A Perfect Pre-Cruise Breakfast
Sunday, May 20: Part One
We woke up Sunday morning to a phone call from Mom, Dad and Beth letting us know that they had decided to skip breakfast and sleep in. This was a problem because when we looked at the clock we realized that we had missed our wake-up call. We should have been up half an hour ago! This breakfast is one of my must-do's for every trip, so we still wanted to go without the rest of the family. We got ready at light-speed and called a cab, leaving our luggage with Mom, Dad and Beth, so that they could load it up and meet up with us later. With the cab, we were able to make it to the Poly just a few minutes late, and they took our picture and seated us immediately. We were having breakfast with Stitch at 'Ohana!
We started out with the delicious tropical breakfast breads.
We also had some Lilikoi juice, which is my favorite juice ever!
Next was the beautiful fruit plate.
And then the platter with eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes and biscuits.
We also had some Mickey waffles.
They even brought us a little cupcake for our anniversary.
All ofthe food was delicious, and throughout the meal, we had fun with the characters. First up was Pluto.
Then, my favorite, Stitch!
He autographed my pocket on our fish extender.
Next up was Mickey.
And last was Lilo.
This is one of my favorite breakfast spots at Disney partially because Stitch is my favorite character, but I also love the family style service. You never have to worry that you're going to miss a character because you're at the buffet.
Soon, our meal was over, and we headed downstairs, where the van service was picking us up.
We were taking a van to Port Canaveral because it was actually more economical for five people, would allow us a grocery store stop and was going to get us to the ship about an hour before the Disney buses would have.
We all loaded up into the van, and said "See ya real soon" to Disney World. It was time for our cruise! We made a quick pit stop at a nearby grocery store, where we purchased some snacks and toiletry items we had run out of or hadn't thought to bring(I dont think any of us actually forgot anything on this trip--yay!). The trip takes a while, so we settled in for the long haul. Dad, Josh and Beth took a nap while Mom and I talked quietly. It was comfy and pleasant and although the driver was rather grumpy, I would recommend the van service heartily. Soon, we caught our first glimpse of the Dream.
Soon we arrived at the terminal. We had forgotten to repack our items so that we had a "day bag", so we rearranged things there on the sidewalk and checked our bags in before proceeding into the terminal building.
Security was quick and easy(you're not allowed to take pictures), and we soon found ourselves back in the realm of Disney. The terminal is truly lovely and is a great gateway to your cruise experience--I love it!
Josh and I had cruised with Disney once before, so we headed for the Castaway Club check-in, while Mom, Dad and Beth used the restroom and went to the regular check-in.
After checking in we spent a few minutes looking around.
Our numbers came up in less than ten minutes(and both at the same time), and we all gathered at the giant Mickey portal and boarded the ship! We were soooo excited!
It's so wonderful to hear your name announced as they welcome you to the ship!
Seriously, the whole check-in procedure is super-efficient. From the time we pulled up in front of the terminal to the time we set foot in the ship's lobby was certainly less than half an hour. It was all also really pleasant, every CM we encountered was kind, polite and friendly. It was a great start to a great cruise!
The Realization of a Dream
Sunday, May 20: Part Three
We were finally there! After months of planning and anticipation, we were finally on board the Disney Dream. It was beautiful!
We hopped onto an elevator and made our way to Cabanas for lunch.
We found a table and then took turns going to the buffet so that someone would be with our things at all times. Getting your bags stolen would not be a good start to your cruise vacation! Here are some shots of the buffet:
(Sorry about the blurry ones. I was trying to take as many as possible without holding up the line, so I was kind of rushed)
Here is my first plate. Clockwise from top: Cheesy mashed potatoes, two specialty pastas, marinated tomato, caprese sandwich on ciabatta, and some kind of beef.
