No surprise, I was awake early today, so I got dressed and, after a few glimpses at sunrise, took myself on an early morning walking tour of the ship. It’s always amazing to me just how few people are out and about before 8 am on the ships.
When I got back to the room, I rallied Nick who got ready for the day and we headed for Marceline Market where we had breakfast with a view of the island as the ship got tied up.
We then headed back to the room for sunscreen and to prep the beach bag. Then we worked our way off the ship for our first visit to Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point!!
Ok, so the walk really wasn’t bad. We thought it was pretty comparable to where we had docked in Cozumel last year. And it was broken up by stopping for pictures, obviously.
We continued walking until we got to the tram loading area. We were on a tram within a couple of minutes, and pretty soon we were really starting our day on the island. We did some picture taking with the photo opps and then continued on to the sea cave at the far end of the beach. What a beautiful island.
Pictures taken in the sea cave, we worked our way to the bar for our reward for all that walking in the Bahamian sun. We stopped at the Reef and Wreck Bar, where the bartenders were shocked to have customers. They also didn’t really want to make the drinks specific to this island and tried to offer us Konk Koolers. They were SUPER friendly and outgoing and explained that the Wish only stops here once or twice a month, but stops at Castaway twice a week, so they’re not as familiar with the drink menu here. But I ended up with the Eleuthera Euphoria and Nick got something to drink, and we both enjoyed.
We then continued exploring the island as we worked our way to Serenity Bay at the far end. Once there, we headed for the water to cool off. The water temperature was wonderful. I stayed in the water quite a bit longer than Nick, but we both enjoyed.
Eventually I got out of the water and checked the time. I decided we could JUST make it to Junkanoo Rush, so we booked it over to the Goombay Cultural Center, where we were able to catch this parade of sorts. Even though we definitely missed part of it, I enjoyed it and was glad that we caught it now, knowing we probably were not going to last two more hours in the Bahamian sun.
We then headed back to the Serenity Bay side of life and grabbed lunch from the buffet. The food was fine. The flies were not. The cast members were wonderful trying to help us out, but it definitely put a damper on lunch. The flies really seemed attracted to something I was eating, rather than being the general problem they reportedly were when the island first opened, so once I raced through lunch and ditched my plate, the flies dissipated and things improved significantly. We then were able to enjoy some ice cream for dessert.
After dessert, I left Nick reading in the shade at the lunch pavilion while I took a few more pictures.
Then we worked our way back to the ship.
So, my thoughts on Lookout? Well, I wanted to love it. I definitely enjoyed it, but I like Castaway better. For our cruise at least, which seemed backwards from everything I had read, Castaway had the better food. The CMs are more familiar with it, and, for our cruise, it showed. I like the true separation between Serenity Bay and the family beach at Castaway. The lack of flies is nice too. I did love the landscape of Lookout and the efforts that have been made to cross the Disney island paradise concept with Bahamian culture. But I think they still have work to do.
Back on the ship, we found a bonus towel animal!
We showered, changed into pirate night gear, and headed up to the pool deck for some food. Lunch on the island just hadn’t been enough to get us through until dinner time. I wanted to get a burrito bowl from Donald’s Cantina, but the line was massive, so I joined Nick in getting bbq. He had brisket and mac and cheese. I had pulled pork and mac and cheese. We both were pleasantly surprised by this. While I don’t see the pool deck bbq winning any true bbq awards, it was surprisingly good. And obviously, we got some soft serve after our bbq. I got mango/blueberry swirl which was a real surprise hit.
Food enjoyed, we headed down to deck 4 to theoretically watch sail-away. But there was some delay, so really we just watched them chain up the 5000 (ok, maybe it’s 500) wagons and load towels, before we headed inside for some picture taking.
Pictures taken, we headed back to the room for a bit, before we went up to the pool deck for the first of the pirate parties. Honestly, I enjoyed the sunset more than the party. I also definitely prefer the format on the Magic and Wonder better, where it’s just one party for the night, rather than two separate parties that both feel a little pointless. But, it was a beautiful night.
Party over, we headed to dinner. We were back in 1923 again, and Chris and Courtney skipped dinner. So we ended up chatting with the folks next to us, and Donovan tricked us by disguising a riddle as a math problem. I had the samosa, the chicken, and the caramel macadamia cheesecake. The food was all good, and Donovan eventually rescued us from his riddle. Add one line to make it a legitimate equation. And yes, he wrote on the table cloth. I think when you’re a server you can do stuff like that.
It was then back up on deck for the fireworks, which were excellent, after another deck party that wasn’t quite necessary. It always is mind blowing to me that we are watching fireworks on a ship on the ocean.
Fireworks done, we headed back to the room, where we found the traditional pirate night towel (bedrunner?) creation. I crawled into bed and checked out our pictures on the TV (I do like this new feature!), while Nick headed off to an 11 pm World of Old Fashioned. My wallet doesn’t love that I treated him to that for his birthday last year. But he definitely enjoyed it then, and he enjoyed it again this year. Of course, I don’t have him well trained yet, so he didn’t really give me details, or any pictures, but I think there were like 5 people at the whole seminar, and they had 5 or 6 varieties of old fashioneds. So he enjoyed himself, despite it being a late night.
We both crashed, knowing it was a sea day tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment