Dream 10/13-17/13!

[bumbershoot]

Hello!

I'm Molly, and the family is Robert (DH) and Eamon (DS...and his name is said sort of like "Aidan", but not quite if that makes any sense...it's not eeeemon, it's definitely NOT "amen", it's long-a then mun).

This trip was something of a surprise. Well, a total surprise to the kiddo, and something of a surprise to me. It was plopped at the end of a longer trip, and it was one of those "can't resist, that's a good deal, it should be done" sort of things. It got its start when I got sunscreen all over my lovely Tervis cup. That tends to destroy the good looks of a Tervis, by the way. They even have an FAQ about sunscreen on their site! When you buy a Tervis anywhere but on DCL or at WDW, you get a nice tag telling you all about the evils of sunscreen. But not when it comes from Disney! Alas, not telling us doesn't make the cup impervious.

So I ruined the looks of the mug I got during our first Disney cruise, which was only in February, and that started the conversations that led to what COULD have been called "the most expensive replacement Tervis cup EVER". But won't be called that, because that's just silly.

 

[bumbershoot]

10/12 we headed from Universal over to Hyatt Regency. The DCL bus had been arranged for the next morning, and a PAT of 10:30 had been procured.

However, we got to the hotel late and Eamon finally found his hunger (he had had a nasty and FAST-moving cold that went along with almost no hunger) and since it was late and we had just turned in the rental car, that required room service. Which took awhile. So bedtime was late and wake-up time was late as well.

I was up, though, and got us ready. Got to meet the guy picking up luggage instead of just leaving it in the room as we traipsed to the bus...but...ya gotta let the family get their sleep when sleep has been lacking the previous week.

Took some pictures from our room, playing with my new camera's "miniature" feature.

At last we were ready and headed on down!

Got on the bus, met nice people, rode on out to the port, soon enough we were there.

But, because we had (and still have) a longer-standing booking on RCCL, seeing Freedom of the Seas sitting there thrilled us.

Got our focus on what we were doing and where we were going, as we approached the Dream. Headed into the terminal. Our memories of doing this in Feb were blurry and different, because that time we had concierge booked. This time we were with the masses of normal people. A couple days before this Robert had gotten a call from DVC about the cruise (even though cash was paid for the cruise) telling him to stop by the DVC booth in the terminal to get a present. Which was? Lanyards. With a DVC button saying when we had joined. Exciting. Right?

Checked in, and since we had been so delayed from our PAT we got right on board.

I was a little stressy because I felt so so so late, but the reality was we were doing just fine.

We learned in Feb the absolute necessity of reading the cruise-provided schedule-of-events each day. On DCL that's the Navigator (as many here know, but maybe there are newbies reading). We calmed our excitement to sit and read through the Navigators each day, so that we could pick out what we wanted to do. Just carving out that time actually GAVE us more time each day, because we weren't as scattered.


Went up to the kid's club to get him his band and to check out the open house. My kid's a dancer, and couldn't resist the dance floor. Every time we went to get him in the evening, we found him dancing. (and my goodness, forgive that outfit...the hat he didn't want to pack and so he wore instead, the bags were because our room wasn't ready yet, the shoes are just athletic shoes that fit him really well but are horridly black)




We got some lunch.

There was a DVC presentation so we went. They cleverly put the cherries in the NON-alcoholic drinks.

The following picture shows a questionable choice, IMO, because they put these stickers in EVERY window on that deck. Which meant there were no unblocked views outside.

We ended up visiting the Concierge floor on our way to tour the spa, and I absolutely LOVE that they got rid of the gates!

E went on the slide.

The fun had to end, though, to get ready for dinner. That night was Enchanted Garden. By this time, Robert was getting a nasty headache and felt that it was best he sit out dinner the first night.

So E and I got gussied up and headed out. We were the first at our table (table for 8 against a wall) and soon met our tablemates. A family of 4 with two boys whose ages flanked DS's and the family's mom's mom. All VERY nice, VERY fun, and the boys got along so well with DS it was like they'd been friends forever.

For some reason the mac&cheese wasn't making DS happy and the sauteed mushrooms didn't do much either. I had the pearl barley cakes that I wanted to be good but they just weren't. All in all, disappointing first dinner, but that was OK.

Someone had mentioned my birthday in the official stuff, so at the end of the meal, AFTER I'd had dessert, they brought out a little cake for me.

If only I had known, I wouldn't have had dessert! But it was really nice.


Since Robert was still out of commission (and unfortunately he didn't get to rest because the room was FREEZING and he was arguing with the thermostat and then later with maintenance and it went on until nearly midnight and that is ENOUGH said except that the snobs in us thought "I wish I had a concierge person to call instead of maintenance so this could be helped faster") E and I went along to the first show, a magic show. It was good! We were glad we went. I'm not normally a cruise-show person and I didn't go to any of the shows on our first, 3 night, cruise (nor had I gone on any on our FIRST cruise, our honeymoon, but that was because I was approx 5 minutes pregnant and already passing out at 8pm each night), but I was glad we went to this.

