Mexican Riviera Cruise with WONDERful Souvenir in the Works! 6/7 PTR Link!

[Leshaface]

*** Merry late Christmas everyone! I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas with lots of yummy food and presents. Sorry I didn't get a chance to update when I wanted. I'm STILL sick, and unfortunately, it's not from a souvie. I'm not sure what I have, but it's holding on for dear life. I'm still coughing, sneezing, blowing my nose, etc. I'm hoping I don't start the new year off feeling like this.

Here are a few threads where I got the magnets from - thread for the Mickey Sombrero - http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2172891

Custom Name tags - http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1953182

Hope these help! ***




I asked DH to go grab us some wine glasses from the Promenade Lounge while I ironed his shirt for him. A Tip: DH wore a dress shirt every night of the cruise and I hate ironing. In fact, he’s better at it then I am. But for only 8 bucks and some change, we put his shirts in a laundry bag to be pressed only and they brought it back by 5pm the next day. It was a GREAT time saver and worth the $8.

DH returns the wine glasses, gets dressed in the bathroom and yells "You're not going to believe this. I forgot my toothbrush!" The last question I asked him before leaving the house was, did you pack your toothbrush? UGH! I needed to go load our Disney Rewards on to our account anyway, so I went to Guest Services and was finally able to load our cards. I asked where I could purchase a toothbrush for my forgetful hubby, and he actually gave me two small travel-sized toothbrushes! A Tip: So if you (or your significant other) forget your toothbrush, head to Guest Services first.

I poured us some of my fav Chardonnay and off we went to Animator's Palate!

We were lead to our table, 49, and we met our awesome tablemates! In fact, I found out later that one couple, is TimandMellie here on the DIS! They were super nice and very talkative. The other couple, Ryan and Tasha were nice too. As soon as we got our menus, I took a picture and asked if they didn’t mind me taking pictures of the food, and none of them cared. PHEW!


The Menu:

Appetizers:

I ordered the Ahi Tuna Tartare – with Caviar, Chives, and Wasabi Cream

Very good, light and refreshing!

DH ordered two appetizers:

Wild Mushroom Risotto and Porcini Twist – served with Parmigiano-Reggiano

and the Creamy Butternut Squash Soup – garnished with Chives and drizzled with Sour Cream

Both were very good. The soup was a bit oily, but still tasty.

The Entrees:

I ordered the Asian Marinated Beef Tenderloin – on wasabi mashed potatoes with Bok Choy and a Tamarind-Barbecue Reduction.

It was good, but a bit chewy.

Dh ordered the Animator’s Grilled Veal Chop (right after telling his tablemates that we don’t usually order veal! )

With Roasted Red Bliss Potatoes with Sweet Onions and a Morel Mushroom Sauce

Didn’t try the Veal, sorry everyone, but Dh seemed to really enjoy it.


Dessert Menu:

The picture doesn't really match up to the description, but since it's the closest thing, i'l go with the Double Fudge Chocolate Cake with Caramel Ice cream

And DH ordered the Buckled Warm Apple Crumble - Cinnamon flavored Apple Filling with a crunchy crumble served with Vanilla Ice cream

I don't remember my dessert so much, but I do remember his! It was so good and warm and comforting!

Once our dessert was served, all of the servers left the room, and a little show began!

And Mickey came out!

The servers changed their vests. They were black and white when throughout the entire meal.

DH is very confused by what's happening.

Once dessert was over, our server came by with a trick with some crayons. He did multiple mind tricks with us throughout our cruise and it was fun trying to figure it out.

I found out during dinner that everyone had their character breakfast tomorrow morning. We never received our 'meal tickets' that they put in the room for you so you know where you're going which day. And on that ticket it shows which day you have your character breakfast. I wanted to go to Guest Services as soon as we walked out to see if we could get it switched.

We all went our separate ways, but I wanted to take a picture in front of the tree.

More pictures of the decorated lobby

After snapping some pictures, we went to Guest Services and asked if we could change our Character Breakfast because we had Palo Brunch tomorrow morning. The CM we spoke with said that the Dining Manager wasn't available till tomorrow morning but said because she was doing the overnight shift, she would talk to him as soon as he was available, and call and leave us a message to see if they were able to accommodate us. While we were there, I asked about our meal tickets (just to have as a souvie) and asked if there was supposed to be any other papers we should have gotten in our room, because we switched rooms. We did not receive our Excursion tickets for Puerto Vallarta, so she printed those out for us. It seemed that switching our room last minute cause mini-problems here and there.

