Disney Fantasy Trip Report Part 3: First Sea Day

In case you missed the beginning of this trip report:

Disney Fantasy Trip Report Part 1: Getting There
Disney Fantasy Trip Report Part 2: Embarking the Disney Fantasy

Part 3: First Sea Day (and Alyssa's birthday)

Sunday, October 5, 2014

This was our first full day on the Disney Fantasy, and the first of three sea days. We love sea days on Disney ships, and that's one of the reasons why we chose this particular cruise.

We all woke up around 8:00 a.m. The kids enjoyed some time looking out the porthole window:

Today was my youngest child's 4th birthday! We brought 2 presents from home and purchased another present from Grandma in the gift shop so that she had a few things to open.

She liked her new Elsa dress and Ariel light-up wand.

We ate breakfast at the Cabanas buffet.  Love those large windows!

So we had a few things on our schedule today. Since we got tickets for the Anna/Elsa meet and greet and the Princess Gathering the previous day, those were on our schedule for the morning. I tried to convince my boys to at least come to the Anna/Elsa meeting, but they were more interested in riding the Aqua Duck. (Which made me kind of nostalgic, because on our first cruise in 2012 my younger son was 4 and he was all about meeting every single character!)

So Brian took the boys to the pool area while I took Alyssa to Animator's Palette to meet Anna and Elsa.

Our tickets were for 9:30 a.m. We arrived a few minutes early and were allowed to enter the restaurant. The screens were showing scenes from the Frozen movie.

There were only 2 other families in front of us, so we didn't have to wait long. Anna and Elsa were really into their characters and were great actresses!

Our tickets for the Princess Gathering weren't until 10:15 a.m., so we had some time to spare.

We saw that Tinkerbell was in the atrium, so we met her.

Soon it was time for the Princess Gathering. And I just have to say that I loved having a ticket with a reserved time! On our last cruise, Brian stood in line for almost an hour to get a spot at the front of the line so that Alyssa wouldn't have to wait in line that long. This time, when we arrived at our pre-assigned time, there were only 2 families in front of us again, and Alyssa was with the princesses in no time.

She met Cinderella, Ariel (again), Tiana and Jasmine.

Then we saw that Princess Sofia the first was up one level, and Alyssa wanted to meet her, too.

Doc McStuffins was about to come out and we could have waited, but honestly I was kind of done with the characters after meeting 8 of them this morning!

We met up with the boys back in the room, who were changing back into regular clothes after the pool. We decided to drop the kids off at the clubs for lunch so that Brian and I could have a bit of alone time together.

After we dropped the kids off, we headed to the Cove Cafe in the adults-only section for a drink. It was so quiet there! (Ahhhh....peace and quiet).

Cove Cafe

Then we had lunch at the buffet in Cabanas. But we picked up the kids pretty quickly because at 1:00 the boys and I had a scheduled meet-up with some people in our Facebook cruise group. One of the families had organized a Minecraft meet-up for the kids who were into Minecraft. They had some goody bags to pass out, and the kids got to talk Minecraft strategies. What a great idea! We met near the Eye Scream machine. I got to meet and talk to a few more families that I had been talking to online for the past year.

While the boys and I were at the Minecraft meeting, Brian took Alyssa to the pools since she didn't get to go swimming in the morning.Tip: The pools aren't too crowded in the morning of a sea day, but in the afternoon they are packed!

After the Minecraft meeting, I took the boys back to our stateroom to watch a movie on demand while I showered for formal night. Soon, it was time to take Alyssa to her appointment at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. This is the same boutique that is at The Magic Kingdom, and right now the Fantasy is the only ship that has it. A makeover at the BBB was part of her birthday present.

We almost didn't go to the BBB because my daughter got an unexpected haircut from one of her brothers this summer. Her hair used to be halfway down her back, but it was cut off military-style in June. I was worried that the salon wouldn't be able to do anything with her short hair. But the stylist was able to pull some of it back and put in hair extensions (Alyssa chose pink to match her dress).

Pulling the hair back

Nail polish

Waiting for her nails to dry

The appointment lasted around 45 minutes. She had her hair done, eyeshadow and lipstick, nail polish, and glitter in her hair. Totally worth the $59 on her birthday, in my opinion.

We planned to meet up with our guys in their formal attire before dinner, so we stayed in the atrium and took some photos.

The boys came down in their formal wear just in time to join us for a photo with Daisy Duck all dressed up in her formal gown.

The boys were very excited to dress up for formal night. We talked to them about it months ago and they picked out their outfits.

We also got a photo with Minnie:

And killed a little more time until our dinner:

On formal night, we had dinner at the Enchanted Garden restaurant.

This restaurant is supposed to be set in the gardens of Versailles, France. During the course of dinner, the lights and murals in this restaurant change from daytime to nighttime (but it's very subtle).

Dinner seemed to take an extra long time tonight--and as I've mentioned before, my kids don't do well with long dinners. Normally, we would take them to the clubs after they've eaten, but tonight we were waiting for Alyssa's special-order birthday cake. We waited. And we waited.

Finally her Mickey birthday cake arrived! The servers sang Happy Birthday to her. Since she is so shy, she was terribly embarrassed and tried to hide behind her hair extensions.

By this time, we had been in the dining room about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Brian and the boys wanted to see a juggling show, so they darted out while I helped Alyssa finish her piece of cake. Our servers brought us a cover to take the remaining cake back to our room.

After the cake, I took Alyssa back to our stateroom to change into something more casual before dropping her off at the club. After she changed, I walked her to the kids club and guess who we met on Deck 5? Princess Jasmine was just hanging out. She saw Alyssa's birthday button and asked her about her birthday. She then took her hand and escorted her into the kids' club. But of course I have no proof of this because I had left my camera back in the room!!! This was the first time on any Disney cruise that we had an extended interaction with a character that we met randomly in the hallway. This would happen 3 more times on our cruise! I'm not sure if this happens more often on the Fantasy, or on 7-night cruises, or if we just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

After the juggling show, Joshua wanted to go to the kids' club, but Nathan decided to watch the Aladdin show with us (the live musical in the big theater). It was a great show! Halfway during the show, we received a call from the kids' club. Joshua had been hit by another child in the club and was crying. Brian went to comfort him and asked if he wanted to leave. He decided to stay, and Brian came back to watch the rest of Aladdin. (Apparently, Joshua was playing a video game and another child decided he wanted to play it right then and hit him hard on the back. A counselor saw the whole thing happen. The other child's parents were summoned, but we don't know if the child was allowed back in the club).

After Aladdin, we picked up Joshua and Alyssa from the club and dropped off Nathan. We were greeted by another towel animal in our room.

The younger kids fell asleep very quickly. We allowed our oldest to check himself out of the club and walk back to the room by himself. He was enjoying this little piece of independence.

What a busy day!

Next up: Second Day at Sea