We did some shopping and headed on to bed. Well, we headed back to the scene of Robert trying to get the room's temperature up from freezing, and the maintenance guy acting like we had never seen a thermostat before ("you have to leave it there for 15 minutes for it to work"...like that hadn't been done, LOL, only being changed later on when it wasn't working after 20 minutes) and finally it started to work after the guy did some fiddling around on his laptop and some thumping around in the wall outside our room (an inside cabin on deck 7...I want to say 7501?).

Over the course of the night it actually got TOO hot, and then took 1000 years to cool back down, so they fixed it too well.

But anyway, it was fixed and we got some sleep and that was GOOD. I sleep like crazy on a ship, which is lovely.

 

[nancy drew]

Following!! How exciting! And you know I will be taking notes as we are still "on board" to take a 4 night Dream cruise in April!

 

[bumbershoot]

Yay, someone to talk to!



First Full Day.


I wanted to post as much of this day as possible but suddenly cannot find my Navigators. Those tell me what people did, so I'm at a loss without them right here. But I know the first things I did, and that was taking a run on the deck (trying to do approx 5K), then I got all prettified and went to brunch at Palo. On my own!


I had a faulty series of memories of the morning! I did run, came back to the room, we all got ready. The guys had things they wanted to do, so we went to Enchanted Garden for them to eat (I think I had some fruit). OH how I dislike that buffet....buffets stress me out when they aren't in obvious pods because there are vast swathes of foods I won't be dishing up and I just want to jump ahead. Anyway, they ate a bit and then we went our separate ways. Robert dropped E off at the kid's club and did whatever he wanted to do while I went and ate...this:

and

and

and then the server brought me (not sure why he wanted to get me dessert, but he offered so I said OK) this

I was SO full. And I saw people carrying plates FAR more full than my plates were, and going back way more times than I did. I don't know how they fit it all in, LOL.

So that pasta...delicious. It had teensy chopped up cubes of zucchini in it. Added only a hint of flavor, but a HUGE burst of freshness to what was otherwise a perfectly delicious bowl of pasta with pesto.

The almond croissant (an amazing mix of croissant and bearclaw) was THE best pastry I've ever had. I could have just eaten those.

The fruit was tasty. In retrospect I realize the whipped cream was probably stabilized with gelatin and I bet the desserts were, too. Ick. Wish I'd thought of that at the time. But..I am as careful as careful can be when at home. At restaurants, I ask basic questions and make basic guesses, but I know I'm not perfect at it every time. It didn't make me sick, so at least that was OK.


This was the view I had to my left.

The view to my right was fellow guests and then beyond them a wall of glass and very pretty ocean outside. I didn't take a picture that way because the picture wouldn't have come out and it would have had fellow guests front and center.


As I was leaving (and even though I am happy to be a person who can go places by herself, I gotta admit it would have been nicer and perhaps a bit of a more spread-out-over-time experience if I'd had someone else with me, but DH simply didn't want to go) I was chatting with the main server guy (manager?) and in conversation he found out that I have a kidlet, and he rushed back to have my server make up a plate of desserts for him and DH. That was awfully sweet.

For right now that's all I have in my brain!

 

[UK Fan]

Following along....

 

[jedijill]

Just joined in.

Thanks for the explanation on how to pronounce your son's name. It had been driving me crazy forever!

Jill in CO

 

[bumbershoot]

Following along....

Welcome!

Just joined in.

Thanks for the explanation on how to pronounce your son's name. It had been driving me crazy forever!

Jill in CO

Glad to be of help. If we had it to do all over again...might have thought a little bit more about the pronunciation issue. Well, if we had it to do all over again I'd have named him Sage like I wanted to; DH would have gone along with ANYTHING I named him at that point. Sage had been highly contested because all the Sages I know of are boys but all the ones DH knows of are girls, so he worried. (and I think DS would have staged a revolt the instant he saw the first American Girl Saige ad, LOL)

Anyway, glad you're here.

 

[bumbershoot]

I want to back up a moment and talk about the differences between our first Disney cruise in Feb and this one. The obvious differences (not that you guys know this) is that we were alone on this one vs being with extended family in Feb. We took the time to read the Navigators this time, when we didn't feel we had the time last time. The ship felt a little bit smaller this time. We seemed to be able to do a bit more in an hour than we did in Feb. Little differences.

So overall our second cruise felt longer than our first. OK OK it was; it was 4 nights vs 3. But each HOUR felt longer.

And I don't know if that's normal, because my cousins said that their second cruise (the one in Feb of this year) felt SHORTER than their first, though they were the same length. For them, the newness made time stand still. For us, knowledge of the ship and what was coming up, etc, helped.

When we saw something in the Navigator we liked, I outlined it in a ballpoint pen and that helped us make it a priority.

 

[bumbershoot]

First Full Day, continued.


Aha, I talked with the family about this day and have to amend my memories (you can see changes in red in my second to last post above). When they got up (while I was at brunch) Robert was feeling a lot better, and Eamon had had enough sleep.

