Day 6, Saturday April 30, 2016
The last full day of vacation. I woke up about 6:45, and realizing that we were heading due west, and the sun, according to our Navigator, was supposed to rise about 6:50, I quickly grabbed my camera and headed out onto the balcony.
Perfect. My 3 goals for the cruise (try the konk kooler on Castaway Cay, see a sunset at sea and see a sunrise at sea) had all been accomplished. I aimed high folks!
Once I was done taking pictures, I grabbed the remote and turned the volume down enough so that I could channel surf a bit while Nick continued his one-man snorechestra. Eventually he got restless, so at that point I was able to justify doing some packing.
Nick woke up eventually (we were in no hurry this morning) and the packing continued. When we started to see land getting close, I switched the phone out of airplane mode, and sure enough I had a signal that wasn’t roaming. I had something like 160 emails, 22 facebook alerts, and even 15 emails in my work email, despite everyone being on vacation. I did some catching up with the outside world. Eventually we started getting ready for brunch at Palo. Thankfully, Nick wore actual dress shoes this time. We docked in Key West right around 10 am.
About 10:15, we headed down to the Walt Disney Theater to see if we could get through immigrations before brunch. Tai, the same guy from the future vacations desk, saw us dressed up and accurately guessed exactly what we were up to. He told us to get in line because if the customs people got on board early enough, the process would be quick. However, he also told us that we had docked a few minutes later than expected, so everything would be delayed by a few minutes, and that it would take awhile to process the whole ship, so don’t be afraid to go to brunch and then come back. And then he handed us hand wipes.
We stood in line until 10:27, at which point, we headed for brunch. We can do this later! Thankfully, Nick had figured out how the ship was arranged, because I clearly had not. He led us to Palo, and we got there just in time. We were seated just a couple minutes after arriving, and were offered either mimosas or champagne. We both went with mimosas.
Because the buffets had been placed on lockdown, we were handed menus. After looking over the menu that was divided into half a dozen different sections, I asked our server (Sasha, I think) how this all works. Everything I’d read about Palo was from stomach bug free sailings. After all, as I would find out later, this was DCL’s first significant outbreak in 14 YEARS. What I had read described brunch at Palo as a buffet, with some additional hot options to order.
Sasha told us to just look over the menu and he’d get us whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted it. He ran through his recommendations. Nick ordered some nutella stick thing and eggs benedict. I ordered chilled strawberry soup, melon and prosciutto, and chicken parmesan. It was all absolutely amazing.
Nick had apparently never tried eggs benedict before. He all but licked the plate. When Sasha came back and asked if there was another entree he’d like, Nick ordered the eggs benedict that had salmon on it. He loved that too.
Once we’d finished eating, Sasha reminded us that there was still dessert. He offered to make us a sampler of all of the dessert offerings. Sure!
It should come as no surprise that we finished virtually none of the dessert options on that plate, but we sampled all of them. They were all delicious, although I didn’t like the peach and almond souffle nearly as much as I had liked the grand marnier souffle at Triton’s.
After admitting defeat, we settled the check just in time to hear the “last call” for those who needed to go through immigrations. This turned out to be the first of about 10 last calls. We headed back to our room, where I quickly changed shoes and Nick changed out of his dressy clothes, and we continued down to deck 4 to the theater.
The immigrations process was quick. This was just a check, rather than customs, so we just had to show our passports and Key to the World cards. They had multiple immigrations officers set up throughout the theater with multiple CMs directing traffic. The process took very little time at all, and on our way out of the theater they stuck a sticker on our card to prove we had been through immigrations. When I say sticker, I mean the same sparkly star stickers that I buy at the dollar spot at Target for my students’ sticker books. Super secure stickers!
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