May 2019 EBTA - Taking the Magic eastbound across the Atlantic (and bonus non-DCL Mediterranean cruise!) - Update 8/3/2022

I agree with you, we like the paper navigators. I don't even bring a phone.

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DCL 2014 Dream Bahamas, DCL 2015 Wonder WBPC, DCL 2016 Magic Norway Fjords, DCL 2017 Magic Northern Europe, DCL 2017 Dream Bahamas, DCL 2018 Magic Northern Europe & DCL 2018 Magic Western Caribbean.
 
Sorry for the delay in writing updates; I feel like this 21 day vacation trip report is somehow going to end up taking me till my next vacation to finish :D

A few random comments:

Serving team: we loved our servers. Non from Thailand (server), Ratna from Indonesia (assistant server) and Valentin from... possibly Slovakia (head server). First of all Non and Ratna - both experienced (Non has been with DCL for many years and was on the Fantasy when it first sailed over from Europe in 2012) and just super efficient. Ratna had drinks ready for us every night (and the first night that she saw me not drink mine, she immediately asked what else she could bring me; the next night she didn't bring one in advance so that I could choose something). Non had excellent, spot on recommendations every night. He never put down any of the food of course but if it wasn't the best item, he would either not mention it, or would say something like "It might not be what you expect" (e.g. when there was pad Thai and he noted it's not like in his country!)

And a huge thing I noticed: every night, a serving team dropped something. Every single night in the MDR. Once it was an entire tray. And it was never, ever our serving team. They weren't slow at all, they just told us they would rather go to the kitchen more times than carry too much and risk dropping it, and creating 3x the work for themselves. Further, Non told us what he could about every port, including his own experiences, and he always knew the all ashore/all on board times. Our head server Valentin was also awesome. When my son mentioned he wished there was curry on the menu (he had missed butter chicken that day in the buffet), Valentin arranged for a special dish of it, with naan bread, to be at our table the next night. He too was just lovely about greeting us every night at our table (I've had head servers that we never see!)

They did not give us the "excellent" speech, except a brief mention on the last day that we would get a survey, and to please make note of the questions that would ask about our dining experience which really meant our experience with the servers - and that for DCL, "very good" isn't as good as "excellent" :) I assured them everything had been excellent of course and that we would be grading them that way.

Non and Ratna weren't the type of servers that act like they are your best friends. Ratna brought origami for the kids some nights, and challenged them with crayon or other puzzles. They were honestly the perfect servers - great at their jobs, friendly but not overly so, and knowledgeable. I am so happy we had them.

The Magic vs. the Fantasy

Wasn't sure if I'd like the older ship, but I really did love it after all. I missed the AquaDuck, but otherwise it was really nice to be on a smaller ship. Orienting ourselves was easy. I loved the food options on deck 9 (the Build a Bowl was one of my favourite places to eat lunch). For me, the "Sweet on You" on the Fantasy is useless space, as I don't really believe in paying for ice cream when you can eat so much of it on a regular basis either at Eye Scream, or scooped for you at the buffet. And the shawarma is awesome, so much better than just standard burgers and fries (although I consumed many chicken tenders!)

Soft Serve Ice Cream: available flavours alternated of course but we had chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, banana, pineapple and blueberry. I heard someone say she didn't like the mango one from the day before, but DH swears to me there was no mango because he went every day. I don't know, but I did enjoy blueberry and pineapple.

Cove Cafe: a really nice place to sit and kill some time. I wish the menu were a little more standard because when faced with a colourful menu with only a few items on it, I apparently can't think of what to order if it isn't on the menu, and I generally found the coffee not strong enough when I ordered specialty coffees. No doubt my own fault. I ordered an espresso chiller one day when it was the non-alcoholic drink of the day and it was great, but the next day I tried to order it and got something vastly different. Oh well. I did manage to fill one stamp card. As for the treats at Cove, I'll go with "meh". Does anyone else not like DCL pastries? I feel like they could be so much more delicious. The chocolate pillow (basically a pain au chocolat) was good, everything else was just calories I didn't need.

Quiet Cove: maybe owing to the fact that this was a 13 night cruise with plenty of platinum members and obviously fewer kids than usual - I did not find Quiet Cove to be quiet at all. We never really found loungers by the pool, and the adult pool often had more people in it than the kids pools. We sat and watched the ocean go by a couple of times, but I thought I'd enjoy this area way more than I actually did.
 
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Sorry for the delay in writing updates; I feel like this 21 day vacation trip report is somehow going to end up taking me till my next vacation to finish :D

A few random comments:

Serving team: we loved our servers. Non from Thailand (server), Ratna from Indonesia (***'t server) and Valentin from... possibly Slovakia (head server). First of all Non and Ratna - both experienced (Non has been with DCL for many years and was on the Fantasy when it first sailed over from Europe in 2012) and just super efficient. Ratna had drinks ready for us every night (and the first night that she saw me not drink mine, she immediately asked what else she could bring me; the next night she didn't bring one in advance so that I could choose something). Non had excellent, spot on recommendations every night. He never put down any of the food of course but if it wasn't the best item, he would either not mention it, or would say something like "It might not be what you expect" (e.g. when there was pad Thai and he noted it's not like in his country!)

And a huge thing I noticed: every night, a serving team dropped something. Every single night in the MDR. Once it was an entire tray. And it was never, ever our serving team. They weren't slow at all, they just told us they would rather go to the kitchen more times than carry too much and risk dropping it, and creating 3x the work for themselves. Further, Non told us what he could about every port, including his own experiences, and he always knew the all ashore/all on board times. Our head server Valentin was also awesome. When my son mentioned he wished there was curry on the menu (he had missed butter chicken that day in the buffet), Valentin arranged for a special dish of it, with naan bread, to be at our table the next night. He too was just lovely about greeting us every night at our table (I've had head servers that we never see!)

They did not give us the "excellent" speech, except a brief mention on the last day that we would get a survey, and to please make note of the questions that would ask about our dining experience which really meant our experience with the servers - and that for DCL, "very good" isn't as good as "excellent" :) I assured them everything had been excellent of course and that we would be grading them that way.

Non and Ratna weren't the type of servers that act like they are your best friends. Ratna brought origami for the kids some nights, and challenged them with crayon or other puzzles. They were honestly the perfect servers - great at their jobs, friendly but not overly so, and knowledgeable. I am so happy we had them.

The Magic vs. the Fantasy

Wasn't sure if I'd like the older ship, but I really did love it after all. I missed the AquaDuck, but otherwise it was really nice to be on a smaller ship. Orienting ourselves was easy. I loved the food options on deck 9 (the Build a Bowl was one of my favourite places to eat lunch). For me, the "Sweet on You" on the Fantasy is useless space, as I don't really believe in paying for ice cream when you can eat so much of it on a regular basis either at Eye Scream, or scooped for you at the buffet. And the shawarma is awesome, so much better than just standard burgers and fries (although I consumed many chicken tenders!)

Soft Serve Ice Cream: available flavours alternated of course but we had chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, banana, pineapple and blueberry. I heard someone say she didn't like the mango one from the day before, but DH swears to me there was no mango because he went every day. I don't know, but I did enjoy blueberry and pineapple.

Cove Cafe: a really nice place to sit and kill some time. I wish the menu were a little more standard because when faced with a colourful menu with only a few items on it, I apparently can't think of what to order if it isn't on the menu, and I generally found the coffee not strong enough when I ordered specialty coffees. No doubt my own fault. I ordered an espresso chiller one day when it was the non-alcoholic drink of the day and it was great, but the next day I tried to order it and got something vastly different. Oh well. I did manage to fill one stamp card. As for the treats at Cove, I'll go with "meh". Does anyone else not like DCL pastries? I feel like they could be so much more delicious. The chocolate pillow (basically a pain au chocolat) was good, everything else was just calories I didn't need.

Quiet Cove: maybe owing to the fact that this was a 13 night cruise with plenty of platinum members and obviously fewer kids than usual - I did not find Quiet Cove to be quiet at all. We never really found loungers by the pool, and the adult pool often had more people in it than the kids pools. We sat and watched the ocean go by a couple of times, but I thought I'd enjoy this area way more than I actually did.
Was the air temperature warm enough on most days to go to the pools? I guess I really don't have a concept of what the temperature is in May going across the Atlantic, or even once you get to the Med. Was the air temperature somewhat consistent?
 
Was the air temperature warm enough on most days to go to the pools? I guess I really don't have a concept of what the temperature is in May going across the Atlantic, or even once you get to the Med. Was the air temperature somewhat consistent?

