Day 10 - Studios and Blizzard Beach or Day 1 at WDW

We woke up and had breakfast in the room. I love having a full kitchen to make real food. Today it was orange rolls, bagels, juice, etc. But just to have it in our own space was great.
Once we were dressed and coated with sunscreen we headed out the door to rope drop at Disney's Hollywood Studios. We had a fairly short list of must do's at the Studios today, but high on the list was Toy Story Midway Mania. And Fastpass first thing is the only way to do this ride. So we made it to rope drop and here is where I dropped the ball. I got in the WRONG bag check line. Hubby was in the line next to me and all was going fine, then my line came to a screeching halt. His was cruisin along too fast for me to jump lines without being really rude. Well, what to do, stick it out. We made it to get Fastpasses, so all was not lost. But I learned my lesson... follow hubby when choosing a line.
Since we had about 90 mins to kill before our time to ride Toy Story we walked through the One Man's Dream attraction. Talking about the history of the parks and some of the future things.
Then we moved on to Muppet Vision 3D - a family favorite. When we left the theater we spotted Phineas and Ferb posing for pictures, so our Lady got in line to meet the brothers.
After her photo op, we did some leisurely shopping.
Then much to my suprise both kids said they wanted to go over to the Animation building and to the Animation Academy. Cool!
We all participated and learned (or at least tried) to draw Goofy. The animator promised, that no matter what it would look goofy... he was right ;)
We had a lot of fun with this.
Now its time to ride TOY STORY!!!! Yay! Its really what everyone had been waiting for. And we were off. It's one of my favorite rides. We have so much fun with it, it's a shame one time through is all we got.
This was really all that we had on our list for Hollywood Studios so we headed out... it was a short visit but full of fun. And we grabbed some Mickey pretzels for the way out.

Back in the room we packed up a few things for our afternoon plans.... Blizzard Beach. The kids have never been and were soooo excited. Waterslides - Yay!!!
But first... lunch.
We have always enjoyed eating at Coronado Springs, Pepper Market. In recent years they have tried to restructure it a bit, but upon arriving for lunch we found it was all back to normal... or at least what is normal for us. So we got our stamp cards and headed for the food.
Everyone got something that they liked and we had a lovely lunch. This place is big and open, but even when it's busy, you never feel like it's too crowded.

We moved on to Blizzard Beach. Our annual passes include waterparks... what fun! We took advantage of the changing areas and lockers and then were off to the slides. Actually we started with the lazy river.... they have a cleaver name for it... but I already forgot :) We thought this would be a nice way to go around without walking. Well it was, but you can't really see anything from the river. We had a nice float all the same. And made it almost all the way around before getting out to hit the chair lift.
Our little lady was sure she didn't want to go on the chair lift, and once she survived it and was at the top, she was sure she didn't want to do the family raft slide (Teamboat Springs) with us... but once it was over - you could hear her chanting "Again, Again, Again" all over the park.
This dumped us out really close to the kids area - Ski Patrol area. So we checked out the smaller slides here and scoped out what was next.
Ice Cream! Or something cold and frozen for sure. Some had Mickey bars, some had frozen lemonade, and all were cooled off and slightly sticky when it was over.
We cleaned up and returned to Teamboat Springs for another ride on the family raft slide... it's a great slide. Then we hit the lazy river again for a short ride, before going back to the ski patrol area. But when we arrived the sky had started to darken and we were greeted with a thunder clap.
Thunder and lightning are very common this time of year in Orlando, and they mean water parks close down quickly. Within minutes all the slides were closed and everyone was headed for cover... the rain came fast and hard. I had forgotten how crazy Florida rain is.
It was just before 5 when we reached the sheltered area. Which also happened to be the main food area. So we ate dinner.... our umbrella'd table weathered the rain well. We ate at 5:10 and hung out at the table til about 6. By this point the rain had mellow'd significantly and was light enough to walk in. The lightning was gone, or far enough away, that we didn't notice it. So we were hanging out waiting for them to re-open... Us and several hundred other families.
Apparently their rule is 30 mins after the last spotted lightning they can re-open. So we wandered.
And about 7, there were some announcements about the park still being closed, etc. and some codes - like "all cast, code 5" or something. We noticed a number of the life gaurds heading back to the slide areas... hmmmmm. Well lo and behold - 5 minutes later they reopened. And we had the place practically to ourselves.
This was hubby chance to ride the grown up slides, so off he went to Slush Gusher. While the kids and I did more Ski Patrol slides.
He came back by and the little lady decided to join him on some other slides, the toboggan racers and runoff rapids
The Boy and I stayed at ski patrol for various slides - He was a real ace by the time we left.
The park closed at 8, so this flurry of activity didn't last long. We dried off and headed out, with a quick stop in the store for me to pick up a new beach towel... it has the Nemo seagulls on it and says... wanna guess? "Mine, Mine, Mine" I love it. 
Back in the room we showered and fell into bed. What a great day.
Tomorrow we have a tour and princesses.

