Can you use the force on Toddlers? Fantasy SWDAS March 2016 FINISHED

[hnthomps]

Our first Disney Cruise!
Fantasy, Western Caribbean with Star Wars Day at Sea, March 19 - 26th 2016

We got off the Fantasy just over a week ago, and we are all still talking about it all the time. I want to write up the trip for my kids to help them remember, and since I read so many trip reports in preparation for the trip, I figured I might as well post a version here.

Two caveats though: first, while we ate a lot of excellent food, we did not take any pictures of food. Nor did we take any pictures of the restaurants. Sorry...managing the kids was enough without worrying about photos!

Second, we have a general family rule about not posting photos of our children's faces on public websites. Since, obviously, most of the photos we took featured our kids...there aren't a lot of great photos left. I'll include what I can (helpfully, my kids just loved leaning up against windows, showing only their backs!), but please excuse that this will be text heavy, and some photos will be blurry.

Oh, and additional caveat: I’m pretty verbose. This is…probably going to be long. But I took elaborate notes along the way, and it's almost all written already, so it will go up pretty quickly.

Pre-trip report and Cast of Characters

I’m in my mid 30s and I work in the Chicago theater scene. My husband, D, is an attorney, and we have two small children. We essentially only have positive associations with Disney, but we aren’t particularly knowledgeable and haven't taken the kids to any of the parks yet. Our only prior cruise experience was on our honeymoon, but the destinations were the point, the boat was completely secondary – basically just a mobile hotel. So we were going in pretty blind ... other than my obsessive research on this board.

We decided to take this cruise slightly over a year ago, when SWDAS was announced. It was the end of a brutal Chicago winter, we had no spring break plans, and we were going out of our minds trying to figure out what kind of vacation we could possibly take with small children that would actually feel like vacation. As we both love Star Wars, the announcement –which came the very day we had hit the breaking point and decided we HAD to book a warm-weather vacation for 2016 ASAP – seemed serendipitous. A friend had just returned from a cruise on the Magic, and her photos had made me pretty jealous. We did minimal research, found a travel agent who offered a good deal, and booked it. It felt both incredibly impulsive and ridiculously far out.

Our son, P, is 4 (he would tell you “four and three quarters”) and Star Wars obsessed as only a preschooler can be… which is to say, he hasn’t actually seen any of the movies. He has, however, watched a seemingly endless stream of videos of other people building Star Wars LEGO kits, and he has a fair collection of his own similar LEGOs, which he will happily discuss for ages. He has Star Wars books, asks to be read the Star Wars encyclopedia at bedtime, and can talk at length about who has what color lightsaber. But just to repeat, he’s never seen a Star Wars movie.

Our daughter, J, is 2. She is strong-willed, independent, and determined to have her way. If you were on the boat with us, you probably saw her running away from us / attempting to lie down on a staircase / trying to negotiate her swim-diapered-behind into the pools. You may even have heard her, um, thoughts about the injustices of the world at various points. I’m sorry about that. She’s… 2.

P’s favorite movie is Planes: Fire and Rescue, with Aladdin and Frozen a close second. The only movie J has seen is Frozen, and she would like to watch it again, please, now, right now. Both children love “Mickey Clubhouse” and can sing the theme song and do the hot dog dance with the best of them. J is also pretty into Sofia, but doesn’t get to watch it very often as her brother has no interest. Needless to say, they were PRETTY excited that they’d get to meet some of their favorite characters on board (I did break it to P that Dusty Crophopper wouldn’t be on board and he said, “of course not Mama, he lives in the Cars and Planes world, not our world. He’s not like MICKEY”)

Both of our children keep pretty strict schedules at home, and in the past have not reacted well to deviations from the routine. They’re usually in bed by 7:15pm and wake up between 6:30 and 7am. As you can imagine, this presents some challenges when traveling, and we really had no idea what to expect. We knew that at bare minimum, one parent would be stuck in the stateroom early every evening, and there would be no sleeping in (when first researching the cruise, we had desperately hoped there would be some sort of in-room babysitting option, or an easy way to leave the sleeping children while we went out, but we knew months in advance that this would not be the case).

Oh, and J still naps for 2+ hours every afternoon, and is not good company if her nap is shortened (spoiler alert: this will come up again). We agreed in advance that on vacation all rules about screen time and ice cream are on hold, but were worried about naps and bedtimes because our kids have consistently demonstrated that they are happier with routine.

