Birthday 2013 - 1st Sea Day

I had taken notes for this day on the day of, but by the next day I decided that notes were all I was going to do each day.  I was just busy putting all my energy into having fun, and by the time we returned to the room most nights I had little energy left.

I was late deciding that I wanted to do the character breakfast, and so I wasn’t able to reserve it online. I had meant to ask about a reservation after getting onboard, but I just forgot. So I decided to just try showing up and asking. I was actually about 10 minutes late from the scheduled start. I asked the first waiter I ran into, he and another waiter found the head waiter who said it was fine and seated me. I did have to repeat what I wanted about 5 times through the course of this, but no big deal.

I loved the character breakfast. The menu was a Dreamworkified version of the chocolate breakfast. I started with a chocolate milkshake (very yummy). I ordered my usual breakfast plus a banana chocolate waffle. It was delicious.

There was also a plate of chocolate pastries offered, but I didn't actually try any of these.

Not long into the meal, a waiter came out and said the characters would be coming out and doing a little performance and then would come around for pictures. The little dances they did for each character (Shrek, Puss in Boots and Fiona) were cute. It was particularly fun when Shrek did Gungnham Style.

I took pictures with Shrek and Puss in Boots.

I could have with Fiona as well, but didn’t really want to. I really enjoyed the breakfast and was glad I did it. Afterwards I got them to give me a to-go breakfast for my mom.

Mom and I then went to the Cruise Critic Meet & Mingle.

Everyone got a little plastic document holder with a notepad and pen. There was a raffle for various things (better document holders, hats, champagne bottle, and some other knick knacks). We didn’t win any of those though.

We then went to the shopping show. Hindsight being 20/20, I’m not sure I would have gone. It was long, very, very long. We barely got out in time for our cupcake class. We also never ended up using anything we got from it. We just had too much else going on when we were on the islands. The one coupon I tried to use from it for $5 off from Del Sol, I was told I could either use the coupon or get the tote bag. This was not something he said during the show. But more on that tote bag later.

The cupcake class was a lot of fun.

Only 4 people actually showed up, but more had apparently registered and just not shown.

We made these cute puppy dog cupcakes.



My cupcake is on the left, and mom's is on the right.

I think they turned out pretty close to the original.



Our lovely teacher and the cupcake she made that I ended up with



Mom was able to trade her made cupcake for a sugar-free cupcake since she didn’t want to eat the very high calorie one we had made. I walked out of the cupcake shop and immediately while pushing mom’s wheelchair dropped my puppy on the floor. :-( The cupcake lady gave me hers to have instead. :-)

I strongly believe in eating in the MDR at every available opportunity. So after the class we went to the MDR for lunch. I had an absolutely fabulous lamb pita. It was spiced so well, and was just delicious.

We had our cupcakes for dessert. I actually only had part of mine. It was just too much and too sweet to have the whole thing.

We then went to the cantilevered hot tubs and enjoyed a nice relaxation with our kindles. The question we got asked the most while on this cruise was where we had gotten our water-proof cases for our kindles: Amazon, of course. Link to them on Amazon. It was so fun to watch people’s reactions when we intentionally dunked our kindles into the hot tubs or pool. One lady actually screamed a little. I love our cases, and highly recommend them. We also loved these hot tubs. We vowed to try and hit them at least once a day, and most days we succeeded.

We then went to see Rise of the Guardians in 3D. However we got bored with it, not long into it and decided to go for a snack in the WJ instead.  Here is as good a place as any to talk about how much I love bread and butter.  I only really eat it this one week a year, but I eat a lot of it this week.

Next I had seen on the compass this thing called bouldering. I had seen it on previous cruises, and so we went to check it out. I watched this young teenage girl do it for awhile and decided it looked like fun, although I knew I’d never be as good at it as she was. Now I didn’t make it very far across the wall, only about 3 or 4 panels, but it was a lot of fun. Mom took pictures for me.

I’ll probably try it again on my next cruise by when I should hopefully be down to my desired weight, and maybe I’ll be better then.  But I had fun doing it, regardless.

We then went back to the room and got ready for dinner. We went about 30 minutes earlier than our scheduled reservation time of 7:30. We did this most every night. It worked out well for us for making it to the 9:00 show. For the appetizer, I had grilled cheese with tomato from the children’s menu, and this time it actually had the tomatoes on it like the menu said it did. Mom had the shrimp cocktail. For the entrée, I had the filet and mom then had a double serving of shrimp cocktail for dinner. Mom had a goal of leaving this cruise at the same weight at which she started it. Her choices were limited this night, and the waiter was not cooperative with special ordering for her. I had the cheesecake for dessert and mom had a sugar-free pudding like dessert. In general, we were not impressed with our service this night. Overall these waiters weren’t bad, but they weren’t good either. So we decided to ask for different waiters again the next night.

We then went to the 9:00 show of Marquee. This night we were able to sit up close, as during the shopping show we had learned how to use the handicap lift down to the bottom level. So I guess it was good we had gone to the shopping show after all. Marquee was a very fun show. The singing and dancing was amazing, particularly one of the female lead singers. She had an awesome voice.

We then went in search of the deck 3 karoke booths that I had learned about from middle-age drama queen’s review on cruise critic. We enjoyed it, but only did like 1 song. There was a couple sitting right in front of the screen where you select the song so it was a pain to look at the song list. Later in the week, I realized there are two booths (one on each side of the room).

We then went back to the room where we found our first towel animal of the cruise, elephant, I think.

I love towel animals. I would always move them over to the window seat so I could enjoy them all of the next day as well.