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

Thanks for the pics of the souvenirs and Dooney purses available!

Loved the brunch pics! I had to laugh at the pic of your DH. Because of the person sitting behind him, it kind of looks like he has a ponytail or a bad mullet! :lmao:
 
I am FINALLY caught up!!! Love your TR so far and I'm gald you posted the navigators because I didn't post them on mine, lol.

Yay for being able to upgrade!! I am thinking Daniel might have been my waiter at Palo too, but I am not positive...

I also got the chicken parmesan and it was AMAZING.

I love all the Christmas decorations. It's cool to read your report since you went only a few weeks after me, so it's like reminiscing about my trip lol. Especially now that I am almost done with my TR!

Can't wait to read more!
 
Well Hello You :wave2:

I have just sat and read this whole TR (I really should be working :laughing:)

I've loved it !!!

Firstly, I dream of visiting Disneyland, having been to WDW many times and you have just made me want to go even more :goodvibes

Loving the Cruise reviews :thumbsup2

We are sailing on the Fantasy in May 2012 and a Palo Brunch is top of our list :cool1:

Looking forward to reading more popcorn::
 
I have one questions.

I was watching the webcams of Cabo and does the ship sail away and come back?

And so, where does it go? Is it along the coast? This confuses me. I thought it sat there for two days. :confused3

TIA!
 

I have one questions.

I was watching the webcams of Cabo and does the ship sail away and come back?

And so, where does it go? Is it along the coast? This confuses me. I thought it sat there for two days. :confused3

TIA!

The ship has to go out to international waters to open up the stores.
 
I have one questions.

I was watching the webcams of Cabo and does the ship sail away and come back?

And so, where does it go? Is it along the coast? This confuses me. I thought it sat there for two days. :confused3

TIA!

The ship has to go out to international waters to open up the stores.

I also understand they go out to sea because the ship is designed to sail through waves, not sit off shore and bob up and down :)

They do this whenever they end up with b2b trips to CC as well.
 
I am loving your TR, as we gear up for our 25th wedding anniversary MR cruise! I guess I am going to have to try and give Palo Brunch another try. We just got back from our 1st cruise on the Dream and I hate to say it, but my wife and I both were thoroughly underimpressed with the brunch. Maybe it was because we did it the day after going to Remy's (all I can say is wow!! worth EVERY penny), maybe it was because they chose to sit us behind the worker's station so our view was dishes, glasses (which was sad because the row of window tables sat completely empty until just before we left which was a good hour after we got there)... Food was OK, tons of items that were supposed to be out never came out until 45 minutes after we had been there, our special order food came out almost cool to the touch.

We will definietly have to give another go, too many people rant about it, so I am hoping we just had that rare "off day" for the Brunch ;)
 
Your brunch looks soooo yummy!! I am so nervous I am going to be sea sick on the cruise!!
 
Happy New Year! :goodvibes

The Palo brunch looks amazing! You certainly had a nice selections...great choices from what it looks like! Those cheeses look amazing (I love all kinds of cheese too), and I am one of those weird people who likes salmon mousse. I find it to be very different, love the texture and taste.

Awesome update, hope you are feeling well, and that 2012 brings you all great things! :hug:
 
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. :scratchin

WONDERful update!

@ the bolded - exactly! We had dinner at this nicer Italian restaurant the other night, and my mom ordered Tiramisu (Because I was afraid of wasting it) and I took a bite of hers and it was really good! Not as good as Palo's but DEFINITELY better than other tiramisus' i've tasted. Hmm...do you have a recipe for Tiramisu?? Maybe I should give it a go sometime.

Yep! I'm not sure why they pulled out for next December. That's unfortunate. It's an itinerary we would be interested in doing again.

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

We ended up getting him for Palo Dinner too!

Your brunch looks fantastic:goodvibes 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.

I'm a huge 'cheeser' too! I love any and all cheese, and I asked Daniel which was the stinkiest cheese they had and he pointed to the one which was my favorite.

Definitely book Palo brunch! You will love it!

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.

There is way more people on the Dream/Fantasy which is why everyone was so confused to why they would make a smaller adult pool!

Another update coming shortly :)


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.


:laundy:

Happy new year! I'm feeling almost 100% better thanks :goodvibes

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

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 :thumbsup2

:lmao: I wish I could update twice a day for you! I'm so slow at it! Try it the grape pizza! You can always order something else too :thumbsup2

Thanks for the pics of the souvenirs and Dooney purses available!

Loved the brunch pics! I had to laugh at the pic of your DH. Because of the person sitting behind him, it kind of looks like he has a ponytail or a bad mullet! :lmao:

:rotfl2: I went back to look at what you were talking about and you're so right!

