I will do my best to get another installment of this never-ending story written today. I’m literally stuck in bed with a sick kid. Kevin has a double ear infection along with a fever and will not let me leave his side. Never mind that there are piles of laundry, no food in the fridge, dog hair in the kitchen and shattered glass in the basement (doesn’t everyone have their daughter practice fastpitch with a panel of glass nearby? No? Well, apparently I do). So, here I sit watching Nickelodeon for hours on end. After my 4th episode of Fairly Odd Parents, it dawns on me that with a handy dandy laptop, I can write more trip report. Yes, the trip report from back in early November. Does anyone really care anymore? Probably not but here goes anyway.
Thursday Nov. 9th cont…drunks eating chocolate
We leave Animator’s Palate and head towards the pictures. This is it, our last chance to get our Christmas card shot. I think I’m calm about it since I already have decent pictures but once we get to the lobby, my picture-obsessed personality takes over. Christine and I feed off each other and it’s kind of scary, actually. The line at the white background is pretty long and we moms start getting antsy. We need these pictures but we also need to get to Disney Dreams. We had passed the moonlight background on the way over and it wasn’t as crowded as this line. Chuck offers to wait in the white background line while I take the kids over to the moonlight background. “But what about you being in the picture?” I ask. Nope, he shakes his head, “kids only, I’m done.”
Well, OK then, sounds like a plan. We and the Boots head past Lumiere’s over to the moonlight background. Christine is still hoping for a good family shot so Keith is not off the hook yet. The line is long here too, much longer than when we passed it 5 minutes ago. Oh well, might as well wait. The kids are generally well-behaved and the wait is not so bad. We are next in line when Christine notices the kids club bracelets. We will not make the same mistake again, they must come off for these semi-formal pictures! Since tomorrow is
Castaway Cay, they are officially done with the clubs. Keith whips out a pocketknife and starts cutting bracelets. Wow Keith, how MacGyverish of you! Chuck is not the pocketknife type so it always surprises me when a guy wears one. He and Christine have a conversation about the microchip thingies and I swear I hear Keith say they don’t need them anymore as he heads toward the garbage. I’m not so sure so I slip our 2 microchips in my pocket.
The family in front of us is taking every picture configuration possible. It’s like an SAT question from hell…there are 6 family members in total, how many different picture configurations can a Shutters photographer take?
1. The basic family of 4
2. The basic family of 4 with 2 grandparents
3. The 2 kids together (they weren’t even kids, they were early 20’s…will I still be like this when my kids are in their 20’s?)
4. The daughter with the mom
5. The daughter and mom with the grandmother
6. The son with the father
7. The son and the father with the grandfather
8. The 2 kids with the grandparents
We think this is the end but now the mother wants one of each kid individually. Oh for the love of pete! The girls are watching this and come up with the idea that they want their pictures taken together. I’m thinking of Chuck standing by himself back at the white background…he’s got to be getting close to the front of that line. For the hundredth time this cruise, the walkie talkies would have been useful here.
It’s finally our turn and my kids go up for their shot. Kevin attempts to smile for the first time all week and after 2 or 3 quick shots, we’re done. I’m ready to head back to the other line but the girls beg and plead for a picture. Well…it’s not as bad as the people in front of us and it’s not often you get a professional picture with your friend, so…OK but make it quick.
Here are our cruise girls:
The girls get their shot and of course the boys want a picture together too. We push them forward and get a quick shot of the 5 kids together. Kevin is smiling in his own way for this one too.
I gather my group and jog back to Chuck and the white background while the Boots take a quick family picture. We are in overdrive.
We arrive at the white background to find Chuck with only one family in front of him. The kids take their shoes off (a rule on the white background) and the Boots arrive with plenty of time. It’s this point that I start to feel bad about our little supermarket line trick. I’m sure the people behind us did not bargain for two families. I vow to make it as quick as possible and tell myself that Chuck did wait there, they must have realized people were coming.
The photographer arranges my kids on the mat, takes 3 quick shots and we’re done. Kevin tries to smile for these pictures too. What a difference from the tear-streaked pictures from Monday’s formal night. Keith refuses to take another family shot so it’s just Kyle and Alyssa on the mat. Christine really wants Kyle to smile nicely so I jump behind the photographer and dance around like the crazy woman I am. The kids start cracking up and Mr. Shutter’s photographer snaps the picture at the perfect time. We’re done taking pictures! Off to Disney Dreams!
We arrive at the theatre just as they’re letting people in. The kids immediately head towards “our seats” on the side in the front. Chuck is now resigned to sitting in these seats but at least now, at the end of the week, he has stopped trying to convince the kids there are better seats available.
We settle in and wait for the show to start. Steph sees her friends across the way and goes over for a visit. She comes back asking if she can sit with them and I say OK. But she returns after a few minutes b/c her end seat on our side is better than the 5th or 6th seat on their side.
Contrary to Chuck’s opinion, these really are great seats for Disney Dreams. The bed in the show gets moved over right in front of us and we’re sooo close to the actors, we can see the sweat on Peter Pan’s face. Yes, we are close! These seats again prove to be fabulous as the bubbles come at the end and the kids just can’t help themselves and start popping them one by one. No way we are going to get them to remain seated with all these bubbles floating around so we just try to keep them from making too much noise while they’re popping.
We all really love Disney Dreams. It is my favorite show of the week. There’s nothing in life that can’t be fixed with a little faith, trust and pixie dust. (I should have remembered this on our trip home! Yes, that would be foreshadowing!! I should get to writing that sometime this summer!)
After the show, we head back to the room. It’s been another long day for these kids. Tomorrow is Castaway Cay and we want everyone refreshed. Besides, Christine and I have big plans for tonight, big plans. We plan to meet out in the hallway in a few minutes.
Chuck and I get the kids in PJ’s, all the while listening to them ask for chocolate chip cookies. OK, fine, I knew there would be cookies sometime tonight. Steph calls for cookies and milk and Chuck orders a BLT to get his money’s worth or something like that. There’s nothing like room service:
I kiss everyone goodnight, grab my brown folder and my KTTW card and out the door I go. Knock on room 2620 where all is quiet inside. Apparently I’m the only nutty mother allowing her children huge cookies at 10:30 pm. Christine has folder in hand and we take care of our first order of business…the kids’ clubs.
We hand in our beepers and the CM asks for the bracelet chip thingies. I hand mine over but Christine doesn’t have hers. I tell her I thought Keith threw them out. She has no idea what he did with them. I remind her of the conversation in the picture line and how he went right to the garbage can. She asks the CM what happens if you don’t have the bracelet thingies and the CM says it’s $25 each. Christine is horrified and says she has to go back to the room. The CM offers her the phone and she calls Keith who thankfully put them in his pocket. I could have sworn he threw them out! The CM says she can hand them back tomorrow.
We ask about getting t-shirts for the 2 kids who weren’t at graduation and the CM asks if we can come back tomorrow b/c the person in charge is not there. OK, we’ll have to remember tomorrow to make it here at some point.
After this, we head to our primary destination…Shutters (oh, like you’re surprised!).
First order of business is to collect our pictures still on display, mostly our pirate night pictures. We look around for the pictures taken tonight but we don’t see them anywhere. We walk over to our spot by the desk and the door and say hi to Bahar who is working behind the desk.
She squeals when she sees us. She immediately asks us what we want to drink. Huh? Really, you don’t have to get us drinks. No, she insists…she is getting us a drink and she’ll choose it if we don’t tell her. She apologizes for not having cushions out for us, she was not able to find any for us. We tell her it’s quite all right, we don’t need cushions, we just need our spot on the floor. She is so excited to see us!! We’re laughing before we even sit down.
She asks us one more time what we’d like to drink but I’m torn over ordering something b/c I can’t be sure if it’s on the house or on her tab. I really don’t want her to have to pay for it but I can’t think of a tactful way of asking. So we just keep smiling and telling her we don’t need a drink.
We ask if tonight’s pictures are ready and she tells us not yet. She’ll let us know when they are. We settle in on the floor and get to work. I absolutely love our pirate pictures. They are so much better than the formal ones. For the first time, I wonder aloud if I should use a pirate picture for my Christmas card. Christine says, “why not?” and I wonder some more. They really are the best pictures and it would be fun, it would be original and it wouldn’t be something I could do again.
