So, our family went on this way fun vacation in March over spring break. We went to Disney World and on a Disney Cruise. I've been trying to get everything scrapbooked, so while I was home this weekend, I made a journal of what we did each day. I only have the cruise entries with me; the rest are at home. I'll get them posted sometime. :) I might as well add some pictures too... we certainly took enough of them! It's great! Haha
March 27, 2008
Anchors Away!!!
Thursday morning, it was with some sadness that we packed up our suitcases and cleared out the kitchen at our villa at Wilderness Lodge to get ready for the next stage of our trip. We were all really excited, but had had such a magical time in Disney World that we didn’t want it to end! Our little villa had been such a pleasant home away from home that we didn’t want to leave it. A bus came to pick us up at the lodge and take us to Cape Canaveral for our departure. We had about an hour bus ride to get to the port. Poor Mom got a little car sick, but that was only the beginning for her. There was a cute movie they showed on the bus about Mickey and his pals getting ready to get on the cruise themselves. Lindsay and I were so excited we could barely stand it. I had to try pretty hard to keep Lindsay from screaming with excitement when we saw the ship. Our first view of the ship was pretty spectacular. It was enormous and looked so fun! We managed to get through security and onto the ship pretty well. We didn’t have to worry about our luggage since the cruise line took care of it. We all just had little packs full of stuff that we might need for the afternoon. We were sent to Parrot Cay for lunch. It was incredible! There was so much good food everywhere! Grandpa, Lindsay and I were a little confused at first: we grabbed the children’s plates and Grandpa had macaroni and cheese. We found the “big kid” food fairly quickly. Everything was delicious! My favorite thing of that meal was a cold strawberry mint soup. It sounds really weird but was so yummy. The salad bar had more food in it than most restaurants have on the entire menu. The dessert bar was really hard to resist. There were little tarts that I found at almost every meal that were so good. We headed to our room and found that our luggage had already arrived. Our little rest was short lived because we had to put on our life vests and head down to the fourth deck for a drill. Disney knows how to make things move smoothly. We were done in almost fifteen minutes, which was a good thing because it was so hot outside. We saw another cruise line take nearly an hour for the same drill. The deck party as we were pulling away was really cute. They brought out the cruise director and a bunch of Disney characters and had a little dance party on deck 9 where the pools were located. They were selling nonalcoholic strawberry daiquiris. We bought two of them and shared them amongst us, which was fun. They were handing out streamers to wave around as we pulled out. I could hardly tell we were moving when we pulled out. I found “Captain Jack Sparrow” from the Pirates movies and had a picture taken with him. He was pretty full of it, saying that Mom looked more like my sister than my mother and wonder where I got my nice, sparkly necklace from. He played the part flawlessly. That night, we went to our first show. It was “Toy Story- The Musical,” and it was so well-done. The songs were awesome and the sets were so lifelike! You really felt like a toy in Andy’s room! The actors had so much energy and made it so fun! After the show we had a while before our dinner hour so we just went to deck 4 and sat and watched the sun set. Lindsay and I went and had our picture taken with Mickey and Minnie, which was fun. They were pretty cute and looked adorable in their nautical getups. Mom was getting way seasick by that point. By the time dinner rolled around, she had to go lay down and was way sick for the rest of the night. She ordered the “seasickness special” from room service and they brought her forty saltine crackers and a liter of ginger ale. I don’t know that it helped, but at least it was something. We met our wait staff that night. Coleen, our main waitress, was from Canada. She was so cute! She was so personable and made our table feel like we were the only ones she was taking care of. Gina was from India and she was our assistant waitress. She was really funny. She was pretty dingy and had a hard time remembering much, but she definitely had a good heart. They were both so worried about Mom and were suggesting all kinds of things to help with seasickness since they were pretty much experts on the issue. Gina suggested green apples, but we never got to test that out. Lindsay and I weren’t doing that well either, but we managed to stomach some bread and fruit. Dad, Grandma and Grandpa seemed to do ok though. They said the food was really good, which was a plus. While we were at dinner, the waters got so rough that I could see the water in my glass sloshing around. It was pretty wild. We were glad to lie down and sleep off the sickness until the next day, but were excited for the adventures ahead of us.
