Friday September 20th- Arrival
Early EARLY flight, we departed Kansas City at 5:50AM, because these are the flights you can afford when you’re paying with miles. Arrived at MCO around 9:30 and our GearFusion ride was already there waiting to take us to the Polynesian. Dumped our bags with the bellhop and caught a bus (because it wouldn’t be a Disney trip if I didn’t spend 20 minutes standing on a crowded bus) to Disney Springs to caffeinate and eat lunch.
(always take a picture of my namesake)
Lunch was at my favorite restaurant from our last trip, the Boathouse. Being from Kansas, I will eat this lobster roll every trip from here until the rapture, it’s absolutely fantastic.
After a bit of souvenir shopping, we got the notification that our room was ready so we headed back. Now, this was sort of a special trip, today was our anniversary, the wife was soon to be celebrating a milestone birthday that I am not allowed to elaborate on, and Monday was my birthday.
So I splurged a bit for a water-view room. Now, when I booked a water view room, I messed up not checking the actual view from the room on this site. I just figured water view meant “the lagoon”, but instead, it was their boat parking lot. So I trudge down to guest services with the intent of asking for a different room. Guest services told us there was one type of room still available for our 3-day stay, and once they started describing it, the look in my wife’s eyes told me this credit card statement was going to sting. And this is the tale of how I got talked into a Club Level Theme Park View room. $$$$$. (To be fair, the view WAS amazing)
After staring at the castle until I stopped thinking about how many overtime hours this was going to cost me subsided, we headed off for our anniversary dinner at California Grill, which was fantastic as always. We headed back and crashed, because it had been a LOOOONG day.
Then all of a sudden… EXPLOSIONS!!! This is when this truly became the balcony trip. We sat out watching the Halloween Party Fireworks and the Electrical Water Pageant before going back to bed.
Saturday Sept 21-Epcot
Our first park of 2 park days, we decided to hit up Epcot for the Food and Wine festival, Note the day of the week. Never, EVER, doing Epcot on a Saturday again. Since it was just the wife and I, we did minimal planning, we always wanted to do a free-flowing trip without spreadsheets and minute-by-minute go here and do this plans. So, while that was nice, I completely forgot about weekend Epcot crowds. It wasn’t AWFUL, we still rode everything we wanted and tried all the food that interested us. (the liquid nitrogen sweet potato thing was surprisingly fantastic)
(a tradition like no other, trash can tabling at Epcot)
It just sort of astounds me the sheer amount of drunk, not tipsy, but full-on blasted people in the park. I hope Disney will have a plan for this in the future before something awful happens. But moving on, I brought up a choice for the wife. Stay and watch Luminous, or return to the room and watch Happily Ever After from the balcony. I didn’t even get to finish my sentence before she answered. Now, there are many arguments regarding the best place to view fireworks. Some say Main Street, some say in the hub. I say it’s sitting on your club level theme park view room balcony drinking a hippopoto-mai-tai from Trader Sam’s Tiki Terrace.
Sunday Sept 22-MNSSHP
Our second and final park day was Magic Kingdom for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. There was only one thing on both of our must-do lists, watch the pirate band, and they did not disappoint.
They’re a hoot and I’d go just to see them again. Otherwise, the park was fairly empty in the morning, everything was practically a walk-on.
But when the party started, which was sold out, my goodness the crowds. It was impossible to walk anywhere with the huge mass of people jockeying for a spot for the parade, or the fireworks. The lines for some of the treat stops were longer than the line for Pirates, it was wild. Eventually, we just said screw it and bailed back to the resort for some more Trader Sam’s goodness.
Monday Sept 23-On the Disney Wish
Checkout day. Huge shoutout to Ketzel and the rest of the club-level concierge crew, they were great, and my goodness they work long hours. Caught a quick breakfast at Kona Cafe until our ride to Port Canaveral showed up. (GearFusion again, they really are a great ride option) Off to Port Canaveral for the wife and I’s first-ever cruise, and holy cow, I knew the boats were big, but I never realized that the boats were BIG.
Embarkation was a breeze and our room was better than expected, this really was the Balcony trip. After a bit of exploring, we happened upon Hyperspace Lounge, and being my birthday, I treated myself to the $400, I’m sorry, 400 credit, Hyperfuel Coaxium Trio drink. (fun fact- I just wanted to ask our server, Jorge, what it consisted of. My wife then chimes in said "it’s his birthday and he wants it, so that settled that)
Hip hip, Jorge!
It consisted of 3 separate drinks in sleek Star Warsy packaging (that I got to keep) meant to be consumed by two people. The first was a delightful gin drink that reminded me of gin and lemonade. The second was the highlight and my favorite drink of the trip, it was a mezcal-based drink with a hint of cinnamon and I was secretly overjoyed when my wife didn’t like it because I got to drink hers too. The final drink was a bourbon drink that reminded me of an oversweet old fashioned. It was OK, but following the mezcal drink, it was immediately forgotten about.
