The" Never Say Never" Cruise - Dream August 25, 2017 - COMPLETED

[ukintheus]

Back onto the verandah to look around and see what all the busy people are doing. Us non-busy people have to be busy watching the busy people – it’s how it works.

Lounger in the shade,..…OK, we are set!!! Although we didn’t stay outside long as it was really hot.

We were watching the TV off and on as the Governor of Texas was supposed to be giving a press conference. He really didn’t give any more information than we had got already from the TV coverage, especially as what I was really looking for was for him to say “your brother’s house is OK and so is yours”, yeah, he didn’t do that.

We decided to go and watch the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie that was showing in the Buena Vista theatre at (I think) 2:30 pm. I had read that you could get popcorn free in the concierge lounge so we swung in there just after 2:00 pm and picked up a bag and some waters (we constantly picked up water – that was nice). She did ask us if we wanted more than one, I said no, bad move You can never have too much popcorn! There were about 4 other people in the movie theatre when we got there and two of them were the couple that were leaving with their popcorn from the lounge right as we were. It filled up fast though the closer it got to the start time and it was pretty full once the movie started. I need to watch it again to decide if I enjoyed it or not. I didn’t like the way they portrayed Captain Jack in this one…as I said, I’ll watch it again as it’s one of my favorite movie franchises of all time.

We got back up to our cabin right as cocktail hour was starting in the lounge, so we grabbed a drink and headed back to our verandah.

It was pretty warm and there wasn’t much in the shade so we had to maneuver chairs around to get where we could sit out of the sun but we enjoy the people watching of everyone coming back onboard. The Norwegian Sky left shortly after we sat down.

The music from Senor Frogs was going and we could hear it from our verandah, so it gave us some music to listen to while we sat out there. Our all aboard time was 5:15 pm but it was now 5:35 pm and they still had the gangway down.

We were slightly obsessed with trying to figure out who it was that they were waiting for, even though it was hot and we were in the sun we didn’t want to leave and miss it! Unfortunately, at 6:15 pm, this ambulance showed up and he was looking our way.

They took a young girl off on a stretcher, although she was cuddling a stuffed animal so I’m hoping that she was OK. About 4 family members got off with her along with their luggage. I felt so bad for them because we have had to do that before on a cruise with my family and I know how stressful it is. Hopefully everything worked out OK for them.

While we were out on the verandah, someone from the concierge team popped into our room and delivered this lithograph. I had read that everyone in concierge gets one, but I hadn’t seen what it looked like.

I decided that I was going to use that massive bathtub and I had come prepared! I had brought a bath bomb with me that I had got from Basin in the Grand Floridian several vacations ago with my Mum and sister. It took a long time to run though! I actually felt a bit bad for using all that water, which makes me chuckle because the British have a “thing” about wasting water which is silly as it’s never been a third world country!! “Waste not, want not.” I can hear it now!

So these Mickey bath bombs have cute dissolving mickey heads in them….I just love them. I think I have 1 left at home

I watched us sail away on the TV in the bathroom and Scott took photographs from the verandah. I was actually running out of time as we had a reservation at Remy at 7:30 pm and I didn’t get into the bath until 6:40 pm and I still needed to wash my hair, which required me to also take a shower. So it wasn’t as relaxing as I would have liked. Here’s some relaxing pictures for you though, you don’t have to rush to get ready, so take your time looking at them but imagine me running around like a crazy person after about 5 of them.

Scott got some good ones of the spit of land that the lighthouse is on. I always like to try and find one from our trip to get a print made to put on the wall and I think one of these will be it from this trip.

 

[ukintheus]

And so we sail off into the sunset…..and are now really late getting ready for dinner.

Much frenzied showering and getting dressed up followed these tranquil photographs and we were finally ready and walking out of the door by 7:30 pm. Another fail on our part to take a photograph of ourselves and I realize I didn't get one of us all night, not even a selfie. Of course we had the trek from our cabin to Remy to make, so we packed the Sherpas and got started. It wouldn’t be bad if you just went out onto Deck 12 and made your way back there, but that would involve being outside and stairs up and down on the pool deck and when you are in fancy duds, and particularly high heels, that just isn’t going to happen. Especially since I had literally just finished drying my hair, and it would instantly frizz if it got into humidity….oh the problems!

We got to Remy and they seated us immediately. Made it! How going to dinner became stressful is beyond me?? We literally did NOTHING all day!!

Scott went with the Savuer menu and I went with the Gout. We also got the wine pairings and we ate half of our plates and then shared it with each other, so we both got a bit of everything. First up though is their complimentary signature cocktail the Colette. We also only used an iphone for photographs as I had taken my camera but it doesn’t take great photos when it’s darker – at least not when I’m taking them anyway.

This is the amuse bouche which is crispy on the outside and then has liquid tomato soup on the inside. Clever clogs chef.

They serve the salt and butter in these cute little pots, but recently I’ve been wondering about the salt when it’s served this way….who else has stuck their fingers in there? HMMM..

The next course was not on the menu and it was a fois gras foam with a macadamia nut sauce at the bottom. I’ve never had fois gras before and I wasn’t keen on the taste really but Scott loved it.

Because we are on vacation, and therefore are obviously millionaires while we are away in our little bubble world , we decided to add a course of caviar. We both love it, but rarely (never) ever splurge for it. They offered it served to us in the American tradition with blinis or in the French tradition. We went with the French seeing as we hadn’t had it before. I forgot to take photographs of it when they served it but they brought the little container and left it on the table, so I got a snap of that. We wouldn’t order it served in the French tradition again, it wasn’t as good in our opinion. The quality of the caviar wasn't great either for the price.

