Disney Dream

For Mother's Day and my mom's birthday this year, my gift to her was a Disney Cruise.  I was beyond eager to take her on her first Disney Cruise and I was so looking forward to having her all to myself!

We flew down to Orlando on Saturday, August 12 and arrived around dinner time.  I'd never taken advantage of the transportation from MCO to WDW, and I was more excited than was probably necessary to finally ride the Magical Express!  I must say that I'm pretty impressed with the entire process, from making the initial reservation to actually boarding the bus at the airport.  All of it was very easy to navigate.  We put the special luggage tags on our checked bags back in Baltimore, and we didn't have to give them a second thought; they appeared in our room a few hours after we arrived!

Our Magic Bands for this trip were Duchess and Marie, the mother and daughter from "The Aristocats," and we were spending two nights at Contemporary before our cruise left on Monday.  I love Contemporary SO much, and when we checked in and went up to our room, there was a nice welcome note and some delicious treats waiting for us!  How nice!  We stayed in the tower with a view of Bay Lake and it was just lovely.

We spent some time at our resort, grabbed a bite to eat at Contempo Café, and then took the monorail over to Polynesian for Dole Whip Floats.  After enjoying Polynesian for a while, we took the monorail over to Grand Floridian to visit the resort.  Clearly we spent a little too much time there, because when we went to the monorail, planning to take it back to Contemporary, we were told the monorail was closed.  Perhaps that's on me for not paying attention to the operating times, but it was only 11:02!  The cast member was not particularly helpful, so we went down to the valet station and those two cast members told us to take a bus to Disney Springs and transfer there to get back to Contemporary.  We decided we had no interest in wasting such a huge chunk of time, so I ordered an Uber.  What a debacle that turned out to be, as the driver was unable to find Grand Floridian (at one point he called me and said he was waiting at the entrance to Epcot…ummmm, what?!?).  So after a very long wait, I cancelled that and we ended up getting a taxi to take us on the two-minute drive back to Contemporary.  A comedy of errors for sure.

On Sunday, we spent the day at Disney Springs, which was a lot of fun and included lunch at Blaze Pizza, which I love!  And while we were in Wold of Disney, I bumped into a friend who is both a former colleague and the parent of one of my former students!  What are the chances?!?

After a late afternoon nap, we headed up to the 15^th floor for our dinner reservation at California Grill.  Another first for my mom, who had not dined there previously, and it did not disappoint.  There was Mickey confetti on the table when we arrived, the service, the food, and the view were amazing, and we were able to watch the new MK fireworks, "Happily Ever After," from the roof of Contemporary, because they pipe the music from the park in!  So magical!  I was a huge fan of "Wishes," so I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the new show, but it was great!  I loved that some of the movies I think are underrepresented were featured, and of course I was crying by the end of it.  I can't wait to watch it inside MK so that I'll be able to see all of the castle projections as well!

On Monday, we got up early to get some breakfast at Contempo Café and check out so that we could be in the lobby at 10:15, which was our assigned time to check in for the bus from WDW to Port Canaveral.  And yes, it was yet another first, as each of the other times C and I have taken a cruise, we've driven our car, so we had no need for the Disney Cruise Line bus!

The COOLEST thing happened on our way to the ship…there was a SpaceX launch and we SAW IT FROM THE BUS!  And then we saw the first stage of the rocket return to earth and it looked like a huge, bright meteor blazing toward the ground.  Amazing!!!!!!!!

When we arrived at the terminal, we checked in and boarded the ship in less than 30 minutes.  As with the Wonder, Magic, and Fantasy, I was blown away from the moment we set foot on the ship.  Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.  Don't let the relatively few photos fool you; it is a fabulous ship!  It is very similar to the Fantasy, and since I just posted many photos from that cruise, I didn't want to duplicate too many pictures.  The atrium was different, as was the sweet shop on the 11^th deck, but there were a lot of similarities!

Everything about the cruise was awesome and my mom and I had such a good time together!  I cannot even describe how fortunate I feel to have had all that time for just the two of us.  I love my mom so much and I don't ever take the time we have or our relationship for granted because I know how lucky I am!  We relaxed and watched movies and explored the ship and generally had the best time.  We didn't bother getting off the ship when we docked in Nassau, but we certainly disembarked for the day at Castaway Cay (another first for my mom!)! This time, I absolutely doused myself in sunblock and wore a long sleeve swim shirt to avoid a repeat of my carelessness a few weeks back!

