onetothenuts
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- May 9, 2005
- Messages
- 8
Day 7, Friday, April 1, Castaway Cay.
Are we going to make it? We don't know. We we're eating breakfast in Topsiders when the boat began to shutter up and down for a good 5 to 10 seconds, we didn't know it until we looked out the back but we were coming around and the waves were throwing the ship around. I had gotten up early to see the island and the sunrise, what I experienced was 45 knot winds, when you add in the speed we were traveling. We had heard of other cruises to cc being canceled due to rough seas. Personally we would have been deeply disappointed if we did not get to see and explore the island. Well the captain did a great job pulling us in, it may have taken a little extra but we arrived.
We spent some of our extra time this morning packing up most of our bags. We were told to have all bags packed and outside our stateroom between 8 and 11. Any bags leftover would have to be brought with you to breakfast. Due to the weather there were going to be cancelations of excursions. We had purchased the extreme getaway package; bikes, snorkeling, float/tube, stingray cove option. The rough seas cause the stingrays to be off limits, so when we received our final bill they had downgraded us to a getaway package which was a 22 dollar difference which they refunded. We were able to disembark around 10:15 or so. There were obviously some anxious people to get on the island, people were lined up the stairs from level 1 up past level 3 in the aft stairwell at 9:50 when my oldest son and I went to get him breakfast. Topsiders was so busy they were lined up out of the doors of the lobby. Not having known how the sit down breakfasts work, seeing that no one ever told us, we just told them the number in our party and were seated. 15 minutes later there was a line 15 people long waiting to get into parrot cay as well. We got off the boat and started walking. We had been told by Z, our server, that we should get on a tram and get off at the first stop and walk to the second stop to beagle to see everything. Well we never got on the tram, it was always busy. The one time I could say I was truly disappointed in a Disney employee occurred at the tram station closest to the boat. I was disappointed when I thought about it not to take a picture. At the first tram station there was a Disney employee, in uniform and name tag, watching us all walk by, smoking. All right the guy can kill himself if he wants but I am shocked that Disney would allow an employee to do this out in the open.
Back to CC. We ended up walking the entire length of the beach all the way out to the platform with the slides. Some things of note to people who have not been there; kids between 38 and 48 inches must wear a life vest for the slides, over 48 inches they must be a good swimmer. I waited in line for 20 minutes to go down 1 time. Later on I went out snorkeling with my wife in the lagoon, she could not make it too far, the choppiness of the water was pretty intimidating so she turned around. I had been told about the Mickey statue in the lagoon, that it was beneath a white float. However when I did my search I found the nautilus first, then a boat and then Mickey. only after returning home did I learn of a Minnie statue out there. The was plenty of aquatic life out there to see including a moon jelly. We got our floats but never used them, especially with all the wind, I was worried about the boys just letting them blow away. When we decided to do lunch with our dinner table mates at 1:10 it was not too busy, maybe a 5 minute wait. What was rather annoying though was how some people were working the lines. Now when we walked through the pavilion I saw the huge chocolate chip cookies and I was encouraged. When we finally got up to the dessert area we had 2 moms cut right in front of us, one of which decided to take 8 cookies, leaving 6. My wife made a comment about how we may not have one and the lady got snippy saying "oh there's plenty". Well that may have been true for about the next 10 minutes, by about 1:30 no more were being put out where we were. After lunch came another let down, the weather. It had started looking pretty grey when we started eating, by the time we were headed back to the beach it was starting to rain. By 2:00 it was torrential.
On the beach the lifeguards use the old traditional style megaphones, which is a real poor means of communication, especially when they are trying to find missing children, which they tried doing twice that afternoon. Secondly, they called for everyone out of the water. Was this because of the weather? We don't know, what we do know is that one of the stingrays got loose and was now swimming in the lagoon closest to the slide platform.
Due to the bad weather we decided to return to the ship, along with everyone else. Disney should consider some ways to move people back to the ship quicker when bad weather rolls in. The organization at the tram stop could be improved between the number of trams returning to the ship and organized entry to trams.
Back on the ship my wife and I sat in the hot tub and enjoyed a drink or two. That evening was the Remember the Magic show, we decided to let our kids decide for themselves if they wanted to see the show or not. They did not choose to see the show. We thought the show was pretty good, a good recap of the cruise entertainment. We especially liked when the kid walked away with Bill the Duck. After the show we returned to the room and put our bags outside of our room. We also took care of filling out our survey card, don't forget "very good won't do, excellent is the only thing they want to see"
Our final dinner was at Animators Palate, probably the best dinner yet. This is the evening when they have you distribute your gratuity cards to your servers saying a special thank you. after dinner we wandered the boat, while the boys went to be boys. We had been talking about if we would decide to return for another cruise, we had enjoyed ourselves and felt like we did not take advantage of castaway cay. So we sat down and waited for 40 minutes to talk with the sales guy about a 5 day Bahamas cruises with a double stop at cc. We waited for 3 other groups to finish, which gave us plenty of time to discuss dates and choices, so when it was our turn it was just talking about the money.
