franandaj
I'm so happy, I could BOUNCE!
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
Day 2
At dinner the night before, we set up a plan so that we could make our Port Arrival Time of 10:30AM. And we stuck to it pretty well. In hindsight I'm not sure how good an idea that was! The alarm went off at 6AM and I took a look at FB. Someone from our cruise group posted that the port was fogged in and the Fantasy was not able to dock yet. Fran slept a little longer while I read online and updated my “journal”. We went down to breakfast at 7:45. I made us a waffle.
Here's hers:
Fran got a plate of fruit for us, and some ham.
She got a bagel too.
I poured myself a cup of the brown water that they tried to pass off as Robust coffee, and we ate our breakfast.
Pretty soon we were back in the room packing all our final items, rinsing out her tupperware sandwich container and bringing our bags downstairs to catch the 9AM shuttle back to the airport. We had the same driver from the night before and he got us to the DCL drop off quickly.
That's where the snag hit. Evidently the port channel was closed to all cruise ships. Normally the ships dock by around 6AM and the “walk off” passengers can leave by 7:15. The ship had just docked when we arrived at the airport at 9:20. The CMs told us just to take a seat and they would start checking people in after about an hour. I barely found a seat it was so packed. At that point I realized I could have Starbucks! So I sent Fran off to get me one, that way she could also browse the stores while I sat in peace. Well as much peace as you can have when a bunch of kids are stuck in a holding pattern for a few hours.
At one point they made an announcement about boarding and everyone got up and in line. But then they were like. “Just kidding, sit back down.”
I took a different seat and ended up sitting with a three generation family. The daughter and husband were taking her parents on their first Disney cruise with their young kids. We got to talking about things and I mentioned having sailed out of San Diego and the grandfather says, “Well we live in Long Beach, so that would certainly be convenient.”
Of all the people in that room and I sit down with the ones from my hometown!
Fran and I waited a while before getting in the line, hoping it would go down some, but it only got longer and longer so finally Fran got in line in her scooter and I joined her once she got close to the front. She was so tired that she was falling asleep in her scooter. At one point I thought I had woke her up and I moved ahead in the line about 10 feet. I turned around just in time to see another passenger tap her on the shoulder. She made small noise of surprise and this time she did wake up and drove up to join me.
We were on the bus and our way at noon, and within an hour or so we got our first glimpse of the ship.
However when we were what should have been 10 minutes from the port we hit the worst traffic our bus driver had ever seen. It took us another hour to get to the ship.
Because there were three cruise ships that all arrived late, the entire port was a mess.
It took us two hours just to get to the port and another half an hour to get through security and on the ship. Even though we were late, I still stopped for our embarkation photo. Essentially this photo is about $300, and every time we take another photo, the price can be divided by the number of photos taken, eventually we whittled it down to about $7.75 per photo (and that isn’t counting multiple shots with the same character.
Our stateroom had been ready for half an hour, so we headed up there, dropped off our bags and took the elevator to the enchanted Garden to see if they were still serving lunch. No Dice.
So all the way up to Deck 11 for Cabanas. This would not be my ideal choice, but it worked out for us. I realized when we got up there we had forgotten to bring the Navigator for the day. We had wanted to study that at lunch. Even though we didn’t get to read them now, you get the benefit of perusing them while Fran and I get our lunch from the Buffet.
After making a quick scan of the place I decided on seafood and salad.
Fran got seafood and soup.
Normally I would have eaten my first plate before getting more, but we had 40 minutes and weren't sure how strict they were about closing down the buffet. So I got some roast beef, Mac and cheese and mashed potatoes.
Fran wanted some more Mac,
and this Asian stuff caught my fancy so we had these bowls.
Oh my gosh the noodles were spicy. I downed my water trying to cool down my mouth!
Then it was dessert time. Fran got a bunch. Oreo cheesecake, carrot cake, cookies, and this praline muffin.
She wanted me to get this mousse and I remembered how much I liked the apple cobbler on the Dream. They added vanilla Ice Cream and I put vanilla sauce on top. Yummy!
She couldn't finish off the cookies so she wrapped them in a napkin and took them back to the room. I put them in the tupperware container for safe keeping.
Then we headed back to our room so that we could find out where our muster location was. By this time it was 3:30 and everyone was coming in for a last minute snack., good time to leave!
The room:
The muster drill was relatively painless, and they let Fran and I go with plenty of time so that we were able to get to the elevators and back to our room before the crazy crowds descended on the elevators and staircases.
One of our suitcases had arrived by the time we got back so I started to unpack it and soon after the other three showed up. I decided to go up and get a drink of the day for sail away. It was called a Paradise Punch and it was pretty good.
Everything was going so quickly with the mayhem of the morning. I wanted to enjoy a leisurely sail away. Fran was ancy to go shopping. We had barely left port, but she called Guest Services and they told her that the shops were already open. I convinced her to wait until we got out of the channel, and I believe this was the first time in all of our cruises she came out on the verandah to join me for sail away!
Pelican
It’s a long way down there!
And now we’re out of the channel
Be back later with shopping, more fun, and dinner!
