Once we were ready, we met Kim and John in the atrium for pictures. While Nick and I had been having pictures taken frequently, this was the only night we pushed for group pictures. And since we all had matching t-shirts, they willingly agreed.
Upon our arrival, we heard John’s joke of the night for the first (of many) time. It went like this: John would ask “What’s a pirate’s favorite letter”. A poor unsuspecting soul would respond: “r?”. And John would respond (in pirate accent), “you think it’s r, but actually it’s the c they love”.
Joke endured, we started posing for pictures. This is where we really noticed that John was indeed enjoying this cruise.
While posing for pictures, we also were enjoying the music. While this was not our favorite of the 2 couples we saw performing regularly on board, they were very good. There’s just something so nice about music being so widespread.
After pictures, Kim and John went to the show of the night. It was a magician. Nick and I skipped in favor of doing a bit of shopping while most people were at the show or dinner. No lines and no tripping over people!
Several purchases made, we headed back to our room to drop those off and adjust bandanas in the mirror. We relaxed a bit, and I spent some time on the balcony watching the...RAIN.
You can’t tell from these pictures, but it was POURING. I was particularly impressed, though, with how blue the water was, despite the clouds. Every time the ship turned (which was frequently, since we were quickly approaching Pirate Party time and they were trying to find a break in the weather), the water absolutely poured off the side of it. It was fascinating to watch. Yes, in addition to having an engineer for a father-in-law, I have a father who is an engineer too, how did you guess?
The other thing you can’t tell from the pictures is that one deck up, and one room over, the kids and THEIR MOTHER were throwing popcorn over the rail to feed the fish. UGH!
As it got closer to 8, we headed for the pool deck, since there had been no announcements about the status of the party yet. As we got out on deck, it was evident that it was still raining. However, right then they made an announcement that in about 7 more minutes, we would be out of the rain, so they would start “swabbing the decks” as soon as that happened, and the party would go on, with just a 10 or 15 minute delay. They also made it clear that we should stick around and enjoy the party; they’d notified the theater and dining rooms of the delay. Alright then!
So Nick and I did what any good Disney cruiser would do; we found the soft serve ice cream and got ourselves some cones while waiting for the weather to clear. Within a few minutes there was a stampede upstairs, which was our cue to get moving. Sure enough, the rain had basically stopped, and we found his parents along the rain on deck. We watched the action as the decks were swabbed, and we did our part as a beach towel was passed down the railing to dry that off too. And we got ready to enjoy the party.
Partway through the party, it started raining again, and lightning could be seen in the distance. As an added bonus, we were rocking! Pretty soon, I saw cruise director Darren appear and start talking with the music booth staff, and within minutes we heard, “how about some fireworks!”. They cut a bit out of the party, but they got the fireworks set off!
The rain really picked up as the fireworks ended, but we took our time heading downstairs. No need to be trampled on wet wooden stairs! Kim and John had clearly enjoyed the party, and we had too!
Dinner was in Animator’s Palate again tonight, and the photographers were out in force again.
So...the pirate menu changed since our last cruise. I had been in the minority (as had Nick) in liking it on the last cruise. I was not overly excited about anything except dessert on this menu. This menu has a lot of shellfish on it, which I don't do. So this was a tough menu. But, I tried.
For an appetizer I had the Smoked Saucisson Baked Brie Brioche and Honey. This was just weird. It was kind of like an egg souffle. Kim also had this, and she wasn’t wild about it either. It was ok, but neither one of us finished it. Nikola, of course, teased that we should have listened to his recommendations, as he hadn’t seen us not finish an appetizer yet this cruise. I did better with the soup course, with the chilled mango soup. This was really tasty, and I think I finished it all. Kim wasn’t as crazy about her carrot soup. For the entree, I had the jerk chicken, which was very good. It wasn’t overly spicy, just flavorful, which was perfect. And for dessert, I had the caramel macadamia nut cheesecake tart. This was amazing. I really don’t remember what else everyone got to eat. Oh well.
For an appetizer I had the Smoked Saucisson Baked Brie Brioche and Honey. This was just weird. It was kind of like an egg souffle. Kim also had this, and she wasn’t wild about it either. It was ok, but neither one of us finished it. Nikola, of course, teased that we should have listened to his recommendations, as he hadn’t seen us not finish an appetizer yet this cruise. I did better with the soup course, with the chilled mango soup. This was really tasty, and I think I finished it all. Kim wasn’t as crazy about her carrot soup. For the entree, I had the jerk chicken, which was very good. It wasn’t overly spicy, just flavorful, which was perfect. And for dessert, I had the caramel macadamia nut cheesecake tart. This was amazing. I really don’t remember what else everyone got to eat. Oh well.
The dining room was quite lively tonight. Around dessert time, the servers did a bit of a parade and then set up limbo for the kids, complete with servers using the metal plate covers to create a little extra noise. It was fun.
Aziz also chatted with us for a bit tonight, inquiring about our service. When we told him that Nikola is awesome, he shared that this is Nikola’s last regular service rotation. On the next cruise, Nikola would be starting as a server in Palo. Aww. Nikola will be a great server wherever he goes, but we had been observing him working pure magic with the kiddos, managing to trade food for game systems that they were glued to, and convincing them to actually eat. This is a gain for Palo, but a loss for the main dining rooms for sure. We are very grateful that we got to have Nikola as a server. As fantastic as our serving team was on the Wonder (and they were AMAZING), he single-handedly blew them out of the water.
At some point during this dinner, we got to talking about how much fun we were having. Kim made it very clear she was considering doing another cruise some day (“How about a Thanksgiving cruise some time?!”), and when she asked John if he’d do another one, the response was a very quick “yup”. That’s about as good as you get with him, or so we thought.
Kim also shared stories and pictures from their excursion. Overall, they really enjoyed it and said it had been a good use of their afternoon.
After dinner, Kim and John headed back to their room, and Nick and I headed for Shutters, for our routine of checking out our pictures. We then decided we needed to go down to Keys, as we hadn’t really spent any time there yet, and this cruise was quickly coming to an end.
I didn’t last very long in Keys. I really noticed as soon as I got into that dark, peaceful bar just how tired I was. We settled in to seats to listen to the really good music, and Nick ordered himself a drink (some whiskey or bourbon), but within probably 15 minutes, I was on my way back to the room to crash. Nick stayed a bit longer, and apparently had a glass of the Jack Daniels Sinatra version, in addition whatever his first beverage was. He returned to the room gushing about the great music, the wonderful bartender (Mary Ann from our Mixology class) and the beverage selection.
We both fell asleep quickly, listening to the sound of pouring rain hitting the ship. We both were quite surprised that the ship was not rocking, in light of the apparent weather.
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