Better late than..later?Western Sept 05/09 **Completed 02/17** About This Page:

[NanaTink]

Just caught your TR. Sounds like you had a lovely trip so far, left-behind license, Passporter, lost KTTW cards and all notwithstanding!
Can't wait to read more!! Thanks for sharing!

[dsnytina]

Glad you got to see Golden Mickeys! Your day sounded just heavenly!
Can't wait to read more!

[mcc0313]

What a nice relaxing day, sorry that your vote lost out and you ended up going to the Golden Mickeys dinner but it sounded like the cake was delicious.

[rlb38]

GRAND CAYMAN

An early wakeup call this morning since we had to meet for our excursion at 7:40. After a quick shower I wandered up to Topsiders. Now why is it Topsiders? must be the most boring Disney name ever anyways I secured some caffeine and milk for Rachel as well as some fruit, muffin and a pastry or 2. I returned to the cabin and woke Rachel up. We had a quick breakfast on the verandah. Lovely warm air, blue sky and beautiful blue water. A perfect start to the day. We would have ordered room service but 1st delivery time was listed as 7-7:30 .

We grabbed our snorkel gear we'd borrowed from friends and headed to our meeting place. (upbeat ??) We checked in handed in our waivers and grabbed some towels from the huge pile. And we waited and waited and waited. One family dropped out at the last minute because their 15 year old son hadn't made it to the meet point. The mother had made a couple of frantic trips to their stateroom and a couple of other meeting points but no sign of her son. The father calmly said we will have to cancel. The CM pointed out to them that there is a no refund policy but they could go to the excursion desk and try to find another excursion to go on. Sadly our excursion was the only combo of snorkel and semi submarine tour of the day. But they thought they'd opt for the semi sub part later in the day. I felt badly for the mother who seemed quite frazzled but also there were 2 other teenage girls and a grandma who wouldn't be going on the planned excursion.

So our party went from a group of 19 down to 13. About 8:10 we were finally on our way to the tender. The tender was much larger than I had pictured and I'm sure the total time on the tender is about 5 minutes.



I think this is the pirate boat that Disney offers as an excursion.

We were directed to a nearby waiting van , took a 2 minute drive to where the semi sub was waiting and we were off. We had a 2 man crew of captain Jack from South Africa and a very soft spoken man from Jamaica. (can't remember his name so I'll just call him Silk since his voice was a smooth as silk)
Silk
Captain Jack
inside the semi sub
We were told to sit on the left hand side while we drove by the 2 wrecks just off shore. Now Silk's voice did not carry to the back of the boat so he was quite difficult to hear. Mike moved up to hear better but Rachel and I stayed back. I was just trying to stay calm and enjoy the scenery. I sometimes have a problem with being in confined spaces and the thought of being trapped underwater terrifies me. ( no doubt due to big brothers who thought it was funny to hold me under water when I was a kid) So I really didn't want to hear about 2 ships crashing when I was already below water.

I was enjoying seeing the different fish and the left overs of the wrecks.



After we toured the wrecks the boat stopped so Captain Jack could feed the fish. I pictured him dropping food from a bucket off the side but he had a more direct approach in mind.



While Captain Jack climbed back aboard we were given a quick lesson on how to use our snorkel gear and then headed up on deck. Silk took Rachel and I aside since we were first timers to help us with our gear. Now Rachel has snorkelled before so I'm not sure why she said it was her first time. I was anxious about the whole trying to breath through a tube underwater thing and wasn't paying much attention to her.

I climbed into the water under Silks watchful eye and he had me hold on to the back of the boat and just put my face in the water and breathe. I was as nervous as a 1 year old in their first swimming lesson. I put my face in and thought , WOW it's so cool then had the thought I'd don't think you're breathing right. I whipped my head up out of the water like I had been bit by a shark. Silk looks at me and says "what happened" I try to be all cool and tell him "nothing". He says "my dear if it was nothing your face would still be in the water". So I confess that I'm concerned that I won't breathe "right". Silk soothingly says " there is no wrong way but it helps if you get it right" That just cracked me up and I instantly felt a little calmer. Silk had me breathe without the mouth piece, with the mouth piece and finally to try in the water again. Success. Once I got the pattern I didn't want to take my head out of the water in case I couldn't do it again. So I slowly swam around taking in all the surroundings.



All too soon it was time to go back to shore. Only problem was that I didn't realize until fairly late into our snorkel that Rachel was back on the boat. She was having trouble with her mask leaking and was too shy to ask anyone to help her fix it. Mike had watched her start off and she seemed fine so he went off but never thought to check on her again. Lesson learned.

It was a great first time snorkel experience. The water was clear, calm and very warm. Silk was soothing, patience and encouraging. We were happy with this excursion.

[Colexis Mom]

What great pictures from the excursion!

