Our first full magical day

First, a picture I forgot to add from yesterday! Key to how things turned out at the end of our week at sea. This is Nanny (aka Pam, but called Pamela on the ship) meeting Captain Hook. Now, not because of the Captain, but more due to a throwaway comment from his handler, Nanny came away not the biggest fan of Hook. This led to lots of laughter and joking about catching up with him again, as Hook is walking around the ship all the time. It became a bit of a ship meme for us.

Also, I don’t know about you, but any time I ever thought about a cruise, I imagined lots of pool time, and getting up early to snage a deck chair. Spoiler alert, I didn’t sit in a deck chair once, nor did I swim in the pool ( the waterslide doesn’t count.) There was too much to do!

Ok, back to our regular programming: Where were we? Ah, yes. Monday!

Kara had begun to feel seedy once the ship began to move on Sunday night. We could feel the lurching and rollicking but didn’t realise how tumultuous the sea was until cast members the next day told us that even the most seasoned of them felt that it had been pretty awful. We’d had no comparison point and felt quite fantastic that we coped so well overall.

With the ship’s tossing and turning overnight, I kept dreaming I was falling overboard and then waking with a start.

We woke later than usual, probably due the travel sickness tablets we have been taking. The morning was dark and grim, with a wind whipping us about as we stood on our balcony.

It felt like a battle to get inside Cabanas, the ship’s buffet restaurant for breakfast., the wind was so fierce.

I approached the buffet with great anticipation of grits and cream-of-wheat cereal. But no, they don’t provide those options for the Australians cruises. Instead there was yellow cornmeal and porridge. Every type of cooked egg, bacon, baked tomatoes, fried mushroom, fried up potatoes and corned beef, pastries, pancakes, and Mickey waffles. The chilled display cabinet held small smoothies, bowls of fruit, bowls of berries, bowls of bircher muesli, all the topping for bagels as well as little pastries. A muesli and fruit salad held about 8 different types of fruits, nuts, and dried fruits. I tried some hot cornmeal, mushrooms, and egg, bacon and hollandaise sauce, a smoothie, a bowl of bircher muesli with nuts, dried fruit, and yoghurt. A small serve of gravalax, cream cheese, capers and red onions were delicious too. 

A few of us enjoyed our first coffee at Cove Cafe. The coffee there tasted a bit like Canberra coffee. ….. very good, and with Disney characters on top!!

The service everywhere was faultless, not forced. We ditched our Mickey ears pretty much immediately, but some people wore them every day. Lots of miniature princesses walked around regally with their families. Chatting with characters was constant, and the crew were absolutely amazed that us Aussies would line up for over an hour to meet a Disney princess or other character. Hook and Goofy and some of the other characters were happy to just wander around interacting with us.

Getting used to there being three sets of stairs and elevators: aft, midship and forward took me more than a couple of days.

This was a day full of trivia hopping, marvelling at Disney characters and finding our feet.

I dropped in on a cooking demonstration by one of the chef’s and we got a little sampler of the lobster ravioli with a drop of wine to go with!

We popped into the Buena Vista theatre to watch a showing of Next Goal Wins at the cinema. Such a good film with notes of Cool Runnings.

Lunch at Cabanas was fun. There was a create-your-own-burrito station. Everything was yummy besides a disappointing chimi churri sauce that was about 75% garlic.

For dinner we ate at Tritons. Our amazing server Noel and drink server Deresta were waiting for us with big smiles. Noel is very good at explaining what is on the menu and what to expect the next day also. This night at Tritons, there was no entertainment, but the food is supposed to be yummy. At every restarurant, we sit at table #73.

I didn’t experience any really standout dishes this night, but I tried the escargot and it was good, The fragrant savoury oil infused the escargot with flavour. I ordered a very expensive fancy chai here against my better judgement. It tasted just like a packet mix, quite disappointing.

A huge line formed outside The Disney theatre due to the Hilden Mickeys show that we would be watching at 8:30. They do two performances each night. I had no idea what to expect, bit it blew us away., I can totally see why people cry. It was pretty wonderful and poignant. We saw Tarzan, Woody and Jessie, Quasimodo, Snow White dopey, Ursula,Tiana, rapunzel and Flynn Ryder, goofy, Minnie and Mickey, Louis alligator, Simba and Nala, the monkeys, Cruella, Sleeping beauty and the fairy godmothers. And each of these characters performed against the most stunning backdrops. It was like getting a taste of a dozen Broadway shows all at once.

We finished on….. gosh, I can’t remember what I meant to write here. I must have fallen asleep.

But, on this night we got back from the show to find that Art our room attendant had made this gorgeous towel creation! He had been distressed that the cruise had changed our meal time without informing him the previous night, so he showed up to turn our beds down and amke a towel creation, only to find us in the room.