I am FINALLY caught up!!! Love your TR so far and I'm gald you posted the navigators because I didn't post them on mine, lol.

Yay for being able to upgrade!! I am thinking Daniel might have been my waiter at Palo too, but I am not positive...

I also got the chicken parmesan and it was AMAZING.

I love all the Christmas decorations. It's cool to read your report since you went only a few weeks after me, so it's like reminiscing about my trip lol. Especially now that I am almost done with my TR!

Can't wait to read more!


I just got finished reading your TR. You did a fantastic job and am hoping you'll be doing one for your 2013 cruise!

Well Hello You :wave2:

I have just sat and read this whole TR (I really should be working :laughing:)

I've loved it !!!

Firstly, I dream of visiting Disneyland, having been to WDW many times and you have just made me want to go even more :goodvibes

Loving the Cruise reviews :thumbsup2

We are sailing on the Fantasy in May 2012 and a Palo Brunch is top of our list :cool1:

Looking forward to reading more popcorn::

HI! It's been a while!

Ooh the Fantasy! I'm so looking forward to reading about the Fantasy and seeing pics about it. Will you be doing a TR??

I have one questions.

I was watching the webcams of Cabo and does the ship sail away and come back?

And so, where does it go? Is it along the coast? This confuses me. I thought it sat there for two days. :confused3

TIA!

The ship has to go out to international waters to open up the stores.

I also understand they go out to sea because the ship is designed to sail through waves, not sit off shore and bob up and down :)

They do this whenever they end up with b2b trips to CC as well.

Thanks for answering this since I was so slow to respond :upsidedow

I am loving your TR, as we gear up for our 25th wedding anniversary MR cruise! I guess I am going to have to try and give Palo Brunch another try. We just got back from our 1st cruise on the Dream and I hate to say it, but my wife and I both were thoroughly underimpressed with the brunch. Maybe it was because we did it the day after going to Remy's (all I can say is wow!! worth EVERY penny), maybe it was because they chose to sit us behind the worker's station so our view was dishes, glasses (which was sad because the row of window tables sat completely empty until just before we left which was a good hour after we got there)... Food was OK, tons of items that were supposed to be out never came out until 45 minutes after we had been there, our special order food came out almost cool to the touch.

We will definietly have to give another go, too many people rant about it, so I am hoping we just had that rare "off day" for the Brunch ;)

We had Remy back in June on the Dream and it was AMAZING! The best experience i've ever had. You really should give it another shot. It was so worth it and Dh was so glad we tried it. We will be doing brunch again on any sailing from now on!

Your brunch looks soooo yummy!! I am so nervous I am going to be sea sick on the cruise!!

Just make sure you bring medication with you. Also, my brother wears those sea bands and he says it helps him. I also saw lots of people with sea bands on and those sticker things that you wear behind your ears. Maybe pick some up before your cruise and give them a try.

Brunch was our favorite time at Palo too. The view is magnificent. My plates didn't look quite as artistic (or sparse) as yours though! ;)


Great picture! Well, I should have mentioned that I got plates in between plates that I didn't take pictures of because it was mostly repeat cheeses and seafood with a few new items thrown in. It was all wonderful!

Happy New Year! :goodvibes

The Palo brunch looks amazing! You certainly had a nice selections...great choices from what it looks like! Those cheeses look amazing (I love all kinds of cheese too), and I am one of those weird people who likes salmon mousse. I find it to be very different, love the texture and taste.

Awesome update, hope you are feeling well, and that 2012 brings you all great things! :hug:

Happy New Year Bonnie! Mmm, those cheeses. We still talk about them.
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

It's been a crazy past few days at home. Haven't even been on the DIS to lurk since the 30th (yes it's only been a few days, but i'm obsessed with the DIS). I'm FINALLY better! But, poor DH is sick now. I'm actually surprised that he hasn't gotten sick sooner, seeing as i've been sick since we returned home from Disneyland back in November :eek:

Anyways, since all the holiday shenanigans is over, i'm back to update more often. Starting tonight! See you soon.:cool2:
 
@ the bolded - exactly! We had dinner at this nicer Italian restaurant the other night, and my mom ordered Tiramisu (Because I was afraid of wasting it) and I took a bite of hers and it was really good! Not as good as Palo's but DEFINITELY better than other tiramisus' i've tasted. Hmm...do you have a recipe for Tiramisu?? Maybe I should give it a go sometime.

