A Day in the Bahamas

If you haven’t been on a cruise before, let me just remind you that the food and non-alcoholic drinks are free. Free breakfast, free lunch, free late night pizza, free room service, free calories at your beck and call at all times. Provided you remain active and burn off some of your excess, it’s a grand thing. 

We started Day Five with the breakfast buffet at Cabanas on Deck 11 – out our stateroom, left, left again to the elevator, up to eleven and left a final time. It’s quite the spread, highlighted (for the kids) by Mickey Mouse Belgian waffles with whipped cream and strawberries. Yum. 

Soon tho, it was time to go ashore at Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, a sight that had appeared in our porthole as soon as we awoke. 

(We had an inside stateroom at the aft of the ship, but the ‘porthole’ was linked to a camera that transmitted to the screen whatever was actually outside at a given moment.)

We disembarked through security, being extra sure to take along our citizenship papers for the authorities. [ Although we had blown a lot of time and some money on the effort, not once were they asked to be seen in the Bahamas. ]

We’d paid for a glass bottom boat tour excursion, much as we had eight years before. Lisa remembered it as dull, but I had fond recollections and wanted to give it a go. Unlike last time, when an energetic Bahaman native gave the tour and fed the fishes oatmeal, this one was run by a heavily tattooed Hispanic American who tossed a few slices of bread overboard. 

Not quite the same ambiance. 

We started the trip on the main deck, where the highlight was some free fruit punch, but I soon meandered upstairs with the kids to the ‘viewing deck’, and I’m glad I did. In the open air the trip was much more exciting. Just as a tour of the harbor the trip was worth the cost. We saw military vessels, legitimate shipwrecks, houses owned by Oprah Winfrey and J.K. Rowling, and lots of gorgeous sights. Over the rails the kids saw schools of fish, a stingray, and more. 

Lauren drove me crazy. She’s a bundle of energy and sometimes common sense leaves her, and more than once I thought she’d hop right over the rail and into the water. I was very grateful when Lisa came upstairs and gave me an extra set of eyes to watch her. 

[In the picture where Junie is standing by the pole, note the woman in the gray dress kneeling with her back to the camera. Along with two other Asian women in her party, she insisted on leaning so far over the railing that their dresses rode up, showing the world their panties. While normally I’m in favor of such things, I thought it inappropriate given the time and place.]

The actual glass bottom portion of the trip was a bust. We were escorted down to the viewing room but didn’t see much more than we had over the rails, and certainly less than when we snorkeled later in the cruise. 

Keep in mind this wasn’t a Disney excursion, but a private party. The men’s room was broken, as was the toilet in the ladies room. The latter didn't stop people from doing what nature demanded, and by the time the lady in front of me had a chance to use it it was disgusting. Instead, she held her young daughter over the sink to urinate (or so she told me). I don’t blame her. When it was my turn, I peed in the sink too, rather than overflow the nasty multi-person mess that was the toilet. Yech. 

After the viewing and the restroom fiasco, the tour guide ran a trivia contest where the kids each won a Bahamas keychain. 

If the excursion sounds awful, it wasn’t. It wasn’t the best, but I enjoyed it more than the one in 2006. The kids seemed more enthused by the sights and the sea than I had hoped, and the views were breathtaking. It was worth the (comparatively) small amount we paid for the tickets. 

Much of the day lay ahead . . .

Then and Now

The Cruise Begins

One bit of trivia: to conserve energy the electricity in the stateroom will only work if a room key is left in the slot by the door. That's swell, but when you have adjoining rooms you often enter through one and walk through to the other, meaning you are in utter darkness until you find the light catch. All in all, the earth conscious step was a pain in the behind. 

Anyway. 

After the party Lisa and YaYa had a wee disagreement about the latter's behavior at said event, but soon enough we put her in her dreaded club and went on with the afternoon. It turns out, btw, that her "horrible" club would CONSUME her time on the ship. Given a free reign, and a midnight curfew, she seemed to spend every free moment at Edge, or with friends she met there. Meanwhile LuLu seemed more withdrawn, spending time at the club but also retreating to the cabin to read or chill out.

