Day 5: Friday April 29, 2016, Part 2
After the movie, we headed back to the cabin. As we were walking down our hallway, we passed a room where a heated discussion was occurring between some in the hallway who clearly were staying elsewhere, and the occupants of the room. It was clear that they had been found to have the stomach bug and they were not impressed with being quarantined. It also sounded as though they’d started with it more than 24 hours ago (aka boarding day), and had tried to carry on with cruise activities. Mystery solved? Side note...how does anyone carry on with normal activities with a stomach bug?! The last 2 I’ve had have had me in bed for a good 24 hours after the heavy duty symptoms and sleeping on the bathroom floor phase have passed! I couldn’t comprehend trying to board a cruise ship under those conditions. We hightailed it away from that cabin and got back to ours where we had received our information for immigrations in Key West the day. Uh oh. The time they wanted us to be in the Walt Disney Theater was 15 minutes after our reservation for brunch at Palo.
We also noted when we entered our room that the message light was flashing. I listened to it and it was a recorded thing from the hotel director saying that while the majority of the guest onboard were unaffected, a larger percentage than usual was experiencing stomach bug symptoms and to notify the medical center immediately if we experienced any symptoms. No kidding...
I did some people watching (I now understand the term “port runners!”) and picture taking from our balcony and then from that aft deck just beyond our room.
After my picture taking was done, it was off to Guest Services to find out how they suggest we solve this little issue. There was a bit of a line here as they were passing out packages of bottled water and canceling port excursions left and right. Umm...so how few people have this stomach bug? The line moved quickly though, and the girl told me to try showing up early and see if they were ready, otherwise, the immigrations people would be on board for awhile, so we could arrive after brunch. Ok, problem solved.
While I was at Guest Services, the ship started moving, so I headed out onto deck 4 to watch us leave Nassau.
From here it was off to the gift stores to finalize my purchases for the trip, because I knew tomorrow would be busy with timelines and I wanted to have a lot of packing done before we went to brunch. Here I saw more evidence of the precautions they were taking. All of the gift store CMs were gloved, and to avoid touching anything, they were using room numbers provided verbally to look us up in the computer (and compare our appearance to our security picture), rather than swiping our room keys. Wipes had also made an appearance at every register.
After making some purchases, it was off to Shutters to make sure all of our pictures thus far were in our account and to verify whether I needed to do anything for my pictures to appear on the CD I had prepurchased.
Sure enough, one of my pictures was missing from the digital account, so the CM filled out the paperwork for the lab to find it. She was very helpful and said to check back later; they would find it. She also said that all I had to do was show up on disembarkation morning and the CD would be waiting for me. That’s easy!
One last stop before getting ready for dinner. We’d been discussing whether this was something we wanted to do again over the course of the day (it was!), and when I told Nick about the placeholder option, he basically acted like I had 10 heads for having not booked that yet. So, it was off to the Future Vacations desk to get that booked. Tai from New Zealand took care of that, and the process took all of 4 minutes. Easy! For those who haven’t done a Disney Cruise, a placeholder is when you book on board, saying that you intend to sail again in the next 24 months but you don’t yet commit to a date. You pay a deposit, they give you a reservation number, and when it’s time to book a cruise for real, you get 10% off the cost of the sailing, and an onboard credit. It’s kind of a no-brainer.
Time killed, it was time to go get ready for the evening. It was dress up night. I’m NOT a girly girl, at ALL. But I had found some cute sundresses at Old Navy, so what the heck. Even Nick had agreed to dress up.
Of course getting ready required ironing. I think I had ironed that dress more in the last week than all of the rest of the ironing I’ve done in the last 5 years! Don’t buy a white sundress. It shows every wrinkle! So, off I went to the laundry room, which was conveniently located just down the hall from us. My goal was to not touch ANYTHING except the iron and sanitize heavily after ironing. I’m not typically neurotic about germs, but we REALLY didn’t want the stomach bug.
Ironing complete, I got ready, had a quick snack with food we had brought from home (I wasn’t ordering room service with the amount of deliveries they were doing to sick people!), and it was off to the Walt Disney Theater for Toy Story the Musical.