Everything got settled and we were on our way to Wavebands to watch the band Speakerbox perform for a bit.

They were actually really entertaining and very good! Also: Gasp! I had a MAD crush on the guy playing the keyboard. He was just so cute and animated every time he played. He would nod his head crazily, open his mouth and smile, march in place, etc. So CUTE! I should have kept this secret crush to myself..this secret will not be so secret later

My brother told me to go check out the Piano guy at the Cadillac Lounge so we made our way there.

He came on at 11:30 (we could NOT get used to the late shows! That's a sign we're getting old for sure!) He had such a romantic voice. We stayed for about 30 minutes and by this point, we were done. It was time for sleep.

We went back to the room and got ready for bed. But I really wanted to wake up to a little tiny breakfast before our big brunch at 11am the next morning, so I filled out the room service breakfast card, hung it on our door, crawled in bed and passed out watching Ratatouille.

 

[Dream426]

Love the Apple Crumb dessert. DH got it at every restaurant and our server had it sent to our room as well...haha Our server actually gave him 3 apple crumbs one night as a joke and of course my DH ate every single one of them. He still talks about it. We had apple crumb the day before Christmas Eve and he said nothing compares to the apple crumb on the Wonder. Great update. Love the pictures. Glad you had fun tablemates

 

[Leshaface]

Love the Apple Crumb dessert. DH got it at every restaurant and our server had it sent to our room as well...haha Our server actually gave him 3 apple crumbs one night as a joke and of course my DH ate every single one of them. He still talks about it. We had apple crumb the day before Christmas Eve and he said nothing compares to the apple crumb on the Wonder. Great update. Love the pictures. Glad you had fun tablemates

That's funny! I probably would have eaten all 3 as well. I mean, you can't just leave them there right???

 

[Leshaface]

 

[Leshaface]

I set a wake up call the night before for 6:15am. I love that I set the wake up call myself and not someone on the other side. I changed my wake up calls so many times throughout the cruise, it was ridiculous. Anyway, we woke up early so we could get a quick workout in. And it was a very quick one. It was packed! It was never like that on the Dream. There was only one cardio machine available so I took it. Dh showed up about 10 minutes later and there wasn’t much he could do. We probably stayed for 30 minutes. I kept thinking that it was busy for two reasons: 1) it’s a Sea Day and 2) these are mostly LA people we’re dealing with. They’re all health nuts! It was when I was on the elliptical when I really felt the bike moving. It was raining really hard outside and the waters were rough. I actually started feeling a little nauseous and decided to take a shower to see if I would feel better. Room service came before the selected time, 7:45am, and I was grateful. Hopefully a little food would help me.

Coffee, bagels, pastries, donutshyper, juices, and cereal.

I really wasn’t feeling good at this point and looking out the window wasn’t helping. I went to look through my bag of medicine for the un-opened Dramamine I had packed for our cruise in July, and it wasn’t there. I knew that the health center gave out free packets of motion sickness medicine, so I went downstairs to the Health Center. You don’t even have to go into the center itself to get the medicine. It’s in a plastic container outside the door with flyers on how to use the medicine and how much to take. I took some as soon as I got back to the room and cleaned up a bit. It was now around 9am and I wanted to go explore the rest of the ship before our brunch at Palo at 11.

There is always some type of picture near the stairs and this was the closest picture to our stateroom

Here’s what the elevators look like

There is a mini-art gallery near Shutters, located on Deck 5 and here are some of my favorites.

And some more lobby pics

We went to Studio Sea, where they have demonstrations and family type shows

Lobby from the other side

Then we made our way to browse the shops

Some cute MR souvies

The Dooney purses available

On this day, I ended up buying a DCL travel coffee mug for when I go to work.

Characters in the hallway outside the shops

The entrance to the Walt Disney Theater

After walking around a bit, we went back to Guest Services (feels like I live there!) to sign up for some Tastings that were taking place later that day – Wine tasting at 1pm and Tequila Tasting at 5pm.

Sometime in between taking the medicine and walking back to our stateroom to get ready for brunch, I was feeling 100%! I’m not sure if it was the combination of food + medicine + walking that helped, but I felt great and I was ready to eat a HUGE brunch at Palo. Little did I know, huge is an understatement

 

[franandaj]

Love the food porn update!

