The Chambers

Our 100th post! *yawn*

This weekend I’ve worked my way through another big chunk of the 2,600 or whatever photos we took and have now picked out my favs from the Disney Cruise.

Click this link to see a nice big slideshow (you know you want too!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612939854559/show/

Watch the piccies here:

Some of my favs from this lot:
Photographic evidence of Jackson having a doughnut for breakfast
The shots of Kylie and I’s toes with the Caribbean waters in the background
The price of water vs beer in the Caribbean

Cruise Update

Our 7 night Caribbean cruise which visited the US Virgin Islands ports of St Thomas and St Marteen and Disney’s own island of Castaway Cay was incredibly relaxing. It was a great change of pace from the previous couple of weeks.

Jackson loved the kids club and would have spent the whole cruise in there if wed let him. I’m sure some kids do spend nearly the whole cruise there, but we wanted to make sure he got to do some cool non-kids-club things with us too. Though there were a few times when we were tempted to just let the kids club crew know that we’d pick Jackson up on the Saturday morning after we’d had our breakfast and before we left the boat.

On board we enjoyed the new Disney movie “Bolt” in 3D twice (obviously not our choice). The first time we saw it Jackson asked the Assistant Cruise Director, who was dressed in his whites and looked like the captain, “How the ship was driving?” The guys (an Aussie) joked back that it was driving well thanks. He then asked Jackson if he’d like a special job, Jackson said yes and he got to be projected onto the cinema screen before the film started and was introduced as a specialist flown in from Australia who would start the movie. Jacko then got to press the button which started the film! He thought he was very special!

I finished off the first and second books in a trilogy I bought to read.

Kylie and I played Bingo and won nothing! Their Bingo boards are electronic, when the numbers are called out the digital board you have crosses off the numbers on each of the cards you have and even has red lights which light up when you have a winner. There’s not much to do except sit back, drink Mojito’s and hope your card tells you you’ve won!

St Marteen was our first port of call, after two days at sea. We’d done some research on the web before we left home and decided not to book one of the Disney shore excursions, but instead get a taxi up to the North East of the island and go over to Pinel Island.

Pinel Island is a great spot only a short distance off the main island. You get there by a 25 minute taxi, then a 5 minute water taxi ride. We got there early & before the first scheduled service and got to ride over with restaurant staff. The boats were like Thursday Island Taxi’s (short wooden boats, rather than tinnies) and after the last fishing trip with Pa I was sure Jackson wasn’t going to appreciate the ride. He was fine, providing commentary along the way and even offering suggestions on how the restaurant stock could have been better packed onto the boat. There are two restaurants on Pinel Island, the main one shut down for the day and they told us the forecast was for bad weather…. Gah! So, we hung out on the beach for a couple of hours and then jumped back onto one of the water taxis and headed back to the island, called the taxi to come and get us and went back to the ship ALL before the island had pretty much anyone else on it.

Jackson then went into the kids club and we went into St Thomas for a walk around. We caught the water taxi from the ship’s pier over to the shopping part of town. The scene probably would have been more appreciable had there not been a dredging operation underway on the main beach. Our last visit to this part of the world we visited Nassau and were underwhelmed by our visit, but St Marteen was a lot nicer and we enjoyed our walk up and down the street poking in for a look at a few of the shops.

Initially I was a little disappointed that we had to leave Pinel Island early because of the weather, but after getting into St Marteen for a look around and spending the day lazing on St Thomas, I’m glad of how it worked out.

St Thomas was our second port of call. I had booked one of the Disney Excursions – a round of golf at Mahogony Run, but unfortunately they did not get the minimum numbers for the tour to run, so I booked onto the same tour as Kylie and Jackson. We were headed to Magens Bay for a day of restful relaxation at a beautiful beach. It sure turned out to be just that, with a 20 – 30 minute bus ride over to the Magens Bay and to our deck chairs. The “taxi” we caught over to the beach was a converted Ford F450, the back tray converted into rows of covered seats and open sides. We spent the day lounging under some palm trees with the Caribbean waves dumping only a few metres away. There were signs up “Do not feed the Iguanas”, unfortunately we didn’t see any Iguanas.

After the day on the beach we were all a little worn out – all this relaxing by the seaside is tough going! We returned to the ship, freshened up and spent some time relaxing in the cabin. Our cabin was on the side of the pier, so we got to watch all the cruisers running late running to re-board the ship. There were some funny sights as people come running back, including a mum and dad who sent their young daughter running ahead to tell the re-boarding party not to leave without them, a rather large grandmother (we think) and her granddaughter who had to be picked up by a golf cart about 2/3rds the way down the pier, a group of drunk bikini clad girls who were that happy to get back and see the boat hadn’t left that they ran (in not straight lines) to the boarding crew to hug & kiss them and a family who were sure they were running late and bolted all the way down the pier having an argument about whether they were late or not and apparently the mum won a $20 bet from the dad because they were late.

With the last group on board, the ship blew its horn (which is to the tune of when you wish upon a star), the last of the ropes tieing us to the pier were thrown off and we were on our way.

We then had a day at sea and afterwards stopped in at Castaway Cay, which is Disney’s own island. The weather was hardly Caribbean, rather overcast and more like a NSW beach (tongue in check there) and we hung out on the beach until just after lunch and then went back to the boat for some rest.

On top of the kids club, we had Rafael, Valentin and Terri helping us out. Rafael and Valentin were our servers in the restaurants, they moved around to each of the restaurants with us and helped keep Jackson entertained, even cutting up some of his food into bite-sized chunks for him to eat more easily (the servers do this for most of the younger kids). Terri was our cabin host, he made the beds and tidied up after us and best of all, each night he made different animals from towels and left them on the bed. Sometimes they were even wearing Jackson’s sunglasses.

