Disneygeek - Disney Cruise Trip Report

Disney Cruise Day 4

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Trip Log:

Started off the morning with an early wake up call due to them turning on the thrusters.. we stopped a little after 4am to drop off an injured passenger. I got out of bed closer to 7am and was up at Cabanas around 7:30 for breakfast. The others headed to Royal Palace at 8am. I spent some time roaming around and made my way to the Buena Vista Theater to watch the Muppets. After the movie met up with the rest of my group back in the room to get some packing done then we went out to roam the ship a bit. Watched the Baby Jack Jack Incredible Diaper Dash and then headed for lunch at Royal Palace. After lunch roamed the ship some more taking pictures. Made my way to the Walt Disney Theater for the 3pm showing of Disney's Believe followed by the See Ya Real Soon! Event in the Atrium. After the even back to the room to finish up packing, copy some pictures and get ready for dinner. Headed down to dinner at Animators Palate. Then a quick stop by the room before going to Evolution for the comedy act. Stopped back by the room to put the bags out and then went for one more circle of the decks. Started on 11 aft and worked our way up to the front and then doubled back to play mini golf on 13 aft before grabbing one more snack at Maters. Walked up the Aquaduck line to get some pictures and then took in the pool deck one last time before heading back to the room to call it a night.

Thoughts & Observations:

Today was Pearl Harbor day. I thought it would have been appropriate to show the film in the theater but no such luck.
Our morning started off with the thrusters below again as we pulled into then out of port during the 4am hour to drop off the hurt passenger. Usually I am not that light of sleeper so curious why these woke me up.
Since I was heading to a movie at 8;30 my breakfast choices were a bit limited. The buffet in Enchanted Garden did not open till 9am and the sit down service in Royal Palace started at 8:00am which would be cutting it close. So I opted for Cabanas and again had a great breakfast and since it was early it was peaceful too.
I made my way down to the Buena Vista Theater and found a seat. They ran into some minor technical difficulties and had to restart the trailers. The second time through everything was good. I thought it was great that the theater on board had first run movies, like the Muppets that was only out for a few weeks in theaters. It could also do 3D, I stopped by to see a bit of Cars 2 and it looked great! The Muppet movie itself was ok. I enjoyed it because I like the Muppets but the film itself was nothing spectacular. I really enjoyed the Small Fry short at the beginning. It features Buzz Lightyear as a happy meal toy and is a fun short.
At 11:30am a crowd gathered in the lobby atrium for Jack Jack's Incredible Diaper Dash. This was a fun event, what's not to enjoy about baby racing?? The idea is to see who is the fastest crawler onboard.
For lunch we did not know what we wanted so we stopped by the Enchanted Garden and were not impressed so we ended up at Royal Palace ordering off the menu. The food was good but the service was a bit slow. They had a bunch of Cast Members, it appeared they were training servers.
There were three showings instead of two of the main stage show for the day. We opted to go the first one to free up some of our evening, so it was an afternoon, 3:00pm show time of Disney's Believe. They had some technical issues with the show and it was slightly delayed. Also they had some A/C issues going on too. The show itself was top notch just like the other two Disney productions. I thought the story line was a bit hookey but the performance numbers more than made up for it.
In terms of ranking the shows... for sure I would put Villains Tonight on the bottom. And its a toss up of Golden Mickeys or Believe at the top. I liked parts of each. I guess the wise cracking Genie of Believe would put it a bit above the Golden Mickeys.
After the show we gathered in the Lobby Atrium to see the Sea Ya' Real Soon! character send off @ 4:15pm. The characters came out for autographs then did a brief little good bye. The show was repeated later in the evening at 10:!5 also. I like how they have the little touches, such as the screen that drops down to play some clips and the confetti blast near the end.

Here is some video from the send off:
Dinner this evening was at Animator's Palate. Tonight was the regular Crush show. I was a little disappointed by the Crush interaction. He made his way around the room but really did not spend that much time in each area. I would say under 5 minutes in each. I understand that you cannot have him in two spots at the same time as that would be bad for guests to look across the room and see him. I thought they could have done a better job of segmenting the room so you could have more than one Crush out. This would give more face time with the character. I think he talked to no more than three or four people in our section.

The food tonight was slightly better than last nights, but still a disappointment to me. Again no real steak on the menu!
Since we had our evening open after the show we went to catch the Adult Exclusive Wilde and James show in Evolution. This was a repeat of a show they did earlier in the cruise but different than the one they did in the Walt Disney Theater last night. Again we found them very entertaining but their show was short as they needed to wrap up within half an hour for those that had a late seating for dinner. The show was very sparsely attended. Not sure if that was because of the time, that it was a repeat, or what.
I was curious why they did the Cruise Staff Farewell so late.. it was 11:00pm. I did not make it there due to this and the fact that we had a 6:45am breakfast time tomorrow.
I made one more night time pass around the decks to see what was going on and everything was very peaceful this evening. I was surprised that even with the amount of sitting I did at the shows, movie, etc today I still managed to walk nearly 4 miles!