After our naps, we got ourselves ready for the much-anticipated Pirate Night. We had purchased a pirate costume especially for The Big and she actually agreed to pose for me a bit before we left our room for dinner. (Since photography is a passion of mine and since I need ALL of the practice I can get, The Big really has developed an abhorrence for having the camera stuck in her face. Imagine that!).
Our dinner that night was once again at Animators Palate and the food was again just phenomenal! Since a nice dinner out in our household is either Outback (my and DHs favorite) or Japanese Steakhouse (The Bigs favorite) we definitely arent used to food that is so beautifully prepared as well as tasty. I actually saved one of our pirate menus and, if any of you are interested in exactly what was on the menu, please let me know and I will type the selections out.
Oh, and one thing that I realized about myself that night as well: I am bandana-impaired! Literally, DH was almost crying he was laughing so hard at my (idiotic) failure to secure my bandana, while our tablemates were trying that much harder not to laugh at me. Finally, with the help of the wife tablemate (I cannot for the life of me remember what their names where), we got the darn thing on.
At the end of our dinner (after our first dessert), our servers ONeil and Marie brought us a special anniversary cake to share with the table. Yummy, huh?
After dinner, our entertainment for the night was The Golden Mickeys. I mentioned before that we had found great seats for the Herc show, and we managed to get the same (or very close) seats on that night too. Since I forgot to even turn my camera on the night before, I really did try to capture a few shots of this show but Im really not that impressed with the results. Sorry guys!
After the show, we saw that Captain Hook was in the lobby and I couldnt resist the photo-op that presented itself. This picture and another, together with the back-story that goes with them, are my *favorites* of our entire trip. Ill give you the full scoop now, if you are interested. Earlier on the cruise, we had managed to secure Peter Pans autograph for our autograph book. Well, out of left field, our Big proceeds to tell Peter Pan and Wendy: Well, Im going to throw Captain Hook in the boat water if hes mean to you. That is cute in itself, but nothing prepared us for the hilarity that would ensue when she met the dear Captain face-to-face. She asked him if he was going to be mean and when he shook his head no (since he cant talk, obviously), she told him: Well, youd better not be mean because Im going to throw you in the boat water if you are. All the while, Captain Hook was shaking his head no, no, no. Im probably losing a bit of the luster in the telling, but my heart just warms when I think about it. So, here they are - my favorite pictures of our trip:
Anyway, after The Big left the Captain, it took a while for DH and I to get ourselves under control, so we just did a bit of shopping and browsing the ship until it was time for us to make our way to Deck 9 for the Pirate Party!
Again, please heed my advice to get yourselves and your children there early. Its so worth it to be front and center!!
That night, DH also found out another factoid relating to
Disney Cruise Line, which I found utterly amazing. Disney is the only cruise line that is allowed to shoot off fireworks. You guys probably already knew that, but do you know why that is? First of all, the Disney enterprise is the
largest purchaser of fireworks in the entire world. Once Disney decided to shoot fireworks from the ship, it still took 3 years to gain approval from the regulatory agencies *and* Disney is required to employ a fireworks engineer on each ship, who is required to "babysit" the fireworks for the duration of each cruise. Isnt that amazing that Disney does that for us just to add a bit more magic to our experience?
After the party, we headed back to our room and gratefully sank into our beds.
Thanks.
I'd be happy to take a few snaps of a few of the pages (a few so as not to bore anyone with my *other* hobby - LOL) and post them for you. DH and I made 20 pages - let me know if you have a preference as to which ones you would like to see:
They are definitely a hot commodity. Pirate Night will be up soon, I promise! 
TOO Cool!!!!
Thank you SO much for your TR. I am REALLY wordy so I think that your entries are just short enough. I am debating planning a family land/sea trip for 2009 and am looking for all the help I can get. We are in California and actually have annual passes for 