I apologize for not taking any pictures today... crazy I know. I was enjoying the day too much to get my camera out :)

Day 9 - Off Ship

Breakfast this morning was early. Let me be more specific... breakfast was CRAZY early. Since we had the first dinner seating for this cruise, we then had first breakfast seating on disembarkation day. So we needed to be dressed and all packed up at breakfast with our stuff at 6:45 am. They don't want you to return to your room at this point. They feed you a lovely meal and you walk off the ship... more or less :)
We had a short wait to walk off, sometimes it can take a few minutes for the line. But we had found a porter to help with our bags and were walking through customs in record time.
Having the porter help with this was really handy. He guided us out of the terminal to where we would meet our car for transportation to Disney World.
When scheduling a car you need to give them a time for pick up. And for us this was a complete guess. We haven't had first seating on a cruise before and we had no idea how long it would take on a ship the size of the Fantasy.
So we were a bit off on our time estimate. Our car arrived about 30 mins after we got off ship. And the driver loaded up all our stuff. It wasn't long before we found ourselves enjoying a comfy ride in a long black limo! Wowsa, what a treat.
The drive went quickly. And we were at the on-site rental car office at Disney World before we knew it. We put all our gear in the rental car and headed to Disney's Old Key West to check in.
We are DVC members and this is our home resort. Although we haven't stayed here in about 4 years.
So when the guard said "Welcome Home" at the guard station it really felt like we were returning home again.
We had no expectation of being able to get into a room this early. Rooms are ready by 4 pm and this was barely 10 am, but we wanted to check in all the same. And guess what... a room was available. It wasn't the room assigned to us, but it was the same layout we reserved so we took it. Our one bedroom was the perfect size for us. With a king bed, pull out queen and pull out twin. So everyone gets a bed. Plus a full size washer and dryer and a great soaking tub... ahhhh.
We spent the next half hour or so settling into the room, unpacking and exploring.
Then we headed back down to the main area of the resort to catch a boat to Downtown Disney for lunch. A family's gotta eat right? Actually having been so well fed for the previous week, it was kind of funny to be on our own for means all of the sudden. But we managed ;)
Wolfgang Puck Express and Ghiradelli for ice cream after worked out great.
We also took a minute and activated our park passes while we were near guest relations... more on this later.
We wandered back to the boat dock and began working our way back to OKW.
This evening for dinner we had reservations at 1900 Park Fare, in the Grand Floridian resort for dinner with Cinderella and "friends" - to celebrate our little lady's birthday... Oh, did I forget to mention? Today was her birthday! And she was definitely in birthday mode all day ;)
But dinner was the highlight for her.
We had a bit of quiet time before we had to get ready and go.
Then we were off again to eat.... hmmm, I hope this isn't a theme this week.
Dinner came with pictures of the group and then of course getting to meet all the characters and take pics.
Our peace loving son doesn't care for characters at all, so this was really stretching him. He managed well and even timed his trips to the buffet for when they came to our table. He really was surprised when the stepsisters would scream... just because they can.

meeting the Prince 

Ok, is this one Anastasia or Drisella?

classic Cinderella Stepmother... she was soo funny. "Oh, great, a birthday girl" 

this one was the screamer - and she can scream! 