We were in an inside stateroom and so paid some attention to the magic porthole. It was barely ever "magic" but it was still interesting.

So we went together for the guys to nosh, they went off, I went on my own way, and later on we all met back up at the D Lounge for the Magic Workshop. I had to go back to the stateroom to drop off that plate of goodies so I was a bit later than anticipated. This was a hands-on version of the magic show (Kyle Knight and Mistie) and the kids had literal front floor seats. I found Robert, and he pointed out our little (ha! he's approaching my height at a far too rapid rate of speed) redhead towards the front.

It was a cute show, and involved showing the kids how to do at least one trick. E just ate this up (lots of the kids did). It was the "how do two strings become one" trick. E got to help for a moment.

It's funny to have E's name mentioned here, because when Kyle Knight asked his name and he answered, this alerted another child that a kid of the SAME name was there! The other boy and his mom approached us after the show. That's the second time we've run into another Eamon at an east coast Disney place; first time was at Animal Kingdom. not the same kid, either. And none of us have been from Ireland; being from Ireland would make it all make SO much more sense, but nope, just a bunch of Americans using Irish names.

The magic show ended in a really cute thing where, basically, Kyle Knight was doing his routine blind, making it look like a boy was doing the trick. It was VERY cute and fun.

We hung out at the lounge for a bit, then moved along. We tried to drop E off for Super Sloppy Science, but the Lab was having an Open House at the same time. What does that mean? It means that kids without self-check-in/out privileges CANNOT STAY without their parents. Ugh. (not that we knew about the checkin/out thing...that was taught me by the CM who posts here on the DCL board...they just told us we had to stay, full stop) E had NO interest, not even a smidgen, of us being in the Lab during this, so that meant HE had no interest in it. So we all left, disappointed.

As we trudged along, saddened (I exaggerate), we came across a clump of silly CMs at the Port Adventures desk. They asked what we had been doing, and what E was holding in his hand. He was holding the string given to him (and all the other kids there) at the magic show. He did the trick for them.

OK I know that sometimes CMs have to act like they are delighted and enthusiastic when maybe they aren't. I'm aware of this and I know that just because they act like we're fascinating it doesn't mean we are or that they think we are. But I truly think they thought this was pretty cool of the kidlet; after he did the trick he showed them how it was done, and they seemed to love this. The main CM working behind the desk asked if we had any plans for Castaway Cay, and when we said we didn't, she told us to hang on, and she arranged for the Float/Mat/Snorkel/Bike Rental Port Adventure for us. FOR FREE!!!!! It was SO cool. So special. Put us in an even better mood for, well, even now.


The three of us found some way to fill about an hour, and then we took E back to the Oceaneer Lab so he could have some more kid-fun.

During our spa tour the day before we had bought the Rainforest Room package, so we went to enjoy that. Met interesting people while sitting in rooms and sweating. I would definitely do the RR again, but I would spend even MORE time in there. As it was we didn't really break even on the package. Our own fault, most definitely. Just too much to do!

Some of those rain showers get COLD, though! And it is odd being in a co-ed space like that. I kept forgetting I had my swimsuit on; here at home I used to go to a Korean day spa that's somewhat similar to the concept of the Rainforest Room, except at the day spas it's all women and you're nekkid. In the RR I'd see a male CM checking on towels and get all paranoid for a second!

The locker rooms really should be checked out. They are free to use, and amazing. They even have cheapie one-blade shavers in case you forgot yours.

We spent ages in the Rainforest areas (I do love a steamroom). I should note that when we bought the package we had been shown handmade body scrubs; we figured the package came with them. We signed in that first day we were using the package, turned in our keycards and got green plastic wristbands to let us in the doors, and that was all that was said. When we were in a room we saw people using the cups of scrubs and those people said that you had to pay extra. We got a little miffed. Well, it turned out that we HAD purchased the package including those, and only figured it out the next day. So we'd missed a day of them.

BUT. Holy heck I did NOT enjoy the steamrooms anywhere near as much with that stuff on me! I felt like I was going to boil to death with the oils and scrubby stuff on. I much preferred it without it. So I would most definitely NOT purchase the package with the scrubs if I did it again.


From my photos, it looks like 2 hours passed before we were out in the real world again. We stopped and had a drinkie in the Cove Bar area. I felt like an interloper; like I wasn't really allowed in there. Not sure why!

E was still having huge amounts of fun. Once the Lab opened back up at 2:30, they had Parachute Games, then Magic Playfloor, then an hour of Anyone Can Cook. Half hour break then Get The Hook. I believe we ran and got him to let him change into dinner clothes in that half hour break. Robert and I got changed as well and we all headed on to dinner at Royal Palace!


This was the first time our tablemates met Robert, and that went fine. Our server (Jose) had already set the boys up so they were sitting right near each other and I got to chat more with the mom's mom and also with the dad (who is a railroad engineer, which I think is nearly the coolest job you can have). If only I could remember what I ate. I'm trying to use the disneycruiselineblog menus, but I actually cannot remember what I ate even from the few vegetarian options there are. Silly! If that's the night they offered the Grand Marnier Souffle, though, I did have that for dessert. But as lovely as Jose was, the souffle just wasn't the same without our February cruise's FABULOUS assistant server Ludovic. Sigh. But in Feb he had said that his plans by September were to be off the ship and at home in Paris with his flight attendant wife. Not a bad set of plans at all.

After dinner E wanted to run off to play again; he had NO interest in the Golden Mickeys. That was fine with us, so we made that happen. I think we did a little shopping and browsing, then headed into the the show.

I won't say much about the show. I really, truly, did NOT like it. But I don't want others to not like it just because it's not my thing at all. Even if I say something like "I don't like illogical shows" that seems mean, because if you like it does that mean that YOU like illogical things? No, it doesn't. It just means that some people have the gene for enjoying musicals, and others are a bit more challenged in that department. I adore The King and I. I love West Side Story. I don't even mind the stage version of Sweeney Todd. But the Golden Mickeys? That would be a NO. For me. I am happy to give up my seat for you at the next showing.


At some point that evening we made a room service order for early the next morning (as we had done on our first night, too, for our first full day's morning), which allowed us to have fruit and coffee delivered bright and early! Helps me out a great deal, to have that coffee at the ready. I'm frighteningly addicted.


E still had Super Sloppy Science, GAGA Ball (which he was NEVER able to describe to us), POTC Tides of Fortune, and Magic Playfloor to keep him occupied that evening. After the show we walked around the ship, seeing the sights and walking outside as well. Ahhhh, the sea.... But at some point in there I got massively sleepy. Too long of a trip already, too long in the steamroom that day, one too many drinks (I'd had one drink, LOL). I went off to the stateroom to sleep, and sent Robert off to watch the magic show at Evolution since he had missed seeing the BIG show they had done. Then he picked up E later, but waited a bit for the Magic Playfloor to end. Why? Because when he went in to get E, he was dancing up a storm on the cool light-up floor. And when they noticed it was E being picked up, something like EIGHT girls all did a big sigh and "don't go" sort of thing. It's not often you get a boy to dance with! So Robert left, went and sat outside until it was done and THEN picked him up. This whole dance thing is someday going to really pay off for the kid, dating-wise, I think. As long as we don't continue to tease him about the girl in his dance troupe that he has a crush on, that is.

They got back, I barely woke up for them, and we all pretty much passed out for the evening.



By the way, this was the somewhat creepy towel animal we had that evening.

I think I might start tipping more for NO towel animals, LOL....

 

[bumbershoot]

Second Full Day, Nassau!



I'm not going to lie. We really did not like this place the first time we went there. Of course, we barely gave it a chance. I tried to follow the antjes' website walking tour, but too many years of traveling solo in cities made me paranoid to have a proper map (somehow forgetting that it's fairly obvious we're tourists so *not having a map* wasn't helping us to look like non-tourists). And I had talked off the ears of hubby and son already about nonsense so when it came time to talk about what we were going to do in Nassau I wasn't able to really inform them of what it might be like.

So we were walking and actually passing by a few of the things we were supposed to be looking for, but didn't realize it (it's a small place!), and then we ran out of sidewalk and didn't know if we should have sidewalk, and I refused to really look at my map, and blah blah blah, we went back to the ship in defeat.


I had said that we would either stay on the ship OR take a tour of some sort if we ever made it back to Nassau. Therefore, the chocolate factory tour was booked this time.


This morning I tried to go for a run, but a big section of the jogging deck was closed off. So I went up to the workout room and spent some time on the treadmill. Good way to start the morning!

We met up at something like 10:45 for the tour, got little Simba stickers to put on our clothes, and headed on out (after buying bottles of water, LOL...so much for not being able to take things off the ship?). It was SO nice to be ON a tour, and therefore not get bothered by others wanting to give us tours (except for the hair-braiding ladies...they knew we'd be back and wanted us to know that they would be there).

Pretty views...

Got on our actually quite nice small tour bus and started the tour. The driver was nice and personable, though he seemed to have something against the governor. We drove past the governor's mansion, which I would never have guessed was a mansion. The aesthetics of an island nation is simply different than what I'm used to, and it takes, well, some getting used to for me. I've lived here and I've been to Canada and Ireland, and that's all, until these cruises. Not the same architecture at all.

I think this might be a view of the mansion but I'm not sure. Looks nicer than I remembered the mansion to be.

Going backwards here, this is a gate area you enter (in this shot we were leaving and I had him turn around) to get up to the factory.

E is in front of the factory door.

Things you see as you go to the factory, which is on the grounds of the very fancy Graycliff restaurant. Different level of "fancy", you see.

This was actually inside the restaurant, where some of us went to use the bathrooms. As we were being lead to the bathrooms our tourguide said that Beyonce and JayZ had been guests here more than once in the past, before their baby was born. That's cool.

