[Disney Cruise] Days 5 and 6

Goodness this post is LONG overdue. But what's that saying... better late than never? I'm going to take that saying and run with it!

This is the last installment in my cruise recaps : Days 5 and 6! I hope you've enjoyed the recaps and haven't been overloaded with all my Disney photos :)

In case you missed them, Days 1-4 can be found here : Day 1 // Day 2 // Day 3 // Day 4

I'm embarassed and ashamed that it has taken me THIS long to get this post up. I'm sure most of you have already forgotten that I even went on a Disney cruise back in October. It's been THAT long. (insert monkey covering eyes emoji). Even though it's been so long, I still did want to do a recap for my memory purposes. Since I haven't scrapbooked in AGES, this blog is serving as my memory and my scrapbook, so I want these details for myself for later.

When I last left you, we had just finished Day 4 of the cruise. We are now on to Thursday, Day 5. To be honest, I REALLY wish that I had recapped this sooner because I've already forgotten so many details and when I looked back on my phone to find the pictures I took, I was a little confused at where they were. Apparently we either didn't do much or we did so much that I was having so much fun and forgot to take pictures. We'll assume it was the latter.

So, Day 5, Thursday, was our second to last day on the ship. It was a full day at sea as we were traveling back to the port in San Diego. We were all pretty sad that our vacation was coming to a close and we tried to get in as many ship activities as we could.

First thing in the morning, we went to breakfast and then saw that Jake and Sofia had some character signing times so we knew we wanted to hit those up since it was our last chance to see them. I didn't have high hopes for Mason seeing them since he pretty much hated almost everyone else. BUT, Jake. Oh my goodness, Jake. He LOVED him. I mean, do you see that smile (below)? He loved him so much that after he and I took our picture with Jake, Mason ran back into the photo with his cousins. After their photo was over, he didn't even want to leave. Of course we found his favorite on our second to last day onboard!

After breakfast and our Jake and Sofia sightings, we went back to the room to get ready to go to the pool. It was a bit windier and colder than it had been the past couple days but we didn't think anything of it. (We later found out that we were sailing away from an impending hurricane, but we didn't know it at the time.)

We waited in line to meet Daisy and then we played by the pool for a few hours, had some lunch, and then headed back to the room for Mason to take a nap.

After Mason napped, we got ready for our very last dinner on board our cruise ship.  We stopped by to see Pluto and then headed over to our restaurant for the night. Dinner was so, SO good (I mean, we had beef wellington and baked Alaska!) and it was a great way to end the cruise. We said goodbye to our server (who was AMAZING and is probably 98% of the reason that I probably gained 5 lbs (or more) on the cruise) and headed back to our room to put our luggage out so they could take it to the holding area to be taken off the ship in the morning. We then headed to our last show onboard. To be honest, I can't even remember what it was called but I know it was AMAZING!

After the show, we headed back to our room for one last sleep and then in the morning, we woke up early (we docked at 7am), had some breakfast and waited for them to call our color and character (we had tags that we put on our luggage that corresponded to a color and character (we were purple Minnie) and when they called that color and character, you were allowed to get off the ship). At this point, we finally had cell phone reception again and the information came through that we had just narrowly escaped a major hurricane that was now hitting Mexico (where we were a couple days before) which also explained why it was so windy the day before.

When we got off the ship, we went to go pick up our luggage which was surprisingly organized. I was actually really impressed with how well they organized it considering there was luggage for 2,500 people to disembark. Once we found our luggage, we headed to the shuttle bus area to take us back to our car. We had parked off site in a little park and ride and just had to call for a shuttle to come get us and take us back to the parking lot. Or so they made it seem that easy. I could use a few choice words for how I felt about the situation, but I'll just say, it definitely was NOT as organized or as easy as they made it seem. We called for the shuttle, the shuttle picked up a different group of people. We called again and approximately 20 minutes later, a shuttle came... for us and another family of 8. There were clearly not enough seats for us all, but we lap sat and made it work since those people had been waiting for forever also. 

We finally made it back to our car, we said goodbye to our family members, and we headed back over to the dock to take some pictures of our cruise ship, the Disney Wonder. I had wanted to get pictures before we got on the ship, before our cruise started, but we were dropped off basically right at the terminal by the shuttle bus and I didn't have a chance so I wanted to make sure we got some before we left. Because, I mean, look at that beauty!

Someone was a little worn out after his week long party (aka vacation with little to no naps) that he crashed almost immediately when we got into the car!

And that's that! Looking back on these pictures, it makes me SO excited for our next cruise! Yes, we had so much fun on this cruise that we booked another one for 2017! It's officially less than one year away and to say that I am excited would be an understatement.

When we went on this cruise, we had NO intention of booking another one anytime soon. I mean, I won't sugar coat it, cruises are not cheap. BUT when they give you an amazing deal if you book another one while you are onboard this cruise, you just can't say no. To be honest, I was actually SHOCKED how easy it was to convince Seth that we should take another one, but he must have had such a good time (or been on a Disney vacation high, one of the two) that he was excited to book another.