I didn’t find a lot of trip reports from people with small children, which is the main reason I am posting this. I hope it is helpful!

If I can figure out how, I'll update with a table of contents as I go. For now, the story continues below!

Table of Contents

1. Travel to Orlando, Embarkation, and the first afternoon
2. Muster, Sail Away, first night
3. Sunday, at Sea
4. Monday, Cozumel and Characters
5. Tuesday, Grand Cayman
6. Wednesday, STAR WARS DAY AT SEA
7. Thursday, At Sea
8. Friday, Castaway Cay
9. Debarkation
10. Final Thoughts

 

[hnthomps]

Friday, 3/18 - Chicago to Orlando

We had decided to fly in the day before the cruise, to avoid any panic or crises due to delays, etc. Given that this was our first cruise (and, in fact, our first trip with both kids that didn’t involve additional adult relatives), we went for the easiest option. Therefore, we had a room at the MCO Hyatt and Disney transfers to the boat.

We woke slightly early for the airport, which set a general tone of mild exhaustion to get us started.

The plane was uneventful, and we landed on time.

We found our bags and the hotel lobby with no problems, checked in, left our bags to be brought to the room, were promised a crib would be in the room as soon as we were done with lunch, and went to eat.

Our room was indeed ready after lunch, and our luggage was there…but no crib. It was half-past nap, so I had a Very Clear conversation with the hotel staff, and surveyed the scene. The other issue was that while we’d requested a room with 2 queens, we had been “upgraded” to a room with a king…we decided to squeeze P in with us rather than worry about switching since we were already in the room early and making a fuss about the crib.

When the crib arrived, I took P off to the hotel pool, figuring that was the best way to kill a couple hours, while D did some work in the hotel room.

Of course, P decided he wanted nothing to do with the pool…so we wandered around the airport for as long as we could stand. A stronger parent than I would not have ended up in the Disney store, but we were on vacation…

We rejoined J and D when she was up from her nap, and the children happily colored on the hotel room verandah while D and I re-arranged the luggage to our satisfaction. The rest of the day passed companionably…until the children’s bedtime.

I won’t go into the gory details, but the short version is that no one was asleep at the right time, and it was the first hint that maybe J was not going to be the best roommate. Tension rose, as the grownups began to worry about how we would cope with shared quarters for a week!


Saturday 3/19 – Port Canavaral

The write up for today will be extra long, as there’s a bunch of stuff to cover that will carry forward to future days. So don’t assume every day will be this long!

The children woke bright and early, as always, despite the late night. They were INCREDIBLY excited. J kept asking “Meet mine Elsa friend? See Minnie? Go on boat with Mickey?” We explained over and over that character meetups would be quick affairs, but were still worried she would be disappointed that Elsa wasn’t going to be with us 24 hours a day.

We had a delicious buffet breakfast and found ourselves with…well, a couple hours to kill. Our PAT was 10:45, so we didn’t really want to head to the bus before 930 at the earliest. Eventually, however, the waiting became overwhelming. We called the hotel to make sure that we really could just leave our luggage behind (yup) and headed to the bus. I’m not sure exactly what time we left the room, but it took slightly longer to get to the bus than we had expected (because toddlers don’t walk very fast, mostly).

The Magic(al?) Express was great. The 45 minute ride to port went quickly – they showed a video about the Fantasy, which sufficiently excited the children, and then some classic Mickey cartoons. We pulled into the terminal and the children practically launched out of the seats at the first sight of what was very clearly the “Mickey boat”

Check in was a very smooth and easy process. The lines were not short, per se, but they moved efficiently and it was always clear where we were supposed to be standing and what we should be doing. Once checked in, the children and I got in a medium-long line to meet Captain Mickey, while D got in the REALLY long line to register for the kids’ club. We were boarding group 8, which seemed pretty good. Boarding began around 11:30, as we were still in line for Mickey. Not long before we got to the front, Mickey swapped out for Pluto, which was actually fine. Pluto was an excellent first character meet.

Our timing was pretty good – as we finished up the photo op, boarding group 7 was called and D was near the front of the kids club line. We got P registered and his band attached (he was not particularly excited to learn that he had to wear a bracelet for an entire week – we should have prepared him for this in advance. He asked frequently if he could take it off). They actually had called group 8 while we were still in line, but it didn’t seem worth getting out of the line – we knew we could register on board, but we were there, it was almost done, and getting on board 5 minutes later wouldn’t make a difference.

