Day 4 Grand Cayman
We must be very lucky people, because we get another gorgeous day as we anchor off of Grand Cayman. GC is a tender operation, which is a short boat ride over to the island. There isnt much of a wait unless you wanna get off real early and do not have an excursion planned, so waiting a couple of hours is best. Before we left for the trip we had loose plans of going to 7-mile beach
. We have been to GC 3 times, and twice to 7-mile beach, and that was starting to sound a bit BTDT for us (I know, how blasé
). We actually left the room and got breakfast with Cyndi and her gang at topsiders. Once again we all went to the Mickey
Pool, and the girls went swimming in the pool. The moms and dads chatted while the girls were playing, and an hour or so later my running man decided that he was going to go ashore and run in Grand Cayman.
DD came out of the pool (starting to show signs of vacation fatigue, she merely lasted 2 hours in the pool) and stated it was lunch time. I got her a hot dog, and got myself a beautiful sandwich and fruit from Goofys galley. Try their panini sandwiches, they were delightful! We kinda split up from Cyndis family because her DD was not yet done with the pool. At that time we decided to take a walk on the wild side
: we were both going to go ashore and gasp leave DD at the club with no way to contact us since the pager the club provides will not work ashore. We decided that was ok since it was for such a short time, and off we went. We did warn the club we were unreachable and until when, and it seems quite a few people do that (you have to understand as parents of an only child that is a HUGE deal!!!
)
I am reading this and it does sound kinda boring, however trust me, that was a great morning, because the pool was pretty quiet, and Cyndi and I got to chat while reading her stack of magazines by the pool in the warm Caribbean sun.
We got a tender around 2pm. DH went for a run and we agreed to meet at the Flagship store 45 minutes later. Which was plenty of time to shop for the usual trinkets the islands offer (tshirts, cheap jewelry, ball caps, turtle souvenirs, rum cake, etc etc). I bought a small wooden treaure chest as a little gift for DD (mommy guilt for leaving her onboard). We caught a tender back and let the club know we were back onboard, however DD was having a fun time and decided to stay at the club. So much for mommy guilt leaving her there all alone. DH mentioned the running in GC was marginal at best, since it was hard to get away from busy traffic.
Wait for it, more excitement! We did
wait for it
LAUNDRY.
Woo hoo. Since we had been gone from home for 9 days, everyones underwear supply was dwindling down, and to avoid having to dedicate a sink to hand washing tighty-whities (love that word, but no underwear in our house is white!), laundry was required. Now a word of warning: we were (almost) witness to underwear theft in the laundry room
. Back to that in a moment. We did one wash, carefully selecting garments. The total cost was $3 ($1 for soap, $1 to wash and $1 to dry). Change machines are available anywhere, and that is the closest you will get to the sound of slot machines on a Disney ship, so enjoy!
Ok, I know, a lot of bad jokes on this instalment. As a disclaimer
, I got perhaps 3 hours of sleep total last night as DD caught some kind of stomach bug and vomited in her bed 5 times between the hours of 7pm and 4am. So I am a bit tired.
Back to the theft. Cyndi can add more detail (or not
), but her DH also did laundry, and when he went back to get his stuff, his underwear, his favorite underwear, was missing. There are so many disturbing places a mind can go with these set of circumstances, lets just say I do not believe the underwear was recovered. I think Cyndi may have thrown it out...
After all the excitement, I managed to get my butt to the gym and waddle on the treadmill for what was about 2.5 miles, but felt like a marathon
. I looked around at the weight machines, thought about trying one or two, and then decided against it. During that time DH had collected DD from the club and brought her back to our hangout, the Mickey Pool. We had some plans to maybe miss dinner, but seeing as this was our AP show night (we had formal night at AP the night before but without colors changing, and we did not want to miss it). So we quickly swept up DD from the pool, rinsed her off and slapped on a clean dress on her for dinner.
All right, Animators Palate, or Palette, or whatever. Big, big, BIG disappointment. I had seen the DVD, knew the waiters would change into colorful outfits, and read that the restaurant had cost over $4 million bucks. The only real colors that appeared (and not subtly at all) were some lights on pillars and the pictures on the wall. The ceiling remained black and white as did most of the walls. We meant to ask if that was it, but forgot. Our table mates had even changed their Palo ressies to witness this, and chose to miss Pirate
night instead, and were also greatly disappointed. Oh, well.