We ate and took pictures, the birthday girl had a blast and we were heading out before anyone else started to scream ;) just kidding. It was a nice character meal experience.
We went back to the room and then things got a bit nutty for hubby.

Before the trip, we had been trying out some of the new "MyDisneyExperience" features on the Disney World website.  It is a new web application and smart phone app.  A few months ago, Hubby had associated our annual pass vouchers with our profiles in the system.  Well, after we activated our passes today, hubby looked online to see if the new passes has been automatically associated with our online profiles.  They had, with one problem.  His pass was associated with our son, and our son's pass was associated with him.  We weren't sure if this was going to be a problem or not, but hubby felt that it would be best if we worked everything out before we tried to enter the parks the next morning, so he went back to Downtown Disney to Guest Relations to ask about it. After explaining the issue, the girl working at guest relations first congratulated hubby on finding a way to break the system in a way that they had been unable to, and then ended up re-issuing hubby's and the boy's passes.  Hooray, everything was fixed... at least until he came back to the room and found that he couldn't get into the room.  Somehow during the process of getting the passes re-issued, his key was deactivated.  He then went to the OKW front desk to get his key re-issued, but their system wasn't able to confirm that the new passes were set up correctly.  So, he headed back to Downtown Disney to double-check that the passes wouldn't give us any trouble in the morning.  The new system has some cool features and shows promise, but still has a lot of bugs to work out.

While he was gone, the kids and I took the resort bus to the OKW general store and did a bit of looking around. We picked up a few things and then grabbed the bus back to the room and got ready for bed.
Tomorrow we hit the parks!

Day 8 - Castaway Cay... by way of Nassau

We all expected to wake up at Castaway Cay -- Disney’s private island. But when I woke up about 2 hours before we supposed to get to the island, it felt like the ship wasn't moving. After about 20 minutes, curiosity got the best of me and I had to look out the window.... and we weren't anyway near Castaway Cay. So I turned on the stateroom TV that has a map and bridge report, to see the message that due to a medical emergency we had changed course, more information would be available in a bit. Soon Hubby woke up and we began trying to figure out where we really were. We were pulling into dock in Nassau. They made one announcement that I didn't hear about what was going on. But no more communication came until the person who needed to depart had left the ship. Then the cruise director came on the speaker and talked about the plans for the rest of day. We were still going to go to castaway cay - but would arrive late.

As the morning played out, the crew did a great job of keeping everyone entertained. And we arrived at the island about 1:15. They pushed back our departure time to 5:30, which would give us a nice amount of time on the island.

We got to see the Disney Dream pull into Nassau

Our sister ship (the Dream) and a Carival ship in port at Nassau

our location and course

So a bit of history... I have been to Castaway Cay four times previously. And have never had a great time. Most people LOVE this place. It's the whole reason they cruise and want to go more than once. I have had an OK time at best. Each time I try and go into it with a good outlook, today is the day I will see the light and fall in love with this place. (insert buzzer sound here) Not this time.

I soo want to love this place... even like it would be good. But today didn't help :(

We got off the ship without issue and headed toward the tram station. Beach here we come. We were first in a line to get on the next tram and our transportation loving boy was having a hard time waiting. Now it wasn't an organized line, but if you are a follower of common courtesy then you would clearly see who would get on the tram first... Ha.. silly lady. You push and push until you are on, don't look back just GET ON THAT TRAM.

We were shocked! Less than 30 seconds after the tram stopped to load we had all been pushed and moved out of the way, no seats were left and we stood there looking at each other with our mouths open.

Hubby was upset. Actually we all were, but I knew he needed to walk and not be in this line any longer. So we started to walk to the beach. And our boy lost it. He was sooo sad about the tram. Which was apparently his favorite thing on this island. We eventually got to the beach. The walk isn't too long, but I made several stops to help my kiddo calm down.

