January 11. At sea Sunday. I wake before anyone else, 5:00, and sneak onto the verandah to see if we are in the tropics yet. Nope, still pretty grey and chilly out there. Im wondering if this cold front is going to follow us all the way south. I pull out the computer and write the last three days worth of reports, the cord reaches all the way to the verandah, we did not need to buy and carry the heavy, huge power strip along. Whistler joins me at about 6:30 on the verandah. A bit later, Gameboy joins us. Room service delivered our coffee, rolls, juice and tea at 7:00 as requested. The advance phone call roused Peter a bit. The poor guy from room service, never got his name due to darkness, always came in dancing around our mess, in nearly total darkness to deliver our tray, thanks. Last cruise I had learned to request exactly what and how many of each item we wanted. Earl Grey tea and lots of cream! I had tea and typed. The kids ate donuts, something I never buy them, so were content. Peter went back to bed.
At 9:00, we quietly slipped on clothes and I took the kids to their clubs and got them registered. Got a warning about having to pay $150 dollars if I jumped in the pool with it. Nothing mentioned about toilets, however, more on this later. They stayed willingly at their clubs (not like last cruise) and I went back to the cabins. Rack was exercising, Peter still sleeping so Gma and I went to Topsiders to have breakfast, by now about 10:00. Peter joined us, but decided to wait to eat. Parked Gma by the pool to listen to the music, the day had warmed a bit and was tolerable out of the wind with a sweater. Peter went to a seminar about the Haunted Mansion by Imagineer Jason Surreal (really??) the man responsible for the new Madame Leota tombstone. I gave this a pass, a mistake in retrospect, because the lecturer on our last cruise had been fairly dull. Retrieved Whistler from his group at the Lab, dropped him with ice cream with Gma on deck 9. Then had to hunt down Gameboy. I was looking in the Stack, their ostensible location, but they had left ahead of schedule. Then other parents I trooped to the front of Animators Palate, and waited and waited, but they had come in the back. By the time I found Gameboy he already had lunch and decided to stay, he agreed to meet back at the designated place after eating. Back to deck 9 to get Gma and Whistler and wait for the time to meet Gameboy. As I was scouting around trying to find Rack a bit later, Gameboy walks by, heading to Quarter Masters. He flushes, looking very guilty, deep doo-doo. I remind him that if he has checkout privileges, the meeting place was changed this morning to the cabin, NOT Quarter Masters. He claims he forgot, uh, huh. So back up to the cabin, found Rack and Peter and we all headed to lunch, as if we were hungry. Peter, Rack and I were at least.
Nice sit down lunch at Lumieres. I had wanted to do this on our last cruise, but we only had one hurried lunch at St Thomas. I had bean salad and soup. Most everyone else had tuna salad, including Whistler. Rack had tuna salad, then the grilled chicken, then tuna salad, then desert. He needed to be reminded that he could request as much food as he wanted. Gameboy had coke (something else my kids never get) and a lot of dirty looks. Peter told us about Jason Surreal, who has written a Haunted Mansion book. His lecture was quite entertaining and very juicy according to Peter, so I was sorry I missed it.
After lunch, kids went with Peter to the pool while I went to the shopping talk, where Clyde tossed every freebie into the audience at his right or center, I was on the left, dang, what was up with that? Found it strange that Clyde was pushing an artist who sculpts and make jewelry of black coral. (There is also page after page of this guys advertising in the in room guide). Ummmm, correct me if Im wrong, but doesnt Disney have an environmental friendly policy? And isnt black coral very endangered? And isnt it illegal to bring it back into the U.S.? It used to be, at least. And I have not heard that black coral has made a remarkable recovery. And isnt most of the audience here from the U.S? The least Clyde should be compelled to do is make a disclaimer for Disney.
The couple sitting next to me turned out to be Brack and Annette, fellow DISers on their back-to-back. Went up to the DIS meet, met DVCreg, and her DH also. Gee, where were the rest of you? Probably like us last time, running around, attending all those interesting activities, and trying, but failing, to do it all.
Peter could not get Gameboy to get out of the pool, so he lost his (real) GameBoy for the day. Gameboy is 10 going on teenager. We can see the hormones beginning to rage and it is not a pretty sight. Banished, well actually they wanted to go, the kids to their clubs. Peter and I tried to nap, but not much success. Just stayed on the bed with eyes closed, drifting tiredly. I think we had a strange Meclizine buzz that left us pretty spacey and tired but incapable of napping. Rack, bless him, took Gma to and from her hair appointment. We then did a mad rush to shower, get kids and dress for Formal Night. I wanted a formal portrait but did not want to wait in a long line. We ended up being almost the first people in the lobby, duh. Bagged a couple of free drinks and had our formal portraits taken and then had pictures taken with Captains Tom (we were the first there too, even beat Captain Tom). We had him to ourselves for a bit. He said there was seven hundred repeat guests nearly every cruise. That nearly every cruise is full, but they are still looking for a builder for the next ship. Peter and he discussed a movie with Richard Widmark called Heroes of Telemark about the Norwegians in World War II, guy stuff.