Oh man! I had a whole post with a well thought out recipe for you and the DIS ate it saying I was not logged in! I'll try again. I lost my recipe, and I was making Tiramisu about 15 years ago. It took quite a few tweakings to get the right mixture and not knock my guests on the floor! :lmao:

1/2 cup espresso
brandy (this is where the tweaking comes in, my first few attempts knocked Fran out!)
lady fingers (1-2 packages depending on pan size)
Mascarpone Cheese (8 oz more for a larger batch)
Semi Sweet Chocolate

Mix the espresso and brandy in a flat bowl. Be careful how much brandy, a shot is definitely too much! Dip the lady fingers in the mixture on both sides. Coat them well, but don't dip too long as they will fall apart. Lay the lady fingers flat across your serving bowl in rows.

Mix the mascarpone with a teaspoon or less of the espresso mixture. Spread half the mascarpone over the lady fingers. You may want to add a litle sugar to the cheese mixture, taste it and see. Grate some of the chocolate over the mascarpone. Repeat the process with more lady fingers, but place them perpendicular to the first layer. Finish it off with more grated chocolate so that the top is completely covered.

Chill in the refrigerator for several hours before serving.

When restaurants have yucky Tiramisu, most likely they have used cake instead of the lady fingers, or whipped cream instead of the mascarpone, or both! I've had some bad ones out there, now I only order it at high end italian places.
 
Oh man! I had a whole post with a well thought out recipe for you and the DIS ate it saying I was not logged in! I'll try again. I lost my recipe, and I was making Tiramisu about 15 years ago. It took quite a few tweakings to get the right mixture and not knock my guests on the floor! :lmao:

1/2 cup espresso
brandy (this is where the tweaking comes in, my first few attempts knocked Fran out!)
lady fingers (1-2 packages depending on pan size)
Mascarpone Cheese (8 oz more for a larger batch)
Semi Sweet Chocolate

Mix the espresso and brandy in a flat bowl. Be careful how much brandy, a shot is definitely too much! Dip the lady fingers in the mixture on both sides. Coat them well, but don't dip too long as they will fall apart. Lay the lady fingers flat across your serving bowl in rows.

Mix the mascarpone with a teaspoon or less of the espresso mixture. Spread half the mascarpone over the lady fingers. You may want to add a litle sugar to the cheese mixture, taste it and see. Grate some of the chocolate over the mascarpone. Repeat the process with more lady fingers, but place them perpendicular to the first layer. Finish it off with more grated chocolate so that the top is completely covered.

Chill in the refrigerator for several hours before serving.

When restaurants have yucky Tiramisu, most likely they have used cake instead of the lady fingers, or whipped cream instead of the mascarpone, or both! I've had some bad ones out there, now I only order it at high end italian places.

Oh my goodness. That's it?! It sounds so incredibly simple! Why in the world would restaurants want to make it incorrectly when there are only a few ingredients? Yes, i'm sure whipped cream is cheaper than mascarpone but still!

Thanks Alison :)
 
By the time brunch was over, it was close to noon. Our wine tasting wasn’t until 1pm, so we had some time to spare. And what does Lesha do with spare time? Why order a Drink of the Day of course! We headed to the Promenade Lounge to grab my DOTD since it was closest to our stateroom.

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It was called Ocean Pearl and I have no idea what was in it. I wish they included the ingredients on the Navigator. But it must have been good since I finished it.

We went back to the room and DH made himself a little something.


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Our bar

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We hung around in the room for a little bit, watching Disney movies, chit chatting, and looking out the window from time to time. We did pay extra for it after all!


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Then we got bored with each other :rotfl: We needed some interaction with others, so we decided to head out of our stateroom a little early and head to the Cadillac Lounge. Let me just say, it never took long to get somewhere on the Wonder. It felt like we needed to leave our stateroom 15 minutes early just to navigate the ship on the Dream. The Wonder took us minutes. So we got to the Cadillac Lounge at 12:52 and they were still setting up but they asked for our tickets and told us to pick a spot. A Tip: You don’t necessarily need tickets for the tasting events, but it’s probably best that you do. There were many people that just walked right in, not knowing they had to pay in advance. But the CM’s didn’t care at all. They just charged them right there at the Lounge, instead of making them go back to Guest Services. It also wasn’t a full ship, which is probably why they were taking walk-ins. But make it easier on the CM’s and get your tickets early.

Today we were tasting 4 different wines: Sparkling wine, Pinot Grigio, can’t remember the third wine, and the last was a Burgundy. There were 3 CM’s leading the tasting, all of them from different dining rooms that helped guests choose which wine to have with their meals. It was neat that there was always someone available to help you choose wine if you wanted advice. They gave us each a glass of water and white chocolate to cleanse the palate in between wines.