Just as I’m pondering this, a waiter appears balancing a tray with a napkin draped over his arm.
“I have some drinks for you ladies on behalf of the staff here at Shutters.”
We scramble to our feet to take our drinks from the waiter, our faces red and the Shutters CM’s laughing at us. We thank him and Bahar and she says “I hope you like Coke, you could have just told me what you wanted.”
We sit back down with our Cokes and carefully place them away from our precious pictures. Now I haven’t had a coke in years. I rarely drink soda and hardly ever drink coke but I drank my Shutter’s coke. And it made my punchy. And giggly. And wired!!
We sort through lots of photos and I’m ready for the slot of doom. I don’t have the same anxiety I had on Tuesday. I’m a new confident Disney cruiser. As I get to my feet for the slot of doom across the way, Bahar points out that there is a slot right next to where we’re sitting. It’s built in underneath the display boards and I never noticed it. She tells me to put all our pictures in there. I tell her I didn’t even notice it was there and she says no one does, it will be our own personal slot of doom!
A Shutters CM comes out of the back room with a whole stack of pictures. “Are those the pictures from tonight?” we ask. Yes he nods. “Can we look through them?” No he shakes. We have to wait for them to go up on the board. Bummer.
We look through our pictures some more while the stack of pictures just sits on the desk. They’re calling to me. If I could see our shots from tonight, I could make some definitive decisions. I get up and go over to the stack. I ask Bahar if I can look through them to see if our pictures are there. She says “go ahead”. Yeah!!! I feel like a little kid who got a “no” from one parent and a “yes” from the other. The yes wins!!
I’m very careful to not get my fingerprints all over the photos. I leaf through them but our pictures are not there. These are the early ones, taken before dinner. Bummer.
Bahar sits down with us to look at our pictures. Christine complains some more about her double chin and asks again about photoshopping. Bahar still avoids the question instead focusing Christine on how to pose her head during the shot. She tells us she will be on Castaway Cay tomorrow, doing the photos alongside the ship and she will work with us to get single chins.
We’re done a lot quicker tonight. We really just sort through the obviously bad pictures. We can’t make any real decisions until we see the shots from tonight. Bahar updates our cards and sends us off with our cokes and thoughts of single chins. We are both feeling the affects of the sugar, caffeine and bedtime and are very giggly.
As we leave Shutters I realize that the chocolate fountain buffet is happening right this minute. We should go!! We laugh about how the guys are stuck in the room with the kids while we’re going to a chocolate fountain. For some reason, this sends us into near hysterics by the time we reach Lumiere’s and the chocolate fountain.
With cokes and pictures in hand, we reach the table. We have no hands to take a plate. We laugh some more. Not seeing the waiters there, I grab a pre-selected plate of goodies and head to the nearest table. Apparently I was not supposed to do this b/c a waiter swoops down on me telling me we can’t sit there. I jump up like the seat is on fire, sending Christine into more fits of laughter. This sets me off and we’re both hysterically laughing in the middle of Lumiere’s.
The waiter escorts us over to another waiter and he gives the guy a look and a nod toward us. The second waiter gives us this glance that Christine and I both read exactly the same…they think we’re drunk!! This makes us laugh even more. We follow the second waiter who hands us off to a third waiter. For crying out loud, it’s an empty restaurant and we just want to eat chocolate!! The third waiter takes us clear across the restaurant and seats us at a table that has chocolate stains all over it. Apparently he thinks the 2 drunk ladies are too sloshed to notice the dirty tablecloth…of course setting us off on even more hysterics.
We eat our chocolate covered marshmallows and bananas but decide not to go back for more. Too far away and we’re much too punchy. We grab our folders, leave our coke glasses and head out of the restaurant with every eye on us. We make our way back to our rooms and I say goodnight to my “drunk” friend and try to wind down enough to fall asleep. Chuck is fast asleep which is just as well cause I start to feel bad that he missed the chocolate. I consider packing up a bit but all the suitcases are under the beds that have sleeping bodies on them. Big mistake.
Up next…Castaway Cay and the worst beach picture ever taken!