Beach time was great. White clean sand with lots of shells to find. And we really enjoyed ourselves.

Next up was a cabana massage for hubby, scuttles cove kids club for the little lady and back to the ship for the boy and I.

Boy at Mount Rustmore

on tram back to ship

ship from the tram

Amazing mosaic tile mural in Cabanas - Nemo themed 

a close of up of Nemo in mural

A little soft serve... watch out for pelicans 

Mine, Mine, Mine!
Great themeing for this place!

Our boy and I headed back to the ship for some quiet time. With a stop up top for some soft serve on the way. We were really settling into the room when my wave phone beeped.... I have mentioned wave phones?

Wave phones: like a cell phone, but provided by the ship. They work on board and at Castaway Cay. Allows you to call room to room and text - each room comes with two. And the kids clubs page or call on the wave phones.

So, the phone beeps... hmm. Who could that be? It was a text from Scuttles Cove on the island saying "just a reminder, we close in 10 minutes. Please pick up your child". Ahhhh! It takes at least that long to get there if everything goes your way: i.e. elevator is waiting, you make the tram and your relaxing boy wants to jump up and run off the ship.... oh, bother.
Well, with much coaxing.. and a little bribing, we were off. We made it off the ship in record time and the tram saw us coming and waited for us - what luck. Well, not really. this tram didn't stop at the Scuttles cove stop! It went right past it to the next stop and we had to walk back, which was not a fun thing for me or the kiddo I was dragging along with me. But we made it and picked her up before they closed up shop. We later found out that if you don't pick your kiddo up they will just take them back on board. Which makes perfect sense, but it all seemed sooo urgent at the time.
We met up with Hubby, who was in a massage relaxation bubble until he heard about all this silliness and had to deal with a grummpy boy, stressed wife and distracted girl - sorry hubby :)
He had planned to pick her up and bring her back onboard - anyway. Next time ask what time they close... because the times weren't posted and even though they postponed all aboard time, they didn't postpone the previously listed closing time for scuttles cove. Oh, she had a great time by the way.

Once we all got back on board it was time to get ready for dinner and eat. Dinner was back in Royal Court. Being our last dinner on board it's also the night you typically hand out tips :)
We had wonderful service on board. Our main server Nestor was awesome and Richards his assistant was so friendly. Overall we had great dinner experiences. 

After we ate and took a leisurely walk back to the room, we decided to get swim suits back on and hit the AquaDuck and pool one last time. Final AquaDuck ride count for the whole cruise: Boy: 18, Little Lady: 4, Hubby: 21, Me: 1

view of funnelVision screen with AquaDuck tubes over pools

Dad and Boy waving from AquaDuck

Loving the empty pools

Dad and Little lady waving from AquaDuck

The last night of a cruise you put your bags out before you go to bed. The crew then organizes and takes them all off the ship and into the terminal at the port in the morning.
So, we had some packing to do.
Then off to bed as early as possible. Our next morning would be the earliest morning yet.

Day 7 - Our last day at sea

We slept in a bit today. With no big plans til 10:30 it was nice to have a leisurely morning.

Hubby and I had brunch at Palo today. The kids went to the clubs and we dressed in our brunchy best went up to this adult-only restaurant. It was a lovely meal. They tell you to take your time and relax and then pace your service so you do. We enjoyed the view and the rare time just the two of us. The food was wonderful, with one interruption from the kids, that required me to run down for a few minutes. We had a great meal. And left full.

Hubby picked up the kids and we all met back in the room, we wanted to get them some lunch and change clothes ourselves. After we watched the kids eat, Hubby and the little lady headed down to see a magic workshop. The performers from the night before did a small family workshop. They all learned how to do a rope trick. The busy boy and I planned a bit more of the day and enjoyed the quiet time and talked about what was next.

