After the marathon we didn't have much time to relax because we had to be at Port Canaveral (adjacent to Cape Canaveral) to board our boat before it left. Every one gave me a few minutes to recuperate and then we were off to the hotel room to pack up. Justin had rented an "accessible" shuttle to take us all to Port Canaveral so when it showed up we loaded up our gear and off we went.
You can imagine what a production it is to get three thousand people onto a boat in a single afternoon but they had it well organized. We had tags for our baggage so we dropped off the bags and miraculously they just showed up in our rooms. We made sure to keep our swimming suits so we changed and then went to explore the boat. What a very cool boat. There is no way I can remember everything and there were many facilities that we never used but the places I can remember off the top of my head are:
- a theater where they had live plays every day. They had a family oriented play just after supper and then an adult oriented performance around ten after the kids were in bed. Everyone would go see the family play and then we would put the kids to bed and one of us would stay with the kids and the other three adults would go to the adult play. The cool thing is that it was a Disney Cruise all events were clean even if is was geared towards and adult audience.
- a movie theater which Lisa and I only used once. We can see movies anytime.
- A small bar where they had small shows. We saw a few shows there but we only went to performances that looked really good because it was a bar.
- Two water slides, one for the most daring and one for the less adventurous.
- Three pools, and adult only, a kid pool and a splash park. Children with diapers were only allowed in the splash park. Since we had two kids in diapers that was a disappointment.
- A doctors office. I didn't need the doctor for the marathon but my cold was bad enough that I went to see what drugs I could get.
- Three very cool restaurants plus several smaller kiosks where you could order food 24 hours a day. The restaurants were only open during meal times.
- A huge kids play center where you could drop off younger kids.
- A teen center where teenagers could hang out.
- A basketball court plus a number of games such as Foosball and Ping Pong.
In addition to the actual facilities they had three decks where you could sit and enjoy the sun and the views. One of these decks had a huge movie screen on the funnel and the soundtrack from the movie was played over loud speakers. Several nights after everyone was back at their rooms I would go for a walk along the upper deck and enjoy the fresh air. Some times I would walk with someone else but several times I just went and walked alone. It was a very peaceful way to end the day. The weather was gorgeous during the entire ten day cruise.
Our rooms were really quite nice. Not very big but I've stayed in smaller hotel rooms. I really like the cool decoration on the couch.
Our first night we ate in the restaurant called "Lumiers" after the candlestick in "Beauty and the Beast". It was the swankiest of the three restaurants and the one we ate at the most.
We had the same waiters every night of our stay. This is Miroslava and she is from Slovakia.
The lights in Lumiers had cool glass roses in a cylinder under the light. It looked very cool.
Me and myt buddy Cameron spent a lot of time together. I slept on my shoulder during nearly every one of the evening shows.
Check out Justin on the stairs going to the water slide. He has his arms spread wide. The big water slide had you stand in a glass capsule and the floor would drop out and you would fall straight down. They had a count down to prepare you. Justin wanted to mix it up a little so he told the operator to not open the trap door on the signal but to surprise him. I coped him and that made it much more interesting.
It was Kira's goal to spend as much time in the Sun as she could.
It was my goal to go down the water slide as often as I could.
The splash park had water spouts all over the place which would randomly spout water and surprise you.
Evan got really good at putting his finger in the water spot and directing the water towards people to get them went. He would point it at complete strangers. 
They hosted a diaper dash in the main lobby for kids who could not walk. Cameron is such a faster crawler we though he was sure to win.
He got off to such a fast start we were confident that we had the medal in the bag.
Half way through the race with a wide lead he found the cheering crowd irresistible so he stopped right in the middle of the track and stared at the hundreds of onlookers.
Since the cruise was just a couple of weeks after Christmas we brought our Christmas gifts with us and exchanged presents.
This night (Monday night) was formal night so I brought my tux for the occasion.
With the kids all dressed up how could we not take a picture.
Dinner on Monday night was in the restaurant called "Animators Palette". The walls were all covered with large screens. On the screen random Disney characters were drawn. Each stroke of the pencil was recorded and in some cases the lines were erased. Finally the drawing were filled with color and the characters would start moving and play a segment from the movie that the scene was in. It was very fascinating and made it tough to focus on eating.
On this night we got a surprise visit. We ate all of our meals with friends of Justin and Kira, Matt and Sheena Smith and their family who also came on the cruise. We had by far the largest table in the room so Micky naturally made his way to our table and danced right in front of Piper who was very intrigued. Coincidentally I went to school with Sheena's mother.
--------------------trivia-------------------
Our ship weighed 90,000,000 pounds
--------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment