/Cruising on a Dream Full of Frights and Friends: 10/12/13-10/19/13 TR completed 4/21/2014 About This Page:

[xwewhisper]

Wow you sure got a lot into the day so far! I wish they would make an adults area with all those fun things, darn kids get all the cool stuff

[stardust190]

Glad you got to meet up with Kelly. How special that you guys were able to cruise together. Have you ever been able to figure out how Hope can sleep like that? Cause my kids do it too and I'm so jealous. A loud noise can wake them up and they fall right back to sleep. Mallory makes the slightest peep at night and I'm up for 2 hours trying to get back to sleep. Maybe I just need to be a kid again. I'll start in the kids clubs on the ships!

[lauriep]

Love the "family" reunion between the two families! The kids' club looks just amazing. They need an adult play day in there some time. Your stateroom looks great. If that's how it looked on the second day, you're either the neatest family ever, or your stateroom host was fantastic!

[OhToodles!]

I'm so bummed we never made it to your room to check out that huge porthole window! That looks cool! And you described our meeting so well! I think I'll just refer people here in my TR. I told you Mike would be quiet at first, but it didn't take him long to get in a few digs. He & Chad got along so well!

[cubfancolleen]

The kids club looks like someplace most kids would happily stay for the whole cruise!
We've been lucky enough on 1 of 6 cruises to be assigned to an indoor muster station. It can get hot and uncomfortable out on deck for those!

[MayraLR]

I had a mental picture of you and Kelly meeting on the boat and a song popped into my mind. "Reunited and it feels so good...". Ok, enough of the silliness.

[PrincessSharon]

Glad you're finally all together! Love how excited Hope was in the kids club. Can't wait for more!

[mommapants]

Well I'm glad you were able to squeeze in an update and hope that all is well personally since you alluded to a problem...Reading your report is reminding me about my first cruise and all the excitement - if only I could get over the seasickness. I'll have to see if the Bonine works.

[KMB733]

Glad you got to meet up with Kelly!! The kids club looks like so much fun!!

[num1DVCfan]

You're having a great first day and the ship hasn't even left port yet. I can't believe the size of the window in your room, that thing looks huge!

[honeybee723]

Originally Posted by disneydreamer33

The kids club looks amazing, as does your stateroom.
Great pics.
Glad you got to meet the rest of Kelly's family.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by OneLittleSpark

You make me wish that my DH would even contemplate a cruise. He is terrified of water and will never go on one. I could always do a solo, but it's hard to tear myself away from WDW! You make it look slightly easier though.

Can't wait to hear about your bon voyage party!

You could always do a 3 day cruise and then enjoy WDW for a little bit afterwards. You honestly don't even realize you're on a ship half the time, and if you got an inside stateroom, maybe that would help him feel safer as well.

Originally Posted by lfredsbo

As I had said to Kelly.....I wouldn't have wanted to leave that play area either! Looks fun!
Love the window in your cabin! What category is that?

It's a category 8D (Deluxe Family Ocean View Stateroom), and it had soooo much storage room. I even said to Kelly that whoever designed that room should receive an award. After everything was unpacked and put away, we still had unused storage space in there. I think whoever designed AKLV should have had a meeting with this designer.

Originally Posted by chezp

I love the kids' club - it looks absolutely amazing!

If you were to ask Hope she'd definitely agree with you.

Originally Posted by xwewhisper

Wow you sure got a lot into the day so far! I wish they would make an adults area with all those fun things, darn kids get all the cool stuff

I couldn't agree more!

Originally Posted by stardust190

Glad you got to meet up with Kelly. How special that you guys were able to cruise together. Have you ever been able to figure out how Hope can sleep like that? Cause my kids do it too and I'm so jealous. A loud noise can wake them up and they fall right back to sleep. Mallory makes the slightest peep at night and I'm up for 2 hours trying to get back to sleep. Maybe I just need to be a kid again. I'll start in the kids clubs on the ships!

