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Tuesday 1 September – part seven: this is not how I wanted it

For entrée, Mark had the herb crusted pork chop, roast pork chop brushed with Dijon mustard and crusted with herbed breadcrumbs, served with sundried tomato risotto and a Borolo wine sauce.



I went for the grilled tuna steak with fingerling confit, caponata, sun-dried tomato pesto, and aioli. This is what turned up:



Now you can’t see it from this photo, but it was completely red inside, and everyone agreed it had been cooked rare. I really wasn’t happy to eat it, and Norma agreed with me that it was too rare. I went to get Parcha, but of course we were now into the show, so I couldn’t find him or anyone. That’s the problem if you have an issue at this point in the meal.

Finally, I managed to catch Parcha, and told him there was no way I was eating this and I wanted a well done tuna steak. I have to say that they were immediately fussing around me, asking what they could do to make things better. Tom didn’t hold back, and told them they should ask passengers how they’d like their tuna, and he had a really good point there. They hadn’t asked, and if they had, the whole problem could’ve been avoided.

Thankfully, the second time around, although it looked exactly the same on the outside, it was cooked to perfection on the inside, and was very flavoursome. It was exactly how I’d have wanted it the first time around, so at least we got there in the end.

We both thought the dessert menu was a bit disappointing, so Mark didn’t bother as he couldn’t see anything he liked the look of. I went for the Cookies ‘n Cream Sundae, cookies and cream ice cream with chocolate sauce and chocolate chip cookies, as nothing else appealed, and it was fine, but then again, what the heck can go wrong with a dish like that?



At some point during the meal, we had a photographer come around again:





Animator’s Palate

Appetiser 1 9½ 9½
Appetiser 2 8 7
Entrée 7½ 8
Dessert 8 N/A
Service 8 8
Atmosphere 8½ 8

Average score: 8.18

Our head server, Kerry Sean, came round to see me after the issue with the tuna and asked if we had any other feedback, and I told him what I thought of the character breakfast, that it was too rushed, and that the portions were too small. We were told the Magic had re-introduced their character breakfast, and I told them I was very surprised to hear that, as the way it’s treated on board the Wonder, it came across to me that they were just hedging to get rid of it.

We did also suggest various other character meals that would be selling points for certain cruises – like you could do a Frozen themed meal for Alaskan and Norwegian itineraries, with Anna, Elsa and Olaf visiting tables. As I said to Mark later, you could even charge a premium for that, similar to Palo, and I bet they’d still have a full dining room.

When we got back to our room, this was the sight that greeted us – a dinosaur, as I assume that’s what it was was a new one for us…



We were also passing by various islands and it was a gorgeous evening outside:



We headed to bed just before 9:00pm, but it was not to be a quiet night… about half an hour later, we had a tannoy announcement from the captain in our room, which was a shock to the system a) because they don’t do these unless it’s really serious and b) we had both been fast asleep. We both guessed Disney were forced into a corner on this one, and had to say something, as apparently fire doors across the ship had been automatically closed.

Captain Robert came on to tell us that there had been an “incident in the engine room” and that’s why the fire doors had closed. He reassured us that there was no issue, and he would update us again shortly. Then Clayton came on from the bridge, which has to be a first, and for him to be on the bridge told me it was something serious. He was trying to be his usual cheery self, but there was a definite edge to his voice, and he didn’t sound that calm. I could almost hear some panic in his voice.

I did no more than get up, and assemble some clothes just in case. I figured it made sense, although I figured it wouldn’t get anymore serious than this with any luck. It didn’t – 10 minutes later, Captain Robert was back on to tell us that “the first responder teams” had dealt with the incident, so that says to me there was something serious going on in the engine room, and crew members were apparently now going around the ship, re-opening the fire doors. He told us he’d see us all around the ship, and there was nothing to worry about, and Clayton came on again from the bridge to give us the same message.

A few minutes later, we heard alarms going off, which we assume were the fire doors all being re-opened. We think things weren’t 100% after that either, as we heard a loud clunking noise about 1:00am, and Mark was convinced that was a generator coming online. We’ll never know the truth of what happened, but I suspect there were a lot of officers who had a bit of a panicked evening, let’s just say…

The weather today was mainly dry with some rain in the morning, but some sun later on, and temperatures in the low 60s.
The best thing today was getting all our formal photos done.
The worst thing today was the tannoy announcements after we’d gone to bed.
Today we tried going to the character breakfast at Animator’s Palate
And the result was it was a bit of a disappointment.
The most magical moment today was meeting Olaf!

Next: I’m like Piglet!