The next several posts will be all about our recent family vacation on a Disney Cruise to the Caribbean. The previous post can be found HERE.
This post is about days five and six on the cruise. We started Day 5 by arriving at the island of St. Thomas, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Yet another tropical paradise - this is the view as we arrived in the morning. This island was much more developed than Tortola:
Our adventure involved zip-lining across the mountain jungle forests of St. Thomas. We traveled to the other side of the island, with breath-taking views of Meghan's Bay below us. We strapped on the safety equipment and headed up the mountain:
Here are just a couple videos of our adventure. G-Man handled it like a champ. I was really proud of him. Because he's so light, he worked hard to lift up his legs and continue the momentum needed to get all the way across some of the longer zip lines.
On the other side of the island, L and my wife went to Coral World, which was like an aquarium. Here's L with a giant eel (yuck):
They also had a turtle sanctuary there...and these sea turtles were huge! The girls were able to play a little at the beach and watch the turtles feed:
They also saw some of the local wildlife while handing out at Coral World:
G-Man and I finished pretty early, so we decided to ride a tram up the mountain to Paradise Point. It was fun to see our ship from this far away, and understand just how big it was!
Back on board, we noticed a fun way for the pictures to be displayed. As anyone who has taken a cruise knows, they try to take a lot of pictures of you - with the hopes that you'll buy a lot of prints. Every stateroom was given a special book/album - located in these kind of cabinets - that had all the pictures associated with your family. It was another genius move...so that you didn't end up searching through hundreds of pictures to find yours...
That night we returned to the Animator's Palette restaurant. L decided that she needed to dress as a princess again...which was fine with us. Here's another delightful touch...L’s dessert was actually a complete cupcake-decorating kit. It was just awesome! She had several flavors to work with, and had a blast creating something that was her very own. Yet another great Disney touch. However, that was just the tip of the iceberg for the evening. Let me explain…
And hey...the adult dessert was pretty darn good, as well....
When we sat down at dinner, the waiters gave us some fun pieces of drawing paper. They were unique - and the waiters asked us to draw some characters within the outlines on the page. They ended up looking like this:
What happened next was truly amazing. I’m still in awe of how it was accomplished. That doesn’t happen very often ; ) Basically, throughout the dinner, Mickey would appear on the big video screens and indicate that they were working on a special surprise.
At the conclusion of dinner - Mickey returned to the screen to show us a little “magic”. The simplest way to describe it, was that they had scanned all of our drawings, and then animated them to move across the screen. They even inserted the characters into several Disney animated movie sequences. The screens near us only showed the characters from the nearest tables. Amazing…let me show you what it looked like. You’ll hear my family make comments, and you’ll see our actually drawn characters showing up. Just amazing!!!!!
Here were the "credits" at the end of the show...you can see our signatures on the screen:
We were still buzzing about the whole experience when we returned to the cabin…and found a towel bunny relaxing on the bed ; )
What a fantastic day! I’ve decided to include the next day in this post, as well. We spent the day at sea. However, this was a special event that not every Disney Cruise has - it was Star Wars Day at Sea. And boy, was it ever.
Star Wars characters were found around the ship during the entire event. They had special items for sale in the stores (genius) to appeal to Star Wars fans:
We signed up for a Jedi Training experience for both kids. We went to the largest theater on board and the kids were able to do a little lightsaber fighting with Darth Vader and a Sith character from the animated Star Wars Rebels show on TV. The experience is similar to what’s offered at DisneyLand. You can spot the little red-headed Jedi, below:
L was a little scared of Darth Vader when he appeared, but the crew members were so sweet and she regained her confidence in time to fight. Both kids walked off the stage confidently. It was a great experience.
We caught up with a Gamorrean Guard from Jabba’s palace, while walking down one of the hallways:
We also had a chance to meet up with Darth Vader himself:
There were other Star Wars objects around the ship, including this replica of Rey’s speeder from “The Force Awakens”:
That night at dinner, they provided masks for all the kids to color and play with. Really nice touches for youngsters that aren’t patient with the time it takes to prepare food:
The menu was completely Star Wars-themed. I loved it, as there were selections from several planets from the films. The best, however, was the Carbonite dessert…you can see Han Solo frozen in chocolate carbonite in my dessert:
Later that evening, after everyone had fallen asleep, I went back out on deck to experience the late-night buffet. This usually happens on most cruises. It’s traditionally a chocolate-themed experience. Since this was Star Wars day, everything had a fun twist to it:
That’s it for Day 5 and 6 on the cruise. Come on back for the final days of the vacation at Disney’s private island and Florida.
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