March 28, 2008
Nassau
By morning, Mom was thankfully feeling much, much better than she had the night before. Her color was tons better and she just seemed more perky, partly because we had almost reached port already and didn’t have We went to Beach Blanket Buffet for breakfast. Once again, there was a plethora of delicious food. I had waffles baked with Mickey faces on them. Our shore excursion was pretty early that morning. I’d booked us a glass bottom boat that sounded so fun! We were a little less than pleased when we realized what the reality of it was. It was a pretty dumpy looking boat. The glass bottom was really small and you couldn’t see much anyway. When we finally got to the area with good views, it turns out the best view was on the top deck of the ship where you couldn’t even see the “glass bottom.” It was kind of cool to see the other yachts and things in Nassau, but it was false advertising and we were pretty disappointed. We got to see Michael Jordan’s house and some sheik’s house was recently put on the market for $15 million. There is definitely a wide gap in economic prosperity in that area, with the very poor working for very little in port and the very wealthy having private helicopters on their yachts. We looked at the market in the port after our boat ride and I bought a cute dress outfit to wear for Halloween parties and luaus. It was pink and had sunsets on it. Mom got a cute Hawaiian shirt that she wore to Castaway Cay the next day. We went back to the Beach Blanket Buffet for lunch, and yes, there was more scrumptious food. That afternoon we had to take a nap because we were shot from our excursion that morning. That evening’s show was “The Golden Mickeys.” It was darling. They had quick songs and scenes from so many classic Disney shows. There were little golden Mickey awards to give to the best in various categories. That evening’s dinner was the best the whole cruise! We went to Triton’s, and it was awesome. I had some of the best steak I’ve ever had. For dessert, Mom and I shared a white chocolate raspberry dessert that was delicious. That night was the Pirates IN the Caribbean deck party. Grandma and I wore the bandanas given to us at dinner, but the rest of our party said we looked stupid. We decided we didn’t care and wore them anyway. There was a dessert bar out on deck with fifty different kinds of desserts. I wish I hadn’t been so full from dinner that I could have tried some, but my stomach had been stretched to its limit. There was a huge chocolate cake that looked like a pirate ship and an ice sculpture that looked like a pirate. Like everything else, Disney went all out with it. Disney is the only cruise line in the world that is allowed to set off fireworks at sea, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. They were so fun. There was a little show on deck where Captain Hook tried to take over the ship but Mickey saved the day and when he did, the fireworks went off. It was so fun! We all slept pretty hard that night from an exhausting day.
March 29, 2008
Castaway Cay
March 29 was a pretty exciting day. It was Lindsay’s fourteenth birthday, so we made sure that we had some gifts to give her so that she knew we didn’t forget about it. Grandma and Grandpa gave her a frame for her to put pictures in from our trip, I gave her some Tinkerbelle earrings and Mom and Dad gave her a sweatshirt we picked up in the Wilderness Lodge gift shop. Our second breakfast at Beach Blanket Buffet was just as good as the first. This time I had Mickey French toast. Our arrival at Castaway Cay was so fun. I looked out on our verandah and saw the Flying Dutchman, the ship from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. It was awesome! We were never allowed to get very close to it, but it was still cool to see it in real life. We walked off the ship onto Disney’s private island and were given towels and bought a cooler of water bottles. (Go figure, you can get all the free soda you want, but you had to buy water bottles.) We took the train over to the family beach and staked out our spot. There were several beach chairs close to a hammock. That was Dad’s favorite part. It was pretty fun to just lay back and chill, looking out at the turquoise water, bright blue sky, lush palm trees and snow white sand. Mom, Dad and I left the other three and headed back for our shore excursion. We decided to go parasailing and it was one of the most fun things of the entire trip! Mom and I decided to ride tandem and send Dad by himself. We rode out into a wide open area and let the others in our group go first. Dad went before Mom and me. There was 1,000 feet of rope, so when the boat was moving, you were probably a few hundred feet in the air. It was all very gentle. I expected more of a jerky ride, but it was all very smooth. You got into the harness and all buckled in, then sat down, and when the boat started moving you just floated up into the air. It was gorgeous!!! We could see for miles! The water was so pristine and clear and island looked absolutely beautiful. It was so quiet up there. I was glad Mom and I went up together; it was fun to have her to talk to. It was so quiet that it almost seemed like you were speaking too loudly if you