Monday, January 12, at sea.
Right now I am sitting on the verandah, drinking, at 4:00 in the afternoon. Why? Everyone else is in Treasure Ketch shopping for souvenirs. Not me though, because I just purchased mine. At $150. More than my budget for souvenirs. Not at all something I was the least interested in purchasing, not something available in Treasure Ketch, not even something I can take home with me. Something I actually despise. Something I took early retirement and a cut in income to avoid. More about that later.
Today started with even warmer weather, and finally by afternoon, it feels like the Caribbean, there is sun and a warm breeze and spending time at the pool is beginning to sound good. Plus the waters have been calm and we ditched the Meclizine and I actually feel awake.
All were awake at 8:00 for room service rolls, juice and tea. Whistler was wide-awake with me an hour before at 7:00, really 6:00 since the time change. We hung out on the verandah and cuddled.
.
We got dressed and the kids went, protesting, to their clubs. Gameboy changed his attitude when he arrived at his clubs location, The Stack, to find he and one other guy had the Sony Playstation to themselves. Ian went off to his group, playing games at the sports center on deck 10 with barely a glance backwards.
The adults then went to Palo for brunch. We ate crab, including stone crab. Denver is not conducive to crab eating (long story where Peter almost had his appendix removed), so I was looking forward to eating safe crab. Palo is not really conducive to eating crab, either. You need newspaper-covered tables, hammers and a roll of paper towel and a bib. Our server was nice, but spent most of her time chatting with the folks next to us and required several promptings to bring butter and a crab cracker for the stone crab. (Later I realized it probably was not the servers fault, saw the couple talking the ear off of any DCL employee they could waylay on many occasions in later days.) The butter and crab cracker arrived just after we all finished (hacking away at) most of our crab. Loved the salads, fennel with dill, marinated tomatoes, olives and cucumber. Then tilapia with risotto for all, and pancakes, too, for Peter. There were really nice berries for dessert (and since the other desserts were coffee or chocolate flavored, not my favorite) I ate a lot of those.
After brunch, Rack, Peter and I went to the adult pool (another first for us), Gma to the verandah. Rack sunned and we sat in the hot tub, since it still was chilly in the pool, chatted with DVCreg, her DH, DDs and another couple who had traveled extensively in the Caribbean. Back to get the kids, who had lunched with their clubs, cleaned up, then we all went to the matinee of Hercules. It was nice to see one of the shows without having someone falling asleep, wished we had done the same yesterday. Very funny show, this team is very talented, but I did not pay much attention to Herc or the others, because I spent too much time watching the Muse who was in drag. The guy was very funny. We exited the theater and went to Treasure Ketch to shop, hadnt been there yet. Whistler decides he needs to use the restroom, fast, so I led him out.
Now to my very expensive Disney Cruise souvenir, a souvenir that I did not even get to keep let alone want. When you sign your kids up for the kids club you get a pager, they warn you that if you jump in the pool with it, consider it sold for $150. That it will never work again, and you will be charged $150. Now mind you, I have carried a pager for a large portion of my adult life, and all the folks I worked with used to always say that if something REALLY MAJOR was going to go wrong, it always happened when I carried the pager. Everyone loved carrying it the week before or after me because they were assured of a call free week. Trust me, you dont want to know what the pager warns of, just imagine the night of 9-11, entering a deserted VA Hospital at 2:00 A.M. in the morning . Anyway I can tell you lots about Motorola pagers, how to program, change batteries, the design changes that have occurred over the years, etc. How some of the clip designs are excellent, how some left a lot to be desired. The fact that you can insure them, and that they should never cost you a dime, and the amazing kind of abuse you can put them through and how they will still work, dropping them in the snow cross country skiing, having the clip snap off and shooting the pager flying down a hallway, dropping from large heights and on and on. I have never seen a Motorola pager of the type DCL has. It is two pieces, a fact I was not aware of, or at least never focused on, ALL the pagers I ever had were one piece. At DCL there is a clipped holder and the pager itself slides into this holder. If you go to the toilet on the Magic, it can and will slip out of the holder and fall into the toilet. You can fish it out instantly, eeewwww. This type of pager is so water sensitive it can and will be dead. You can wash it off, eeewww again, dry it as quickly as possible, take it back to the kids clubs, replace the battery and it will still be dead. It will cost you $150. I think that DCL and Motorola are in cahoots. They have designed an exquisitely cheap and non-water-proof pager guaranteed to assure high profits for DCL in perpetuity. I think it entirely appropriate that my souvenir from this trip was essentially purchased in the toilet. I spent half my time in the toilets at WDW and on the cruise, taking one son or the other, or my mom, to the toilet. This was my younger sons single most expensive trip ever to the toilet, even counting all of the expensive-color-changing-form-metamorphosing doo-dads we purchased to finally get him potty trained. More expensive than Gmas trip to the Mousegear toilets while we rode Mission Space. I didnt even HAVE to go, but was simply following the previously stated I-dont-care-if-you-dont-have-to-go-go-anyway-we-are-not-stopping-again rule.