On Board!

We went through the Mickey entrance (I made the mistake of saying we had to walk through the Mickey ears – my very literal 4 year old kept asking why we would walk through an ear, way up there, when everyone else had just walked through the head…I clarified, but he was pretty convinced I was really unobservant) and onto the boat! J covered her ears when they announced us, but P was VERY impressed.

Once boarded, D took the children and the day bag straight up to Cabanas for lunch while I went to the port excursions desk to get meet and greet tickets. The line was… long. I’m not sure exactly how long I was in line, but long enough for D to find Cabanas, get situated at a good table, figure out how to get food while leaving the kids at the table (thanks Josh from South Africa, first of many very helpful servers!), feed the kids 3 helpings of mac n cheese each, and then start texting me manically asking when I would be done.

(It was definitely worth getting in line first thing, at least on a trip as crowded as ours. There was already only one princess meet n greet time left and it was at a terrible time for us – more on that later – and we couldn’t get a good Frozen time until Thursday. We did get our first choice Disney Jr breakfast time, however).

For reference, we were on board a few minutes before noon. Checking my text messages, it looks like I was heading up to Cabanas at 12:35. In the meantime, D had been convinced to buy a case of bottled water and an enormous BB8 mug. I scoffed at both purchases, but came around by the end of the trip. I scarfed a quick lunch, and then we headed to the Oceaneers Club open house.

At 1:25 we wrangled the kids so that we could get in the stateroom right as it opened, with the goal of having J down for a nap ASAP. The hallway was still closed off when we got there, and it was almost 1:40 by the time they let us into the hallway, much to everyone’s great annoyance. We finally got to our room, unpacked the day bag, and spent a few quick minutes getting acclimated and planning how we would unpack when the luggage arrived.

Once the pack n play was set up, D tried to put J down for a nap, and I took P back to the Club. We hoped J would fall asleep quickly, as we knew we would need to wake her up at 3:30 so that she had been awake for a few minutes before the muster drill sirens started. This…did not really work, as she was too excited to fall asleep until 2:45.

Meanwhile, P was having a wonderful time in the Club. There was a magic playfloor activity happening, and he was completely absorbed while I got to chat with some other parents (it was still open house).

 

[Oursweetworld]

We were on the same cruise as you. Looking forward to reading your report.

 

[cheermom2four]

There was already only one princess meet n greet time left and it was at a terrible time for us – more on that later – and we couldn’t get a good Frozen time until Thursday. We did get our first choice Disney Jr breakfast time, however).

Glad you mentioned this (to go there first even if line is long) as this is the only reason my dd wants to go on this cruise.

We are going on the Western 7-night in September and I have a 4 turning 5 while on cruise so I'm definitely going to follow this TR as DD is definitely a schedule type person too

 

[hnthomps]

Day 1 - Continued - Muster, Sail Away, first night

At 3:30 we headed back to the room, where we found D gently waking up a VERY grumpy J. She was not at all pleased to be woken up, and her mood was not improved when the shipboard announcements started, and deteriorated when the muster drill alarm began. Luckily the actual siren did not last long.

We followed the signs down to deck 4 (our stateroom was on 10), I was carrying J the whole way as she kind of whimpered and asked “more nap soon Mama please?” The drill itself was fine. A necessary piece of business that seemed effectively and efficiently run. The rain that had threatened earlier held off, so it wasn’t unpleasant to be outside. It also turned out the CM in front of us was our dining room server, though of course we didn’t know that yet!

After the drill the crowds and crush around the elevators were unbearable. The kids couldn’t handle it. So we walked up from 4 to 12 (this time D got to carry J) and grabbed a really good spot to watch the Sail Away party.

P was excited for this – we had watched You Tube videos of the deck parties in anticipation of the trip, so he knew that we would get to see the characters. At first he was annoyed that we were on the "wrong" deck, but quickly realized that down on 11 he wouldn't actually be able to see over the tall people in front. So he pressed right up against the railing and was soon joined by a similarly sized girl. We would later find out that she was 5, and her family was at the table next to us at dinner, so we saw them frequently throughout the trip.

DJ Wendell provided the music. While I’m sure it’s just his actual name, Wendell seems such an incongruous DJ name…all week I secretly hoped it was an homage to Key & Peele

During the first part of the party – before the characters came out – J still insisted on being held, with her head on her Daddy’s shoulder. She wasn’t complaining, but didn’t seem happy. However, once the characters came out it was like she was a new person. She became completely animated and delighted.

