If You See It: Eat It! Via Panama to Disneyland - Completed and Link to New Trip Report 2/24

[Captain_Oblivious]

All caught up! Hooray for a new room, especially with a secret porthole!

I think I would share Michael's frustrations. I'm not a seafood fan and wouldn't want goat cheese either.

Sounds like things were really starting to look up at this point on the cruise. I love that you had to cover up Mickey for Donald's benefit.

 

[nodnol]

is back! (Someone of the important Disboards people must be reading along as well!)

for the new room. But where are the pictures??? Will Michael finally get up so that you can show us the room?

Lesson learned there: Use downtime either for laundry OR nails, never both at the same time!

Or for nothing. It is called downtime...

Michael started dinner with the Tomato Tarte with Glazed Goats Cheese and Radish Salad:

I think this was the point in the cruise where Michael was getting a bit frustrated by the amount of goats cheese on the menues. It seemed that a lot of the non-seafood dishes would have goats cheese added into it. On a 15 night cruise you can get a little bit fed up with it. I would say that in general if you don’t eat any seafood, you will find your menu choices a bit limited.

Well, you are at sea....

I had the Smoked Salmon Tartar with Dill, Capers, Onions, Pickles and a Horseradish Cream:

This was wonderful. I ordered it not being totally sure about whether I would like it as I am not big on dill nor on onion. But ti was a lovely dish and quite a sizeable portion!

It looks really tasty!


You seem to have accomplished quite a lot in the morning! Massage, sauna, breakfast (with tea!!! - proper breakfast), no cooking demonstration, wandering around... So when will you finally take pictures of THE room?

 

[Flossbolna]

After a week in Key West and another one on the Fantasy I've finally vaught up with your trip report and can't wait for my PC cruise next may.

Sounds like you had a wonderful vacation!!

I did the Secret River excursion on our Eastern Caribbean last year and it was a truly amazong experience. The trip to the mainland wasn't bad at all.

That's great to hear. I know that whenever I will be back in Cozumel, I just have to go on that excursion. It stuck out to me the first time I ever looked at the list of port adventures being offered.

The Wonder looks really beautiful and I'm looking forward to being on a smaller ship with less kids.

Oh! Sounds like the Fantasy was a bit too full of kids? The PC cruise definitely has a very special atmosphere with so few kids. I actually think it is a great cruise for the kids as they get so much more attention!

Do I see that right, is there a lady barefoot on a treadmill in your picture?
I don't know what's up with people but on the Fntasy I saw people wandering barefoot in the Atroum twice, how bad mannered can you be? I couldn't imagine treating the public places of a ship or a hotel like my own personal living room, that's just disgusting.
I'm also surprised that they allow using the fitness center equipment without shoes.

I had noticed it, but you are right! Wow, I never would want to use a treadmill without proper shoes. I think that might really be a safetly issue! Personally, I don't mind people walking through the ship barefoot, but I can see your point. I feel that the flip flops that have become so ubiquitous are not much more shoe than no shoe anyway.

But, on the PC cruise you could tell that there were quite a few people who felt kind of entitled to treat the ship as their home because they had been on so many cruises.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying report, thanks!

Glad you are enjoying it!!

All caught up! Hooray for a new room, especially with a secret porthole!

It was really such a wonderful surprise. I have to say that the two times that something not so magical happened on a Disney vacation - last time the server with an attitude at Be Our Guest and this time the tired room - Disney really came around and was treating us very nicely to make up for it! They even kept thanking us for alerting them to the room issues! It's things like that that make me a loyal customer.

I think I would share Michael's frustrations. I'm not a seafood fan and wouldn't want goat cheese either.

Yes, I can see why you would not be the greatest fan of the cruise menus. They do have a steak every day. But on a long cruise, who wants to eat steak every single night? However, you would love the lunch burger they have on the table service lunch menu! Picture coming up at a later time in the cruise!

Sounds like things were really starting to look up at this point on the cruise. I love that you had to cover up Mickey for Donald's benefit.

Donald was so much fun. Actually all of the characters were. They were so good at having "conversations" with you.

 

[Flossbolna]

is back! (Someone of the important Disboards people must be reading along as well!)

Sure, the DISboard webmaster is reading my TR -and more importantly your banana complaints!! No, the disappearing smileys are a constant puzzle that has been going on for years! I hate it for example when this one here disappears:

for the new room. But where are the pictures??? Will Michael finally get up so that you can show us the room?

What would you say if I told you that I failed pictures of the new room????

Or for nothing. It is called downtime...

Pft! Who wants to sit around and do nothing?

Well, you are at sea....

It is not as if they would have a few CMs sitting up on deck with fishing rods and then serve up the catch of the day in the dining room!

It looks really tasty!

Yes, there will be more pictures of dishes where I thought you would love them - next one coming up for dinner on that day. Even reading the menus I kept thinking that you would be in heaven. I do hope we get a Norwegian inspired menu on our cruise, that would be interesting!

You seem to have accomplished quite a lot in the morning! Massage, sauna, breakfast (with tea!!! - proper breakfast), no cooking demonstration, wandering around... So when will you finally take pictures of THE room?

