On Deck
First place we stopped was the kids club. We wanted to let the kids look around and get excited for it later on! It was soooo cool!! There was a big jungle gym type slide in the middle, and little game rooms off to the side, tvs and computers all over the place. They were both so excited to play and were less than pleased to find out they couldn't stay right now. We had to bribe them with promises of treats and cool drinks up on deck.
UP on deck we walked around and looked at everything, enjoying our frosty cool beverages and just taking it all in. It was rather cool, cloudy and windy which did not set up a great mood. Finally it was time for my 3pm meeting with Imran so I left Joe and the kids with everyone else and went down to finalize all my details.
Imran was very sweet, efficient, and seemed very dedicated to ensuring that the VR was as perfect as I had planned it to be. We went down to one of the conference rooms and set to work on everything that Brianna had given to him. Suprisingly enought, most everything was correct. The 1st problem we encountered was the chair situation. I had given him a list of stuff to be set out, the fans and programs, flower petal cones, how i wanted the sand table set up, and all that stuff. He asked where i had gotten the idea there would be 16 chairs set up?
Um....well i have 16 guests that i had to PAY EXTRA FOR...why would there not be chairs available for everyone? Seems that even though you are allowed to have up to 20 people on Deck 7, they only have seating for 12......2 rows of 3 on each side of the aisle. There were no extra chairs available, and very little room to seat them. He assured me it would be no problem as everyone would be standing anyway. I told him that people were probably standing as there were no chairs available!! I was pissed off!! NEVER had anyone stated that the extra guests I had to pay for would be required to stand on deck in the hot Bahamian sun during the 20 minute ceremony, cake cutting, toast and dance!!! We never came to an agreement, so in a way i'm glad we got rained out because my family would have found chairs and drug them up to deck 7 themselves! Our next issue was the sand ceremony. no way no how was he budging on this one. I assured him that the sand was perfectly clean, still sealed with plastic in the bottle it was bought in, and we would do it ourselves, no problem if the captain didn't want to say it. Nope, he wouldn't budge, we couldn't even take the sand out of our cabin and do it ourself. Fine, whatever, i'm not that pissed as I really didn't want to have to worry about the sand getting messed up on teh way home anyway. (atleast i wasn't that pissed until I got home and saw that Tanya who had just gotten off that day from her VR had gotten to have her sand ceremony and Imran even set up the table for her!!!
) We went over the ceremony order, the music, setting up the aisle runner and petals, cones, cake table and how to arrange the table in Palo with the favors. He said he would even come by the cabin later that night to pick up everything for Palo and would ensure it was set properly. He told me that the flowers I had orderd from Perfect Gift were delivered and they looked good, he would make sure they were in Palo for dinner also. (this was all stuff Betsy had to do on her own and i was prepared to, so i"m glad he offered to do it for me) At this time we went over the cake design. He had everything correct, flavor and size, and even knew that i wanted absolutely NOTING on the cake and I had provided my own cake topper. That's when I showed him the 2 other cakes i wanted.....the one with the Mickey heads on it, and the Happily Ever After cake. Imran said he would check with the chef and see if one of them could be done, but he couldn't promise me anything. I said that was fine, if they could do it, i'd be happy, if not, no big deal as I was already expecting the plain one.
With that I gave him the CD of music and we were off to Life Boat Drill.
Sailaway Party
After life boat drill, we head back to start unpacking and make sure all our boxes were delivered. In addition to the obnixious amount of stuff we brought....I also had 3 boxes sent ahead!! We get to the cabin and i have NO BOXES at all!!
EEK! Time to call Imran and freak out! I gave him a description of the boxes and he had them found and delivered to us in less than 15 minutes! YAY
I had the Exotic Rasul booked for 8am friday morning....but our 1st problem came up as the kids club didn't open until 9am. I didn't want to ask anyone to watch the kids at 8am, so I ended up cancelling. totally sucks as I was so looking forward to it, but what could i do?