Next up is our “first” course. Octopus for me, which was a bit out of my comfort zone but I decided to give everything a try and see if I liked it. This was OK, the texture was very firm which was what I was worried about, but it didn’t have much flavor. Scott thought it was good.

Scott got a dish with tomatoes served in different ways, he didn’t love it, where as I thought it was lovely, and nicer than the octopus.

I am totally forgetting what my next course was, although obviously it was fish, but I’m forgetting what kind and I can’t find a menu online that is exactly what we had. My mind is telling me Golden Tile, but where that’s come from I have no clue!

Scott got this dish, which was sashimi salmon (raw) wrapped in a bit of seaweed I think. He loved it, it was just OK for me.

Here’s a view from the other side.

Here’s a photo to prove we were having the wine pairings. Like you would question that.

We were all entertained by this lady who was playing the electric violin. She was very good and wandered around the restaurant, it was a nice touch. <- I've never got to use this guy before!

At this point, cue the sandman please!! The dreaded jet lag began to hit Scott and he was fading fast. He got up and used the restroom to see if walking around would help him out any. I pointed out (probably not helpfully ) that we hadn’t even had our main course yet! The main course arrived right after he got back, thankfully. I think mine was Wagyu beef, but my memory is that Scott had that…oh well, here it is anyway!

And I think this was pork belly. I have to say that both of these were just OK as they were both very oversalted, and it spoiled the overall taste. I know we didn’t finish them.

Despite trying hard to be awake and enjoy it, Scott was completely flagging at this point and I could tell that he was just miserable so I asked the waiter to just speed up the service and we would skip the next course, which was the cheese….wahhhhhh….. Dessert was delivered and we both had a couple of bites each…oh how I wish I could go back in time and really enjoy these!

Chocolate tarte with raspberries for me and a chocolate mousse for Scott which was to die for!

They then brought all the scrummy delicious little things to have afterwards but we didn’t eat any of them. These were given to us in a little packet to take with us.

But sadly these didn’t get touched and they don’t let you take them.

We snapped these photographs while we were waiting for the check to be dealt with, which seemed to take forever because Scott was sooo tired and so ready to get to bed.

Not a great photo of Remy, but the details they have in here are just so cute.

It was 9:45 pm when we walked out, so we had been in there a while, but Remy dinner can typically take about 2 hours or longer, especially when you add courses! We have only done Remy dinner once before back in 2012 on the Fantasy and it was absolutely wonderful. This was just OK, the food wasn't great to be honest, lots of things had been oversalted, and some things didn't have that flavor that you expect from a 5 star experience. We were definitely underwhelmed this time.

Back out in the real world.....Pirates were everywhere tonight!

A quiet Cove pool…

We cut through Cabanas to get upstairs and the buffet was waiting for everyone. They had some good looking watermelon carvings. Funnily enough, Scott managed to get some photos while we were passing through, I think they were enough to temporarily wake him up.

It was 9:50 pm when we got back into the room and Scott took a quick photo of our “pirate” before shoving him off the bed, peeling off his clothes and instantly falling fast asleep!

I went out onto the verandah to watch the fireworks. The people next to us were out and I chatted to the lady there for a little while before the fireworks started. I took a video but didn’t get any photographs…of course…but this is the direction they went from, so there was a great view!

Right after the fireworks ended I headed to bed. I got on the internet to check on home real quick and heard from friends that there had been tornadoes to the west of Houston, and very close to where one friend lives, and that the rain was just crazy with no let-up in sight but that everyone was safe.

Coming up: Castaway Cay

 

[ukintheus]

Hi Jenny,

I'm really enjoying your trip report! I'm tentatively planning (fingers crossed) the same three-night itinerary on the Dream next February, so your information and photos have been valuable

Keep up the great work!

I realized I hadn't replied to you - thanks for following along. Hope you manged to get you cruise next February booked.

 

[bcwife76]

Well looks like it was a near perfect stay-on-the-ship-in-Nassau-day! Too bad about Remy though. I keep going back and forth on whether my hubby and I should try it next time we are on the Fantasy. I have a feeling it might just not be for us though Perhaps we will try the Remy champagne brunch and/or the dessert experience instead of the dinner.

 

[ukintheus]

Well looks like it was a near perfect stay-on-the-ship-in-Nassau-day! Too bad about Remy though. I keep going back and forth on whether my hubby and I should try it next time we are on the Fantasy. I have a feeling it might just not be for us though Perhaps we will try the Remy champagne brunch and/or the dessert experience instead of the dinner.

I think the Remy brunch is definitely a good place to try first - good idea. The dinner isn't for everyone that's for sure, and the dress code is more relaxed for the brunch which makes packing easier too. You know we are really go with the flow folks, and rarely do we feel the way that we felt about that Remy dinner. I really didn't feel like this particular one was worth the upcharge. As an example, the caviar came with a complimentary glass of Krug champagne...ooohhh fancy! They gave us one glass (I get that, it only came with one). But, they knew we were both having the caviar, for a 5 star experience you would think they might have split that one pouring in two glasses instead of us both sharing the same glass. Sharing a glass and swapping spit (although hopefully not too much spit ) when you are eating fish eggs, doesn't really stand out as 5 star experience!

 

[ukintheus]

Sunday, August 27th – Castaway Cay

We woke up a bit later this morning and we were already docked at Castaway Cay, it think it was at about 7:45 am, and by the time we looked outside we could see the island sitting waiting for us and it looked like we were going to have another good day weather-wise.

