(great! forgot a post…..ignore that this is out of order!)
Started off the morning with a quick trip to Cocoa Beach; the first time the boys have dipped their toes in the Atlantic!
After about 30 minutes at the beach we headed over to Port Canaveral to begin the boarding process. Drop the family, go and park the car, reunite with the family, and go forth onto the Dream. The plan was to try and get on board as soon as possible; boarding starts at 11 am and we had finished the process by 10:30. So, we wait. One very huge carry-on; two 12-packs of water and Diet Cherry Pepsi to last through the trip….
A panorama from Deck 10, .looking south on Port Canaveral and Cocoa Beach. We had lunch here on the Lido Deck (Mom and Dad has selections from the Tandoori Grill: Tandoori Chicken and some Tikka Masala…boys had cheeseburgers and Kevin tried out the pasta bar)
The rooms finally opened up around 1:30 pm….the boys went down first and checked out the two cabins and then reported back. The top picture above is the cove balcony room that Suzanne, Matthew, and Kevin are sharing. The third bed is along the wall to the left of the picture. The 2nd shot is the bathroom; it is no bigger than you see there, the mirror and vanity are to the immediate right. The third shot is a view from the balcony (that’s the Disney Magic in the background). These balcony rooms are cheaper, because they are lower (you’ll see pictures later on that show the lifeboats and tenders that you can see from the balconies) but they are very private. Suzanne had decided from her research that this was the way to go…..
The interior cabin that Christopher and I are sharing. He was very geeked about having this room and happily climbed up to the top bunk. The Bon Voyage stuff you see in the rooms was an extra Suzanne paid for…..she was pretty disappointed when the boys came back up to the Lido Deck after going into the rooms and didn’t say anything about them….I don’t think they even realized that the party favors were extra.
Heading down the channel to the ocean; this is the restaurant we ate dinner at on Friday night. You could see dolphins in the water as we pulled out and the boys enjoyed watching the pelicans dive in after fish. A lot of boats and people on the shores waving….and one redneck who had to drop his trousers and moon us.
One nice thing about the Cove Balcony room is that we got a really good look at the Pilot’s vessel as it pulled up to retrieve him after we cleared the channel…the boys enjoyed watching the ship come up next to the big humongous Dream!
We had dinner in the main dining room (we were able to switch to Anytime dining, so, arrived today on the earlier side of things). The wait staff was nice, they did a nice job of encouraging the boys to ditch the kids menus and go off the adult menus. Suzanne, Matthew, and I had the ribs (Suzanne, in her hours and hours AND HOURS! of research had read that this was the way to go on the first night) while Christopher and Kevin had the steak. Everyone ate well, did mostly ok on the eating-with-manners portion of the meal, and really enjoyed the chocolate lava cake that came for dessert (Matthew had the orange sherbet….don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned here that a) he’s not that into chocolate and b) he is a major sherbet fiend). And we headed off to the theatre for some trivia, bingo, and fun.
Matthew at the Encore theater as we waited for Invisible Movie Trivia
What’s that? Well, they show scenes from movies and the people are ‘invisible’….you have to identify the movie. We did Ok, we weren’t close to winning (and achieving the goal of getting a “ship-on-a-stick”)….mainly because the movie ‘expert’, Suzanne, wasn’t so good at this game….I was definitely better at identifying the movies, even ones that should have been in Suzanne’s wheelhouse
Next was a game show, they chose the contestants by who could act the goofiest and you can see the tall goofy kid made it on stage. Not an inspired choice on Kevin’s part….he wasn’t old enough to get most of the clues. They asked a question and then asked you to answer it as you hear the sound-bite of a clue. Kevin finished 2nd in this round…..he answered a question about Elvis Presley correctly and then a question about the Muppets (he only got it after the other woman misidentified them as from Sesame Street). Overall, this group of three proved themselves to be pretty out of it….
The location of the Dream at the end of Day One.