It also became clear that somehow, without our noticing, her favorite character had switched from Minnie to Donald (she had a Minnie themed 2nd birthday party. She wears Minnie shirts whenever she can. She has Minnie bibs and Minnie hairbows and a general Minnie obsession. And yet, when faced with the actual characters, Donald was the one who made her happiest).

Sail Away wrapped, very satisfyingly, with the boat actually starting to move. This was clearly exciting for the children, and for us as well – among other things, that was the moment we switched our phones to airplane mode.

We realized that Captain Mickey was appearing downstairs in 15 minutes, so we made our way down and were second in line. We considered this basically perfect, and followed this model the rest of the cruise – for almost all the character meets (exceptions noted as we go through the week), arriving about 10 minutes early put us toward the front of line, such that once the character was actually there it was a really quick wait.

Plus there were always portholes to look out

After Mickey, it was time to go back to the room to get ready for dinner. All of our bags had arrived, so we also quickly unpacked everything that was to live on the kids’ side of the curtain and some of us changed for dinner (I changed for dinner every night, everyone else mostly didn’t). We were in Animator’s Palate that night -- our rotation was AERAEER (because we had Palo on night 3, this actually meant we didn’t set foot in Royal Court until the last night).

I knew a little bit of what to expect from Animator’s Palate from reading trip reports, but no one else in the family had a clue. When I saw our table I was delighted – we were on a wall, near a screen, and I had high hopes.

The children were very impressed that there were water cups (with lids and straws) with their names on them waiting at the table. We met our EXCELLENT serving team – Lumi & Suardika – and got to the important business of ordering. I don’t remember what we ordered, though I do know that P ordered something relatively adventurous (I mean, for a 4 year old) off the adult menu and ate all of it, which we considered a major victory.

You can assume that for every meal I ordered something vegetarian, J ordered pasta or mac n cheese (let’s pretend that’s not pasta, mmkay?), and P alternated between pork or fish and pasta…leaving D to carry most of the menu-tasting load!

I had read that the kitchen couldn’t control the timing of meals, so I was worried that it would be a total disaster, but it was great. We appreciated how understanding our team was. They brought our food out very quickly (almost always first in our section), including the children’s meals with our appetizers, and then cleared our apps and brought out mains quickly enough that usually, given how slowly small children eat, we were all ready to order dessert at the same time. The children's menus also always had activities (and there were plenty of crayons on the table), which kept the kids occupied. Plus, of course, the shows in Animator's and the gradual lighting shift and flower blooming in Enchanted Garden kept the kids fascinated and absorbed.

Back to night 1 and the Crush show. It would have been enough it was just the fish-shape guessing game (if you haven’t been – schools of fish create different shapes on the screens and you have to guess what the shape will be before it's complete).

When Crush swam up and started talking, everyone was blown away. He actually went to the table next to us, but the boy over there (older than our kids, but still pretty young) was very shy. P started answering questions as though they were being asked of him, so Crush then responded both to P and to the actual table he’d intended to address.

The other table seemed totally understanding and didn’t seem to think we’d hijacked their moment, thank goodness! My children were completely amazed and absorbed. Honestly, if that had been the last amazing thing that happened on the cruise (it wasn’t) they would have gone home thinking Disney boats were the best places in the world.

The kids had chocolate ice cream for the first time as dessert. They probably had chocolate ice cream twice a day for the rest of the cruise. I gave up suggesting that they might want something else (we tried enforcing a no-ice-cream-at-dinner rule one night later in the cruise, in hopes it would help with bedtime...but it didn't).

We returned to the cabin after dinner for bath-books-bed. We got to the cabin a little before 7pm, so dinner took just about exactly an hour. I'd read trip reports implying that dinner was a 2 hour affair, so this was a relief.

D headed off to see if he could find the NCAA basketball tournament on TV somewhere while I supervised bedtime. It felt at the time like bedtime was a complete disaster, though as it repeated every night it clearly wasn’t. At home, we basically know that when we put the kids down at night P falls straight to sleep – he doesn’t nap and is very active – whereas J talks to herself quietly and plays with her stuffed animals while gradually going to sleep. I’m sure you can see, though somehow we didn’t, where this is going. It turns out that two year olds just can’t seem to obey an older brother saying “stop talking! I want to go to sleep!”

