Disney Cruise Part 3: Evening Fun

 My favorite time on the boat, by far, was the evenings.  The dinners were wonderful, I love ordering whatever I wanted and not worrying about the price.  The food was delicious but the service was even better!

These were our Waiters, Marcos and Kaya, they were AMAZING!  They knew what drinks we would want and had them waiting when we arrived, they entertained the kids, didn't roll their eyes when we ordered multiple desserts and even cut the kids' food for them!  They followed us around each night to whichever Dining room we were eating at.   If Eloise started fussing they were there to talk to her and bring her ice cream to keep her happy.  It was wonderful! 

 Grandpa was happy to share dessert with Eloise too.  

 At one restaurant they had an interactive movie of Crush from Finding Nemo.  It was super funny and entertaining, Teagan thought it was so cool.  Crush would talk to different people sitting at the tables.

 This was formal night, eating our delicious food.  Lobster Ravioli for me and maybe a stuffed mushroom smothered in gravy for Zac.

 Eloise and Teagan both loved the Mac N cheese.  All healthy eating and food battles went out the window for a week and it was a nice break for all of us.  They both had Mac n cheese for almost every meal.  I was surprised that the adjustment back to normal was fine, the kids went back to good food pretty easily.

 It was not uncommon to order two desserts.  We both did pretty much every night.  Teagan LOVED ordering desserts.  We had Teagan at a table behind us with some of his cousins and he loved giving Marco his order, I think he felt pretty grown up.  

One night we all got to draw pictures on these special mats.  After dessert was served we got to watch the pictures come to life on screens around the room.  Mine was the giraffe on the left.  We never saw the kids' pictures and I missed a picture of Zac's. dang.

 Our autographs, that came up after the show was over.

One night was designated as "Pirate Night."  Everyone gets dressed up and the food is pirate themed and they have a live pirate show on the top deck that is really fun.  They even had a firework show.  It was pretty amazing.

Teagan loved getting facial hair, via eyeliner.  He was saying "Arrrrrrrg Matey" all night.

Buffest pirate you'll ever see.

 Several people pointed at this little cutie and said: "Oh look!  A pirate princess!!!"  

The day we figured out having the older kids sit at their own table so more adults could sit together was beautiful for everyone!  The kids got a little more freedom and independence than usual, and the adults got the same.  

We went to see several of Disney's broadway type evening shows.  This particular time was Aladdin.  It was so good.  I think we all really enjoyed it.  Teagan looks mad, but you should have heard him rolling over the Genie's funny jokes during the show.

I think our favorite part was the late evenings when our best friend David hosted different activities.  He was so hilarious and he was good to "keep it Disney" even with the adults only, late night crowd.  

 We played Battle of the sexes, team scavenger hunt, match your mate, 80's trivia, and a few more that I can't remember.  Every night David had different games or entertainment for us that had us laughing so hard.   On the scavenger hunt night Zac was our team leader and his expertise and quick feet won us first place!  It was close between us and one other team so Zac had to do a dance off with another guy and he killed it!   Zac actually did the worm.  It was hilarious.

 This was a family show, it was an amazing juggler who was pretty hilarious too.  The kids loved it (except Eloise, she was totally unimpressed).  He walked onto a unicycle while juggling, it was crazy!

He invited the kids to go sit up front to get a better seat.  Teagan was so amazed, a few times he walked right up to the stage, jaw dropped, for a closer look.

The last night we got to go to a fancier, adults only, dinner at Palo.  The food was incredible.  The service was above and beyond amazing.  There was only one server per table and he kept a close eye on all of our needs.  It was the perfect ending to our cruise.

Disney Cruise Part 2: Onboard Daytime Fun

Right away Teagan wanted to go see the famous kids club.  He had been talking about the Monster's Inc room forever and was so excited to see it!  They had an open house that first afternoon so Eloise got to go in the 3-11 year old club and play too.

They have a Toy Story room that has life size characters from the movie.  All the pieces for Mr. Potato Head were removable, Eloise thought it was awesome.

Toy Story is one of Teagan's favorite movies so he was loving it!  (In this picture you can see into the main room where they did group activities, they have a floor that is made of a bunch of interactive screens, it was really cool.