Well - I did not get around to taking pictures of the room that day. I did on a later day and meant to include them then. But if you are so impatient - do you want me to do a special room picture update??

 

[Flossbolna]

I was hoping someone would take the last post on this page, but since no one wants it, I think I will fill it with the room pictures that Katharina demanded so vehemently...

These were taken on May 7 (not that this matters, the room did not change much during the cruise), so they are not in the chronological order of the TR.

View from door:

Once you are a bit further into the room with the curtains closed:

And open:

Bed:

Once you are past the bed, view back towards the door:

As you can see, we used the connecting door as a base for our magnetic whiteboard that we got as a Castaway Club gift. It was a really useful gift! Underneath it you can see two white sheets of paper. These are our daily schedules. I was afraid that we would lose track of the things we had planned on the cruise and was thinking of making a schedule for the whole 15-night cruise. But then I thought it would be nice to have a daily planner that is easy to reference. So I came up with a design that had the different times and both our names for each day and printed it on card stock paper. I brought some magnetic tape with which I put the sheets up, every evening I would take down that day's sheet and put up the day after the next as well, so we would always wake up to having today and tomorrow in view. When we read something in the Navigator that we wanted to do, we wrote it on the schedule. I also added in the restaurant for the night. I found it a useful tool to keep track of things over a long cruise, I would not think it is necessary for a shorter cruise. But once we got to that stretch of 4 sea days in a row, days really started to blend into each other and you did not really have a lot of structure to your days anymore. Here is a closer picture (this is actually from the old stateroom):

View of desk area:

Sofa that can be turned into a bed (the back folds over and then the other side of the back is what you sleep on, it is not a pull out couch):

View towards the window with curtains open:

Closer view out of the window - here you can see that the obstruction is really not bad at all:

That's it! I will return shortly with a regular update!

Next: This is a “crumble”?

 

[Flossbolna]

After that I did some more exploring. I thought I might want to sit outside on the “secret” deck on deck 7 aft. This is a small deck that is kind of hidden as you get by it walking along a corridor with staterooms. It is open to the public most of the time, I have read that they sometimes have weddings there.

I found it:

But there were no chairs there, so obviously not very comfortable to hang out right now. I saw later in the cruise they had chairs there.

Since there were no chairs to sit, I moved on and ended up on deck 4:

I decided to get a drink from the drink station and then head back to deck 4 to read a little while before I would get Michael. Walking past our stateroom I noticed through the little hole in the door (the one for seeing who is in front of your door) that it was light inside the room, so I went in. I found a very grumpy Michael. It turned out that directly opposite of our room was a door which the CMs used to go “back stage”. And that door was banging every time someone walked through. This had woken him up. And then he was complaining that he was just starting to drift off again when Jimmy came on and started “yammering on” about all the fun stuff one could do on the ship, while poor Michael only wanted to have the fun of sleeping. Sometime in the afternoon I saw two guys working on the door opposite our room and asked them if they were repairing it and they confirmed just that. It was never supposed to bang and after they were finished with it, it never banged again during our cruise. However, Jimmy became quite a grievance for Michael (I guess “This is your Bingo Buddy Chris” was just behind) as we could hear the general ship wide announcements very well in our stateroom. I think it was partly due to being very close to the elevator lobby and also the noise from deck 4 being able to travel into our stateroom. The first few days I thought Michael was being overly sensitive but then one day I was in the room during one of those announcements and you could understand every single word inside our room. That’s not the way it is supposed to be!

I convinced Michael that we should watch the Cruise Director’s Morning Show on TV since I had missed it that morning due to having my wonderful massage. He graciously agreed despite being rather annoyed with Jimmy disturbing his sleep.

Once we started to get going we decided to catch up on our walking around the ship as we had skipped that the last evening. After one round we started to talk about lunch and looked at the menu at Triton’s which looked very good again.

So, in we went and were greeting by a bunch of CMs waiting to lead people to their tables:

Lunch menu for today:

I had the Meze – Red Pepper Hummus, Tabbouleh Salad and Marinated Olives served with Pita Bread:

This was delicious. I would have loved more olives and more hummus, but overall it was a very good dish.

Michael had the Tomato and Mozzarella Salad with strips of Bresacola and Balsamic-dressed Arugula Leaves:

He liked this a lot.

For his main course he had the Cheese Croissant Sandwich with Minute Steak, Caramalized Onions, Swiss Cheese and Horseradish Mayonnaise served with Potato Chips:

Obviously he got some kind of slaw with it as well. I think he liked it quite well and even commented on that the steak was very decent meat quality for what it was.

I had the Smoked Duck Breast Salad with Brie Cheese, Mache Leaves, Walnuts, Orange Segments and Pomegranate Dressing:

The duck was quite wonderful (sorry, the flash made it all a bit brighter than it was), but I was not sure about the pomegranate dressing, it was a bit too fruity for me, even though I love pomegranate. I think next time I would rather have it with the balsamic dressing that Michael had for his tomato and mozzarella dish.