Day 8, Saturday, April 2, Port Canaveral
We arrived at Animators Palate for our final meal, just kinda of a standard breakfast, but a last chance to talk with our servers and thank them. Once again we are one of the last ones to leave. As we walk thru the ship and off the boat at 9:20, I notice the computer as I walk off the ship, it says that there are still 300 people left onboard, so maybe we arent the last. Finding our Goofy luggage zone was easy and we were in line for customs in less than 10 minutes. The line moved pretty swiftly, in less than 15 minutes we are thru customs and out the door. We were renting a car with Thrifty, which took some time, but we were on the road to visit Kennedy Space Center by 11 AM.
Final Thoughts
Our family is not the epitome of a Disney family, we have 2 tween age sons. We had a lot of fun but in different ways than we ever expected. Going in we thought that we would build some kind of great family memories together, things that would last for a long time. Right now the most memorial thing was a thing my son said. They were cuter in bikinis Hows that for a Disney experience? We thank the cruise organizers for seating us with another family that had the same family situation as us, 2 tween age boys. If we had been seated with some other sort of family, with kids of other ages, I am not sure that we could say that we would have enjoyed this cruise as much as we did.
Dining. I dont know if it was us, being slow eaters and very talkative or if our servers could tell we had little interest in post dinner activities, BUT we were always one of the very last tables to exit the dining room. In most cases we really didnt feel like we missed too much by not getting out earlier.
Entertainment. The shows in the Walt Disney Theater were all very good, although the All Aboard and Remember the Magic felt like they were pandering to us a bit. The choice of showing a new release 3D movie as a main stage show was disappointing.
Did we enjoy ourselves? Yes. Will we be back? Yes, we have already scheduled our next cruise. Part of the reason is the discount, but part is because we felt like we cheated ourselves out of enjoying Castaway Cay. The late start, which we cannot blame the cruise line for, and our decision to go back to the boat after a heavy storm and looming clouds. We did not spend enough time there to really enjoy what all of our friends have said is the highlight of the trip.
Are we going to make it? We don't know. We we're eating breakfast in Topsiders when the boat began to shutter up and down for a good 5 to 10 seconds, we didn't know it until we looked out the back but we were coming around and the waves were throwing the ship around. I had gotten up early to see the island and the sunrise, what I experienced was 45 knot winds, when you add in the speed we were traveling. We had heard of other cruises to cc being canceled due to rough seas. Personally we would have been deeply disappointed if we did not get to see and explore the island. Well the captain did a great job pulling us in, it may have taken a little extra but we arrived.
We spent some of our extra time this morning packing up most of our bags. We were told to have all bags packed and outside our stateroom between 8 and 11. Any bags leftover would have to be brought with you to breakfast. Due to the weather there were going to be cancelations of excursions. We had purchased the extreme getaway package; bikes, snorkeling, float/tube, stingray cove option. The rough seas cause the stingrays to be off limits, so when we received our final bill they had downgraded us to a getaway package which was a 22 dollar difference which they refunded. We were able to disembark around 10:15 or so. There were obviously some anxious people to get on the island, people were lined up the stairs from level 1 up past level 3 in the aft stairwell at 9:50 when my oldest son and I went to get him breakfast. Topsiders was so busy they were lined up out of the doors of the lobby. Not having known how the sit down breakfasts work, seeing that no one ever told us, we just told them the number in our party and were seated. 15 minutes later there was a line 15 people long waiting to get into parrot cay as well. We got off the boat and started walking. We had been told by Z, our server, that we should get on a tram and get off at the first stop and walk to the second stop to beagle to see everything. Well we never got on the tram, it was always busy. The one time I could say I was truly disappointed in a Disney employee occurred at the tram station closest to the boat. I was disappointed when I thought about it not to take a picture. At the first tram station there was a Disney employee, in uniform and name tag, watching us all walk by, smoking. All right the guy can kill himself if he wants but I am shocked that Disney would allow an employee to do this out in the open.