So to vent, I came back here, poured a glass of wine, plopped on my life saving verandah and wrote this, while everyone else shops in Treasure Ketch for THEIR souvenirs.
Everyone returned and we got dressed for dinner, casual evening. We attended the Castaway Cay Club reception in Rockin Bar D. They had some kind of ubiquitous mango-orangey-rum punch thing for the adults (low in the rum, Rack bagged three and didnt even get a buzz) and punch for the kids. There were several kinds of fried egg rolls, poppers, and wontons and cold sandwich circles with bits and dabs of mostly cheesy unidentifiable stuff on them. All nice, but nothing particularly exceptional. Some of the officers strolled and conversed with the returning passengers. I laughed pretty hard when I was telling one of the officers of my toilet-meets-pager adventure and he unclipped his pager to demonstrate that his didnt slip out easily. Wrong. The thing fell right out of the holder; he looked pretty embarrassed, and then repeated the motion several times. Well, I guess mine is worn out. Uh, huh. And you are a guy, when you use the toilet the thing stays upright. When you are a woman in the toilet situation, you tend to have to move that little pager and holder around a bit. I made Peter carry the replacement pager the rest of the trip. No way was I gonna touch that sucker with a ten foot pole.
We went to dinner at Animators Palate. Show night. It is very fun to watch the restaurant color up, I especially like the point when it is mostly black and white and the brushes are blue and green and there are tinges of blue in the walls. Kendall Jackson merlot was the wine tonight. I had the baked stuffed tomato, good this time, the last cruise the tomato was of the imitation variety. Other adults had the lobster wrapper (looked like a burrito to me). Then salads all around. Veal chop for me, loved the risotto and asparagus. Sirloin for the guys, Gma passes. Last cruise the menu here was particularly bland, I had had the strawberry shortcake and thought it pretty awful, stale poundcake, frozen mushy strawberries and gluey whipped white-plastic imitation cream. I love shortcake and decided, what the heck, go for it again. This time it was really good, nice warm mixed berries, light cake and better cream. Cheesecake and Boston cream pie for everyone else. (It seemed like the servers had always had to parade around the restaurants before, Characters, baked Alaska and Cherries Jubilee in hand, making the service uneven and rushed. But this year each restaurant parade did not deliver the desert, and made for smoother service.) Anton had started the kids on a couple of mind benders during the meal and revealed the solutions. The kids revealed that they knew the secret of the servers vests.
We left dinner pretty late. We were always early (amazed me how many people would show up half hour or more late) but still were late getting out, usually due to finishing our wine. I commented to our servers a couple of times about it, knowing they needed to turn the tables for the late seating, deserving of a mini-rest, but they said it was fine, and they never tried to rush us out. Gma back to her cabin to bed. So once again we went to Rockin Bar D with the show already in progress. Freddy Fusion was very funny. The kids were in stitches over the duck. Youll just have to see it to know.
We had never made it into Studio Sea at all on our last trip, so we planned that next, the major reason we went to the Hercules matinee. The program was Generation Gap and was not crowded. We ordered drinks from the server, another beautiful Romanian lady, Dana? Black hair like Adina but lovely green eyes instead of blue. Rack and Whistler were chosen to be one of the parent-child teams, see; everyone thinks we are the grandparents. The kids leave, and then the adults answer questions such as Who is your childs favorite Disney character. Then the teams are reversed and the kids have to predict the parents answer. Turned out the Whistler-Rack adult-child cousin combo beat out all the other teams, and they won a red, white and blue ribboned gold medal. The funniest team was a mother and daughter, where Mom could not say what her daughter was wearing. Mom had every item down to a T, BUT the T, which was a glaring Freddy Fusion T won mere minutes before and pulled over the rest of the perfectly described outfit.
Back to bed for the rest of us to be wide awake and bushy tailed tomorrow for St Maarten.