We started getting Hope used to noise when she was a baby because I didn't want to be that mom that would have to tip toe around the house for fear of waking her up. Now she can fall asleep anywhere, and it's been wonderful when I have to walk around the parks and she falls asleep in the stroller. As for me, I've always been a light sleeper, but now that I'm a mom, it's only gotten worse.

Originally Posted by lauriep

Love the "family" reunion between the two families! The kids' club looks just amazing. They need an adult play day in there some time. Your stateroom looks great. If that's how it looked on the second day, your either the neatest family ever, or your stateroom host was fantastic!

You made me laugh so much, that I had to pass your comment along to Chad. His response was, "She has obviously never met you yet". I've said it before, but I'm very Type A, and everything has to be in it's place, and kept neat. It's a horrible disease to have, but yes, that's how our stateroom looked every day of our trip.

Originally Posted by OhToodles!

I'm so bummed we never made it to your room to check out that huge porthole window! That looks cool! And you described our meeting so well! I think I'll just refer people here in my TR. I told you Mike would be quiet at first, but it didn't take him long to get in a few digs. He & Chad got along so well!

If you did that, you'd be waiting forever for your TR to get updated since I'm not doing the best job of doing that here. You know, Chad and I would be sitting around talking, and then all of a sudden we would think of something Mike said, and bust out laughing. We were just talking about you guys with another couple that we hang out with, and it got us to missing you all over again.

Originally Posted by cubfancolleen

The kids club looks like someplace most kids would happily stay for the whole cruise!
We've been lucky enough on 1 of 6 cruises to be assigned to an indoor muster station. It can get hot and uncomfortable out on deck for those!

It was tough tearing Hope away from that place. I'm not gonna lie...there were tears a few times.

Originally Posted by MayraLR

I had a mental picture of you and Kelly meeting on the boat and a song popped into my mind. "Reunited and it feels so good...". Ok, enough of the silliness.

That song pretty much sums it up.

Originally Posted by PrincessSharon

Glad you're finally all together! Love how excited Hope was in the kids club. Can't wait for more!

It was so nice being able to share our vacation with the Davis family. They're incredibly good people.

Originally Posted by mommapants

Well I'm glad you were able to squeeze in an update and hope that all is well personally since you alluded to a problem...Reading your report is reminding me about my first cruise and all the excitement - if only I could get over the seasickness. I'll have to see if the Bonine works.

There was a problem, and it's just a bunch of drama that I don't want to bore everyone with, but it did prevent me from getting on here like I had wanted too.

Originally Posted by KMB733

Glad you got to meet up with Kelly!! The kids club looks like so much fun!!

Hope will tell you that it WAS a lot of fun.

Originally Posted by num1DVCfan

You're having a great first day and the ship hasn't even left port yet. I can't believe the size of the window in your room, that thing looks huge!

You could sit in that porthole. Hope loved doing that every morning right after she woke up.

[pamcarey]

Great update! So glad that you and Kelly's families have now met up!

[OhToodles!]

Have you seen the camel skit before movies? He comes in like "Hump Day" but it's "Movie Day" and gets someone to turn off their phone. Totally makes us think of you, especially Hope.

[honeybee723]

Originally Posted by pamcarey

Great update! So glad that you and Kelly's families have now met up!

Thanks!

Originally Posted by OhToodles!

Have you seen the camel skit before movies? He comes in like "Hump Day" but it's "Movie Day" and gets someone to turn off their phone. Totally makes us think of you, especially Hope.

I have seen that. And I think of Mike whenever I see that darn camel.

[honeybee723]

Because I've tried posting this thing twice now, and haven't been able too because the circuit breaker in our office tripped, this update with be sans smilies.

Day Two: Sunday, October 13th
Part Three: Cheers!!!

The ship was set to pull out of port around 5pm, so the plan was to meet up at Kelly’s cabin around 4:45pm so we could get the party started a bit early. Before we left, I pulled a gift out for Hope, and placed it on our bed so that when she saw it she would be surprised.