At dinner the night before, we set up a plan so that we could make our Port Arrival Time of 10:30AM. And we stuck to it pretty well. In hindsight I'm not sure how good an idea that was! The alarm went off at 6AM and I took a look at FB. Someone from our cruise group posted that the port was fogged in and the Fantasy was not able to dock yet. Fran slept a little longer while I read online and updated my “journal”. We went down to breakfast at 7:45. I made us a waffle.
Here's hers:
Fran got a plate of fruit for us, and some ham.
She got a bagel too.
I poured myself a cup of the brown water that they tried to pass off as Robust coffee, and we ate our breakfast.
Pretty soon we were back in the room packing all our final items, rinsing out her tupperware sandwich container and bringing our bags downstairs to catch the 9AM shuttle back to the airport. We had the same driver from the night before and he got us to the DCL drop off quickly.
That's where the snag hit. Evidently the port channel was closed to all cruise ships. Normally the ships dock by around 6AM and the “walk off” passengers can leave by 7:15. The ship had just docked when we arrived at the airport at 9:20. The CMs told us just to take a seat and they would start checking people in after about an hour. I barely found a seat it was so packed. At that point I realized I could have Starbucks! So I sent Fran off to get me one, that way she could also browse the stores while I sat in peace. Well as much peace as you can have when a bunch of kids are stuck in a holding pattern for a few hours.
At one point they made an announcement about boarding and everyone got up and in line. But then they were like. “Just kidding, sit back down.”
I took a different seat and ended up sitting with a three generation family. The daughter and husband were taking her parents on their first Disney cruise with their young kids. We got to talking about things and I mentioned having sailed out of San Diego and the grandfather says, “Well we live in Long Beach, so that would certainly be convenient.”
Of all the people in that room and I sit down with the ones from my hometown!
Fran and I waited a while before getting in the line, hoping it would go down some, but it only got longer and longer so finally Fran got in line in her scooter and I joined her once she got close to the front. She was so tired that she was falling asleep in her scooter. At one point I thought I had woke her up and I moved ahead in the line about 10 feet. I turned around just in time to see another passenger tap her on the shoulder. She made small noise of surprise and this time she did wake up and drove up to join me.
We were on the bus and our way at noon, and within an hour or so we got our first glimpse of the ship.
However when we were what should have been 10 minutes from the port we hit the worst traffic our bus driver had ever seen. It took us another hour to get to the ship.
Because there were three cruise ships that all arrived late, the entire port was a mess.
It took us two hours just to get to the port and another half an hour to get through security and on the ship. Even though we were late, I still stopped for our embarkation photo. Essentially this photo is about $300, and every time we take another photo, the price can be divided by the number of photos taken, eventually we whittled it down to about $7.75 per photo (and that isn’t counting multiple shots with the same character.
Our stateroom had been ready for half an hour, so we headed up there, dropped off our bags and took the elevator to the enchanted Garden to see if they were still serving lunch. No Dice.
So all the way up to Deck 11 for Cabanas. This would not be my ideal choice, but it worked out for us. I realized when we got up there we had forgotten to bring the Navigator for the day. We had wanted to study that at lunch. Even though we didn’t get to read them now, you get the benefit of perusing them while Fran and I get our lunch from the Buffet.
After making a quick scan of the place I decided on seafood and salad.
Fran got seafood and soup.
Normally I would have eaten my first plate before getting more, but we had 40 minutes and weren't sure how strict they were about closing down the buffet. So I got some roast beef, Mac and cheese and mashed potatoes.
Fran wanted some more Mac,
and this Asian stuff caught my fancy so we had these bowls.
Oh my gosh the noodles were spicy. I downed my water trying to cool down my mouth!
Then it was dessert time. Fran got a bunch. Oreo cheesecake, carrot cake, cookies, and this praline muffin.
She wanted me to get this mousse and I remembered how much I liked the apple cobbler on the Dream. They added vanilla Ice Cream and I put vanilla sauce on top. Yummy!
She couldn't finish off the cookies so she wrapped them in a napkin and took them back to the room. I put them in the tupperware container for safe keeping.
Then we headed back to our room so that we could find out where our muster location was. By this time it was 3:30 and everyone was coming in for a last minute snack., good time to leave!
The room:
The muster drill was relatively painless, and they let Fran and I go with plenty of time so that we were able to get to the elevators and back to our room before the crazy crowds descended on the elevators and staircases.
One of our suitcases had arrived by the time we got back so I started to unpack it and soon after the other three showed up. I decided to go up and get a drink of the day for sail away. It was called a Paradise Punch and it was pretty good.
Everything was going so quickly with the mayhem of the morning. I wanted to enjoy a leisurely sail away. Fran was ancy to go shopping. We had barely left port, but she called Guest Services and they told her that the shops were already open. I convinced her to wait until we got out of the channel, and I believe this was the first time in all of our cruises she came out on the verandah to join me for sail away!
Pelican
It’s a long way down there!
And now we’re out of the channel
Be back later with shopping, more fun, and dinner!
I would hate that.
I've read several of your trip reports and glad there's another to share. 
