4-Night Bahamian Cruise from Port Canaveral

By Michael

Once aboard we found the Oceaneer's Club, with its own Toy Story room, a pirate map table, and a Marvel corner where Thomas played the Avengers Academy game on a tablet. After lunch we headed for the pool deck, and I got in the water with Lisa and Thomas in their swim vests.

By late afternoon the ship was ready to sail. The crew put on a sail-away party on deck, the Adventures Away screen lit up over the pool and streamers going everywhere, and Lisa danced with a red one right in the middle of it.

We spent the evening wandering the atrium and its staircase before dinner at Animator's Palate, where the walls changed with animated drawings while we ate. Thomas and Lisa leaned in for a photo with me before the scallops came out.

By Michael

We walked through the resort past the lagoon and the pink towers, then into the Predator Lagoon tunnel, where fish swam past overhead and a diver worked in the tank. Lisa signed "I love you" for the camera by the Lost Children sign. We stopped at the Shark Bites Grille for drinks in Atlantis cups, then put on life vests and snorkeled in the lagoon together, fooling around on the railings along the way.

By Michael

We woke to the Disney Magic already tied up at Castaway Cay, Disney's private island in the Bahamas. Kathy had her camera out early, catching the ship at the dock and the painted signs for the post office, Scuttle's Cove and Marge's Barges before we even reached the beach.

Lisa and Thomas spent the morning at the water's edge, digging with a driftwood log and their blue Mickey-shaped buckets and building a sandcastle at the waterline. Thomas wore his snorkel mask most of the morning. Kathy waded out with them a few times in her pink swimsuit, camera around her neck between shots.

We stopped at Scuttle's Cove, where Thomas had an ice cream cone at the picnic tables, and posed by the rocks painted like Mickey and Donald near the path. Minnie Mouse was out on the beach, and we got a family photo with her, along with the ship photographer's portrait by the pier.

By early afternoon we were back aboard and the ship pulled away from the island. We watched Castaway Cay from the upper deck as the tenders and a couple of sailboats came in behind us, the beach and the lighthouse-topped tower shrinking astern.

By Michael

That evening was Pirate Night. Thomas had on his skull-and-crossbones shirt, Lisa wore a pirate hat, and I tied on a red bandana for dinner at Carioca's. We had portraits taken in pirate gear, with Mickey and Minnie done up as pirates too, and the dining room staff came through in costume, dancing between the tables before dessert.