It’s CRUISE DAY!!
Running on well under 4 hours of sleep, I was awake for good by 6:30. Nick snoozed a bit longer, but really only an extra hour or so. And we have to wait until 8:15 for dinner tonight?!
Once Nick was awake, we went to breakfast. Much like the Homewood we stayed at a few years ago in Rhode Island, we found the breakfast to be incredibly limited. But, the breakfast area itself was nice enough.
Sort of fueled for the day, we headed back to the room, where Nick showered and took a nap, and I tagged our luggage for the ship. About 9:30, I woke Nick up, and we were headed down to the front desk about 9:45 to check out. And yes, I spoke to them about that air conditioner!
The shuttle arrived just after 10, and there was much less luggage tetris this trip. There was just a family of 4, with a normal amount of luggage on the shuttle with us. It was a quick trip to the airport, with a stop at the United Airlines terminal for the family, followed by a stop right next to the DCL luggage truck for us.
We gathered our luggage, and when the luggage truck people saw the tags on our bags, they waved us over, took our luggage to be loaded into the truck, and directed us inside.
Within minutes of stepping into the check in line, we had received a Chip and Dale sticker, and were sitting down to wait for our character to be called.
Surprisingly quickly, they called the Stitch group, and then as they loaded onto the bus, they called the Chip and Dale group. We checked in at another podium, and headed for the bus. Woohoo!
After having our cruise docs scanned once again, we boarded the bus. Said bus was rolling within half an hour of us stepping off the hotel shuttle. We were officially on our way!
I think we both enjoyed the ride to the port. The video clips were fun, the trivia was fun, and the excitement was great. And after yesterday, it was nice to know that for the next week, Disney was in charge of getting us everywhere. There would still be the chance for variables out of our control, but we were going to make the ship, and Disney now knew where we were.
The ride to the port passed faster than I had expected, and soon, we had our first ship sighting! It was a gorgeous day, and a gorgeous drive into the port.
When the bus arrived in its bay, it emptied quickly. The cast members directed about half the bus to one security area, and half to the other, so security was very quick, and minutes after stepping off the bus, we were on the escalator up to the main terminal.
Both of us were wowed by this terminal. There was nothing wrong with the terminal we sailed from in Miami, but this was just cool.
We walked in the general direction of check in, and a cast member asked us, “Ready to check in?”. Uh, duh? I responded “Absolutely!”, and was directed to the Castaway Club line, where we barely had time to fill out the health form before we were directed to the cast member to check in. Check in was quick, and we were assigned boarding group 4. They were on boarding group 10 at this point, so we were directed to board when we were ready. I wanted to take a few minutes to see the ship model and go out on the observation deck, and Nick needed a restroom, so we divided and conquered, with him finding me just in time to take a selfie with the ship.
Selfie taken, it was time to join the boarding line. I took a few more pictures along the way, we wound our way through all the gate lice, and pretty soon we were having our boarding picture taken, and scanning our cards to board the ship!!!!
The longest line we stood in was actually the one on the gangway to physically board the ship. But even that passed quickly, and within a few minutes, we were being announced. We found a Cast Member to find out what MDR was open for lunch, since the Voyage Navigator they gave us in the terminal didn’t have the daily Navigator in it and the app wasn’t working yet, and headed off to Animator’s Palate for lunch.
We were seated immediately. It was quiet, and the service was great. Nick got gumbo and a steak for lunch. I had pasta. We both had our first drink of the day. And for dessert, he had the cookies and cream cheesecake and I had a sundae. All was excellent, and it was a great, relaxed start to our cruise. And did I mention we were eating lunch on the ship less than 12 hours after our flight touched down? Yup…
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