Disney Dream Trip Report Day 6: Nassau, Bahamas

Here is the navigator for this day:  Navigator June 12 2012

The kids were up at 6:30 a.m., as usual.  We managed to keep them in bed until 6:50.  We weren't supposed to dock at Nassau until 9:45 a.m. this morning, so of course we had hoped they'd sleep later.  (Have I started every day's trip report like this?)

We all went to Cabanas for breakfast at 7:30 a.m., which is the time they open up the full buffet (continental buffet only starts at 7:00 a.m.).  I should mention that before you go into any of the dining rooms or eating areas, they hand you a disinfectant wipe for your hands.  Very handy.

After we got done with breakfast, I delivered some of our Fish Extender gifts (the pens personalized for our trip date and the candy/gum).  They announced that we could disembark the ship early, I think it was around 9 a.m.

Originally, we had planned on getting off at Nassau and taking a taxi to Ardastra Gardens (a local zoo and gardens with a flamingo show).   However, after being on the ship for 2 days now, we felt that we had only touched the tip of the iceberg in all the ship had to offer.  So we decided to shorten our stay in Nassau and skip Ardastra.  Instead, we opted to start our day with a horse & carriage ride.  We hoped to be back on the ship for lunch.

Now I had read on a few cruise boards that many people don't care for Nassau.  I've read that it's dirty, there are pushy sales people all around you, it's not safe, etc.  So before we disembarked we prepared the boys for the worst.  We told them that people might try to put things in their hands so they would buy it.  We told them not to talk to anyone.

But we really wanted to see Nassau, because this would be the first country (besides Russia) that my boys will have seen.

When we got off the ship, we were ushered into this building and then directed to the way outside.  And when we got outside we were asked by several people if we needed a taxi.  But no different than when we've landed in New York or Vladivostok, Russia.  So far, no big deal.

We kept walking and spotted the horse and carriage area.  While we were walking there a man approached us and asked if we wanted a horse & carriage ride.  He was very enthusiastic and friendly. We said yes.  He ushered us over to his ride and he had to have several other horse & carriage drivers move theirs for us to make it out of the complex.  Actually, before we got in I asked him how much, just to make sure we weren't completely getting ripped off.  He quoted us $10 a person (minus the baby who was free).  That's how much I read it would be, so we got on.

The carriage was a little rickety, for sure!

Brian sat in front with Joshua, and I sat in the back with Nathan and Alyssa.  Our driver talked a lot about the history of the city and pointed our buildings of interest. He was sure to point out the hospital where Anna Nicole Smith gave birth.

Another man offered to take a picture of all of us in the carriage.  I was a little afraid that he would take our camera and run with it.  But I had read that this would happen, and the people who do this are just looking to earn extra money.  So he took this picture, and I paid him $5.

Our driver pointed out this almonds (green) on the trees.

Nathan with our driver (I wish I could remember his name).

I think the ride lasted maybe 30 minutes.  It was pleasant and a good way to see some of the city without walking it ourselves.

Here's a picture of 3 ships that were in port that day:

We had told our driver that we were heading for the Nassau Pirate Museum after our ride, and he tried to direct us there.  We walked to the right, by the waterfront, and first passed Senor Frogs.  There were some fun chairs to sit on outside.

We found the pirate museum.  There was a man dressed as a pirate outside who had fun with the kids.  He was a really good pirate.

The inside looked better than I expected.  Good props.

There was a big pirate ship to tour, a pirate takeover simulator, and several displays that talked about the history of pirates in Nassau.  Outside, there were also several picture spots:

We were there less than an hour, but it was a fun little excursion.

Next, we headed to the famous straw market.  This is a picture of the end aisle.  On the inside it's narrow and there are lots of vendors.

We decided to let our kids each pick out one souvenir from here.  We got Alyssa this Minnie Mouse straw purse:

The vendor sewed her name on it within a minute.  I was amazed.

Nathan got a guitar.  Joshua got a small drum.

I bought this tote bag.  Everything was purchased was really inexpensive.

And I have to say, the straw market was not bad at all!  As we walked through the aisles a few of the vendors would say "Wouldn't you like to buy this for your daughter?"  But I didn't think they were really pushy.  We were never bombarded by vendors anywhere we went.  I've experienced much worst in Mexico and Guatemala.

And then we decided to head back to the ship.  We enjoyed seeing a little bit of Nassau and getting to soak in the flavor of the city.

We decided to have lunch at Royal Palace, the one restaurant with a sit-down lunch.  We were seated next to a big window. 

