Busy Busy Busy

Day of departure

I got out of bed at 6am and did the duty of repacking. Somehow my luggage doubled despite the fact I’ve thrown away a shirt, outgrown Croc shoes of Victoria’s and paperwork no longer needed. I checked my Disney rewards and transferred the reward dollars to my card. My plan was to transfer those dollars to on board credit. The credit can be used for on board purchases, tips for the staff or for excursions. I have 400 dollars in credit wait for us when we board. That is pretty much spoken for between staff tips and our Cartegena excursion.

We have met some nice people this time. We met a family traveling from the Anchorage area who was having a hard time breathing due to fog. Another family we met up with was from Austrailia. They were doing a world tour. She was from Madagascar and he was from the Barrier Reef area.

We packed up our things and went outside of the hotel to meet the group for the bus at 8:30am. The bus was due to depart at 9am. I quickly checked out and stood with a large group of people staring at several empty buses. None of the busses were for our group and the other group seemed to be confused. After moving some busses over, we quickly loaded the luggage in the storage, rather than expecting the driver to do it, and boarded the bus.

We picked up another 9 people at the Grand California hotel and made our way to the port at San Pedro. We arrived to the port by 10:30am and went into the terminal. When we got to the terminal, there were people waiting for us to ask if we had filled out our paperwork. After heading into the building, we were given boarding cards. I was given boarding card 11. I was surprised to have such a number in the morning. I asked the woman how I could possibly be in boarding group 11 at such an hour. The woman told me there were people waiting since 6:30am. They let people into the terminal at 6:30am? I didn’t believe her. Lynn had checked in at the hotel the day before and was given boarding group number 2.

We marched into the area and met up with folks. We were directed to a long line in order to check in. After waiting in line for fifteen minutes, we went to a window and handed over passports and authorization forms. The woman behind the desk gave us our Castaway Club lanyards and said, “you must have quite a few of these.“ I didn’t like her tone. Someone told me later, “We’re not in Florida!“ \So I suppose these aren’t your typical Disney Cruiseline employees. She handed me a paper with the day’s activies and a ship’s map and sneered, “You probably know the ship better than I do.“ Geeze. I’m on vacation and she is not going to get to me.

We dragged our carry ons over to a seating area and I was surprised there were so many seats. After we sat down I realized I had passed a sign indicating the area was for concierge guests only. Oh well. Mysteriously I had a boarding card number 3 in my hand. It’s good to travel with a group. We met Lynn and company at Parrot Cay and enjoyed lunch.

After lunch we all went up to the kids’ club to try and move one of our party’s 10 year old into the 11-13 year old group. The 11 - 13 year old group is based out of Ocean Quest on deck 2 rather than the Lab. It’s convenient to our deck 2 stateroom but there is no checking in or out. You must tell your child they are not allowed to leave. Disney changed the 10 year old with no problems. Our rooms were ready at 1:45pm as promised.

We unpacked and went to the life boat drill at 3:30pm. The sail away party kicked off soon after the drill and we quietly set sail at 5pm. Our dinner rotation is 5:45pm and is APL (Animator’s, Parrot Cay, Lumiere’s dining rooms). Our first dinner was a comedy of errors. We were surprised not to have the dining team we requested. We made no other requests other than our group and servers. Lynn was not notified her requests were not granted and we met our new serving team: Chintana the server, Gaspare the head server and I still can’t remember the assistant from Serbia.

The chef’s recommendation was the beef steak. It was tough. None of us liked it. Drinks were not served properly and coffee never delivered. When we were asked how it went, we were honest but polite. My only comment was that I would like to be offered coffee each evening. The server said to me, “you can drink coffee this late?” and I told her yes, I could drink Nescafe coffee this late, it’s not very strong. She suggested I have coffee from the Cove Café. We were shocked at how bad everything was. We all agreed to give it another chance.

We went to the opening night show and enjoyed it. It was a good way to start the cruise. We went to bed soon after the show.

Monday August 18th Day at Sea

We woke up fairly early. It was the first of our sea days. Victoria put on her bathing suit and we headed to the Goofy pool on deck 9. We had a quick breakfast at Topsiders and relaxed by the pool for the morning. I tested out my travel coffee press. It works great. While it’s a bit cumbersome to lug it around, it provides for a good cup of coffee in the morning. I can deal with yucky coffee at other times but the first cup of the morning must be good.

I went to the shopping talk at 1pm while Victoria stayed at the pool with the kids and parents. The shopping talk was pretty boring, but I bought the shopping VIP card. I knew better but I thought of it as a 25 dollar excursion.

We had dinner in Parrott Cay. It was formal night. None of us felt like dressing up but we did anyway and ate a better meal than the night before. The service was improved and I got coffee without begging.

The show was the Golden Mickeys, my least favorite show so we skipped it. Victoria went to Ocean Quest to hang around after changing out of her clothes (which she spilled a Shirley Temple on). I went to deck 4 and read some of my book. I was pretty tired and we retired to the cabin at 9pm. I slept ten hours!