This is their chocolate tempering unit, where it is slowly cooled down (and heated up? can't remember). Not just "tempering", but tempTING!

Their historic floor. The building cannot be changed to any extent because it's so old, and that floor is from the 17 or 1800s, I think?

Our absolutely adorable tourguide Kiki, posing for me. She said that she has seen herself in mid-sentence, mouth wide open, too many times on message boards and facebook, and so now if she sees a camera she poses! You can also see the highly fashionable outfits we got to wear.

The molds for chocolates. And some big bowls of chocolate. Yum.

The last 40 minutes or so are spent "making" our own creations.

For anyone with sensitive ears, bring earplugs! The first part involves pouring chocolate into a bar mold and then slamming the tray down over and over and over (and over) again to get all the bubbles out of it. KiKi said that our group did it for by far the longest; it did seem to go on forever! Bet none of us had bubbles in our bars, though!

They take the bars away then bring them back. If you got the tray mold nice and polished, you end up with a shiny bar. We didn't quite get it polished enough.

E was so sweet. He (and Robert) decorated their big huge marshmallows then gave them to others on the tour. I didn't "waste" my chocolate on that and just gave mine away. (marshmallows...even outside the States still have gelatin in them, so there was no point for us)


This is my group of stuff. The pineapple was delicious. But you really ought to eat it right then and there. The acids in the pineapple get to work right away, and by the time we got back on the ship it was starting to sort of melt through the chocolate.

The tour was a lot of fun. It's probably a one-time thing for me, though. I would absolutely positively go back to the store part of the chocolate factory, though, the chocolates we BOUGHT there were astonishingly wonderful. And they aren't horribly expensive, either, apart from having to get to Nassau to get them.


On our way back it really seemed like we were going to have a storm.

However, we did not have a storm.

On our way back to the ship from the tour bus drop off, Robert went up to one of the nice young soldier-men to ask where to get our passports stamped. He told us, so we went through the gate he wasn't letting others go through (he pointed for others to go through the main buliding instead), went into the official looking building, down the deserted hallway to the right, and all the way to the last door on the right. There a rather solemn looking woman was happy (?) to stamp our passports. It was very cool.

We were back on the ship between 1:30 and 2.


Which was right in time for E to head to Anyone Can Cook again! They were so nice and kept checking ingredients for us. So we knew when he could eat his creations (cookies!) and when he could not (cupcakes). His issue is corn syrup based ingredients; used to turn him into a violent beast, and now it just makes him really woozy and feeling bad. This stiffens my feelings that it is and always has been a blood sugar thing with him, and it's absolutely for the best if he avoids such things altogether. Robert has always had a problem with sodas sweetened with HFCS, even before he knew he had a problem. There's only so many times you can actually fall asleep while driving home from gaming evenings after drinking umpteen bottles of Mountain Dew...only so many times you can start passing out after having 4 ounces of Coke, only so many times you can have those same experiences over and over and over with the same sorts of things, before you finally call a halt to it. For Robert, it was being diagnosed with SUDDEN diabetes and for us discovering the culprit for E's violent outbursts, for us to put it together. Robert had to clean up his diet of all the same things we cleared from E's diet, and he had to do it for a few years, but now he is not considered diabetic any longer. He only took drugs for it for a week and then stopped. So it's pretty cool that he beat it. He simply cannot go back to that sort of diet. That's "all". So it truly is best for Eamon to stay away from it.

Anyway, they were VERY good about following up on that stuff, even though we never said it was an allergy. As we've said for a long time...he won't die from it, he'll just become very very unpleasant and it's hard to control it, so it's best he doesn't consume it.

After that it was POTC Tides of Fortune (which I guess is a multi-player videogame or something) and Get The Hook, so he was having some serious fun.

I'm going to assume here that we went back to the Rainforest. Ahhhhh.

Soon enough it was time for dinner, which was again at Royal Palace! I know I had something with pineapple and coconut for an appetizer, I had a salad, and I had some sort of entree. I even had some sort of adult beverage! And maybe a dessert. Maybe not. Jose was happy with me since I had multiple courses this time. They just like feeding people.

The night before had been the Halloween celebration thing, and E dressed as Indiana Jones. Tonight was Pirates in the Caribbean, and he did something piratey. I wore a simple beige dress and tied a couple of the red bandanas they gave us to make myself a piratey belt. That was my extent of dressing as a pirate. Jose was happier with me this night too because the Halloween night I had worn some sort of sparkly red dress and then my red devil horns. He really really did NOT like my devil outfit, and kept covering his eyes when he saw me. It was kind of funny but I also felt bad that I was bugging him on some level. I wasn't wearing the horns Nassau night and I ordered more food, so it was all much better.


Our tablemates had done a dolphin swim that day and had absolutely LOVED it. It was neat hearing how much fun they had had. They seemed to be pretty "normal" people; no online obsessing for a year over things...they just booked it, saw what they could do, planned it, went. And had an absolute blast.


After dinner we all went to see Villains. In between we wandered around, not wanting to do the pirate stuff. I bet the arcade was involved. Sorry, Arr-cade.