Great question! I'll check my notes to be sure, but I recall that on most days, my kids were in the pool at some point. The weather was generally pretty good. I recall one or two slightly cloudier or windy days, but overall we found it to be perfectly warm and mild. Now bear in mind we are Canadian, so we did not think it was cold at any point in the DCL part of our trip, but I know the Floridians on the cruise wouldn't agree with that :D I'm not sure of the official temps, but to me it was basically around the 20-25 degree mark (I think that's high 60's-low 70's for the US crowd?) most of the days. We were sailing at top speed so some wind was to be expected.
 


Following along! It's really interesting to see a report from a trans-atlantic - I don't see many of those! And I'm looking forward to your non-DCL Mediterranean!
 
Was the air temperature warm enough on most days to go to the pools? I guess I really don't have a concept of what the temperature is in May going across the Atlantic, or even once you get to the Med. Was the air temperature somewhat consistent?

On our EBTA there were days everyone was in the pool, and there were days no one was. I noticed a lot of people sitting around the pool. I'd say the pool was more crowded once we got into the Med. During the crossing it was jeans and t-shirt type weather, maybe a light jacket at night as the wind can be crazy strong on the top decks with no land to block it. (They even closed the front of Deck 10 at points due to high wind), once in the Med. we had on shorts or knee length pants and t-shirts and were comfortable during the day.
 
I don't know why, but every time I try to add a post, this page somehow goes to some spam site. What's wrong with the DIS?? (or is it me?)

Anyway to end off Day 1 I thought I'd insert pics of the Navigator. They handed these out in Miami, but the lady would not give these to me until after I had actually checked in. Weird. I know you can find these on the DCL blog (there was a lady in our social media cruise group who kindly scanned all of them and uploaded) but I kept these for a reason and dang it I'm going to use them for this! See that graphic of the Magic there on the top left (also bottom right of the 3rd image) - that was the image on the back of the Transatlantic hoodie they were selling. I have a thing for hoodies, but, in the end I didn't love the colour scheme, sigh.

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Lol I just noticed that it says "New Summer 2019 Itineraries" - looks like someone forgot to change this from the WBTA 2018! (I'm guessing)
By the way there you can also see that the Rainforest was $340 for a length of cruise couples pass and $229 for a singles pass. We didn't make use of the Rainforest on this cruise - and while I don't think that's a bad price for 13 nights, I wouldn't personally get the value out of that.

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And the actual Navigator for Day 1:

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Day 2! First full sea day.

This morning, we woke up bright and early so as not to miss a minute of our fun sea day. Just kidding, we totally slept in. I think the excitement of boarding, and the strain of the travel the day before really took it out of me, and my kids aren't morning people anyway. We did make it to breakfast at Cabanas, which I thought was impressive (making it there before it closed, I mean!)

Side note: our server, Non, told us that breakfast in the MDR (which I usually really enjoy, on any cruise line) is exactly the same food as in Cabanas, just plated for you. Funny, b/c that's exactly what I thought about breakfast in the MDR on the Fantasy. In any event, I don't mind breakfast at Cabanas if it's not too busy. In fact I found a fave - chicken congee. Congee is a Chinese rice porridge (sort of like oatmeal but with rice) and it's either plain, or savoury. Cabanas had this every morning. I am pretty sure the only people who tried it were Chinese like me, lol. It's often consumed at breakfast. I grew to really appreciate the congee as I tend to miss Asian food when we are cruising.

After breakfast, we went swimming. Weather was lovely and I snapped a few pics :
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Not too crowded, and warm enough for L to swim without rashguard:

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We grabbed food on deck 9 for lunch, I think DH tried the shawarma (yum) and kids ate burgers and fries and more ice cream. I learned to put ice cream only in the top part of the cone; on a hot day the ice cream makes the bottom of the cone soggy quickly and it is just a huge mess. I have a weird thing about sticky messes, sticky hands in particular, and I may have freaked out slightly about ice cream dripping down all over the place :/ so much for being super chill on vacation! Anyway.

The boys wanted to check out Oceaneer's Club/Lab so they decided to head off to Marvel Avengers Academy. DH and I went to Cove Cafe and I got my non-alcoholic drink of the day, the Espresso Chiller. Voila:

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Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but it makes very little sense to me to serve these in a disposable cup on a ship. I suppose it's done on the idea that people may walk around on the ship after getting their drinks, but even if that were the case, and DCL was worried about glasses being broken, some sturdy plastic reusable cups could do the trick. Or even the question - would you like this in a to go cup? We just sat around so I would have been absolutely fine with a mug. Anyway.

