March 26th, Part 3
We made our way to 10512, forward, starboard side.
They changed the hair dryers
The BabyLiss ones are so much better! I actually loved the ones on our 2017 Fantasy cruise so much that Rob bought me the consumer equivalent so I'm sad to see them go. This one was okay but I prefer one that has a temperature switch, not just on and off. Oh well, my hair is short now so it's not a huge deal anymore.
So, we were in a bit of a quandary here.
See what I did there? 
Because of my auto-immune issues, we always sanitize our rooms. It's just something we do that gives us peace of mind knowing that every surface we will be touching is as clean as can be. It takes some time and more than a bit of an effort. Also, our bags had all arrived in the following 20 minutes and we already had our door decorations in our carry-ons. This is the time we always unpack, decorate and settle in for the next 7 days. We had early dinner and then I knew I would be in the pool so if we waited until later, to see if we got a new room, we would have to do this all over again in the new room and we didn't really have the time later, so what do we do?
For a short while, I had decided to just put our bags in the closet and just do the sanitizing. Once that was done, and all of our bags had arrived, there wasn't much to do. Kira didn't feel like hitting up the Vibe just yet and so Rob did some reading on the verandah and Kira and I snuggled
Okay, I snuggled her while she chatted with her bestie. Whatever.
Time passed and it really started to bother me that I could be doing all this stuff now while we had the time and I was just laying there.
I'm just not the type to put things off, I like getting things done, ya know? So, I decided to just unpack and decorate and hope for the best! Maybe it's not as loud as people say, every cruise is different anyway. Perhaps they didn't even have another room for us anyway? And if they did and we moved, what if it's loud there too? Or we get terrible neighbours? We've certainly had more than our fair share of those! Plus I really loved the location of our room! Positive thoughts!
So, I unpacked, got us settled in and decorated our door.
I will say, I sure missed that chest of drawers in the middle of the room on the Wonder. We made it work but with those middle drawers, it's so easy to organize, Kira always gets the area near the desk, I get that middle and then Rob gets the drawers by the closet.
I finally got to use our FE that my bff Nancy got us many moons ago. We've been using our Christmas one for the past few cruises. I decided to bling it up a little with some lights just before we left.
I wasn't sure if they were allowing us to hang FE's yet but I figured I would put it up and if they asked us to remove it, we would.
We started to move so Rob and I headed to deck 4 in the shade to watch us sail away. Kira was feeling a little lazy and stayed in the room.
We switched sides as we sailed out of the channel.
My friend Jen had been on the Mardi Gras recently, twice, in fact and she loved it. I will say that if I ever felt the need to try a Carnival ship, it would be this one but...meh....it's
Carnival.
Disney has spoiled me.
Just as we were passing her, we showed off with all of our cool Disney horns.
Passing by Jetty Park, my favourite part of sailing away here, it's so pretty.
We got a notification in the app so we stopped off at Guest Services. They had found us a room but honestly, it wasn't much better than ours, when it came to proximity to a noisy area and we were all fully settled in now so we thanked them but declined.
Back to the room quickly and then down to dinner at 5:45pm at Royal Court. While we were in line for GS earlier, we had heard an amazing violinist in the Atrium. Kira also fell in love with this guy, he was amazing! She found out his name was Jordan Caswell, and the moment she got internet again, she followed him on Instagram.
Table 52 is where we were headed.
We're always eager to meet our dining team. They really can make or break your whole dinner experience. This was my 15th
Disney cruise and I've been lucky to have mostly good dining teams.
We've had some great servers but my favourite server ever was Orlan, from the Philippines, on the Magic back in 2009. Man, he was the best! He was so funny, we joked every night and we were with our friends, who have a good sense of humour, so we laughed every night.
When it comes to assistant servers, we've had a few good ones, a few bad ones and the absolute worst one back in 2013 on the Fantasy.
This cruise, we ended up with a team of three, Ronny, our server, Dean, our assistant-server and Fabiano, who was also an assistant-server, and Dean and Fabiano were splitting their services between two stations. This was new to them, and to us! It seemed that Fabiano was doing water and bread most nights and then Dean would take our drink orders and Ronny would be doing our food orders and then they all kind of worked together for the rest and it ran very smoothly.
Oh, and our head server was Tony.
Ronny was really good at his job but quiet, he wouldn't chat unless you started a conversation with him and asked specific questions. And then his answers were short and to the point. He got the job done though and I was happy!
Fabiano was the same, quiet, good at his job. He was an amazing artist, he showed us some of his drawings later on in the cruise and well, this dude should be working for Disney but in another department, the animation one.
Then there was Dean. Where do I even begin?
First off, he was Scottish, so right there, I felt a connection.
My mum was born and raised in Scotland, before she moved to Montréal in her late teens. She died almost 25 years ago now, so it's been a lifetime since I've heard her voice. She had lost a lot of her accent by the time I came along but it was still apparent with certain words, where she came from. So anytime I hear that accent, it just makes me feel a little closer to her.
Besides the swoon-worthy accent, this guy was the epitome of a "people person". He was chatty, entertaining, engaging, charming, quick, and funny as HECK!
His name tag said United Kingdom, so when he first spoke and it was obvious he was from Scotland, I asked him where he was from. He replied "Glasgow", to which I replied, "Cool, my mum was born in Glasgow!" and without skipping a beat, he said "Hey! Mine too!"
I knew it was going to be a good week.
I'm not funny but I have a really good sense of humour and I love funny people. My two best friends in life are freaking hilarious (probably one of the reasons they are my besties!
) and I can laugh at myself just as easy as I can laugh at others. Kira has my sense of humour, which she thanks God every day for because Rob has a very dry sense of humour. If Kira and I are laughing about something, Rob will just be sitting there, shaking his head, totally not getting it. And then if he's laughing, Kira and I are shaking our heads, wondering why he's so weird.
Kira, on the other hand, is hilarious! She has made me laugh every single day of her life. If she wasn't super introverted and crippled with anxiety, she'd probably be a stand-up comedian.
And while most of Dean's jokes went over Rob's head, he really appreciated his friendliness and approachability. Kira not only appreciated his humour and fun nature, I think she might have been a little smitten too.
He was also really good at his job! He kept us in coffee, lemonade and diet-cokes all week-long and delivered an endless supply of buns to Rob and Kira every night.
Needless to say, it was a good week, filled with great food, lots of laughs and great memories.
Here's some food porn:
Rob always tries to steal Kira's mickey ice cream bars. We still don't know why he finds it so funny but he does and he continues his attempts.
Look at Kira's face!
I obviously don't remember all of Dean's jokes but I do remember one in particular from that night that stood out, probably because I almost choked on my diet-coke.
Rob and Kira eat a lot of buns at dinner and Rob makes a huge mess every time, so he was cleaning that up and Dean walked by and they were talking about the mess he made and cleaning it up (don't worry, I did not repeat my little Palo Brunch faux-pas from the last cruise!
) and Rob wiped a few of the last remaining crumbs onto the floor and Dean said something like "Well, don't do that now! We're gonna be needing those crumbs for yer parmesan-crusted chicken in a few nights"
I don't have a photo of our dining team from that night but here's one from our last night. Dean's on the left, Ronny's on the right.
Sadly Dean is on his last cruise of his current contract right now but if you're ever at Rose & Crown at Epcot, make sure to ask for him. He'll be there for the next year. Tell him the Pettigrews say hi!
It, however, makes me the best person to play trivia with. 