Inside the bucket was an autograph book and a Halloween light up toy, which I also bought for Dylan and Lukas, but with their buckets, I added a few more fun things into them. She was so excited about the autograph book, and throughout the trip that thing went everywhere with us. I honestly never got the point of them, but now I totally do, and I smile every time I think about how happy it made her.

With our gifts in hand, we headed over to the Davis’ cabin, and once we got there I was floored to see that their door was already decorated, everything was unpacked and they had even hung up Halloween decorations! I was either an extremely slow packer or I brought way too much stuff with us because Kelly had smoked me in this department.

Their stateroom was pretty much set up the same as ours, but they had a verandah and because of that they didn’t have as much dresser space as we did. Although, if I had my choice between the two, I’d much rather have the verandah. And as for their obstructed verandah view, I honestly didn’t even see what I would consider an obstruction, so they really lucked out with their stateroom.

We started getting all of our party supplies out. Kelly had her farewell sign that she later taped to the outside of the verandah, and that apparently no one ever got to see.



And I got out my DIY streamer sticks for the kids to wave around, but I think they only played with them for about 5 seconds, and then went back into the stateroom to play on their Kindles.



Once the ship started moving, Kelly pulled out a bottle of bubbly and handed it over to Mike so he could pop that baby open.




Kelly had told us to bring two glasses from our room for our sail away toast, but because of Chad’s tremors, there was no way he was going to be able to hold that glass still enough. That’s when Kelly ran inside and grabbed his gift…a Baltimore Ravens Tervis cup with a lid and straw. The perfect adult sippy cup for him to toast with.

This picture pretty much says it all.



I feel like not only were we toasting what would end up being an amazing trip with them, but also what would end up bringing 7 people so much closer together. Chad and Mike hit it off, and the boys thought my husband was just a big kid in disguise. Plus, it still boggles my mind how well the kids got along because you just never know how they’re going to act in this sort of situation, but here they were after about 5 minutes of getting to know each other…





Then we exchanged our gifts. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of everything, but Hope and I were given cute little goodie bags full of fun stuff. Hope got some cute little bracelets, a Cinderella tin box, a coloring/sticker book with crayons, a Halloween light up toy, lip gloss rings with the characters from Tinkerbell on them, some tattoos for pirate night and a few other little girly things. My goodie bag was full of a bunch of cute Vera Bradley items such as a little wristlet, a pen and a journal. That wristlet ended up coming in super handy on the cruise because I was able to put my room key and lip gloss in there without having to make Chad carry everything around for me.

Before we knew it, it was time for us to head back to our stateroom so I could finish unpacking and then get ready for dinner. Once we got there, Chad and Hope headed up to deck 12 to grab a drink from the beverage station, with Chad using his new sippy cup, while I got right to work on the suitcases. Then when they returned, I could tell Hope was still sleepy from her catnap during the muster drill, so Chad volunteered to lay down with her for a little bit, and guess what? He ended up falling asleep too. Isn’t that just dandy? Everyone got to enjoy a little bit of shut eye except for me. In all honesty though, it was all for the best because instead of afternoon naps giving me an extra dose of energy, they make me even more tired. Weird right?

I was also able to finally decorate our door while they slept.





And then I woke them up so we could all start getting ready for our dinner at the Enchanted Garden. Out of all the restaurants on the ship, this was my least favorite in terms of theming and décor. It reminded me too much of a craft store with all the fake plants surrounding you at every turn. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about all the dusting that must be done in there since fake plants tend to collect A LOT of dust. Yuck! They also seated us in a back corner where we weren’t really able to enjoy anything about that restaurant, but I had no problems with that at all.

Kelly and her family were already at the table when we got there, so once we found our seats, we met the servers we were assigned for our cruise. Once again I’ve forgotten their names, and I’m hoping Kelly can help me out with this one because all of them were super nice and attentive, which is something I’ve never been lucky enough to have on my other Disney cruises.

