Dream Trip Report Day 7: Day at Sea

Here is the navigator: June 13, 2012

The kids woke up at 6:30 a.m. again.  The blackout curtain in our room is really good--but even with a dark room they still woke up at the same time.

Today was our day at sea!  No place to go.

At 7:45 a.m. we all headed to Cabanas for breakfast.

We asked the kids what they wanted to do.  The boys wanted to go to the pool/slide.  I wanted to take Alyssa to an open house at the Oceaneer Club to give her a chance to play there for a little bit.  She hadn't been there since our first afternoon on the ship.  At 9:00 a.m. the navigator listed something called "Big Top Fun Fest" in the club.  We were a little too early for that, so I took Alyssa to Deck 4 to walk around. 

At 9:00 we headed to the Oceaneer Club.  It wasn't full at all--during our whole time there I'd say there were maybe 5-10 other kids with their parents max.

They did have a circus program, where a crew member brought out various games to play.  Toss the balloon like a seal, jump through the hoop like a tiger, spin plates, etc.  But Alyssa (and most of the kids) weren't interested in that.  They mainly just wanted to play.  Since this was the open house, most of the kids seemed to be the kids that were not old enough to be there on their own (a lot of 2-year-olds).  But it was open to all ages.

Alyssa spent a lot of time playing in the Toy Story themed Andy's Room.  They had a giant Mr. Potato Head there and the cast member was very interactive with Alyssa.

Meanwhile, the boys were at the pool.  It really wasn't too crowded on the morning of our sea day.  This is the only pic of Joshua going down the Mickey slide.

Joshua (and all the other kids) really enjoyed the hot tubs.  They were always packed with kids.  (The hot tubs have a glass floor--kinda neat).

When Alyssa and I were done with the Oceaneer Club, we came and met the boys near the pool area.  On all cruise lines, children who are not potty trained are not allowed in the pool (I think it's an international law or something).  So Alyssa was only allowed to go in Nemo's Reef splash area.  Although she tried real hard to make it in that Mickey pool!

Nathan was lounging on deck watching Lilo & Stitch on the big funnelvision screen.


I had made a reservation for Alyssa at the nursery from 11-1 today.  I took her back to the room to get changed and dropped her off.  Then I decided that Brian should have some alone time to read or explore the ship, so we let him go and I took the boys to lunch at the fast food places.  There was no line (it was about 11:30 or so).  We were able to get seats right by the window.  Josh and I had pizza, Nathan had chicken strips.  The pizza was pretty good!

Our dinner server Vijay was working in another role that morning but he made sure to come up to us and ask how we were enjoying our sea day.

One of the fast food places had the healthy food!  I didn't notice this until after lunch.  They had lots of fruit, salads, wraps.  This is what I had been missing the whole cruise!  Now I know.

On the other side of the deck is the Eye Scream ice cream spot.  So we all got ourselves a cone.  They had chocolate, vanilla, banana, and strawberry flavors.

The boys wanted to go to the character dance party in the atrium, and we were still a few minutes early, so we took some pictures out on Deck 4.

At 12:15 we went to the character dance party.  First Chip & Dale came out to dance,then Lilo and Stitch.  It was a lot of fun for the kids!  And not too crowded. (I have footage in my video).

At 12:45, we met back up with Brian.  He and Nathan wanted to go see The Avengers, which was playing in the big theatre.  It was almost time to pick up Alyssa, so Josh and I went to get her.

I asked Joshua what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to meet some more characters.  So we got in line to see Woody and Jessie.  I found out that the characters are much more popular on the sea day, as we waited in line 30 minutes to see those two!  I kept asking Joshua if he was sure he wanted to wait, and he did.  At least he had these fun portholes to play in while we waited.

While we were waiting, Alyssa fell asleep in my arms.

We then waited for a picture with The Incredibles.

And then a quick picture with Remy from Ratatouille.  (Remy had a much shorter line than all the rest).

Then we went back to the room and I ordered Alyssa some room service, since they told he she wasn't hungry at the nursery.

And Josh had a Mickey ice cream bar.  The kids watched a movie while I showered.

Brian and Nathan came back from the movie theater.  They loved The Avengers.  And it was time to get into our pirate gear for Pirate Night!  Our stateroom host had left us all pirate bandanas on our bed earlier.  And we had brought a few things from home, and we had gotten more pirate stuff in our Fish Extender.

Alyssa only kept her bandana on for a few minutes, then she was done with it.

We wanted to eat dinner with our kids on pirate night because we heard there was a special menu and the servers dressed up in pirate gear.  We thought it would be fun for the kids.

But first we wanted some pictures of us as pirates.  We tried the line for Jack Sparrow, but it was too long and we'd miss dinner.  So we settled for the white background.  Somehow, the photographer got these 2 pictures to work out:

I'm not sure how, because Alyssa was crabby and screaming and the boys were fighting with eachother.  I'm sure we were quite a sight.

At dinner, photographers came around and took this picture of Nathan and Brian:

Dinner did not go well for us.  It was in the Royal Palace restaurant and yes, there was a special pirate menu and yes, the servers dressed up. But my kids were just tired and dinner was still 90 minutes and it was just too long.  The servers tried to help entertain our kids, and even the head server came over, but our kids (at least the 2 younger ones) were just done.  I didn't have nursery time scheduled for Alyssa until 7:30, so we had to wait for that.  Next time, we will know not to force our kids to eat with us on pirate night.  Totally not worth it.

Ok, finally it was 7:30 and I dropped Alyssa off at the nursery.  Then the rest of us headed up on deck to see the Mickey pirate show.

And it seemed fun and got the kids involved with dancing, but I couldn't help but notice over my shoulder THIS:

The sunset was gorgeous!  How could I have missed this all week?

After the show, we dropped the kids off at the kids' club.  Brian and I wanted to catch the comedy show by Alfred and Seymore.  Ahhhhh, we needed few moments to ourselves and some good laughs.  I thought the show was really good.  The first 15 minutes of it they spent making fun of all the people who walked in late.  So if you don't want to be called out in that show, arrive on time.

When we got back to the room, we found this towel monkey:

Soon it was time to pick up all the kids and head to the Buccaneer Blast fireworks show, which was at 10:30 p.m..  We had debated about whether we should keep Alyssa in the nursery, or if one of us should stay back in the room with her because it was so late.  But in the end we took her in her stroller up to the top deck.  We didn't want to miss anything!

The boys had lots of glow necklaces from our Fish Extender gifts.

Alyssa fell asleep before the fireworks started.

We stood on Deck 12 below the Currents Bar and had a great view of the fireworks with little crowds!

The fireworks show was very short, maybe 5 minutes?  Not nearly as long as the fireworks in the park, but there are only 4000 people on board here vs. like 75,000 in the parks.  So I'm sure that played into the equation.

After the fireworks, the pirate show continued with some sort of Jack Sparrow show.  I was hoping that we could take the 2 younger kids back to the room for bed, but Joshua didn't want to miss a thing.  And then after the show was a dance party on the pool deck!  So Brian went back to the room with Alyssa while I kept the boys out.  Joshua lasted maybe another 10 minutes before he started to melt down.  He was just so tired!  I dropped him back off at the room.  Then it was just me and Nathan.  Nathan didn't last too much longer--I think he just wanted to be the last one up!

Brian and I were talking that night--the sea day was our favorite day of this cruise so far!  I think we just felt more relaxed, there was nowhere we had to be, we let the kids decide what they wanted to do.  And now we understood why people liked the days at sea!  (We had a hard time understanding that before our cruise).

Tomorrow: Our 2nd day at Castaway Cay!