Actually the whole day went pretty fast. When they returned and showed off the trick they learned, it was almost time for the kids to go to their last session of “Get the Hook” in the kids club. They were really enjoying this event and today was the last session... they were going to find the Hook! Hubby went up to the Rainforest room and I took the kids to the club and then met him up there.

This session of Get the Hook was only a half hour, so with transit time its not much time for falling asleep in a lounge chair in the Rainforest room. Hubby picked the kids up and I spent a few extra minutes relaxing.

Before dinner we worked on the on board treasure hunt style game they have “MidShip Detective Agency”, which took us all over the ship and to our restaurant of the evening, Enchanted Garden.

enjoying some bread at dinner

I think we went through two baskets of bread at each dinner

Pepe's room - part of the midship detective game. 

After dinner we picked up with our detective plans and continued until the evening show “Believe”. Another great show from the ship's cast. It was sweet and fun and we enjoyed it.

Next up... bed. Please please please can we go to sleep before 10! Almost, but not quite... maybe tomorrow.

Day 6 - St Thomas (who says you need to sleep on a vacation?)

Today we were up earlier than yesterday - whose idea was this?

We all got up, dressed and ate without incident. We even found our way down to the D Lounge where our Island Tour to Coral World was supposed to meet. Somewhere between the Lounge and getting on the tour bus, the little lady lost it... not to say she was kicking and screaming, she was a bit more composed than that. But she DID NOT want to go on a tour or another island and more than that she really didn't want to be off the ship. The crying stopped before we got on the bus, but the bad attitude remained for the first third of the tour... slowing softening into acceptance and ending with “this is a great day!”. She is clearly suffering from late nights and early mornings. We must remedy this soon, if for no other reason than my sanity :)

great views

view back down to the ship

checking out the view

pic with a local

hanging out in our tour vehicle

showing me just how grumpy she is :)

sharks at Coral World

checking out the touch pools

not a bad place to be 

lovely day

big school of small fish

sea turtle

Iguana - these things are all over, think of them like squirrels at home :)

checking out the map

smoothie time

feeding the birds

The tour was good. Our driver was friendly and in a reasonable amount of time we found ourselves at Coral World. Which looks much bigger on their map than it is. We had 1 1/2 hours to explore and when I saw the map, I thought “we better be quick, or we won’t see it all”. Not the case. With 30 minutes to spare we had seen it all. It was a nice small aquarium-like sea park. Low crowds made for easy viewing of the exhibits. They were doing some construction with was a bit distracting, but only in the one building. The kids had fun and we were heading back to the ship for lunch.

We lunched in Cabanas again today. I found an area in Cabanas that I prefer to sit in, so that is where we landed. And we ate with great views of St Thomas and the water.

After lunch we played a round of Goofy Golf on deck 13, which is a 9 hole mini golf course.

not a bad view from our Goofy Golf game on deck

Then it was back to the room to rest for a bit. I napped, I think. I was soo groggy that I know I wasn't really awake, but I didn't feel like I slept either. The kids watched some Disney cartoons and hubby read. When it was time to get up, I decided coffee would help the situation. So down to deck 4 for an iced coffee - which really did the trick.

The lady whose attitude has been awesome since mid morning, had a Bippity boppity Boutique appointment. This was her birthday present from us - it includes a Disney costume, hair etc. They will turn you into a Disney princess. When we booked it she actually choose the Cruise Line Minnie costume, so that is what we did. It was a challenge for her as she isn't used to big fancy up-dos with her hair... and by big fancy, I mean pulling, gel, hair spray, bobby pins, etc. We had a few minutes I thought she was going to throw in the towel, but she muscled through. Her “Fairy Godmother in Training” was awesome. Really tired to go easy on her and was so patient. And in the end with some minor modifications she got the crazy rainbow hair up-do she had selected.

Her first look at her outfit and fun hair

Telling Ariel about her outfit

Dinner tonight was back at Animator's Palate and although the menus are a bit fancier than we would like, we always find good food to eat. Tonight the entertainment in the restaurant was awesome.