Life Lately April 2022

There's really not too much to share from April because I wrote individual posts about the most noteworthy happenings: a visit to WDW, a Disney Cruise, a game in a new baseball stadium, and a game in a new hockey arena.

In other words, for the first time since the pandemic began, life is actually feeling like it's returning to normal. Things at school are still very challenging and I'll be very relieved to survive the spring testing season, but I'm finally beginning to feel my hope and optimism return.

My head and my heart have been shrouded in darkness since last fall, and only very recently has the sun started to break through. To be perfectly transparent, there were moments when I didn't think that would ever happen.

I think May is going to be another good month, which will be two good months in a row, and I'm pretty sure that technically constitutes the start of a streak. Hopefully I can keep it going!

this was the sky on the morning of April 1...
I took it as a sign of good things to come

Happy Tails to you!

NHL Arena #38

A few months ago, we found tickets to the New York Islanders game this past Sunday afternoon, and their arena was the last one we needed to visit in order to be caught up on all NHL arenas. We were really looking forward to the game, since the last one we went to was back in November when we were in Seattle for a Kraken game!

It turned out to be a bit of a busy weekend! We drove up to Maryland for our niece's soccer game on Saturday morning, and had planned to have lunch and cake to celebrate C's upcoming birthday with B1, S1, our niece, and our nephew.

We figured there was little point in driving home Saturday only to turn around and drive right back through Maryland on Sunday, so after we left B1 and S1's house, we drove up to Princeton, NJ for the night, before driving to Long Island the next morning.

We had purchased four tickets for the game, for ourselves and also B2 and S2, since they live less than an hour from the arena. Unfortunately, S2 had a work commitment come up, but B2 met us at the game and we had a great time hanging out with him.

You may recall that a couple of years ago, C and I came up with a list of our favorite NHL arenas (you can see that post HERE). Perhaps the most notable part of that post was that the two arenas we ranked as the absolute worst in the NHL were BOTH Islanders arenas - Nassau County Coliseum and Barclays Center.

We figured the team's new home, UBS Arena, would have to better than both of those, and we were correct. Overall, it is a beautiful building and we were very impressed! Our seats were incredible, the history of the team is displayed with pride, and the graphics on the ice were amazing.

However, the fans are terrible. This is in line with our previous two Islanders games. I was so glad to have an empty seat beside me (even though I obviously wished S2 could have been there!) because the cursing and rude comments were so obnoxious. Someone on the big screen was answering movie trivia questions during a timeout and instead of answering the final question, he chose to use his "air time" to make a very offensive political remark, which was followed by the crowd cheering wildly. To say I was disgusted is an understatement. You're entitled to have whatever political beliefs you choose, but that was neither the time nor the place to share those beliefs. It kind of got the crowd fired up and there was more cursing and yelling and frankly, it didn't help that the Islanders were not playing particularly well. 

We left the game with about seven minutes to go in the third period because we wanted to get out of the parking lot ahead of some of the traffic so we could get on the road. The Islanders ended up losing to the Hurricanes 5-2, so I'm sure those final seven minutes were filled with continued nonsense from the fans. Fan behavior has such a huge impact on the atmosphere and it is hard to enjoy the game when security doesn't keep people in check. That was one of my major complaints from the last Islanders game we went to in 2015 when they were playing at Barclays Center.

I'll focus on the fact that the arena itself is great, that we got to spend the afternoon with B2, and that we are caught up with all NHL arenas for now! The Arizona Coyotes will be moving to a new home, so there may be a trip there next season!

our seats were fabulous!

we never get used to him
not being a Bruin

yes, there are TWO players named
Sebastian Aho in the NHL and they both
played in this game!!!

Happy Tails to you!

MLB Stadium #41!

We went to a baseball game on Saturday night to visit our 41st MLB ballpark! After going to Minnesota last fall, we were down to two remaining new stadiums since our initial completion of going to a game in all 30 MLB stadiums: Miami and St. Louis. When we realized that the baseball season would have started by the time we returned from our cruise, we were anxious for the schedule to come out to see if the timing would work for us to go to a game in Miami. Thankfully, it did, and because the stadium has a retractable roof, weather was not a concern at all! It was an evening game, so after we disembarked from the ship on Saturday morning, we spent the day in and around Miami until it was time to head to the stadium. We got there more than an hour ahead of the first pitch, which gave us the opportunity to roam around and really appreciate the entire place!

Overall, it's a very nice ballpark, even though it's on the small side (according to Wikipedia, it ranks 29 out of 30 in terms of capacity). It also seems like attendance is not that great because they had the entire upper deck closed off, which is something we also noticed when we were buying tickets a few weeks ago. There were lots of empty seats and we ended up having the entire row of seats to ourselves, if that tells you anything! Nonetheless, everything seemed to be well-run, the fans were respectful, and the ambiance was pretty high energy! One of the only negatives about the stadium: very meager food options, even for non-vegetarians! We were pretty much limited to nachos and popcorn and every food counter seemed to offer the same few items (burgers, hot dogs, etc.).

Since we weren't really cheering for either the Marlins or the Phillies (and there were a surprising number of Phillies fans in attendance!), it was a fun game to watch because there was a lot of offense. When you're hockey fans, baseball usually seems very slow-paced and boring, so when we left in the sixth inning with a score of 8-2 for the Phillies, we felt like it was one of the most exciting games we'd seen in a long time!

The reason we left during the sixth inning was because we had a three-hour drive to Daytona Beach ahead of us, since we were trying to shave a few hours off our long drive home yesterday. We got to our hotel after midnight and were back on the road before 6:00 am, knowing that traffic could be heavy because of it being Easter and the end of spring break for most of the school districts around here. For the most part, our drive home was uneventful, although I continue to be baffled as to why I-95 is only two lanes through South Carolina! Ridiculous! Traffic didn't really get heavy until we were north of Richmond, so we can't really complain, and it's always nice to come home after being away!

