Day 3 - Monday, 10/12 - Sunrise and Breakfast
I'm not sure exactly when we passed into the Mountain time zone, but the ship officially changed during our first night at sea. We were pretty happy about this, as it put the local time an hour closer to our biological clocks.
After our first night, it's worth noting that our room was loud. This was the first time we've sailed on the aft/back of a ship and it will certainly be the last.
The room itself shook/vibrated a bit. And there were a few spots making creaking/squeaking noises. I had heard that rooms in the back were a little louder,
but I wasn't expecting it to be this loud. I say this now, because it was fairly annoying as you were trying to sleep. It got worse later in the trip, but I'll save that story for later. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal at this point, and it didn't significantly affect our overall impression of the ship so far.
And before we get going, here's the Navigator for the day.
Stephanie woke up fairly early, and got out of bed around 5:45 AM. She left me to sleep a bit longer… and she headed down to the promenade deck (deck 4) to go for a walk.
I think she said there was a sign indicating that three laps around the ship would equal a mile. She probably did a two and a half miles… in the dark. (Of course the pathway was lit, but the sky was still pitch black.) She said it was weird, because she only saw one other person walking that morning, and she only crossed their path twice. This was very different than what she experienced during her morning walks on Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas this past June (where the walkway was always full of people... and granted the sunrise was much earlier back then.) So… here's another nod to the smaller ship meaning smaller crowds. (Or in this case, non-existent crowds.)
Loving this aspect of the cruise!
Stephanie thought that Cabanas buffet opened up at 7:00 AM, so she headed there for a light breakfast after her walk. Except for she had it wrong, it didn't open until 7:30 AM. She knew that Daisy’s De-Lites was already open, so she went there and had some oatmeal and a cup of tea. The sunrise didn't occur until around 7:25 AM, she still couldn’t see any hint of the sun itself, but the sky was starting to lighten up a bit, so she enjoyed her breakfast on the deck just outside Palo.
Meanwhile, I woke up for good around 6:30 AM. I peeked out the window and it was still dark, so I hopped back into bed and turned on the TV for a little while. Stephanie came back about the time that the sun was rising, and we enjoyed the sunrise from our verandah.
The views were breathtaking! I wasn't expecting to see so much of the coast off in the distance, but you'd see it come and go throughout the day. We sat and enjoyed the sunrise for quite a while, eventually even seeing some dolphins swimming along the ship. How cool!
Plans for the day?
Oh yeah, a little more background. When preparing for the trip months in advance, we found the thread for our trip on here on the Disboards. But early on, it became clear that everyone had moved to a private Facebook group for our cruise. This turned out to be pretty awesome with 300+ people joined in (and a couple of great volunteers who stayed top of coordinating everything.) The group is still actively chatting and sharing photos. They had a ton of fish extender groups, pixie dust groups, meet and greets, and enough interest to fill two Mixology classes (40 people per class.) We've done fish extenders before, so we opted out of that. But we've never done one of the mixology classes, so we decided to sign up for that one. We were in the first group, scheduled for 2pm on this day (Monday.)
So the Mixology class planned for 2pm, and of course, dinner planned for 5:45 PM, and we knew there would be the Pirate Party and fireworks closer to 9 or 10 PM. The rest of the day, we just played by ear.
Looking at the Navigator, we saw that a guided tour of the ship ("Art of Theme Show Tour") started at 9:45 AM. We figured that we'd start with that…
We had an hour or two before the tour, so I went up to Cabanas for some breakfast while Stephanie took a shower and started to get ready for the day.
I felt like breakfast was much better than lunch the day before. Still feeling a bit full from all of Tiana's deserts last night, I didn't go crazy this time around. But… I can never get enough Disney bacon, so I did go back up for a couple more pieces.
Here are a few photos of the breakfast buffet…
(I'm on my lunch break right now, having a small salad, and I'm starting to drool while looking at these photos.)
Some great breakfast options here!
I headed back down to the room after I finished eating to take a shower and get ready for the day too.
I would have loved to glaze over the next part and just move on to the awesome tour… but it's time share a few more negative aspects of the stateroom.
In the shower, just above eye level, I noticed that the shower curtain rings were fairly rusted. Gross!
And then looking up at the ceiling, paint was flaking off.
And while I’m mentioning those two things…
In the bathroom there were cracks in the tile.
And outside on the veranda, it had aesthetic issues too…
Some over-spray (maybe gray spray paint?) on the plexiglass
And some weird hardened brown dripping stuff on the railings. Here are just a couple examples, there were more…
Any one of these things on their own wouldn't be a big deal, at all. But these combined with the squeaky noises (more on that later) really gave me the impression that Disney had dropped the ball back here on these staterooms.
Wasn't the ship supposed to have been renovated last year? Maybe my expectations were too high, but for the price we paid, I don’t think so. (Maybe if we were staying at a Motel 6, I wouldn't have thought twice about it.)
Anyway, we were having so much fun, and beyond those things, the room really was nice. In the grand scheme of things, not counting the noisy/shaky aspect of the room, these were fairly trivial... so we chose to ignore them and focus on the positive aspects.