Dad's first plate. Peel and eat shrimp, some kind of flatbread, steak and a couple of meats(I don't know what they were)
Josh's first plate. Asparagus spears, steak, king crab claws, peel and eat shrimp, salmon, some kind of chicken and a container of cocktail sauce.
I did not get pictures of mom's and Beth's plates, as I was busy eating by the time they got through the line. Here is my dessert plate. Fruit tart, chocolate chip cookie, chocolate mousse.
And Josh's. Fruit tart, banana bread, mint chocolate chip ice cream.
All of the food was delicious! We really enjoyed our meal.
Since we still had time before our rooms were ready, Josh, Beth and I decided to get in a little pool time. We headed for the bathrooms to change, but the ladies' rooom had a line going out the door! Figuring there must be other bathrooms in the adults area, we went over there instead. I'm glad we did! Up the stairs from the adult pool is a lovely little bathroom/changing room that had no one else in it. We got changed and hit the pool deck for a little water fun. I started out by hopping in the hot tub with the see-through floor. It's awesome! The walls are mostly glass as well, so you can see all around yourself!
You could also see most of the pool deck. Apparently, Dad decided to take a nap with his free time!
When Josh finished getting changed, he lasted about two minutes in the hot tub before he decided it was just too hot and wanted to get into the pool!
The adult pool was really nice and not crowded at all. This was the only time we ever got in it, though! There's just so much to do on the ship--we didn't have time to go swimming again.
Since the line for it was starting to build, we decided to ride the Aquaduck before the line got crazy. You cant take photos or video on the ride, but here are some pics of our time in line.
It took about twenty minutes to get to the front of the line. The ride was fun, but not as spectacular as we thought it would be. We only ever rode it the one time.
At this point, our rooms were ready, so we headed down to check them out. Josh and I were in room 5532, which is one of the extended verandah rooms and is near the kid's clubs. I was a little worried about possible noise, but we never had a problem. Here is the verandah:
You can see the people on the verandahs above and beside you from the extended portion of your verandah.
Here is what the main part of the stateroom looked like:
Here are the bathrooms:
We got settled in and cleaned up and then headed our for the afternoon. Here are our stateroom door and Mom, Dad and Beth's once they were decorated:
After we settled into our room and got cleaned up from swimming, it was time for our DISmeet. Our group had decided to have a meetup near the Eye Scream stand just before the Sail Away party. While we waited, we had some delicious ice cream.
We really liked this little ice cream stand. It's self-serve and included in your cruise fare, and they always had interesting flavors. You can just stop and make yourself a mini-cone whenever you would like one.
After a few minutes, our fellow DISers began to arrive. We all introduced ourselves and chatted for ten minutes or so. Everyone was really nice, and it was cool to finally meet people in person we had been talking with online for months!
Once we were done meeting up, it was time for the Sail Away party. On our first cruise, Josh and I missed the deck parties and we really regretted it, so we were very excited to go this time. We got some sparkly streamers from a cast member and found a spot near the stage.
You'll have to excuse all of the heads--I'm very short! Soon, the characters arrived to see us on our way with song and dance and excitement!
It was very exciting, and I loved seeing all of the characters in their cruisewear! Once the show was over, we headed back to our room to get our FE gifts for the night. Here is what we gave out:
For the men, bags of chocolate candy.
For the kids, beach toy sets.
For the teen girls, Lip Smackers.
For the women, dolphin-shaped beach safes.
And for the one teen boy, a mister.
We gave our gifts out at night, and generally tried to give things out that could be useful the next day. (i.e., we gave our pirate stuff the night before pirate day, not the night it took place).
We had the late dinner seating(by choice), so after we finished with FE stuff, it was time for our show for the night, which was the Golden Mickeys.
You are no longer allowed to take any photos during the show, but it was great! My favorite part was at the end, when tons of gold foil Mickey heads rained down on the crowd. We picked up quite a few and took them home for scrapbooking. The nightly shows compete with the fabulous dinners and Castaway Cay for the best part of a Disney cruise for me, so I would certainly say that no one should miss them!