Anyway. What with first night excitement and baths and shenanigans, they were actually asleep between 830 and 9pm. This basically held for the whole trip, even when we managed to start the process earlier. But lest you think this might make them sleep to a more humane hour in the morning…No such luck.

D found O’Gills and I finished unpacking (quietly) and then settled in with a book.

The upside to being stuck with sleeping children is that you get a lot of great reading time! Because of the kids' schedules, we knew we likely weren't going to get to any of the shows. Since I work in the theater, this didn't really bother us--we see a lot of shows in our real life. I was also glad that I'd learned in advance (from these boards) that the TVs don't have any outputs for headphones. We therefore didn't plan to be able to watch TV after the kids were in bed -- we probably could have once they were fully asleep, but we didn't bother.

 

[hnthomps]

Glad you mentioned this (to go there first even if line is long) as this is the only reason my dd wants to go on this cruise.

We are going on the Western 7-night in September and I have a 4 turning 5 while on cruise so I'm definitely going to follow this TR as DD is definitely a schedule type person too

Hope it helps!

I don't think they would run out of tickets, but the slots were definitely more limited as time went on. The princess gathering ended up being annoying -- the only time we were offered was 215pm on Sunday and it was a ZOO, with a huge line (more on this in the next post). But we saw one later in the week that was basically empty. I think later in the cruise people have met the princesses at other points, so they just don't use their tickets? Not sure.

 

[schmass]

Following along! I always love reading TRs with little ones involved. We took our almost 3 year-old on a Fantasy cruise when he was 16 months, and next month will be taking him and his baby sister! Looking forward to reading more.

 

[danajay]

I don't think they would run out of tickets, but the slots were definitely more limited as time went on. The princess gathering ended up being annoying -- the only time we were offered was 215pm on Sunday and it was a ZOO, with a huge line (more on this in the next post). But we saw one later in the week that was basically empty. I think later in the cruise people have met the princesses at other points, so they just don't use their tickets? Not sure.

Curious--did you ask for another time and they said "no"?

 

[mikey0311]

Really enjoying your trip report and writing style so far.... Looking forward to the rest as we are heading on the SWDAS cruise next Saturday....

 

[hnthomps]

Curious--did you ask for another time and they said "no"?

Yes. They told me that was the only time left. I said "but nap!" and they (there were two people - a trainee and a trainer) were apologetic but firm that it was my only option.

 

[hnthomps]

Really enjoying your trip report and writing style so far.... Looking forward to the rest as we are heading on the SWDAS cruise next Saturday....

Thanks! I am traveling, but I'll try to post more soon

 

[hnthomps]

Sunday 3/20 – at sea

After we woke up, we had a little time before Cabanas opened, so we let the kids hang out on the verandah (which they hadn’t seen the day before). They loved pressing theirnoses up against the glass and looking out at the ocean.

D had promised P that he could see Zootopia on the boat, and the 830am showing on the first day seemed like as good a time as any!

They went off to that, and I took J exploring. We checked out “Wake up with Disney Jr”, which I assumed would be age-appropriate…it was, but it was also loud. It’s essentially a dance party, and it was more than she could handle at that hour.

We had her booked for the nursery from 9 – 11:30 (we didn’t have plans, just wanted to get her used to it before we had reservations, plus we knew we’d need breaks!) so we spent some time getting in and out of portholes—an activity that brought GREAT pleasure to the small people – and then went to the nursery open house so that I could help get her situated. She was not thrilled at the idea that I might leave, but she was delighted to get her own wristband (her brother, later, was VERY jealous that nursery wristbands, unlike the ones for bigger kids, are removable). I had a successful handoff when she discovered the craft table.

I found myself with blissful time to myself. I grabbed my kindle and for the first (and, ultimately, only) time headed up to the adults-only sundeck to read in peace.

After Zootopia, D dropped P off at Oceaneers, and we met up. Our stateroom host was cleaning, so we explored the boat more together and looked at the app and plotted out the week a little bit.

We picked the kids up at 11:30. Both seemed happy, but glad to be back with us. P later said that some of the counselors had made him feel a little shy, but we never were able to tell what he meant. J claimed to have been happy, and the counselors reported the same, but every subsequent time we dropped her at the nursery it was a Thing.

We went back to the room, changed into bathing suits, and then headed to lunch.

