April 2018: A MAGICal April Vacation: Day 5, Part 3

Wednesday April 25, 2018, Part 3

Somehow, Nick’s parents beat us to the top deck. Seems Kim had managed to hoof it up those 6 flights of stairs on that new hip. Go Kim! We had been stuck at the back of Animator’s so we’d gotten a slow start. Sailaway was fun. Nick’s mom was WICKED excited. And we actually started sailing during the party. It was a great time!

After the party ended, we stayed back on deck for a bit, enjoying the scenery as we cruised down the channel. It was a gorgeous day, especially now that we had the breeze from moving! 

Eventually Nick and I decided we needed a quick snack, so we directed his parents to meet us in a bit, and we headed back to the room, where we dined on cashews and trail mix that we had brought from NH. Hopefully there will be less to tick off the x-ray dudes at Miami’s TSA checkpoint!

At 5:45, we went down and knocked on my in-laws’ door. Nothing. Eventually we got a message from them on the app (which, we had thankfully set them up with at sailaway) that they were still on deck. We told them to meet us at the theater. This made me a little nervous, since neither of them are good with directions.

Nick and I headed for the theater, stopping at the bar outside of it for a Guinness for Nick. We then headed inside and easily grabbed seats in the first row of the top half of the theater, on the edge. Edge for Kim and me so we wouldn’t have to try to see over the railings that line the back of the bottom section of seats, front row for legroom for the boys.

Apparently, I needn’t have worried about them being able to find us. Kim and John showed up just a few minutes later. I had forgotten one detail...much of John’s job involves time on ships. While he can’t program a GPS, as long as he knows the ship directions and deck, he can find his way around. I will say, I finally, mostly figured out starboard vs port on this trip, thanks to giving John directions!

Tonight’s show was Twice Charmed, a spin on the Cinderella story. Basically, the evil stepmother tries one more time to get in the way of Cinderella marrying the prince. It’s Disney, so I’m sure you can figure out how it ended. I hadn’t expected much from this show, because I never see it mentioned, but we all really enjoyed it. We also liked our cruise director Darren, who reminded me a lot of Peter, the cruise director we had had on the Wonder. He gave us the lowdown on docking in Key West the next morning, since we’d be docking at the Naval pier, and also shared that if all the stars aligned, there would be a late night “premEAR” of Avengers: Infinity War the next night. I nearly lost an eardrum to the cheers when that was announced!

When the show ended, I think we made a quick pass through the stores to get an initial idea of what was in there. Then we headed for the atrium. We enjoyed listening to the music, and I happened to notice there was a good backdrop set up, so I hauled Nick over for pictures. We did prebuy the photo package after all!

Picture taking done, and Nick’s parents absorbed in the music, Nick and I headed over to the After Hours section. We glanced around a bit, and pretty soon I was curled up in a huge porthole seat outside the entrance to Keys, the piano bar. I had a great view of the ocean, and could hear the music perfectly. New favorite spot!

Nick and I hung out here for quite awhile. At some point, John found us. Then he disappeared again. As it got close to dinner time, we mozied back out to the atrium where we found Kim, exactly where we had left her. She was gushing about the awesome character interactions she had observed, and the great music in the atrium. I think we’ve got her hooked!

The line winding through the atrium started moving, so we headed for Lumiere’s, figuring John would catch up with us. When we got to the table, we discovered the 4 of us were assigned a table for 4. Admittedly, Nick and I had mixed feelings about this, since we had had a great time with dinnermates on our last cruise, but we also figured this was a good setup for our resident engineer.

Speaking of him, he did appear fairly quickly. Almost immediately after that, we met our serving team: assistant server Miguel, server Nikola, and head server Aziz. We liked all of them as people immediately.

Dinner was hectic (as our first night dinner had been on the Wonder as well), but excellent. We tried quite the variety of foods at the table, and we all enjoyed everything. In fact, we were only to the second course when Kim (who uses seasoning VERY sparingly in her cooking), said she “didn’t know food could taste this good!”. That was a statement that is still being echoed, 2 weeks later. I don’t remember what everyone had. I do remember that I had the fried brie appetizer, the potato and leek soup, the crusted salmon, and, most importantly, the grand marnier souffle for dessert. 