For dessert we both went with the same choice:

This was advertised as a Rhubarb and Strawberry Crumble with Vanilla Custard. I would have called it fruit puree with vanilla pudding and bread crumbs. So, yes, it kind of had the ingredients of what I know as a crumble. But somehow, from travelling in the UK, I expect my crumbles to be warm (this was not) and then it is chunk fruit with a crumble topping to which you add a rather liquid vanilla custard as a sauce. To me this dessert was a huge disappointment, even though it did not taste bad at all. Michael however, loved it and thought it was one of the best desserts he had on this cruise (however, don’t take this as to high a praise – we will get into the topic of desserts more later on…).

After lunch we decided to check out the menu at Palo since we were going to eat there that evening.

On the way there we passed the main pool and saw Daisy out there for a meet and greet with virtually no line at all and we decided to go and say hello to Daisy:

I think this was when Daisy enquired from Michael why I was not wearing a ring and Michael came back that obviously Donald had not given her a ring either. Which made her rather sad and a bit mad at the absent Donald, but Michael told her that she was wonderful anyway. From then on, Daisy was a huge fan of Michael and continued to flirt with him… I told you, those characters on the ship are a lot of fun, because you really get to know them if you see them a few times.

After a look at the Palo menu I took a brief stop inside the bathroom there and found this incredibly cute hand towel arrangement:

(normally you just have paper towels in the public bathrooms, it is just the one at Palo that is fancy enough to give you cloth towels. And this might be a good point to say how fantastic those public bathrooms are! They are so incredibly clean! Even the ones next to the dining rooms which get a lot of use. They have an attendant in each of those during dinner times to make sure it is constantly cleaned. The attendants also hand you the paper towels when you wash your hands and open the door for you. It is really amazing. When I am staying in a hotel, I often would go back to my room to use my own bathroom instead of the ones in the public areas. On the ship I never was tempted to do that.)

Our next stop was some after lunch coffee at the Ourlook Café. I had a cappuccino and Michael had an iced latte. I also could not resist the tiny carrot cake cup cake. It was quite good, but not carotty enough for me.

We stayed in the Outlook Café for quite some while, watching the crowds at the adult pool. Michael was reading, I was working hard on my trip notes. I was checking the Navigator and saw that Stitch was going to be at the gazebo on the pool deck in a few minutes and suggested that we go and meet Stitch as I knew that Michael loves Stitch. So that’s where we headed then. Stitch was not here yet and we were second in line. I think we met Corinna there, who also wanted to see Stitch and we chatted a little. I was really surprised how few people were wanting to see the characters up on the pool deck. In the atrium the characters generally had some lines, even though they were not very long.

And then Stitch appeared:

He was making quite a show, trying to escape his escort etc.

Once we had our picture with Stitch taken we split up. I went for a run on deck 4 and Michael headed to the pool. It was a little to 4pm, so the pools were starting to clear out with people starting to get ready for dinner.

Once I had finished my run and taken a quick shower to get rid of the sweat I joined Michael in the pool for a little bit, but then decided that I wanted to read my book and watch the sea. It was not really hot that day, so I wanted a spot in the sun and headed up to deck 10 where I found plenty of free loungers. It was a bit windy up there, but I enjoyed the glorious view of the sea and my book

After some time I joined Michael in the hot tub where we met our hot tub friends again and had fun chatting with them. We were skipping the show, so we hang out in the pool for quite some time and once dinner and the first show started, the pool was practically empty. It was great to spend the early evening just relaxing there with only a few people around!

Up Next: An Italian Evening

 

[Poolrat]

The new room is cool. Thank You Katharina for demanding pictures.


You continued the lovely morning with a lovely afternoon minus the grumpy Michael.

Looks like some lovely choices at lunch and I was wondering what those 2 particular entrees looked like and now I know. The salad you had looked good until I got to the dressing. However that is an easy fix.

Ocean Breeze and pool time... Ahhhhhhh

 

[GoofyFan1515]

If I was going to try a massage, I guess a cruise would be the perfect place!

Love the pictures of the new room, but I thought you said it had a porthole.........that thing is HUGE!!!! Sorry the new room came at a price....... at least for Michael's sleep habits!

Love the tour of the ship, and I guess it is rather cool to have the characters to meet often, without the huge lines so they start to recognize you.

Relaxing time in the hot tub with friends..........

 

[Flossbolna]

The new room is cool. Thank You Katharina for demanding pictures.

It is all her fault that I am writing a trip report in the first place... I was told that this was expected from me. I guess I need to make her write trip reports for her travels, too.

You continued the lovely morning with a lovely afternoon minus the grumpy Michael.

I think once we found some lunch he was not grumpy at all anymore.

Looks like some lovely choices at lunch and I was wondering what those 2 particular entrees looked like and now I know. The salad you had looked good until I got to the dressing. However that is an easy fix.

I was thinking of you when I wrote about the dressing! And how you said that it seems that currently pomegranate is very fashionable and is in a lot of dishes. But changing out the dressing is easily done!

Ocean Breeze and pool time... Ahhhhhhh

Exactly! That is the one thing I think I am going to miss on the Norway cruise. Will be interesting how a cruise is without that.

 

[Flossbolna]

If I was going to try a massage, I guess a cruise would be the perfect place!