Teagan loved the computers in the kids club.  He constantly begged to get dropped off there during the day, which worked out nicely for us.  We had plenty of family time so it was nice that he wanted to get dropped off so we could go to shows or movies periodically in between the family stuff.  

Eloise was not a fan of getting dropped off at the nursery, poor girl would scream when I dropped her off, but usually stopped about 30 seconds later.  After a week of getting dropped off she is SUPER clingy.  She doesn't want me to be out of her sight.  As much as I love the snuggling, it's getting a little difficult to get things done with a baby hanging on my leg.

She did love meeting all of the characters, every time she saw one (which was quite often) she would point at them and run to them, it was so cute.

She even let Goofy hold her.

Teagan refused a picture with Minnie Mouse at first, so we said he didn't have to.  As we were about to leave he burst into tears because he wanted a picture with her, he got really close and personal with her, lol!  Lack of sleep at it's finest.

There were lots of times we just ran into characters and only got a quick blurry picture.

Then there were times when we waited in line for 20 minutes and still got a blury picture...

They had a princess gathering where you could meet 5 princesses.  I did not want to be in these pictures, but the characters whose face were showing really scared Eloise, go figure.  She was not excited about the gathering at all.

The princesses did love her though, they were delighted to see her cute little self.

Teagan's favorite character (at the moment that I was making t-shirts for the trip) was Donald Duck so we had to make sure to meet him.

Donald Duck is #1!!

Zac and Teagan were playing mini golf and Max was too, they had to get a picture.

Mini golf was at the back of the boat on the top deck so it was really windy, not friendly on long hair.  I left the golfing to the men (and Teagan).

The boat was beautiful, we loved just walking around.  They had an onboard detective game.  In the game you had to collect clues from the magic picture frames.  They looked like a normal picture, but when you held a special card in front of it, they came to life and became little interactive games.  We solved the mystery of the missing puppies and one about the muppets.  I didn't get any pictures of Teagan, dang!  He was a super star at it.

They had these tile murals all over the place that were beautiful!!  They have a whole line of bathrooms whose walls are intricate tile designs from top to bottom.  I loved looking at them!

A scene from Finding Nemo completely made out of tiny tiles.  It was amazing!

Walt Disney!  

We had fun at the splash pads, pools, and waterslides, but I never had my camera for those activities so we have no record that they ever happened.

Here are the kids on their way to the pool though.  

Things not pictured; mini golf, Zac playing basketball with a bunch of 10 year olds at the sports court, Ellie's nursery, the view from our verandah, the buffet, the kids eating ice cream (this happened so often, I can't believe I don't have a single picture of it), us at our 3D movie of OZ, and so much more that we got to enjoy on our days at sea.

Our Disney Fantasy Cruise! Part 1: Getting There

We were so lucky to be invited on a Disney Cruise with Grandma and Grandpa Durtschi.  We knew about it for over a year and had a blast looking forward to and planning for it.  It will probably take several posts to get all the fun pictures up.

I was really concerned about the long flights and travel days, but the kids ended up doing great.  There were definitely tantrums and difficult moments, but they never lasted too long.  They each had an iPad to entertain them so I don't know why I was so concerned.  

We stayed at a hotel in Orlando and Teagan was ready to go straight to the pool.  He was swimming by himself because the water was pretty cold and Grandpa jumped in the pool wearing all of his clothes and surprised us all.  Teagan thought it was so hilarious and loved having company in the pool.

Later that night after the Lewis and Kauffman families arrived everyone went swimming again.  Zac was the hero and got into the freezing water with the kids.

Teagan was too cold so he decided to just pull the pool chairs next to the water and watch.

The next morning our group of 29 got on a bus that took us to the Port.  We were all so excited!  It was a blast!

Eloise didn't know what all the fuss was about so she just took a catnap.

Teagan, on the other hand, had watched several you tube videos and knew all about the fun he had coming his way and was about as hyper as I've ever seen him.

She got so excited when she saw Mickey and Minnie and was loving all the action.

This was our beautiful ship that we got to board.  It was so enormous!  This picture was actually taken when we were at our port stop at the Cayman Islands.

The closest we got to a family picture, all in our awesome matching T-shirts.  Each shirt had a number on the back that represented the order that we joined the family.  We were 8, 17, 21, and 30.