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Disney Christmas Cruise

Morning at the Hyatt and Bus to the Port

Having slept poorly the night before, we were all in a Grumpy mood when morning came. J. R. dressed and put out luggage out in the hall for the Disney Luggage Fairies(TM) to take our bags to the Magic and then grabbed the boys to set off in search of breakfast. The plan was to repeat an early-morning Cinnabon fix that had worked so well on the last Disney cruise, but alas, the Cinnabon was not to be found, replaced by a Krispy Kreme. That would not do, but spirits were brightened by the sight of hot Chick-Fil-A chicken biscuits, a treat not found in northern Illinois, but sorely missed since our move from Georgia. So five biscuits and two sodas were ordered. The server asked whether we wanted them as a combo or as a combo. We told her 'no' and she laughed. It was apparently an early morning for her as well.

The kids sat on the balcony overlooking the airport atrium eating their biscuits while Janie and J. R. finished prepping, and then it was off downstairs to check in. Janie was getting nervous because the bags had not yet been collected and dreams (nightmares) of 10 days about the ship in the same pair of clothes were haunting her. We met the DCL representatives downstairs and have to admit the 'magic' had not made its way to the airport that morning. The first person looked at our tickets, wrote down our Hyatt room numbers and send us into see another person. This lady must have been new or poorly trained because she had no idea what to do. She complained about the fact the first rep had already taken our voucher and marked us off. We guessed she had some script -- do 'x', then 'y' then 'z' and she was lost because 'x' and part of 'y' were done already. Anyway, eventually she sought help from a co-worker and we were assigned to the Donald Duck bus. J. R. was regretting not coming down sooner so we could have been 'Capt. Mickey' again as we had been last time. It was cool being the first bus to the port last time.

After sitting and standing for about a half-hour, Donald was called and we queued for the buses. After encountering another Grumpy castmember who barely spoke to us as she led us to the buses, we began to 'wonder' when the 'magic' would begin. But soon we were on our bus and the DCL video with Mickey and his pals was playing and we began to get into the spirit. As we cleared the bridge and caught sight of the Magic waiting for us, Rebecca cried out 'there's Goofy hanging from the ship' and we were ready to go!

Port Canaveral

We were assigned boarding group 5 and went to check-in. The Castaway Club lines were rather long, but we met a couple from Wisconsin who were familiar with the Chicago area and talked to them while waiting. Turns out they had family back where J. R. was from in Pennsylvania as well, and so cue the 'It's a Small World' song and we talked about places we'd been until it was time to check in. We ran into them several more times during the cruise, but since we are so bad with names, we just referred to them as 'Wisconsin'. Check in took longer than expected due to a problem matching up names with passports. (Apparently "J. R." was confusing to the DCL cast member). But soon we had our Key to the World cards, our Castaway Club lanyards and pins and we went to find our kids who had found a place to watch cartoons.

We have to say we love the new boarding system. Last cruise, we had arrived on the first bus and ended up standing/sitting in line the entire time until we could board once other people started showing up. This time, we sat down in some chairs, the boys played Nintendo while Rebecca watched cartoons. Rebecca caught sight of her first character for the trip, Sailor Goofy, and J. R. took her over for a picture. She was a little scared, but warmed up. We took Thomas and Rebecca over to guest services, picked up the kids club pager and got Rebecca's wristband and Thomas' card stamped for the kids club and bought a couple of sodas at the little shop. One less thing to do once we got on the ship! Soon Disney was announcing the first people to board and calling numbers. When group 5 was called, we headed through the Mickey ears, showed our passports and swiped our KTTW cards for the first time! We skipped the embarkation photos since we have those from other cruises and we were not planning to buy that many photos anyway and walked up to be announced: "The Gray Family, on their Third Disney Cruise".

Afternoon on the Magic

First order of business was lunch since Chick-Fil-A biscuits can only sustain you for so long. On our other cruises, we had done Topsider's, so we opted for Parrot Cay buffet this time. Our first taste of all-you-can-shovel-down-Disney-Magic-food-food-food was great as we piled our plates high and emptied them. Janie had spied a dessert with her name on it on the way in and circled back to grab the first of what would be many yummy desserts on this cruise.

With time to kill until our room was ready, we headed to Guest Services. We had two staterooms and needed spare keys to each and Janie and Rebecca wanted to do Tea with Wendy. So we got that taken care of and the Guest Services cast member recommended tickets for the gingerbread house building, so we got those as well. With still a little time to kill, we took a quick walk around the ship to show it to our daughter and got to our rooms right after 1:30. The kids slipped into their swimsuits and we went upstairs for some pool time.

After swimming, we headed back to the rooms. Janie decided she wanted to try to change our dining rotation from LAPL so we wouldn't be in Parrot Cay for both formal nights, so we went down to Beat Street. After a bit of a language barrier (the castmember didn't get why we wanted to change seatings since we were already early seating), he changed us to APLA and told us to be at Animator's Palate at 5:30 for dinner. We visited the kid's club so Rebecca could see what was what and then went back to the rooms.

Our luggage began arriving around 3PM, so we started to unpack. We met Dee and her son Keith from the DISBoards as they hung a beautiful Cinderella stocking she had decorated for us on the fish outside our door. We raced to unpack as much as we could before the Boat Drill and mostly finished before we had to don our life jackets and walk down to Animator's Palate, where our station 'S' was located. J. R. was thinking that in the event the ship was sinking, the thought of walking DOWN to an inside location would not feel very comforting. We finished unpacking after the drill and went up to Deck 9 for a drink and the sail-away party. It wasn't much longer before the crew started counting down and we heard the melodious sound of 'When You Wish Upon a Star' from the forward funnel and we were on our way!!

With our seating change, dinner was now at 5:30, so we headed down to our rooms around 5PM to change for dinner. We headed to Table 62 of Animator's Palate and met our servers, Steve and Johnathan. We hit it off right away, except for a small problem where Rebecca had ordered cranberry juice and Johnathan brought chocolate milk. Funny thing however, is for the rest of the cruise, Rebecca ordered chocolate milk for dinner. It was like some serendipitous mistake where she learned she could have chocolate milk for dinner. First night in Animator's was not the 'show' night, which Johnathan said they were saving for later in the week.

First Night on the Magic

After dinner, we stopped at the pin station in the lobby and bought one of the limited edition pins and a pirate pin and we hung out in the lobby for the tree lighting at 7:45 before heading to the theatre for the 'All Aboard' show with Rich Purpura and Michael Harrison. We had seen both of these guys on our cruise four years ago and they really need to get a new act as we remembered most of the tricks and jokes from the last cruise!