Disney Vacation: Day 4

Sunday. Our final full day of the cruise. I could cry just thinking about having to leave. Truth be told, I may have shed a few tears, for many reasons. ie. in the first broadway style show, Cinderella married the prince, tears. Dinner, the first night, the parade of servers, tears. packing our suitcases, crying.

But back to Sunday, it was another port day, this time at Castaway Cay (pronounced key) which is Disney's own private island in the Bahamas, more specifically South Abaco, The Bahamas. Here's a map to give you an idea of it's location to Florida and you can see Nassau (where we were the previous day - Saturday) directly below the 'A' marker

the 'A' marker is Castaway Cay, and Nassau is directly below that

That morning, we woke up pretty much ON TIME! WOO HOO! We got up and enjoyed the scenery out of our window.

The little shack like building to the left is their post office! We tried to get post cards to mail out, but unfortunately it wasn't open that day ):

This was looking to the right from our window. The end of the dock, and out into the clear ocean.

We got ready for our day, and headed up to breakfast, again at Cabana's. I wish I had pictures, but it would just be empty plates, because I inhaled it. Hashbrowns. We'll just leave it at that. SO GOOD.

Then we headed off the ship and onto the island.

Disney Magic from the ground at Castaway Cay!

The boats you could go out on excursions on. Things like fishing, parasailing etc.

Looking back, I wish I had a picture of us here in front of the ship, but we were in a rush to get off, and then on the way back... well, you'll see...

Waiting for the Tram to take us to the family beach to pick up our rentals

It was so pretty, to see the preserved island, it wasn't over done, it still felt like an island.

On the tram!

On the tram!

The tram dropped us off and we made our way down to the rental shop, on our way, we passed Mickey, and Goofy!

Finally, we arrived at the rental shop, and picked up our snorkeling gear. We made our way to an area with loungers and hammocks to set out stuff down and put on all of our snorkeling gear...

One of his many OTHER falls...

Someone FINALLY managed to get on...

Then Summer fell...

And Tyler flipped Ryan, who clung on like a monkey

At Castaway Cay, you have the family beach (where we currently were) there is a net, so no sharks etc, can get into that area, and it also keeps some fish in, so there is guaranteed fish sightings. They have what is called the Lagoon. This is where we went first. The lagoon (since it is essentially a large fish tank with people) they have several habitats for the fish, as well as sunken hidden treasures... you'll just have to keep reading to see those (;

Our first large mistake, was not checking the water temperature... simply put, it was FREEZING. It took us probably 30 minutes, and inch by inch, to get into the water. By the way... it's REALLY hard to walk in flippers... we walked backwards to the beach, then backwards until we got far enough into the water to swim... those fins bend under and we were stumbling all over ourselves (and we were sober!)

Finally, we all just sucked it up and went in. It eventually wasn't SO bad, but it was still chilly. And, it was AWESOME.

Tyler

Summer and her sand dollar she found

Crystal clear water

One of the habitats

That would be me.

A sunken boat that the fish swim through

Sorry if these videos make you nauseous. They make me nauseous. So shaky, but it's really hard to swim with flippers, in cold water, and try to see what you're recording - while holding a camera steady

What is awesome, is that because these fish are around swimming humans, all the time. They are desensitized to us, so check out this video. I'm pretty sure this is what it's like to be a mermaid. Just call me Ariel. (;

Why yes, that is me, swimming through a school of fish, who don't even care.

Now, remember those hidden treasures they sunk, that I told you about before?

Sunken Mickey, he's the front of a boat, I'm not sure the proper term... But the statue that goes on the point of the front.

Minnie!

This is Tyler trying to take a picture of me and Minnie, but unfortunately, it is hard to see and I didn't deflate my vest... darn.

Me swimming to Minnie.

By this point we had been snorkeling for several hours, probably 2-3 hours at least. Our feet/ankles hurt, and it was time for lunch on the island. It was a buffet style, and it was decent. Not stand out, but still good. And they had self serve ice cream. done.

After lunch, we made our way to the adult beach, Serenity Bay, which is 18+ only. So much more peaceful and quiet as there are no kids. We decided we would snorkel out here as well... The difference? No net. We were open to any creatures to come in, and we were free to go out as far as we want. And to get more than waist deep we went quite a ways out. I did not take any pictures in the water, because Summer and I were constantly searching for any approaching creatures. What was really cool is that we saw a huge starfish, several (15+) crawling conch shells, and a few large fish... These fish were NOT desensitized to people, so as we got close, they booked it. Tyler and Ryan each grabbed a dead conch shell, and we made the long swim back to shore... really, really long swim.

Tyler's conch shell

Then Ryan touched his and it "purred" according to him, and he realized it wasn't dead... so he took it back out. A woman sitting near us informed Tyler that they would not allow us to take it back on the ship, so he took his out as well.

We decided it was about time to head back to the ship, Tyler and I still had a spa day to use, and we wanted to try that AquaDunk slide.

my poor sunburnt feeties, I wore Tyler's shoes on the way back to the ship.

And I needed a hammock picture, so yeah....

My snorkeling sunburn... OUCH! This was taken still on the island.

Then we hopped on tram 1 back to the family beach to drop off our snorkeling gear

Then posed at these:

Hopped on tram 2, and headed back to the ship!

