If you missed the previous days of this trip report, you can read Days 1 & 2 here and Day 3 here.
On day 4 we woke up and realized that we had just docked at Castaway Cay. I was disappointed that I hadn’t woken up in time to see the docking process as it is something I always find interesting to watch, and our balcony provided us with an excellent view of the dock. If you have never seen it, what happens is the ship turns around and backs into the dock space. Then some of the CMs that live on the island walk out onto this bridge structure in order to tie the ship to the dock. Here is a picture I took on a previous sailing:
However, I did see something else that I thought was interesting. On a previous visit to the island I overheard a CM telling a guest that only a few of the employees live on the island and the rest just come over for the day from nearby Abaco Island. From our balcony, I noticed several small boats and jet skis coming towards us from Abaco Island which I could see off in the distance. During the 5-10 minutes that I was watching I counted 2 jet skis and 8 boats arrive. Here are the 2 jet skis approaching Castaway Cay. Notice how you can see Abaco in the distance:
And here they are even closer:
Since we didn’t have any excursions booked for the day we took our time eating breakfast and getting ready to go ashore. It was at this point that my husband realized that he had forgotten to pack his swim suit. Yes, that’s right. He goes on a cruise to the Bahamas and forgets his suit. We had a really good laugh about that. The shops on the ship were closed since we were in port, so we decided we would just have to hope that the shops on the island had a suit that would work.
We ate breakfast at Cabanas and enjoyed the view of the island. After we finished, we left the ship. Our first stop on the island was the gift shops in search of a bathing suit. He found one pretty quickly that would work. I think it was plain black with a small white Mickey on the bottom of one of the legs. Into the bathroom he went to change and then we hopped onto the tram to Serenity Bay. When we arrived at Serenity Bay I was pleased to see that we were some of the first ones there. This surprised me because we took our time leaving the ship and hadn’t rushed off. I wish I could remember what time we arrived but I don’t think I ever checked the time. We chose 2 loungers right in front of the bar area. Here is the view from our spot:
And more pictures of Serenity Bay that I took right after we arrived:
For the next couple of hours we read, swam, and just relaxed. The weather was perfect. I think it was right around 11:00 when we noticed some stormy looking clouds began to appear and they seemed to be moving towards us. I wasn’t too worried because even though we had never encountered rain on any of our 3 previous visits to the island, I was pretty sure than any rain showers would be short-lived and quickly pass. When the clouds began to arrive it made for some beautiful pictures:
I love how there is a sliver of ocean in the sunlight that appears as if it is lit from below:
Around 11:45 we were hungry for lunch so we made the short walk to the lunch area. Just in case it rained while we were gone we put all of our belongings under our shade umbrella and laid our towels over them. Right as we got our food and were sitting down it began to rain. It wasn’t just a light tropical shower either. It was a full-on downpour, complete with very loud thunder and lighting. Luckily, each table has a large shade umbrella over it that actually did a pretty good job of keeping everyone dry. The CMs were so great about helping people get to their seats while keeping their food dry. They were getting soaked but didn’t seem to mind. The food area is covered, so some people were waiting there with the hopes that it would soon let up. No luck. We finished eating and just sat at our table, trying to stay dry and hoping that it would stop soon. After at least an hour has passed (maybe more, I wasn’t watching the clock) we began to lose hope. A lot of people were running to the tram every time that it arrived (and getting soaking wet in the process), presumably heading back to the ship. However, we refused to give up hope and kept waiting it out. After some more time passed, we decided to go check on our belongings on the beach. I knew I would get really wet but I didn’t care because I was wearing a bathing suit. We dashed over to our spot and our stuff was still mostly dry. We grabbed it and took shelter under a covered area near the bathrooms. We waited there for a little longer, still hoping it would stop. Finally we threw in the towel and decided to go back to the ship. We got soaked as we ran to the tram stop and hopped on. As we drove, the rain turned into a light sprinkle. We thought about turning around and going right back, but we also wanted to do some more shopping on the island. We got off the tram and walked through the drizzle to the gift shops. It looked like most people had left the family beach areas by this time, and the tram stops were very crowded with people going back to the ship. We did some shopping, and while we were in the shops the rain picked up again. At that time we decided that we were just going to go back to the ship no matter what. In the gift shop we happened to run into some of our table mates who had done the parasailing excursion that morning, while the weather was still good. They said it was amazing. We finished shopping (shirt, magnet, and coffee mug for me, pin for daughter) and rode the tram back to the ship. On the tram with us were a lot of CMs from the restaurants. They were all soaking wet, but seemed to have a good attitude about it. We got soaked, again, walking from the tram stop to the ship. When we entered the ship, we were greeted by a blast of cold air that did NOT feel good. We were shivering before we got to the ship, and the air conditioned air was frigid. There were a couple of ship officers standing right inside the ship handing out dry, warm towels to everyone. It felt SO good to wrap that warm towel around me!
I think it was around 3:00 when we got back to our room. We showered and relaxed for a bit, reading and watching TV. Of course, around 4:00, the rain was gone and the sun was shining. All aboard was 4:45, so there was no time to go back onto the island. We ordered some room service (cheese platter, chocolate chip cookies) as well. I think I ended up watching the Adventures by Disney promo channel for a while. Every cruise, I end up watching that channel over and over. It’s like it hypnotizes me. Does this happen to anyone else? No? Okay, moving on……
We eventually got ready for the show and went down to the theater for Disney’s Believe. This was our second time to see this show and I didn’t remember it very well. It is not one of my favorites, but it is definitely worth seeing. I think the storyline (a girls who loves magic, her father too busy with work to care) is a little corny but the scenes from Disney movies are fantastic of course. After the show we went to the gift shops for me to make my final purchases. I ended up buying a 24 oz Tervis cup and a Christmas ornament.
Dinner tonight was in Royal Palace. We enjoyed our final evening with our table mates. At the end of the meal our servers reminded us that breakfast the following morning would be at the same place at 8:00 a.m. They gave us this ticket to help us remember:
After dinner we talked about going to the 80’s Music Challenge in Evolution but decided to call it a night and head back to the room instead. The alarm would be going off bright and early in the morning. We chose not to put our luggage out in the hallway that evening, but to just carry it off ourselves in the morning. When we got back to the room we found this:
Our final towel animal of the cruise 🙁 (If you like towel animals as much as I do, check out my post about them here).
Up next: Day 5 – Back to Reality
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