As dinner wore on, Nick and I realized we had a real standout in our main server. Nikola was personable, professional, incredibly hard working, and had a great sense of humor. He was fantastic! We saw him cajoling the kiddo at the table next to us to eat instead of play with his Gameboy (“Mickey won’t come visit tomorrow if you don’t eat those vegetables”), and yet he was also able to engage John in a technical/science conversation. We couldn’t have asked for a better main server.

Aziz was equally personable, and had much more of a presence than our head server on the Wonder had. We were impressed there too. He wasn’t afraid to do some heavy lifting in the dining room either.

Then there was Miguel. We truly liked him as a person. Genuinely nice. He learned our names immediately. But he couldn’t keep a water glass filled to save his life, and he didn’t know what the drink of the day was. Hmm. We chalked it up to the quantity of bottles of wine he was serving to tables around us, and hoped the next day would be better in the water glass department.

Dinner wrapped up well after 10. I think we said good night to Kim and John at the restaurant entrance. Nick and I took a quick walk to Shutters to check out our first day pictures and then headed back to the room, where we found this critter waiting for us. And yes, there were jokes about crabs in the bed.

We then showered and crashed, knowing we would be docking very early the next morning, and I knew that meant I’d be waking up early.

April 2018: A MAGICal April Vacation: Day 5, Part 2

Wednesday 4/25/18: Part 2

Our first stop approached quickly...the boarding picture. John’s response was basically “they’re trying to get me to buy pictures already?!” No worries, John, I bought the photo package!! Yes, I’m pretty sure I saw an eye roll.

Once the pictures had been taken, we continued around the corner where we scanned our key cards to board the ship. We then zig-zagged along the gangway, and then hopped in line to be welcomed on board the ship.

Nick had his lanyard on with his key facing out, so one of the cast members read it from a distance (the optician was quite impressed with his eyesight. Actually...all of us were), and within minutes the cast was clapping for us, and we were making our way toward lunch.

We aren’t big on chaos, and there are some food allergies in the group, so we had looked at menus ahead of time, and decided to go for the sit down lunch in Lumiere’s today, rather than the buffet in Cabanas.

It was a great choice, and I have a feeling Nick and I will be dining in the sit down place on our next Disney Cruise (spoiler alert...in less than a year!!!). We thoroughly enjoyed the food, the service, and the peace. It was nice, too, to have the opportunity to see the details in the restaurant with fewer guests around. Everyone (even those of us that had been on a Disney cruise before) were blown away by the details, especially in the lights. The drinks were good too. Also, Kim received a special dessert, because the chef couldn’t guarantee that the dessert she had ordered hadn’t touched a walnut. She was pretty excited because they dessert they brought out to her was remarkably like the strawberry jello pie she likes for her birthday. 

Lunch did take a fair amount of time, so by the time we finished, it was just about time for staterooms to be opened up. We made our way to the aft staircase, Nick’s mom oohing and ahhing along the way, and worked our way to deck 7. Within about 2 minutes of arriving at deck 7, one of the dudes in white unhooked the rope, and we made our way to our rooms: 7620 for Nick and me, 7598 for Kim and John.

Nick and I were impressed with our room immediately. We had booked a Navigator’s Verandah, and our wonderful travel agent had scored us one of the reclassfied ones, that’s basically a standard verandah, with a slight curve to one wall. We had figured this out long before our trip, but to see it in person was nice. 

We watched the port happenings for a bit and then I got antsy, so I went to “check on” Kim and John. This turned into me giving Kim a tour of the ship for long enough that Nick was able to watch all of Wreck-it Ralph while we were gone, courtesy of the new on-demand movie channels on the Magic. No joke, the final credits started as I walked back in the room. It was a good tour!

There actually wasn’t that much longer until muster (where did this afternoon go?!), so we watched the last of the luggage being moved around, and then headed for our muster station, station S in Animator’s Palate. Nick’s parents were out on the deck for their muster.

Muster was uneventful, and pretty soon we were sucking wind, working our way to the 10th deck for sailaway. Somehow I had convinced Nick that he should go too. I think it was mostly that he wanted to see his mom’s excitement. He had avoided sailaway on the Wonder, so the party was going to be a first for him too.