As I mentioned, we had a spa day (the one we won for our newlywed style game loss) it is called the Rainforest Room. It's a quiet room in the spa, with 3 different saunas (gentle - simple a slightly warm room, aromatherapy - a room with some scent - I don't know what scent, they weren't extremely helpful... and then a mild steam room - quite intense.) Then it also had 3 showers, a tropical rain forest shower, a fog shower, and then a regular shower with soap etc. The premise of the Rainforest Room is to "restart your body by transitioning from easy saunas and warm showers, to intense saunas and cold showers" I have a feeling they are still having plumbing difficulties, because what we experienced, were, cold shower, freezing shower, ice. I've heard that other people on cruises within the few months before us, had to have them call plumbers to fix issues. Thankfully ours was free, but it was quite disappointing that we had zero guidance on the set up of the room, or how to even properly work their showers (knobs, buttons, the shower heads also twisted) but they pretty much showed us to the changing rooms (which also weren't working, which I'm in the process of writing them an email with our experience, they should know the issues to fix so others can have a great experience) after showing us to the doors of the locker rooms, they were gone. POOF. never saw them again until we left. cool. not. Another feature we really enjoyed, was heated tile loungers. They were a little intense with my back sunburn, but I think the whole experience helped my sunburn. We really enjoyed the loungers, probably the most.

Because we spent so long in the spa, we missed our show, which I heard was fantastic, so I'm a little disappointed we missed it, but Tyler and I had a great time relaxing together in the spa!

We then got ready for our last dinner of the cruise, at Lumiere's, the fanciest of the restaurants.

Lumiere's is located in the Grand Atrium (where we boarded the ship) through the double doors

It was Beauty and the Beast themed (get it, Lumiere's, as in the candelabra guy from the movie!) The restaurant also had a mural of a Beauty and the Beast scene: here's a picture. (it's not my picture, but it gives you and idea of the inside of the restaurant.)

The light fixtures

The rose from the movie was the center point of the light fixture

What is unique to Disney Cruise Line, is the Rotational Dining set up. As you've read, every night we rotated restaurants (we're assigned, we did not choose) at the first dinner, they ask for our cruise key (called a Key to the World - it acts as our identification, room key, credit card, everything.) which has our dining table on it. We are then escorted to our table (this happened every night) to meet our table mates, and our servers. These people (table mates and servers) all rotate with us each night, so we got to know them on a personal level. Our table mates were two guys from Orlando, that worked at Sea World! Our server, Marcus, from Trinidad and Tobago, was awesome. He would leave us with riddles while waiting between courses of our meal, and was really awesome, I feel that we really got to know him and his personal life during our 3 dinners. Our assistant server, Irma, from Montenegro, was really sweet, she really opened up on the last night, and was telling us all about her home country. (I had NO idea where or what it was... Mr. History Tyler, knew all about it.) We also had a 'head server' who was in charge of a chunk of tables, and we saw him once a night, and he came around, engaged us in conversation, asked about our meals and made sure we were satisfied. His name was Wemick, but I am not sure where he was from.

At Lumiere's with our head server, Marcus

At Lumiere's with our assistant server, Irma

Another cool part of the Rotational Dining, is that each restaurant has a different uniform, so each night our servers worn a different outfit that fit the theme of the restaurant, which added to the experience (as opposed to them wearing one uniform throughout all three restaurants)

Another cool feature, is that when we booked the cruise, we had the option to mark whether or not we were celebrating anything. We chose Honeymoon (it was our first real getaway since, so why not?) and anniversary. At dinner on our last night, at Lumiere's, after desert, we had our head server, server, and assistant server sing and present us with a "Happy Anniversary" desert... It was equal parts awesome and embarrassing. The song (to the tune of Happy Birthday):

Happy Anniversary to you, KISS.

Happy Anniversary to you, KISS.

Happy Anniversary to you guys,

Happy Anniversary to you. KISS. KISS. KISS. KISS.

Complete with Mickey head sprinkles, and Mickey head fruit sauce.

After dinner, we headed back to the room to find all of our disembarkment information, and luggage tags. Then reality sunk in that we had about 30 minutes to pack and have all of our checked baggage outside our door ready to be collected... well, our poor stateroom host, waited and waited. Passed several times while I was frantically trying to cram everything in our suitcases. We finally passed off our suitcases, and by this point had missed the farewell character performance (BOO!) and headed off to karaoke (fun fact, Summer is a phenomenal singer) to watch Summer sing. Unfortunately we were about 15 minutes late, and missed her sing. (I swear, we are late for everything.) After we watched a few hilarious people (and a few awesome ones) we headed back to our room. We had to be at breakfast at Lumiere's at 8:15am, with every thing that we didn't check the night before, because immediately following breakfast we had to get off the ship. It was bittersweet. Breakfast was no where near as fantastic as  the previous two mornings at Cabana's. In Lumiere's we had a menu to order from. I simply ordered fruit and hash browns (I am so serious when I say that these hash browns were the best. ever.) I only asked for one, but Marcus (our server) brought me three. yum. I wish I could have gotten some in a doggy bag for the 4 hour drive home. I'm drooling just thinking about them.
We finished our breakfast, said our goodbyes and headed back through the grand atrium to get off the ship.

This was hanging over our exit, yes tears filled my eyes.

As we headed back off, they scanned our cruise card to verify our picture matched our face, and we headed back into Port Canaveral to pick up our checked luggage. Which was quick and painless, we then joined the US Border Patrol and Customs line, and handed him our paper that said what all we had purchased out of country, he checked our travel documents and off we went. We headed back to the car, played car Jenga trying to fit all of our stuff in the trunk.

Then we headed home.

Normally, this would be the end. BUT in all of my forgetfulness there are a few pictures that I forgot to share during the other posts, so I'll add them all here!

This was our towel animal on the first night - two swans in a heart, with rose petals

Towel animal night 2 - hanging monkey

Towel animal night 3 - lobster

I think that is everything, I really hope you guys enjoyed reading these, and because of the positive feedback, I will continue to post about the eventful things we do (:

xoxo, T & H