TimandLesley's When the Boat's a Rockin' Don't .... Trip of a Lifetime TR 2/4/1 pg.33

[sunnygirl8503]

Well I have come out of lurking to say Great trip report so far. Cannot wait to read more!

 

[Native NYer]

What an great first day on the Dream!
The kids club looks amazing. I definitely need to book a cruise!

 

[cherbear]

WOW Lesley!!! What a dream vacation!!!

I am so glad I’m not too late. Thanks to Kelly (Trentmom) for telling me you had a report going

I am all caught up reading….I’ve been compiling my comments in Word so here goes.....


Luke is a “SUPA STAR!!” LOL I love his walk down the red carpet

I love your videos, I watch them all entirely! Thank you for putting them on photobucket. I am unable to get to youtube at work…and I love reading trip reports on my lunch break!

We decided to hang out in France. I “had” to get Tim and I two Grey Goose Slushies and Tim and the kids went inside the bakery to use a few snack credits.

LOOOVE that picture!! Ever since you told me about them and I tried them out, I have been in love with the grey goose slush! (It’s never enough is it?)

So when you said you got Tim and you one, and he was inside the building with Luke & Lauren, does that mean that you really drank them both? LOL

OMG, Disney lets you bring on alcohol, free mimosas at a DVC presentation…wow! That’s a cruise done right, for sure! (So does that mean you had to be a DVC member to go to the reception?)

Were the stuffed animals on the kids beds put there by the staff? If so, awesome!!!!

The Aquaduck looked amazing!!!! And at night, wow! I hope you have pics of that

I had read an article about the virtual portholes and that seriously SOLD me about wanting to do a Disney cruise! And now your report has me hooked on booking one as soon as we can! Thanks for your incredible reporting skills, as always. I've said it before, but your TR was the very first one I have read, and I've been "hooked on TimandLesley" ever since!

 

[timandlesley]

I absolutely love your reports. You are so going to make me want to go on a cruise.

Thanks so much, I appreciate it. You would love it, but I warn you, for all the reasons you've already seen they are ADDICTING!!

Well I have come out of lurking to say Great trip report so far. Cannot wait to read more!

Thanks for reading/posting, so glad you are enjoying it!

What an great first day on the Dream!
The kids club looks amazing. I definitely need to book a cruise!

I'm telling you, ya do! It IS amazing!

WOW Lesley!!! What a dream vacation!!!

I am so glad I’m not too late. Thanks to Kelly (Trentmom) for telling me you had a report going

I am all caught up reading….I’ve been compiling my comments in Word so here goes.....


Luke is a “SUPA STAR!!” LOL I love his walk down the red carpet

I love your videos, I watch them all entirely! Thank you for putting them on photobucket. I am unable to get to youtube at work…and I love reading trip reports on my lunch break!



LOOOVE that picture!! Ever since you told me about them and I tried them out, I have been in love with the grey goose slush! (It’s never enough is it?)

So when you said you got Tim and you one, and he was inside the building with Luke & Lauren, does that mean that you really drank them both? LOL

OMG, Disney lets you bring on alcohol, free mimosas at a DVC presentation…wow! That’s a cruise done right, for sure! (So does that mean you had to be a DVC member to go to the reception?)

Were the stuffed animals on the kids beds put there by the staff? If so, awesome!!!!

The Aquaduck looked amazing!!!! And at night, wow! I hope you have pics of that

I had read an article about the virtual portholes and that seriously SOLD me about wanting to do a Disney cruise! And now your report has me hooked on booking one as soon as we can! Thanks for your incredible reporting skills, as always. I've said it before, but your TR was the very first one I have read, and I've been "hooked on TimandLesley" ever since!

Glad you found us. Luke will love your superstar comment : ) No, I didn't drink both of them, but it was hard to hold off and not drink his while he was stuck in line in the bakery, i just posed with the two empty glasses : ) No, you don't have to be a DVC member to go to the reception : ) The towel animals were done by our room attendant every night, I took a pic of them each night, so there will be more of those : ) The auqua duck was AMAZING! You would love a cruise, we are sooooo hooked now! Thanks so much for your kind comments, I enjoy them every TR, so THANK YOU! Glad you found us again!!
Lesley

 

[cherbear]

Lesley, thanks for the great welcome!!

