Day 2- Friday Nov 1st
We've got the Magic in us!!
Who can sleep in when you know where you are going today??!! Not me!! We were up and at 'em bright and early today. The anticipation was killing us!! DH had an early flight out of Jacksonville, arriving in Ft Lauderdale at 9:10 am. He would grab the hotel shuttle and meet us in our room. We were in the mist of repacking our bags and such when he arrived. I finished packing, and laid out the cruise documents that he had to sign. I like to think that I am a very organized person. Maybe a little to organized at times. This comes into
play twice this morning.
#1- I was not prepared for how much stuff you need to pack for a cruise!! When we go to Disney World, I pack much lighter. If I forget something, we run to the store and buy it. Not so on a cruise!! There is no where to "run and buy it"! With that being said, I did everything I could yesterday to just shove everything in my suitcases. My packing was very unorganized, in turn
making me feel a little bit uneasy. That is why I was more than glad to be able to reorganize the bags before heading to port! We also removed our airline luggage tags and attached our
DCL tags. It was almost time!!
#2- With my organizational need, and just pure excitement of going on a cruise, I made sure to order copies of DH and my birth certificates super early in order to make sure they arrived in plenty of time. None of us have passports, and with having booked only 27 days in advance, there was no time to get them. SO, birth certificates it would be. The DAY our cruise documents arrived from Disney I made sure to gather all of the necessasry documents and put them in the folder. I also made copies the day we were leaving and put them in a seperate spot from the folder in case anything was lost. While finishing up at the hotel this morning, I told DH that he needed to still sign the cruise contract. He pulled out all of the documents, started looking throught them, and then stopped me dead in my tracks. He had asked my why I had my older sons birth certificate with me???!! The older son who had stayed at home!! Turns out Mrs. Super Organized brought one of the wrong birth certificates!! I brought son #1's but NOT son #2's!!! I about fell over!! Luckily, DCL accepts copies of birth certificates, especially for children. SO, with hands shaking, I called son #1 at home, had him scan and email copy of son #2's BC, went to the business center at the hotel, and printed out a copy. Crisis averted!!!! Thank goodness!!
With said crisis behind us, we called Ken and told him we were ready to head to Miami! We were given a port check in time of 12:30-1:00 PM. Hotel
check out time was 11:00 AM, so we had a little bit of time to kill. Ken suggested we try out a nearby Colombian restaurant. Now that our bellies were full, we headed out towards Port of Miami. We arrived a little bit after our 1:00 PM arrival time. We exited the car, and there she was!! The Disney Magic!! How exciting!
We made our way into the port, cleared all of the necessasary security check points and arrived in the registration area. Here, after waiting in a rather short line, we were handed our Key to the World card and assigned a boarding number. Turns out our boarding number had already been called, so we were able to head right aboard. As we went up the escalator, I had to keep myself from running!! We went through the final checkpoint, and were welcomed aboard. We entered through the Deck 4 gangway. The next thing we heard was "Disney Magic, please welcome the Brown Family aboard!" It was finally here, and we were ecstatic!
The staterooms were already available, so we set off to find ours. We were on Deck 7, starboard side room #7578. We entered our room, and I went straight for our verandah! I could quickly tell that this would become one of my favorite places on the cruise!! After dropping our day bag, we set off to explore the ship. We went up to decks 9 and 10. We explored the pool area, sports area, and found the soda station. I love that soda is included on Disney cruises. If not, I could see soda quickly becoming a huge expense!! At 4:30 PM we made our way to deck 9 to enjoy the Adventures Away deck party. This is an exciting send off party with all of the characters. It is very fun, and really gets you in the vacation mood! After 30 mins of singing and dancing, the countdown began. 3, 2, 1 and with that, the Disney Magic sounded her horn- When you wish upon a star- and vacation was officially under way. Turns out, so were we. We had made our way back to our cabin to get ready for dinnner. We had the early seating- 5:45. When we entered the room, I made the comment that I felt like we were moving much more in the room. Went over to the verandah and- guess what?? We were moving!!
With a quick freshen up, and clothes changed, we made our way to our first dinner. Tonight we would be eating at Carioca's. It is a brazilian themed restaurant, but tonight, the menu was not the normal menu, but rather
the Let the Magic Begin menu. We were shown to our table, table #29- one of the best seats in the house! We had a starboard side, sea view! Gorgeous view!! We were soon
greeted by our serving team. Cyprian from India was our head server, and Antonio from Portugal would be our assistant server. A few minutes after we arrived, our tablemates arrived. A really nice family of 4 from Lakeland, Florida.
Dinner was amazing!! So many great choices! I think all 4 of us had the NY strip steak that night. Followed by an amazing dessert. Now stuffed, we decided to skip the show tonight. We decided to go up to deck 9 and see what was going on by the pool. Turns out, that deck 9 is very deserted at night after dinner! We let the boys go change and they swam while watching Cars on the big screen. DH and I enjoyed a cocktail while relaxing and breathing in the fresh sea air.
Soon, we all felt the sheer exhaustion of the day and decided to head to bed. We opened the door to our stateroom to find that our stateroom host had turned down the beds for us. She left us our Personal Navigator for the next day on our bed, along with our first "friend"- our towel puppy!! He was wearing my sunglasses! I was very curious how it would be sleeping while the boat was rocking. The sea was very smooth so far, so turns out it was a pretty calming, relaxing feeling.
Day 3- Do you sea what I sea.....