It certainly adds to the feeling of being on a luxury vacation! But I hear that the spa at Aulani is quite amazing. So if you find yourself there one day, I would recommend to try a massage!

Love the pictures of the new room, but I thought you said it had a porthole.........that thing is HUGE!!!! Sorry the new room came at a price....... at least for Michael's sleep habits!

The porthole was great! I think because of being on deck 5 which has a little different dimensions, the porthole was much lower than in our room last year (I need to go and find pictures and do a comparison). This gave you more of a feeling of an open wall than just a window. It was really nice as you could look out of the window when lying on the bed.

Love the tour of the ship, and I guess it is rather cool to have the characters to meet often, without the huge lines so they start to recognize you.

I am not a huge character meet and greet person, I like it if it does not mean a lot of effort, but you will never find me in a 5 hour line to meet Anna and Elsa (or any other character). But it was far more fun on the ship!

Relaxing time in the hot tub with friends..........

Yes, that's why I like sea days on cruises!

 

[rentayenta]

All caught up!


Love that your new room has a view. I also love what Disney considers an obstruction. I agree, your view is hardly obstructed. Major score.


The food all looks amazing. The spa is gorgeous.

The photo of you with Daisy and Donald is adorable.

 

[Flossbolna]

All caught up!

Well done!

Love that your new room has a view. I also love what Disney considers an obstruction. I agree, your view is hardly obstructed. Major score.

We really were content with not having a view. But getting one was a definite bonus! I kind of liked the obstruction, it gave the view more depth because we did not only look out into the distance.

The food all looks amazing. The spa is gorgeous.

The spa is wonderful and that is another advantage of going on a longer cruise: you have more time to enjoy all the things the ship had to offer, including the spa.

The photo of you with Daisy and Donald is adorable.

Thanks! I had a lot of fun with them!

 

[Flossbolna]

At 7:15pm it was finally time to head back to the room to get ready for dinner at Palo, our reservation wasn’t until 8:30pm. I think I got such a late reservation because we wanted to have the chance to see the show before if it was interesting to us. A hypnotist was not our thing, that’s why we skipped his show. Even if it made Jimmy happy that the hypnotist boarded the ship and stayed on the ship! That was one of the stories he mentioned in the morning show that on his last Panama Canal cruise (I think it was the east bound one last year) they were supposed to have a hypnotist as entertainment. And he had been telling people that later in the cruise there would be the hypnotist and how wonderful he would be. Well, the hypnotist was supposed to board the ship at some point during the cruise, not sure whether it was at the Panama Canal. But it turned out that the hypnotist came on board, walked a few steps onto the ship, announced :”This will not do”, turned around and disembarked. So, they suddenly had one night of entertainment missing and desperately had to work to put together a show for another night! He was so relieved that the hypnotist for our cruise came on board in Cozumel and stayed onboard and performed a show!

We arrived at Palo a little before our time and met Dragan again, the Palo manager whom we had met on our last cruise. He is from Croatia, but used to work in Switzerland for quite some time and speaks perfect German. He told us that this was his last cruise on the Wonder and he was going to transfer over to the Dream.

We were seated at a nice table at the window – which did not really matter since it was dark outside. Our server was Judy from Barbados and she was wonderful. She was part of the opening crew which brought the Wonder over to Florida from Italy where she was built and had been working on the Wonder ever since. I find it amazing that there are so many crew members who have been working for DCL since they started.

I started the meal with a drink, the Balsamic Grande – Grey Goose Vodka, 5 Year Old Balsamic Vinegar, Fresh Muddled Strawberry:

Judy commented on that this was a good choice and I loved the drink. It was certainly not your typical drink. It was not nearly as vinegar heavy as I thought it might be, so don’t be afraid of it!

We were served the bread selection:

Some warm pizza bread (which was delicious), some flat cripy bread with parmesan sprinkled on top and grissini.

And then Judy came with the antipasti trolley:

She was making a bit of a show out of putting our plate together. She was happy to customize it to our wishes, but we told her to just put on everything!

They pour over some aged balsamic vinegar and some oil. There are different oils to choose from, not sure which one we chose. But it was good! I love the antipasti there!

I had the Mozzarella and Plum Tomatoes:

It had been a long time since I had ordered this dish. It is such a common party food here that I had kind of stopped eating it. But I felt it was fitting after all the lovely antipasti and wanted something that was not too heavy. It was very nice mozzarella, but the tomatoes could have been a bit more flavourful. And I would have liked more basil.

Michael had the Fresh Arugula Salad:

He loves this salad – and I got his cucumbers as a bonus!!

After the salads we were being served a palate cleanser: a lemon sorbet. This is delicious:

For my main course I got the Grilled Tuna - Truffle-infused Potato Risotto with Garlic marinated Artichokes and Tarragon Veal Jus:

This was amazing! The potato risotto is small cubes of potato cooked in cream. And the tuna was perfect. I will have a hard time to order something else from that menu when I am back at Palo at some point in the future.

