pdarrah
It's nice to know you are real, too
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2004
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Part 3: Continued from Part 2
Monday, October 25: Food, food and more food
Ill admit it upfront we made a tactical error in our plans for our first day at sea. We had arranged to have brunch with a DISer couple at 10:30am. We also arranged to have Tea with our DISer dinner mates at 3:00pm. DONT DO THIS! We basically ate all day. The food was fantastic I would recommend either brunch or tea but dont try to do both the same day! Since you need to dress nice for Palo (resort casual no shorts or jeans), you dont really have time to do much before brunch at 10:30 unless you are a very early riser. We were up by 8:00am, we hurried and had DS5 dressed and fed and ourselves dressed by 9:00. I went to one of the Art of Entertaining presentations and watched a chef create an interesting appetizer we also all got a serving of it to eat and wine. DH dropped DS off at the kid club and then relaxed for a little while on Deck 4. Then we checked our email and went to brunch. Eating brunch took just over 2 hours. It could probably be done in less time, but it is very good and we were chatting with friends and it seemed about right. Many others were still there when we left!
We then only had about 2 hours until we needed to be back for Tea. DS came out of his club for a little while in order to swim at the Mickey pool. I was surprised at how reasonable the crowd was at the pool. From reading the DISboards, I had expected it to be packed on a day at sea, but it wasnt bad at all. After swimming, DS went back to his club again so far he loved it, but he told us he didnt want to eat with the club. It took a couple of days to find out why: it turned out that he didnt like walking up the stairs to Topsiders!
Before Tea, we stopped to see our friends room since they had a verandah and DH wanted to see one. He decided that he really liked it and started his campaign to convince me we should book a cruise for next year and get a verandah room. This was something of a surprise since he had rather grudgingly agreed to this cruise and hadnt seemed at all excited about it!
Tea was wonderful. I am a particular fan of afternoon tea and one of our friends is British and we both thought that it was a very good tea. Our only complaint was that they only put a little dab of devonshire cream on the table, however, the serving staff did replace it for us several times so we all had as much as we wanted. Once again there was too much food: scones, tea sandwiches, trifle, and chocolate éclairs. It was scrumptious (I didnt try the trifle, but others enjoyed it) and we didnt finish until around 4:30pm.
Since this was our Formal night and the night for the Golden Mickeys show, DS had decided to join us for the show and dinner. Long before we heard about the new Pirate Night, DS had decided to be a pirate for Halloween. When we booked the cruise (in May) he announced that he was going to bring his pirate costume. My mother made his costume and he was a fancy pirate like Captain Hook. During the search for formal clothes for DS, we hit on the idea that he could wear his pirate costume for formal night just like all the little girls wear their princess outfits. We had arranged a DIS meet for between the 2 dinner seatings because a group of the ladies from our thread had agreed to wear long black gloves and tiaras and we wanted to get a photograph of all of us. That was set for 8:15pm, so we decided we better dress before the 6:30pm show in order to have enough time to get all 3 of us ready.
DS really enjoyed the show DH and I thought it was an OK Disney show. It was entertaining, but I dont feel like I need to see it again next year unless DS really wants to go. After the show, we needed to kill a little time before our black-glove ladies photo shoot! We wandered through the atrium and decided to do a formal photo with the Mickey Statue since we were still early the wait wasnt that long. After that we stopped in Studio Sea where they were doing Family Karaoke. DS didnt think too highly of the girl who was singing and I asked him if he wanted to try it. He surprised us by saying Yes!. We looked through the book and he chose Zip-a-dee-do-dah which is one of his favorite songs (we even used it on our door magnet). Much to our amazement, he took the little form up to the organizer himself and when called he marched right up on stage and sang it surprisingly well. Once he was finished, we listened to a couple of other performances and then it was time to go back to the atrium for our DIS meet. Unfortunately, this didnt work out. The early seating diners didnt make it and only a few of the late diners showed up. The few of us who were there took a photo and since the Captain looked lonely (no one was waiting to have a photo with him), we all went over and did family photos with him. At 8:35, we gave up on anyone else arriving and went to dinner. (Later, we found out that a few others had arrived at 8:40 or 8:45, but all in all it just didnt seem to work trying to put together a meet even a short one during dinner time.)