I'm so glad you ordered the veal and the tenderloin! Those were the choices that I would have been torn between on the menu.

You guys also got the appetizers I would have picked, but we would have also ordered the baked potato soup too!

So did the room start to change color throughout your meal or was it only at the end that the colors came up? When we dined there, the pictures kept adding flashes of color until the end of the meal when the whole restaurant was in color. Then at the end of the meal the waiters turned their vests around.

Looking forward to hearing about how you worked out your brunch/breakfast plans. Love that you can doze off to Ratatouille!

 

[LuvEeyore]

I cant wait to hear about the 1pm tasting afte the 11am brunch. I wouldnt have made it. I dont think we had left Palo at 1 pm.

 

[dvc4life]

Loving your report Lesha! The photos you are taking around the ship are just amazing. Would so love to do a Christmas Cruise. Some day.

We will be taking our first cruise on the Dream in March. Not so sure about that big of a ship. We have sailed many times on the Magic and Wonder and love both of those ships, so it is gonna be interesting.

Since you have been on both, which do you prefer? The bigger Dream or the smaller Magic/Wonder? Just curious.

 

[Sorcerer Mom]

Such a great report...we leave on the Wonder 1/2 (it was a surprise Christmas gift to our kids) and was happy to see more updates! Looking forward to hearing about and seeing Palo Brunch.

Hope you feel better soon!

 

[Pinkocto]

So does the lobby grow on you after a while. Even though it's smaller than the Dream it looks gorgeous. The Christmas decorations are beautiful too.

DH does look a tad confused at Animator's Palate. Your dinner pictures look great. Too funny about the drummer. I can't wait to hear the rest of the story.

I love the artwork. I'm worried how tempted I'll be buy some.

I can't wait to hear about brunch. I wasn't able to get a reservation, they were sold out, I'll live vacariously through your photos. I hope they were able to change around your character breakfast.

I'm sorry you're still sick. I hope it runs its course soon.

 

[bangzoom6877]

The decorations and the ship itself are very beautiful. Awesome food porn, as always! I want some of that apple crumble! Perfect for this time of year.

I always take Bonine to prevent motion sickness when I go on a cruise. It lasts 24 hours, so I just take it an hour before sailing time and once a day thereafter. I probably don't need it most of the time, but I tend to worry too much, so this prevents that!

How are you feeling? Sorry it's the flu and not from a souvie...I had a nasty sinus infection last week, and the doctor gave me zithromax. It made me feel a whole lot better, and then the side effects kicked in...too much stomach pain, but it's much better today. Skipped going out to dinner with my in-laws last night because of how I had been feeling, so we ended up ordering Japanese food. Of course I turned out to be fine the whole time, but had I gone out to a restaurant...let's just say, Murphy's Law! Regardless, it was a nice relaxing day just being at home with everyone.

 

[Leshaface]

Love the food porn update!

I'm so glad you ordered the veal and the tenderloin! Those were the choices that I would have been torn between on the menu.

You guys also got the appetizers I would have picked, but we would have also ordered the baked potato soup too!

So did the room start to change color throughout your meal or was it only at the end that the colors came up? When we dined there, the pictures kept adding flashes of color until the end of the meal when the whole restaurant was in color. Then at the end of the meal the waiters turned their vests around.

Looking forward to hearing about how you worked out your brunch/breakfast plans. Love that you can doze off to Ratatouille!

I wanted to get the potato soup, but didn't want my tablemates to think I was a pig on the first night! It was black and white throughout the entire appetizer and entree courses. Then subtly it started flickering colors and the entire place was all color by the time the show was over and all of the servers had their vests around. It was really pretty!

I cant wait to hear about the 1pm tasting afte the 11am brunch. I wouldnt have made it. I dont think we had left Palo at 1 pm.

Oh, we made SURE to make it to the tasting!

Loving your report Lesha! The photos you are taking around the ship are just amazing. Would so love to do a Christmas Cruise. Some day.

We will be taking our first cruise on the Dream in March. Not so sure about that big of a ship. We have sailed many times on the Magic and Wonder and love both of those ships, so it is gonna be interesting.

Since you have been on both, which do you prefer? The bigger Dream or the smaller Magic/Wonder? Just curious.

The Dream and Wonder are just so different/ You're going to find yourself with lots more people on the Dream but there is more places for the adults to hang out. The Dream adult pool area is not great. I wish that the Dream had kept the way the pool area is on the Wonder, and I think they redid the Fantasy adult pool area after hearing about the complaints on the Dream.