spoke in a normal voice. I thought they had started reeling us in at one point, but they made an effort to dip our feet in the water. I started screaming and flailing, which didn’t help us from getting wet, but it was pretty fun. They just dipped our feet in the water. The whole boat got a pretty good kick out of that. After our parasailing adventure, we went back to meet up with Grandma, Grandpa and Lindsay. They were so excited to hear about our experience. I went and got lunch at Cookie’s BBQ. It was so yummy! My burger was the best and the fruit was so juicy and sweet. When I was done, I went back to our spot and found that Dad and Lindsay had gotten us floatation devices for out in the ocean. Normally I’m not a big fan of swimming in the ocean but this was an exception. The water was so clear and the sand on the ocean floor was so clean! There wasn’t even any seaweed to get tangled in! Lindsay got a kick out of watching me try to paddle into shallow water since I’m so short. I was on one of the floaties and got flipped over and out. I don’t think anyone was paying attention, but I’m sure it looked pretty funny. It was fun just playing in the water and hanging out on the beach. Mom, Lindsay and I went back to the ship in the middle of the afternoon. We figured we’d just hang out in the pool on the ship since that was about the only time it wasn’t going to be busy. It turned out to be kind of a bust. It was really small and not very deep. We didn’t stay long. We went back to our stateroom and got ready for that night. The show that night was my favorite! It was “Disney Dreams: An Enchanted Classic.” It was similar to the “Golden Mickeys” in that it featured clips and scenes from Disney movies, but it was better! There was a cute storyline and the effects were fantastic. There were even mini fireworks. The music was phenomenal. Mom hit it right on when she said, “I could almost believe in magic after watching that.” What a show!!! Lindsay and I had our picture taken with Goofy, who was in his tux. It was so cute! Dinner that night was at Animator’s Palate. It was pretty cute! It was a cute setting, but Triton’s was still my favorite. Since it was Lindsay’s birthday, they brought out a strawberry type cake and the wait staff sang to her. There was a little piece of white chocolate on the top of the cake that said “Happy Birthday” on it. That night we were all really tired. There was a final party where all of the characters came out for final pictures. I stayed out to watch it, but everyone else went to bed. It was really cute. There were princesses everywhere and it was just darling. That night was kind of sad when we went to bed, but as Grandma likes to say, "we smiled because it happened."
Anchors Away!!!
Thursday morning, it was with some sadness that we packed up our suitcases and cleared out the kitchen at our villa at Wilderness Lodge to get ready for the next stage of our trip. We were all really excited, but had had such a magical time in Disney World that we didn’t want it to end! Our little villa had been such a pleasant home away from home that we didn’t want to leave it. A bus came to pick us up at the lodge and take us to Cape Canaveral for our departure. We had about an hour bus ride to get to the port. Poor Mom got a little car sick, but that was only the beginning for her. There was a cute movie they showed on the bus about Mickey and his pals getting ready to get on the cruise themselves. Lindsay and I were so excited we could barely stand it. I had to try pretty hard to keep Lindsay from screaming with excitement when we saw the ship. Our first view of the ship was pretty spectacular. It was enormous and looked so fun! We managed to get through security and onto the ship pretty well. We didn’t have to worry about our luggage since the cruise line took care of it. We all just had little packs full of stuff that we might need for the afternoon. We were sent to Parrot Cay for lunch. It was incredible! There was so much good food everywhere! Grandpa, Lindsay and I were a little confused at first: we grabbed the children’s plates and Grandpa had macaroni and cheese. We found the “big kid” food fairly quickly. Everything was delicious! My favorite thing of that meal was a cold strawberry mint soup. It sounds really weird but was so yummy. The salad bar had more food in it than most restaurants have on the entire menu. The dessert bar was really hard to resist. There were little tarts that I found at almost every meal that were so good. We headed to our room and found that our luggage had already arrived. Our little rest was short lived because we had to put on our life vests and head down to the fourth deck for a drill. Disney knows how to make things move smoothly. We were done in almost fifteen minutes, which was a good thing because it was so hot outside. We saw another cruise line take nearly an hour for the same drill. The deck party as we were pulling away was really cute. They brought out the cruise director and a bunch of Disney characters and had a little dance party on deck 9 where the pools were located. They were selling nonalcoholic strawberry daiquiris. We bought two of them and shared them amongst us, which was fun. They were handing out