It was time to grab a bite to eat and get some coffee so we headed into the lounge. It wasn’t too crowded… but I have a story to tell. LOL There was a couple with a little girl about 3 years old who was veeerrrrrry sleepy. You could see she was just zoned out looking at the TV and completely out of it. Her Mom must have spent about 15 minutes asking her SO many questions and of course she just bobbed her head to all of them seeing as she was zoned out. “Do you want milk?” bobbed head, Mum went off to get it. “Do you want juice?” bobbed head, off went Mum, “do you want yogurt”…”do you want fruit”…“do you want cereal”… do you want a muffin?” I am not joking, by the time this lady was done, this half asleep 3 year old had almost every item that was on the buffet sitting in front of her! I doubt she ate more than 2 bites. Waste not, want not comes to mind.

While I’m busy being a nosey gossip and talking about other people behind their back, here’s our breakfast. Ditto on yesterday basically.

Here are some more photographs of what they had to offer, but it was the same as the day before.

This was the coffee machine, it was easy to use, but there was a trick to getting something that tasted good to me and not too strong. They also had 2 different syrups available, but neither of them was sugar free. I probably could have asked for it now I think about it, but I didn’t think about it at the time.

We went back to the cabin and threw a few things into the backpack to take with us for our day and snuck this selfie in while we were at it.

We got off the ship at about 9:15 am and we followed this crazy goof out. Stitch was heading off to his character spot but of course messed around with people along the way.

He had people waiting for him already, these little girls were first up.

Quick snap of the ship while we walked along, and then we saw Daisy at the post office.

We decided we would walk to the tram stop for Serenity Bay and so we took a few photographs along the way. It was much warmer than our usual Nov/Dec/Jan trips here from Galveston and it was actually nice to be there in warmer weather.

The family beach wasn’t crowded at all this early, still plenty of space, but people were already in the water and enjoying their day.

We got to the tram stop and waited for the next tram to Serenity Bay.

I guess I have never looked up before, because I don’t remember seeing this dinghy here before.

These two guys had just run the 5K and people were congratulating the one guy on winning. He said he held the record on the island and that they had taken his photograph when he set the record. My recollection is that he said his time was just under 13 minutes!

The tram arrived and we got into the back like the bad kids that we are.

When we got to Serenity Bay we checked in with the cabana place and were whisked off to Cabana 25 for the day.

Nothing had changed since our visit with the family in January, but the magazines were laid out on the table instead of left in the rack, and they also had a copy of the navigator there. Nice touch!

 

[ukintheus]

We got ourselves situated and decided to go and get into the water seeing as it was nice and warm. This is our first time to use floats on CC!! It’s always too cold when we are here normally. We slathered ourselves in sunscreen and headed out to the water, which was the perfect temperature. Definitely a plus to sailing in the summer.

I’m pretty proud of this one, I took it without really being able to see what I was taking and it came out pretty well I thought.

We just lazed about really and floated out there for about an hour I’m guessing. I had taken the underwater camera with me (I usually forget it) and so snapped a few photos. Some of them have a water droplet on the lens, I need to google how to avoid that. I read somewhere to use RainX which makes sense.

Not much to see at Serenity Bay underwater but here’s a photo for you anyway.

The water was deeper than it usually is and I had to be pretty close to shore to get on and off the float. When we were here in January we walked out to the sandbar without getting our shoulders wet, so it was a really big difference. I was in about waist deep water within 8 feet this time. On the way back in Scott found a sand dollar (he stepped on it! ) we took its picture as it made it unscathed (or so we hope) and then put it back in.

We got ourselves comfy and settled in for a relaxing lounge and a waiter came around so we ordered these. We didn’t order the cooler, but he put Scott’s beer in it to keep it cold and said he would just come back for it later, but he never did.

Happy drinks, happy people, happy place!! Yay!!

This little guy was hanging around on the back of one of the chairs. He would tilt his head every time we moved the chair around, and eventually decided he’d had enough and scurried off the deck. On another nature note, there weren’t anywhere near as many birds as there are in the winter – I’m assuming a lot are migratory.

Our cabana host guy had asked us what time we wanted to go to lunch and we said anytime around noon, so he came and got us right before noon. Very punctual!

There weren’t many people there yet and the food set up was different from when we sail on the Wonder there. Don’t know if it’s just changed or if different ships set up differently but the soda machine had moved to a different location and the dessert table was a bit larger, although I didn’t see anything different on it. We also had to ask for food instead of just serving it ourselves out of chafing dishes. I have a feeling it may be to do with the Dream Class ships, but not sure???

Scott got a steak and I got some fish and chicken. The fish was dry but the rest was good.

I don’t know why I took this photograph, and I don’t know why I’m putting it in my trip report really…but here it is anyway!

Scott then got a burger and some ribs, although half of the ribs were for me. They didn’t have them when we first went through the line. They were different from the kind we have had before and again, we wondered if it was to do with the ship, or maybe just the meat supplier from FL vs TX. Interesting to see the differences as you don’t really think about it otherwise.

We both popped into the loo before heading back and I experienced another first! There was a man in the ladies room!! My guess is that he hadn’t figured out that it was a ladies room as he looked a little confused before wandering back out. He wasn’t exactly rushing to get out though, so maybe he thought it was unisex?

Here’s the melted and half eaten strawberry and vanilla ice cream that I couldn’t pass up.

We got back into the water for a little while but it was getting pretty hot and so we decided to just chillax on loungers. So another interesting little tidbit is that in the summer there is basically NO shade on the deck part at all, you have to be inside the cabana itself. There is that hanging screen thing, but it doesn’t really provide shade. So, we moved the furniture around a LOT. It kept rumbling thunder and we were hoping that we might get a break from the sun but it never materialized into anything significant. At about 3 pm we got a very brief shower of rain but somewhere there had to be a rainbow as the sun was mostly out the whole time.

