Day at sea

Day 4 was our last day on the ship and it was our only day at sea. Jason and I have been on several cruises before and we were surprised at how much we realized we needed and enjoyed this day. It was so much fun to take advantage of the things on the ship. Usually by the end of the cruise we knew the ship forward and back. By the end of the night we were still finding things on the ship we had no clue about.

This day was definitely well needed. We had been so busy and run all over the ports, and had gotten way to much sun, we took advantage of our last day especially since once off the boat we were immediately taking the transfer to our hotel on the Disney property for 4 more days of fun. Even though we would have liked to swim and run around Kaylie was absolutely exhausted, woke up with a cold, and needed a day to just be mellow. So...we were mellow.

On our way to breakfast. As you can see we did not leave the house without the essentials...sun glasses to match her outfit, melts, Pluto, and matching shoes. Our goal was to go to see the Princesses right after breakfast so we had to come prepared.

Apparently, every place she went to was too sunny for her to take her sunglasses off. Either that or she hasn't had her diet coke yet and hasn't woken up like her mommy.

Waiter wanting to know how old she is.

Pluto was thirsty. How could we deny him a sip of apple juice.

She looks good her but really felt bad. Her poor little nose was running like crazy and she was super exhausted.

Kaylie looking at the entertainment for the day. She is a good reader...she would have to be to read the paper upside down.

We saw the line for the characters and asked if it was for the princesses. Since it wasn't we decided we would wait for this and then get in line for the princesses. Thankfully a lady gave us the idea of one of us wait for this and the other get in line for the princesses. This was a fantastic idea. After standing in line for the princesses for 5 minutes the line grew to an hour. I thanked the lady over and over for the idea. All said and done we waited in line for 30 to 45 minutes for all the characters and princesses.

I was so grateful for the ladies that were in line with me for the princesses. The were so sweet and understood the need for me to be able to take a picture with them. They had no problem allowing me to run over to them to get in the pictures with my family. It was so sweet.

Pluto is her favorite Disney character. She was a little scared of him but with Jason's help she got over it.

When we first flew into Orlando we told her we were bringing Pluto and Mickey home to see their family. Right after this picture she started to push her Pluto towards him and couldn't understand why he wouldn't take it. She kept saying he needed to go home. Too sweet.

Right as the princesses started to come down my battery died. We were about 5 minutes from them when it happened so I did a mad dash up 3 flights of stairs, grabbed the spare and ran 3 flights down. Initially it looked as if it had some charge to it. After about 5 pictures with Snow White my battery died. I was bummed. I had a hard time letting that one go. We quickly fixed it by buying one of her with Snow White and one with Cinderella.

The fun thing about seeing the characters on the ship is that they take the time to interact with the children. They do not make you feel rushed and take several pictures for you. The princesses try hard to make them feel special. The other thing I liked was that the photographers were more than willing to take pictures with your own camera. When one of them heard my battery was dead he offered me his. Unfortunately his was a little bit bigger.

The show was called, "Disney Dream." It has won a bunch of awards and by the end you knew why. This show was amazing. I loved it so much I could have gone and watched it again later that night.

We were so excited when they told us this nights show was going to have a special 1:30 showing for those that have kids that may not be able to stay awake during the evening performance. Kaylie fell right into this category. Since we were not quit sure how this show was going to be we decided to try it. If it was bad Kaylie could at best get a good nap in. Kaylie liked it so much she stopped laying on Jason, got in her own seat, and sat straight up with her feet dangling off the edge for the rest of the show. Jason and I loved seeing how much she soaked it all in.

Finally...hard to see but all of the characters that were featured are here.

After we left we went and had a little bit of quiet time before going to the kids club for some sliding time. At first she had to go with daddy. After awhile she switched to mommy. A little while after that the girls that were slightly older took over and Jason and I were able to sit down at the bottom of the slide and watch her come down. It always makes me smile at how much the older girls take to the little girls.

I loved this picture of Jason.

She is supposed to be sliding down the slide...not walking down it.

Our fourth and final friend...Mr. Bunny.

After play time we took her to the toddler area for one more dinner. Since we knew we would be all together as a family for the remainder of the trip we decided to keep Kaylie in the daycare for an extra two hours so Jason and I could have a date night. It was nice for us to walk around and explore some of the adult only areas. We got to sit in comfortable chairs in a coffee bar and watch the water went by. How much more relaxing can you get. After that we went to the sports bar and played backgammon. The only problem was that although we knew how to play it we couldn't remember exactly how to set it up. After asking several of the crew members I flagged down the guy in the white coat that was walking by. Turns out I grabbed the cruise director. This was the right guy to catch. After he called a bunch of the higher ups he went to the Internet and printed off what seemed like an entire book for us. Now that is an awesome cruise director. The sad part...Jason won all three of the games. I think the dice were rigged.

That night our bags had to be outside by 11pm. You only kept the things you had to have with you to get out the next morning. Since Kaylie was going to bed we started to put the suitcases out. She knew there was a mommy, daddy, and Kaylie suitcase. Not thinking we started to put them out. This was quickly followed by a screaming child yelling, " mommies suitcase, daddy's suitcase, Kaylie's suitcase." From that point on she was a mess. She thought we were leaving her and if she fell asleep we would be gone. After about thirty minutes of her refusing to sleep in her bed and a bunch of tears I got into bed with her, sang Jesus Loves You, and rubbed her head over and over. After a good five minutes she passed out cold and didn't move until we woke her up the next morning.