Villains was decent. I hadn't seen a whole lot of the movies they were talking about so that was confusing but that's what I get for not really growing up in a Disneyfied household. Heck, I had to be taken out of Cinderella when it was in a theater-run in the early 70s because the stepsisters scared me so much.

After Villains the boy-o went BACK to the club/lab and we wandered... at some point there was a beer at Skyline; they don't have beer there but they send someone to 687 to get it. We liked sitting there, chatting with each other, talking about the skylines on the wall, and learning a ton about tequila from our bartender. Good stuff. While sitting there the ship did something funky but none of the CMs reacted, so we figured it was just one of those things.

Late that night we went to pick up the kiddo who was dancing again and having a huge blast (though someone had taken his flubber). It was just about club/lab closing time (around midnight), and we wanted to take him out on deck so he could see the water rushing by and how gorgeous it is at sea at night.

Walked out onto the deck to see...Nassau! Wait, what? We were docked.

Turns out someone had had a medical emergency, so we had turned around and gone back to Nassau to let them off. And all we noticed of it was one funky movement on the ship. And this despite Robert having worked on ships before! But since he worked up in the Valdez area on tankers, he thinks this whole cruiseship thing is pretty funny, that people like me think it feels like it's moving.

Well, we weren't able to show E the gorgeous night-at-sea, so we mentally wished the person and his/her family well and better health, and headed back on inside. Made our coffee/fruit order for the morning, and went to sleep.

 

[jedijill]

Kiki was so much fun! I thought the chocolate tour was really good. A nice way to do Nassau. If I go back, I'm going to do one of the Bahamian foods tours.

Jill in CO

 

[nancy drew]

Mmmm, the chocolate tour looks delicious! We could never do it, due to allergies, but if we could, that would be our #1 choice!

 

[wiigirl]

Great pics!

 

[bumbershoot]

Mmmm, the chocolate tour looks delicious! We could never do it, due to allergies, but if we could, that would be our #1 choice!

Those darn nut allergies. So pesky. (and dairy too, though other tours did get to use DARK chocolate, yum)

Great pics!

Why thank you!


I'm approaching my memory limit for photobucket. Trying to figure out what I should do.

 

[bumbershoot]

Third Full Day! (= our last night)


Today was Castaway Cay day! Woo!

Got our usual coffee and fruit delivery so I could nosh a bit before heading out EARLY for the Castaway Cay 5K meetup. I got myself all ready the night before so I could sneak out, but they were SO asleep I probably didn't need to worry.

Info on the 5K is on the front of the Navigator for that day (given out the evening before) and also on the, hmm...timesheet? Thingie that lists all the times and places and what to do during those times and places? Anyway, that tells me that we were to meet in Evolution at 8:15am and that it's for "12+ Years and Older". Glad to have that "+" and the "older" in there, just to make sure we get that it's not only for 12 year olds.

So I went to Evolution and just by cool fate sat next to two neat guys. The 5K meeting took WAY longer than the 15 minutes indicated (by "Departs at 8:30am") on the sheet, so we had a lot of time to talk about running and our families and stuff like that. People say that men don't talk about personal things, but these guys had no problem chatting about deep stuff. Super-nice.

We finally headed to the island (with some people making frantic dashes to go get IDs). One lady was pretty angry, because she had arranged for one hour of nursery time, assuming they would follow the timing on the Navigator, but that did NOT happen. I felt bad for her and really want to make it clear that even if we had headed off at 8:30, it can take 15 minutes just to get off the ship, another 5 to gather everyone again, then another 10 to walk to the starting line. And then you run 5K! And then have to walk back to the ship, get on, get through the scrum of people trying to get off the ship, and get on up to the nursery.

Don't plan on one hour of nursery time. Go for at least 2. Just so you don't have the stress that that lady had.


So I did the 5K and I did better than I'd done in February. This time I decided to buy a shirt, but the sizing left something to be desired. The women's sizes run really really small. Just warnin' ya.

Instead of having the guys meet me off the ship, I told them I would come back, so I did just that. It was a whole lot easier to get cleaned up on the ship than it was on the beach! We must have fed Eamon something, and then we headed off altogether to our day....

Robert had wanted to do Yoga on the Beach, but didn't. E had wanted to hit the kid's club on the island, but didn't. I wanted to have a repeat of the Best Day EVER EVER EVER that I had on the Cay in February, and, sadly, I didn't.

What I did get was the third worst sunburn of my life.

I also got an allergic reaction *on my face* to the Target brand "just like Coppertone" sunscreen I'd bought just before we left.

Bonus? So did Eamon. I thought it was just me having weird burning feelings on my face (not long after applying the sunscreen) and then E started freaking out, too. Oh it HURT.

Robert ran to the giftshop and bought a scandalously expensive small bottle of better sunscreen. I washed our faces while waiting, then reapplied. I had put the Target on the rest of my skin, too, but it didn't burn there. So I didn't change that out. And I paid. OH I PAID.