Tink aka Motorola girl
Right now I am sitting on the verandah, drinking, at 4:00 in the afternoon. Why? Everyone else is in Treasure Ketch shopping for souvenirs. Not me though, because I just purchased mine. At $150. More than my budget for souvenirs. Not at all something I was the least interested in purchasing, not something available in Treasure Ketch, not even something I can take home with me. Something I actually despise. Something I took early retirement and a cut in income to avoid. More about that later.
Today started with even warmer weather, and finally by afternoon, it feels like the Caribbean, there is sun and a warm breeze and spending time at the pool is beginning to sound good. Plus the waters have been calm and we ditched the Meclizine and I actually feel awake.
All were awake at 8:00 for room service rolls, juice and tea. Whistler was wide-awake with me an hour before at 7:00, really 6:00 since the time change. We hung out on the verandah and cuddled.
.
We got dressed and the kids went, protesting, to their clubs. Gameboy changed his attitude when he arrived at his clubs location, The Stack, to find he and one other guy had the Sony Playstation to themselves. Ian went off to his group, playing games at the sports center on deck 10 with barely a glance backwards.
The adults then went to Palo for brunch. We ate crab, including stone crab. Denver is not conducive to crab eating (long story where Peter almost had his appendix removed), so I was looking forward to eating safe crab. Palo is not really conducive to eating crab, either. You need newspaper-covered tables, hammers and a roll of paper towel and a bib. Our server was nice, but spent most of her time chatting with the folks next to us and required several promptings to bring butter and a crab cracker for the stone crab. (Later I realized it probably was not the servers fault, saw the couple talking the ear off of any DCL employee they could waylay on many occasions in later days.) The butter and crab cracker arrived just after we all finished (hacking away at) most of our crab. Loved the salads, fennel with dill, marinated tomatoes, olives and cucumber. Then tilapia with risotto for all, and pancakes, too, for Peter. There were really nice berries for dessert (and since the other desserts were coffee or chocolate flavored, not my favorite) I ate a lot of those.
After brunch, Rack, Peter and I went to the adult pool (another first for us), Gma to the verandah. Rack sunned and we sat in the hot tub, since it still was chilly in the pool, chatted with DVCreg, her DH, DDs and another couple who had traveled extensively in the Caribbean. Back to get the kids, who had lunched with their clubs, cleaned up, then we all went to the matinee of Hercules. It was nice to see one of the shows without having someone falling asleep, wished we had done the same yesterday. Very funny show, this team is very talented, but I did not pay much attention to Herc or the others, because I spent too much time watching the Muse who was in drag. The guy was very funny. We exited the theater and went to Treasure Ketch to shop, hadnt been there yet. Whistler decides he needs to use the restroom, fast, so I led him out.
Now to my very expensive Disney Cruise souvenir, a souvenir that I did not even get to keep let alone want. When you sign your kids up for the kids club you get a pager, they warn you that if you jump in the pool with it, consider it sold for $150. That it will never work again, and you will be charged $150. Now mind you, I have carried a pager for a large portion of my adult life, and all the folks I worked with used to always say that if something REALLY MAJOR was going to go wrong, it always happened when I carried the pager. Everyone loved carrying it the week before or after me because they were assured of a call free week. Trust me, you dont want to know what the pager warns of, just imagine the night of 9-11, entering a deserted VA Hospital at 2:00 A.M. in the morning . Anyway I can tell you lots about Motorola pagers, how to program, change batteries, the design changes that have occurred over the years, etc. How some of the clip designs are excellent, how some left a lot to be desired. The fact that you can insure them, and that they should never cost you a dime, and the amazing kind of abuse you can put them through and how they will still work, dropping them in the snow cross country skiing, having the clip snap off and shooting the pager flying down a hallway, dropping from large heights and on and on. I have never seen a Motorola pager of the type DCL has. It is two pieces, a fact I was not aware of, or at least never focused on, ALL the pagers I ever had were one piece. At DCL there is a clipped holder and the pager itself slides into this holder. If you go to the toilet on the Magic, it can and will slip out of the holder and fall into the toilet. You can fish it out instantly, eeewwww. This type of pager is so water sensitive it can and will be dead. You can wash it off, eeewww again, dry it as quickly as possible, take it back to the kids clubs, replace the battery and it will still be dead. It will cost you $150. I think that DCL and Motorola are in cahoots. They have designed an exquisitely cheap and non-water-proof pager guaranteed to assure high profits for DCL in perpetuity. I think it entirely appropriate that my souvenir from this trip was essentially purchased in the toilet. I spent half my time in the toilets at WDW and on the cruise, taking one son or the other, or my mom, to the toilet. This was my younger sons single most expensive trip ever to the toilet, even counting all of the expensive-color-changing-form-metamorphosing doo-dads we purchased to finally get him potty trained. More expensive than Gmas trip to the Mousegear toilets while we rode Mission Space. I didnt even HAVE to go, but was simply following the previously stated I-dont-care-if-you-dont-have-to-go-go-anyway-we-are-not-stopping-again rule.
