Welcome back to the long awaited return of the Disney World Nation, while we are still on hiatus until my book is published (which will be heading to the edited within the next week) I wanted to give Disney fans a little taste of what I experienced last weekend aboard the Disney Dream. So here we go with tonight's blog.
Day 1
The Day started with a flight from Providence to Orlando, followed by a shuttle transfer to Port Canaveral. Because we did online check in, we got to skip the registration line (highly suggest doing that), and bored the ship. The ship is amazing both in size and how great it looks. We went up to Deck 9 to find our room, and our inside stateroom was wonderful, complete with queen size bed, couch that converted into a bed, TV, desk and of course, the Virtual Porthole. The Virtual Porthole lets guests on the inside part of the ship a chance to see whats going on. Basically its a giant screen above the head of the bed, and it shows images from a webcam located around the outside of the boat. During the day you can see whats going on, on the outside (at night it's like snow from an old tv) and you will recieve a surprise or two if you pay attention to it long enough. We watched the entrance video on the TV, had lunch at Cabana's ( a wonderful buffet place on Deck 11) and waited for the evacuation drill at 4pm.
The evacuation drill was nothing more than when you hear the alarm, get to your designated area, and wait for instructions. The drill was fairly easy and took less than half hour. After that we were free to do what we wanted. So Mike and i wandered around the ship until we came across the Midship Detective Agency Kiosk located on Deck 5. The Midship Detective is a scavenger hunt that takes you throughout the ship looking for clues to solve one of two cases. Detectives are given a badge, a pencil, and a map/suspect list to help solve the case. The map leads you to the enchanted art stations around the ship. Enchanted art is another innovention on the dream that looks like a regular painting until you stand in front of it (a cartoon scene will then play). If you wave your badge in front of the Enchanted Art, you will be either recieve a clue or find one of the missing items. Write down the clues to help you find which of the 7 suspects stole the items. When you have found the items and think you know who did it, Mickey will ask you for your choice. If your right, you can help catch the villan! You have the enitre cruise to solve the puzzle, but it took us like 30-40 minutes. This was a lot more fun than we thought it was going to be.
It was 6:15 time for the second dining people to go to the Walt Disney Theatre for the first of three broadway style stage shows. The first night's show was The Golden Mickey's. First Cruise Director Clayton came out to talk. Clayton is a funny man, who got people laughing with his humor and Carlton dance (complete with Tom Jones music). Captain Gus came out to say a few words, and the show began. The Golden Mickey's is an award's show with many categories for Disney movies. The captain is unable to host and it becomes up to Ensign Benson, a shy stage hand who has no confidence she can do it. With help from everyone from Robert Iger, to Tim Allen, and many Disney characters, the show goes on and is a wonderful show with many great songs and characters sharing the stage. I dont know who could walk out of that show without a smile on their face.
We decided that instead of going to the restaurant assigned to us, we were going to eat at Flo's Cafe, a food court located on Deck 11. Flo's has multiple stations that offers foods such as pizza, burgers, sandwiches, chicken and more. Was a real good choice as we were the only people in line and got food right away. The rest of the night was spent walking around the ship and a special stop at Eye Scream (a self-serve ice cream stand on Deck 11). Eye Scream has the best soft serve ice cream I have tasted in a long time. I think I had 6 cones of ice cream on the cruise..lol
The night was an early one for us, we started at 5:00am, and knew, we had to get started early the next day, so we went back to 9611, and watched some TV and fell asleep.
Will continue with Day 2 on the next blog