E wasn't anywhere near as bad; his genetics protect him more than mine. Robert is half Korean and that protects him from burning (he's had two sunburns total in his life, and one was caused by me suggesting he go to a tanning bed for 10 minutes to even out his farmer's tan). E looks all Celtic but his quarter "Koreanness" (to steal a conceptual phrase from The Birdcage) allows him to turn golden tan instead of burning. Lucky duck. Hurts a heck of a lot less!


View from our chairs.

View behind our chairs.

View on the way to our chairs?

We still loved our day. But.

The food didn't taste as delicious as it did in Feb. Weirdly, the cookie was better. Robert was more relaxed than he was in Feb, but also wasn't having AS nice a time. The water was warmer and that was nice.

Oh, and it was hot hot hot hot. Apparently October is hotter than February. Who knew?


Finally we decided to take advantage of the cool rental "port adventure" Eamon had earned for us, and got snorkel sets.

Snorkeling was, ultimately, worth it. Snorkeling was, also, hard. We must have spent at least half an hour just getting E's mask to sit right on his face. Finally he and I switched masks; I have a normal sized head and his is big, so I could wear the junior sized mask/snorkel easier than he could, and we just tightened up the adult mask/snorkel for him. After that it got better.

I did surprisingly well. I tend towards claustrophobia and asthma. Previously, just the idea of a snorkel brought both of them up. But I found it to be just lovely.

Because we spent a lot of time messing around with the masks and going back and forth, the "course" seemed really long. I wanted to go all the way around and they went along with it, but that last part of the horseshoe-shape was terribly long.

However, that part was possibly the most rewarding, because we were all near each other (which hadn't happened a whole lot until then), all looking down, all looking in the same place, and a RAY went under us! It was so cool.

Well, it should be no surprise to anyone that most of my burn was on my back. We had spent so long in the water, so long without access to my tubes of sunscreen, and the sun was so bright and reflecty, that my poor back was toast. Ha.

E had gotten a lot of water-time in earlier, and I'm pretty sure he had taken advantage of the float rental.

We wanted to do the bike, but it was just so hot. I was sad that I wanted to do this, but I was actually the one that suggested we head on back a little bit earlier than we had to. Hot hot hot.


Walked, slowly, on back to the ship. Sad.

I don't blame Castaway Cay for our feelings that day. It was probably a symptom of "second-timers disease" or "the end of a LONG trip syndrome". It was all on us. And that sun.


Got back, got into a dress that was, unfortunately, just a bit itchy on my normal skin and became horrible on my burned skin. But it was a cute dress and it was green so it didn't make the burn look any *worse*. The guys made themselves more handsome and we were off to Animator's Palate.

We were sat at a long table just *away* from a Crush screen, so we could watch others interact but did not interacting with Crush ourselves. I was in a position where I could watch Bruce and Crush, etc, swimming through the room, showing up on this screen then that screen, etc. I like that.

Dinner tonight was my favorite. Turned out we were among the first to get the new AP menus, and unlike in Feb, it did not disappoint. I had this potato and celeriac (some sort of veggie?) gratin that was absolutely wonderful. I'd started with a red bell pepper and something or other salad that was also amazing. I nearly asked, and should have asked, for seconds on both. SO good. Robert had the butternut squash soup and the black bean chipotle cakes, and loved both. The trick to the black bean cakes is to mix it together and eat it that way. That way the flavors blend and meld. If you eat it in measured bites you miss some of the flavors and it just doesn't work. According to him. He's had it twice now and so I guess he's the expert on it.

E had...something. The mac&cheese wasn't really doing it for him by this time, and the ice cream had, it had become obvious even to him, corn syrup in it. It was making him really sick even while eating it. So I don't even think he had dessert that night. Doesn't mean he didn't have some of his chocolate stash from the factory tour, of course.

We were sad to say goodbye to our tablemates. They knew they wouldn't be there at breakfast, so it was The End for our BFF status. (I'm really not sure they liked us as much as we liked them, but who cares? we liked 'em and I enjoyed hearing about what they had done during the day and about their lives)


They were off to see Believe and we were not (Robert saw it in Feb and knew that it would not be my style and even he didn't want to see it again). E couldn't wait to get back to the club/lab; I have Piston Cup Challenge circled on the schedule so I'm guessing that's what he was off to. Then, again, Tides of Furtune, Stitch's Final Farewell, Get the Hook, Anyone Can Cook, Super Sloppy Science, and Magic Playfloor!

YES he was there for all of that. YES he had an amazing time. (YES we missed him! but he was having an absolute blast.)

While we were on the beach, while he was in the water, his kid's club band *fell off*. And he caught it. Whew! I tucked it away safely for later. So on this last night he had to get the band put back on for the last few hours.



First, we packed. And put stuff in the hall. Considered going to the Rainforest room again but decided against it.

Instead, this is where we went.

We wandered. If you time it right, you can find a little buffet in the grownup "district".

Here's the "miniaturized" Halloween tree (my camera is fun).