 

[ukintheus]

This little guy was happy to give himself a quick bath in the droplets of rainwater on this bush. He was very cute to watch. I did try feeding the birds some grapes and strawberries but none of them were interested.

And then it was back to doing nothing. We both read our books and I got a bit fidgety with no people watching going on, so I got my camera and played around with it a bit. By this time the palm tree in the corner was providing a little bit of shade so we were both squeezed into it.

These two were on a different setting that I didn’t even know existed…I’ve had this camera for about 2 years, I am horrible about figuring out how to work things other than “auto” mode.

We were going to be picked up to go back to the ship at about 4 pm so I made Scott put all the furniture back in its proper place, which he didn’t appreciate, and we took one more nice and sweaty selfie while we waited for our ride.

He arrived on time but asked if we wouldn’t mind waiting for him to take the trash and the food/fruit etc. back first and would be back for us. We tried to give him the cooler, but he said we should take it back on board, so we hung out for a bit longer and then he was back to get us. It is very nice that they take you all the way back to the ship, they could easily just drop you off at the tram place, but you get VIP service on the way back.

We were on board by 4:30 pm and we swung by the lounge to see what to do with the cooler that had been left with us. Nobody wanted to take that sucker from us! The concierge lady didn’t want it either! The lounge was quiet so I asked her if she could look at some future cruise prices for us and she said yes. She also asked if we had been left our United paperwork for tomorrow and I told her that we hadn’t so I went off to get all the information. I checked to see how things were going at home and had a message from our neighbor with this photograph of a fallen tree by our driveway that a very kind neighbor had already cut down. He also said that we wouldn’t be able to get into our neighborhood as there was flooding so we may need to try and get a hotel room in Tomball.

So here’s the part where things started going south in a hurry. I go back into the lounge and we discover that the reason we don’t have paperwork for our United flight is that it has been cancelled….along with every other flight back to Houston. The concierge staff did a great job trying to find us an alternative, but the reality is that they only had the United website to work with as well, and there was nothing going back to Houston for the next 3 days with Thursday being the first available!! We tried alternative airports and there were no options. So we were stuck. We tried to figure out what the best thing to do was, and they even found us a cabin on the ship if we decided we just wanted to do another sailing. To be honest, the next few hours were pretty much a blur while we tried to juggle logistics. I ended up booking a room at the Hyatt at the airport for the night on Monday night and went back to the room to talk to Scott about what to do. He had started packing, as we hadn’t done any of that, and it was now about 7 pm. I texted back and forth to friends and we discovered that Houston had completely shut down with unprecedented flooding. Of course, I also needed to figure out what I could do about our pets, and thankfully we have an awesome neighbor who offered to come and care for them until we could get home. It was pretty stressful and we really didn’t know what the right thing to do was.

After much discussion, we decided to switch tracks completely and to book to stay at Disney World for a few nights. We didn’t want to sit at the airport with absolutely nothing to do for 3 days and by all accounts we couldn’t get into our neighborhood even if we could find a flight to get us there. I wish that had flickered into my brain before I booked a non-refundable room at the Hyatt, ugg! So I went and asked the concierge staff if I could use a computer to book at WDW as I was almost out of data and I needed what I had left to keep in touch with home. It took a little while but I booked 3 nights with tickets and they changed our transfers to go from the port to WDW so we were all set! The concierge staff were very helpful and concerned for us and she was worried we hadn’t eaten and talked us into going to the main dining room for dinner. So we showered and got ready to go to dinner in the main dining room. I did have a brain fart and thought I could get a load of laundry done beforehand, which of course wasn’t even reasonable given the time we had, so that was a wasted journey.

Anyway, trying to put stress behind us we headed off for dinner. Hey, at least we got some atrium photos! This was the first time we’d been back through here since arriving!

Tonight we were in Royal Palace and we met our dining team for the first time, who were a hoot - we would have had a great time with them!

Obligatory bread basket photo and a photo from our table (looking to the side).

We both were pretty boring and ordered the same thing. Escargot and Beef Wellington. We only ordered two courses tonight and we skipped out of the restaurant before they served dessert but it was all really good.

Managed to snap this of Admiral Donald on the way out.

We went back to the lounge to grab a drink - go figure!!! I hadn’t taken any photographs of the artwork along the entryway, so here it is for your viewing pleasure.

There was a couple in the lounge who overheard the concierge staff asking us about the hurricane and the wife offered to take us to Disneyworld the next morning! I assured her that we had Disney transport all lined up, and she told me that they lived very close and that her husband (who was very quiet but seemed a super nice guy) used to be the director for all of Disney Parks attractions worldwide. Wow!! I wish I could have sat him down for a couple of hours and grilled him on all sorts of things! He did tell me that if we were going to be in the parks that we should not miss the new Flight of Passage attraction at Animal Kingdom and that it was by far the most creative project that the imagineers had done, and he has ridden every ride in every park, so he knew what he was talking about. I was kicking myself for declining the offer of a ride. Not really, that would have been weird!

We got back to the room and took this photograph of this little cutie before finishing up the packing. We had decided to carry off all our luggage as we weren’t organized enough to have it out tonight. After much texting back and forth to family and friends we finally settled down for the night.

Coming up: Embarkation and Hurricane Harvey diversion to WDW.

 

[TestingH2O]

Amazing report. Remy dinner looks divine. I'd love to try it one day, but not with my husband. He's way too afraid of trying new things.