Regarding the stuffed animals, I was referring to ones on the kids' beds. Thinking back...there was a Mickey on Luke's bed, and I can't remember what I saw on Lauren's. They weren't towel animals. I thought maybe those were gifts they received on the cruise? Or did they bring them along? (if so, that is so sweet!)

And by the way...I would've drank them both heehee

 

[timandlesley]

Lesley, thanks for the great welcome!!

Regarding the stuffed animals, I was referring to ones on the kids' beds. Thinking back...there was a Mickey on Luke's bed, and I can't remember what I saw on Lauren's. They weren't towel animals. I thought maybe those were gifts they received on the cruise? Or did they bring them along? (if so, that is so sweet!)

And by the way...I would've drank them both heehee

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, sorry. The one is a "Chef Mickey" that Luke brought with him and the other is Lauren's "cowie", it's a cow she's had since she was 1 year old,he goes on ALL our trips : )
It was soooooooooo tempting, but I was good : )
Lesley

 

[timandlesley]

Day 2 of Living the Dream
We awoke on our first full day of the cruise, looked out our virtual porthole and what did we see? CASTAWAY CAY!!!

I was soooooooooo excited, we all were. We had dreamed of this private island since we booked the cruise and couldn’t wait to get out there and see for ourselves how beautiful it was. We headed to the Enchanted Garden (right down the hall) for a wonderful breakfast buffet then headed back to the stateroom to get our suits on and go! We walked down one flight of stairs and were on the gangway in beautiful Castaway Cay in no time!
Donald and Daisy were there to greet us (again with NO LINE!)

We hopped in line for a tram. We had discussed the night before at dinner with Diane and Bryan that we would both like to go to the farthest family beach because it should be less crowded and it’s where the slide was. The tram came quickly and we jumped on board (the kids were wearing the hats they were given for free at the DVC reception the day before):

As we were riding on the tram I looked up to the beautiful palm trees and blue sky and had to snap a picture of Heaven on Earth:

I turned around to see the Beautiful Disney Dream docked:

When we got off Tim and Luke headed to find a spot for us and Lauren and I went to get some rafts. I had booked online before our cruise a 2 day raft rental for 2 of us. It was very cheap, like around $14 for 2 days worth of raft rentals. When you pre pay for an “excursion or rental” they leave tickets for it in your stateroom, so I took my ticket to the counter and got the rafts. There were tons of chairs and umbrellas everywhere, many sat empty all day, so it will never be an issue of not having a spot. My beautiful Lauren on a beautiful island:

Another pic of the island:

I spent a LONG time just floating on my raft in the crystal blue water. At one point I drifted all the way in and ended up on the sand in between a lady sunning herself and two kids playing, it was HALARIOUS, it gave Diane a good laugh who saw me do it.
Happy Lesley on the island:

Tim and Lauren on the island:

Luke and I:

Diane and Eric went out to the slide and said it was a rough swim out there and the slide was FAST, so we decided to skip it and just had fun swimming and enjoying the rafts.
After a while the boys were complaining of itching like crazy (in their nether regions : ) : ) Diane, Lauren and I did not have this problem. Diane had read about “sea lice” on the island, so we went to find the freshwater play area for the boys to soak themselves. It was a fun place to play and they felt better instantly.

After we played for a while we headed over to “Cookies Two” BBQ for a yummy lunch.

They had really good food, hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, ribs, rice, chips, lots of fresh fruit and cookies. The kids were thrilled the ice cream machine was on the island too, as well as the fountain drinks. We had a great lunch with Diane, Bryan, Eric and Matthew.
Chip and Dale were back in the BBQ area (again, NO LINE!!) Luke loves Chip and Dale:

After lunch Bryan (who had ran the 5k on the island, was tired so he found a spot in the shade to lounge and fall asleep) Tim, who was still a bit uncomfortable from the experience that morning was itching to hit the gym on the ship so he headed back. That left Diane and myself with the kids, so what did we do? We checked the kids into Scuttles Cove!

The kids were excited to try it.,
Diane and I spied on them and they seemed to be having a good time.

Knowing they were having a good time we hit the bar for some Conch coolers

We got our drinks and headed back to paradise:

We pulled our chairs into the water and sat there with our drinks and just enjoyed eachothers company, I could have sat there all day. The drink was yummy, company was great and the beach was heavenly!
After our drinks and time on the beach we shopped around a bit, here is a pic of a shop on the island:

We took some pictures:

Then we got the kids out, they seemed to have a good time. They wanted to play some Tether ball, so we watched them do that for a bit.
We then got back on the tram and headed back to the ship.
The kids were DYING to play Midship Detective Agency on the ship.