Michael had the Beef Tenderloin “Palo” topped with melted Gorgonzola Cheese or Palo Signature Barolo Red Wine Sauce:

It looks like Michael chose the red wine sauce, not the cheese. On his last cruise Michael had the same dish at Palo and thought that the meat was not really that good. He mentioned this to Judy and she very diplomatically said something along the lines that today there had not been any complaints about the meat quality. This kind of answer told me that she was aware that there sometimes were issues with the meat quality. But it turned out that Michael’s steak did not give any rise to a complaint. He likes his steaks well done, therefore the butterflied it. If you choose it medium it will be served as one thick steak. He was very happy with his choice!

We both had a glass of wine with the main course and just asked Judy for recommendations. Therefore I have no clue what we got, I just know that she chose perfectly after we told her what we liked.

While we were waiting for the main course I went to the restroom and when I came back I found Michael chatting with Judy and our neighbouring table and the neighbours told me that I had no choice, I had to eat the chocolate soufflé. I was a bit confused at first, but I had told Michael in the afternoon that I intended to get the soufflé for dessert, so that was fine with me. It turned out that Judy had come by to enquire just about this while I was away and Michael told her that I had said I wanted it and therefore they all decided that this is what I was going to have. I was fine with that! They come and ask about the desserts early as the soufflé is their signature dessert and it takes quite some time to prepare. So they want to avoid people having to hang around for a long time after their main course until they get dessert. I would not mind. My family’s favourite restaurant is run by a wonderful couple and it is mainly just the one chef working in the kitchen. So if you want dessert you will end up waiting until all dinner guests have been served their main course. We kind of got used to it as the food really made up for the inconvenience.

So, here is my Chocolate Soufflé with Vanilla Bean and Chocolate Sauce:

It was so wonderful! It was not perfect as it was very slightly burned on the bottom. But I loved it even more for that, I kind of like that burnt chocolate taste and there was only a hint of it. The funny thing is: I am not a chocolate person, I rather choose fruity dessert over chocolate ones, I like a certain tartness in my sweets. But this is just so good that I totally deviate from my normal preferences!

Michael got the same dessert that we both had on our last cruise, the Zabagione with Sangiovese-infused Berries made with Marsala Wine and Biscotti Chips:

This is a very delicious dessert as well and Michael loved it as much as he did last time.

All around Palo was a wonderful meal which we really enjoyed. To eat there you have to pay an additional amount of 25 $ per person. Last year we only paid 20 $ per person. I still think it is worth it, even with the price increase. With this being such a long cruise, there was lots of availability and they invited us to come back. However, as wonderful it was, we felt not like we wanted to eat another meal there. I am even still debating whether Palo is a must for the next cruise with Katharina. Especially for a 7-night cruise, I think the dining rooms provide a nice variety. Also, after all, Palo is just a very nice Italian restaurant. And at least here in Nuremberg I know at least 3 similar restaurants, and Berlin has even more. So it is not really that special. For a longer cruise like ours, however, I think one meal at Palo is a wonderful change of pace. Also, if you don’t have your own table (like we did) in the main dining rooms, this is a nice evening to have a meal as a couple.

We left Palo just in time for our evening event. There was a showing of Saving Mr Banks in the Buena Vista Theater. This is one of the great things about DCL, that they have a real cinema that shows movies. It is a selection of the most recent movies distributed by Disney. So not at all only animation. They show Disney Nature films, later on our cruise they were having a prem-ear for Million Dollar Arm. It kind of depends how popular the films are, but in general it is a selection of a handful of films from the recent months. On the Panama Canal cruise they were even showing movie classics. I had the best intentions to catch one of those as it would be interesting to see some of these old movies on the big screen. But I guess this is another reason for going on another Panama Canal cruise as I never made it there…

Just when we got to the movie theatre, who walked out of the doors: Donald Duck!! I have no idea what he was doing in the theatre, maybe thinking about watching a film as well? We were very amused and he graciously agreed to pose for a picture with Michael. That picture of Michael in a black suit (we did not have time to go and get changed between Palo and the start of the film) and Donald in his red cruise line sailor outfit is one of my favourite pictures of the cruise.

After that nice surprise, we headed in the cinema, found some seats and shortly after the film started. The cinema was quite well filled, I would say about 3/4. You could tell that this was a Disney fan crowd who was interested in the film that showcased the making of Mary Poppins. I had mixed feelings about the film – I somehow thought the childhood parts of the film were far too overdramatic for my taste. The other half of the film was rather enjoyable though.

Once the film was over I fell into bed after a long and full day. But I was very content with how it had turned out! I did not set any alarm for the next day as that would be another sea day. And as much as I enjoyed Jimmy’s show, I also like not having to rush anywhere!

Up next: A non-drinking day!!

 

[Poolrat]

WOW Palo look simply scrumptous. From the drinks to the entrees to the dessert, I am drooling....


Too funny on Donald Duck checking out the movie. I am sure Michael looked spiffy in his suit. No pictures of the foraml wear? Awwwww
I know Michael does not like his pictures shown but one of you would be nice.
I did see Saving Mr. Banks and liked it. Kind of interesting to see how the story came about.



A no alcohol day????

 

[Flossbolna]

WOW Palo look simply scrumptous. From the drinks to the entrees to the dessert, I am drooling....


