The Cruise Review You've Been Waiting For: Part 5

Welcome back to the much-more-abridged-than-you-can-imagine trip report of our Disney cruise this past May. 

Part 1, which covers the Disney World portion of the trip, can be found by clicking HERE. 

Part 2, which can be found HERE, brought you with us as our cruise got underway. 

Part 3, which can be found HERE, continued the fun.

Part 4, which can be found HERE, showed you more of our ocean antics.

Let's keep moving!

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On Tuesday, we finally stepped foot off the ship onto Sint Maarten/Saint Maarten. This island is half-Dutch, half-French. 

What a crazy shot. Some people who also disembarked our ship took this for us. Hannah looks smooshed between us and I don't know who the man on the bench is. But at least we have proof we were off the ship!

As we walked down this street, Hannah looked at us, wide-eyed, and exclaimed, "Mommy! It's a whole ISLAND full of BROWN PEOPLE!!!" She always loves it when she sees a large gathering of non-white people, which is simultaneously sweet and sad to me (because maybe she's too surrounded by white people?). But this is happy tale, so let's move right along. 

A free beach. Can't beat that!

This is the obligatory "we've got our feet on the sand" shot.


We weren't on the island as long as we'd planned. When walking down this street, Hannah fell off the curb and scraped her knee. One of the cab drivers took the time to stop and make sure she was okay, and we were grateful for her kindness. Hannah wasn't in the mood to walk anymore, so we headed back to the ship. 

Thankfully, since so many people were on the island, the pool deck was relatively empty, so we took our first go-around on the AquaDuck. Miss waited and took pictures of us. This was us sailing by!

The island was pretty!

The adults-only area sported some deluxe lounge chairs; you get "pillows" there!

Tuesday night was also the Pirates IN the Caribbean party. Disney is the only cruise line allowed to shoot off fireworks from the ship. They also have a Jack Sparrow character who rappels down one of the stacks and gets into lots of trouble. Afterward is a dance party, which we enjoyed for about 10 minutes. We also took some night rides on the AquaDuck, which is all lit up in neon lights at night. Fun stuff!

Armando left us a monkey tonight, which was really creative!

Wednesday held what was to be the highlight of the trip. We docked in St. Thomas. We booked a private charter for the day called The Rumbaba. This was not a Disney excursion, so we had to get ourselves there and back. This company has 138 ratings on Trip Advisor, and they are all "excellent." (I haven't added ours yet.) We shared this boat with Captain Chad, first mate Lori, and a honeymooning couple. For 6 hours, we got a private tour of St. John and St. Thomas, snorkeled in two spots, had a delicious lunch they grilled for us on the sailboat (not to mention the delicious appetizers), and got our first experience on a sailboat. It was a WONDERFUL day!

Hannah and I sat up on the bow of the boat. This turned out to be quite a bumpy, splashy, fun experience! (I made sure she was always gripping the handles on the boat since it was so bouncy she could have bounced right out!)

Sailing out of the St. Thomas harbor. 

Crossing over to St. John. 

Each time we bounced over a wave, Hannah squealed in delight. So fun!

Our first snorkeling spot was Christmas Cove on St. Thomas, named thusly because this is where Christopher Columbus spent Christmas when he got to the Americas. We saw lots of fish after having a very tasty lunch. I also swam over two stingrays as I snorkeled into the coral edge.

More sailing around the waters. I'm a sucker for water breaking against rocks. 

Our second snorkeling spot was Honeymoon Beach on St. John. This is only reachable by boat. The Rockefeller family had bought up a lot of St. John decades ago when the elder Rockefeller was worried that St. John would be overdeveloped. He sold (or donated? It's late and I forget) the land back to the government. The warden of the park (again, not the right term, but it's late and I forget) now lives right on the beach. Tough life, eh? The snorkeling here was incredible! I saw an eel, a parrotfish, brain coral, fan coral, dorys, two sea turtles from a distance, and two more stingrays. Miss and Hannah opted not to snorkel but to instead play on the beach. Regrettably, my camera didn't make it onto the beach for close up pictures, so you'll have to look up videos on YouTube or take my word for it that the water was CRYSTAL CLEAR!

Time to head back to the ship after a fun day. The ship is so tall! 14 decks. And you gotta love how far over the side of the ship the AquaDuck goes!

