Third Time's a Fantasy? 6/18/22 Western Caribbean Cruise

[Geomom]

6/24/22 Castaway Cay part 3
Tonight was Animation Magic Night in Animator's Palate! Lots of marker colors as Lissie had high expectations for our drawings! DD22 just graduated with a BS in Digital Media: Animation concentration.

Drawings plus the animations after the main course:
DD22 Stitch


DD18 girl with snail shirt (she loves snails.)


My purple Minnie


DH's drawing

 

[Geomom]

6/24/22 Castaway Cay part 4
Animation Magic menu:
I had the crisp romaine wedge salad,

DD18 had the Kisses drink,

The Tomato Caprese

And the Chicken Schnitzel

DD22 had the Malaysian Chicken Satay

DD22 and I had the Beef Wellington

DH had the Sesame Crusted Tuna Sashimi,

And the Roasted Salmon Steak

 

[Geomom]

6/24/22 Castaway Cay part 5
To end the cruise we had ALL the desserts, again:
celebration cake,

orchard peach tart,

chocolate decadence,

very cherry chocolate sundae,

amaretto cheesecake,

cappuccino mousse

We gave envelopes to our servers. On our way to the theater, I saw Rapunzel dancing with a bunch of kids in the lobby. It was so sweet, just like that scene in the movie. Especially touching when you realize characters are still social distancing on the ship…but this type of magic is happening!

Tonight was the Believe show.

After the show, DD18 and I quickly ran to the room to put on bathing suits to get DD18 into the adult pool and hot tub once during this cruise! We had about 30 minutes left before they closed the pool and hot tub. We had the pool to ourselves, and while one side of the hot tub was occupied, the other was empty. When it was 10pm, we got out and all 4 of us sat in the adult area comfy chairs to relax. We ate our last Cove Cafe olives and fries from the pool. When we got back to the room, DH ordered Mickey bars and fries from room service to end our night.

 

[mickeymom22]

6/16/22: Travel day?

DD18 and I had our Onpoint appt at 11am, DH had his at 11:30am–thankfully all negative! Results emailed within 30 minutes, we uploaded them to Safe Passage and we were cleared to sail by 4AM.
View attachment 695666
At 2:30pm we headed to the airport (MHT), checked luggage, zipped through security (I love small airports!), and our 5:30pm Southwest flight was delayed 20 minutes…so we got an early dinner at the sit down restaurant near our gate.
View attachment 695838
Like usual, I had paid for early bird in the hopes of sitting together. We boarded the plane and sat there and sat there and sat there. They announced the skies were closed for the whole East Coast due to storms in the South. Eventually they had us get off the plane with all our stuff. DH bought some snacks, kids had just opened them, when they told us to line back up, we had a brief window to depart. So back on the plane and we took off at 7:10pm! We landed in Orlando at 10:15pm. DH went to the Budget line while the kids and I got the luggage. We met up with DH just as he was finishing with an agent. We were given a Mitsubishi Outlander vs the Toyota Corolla I expected, so a slight upgrade! We stuck our EZ pass on the dash and drove 1 ½ hrs to Disney's Vero Beach resort for our first stay there. Checked in at 1am. We used our DVC pts for a standard inn room, since we would just be there 2 nts. Went to bed around 1:30am.

Thanks for sharing your trip with us! Question: Can I make one virtual appointment at Onpoint for myself, hubby and daughter? Or do I have to schedule three different appointments?

Thank again!

 

[Geomom]

Thanks for sharing your trip with us! Question: Can I make one virtual appointment at Onpoint for myself, hubby and daughter? Or do I have to schedule three different appointments?

Thank again!

Onpoint: You would pay for 3 'tests' (1/person--can use the same email address for each person), and can schedule all 3 people into 1 appt. (When we did it the max was 2/appt, now it is 4.)

Thanks for reading!

 

[Geomom]

6/25/22 Port Canaveral

Sunrise:


Well...the bad part about early dining is having early breakfast the day you leave…7am saw us not so awake in Animator's Palate with our carry on bags, having left our luggage out for pickup the night before.

I had French toast, yogurt, fruit, coffee, and cranberry juice

DD22 had blueberry pancakes, hash browns, sausage, and tes

DD18 only had hash browns…too early to really eat

DH had Nature's Muesli, and apparently something with scrambled eggs and breakfast potatoes.

There was a bit of a line leaving the ship, but it was moving, and we went through customs with no issues. Unlike our first cruise, we found our luggage with no issues! We packed up the car and drove to Disney World.

We spent 3 nights in a 1 bedroom at Bay Lake Tower and then 4 nights in a Boardwalk 1 bedroom. (Used our DVC pts) It was great to have the extra space after a week on the ship and we made good use of the in room laundry. I'm not going to talk more about this part of our trip as we go to Disney World at least once a year and that affects our touring style… but we did not buy Genie +, or pay extra for any rides…AND we let the kids sleep in every day. We still had a great time!

 

[Geomom]

Notes:
We stopped by the DVC desk daily across from guest services. They scanned our card and we could pick up that day's freebies. We came home with 4 DVC lanyards, 4 cinch bags, 3 Riviera prints, 4 Pirate Mickey temporary tattoos, 4 Grand Floridian buttons, 2 member buttons, and 4 'Dream It Forward' luggage tags.