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Here’s all the soon-to-be-filled seats next to us


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The seminar was very fascinating and fun. Each CM explained the flavors that we could be tasting with each wine and where the wines were from. At the very end, they gave us another tasting of a different red wine. They also gave us pins that showed we ‘completed’ the wine tasting course.



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I met a really nice man sitting next to me with his parents and his sister (:confused3) or maybe a friend. Anyways, wine gets you talking you know. So we started talking and found out that he was a CM. He worked for the Disney University over in Hong Kong! It was so neat talking to him about the park and how awesome that park was. We talked for about 10 minutes and we all left.

As you can imagine, we were beyond tired. We ate a whole bunch of magnificent food, had some great drinks and we were so ready for a nap. So we headed back to the room for a quick rejuvenation nap before our Tequila tasting at 5pm.

Oh wanted to show you a picture of the mug that I had bought early that day


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We took a long 2 ½ hour nap. We felt great though when we woke up. It was 4:30 and the tasting was at 5pm so we freshened up a bit. A picture while I’m waiting on Dh.

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Again, the Tequila tasting was at the Cadillac Lounge so we headed over there. And again, we were early so we waited off to the side at a table and I was able to take this picture before they told us to choose a seat.


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Okay. So we hadn’t eaten since 11am, had lots to drink and were going to drink again on an empty stomach. We still had 10 minutes before our tasting officially begun, so I asked DH to grab us something substantial from one of the Quick Service restaurants. What does he bring back? A few pieces of honeydew and watermelon. :lmao::eek: All this is going to do is put more sugar into our body. Yes natural sugar, but still! I don’t say anything because I’m still grateful that he went and got us something. We ended up sharing some too, so it worked out.

This tequila tasting was WAY different from the tequila tasting we did on the Dream and I’ll tell you why in a sec.


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We were given three shots of Patron: Silver, Reposado, and Coffee Liqueur. We were also given two different margaritas: a passion fruit and I can’t remember the other one. Maybe just a plain margarita? Anyways, the CM gets right into talking about tequila’s and what you want to look for (i.e. 100% agave only people!) and tells us to take the first shot with the lime and salt that’s in front of us. Not sip and savor it like we were told on the Dream, but to shoot it. So we do it! And soon as everyone took their shot, he went straight into talking about the Reposado. We weren’t going to be tasting this tequila with a lime and salt this time. We were going to take a shot the way Europeans take their tequila: with orange and cinnamon?? I’ve never heard of this before. He told us to shoot it (!!!!) and dip the orange in the cinnamon and suck on it after the shot. Oh. My. Gosh! Extremely different and tasty! It was, seriously, a perfect pairing! Now I want to buy the Reposado, just so I can drink it with an orange and cinnamon. So yummy! Next was the Liqueur. Ick. It was way to sweet/strong. A woman next to me had the right idea though. She ordered a cup of coffee and put the shot in it. She said it tasted much better. We were then able to taste our margaritas. Oh boy! Stupendously good! After our margaritas were gone, the CM went around handing out the leftover margaritas! :banana: We were very happy! This was well worth the $15 for sure! The tasting went by surprisingly fast (unlike on the Dream, we were there for an hour and 15 minutes – we were actually late to the 6:15 show). We were out of there by 5:45ish I want to say. So we headed back to the stateroom for a quick second.


 
Very interesting how the tequila tastings were so different. I wasn't interested in it until I read this recent report. Sounds like it was great. Thanks for sharing
 
We did the Tequila/Margarita tasting on the Magic and it was wonderful. I loved the lime margarita - so yummy. There was left over ones that got passed out at the end also.
 
Very interesting how the tequila tastings were so different. I wasn't interested in it until I read this recent report. Sounds like it was great. Thanks for sharing

Yeah it was really weird. We went super slow, savoring every drop on the Dream and on the Wonder it was like, "PARTY! WE'RE IN MEXICO!" :lmao:

We did the Tequila/Margarita tasting on the Magic and it was wonderful. I loved the lime margarita - so yummy. There was left over ones that got passed out at the end also.

When we were on the Dream, they passed out the extra margaritas as well. However, we were only given one margarita on the Dream and 2 on the Wonder. :thumbsup2
 
Yeah it was really weird. We went super slow, savoring every drop on the Dream and on the Wonder it was like, "PARTY! WE'RE IN MEXICO!" :lmao:

I think I like the "PARTY! WE'RE IN MEXICO" version. I will def sign up for this now. :cheer2:
 


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