Our Ocean Voyage - Part 6

Thursday is Day 6 of our cruise, another planned sea day as we sail from Cozumel to Castaway Cay in the Bahamas. In my original plan for this day, it was going to be filled with relaxation ... but there's just so much to do on board that we filled it up very quickly. My wife and I had brunch at Palo planned this morning plus the girls were part of the big Friendship Rocks show this afternoon. More on that to come.

Once again I got up early. Today was a picture morning for me. Getting out and around the ship early gave me great opportunities to take pictures without any of the crowds blocking my views. I spent a good hour wandering every deck taking pictures. The details and design of this ship is simply fantastic. I really enjoyed playing with my camera and trying to capture as much of the beauty as I could. Of course, the real beauty was not the ship, but Mother Nature. The sunrise was glorious and I snapped it the best I could.

Just after Sunrise with Cuba in the distance

The girls were sleeping late now, and instead of getting them up to go to a dining room for breakfast, I brought them some cereal from Topsiders and we served them breakfast in bed.  They really loved it. We got them dressed and off to the kids club so that we could make it to Palo's for our 10:30 brunch.

My first plate

The dinner at Palo was fantastic, but the brunch is another thing all together. They start you off with a mimosa and they take you on a tour of the buffet area. This is supposed to be for the appetizers, but its so much food. There are breads and fruits, cheeses and meats, fish, shrimp and crab legs, caviar and then a whole table of sweet danishes and donuts. Then after that, you order a main dish that is brought to the table, anything from eggs benedict (three different varieties) to veal saltimbocca or chicken parmesan.  Oh, and I cannot forget about the pizzas. They serve little thin crust pizzas. We ordered one that was Gorganzola and Grape. Trust me, it tastes 100x better than it sounds.  Simply phenomenal. We ate and ate and then ate some more and enjoyed every single second of it.

After we finished, we went and gathered the girls from kids club. We stopped by the future cruise sales desk to talk about doing this again. They give you a good deal when you rebook on board, and there's no risk if you cancel so its worth doing. Well the second princess gathering was just ending in the atrium as we were there, and we just happened to be standing at the top of the stairs as the Princesses were leaving. They each stopped to talk to the girls and give them hugs and allow me to take more pictures. Cinderella and Tiana both remembered our girls and were really sweet to them. The girls lit up again and we had another one of those magical moments that we'll never forget.

My wife wanted to rest a bit, so I took the girls up to eat some pizza on the pool deck. We had a great time enjoying the sunshine and I think the two of them together almost ate a whole pie! But, it didn't last long, because today was the big Friendship Rocks show. Its like a good bye show for the kids, and they all get to go up on the big state in the Walt Disney Theater and sing a song. I brought them back to the kids club and went off to find my favorite spot on deck with a book and a nice strong rum drink.

 The show was really cute. All the kids got t-shirts and they marched them up on stage where they got to sing a song with Mickey and Minnie. Our girls are pretty tall, so they were stuck in the back, but they saw us and had a great time waving and jumping up and down. At this point we've already had a pretty full day, and it was only 5:30. We had a little time until the Disney Dreams show for today, so we gathered the kids from the club and wandered until they opened the doors.


The show was another really nice story. Its about a girl who wants to fly and Peter Pan has to help her believe in all the fairy tales before she can fly. They travel through some more of the Disney stories, including Little Mermaid, Cinderella and Lion King. The special effects in this one were pretty cool too. They even made it snow.

After the show, our stateroom attendant had asked if the girls wanted to learn how to make towel animals. Duh, yea, of course!  Of all the things that they did today, this is the one they kept talking about, the one they couldn't wait to do. He came with one of the other attendants and showed us how to make all the different animals. He made an octopus, a lobster, a dog and a monkey. Then he showed the girls how to make little baby chicks out of two wash cloths and gave them to the girls to take home. They are so cute they both still keep them on their dressers to this day.

Now it was time for dinner. Tonight was semi-formal night, so we got dressed and headed to Lumiere's. The menu tonight was lobster and I love me some lobster. Everyone was having a great time. The girls at the table ate their Mickey bars and had a crazy face making contest while the adults took their pictures. The head waiter came to our table and shelled each person's lobster tail. We all joked because we'd seen very little of him the whole week, but tonight, the night before tips, he is suddenly there. We ate and ate, and had a great time.

The only characters we hadn't yet gotten autographs from were Donald and Daisy. And they just happened to be making an appearance right outside the dining room when we finished dinner, so we all lined up and got pictures with them in their lovely formal wear. They were really hamming it up,  with Donald getting mad when some guy took a picture with Daisy. The girls were cracking up as Daisy calmed Donald down.

Now, you'd think these kids would have been tired and wanted to head to bed after this busy, full day. Nope, they all wanted to go back to the kid's club and who were we to argue! So the kids headed to the club and the parents went up on deck where they were showing a football game on the big screen. We sat around enjoying some rum and some great company until midnight when they forced us to pick up our kids.

I don't think we could have packed more into this day even if we tried, and looking back now at the newsletter for that day, there are tons of things we didn't do.  Oh well, good thing we stopped by the future cruise desk.