Magic-al Thanksgiving Cruise ~ Because Chris and Kylee Love Swimming

More than they care about frostbite.
So I woke up extra early this morning to take some pictures around the ship of all of the cool things I’d learned about during the Art of the Theme Tour on Thursday, and of course, to put in five miles on deck four.  I really think that anyone could be a runner and learn to love it if they could run on a beautiful ship in the middle of the ocean during early morning and stretch at sunrise.

I got a quick picture on the way out of our stateroom of the lovely FE that Jen of Stitches N Bows put together for us. (Thanks!  It’s exactly what I’d wanted!)

 

And an extra photo to show our pretty little Thanksgiving foliage inspired magnets, courtesy of me and all that free time I allegedly had since Chris was in Kindergarten.

Then I headed up to deck ten for some nighttime stack pictures.

 

 

And of course a Mickey Pool picture or two…

 

 

And I also took some pictures of the lovely Chihuly chandelier from my home deck.

The seating around the fifth floor atrium where Ben and I hung out and I met Marisol got some pictures as well.

I absolutely love these little detailed insets around the trim of the floor, the inclusion of the old rarer Disney characters just makes this for me. And I took one last photo of the chandelier from the fourth deck landing before I headed out to run.  After a nice cool run (the high this sea day barely topped 75) I headed back to swap with the DH.  Ben headed out to circle the decks. I showered (quietly). And both kids woke and dressed before breakfast arrived.  Yep, we did the room service thing.  If it’s included, why not?  Ben pretty much tied the room service person to our room, so he hopped in the showers as we started slowly picking away at our meals.  Soy milk and cereal and fruit plates while the kids enjoyed the whole “Saturday Morning Cartoons” vibe of the meal.  They don’t watch much television at home (as I speak we’ve been home for most of the summer, and more often than not we go days without watching TV, movies, or video games) but on vacation, why not?

Chris as he enjoys  the virtues of “Building a Building” and “Clock Cleaners” looks very optimistic...perhaps I should take more photos of him zoning out in front of the tube?

Kylee eyes her brother’s breakfast, finishes her own and then insists after finishing my additional fruit bowl that she is still starving and must go fetch further sustenance. Thankfully Ben emerged dressed and decided we could go hit up Goofy’s Galley while he and Chris finished up their breakfasts then meet up at the pool after everyone’s appetite abated.

 

 

Kylee brought her little jacket as with the wind on the upper decks; it seemed quite a bit colder than it had while running on deck four.  She nibbled away on her apple and insisted she still wanted to go swimming.  So she did. And splashed and splashed and splashed.

 

 

She went around to the kiddy splash area. After a bit Chris joined Kylee in the pool and Ben joined me in huddling in sweatshirts next to the pool.

Chris is sticking up in the left ear.

Warm Tea.  Yum.

I grabbed a mint tea from the drink station (we were the only ones crazy enough to be in the pool area when it was this cold and early.)

See.  No one in sight.  In day light.  On a sea day.  Weird, huh?

Kylee turned bluish, Chris basically voted to go to the Oceaneer's Lab instead. So I dried Kylee off and popped her back in her nice dry warm clothes and jacket and dropped her in the Oceaneer Club.

Ben and I decided to find out whether “Innovations: Theme Parks & Resorts” interested us.  I thought it kind of could have been so much more interesting than it ended up being.  It involved a countdown of the top ten evolutionary ideas Disney theme parks and resorts developed.  It basically was a slide show and read along scripted narrative and I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it.  I didn’t attend it on the next cruise we took on the Magic, and I wouldn’t go to it again. Ben seemed to enjoy it alright, but it just didn’t live up to the amazing stellar wonderful neat behind the scenes tidbits feel that the Art of the Theme Tour ended up making me expect from all the adults only entertainment.  Maybe my expectations were just too high.  Anyways.

After a lap around the walking track on four (yes, we cannot get enough of it, even after running on it for an hour each) Ben and I headed over to Studio Sea to catch the Art of Entertaining-Battle of the Chefs hoping it would be like food network.  Well, the setup promised a lot as there were rows upon rows of ingredients out and a very large cooking area in the stage with double setups of everything.  Learning from the Tea with Alice, we selected a table close to the front and I got ready (without Ben’s knowledge) to volunteer him if they needed people for anything.

Ingredients laying in wait.

As luck and this cheerful CM would have it…they did need a volunteer, actually five volunteers.
They took two of the chefs away from their galley duties to come and have a showdown of sorts.  Each had thirty minutes to prepare an appetizer, entrée and dessert. They both started with (not Ben, but other) volunteers as their sous chefs and after brief introductions during which the lawyer confirmed she would attempt not to cut herself but couldn’t promise any level of skill as an assistant the host revealed that this challenge would include a special and somewhat rare secret ingredient.

Teams getting underway

Would it be snapper?  Pepsi products?  Inquiring minds guessed all manners of things.But each chef got presented with their ingredient and pulled the dome off to reveal…absolutely nothing.  The CM explained when he put the ingredient out ahead of time it was so highly prized among the crew that it wouldn’t make it out of the galley.  And from behind his back he produced a ginormous bag of Milk Chocolate M&Ms.
That’s right; the secret ingredient was M&Ms.  Ben started looking confused.  As a member of the judging panel, he stood fairly good odds of being served sirloin with a side of M&Ms…

Awaiting the M&M secret ingredient meals.

He LOVES watching Iron Chef, if it’s one of his favorite chefs and he’s currently catching up on episodes of Master Chef, but I digress.  So as I amusedly sit there contemplating what exactly Ben will possible be eating Ben stands and hands me the wave phone across the table.  Now wave phones are the bane of my existence.  The ones in our staterooms oddly would default to speaker mode when answered and, and, and it’s just not my phone. KWIM?
This post is Part 17 of an Ongoing Trip Report Covering Our Thanksgiving Cruise 2012