I also tried some treats:
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Actually, the cranberry bar wasn't bad. The orange chocolate cupcake was not great and I also didn't like that thing in front (I think it's a caramel tart). The chocolate "pillow" was good. I'm pretty sure I'm just repeating myself now, sorry!

I also spent time exploring the DCL app and trying to plan out a few days in advance. It is handy to be able to see the various character gatherings and look at menus and such, but frankly if I didn't have that ability I wouldn't mind just putting my phone away for the entire cruise. When it's my hand it's so tempting to just go online to browse or check email or whatever.

DH and I went to O'Gills to do some 3D Star Wars crafts. The DCL staffer who was in charge must have said "glue dots" about a thousand times, as in "who needs more glue dots?", "If you need glue dots, come get them", "we have lots of glue dots" and "glue dots, anyone??" I had actually never seen glue dots before, what an interesting product. Again, kind of wasteful as it's one glue dot per 2cm of paper, and I found them somewhat difficult to use, but perhaps crafts just really aren't my thing.

We then picked up the kids who were pretty excited as they had made some superhero masks that they couldn't wait to show us. At some point in the cruise these became a bit annoying b/c one or more of the boys would misplace their mask and then spend hours (okay not hours, but you know how it feels) looking for it and complaining that they had lost it. But for the time being, they had a lot of fun with them Oh, and this was Formal Night - but I really hadn't packed anything too formal. Some were dressed to the nines, that was definitely not us. Managed to get my kids into something somewhat solid coloured, at least!

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Stay tuned for more!
 
Day 2 continued

As I mentioned it was formal night and we were dining in Animator's. However, although it was Formal Night, it was actually the color change night in Animator's Palate, with regular AP menu. Sort of weird how the menus worked out this cruise, since we didn't start the Standard Rotational menus till night 2, but then, since it was a long cruise there were actually two formal nights anyway. So we didn't really dress up, but that's mostly because it takes convincing for my kids and DH to get dressed up, and I didn't feel like packing too much anyway. We do get dressed up for weddings and stuff. Some guests had packed full on evening gowns, I was impressed.

We managed to take a couple of nice pics including this one with Commodore Tom. We didn't really get into the Captain's Reception stuff much this cruise, but there were a few "Commodore Tom signing opportunities" which seemed nice. I noticed he wore gloves - probably wise when you're shaking hands with hundreds of guests.
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Oh and we also got a photo with Minnie and her beautiful formal dress. Here's the Shutters pic first and then the pic from my camera:

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I can't remember if I said this already, but on this cruise we did purchase the photo package. On the long cruises (9 nights and over) it's actually quite a good deal; I paid $339.95 in advance of the cruise (on board price is $399) for the full digital package. But to be honest, sometimes I actually liked the pictures my camera took better. DH bought me a Sony A6000 this year and it was my goal to learn to use it on this trip. I don't think Shutters does a terrible job at all! but in many pics the flash is so bright. This particular picture was, I believe, taken on Deck 4 next to D Lounge so there's a window there and I kind of like the natural light. Anyway. Overall, it was really great to have the digital package, but on a 7 night cruise or shorter, I probably wouldn't buy it. For us, it wouldn't have been worth it. I believe I got about 200 pictures, but my kids aren't super into the character pics (except Marvel).

Okay anyway, I won't bother inserting my pics of AP dinner as it was the standard. I do love the black truffle pasta pursiettes. The rest of this menu is a bit blah for me. Even the desserts were blah. I had walnut cake - it wasn't bad.

Entertainment: on Day 2 we skipped the show "The Beverly Belles". I thought these ladies were lovely and obviously good at what they do, but their style didn't appeal to me at all (sort of vintage takes on popular music). For me they were sort of the epitome of cruise ship entertainment (having seen them at Be Our Guest), and that's not a good thing. Instead, we went to watch Captain Marvel. I rather enjoyed the movie, we hadn't seen it yet, and it was nice to piece together who she was since we had already seen Endgame. Also, I like Brie Larson.

On this cruise, DH and I discovered late night snacks at O'Gills Pub. I loved this. No one needs more food on a cruise, least of all me, but boy it was nice to end off our evening watching some TV and eating random snacks and the obligatory slices of melon to make myself feel healthier :D

Next up: Day 3 - another sea day, of course :)
 
Day 3 - Sea Day #2

This morning we woke up and hurried off to our 9:15am VIP Character Breakfast. By the way I have said this in other threads, but for anyone who is wondering, the vast number of platinums and golds on this cruise meant that it was pretty difficult to book special events. Most of the first timers seemed to miss out on character breakfast, frozen gathering, princess gathering, Palo brunch etc. Just an FYI since DCL probably can't do anything about it other than to add more slots for advance booking.

