It was only four quick days but felt like a couple weeks because of the amount of the stuff we did and saw...and the amount we ate.
The last day of our cruise was spent at sea, headed back to Florida.
We lounged around the pool and ate lots of chicken fingers.
Then it was showtime for Disney's BELIEVE, the signature show of the ship. It's brand new and contains all kinds of neat special effects and is as impressive as a Broadway show and MUCH better than Spider-Man (I saw it. It was garbage.).
The story revolves around a young girl whose horticulturalist father is too busy to spend time with her and gets annoyed with her foolish antics and doesn't believe in magic and is generally just kind of a grumperton.
Over the course of the show he goes on journey through many magical Disney lands and all the Disney characters teach him to believe in magic.
Like...the Genie, who performed "Friend Like Me".
And Merlin! (Played by Tom AKA Gaston.)
And Mary Poppins! (Played by Mallory.) Who performed "Supercalifrabwhatever"
Below you can see Tom and Justin as tribal drummers during The Circle of Life.
Then Tom's bestie Jay played the Frog Prince in the big Princess and the Frog number. (You can also see Ashleigh with the umbrella below playing the annoying best friend of the Frog Princess.)
While Justin played the tambourine...
And Tom played the accordion...
He then did a quick change in order to play Prince Philip. (I think that's the Prince's name from Sleeping Beauty right?)
Jay also played Aladdin and sang "A Whole New World".
Justin, who always ends up playing weird fat characters sang "Be Our Guest" as Lumiere.
Mallory sang Mrs. Potts's part.
It was a really fun show.
And in the end everyone believes in magic.
Yay!
Afterwards we had our last dinner at the Animator's Palate.
Risotto...
Salmon Tartare...
Raviolis...
Pork/Veal...
Chicken...
And we noticed that it would be very easy to deface the Mickey Mouses on the menus with a lewd addition to these drawings...I'll let you use your imagination.
Some final drinks of at crew bar...
And that's it!
Cruise over. Back to NYC. It was four days of absolute magic.
But for all the cast and crew on board it was about to begin all over again. Like Groundhog Day.
Crazy to think that since I got off the ship they've done the loop three more times already!
On Day 3 of the cruise, we docked at Disney's private island in the Bahamas, Castaway Cay.
The place looked unreal. The water was like magical.
It's a small-ish island. Just a bunch of different beaches and cabanas.
After a DELICIOUS lunch of Chicken Pot Pie...
We texted all our friends...(Disney has a cool on-board cell phone system)
And went to the beach.
The beaches are all spread out and there's a couple regular beaches for families, then there's a adult beach (which just means no kids, not no clothes), and a crew beach.
You have to take a little trolley to get to each beach.
We passed by the family beach. It looked crowded and awful.
Fun though...
But at the far side of the island was the quiet crew beach.
Lovely!
We spent the afternoon sunning. Then headed back to the ship.
Ohhh and we totally rode the aquaduck. It is AWESOME.
BTW we totally rode the Aquaduck and it was awesomeeeee...
This is a first person POV.
Just as we set sail, it started to pour.
AND THEN.
We had our dinner.
OMG.
So. There's the regular dining rooms. And they are delicious as you've seen.
But then there's two REALLY nice restaurants on-board called Palo and Remy. It's the same style of dining though. You just order whatever you want on the menu (you can order multiple entrees if you want) and they charge you a flat rate.
And at just $20 extra, it's kind of a no-brainer.
And that's $20 extra from NOTHING, because we didn't pay for our cruises. Woo!
For the fancy occasion we all got cleaned up a bit.
Are you ready? Ok.
We decided to eat everything family style.
It started with an assortment of pizzas.
Pesto-Prociutto...and truffle, shroom and sausage...
Then we had tomatoes and mozz...
Then this AMAZING truffle portabello polenta with a little crostini thingy...
Scrimps...
Lobster raviolis ina truffle butter sauce...
Veal ravioli...
Some seafood medley thingy...
Sea bass...
Oh I don't know who ordered this but it looked delicious and like pork...
...but it was LIVER and had the consistency of BRAINS. YUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Osso Bucco more than made up for that though...