 

[ukintheus]

Amazing report. Remy dinner looks divine. I'd love to try it one day, but not with my husband. He's way too afraid of trying new things.

It is something that you need to be open minded for (IMO anyway.) Sounds like you may need a Remy wingman.

 

[bcwife76]

Oh wow....what a lovely relaxing day at Serenity Bay and then.....chaos! I'm glad you were able to make a new plan but I can only imagine how worried/stressed you were about everything happening back home, even IF it meant having a spontaneous stay at WDW.

 

[ukintheus]

Oh wow....what a lovely relaxing day at Serenity Bay and then.....chaos! I'm glad you were able to make a new plan but I can only imagine how worried/stressed you were about everything happening back home, even IF it meant having a spontaneous stay at WDW.

I'm actually really glad that we didn't find out earlier or it would have spoiled our day on Serenity Bay, so even though it was a hectic evening, we did have a lovely day, so it all worked out. Yes, wasn't planning on a trip to WDW!!

 

[ukintheus]

Monday, August 28th – Embarkation

We were up bright and early this morning. Of course first thing was to see what was going on at home, although it was more of the same. Lots of bad news and not much good news on us hoping to get home. The good news was that both of our work places were closed due to the weather, so it’s not like we were missing work. Everyone else was too!

We were already in port when I popped outside to take this at 6:50 am.

We then wandered into the lounge to grab a quick bite for breakfast, which was the usual fare for both of us. The first passengers were escorted out of the lounge right before 7:10 am to disembark. SIDE NOTE It was the couple that we had met last night where the man had worked as an exec for Disney. I’ve googled him since we got home. He was a REALLY big wig, Al Weiss, who retired as president of worldwide operations for Disney parks and resorts in 2011 after working for Disney for 39 years! I knew he would be interesting!

Anyway, we had a couple of cups of coffee and hung out for a little while in there before getting our luggage from our cabin at about 8 am. We were walked off the ship at about 8:30 am and were off the ship in about 5 minutes – it was incredibly fast. We stood outside and waited for a little while for the resort bus, but were on it by 8:45 am and were pulling away right at 9:00 am. A quick picture of the Dream as we pulled away.

We both caught up on email and all the real world stuff on our ride over to DisneyWorld. I also got the Disneyworld app fired up and tried to get some Fastpasses arranged. I haven’t really kept up on what’s going on at WDW as we “were NEVER going to go any time soon”. This is one of those instances though where it’s really good to be addicted to reading other people’s trip reports. I had been reading a pre-cruise WDW trip by @jenseib and was really glad that I did as it at least gave me a reminder of things to do at WDW. I think I booked FPs for Spaceship Earth that afternoon and Soarin early that evening while on the bus. Test Track was closed for the day.

It didn’t take long at all before we could see this ahead of us and we were at WDW.

We had a stop at another resort, I think Saratoga Springs, before we arrived at the Boardwalk. Check in went very smoothly considering I had booked about 12 hours ago! While chatting to the Castmember at check in I told him our whole saga of last minute booking, he was very helpful, and then the CM next to him came and asked about Houston as she has relatives there, and by the time we were done another 2 of them had come and said hello and to talk about the hurricane. My guess is that because we were “displaced” peeps we got pixie dusted with a room that was ready. I took this at 9:56 am, talk about early!!

It was really nice though because we had been discussing how we could do laundry with our luggage stashed away with bell services, and now it wasn’t an issue. The room was huge – I’m still not sure if it was an upgrade as we’d booked the lowest room rate that I could find, but it’s been so long since we’ve stayed there I don’t remember what the rooms look like. It made our suite on the Dream feel small!!

H2O soap and products…we didn’t miss out on them after all.

This is the view from our balcony. It was actually nice and pleasant out there and I sat and called my Mum while Scott took the photographs. Disney property is maintained so beautifully.

We checked out the weather and it was forecast to piddle down rain later on, so we decided to go into Epcot and grab some lunch and walk around. Right as we went to walk out of the hotel it was drizzling rain so we hung around inside for a little while. I had called my work travel agent to try and help us get a flight home and she called while we were there and confirmed that Thursday was the first flight that we could get on, and she helped me get us booked on the 1:35 pm flight. It felt good to at least have a flight booked and so we could finally relax a little. The rain continued for about 20 minutes but we finally made it to Rose and Crown which is conveniently right inside the International Gateway so we made a stop for fish and chips. 2 fish and chips, 1 Stella and 1 bottle of water came to $36.00 at the little outside booth. I admit that I was shocked, and that trend continued over the next couple of days. The prices have skyrocketed since we were here last.

After eating and still somewhat in shell shock that we were back at WDW we meandered through the UK. It was weird to have a last minute trip to somewhere that I usually plan for for months!

They were getting ready for Food and Wine which started in a few days and they had all the booths ready to go. We were actually glad to be leaving on Thursday and avoid those crowds. Quick selfie before heading out of the world showcase.

A picture on the way to the Land pavilion. The crowds seemed pretty low, which was nice.

We decided to go and hit up Living with the Land as the wait time was really low. It was a very short wait in the standby line. It still blows my mind that people fastpass this.

By the time we finished there our Fastpass window for Spaceship Earth was open so we went up the escalator to head out. We were almost at the top when people started getting stacked up and there was general confusion and cries coming from ahead of us. I could see a lady crouched down frantically trying to get something free from the escalator track. They had obviously gone to get off and someone in her party had an untied shoelace that got caught under the escalator track and she was hunched down right at the top of the escalator trying to get it undone. Of course that meant that everyone coming UP the escalator had a very tiny escape route in order to not completely bowl her over. Scott and I dodged to the left and missed her, and thankfully right then the shoe lace came out. It was a bit scary as it could have been really dangerous on so many levels, but crisis averted and everyone appeared unscathed. Not sure how the shoelace fared.

