April 2016: A WONDERful vacation. Trip Report Day 3, part 3

Day 3, Wednesday 4/27/16, part 3

As soon as the party ended, and the “when you wish upon a star” horn blew, I joined the masses at the front of the ship to watch us start the trip out to sea. And just look at those people sitting in traffic while we were heading out to sea!

After several minutes of watching us get underway, I headed back to the room. Nick had let me know that food from room service had arrived, and I knew if I was going to have time for a snack before we went to see tonight’s show, I needed to get back to the room.

I arrived back at the room to find Nick’s suitcase sitting outside the doorway. He was really happy when I rolled that into the room. Nick had ordered a cheese pizza for himself and a cheese plate for me. We had late dinner, and we were using the term “hangry” to describe me long before the term got popular, so we both knew a snack was needed around now.   

As I ate, Nick described his adventures in room service delivery. Neither one of us have ever ordered room service before because it’s always horrifically priced. Now that it was “free” and you just needed to tip, the convenience totally made sense. Plus a cheese plate is healthier than the fries and burgers on deck. I guess when the guy arrived with the food, Nick opened the door and was basically like “so, how does this work”. I was glad he had the opportunity to try the room service concept first, because I had no clue either!

Refueled once again, we worked our way toward the Walt Disney Theater for tonight’s show: All Aboard, Let the Magic Begin! I’d been a little surprised to see this in the line-up, as all of the research I had done had had this not in our line-up, but it turned out to be a really cute show (no real surprise). It really outlined all the primary themes of the cruise and really introduced us to our cruise director, Peter, who reminded both Nick and me of my grandfather. Same mannerisms, sense of humor, just 30 years younger. The show also introduced us to Taylor Mason, the ventriloquist that was onboard who would be the entertainment the next evening. The 10 minutes he was on stage were plenty, and more than enough for Nick and I to know we would be skipping that particular show.

After the show, we joined most others in walking into Treasure Ketch, the store with the jewelry and some souvenirs. I recently got into the whole Pandora thing, and I had read that the DCL charms sometimes go quickly. The stores had just opened, so I wanted to get a charm while all choices were still available. As I looked at the 3 choices, Nick “strongly recommended” that I not get the cruise ship one. Hmm. So I went with the anchor with Mickey’s head on it.

Once I’d made my purchase, we went back to the room to pick up my camera, and get rid of the pandora box. While there, Nick said “I have a surprise for you”. Turns out he had prebought a generic cruise ship charm for my bracelet. Oh, now this makes sense.

Camera in hand, we headed up to the soda station for drinks, and then to the very back of the ship to watch the sunset. I’m kind of a sucker for sunsets and sunrise.

After watching the sun very quickly drop into the clouds, we went back to the room, ditched the camera, and got ready for dinner. Tonight we would be in Triton’s. Shortly before 8:15, we headed down to deck 3 and joined the masses filing in. We were seated at table 35. We were the first ones at our table for 8.

Pretty quickly, our servers and our tablemates started to emerge, and thankfully, none of them were Henry. I’d been wondering how dinners would go. I didn’t have to worry. Our tablemates were 3 other couples our age. Andy and Jackie from Michigan, Alexandra and her bf (known forever by Nick and I as HR guy because we can’t remember his name) from Miami and Sergei and Vavara from Russia. I’ll let you figure out who had the hardest time fitting in at that table.

Our assistant server Allwyn was the first server to emerge. He was from India and was VERY concerned with us having a good time. He coaxed us and reminded us to get those ice breakers started, then took drink orders. He also introduced us briefly to our head server Geffrey, who we didn’t see much of during the cruise.

Harlan, from the Phillipines, was our main server. He seemed a lot less comfortable in his own skin than Allwynn. After explaining the menu and giving recommendations, he took food orders for all courses except dessert. I had the fried brie appetizer, the potato and leek soup, and the chateaubriand filet. Nick had the duck confit appetizer, potato soup, and the duck main course. It was a ducky kind of night, apparently.

Once the ice was broken, we all quickly started talking. Allwyn was beyond thrilled when he came back and found all of us laughing. Apparently the ice broke at our table very quickly. We really liked Allwyn immediately. It was VERY clear that his primary focus was that we enjoyed our cruise.

The food started emerging fairly quickly. All of it was fantastic, although my personal favorite was that fried brie appetizer. WOW was that good!

When dessert rolled around, Nick got the sampler, and I got the grand marnier souffle. It was a fantastic choice!

As dinner was wrapping up, our servers gave us the lowdown on food options for the next day for breakfast and lunch and reminded us that we’d be in Animator’s Palette for dinner for Pirate Night the next day. We said goodnight to everyone and headed out of Triton’s. There were backdrops and photographers set up in the atrium so I convinced Nick to stop for a picture. 

Once that was done, Nick decided it was too early to go back to the stateroom, so we headed to the Cadillac Lounge. Nick got a drink, the 1914, I believe, that involved various types of fruit, and we settled in to listen to some piano music. That didn’t last long. Chuck Perry was an ok piano player, but his singing and song selection left a bit to be desired.

Once Nick’s drink was finished, we headed into the Star Wars store that’s set up in Route 66 for Nick to poke around there. After that, it was time to head back to the stateroom. Tomorrow is Castaway Cay day!

We arrived back to the stateroom to find our first towel animal of the cruise, and the next day’s Navigator. Oh, and those awesome Sleepy chocolates. Nick thought this was pretty cool! Ok, I did too!

After reading through the Navigator, it was out onto the balcony to see if the stars are any clearer at sea than at home. I’m not sure why Nick thought they would be, since we live in the boonies, but they were not. It was fun though to be looking at the stars in the middle of the ocean. This is also when I made the mistake of looking down. Something about the combination of the movement through the dark water with the lights Disney shines into the water didn’t work out so well. In hindsight, the light and dark movement combination is the same reason I can’t tolerate Space Mountain.

Lesson learned! Thankfully, the lesson was learned and corrected BEFORE any protein spills could happen! After staring at the stars a bit longer, we got ready and collapsed into bed.