Tuesday, January 18, 2022 - Castaway Cay
We woke up at 7 to my phone alarm and quickly dressed for a beach day, in hopes we would actually be able to dock at Castaway Cay for our first time on the island. It didn't feel like a sure bet from the wind we had experienced the previous and by the way in which the waves appeared a bit choppy from our verandah. Here is Peter gazing wistfully at Castaway Cay.
This is what he saw!
Honestly, though the sky looked more promising for a sunny day, the wind and the water seemed more hostile to docking than they did on that fateful day two years earlier when we were unable to dock here on the Fantasy.
We were able sign up for the virtual cue in the DCL app before we even left the room, and we got an estimated disembarkation time between 0830 and 0845. IIRC, the virtual cue opened at 0700, which may be why I set my alarm for that specific time. We got push notifications the night before that we could join the virtual cue to leave the ship at a certain time. It was all very easy and organized...one good thing about the app.
We went to grab some breakfast, hopeful, but still not entirely convinced, that we would be enjoying CC that day.
Every good breakfast requires a great cup of coffee, so our first stop was, of course, Cove Cafe. I had watched and read about the famous Coconut Caramel Latte, so I figured then was an opportune time to taste one. When Peter heard me order mine, it sounded so tempting he decided to make it two! We also got our repeat customer card with our first two punches.
The character art on the lattes is so flippin' cute! We usually take our coffee black, so this was a big change for us, but a very welcomed one. Such a vacation treat! Living our cruise lives, we were!
While the drinks at Cove Cafe are an up-charge, the food is all included. We grabbed a few chocolate pillow danishes, which are essentially chocolate croissants, because...how could we not?
They have select danishes out all day, and in the past, Cove Cafe has also offered a small selection of appetizers in the early evening hours (like charcuterie, cheese, olives), around when the Signals Bar would have Happy Hour. I popped in a few times during that window on this cruise and didn't find any savory treats. I hope they bring them back! The pastries we tried were all good, but I think they're the same things offered in Cabanas and the Dining Rooms (I don't ever eat pastries in those venues, though, so please correct me if I'm wrong).
We sat outside Cove for a few minutes and enjoyed our lattes and pastries, and then it was time for second breakfast in Cabanas.
I grabbed a Mickey Churro, because 1. it's Mickey, 2. there were no Mickey Waffles, and 3. I love churros. It was delicious, and much better than a Mickey Waffle in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, Mickey Waffles are amazing, especially on DCL. But I prefer churros to waffles, so this thing was made for me. I also went for a ham, cheese and egg croissant. Cabanas offers a different pre-assembled breakfast sandwich each morning, and that day, it was this. I'm a big fan of breakfast sammies, and this one was good. The croissant was a bit dry, I'm guessing from sitting under the heat lamp?
Peter likes a nice full English breakfast, and Cabanas offers most of the things. I'm noticing he has no black pudding or mushrooms on his plate. Since I wasn't looking, I'm not sure if they were not there, or if he just wasn't in the mood for them that day.
Peter also loves his Cream of Wheat.
As we were enjoying our breakfast, we were able hear the captain announce that we had successfully docked at CC and that the crew were working on the necessary tasks to enable us to begin going ashore. Very exciting!
We stopped back at the stateroom really quick to grab our stuff and headed down to deck one to disembark. Here we learned that we would need photo ID to return to the ship. I'm so glad they told us this because, duh! I hadn't even thought about that! I was thinking that the island was really and extension of the ship and all we would need was our room key. But no, we were in the Bahamas, a foreign country, and we would need at least a driver's license to get back on board. So I headed back up to the stateroom to grab my license (which nobody ever looked at when we got back on the ship, by the way). I was so anxious to get onto Castaway Cay, it felt like forever going back up to deck 7 for my license bout in reality, it took about 10 minutes. We were on the beautiful shores of Castaway Cay by 0850.
It was a picture-perfect, stunningly gorgeous day in Castaway Cay, with bright sun, and occasional puffy clouds.
We stopped briefly in the shops to check out the merchandise, because we had heard the CC merch can only be found on the island, and it can sell out fast, so we wanted first crack at it. We learned that a few items that interested us were not available in our sizes, boohoo. Then we jumped on the tram to Serenity Bay. Perhaps it was a mistake on this breezy day to hit SB beach so early, because that is a windward beach. It was chilly and breezy there on that morning, and the sun was not yet quite high enough in the sky to clear the palm trees lining the beach.
Here is Peter trying to stay comfortable on Serenity Bay at 0921.
Fortunately, the day would warm up, even at Serenity Bay, and we would be able to relax!
We leave on Saturday on the 5 night double dip cruise. It is my 7th grade daughter and I, cannot wait! please keep your review going, it has been awesome!
We are getting close enough to be excited and think about it but far enough it still feels like forever.
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