Day 16
I had set a Mickey call for Graham so that he could go to his exercise classes, but with nothing planned until later in the morning, I asked to put the Privacy sign outside and went back to sleep. This was potentially dangerous as I did not set a new wake up call. Fortunately around 9:00 I got a call reminding me that the Group Brunch in the private dining room in Palo that I had signed up for was at 10:30 that morning. The organizer also mentioned that one of the other people who were supposed to be attending was sick and wondered if Graham wanted to join us. I told her that I would check with him and get back to her. I headed upstairs to deck 9 and I found Graham straightaway. He was enjoying an empty pool. I asked him, which sentiment was stronger: not wanting to get involved in any group activities or getting another Palo Brunch. He had to think about this for about 30 seconds and the told me that getting another Palo Brunch had won out. I told him about the details and then left him his own devices. When I got back to the cabin, I tried to ring the organizer to tell her that Graham would be coming. She was not around, but her husband told me that he would pass on the message.
I still had a bit of time until it was time for Brunch, I decided to do another Fish Extender run for those doing all groups. For the women, I had done mobile phone charms with pumpkin coach charms a Swarovski charms in various shades of blue. For the girls, I had made hair clips with resin Mickey heads. For the men, I had made tie clips with lime green Mickey heads. With the boys I had been struggling again, but I found somebody who did some crayon roll ups for me using our shirt fabric. Once I had finished my Fish Extender run, I headed back to the cabin to get changed. This was the perfect opportunity to wear my new dress that I had bought in Honolulu. Graham appeared in the cabin shortly afterwards and once he was changed, we headed out.
As we still had some time before we needed to head up to Palo, we decided to check out the situation at the future cruise desk. There was one couple being assisted, but there did not seem any more people in line. So we decided to hang around. It did not take long until we were seen. We managed to book a back to back cruise for next year doing the repositioning cruise from Los Angeles to Vancouver and then the first Alaska cruise of the season. We even managed to get the same sideways cabin for both cruises. As it turned out, the Mouse can give and the Mouse can take away. While I was still on the ship, I checked the
DCL website and both cruises were on there. When I went online again at home so that I could forward the details to our
travel agent, who I had nominated when booking, the first cruise had disappeared from the system. I got my travel agent on the case straight away. Initially DCL claimed that the credit card had come back as invalid when they tried to take the deposit. The funny thing is that they charged the deposit for the other cruise to the same card. This was the argument that our travel agent used and she managed to get the cruise reinstated with the original terms. However, the cabin that we were supposed to have was gone. So we had to move cabin for the other cruise, too. Still, all is well that ends well. I just can't understand why they did not contact us if they had problems taking the deposit.
When we got up to deck 10, Palo was still closed. There were quite a few people already waiting and most of them were from our cruise meet thread. Graham decided to get some fresh air. Some of the people that were waiting mentioned that they were looking forward to their Brunch in the dining room. The people in our group started to get a bit alarmed as we knew that they were not talking about the same group Brunch that we had signed up for. It turned out that the private dining room was double booked. Our organiser had arranged this a fair while before the cruise and the confirmation even showed up in her cruise documents. However, Palo had no record of us. Some members of the other group had dinner at Palo the previous night and had enquired about the availability of the private dining room a couple of days later as it was the birthday of one of the people in that group that day. They were told that there was no availability on that day, but that the private dining room was available this morning. Once Palo opened, they realised the mess and were trying to convince our group to take a large table in the main restaurant instead. Our organiser politely declined. The other group then gracefully accepted the alternative arrangements.
Once this was sorted out, it was time to head for the private dining room. I quickly retrieved Graham from outside. This was the first time that I had seen the private dining room. It is quite small, but also very nice. Our server came to introduce himself. This was Nikola who had been our server for a couple of our meals on the Panama Canal cruise and all of our meals at Palo on our Mexican Riviera cruise. Even though the Palo server we had this cruise was fantastic, I was glad to see Nikola. He took our order for either sparkling wine or a Mimosa and made sure that we all had water. Once we all had our drinks and we had settled down, he took us out for a quick tour of the buffet and then let us loose. Graham headed straight for the seafood. I had some bread and cheese and some of the Almond Bread. They had been a bit tight with the filling that day, but it was still very nice. Nikola brought some pizzas for the table. We had Pizza Margerita, Spicy Sausage Pizza and Grape and Cambozola Pizza. It was nice to get the chance to try all of them without filling up too much with pizza. Once we all had our fill of pizza, Nikola came to see if anybody wanted to order some hot food. I ordered my beloved Chicken Parmigiana with Risotto and Graham had some fish dish that he thoroughly enjoyed. I also decided to try the chilled strawberry soup that Nikola had recommended. I don't know why I never thought about ordering this before as the chilled Strawberry soup that they serve on embarkation day is one of my big favourites. I was a little disappointed when Nikola brought the hot food and there was no sign of my strawberry soup. I did not want to be difficult so I did not say anything. The Chicken Parmigiana was as gorgeous as ever and the company was great. I thoroughly enjoyed our Brunch. When we had finished with our main courses, Nikola cleared the table and offered tea and coffee. When he brought the coffee, he also brought my Strawberry Soup. I have to say, this made a fantastic dessert. This is so much better than the one that I had at Parrot Cay before. I started a trend and a couple more people ordered the soup as a dessert. Once I had my soup, I headed out to get some more dessert from the buffet. I could not resist those white chocolate covered strawberries. I also had a small glass of Tiramisu. Graham also had the white chocolate covered strawberries, some fruit tarts and a dessert that Nicola had recommended, which was almost like a trifle. It really was a fantastic meal.
After all this lovely food, we were tired so a post-lunch snooze was in order. Fortunately I did not have anything further planned until our Mascot Meet at 15:00. When I woke up again, I took Pink and we headed for the meet. One of the couples at the Palo Brunch mentioned that they had a soft toy hedgehog called Hedgie and that they would bring her to the meet. Graham has a soft toy called Hedgie, too and I decided to take her along as well. While we were chatting to each other online in the year before the cruise, people often posted photos of their little stuffed travel companies and the little outfits that they had made for them. At one stage the idea was born to organize a meet for the little furry travellers and their owners. I had tried to get a private space for an hour, but there were no more venues available for private functions. My contact at DCL Shoreside recommended that we should just meet in the Promenade Lounge, which we did in the end. The turn out was good and it was great to see all the different stuffed travellers in their holiday finest. One of the bartenders at the Promenade Lounge had somehow found out about this and had brought her stuffed friends, too.
After the meet, I stayed behind for a bit. Somebody from our cruise meet thread was kind enough to let me have her off cuts from our cruise shirt fabric so that I could get the crayon roll ups for the boys made. We had agreed that I would buy her a drink during the cruise. As we were both at the Promenade Lounge, this seemed like the perfect opportunity. She had a beer and I went with the Drink of the Day, which was Blue Ocean that day. There are various versions of this, but the version that they served on the ship consisted of Gin, Blue Curacao, Lime and Tonic Water. It tasted kind of like a grown up Gin and Tonic and was very nice. We chatted for a while. At one point the cruise staff started to set up for Disney Tune Trivia. I decided to hang around. There were some other people that I knew so I joined them. I have to say I am not very good at this. I recognized 3 tunes. Still, I enjoyed it and that is the main thing. After the trivia, I headed back to the atrium. While we had our Mascot Meet, they had the Minnies Fiesta Grande deck party up on deck 9. Afterwards Minnie and the dancers were posing for photos in the atrium.
cant wait to see photos...
