The End of the Cruise As We Know It

Our last full day on board (yesterday) was spent at sea. Days at sea are pretty relaxing, though you need to be prepped with things to do if you're the type of person who gets bored easily. We took advantage of having no schedule to sleep in a bit and have a slow, leisurely breakfast. We finished eating around 10 and went to wander around. The line for the lobby princess gathering was just beginning. We had thought to skip that completely, but the doodle was determined that he wanted photos with all the princesses, so into line we got. The photos took quite a while (princesses are a big deal), but in the end we got to see five of them: Belle (our favorite - she was so wonderful), Cinderella (who looked like she had better things to be doing - she was honestly kind of obnoxious), Ariel (another really good princess who actually seemed to enjoy kids), Snow White (clearly an introvert in the wrong job), and Tiana (from the Princess and the Frog, which we have not seen, and again she did not seem all that excited about being there.) After that we toodled around the ship for a bit, then headed up for a light lunch. Only the doodle was actually hungry, so he ate and Tim and I pretty much had a small bowl of soup and then dessert. But hey, it's a cruise.

After lunch we went to the play area with the doodle for a bit and I snuck out to do some laundry (not sure how I ended up needing to do it twice, but that's what really ended up needing to happen, and since it's only $1 for a load of wash, it really was worth doing.) At the start of the cruise, laundry was easy. The last day of the cruise is not the day to try and do laundry. Everyone is trying to do laundry...and some of the machines have stopped working. Every laundrette was down at least one dryer - so while I did finally get a washer, I had to sit there with my wet laundry for about 30 minutes before I could get a dryer. Still, I did finally get a dryer and then headed back up to the room for a minute. Tim and the doodle had just gotten back there to take a quick nap so that we could head back to the play area for Belle's story time.

The story time was adorable - they started with the scene from the beginning of the movie where Belle goes to the bookshop to get her favorite book out, and then, there's Belle in her town outfit (usually around the ship she is in her yellow ball gown from the end of the movie). She has the blue story book from the movie and she starts reading her story (it's a summarized version of Beauty and the Beast). When she gets to the castle, everyone gets up and follows her to another area of the play area that's the West Wing of the castle. She reads more there, then moves everyone to another area - it was a really cute way to keep everyone engaged, even the active little ones like the doodle. When story time was over, there was a little more free play on the big pirate ship and slide, so we hung out for that, then headed back to the room for a little bit.

The kiddo was still tired, so he flopped on the couch to watch some TV (great thing about Disney ships, always something on TV that's ok for kids to watch) and Tim and I dug out the suitcases and got everything organized and repacked. Then we rested a bit as well before supper. Tim had a chicken satay, potato leek soup, and beef tenderloin. I had a spinach-artichoke-jalapeno dip instead of the satay, but otherwise the same. We had baked alaska for dessert - quite yummy.

After dinner we walked around a little before heading to the last show - Disney Dreams. This was a fun little original show that highlighted the Disney stories from Peter Pan to Cinderella to Beauty and the Beast to the Lion King - it was really well done and very entertaining. After that, it was time for bed and our last night with the sea rocking us to sleep.