Of course they still had you order an appetizer, soup or salad, and entree.  I chose the mango soup.  WOW.  It was absolutely amazing.  It had a mint foam on top.  Seriously, my absolute favorite food item from the entire cruise!

Oh, Alyssa fell asleep at the straw market and was still asleep when we entered the restaurant.

After we left the restaurant, Joshua wanted to go to the Oceaneer Club.  So we dropped him off there.  On the way back to our room, I took Nathan's picture in front of the theatre:

And I found myself in this restroom with a Mickey head mirror.  (All of the public restrooms on board were exquisitely decorated).

Brian and Nathan went back to the room to change so they could go on the Aqua Duck.  It was about 1:30 p.m.  They managed to ride the Aqua Duck 3 times in a row with little to no line.

I went back to the room and ordered room service for Alyssa for lunch, who was now awake from her nap.

Around 2:30 I got a page from the Oceaneer Club saying Joshua was ready to be picked up.  I took Alyssa down to Deck 5 and I noticed that a bunch of characters were hanging out in the atrium.  I figured if they were still there we would catch them after we picked up Joshua.

I picked up Joshua (who couldn't remember why he paged me but was having fun, but when I told him there were characters in the atrium he agreed to leave), then saw that the characters had no photographers with them, so we ran back to the room and picked up my camera, then went back to the atrium.  And there were only 2 families in line in front of us. The characters were dressed in their "island wear".

Based on the low crowds at the Aqua Duck and at this character meet in mid-afternoon, I'd say that a lot of people leave the boat on Nassau day and it's a good time to see some things on the ship with no crowds.

Oh, how can I forget...this character greeting was really hard for me.  Any time Alyssa went into the atrium she just wanted to run, run, run.  So she was running all over the place, I was trying to chase her and at the same time take pictures of Josh, we were running into other people's pictures along the way (so sorry!).  Next time, I'd need help for a character greeting.  Sheesh!

We stopped by this "throne" on our way back to the room.

When we got back to the room, the kids watched The Little Mermaid on TV.

After Brian got back with Nathan from the Aqua Duck, he decided to stay with the kids and give me an hour to myself.  Woohoo!  What to do?  I decided to go to a lounger on Deck 4 (an open-air deck) and read a book.  I had purchased 50 Shades of Grey before the trip and I wanted to see what all the hoopla was about.  I only got through 3 chapters and I still didn't understand what all the hoopla was about!  I guess I had to read farther.

Alyssa took another nap while I was gone.  Yay!  We took showers and ordered room service for the kids for dinner.  Tonight was our big date night at Palo, the adults-only restaurant!  We dropped the kids off at the nursery/kids' club.

We had a 6:30 Palo reservation.  We were seated right away near a window.  Our server was Ivan from Croatia.  He was very passionate about the food they served there. Before we got started, we asked him to take our picture.  He said he had a special place for a picture, and ushered us over to another table for this pretty Italian background:

We were seated at the window and this was our view:  (The Atlantis Resort on Nassau)

The food was very good.  The restaurant was a lot smaller than the main dining rooms and it was a lot quieter.  I had the lobster ravioli.  Totally yum!

Here is our formal picture from Palo:

We ended our dinner with Palo's famous chocolate souffle:  WOW!

We are very glad we got to experience Palo.  Such a treat for us!

We picked up all the kids at 8:30 and came back to our room to discover this towel frog.

We wanted to get the kids to bed as soon as possible. We put Joshua and Alyssa to bed while Nathan went out with me to deliver the rest of our Fish Extender gifts. I ran into another one of our group members in the elevator. Our stateroom host gave Nathan a whole handful of bedtime chocolates when we saw him. And he ate them all as we were delivering our gifts!

When we returned to our room, the younger kids were asleep and Nathan followed them shortly after.

Dream Trip Report Day 5: Castaway Cay

Everyone was awake by 6:30 a.m.  Oh how I wish the kids could sleep later!

Today was our first day at Castaway Cay! (Disney's private island in the Bahamas).

The night before, at the turn-down service, our stateroom host left us our navigator for the next day.  Here is a copy I scanned in so you can see what sort of activities were happening on board the ship and on the island throughout the day.  It's kinda hard to read since it opens up like a book and I had to scan one page at a time:
Day 2 Navigator

I opened the curtains and discovered the daylight.  The kids liked the porthole.