I was planning to do a recap post with questions and answers, but I'll be honest, it took a LONG time for me to get to this one, so that probably won't happen. A couple questions that people had asked already that I planned to answer in the post though were :

How far in advance did we book? We booked FAR in advance. Probably about a year and a half. I think it was around June of 2014 that we booked our October 2015 cruise and then we booked our January 2017 cruise when we were onboard in October 2015. We did this for multiple reasons.
1) It takes time to save and pay for the cruise. It's not something you can just say you want to go on tomorrow and have enough money to pay for it (or at least we can't).
2) Also it happened to be the time of the cruise we wanted to go on. This particular cruise was offered only in October 2015 so when we found out about it and saw the good deal that was going on, we jumped on it. Which brings me to my next question...

Did we know we wanted to go on a Halloween themed cruise or did it just work out that way?  It really just worked out that way. I'm not sure that I would have ever chosen to go on a Halloween themed cruise, but it was amazing and I'm so glad we did it. My sister in law found this amazing deal through her friend who is a travel agent, asked if we wanted to go, and I said yes. We chose the week in October that worked best for all of us and we went. It was also a major plus that for our first cruise, we didn't have to fly to a port and then leave from there (we just drove down to San Diego and then left from there), but that wasn't necessarily why we chose the cruise.

Why did we choose the cruise we did? In terms of choosing Disney Cruise Line, I knew I wanted to go on a Disney cruise so that's how that worked. But in terms of knowing where I wanted to go or when we wanted to go, it just kind of fell into place based on the good deal we found. But moving forward, I would look into time of year (we booked our next cruise during off season so it was cheaper) and where the cruise goes and choose that way.

If you have any other questions for me, please leave them in the comments and I'll email you back (PLEASE make sure your email is associated with your profile so I can email you back)! I'm definitely no cruise expert, but I did have fun, so if your question is, would I do it again, the answer is obviously yes :)

[Disney Cruise] Day 4

I'm back with another installment of Disney cruise updates! We're on to Day 4 now, Cabo San Lucas. If you missed Days 1, 2, and 3, you can find Day 1 here, Day 2 here, and Day 3 here.

On Day 4 of our cruise, we stopped in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. While Seth and I had both been there before, we still decided to get off the ship and explore. We went in 2009 with Seth's mom and aunt and while we did go zip lining, we didn't really explore as much as we wanted to.

Our day started VERY early...so early in fact that we had to set an alarm (the horror!). Our excursion was set to meet at 7:15am so we could all disembark together, so we had to get up, dressed and fed by around 7:05am. No tour should ever start so early on vacation, but nevertheless, we made it (barely - Seth had to run back down to guest services to get a new Key to the World card since he somehow lost his between leaving the room and getting to the meeting place - luckily it's easy to get a new one)!

Now Cabo was different than Ensenada. Due to the cove being too shallow for the cruise ship to pull in and just the way that the dock is situated, the cruise ship had to "dock" in the middle of the ocean. It's kind of hard to explain, but we were close, we just had to take little shuttle boats to get to the land. They pulled up right next to our ship, there was a little walk way, and we got on the little boat. It was a short 10 minute boat ride to get to the actual dock in Cabo. Now, this is the part where if you get sea sick, you might have an issue. It was BUMPY or turbulent, or whatever you call choppy water. I was a little worried about Mason because we didn't know if he would get sea sick or not, but turns out, he's perfectly fine!

Our ship with the little "shuttle ships" taking people to the dock

So we got to the land, got off the boat, and headed to our meeting place for our tour. The tour that we signed up for was two parts - one by sea and one on land. We started off with a little harbor cruise on a yacht like boat (it was smaller than the cruise ship but bigger than the shuttle boat). I'll be completely honest. I was a little disappointed in this part. The boat ride was literally maybe 30ish minutes and took us to one side of the arch and then the other (as you'll see below). I thought maybe they would give us some history on Cabo while we sailed, but it really wasn't anything special. The view though, almost made up for the lack of "entertainment" from the boat staff.

Once the harbor cruise portion of the tour was done, we made our way over to the bus stop area to get on a bus for the land portion of the tour. Now this tour was pretty great. Our tour guide, Armando, knew tons of information about Cabo and about Mexico in general and was super informative. It almost made up for the lack of information on the harbor cruise. The land portion of the tour was roughly an hour, maybe a little longer, and took us to a couple different stops. Our first stop was a restaurant/hotel that over looked the ocean. This was definitely one of the highlights as the view was GORGEOUS and... they gave you free booze! Haha. Each person got a ticket for a free drink and when we got there, we exchanged the ticket for a small beer. Unfortunately for Mason, he is not old enough to drink, so I gladly took one for the team and had two beers myself.

After we spent some time taking in the views, we were back on the bus and on to our next stop - a glass factory. Now, while I think glass factories are big in Mexico and they make some amazing products, I kind of felt like this stop was a ploy for us to buy stuff. I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing how they make the different glass products (they showed us how to make a vase), but after that, we were just given time to walk around... aka shop. We didn't end up buying anything and headed back to the bus to wait for the rest of the passengers.