We placed our orders, and then got right into chit chatting with each other again. Now because Kelly had to remind me once, or 5 times, to take pictures of the food, I forgot to get pictures of Mike and Kelly’s choices, SO for the sake of this TR, I’m only going to document my family’s meals (except for Hope).

I started out with a glass of Moscato Wine, with Chad having a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Appetizers

Mine - Tomato Basil Soup



Chad - North Atlantic Lobster Ravioli (for some reason this doesn’t seem right to me though)



Main Course

Mine - Pan Seared Sea Bass



Chad - Grilled NY Strip Steak with roasted vegetables and double-baked potato



They always brought out the kid’s dinner when they served our appetizers, so around the time we were served our main course, the kids were either done eating or full and didn’t want to eat anymore. We were told that a CM would be walking around the dining room halfway through the dinner service to collect all of the children wishing to go to the kid’s club, but we never actually saw anyone. Chad and Mike decided to take them out to the front of the dining room, and that’s where they found the CM checking in everyone who wanted to go play.

Kelly and I waited for what seemed like an hour for them to return to the table, and I think our waiter ended up putting a warming lid over their dishes so their food wouldn’t get cold. Once they did get back, I had the pleasure of cutting up Chad’s steak, and I felt like I was performing surgery on that thing. There was so much fat and blood in it that it almost made me lose the rest of my appetite.

I don’t have anywhere in my notes or photos telling me that we ordered dessert, but I’m pretty sure we did, so I guess Kelly forgot to remind me to take a picture because I have nothing.

It was such a nice evening getting to know more about each other. We were able to enjoy our meal without the kids nagging us for something or the other, and instead focus on the conversation and company. Eventually it had to come to an end, and at first we were super excited to be able to hang out and do something adult-like without the children, but then as we were standing around trying to decide what to get ourselves into, we all just seemed to have the same idea in our heads…sleep. How pathetic are we? Four adults, the kids are busy having fun, and all we want to do is go back to our staterooms and go to bed. I think Kelly and Mike were going to do some exploring first, with us heading into the gift shops, but then it was straight to bed after that.

We said our goodnights, and after checking out the stores, we went up to go collect Hope. Just as we were walking down the hallway to the club, we spotted Mike standing there all by himself. Apparently they had gotten a page that Lukas wanted to be picked up, and Mike was out there waiting for Kelly to return with the boys. Meanwhile, I went up to find Hope, and they told me she was over on the Lab side, so as I was heading over there, I see her standing near the entrance with a drawing in her hand. Thinking she was about to tell them to page me, I put a big smile on my face and say her name in a “I’m so happy to see you” tone of voice. All of a sudden she looks at me and starts bawling her eyes out! Not the sort of reception I was really going for, but apparently she was just up front so she could ask one of the CMs a question.

I checked her out of the club with her crying the entire time, and telling me she didn’t want to leave because she was having soooo much fun. Then a really nice CM, with a very sexy Australian accent by the way, looked at her and said he had something for her if she stopped crying. So after she reluctantly said okay, he disappeared for a second and then returned with an Oceaneer’s Lab hat, and put it on her head. Then he told her she could come back tomorrow, but ONLY if she promised not to cry again when it was time to leave. Either the hat did the trick or the CM’s Australian charm, because she was putty in his hands, and agreed to those terms.

We said goodnight to Kelly, Mike and the boys one more time, and then made our way back down to our room. Hope was super excited to see the towel animal on our bed (a seal…I think), and her stuffed animals all tucked in under the covers in her bed.




To say that the day couldn’t get any better is an understatement because as soon as my body got into that bed and I put my head on that pillow, I think I died and went to heaven. OMG was everything AMAZINGLY comfortable. Or as Linny would say, that bed was AMAZEBALLS. Everything about it was perfect. The mattress, the pillow, the sheets and the comforter. If I wasn’t on a Disney ship, it would have been extremely difficult getting my butt out of there each and every morning, but knowing I would have the chance to get back in there at night, made it just a little easier to leave. Heaven…I’m in heaven…

Up Next: Trout Mousse & Caviar...eek!