We left dinner, and made plans to meet up with our tablemates to see the show together. We took a picture with princess Minnie, and DD deemed the Princess outfit lame, compared to the sequined dress she had on for Golden Mickey night. You be the judge.
I thought it was cute. As usual I sent DH to grab front row seats for the show (Twice Charmed), which was really cute and well done, however I was beginning to feel very glad our DD is young and into all the princess
stuff, because a lot of older kids (like, over 8) kinda had glazed over looks during and after the show. That got us started on a discussion that Disney seems much more geared for little girls, even where there would be more boy type opportunities. I wonder if it I because we spend more on girls than boys
? We got back to the room to find a towel animal I could not identify (DD clued me in on its Dinosaur-shape), and went off to bed.
I suppose this is as good a time as any to say we loved the room, but it was very creaky. There were creaky noises pretty much every night, which had DH scurrying around at 2m trying to locate the creak (once a desk drawer, often a ceiling tile) and try to make it go away. On top of out %$#@#$%^%^$$#@ neighbours. Seriously, people. Stop yelling in the hall past midnight, you are not alone on this ship
. You know who you are (and in this case, you are definitely not reading this as you did not speak a word of English, and DH and I debated all week about exactly which language you were speaking we narrowed it down to Eastern European).
Nighty-night all. Please wish us a vomit-free night!
Sad and happy because it was a great trip. I hope to start posting a real trip report sometime this week, after I get out from under all the 
and I start catching up with my 
Normally I would be livid that my plan was off track, but DD was sooooo tired, I let her watch TV in bed for a good hour and a half after she woke up, and I decided we would get to the port when we would get to the port. DH was relieved I wasnt going to go in slave driver mode and we were on our way.
. I had figured after 4 days at WDW she would be charactered-out
no such luck!
time and I went over to the Palo table to please, please please get a brunch preferably on a sea day. Now this was our first idea that this sailing was far from full. We managed an 11:00AM Palo on Monday (1st sea day), and were immediately given a 1st seating dining with the hot rotation of PLAAPLA animators on formal, Parrot Cay on pirate night. Now the pressure was waaayyyyy off! 
to give us a porthole. Well, she didnt come thru, and we were assigned cabin #2047. Some quick research showed that was RIGHT below Rockin Bar D and some people had reported noise between 10pm-1am. No good for us. We called DCL and downgraded to #6507 (cat 11), since they had no other cat. 10 available and were not going to upgrade us. We could pay for an upgrade to cat. 9, but the cabins were way aft and we hate to be too far forward or aft. 6507 sounded like a good location and was a sideways cabin, sounds like fun. Plus, DD loves to shower on vacation so the split bath was not an issue. Fast forward to the day before we flew out, and I checked prices online to see balconies had come down and would only cost us about $300 more. Hellooooo DCL! Can we have a balcony please? We were lucky enough to snag cabin #7532, midship, cat 5
woo hoo. 
). Back to the room. Tons of storage, tons of hangers, cool h2o products, big balcony, split bath. Carnival comparison: DCL has bigger balconies, more storage space, flat screen TV, and doors that slide instead of open into the room and block access to the other people walking thru.
We also missed the dis meet because we were giddily unpacking.
. Salads were just okay, soups were good, main courses also ok. But the breads were good and different each night. I honestly cant remember what I ate every night, so this TR will not be full of food porn, but I can tell you both times I had crème brulee it was heavenly
Food is one area where Carnival tends to be better, in our humble opinion.
Off my soapbox, we proceeded to move a few towels and enjoy the chairs for a few minutes.
and memorable and I hope we will have the opportunity to see each other again. I couldnt help but post a pic of the girls literally minutes after they met as it really warms my heart!
& Daisy at 9:30. For some reason, Daisy & Donald seem to be harder to find, or perhaps our schedule just didnt work with their appearances 
gave me the evil eye 
. I leave DH to finish the tour, I walk to the Palo entrance (kids are not allowed at Palo, so poor DD was left alone at the entrance, in a bathing suit covered with a towel and dripping wet. I wish I could have taken her picture, she was pretty pitiful!) Thankfully, after a few hugs, DD claims to be hungry and Cyndi saves the day by telling DD they should go get ice cream together 
. Bue-bye, back to stuffing myself please!
which I thought were good, and the girls got guitars from a local vendor (after much negotiating who would get what color, and may I say Cyndis DD was way more cooperative than ours
) we ate some fajitas, guacamole and chips, and the guys tried the pool with the kids. After a couple of hours we were done, and took a cab back to the ship. Here are some pics:
