Best Friends and New Friends - a MAGICal Tale

[Jennifer48]

Thar she is!

Because we took the DCL transportation buses, we didn’t arrive at the port until almost 2pm. Sure we were a bit bummed not to be spending more time on the ship but after the month we’ve had at work, we were just glad to be there. We went through security, up the escalator and double checked our Immigration forms because I can never remember how to fill out some of the spaces. We asked a nice CM who was at the front table and she clarified a few things for us. Thankfully we only had to change one thing on my form and Dan just had to fill the rest of his out. We proceeded over to the Castaway Club line since this was our first CC cruise and we were excited to be able to use this line! That port was nearly deserted since everyone else was already allowed to embark and was enjoying lunch on the Magic.

We got our CC lanyards from the CM at the desk and she gave us our Goofy Key to the World cards. We repacked the docs in my back pack and headed towards the giant Mickey ears for our embarkation to begin! First we went outside on the mini deck they have so we could get some fun up-close pics of the Magic. Hey it was our first time seeing her in person!

We love self-portraits!

Take a look at the detail that they even put above the windows on the port!

DCL Terminal Window Decorations

One good thing, well two good things, about getting to the port later when everyone else was onboard was 1) no lines anywhere and 2) our room was already ready!

We took our photos with our Incredibles t-shirts on, headed up the gangplank and entered the ship.

The Incredibles are here!

We had them announce us just as Jen and Dan since we aren’t married……yet ;-) We went straight to our room first to drop off our backpacks and then planned on heading up to lunch at Topsiders. This time, we got a Category 9 stateroom so we could have the porthole window. Best thing we did. Our room was 2082 and we loved it! We opened the door to our stateroom for the first time and saw all the gifts already sitting on our bed. And, what gift is that?!

Up next: Any dolphins around?!

 

[Nora03]

Hi Jennifer,
I'm reading - just found your report. I used to be a lurker, but then I realized that writers like to be appreciated for their hard work. We appreciate you.

What a sweet man to find the perfect card for you - not all of them know how to do that. And, aren't you sweet to pay for most of the trip. It all balances out in the end.

Looks like you're off to a great start. We stayed at CBR many years ago - 1996 and loved it. Haven't been on a Disney cruise (Princess - and had a great time).

Looking forward to more trippie.

Nora

We're counting our days until Disney - 172 now (May 2008)

 

[scottishwee35]

Hi Jennifer

Enjoyed reading your story and love the photos too.

Looking forward next

Scottishwee35

 

[Kimberly815]

Cute pic!

I can't wait to see pics of your stateroom! I am totally living 'the trip that didn't happen for us' vicariously through your report!

 

[Jennifer48]

Hi Jennifer,
I'm reading - just found your report. I used to be a lurker, but then I realized that writers like to be appreciated for their hard work. We appreciate you.

What a sweet man to find the perfect card for you - not all of them know how to do that. And, aren't you sweet to pay for most of the trip. It all balances out in the end.

Looks like you're off to a great start. We stayed at CBR many years ago - 1996 and loved it. Haven't been on a Disney cruise (Princess - and had a great time).

Looking forward to more trippie.

Nora

We're counting our days until Disney - 172 now (May 2008)

Hi Nora! Thank you very much for reading and your kind words. It does give me some confidence knowing that others are reading and enjoying my tale. Before you know it, 172 days will be here!

Hi Jennifer

Enjoyed reading your story and love the photos too.

Looking forward next

Scottishwee35

Thank you Deborah!

I can't wait to see pics of your stateroom!

They are coming!

 

[Jennifer48]

Along with our Castaway Club member gifts, there was one other sitting on the bed. That gift is the Romance Basket. Dan had secretly ordered it before we left to surprise me. Told you he was the bestest! I’ll let him post and explain more about it and how he came about ordering it.

Our gifts!

We literally just dropped our backpacks down and headed up to Topsiders as it was now after 2pm. We had a scheduled DISmeet at 3p in front of Pluto’s at the Mickey pool.
It was a beautiful, sunny, hot day so that was our major decision in eating at Topsiders. We wanted to be outside as much as we could. Through the buffet line we went, not picking up as much food as we thought we would considering how hungry we were.

LUNCH! Mmmmm I me some mac & cheese!

We did feel very rushed though since we had our DISmeet soon. I was nervous about this. I had that first-day-of-school feeling where you meet new people that you don’t know. I’m weird like that. So we headed over to the Mickey pool to pick up our bracelets from Bareacuda (Ann) and meet our tablemates for the next 7 nights. It was actually pretty fun meeting people that you’ve only spoken to via the internet. You feel like you already know them based on online conversations so it went better than expected. Whew! The bracelets that Bareacuda (Ann) got for us were awesome! They were lime green and had ‘Cruisin’ the Magic Sept 2007’ on them. Guess what? I forgot my gifts for her and tinkerbelle77 (Tina) back in the room! We had to go pick up the water from tinkerbelle77 (Tina)’s room so we could bring the gift down then. Now it was just a matter of finding Ann in the sea of people later! (No pun intended).

Saying our hellos and goodbyes to our DIS friends, we headed back to our stateroom to do some unpacking and get our life vests for the mandatory lifeboat drill. There were a lot of people already heading up to their designated area BEFORE they even signaled the beginning! Rachel, our Cruise Director, specifically said to wait until they sound the blasts before heading out. Some people just don’t listen.

The mandatory drill was boring and uneventful and quick, just the way we like it. We headed right back to our room to drop off the life vests, picked up our cameras and headed up to deck 9 for the Sail Away Party aka Adventures Away Party.

What happened to Sail Away?!

I was looking forward to this for months because I had purchased the High School Musical DVD and I learned the dance to “We’re all in this Together.” Yup, I’m a dork but who cares, I was on vacation! They did end up playing it and guess what? I forgot some of the steps! Oh well. As we were watching the Ariel View I saw Bareacuda (Ann)! She was watching from deck 10 so I ran up to give her her gift.

Once we realized we were moving, we made our way up to deck 10 to wave goodbye to Florida. We kept our eyes peeled for dolphins but unfortunately we didn’t see any this time.

Bye Cast Members!

I love waving to everyone on shore. It makes me feel like they are all thinking “man I wish I was on that ship” and I was!
After we were out of the harbor, we headed down to tinkerbelle77 (Tina)’s room to get our case of water and to give her her gift. We dropped the water off in our room and headed to Pluto’s to get our first plate of French fries on the cruise. We will frequent Pluto’s during the 8 day journey. Man free food is good food . Plenty of time before dinner so we decided just to venture around. We ended up on Secret Deck 7. I made it a point to see it since last cruise we never made it down there even though we were only 3 doors away!

Good bye land!

Time to head back to the room and get ready for dinner. We put up all our door signs before we got changed.

Our blood, sweat and tears went into making these door signs

Let me sidetrack for a moment and head back in time to the Monday before the cruise. I was watching HSN because one of my favorite inventors was selling her products again, Joy Mangano. If you don’t know who she is, Google her. She is a genius. She has a product called My Little Steamer. I wanted to buy it in the past but I just never got around to it. I really wanted it and thought it would be really useful on the cruise to steam our dress clothes. I purchased 2 online with express shipping so I could try it out before we left. It worked so well! Ok back to the present. We steamed our dinner clothes for tonight and decided to steam the rest later because we didn’t have enough time after we unpacked everything.

Dinner rotation was LAPLAPL so tonight we were heading to Lumiere’s.

Menu

We got to really meet our dinner companions, Lisa0503 (Lisa) and her husband Chris along with Hixski (Donna) and her husband Glenn. Lisa volunteered to contact DCL to link our reservations since we were three couples sans children and we all had the late dining rotation. Thanks again Lisa!

We had the best servers. Our head server was Jeevan and he was from India. We actually saw him many times during dinner and one night; he even took our dessert order! He was great. Our main server was Romeo and he was from the Philippines and our assistant server was Soumitra and he was also from India. Great team. This first night, Romeo took out a slip of paper out of his pocked, went around the table and guessed who we were and got us all correct! We were wickedly impressed. I’m really sorry but I forgot to take pictures of our food AND I even forgot what we ate! I’m such a bad trippie author. You can stop reading now if you’d like. I understand. I do remember that I had the chocolate soufflé for dessert. We told Romeo that Dan and I had Palo the next night so we would not be at dinner. He told me that if I liked this chocolate soufflé, it was nothing compared to the soufflé at Palo. He brought it to the table along with the chocolate sauce. He held it over my soufflé and as he was about to pour it, he would say something about Palo. Then he’d start to pour again and then stop in midway to mention something ELSE about Palo. This lasted about 2 whole minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore and told him to just pour the chocolate! . It was great. I’m sure my tablemates enjoyed the laugh on my behalf.

Adequately stuffed, we changed out of our nice clothes and headed up to the Goofy pool. They were showing Mary Poppins on the Ariel View and that was my favorite movie. It was wicked awesome watching it out in the warm air at night. Dan and I pulled up a chaise and I sang along. Vacation has begun.