We had lunch at Cabanas (basically for the last time – every other day the kids, at least, ate at the quick serve as it was just faster and easier) and then hit up the pool deck. P did the Mickey slide 800 times and played in the Mickey pool with some other similarly aged kids while J was in total bliss in Nemo’s Reef.

(For the record – Nemo’s reef is basically the only water area a not-totally-potty-trained kid can play in. We probably could have brought her into the aqualab as well, but there were too many big kids there. And Nemo’s Reef is GREAT, but it’s not necessarily enough for 7 days of entertainment. The lifeguards also weren't great about sending 7+ kids elsewhere, so a few times there were too-big kids making it a little chaotic).

We dried the kids off in time to go meet Minnie Mouse for the first of several times. She was in her formal gear, as it was to be formal night. Then I headed to the spa for a facial, and D took the kids to the Princess gathering.

I have little good to say about the princess gathering (and I wasn’t even there!). The timing was hard for us – the only time left when I got the tickets was 2:15pm, which was about an hour after when J should have started her nap. And even with the tickets, the lines were REALLY long. My facial was at 2pm, and I got back to the room at the same time as the rest of my family. They only got one picture per princess, so it was a 45 minute line even with tickets. If we had cruised Disney before, we would have bailed -- the princesses were actually out several times, and there would have been other opportunities.

Of course this meant J was doomed to another short nap. D took P out of the room, running into Goofy for the first time while they adventured

We woke J up at 430, which is the latest we ever let her sleep for fear of totally screwing bedtime. She was a total mess. She’d woken up too early Friday for the plane, then had a too short nap, then not slept enough overnight, then had a too short nap Saturday, then gone to bed late AND woken up with a diaper explosion, so by this time she was At Her Limit.

It was formal night, so we wrangled J into her Elsa dress (which she loves, but the mesh sleeves are a complete PITA to get on. I should have sprung for a higher quality one, but she’s 2, it won’t last long enough!) and convinced P that he really would feel out of place in shorts and a t-shirt.

Things seemed ok, but then…total meltdown when we got to Enchanted Garden. J didn’t want to take a sanitizing wipe at the door, she didn’t want the high chair, etc. I removed her a couple times to get her settled out of everyone else’s way, but then we’d come back and it would start over. I was about to just give up and take her back for room service when the serving team started miracles. First, Lumi asked if there was anything J wanted to eat. She asked for applesauce. Not on the menu, but it appeared. Then she had another fuss and asked for grilled cheese. We told her that wasn’t an option, but she could have mac n cheese (which was on the menu at least). Mac n cheese and a grilled cheese both appeared, and the assistant server made origami figures … we basically had 4 grownups and an untold number of cooks in the back all working on Project: Keep J happy … and it worked. She also ate an incredible amount of (mostly junk) food.

The formal night photo the Shutters people took during dinner is kind of amazing. We’re all nicely dressed, J is smiling, everyone seems happy. HAH.

Back to the room for bath books bed. The kids noticed the towel animal – a bear – which they had missed the night before in their first night excitement. They immediately figured out that 4 chocolates = bonus desert for everyone, and had a prolonged discussion about who would get to knock down the bear.

I went to see the 815pm movie – Zootopia, so I could discuss it with the boys– and left D to finish up bedtime and deal with the craziness.

 

[heaven2dc]

Joining in and enjoying your TR! We are thinking about taking a big family Disney cruise in 2017 and by that time the youngest will be 3. Hopefully she'll adapt to a possibly different schedule while on vacation - her older sister will be 6 and cousins 4 and 9 and may not want to go to bed earlier than the rest of the kids. Should be fun and interesting lol Your little ones are so adorable! Loved the pic of P and Goofy!

 

[hnthomps]

Monday 3/21 – Cozumel

This day more or less marks the turning point in the cruise. Leading up to this point, there was a certain amount of stress/worry – about whether the kids would sleep, would we do everything “right”, etc. This was the day we just decided to relax and go with the flow… and it ended up being an amazing day (albeit with a rocky start).

We woke up fighting some crankiness and stubborn 2-year-old-ness. The kids loved the view of pulling into port (bright and early…) so I recommend a starboard cabin if that appeals.

Breakfast and getting ready was tense, as J was still in… let’s say a mood. We ended up having to split up, as she needed some “alone” time, so I sent the boys off ahead and agreed to meet up in the theater for our excursion (I think we were supposed to be there at 845am)….which was cancelled due to high winds.