After the show, we had a little time before dinner, so we went back to the room so Josh could change, and then headed to Guest Services to turn in our things to be signed by the characters.
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I took this one through one of the giant portholes.
An Enchanted Dinner at Sea
Sunday, May 20: Part Five
After we had finished turning in our items, we headed down to the Enchanted Garden, where we would be having dinner. We were a bit early and spent about fifteen minutes waiting to be let in. Once we did get in, however, we were overwhelmed with how lovely it was! Pictures don't really do these restaurants justice because they don't capture the lighting correctly, but here are a few anyway!
We were seated quickly and met our lovely tablemates for the cruise. There was a mother with a teenage daughter and the mother's sister. They were really, really sweet! We really got to be friendly by the end of the trip; I was glad we got good tablemates, beacuse on Josh's and my first cruise, we really didn't! We also met our servers. Our head server was Kruno from Croatia, and he was amazing! He was friendly, efficient and knowledgeable, and you could tell he loves his job. He was really striving to give a superior quality of service. I don't know if you can request servers, but if you can I would totally ask for him again. Our assistant server was Natasha from Scotland. She was very, very new(ours was only her second cruise), and she was struggling to keep up a bit, but she was very sweet and friendly and funny! We really loved her,too, even though we often had to wait awhile for drink refills. Strangely, she was really difficult to understand, even though English is her first language. Apparently, Scottish accents are really strong! Our bread service(Multi-grain loaf and country currant bread with chickpea garlic puree) was delicious! I wasn't sure I would like the puree, but it was really good.
Here's the menu:
I always ordered the non-alcoholic specialty drink for the night. This one was the Northern Garden(Sprite and Harmony tea with pomegranate syrup and sugar syrup). It was amazing--I loved it.
We ordered our appetizers, and the came up quickly. Mom had the Tomato Soup.
I had the Thyme and Garlic Brioche.
Josh, Dad and Beth all had the North Atlantic Lobster Ravioli.
Next up was the soup and salad course. I was the only one in our group that ordered a second course. (Some of our tablemates did, but I didn't feel comfortable asking them for pics yet. I did on later nights!) I had the Romaine Wedge.
All of our first and second courses were delicious! Everyone was very happy!
Next up were the entrees. Beth and I had the Roasted Pork Tenderloin seasoned with Smoked Salt.
This was great--I loved the little polenta cakes, and the apples were delicious with pork.
Josh and Dad had the Caramelized Sea Scallops. They liked them a lot, although they were not necessarily the best scallops they had ever had.
Mom had the Grilled NY Strip Steak.
She enjoyed it very much.
Next were the desserts. I don't remember who had what except that I had the trio. This is the Strawberry Cheesecake.
The Banana Foster Sundae:
The Sweet Temptations:
And the "Sacher" Chocolate Torte.
My trio was fantastic! I especially loved the Sacher torte(in the middle).
We also got these little jelly candies.
They were a tasty finish to our night.
Josh and I were pretty exhausted, so after dinner, we went to our room to go to bed. Our room steward was Rian from the Philippines, and he was incredible! He did an amazing job on our room, even though we never saw him go in or out of it. Whenever we saw him in the hall, he always remembered not only our names, but things we had told him about what we were doing that day! I was astounded! He could not possibly have written down everything we told him, so he must have the best memory ever! He was also really friendly. When we arrived back at our stateroom, Rian had already completed our turn-down service.
We showered and went to bed, and that was it for our first cruise day!