Our crabby towel animal for the night

Up next: What is that noise?!

 

[scottishwee35]

Jennifer

Ah, bless you are so lucky to have Dan. As he is a great man to give you a surprise!!

Ah, see the photo, make me want to go back on the Cruise

Was any an interpreter on the Cruise?

I had two interpreter on my cruise last July as they were so fantastic and we all are hoping to meet again next May 08.

Looking forward to read next one

Scottishwee35

 

[MagicMe]

I'm really enjoying your trip report! Keep it coming!

 

[Jennifer48]

Jennifer

Ah, bless you are so lucky to have Dan. As he is a great man to give you a surprise!!

Ah, see the photo, make me want to go back on the Cruise

Was any an interpreter on the Cruise?

I had two interpreter on my cruise last July as they were so fantastic and we all are hoping to meet again next May 08.

Looking forward to read next one

Scottishwee35

I am very lucky to have Dan. I thank God every night for bringing him into my life.

The shows that we went to, we did not see an interpreter. I hope that only means that there was no one on board that needed the assistance.

Thank you again for continuing to read!

 

[Nora03]

Jennifer - looks like Dan's a keeper! A surprise AND he worked on the signs too!

I love the picture of the wake behind the ship. Doesn't it give you a great feeling watching it?

Sounds like you had a blast. Looking forward to more.

Nora

 

[Hixski]

We are up to Saturday!!!! You realize I don't need to do a trip report. You will probably cover just about anything I would!!!

 

[squall55]

I am very lucky to have Dan. I thank God every night for bringing him into my life.

Awwwww I'm all teary eyed!

You're the bestest too.
I love you!

 

[squall55]

Well the whole thing about the Romance basket was this.

For anyone knows does not know about ordering things for the stateroom, for most everything ordered, it must be done no later than 48 hours before the day of the cruise. So the boat left on Saturday and I had meant to do this all week, but work got so hectic, that I kept not having the chance to do it. So Wednesday night around 9 at night, I finally got the opportunity to sit down and do it.

I called them up and asked them if it was too late to order the Romance Basket, she asked when I was leaving and I said on Saturday. She said that it might be too late, but that she would check. She took quite a few minutes to come back and when she did, she said that I had just barely made it and that they would not be accepting orders much longer. Just barely made it

Just another memory I wanted to give Jen of the cruise and how much I appreciated the gift of the trip she gave me. She was pleasantly surprised and we used the bathrobes the entire week.

Just to see her reaction was worth every penny.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Now, that peanut butter pie that we had from Topsiders has to be one of the most scrumptious dessert's on the ship. I looked forward to it all year long. The only day I ever saw them have it was the first day. Go figure. They need to have it more......so so good.

 

[Kimberly815]

Good bye land!

Oooh, I wish I was there now!! It look so serene!

And Dan was so sweet to get that basket!

 

[Jennifer48]

I'm really enjoying your trip report! Keep it coming!

Thank you for reading MagicMe!

Jennifer - looks like Dan's a keeper! A surprise AND he worked on the signs too!

I love the picture of the wake behind the ship. Doesn't it give you a great feeling watching it?

Sounds like you had a blast. Looking forward to more.

Nora

Hi Nora, Dan is a keeper! I agree
We watched the wake many times during the week, its so calming.

We are up to Saturday!!!! You realize I don't need to do a trip report. You will probably cover just about anything I would!!!

Yeah you don't need to write one considering you'll be in most of mine! I just need to add that you drank a little more and you had different excursions. Other than that, same trip!

Well the whole thing about the Romance basket was this.

For anyone knows does not know about ordering things for the stateroom, for most everything ordered, it must be done no later than 48 hours before the day of the cruise. So the boat left on Saturday and I had meant to do this all week, but work got so hectic, that I kept not having the chance to do it. So Wednesday night around 9 at night, I finally got the opportunity to sit down and do it.

I called them up and asked them if it was too late to order the Romance Basket, she asked when I was leaving and I said on Saturday. She said that it might be too late, but that she would check. She took quite a few minutes to come back and when she did, she said that I had just barely made it and that they would not be accepting orders much longer. Just barely made it

Just another memory I wanted to give Jen of the cruise and how much I appreciated the gift of the trip she gave me. She was pleasantly surprised and we used the bathrobes the entire week.

Just to see her reaction was worth every penny.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Now, that peanut butter pie that we had from Topsiders has to be one of the most scrumptious dessert's on the ship. I looked forward to it all year long. The only day I ever saw them have it was the first day. Go figure. They need to have it more......so so good.