In terms of the restaurants, we skipped dinner the night we were schedule at Enchanted Garden (we got room service that night), and one night we ate at Royal Palace, but of course our favorite was Animator's Palate!  We ate dinner there twice; one night was the Crush / Finding Nemo theme, and the other was on Pirate Night.  Both were so much fun!  We also had brunch at Palo and it was incredible.  I mean, an out-of-this-world meal, impeccable service, and spectacular views of the ocean…what an experience!

We didn't go to any of the live shows, but one night, they were showing the movie of the Broadway show "Newsies"  As I've written about previously, I seriously LOVE "Newsies," so this was my personal favorite entertainment of the cruise (although the fireworks on Pirate Night were pretty fantastic as well!). We also saw the fifth "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, which I freely admit I was not looking forward to in the least bit.  I loved the first one, the second was passable, the third was awful, and I never even bothered seeing the fourth one.  As a result, I had extremely low expectations for this fifth one.  Well, I was very pleasantly surprised!  It was very entertaining!  And I cried at the end of it, which is always the sign of a good movie by my standards!

  

We were both of the opinion that a four-night cruise went by far too quickly!  It was the fourth night before we knew it, so we packed and set our luggage outside our room before heading to bed so it could be taken off the ship for us.  As the saying goes, time flies when you're having fun!

On Friday morning, we woke up and we were docked back at Port Canaveral, so we made the decision to skip breakfast and just make our way off the ship.  We picked up our luggage in the baggage claim area and cleared customs, then headed to the DCL bus, which took us to the airport.  Our flight wasn't scheduled until 5:45 in the evening, and we arrived at the airport around 9:30 am, so we had quite a chunk of time to kill.  I used the time to write a blog post about the cruise C and I had taken with his parents a few weeks earlier, while my mom caught up on the news of the week.  We didn't mind just waiting at the airport, but we were anxious to check in for our flight so that we could rid ourselves of our suitcases and not have to drag them around with us; we were looking forward to 1:45 (four hours prior to our departure time), when we'd be allowed to check in with Southwest and drop off our bags.

Around noon, we got a text stating that our flight had been cancelled.  What?!?  Apparently there was bad weather in some parts of the country, which was already wreaking havoc with delays and missed connections, so our flight was cancelled as a result.  We immediately went to the ticket counter and were told that there were no flights with available seats for the remainder of the day, but that we could take a flight to BWI the next day at noon.

We decided that our best (and most fun!) option would be to return to WDW for one night, so as soon as the changes to our flight reservations were completed, I booked us a room for the night at Pop Century.  We went down to the Magical Express loading area and explained that we didn't have a reservation for the transportation since we had literally just booked the hotel ten minutes before, and we were on a bus and on our way in a matter of 15 minutes.  (Have I mentioned how impressed I am with their system?!?)

We checked into Pop Century and spent the afternoon there and at Art of Animation.  We'd already had to do quite a bit of walking, and it was taking its toll on my mom, so we decided to take it kind of easy since we had also gotten up relatively early after talking late into the night.  We had a nap, with plans to go to Jellyrolls for the night because my beloved Scotty was performing.  However, my mom decided to rest in the room instead so that she could use her oxygen, but insisted I go to Boardwalk without her because I'd been looking forward to Jellyrolls all day (one of the first things I did between booking the hotel and walking to the Magical Express was check the Jellyrolls schedule to see if Scotty was playing!).

Since we didn't have a car and I wasn't in a rush, I took a WDW bus from Pop Century to Disney Springs, and then a second bus from Disney Springs to Yacht Club.  I visited the gazebo where C and I got married (and admittedly shed a few happy tears), then walked over to Boardwalk.  Jellyrolls was as fabulous as always, and it was so great to see Scotty and chat with him because I felt like it had been forever since our last visit!  I took an Uber to get back to Pop Century later that night, and I decided I was very thankful for the cancelled flight because I had ended up having a super fun night!

On Saturday morning, we grabbed some breakfast at the resort, then boarded the Tragical Express to get back to the airport (this is the nickname given to the Magical Express when you are leaving WDW), and later that day, which was mostly uneventful, we landed at BWI.  While I was sad that our week of fun was over (and that I was less than 48 hours from my first day back for the new school year), and I happy to be home because I had missed C and our pups so much!

My mom and I are already talking about what we should do next, and the memories we made on this trip will certainly last a lifetime!  I love her beyond words and I am so very fortunate to be her daughter because she is the greatest!  Thank you, Mom, for instilling in me both a love of all things Disney and a never-ending sense of adventure!  I can't wait until our next trip together!

Happy Tails to you!