April 2018: A MAGICal April Vacation: Day 5, Part 1

Day 5: Wednesday 4/25/18

IT’S CRUISE DAY!! And despite having no trouble falling asleep, one of us had plenty of trouble staying asleep. I was awake at 2, 3, 4, and then for good about 5:30. You see, I made the mistake of getting out of bed to see if the ship had docked yet. It hadn’t, but it could be seen sailing in. So...I watched. 

And then I was wide awake. Nick had turned the air conditioner down to an inhuman temperature, I guess trying to replicate our NH sprinter we’ve been having, so I crawled back into bed and facebooked from the comfort of the covers, until sunrise, when I did more picture taking. 

Eventually Nick woke up to the crazy bright sunshine streaming in our room (seriously, I needed sunglasses in the room!) and we got ready for breakfast.

One of my credit cards gives me automatic gold status with Hilton Honors. This means I get free breakfast at hotels that typically charge for it (Doubletree, Hilton Garden Inn, etc). It’s a great perk and has saved me a bundle of money ($60 one morning in San Francisco alone!). Because this hotel has so many restaurants attached to it, I had been given a card that acted as a voucher for either x amount of money at certain places or a continental breakfast for 2 at other places. I had packed breakfast bars in the snack bag, and was pretty content with that, but Nick’s a big breakfast eater so we set out for the deli downstairs, where we picked up some juices, pancakes for Nick, and hashbrown patties for both of us, just in case we can’t get enough of those on the ship. And it was less than $4 out of pocket. Yay! Considering I had paid for our room completely on points, this was a very inexpensive precruise stay.

We took the food back up to the room and ate, enjoying the view, and the sound of the water lapping at the shore. Once we’d finished eating, we told Nick’s parents to meet me in the lobby so they could come stare at the ship with us.

I think Kim was a little jealous of our view of the ship. We all continued to joke about the insane upgrade they received, but we were glad that we had this room to stare at the ship this morning. We all enjoyed hanging around the balcony for about an hour, before they headed back to their room to finish packing. We agreed to meet in the lobby right at 11, and packing in earnest commenced.

The packing got done, and Nick and I actually managed to check out about ten minutes early. We grabbed a seat in the comfy seats in the lobby and waited for Kim and John to emerge from their elevator.

The emerged about a minute after 11, John quickly checked out, and we were on our way out to the entrance, where the car appeared a couple minutes later. The boys played Tetris again, and we were on our way to the cruise port!!

The drive was completely uneventful, and pretty soon we were getting our first ship sighting from a different vantage point as we crossed the bridge.

We found the Disney terminal easily enough (terminal F, and we were the only ship in port that day), and John pulled up to the curb. We unloaded the car, passed the luggage off to the porter, and Nick and John hopped back in the car to park it. Kim and I walked toward the entrance, and found a good spot to wait for the guys and people watch. I have to say, some of the shirts I saw put the one I had gotten for today to shame. 

Nick and John appeared after 5 minutes or so (which felt way longer, since we were waiting to go into the terminal) and we headed for the doors.

Nick and I were surprised immediately. This is the same terminal we had sailed out of in 2016, but the entrance seemed to be in a different spot. When we got inside, it was clear that, yes, the doors were in a different spot. They had totally redone the terminal, and it was a very positive change. Much bigger security area, and when we got to the check in area, we found a brand new check in area separated from the waiting to board area. Huge improvements.

Security was the slowest part of the process. Once we were through security, the process was easy. We didn’t even have to wait to check in, and pretty soon we were reunited with Kim and John, who had been directed to a much faster security line than we had been. We compared key cards to make sure we’d been assigned the same dining assignments (table 48, rotation LAAR), and also boarding groups. John and Kim had been assigned group 8. We’d been assigned group 6. So we decided to all board with group 8.

Boarding of concierge had already started when we got into the holding tank area, so we really didn’t have to wait very long. No more than 20 minutes, and it was probably less time than that. We passed the time pouring through the first Navigator of the trip, explaining why Nick and I had received lanyards and Kim and John hadn’t, and taking pity on the guy whose job it was to walk up and down the rows with the flip chart to show which groups could board now.

After they called group 7, we stood up and moved closer, but not so close so as to be gate lice. When they called group 8, I believe Kim let out a “woohoo”. We showed our boarding cards, wove through the queue rope, and hopped on the escalator. Time to board the Disney Magic!!