You know the drill…I was awake just in time for sunrise, which, I realized about as soon as I walked out onto our balcony, was viewable on the other side of the ship today. As it turns out, Progreso is pretty much directly south of the end of the Mississippi, so the ship was no traveling pretty much straight north, and we were now on the west facing side of the ship. But the sky was pretty!
I watched the bridge report and the Good Morning Disney Magic show and then Nick thankfully woke up, so we got ready and headed for the buffet. It was churro waffle day!!
I don’t know if this is a fleetwide thing or a Disney Magic thing, but the last sea day brings with it churro Mickey waffles. And I wasn’t missing that, especially since Sompong even reminded us of it the night before! Thankfully people seemed to have slept in SLIGHTLY more than the previous sea day so the buffet wasn’t quite as hectic. We found the churro waffles (and plenty of other goodness) and grabbed a table that had a decent view of the water. The churro waffles were delicious! Don’t skip the buffet on the final sea day! Get the churro waffles!
Then we went back to the room for a bit before our first activity of the day. Nick probably took a nap, and I, of course, sat on the balcony marveling at that blue water.
First sea day activity of the day was for me. Just before 9 I headed up to Palo for the Art of the Theme tour. This is something that I’d wanted to do on at least one of our previous cruises, but hadn’t. So this time I made it a point to. A decent sized group gathered and Hanah arrived promptly at 9:00 to start the tour. The tour was filled with history and explanation about various decor on the ship. We worked our way from deck 10 outside of Palo down to deck 3 in the After Areas section. We talked about carpet choices, wall art choices, the shape of the glass in the After Hours logo, and the color choices for the exterior of the ship itself. It was really interesting, and I’m so glad that I did it.
When I returned to the room, Nick was conducting his one man orchestra in snore major, so I woke him up to get ready for activity number 2 of the day. After all, it’s the final day of the cruise! Have to squeeze in all the stuff!
Once Nick was ready we headed for the D Lounge for Anyone Can Cook. Today’s (and the only one offered on this sailing) was apple strudel. We’d attended this on the Fantasy too, but it was fun then and…free food! So we went again. And we enjoyed it again.
After Anyone Can Cook, we went back to the room for a bit, where I think even I managed to nap for 10 minutes on the balcony and Nick napped for longer than that. Then it was off to lunch at Cabanas. We saw Sompong outside the entrance and he greeted us by name (something I found very impressive, given he only had us at his table for a couple of nights and we were one of many couples he was serving on that cruise alone) and told us excitedly that it was Indian food day. When we got inside we filled our plates and then found seats outside (in the shade). I neglected to take pictures, but all of the food was delicious, including some pulled pork and corn soup that they had. The sit down lunch in the main dining room is nice, especially once on a longer cruise, but honestly, Cabanas was producing great food!
After lunch we headed for the atrium, where we found that we had already missed watching Jack Jack’s Diaper Dash. Clearly we should have tried to see the baby races first and then gone to lunch. Rookie mistake! So we found a comfy couch on deck 4 of the atrium and parked it for a bit to wait for the next thing on my agenda: the character dance party.
Now many of you know that dancing is totally not my thing. But we’d discovered on the Fantasy that the character dance party is pretty amusing to watch. So watching this from one deck above was definitely on the agenda. And it didn’t disappoint. First off, by now we had hit some choppy water and we were rocking, mostly side to side. So everyone on board was walking like they were drunk, whether they were or not, and the characters were busting some impressive dance moves in those giant shoes. Also, less amusing, but still awesome, I work in a school, in a district that aligned fully with CDC guidelines through the pandemic. I lived through a school year of kids being socially distanced even at outdoor recess. Think structured recess activities and off limits playground equipment, because recess was a “mask break”. Watching the character dance party, I saw kids being kids…joining each other to dance in groups with the characters. In special ed I deal, daily, with the impact of kids having been isolated for, in some cases, years. So to see this was awesome.
Once the dance party had broken up, we headed back to the room where we found the worst luggage tags at all. We were orange Goofy for this bummer delivery. I finished packing so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it later in the afternoon, and then I headed out, having given Nick directions to enjoy the ice cream that I’d discovered he was carrying a spoon in his pocket from the buffet for, and to finish packing.
Where was I headed? Fathoms for towel folding. This was led by one of the members of the housekeeping team, and there was a small army of more members of the housekeeping team spread around the room to help us all. The woman leading the class(?) was full of energy and fun. In approximately half an hour she led us in making an elephant, a dog (I needed help for that), a monkey, a ghost, and a dinosaur. This was a lot of fun.
