I forgot to mention, we did Secret Mickeys on this cruise like we did on the August Repo cruise. Kind of a Secret Santa. I ended up with someone we cruised with in August, eeorelvr10 (Laura). She was original on Deck 7 like us but got an upgrade to Deck 8. As it turned out, this was a great location. She was fairly close to the stairway so I could drop something off and get back to the stairs. Peter decided to give Scott stuff even though he didn't sign up for the Secret Mickeys. This caused a lot of suspicion from Scott. Peter let everyone at our dinner table in on what he was doing and a few of them picked up some gifts for Scott and Lynn too. Now understand, the gifts were supposed to be bad gifts, but somehow they were viewed differently by Scott and Lynn. Back to the trip report.
Tuesday was Jammie Breakfast, hosted by Elaine (Mickey&JoshNut). We had over 100 DISers scheduled to have breakfast in Tritons in our Pjs. The whole back end of Tritons was filled with DISers, this was KEWL!
While we were waiting to get in to Tritons, Laura (eeorelvr10) gave me a gift but told me not to open it in front of everyone because she gave one to her Secret Mickey too. I asked Bill to take it back to the room because he was going to get our camera and deliver another Secret Mickey gift because she wouldn't know who it was because we were at the PJ breakfast with her when a gift arrived. Leslie got caught in the hall (I believe she was delivering a Secret Mickey gift to Lynn and Scott at the time) by an officer who said Your late for the pajama breakfast in Tritons. It's amazing what they all knew we were doing.
After breakfast we went back to the room and changed for the day. At 11 was Tom McAlpin's speech. After last year, we knew we needed to get there early to get a good seat. A number of the things he spoke about we had heard in previous speeches, press releases, etc., but some of it was new and interesting. Mr. McAlpin mentioned the changes to the
Castaway Club, starting with the reception to make it more interactive. The lanyards and pins were meant to be a gift for each repeat cruiser, regardless of how many were in the room, rather than one gift of a towel or bag that people had to agree who would get. The gift they are giving in the room has a bunch of things in it so that everyone can get a little something. We liked the new gift a lot as it had some mesh bags, sunscreen (for faces!), a note pad, a magnet and a lot of other things. He was asked about an announcement for 2008 and he said in the same time frame as the Med cruises were announced (March-April). He was also asked about a new ship, but didn't answer the question with the usual response about the cost of the Euro vs. the dollar. We had heard some rumors about space for two ships opening at Fincantari (sp?) and a deal to offer the space for the dollar rather than the Euro. The funniest thing happened when Mr. McAlpin said if we wanted to know what was happening with
DCL to check the DISboards. That got a roar from the crowd. At one point, he couldn't answer a question someone asked and said that they should leave their cabin number and he would get an answer to them. He said if anyone else wanted the answer to also let Guest Services know and someone said Just post it on the DISboards!. He laughed!
After the presentation, Regina (WebmasterRegina) wanted to introduce me to someone so I hung around. She introduced me to Donna from
Dreams Unlimited Travel. It was really nice to meet her and her husband, but I didn't have long to talk because we were planning to go to the DVC presentation starting about 5 minutes before that time! We ran into Donna a Joe a number of times over the course of the cruise.
Next we went over to the DVC presentation in Diversions. There were a bunch of DISers in one of the corners. I ended up sitting on the floor with Leslie, Elaine and Elizabeth (MyFairyGodmother). During the presentation, a child (probably around 8-10) started playing a video game with the sound on. When his parents tried to take it away, he threw a fit! So what did they do? They let him continue to play. This was about 1/2 way into the presentation. A number of us were about ready to go say something to the parents. Finally, just before the presentation was over, they left. We cheered. I can't understand parents who let their children disrupt everyone else. It was very distracting. We decided that the time is not right for us to buy DVC, but may do so in the near future. After the presentation, we got some lunch. Today was also the Bobs' Cigars & Scotch get together. We had lunch at Pluto's Dog House. I got a brat because I had heard that they were good the last time on the Magic. That was wrong! It was the worst thing I had eaten on both cruises combined (and that includes the lumpy creme brulee). It was so bad that when I was trying to describe to Bill what it tasted like, I figured it would be better to try it again, but I just couldn't. We swam for a while. Then we decided to go to the Cruisin' Trivia. We joined Stephen (Corwin17) in the Promenade Lounge and played as a team. We ended up tying for first place!! We won a DCL logo backpack thingy. And of course Pub Points! The sports trivia started 1/2 hour after the Cruisin' Trivia started so at the end while we were scoring our trivia, Bill left to get to Diversions for the Sports Trivia. By the time I arrived, it was done and we did very badly at that! Regina and Gary's team won! It was all about baseball and Bill, Bob and Cheryl aren't baseball diehards.
After this, it was time to get ready for the Golden Mickeys and formal night. It was also the Captain's Gala. We left Diversions and grabbed a cocktail in the Atrium. We got dressed for the show and found out that the tuxedo shirt that I borrowed from Leslie's Joe did not fit Bill (sleeves were too short), so he went back to wearing the same shirt he wore on the Magic. We just made it to the Golden Mickeys before it started. The show was as good as usual. After the Golden Mickeys we went down to Diversions for what then became our nightly ritual of Pub Quest and veggies and dip and guacamole! I think this night was the full contact thumb wrestling, or maybe it was the random card number game, but I know it wasn't the cup stacking game (that was on the next formal night). It may have been connect four, full contact of course. No wait, it was full contact Uno.
We had dinner that night in Tritons. I think I like Lumieres atmosphere better than Tritons. When they dimmed the lights in the room and increased the blue lights, I thought it made my food look weird and everyone looked weird because of the coloring. This was the night that we decided to celebrate my birthday. Turns out on the first night when Charlie was going around asking about celebrations, he made it sound like we could pick a date to celebrate anything so I chose Tuesday in Tritons for my birthday celebration since it was only 3 weeks prior. I had told Bob (BobandLee) that I would get him a Key Lime Pie like we did on the Magic last year so I told our head server Michelle on the first night I would like one for Tuesday night. In the meantime, Leslie and Elaine were planning a party for me. They had hats and horns and Elaine had them on the table when we arrived. We had lots of fun with the horns, even though they didn't make a sound, and the hats (right Leslie and Jenn?). They brought out two Key Lime Pies. Two couples were not there for dessert so we ended up only using one of the pies and saved the other for the next night. Elaine gave me a gift with some scrapbooking stuff and a couple little bottles of Ice Wine!!!! Thank you Elaine!!!
After dinner we went to the end of the balloon drop. We were there after the balloons dropped, but before the confetti. We were dancing in the atrium. I took off my shoes and my feet got plastered with the gold confetti. After the show, we went to bed.