We decided to get off the boat and wander around. The winds were crazy, and while we thought about just taking a taxi to a beach (I had done enough research to know that we could go to Paradise Beach easily in a legal taxi for relatively cheap) we decided it wasn’t worth it – the weather was uncertain, we wouldn’t have a ton of time if we wanted to make it back for J’s nap (which, you probably understand by now, we REALLY did), etc. So we just wandered around the not-very-scenic port for a little getting blown about and then headed back to the boat

You can see why we might think this was going to be a disaster, right?

But it was SO good

We went back to the pools and everyone had an amazing time. D did the aquaduck, P did the Mickey slide, J did the Nemo Reef slide. P hung out in the pool watching Funnel Vision . Then P went to the kids club for Magic Playfloor time in the Lab, and I hung out with J as she learned about pool chair lounging.

We had lunch at the quick serve (hot dogs, veggie burgers, ice cream) and then the boys went off to do the Midship Detective.

I took J back to the room and let her watch one mickey clubhouse before she went down for an on time and easy nap. D brought P back when they had solved the case of the missing puppies, which P was VERY excited about – he was so proud of himself and delighted by the whole experience.

D needed to check email and work, so we switched and I left him in the cabin with a blissfully snoring tot and went off with P to find a quiet place to do a LEGO and a puzzle. We settled on the atrium, somewhat counter-intuitively, as there weren’t a lot of people about.

What followed was the kind of Disney afternoon you read about, but can’t really imagine happening. First, we saw Stitch coming down the stairs. We don’t really know anything about Stitch (I’m too old, he’s too young), but, hey, a character! So P ran off for a goofy photo op. If that had been all, it would have been enough (dayenu!).

Mere minutes later, this happened

Hook was plotting his takeover the ship. We had a delightful interaction, and Hook attempted – successfully – to recruit P to be on his crew, watching out for Peter Pan.

We retreated to the table, and puzzle, while Hook met other children and started to head off. But then he saw P again and came back to ask more questions about his puzzle. It was a Return of the Jedi puzzle, with characters and death star prominent. So Hook asked about all the characters, and then about whether he could get a Death Star (“is that the 3rd star from the right?”) and on and on.

We honestly got about ten minutes with Hook. I remarked to a passing CM that thiswas total magic. The CM’s response was “that’s what we do”.

Eventually Hook had to go look for Pan elsewhere. P had just finished his puzzle, and started in on the Lego, when who should appear but Pluto! P was wearing his Pluto shirt, so that required some discussion.

After Pluto left it was 10 minutes before an actual scheduled character meet up. At that point it felt greedy, but what the heck, why not. We stuck around and met Chip & Dale.

At that point, we figured we should leave the atrium before the magic wore off – go out on a high, as it were. We went to deck 4 and played shuffleboard. I told P that the rule was people who were too short for the Aquaduck were allowed to push each puck twice. Unfortunately this meant I lost. Harrumph.

The view as we pulled away from Cozumel:

J was finally up from her (3 hour) nap, so we went back to the room and ordered room service, the much lauded All Hands On Deck. After that snack (eaten on the verandah), we got the kids into their pirate gear and headed out to get in line for Hook and Smee and other pirate characters.

This was one we did not play well – the lines were ridiculous. There was certainly no chance that we’d meet Peter Pan, and even though we joined the line for Hook and Smee before they even arrived, we weren’t sure we’d make it before we had to drop the kids off at the club/nursery for dinner. We certainly weren’t going to be able to hit some photo ops and still make it to the Disney Jr pirate show. Whoops.

J was not into the line, as usual, so I took her off for photo ops with pirate Daisy and Minnie – those lines were much shorter, and it seemed only fair given how many characters P had seen earlier in the day! We also watched Hook and Pan interact from opposite ends of the staircase, which was delightful.

(They aren't interacting in this picture, obviously, but this was where we were in line, about 2 minutes after the meet and greet officially started, and you can see their relative positions.)

(Though P’s view of Peter almost blew the whole thing “Mama, is that really Peter Pan? That looks like a man dressed up in a costume. Peter is a boy! Not a man! Why would they have a man dress up as Peter along with all the real characters?”)