I was pretty excited about this, since on the Fantasy the character breakfast was Disney Junior, which my kids don't watch.... so they didn't really get too excited over the characters. Okay, what I really mean is that *I* didn't get too excited over the characters. My kids are, apparently, too cool for characters in general, sigh. Anyway. Our assistant server happened to be at breakfast serving us, but I think that was just a coincidence. Okay so characters - everyone said it was the Fab 5 that come out - well, we only got Minnie, Mickey, and Goofy. I was a tad disappointed. I would love if Shutters photographers would take pics for these, but alas, I made do.

Here's the kids with Mickey (I don't think we have a ton of Mickey pics, which seems weird!)
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And in this pic - Goofy sat down at an empty chair at the table behind us, I thought that was cute.
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I don't remember being overly impressed by my breakfast, however, to be expected as it isn't gourmet food - it's a character breakfast :)

After breakfast, the kids went off to the clubs and DH and I went to Anyone Can Cook. As this was a longer cruise DCL brought on a special guest chef for the Anyone Can Cook series, which were adult only and would run every sea day at 10:30am in the D lounge. I didn't end up making it to every one, but it is well worth going if you like food and cooking demos. For this cruise, they brought on Chef David Nguyen who is a chef at Be Our Guest in MK. I really liked him. I felt like the crowd took a bit of time to warm up to him; he's a bit of a fast talker and can be hard to keep up with. At the end of the session he did a quick Q&A. I believe he and his wife were on for the whole cruise, which was neat.

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Today's delicious bite was Citrus Poached Shrimp with avocado cream and some fried hominy:
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Cute story, Guy, the CM responsible for this event, asked if it was Citrus Pouched Shrimp and the chef confirmed it was not, it was Poached, and Guy said something like "Oh, because someone, I'm sure not me, typed Pouched on the recipe card..."
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Pro tip: if you are on one of these longer cruises and you want to attend this event, get there early especially as the days go on - they are PACKED! Another special treat for us was that DCL brought on a sommelier specifically for the cruise, Lars Leicht (I'm embarrassed to say that I searched everywhere for his full name only to find that it was in the very first Navigator/cruise highlights... sigh). Lars was great, he attended every Anyone Can Cook and chose a wine to accompany every dish, with great explanations. For this one he chose Principessa Gavia Gavi. I know nothing about wine, I know this one was white, but that's literally all I can say about it other than it was tasty. But, another reason to go to Anyone Can Cook - free wine!
 
Is there a cost to attend Anyone Can Cook?

Nope! It’s a bit of an odd name since it’s a cooking demo and strictly speaking not anyone can cook, but anyone can watch. Lol. They do these on regular cruises too, maybe less often? And there is even a kid version where they make cookies in kids club!
 
Day 3 continued

This is how the ocean looked on Day 3 - a little tiny bit windy, but overall I thought it was lovely.
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After Anyone Can Cook, we went up to grab some lunch and then the kids wanted to go back to the clubs... but I saw Mickey & Friends was on the characters list, so we went to the lineup. We got there quite early, but were still 3rd in line! The rule with these big group pics is that they will take one photo per family. That doesn't mean they only click teh shutter once, it just means you can't do a kids only, parents only, whole family together kind of lineup. I was, and still am, so darn excited about this picture. So good to have so many characters in one :)

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After this, DH and I went to the Oil and Vinegar Seminar being held at Animators. We were a tad late for this but there was plenty of room. All of the seats were already set like this, with small dishes of bread. I believe one of the officers was giving the talk, he is from Italy. This isn't maybe the most exciting in terms of what you get to try, but it was still fun. He talked a bit about the different types of olive oil, the regions from which you get the best balsamic vinegar (Modena - you can't call it that unless it's from there)... I really enjoyed this seminar, which is adults only. I was a little tired so was finding it hard to pay attention!

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After this, we went and signed up for the Boat Building Bash. This is one of those neat events they only do on longer cruises. Basically, every sea day they had time set aside in the D Lounge for you to gather materials and build a boat, which was going to be set out to 'sea' (the pool) on our first port day. So this sounded super awesome. However, as it turns out, my kids have zero interest in building a boat, so I'm sad to say we never did finish ours. I saw some pretty cool creations on the day they were presented, and several people won prizes.