We had dinner at Palo that night (again, adults only), so Hannah had fun in the club. As luck would have it, we had Milos again, and he was again wonderful. We got back to the room, and Hannah changed and laid down... only to fall asleep in this position about a minute after she hit the pillow. It was a great day!

Thursday was another sea day, which means more pictures of the ship, characters, and anything else I felt like!

We were participating in a scavenger hunt with the All Ears group, so we explored more of the ship today. We went into the Skyline bar, which was a VERY cool space. The walls of the bar are LCD screens that show various European cities at night, like Paris, London, Athens, Florence, Budapest, and St. Petersburg. I didn't take this picture, but I wanted to give you an idea of it. It was seriously SO cool. Every 12 minutes, the skyline changes, and the people in the pictures move, cars drive, etc.

On Friday, it was time for another highlight of the trip - Disney's private island, Castaway Cay ("key"). Here are some shots from the ship before we disembarked. 

Here's the All Ears photographer's picture of the island to give you a birds-eye view. 

Once on the beach, it was time for a pose before it got too full of other guests. 

There's the ship in the background!

Hannah wisely spotted the wedding being held down the beach, so I used my super zoom to snap a quick picture. 

Sandcastle creations!

This isn't my picture; it belongs to the All Ears photographer. That said, we did see two of these guys on the island. They had cool tails! 

These are iconic on Castaway Cay; many guests stop for pictures with these giant anchor weights. Can you spot who doesn't fit?

No picture of this 30 minute period of the day (thankfully): Hannah and I braved the AquaTrikes on the island. These look like big bicycles that you pedal around in the ocean. I thought this would be fun. HUGE mistake. First, you don't pedal along the beach, like I thought you would. Second, you have to pedal INTO the tide, which was super hard. Third, I was stuffed into a too-small life vest (safety first, I guess) that I had to wear. This made it super hard to move around, let alone sit comfortably while pedaling the trike. Fourthly, I was the only one pedaling. Fifthly, when I needed a break (and I did often), the tide would start taking me away from the shore again. I literally had a meltdown and got somewhat hysterical. Hannah kept cheering me on - "You can do it, Tia! Oh, look, we're almost there!" I thought I was going to have a stroke. I had a horrible headache after that and was seriously thankful I didn't keel over on the AquaTrike. NEVER. AGAIN.

Toward the end of the day, I'd recovered enough to get a picture in front of the ship on the beach. 

Back up on the ship, we had to get gussied up for our All Ears finale event (where they gave away a 7 night Disney vacation, all expenses paid, that we sadly didn't win). We also were having dinner at Remy, another adults-only restaurant. 

At the event, we got our picture with Deb Wills, the All Ears founder. She's very warm and remembered us each time she saw us. 

The photographer snapped a picture of us as we walked into the party. I like this shot of us. 

Because the All Ears group comprised about 50-60 staterooms booked under one travel agency, they had enough clout to bring the Big Cheese himself to our party! 

Now, about Remy. Here are the highlights. The waiters wear tuxedoes. They escort you to your table. Your head server (he was from Brazil, but I forget his name, sadly) walks you through the menu, which includes an amuse bouche ("amusement for the mouth"), 4 courses, a cheese course, and a dessert course. The food is PHENOMENAL. The best food I've ever had. I loved everything. I had smoked bison, quail, olive oil ice cream with a small ratatouille, turbot (AMAZING fish), waygu (Japanese beef that comes from cows that are literally serenaded with Mozart and massaged to produce the best meat - weird but it works), vanilla poached pear, 6 different kinds of cheese (including a delicious goat cheese topped with honeycomb that was more like dessert than cheese and a parmesan doused with balsamic vinegar, which was incredible), and an ornate chocolate dessert. I'm forgetting things, too. It was incredible. Best meal I've ever had. Hannah was in the kids club, and we didn't think it would *really* take three hours as we were told it would, but it did. And the time flew by. Hannah did well in the club, and I miss the food often.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled trip report.

We went to the "See Ya Real Soon" party, which was at 10:15 on Friday night. The characters come to say goodbye and have meet and greets with the guests.

Mickey and Pluto were right in front of us, and Pluto posed like he was actually Mickey's dog, which I'd never seen them do and thought was very cute.

The characters were doing their dance and song routine on the stairs. 

They shot confetti as the show ended, and of course, Hannah made a beeline for it, along with the other kids. Gotta love kids. Just spent a week on a thousands-of-dollars cruise with princesses and mice and pirates, and they go nuts over 25 cent shiny pieces of paper.