A Great Day Aboard

One of the reasons for haste while shopping was that I had a 4:30PM appointment at the golf simulator on the ship. It was my first time using one, and I stunk up the joint. Not *all* of it was my fault – no one told me that putting was useless on such a machine because it fails to register the motion, so I racked up a zillion strokes on the greens at Pebble Beach – but, yeah, mostly I sucked. 

It was fun though :)

Then it was back to the stateroom to shower and change for dinner. On our first cruise dinner required dress attire, a restriction that had been relaxed in the years since. We abhorred that change, even as we ourselves attended at least once in shorts, because part of the fun of the cruise was acting like you were fancier than your measly station in life. 

On the second day from port (Day Five by this tale’s reckoning) diners were encouraged to dress their best, and so I put on my shirt and tie and the kids and Lisa tidied up as well. Some of the kids whined that we would look out of place, and sure enough, some people still showed up in shorts, but oh well - I’m glad we dressed up. 

Dinner was marvelous. As always dinner was a four course affair. I wish I had a copy of the menu, but I know I had some marvelous roast duck, and a soufflé for desert that was so decadent, so wonderful, so undeniably heavenly that I do not hesitate to say that eating it may be the most pleasurable thing I have ever done, and by itself a justification for enduring forty years on this Earth. 

That said, not everyone could hang with the “fancy” food. LuLu by this night had already opted out and ordered off the kids menu. Grace kept trying but often couldn’t pull the trigger and actually *eat* the food – I ate half her escargot, and the rest went untouched. At least she tried. 

During dinner professional photographers came by to record the moment, and Tony and Jupa, our servers, made the kids origami animals. 

Afterwards it was back to the club for Smiley (the kid wanted to spend every spare waking moment there) and YaYa, despite her long standing wish to see Hades host the show that night, had some pressing engagement at The Edge and backed out. Lu went to The Edge too, but eventually returned to the room to read and chill. 

Only Junie remained with us to see “Villians!”, hosted, as I mentioned by Hades from Hercules. It tells the tale of Hades as he struggles to prove to the Fates that he’s just as evil as ever. 

Afterwards we took her to have her autograph book signed by Princess Tiana, and she got the chance to dance with Goofy in the atrium!

With a big day ahead the next day, I think we were all in the staterooms and asleep by midnight.

On the Beatles

Given all the adulation placed at their feet, it is impossible for The Beatles NOT to be over-rated. That doesn't reduce their greatness one bit 

The Bahamas

Trivia: Wifi on the ship costs $$, and I tried their pay as you go plan, but a scant two minutes of time cost me $4.25, so from that moment on our phones were silenced. On the trip last time WDW had paid wi-fi, something they now offer for free, so I’m hoping it will change on the cruise line before our next trip. Even without wifi the ship allows you to access the Disney Cruise Line Navigator on your phone. The app keeps you up to date on showtimes, locations and times for character meet and greets, and dinner menus. There’s also a built in chat function, which on board was pretty much our only means of communication with Grace LOL

***

So the glass bottom boat tour ends, and I try to take the family for a walk through Nassau, thinking to myself “How often do you get to walk in another nation’s capital? Maybe this is the only chance for the kids to do it.” 

But the trouble is, nobody *wants*to do it. Lisa is tired and put off by the nagging street vendors. Smiley and Junie  want to go to “the club” (although LK briefly rethinks her position later, just to make me happy). LuLu wants to go swimming, and while YaYa is willing to sightsee, one vote isn’t enough to sway the masses. I feel a little betrayed and say “fine, ixnay the sightseeing.” Our trip through Nassau lasted all of ten minutes, tops. 

I petered around the ship for awhile, wasting time while the kids did their thing and Lisa took a nap. In my gut though I knew I was going to head back out, and I tracked down the older two at the pool to ask for volunteers. YaYa  agreed and went and changed, but this was the time the crew wouldn’t let me take her off the ship because she was registered to a different (Lisa’s) stateroom.  It took awhile for the paperwork to get ironed out, but eventually we made it back onto land and did what Americans do best: we went shopping. 

My budget was small, but through some careful searching and some unexpected help from YaYa (not a girl known, by reputation, for unselfish gift-giving, but she rose to the challenge BIG TIME), we scored the perfect set of gifts. A braided leather bracelet for Smiley ; a white seashell anklet for LuLu; a less mature pink and white seashell bracelet for Junie; a set of three handmade bracelets that said “Bahamas” for YaYa (the cheapest gift of the group, at a buck a piece; a fourth was bought for Lu). For the house I bought a set of coasters housed in a wood turtle, as well as a hand painted magnet that vanished en route to Milwaukee.  For Lisa I bought a nice necklace that she would later,  sincerely call “gorgeous”. 

And then it was time to wade through the security checkpoint – manned, a little disturbingly, by a somewhat aggressive solider – and return to the boat. 

Oh, the soldier’s farewell to me as he waved me through? “Goodbye big mon Daniel.”

Uncool Miller, Uncool

I just found out that Miller laid off my Uncle Kenny after 49 years of employment. That action denied him his goal of making it to the half century mark with the company he joined as a teen. #dislike

I Guess She Was Tired LOL