Since it was around 4:00 already and I knew the detective agency thing can take around an hour we headed back to the cabin and got ready for dinner and then headed up to play.

This is an interactive detective game that is throughout the ship. You head up to deck 5 to be trained and get your agency card

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[timandlesley]

Then you are sent around the ship looking for clues contained within the artwork, you use your card to interact with the paintings (the card actually hammers nails, wipes glass clean within the images, pops balloons, etc. to help you solve the crime). You have a tally sheet with the villans and cross them off as you go like a giant game of CLUE, my jaw kept dropping at how amazing it was. Here are some pics of our adventure:

Disney did it again with this one it is AMAZING technology and of course the kids loved it! It took us about 45 minutes to solve the clues. We used our wave phone to call Tim and he met us up at Shutters to check out some of our photo’s they had taken of us so far on the ship and then we headed to Animators Palate for dinner, I couldn’t WAIT to eat here!
Before dinner we saw that Buzz Light Year was appearing, so we jumped in the short line to meet him.
The kids in the porthole while we waited (love this pic of them):

Buzz!

Before we knew it our dinner time had arrived. We were in the early seating for dinner (5:45). I forgot to mention how every time you went into dinner the staff was standing outside with hand sanitizing wipes, they really do a good job keeping everyone clean and healthy on the ship.
We walked inside and I started snapping pictures of this amazing restaurant.

We were seated toward the center of the dining room, I was a little bummed we weren’t by a t.v. screen since I knew about Crush coming out, but we still had a great meal and wonderful experience. The menu:

The detail of this restaurant is AMAZING! Even the butter knives go with the theme:

Tim and I at dinner:

Our whole crew:

Lauren had fun drawing Mickey on her menu, she was VERY proud of this!

Our waitress did a great job greeting us and telling us all about the restaurant and what fun we were going to have in there tonight, made us so excited! She told us it is the most expensive area on the ship, and they have over 300 t.v’s in there, it was SO cool!
I was very excited to try the pursette’s as an appetizer, I had read about how good they were, I ordered them and they did NOT disappoint, I think everyone who didn’t order them, ordered them after they tried mine. YUM YUM YUM!

Before we knew it CRUSH made his appearance:

The kids were THRILLED

The lights started to dim, I can’t describe how COOL this entire dining experience was:

At this point Luke had to go to the restroom so Tim and Luke left for a bit.
Then Crush encouraged everyone to get up on their feet and dance, so dance we did:

Tim and Luke re appeared and poor Luke had gotten himself locked in the bathroom (Tim was waiting in the hall and heard the commotion after another guy alerted him) so Tim talked him through it and he was able to get himself out. Luke was a little shaken up, but he was excited to get back to the meal.
My handsome husband at dinner:

I listened to Zoe and took her recommendation of the Sea Bass as my main course and it was too DIE FOR! Everyone enjoyed their meals. I don’t remember what my desert was called but it was delicious and I snapped a picture of it:

Luke with his desert:

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[timandlesley]

After dinner we headed up to deck 4 towards the Disney theatre. We went outside to enjoy the beautiful evening before the show:

Luke enjoyed lounging on deck 4:

The kids had playing some shuffle board:

I HAD to take a picture of the beautiful bathrooms for you on the ship, the details of this ship at everywhere you turn are just beautiful!

We always made point to be first in line for the show so we could get our box seats. Lauren ready to go in for the show:

Our box seats:

The show was “Villians TONIGHT” and we couldn’t wait to see it!

My babies excited to see the show:

I took a few pictures of the show (sorry if they are blurry, my camera takes GREAT pics close up but we need to invest in a larger lens for the far away pics.)