So, no pics of our boat. They supplied clean, flat milk cartons, popsicle sticks and other wooden dowels, duct tape, and then you could pretty much use whatever you wanted. FYI my idea was to build a boat with the "Up" house and several duct tape "balloons" attached. It was a great idea, IMO, too bad we lacked execution. Really too bad actually b/c one of the boats that won, for either most Disney, or most creative, was an "Up" themed boat. Sigh.

Dinner was at Rapunzel's Royal Table, my personal favourite due to all of the purple. I love all of the details. DCL is, of course, amazing at the theming in all of their restaurants. I mean this is one of the Disney differences - so much attention to detail and so much thought put into something as simple as a table number or bread basket. I re-watched Tangled on the flight down because it had been a while, and of course the Rapunzel and Flynn in the canoe scene is one of my faves.
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This is a small detail, but I love that the print on every single chair was perfectly centered.

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I had the green/white asparagus for a starter. I feel like I ate asparagus for 3 out of every 4 dinners. You know, cuz you're always reminded later... lol.

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and striploin - OMG so yummy, highly recommend this. I wonder what they do for the grill lines, since I don't think they can actually grill over open flame.

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For dessert, I think this was from the no sugar added menu.... cappuccino mousse or something. It was okay.

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I forgot to mention that before dinner we watched Big Hero 6 on Funnel Vision while the kids swam. Boy, do I ever love that movie.

So after dinner, we decided to try out So You Think You Know Your Family, a game show held in D Lounge. We were lucky enough that L, my oldest, got chosen to participate so he picked his dad to go with him (thank goodness). This is one of those "match the other person's answer" games and it was honestly a hoot. The best part was when the hosts asked DH what L's worst habit was, and I can't remember what L wrote - something like sleeping in, maybe? and DH wrote "thinking only of himself and being selfish". Wahaha!!! This was tons of fun and I was so proud of L for going up there, though he is the least shy of my kids anyway. The other families were just great to watch as well, and of course on a longer cruise you tend to see them more so that's pretty cute.

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The host (Michael? I am not sure) and the co-host Gus were honestly both delightful. To participate in this one the kids have to be a little bit older b/c they have to know how to write.

Small thing I noticed: when the kids/families were asked where they are from, they all tended to name their state. So L said that we are from BC. Well, we are, but when people ask, sometimes I say Canada, but usually I say Vancouver. Maybe because it's a big city and I assume everyone will know? But they won't know what BC is? Anyway.

Here's DH puzzling over what L's writing.

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We didn't win the game, I believe it was a tie between the two families on the left, so they had to guess the combined ages of the host and one family was right on. Tons of fun.

After this show, we went to Twice Charmed. I thought this was pretty cute and really well done, if a tad on the cheesy side. But good cheesy. The kids and I then went off to bed while DH went and played poker with some folks from the social media group. He isn't the most social of people but this turned into a real blessing because I think otherwise he tends to think DCL is a smidge on the boring side (gasp!) They got together most sea days to play around 11pm or later, after the adult shows are done.

This was also the second night of turning the clock forward by one hour. Stay tuned to see how that went!
 
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Looking forward to hearing how adapting to all of the time changes affected you. Even more so, because you already started ahead 3 hrs. from your normal time (BC->FL). Wondering if changing incrementally is easier than doing it in one chunk when flying to Europe.
 
but I saw Mickey & Friends was on the characters list, so we went to the lineup. We got there quite early, but were still 3rd in line! The rule with these big group pics is that they will take one photo per family. That doesn't mean they only click teh shutter once, it just means you can't do a kids only, parents only, whole family together kind of lineup. I was, and still am, so darn excited about this picture. So good to have so many characters in one :)

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Wow-that is soo cool to get a photo with all of them! Do they just do that on the longer cruises?
 
Wow-that is soo cool to get a photo with all of them! Do they just do that on the longer cruises?

I think so, as I didn't see this on our 7 day cruise. I wonder how much "longer" it has to be to have this though. They were actually out a few times throughout the cruise in this big group, I believe Stitch even attended once from the pics I saw of others, but I must have missed that one!
 
Wow-that is soo cool to get a photo with all of them! Do they just do that on the longer cruises?
They tend to offer the group photos on the longer cruises. on our EBTA they also offered one with about 5 of the "gang" in a Pirate outfit. They are truly awesome photos to get.
 

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