Back to CC. We ended up walking the entire length of the beach all the way out to the platform with the slides. Some things of note to people who have not been there; kids between 38 and 48 inches must wear a life vest for the slides, over 48 inches they must be a good swimmer. I waited in line for 20 minutes to go down 1 time. Later on I went out snorkeling with my wife in the lagoon, she could not make it too far, the choppiness of the water was pretty intimidating so she turned around. I had been told about the Mickey statue in the lagoon, that it was beneath a white float. However when I did my search I found the nautilus first, then a boat and then Mickey. only after returning home did I learn of a Minnie statue out there. The was plenty of aquatic life out there to see including a moon jelly. We got our floats but never used them, especially with all the wind, I was worried about the boys just letting them blow away. When we decided to do lunch with our dinner table mates at 1:10 it was not too busy, maybe a 5 minute wait. What was rather annoying though was how some people were working the lines. Now when we walked through the pavilion I saw the huge chocolate chip cookies and I was encouraged. When we finally got up to the dessert area we had 2 moms cut right in front of us, one of which decided to take 8 cookies, leaving 6. My wife made a comment about how we may not have one and the lady got snippy saying "oh there's plenty". Well that may have been true for about the next 10 minutes, by about 1:30 no more were being put out where we were. After lunch came another let down, the weather. It had started looking pretty grey when we started eating, by the time we were headed back to the beach it was starting to rain. By 2:00 it was torrential.
On the beach the lifeguards use the old traditional style megaphones, which is a real poor means of communication, especially when they are trying to find missing children, which they tried doing twice that afternoon. Secondly, they called for everyone out of the water. Was this because of the weather? We don't know, what we do know is that one of the stingrays got loose and was now swimming in the lagoon closest to the slide platform.
Due to the bad weather we decided to return to the ship, along with everyone else. Disney should consider some ways to move people back to the ship quicker when bad weather rolls in. The organization at the tram stop could be improved between the number of trams returning to the ship and organized entry to trams.
Back on the ship my wife and I sat in the hot tub and enjoyed a drink or two. That evening was the Remember the Magic show, we decided to let our kids decide for themselves if they wanted to see the show or not. They did not choose to see the show. We thought the show was pretty good, a good recap of the cruise entertainment. We especially liked when the kid walked away with Bill the Duck. After the show we returned to the room and put our bags outside of our room. We also took care of filling out our survey card, don't forget "very good won't do, excellent is the only thing they want to see"
Our final dinner was at Animators Palate, probably the best dinner yet. This is the evening when they have you distribute your gratuity cards to your servers saying a special thank you. after dinner we wandered the boat, while the boys went to be boys. We had been talking about if we would decide to return for another cruise, we had enjoyed ourselves and felt like we did not take advantage of castaway cay. So we sat down and waited for 40 minutes to talk with the sales guy about a 5 day Bahamas cruises with a double stop at cc. We waited for 3 other groups to finish, which gave us plenty of time to discuss dates and choices, so when it was our turn it was just talking about the money.
Day 8, Saturday, April 2, Port Canaveral
We arrived at Animators Palate for our final meal, just kinda of a standard breakfast, but a last chance to talk with our servers and thank them. Once again we are one of the last ones to leave. As we walk thru the ship and off the boat at 9:20, I notice the computer as I walk off the ship, it says that there are still 300 people left onboard, so maybe we arent the last. Finding our Goofy luggage zone was easy and we were in line for customs in less than 10 minutes. The line moved pretty swiftly, in less than 15 minutes we are thru customs and out the door. We were renting a car with Thrifty, which took some time, but we were on the road to visit Kennedy Space Center by 11 AM.
Final Thoughts
Our family is not the epitome of a Disney family, we have 2 tween age sons. We had a lot of fun but in different ways than we ever expected. Going in we thought that we would build some kind of great family memories together, things that would last for a long time. Right now the most memorial thing was a thing my son said. They were cuter in bikinis Hows that for a Disney experience? We thank the cruise organizers for seating us with another family that had the same family situation as us, 2 tween age boys. If we had been seated with some other sort of family, with kids of other ages, I am not sure that we could say that we would have enjoyed this cruise as much as we did.
Dining. I dont know if it was us, being slow eaters and very talkative or if our servers could tell we had little interest in post dinner activities, BUT we were always one of the very last tables to exit the dining room. In most cases we really didnt feel like we missed too much by not getting out earlier.
Entertainment. The shows in the Walt Disney Theater were all very good, although the All Aboard and Remember the Magic felt like they were pandering to us a bit. The choice of showing a new release 3D movie as a main stage show was disappointing.
Did we enjoy ourselves? Yes. Will we be back? Yes, we have already scheduled our next cruise. Part of the reason is the discount, but part is because we felt like we cheated ourselves out of enjoying Castaway Cay. The late start, which we cannot blame the cruise line for, and our decision to go back to the boat after a heavy storm and looming clouds. We did not spend enough time there to really enjoy what all of our friends have said is the highlight of the trip.
