Cruise Day 7: At Sea

Danny started the day out right with a trip to the gym. I slept in and went after breakfast. Today's breakfast was a special one, the "character breakfast", so it had a fixed time and location.

May 21

Danny started the day out right with a trip to the gym. I slept in and went after breakfast. Today's breakfast was a special one, the "character breakfast", so it had a fixed time and location. Unfortunately the food for the character breakfast was some of the poorest. I had a belgian waffle which was more like a limp Eggo, and Danny got a bagel that was missing all of its toppings (smoked salmon and onion). During the character breakfast Mickey, Minnie, Chip, Dale, and Goofy came by the table for pictures with everyone.

Character breakfast, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

Table 12 with napkin headwear, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

While I took my time at the gym, Danny went to investigate the princess gathering. I'd expected that it would be all the Disney princesses together, with little girls dressed up in princess outfits getting their pictures taken. That was pretty close, but the princesses were all separate. Then Danny did some writing and laid out in the sun on the deck.

For lunch, we hit the buffet. We both constructed salads, and I had a pile of cocktail shrimp too. After lunch, Danny went to play the adult pool games.

[Danny here, since Ryan was off tasting cocktails at a mixology class, he didn't see the pool games. When I arrived, there wasn't anything going on yet and I wasn't sure even what to expect. Would they just throw some inflatable toys into the adult pool, or would we all do inane things like try to touch our toes underwater? I was ignorant. Eventually two of the crew, David and DJ Matt set up their sound system and called the adults to order. The games would be a series of three competitions, to be fought girls against boys. Four volunteers from each sex were called for, and I raised my hand and got included in the men's team.

The first game was a relay race in which we had to push a ball along with our noses, one lap down the pool and one lap back. The girls got a ball like a volleyball, but to give the men a handicap we were given a ping pong ball. Our small ball turned out to ride the wake very well and we kept abreast of the women for the first two relays, but then our third man lost the ball and bumped into a large woman splashing herself by the side of the pool. I did my best to make up lost time, and did quite well, but we still lost the race.

In the second competition, David threw a bunch of gold coins into the pool and we had to collect them for our team. He announced that we'd get an advantage in this competition since we had baggy swim shorts with cargo pockets, but not I. I wore a speedo style suit with no pockets. David laughed and gave me a coin to start with to tuck where I could. I jumped in an scooped up a whole section of coins and the mens' team won handily.

In the third race, we had to relay across the pool and back again, with a t-shirt being passed from swimmer to swimmer. We did very well, but then as our fourth man swam back, the host David jumped in the pool and dragged our man down. We all tried to get him back to the finish line, but then the women started pushing us back in the water. Thus, we lost the games, but everyone who participated still got a free drink. There were 10 drinks for 8 contestants, so one of the other men and I each took the leftovers when they were cleaning up. I had fun, and got two free drinks from it ;) Now back to Ryan's narrative. --Danny]

For my part, I went to the Mixology 101 class, where we made (and drank) 5 drinks. The first was a martini (regular and dirty), second was a mojito, third was Sunken Treasure, fourth a margarita, and fifth was a B52 shot. While the drink were tasty, I did actually learn a few things from the class. First was that I don't like a dirty martini - it's far too salty. Second was I learned that I'd been making mojitos wrong - if you crush the mint to the point of breakage, that's too much, as it will make the drink bitter. Third was I got to practice with using a spoon to layer the B52 shot, and found out why the one time I'd tried it before it hadn't worked. You turn the spoon upside down, and then put the end of the spoon just above the layer of liquid, touching the edge of the glass, and pour the new layer very slowly onto the hump of the spoon.

Then we met back up at the Latin dance class where we paired up with a ballet dancer and her mother to learn the meringue and a few steps of the salsa. The meringue was pretty easy. Danny got the salsa steps quite easily, but I had trouble with one of the three patterns, even though it was the same as the other patterns, just in a different direction. We did work up a sweat.

Since it was a sea day, there was a big show this evening: Villains Tonight! The dinner theme was also Villains, so I dressed in black and Danny dressed in purple (a common color for Disney villains). The show was quite good, and like the others, had a great array of costumes, and a lot of song and dance numbers. **SPOILER ALERT** The plot of the show was that Hades has lost his evil since being defeated by Hercules, and the Fates are going to kick him out of the Underworld if he can't get his evil back. So, he summons up many of the past Disney villains to increase his evil. The show includes some fun repartee between the Evil Queen of Snow White and Maleficent as to who is the most evil, which ends up in an audience booing contest. I hadn't seen the Emperor's New Groove, so I wasn't familiar with Yzma, but now I want to see that movie.

Evil queens, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

Villains, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

Dinner was at Parrot Cay. I had crusted baked ravioli, scallops over risotto, swordfish steak, and the ultimate chocolate ending. Danny had baby greens salad, roast duckling, and a ricotta brulee. In addition to the normal meal, the table manager had arranged for some indian food for us. So, we also got a huge platter of basmati rice and a tasty chicken saag. As usual, the food was excellent. The desserts always seems a little disappointing. Usually the cheesecake tastes like a frozen one - too airy and fluffy, and the chocolate desserts aren't dense enough - the ultimate chocolate ending fell into this category, and fell far short of its name. The ricotta brulee was really good though.

Dinner menu, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

Dinner menu, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

After dinner, we had a rum tasting that we'd signed up for early on. We'd hoped this might inform us a bit about rum, but it was kind of disappointing. We had 3 different rums to taste, plus a caprihana made with cachaca, which is like a rum. One of the rums was Malibu, which is really cheating. The other two were Bacardi Silver and Appleton VX. I could tell that the Bacardi was by far the more mixable of the two, and that Mailbu was very weak compared to a standard rum, but that was really all that we learned.

During the day, we'd tried to convince people to show up to the late night DJ session at Rocking Bar D. So after the tasting, we headed there to see if we could get a dance party started. Sure enough, Tennille and Greg, and Amir and Carla, from our dining table had shown up, plus Jenna, Chris, and Evan who we'd originally met one night in the hottub. Plus, Lola and her friends from the rum tasting showed up independently. Danny guided DJ Matt with songs we'd been hearing in our travels, plus some other good ones. When he stuck to that (instead of diverging into hip hop) we had a pretty good group going, and had a few other couples out on the floor too. That went on until about 1:30am, when the DJ played a string of bad songs and we called it quits.