After the muster drill, we attempted to attend the sail-away party, but everyone else on the boat evidently had the same idea, so instead we headed for the bow of the ship as we left the port. Dinner that evening was at 1923. It was quite good. Being my first cruise, I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I was pleasantly surprised. For my appetizer, I had the duck confit and my entree was the rosemary-crusted rack of lamb. Both were excellent. We also met our table mates for the next few nights, an absolutely hilarious couple from the UK who wanted to know if everyone from Kansas wore cowboy hats and if we had ever seen a tornado. (Obviously no to the first and uh, yeah to the 2nd) The other party party at our table was a very nice couple from Atlanta that made things a bit awkward considering the Chiefs had just beaten the Falcons and my beloved Royals were getting ready to play the Braves with the playoffs on the line for both teams. It was quite cordial and it was nice chatting with them at dinner and whenever else we’d cross paths later on the ship. After dinner, we went to Nightengale’s, a piano bar, to listen to some live music. This would turn into a frequent haunt for us each evening as the music was wonderful and the servers were even better. It’s remarkable to me how every server we encountered during our nightly bar crawls always remembered our names and our favorite drinks. They are truly special people.
Blanket origami- ???
Tuesday Sept 24-Nassau
Tuesday morning we arrived at Nassau. We didn’t go into the city, I previously had secretly booked a VIP beach excursion for the 2 of us. When we honeymooned in Jamaica a zillion years ago (16), I remembered how much fun we had just lounging on the beach and i was hoping to recreate that. While I would not spend the money again because the beach was surprisingly crowded. I guess this was an excursion for every ship that was currently docked at Nassau, I had never really considered that. However, the views were beautiful and I made a friends with a seagull. (try as I might, I couldn’t get him to land on my arm, I’m not Disney princess material).
Back later on the ship, our dinner was at World of Marvel, which was fine. I had the chicken schnitzel and the wife and I both agreed that mine is better. No huge complaints though
Blanket origami- stingray?
Wednesday Sept 25-Castaway Cay
Wednesday morning, we started hearing murmurs onboard about Hurricane Helene. One downside (or perk depending on how you look at it) to no cell service is having no clue about what’s going on in the world. We were assured there was no danger to the ship and that was good enough for me.
I had one major goal this whole trip, to run the Castaway Cay 5K. I actually trained for it, however I found out there is a difference between Kansas heat and Caribbean heat. My shirt by the end looked like I had jumped in the sea. It did not help I read a sign wrong and took a wrong turn, turned my 5K into a 6K, lol. But I finished! Afterwards, we had lunch on the island, (I had to shoo away our server from the ship who found us and tried to wait on us, they really are overworked) took a couple pics, bought some 5K swag, then returned to the ship in desperate need of a shower.
We skipped our rotational dining restaurant that night (Marvel again, so we weren’t too sad) because we had reservations for Palo Steakhouse. Two words. Wow. We decided to splurge a bit and try the Japanese A5 Wagyu as an appetizer because we’ve never had the pleasure of trying it.
It was perhaps, the best steak I’ve ever had. Also, as a fun side note, there was a small storm and we watched a small waterspout touch down, so for our UK friends, chalk up another tornado witnessed!
(Just as it was fully formed, the glare from inside the restaurant made it hard to get a decent pic) For our entrees, the wife ordered the filet, as is tradition, and I ordered the Osso Buco. It was delightful and one of my favorite comfort foods.
After dinner, we considered joining the Pirate Night party going on, but, again, it was quite crowded. So keeping with the theme of this trip report, we visited Nightingale’s for another piano set and a martini and then watched the fireworks from our balcony.
Blanket origami- Princess gown?
Thursday Sept 26-Day at Sea
Thursday was our day at sea. By now, we were receiving updates from the Captain regarding the extent of Hurricane Helene and to expect rougher seas despite being on the other side of the state. It actually never got as bad as I expected, it reminded me a bit of airplane turbulence. We were sort of running out of things to do, I’m not a big trivia guy, don’t really do bingo, so we came upon a DVC meeting that promised a $50 ship credit for 30 minutes of our time, we shrugged and said “why not.” And so now this is the story of how I became a DVC member, lol. It wasn’t REALLY an impulse purchase, we had been discussing it for a few years and with the onboard discount, we decided to go ahead and finally pull the trigger. (Fun side story: as the DVC rep was handing us our swag bag, he joked that this was the most expensive backpack I had ever bought. I had to correct him and tell him when I ordered my Mustang, Ford also gave me a backpack. So I am currently the proud owner of approximately $80,000 worth of backpacks.Take that Louis Vuitton.)
Back on track. Since this is getting overlong, I’ll speed things up. Dinner. Ariendelle. No Olaf, guess it was broke. Food. Unmemorable. The scallop pot pie thing we had as an appetizer was good. The entree was a ribeye that I didn’t finish, it was meh… Boat. Rocking, and not in the fun party way. Tried to take a pic of the storm from our balcony.
Blanket origami-crab?
Friday Sept 27-Port Canveral
We lived. Port was closed until the Coast Guard conducted their inspections, so there was an extra few hours of sitting around and waiting, but luckily we had an evening flight that didn’t affect our travel plans too much.
Lifetime stats:
Trips to the Caribbean-3
Hurricanes-3
Deep Sea fishing boats sank/trip cancelled due to hurricane-2
Tornadoes witnessed-4
Thanks for reading, next time I plan a Caribbean trip, I’ll warn y’all well in advance because I may just be bad luck, lol.
That does sound like some luck!!