She show was amazing from start to finish. It is a GREAT show and very funny, the talent of the cast in the shows on the ship is so talented. We had a GREAT night.
After the show the kids had seen that there was an interactive game show for families In the “D Lounge” so we headed over there:

Lauren watching Karaoke in the lounge before the show started:

Luke excited for the game show to start:

We ordered the kids specialty drinks. I really was amazed at how affordable the drinks on the ship were, these nice kids specialty cocktails were only $3.95:

The game show was called “Mirror Mirror”

They divided the audience into teams, we were team “Grumpy” and Diane was selected as our leader : )

The show began:

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[timandlesley]

It was a cute premise, but the cast really was unorganized and our kids are VERY competitive and took it very seriously. Dopey would award the winning team apples in their buckets, well Dopey wasn’t paying any attention and kept putting apples in the wrong bucket (almost always when our team won) so the kids got a little upset at that. Matthew got picked to be a Dwarf in a dress up relay, it was fun to watch:

I got picked to finish a song to earn points for our team too. Overall it was a fun time but if you go, tell your kids not to take it seriously and just to enjoy the experience.
After that the kids wanted to go to the kids club and we were FINE with that : ) Lauren jumped right into the fun:

We hung out with Diane and Bryan and got some drinks. Tried to take a serious picture in the lobby but Bryan wouldn’t let us : ) : )

That’s better…………………………….. : )

We had such a great night. After a while we picked the kids up, they had an amazing time in the club again. We went back to the room and Healine had made it up nice for us, here was our towel animal for the evening:

Luke was excited because the card on the bed discussed how CARS 2 was premiering on the ship, we were all thrilled about that!
We ordered some room service (I got my usual cheese tray with my wine) the kids enjoyed cheeseburgers and pizza and Tim had a steak sandwich (yes we were GLUTTONS on this ship, and it was FUN!).
The next day would be a day at sea so we went to bed late knowing we could sleep in:

CLICK HERE FOR THE NEXT EPISODE:http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=42061079#post42061079

 

[ronnmel]

I have read a lot of your TR, but I don't think I've ever commented.

The cruise sounds like so much fun. Everything looks great! Castaway Cay was gorgeous, reminds me of my wedding. Gotta love the Caribbeans!

How awesome is it to meet all these characters with NO LINE!!!

I just want to go and play that detective game, looks like fun.

 

[Queenofallthings]

Great update Lesley! That just looked like the perfect day...start to finish I told Jasmine you had started your TR and she said to me after reading .... "I want to go on the Dream"...(she was very lucky to go on the Magic with my sister and her family in Feb) I said "I thought you wanted to do another cruise line and she replied with..."that was before I saw Lesley's pictures!

So I thank you...cause now we'll be saving for a Disney Dream Cruise

 

[CreightonsMomma]

What a cool restaurant. What are pursettes? They look like little raviolis.

The interactive game is awesome. I had no idea they had that.

Castaway Cay is beautiful.

 

[MegansMom]

I have always enjoyed your reports Les, but this one seriously leaves me speechless!!! I get through reading about each day, and am so amazed by EVERYTHING about the cruise!!! It really was a DREAM vacation.....it is making me want to cajole Tom into taking a cruise on one of the Disney boats!!! I think if we ever go though, we are going to have to go with another family so Megan could enjoy the kids club with some kids she might know. That is one of the hardest things about having an only child! SO looking forward to more!!!

 

[BrdwayBoy]

I'm loving this; Thanks for sharing!

 

[Trentmom]

Castaway Cay looks gorgeous

Looks like Detective game is fun, kind of like Kim Possible, but better

Animator Palette looks like such a fun place to eat

Poor Luke getting stuck...

Villains show looked great too

Great update

 

[Stringbean&Wingnut]

The cruise sounds like it was absolutely amazing! How great that they had so many fun activities for the kids! The detective game sounds especially fun.

 

[Native NYer]

Castaway Cay is so beautiful. The water is so clear!
I am so sorry about the sea lice incident. At least got better!
The detecive agency activity sounds like so much fun! My nephew would LOVE that.
The theming on the Dream is just amazing! I really love Disney's attention to detail.

 

[2xcited2sleep]

Castaway Cay looks just beautiful. love the manager's name in the sign behind the kids with Donald Duck, "May B Tamara" aka maybe tomorrow.

I am happy to hear you say that you saw empty chairs but boy do they looked packed in pretty tight on the beach.

The details on the ship look pretty great too. the detective game sounds especially cool.

How neat you got box seats for the shows!

Love the idea of nightly room service!

 

[Aburns8]

Great update! I really can't wait until our cruise in September. We are snorkeling on Castaway Cay and I can't wait. I really can't wait to see the restaurants either!