Next Time We'll Just Take a Taxi Monday, May 21: Part One
Monday morning, Josh and I woke up bright and early and headed down for breakfast. It was our Nassau day, and we had something big planned. On our previous cruise, we had done the dolphin enounter on Blue Lagoon Island(which was excellent, by the way), and afterward we had rushed back to take in the culture and try some Bahamian food in Nassau. This was a huge mistake! The tourist areas were crowded and tacky, and the less busy areas were full of people who seemed very hostile toward tourists. When we went to a local restaurant for lunch, we were glared at and repeatedly told they were out of things. Apparently, they were out of half of the menu. I can't imagine that's really possible, so I have to assume they just wanted us to leave. We did. We bought a couple of trinkets, got back on the ship and ordered room service. Because of that experience, we knew we didn't really want to spend time in Nassau itself again, so we booked something that was going to take pretty much the whole day. What was it? You'll just have to wait and see!
On our way up to Cabanas, I noticed the lighthouse everyone is always talking about on here and snapped a quick shot through the windows.
We went through the mostly empty buffet and had just one plate each. Josh had eggs over-medium(which he chops up into tiny pieces), steak, sausage, bacon, potatoes, Eggs Benedict and a grilled tomato.
I had some kind of mango soup, Eggs Benedict with no sauce, potatoes and corned beef hash.
We also split some pineapple and watermelon.
I also took a picture of Nemo's Reef while it didn't have any kids in it.
For our excursion, we were supposed to meet up near the Walt Disney Theater, so we moseyed on over there, where Beth met up with us. Apparently, the wristbands for our excursion had been delayed in their journey to the ship, so we proceeded to wait forever--okay, okay, so it was only fifteen minutes, but it felt like forever--before they gave us wristbands, meal vouchers and purple Timon stickers and began to lead us off of the ship.
Soon, we were outside and following Timon to our shuttles. At that time, the Magic was sailing out of New York and doing the 8-night Bahamian cruises, and she was docked right next to us! It was very cool, and a good opportunity to see the size difference between the older and the newer ships!
As you can see from the first few pics, we actually had to wait a bit outside before we really got moving, too! Eventually, we reached the rather long line for the shuttle vans. These were actually really cool. After all the visible seats were filled, more seats pulled out from under the existing ones to create seating in what otherwise would have been the central aisle.
Forty-five minutes after our scheduled meet-up by the theater, we finally got loaded up and were on our way. Continued in next post
We were very relieved to finally be on our way to our destination for the day, so we sta back and relaxed. The shuttle was very comfortable, and we got a nice look at Nassau on our way through.
In a few minutes, we spotted our destination.
We were going to Atlantis! We(Josh, Beth and I) had decided to do the Aquaventure water park. We all unloaded and were herded together by the Atlantis staff members.
This was when things got really irritating. They proceeded to make all of us march through the resort in a group, on a "tour" of the amenities.
First, we had to walk past all of the luxury shops.
These were mostly the kind of high-end designer stores I will never in my life be able to afford, but I thought some of you might like to see what they have in case you want to visit and do some shopping someday! Next they took us through the casino, where we were very specifically told that we could only take pictures of these glass sculptures.
(Don't worry--the casino wasn't much to look at anyway, and the "decor" was really kind of cheesy.) Continued in next post
Next, they finally let us go outside, where they proceeded to make us stand and be lectured about their theming, and then split us into two groups, depending on whether or not we were doing the dolphin swim(we weren't). It was very hot, and if we knew we were going to have to stand and walk in the heat for so long we would have just worn our swimsuits instead of bringing them to change into. While we waited, I took some pics of the gorgeous scenery and decor.
Next, they led us through a bunch of outside areas and an arcade.