We had ordered room service for breakfast the night before--just some muffins and donuts for the kids.  Brian and Nathan went up to Cabanas by themselves for breakfast and brought us down a plate of protein to go with our carbs.

Not soon after we got up, we could see that we were backing into Castaway Cay!

Today was the day that prompted me, about a year ago, to start the Couch to 5k training program.  I was going to run the Castaway Cay 5k run!

The runners were meeting in Club 687 (one of the adult nightclubs on the ship) at 8:30 a.m.  This is a picture that Brian took of me before I left the room.

When I arrived at Club 687, there were already several runners there. A super bubbly crew member named Cally instructed us to sign the sign-in sheet with our room number and we were each given a race bib.

After a few minutes, Cally explained the 5k to us.  She said it was pretty laid back, there was a timer on the course but it wasn't really a "race" per say.  We could take it at our own pace.  She explained that we would get off the ship as a group and walk to the bike rental shop to the start of the course.  Walking there would take about 10 minutes.

By the way, I have no pictures of all this because I didn't want to take my camera with me while I was running.  It turns out that Cally watched everyone's stuff during the race so I could have brought it and taken some pictures before it started.

Oh, and I ran into a lady from our cruise group at the runner's meet-up.  We sat at a table and chatted with a few other runners.

So then we got off the ship and stopped for a group picture.  There were maybe 25-30 runners.  And then out comes Goofy in his track suit to pose with us! (I could have bought this picture but I didn't...I didn't know most of the other runners).

Then we walked to the bike rental place where there was a map of the course.  Then there was a countdown and the clock started!

Now a few minutes before the race, I noticed a young guy changed into a performance tank top, and when the clock started he zipped off. And I mean it was like he was sprinting.  And one of the runners in the crowd shouted, "Well, I guess we all know who's going to win this one!"

It was probably 9:10 or so when we started.  We ran to the old airplane runway and took a loop around the bike path with the observation tower.  I, unfortunately, took a wrong turn and actually ran TO the observation tower.  Oops!  Had to run back to get back on the main path.  Then we went back to the runway and continued down to Serenity Bay (the adult beach) and turned around.  Back up the runway for another loop around the bike bath/tower loop.  Then back to the place where we started.  And I missed a turn and wound up running almost to the beach when a cast member stopped me and said I was totally in the wrong place.  (There were signs/arrows posted for the 5k but I think they were missing one at the last turn).  It was hot and muggy.  I vowed that no matter what, I would just keep running.  I knew if I started walking, I'd never be able to start up running again.  I stopped for water 4 times (well, didn't fully stop, I jogged in place while I was drinking water).  And I finished the run at 36 minutes!  Not too bad considering my 2 detours and all of my water stops.

At the finish line, Cally handed us each a Disney Cruise Line "Winner" medal.  I gulped down more water.  I was so glad I made it through with this race!

I stopped in the gift shop and bought a Castaway Cay 5k t-shirt before heading back to the ship.  It was shortly before 10 a.m. and lots of people were just getting off the ship to come to the island.  Many of them saw my race bib and asked what it was for.  I don't think the 5k was heavily advertised--it was on the activity list on the navigators, but I only knew about it from reading the DIS boards over the last several years.  I think more people might run it if they knew about it in advance.

Brian had dropped off Alyssa at the nursery at 9 that morning so I had to go back to our room and shower and pick her up by 11 a.m.  I was moving so slow, I was tired!

I showered and still had some extra time, so I stopped by the Future Cruise Desk and booked a future cruise for us.  ;-)

Meanwhile, while I was doing all that, Brian got off the ship around 9 a.m. with the boys.  They got their picture taken with Jack Sparrow on the island.

They took a tram to the 2nd tram stop and swam out to Pelican Plunge and went down one of the water slides.  Fun!

Then they spent over an hour just relaxing on the beach.  The boys built sand castles and hung out in the water.

The water was as clear as bath water.  There were little minnow fish everywhere, and then these bigger white fish (about 6-8 inches long, I'd say).

We used our wave phones (the cell phones the cruise line provides to work on the ship and on the island) to figure out that we would meet at Cookies Too for lunch on the island.  The food was yummy and I was starving.  Hamburgers, hot dogs, ribs, chicken, salads, chips, fruit, cookies, ice cream, etc.  I was very impressed with the crew members working at Cookies Too.  I was going through the buffet with Alyssa in a stroller and trying to balance my tray, and a crew member came over and carried our tray and got our drinks for us and got us settled down at a table.  Woohoo!