Make yourself comfortable!

The selfie king.

At this point, the tour was pretty much over and they took us back to the bus station. We ended up hanging out in town and having lunch at Señor Frogs and walking around to do a little shopping while some of our other family members went swimming with dolphins.

Around 2:30pm we headed back to the boat as we were told that we had to be back by 3:30pm so the ship could leave. We got back on the ship, got cleaned up, and got ready for dinner. Dinner that night was themed - Pirate Night!

Now with all our adventures that day, you may notice that Mason never napped. Keep this in mind...

After we finished getting ready, we took a few pictures, and then made our way to the restaurant that we were having dinner at that night - Triton's. Though we ate there on night 1, on this night, all the restaurants had the same "pirate" themed meal so we were simply in that restaurant just for convenience.

The dinner started off fine, everyone was doing well, Mason was a little cranky but nothing I didn't think my phone couldn't fix until... all of a sudden he put his head down on the table and we didn't see him moving for a few minutes. THE KID FELL ASLEEP AT THE DINNER TABLE. No nap - 1, Mason - 0. Uh oh. He was fine for a few minutes, we were even mean and put a pirate hat on him, and then all of a sudden, his arm slipped off the table and he almost fell into my nap and he was not happy. 

I put him on my lap and he fell back asleep and we tried to finish our dinner, but Seth ended up taking him back to the room after a little while.

He ended up waking up shortly after they got back to the room, Seth ordered some room service for Mason, and I came back shortly thereafter (with an extra dessert that our waiter basically made me take to Seth since he missed dessert - not that I was complaining). I also made Seth take a picture of me in my pirate outfit since we didn't have a chance to really take pictures since Mason fell asleep.

We ended up missing the show that night, which was a comedian/juggler, but since Mason had a little power nap, we were able to go outside for Mickey's Pirates of the Caribbean Party. I'm so glad that Mason woke up for this party because he had an absolute blast dancing to the music and enjoying the show and the fireworks. And we even got to see Mickey fly through the air!

After the party was over, we called it a night. We went back to our room and got ready to go to bed in preparation for Day 5!

Days 5 and 6 coming soon!

[Disney Cruise] Day 3

And we're on to Day 3 of our cruise - our first full day at sea! In case you missed it, you can find Days 1 and 2 here : Day 1 and Day 2.

Day 3 was our first day at sea and surprisingly we had a lot planned! It started off with some silly pictures as we were waiting for Daddy to finish getting ready so we could head to breakfast. I just die over this picture. I mean, look at how he's holding his little hands. So proper!

After Seth was finally ready, we headed to breakfast and then it was time to meet the princesses! When we boarded the ship, we were able to sign up for a day to see the princesses. You see, the princesses were special. You couldn't just walk up to them and see them like the other characters, you had to get (free) tickets to see them. These tickets also included Anna, Elsa, and Olaf, which you already know are always highly sought after. Luckily for us, some of our family members were smart and checked in earlier than I did and got on the ship about 3 hours hours before us. They were able to register our whole party for the meeting of the princesses and so we were able to meet them on the first day at sea.

I apologize for the quality of these pictures. The lighting on the ship was HORRIBLE (probably on purpose so you'd by their pictures but I was too cheap to buy their $20.95 8x10's so this is what I've got!). Mason, as you can tell, was less than impressed with the princesses.

Rapunzel... she's ok.

I'll teach you to take my picture with a princess, I'll stick my finger up my nose! Oh wait, we're still taking pictures?? Not happy!

Belle... she's ok too.

But Cinderella?? NOPE. No way. Get. Me. Out. Of. Here!

Yeah, don't like Olaf, Anna, or Elsa either, Mom!

Tinkerbell? Ok, she's ok too.

After the traumatic princess encounter, we went back to the room to get ready for Mickey's Halloween Party. (Already re-capped, if you're interested in reading, you can find it here).

The party was super, super fun and definitely got us in the Halloween spirit! When it was over, it was time for lunch, so we went to the top deck to have some lunch by the pool and of course, have some more frozen yogurt.

At this point, it was now time for Mason to take a nap. My mother in law super generously offered to watch him and let us go to the pool. So we went back to the room and got ready and then headed back upstairs for some pool time.

A couple hours later, we headed back to the room to get ready for dinner. It was Halloween themed night, so we all put back on our Halloween costumes and prepared for dinner at the Parrot Cay restaurant. We noticed that Goofy was having a photo opp on the deck before dinner, so I went early to get in line and Mason and Seth met up with me a few minutes later. Goofy he actually liked!

Mickey bars for dessert!

After dinner and before the show, we met Donald. He was ok with Donald. Then we headed over to the theater for that night's show - a musical of Toy Story. This night's show was excellent and though I say it about every night, Mason LOVED it!

We came back to our room after the show and found this guy waiting for us.

At this point, it was time to head to bed and prepare for our port adventures in Cabo San Lucas on Day 4!

Stay tuned for Days 4, 5, and 6!