But honestly, you're going to love the Dream. Everything is much newer and not worn out. Hope you have an amazing time!

Such a great report...we leave on the Wonder 1/2 (it was a surprise Christmas gift to our kids) and was happy to see more updates! Looking forward to hearing about and seeing Palo Brunch.

Hope you feel better soon!

Hope you have a great time! It's coming up quick!!

So does the lobby grow on you after a while. Even though it's smaller than the Dream it looks gorgeous. The Christmas decorations are beautiful too.

DH does look a tad confused at Animator's Palate. Your dinner pictures look great. Too funny about the drummer. I can't wait to hear the rest of the story.

I love the artwork. I'm worried how tempted I'll be buy some.

I can't wait to hear about brunch. I wasn't able to get a reservation, they were sold out, I'll live vacariously through your photos. I hope they were able to change around your character breakfast.

I'm sorry you're still sick. I hope it runs its course soon.

I took a lot of pictures of the lobby during this trip, so I think I really loved the lobby! Of course, not as grand as the Dream, but still intimate and pretty.

There was much more artwork for sale, but I just took pics of the ones I really liked.

Aye! I forgot to add the character breakfast part! You keep reminding me of things! THANK YOU!

 

[Leshaface]

The decorations and the ship itself are very beautiful. Awesome food porn, as always! I want some of that apple crumble! Perfect for this time of year.

I always take Bonine to prevent motion sickness when I go on a cruise. It lasts 24 hours, so I just take it an hour before sailing time and once a day thereafter. I probably don't need it most of the time, but I tend to worry too much, so this prevents that!

How are you feeling? Sorry it's the flu and not from a souvie...I had a nasty sinus infection last week, and the doctor gave me zithromax. It made me feel a whole lot better, and then the side effects kicked in...too much stomach pain, but it's much better today. Skipped going out to dinner with my in-laws last night because of how I had been feeling, so we ended up ordering Japanese food. Of course I turned out to be fine the whole time, but had I gone out to a restaurant...let's just say, Murphy's Law! Regardless, it was a nice relaxing day just being at home with everyone.

I actually made a peach crisp the other night to somewhat resemble the apple crumb. It was good! But not as good as the apple crumble and other desserts we'll be having later on.

I stayed home from work today. I'm really phlegmy and I can hear it when I cough. Thinking about finding something at Target today to break up the mucus. My family is going out to an Italian restaurant for dinner tonight to ring in the new year. This cold isn't going to stop me from getting a caesar salad and pasta!

 

[Leshaface]

I forgot to mention, that when we got back from exploring the ship, we had a message on our phone. It was the CM from Guest Services that helped us the night before about our character breakfast. She said that she talked to the dining room manager and he was able to switch our character breakfast to tomorrow morning at 10am I was very happy! I was really looking forward to doing the character breakfast!


Brunch Time!

We were so ready for some food, so we headed up to Palo about 15 minutes before our reservation. And took some pictures while we waited.

This would be a good time to say that, it took some real convincing to get DH excited about going. He’s a very visual person and the menu online doesn’t say much and sounds very bland. I kept saying how many people on the DIS loved this place and that I’m sure he would too. He was very skeptical..Okay back to the TR. By the time I snapped the last picture, someone came and greeted us and we said we were early. The host said, “There is no such thing as early here!” and he called someone over to lead us to our table right away. Score!

Here is our view. You can see how dark it was in the first picture, but the clouds were way darker earlier that morning.

A picture while we waited.

Our waiter, Daniel from Italy, came over and introduced himself. He was very fun to talk to and very informational. He gave us waters and asked us to follow him so he could explain the different food tables.

First up, the Antipasti Table

Next, Cheese and Bread Table

We told him we were huge cheese lovers and he explained each cheese and what they tasted like.

The Seafood Table

After he showed us the three tables, he showed us the Entrée Counter. We pick an entrée we would like to have (you can have as many as you can eat, by the way) and told us the favorites.

Daniel then showed us where we would come after we were finished with our entrees.

One was a sweet bread/pastry table

And the other table was a Dessert table

He recommended the Tiramisu and the Cocoa de pots (not sure if that is spelt correctly)

As he was walking us back to our table, he asked if we would like a complimentary glass of sparkling wine or a mimosa. I asked for a mimosa and Dh ordered the sparkling wine.

I set my camera down and off we went to get our first plate!

I picked the bloody mary shrimp cocktail (EXCELLENT! I cannot say how fabulous this was!), sautéed mushrooms (MMMMM!!), many different cheeses (all of them were great, especially the hard crumbly cheese underneath that moldy looking one. Although the moldy one was my second fav!), some melon and asparagus wrapped prosciutto, and one piece of bread.

Cheers to food!

You can see my mimosa in the pic


Daniel came back shortly after we sat down and asked for our main entrée orders before we got too filled up on all the appetizers. I ordered the Chicken Parmesan and DH ordered the Gorgonzola Grape pizza(came highly recommended on the DIS).

We got back up and got more plates.

I can’t remember all of it, but on the tiny plate is salmon mousse (very interesting and pretty good), fresh salmon, some chilled shrimp, crab, and ahi tuna. It was all so fresh and yummy.

Then our entrees came!

My Chicken Parmesan served over risotto.

Oh. My. Gosh. It was incredible! The chicken was so tender and melt in your mouth. The risotto was a perfect match up with the chicken and sauce. Ugh. I actually finished the entire plate. I left nothing!

DH’s Gorgonzola Pizza

When hearing about the ingredients, it sounds like a very odd combination. But it was wonderful! The gorgonzola is salty and strong and the grapes bring the sweetness and balances it out perfectly. Of course, he demolished it and was still hungry. So he also placed an order for the Eggs Florentine.

The egg was incredible! (Incredible, edible egg ). It was creamy and tasty.

I, of course, went and got some dessert.

Yes, I through in some watermelon slices to balance out the sticky bun and the jam-almond pastry.

Then I went to the other dessert table.

Okay. I’m not a fan of tiramisu. I just don’t like the taste of it. This one, however, was magnificent! I’m not sure what they do differently, but it doesn’t taste like the ones I’ve tasted before. Maybe it’s because other places don’t make it correctly, but this was WONDERFUL! The cocoa de pots wasn’t super sweet. It was a combination of dark and semi-sweet chocolates which was amazing. And of course a white chocolate strawberry to finish off my meal, was a perfect ending.


Palo brunch is $20 extra per person and gratuity is included. So what did DH think? He LOVED it and was so happy that I had made reservations here. He even wanted to try and find an opening later that week! (but we totally forgot about it). I highly recommend this place for a nice quiet brunch. The food is remarkable and the service is wonderful. Do not question the Brunch! Just make a reservation and you’ll be so happy you did!

 

[franandaj]

Wow! That Palo brunch does look amazing! Everything there looks so good! I would have ordered the Eggs Florentine. We have a place here that does both the Benedict and the Florentine and sometimes, I'll ask if they can make me one of each!

I love Chicken Parm too though! I'm sure it was a tough decision, and all that seafood looked amazing! I'm sure you haven't had Tiramisu made correctly, that's the problem. I used to make it about 15 years ago, and got to like it made correctly, so often places use cake instead of the lady fingers, they don't use real mascarpone cheese. And you MUST soak the lady fingers in brandy and espresso!

Sounds like a great time. I heard Disney is taking the Wonder off the MR next December. I better convince Fran to go a cruise soon.

WONDERful update!

 

[lucky1]

Daniel was our server as well for Palo's brunch in Nov. I thought he was great

 

[Shell54]

Your brunch looks fantastic Call me crazy but that "moldy" cheese looks fabulous and I wracked my brain trying to figure out what kind it was (I'm kind of a cheese buff LOL). Really it all looked yummy..I'm going to plan on booking the Palo brunch for our June cruise. Your photos are great, looking forward to more.

 

[dvc4life]

Thanks for your reply regarding the ships. I've heard about the pools on the Dream being a lot smaller, or similar in size to the Magic/Wonder pools, but there are so many more people on the Dream that it doesn't seem right. So we will see.

Yes, we are looking forward to the lounges/clubs. We like to enjoy an adult beverage and they all sound like fun to check out.

Love your Palo Brunch report. Everything looks so good. Can't wait to see what you did for the rest of the day.

 

[Laundress]

That was a wonderful Brunch post. So yummy looking. I made Brunch reservtions for our MR trip in April last weekend. The anticipation is killing me.
Looking forward to your next post.
Happy New Year. Hope you feel better soon.

 

[PizzieDuster]

I love reading your report...check twice a day for updates...

In all my DCL cruises I've always wanted to try the grape pizza at Palo. I think I'm going to go for it