So to vent, I came back here, poured a glass of wine, plopped on my life saving verandah and wrote this, while everyone else shops in Treasure Ketch for THEIR souvenirs.
Everyone returned and we got dressed for dinner, casual evening. We attended the Castaway Cay Club reception in Rockin Bar D. They had some kind of ubiquitous mango-orangey-rum punch thing for the adults (low in the rum, Rack bagged three and didnt even get a buzz) and punch for the kids. There were several kinds of fried egg rolls, poppers, and wontons and cold sandwich circles with bits and dabs of mostly cheesy unidentifiable stuff on them. All nice, but nothing particularly exceptional. Some of the officers strolled and conversed with the returning passengers. I laughed pretty hard when I was telling one of the officers of my toilet-meets-pager adventure and he unclipped his pager to demonstrate that his didnt slip out easily. Wrong. The thing fell right out of the holder; he looked pretty embarrassed, and then repeated the motion several times. Well, I guess mine is worn out. Uh, huh. And you are a guy, when you use the toilet the thing stays upright. When you are a woman in the toilet situation, you tend to have to move that little pager and holder around a bit. I made Peter carry the replacement pager the rest of the trip. No way was I gonna touch that sucker with a ten foot pole.
We went to dinner at Animators Palate. Show night. It is very fun to watch the restaurant color up, I especially like the point when it is mostly black and white and the brushes are blue and green and there are tinges of blue in the walls. Kendall Jackson merlot was the wine tonight. I had the baked stuffed tomato, good this time, the last cruise the tomato was of the imitation variety. Other adults had the lobster wrapper (looked like a burrito to me). Then salads all around. Veal chop for me, loved the risotto and asparagus. Sirloin for the guys, Gma passes. Last cruise the menu here was particularly bland, I had had the strawberry shortcake and thought it pretty awful, stale poundcake, frozen mushy strawberries and gluey whipped white-plastic imitation cream. I love shortcake and decided, what the heck, go for it again. This time it was really good, nice warm mixed berries, light cake and better cream. Cheesecake and Boston cream pie for everyone else. (It seemed like the servers had always had to parade around the restaurants before, Characters, baked Alaska and Cherries Jubilee in hand, making the service uneven and rushed. But this year each restaurant parade did not deliver the desert, and made for smoother service.) Anton had started the kids on a couple of mind benders during the meal and revealed the solutions. The kids revealed that they knew the secret of the servers vests.
We left dinner pretty late. We were always early (amazed me how many people would show up half hour or more late) but still were late getting out, usually due to finishing our wine. I commented to our servers a couple of times about it, knowing they needed to turn the tables for the late seating, deserving of a mini-rest, but they said it was fine, and they never tried to rush us out. Gma back to her cabin to bed. So once again we went to Rockin Bar D with the show already in progress. Freddy Fusion was very funny. The kids were in stitches over the duck. Youll just have to see it to know.
We had never made it into Studio Sea at all on our last trip, so we planned that next, the major reason we went to the Hercules matinee. The program was Generation Gap and was not crowded. We ordered drinks from the server, another beautiful Romanian lady, Dana? Black hair like Adina but lovely green eyes instead of blue. Rack and Whistler were chosen to be one of the parent-child teams, see; everyone thinks we are the grandparents. The kids leave, and then the adults answer questions such as Who is your childs favorite Disney character. Then the teams are reversed and the kids have to predict the parents answer. Turned out the Whistler-Rack adult-child cousin combo beat out all the other teams, and they won a red, white and blue ribboned gold medal. The funniest team was a mother and daughter, where Mom could not say what her daughter was wearing. Mom had every item down to a T, BUT the T, which was a glaring Freddy Fusion T won mere minutes before and pulled over the rest of the perfectly described outfit.
Back to bed for the rest of us to be wide awake and bushy tailed tomorrow for St Maarten.
Tink aka Motorola girl