At this point, they finally, finally let us go off on our own to enjoy the water park. What was especially bothersome about this twenty minute(according to the timestamps on my photos) "tour" was that they barely talked about and definitely didn't show us, the myriad animal exhibits that make Atlantis unique, nor did they even mention any instructions on the waterpark(where to go for towels and locker, where our restaurant choices were located, etc.)--they just dragged us through the parts of the resort that could potentially make them more money. Not only was this annoying, it seemed pointless to me. It's not like someone is going to say, "Gee, I know I paid $200 a pop for waterpark tickets, but that casino looks really inviting. I think I'll spend the whole day gambling instead." From the time we met up at the theater to the time we arrived in the actual waterpark(not counting the time it took to get a locker) was almost two hours! Atlantis is only fifteen or twenty minutes from the port! As you will see in my next post, we really enjoyed the day, and would totally go back. However, I would not buy the "port adventure" through Disney again. We can just buy our own tickets and take a taxi(which Disney employees gave us instructions on how to do to avoid being scammed), and hopefully get there much more quickly with more time to have fun! I'm sorry this post was kind of negative, but personally, I would rather have known about all of this before we went, so hopefully I can be a help to somebody else who is considering Aquaventure for their next cruise. We really did enjoy ourselves, and I promise the next update will be much happier!
Thank you! I love the hot tub, too--it's just really neat to see the ocean under your feet. I wish we would have had more time to spend in the pool area. There are just so many things to do!
Round and Round and Round We Go
Monday, May 21: Part Two
Once we were allowed to enter the water park, we went straight over to rent a locker and then to the dressing rooms to change clothes. I was really excited about the Current, which is Aquaventure's not-so-lazy river, so we went there first. This turned out to be a good choice. The Current makes a huge circle around the Power Tower, with many fun little features such as rapids, a conveyor belt and tunnels. At one point in your journey, you have to choose whether to continue through the rapids or go up to the Power Tower, which contains four of the park's slides. We actually ended up spending most of our day going around and around the Current.
We hopped in and started our journey(and just as a disclaimer, what follows is a sort of summary of all of our trips around. I couldn't possibly remember which pic belonged to which lap, although they are roughly in order):
This is where you had to pick rapids or slides. The employee would guide your tube to whichever side you chose. You had to stay seated in your tube, exactly the way you can see in the photos, at all times due to the strong current.
On this particular lap, we chose the slides, and the river quickly slowed down and narrowed.
At one point it completely stopped, making it a great spot to resituate yourself in your tube while you waited your turn.
Eventually, we reached a conveyor belt. When you get to the bottom of it, you have to turn your tube around backward, which gives you a great view of the ocean on your way up!
When you reached the top, you could either just stay right in your tube and choose one of two slides or you could get out and choose one of two other slides. We did all four! When you finished, you just got duumped back out into the current to do it over again!
Here are some more of our Current pictures:
At some point, we stopped for lunch. I desperately wanted to try conch fritters, so we chose on of the locations that had those and headed over there. Beth had a Caesar Salad, which she enjoyed.
And I had my conch fritters. I enjoyed the taste of these, but they were severely underdone, and I was worried I might get sick, so I only ate a little bit.
My yellow drink is actually some kind of tropical fruit punch, and it was very yummy. Here is what the dining area looked like and the view we had while we ate:
After lunch, we decided to try some of the other slides, which were located in a Mayan Temple. Josh did all of them, but Beth and I only rode this one that went through a shark tank.
It was especially cool because the slide was engineered so that your tube slowed down in the shark tunnel, and you could see the sharks really well. After that, Josh did the body slides, while Beth and I waited near the temple pool. Then, we all took one more spin on the Current. Here are some video clips of some of the cooler parts of the Current from the whole day.
Since we were getting tight on time and pretty waterlogged, we decided to head inside and check out The Dig, which is a walk-through exhibit of aquatic animals.
The Atlantis lobby.
Spiny lobsters:
Lionfish:
Jewel Tank:
This was the main tank, and it had these amazing giant rays in it. They were absolutely massive!
You could stick your hand in the tank and touch these conchs and starfish. One horrible guy was ripping them off of the walls, and it made me sad because I imagine it must have been painful for them!
Not sure what this exhibit was, either:
Seahorses:
Eels:
The exhibits were really pretty, and at the end was a whole bunch of Atlantean theming and a gift shop(of course).
I really wish we could've taken in more of the marine exhibits, but we were out of time, so we headed out through the lobby.
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