We stared in awe at the standby line for Spaceship Earth. Wow! We haven’t really been to WDW since they implemented the whole new Fastpass Plus system, or we have, but only for a day before or after a cruise. It’s very different now that’s for sure. Anyway we bypassed the major line and the FP line wasn’t long at all.

We had a delay so I took a photo while we were stopped here.

Here were our “Welcome to the Future” photographs.

 

[ukintheus]

Because we hadn’t planned on being at WDW and therefore hadn’t packed any really appropriate shoes to wear for all that walking, the next stop was for Band Aids at MouseGear. Once we had those in place we decided to start heading back to the hotel. We wandered to the Mexico pavilion.

And of course found our way to Cava Del Tequila, which was pretty packed. We love the cucumber jalapeno margaritas, today they were really hot!

We hung around inside for a little while until we had drunk enough that we wouldn’t slosh it around as we walked.

We then continued on our slow amble. Glad they don’t have these at Castaway Cay!

This was new to us in Norway, we haven’t been there since they replaced Maelstrom, and we certainly weren’t going to stand in line for 90 minutes to ride the Frozen replacement!

More meandering around and some photos snapped along the way.

By the time we made it to Italy the sky was beginning to look really black so we decided we’d better get a move on and get back to the Boardwalk.

But we kept getting distracted by things like this.

My Disney app wasn’t working right to try and get a dining reservation so we popped into Marrakesh to see if we could get a dinner reservation and we did at 7:00 pm.

And then we got distracted by this guy…

Who was selling these…

So we stopped at France to drink them as I knew we wouldn’t be able to finish them before we got to the gate at the back.

And of course because we had procrastinated so long at this point, we also got to purchase these little beauties when the skies opened. Luckily we managed to duck under the awning in front of the shop in France and stayed mostly dry.

We got back to the hotel at just gone 3 pm and did a couple of loads of laundry in between watching the news on TV and catching up with home. Right as the laundry was done I got an email from United. They had cancelled our flight for Thursday and rebooked us on the same flight for Friday. UGGG!! I called what I thought was the front desk at the hotel (but I guess it’s a help center somewhere else in the world) to see about extending our stay another day. I ended up being transferred back and talking to the guest services manager (I think) who told me that they could add a day, but I had to do it on Wednesday morning when the reservation system opened up to them at the resort. It wasn’t complicated at all, and she told me that they could give us a weather rate. I had to let everyone at home know, including the neighbor that was taking care of the cats, and then we were able to head back out to Epcot for the evening. Phew.

We had a fastpass for Soarin at 5:00 pm and we were a couple of minutes early so we hung around down in the waiting area and walked in right at 5:00 pm. We haven’t seen it since they changed it and we both thought it was good. I liked the other one too. I missed the orange groves and the smell though.

Seeing as we had some time to kill we went and rode Figment – we haven’t done that a loooong time.

We also went and saw the Disney & Pixar Shorts in what used to be Captain EO last time we were there. They had three short movies that were very cute and worth going in to see. From there we went straight back to Morocco to dinner. We really like Marrakesh, and luckily it’s one of the places that is easy to get last minute reservations. Scott had the chicken and couscous and I had the lamb shank. Both were really good.

Scott wasn’t feel great at this point, his tummy was just out of sorts and so we didn’t linger over dinner. We decided to nix the fireworks as we were both tired and ready to get off our feet. We popped into the shop at the Boardwalk and picked up some cereal, milk and some bottled waters for the room.

At 9:30 pm we were in bed and Scott was watching some car show on TV to lull him to sleep. I don't sleep with the TV on. Get the issue here?

We both took one bed each tonight as we wanted the luxury of spreading out and not having to bump into each other. That’s 17 years of marriage for you…two beds?? Yes!!!

Coming up: Magic Kingdom & Hollywood Studios (forever known as MGM to us.)

 

[bcwife76]

Haha, well considering the trip was very last minute you made out quite well for your first day at WDW!

Dang but another day delay of flights! Did United say at least WHY it was delayed yet again? Did they overbook? Goodness. But still, what a place to get 'stuck' ;-)

Oh and in that photo when you were on Figment....that guy totally posed and smiled for you in the back row I think he was flirting with you

 

[lin7]

Loving ur report! So cool u got to meet Al Weiss and his wife, and how nice of her to offer u a ride. Would have been neat if u actually took up their offer. Looking forward to more

 

[ukintheus]

Haha, well considering the trip was very last minute you made out quite well for your first day at WDW!

Dang but another day delay of flights! Did United say at least WHY it was delayed yet again? Did they overbook? Goodness. But still, what a place to get 'stuck' ;-)

Oh and in that photo when you were on Figment....that guy totally posed and smiled for you in the back row I think he was flirting with you

The Houston airports were still shut down at this point and there was no projected day for them to open. IAH ended up opening on Wednesday afternoon, but of course now you have 5 days worth of flights backed up at one of the largest airports in the country - it was a mess!! The guy in that photo cracked me up when I saw it!

Loving ur report! So cool u got to meet Al Weiss and his wife, and how nice of her to offer u a ride. Would have been neat if u actually took up their offer. Looking forward to more

I am kicking myself now for not taking them up on the offer of a ride but it would have been weird, as sweet as it was, and I really had no clue who he was. I forgot to put in my report that we ran into them again in the lounge later that evening on the last night, his wife was talking to someone else and said he used to work for Disney - I grinned at him and said "you were a janitor or something like that weren't you?" He got the biggest kick out of that! He seemed like he was a super nice and very modest guy.