Too funny on Donald Duck checking out the movie. I am sure Michael looked spiffy in his suit. No pictures of the foraml wear? Awwwww
I know Michael does not like his pictures shown but one of you would be nice.
I did see Saving Mr. Banks and liked it. Kind of interesting to see how the story came about.



A no alcohol day????

Palo is truly a wonderful meal! Foodwise it is comparable to the WDW signature restaurants in my opinion, but atmosphere and service wise it totally exceeds those!

We were so surprised to see Donald coming out of the theatre! It really felt like you were on a cruise together with those characters. We saw them so regularly without even looking out for them.

I do have pictures of me in formal wear from this cruise - but they are all of both of us and I don't really want to cut out Michael from a picture that was composed with two people... Next trip I need to make sure to have more pictures of just myself!

On the no alcohol day: Well, you are about to find out!

 

[Flossbolna]

Day 10, May 7

Day at Sea
Dress Code: Cruise Casual
Dinner Menu: French Menu
Show: Paperback Writer
Weather: Partly Sunny, 78°F/26°C


With no alarm clock set I woke up at around 9am. I decided that I would try to see if I could manage to eat breakfast at Triton’s where they have a table service breakfast. But hours are limited, it ends at 9:30am. I got there at about 9:20am, but they were happy to seat me and there were people arriving after me.

I studied the breakfast menu:

Sorry, this is not the best picture! Better picture here: http://disneycruiselineblog.com/menus/main-dining-room-breakfast-menus/
My server offered me some breakfast pastries (they have a tray and you can chose what you want), but I was happy without them. I had a definite purpose why I was there – for the eggs benedict. So that is what I ordered:

They were very good – but the ones I had last year at Palo brunch were better. Which is as it is supposed to be!

Our dining room team was working in Triton’s today and now I had worked it out that they always just work their full day in either Triton’s or Parrot Cay and if their evening is at AP, then they work at the buffet or the pool deck during the day. Both our servers came around to wish me a good morning and chat a little bit and to enquire whether Mr Michael was feeling ill because I was there on my own. Josip, our head server came around as well. He told me that the nice people on the table next to us in the dining room – remember how we chatted with them on a previous day? – had requested that we join them on their table because they thought it was so sad that we had to be all by our own! I guess that just from the sheer look of horror on my face when Josip told me this, he already knew that this was not what we wished! Well, I told him that we were not at all sad about our coveted table for two and that we were so very grateful for having it. He was very relieved as it would not really have been possible to move us together without any huge reassignments etc. Our table neighbours were lovely, but as you all know, we just wanted to enjoy being a couple during dinner.

When I left the restaurant, they had already put up the lunch menu and I took a picture of it for the purpose of documenting it. I think by then I was kind of expecting lunch menus to repeat themselves and was amazed that this was another new menu:

My plan was to sit in the Outlook Café and read for a while, but shortly after I sat down they started a seminar about acupuncture in there which was rather annoying in the background and the other side of the café was already full with people. So I decided to head down to deck 4 instead.

I found a free loung chair there, sat down and enjoyed the view:

I think this was the morning when I just fell in love with sitting on deck 4! It is such a great place!

I went to look after Michael at around noon and he was up and enjoying some cartoons on the TV. We looked at the Navigator and Michael decided that he wanted to see the DVC presentation at 12:30pm. Nearly every day during the cruise they have a DVC sales presentation. Michael was curious about how these would be even though none of us was interested in buying any DVC points from Disney.

Once we were seated we were offered drinks:

And even though you might now wonder how these fit with my title for this update: Those were the alcohol-free choices! Really! I might have needed a small reminder from my company though…

Of course, Michael chose the better drink yet again. Next time we get offered drinks I let Michael chose first and then ask for the same one for me. He is just better at blindly choosing drinks without knowing what they are.

They did not really tell us a lot of things we did not know, but I got to see some nice pictures of the Villas at the Grand Floridian. However, we both were a little shocked by the sales tactics. They did not even try to sell DVC as a way to save money for vacationing, instead it was all about locking in your future happiness by guaranteeing you that you will go on vacations without having to plan them. They also were very much encouraging people to buy on the ship and not defer the decision about it until they were back home and suggested that you should just put the DVC deposit on your credit card. It all sounded a bit too fishy to me and kind of put me off – and I even own DVC! But I bought it on the resale market…

Afterwards it was time for lunch and I already can hear the big complaints from Katharina because I failed to take pictures… Sorry! We went up to the pool deck to the food stations there. They have one with sandwiches and salads, one with burgers, hotdogs and chicken fingers and one with pizza. Today we both got a small side salad and hotdogs. Michael loves the onboard hotdogs, so I had to try it, too. It was good, but not exceptionally so. But then I come from the country of the sausage, so I have very high sausage standards! Afterwards we got some cake from the Cove Café for dessert again.

We headed back to the room and walking past the atrium we saw a huge crowd of people:

After consulting the Navigator I found out that this must have been the “Art of the Theme” ship tour that tells you all about the design of the ship. We had done that tour on my first cruise, it is very interesting. But there were about 15 people on the tour when we did it. Once again this shows what a different crowd was on this cruise as compared to your usual Disney cruise.