Tonight was dinner in Lumieres. The perfect setting for formal night. We noticed that the rest of the folks in Adina and Antons station arrived and were consolidated into one very large table. Oh, oh, we thought, there goes the service. O.K., we were wrong. Not as many opportunities to chat with our interesting serving team, but the service did not suffer a bit. Dinner was not my favorite. Had the duck, because I hated to order the other thing I was interested in, the fish and spinach (note the combo again, for future reference) since I had had it on the last cruise and thought it was just O.K. Appetizer was the Camembert fritters, then salad with goat cheese croutons. The Camembert fritters need a bit of salad or something more on the plate to dress them up, they look sort of lost and they are kinda yucky. Adina asked if she could bring something else, but I said not to worry. The sides with the duck were interesting, more like what you would expect with a good old German sauerbraten, purple cabbage, sautéed parsnips and apples. The duck was, well, duck. Rack and Peter and Gma had beef or lamb. Gameboy had the steak from the adult menu, with rice. Anton fetched soy sauce for the rice and Adina tucked in the kids napkins and cut up his steak. The lamb was huge, but was not any too lean. No one raved about his or her choices, unlike last night. Gma ran out of steam and I took her back to her cabin, and then returned to crème brulee, which was good. Kids passed on desert, thank heaven, Whistler can overeat, and since he is such a little guy, it can get real ugly real quick. I warned Adina not to push too much food on him for just that reason. Another trick from Anton for the kids.
We went to see the Michael Menes show in Rockin Bar D, which was already in progress. He did t-shirt impersonations and juggling. Very cute.
We went to see Golden Mickeys. Loved most of the parts, the Mulan part is a bit lame, though, all the players are squished to the front of the stage, in front of the curtain, and do not look like they have enough room to move. There was a group behind us with two tiny girls who yelled at the top of their lungs about the show all the way through, while the grandparents laughed uproariously and very artificially at their little darlings. Very strange and irritating. Maybe the next cruise I can comment better on this show.
The kids fell asleep during the last quarter of the show, and I was tempted to join them. We roused them out and everyone went back to bed. Kids were excited about Alejandro leaving a towel animal.
If I had known in advance that there would be so many matinees of the shows on this cruise, (Golden Mickeys, Herc and Dreams all had a matinee on this cruise, what happened to the Goofy-Castaway Cay thing, was it gone just on our cruise, or has it been discontinued?) I would have planned the days differently. If you have young kids, leave every sea day free at 2:00 and go to the show if they offer it. May save your back carrying sleepy kids back to the cabin.
Next, a day at sea and Palo pig-out
Carla
At 9:00, we quietly slipped on clothes and I took the kids to their clubs and got them registered. Got a warning about having to pay $150 dollars if I jumped in the pool with it. Nothing mentioned about toilets, however, more on this later. They stayed willingly at their clubs (not like last cruise) and I went back to the cabins. Rack was exercising, Peter still sleeping so Gma and I went to Topsiders to have breakfast, by now about 10:00. Peter joined us, but decided to wait to eat. Parked Gma by the pool to listen to the music, the day had warmed a bit and was tolerable out of the wind with a sweater. Peter went to a seminar about the Haunted Mansion by Imagineer Jason Surreal (really??) the man responsible for the new Madame Leota tombstone. I gave this a pass, a mistake in retrospect, because the lecturer on our last cruise had been fairly dull. Retrieved Whistler from his group at the Lab, dropped him with ice cream with Gma on deck 9. Then had to hunt down Gameboy. I was looking in the Stack, their ostensible location, but they had left ahead of schedule. Then other parents I trooped to the front of Animators Palate, and waited and waited, but they had come in the back. By the time I found Gameboy he already had lunch and decided to stay, he agreed to meet back at the designated place after eating. Back to deck 9 to get Gma and Whistler and wait for the time to meet Gameboy. As I was scouting around trying to find Rack a bit later, Gameboy walks by, heading to Quarter Masters. He flushes, looking very guilty, deep doo-doo. I remind him that if he has checkout privileges, the meeting place was changed this morning to the cabin, NOT Quarter Masters. He claims he forgot, uh, huh. So back up to the cabin, found Rack and Peter and we all headed to lunch, as if we were hungry. Peter, Rack and I were at least.
Nice sit down lunch at Lumieres. I had wanted to do this on our last cruise, but we only had one hurried lunch at St Thomas. I had bean salad and soup. Most everyone else had tuna salad, including Whistler. Rack had tuna salad, then the grilled chicken, then tuna salad, then desert. He needed to be reminded that he could request as much food as he wanted. Gameboy had coke (something else my kids never get) and a lot of dirty looks. Peter told us about Jason Surreal, who has written a Haunted Mansion book. His lecture was quite entertaining and very juicy according to Peter, so I was sorry I missed it.