For reference:

At one point we saw Princess Sofia walking outside on deck 4 (en route to the Disney Jr thing). J saw her and started basically trying to break through the window to get to Sofia. I promised her we’d meet Sofia at our Disney jr. character breakfast the next day. (Will this promise to a two year old come back to bite me? Tune in to tomorrow’s update to find out!)

Ultimately we knew we weren’t all going to make it through the line with time to change for Palo, so I dropped J in the nursery (her initial annoyance was swayed when they announced pizza for dinner with Mickey Clubhouse on the TV!) and ran back to the room to change. I got back to Hook and Smee 30 seconds before our turn in line. I was then able to get P checked into the Lab (because he was still ticked off at the Club, for some mysterious reason) just in time for him to eat dinner, while D rushed off to change for Palo.

Dinner at Palo was fabulous. Our server was great, the food was excellent, the view was perfect calm ocean, the drinks appropriate, and it was nice to just be grownups together.

D went to the nursery and I to the Lab. I found that P had moved over to the Club, where I had to drag him away from a pirate game. He was still in his pirate costume and in a great mood. We found D & J in the hallway, J half asleep on D’s shoulder, barefoot, not in costume. Apparently 5 minutes before we went to pick her up she had announced that it was bedtime (she wasn’t wrong, per se).

When we got back to the room we found this

The kids, as usual, devoured their chocolate. And then J turned to me and asked “eat monkey eyes now?”

I was so amused I almost let her. Almost.

For once the night wasn’t a complete disaster, though possibly this is because P was asleep 2 seconds after we turned the light out, and thus couldn’t be bothered by J’s chatter.

It was D’s turn to go out, and he mostly wandered. He also bought a pirate hook for P’s pirate costume, which we positioned as a thank you gift from Captain Hook for being such a good crew member.

 

[SevenWonkas]

Off-topic a bit, but I have to laugh at your bath-books-bed. We call this BBB in our house! When DS was a baby, it was bottle-bath-bed. When he was cranky in the evening, we'd just look at each other and say "BBB!" and we knew it was time to go. to. bed.! I was sad that BBB was going to go away when he turned one and got off bottles, then we realized it could still be BBB, because we read books and it could replace bottles. (We read books when he was a baby too, so I suppose it should've been BBBB, but that's too much work.)

Now, of course, it's SBB (shower-book-bed). He's 4.5 and decided he wants to practice showers for when he's a grown-up. woohoo! showers are so much quicker.

 

[schmass]

What a great afternoon with all the characters! I love it when things like that happen randomly!

Question about the Disney Jr. dance party - Which characters were there when you went? Do the kids get to meet them?

 

[BlueEyes78]

Really enjoying your report! We did Fantasy western in September with a four-year old who still very much needs an early bedtime and/or nap, so I am feeling your pain! It amazes me how many people say their kids are totally fine off their sleep schedule for a whole week on the cruise, staying up till midnight, up at the break of day. I guess my kids aren't wired that way!
Since I finished my report I'm gobbling up all the Fantasy stories that I can. We sure had a great time!

 

[hnthomps]

What a great afternoon with all the characters! I love it when things like that happen randomly!

Question about the Disney Jr. dance party - Which characters were there when you went? Do the kids get to meet them?

I should have clarified - this was actually something I was confused about too. No characters. It's just a CM with some Disney Jr images on the screens, and the dance party is sort of themed to the different shows (so you would do actions in line with what characters on the various shows would do). It's not clear what to expect from any of the descriptions. The CM was great -- enthusiastic, good with the kids, etc -- but it was pretty LOUD for 830am, even for kids who had been up for 2 hours!

 

[hnthomps]

Really enjoying your report! We did Fantasy western in September with a four-year old who still very much needs an early bedtime and/or nap, so I am feeling your pain! It amazes me how many people say their kids are totally fine off their sleep schedule for a whole week on the cruise, staying up till midnight, up at the break of day. I guess my kids aren't wired that way!
Since I finished my report I'm gobbling up all the Fantasy stories that I can. We sure had a great time!

Thanks! We were also surprised by all the kids who seemed to thrive without sleep, or happily sleep in the club for a bit and then go to bed in the cabin...that just wasn't to be for us. I wish!

We also had a great time, and keep talking in circles about when we will go next -- we swore we would wait until J was 4, to eliminate as much of the schedule tension as possible, but that seems so long from now!!

 

[chunkymonkey]

Great report! You kids are adorable (even without showing their faces!)
Can't wait to hear what you thought about Star Wars Day at Sea!