Back at the room I finally got around to take some room pictures. You already saw those in the special update.

Also the phone in our room showed that we had a message. It was someone from guest services wanting to speak to us. So Michael headed down to guest services, but the CM was currently on his break, so Michael told them he would be back later. We were wondering why they were calling, but knew that we would find out soon enough. So we headed to the pool.

The pool was not horribly crowded at this afternoon the reception for the Gold and Plantinum Castaway Club members was being held. Such lowly people like us, who only are Silver Castaway Club members were not invited. But we got more space at the pool instead! They had actually taken over the whole Goofy pool deck for the reception. At some point Michael went to get a drink from the drink station and just walked through there when they were starting to wind down and he came back with a few rice crispy treats. He said they were just handing them out in masses. I think he got a drink there as well. I was tempted to get one, too. But it was the non-drinking day. And I am not the biggest fan of rice crispy treats and Michael had already brought one for me.

During the afternoon we started to get more sea action, the boat was rocking quite a bit more. Not bad in any way, but so far we had had such calm seas that the difference was noticeable. It even turned the pool into quite a bit of a wave pool. I tried to get a picture of that:

It was fun! I liked sitting in those shallow parts of the pool with my back to the wall and have the water splash over me.

Today we both went back to the cabin rather early to get ready. While Michael was taking his shower, I was watching Jimmy’s Morning Show. It was interesting because they were already talking about how the Panama Canal Day was going to go, about timing and what kind of difference there were going to be from a normal day. Today was already the last sea day before the Panama Canal day as the next day we stopped in Cartagena.

Once Michael was presentable he went to Guest Services to find out why they had called. It turned out to be just a follow up to see whether we were happy in the new cabin (which we were) and whether there was anything anymore they could do for us. We should just tell them if there was anything they could do. We were really being treated very nicely!

The show this evening was a musical group called Paperback Writer – they are Beatles tribute band and they were pretty good. It was fun to hear all the Beatles songs, I was just very disappointed that they did not play Yellow Submarine!

When we got back to the room we were surprised with a special turndown service!!

It was very pretty, I just felt so sad for the flowers that had to die for it! Not that the flowers were alive anymore after they were cut anyway… It was a lovely touch!

And then it was time for dinner in Triton’s. This was a meal that I was looking very much forward to as it was the standard rotational dinner for Triton’s which is called the French menu. You can see it here: http://disneycruiselineblog.com/menus/tritons-menu/

Today’s menu’s design from the dessert menu:

This is the same design that is also on the menu folders that you get for the main meal.

When we arrived at our table the table next to us only had four people seated at, the older couple from Orlando with whom we had chatted with the second evening was not yet there. The other two couples on the table were very friendly as well – let’s just call them the New Jersey couple and the stylish couple (have no idea where they were from) for a way of differentiating them from the Orlando couple. But the two seats closest to our table were open. So we just friendly greeted the others. Shortly after us the Orlando couple arrived and he told us that he had tried to get us included in their table. We thanked him for his kind thoughts but explained why we preferred to have a table for two. They were quite amazed at our long distance relationship…

We got the bread of the day – Warm French Country Bread with an Olive Spread:

I am bit confused as to who had what to eat as I only have one picture of each course. So I am not sure if we only had one appetizer each or whether we had appetizer and salad each and had the same dish.

I know for sure that I had the Breaded and Deep Fried Brie with an Orange and Cranberry Chutney:

The other picture I have is the Farmhouse Salad – Mache Lettuce, Asparagus, Cherry Tomatoes, and Fingerling Potatoes served with a Goats Cheese Crostini and a Olive Vinaigrette:

The fried brie was nice. This used to be something that I loved getting when we went out for meals when I was a teenager. Warm brie (and camembert of that matter) is always delicious!

I kind of think that I had the salad as well, but as you see it was not very memorable, neither in a good nor in a bad way.

While we were eating our appetizers, the Orlando couple next to us was being served a bottle of white wine and the next thing that happens, Shervonne, our assistant server, appears with a glass for me as well as they – for whatever reason – decided that I should share some of their wine. Of course that was the end of the non-drinking day. But what do you do if your very friendly table neighbours offer you a glass of wine????? It was such a nice gesture from them!

For our main courses we both had the Chateaubriand-Roasted Filet Steak – Roasted Filet Steak, Crushed New Potatoes with Shallots, Buttered Green Beans, Red Wine Jus, and a Béarnaise Sauce on the side.

I should have read the menus closer. I guess the use of the world “Roasted” should have told me that this was not a grilled steak. Last year it had been. Seems like they changed around the way the steak is being served in AP and in Triton’s. However, once I started eating I quickly got over my initial disappointment as this was a very good piece of meat. I enjoyed it very much despite it being a roast.

While we were enjoying our main course, suddenly one of the members of the cruise staff (those are responsible for all the types of entertainment being offered on the ship) appeared and announced that we should welcome Ariel. And there she was, parading around the dining room, napkin whirling with about 20 kids (all the kids present in the dining room) in tow.