streamers to wave around as we pulled out. I could hardly tell we were moving when we pulled out. I found “Captain Jack Sparrow” from the Pirates movies and had a picture taken with him. He was pretty full of it, saying that Mom looked more like my sister than my mother and wonder where I got my nice, sparkly necklace from. He played the part flawlessly. That night, we went to our first show. It was “Toy Story- The Musical,” and it was so well-done. The songs were awesome and the sets were so lifelike! You really felt like a toy in Andy’s room! The actors had so much energy and made it so fun! After the show we had a while before our dinner hour so we just went to deck 4 and sat and watched the sun set. Lindsay and I went and had our picture taken with Mickey and Minnie, which was fun. They were pretty cute and looked adorable in their nautical getups. Mom was getting way seasick by that point. By the time dinner rolled around, she had to go lay down and was way sick for the rest of the night. She ordered the “seasickness special” from room service and they brought her forty saltine crackers and a liter of ginger ale. I don’t know that it helped, but at least it was something. We met our wait staff that night. Coleen, our main waitress, was from Canada. She was so cute! She was so personable and made our table feel like we were the only ones she was taking care of. Gina was from India and she was our assistant waitress. She was really funny. She was pretty dingy and had a hard time remembering much, but she definitely had a good heart. They were both so worried about Mom and were suggesting all kinds of things to help with seasickness since they were pretty much experts on the issue. Gina suggested green apples, but we never got to test that out. Lindsay and I weren’t doing that well either, but we managed to stomach some bread and fruit. Dad, Grandma and Grandpa seemed to do ok though. They said the food was really good, which was a plus. While we were at dinner, the waters got so rough that I could see the water in my glass sloshing around. It was pretty wild. We were glad to lie down and sleep off the sickness until the next day, but were excited for the adventures ahead of us.
March 28, 2008
Nassau
By morning, Mom was thankfully feeling much, much better than she had the night before. Her color was tons better and she just seemed more perky, partly because we had almost reached port already and didn’t have We went to Beach Blanket Buffet for breakfast. Once again, there was a plethora of delicious food. I had waffles baked with Mickey faces on them. Our shore excursion was pretty early that morning. I’d booked us a glass bottom boat that sounded so fun! We were a little less than pleased when we realized what the reality of it was. It was a pretty dumpy looking boat. The glass bottom was really small and you couldn’t see much anyway. When we finally got to the area with good views, it turns out the best view was on the top deck of the ship where you couldn’t even see the “glass bottom.” It was kind of cool to see the other yachts and things in Nassau, but it was false advertising and we were pretty disappointed. We got to see Michael Jordan’s house and some sheik’s house was recently put on the market for $15 million. There is definitely a wide gap in economic prosperity in that area, with the very poor working for very little in port and the very wealthy having private helicopters on their yachts. We looked at the market in the port after our boat ride and I bought a cute dress outfit to wear for Halloween parties and luaus. It was pink and had sunsets on it. Mom got a cute Hawaiian shirt that she wore to Castaway Cay the next day. We went back to the Beach Blanket Buffet for lunch, and yes, there was more scrumptious food. That afternoon we had to take a nap because we were shot from our excursion that morning. That evening’s show was “The Golden Mickeys.” It was darling. They had quick songs and scenes from so many classic Disney shows. There were little golden Mickey awards to give to the best in various categories. That evening’s dinner was the best the whole cruise! We went to Triton’s, and it was awesome. I had some of the best steak I’ve ever had. For dessert, Mom and I shared a white chocolate raspberry dessert that was delicious. That night was the Pirates IN the Caribbean deck party. Grandma and I wore the bandanas given to us at dinner, but the rest of our party said we looked stupid. We decided we didn’t care and wore them anyway. There was a dessert bar out on deck with fifty different kinds of desserts. I wish I hadn’t been so full from dinner that I could have tried some, but my stomach had been stretched to its limit. There was a huge chocolate cake that looked like a pirate ship and an ice sculpture that looked like a pirate. Like everything else, Disney went all out with it. Disney is the only cruise line in the world that is allowed to set off fireworks at sea, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. They were so fun. There was a little show on deck where Captain Hook tried to take over the ship but Mickey saved the day and when he did, the fireworks went off. It was so fun! We all slept pretty hard that night from an exhausting day.
March 29, 2008
Castaway Cay
March 29 was a pretty exciting day. It was Lindsay’s fourteenth birthday, so we made sure that we had some gifts to give her so that she knew we didn’t forget about it. Grandma and Grandpa gave her a frame for her to put pictures in from our trip, I gave her some Tinkerbelle earrings and Mom and Dad gave her a sweatshirt we picked up in the Wilderness Lodge gift shop. Our second breakfast at Beach Blanket Buffet was just as good as the first. This time I had Mickey French toast. Our arrival at Castaway Cay was so fun. I looked out on our verandah and saw the Flying Dutchman, the ship from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. It was awesome! We were never allowed to get very close to it, but it was still cool to see it in real life. We walked off the ship onto Disney’s private island and were given towels and bought a cooler of water bottles. (Go figure, you can get all the free soda you want, but you had to buy water bottles.) We took the train over to the family beach and staked out our spot. There were several beach chairs close to a hammock. That was Dad’s favorite part. It was pretty fun to just lay back and chill, looking out at the turquoise water, bright blue sky, lush palm trees and snow white sand. Mom, Dad and I left the other three and headed back for our shore excursion. We decided to go parasailing and it was one of the most fun things of the entire trip! Mom and I decided to ride tandem and send Dad by himself. We rode out into a wide open area and let the others in our group go first. Dad went before Mom and me. There was 1,000 feet of rope, so when the boat was moving, you were probably a few hundred feet in the air. It was all very gentle. I expected more of a jerky ride, but it was all very smooth. You got into the harness and all buckled in, then sat down, and when the boat started moving you just floated up into the air. It was gorgeous!!! We could see for miles! The water was so pristine and clear and island looked absolutely beautiful. It was so quiet up there. I was glad Mom and I went up together; it was fun to have her to talk to. It was so quiet that it almost seemed like you were speaking too loudly if you spoke in a normal voice. I thought they had started reeling us in at one point, but they made an effort to dip our feet in the water. I started screaming and flailing, which didn’t help us from getting wet, but it was pretty fun. They just dipped our feet in the water. The whole boat got a pretty good kick out of that. After our parasailing adventure, we went back to meet up with Grandma, Grandpa and Lindsay. They were so excited to hear about our experience. I went and got lunch at Cookie’s BBQ. It was so yummy! My burger was the best and the fruit was so juicy and sweet. When I was done, I went back to our spot and found that Dad and Lindsay had gotten us floatation devices for out in the ocean. Normally I’m not a big fan of swimming in the ocean but this was an exception. The water was so clear and the sand on the ocean floor was so clean! There wasn’t even any seaweed to get tangled in! Lindsay got a kick out of watching me try to paddle into shallow water since I’m so short. I was on one of the floaties and got flipped over and out. I don’t think anyone was paying attention, but I’m sure it looked pretty funny. It was fun just playing in the water and hanging out on the beach. Mom, Lindsay and I went back to the ship in the middle of the afternoon. We figured we’d just hang out in the pool on the ship since that was about the only time it wasn’t going to be busy. It turned out to be kind of a bust. It was really small and not very deep. We didn’t stay long. We went back to our stateroom and got ready for that night. The show that night was my favorite! It was “Disney Dreams: An Enchanted Classic.” It was similar to the “Golden Mickeys” in that it featured clips and scenes from Disney movies, but it was better! There was a cute storyline and the effects were fantastic. There were even mini fireworks. The music was phenomenal. Mom hit it right on when she said, “I could almost believe in magic after watching that.” What a show!!! Lindsay and I had our picture taken with Goofy, who was in his tux. It was so cute! Dinner that night was at Animator’s Palate. It was pretty cute! It was a cute setting, but Triton’s was still my favorite. Since it was Lindsay’s birthday, they brought out a strawberry type cake and the wait staff sang to her. There was a little piece of white chocolate on the top of the cake that said “Happy Birthday” on it. That night we were all really tired. There was a final party where all of the characters came out for final pictures. I stayed out to watch it, but everyone else went to bed. It was really cute. There were princesses everywhere and it was just darling. That night was kind of sad when we went to bed, but as Grandma likes to say, "we smiled because it happened."
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