Dan, I didn't realize what a project it was for you to get that Romance Basket. Now it means even more

 

[Jennifer48]

Sunday September 16th:

Dan and I are not morning people and we do not like to be woken up if we don’t have to. So at 9am on our first ever at sea day, we were rudely woken up by some kind of strange noise. Was it the motor? Did we hit an iceberg? What the heck is going on? I jumped out of bed and did not see any land mass or other ship in our path so we figured they hit the breaks or something. Strange. So we decided since we were wide awake, we’d get up and be productive.

I said we were awake, that doesn’t mean we moved quickly. We ended up heading to Topsiders for breakfast. What can I say, we like sitting outside whenever possible. Plus the scrambled eggs there are so great. Much better than the ones I’ve at WDW that’s for sure.

Food in our bellies, we headed up to deck 10 to just veg in the sun for the remainder of the day. Deck 9 was full and all the loungers were being held or occupied. There were a lot of people in the pool so I figured those loungers were being held by someone swimming. Now me, I’m a fair-skinned redhead so as you can imagine, I burn and I burn bad. I bought SPF 50, yes 50, with me on this cruise because I did not want that to happen. I applied it before I left our stateroom everyday and carried it with me when we went to lie out. About an hour passed and I started to feel my legs burning a bit so I attempted to reapply the sunscreen. This was one of the Coppertone aerosol cans so I sprayed it liberally all over my legs. We stayed out there from about 11-1p when we figured we’d both had enough sun for the day.

Before we left for the cruise, I hit up our local Home Depot to pick up some Mickey head paint swatches. They had just restocked and had tons of each color. So I did what any logical DISboard member would do, I took one of each! Dan and I laminated them all and when we found out that our DISers cruise roster was called “Mickey’s Magical Gang” I decided to write that on each of the Mickey heads and put one on everyone’s door that I had a stateroom number for. So once we showered and changed from sunbathing, we went around with the Mickey heads and placed them on the doors we knew belonged to one of our DISboard friends. To our surprise, there were a lot of doors with no decorations and a few fish extenders. Once we finished with those (we only had about 30 to do), then we did some of our PassPorters Treasure Hunts. I can’t say enough about this book. It really makes you stop and look around. I’d love to take it to WDW and just do the hunts all day. It would be a lot of fun and I’d probably see more of the parks than I have in all my visits.

Hidden Mickey forward

Many Hidden Mickey's on the soap box!

Despite the fact that we slept in, we were actually pretty tired. You know how the sun does that to you. So we headed in for a power nap before our Palo reservations and Red Sox / Yankees game this evening.

Up next: RRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG

 

[Kimberly815]

Dan and I are not morning people and we do not like to be woken up if we don’t have to. So at 9am on our first ever at sea day, we were rudely woken up by some kind of strange noise. Was it the motor? Did we hit an iceberg? What the heck is going on? I jumped out of bed and did not see any land mass or other ship in our path so we figured they hit the breaks or something. Strange.

Oh, I hope this was a one time occurance!!

Once we finished with those (we only had about 30 to do), then we did some of our PassPorters Treasure Hunts. I can’t say enough about this book. It really makes you stop and look around. I’d love to take it to WDW and just do the hunts all day. It would be a lot of fun and I’d probably see more of the parks than I have in all my visits.

I have almost bought that book like 4 times now. Good to know that you like it. I think I might have to pick it up!

 

[oybolshoi]

Love it! Makes me wish Jay and I were going on a cruise ...

Your Dan is such a sweetie ... definitely a keeper.

Waiting for that Palo review ...

 

[Jennifer48]

Is that the phone?! Who would be calling us? Dan picks it up. They were looking for Sara. They woke us up from our nap to look for Sara. Damn you kids!! It was a nice nap while it lasted. We slept from about 4-5:30. Nice and refreshed despite another rude awakening.

I steamed the rest of our week’s dinner clothes while Dan showered. I’m telling you, good deal and so easy to use. My turn to jump in the shower and as soon as the water hit my legs, YEOWZA! I got burnt! D’OH! And its only day 2 of the cruise! I was so upset with myself. It was only my legs and of course, the burn was uneven because when I sprayed the sunscreen on, it was windy. The darn wind took my sunscreen with it. I should have just evened it out with my hands. Live and learn.

Once dressed to the 9s, we headed up to the Promenade Lounge to watch the beginning of our beloved Red Sox vs. Spankees, I mean Yankees. Our dinner mates Donna and Glenn were having a pre-dinner drink so we bellied up to the bar and joined them until our Palo ressies which were at 8:30, same as our regular dinner rotation.