We got to the theater shortly before the doors were opened. Sandra, the server from Serenity Bay was circulating. When she saw us, we were greeted like old friends. “Mr. Nicholas, do you need anything? What I can I get you to drink?”. WOW! The Disney difference.
Nick ordered a can of Strongbow, and we headed into the theater to wait for the show to start. Sandra delivered the cider a few minutes later. We noticed that they’d done away with the receipt holders to eliminate one more point of contact for germs, and you had to just sign the receipt using arm rest. Wow, Disney takes this seriously!
Toy Story was fun. There was a little more focus on Sid (the Van Gogh of Violence!) than was really necessary, but it was a cute show, and I’m glad I got to see it before its rumored end when the Wonder goes into dry dock. We both were really impressed in the caliber of the 2 shows we’d seen so far on this cruise.
When the show ended, we headed for the atrium. I knew this was the last night with backdrops, and felt we should definitely get our pictures taken if we were all dressed up. I was pleased to see that, with early dinner still in session, the lines were minimal. As an added bonus, the live music in the atrium tonight was fantastic. I have no idea who was performing, but they were great! So, we made the rounds for pictures, and I was pleased that only one photographer neglected to notice what Nick was wearing on his feet before starting to take pictures.
Picture taking done, we wandered up to the pool decks, where we found that the soda station was staffed/no longer self-serve, and there were no snacks available in Cove Cafe. More casualties of the stomach bug. We found some comfy seats outside Cove Cafe and parked it to watch the water until dinner time. We were moving full speed tonight. The previous day had been just 60 miles that we needed to cover. According to that awesome map channel, it was 320 miles from Nassau to Key West. And they anticipated docking around 10 am. We had left Nassau about 4 pm.
Dinner was in Animator’s Palate again, and it was show night! I was really looking forward to it! Even the menus were cute tonight.
The photographers made an early appearance tonight.
I had the truffle pasta things for an appetizer, the butternut squash soup, and the pork with tomato risotto. I don’t know what Nick had for an appetizer, but I know he had the baked potato soup and the beef tenderloin. I LOVED the soup, the pasta appetizer and the risotto. The pork was a bit dry, even by pork chop standards. Nick’s soup was also fantastic! And he enjoyed his beef so much that Harlan (who had done a total 180 and was no longer acting nervous at all) brought him another serving of it.
Once again conversation flowed freely, with the stomach bug a large topic of focus. It sounded like ground zero for it was deck two, where Andy and Jackie were staying. UGH. We all shared stories of what we’d seen so far (black lights being used in cleaning in the atrium, quantity of cabins with yellow bags outside, etc). The joys of being at a table with a pharmacist, a nurse, and someone that works in an elementary school? The other hot topic at the table for the week? The heroin/fentanyl crisis in NH. No...no one at all would be able to tell what occupations were at that table!
The show was fun. I know it’s a lot more high tech on the newer ships, but it was a lot of fun to watch the restaurant change colors, and to see the energy of the serving staff. And you can never complain when Mickey parades through the dining room! We really enjoyed this dining room. It’s just fun!
Dessert was good too. I had the white chocolate fudge cheesecake. Nick got the Mickey sundae. I’m not sure why I didn’t get a picture. My dessert was VERY rich. He seemed to enjoy his. I think he also joined HR guy in getting a Mickey bar, something that was becoming a tradition for HR guy.
After dinner, we cruised through Shutters so that Nick could see all of the pictures from the week, and discovered that they’d found our missing photos already! Woohoo! The girl working was the same I’d filed the missing photo report with and she recognized me and came right over to make sure I’d seen that it had been found. Even though it’s not Disney running the picture show, even these employees are great!
From Shutters, we went back to the cabin, where we found the newest towel creation waiting. Tonight was my sunglasses’ turn to be in on the towel animal art. I was amazed they still had time to leave towel animals with all of the extra cleaning that was happening!
We collapsed into bed immediately, which turned out to be the wrong choice for me. The heavy food and short turnaround between dinner and laying down caught up with me, and for a few minutes I really wondered if the stomach bug was showing up. But, it turned out to just be the above factors, and after half an hour or so, I was able to go to sleep. Phew!
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