After lunch, we decided to take a family bike ride.  We went to the bike rental shop and picked out bikes for all of us.  We decided that Alyssa should ride on the back of Brian's bike since he is an experienced cyclist and I am terrible at bike riding.  In fact, I wasn't sure if I could pull it off without falling.

But the bikes were great!  They had ones with training wheels (which Josh rode) and the bikes were all old-school bikes without hand breaks.  Like the bike I was used to riding as a kid.

Here are Brian and Joshua coming down the runway:

Nathan was always out in front:

So we were riding bikes on the same path where I was running earlier in the day.  Except it felt a lot cooler on the bike.  It was breezy.

We took the bike loop off the runway and climbed up the observation tower.  We could see the Disney Dream anchored in the distance.

Nathan on the top deck of the observation tower:

Checking out the island from the top:

So at this point, Joshua was getting really tired.  He just hadn't been getting as much sleep as he was accustomed to.  We decided we should head back to the bike rental place instead of continuing down the runway to the other bike loop behind the adult beach.  But twice, Joshua just stopped on his bike and shut down.  He didn't want to move any further.

Luckily for us, along comes two of the kid's counselors from the kids' club!  Apparently they had the day off and they were riding bikes too.  They stopped to see if they could help us out.  They encouraged Joshua to keep going and we made it back to the bike rental place.

We turned in our bikes and decided to drop the boys off at Scuttles Cove, the kids' club on the island.  It was after 1:00 p.m.  While they were there, Brian and I hung out with Alyssa on the beach. She had a good time.

Around 2:30 we headed back to Scuttle's Cove to check on the boys.  They said they had a good time there.  We asked them what they wanted to do--Josh said he wanted to watch a movie in the room, and Nathan said he wanted to go to the ship's pool. So I returned to the room with Joshua and Alyssa while Brian took Nathan to the pool.  Joshua watched Aladdin on our bed, and I closed the curtain and Alyssa took a nap on the other side.

Did I mention that the ship has on-demand TV shows and movies?  Like every Disney movie and tv show you can think of.  The kids loved it and we used it about once a day for our down time.

Alyssa woke up around 5 p.m. and played with Joshua.

We ordered room service for the kids for dinner because tonight was going to be our first dinner date night alone, just the 2 of us!!!  At 5:30 p.m. we dropped Alyssa off at the nursery and the boys at the kids' club.

YAY!  Our first dinner alone together, EVER, on a vacation!  Just the 2 of us!  Some of you may think this is no big deal, but for us it was.  We have never had a date on a vacation ever!

We decided to stop by the atrium after dropping the kids off and get our picture taken together.  We were waiting in line for this moon backdrop, but the line was longer and the white backdrop had no line.  The photographer convinced us to do the white backdrop.  It was the same crew member at this white backdrop all week and she was great!  We ended up liking the white backdrop pictures better than most of our other pictures taken on the ship.

We had dinner by ourselves at our table in the Enchanted Garden.  This restaurant is supposed to resemble Versailles in France and it subtly changes from day to night throughout dinner.  It was nice, but it didn't seem nearly as "Disney" as Animator's Palette did the night before.  It was more like a nice, normal restaurant.  Which was totally fine with us.  We were just happy to be there.

I had lobster ravioli as my appetizer.  I am a big fan of lobster ravioli!

For dessert we each had the Sacher chocolate torte.  I figured that since I had run and rode a bike that day, I could afford to splurge on dessert.

Our dinner was over at 7:30 and it was time to pick up Alyssa from the nursery.  We decided to pick up the boys from the kids' club and get our family picture with Captain Mickey.  I think Captain Mickey was out every night on the balcony overlooking the atrium.  His line got shorter as the cruise progressed.

Again, all of us looking at the camera.  How did we get so lucky??

After that, Brian and Nathan really wanted to see the movie John Carter, which was playing in the smaller movie theater.  So they went off to that.  I wanted to attempt to see one of the Broadway shows.  Tonight the show was the Golden Mickeys.

I took the 2 younger kids back to the room, grabbed some candy that had been left in our Fish Extender, and headed to the Walt Disney Theater.  I found a row in back with just 3 seats, so I figured that would be perfect for us.  The only problem was that the show didn't start right away--the cruise director spoke, then the captain of the ship came out...then the show finally started.  But we didn't make it through.  The kids started being too loud and disruptive.  So we snuck out of the theater.  It looked like a good show, maybe I'll catch it next time.

Our towel animal tonight was an elephant!

Tomorrow:  Nassau, Bahamas!