 

[ukintheus]

Tuesday, August 29th – Magic Kingdom & Hollywood Studios

I woke up pretty early and I tried to make coffee in the room in the dark using my phone as a light as Scott was still sleeping. As I heard this weird trickling noise I realized that the cups were upside down on the coffee machine and coffee was spewing itself all over the place. Having cleaned that up and said some pretty choice words, I went on a mission to get coffee. Thankfully we were on the same floor as the Belle Vue Lounge which opens early for breakfast and they were just setting up. Seeing as we were going to be there several mornings, and Scott typically has a couple of cups of coffee I purchased the refillable mugs ($38.32), I don't know if it was a good deal or not, but I figured it would be easier and the mugs seemed to hold more coffee? Scott was awake when I got back and we had our coffee and some cereal in the room. We decided to go to Magic Kingdom for the morning and arrived at the bus stop at 8:20 am. The transportation monitors (hard to see at the back) are new since we were last here and they were handy.

The bus was full with lots of people standing, there was a moment on the way where the driver slammed on his brakes which resulted in grandma’s carrying strollers landing on the kids sitting below them. It wasn’t a good start to the day for several people and I was surprised the bus driver didn’t even ask if everyone was OK once we got to Magic Kingdom. It’s all drama at Disney!!

We got through the turnstiles quickly. I brought the DCL backpack today with an extra pair of shoes for me and the ponchos, but the lines were moving quickly and were walking into Main Street at 8:45 am, about 15 minutes ahead of opening. Everywhere was decorated for Halloween and there was a Halloween Party tonight so the park was closing early.

Everybody converged upon the castle and we waited for the official park opening.

This was the crowd waiting to head to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, and possibly Peter Pan I guess, at 8:50 am.

Another quick selfie while we killed some time.

And then Mickey and the Fairy Godmother set the day off with a bang but I didn't catch the fireworks, they are literally just one shot.

We walked along with the crowd back to 7 Dwarfs. It wasn’t as chaotic as Toy Story used to be, but people were running past us at times. It made me glad we don’t do WDW much any more – it’s so stressful compared to a cruise. And all of us got to the same place at roughly the same time. It was 9:04 am and the line was moving pretty decently.

This was the first time we had done this ride and the theming is just oh-so-cute and there were times you didn’t want to move with the line! HA HA Spinning these barrels was a lot of fun. There was a young couple behind us who were fun to be in line with, big kids with no kids.

By 9:30 am we were next in line to board. It was a very cute ride and we enjoyed it.

We headed over towards Peter Pan but the standby line was already getting out there so we nixed it and just went over to Haunted Mansion which was still a walk on. Didn't get a photo of the outside, but here's one of the interactive thingys in the line.

Next up was Pirates of the Caribbean and while we were there I saw that a Fastpass was available for Jungle Cruise at just gone 10 am, so I grabbed that and let go of our Buzz Lightyear fastpasses (hindsight is 20/20 - should have kept that ).

It wasn't a bad wait for Pirates, maybe 10 minutes tops.

The ears silhouetted through the dark was funny, at least to me!

Or apparently not that funny! I don't look very impressed, do I?

Carefully avoiding spitting camels , we went straight to the Jungle Cruise to use our Fastpasses, it was about 10:30 am so we were really doing pretty well for a non-planned morning at MK.

They loaded the boat and we were next in line to board. We got the “behind the yellow line” spiel from the castmember. It was worthy of a photo as Scott deliberately left his toe ON the yellow line. When your born to be a rebel you just have to, I guess? Notice the footwear, and the dress, which got a little hairy getting on Space Mountain. I would have sworn I would NEVER wear a dress into the parks...never say never.

During his preamble to these passengers, the “skipper” announced to the dock crew his boat wouldn’t start.

Everybody laughed ….but he wasn’t joking . This led to lots of gatherings of castmembers as they tried to figure it out. (Yellow line lady, completely abandoned her yellow line policing by the way )

And someone with a clipboard was sent out, so you KNOW they were serious! HA HA.

Eventually they had to offload everyone, which meant the entire line waiting had to back up. You would think that would be easy, right? Not so much! I know there are a lot of non-English speaking guests at WDW but somehow this proved extremely difficult, which of course was highly entertaining to us! Eventually after offloading two boats they roped them together and pulled the offending non-starter out of the queue.

A new boat arrived shortly, with a new skipper I might add, and we were on our way to the land of Jungles and corny jokes.

Having nixed the fastpass for Buzz Lightyear we knew we were in for a bit of a wait.

I think the standby line took about 30 minutes, although we got stuck again where they had to offload everyone, so it may have been a bit longer. Time for a (uncoordinated) selfie then!

The person on the right (me) beat the person on the left big time (him)

Not surprising looking at Scott’s face here.

Next up was a Fastpass for Space Mountain. We grabbed a bottle of water from one of the carts nearby and sat and shared that until our time window opened. The line went pretty quickly and we were soon on.

We exited out of Space Mountain at about 12:30 pm and deemed that we were starving. A quick stop for more bandaids and then even though it was a hike back to Columbia Harbor House, a trip to the Magic Kingdom wouldn’t be the same without a tuna sandwich from there. We both got the Anchor’s Away, although I got green beans with mine. $29.84 for these two and two bottles of water.

 

[ukintheus]

We had a Fastpass for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and so after lunch we headed over there and rode that real quick.

Splash Mountain was down for refurbishment, although I’m not keen on the drop on that one, so it’s always a secret relief when I don’t have to ride it!

