Note: You can see the daily navigators for this cruise here.
Day 6 was the first of 2 sea days in a row which were also the last 2 days of our cruise. I love ending a cruise with at least 1 sea day and 2 is even better. It just makes it easier to pack and end the cruise on a relaxing note when you are not getting off the ship during the last day or 2.
We had 2 big events planned for the day. First this:
And then this:
First up was the gingerbread house event. This does require 1 ticket per family/room. They are free and can be picked up at guest services (or wherever the navigator says) right when you board the ship. Ours took place in Studio Sea. We arrived and the tables already had the house supplies on them and we were told to choose a place to sit and to please only make 1 house per family/couple/room or whatever your situation is.
This is what it looked like when we arrived:
They had a sample house already built on a table up front:
Weren’t the cruise staff cute in their hats and aprons?
When it was time to begin, one of the cruise staff welcomed us and started giving instructions. She was sure to stress that we could not take the houses off the ship due to customs rules but she encouraged us to take them to our rooms and enjoy them for the rest of the cruise.
She then introduced the lead dessert chef of the ship and he gave more detailed instructions:
Then it was time to begin. Dad had to help with the actual structure of the house but the girls did the decorating. Mom did the photographing.
The final product:
Here is some video that I took:
If you plan to do this event soon, I will caution you that you may need to work fast. It turns out that we only had a 30 minute time slot and there was another class right after ours, so after about 20 minutes they started telling us nicely to hurry up and finish. We barely finished in time and I feel that we worked pretty fast. This may not be the case if there is not another class after yours but just be aware that it could happen.
We dropped the house off in our room, dropped the girls off at the club and then went here for the second time:
Joanne had scored us a second brunch reservation!
Even the bathrooms are fancy:
We had the same server that we had last time (you can read about that here on Day 2) whose name I still cannot remember but he was still an awesome server. We went to the buffet first:
Then we ordered our 2 favorite items from the kitchen. The grape & gorgonzola pizza:
And the chicken parmigiana:
We were sure to save lots of room for dessert:
As we were leaving and waiting for the elevator my husband noticed these books on shelves behind some glass that we had never paid attention to before:
When you enter Palo, there is a guest book on a counter where you can sign your name and a message. On these shelves were several full books that guests had signed in the past. Since we couldn’t touch them it was hard to get a good look but I tried:
On our way back to pick up the girls I noticed some blue and white Christmas decorations:
There was a blue and white tree as well but my picture of it came out blurry for some reason.
We picked up the girls and got them some lunch from the pool deck and when we got back to the room Joanne had left them these:
I think we relaxed in the room for a while until it was time for Disney Tunes Trivia at 3:00 in the Promenade Lounge. There were a lot more people here than were at Disney Cruise Line Trivia. The lounge was pretty much full. Once again they asked us to limit our teams to 4 people but it didn’t really seem like people complied and they didn’t enforce it.
The game was fun but really hard! The cruise staff member in charge would play about 2 seconds of a song (I am not exaggerating – it was literally like 3 notes) and we had to write down the movie it was from. He would then ask a question about the song or movie. He wouldn’t replay the piece of the song so you could only hear it once. There were 20 songs, so 40 questions total. We traded sheets with a neighbor for grading. Our neighbors scored really well although I can’t remember what their score was. We did okay – I can’t remember how many we got right but I think it was a little over half. The team that won only missed 2 or 3 total which made me think they had done this game before because it really was that hard. It was fun and I would recommend it.
After trivia it was time to go to the concierge reception in Diversions Lounge. This is a casual come and go reception where they have fancy hors d’oeuvres, free drinks, Mickey rice crispy treats (with chocolate and without) and a character makes an appearance. We weren’t hungry for the food, but we definitely wanted a stash of the rice crispy treats for later and also needed to talk to Joanne about something. Minnie was the character who made an appearance:
When we saw Joanne we asked her to let our servers know that we wouldn’t be at dinner that night. It has become a tradition of ours to pick 1 night of the cruise to skip the dining room, eat dinner on the pool deck, swim, and watch funnel vision. The pools are practically deserted during dinner and the shows and it is always really peaceful. We like to let our servers know ahead of time so that they don’t prepare our drinks, bread, or just wonder where we are.
After we left the reception we went back to the room to get ready to swim. When we got there we found our tip envelopes – the first sad sign that the cruise is soon coming to an end:
These are the slips that go inside the tip envelopes:
If you would like to read all about tipping on a Disney cruise you can do that here.
We also found this:
I know you would love one of those red pillows, but don’t think they won’t notice if you take it and charge you for it. If you would like to obtain one and still remain a law-abiding citizen, you can buy one here (affiliate link).
I think was around this time that the captain announced that we were sailing by Cuba and could see the western most point from the ship. I went to our verandah and took a picture. There is a white lighthouse on the tip of the island:
We got our suits on and went up to the pool deck to swim and eat dinner. Tangled was showing on funnel vision and the pools were empty:
Only on a Disney cruise can you swim and watch a movie at the same time:
Dinner and a movie:
It was about this time that I noticed the shorter lounge chairs:
I can’t be sure, but it seems like every other cruise I have been on has had the long loungers – or maybe I have just never noticed before now? It makes since why they made the switch since they can now fit a lot more of them on the pool deck.
After dinner it was time for more swimming, this time in a nearly empty Mickey pool:
We eventually decided to go back to the room and change clothes for the evening show which was The Music and Comedy of John Charles. When we got back to the room we found these:
But we were even more excited to find this:
This is the lithograph that all concierge guests received. This one is my favorite out of all of the ones we have received so far. You can see our lithographs from previous cruises here.
We then headed to the theater for the John Charles show and I’m glad we went. He is entertaining, talented, and funny!!! His show is very interactive with the audience and he wanders through the theater talking to people and asking them questions and then he incorporates their answers into the show.
After the show we all went back to the room where 3 of us went to bed and 2 of us stayed up for family karaoke at 10:15. After another successful round of karaoke we went to bed as well.
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