Our dinner was at Animators Pallet (which was why DS decided to join us). He enjoyed watching the room and looking for which screen would change next. I thought it was OK but not a big deal. I dont know if DS will bother with it for the next cruise it may be a case of been there, done that unless he wants to show it to Grandma and Grandpa . I dont remember exactly what DH and I ate (although we enjoyed it), but once again, DS ate chicken tenders with BBQ sauce. As soon as the show was over and the waiters had changed their vests and paraded in, DS decided to go to the kid club. I think our servers were rather shocked that he skipped desert! We had our deserts after DH returned from taking DS to the club. As usual, we lingered over desert and coffee/tea until nearly 10:30pm. Our servers didnt seem to mind they would just start working on clearing the other empty tables and we did always leave before they were ready to start ours!
After dinner we went back to our room to start preparing for Costa Maya. I had arranged an excursion for a group of our DIS friends and I wanted to be sure I had everything I needed. We checked the navigator to check when we were arriving since we had guessed on that when we made the plans. Everything was pretty much on schedule. Part of our excursion included a trip to the Kindergarten school at the village of Majahual (the town that is about ½ mile from the port of Costa Maya). The area is very remote and it is difficult for them to get supplies. People over at the CruiseCritic board have started bringing supplies to the 3 schools in town. We decided to bring supplies to the Kindergarten because DS5 is in Kindergarten and his class decided to help and collected colored pencils for us to bring. The box that we had shipped to Shirley at The Perfect Gift was full of supplies (Spanish/English coloring books, scissors, regular pencils, etc.) The colored pencils traveled in our luggage since our school didnt have them all until a couple days before we left. We made sure we had all our supplies ready to take ashore and I checked that I had the letter I wrote for the Kindergarten that explained who we were and had a photograph of DSs class. (I wrote the letter in Spanish, but since I only studied it for 2 years in high school, I had a friend from Mexico proof read it for me!) The other part of our excursion was a trip to the Chacchoben Ruins. Since we were going to need a taxi for 11 people to take us to town and the ruins, I had made a cheat sheet of Spanish words I might need although I was really hoping for someone who spoke English! Once we had everything together, we took a few minutes to go and check email and then went to get DS at the club. He was watching the end of Tarzan so we had to wait a few minutes for the movie to end before going back to the room. As before, he was wide awake when we picked him up and out like a light as soon as he was tucked into bed.
Tuesday, October 26: Kids, Ruins and Deep Woods Off
We had arranged to meet our fellow DISers in the atrium at 7:30am. Fortunately, we remembered to put the card for the continental breakfast outside the door the night before. We had a pleasant breakfast of cereal, bagels and muffins. Then we packed our soft-sided cooler with some water, a few snacks for DS and a can of Deep Woods Off. The All Ashore was announced a little before 8:00 and we all trooped off the ship. The pier at Costa Maya is so long that they provide a tram to bring you to the main port complex (where the fake village and shops are) We walked through the complex and out the other side to where the taxi stand was. The person organizing the taxis spoke fluent English and we were able to negotiate the price for the group down a little bit and get it similar to the cost if we just took a taxi to Majahual and then booked a taxi from there to the ruins (that was our original plan, but being able to do it all in one taxi-van was very convenient and by the time we worked it all out, the cost was very similar) The taxi guy ended up adding a family of 4 to our group for 15 people in the taxi. They were just told that we would be stopping in town for a minute when we explained about the Kindergarten and what we were doing, they said Oh, your that group from the DIS board We had found some more lurkers! They joined our group for the whole excursion.
The taxi driver spoke reasonable English and took us all to the Kindergarten. The van was a little squished with all of us (8 adults, 7 children) but it wasnt too bad and there was air-conditioning. Our stop at the Kindergarten was short, but a lot of fun. The teacher did not seem to speak much English, but she smiled a lot and thanked us. The children were incredibly happy they all jumped out of their seats and crowded to the door saying Hola, Hola! The smiles were huge! My DS was a little shy and I could only coax him to say a few words in Spanish, but we did take his picture with some of the children. Several of the kids liked seeing their photograph on the digital camera screen. We didnt want to disrupt their class too much, so in a few minutes we all piled back into the van and headed off to the ruins.