 As with every night, the family reunited for dinner at 5;45. Disney does rotational dining, where every night you eat at a different restaurant but are served by the same crew. The trouble with night one was that the ship was rocking. I mean literally rocking. The weather in Florida was cold (47 on one day) and when that cold air hit the water it did not create ideal conditions. I like the feel of a ship beneath me, and find it comforting, but this was NOT the norm. By dinner PD, Mom and I were a little 'eh"but ok, LK and GC were unaffected, but poor Lu was gray in the face and sick to her stomach. 

I offered to leave dinner and retrieve dramamine from our stateroom, but that was a mistake. The ship is big - one lap of the deck is 4/10th's of a mile - and I had to wind through the length of the ship over several decks. Most of the time I was swaying to one side with the roll of the ship, and I saw one child get sick. By the time I returned to dinner I was done, and almost as ick as LuLu. We both excused ourselves before dessert and headed to the stateroom to lie down. Lisa finished dinner, put Parker and Lauren in their club, dispatched the older two, and returned to the stateroom.

By eight I had recovered enough to attend the musical "The Golden Mickey's" with Lisa and Junie, who we of course picked up from the club. Before the show the captain appeared to explain the reason for the harsh conditions, but promised by 11 it would vanish and it would be smooth sailing. That earned him an ovation from the crowd. And you know what? The rest of the cruise was like buttah. 

The show was good, and afterwards Lisa and I put Junie back in the club with Smiley and lounged around. At 11 or so I retrieved them both. The pic of the air hockey table is the last one you'll see from that area of the ship, as they've updated their security protocol  and ban photography from the kids areas (I didn't know at the time). 

I took the two little one's up to the 11th deck, where I got them  some pizza and we all sat and watched the moonlit water. From there it was back to the room, with three more great days ahead of us on the Disney Dream.

Sailing Away

After we stopped in our staterooms, checked out the tween/teen club "Edge", and hit the 24hr ice cream stand, it was time for the lifeboat drill mandated by maritime law. Unlike in '06, you did NOT have to don your lifejacket or actually go to the lifeboat, instead simply meeting at the pre-assigned point for your stateroom. (ours was "O"). It spooked LK but its necessary and important. 

Then it was time for the "Sailing Away" party on the pool deck, where we whooped it up! Grace was a bummer, as she was convinced she would hate the Edge and insisted on acting like a downer. Lisa temporarily solved that by dancing like a fool, saying she'd stop only when YaYa got into the spirit of the moment. 

At some point the horn sounds and you look to your left and the skyline is receding - you're on the move!

Boarding the Ship

Before you board the ship you have to go through several steps at the terminal - showing proof of citizenship, signing paperwork, etc. A big change from our earlier cruise was the use of photography as a security measure. We had our pictures taken in the terminal, and they were assigned to each of our "Key to the World" cards that serve as ID/room key/payment on board. Junie's was grumpy as heck, something that was mentioned to her by just about every cast member who viewed it over the cruise LOL.

In addition the kids photographs and accounts were attached to our own; each time we would claim a child from an activity our photograph popped up on the computer screen next to theirs. No visual match, no kid. As we're a large family we needed two staterooms (I was officially with LK and OJ) and for that reason I was stopped from taking Grace off the ship in the Bahamas when the photo system didn't match. (I completed paperwork to add the other kids to my card at that time). 

The woman, who was from MA, also offered us 'free' onboard airline checkin - I put that here for what the pros call "foreshadowing". A second station assigned each of the three younger kids a yellow wristband that contained all their information as well as a GPS tracker. And then it was on to the ship, where, as is custom, the family name is announced over the loudspeakers. We asked them to announce us as "Team Slap", but the lady spoke it as "Team Slap Family", which was kinda a bummer. But our cruise had begun!

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockerfeller by Richard Norton Smith

My 842 page beach read on the trip.