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Disney Christmas Cruise

Breakfast and Castaway Club Reception

Monday was the first of three planned sea days for the trip and we planned to take advantage of our time aboard the Magic. We got up at our leisure today with no prompting from Mickey and had breakfast at Topsider's. Alex and Thomas headed to Ocean Quest, where they were going to stay until lunch. Rebecca wanted to go to the kids club and since we had the Castaway Club reception at 11, we decided to take her down there. That left us with some extra time, so we went to see the Art of Entertaining: "The Appetizer" in Studio Sea. Artur Bukalo, a chef for Epcot events was on board the ship and showed us how to make a delicious Avocado Mango Crab Meat Salad. The appetizer was wonderful and one we will definitely try at home, and the wine they served us, called "Conundrum" was very good and we said we'd be looking for it when we got back.

The Castaway Club reception was down on Beat Street with the main portion in Rockin' Bar D but overflow in the other clubs as well. The bar was pretty crowded. We remembered our last cruise when we were in the area that is now Diversions and there was hardly anyone there. At that time, they served you alcoholic drinks and a nice appetizer.

This time, it was Mickey Rice Krispies and sodas. We guessed as the CC gets larger, they have to scale back what they do, but hoped they consider doing 'tiers' of Castaway Club like airline elite memberships to encourage repeat cruising. They played a little trivia game to try to get people to mingle. It was reasonably successful, but would have been more so it they had given us name tags where we could have put where we were from on them to help with breaking the ice.

At the end of the reception, they had a drawing to win Castaway Club clocks and Janie's name was the first one selected, so we walked away with a nice little souvenir.

Lunch and Gingerbread House Building

We picked up the kids for lunch and then we went down to the gingerbread house building in Studio Sea. This was a bit disorganized. They were about 15 minutes late getting started and we felt a little rushed to finish with Natalie calling out "15 minutes left", "10 minutes left". We could have used more time, but we all enjoyed decorating the house and it sat in our room until the last day of the cruise.

Formal Night

Janie and Rebecca had "Tea with Wendy" at 4PM. Alex headed off to the Stack for "Gender Wars" and Thomas went to the lab for "Computer Madness". J. R. went back to the room to read a book and relax. We all reconvened at 5PM to get ready for dinner. It was our first formal night, so a bit more of a production than usual. J. R. had rented a tuxedo from DCL and the boys wore white shirts and ties. Rebecca had a red Christmas dress from last year to wear. We went downstairs to get photos taken before our dinner in Lumiere's.

Golden Mickey's and NTWINE

The evening show was the "Golden Mickeys" and were were sure if we would like this one or not, but we decided to go and were glad we did. It was very funny and the kids seemed to really enjoy it as well. After the show, we took Rebecca back to the Club for free time and movies. Thomas went to the lab and Alex headed up to the Stack to watch Monday Night Football -- the Bangles vs. Colts. (No, this is NOT a typo on our part -- the Navigator had the game listed as the Bangles playing the Colts. I know Indy has a bad rush defense, but I think they can take an 80's girl group. We laughed because we could totally see someone asking Brent or another Aussie cast member who was playing and them saying "the Bengals" and having it sound like "the Bangles" and a non-American football fan typing it up that way).

Janie and J. R. went to Rockin' Bar D to have a drink or two. The house band 'NTWINE' was playing. They were okay. They played and sang with a lot of energy and were really trying though and we enjoyed listening to them. We stayed around for Michael Harrison's caberet show and he was extremely funny. We hadn't been that impressed with him first night, so maybe he just plays better when he can do adult humor, or maybe it was the two Johnny Walker Black's. Probably a little of both, but we were rolling in the aisle the entire show.