After lunch, kids went with Peter to the pool while I went to the shopping talk, where Clyde tossed every freebie into the audience at his right or center, I was on the left, dang, what was up with that? Found it strange that Clyde was pushing an artist who sculpts and make jewelry of black coral. (There is also page after page of this guys advertising in the in room guide). Ummmm, correct me if Im wrong, but doesnt Disney have an environmental friendly policy? And isnt black coral very endangered? And isnt it illegal to bring it back into the U.S.? It used to be, at least. And I have not heard that black coral has made a remarkable recovery. And isnt most of the audience here from the U.S? The least Clyde should be compelled to do is make a disclaimer for Disney.
The couple sitting next to me turned out to be Brack and Annette, fellow DISers on their back-to-back. Went up to the DIS meet, met DVCreg, and her DH also. Gee, where were the rest of you? Probably like us last time, running around, attending all those interesting activities, and trying, but failing, to do it all.
Peter could not get Gameboy to get out of the pool, so he lost his (real) GameBoy for the day. Gameboy is 10 going on teenager. We can see the hormones beginning to rage and it is not a pretty sight. Banished, well actually they wanted to go, the kids to their clubs. Peter and I tried to nap, but not much success. Just stayed on the bed with eyes closed, drifting tiredly. I think we had a strange Meclizine buzz that left us pretty spacey and tired but incapable of napping. Rack, bless him, took Gma to and from her hair appointment. We then did a mad rush to shower, get kids and dress for Formal Night. I wanted a formal portrait but did not want to wait in a long line. We ended up being almost the first people in the lobby, duh. Bagged a couple of free drinks and had our formal portraits taken and then had pictures taken with Captains Tom (we were the first there too, even beat Captain Tom). We had him to ourselves for a bit. He said there was seven hundred repeat guests nearly every cruise. That nearly every cruise is full, but they are still looking for a builder for the next ship. Peter and he discussed a movie with Richard Widmark called Heroes of Telemark about the Norwegians in World War II, guy stuff.
Tonight was dinner in Lumieres. The perfect setting for formal night. We noticed that the rest of the folks in Adina and Antons station arrived and were consolidated into one very large table. Oh, oh, we thought, there goes the service. O.K., we were wrong. Not as many opportunities to chat with our interesting serving team, but the service did not suffer a bit. Dinner was not my favorite. Had the duck, because I hated to order the other thing I was interested in, the fish and spinach (note the combo again, for future reference) since I had had it on the last cruise and thought it was just O.K. Appetizer was the Camembert fritters, then salad with goat cheese croutons. The Camembert fritters need a bit of salad or something more on the plate to dress them up, they look sort of lost and they are kinda yucky. Adina asked if she could bring something else, but I said not to worry. The sides with the duck were interesting, more like what you would expect with a good old German sauerbraten, purple cabbage, sautéed parsnips and apples. The duck was, well, duck. Rack and Peter and Gma had beef or lamb. Gameboy had the steak from the adult menu, with rice. Anton fetched soy sauce for the rice and Adina tucked in the kids napkins and cut up his steak. The lamb was huge, but was not any too lean. No one raved about his or her choices, unlike last night. Gma ran out of steam and I took her back to her cabin, and then returned to crème brulee, which was good. Kids passed on desert, thank heaven, Whistler can overeat, and since he is such a little guy, it can get real ugly real quick. I warned Adina not to push too much food on him for just that reason. Another trick from Anton for the kids.
We went to see the Michael Menes show in Rockin Bar D, which was already in progress. He did t-shirt impersonations and juggling. Very cute.
We went to see Golden Mickeys. Loved most of the parts, the Mulan part is a bit lame, though, all the players are squished to the front of the stage, in front of the curtain, and do not look like they have enough room to move. There was a group behind us with two tiny girls who yelled at the top of their lungs about the show all the way through, while the grandparents laughed uproariously and very artificially at their little darlings. Very strange and irritating. Maybe the next cruise I can comment better on this show.
The kids fell asleep during the last quarter of the show, and I was tempted to join them. We roused them out and everyone went back to bed. Kids were excited about Alejandro leaving a towel animal.
If I had known in advance that there would be so many matinees of the shows on this cruise, (Golden Mickeys, Herc and Dreams all had a matinee on this cruise, what happened to the Goofy-Castaway Cay thing, was it gone just on our cruise, or has it been discontinued?) I would have planned the days differently. If you have young kids, leave every sea day free at 2:00 and go to the show if they offer it. May save your back carrying sleepy kids back to the cabin.
Next, a day at sea and Palo pig-out
Carla
