DAY 4 - Castaway Cay:
How can you not love this island? One of these days we'll check out the new island, but this trip was about the ship. The plan for this day originally was this: the boys were doing the fishing excursion and the girls were doing jetskiing. We have never done either of these activities, and honestly the last 2 visits to CC my DH has signed up for fishing and it was cancelled. We were hoping 3rd time was the charm for him but we found out, after breakfast, that it wasn't the case. The boys all got off the ship earlier to do the fishing while we hung back, had a late breakfast, then had to be at the jetski area at 10:15am I think because that was NOT cancelled.
We had time to kill but didn't want to go all the way to the adult only beach as that was too far from our meeting point. So we just sat on the beach near where we thought we had to be for about an hour. The boys went to the adult beach.
I had considered cancelling this before our trip as the weather didn't seem ideal. You really didn't want to get in the water here but at least it was nice to just sit on a lounger on the beach as it wasn't too hot. What I did like was that I signed us both up for this ahead of time, which meant about $200 each or so but
DCL guest services contacted me when we got on the ship and notified me that we could both do it but just on one jetski which was perfect. This is not made clear when you book on the app so if you want to do this make sure you ask.
I think we were supposed to have "15 minutes of instruction" and then 45 minutes of riding with a guide. That's what I told DH. We arrived at the meeting point and there were FOUR of us. The two of us plus another couple...and we were both doing the shared jetski. We got a quick spiel about the inherent dangers, then we mounted our jetskis. Now the two guides asked if we had ever ridden before and we said yes...but that should have probably been no. I think we've both been on jetskis once or twice. Our friends were from Georgia and he said he rode jetskis all of the time and owned them. That was obvious later.
I had my 22yo daughter drive and as the leader got on his jetski and couple #1 followed them my daughter was asking me about the brake??? So we slowly took off and she worked on getting the courage to go fast, as the second guide stayed nearby us and just enjoyed riding the waves and "racing her" as he would say later. Guide and couple 1 were way off in the distance, we could barely see them. So much for staying in a group. Eventually my daughter got some speed and by the time we arrived at the sandbar, passing by the adult beach, she felt pretty confident. We got off at the sandbar, the guides told us a few fun facts, we took a few photos, we talked to the couple, and soon we were back on the jetskis.
Heading back and my daughter has her bravery. I keep telling her the speed is fine but what I don't emphasize enough is "as long as you stay straight". See the guides knew they could just enjoy this "group" and they started speeding AND adding some turns. Just as I realize this, and try to tell my daughter NOT to take the turn that sharp--it is too late. We are both thrown off the jetski into the water at high speed. We go one way and the jetski the other so at least it makes the turn and of course the automatic shutoff engages.
Now at least the water is warm, or maybe that was the adrenaline. The guide behind us stops to fish us out, our jetski is quite a distance from us, so he is trying to get me to climb on his jetski when I can't even reach the ground and I'm not exactly a lightweight. Amazingly I get on his jetski, my daughter gets on the one with the other guide, and they take us back to our jetski for our return trip.
This time we go more slowly but also the water is REALLY getting choppy so we are REALLY bouncing. My body and my butt don't enjoy the bouncing either. We do make it back, I text my husband to tell him we are coming to the beach, and he asks if I saw those jetskiers fall off their jetski.
NOPE.
We meet at the adult beach, hang for a while, and have lunch. I don't know what the new setup they had for our lunch was but it did not work out well. Hard to explain but the line situation was just weird. We've done the adult beach and buffet many times. This change did not work well.
Later I would video my husband recounting the story of the jetski people that he, my son, and my FIL saw go FLYING in two different directions and I can't contain the laughter during this. My son says he blinked and no longer saw the jetski and people together. My laughter gives away the fact that it was us. Also we are both in pain on the side that hit the water.
I am still recovering from either a bruised or cracked rib, not really sure, but those first few weeks were rough. This 50+ body doesn't enjoy flying through the air at high speeds into the water. I'm just now returning to playing tennis which I do regularly.
Back on the ship later, we hang at the adult pool for a while. It is nice.
I enjoy some snacks before dinner. This pizza was my FAVORITE:
Dinner that night is in Arandelle. This is the BEST way to end the cruise, this dinner show is so fun and perfect to end the cruise. There were many crying children but they got drowned out by the music.
After dinner we saw the Aladdin show...THIS WAS FUN! Do not miss it!
We watched some more adult shows and visited the Star Wars bar which was cool.
Soon it was time for our last sleep on the ship.
DAY 5: Disembarkation
We chose to have breakfast in Marceline, and I guess a lot of people do this as lines for the sink before entry were long. We waited for our tag to be called before heading down, instead of hanging on the main area like everybody else. Lines wrapped around to get off the ship, but they moved well and were overall organized. Getting our luggage was easy as always and soon we were back on our shuttle to the airport, also easy to find. This time we were not the only
Disney Cruise Line people on the Go Port bus.
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This brings me to the end. If there are specific questions I can answer, ask away. Would I do this ship again? I think I would but I wish it was a longer itinerary as 4 nights isn't enough.
Food overall was good and I didn't have enough time to try it all, especially all of the options around the pool deck. I loved that they served you the ice cream instead of hovering around a machine with others trying to use it, like kids.
I loved the pizza made to order on this deck. I didn't get to try many other stations but they all looked good.
Lunch at Marceline was also good and had many options. They will load you up with food if you want -- just ask.
We were okay with the elevators though I know that's a common complaint.
I missed having one large outdoor deck to walk around the entire ship.
The main pool area was just crazy but I would guess if you had kids it was nice to have so many smaller pools for them to enjoy. They emptied all of them about every hour so that's when it got a bit crazy, but not so much on the adult only deck.
We did several trivia events in different venues and enjoyed them all and even won ONE of them. It was brainteasers but it was just our group vs two other people in one group and Brian (cast member) just made it fun. He was our favorite. If he was leading an event we knew we would like it. I liked that we won a gift bag with several small items instead of just the medals but we did get those also. Trivia is always hard core so we knew it would be tough to win any of the events but we still tried.
I did find it odd that we didn't meet our stateroom attendant until our second day and it wasn't until about day 4 until she realized we had switched to the earlier dinner. We had an issue with the refrigerator "drawer" in our room, it was iced up and we had to leave it open to thaw. We had bought waters to have in our room. We brought a magnetic white board to leave notes for our attendant which worked out. Rooms were always cleaned well.
That's about it. Looking forward to our next
Disney cruise maybe in the fall?