[Kenny]

Cool pictures, Roberta! Glad you got the hang of it and had a good time!

[chezp]

What wonderful photos from the excursion!

[Big Baloo]

Beautiful pictures and how great that you were able to snorkel! Looking forward to more!

[rlb38]

GRAND CAYMAN cont

Not sure why the pictures stacked up across the screen in the last post, sorry it makes for awkward reading.

So we arrived back on the Magic around 10:30. I forgot to tell you that on the night I was waiting for the laundry I wandered up to the spa.
I was given a tour of the Rainforest room and I signed up for a 3 day pass for $45. I decided that since I was already in my swimsuit I might as well head up to the spa while most people were ashore. Rachel decided she wanted to stay on board and not return to the island. Mike had read about a good restaurant and decided to head out on his own to see the sights and have lunch.

I headed into the rainforest and had the place all to myself . I stood under the showerhead to rinse off the sea water. This shower was also supposed to have fog function but I couldn't seem to get it to work. I then headed into the "hot" steam room. HOT like standing on the sun HOTTTTTTT ! I lasted all of 4.5 seconds and beetled over to the steam room that wouldn't remove all my skin. This steam room was lovely. I especially enjoyed the tiled fountain in the middle of the room where you could turn a tap and splash yourself with some water. There are also hoses beside the benches where you can run some water on yourself. These hoses sit on the floor so I only used them on my legs and feet. I went from there to the sauna. Now I the sauna (although it could have been a little hotter). All saunas I've been in have been wooden benches at various heights. This sauna had all tiled benches in the form of recliners. So I found it heavenly to be able to lean back on the warm tiles and RELAXXXXXX. I left the sauna to see that another woman had arrived and was laying claim to one of the 3 tiled chairs in the room. These chairs are tiled & recliner shaped . Also there are only 3 so much like pool loungers I didn't think you should be saving them if you were heading off to the steam room. But she lined up her robe, several towels and a couple of magazines on the chair to stake her claim. Not a big problem since there were only 2 of us in the room but I did . So I spent and hour and a half going back and forth between sauna, steam room and rainforest shower and finished off with 10 minutes or so perched in the tiled chairs. Which the lady still hadn't used.

Back to the room where I found Rachel finishing up watching Hotel for Dogs from her bunk. We asked Fermin on Key West morning if we could just have the bunk out at all times and he gave us a big smile and said no problem. Rachel enjoyed her perch to watch TV.

Once I showered we headed out for lunch at Topsiders. It was Chinese food themed which is one of Mike's favourite cuisines. I can take or leave it and Rachel is in the leave it category. In fact we got to the end of the buffet she had a roll and a chicken ball on her plate. So we took our trays over by the pools and I sent her off to find more food at Goofy's Galley. Not sure what she came up with. I did note that they had these balls that had a chicken ball "crust' but were filled with chick peas it was my favourite dish from Topsiders that day.

Full from lunch we decided to take our Passporter's Treasure Hunt book out and see what we could find. Rachel had previously brought the book to club and she and several of the kids looked for things on the list. It is a good way to get familar with the ship and stop and notice little details about the ship. My only regret is that we didn't think to take the camera along with us. There's a great hidden Mickey at the very front of the ship that I meant to take a picture of but never got back to that task. Our only difference of opinion on this book is that Rachel wanted to do the hunt in numerical order. But this sometimes takes you from say 3 Forward to 5 Aft and then right back to 3 Forward. So I wanted to save walking and look for clues that were close together and do it that way. We had lots of fun and spent about 2 hours travelling all over the Magic.

We met up with Mike back at the room and I mentioned the Chinese buffet and we headed up there even though he said it had a terrific lunch on the island. Alas Topsiders was closed. Rachel decided to head to club and Mike had a surprise appointment for a pedicure. So I took the opportunity to nap.

UP NEXT: how does Palo for supper sound?

[Colexis Mom]

Great update! Glad you enjoyed the spa! We did the same thing with the bunk! Just easier to leave it down! Can't wait to hear about Palo!

[Kenny]

That's what I did at the Spa/Rainforest Room the day we went there! I just went between the different rooms and showers and all.
I'm wanting to hear about Palo, too!

[chezp]

What a wonderful day - I'm glad you were able to master the snorkelling and I know what's that like, as I had a few issues the first time I tried it. And what a great time at the spa - although I did roll my eyes as well at that woman saving her tiled chair.

[iloverags2]

Just catching up with your report...oh my goodness! The pictures from snorkeling are just gorgeous! And I love how your stateroom host left the bunk down for TV watching...cool idea!

[Big Baloo]

Hmmm, Palo for dinner you say? Sounds yummy!

[lablady]

I'm so glad that I found your TR! We're going on our very first cruise in March, and we're also doing the Western Caribbean, so it's great to hear about all the fun stuff that you've done!