Adventure In The Great Wide Somewhere

If you wake up super early on your final morning aboard, you can still enjoy a run around the deck, just be aware that the forward end of deck four will be closed off from all passengers even before arrival in the port. You encounter some of the most fascinating people early in the morning on the ship, lovely cast members, smokers, a man sleeping in the lounger on deck complete with a pillow and blanket, a real cross section. As I ran back and forth and watched as we pulled around Galveston island back toward the cruise terminal, I kept passing a lady sitting smoking on one of the loungers. Around the third time I passed her, she stopped to ask me what we were passing. I responded the eastern edge of Galveston island, I think. Next lap, she asked if she could talk to me so I stopped for a bit. She wanted to let me know how much she enjoyed the stage show the previous evening. I replied that Disney Dreams is one of my favorite. Then she said she wanted to thank me for putti...

Waking up on our last full sea day seemed like a good time to take another run around deck. Even though I'd slept in quite a bit after pirate party, the promenade deck still sat abandoned. Which suits me fine, as it makes my average slow running seem more acceptable. Sea air has a wonderful way of waking me up, which is good, because running into a head wind is not the easiest thing in the world.  Until finally. The sun peeked above the clouds and it was time for me to go inside and shower for the day. On my way back down the stairs, I passed one of the Cast Members cleaning out the elevators and caught a glimpse of Mickey clear through the elevator. I love this ship. Anyway, I showered while Ben went for a jog and then we headed out to breakfast. Since it was a lovely cool morning, we sat outback behind Topsiders and enjoyed the sun rising reflecting off of the Gulf and the peace of the early morning quiet. After a quiet morning of perambulatin...

After another early morning jog, Ben and I enjoyed another leisurely breakfast on the sun deck behind Topsider buffet. We popped up to deck nine to get a better view of Cozumel as we came into the dock. Sea days and port days feature entirely different energy on the ship. While the sea days feature a much more sleeping in and hanging out vibe, port days there is a purpose and focus as people wake up earlier, eat breakfast in a bit of a hurry and queue for their appointed Port Adventure meeting times. While on sea days the first announcements may not begin until the late morning, port days involve all ashore announcments sometimes quite early. Thankfully, these can only be heard in the hallways and public areas, so you won't be getting an unintentional wakeup call. (Intentional wakeup calls can be scheduled on your stateroom phone.) As the lines and craziness of the all ashore groups died down, we embraced our plan of the day, which consisted mostly o...

It's been a while since I wrote on this particular trip report, so if you need to catch up, you can check under the Adventures tab or here at Couples Only Cruise . I can wait. All caught up? We found ourselves with some free time with Casey and Chris, so we headed down to Diversions where we discovered Giant Jenga. This game replaced shuffleboard as my favorite on deck activity. On land, I am wonderful at Jenga. If you add in a slight rolling and rocking of a ship, it is quite a different game! So while we waited for Disney Tunes Trivia To begin, we created more and more perilously unstable towers until the inevitable point where gravity won. Chris enjoyed some minor good-natured heckling during Jenga. We laughed so hard. When Disney Tune Trivia began, Casey and I (and ostensibly our husbands) formed a team. For each clip played you needed to provide a title of the song and the movie. Although the men sat through their fair share of Disney films over the years and a...

The next day I woke up bright and early and decided to let Ben sleep in while I went out for my morning run. After a few miles of getting accustomed to the slight movement of the ship, the sun started to come up in earnest. If you happen to go on a cruise that includes sea days, do yourself a favor and wake up early at least once. You won’t regret it! Dawn at sea is truly magical. One last picture. Or two. And then I went in and showered in my room. Ben woke up and got ready for the day as well. We headed up to Topsiders to enjoy the view and some breakfast. They stock the ships with Krispy Kreme donuts when it is in port in the states and slowly defrost them as needed throughout the sailings. If you consider yourself a donut connoisseur, don’t eat them after the first day or two as they apparently lose something when they defrost after a few days. I went for fruit, fruit and more fruit, in an effort to not be too full for our brunch reservation ...

After a little more window shopping an taking a seat in Sessions to listen to the pianist for a while I started to really notice how late they pushed late dining with the fog delay. Second seating still didn't begin until 8:45 and I definitely started pulling a Winnie the Pooh. I needed a smackerel of some sort of snack, but dinner started really soon so I just decided to hold off and wait for our dinner. Finally, dinner time! Ben and I walked through Beat Street to Lumiere’s past the line up for pre-dinner photos and after a quick peek at one of my favorite hidden Mickeys, headed into the dining room. Hey Mickey! The servers escorted us to table 68. I don’t know if it was because of our location in the dining room or just the particular group of tables adjoining ours, but it seemed extra noisy in Lumiere’s this evening. The servers waited for Chris and Casey to join us. Chris showed up shortly, but Casey felt like staying in and wouldn’t be joining us that evening. Our serv...

Ben asked me whether I had my wavephone (I did now) and what I'd been up to (wandering around taking pictures.) He smiled, because naturally, what else would I be doing on a great big beautiful ship without the kids to mind?  Lifejackets sadly no longer required. They made for some pretty awesome accessories.  We wandered around a little more then headed back down to deck two to unpack. It is amazing how much space they give an interior stateroom for storage. I think this is when Ben and I started talking seriously about going on a transatlantic cruise. With luggage for only two, you could easily manage a stateroom even with fourteen days worth of clothing. Would it work for four people for two weeks worth of luggage? Either it would be a squeeze, or we could book two adjoining rooms, or I'd breakdown and do laundry in the middle of the Atlantic. I think this is the moment that the transatlantic cruise transformed from a "maybe" to a definite bucket list i...