We were so excited for Palo. We never were able to get the brunch ressies so dinner was good enough for us, for now. We headed up to deck 10 to check-in and take a few pictures around the main lobby area.

Signage

Beautiful décor. We were promptly seated at a table for 2 in front of the windows and our server Sasha from Croatia came over to greet us. We aren’t wine people, nor are we fancy restaurant people so we kinda felt out of place. I didn’t know what to order, how to order, or what would be appropriate. Thankfully there was no one sitting near us to hear the dumb questions we asked each other. I did order the Fairy Tale Cuvee which was just champagne made especially for Disney. It was fabulous!
The bread was wicked good too. We shared the Pizza Margherita and both got the mixed salad. We were so used to seeing a typical salad that we were so taken aback by what it looked like when it came out!

How do you eat this salad?!

We also both had the Filet Mignon as our entrée. A weird situation happened when we were eating our entrees. Rachel, our cruise director, came over the loudspeaker and basically made an emergency call for personnel to head to deck 2 and a specific room number. It didn’t seem like anyone else heard it in the restaurant but we surely did. It was strange.

Food was fantastic and you know of course I had to get the Chocolate Soufflé for dessert, so did Dan. He had it with the vanilla sauce and I had it with a mix of vanilla and chocolate. Sasha also brought us out Panna Cotta and two Limoncello shots. Not to mention when we were eating all this dessert, Sasha came over to see how everything was and he even asked if we wanted another entrée! Yeah right. Sasha was a lot of fun and I highly recommend asking for him the next time you are at Palo. He is wonderful. He gives you enough time to eat, makes sure everything is just perfect for you and what I love the most, he gives you time to eat. We never felt rushed at all. It was absolutely perfect.

Aren't we cute?!

They came around with a cart from the kitchen to load us onto since we couldn’t move we were so full. Just kidding. I wish they would have. It would have made it easier to leave!

We went back to the room, changed into comfy clothes and headed to Diversions to watch the end of the Red Sox game since the Patriots had already won earlier in the day, without the use of video tape! The comedian, Rich Purpura, was in Rockin’ Bar D but that place was packed so they were showing his performance in Diversions and that was packed also. We wanted to watch baseball!! There was one TV in the corner playing the game so we planted ourselves there and Donna and Glenn were already there and they joined us. We basically closed the place down and were just about kicked out. That’s ok. We had a great conversation going and we didn’t want to finish but like everything else, it had to end. We said our good-byes and headed back to our room around midnight.

Any guesses?!

Up next: To character breakfast or not to character breakfast, that is the question.

 

[Jennifer48]

Monday, September 17th:

We decided that we would try to make it to the character breakfast this morning. We debated about it for a while because I had read that the characters don’t make it around to the tables like a normal character meal. But like anything else, we wanted to judge for ourselves.

Mickey’s Island Jam was held in Parrot Cay and our arrival time was 9:45am. Nice and late for us sleep-iners. Lisa and Chris joined us also at our table. Breakfast was delicious and the show was fun. The characters walked by our table and would stop for a few seconds at other tables that had children but we didn’t mind. We enjoy watching children interact with them.

Menu

Minnie

Lilo

Pluto

Lilo & Stitch

Minnie

Dale

Chip

Goofy

After breakfast it was almost 11am and time for the Castaway Clubhouse. We received our invites in our room the night before so we decided to check it out. We headed over to Rockin’ Bar D but since we were late, there weren’t any open seats left. We stood up in the back by the bar for a bit listening to Rachael and Captain Thord.

Captain Thord

A family in front of us left so we jumped to their table. We had a good time. Captain Thord told us that ¾ of the passengers were repeat cruisers. Shows you Disney does something right!

After the videos you watch, they have a raffle for some Disney Cruise Line clocks. Neither of us won but it was fun cheering those that did because as they were to go and receive their gift, Rachael made them do a happy dance. And can you believe it? I didn’t even eat a Mickey rice crispy treat… .sue me. We saw our DIS friends Lisa, Chris, Kamgen Kami and her husband there. Lisa told us at breakfast that they set up a DIS photo meet in the atrium lobby for 12 noon. So from the Castaway Clubhouse, we made our way to the lobby. Bareacuda Ann had set up for a DCL photographer to take our picture. She’s so smart like that! So we took a few happy pics and then one silly one. I never purchased any at Shutters but I did take pictures of them….shhh! Ironically the only one that came out focused was the silly one!

Silly DISers!

Up next: Are you serious lady?!