Immigration

Day 8 of our Disney Cruise saw us docking in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. This, unfortunately, meant an early morning wake-up call for immigration. (For those who do not know, since you are entering a U.S. port from a foreign port, all passengers, including U.S. citizens, have to show their passports to Homeland Security). You had to clear immigration by 8:30. We were up early and went to the theatre around 7. The process was pretty painless -- they walk you into the WD Theatre and you sit for a while, then they lead you down to the front and you show your passports to the officer. They stamp your hand on the way out to show you have cleared immigration.

After that, it was off to breakfast. We decided to have breakfast in Parrot Cay this morning since we were already on Deck 3. It's a buffet and pretty much the same food as upstairs.

Skyride

Our excursion for the day was the Skyride to Paradise Point, which opened at 9AM. (Even though our tickets said to meet there at 8AM). We decided to disembark after breakfast and thought we'd wander the shops at Havensight Mall where we docked. Unfortunately, nothing opened there until 9. We were getting rather annoyed by all of the people asking us if we needed a taxi or wanted to take a tour of the island -- at least six stopped us before we even got out of the mall area. I guess we are just not used to the constant badgering.

We walked around for a little while and then went over to the Skyride. We ran into Kat from the DISBoards and her daughter and we rode to the top of Paradise Point with them. Once at the top, we headed to the observation deck for a beautiful view of the harbor with the ships docked and Charlotte Amalie. There was a short 'nature walk' to do, which worked off some of the dessert from the night before. We stopped and looked at the parrots, but didn't stay for the parrot show. Thomas found a T-Shirt he liked with a picture of all of the islands we had visited and bought that and then we queued up with Kat and went back down on the skyride.

Charlotte Amalie

Since we hadn't done any shopping yet, and since getting a taxi cab didn't seem to be a problem :) we decided to hop an open-air cab in Charlotte Amalie. The cost was $20 for the five of us. After a quick trip into town, we began browsing the stores. The shops were predominantly what you would expect in a Caribbean port -- hundreds of jewelry stores, a couple of liquor stores and some souvenir shops. Rebecca found some earrings she liked and we bought them for her as her reward for being good (by four-year-old standards) on the cruise. Janie didn't find anything in her price range, which given the cost of the cruise, was pretty low, unfortunately. After eight days on the cruise ship, the Wendy's and the call of a Frosty was enticing, but we resisted and hopped a cab back to the ship.

Leaving St. Thomas

After grabbing some lunch from the buffet (yummy baked potato bar), Janie and the kids went to see "The Santa Clause 3" while J. R. headed down to Diversions for a drink. Janie dropped Thomas and Rebecca off at the kids clubs and met up with him for "Crusin' for Trivia" in the Promenade Lounge. Another Johnny Walker Black for Dad, a Black Apple Martini for Janie and a virgin daiquiri for Alexander made trivia much more interesting. We ended up with 23/25 right and tied with a bunch of others for first place. Alexander didn't know who was the voice of the Prospector in "Toy Story 2" so we lost out on winning the "big prize" (which wasn't that big). If only we had guessed 'foot' instead of 'hand' for the body part with the most bones.

Alex wouldn't go line dancing, so he headed up to Deck 10 to watch the sail-away. Janie wanted to get her picture of Capt. Tom out on the overlook, but he wasn't out there today. It was quite interesting to watch the crew try to "unparallel-park" a huge cruise ship. We were docked between an RCL and Celebrity cruise ship. Slowly, the captain used the side thrusters to push away from the dock and then bring us out alongside the RCL "Adventure of the Seas". We waved farewell to the cruisers on the other ship and they waved back to us as the Captain played "When You Wish Upon A Star" as we backed out into the bay. The RCL captain returned the call on his horn, which sounded so weak as opposed to our musical tribute. As one fellow passenger said as their horn went 'honnnk' -- "Sorry, I don't recognize THAT song". The Captain turned the ship around and we headed out to open water.

Dinner

Thomas was playing basketball on the Wide World of Sports Deck, so he came over and joined us and we headed down to get Rebecca and get ready for dinner. Tonight was the casual dining "Master Chef" menu and we were in Parrot Cay. Alexander was going to order the 'roughy' until we told him it was fish and he hates fish. Later, he wanted to know what the 'terrine' was and we told him it was fish. He asked Steve and Steve said it was 'orange roughy' and he'd bring him a plate for dessert. Alex declined.

Movies and Goodnight

The evening show was the 'vocal talent' of Paris Bennett and Bianca Ryan. Paris had apparently been on 'American Idol' and Bianca on some show called 'America's Got Talent', which we'd never heard of. We aren't "American Idol" fans, so we decided to skip the show. Rebecca wanted to go the the kids' club again and they were making Flubber in the Oceaneer Lab, so Thomas wanted to do that, so we sent them back to the kids club and took Alex to Rockin' Bar D to see John Charles' cabaret show. Charles claimed to do 'musical comedy' so we thought we'd check it out. He was marginally funny, although he tended to suffer from "Saturday Night Live Syndrome" in which he let the joke go on too long, singing entire songs rather than just doing the funny part and moving on. Most of his jokes were too dated for the kids in the audience (Neil Diamond, Beatles and Dylan references, for example). We decided we'd go back for his adult show, since those are usually funnier as the artists don't have to avoid being rude.

Alex decided he wanted to go see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" in the theatre, so we said good-bye to him and went down to the lounge to have a drink before the Crew Talent Show. The Crew Talent Show was very funny. Some of the acts were a little off, but knowing these guys were not professional actors and actresses, they were quite talented and amazing. We loved the comedian trying to duplicate the illusionist's act from the day before and not quite getting it right and the "History of Dance" from one of the show cast had us rolling in the aisles. But the best part of the night was watching the crew tell us what they would be "if they were not upon the sea". It takes a big man to wear a tutu on stage.

After the crew talent show, we went to see John Charles' adult cabaret and this was a huge mistake. If we hadn't ordered drinks, we would have walked out after five minutes because apparently Mr. Charles didn't think that people might see both of his shows. He did the exact same songs and jokes as the earlier show. He didn't even listen to the audience and launched into his Neil Diamond even though no one called out for him to play Neil Diamond and that was when we left. Very disappointing performance.

It was close to midnight, so we went to get Rebecca from the club where she was lying down watching "Finding Nemo", picked up Thomas from the lab and went upstairs. Alexander was already in bed, so we said goodnight and got ourselves into bed as well.

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