We drove straight to the ruins other than a stop along the way to rescue a turtle! The driver spotted a leatherback turtle starting across the road. He stopped and backed up to where it was. Before putting it into the grass on the other side of the road, he brought it into the van so the kids could all see it.
The drive took us past a military station (Navy training station) which shocked some of the kids since they were all standing about with their rifles. We also traveled though some small villages. I have seen some postings that imply that these are horribly depressing 3rd world places, but although these people are farmers and poor in terms of the material goods we take for granted, everyone we saw looked reasonably clothed and well-fed. Many places had horses and I suspect that may still be a major form of transportation in this part of the world. Their homes are small and not like ours, but they have 4 walls, a roof, a yard, etc. All of us adults felt that this was a very good experience for our children.
We arrived at the ruins after about a 45 minute drive (some of it was quite fast, but since there was no traffic, I dont think anyone felt all that unsafe.) I had arranged via email for a guide to the ruins. His name was Ivan and we had no trouble finding him. Our only problem of the day surfaced at this point since our taxi driver told Ivan that we could only have 1 hour there. We hadnt actually discussed time when we arranged the taxi we actually spent closer to 1 and ½ or ¾ hours and could easily have spent longer. If anyone else does a similar excursion, make certain you specify the time to be spent at the ruins. Since we didnt really pay attention to the 1 hour limit, the only way it really affected us was that some of us were a little nervous he might leave without us if we took too long.
Our guide, Ivan, was fantastic! He was highly recommended and he definitely deserved it. Ivan actually grew up at the Chacchoben ruins. His family lived there before the ruins were discovered. When he was 11, the government decided to start excavating the ruins and the family was relocated (to available government land nowhere near the area.) Ivan is a licensed archaeological site guide, which in Mexico is a fairly highly trained position. To be licensed he had to take a series of classes and tests on archaeology and Mexican history. In addition to all his knowledge, he also had family photos of the ruins before they were excavated and during the early stages.
We were definitely grateful for the can of Deep Woods Off. The mosquitoes were really bad.
After the tour we returned to the taxi. Before we left, several of the kids had their picture taken with an iguana. Silly but they really enjoyed it. The return trip was even a little faster than the previous one he was probably trying to make up some of the extra time we spent at the ruins! Once we were back at Costa Maya, each family tipped the driver. In addition to our monetary tip, we also gave the driver our can of Deep Woods Off we were somewhat surprised by his reaction. He thanked us repeatedly and seemed much more pleased about the can than about the cash!
We all headed back to the ship for lunch and everyone went their own way. After lunch, we were debating if we should head back to Costa Maya to try snorkeling or just relax and then an afternoon tropical rain storm (think Disney World around 3:00 or 4:00) came in, so we decided to just stay aboard. DS, of course, wanted to go to the Mickey Pool. After the Mickey Pool, DS and DH started getting cleaned up and ordered DSs chicken strips and a couple PB&J sandwiches to bring on our excursion the next day. I took 1 hour of relax by myself time and went to the adult pool. Although I brought my book with me, I ended up running into some other DISers from our thread and chatted with them for a while. Then it was time for me to get cleaned up also so we could all go see Hercules the Musical. DS REALLY enjoyed this show. He is still talking about it. DH and I also thought it was fun and a lot of the jokes were pretty funny. If it is the same each time, it might not be a show you would see over and over, but we certainly considered it worth seeing this time. As soon as the show ended, DS wanted to go to his club. This was our evening for Palo, so we spent a few minutes catching up on email and then went to our dinner.
Palo has been described many, many times on the DISboard, so I wont bother to do it again. All I can say is that it lived up to its hype! The food and service were spectacular. Since we couldnt make up our minds on the entrée, we each ordered 2 half-entrées. In my opinion the best was the linguini carbonara I will probably never be able to eat it again without comparing it to Palos version! We shared a chocolate soufflé with vanilla sauce and each had a separate desert. I had a desert that was like cheesecake, but made with ricotta cheese and very light. DH had a pistachio assortment (tart, ice cream, etc.) Everything was perfect. As we were about to leave, we had been planning a walk around the deck, but then DS had us paged from the club. This was the only time he paged us for the entire trip he was tired and didnt want to watch the movie (Mulan). We took him back to the room and then just relaxed for a while and read the next days navigator and got ourselves organized for the next day at Cozumel.