It was a bit strange, we were enjoying a nice, elegant dinner in the most elegant dining room on the ship and suddenly you have a mermaid parading through it. I found it rather amusing.

Michael got the Tahitian Vanilla Crème Brûlée with Almond Biscotti:

Michael was happy with his crème brûlée.

I had the dessert that I was looking forward the second most (after the Palo chocolate soufflé), the Grand Marnier Soufflé – Infused with fresh Orange Zest and served with Grand Marnier Crème Anglaise:

This is a wonderful dessert! I enjoyed it as much as I did the last time. This is one of the desserts that has quite a following on the DISboards and while I often tend to think that certain foods are a bit over-hyped here on the DIS (I am thinking of schoolbread for example), the hype about the Grand Marnier soufflé is totally justified in my opinion!!

Somehow dinner took quite a long time that day and afterwards we just did our ritual of walking one mile around the ship before heading back into the cabin. The next day we had an excursion planned, so we got our stuff together and put out a form for room service breakfast. You can get continental breakfast from room service. In the drawer of the desk are forms that you can fill out to order it and put it outside on your door by a certain time (I think something like 3am or so).

Up next:Meeting Cesar

 

[nodnol]

What would you say if I told you that I failed pictures of the new room????

I wouldn't believe you

Yes, there will be more pictures of dishes where I thought you would love them - next one coming up for dinner on that day. Even reading the menus I kept thinking that you would be in heaven. I do hope we get a Norwegian inspired menu on our cruise, that would be interesting!

Lots of cardamom and stinky cheese????

Well - I did not get around to taking pictures of the room that day. I did on a later day and meant to include them then. But if you are so impatient - do you want me to do a special room picture update??

See???!!!!

Yes please

I was hoping someone would take the last post on this page, but since no one wants it, I think I will fill it with the room pictures that Katharina demanded so vehemently...

Thank you!

As you can see, we used the connecting door as a base for our magnetic whiteboard that we got as a Castaway Club gift. It was a really useful gift! Underneath it you can see two white sheets of paper. These are our daily schedules.

I'm so looking forward to travel again with my personal travel agent!!!

I like the new room very much!!! And very tidy too...

After that I did some more exploring. I thought I might want to sit outside on the “secret” deck on deck 7 aft. This is a small deck that is kind of hidden as you get by it walking along a corridor with staterooms. It is open to the public most of the time, I have read that they sometimes have weddings there.

This looks like a space I would very much enjoy! I'm afraid of getting annoyed by all these people…

No chairs on deck remind me of so many travels by ferry where there never seem to be enough chairs for everyone (at least not outside), so people have to sit on the floor outside.

Lunch looks good, although a little bit weird.

And you make me very envious with all your time at the pool, I think today autumn started for real in Berlin...

 

[nodnol]

At 7:15pm it was finally time to head back to the room to get ready for dinner at Palo, our reservation wasn’t until 8:30pm.

I'm glad I just had dinner….

I started the meal with a drink, the Balsamic Grande – Grey Goose Vodka, 5 Year Old Balsamic Vinegar, Fresh Muddled Strawberry:

This sounds and looks like salad dressing.

I had the Mozzarella and Plum Tomatoes:

It had been a long time since I had ordered this dish. It is such a common party food here that I had kind of stopped eating it. But I felt it was fitting after all the lovely antipasti and wanted something that was not too heavy. It was very nice mozzarella, but the tomatoes could have been a bit more flavourful. And I would have liked more basil.

Where IS the basil???

All the food looks really yummy!

I am even still debating whether Palo is a must for the next cruise with Katharina. Especially for a 7-night cruise, I think the dining rooms provide a nice variety. Also, after all, Palo is just a very nice Italian restaurant. And at least here in Nuremberg I know at least 3 similar restaurants, and Berlin has even more.

I think I agree with you. Although the food looks really fine, I think it is not sooo special for me.

Up next: A non-drinking day!!

Might do you good...

 

[kid-at-heart]

I understand Michael for not wanting his photo posted. I do not like to see pictures of me either but I love seeing photos of other people. Next time he could wear a mask or something and pretend to be the mystery man. MMM – Mystery Man Michael.

Since I am asthmatic and cologne and/or residual cigarette smoke are my asthma triggers we always request our own table. We would love to visit with other folks but it works better for us to request a private table ahead of cruising.

Yum, the fried brie looks awesome.

What sweet non-tablemates you had! How could you possibly turn down the glass of wine?

I think this would be a night when I would have wanted to request two deserts, the crème brûlée and Grand Marnier Soufflé ... and I am not even a desert person.

Kate

 

[franandaj]

I'm not sure how long ago I commented so I'll just jump in on the updates you recently posted. I love Palo, and your dishes look fantastic. I love their Chocolate Souffle too!

Sea days are just so relaxing, I love having breakfast at Triton's, and lunch for that matter. Your breakfast looked great! It's interesting that you thought the DVC presentation was a hard sell. Though I've never been to one, most people say that they have a soft sell.

That menu at Triton's is my favorite as well, and the Grand Mariner Souffle is definitely one of THE best things that they offer on a ship!

I'm very much enjoying all the details in your report!