Overall, great day!

Working on it

I am trying to catch up. I just did Day 3 (so scroll down) and hopefully I will get the rest up, plus birthday, first day of school.

Castaway Cay

Day 3 brought us a day at Disney's private island known as Castaway Cay. As you pull into port one of the first things you see is the actual ship that was used from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. The rumor is it is haunted so no one dares to enter it.

Castaway Cay was amazing. The water was crystal clear and their was blue sky as far as you could see. We had an amazing view from our balcony which allowed me to take a bunch of panoramic pictures of the parts of the island we would be on. They definitely out did themselves.
When you get off the ship you can walk over to the post office for a character sighting. As you walk down even further you get the opportunity to take a picture with the boat in the back ground. This turned out to be one of our favorite pictures.

The island is set up well. They have several different areas for families as well as an adult only beach, a beach just for teenagers, as well as a child care area for the kids. Parents could use this if they wanted to take advantage of the private beach or any of the shore excursions that were not child friendly. All of these areas were accessible by foot but being that it was rather hot the tram they provided was our transportation of choice. The other benefit to spending the day here was the food. Everything was covered because the cruise provided it. That was awesome. You didn't have to worry about keeping your money on you and you could eat and drink as much as you wanted. How could you go wrong.

Jason, Kaylie, and I decided to spend the day lounging around at the beach. After taking a few pictures with Minnie and Goofy we went to find our spot to claim ours for the rest of the day.

Where all the paddle boats, wind surfers, jet skis, and big bubble bikes as I call it are located.

The area with the umbrellas are were the families were. It stretched for a few miles.

All of the above were taken from our balcony on the ship.

Kaylie using her pirate scope to see what type of fun things we were about to do.

Excited about getting off the ship.

One of my favorite picture of her and I from the entire trip.
She seemed to do well when it came to taking pictures with Minnie. Right after this we stood in line to take a picture with Goofy and she freaked. I ended up taking it by myself.

In the kids area they had an area known as "The Dig." The kids could come here and use tools to locate fossils. They had each area marked off for kids to find some huge dinosaur bones. Any of the small ones the kids could keep.

Even though we did not find anything it was fun. We weren't patient enough to stay when we knew the water was waiting for us.

Since we made a few stops prior to finding our spot the majority of the close up spots were taken so we had to walk a good ways to find some open chairs that had umbrellas. This actually turned out to be a huge blessing because the area we chose was significantly less crowded. Made for a nice relaxing afternoon. Kaylie insisted on having her own chair. I am not sure if she sat in it for more than five minutes.

After being terrified of the water at the Atlantis Kaylie was somewhat skeptical about getting int he water. Thankfully they had these little beach chairs that you could put in the water to sit in. This was just what she needed to start getting into the water.

This was the other thing we did to get her into the water. Since she loves to jump off of things we decided to have her jump in. Each time daddy would take her out deeper and deeper. Once he got far enough out he would swing her from side to side before putting her back in the water. This was all it took.

At first he was very careful about dropping her into the water. Once she realized it was fun she refused to let him stop playing with her.

Right after he swung her she would immediately turn around and run back to her chair to do it again.

The play scape behind Jason and K was for the older kids to play. It will be fun to see K out there one day.

She had a lot of fun using her swimming skills to kick back.

Not to far from where we were they had hammocks. We did stay on it too long but for the few minutes we did she had a blast swinging back and forth.

After this we spent about 30 more minutes swimming and lounging. We had a blast and Jason and my sunburn were keepsakes for us to show just how much fun it was. Thankfully Kaylie did not even get red, just a nice shade of brown.

This one took her awhile to find. Once she saw it she had to have it.

Daddy came to her rescue and pulled it down for her. In less than 1 minute our monkey was no longer a monkey.

That night was the pirate party. We knew Kaylie was tired but decided to try and make it work because they were going to do fireworks at 10:15. Disney Cruise ships are the only cruise ships to shoot off fireworks at sea and I did not want to miss it.

The show was a lot of fun. They had a lot of dancing and where very good at teaching everyone the dance so they could participate as well. Again...they are very focused on keeping kids and families moving. I loved that about them. Towards the end of the show the pirates attacked and took all the characters. Of course, Mickey came to save the day.

Captain Hook dropped in to capture everyone.

Mickey coming to save the day.

Definitely thought this was cool. He is going from smoke stack to smoke stack. He is a lot higher than I would want to be.

We got outside around 9:45. As she laid on Jason you could tell she was struggling to stay awake. Since I didn't know if it would be cold or not I brought her a jacket. Even though it was hot this worked to our advantaged because it had a hood on it. Once I put her hood on to cover her ears and block out some stimulation she was out cold in less than 2 minutes. She was so tired she didn't even budge when the fireworks went off right to the right of us.

The fireworks were amazing. I really enjoyed seeing them in the beautiful night sky with my husband and my incredibly passed out baby girl.

After the show I took over holding her since Jason had been holding her for awhile. When we got into the room we laid her in her bed, took her jacket and shoes off. She grabbed her animals and was out. You could have slammed a few doors and she wouldn't have budged.

All said and done this was my favorite day of the cruise. We had a great day full of new things for all of us to enjoy.