Our show was before dinner, and we were off to the Golden Mickey's. I wasn't sure how the kids would be sitting thru the whole show....would have rather take them to the kids club and then enjoy the show and dinner by ourselves. But they wanted to see it and ended up being really good through it. The show was really good.....I enjoyed it and the "pre-show" was really cute with the kids talking.
Our 1st dinner was in Animator's Palette.
Was sooooo excited to see this restuarant. It was so cool!! Yet this is where everything started to go down hill.
(stock photo)
There were 18 of us in our party......We had 3 tables....a big round of 10 and then 2 smaller tables pushed together for another 10......I was kinda happy to see that we had extra room....you can never have too much table room when you are at a table with 6 children!! And then in walk Tory and Thad!!
(our photographer!) then it becomes....
How in the world did they get put at the same table as us!?!?!? Coincidence?? no idea...but I can assure you.....my family is too much for Dh to handle at times.....I knew that we were going to freak Tory and Thad out. Besides that....THEY WERE ON THEIR HONEYMOON!!! Why would
DCL put them at the same table as 9 children!!!?!?! It took less than 2 seconds to see that Thad was very uncomfortable, who could blame him!?!?! He'd met/seen me for all of 5 seconds at the DP the before, and now he was surrounded by 17 other obnixious people. I felt horrible......
I told the waiter and assistant waiter that 7 of the kids would be leaving for the kids club when the counselors came at 9pm to get them, so we needed to order their food and get it quickly. All 20 of us order our meal and make chit chat as we watch the restaurant change colors. Appetizers and soups come out shortly, then the kids meals come out at 8:55pm.
I should note.....we were seated at 815pm. NO ONE had any drinks yet.......and only 6 of the kids meals were delivered.....the counselrs were at the door and Jackie still didn't have her pizza!! WTH is going on?!?!?! Becuase of the mix up with the food, the counselrs left with 1/2 the kids and the other 1/2 had to quickly finish then Amy (SIL) and I took the other kids up, but Joey refused to go. He was really tired and was getting very grumpy. He was going to become an issue quickly. The assistant waiter finally takes a drink order, and our food comes out. I can't remember what I had, I know it was a steak because the waiter did actually cut my steak for me as I had Joey almost asleep on my lap. I was pleased with that one, but I shouldn't be because i've had the waiter on RCCL and CCL both cut my meat for me....and I didn't have kids on my lap then. Maybe my dresses were cut lower then? :
About 1/2 way through our meal, we get a Page....Jackie is done at the club and ready to come home.
That was it, it was almost 10pm, everyone was grumpy and tired......we left our meal and took the kids back to the cabin. Missed the show, missed seeing the complete transformation, missed DESSERT! (yeah, that still pisses me off!) But it really needed to happen. So the 4 of us were back in the cabin and in bed shortly after 10pm.
So at the end of day 1, I had already been disappointed by our wedding coordinator, almost lost all our VR supplies, had to cancel my much needed spa appointment, the kids were seriously disappointed with the kids club, our dining room waiters sucked ***, and so far....I had yet to experience the "Disney Difference". It was definatley NOT the start to our WONDERful cruise. Will it get any better???
Up next....Saturday...Nassau....the torrential RAIN....and an automobile accident?? How serious was it??
I LOVE how quickly they were coming!! Just enought time between the visits to get a few bites to eat.
Then it was time to FINALLY figure out what this whole Journey Into Imagination thing was. It was cute, i can understand now everyone's obsession with Figment, he's a cute little guy. Yeah, the kids weren't impressed that much though. 
) 
Yeah, we had a lot of stuff to load in.
Hey, i'm the bride....i can do what i want. And i DID have my ears on! :love3: 
And my Epcot Shoot is the only thing I am 150% so pleased we did. I LOVE all of our pics and my hair was great and Dh had a good time....seriously, we should have just stopped there. 
Even being an inside cabin, my kids won't sleep in. So we got up and got dressed and headed up to Beach Blanket for Breakfast. Met some of the family on the way....
So Jackie and I got ready in total silence, except for the click of Tory's camera. 
. You looked fantastic and your kids are adorable!