Then it was back to the room to make sure that Nick had actually finished packing (he had, thankfully) and rally him for one more activity of the day. We headed down to After Hours, where we waited a few minutes before being let into Keys.
Time for Mixology! I think this was our best one yet. Definitely higher end than previous ones, but also quite the history and bartending lessons. The drinks were entirely made by the bartenders, no audience participation. But it was really enjoyable. There was a Kir Royal, a spin on a mojito made with Kraken rum, mint, lime, agave and Sprite (SO refreshing), a sangria made with Malibu, peach schnapps, Cointro, pinot grigio and some orange and pineapple juice, a spin on a martini made with gin, POG juice and pomegranate liqueur, and a shot made with Bailey’s and Chambord. We liked all the drinks. I also liked that the bartender lined up all of the ingredients on the bar so that we could see exactly what he had used. Oh, and with the higher cost, we got our own bottles of expensive water, instead of glasses of water like in previous seminars.
After Mixology we headed back to the stores for one last shopping opportunity before they closed. I got a DCL Tervis. We headed back to the room to stash that (and have a slight breathing break) and then headed up on deck for some food to absorb the alcohol. Nick got a burger or a sausage and I got chicken tenders. We brought the food back to the room to eat and to marvel at how well the weather now aligned to the mood of the last night of the cruise. Having done a 7 night cruise, 4 nights now definitely seems too short. I wish my school vacation week more frequently aligned with the 5 night cruises, because it's really hard to time the flights these days for the Saturday departure 7 night cruises.
Pretty soon it was time for one more evening of picture taking.
Picture taking done, we headed back to the room for a bathroom break and to put the luggage out. We (I) hauled the luggage out into the hallway, and then we headed to the Walt Disney Theater for the last time for this cruise. It was time for Disney Dreams an Enchanted Classic.
We got to the theater a few minutes later than we had the first night, and it showed. We love the first row of the second level, but that was full all the way around, so we grabbed seats on an aisle a few rows up. The show was excellent. The audience behavior was not. How many (adult) drinks do you really need to get up to retrieve in an hour long show?! Take the screaming baby out! And for the love of everything, cruise director Matthew very nicely asked you to put the cell phone away and enjoy live theater as it’s intended to be enjoyed.
But really…the show WAS excellent! When it ended we headed down to Fathoms for Songs for Everafter! Turns out the person playing Mother Gothel and another role this week (and for awhile from the sounds of it) was Vivienne Carlyle, who had at some point been a performer on London’s West End. This show was her performing a whole lineup of various Disney songs. It was excellent…to the point where my husband, who is anti-clapping-along-with-music because "no one gets the beat right", was noticed to be clapping along during her final song. So, it was a pretty perfect way to wrap up the evening before dinner!
And then it was dinner time. We headed to Animator’s Palate, which was, I think, a great spot to finish our dinner rotation. I really do love Animator’s on the Classic ships. It’s truly special. Dinner was great again, even if I was still too full from those chicken tenders earlier to eat as much of it. Sompong was quite concerned that I might be seasick. Nope, that’s Jenna, who was making a valiant effort to not vomit at the table. Thankfully towards the end of dinner, we must have entered the Mississippi, because we went from rocking quite a bit to a totally smooth ride again. For dinner I had the potato soup, the pasta appetizer, the pasta entree, and the lemon ice box pie. I also had the drink of the day, which, ironically, after we’d had a tablewide discussion the night before about how the drinks of the day were always fruity rum drinks, was tequila based with cranberry and lime juice. The pasta entree was pretty dry, but everything else was excellent. The light show was great, and Mickey’s appearance was fun. But we were bummed to see that the servers no longer have the reversible vests. We enjoyed our time with our tablemates, got Jelena to take group pictures, and said goodbye to Dana and Jenna, who had an early flight and would be doing express walk-off the next morning. The rest of us would see each other at breakfast.
We were among the last tables to leave again. And then Nick quickly retraced his steps realizing that Jelena had forgotten to give him his key back from the drink ordering. I guess that’s how she balanced out finally remembering to bring him the Sprite he’d ordered as his second drink round for the first time all cruise. While he was retrieving his key, I did some picture taking.
Then we headed to the photo kiosks to make sure all of our pictures were there, before moving to the atrium for See Ya Real Soon. Along the way we found Jesse and Stephanie, so we all watched together from deck 5, where we were able to find a small amount of real estate along the rail. I think Josh and Irene actually found us too, so we had a Table 23 viewing (minus Dana and Jenna). This was fun to watch, but also bittersweet.
And then it was back to the room to attempt to crash after finding our final towel creation of the trip. We were definitely back on the muddy Mississippi and passed one of the Carnival ships shortly after returning to the room.
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