Nancy and I spent a few cold moments topside watching the dolphins play around the side of the ship as we began to set sail out of the channel toward the coast. We had read about them playing near the ship and I had figured it would be once we hit open water. But the dolphins would actually surface along the side of the ship right in the port area. I tried getting some video and pictures of them, but had no luck. We figured enough time had passed that we could head back and check out our stateroom on Deck 2. Like we said before, we booked a guarantee 12 category, which meant we might get bumped up a category or two if Disney managed to sell out all the category 12 staterooms. What you sacrifice for this option is not having the ability to choose your stateroom. But, seeing it was just the two of us and we did not need a lot of room, we figured a category 12 would be just fine. Lucky for us, we were assigned room 1054, a category 9 stateroom on Deck 2 with two porthole windows. This was nice because it was low on the ship in an area that was fairly quiet and only a few feet above the water line. Here is a shot of the door with all the decorations on it, including the artwork created for us by Rog. Many thanks for that Rog, it worked great, printed up on a magnetic sheet and it held to the door really well. It was kind of funny being in the room listening to people stop by and check out the artwork while we were in the room.
Here are a few interior shots of the room, and I have to say that they are pretty good sized for a ship. I think it was a lot bigger than the room we had on Premier 20 years ago. Then again, I’m a lot bigger than I was 20 years ago too!
A nice surprise gift from friend of ours;
A view from the porthole area looking toward the door and bathrooms (yup – two bathrooms!)
The bedside area:
And the desk area with one of the few places to plug in things like cell phone chargers, laptops or a portable DVD player if you wanted. They had recently refurbished the ship and changed to new flat panel TVs that were pretty decent. Then again, who wants to spend much time watching TV when you are on a cruise!
We took some time unpacking, watched the information channel to learn a little about the ship, read the Navigators and waited for our turn at the safety assembly. Per usual, there will always be someone who arrives late, unprepared and not wearing the lifejackets like they are supposed to. I got the guy on video (no, NOT ME!). The castmembers were pretty decent about it, but most of the other guests were a little ticked off because they had to wait for this guy to show up. Here we are in our finest lifesaving apparel looking kind of fashionable I must say:
So, now that we were properly trained on how to drown in an organized fashion, we could go get ready for the most important part of the cruise – MORE FOOD! Tonight we dine at Animators Palate and get to meet our tablemates and official servers who will be with us for the remainder of the cruise. Here is another Glam shot of Nancy all decked out and waiting just outside Animator’s:
We went for early seating because I tend to need to eat long before I go to sleep, so I feared we would be dining with lots of loud kids that weren’t ours. Not to be, they assigned us to a table with two other couples. One couple had been on many cruises and the other couple were on a ship for their first time. Here are some more food porn shots for those who can’t wait to go on their next cruise. Nancy got the soup for a starter:
And I got a tomato salad which was very tasty with fresh ground pepper on it, tasted like summer:
I followed up with beef for the main course:
I either forgot to get a photo of Nancy’s meal or I didn’t load it up to my photobucket account. Either way, we’ll just have to imagine what sort of tasty nosh she had unless I can find it on the PC and edit this later! However, she did have a taste of some delicious ice wine:
On to dessert! I had the apple crumble with ice cream on it:
And Nancy had the desert sampler:
The meal was fantastic, and my dessert ended up being much better than the dessert sampler that Nancy chose. The ice wine was really good, but at $11 per glass, not something we were going to have too often. So, completely sated, we ambled on out of Animators Palate to take in the show, which was completely packed. The cast members did some amazing performances considering that we had entered the Gulf Stream and the ship was beginning to crest a few waves. Nothing too dramatic, but I would not want to run around on a stage with that motion. Finally, we headed back to the room to let the waves rock us to sleep, in a completely darkened room (no street lights shining in, no night lights in the kids rooms, nothing but blissful peace and quiet and about half a dozen big fluffy pillows on a king sized bed. So ended our first day on the cruise, and we were looking forward to a relaxing day on the ship the next day while docked in Nassau.
me and the DW get school bread a few times on our trip. Not to mention its cheap.