Continued with Part 4
Monday, October 25: Food, food and more food
Ill admit it upfront we made a tactical error in our plans for our first day at sea. We had arranged to have brunch with a DISer couple at 10:30am. We also arranged to have Tea with our DISer dinner mates at 3:00pm. DONT DO THIS! We basically ate all day. The food was fantastic I would recommend either brunch or tea but dont try to do both the same day! Since you need to dress nice for Palo (resort casual no shorts or jeans), you dont really have time to do much before brunch at 10:30 unless you are a very early riser. We were up by 8:00am, we hurried and had DS5 dressed and fed and ourselves dressed by 9:00. I went to one of the Art of Entertaining presentations and watched a chef create an interesting appetizer we also all got a serving of it to eat and wine. DH dropped DS off at the kid club and then relaxed for a little while on Deck 4. Then we checked our email and went to brunch. Eating brunch took just over 2 hours. It could probably be done in less time, but it is very good and we were chatting with friends and it seemed about right. Many others were still there when we left!
We then only had about 2 hours until we needed to be back for Tea. DS came out of his club for a little while in order to swim at the Mickey pool. I was surprised at how reasonable the crowd was at the pool. From reading the DISboards, I had expected it to be packed on a day at sea, but it wasnt bad at all. After swimming, DS went back to his club again so far he loved it, but he told us he didnt want to eat with the club. It took a couple of days to find out why: it turned out that he didnt like walking up the stairs to Topsiders!
Before Tea, we stopped to see our friends room since they had a verandah and DH wanted to see one. He decided that he really liked it and started his campaign to convince me we should book a cruise for next year and get a verandah room. This was something of a surprise since he had rather grudgingly agreed to this cruise and hadnt seemed at all excited about it!
Tea was wonderful. I am a particular fan of afternoon tea and one of our friends is British and we both thought that it was a very good tea. Our only complaint was that they only put a little dab of devonshire cream on the table, however, the serving staff did replace it for us several times so we all had as much as we wanted. Once again there was too much food: scones, tea sandwiches, trifle, and chocolate éclairs. It was scrumptious (I didnt try the trifle, but others enjoyed it) and we didnt finish until around 4:30pm.
Since this was our Formal night and the night for the Golden Mickeys show, DS had decided to join us for the show and dinner. Long before we heard about the new Pirate Night, DS had decided to be a pirate for Halloween. When we booked the cruise (in May) he announced that he was going to bring his pirate costume. My mother made his costume and he was a fancy pirate like Captain Hook. During the search for formal clothes for DS, we hit on the idea that he could wear his pirate costume for formal night just like all the little girls wear their princess outfits. We had arranged a DIS meet for between the 2 dinner seatings because a group of the ladies from our thread had agreed to wear long black gloves and tiaras and we wanted to get a photograph of all of us. That was set for 8:15pm, so we decided we better dress before the 6:30pm show in order to have enough time to get all 3 of us ready.
DS really enjoyed the show DH and I thought it was an OK Disney show. It was entertaining, but I dont feel like I need to see it again next year unless DS really wants to go. After the show, we needed to kill a little time before our black-glove ladies photo shoot! We wandered through the atrium and decided to do a formal photo with the Mickey Statue since we were still early the wait wasnt that long. After that we stopped in Studio Sea where they were doing Family Karaoke. DS didnt think too highly of the girl who was singing and I asked him if he wanted to try it. He surprised us by saying Yes!. We looked through the book and he chose Zip-a-dee-do-dah which is one of his favorite songs (we even used it on our door magnet). Much to our amazement, he took the little form up to the organizer himself and when called he marched right up on stage and sang it surprisingly well. Once he was finished, we listened to a couple of other performances and then it was time to go back to the atrium for our DIS meet. Unfortunately, this didnt work out. The early seating diners didnt make it and only a few of the late diners showed up. The few of us who were there took a photo and since the Captain looked lonely (no one was waiting to have a photo with him), we all went over and did family photos with him. At 8:35, we gave up on anyone else arriving and went to dinner. (Later, we found out that a few others had arrived at 8:40 or 8:45, but all in all it just didnt seem to work trying to put together a meet even a short one during dinner time.)