Here are just a few random pics from the day; there's nothing particularly noteworthy to share, as we were pretty much just killing time until the game!

As of now, we are down to only one remaining new stadium to visit, and if the weather cooperates, we are planning on going to a game there next month!

Happy Tails to you!

Disney Magic 2022

Ask any teacher you know, and I'm pretty sure they will tell you this has been the most challenging, stressful, and exhausting year they've experienced. That has certainly been the case for me.

Before a new school year begins, I write all of the holidays and teacher work days in my agenda, and I break the year into three countdowns: first day of school to winter break, first day after winter break to spring break, and first day after spring break to the last day of school. I'd been counting down the days to spring break since January because I could not wait for this cruise!

As I shared in my last post, we spent the first two days of spring break at WDW, and then last Sunday night, we drove to southern Florida because our cruise was leaving out of Miami. We'd only been to that port once before, and we knew with covid testing protocols prior to boarding, the whole process would be much longer than our prior experience. Our arrival time was 12:30; we got to the port around 11:30, dropped off our luggage, parked in the designated garage, and took a bus back to the terminal, putting us in line around 11:55. We stood in line until 12:30, then were shuffled inside with everyone else who had a 12:30 arrival time for more waiting, then covid testing, then more waiting until our results were available. The relief we felt when we both negative cannot be overstated! We boarded the ship around 1:40, so all in all, it did not take nearly as long as we had feared.

This was my seventh Disney cruise and C's sixth (you may recall that I went on one with my mom back in 2017) and our second on the Magic, which we hadn't been on since 2016. It is a fabulous ship! It is one of the two smaller ships in the fleet, and I've said it before, but I much prefer the smaller ships. The bigger ships can accommodate 4,000-ish passengers, while the small ships can accommodate 2800-ish passengers. Huge difference! And on our cruise, there were only 1700-ish passengers, so even thought the ship is smaller, it felt  incredibly spacious compared to our experience on the Disney Fantasy when it was at full capacity. The biggest difference was on Castaway Cay...it was shockingly unpopulated on both the family and adult beaches and we loved it!

Before I share pics, I have to boast a little about the onboard trivia games. I have only ever won once, on the Dream in June 2018, and I wanted so badly to win again on this cruise! Well, guess what? I won THREE times: Disney Trivia, Pixar Trivia, and Disney Tunes Trivia! Unfortunately, I had to win a tiebreaker question to secure all three victories, two of which were completely bogus. There were two tweens who C and I secretly named Crabbe and Goyle who were in the first two trivia sessions and who miraculously tied my score, even though it was clear they did not know the answers, kept asking which question we were on, were using their phones, and made several questionable comments that made it so obvious they had no clue what they were doing. How, then, did they tie my score of 18/22 on Disney Trivia? CHEATING. Because of covid protocols, papers were not exchanged, but rather everyone scored their own paper. They just wrote in the answers as the host went over them! The tiebreaker for the Disney Trivia session was "In which land would you find the Mark Twain River Boat?" and while I immediately answered Frontierland, they didn't even have answer to give. Thus, I was victorious and C and I got medals. The next day, at Pixar Trivia, Crabbe and Goyle were there again, and repeated their dishonest nonsense, and they once again just happened to tie my PERFECT score! I'm sure they knew that Carl uses his walker with his left hand and that Merida's father's name is King Fergus, right? Since the host didn't see any of what they were doing, we went to another tiebreaker, which was "How many minutes in length is the movie Onward?" and this time, we had to write down our answers, with whichever answer was closest being the winner. We guessed 115 minutes and the answer was 112 minutes. Their answer? 35 minutes. Thirty.Five.Minutes. For a full-length film. Ridiculous. Needless to say, we walked away with medals again! The third and final victory was hard won because there was another avid Disney music fan who also scored 27/30, so she and I had to go up in front of the crowd and the first person to answer was the winner. The song I won with? The Rainbow Connection! I mean, there could not have been a more perfect song for me! So we are coming home with six medals! C will tell you I answered most of the questions on my own, but he contributed at critical moments and equally deserves the medals!

Aside from my goal of winning a trivia game, I wanted to get some pics in the kids' club because one of my best friends had shown me pics from her cruise and I discovered there was a Slinky slide on the Magic! On the first day, there were open house hours, so I went and took some pics with my Slinky ears and it is just about the cutest little area you can imagine!

As for the rest of the cruise, it was simply wonderful. So relaxing, with two days at Castaway Cay (there was a port day in Nassau, but we did not get off the ship), incredible service, food, entertainment, and a ship that felt pretty empty for the entire time!

Around the Ship

Restaurants

Characters

Food and Drink

we were assigned Table 24
on this cruise...

...and we realized that we were also
assigned Table 24 on our last cruise
on the Magic back in March 2016!

Stateroom

Castaway Cay

this water!

At dinner on our last night, we were chatting with the Head Server, who has been with Disney Cruise Line for well over a decade. While we'd spoken with him throughout the whole cruise, it was at our final dinner that we had a pretty lengthy conversation with him, and he referred to us as "serious cruisers." Please understand, that prior to 2014, I had never once had any interest in going on a cruise. Ever! So for this man, with his impressive experience, to think of us as serious cruisers as a result of our conversations? It was pretty flattering because this is a not a title we thought we would ever hold! I will amend it, however, to "serious Disney cruisers" because Disney Cruise Line has spoiled us for all other cruises!

We have another Disney cruise planned for September, on the fifth and newest ship, the Wish, and we're already looking forward to it! Until then, it's back to reality tomorrow and the countdown to the last day of school begins!

Happy Tails to you!