At last it was time to pick up the wee one. While Robert went to get him I rested my poor feet and took some pictures. There are always questions about the gates to the kid's area, and since I've watched those gates a bunch I feel they are secure.

They look invisible here, though, LOL.

That's E and Robert behind the gates inside the lab, waiting to get out. You can see a frosted glass wheel "on" Eamon. The CM is also inside, and she asks for the password, etc, then lets people out. On this night she also cut off the kid's club band thing.

Closer. Those gates open when they do something and when the child holds the band to it. I watched bigger kids than E "trying" the gates, hoping they would open, and not only did the gates hold but the CMs saw them and stopped it immediately.

This is what our kidlet looks like after hours of playing in the club.

Tired!


This is the view when looking down the side of the ship, with the ship rushing through the water (why does it go so fast on the last night? why?).

We were sadness defined. Too short. But we have no interest on going on the Magic or Wonder, or even Fantasy. We've gotten somewhat attached to the Dream. And the Dream only does short trips. Oh well.

With sad feelings, we went to sleep.

 

[bumbershoot]

On the previous evening, someone had accidentally taken E's flubber that he made during Super Sloppy Science. He was so sad. The CM made a note to herself, said she had friends in the flubber business or something like that.

On our last night, when Robert and I got back to the room to pack, we found one of the green kid's club backpacks (you can see it in the pictures above) on our door, with flubber inside. SO cool.

I've mentioned it here there and everywhere, except NOT in the hearing of Eamon, that we already have another Dream cruise planned for next October. It was actually for November but then it was one of the rescheduled ones. Oct 23 worked just as well for us as Nov 13, so we just went with the change. We actually booked that about a week after we got home from the February cruise. The cruise we have coming up on a RCCL ship was planned soon after that. The one I'm describing here was an even bigger fluke than us being able to do the RCCL! It's all crazy right now.

Anyway, the point is, E didn't know about next year's October Dream cruise. We decided to let him in on it, once we were home, and we decided to do it with the green string backpack of flubber. So we tucked that away in a checked bag.



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Storage!

Storage is a big topic on the cruise boards.

We were in 7501, which is category 10A. And the storage was fine, especially in the bathrooms.

Walking into the "toilet" room, starting on the left. Those glass shelves held a whole lot.

And knobby things to hang stuff up.

The bathtub (not a round one) room, from the left.

IN the shower/tub.

And then as you transition from the hall area to the living space, more hooks. Thankfully, up high.

******************************************


Well, the time to leave was upon us. We got up terribly early to get to our oh so early breakfast. We had managed to pack everything that needed to be packed.

Went on down to Animator's Palate for breakfast (you have breakfast in the restaurant where you had the last dinner). I think I had oatmeal and a pastry and a bunch of coffee. The guys had eggs or something. Not sure. We were sad. And tired.

I think this picture reflects all of our faces that morning.

Disembarkation went just fine. We were able to do onboard airline checkin, which meant that our bags were going straight to the airport. That was AWESOME. If you're taking an airline that is part of that program and you're leaving that day, wow, do it. Fabulous! So we waltzed off with just carryons.

Caught the bus. Got to the airport.

Went to National and rented ourselves a car and headed off to get some Butterbeer.

Yes, we went to Universal. For approximately 3 hours. It was highly contested, by the way; would we go to get Butterbeer or would we go to get Norwegian pastries at Kringla in Epcot? Back and forth. But since E had almost totally missed Universal...for those who didn't read my WDW or Uni reports, E caught a fast moving, nasty little cold that stopped being symptomatic just in the nick of time to be able to answer the pre-cruise questions truthfully, but that kept him from enjoying more than I would say 2 rides at Universal over four days...we figured that it would be best to head over there.

Had a little food, had some butterbeer, rode a couple rides, got to experience the themepark/citywalk parking lot (weirdly fun!)...went back to the airport. utterly, entirely, totally exhausted. We SO didn't need a delay in either of our flights, but at some point before we landed in Newark that late afternoon, a passenger managed to go through security without being fully cleared, thereby shutting down the terminal until they could find her, thereby stopping all flights in and out for something like an hour, which caused OUR flight to be something like 3 or 4 hours delayed as they played catchup with the air traffic.


But it all worked out. E got a travel pillow at long last, we got to see what a deliriously tired 9 year old boy is like on a plane (quiet, but miserable), I managed to watch The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and then Monsters U, we landed safely and got home...it was fine.

Couple days later we gave him the green bag with the flubber and with the little folder for the 2014 DCL plans. He was happy. We were happy. Robert was especially happy because he did NOT like keeping that secret or the secret of this cruise. So it was all good.


And that's the end of our surprise cruise story!

 

[bbn1122]

Enjoyed your report....thanks for sharing....

Also, I have known quiet a few Eamon's over the years.....it's my friends husbands name......lots of Irish in NJ....great name!

 

[bumbershoot]

Thanks!

And how cool that you've known many with that name. Perhaps we should visit NJ. Ooh I bet Boston would be a good place for the name, too.