Hey everyone,
To continue where I left off with our recent 3-Day Dream cruise:
While people were still coming onto the ship, Steve and I walked around checking everything out. We peeked into the dining rooms, knowing that we weren't going to try them out this time, but wait until we were with the twins in August. All of the dining rooms are beautiful! We also went up to the Vista Spa to check out the amenities. Before the cruise I had booked the Couples Villa, but changed my mind and decided to spend the money on a Serenity Bay Cabana. I decided that it would be more penny wise (ha!) to have a cabana for several hours than enjoy the spa stuff for less time. That said, the spa rooms look amazing, so you can't go wrong doing that either!
I wanted to hear about the shopping in Nassau (a place I've only been to once before about thirty years ago) so we went down to the Buena Vista Theatre to listen to Whitney (the Disney personal shopping guide) talk about the ins and outs of shopping in
DCL places. I wanted to upgrade a piece of jewelry I had gotten in Grand Cayman on my last cruise, so it ended up that Whitney told me she'd meet us at the store the next day after our excursion to Atlantis ended. I know nothing about gemstones, so was glad to hear that she would help us.
The sailaway party was already in full swing when we went up to the upper decks. Cast members were handing out streamers, drinks were being passed around, kids were playing in the water, and the aquaduck had acquired quite a line by then! The ship blasted the horn with the famous sound "When you wish upon a star" (which brought a huge smile and a catch in my throat) and we were off! There were a couple of cast members on land who waved to us with their big mickey hands.
Steve and I wandered back upstairs to deck 12. The concierge lounge was full of people and free drinks were available as well as other finger foods. We took our glasses of wine and went out on our verandah to watch the boat move out of the port and into open water. We called the kids one last time while our cellphones still worked. All was well at home, so we sat back in our lounge chairs and enjoyed feeling the ship go into the ocean. The water was unbelievably pretty and those love bugs were now all gone!
We got unpacked (as mentioned earlier there were plenty of shelves and cupboards to put our things into). Steve logged into the Surf at Sea stuff to get his computer all connected. Turns out that if you are in concierge you pay the $40 for 100 minute fee, but you get it refunded back at the end of the cruise. The connections are really slow, so Steve used it rarely to check email. After we got settled, we went downstairs to see the 6:15 show called The Golden Mickeys. It was great! Loved it......
We got dressed for Palo and went upstairs. There is a nice bar between Palo and Remy so we went there and had a drink. Our reservation was for 7:40pm and the restaurant was still fairly empty when we got there. They seated us up on the second level and we were the only ones there except for a couple of tables of crew members. There must have been at least 10 tables that remained open the whole time we were there. We figured that since it was the first night of a three day cruise, maybe people wanted to eat in the family dining areas since if you went to Palo you would miss one of the restaurants on the three day cruise. Our service was "okay" kind of slow given the relatively uncrowded nature of the restaurant. Steve enjoyed his rack of lamb, but my fish (wrapped in parchment) was rather bland. We passed on the chocolate souffle (I planned on getting it the next night) and left deciding that while our meal was good, it wasn't over the top. Our Palo experience on the Magic last October was definitely better. We still had fun, though, and we planned on going back again the next night.
After we were done, we went back to our room to change into comfy clothes. Then we headed down to Evolution as I had convinced Steve that we needed to check out the adult lounges. "Pink" is pretty, "Skyline" is cool, and there are definitely adult bars and areas all over the place. In "Evolution", a show called "Match Your Mate" was just about to start. Steve made me promise not to volunteer us which was just fine with me! We did enjoy the show (three couples are picked) and a dynamic duo who had been married 47 years won the bottle of champagne.
We then headed over to the shops to check out the merchandise. Lots of inaugural voyage pins, shirts, to be had. The stores even had the large vinylmation mickeys that I had lugged onto the ship (though theirs were $42 instead of my $14.99 ones on sale!). I bought a few things for the girls and we called it a night. Tomorrow would be Nassau Day!
More later.... Gotta get the twins on the school bus soon.
Thanks for sharing.
That's great news!!
I can't wait to find out our cabin number.
laura
No news so far !!! 
schools either !! 
Off I go ... some laundry before bed time !! 
