The Royal Treatment ~ R is for Roll Call

We disembarked from the Disney Wonder a few days ago on Wednesday, January the eighth after a surprisingly packed four night voyage around the Gulf of Mexico and Cozumel.
But before we get to that let me introduce our cast of characters again.

I'm Lorelei (Lori to my friends and if you read this, you're one of my friends!) aka "that Disney cruise lady".

I wonder what it would look like if took a picture of the coffees in the reflection on the bar.

I love running, yoga, and watching marathons of Once Upon a Time with big mugs of almond milk hot cocoa usually while I'm in full on dream come true vacation planning mode typing away on my laptop either blogging or "window shopping" on www.disneycruise.com. I am a goofball, spaz, and all around pixie-dust nut.

I'm wife to a kind Disney-holic supporting man, Benjamin.

Contemplating his next Giant Jenga move.

He's survived ten years as my personal prince charming in the crazy part of our story where "they lived happily ever after". After our honeymoon at "the world", he was originally skeptical about DCL, trying to plan future trips with our kids around juggling both a short stay at WDW and a short cruise. Then we took a short 3 day cruise out of Port Canaveral, just to "try it out" without the kiddos. Now it's going to be like pulling teeth to talk him back into the parks and off of the ships...oh, well, I guess we'll have to do both.


The Mouseketeers

Our two darling children, who love WDW and  DCL equally, can each tell their port from starboard and help direct you with a Disney point to the nearest Oceaneer Club on any of the ships. Either can beat me at shuffleboard without trying (I'm dismally, appallingly bad at shuffleboard.)

Mickey Mouse Krispies? Whoop!

Christopher is a seven year old first grader known for his gluten free muffin happy dance. He lives in the Oceaneer Lab but will occasionally leave for a dip in the Mickey Pool.


"Happy Anniversary Mommy!"

Kylee Anne turned five years old during this cruise and is allergic to dairy. She and I both live as vegan as possible, while my DH and DS both make up for us in the meat and milk eating capacities.

The original big plan: save up for a super deluxe WDW DCL vacation for some time around our tenth anniversary in January 2014 with the caveat of "if they ever come to Texas, we'll jump right on that" as we live in the north Houston suburbs and the cruise sans airfare is much more reasonable.
Since they were in our neck of the woods, we decided to celebrate our anniversary in style and try out the Walt Disney Suite on the Disney Wonder and save the WDW part of the trip for another time.
January 2014 dates came out in late 2012. It looked as though DCL wouldn't be offering more Texas sailings for quite some time, so we opted for an itinerary the day following our anniversary (or the tenth anniversary of our honeymoon!) which spanned Kylee's fifth birthday.
Talking to Casey on facebook, we both bemoaned the lack of future opportunities to cruise DCL from Texas. She and her husband Chris decided to get their own room and we could all cruise together again.
The thing is, the royal suite sleeps seven in two bedrooms covering more square footage than my first apartment. This is, of course, a ridiculous luxury of space on a ship. We asked my sister if she'd like to sail the seven seas with us in our suite. She decided it would be amazing! Then a while later she decided she'd rather catch us on a future beach-y vacation instead. Since she dropped off the reservation, we decided to offer her spot to Diana (who is known interchangeably as Mimi or Grammy to the kids.)

Mimi and Kylee dancing at sunset.

Diana would be enjoying her second cruise with DCL and her first with kids.

Our happy band of Castaways waited eagerly for the commencement of our adventures!

This is Part 2 of an Ongoing Trip Report "The Royal Treatment" additional sections of this report can be found on the Adventures page.