And our DVC member door magnet:

Forgot to mention that we had our DCL sling bag in our room on day 1, as our Silver Castaway Club gift. It's 'just'' our second.bag, so we were happy to get it! I used the first one for the past 4 yrs as my girl scout leader bag to carry the first aid kit, paperwork, and my water bottle.

Our serving team..they were really nice…but Lissie gave parts of the 'excellent speech' multiple nights…and talked so fast you couldn't cut her off. It didn't affect our enjoyment of our meals though.

Overall we had a great cruise, much better than we anticipated. Loved the location of our room, but felt more ship motion than we really like, so we chose a room on deck 7 vs 9 for our next cruise. We enjoy going to the MDRs for breakfast and lunch…and somehow only managed it 1x each…just too busy doing something…

We did the placeholder booking on the app (10% off a future cruise). When we finally got home on 7/2 after the Disney World portion of our trip, we booked a cruise for next summer with our TA. 7nt Norwegian Fjords cruise, 8/19/23-8/26/23 from Southampton, England. Hopefully that one actually happens as it's a dream itinerary for us, especially DD22 who has wanted to visit Norway for years. DD18's college doesn't start classes until September, making a late August cruise possible for the first time in forever…

 

[Geomom]

One more humorous note...when we walked into the Epcot Mexico pyramid building, DD18 said it smells like Mexico. So apparently...Disney has managed to duplicate the scent of Cozumel.

 

[greensombrero]

Thanks for sharing your adventure, great trip report!

 

[Geomom]

Thanks for sharing your adventure, great trip report!

Thanks for reading!

 

[Nicnicnic.nic]

So fun to read. And loved all the pictures. Thank you

 

[Geomom]

So fun to read. And loved all the pictures. Thank you

Thanks for reading!

 

[Flossbolna]

I just saw your post on the thread about the first 7-night on the Dream and saw the link to your trip report. I read your Alaska report a few months ago when planning for our upcoming Alaska cruise. I ended up booking with Chilkoot Charters for Skagway because of your trip report (and another one that really liked them, too). It's so funny to see how much your girls have grown! I hope you will have an amazing cruise in Norway!

 

[Geomom]

I just saw your post on the thread about the first 7-night on the Dream and saw the link to your trip report. I read your Alaska report a few months ago when planning for our upcoming Alaska cruise. I ended up booking with Chilkoot Charters for Skagway because of your trip report (and another one that really liked them, too). It's so funny to see how much your girls have grown! I hope you will have an amazing cruise in Norway!

Thanks for reading the trip reports!

Thank you! We're really looking forward to the Norway cruise. I FINALLY got 'affordable' airfare about a week ago...at exactly 5 months out. ($815/person, non stop, economy with a checked bag.). I'm so happy to be planning again now that my dates are all set.

I hope you have a great Alaska cruise! We loved our excursion with Chilkoot Charters.

 

[Flossbolna]

Thanks for reading the trip reports!

Thank you! We're really looking forward to the Norway cruise. I FINALLY got 'affordable' airfare about a week ago...at exactly 5 months out. ($815/person, non stop, economy with a checked bag.). I'm so happy to be planning again now that my dates are all set.

I hope you have a great Alaska cruise! We loved our excursion with Chilkoot Charters.

Yay on the airfare!! That's a really good price for this summer! We are doing a Med cruise in May (in addition to Alaska, need to catch up after the long Pandemic brake) and in our Facebook group people talk about some scary airfare prices. We are coming from Germany, so not expensive at all.

 

[Geomom]

Yay on the airfare!! That's a really good price for this summer! We are doing a Med cruise in May (in addition to Alaska, need to catch up after the long Pandemic brake) and in our Facebook group people talk about some scary airfare prices. We are coming from Germany, so not expensive at all.

It was $1200/person that morning and had a sudden drop in the evening, so I grabbed it! Looks like prices are still around $800 for mid-late August from BOS to London. I had looked at other cruises (despite really wanting to do Norway) to see if any other dates were cheaper and the June Rome ones had airfare more in the $1500 range. Crazy. Enjoy the cruises!

 

[Hubie]

It sure pays to watch airfares. I also snagged a good price for our round-trip flights to Honolulu and back on Delta. Then after I finally paid for our flight with Qantas to get back to HNL from Sydney, I realized that it arrives at HNL on the same date. I frantically made the change on our Delta flight home from HNL and low and behold my tickets were $300 cheaper. Delta gave me the $300 to use as e-fare in the future.

I hope you have a great cruise to Norway. We loved our cruise there on the Magic, but I never did write up a trip report for it.

 

[Geomom]

It sure pays to watch airfares. I also snagged a good price for our round-trip flights to Honolulu and back on Delta. Then after I finally paid for our flight with Qantas to get back to HNL from Sydney, I realized that it arrives at HNL on the same date. I frantically made the change on our Delta flight home from HNL and low and behold my tickets were $300 cheaper. Delta gave me the $300 to use as e-fare in the future.

I hope you have a great cruise to Norway. We loved our cruise there on the Magic, but I never did write up a trip report for it.

Thanks! Looking forward to our Norway cruise in 3 weeks!