Our dinner was at Animators Pallet (which was why DS decided to join us). He enjoyed watching the room and looking for which screen would change next. I thought it was OK but not a big deal. I dont know if DS will bother with it for the next cruise it may be a case of been there, done that unless he wants to show it to Grandma and Grandpa . I dont remember exactly what DH and I ate (although we enjoyed it), but once again, DS ate chicken tenders with BBQ sauce. As soon as the show was over and the waiters had changed their vests and paraded in, DS decided to go to the kid club. I think our servers were rather shocked that he skipped desert! We had our deserts after DH returned from taking DS to the club. As usual, we lingered over desert and coffee/tea until nearly 10:30pm. Our servers didnt seem to mind they would just start working on clearing the other empty tables and we did always leave before they were ready to start ours!
After dinner we went back to our room to start preparing for Costa Maya. I had arranged an excursion for a group of our DIS friends and I wanted to be sure I had everything I needed. We checked the navigator to check when we were arriving since we had guessed on that when we made the plans. Everything was pretty much on schedule. Part of our excursion included a trip to the Kindergarten school at the village of Majahual (the town that is about ½ mile from the port of Costa Maya). The area is very remote and it is difficult for them to get supplies. People over at the CruiseCritic board have started bringing supplies to the 3 schools in town. We decided to bring supplies to the Kindergarten because DS5 is in Kindergarten and his class decided to help and collected colored pencils for us to bring. The box that we had shipped to Shirley at The Perfect Gift was full of supplies (Spanish/English coloring books, scissors, regular pencils, etc.) The colored pencils traveled in our luggage since our school didnt have them all until a couple days before we left. We made sure we had all our supplies ready to take ashore and I checked that I had the letter I wrote for the Kindergarten that explained who we were and had a photograph of DSs class. (I wrote the letter in Spanish, but since I only studied it for 2 years in high school, I had a friend from Mexico proof read it for me!) The other part of our excursion was a trip to the Chacchoben Ruins. Since we were going to need a taxi for 11 people to take us to town and the ruins, I had made a cheat sheet of Spanish words I might need although I was really hoping for someone who spoke English! Once we had everything together, we took a few minutes to go and check email and then went to get DS at the club. He was watching the end of Tarzan so we had to wait a few minutes for the movie to end before going back to the room. As before, he was wide awake when we picked him up and out like a light as soon as he was tucked into bed.
Tuesday, October 26: Kids, Ruins and Deep Woods Off
We had arranged to meet our fellow DISers in the atrium at 7:30am. Fortunately, we remembered to put the card for the continental breakfast outside the door the night before. We had a pleasant breakfast of cereal, bagels and muffins. Then we packed our soft-sided cooler with some water, a few snacks for DS and a can of Deep Woods Off. The All Ashore was announced a little before 8:00 and we all trooped off the ship. The pier at Costa Maya is so long that they provide a tram to bring you to the main port complex (where the fake village and shops are) We walked through the complex and out the other side to where the taxi stand was. The person organizing the taxis spoke fluent English and we were able to negotiate the price for the group down a little bit and get it similar to the cost if we just took a taxi to Majahual and then booked a taxi from there to the ruins (that was our original plan, but being able to do it all in one taxi-van was very convenient and by the time we worked it all out, the cost was very similar) The taxi guy ended up adding a family of 4 to our group for 15 people in the taxi. They were just told that we would be stopping in town for a minute when we explained about the Kindergarten and what we were doing, they said Oh, your that group from the DIS board We had found some more lurkers! They joined our group for the whole excursion.
The taxi driver spoke reasonable English and took us all to the Kindergarten. The van was a little squished with all of us (8 adults, 7 children) but it wasnt too bad and there was air-conditioning. Our stop at the Kindergarten was short, but a lot of fun. The teacher did not seem to speak much English, but she smiled a lot and thanked us. The children were incredibly happy they all jumped out of their seats and crowded to the door saying Hola, Hola! The smiles were huge! My DS was a little shy and I could only coax him to say a few words in Spanish, but we did take his picture with some of the children. Several of the kids liked seeing their photograph on the digital camera screen. We didnt want to disrupt their class too much, so in a few minutes we all piled back into the van and headed off to the ruins.
We drove straight to the ruins other than a stop along the way to rescue a turtle! The driver spotted a leatherback turtle starting across the road. He stopped and backed up to where it was. Before putting it into the grass on the other side of the road, he brought it into the van so the kids could all see it.
The drive took us past a military station (Navy training station) which shocked some of the kids since they were all standing about with their rifles. We also traveled though some small villages. I have seen some postings that imply that these are horribly depressing 3rd world places, but although these people are farmers and poor in terms of the material goods we take for granted, everyone we saw looked reasonably clothed and well-fed. Many places had horses and I suspect that may still be a major form of transportation in this part of the world. Their homes are small and not like ours, but they have 4 walls, a roof, a yard, etc. All of us adults felt that this was a very good experience for our children.
We arrived at the ruins after about a 45 minute drive (some of it was quite fast, but since there was no traffic, I dont think anyone felt all that unsafe.) I had arranged via email for a guide to the ruins. His name was Ivan and we had no trouble finding him. Our only problem of the day surfaced at this point since our taxi driver told Ivan that we could only have 1 hour there. We hadnt actually discussed time when we arranged the taxi we actually spent closer to 1 and ½ or ¾ hours and could easily have spent longer. If anyone else does a similar excursion, make certain you specify the time to be spent at the ruins. Since we didnt really pay attention to the 1 hour limit, the only way it really affected us was that some of us were a little nervous he might leave without us if we took too long.
Our guide, Ivan, was fantastic! He was highly recommended and he definitely deserved it. Ivan actually grew up at the Chacchoben ruins. His family lived there before the ruins were discovered. When he was 11, the government decided to start excavating the ruins and the family was relocated (to available government land nowhere near the area.) Ivan is a licensed archaeological site guide, which in Mexico is a fairly highly trained position. To be licensed he had to take a series of classes and tests on archaeology and Mexican history. In addition to all his knowledge, he also had family photos of the ruins before they were excavated and during the early stages.
We were definitely grateful for the can of Deep Woods Off. The mosquitoes were really bad.
After the tour we returned to the taxi. Before we left, several of the kids had their picture taken with an iguana. Silly but they really enjoyed it. The return trip was even a little faster than the previous one he was probably trying to make up some of the extra time we spent at the ruins! Once we were back at Costa Maya, each family tipped the driver. In addition to our monetary tip, we also gave the driver our can of Deep Woods Off we were somewhat surprised by his reaction. He thanked us repeatedly and seemed much more pleased about the can than about the cash!
We all headed back to the ship for lunch and everyone went their own way. After lunch, we were debating if we should head back to Costa Maya to try snorkeling or just relax and then an afternoon tropical rain storm (think Disney World around 3:00 or 4:00) came in, so we decided to just stay aboard. DS, of course, wanted to go to the Mickey Pool. After the Mickey Pool, DS and DH started getting cleaned up and ordered DSs chicken strips and a couple PB&J sandwiches to bring on our excursion the next day. I took 1 hour of relax by myself time and went to the adult pool. Although I brought my book with me, I ended up running into some other DISers from our thread and chatted with them for a while. Then it was time for me to get cleaned up also so we could all go see Hercules the Musical. DS REALLY enjoyed this show. He is still talking about it. DH and I also thought it was fun and a lot of the jokes were pretty funny. If it is the same each time, it might not be a show you would see over and over, but we certainly considered it worth seeing this time. As soon as the show ended, DS wanted to go to his club. This was our evening for Palo, so we spent a few minutes catching up on email and then went to our dinner.
Palo has been described many, many times on the DISboard, so I wont bother to do it again. All I can say is that it lived up to its hype! The food and service were spectacular. Since we couldnt make up our minds on the entrée, we each ordered 2 half-entrées. In my opinion the best was the linguini carbonara I will probably never be able to eat it again without comparing it to Palos version! We shared a chocolate soufflé with vanilla sauce and each had a separate desert. I had a desert that was like cheesecake, but made with ricotta cheese and very light. DH had a pistachio assortment (tart, ice cream, etc.) Everything was perfect. As we were about to leave, we had been planning a walk around the deck, but then DS had us paged from the club. This was the only time he paged us for the entire trip he was tired and didnt want to watch the movie (Mulan). We took him back to the room and then just relaxed for a while and read the next days navigator and got ourselves organized for the next day at Cozumel.
Continued with Part 4
