So Long, Mickey!

Collin’s Ten-Year-Old Trip

Disney Cruise Day 5:  Thursday, June 20, 2013

Technically, this is Day 5 of the cruise, but since we have to be off the boat right after our 8 a.m. breakfast seating, it hardly counts.  

 

By the way, we are in the Enchanted Garden again this morning--designed to evoke a greenhouse on the grounds of Versailles, our dining room host (server) told us.  Last night it was lit in warm orange colors with the “view” through the greenhouse glass panels resembling a beautiful sunset seen through the trees, and this morning the sky is dawn blue.  The light fixtures that seemed to have orange shades last night are now blue.  I think they were green at lunchtime when we first got on the ship.  

Here is Disney’s amazing efficiency--our dining room hosts, who finished serving us dinner last night at around 10 p.m., and stayed later to get their tables set up for breakfast this morning, were back at work (in totally different uniforms) hosting the first seating of breakfast this morning at 6:45, then serving us at 8:00.  They got us fully served and out of there before 9, and got busy prepping the dining room for 10:30 perfection inspection--lunch guests will arrive for the next cruise starting at 11:30.  (Here they are bidding Collin a fond farewell after breakfast.)

The room hosts (stewards) must have all the staterooms on the ship thoroughly cleaned and prepared for all the new guests by 1:30.  With a $2 billion ship to pay off, they can’t afford to have any downtime. 

Disney and U.S. Customs are efficient, and even though the process to catch a van back to the Radisson long term lot is chaotic, and includes a lot of very un-Disneylike ill tempered grousing (by others, not us), we still manage to be on the road back to Savannah by 9:30.  

We are too tired to have any big adventures or exciting activities on the way, other than long-awaited phone calls to Collin’s parents, who he hasn’t talked to since before we boarded the ship.  

Back home, Granddad goes into high gear with unpacking and laundry, so that just about all of everyone’s cruise clothes are washed and dried before we get to bed.  WOW!

We do take a break for dinner--Collin wants some real Southern seafood, so we head for Fiddler’s Crab House, where we share a big bowl of some of the world’s best hush puppies, and lots of good shellfish.  But, it is not really Southern seafood--the blue crab in my salad is the only thing that might have been caught in local waters--Granddad’s lobster and Collin’s snow crab are from much colder climes.  We are also the only ones in the place not ordering our seafood fried (the true Southern way to eat seafood, and just about everything else). 

We miss our Disney waiters’ tableside antics--no one at Fiddler’s Crab House makes us ketchup art on our plate or does tricks for us like they did on the Disney Dream.

 

Another fond Disney memory--Mickey at the wheel