The cruise was VERY relaxing and just the tonic after NYC and before Disney World.

Over and out!

cc, Kylie and Jacko

On Thursday we checked out of the Polynesian Resort and headed off on our Disney Cruise. Disney make the process of transferring from the resort to the chip very easy. We’d packed up our bags the night before and had them tagged and inside our room by 8am – went off for breakfast and when we came back they had taken them off to transfer them to the ship. We did not have to haul them to reception, or over to Port Canaveral – they looked after all of this for us,

We travelled by bus from the Polynesian Resort to Port Canaveral, which is the port of departure for Disney Cruises. The bus trip took about an hour and a half and Jackson fell asleep literally as we rolled into the port area. After clearing through security, customs and checking in, we were on board the ship and in our cabin by 1:45pm. I could see one challenge in front of us already….. How would we fit all our bags in our cabin?! Our cabin is much nicer than the last cabin we were in on a cruise boat (the Fairstar 14 or so years ago). The cabin has a balcony / verandah which is nice to sit out on and watch the waves go by – or the US Naval ship which is “parked” beside us in Nassau, the Bahamas. The cabin is roomy (for a cruise ship cabin) and has a Queen sized bed and a fold out sofa bed for Jackson.

After everyone was on board, there was a mandatory evacuation drill and then a “sail away” party. After the main part of the party, we were able to find a quiet spot on one of the decks and watch the port slip away.

Returning to our cabin we were confronted by a mountain of fat lime green suitcases blocking our doorway and part of our next door neighbours. Oops. First we hauled all the bags in to the cabin and then we looked for places where we could hide the luggage. The first place I always hide excess stuff in my bedroom is under the bed!! Unfortunately, the bags wouldn’t fit here, so the next spot is the cupboard and basically all the bags were able to fit in there!

We watched the waves slip by for a while and then went off to dinner. For each dinner meal we moved trough each of the ship’s three main restaurants and were seated with the same people on each night. We shared a table with a family of three from Pennsylvania, they are probably a couple of years older than Kylie and I and have a son named Zach who is 6. The two boys hit it off and they are a nice couple, thankfully.

Our second day on board the ship was spent docked in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. We planned on spending most of the day on the ship and taking in a movie and relaxing after a busy week of theme parks. There wasn’t much which interested us on the list of tours you can do from Nassau and in the research we did before the cruise, Nassau itself didn’t appeal all that much.

As you can imagine, on a Disney cruise they are well equipped to look after kids. There is a kids club, which Jackson basically spent all Friday in – mostly by his own choice. Kylie and I had a nice lunch, which was enjoyed at our own pace and not Jackson’s and we watched a movie ‘Evan Almighty’ and relaxed. We did go for a walk through Nassau. I bought myself a few Cuban cigars – real Cubans (apparently)! Nassau is apparently famous for its diamonds, but the shops we looked in mostly looked like they opened last week and were run by “dodgy brothers inc”, so no more diamonds for kylie…

Dinner Friday night was in a restaurant called Animator’s Palate, where the walls start as black and white cartoon outlines and end the meal very colourfully illustrated images from Disney cartoons and movies.

Castaway Cay is a Disney owned island which is available exclusively for Disney cruise guests. We spent Saturday docked here. It is a great set up and we enjoyed our morning here immensely! We had a tip to get off the ship as early as possible today and to go and enjoy the island before the throngs arrived and it turned out to be a great tip. We were amongst the first off the ship and onto the beach. Arriving at the beach there were thousands of deck chairs lined out on the beach, but we were one of only a few dozen people there, so we had our pick of the chairs and took up a prime position on a couple of hammocks nestled under some palm trees. It was great to lie there and listen to the wind rustle through the palm trees (with a little bit of Jackson screeching in the back ground).

We had a swim, we had a cocktail, we had a rest in a hammock and got to relax for a few hours and then we looked up and the place was crowded with people from the ship. It was hard to see it as the same place, there were people EVERYWHERE! Most of them were vacationing Americans (who’d have thought that on a cruise out of America?), so you can imagine the din and what had happened to the peace and tranquility and the wind rustling through the palm fronds… ( hi to all my American readers, I’m sure you know what I mean ). At this point we elected for lunch and to head back to the ship.

We decided to take Jackson to his first cinema movie experience. Ratatouile (or however you damn well spell it) was showing. The ship has a 300 seat cinema in which they play recently released Disney movies. Jackson has seen this movie advertised, but not seen it, so was keen to go along and watch. It was an interesting experience. At times he was almost begging to leave as he was a bit frightened – but (being the kind and loving parents we are) told him we couldn’t leave as the doors to the cinema were locked (or something like that) and we were able to make it through the movie. Afterwards Jackson was very proud of himself for having sat through the movie and he told us he loved the movie, except for a few mildly frightening bits.

After dinner we retreated to the cabin to pack our bags and prepare to travel to Vegas….

The cruise was fantastic – we met some nice people on board and Jackson LOVED the on board child care and being able to play with kids. Kylie and I think he is missing playing with kids (no comments about my maturity please) and he enjoyed the child care a lot, while we enjoyed no being pestered and had a nice peaceful lunch. The entertainment on board was good and the staff were all very helpful and geared to looking after kids – an example of this is Galina (our dining room server) would cut up Jackson’s dinner for him and fed him his breakfast pancakes on the last morning of the cruise! I think 4 days of cruising was enough for us and we could have skipped Nassau, but then we would have just cruised from Port Canaveral to Castaway Cay and there would not have been much cruising going on.