The parade was about to begin so the ropes were going up, but it was also starting to rain on and off so we did our best at cutting through gift shops to get as far as we could without getting wet. A quick dart out into the rain and we made a stop at the Christmas Shoppe to grab a souvenir. As it had eased off raining at this point we made a beeline for the exit.

We were at the bus stop by 2:00 pm and the skies opened right after we got there. Pouring rain! I felt sorry for everyone that had wanted to see the parade.

We got back to the hotel and just vegged out for a couple of hours to avoid most of the rain showers. By 4:30 pm it looked like it was clearing up so we decided to go to Hollywood Studios for the evening and I managed to get a Fastpass for Toy Story.

Leaping Libations at the main pool is themed to look like a carousel. The pool area was really busy, I think a lot of people had left the parks when the weather got bad.

It’s a really enjoyable walk along here from the Boardwalk to the Studios, although it was a bit hot and humid after all the rain.

The studios seemed pretty quiet, and of course a lot has changed since we were there last. First up we went to Star Tours, it was a fun one.

Then a swing by the old Great Movie Ride. I suppose new is good, but most of us are sticklers to the things we love about WDW and that was just an iconic ride to me.

But, coming soon…or as soon as they get around to it I guess.

We had Fastpasses for Toy Story Mania at 5:00 pm and so we were already within our window for that and went right on in.

This time I was beaten miserably by Scott who always beats me on this one.

As we came out and walked towards the Brown Derby there was a Star Wars show on. This is where I’m horribly behind on what’s going on. I have no clue what this was, and I have only ever watched the original Star Wars movie (many years ago) so I have no clue who most of the people were either! I need to get busy watching the movies as we are doing a Star Wars cruise in January with my UK family peeps who know all about it!

We decided to get a reservation at Brown Derby for dinner. It was one of our favorite restaurants on our honeymoon many moons ago, and we still have that “awe” feeling when we are in there, even though it is on the high end of the already ridiculously high Disney foodchain. And they’ve added an outside bar, what’s not to love?

Scott ordered a Maker’s Mark Manhattan. The first time he had one was here 17 years ago. This one looked a tad on the girlie side.

I got the martini flight. It was just OK, it really tasted watered down, especially the dry martini – I swear it tasted just like water with vermouth in it. I’m pretty good at judging drinks…you can come to your own conclusions why. Of course, being British, I don’t actually complain about it, just complain to the person with me. It’s what we do. (Drives Scott nuts by the way )

Once our reservation time rolled around we headed into the restaurant and were seated pretty quickly.

Our server was from Jamaica and he chatted a little. We took a couple of photos.

Another closed eye photo from me.

And he offered to take one of the two of us.

The “hurricane story” came up…the whole “where are you from?” thing kicks that off pretty well. After a few minutes another castmember came up to us because she was from Houston and wanted to ask us about how our area was doing. She was young and came from Tomball, which is only a short distance from us. We chatted to her for a while until our food was ready – she was super sweet.

We split a Cobb Salad appetizer. Just love this. We’ve tried to replicate it at home and I must admit we’ve done a pretty good job but it’s always nicer when someone else does all the work.

We both got the same thing for our main course which was the filet. It was surprisingly delicious and a really good cut of meat. Plus it was cooked perfectly. We were both impressed.

We also split these tiny desserts. I wanted a bite of the grapefruit cake (on the right) and the other two were Blueberry cobbler (in the middle) and lemon cheesecake (left). We had a bite of each of them and they were awesome!

We paid and then headed off to Rock N Roller coaster – I think we had a fastpass, but maybe not. Right as we got to where Starring Rolls used to be the little waitress from Tomball came flying up behind us and gave us these passes to Fantasmic! Aww…how kind of her . We actually weren’t planning on going, but decided why not now that we had these.

We still went ahead and did Rock N Roller Coaster, it was as good as ever, probably my favorite in all of WDW.

We got out of there right about 8:20 pm and now had to really scoot to get to Fantasmic. Always time for a couple of quick photos though.

We snuck in on the back row a few minutes before it was about to begin. Perfect timing!

With about 5 minutes until the end we left to be able to see the Star Wars fireworks (I’m sure there’s an official name but I don’t know it). Fantasmic ends right as those fireworks begin. I don’t really understand the logic there Disney, but I guess you have it figured out.

The fireworks were pretty good – we didn’t get any decent pictures with the iphone and there were a lot of people trying to press into the crowd at the end that had just got out of Fantasmic so there was lots of shuffling around. It’s weird timing to me. Been there, done that, wouldn’t bother again was the verdict for us.

We did the walk back along the river to the hotel, it was a bit of a dawdle at this point because the dogs were barking (translation = feet hurt.) Horrible photo, but it's the best I got of the walk.

It was 9:30 pm when we got back to the hotel and we (at least me) were pooped.

By the way, for the record, my iphone recorded over 7 miles of walking each day we were at WDW. It's easy to forget how killer the days at the parks are. No wonder we love cruising so much. Tomorrow morning I need to go to the front desk to add the extra day and deal with all that mess, so we decided to not set an alarm and we planned on going to Animal Kingdom whenever we felt like it. Rebels indeed! On the home front, neighbors were reporting that you could get in if you had a tall truck, and they thought by the end of the day tomorrow the roads would be clear. Both of our work places were still closed though, at least through tomorrow.

Coming up: Animal Kingdom

 

[Kstatefan]

Great trip report. I haven't read a trip report in a LONG time, but decided to on a whim today to get excited about our cruise on the Dream in October. This did the trick! Great humor and photos. God bless Houston and all those affected.