Panama Canal Trip Report: Day 4 At Sea

Day 4:  At Sea

 If you would like to start this trip report from the beginning, click here.

Note: I do not feel right posting pictures of fellow cruisers who have not given me permission to use them on the blog, so I will blur out the faces of people in the background of my photos. I’m sorry if it looks funny, but I want to respect their privacy.

Also, anytime you see red text, it is a link to either product information or another one of my blog posts that gives more detailed information about that topic.

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You can see this day’s Daily Navigator by clicking here:  Daily Navigator Day 4

I was the first one up about 8:00 and I watched the morning show, checked email, and caught up on my trip notes.  Everyone else got up shortly after and we all went to Cabanas for breakfast about 9:00.  This is what the Goofy pool looked like when we walked past.  It didn’t open until 10:00 am.

I didn’t remember to take many breakfast or lunch pictures during the cruise but I did on this morning.  This was my plate at Cabanas:

Something weird was going on with the drink stations in Cabanas during this sailing.  For some reason that I never heard, one would often be shut down during peak times which caused the other ones to back up so badly that it was chaos.  I had never seen this before and it was a little bit annoying.

We had tickets for the princess gathering at 9:45 and then the Frozen meet & greet at 10:15, so we ate pretty quickly and went down to the atrium for the princess gathering at about 9:40.  I was surprised at how long the line was, especially with the tiny number of kids on this sailing.  This is by far the longest we have ever waited for the princess gathering since they started requiring tickets.  I took a picture of the new chandelier while we waited.

I really like this chandelier.  It is just stunning in person.  I like it better than the old one.

We probably waited about 20 minutes and then it was our turn!  There were 5 princesses at the gathering:

Something really funny happened while they were talking to Belle.  Belle asked my oldest what book she was currently reading and she answered “Harry Potter”.  Belle then asked which Harry Potter book she was on and my daughter answered “The fourth one”.  Belle’s response to this was, “Oh, that one’s my favorite!  I just love how it ends!”.  My girls walked away and then looked at each other with horror on their faces.  If you are not familiar with the series, the fourth book ends with the most powerful dark wizard of all time regaining power, thereby threatening the existence of the entire wizarding world.  Oh, and he kills a student while he’s at it.  So yeah, not a happy ending at all.  We laughed about that the whole cruise.

Right after the princesses we went to Animator’s Palate for the Frozen Meet & Greet.  The line was pretty long here as well.  This is what the set up looked like:

They had Frozen images on all of the screens:

I think we waited about 15 minutes for our turn.

They got some warm hugs:

Right after this, the girls and my husband raced up the stairs to the Buena Vista theater just in time to watch Beauty and the Beast.  None of us had seen it as we were specifically waiting to see it on this cruise.  I wanted to see it, but I also wanted to go to Captain Puckett’s lecture in the Walt Disney Theater.  I decided to leave them there and go to the lecture instead.  The Buena Vista theater was completely packed.  Also, my husband told me later that he saw an older woman fall really badly down the stairs.  He couldn’t believe that she stayed and watched the movie.  We saw her later on during the cruise and it turns out she had a hairline fracture of her tibia.  The ship’s doctor had put an air cast on it and confined her to a wheelchair.  We felt so badly for her.

I will take this opportunity to say that I don’t think they showed Beauty and the Beast nearly enough on this sailing considering it was recently released and very popular.  On most days is didn’t show at all, and the few times that it did it was in the evening during dinners and shows.  This was one of the few (if only) times it was shown in the morning.

I had a few minutes to kill before the lecture so I went to get a drink from the drink station.  I also walked through Shutters to check our photos on a kiosk.  There were several pictures of different guests in our account which I have never experienced before.  I was able to mark them as not belonging to us and they didn’t appear anymore after that.  I do want to mention that on this cruise, the Shutters photographers no longer swiped your card before taking your picture.  Instead, they just asked your room number.  This was the first time we had experienced this but I liked it so much better!  It was much quicker and easier than taking out your card every time.

I got to the Walt Disney Theater a few minutes before Captain Puckett’s lecture began and it was pretty full.  The title of today’s lecture was “Construction of the Panama Canal”.  This was his second lecture and he did a different one every sea day of the cruise.  I had missed the first one (“Introduction & the Age of Exploration”) because we were at Palo brunch.  His lectures played all day on one TV channel so I was able to catch most of that one in our room later that night.

I really enjoyed the presentation.  Captain Puckett is a very good story teller and he has some GREAT stories from his 16 years of piloting ships through the canal.

After the lecture, my family was still in the movie so I went back to the room to get our gift cards so that I could take them to Guest Services and have them applied to our onboard account.  I have several ways that I earn “free” money which I convert to Disney Gift cards in order to maximize our onboard credit.  You can read about that here.

There was no line at Guest Services so that only took a few minutes.  Next I sat outside on deck 4 relaxing for a bit while I waited for the movie to finish.

Once the movie was over, we went to deck 9 to get some lunch.  Tangled was on funnel vision so we ate outside and watched it.  The girls had chicken tenders, and I think my husband and I both got a plate from Cabanas.  The ice cream flavors this day were chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and banana.  During this time a sweet blog reader named Lauren came over to introduce herself and we had a lovely chat.  I really enjoyed meeting her.

After we ate, the girls actually asked to go back to the room and watch cartoons.  We took full advantage of this opportunity for some kid-free time.  First we went to see if the future cruise desk was opened but it wasn’t.  Then, we went down to Port Adventures to get the photo challenge for the day:

This is something that I have never seen before on a cruise but we really enjoyed doing these.  They had a different one almost every sea day.  You have to write down the location of each item and then turn it in by 10:00 pm that night.  The next day, a winner is drawn from all of the correct forms.  I don’t think there was a prize, you just had your name announced.

After that we saw that an adult trivia session was starting at the Crown & Fin Pub so we went to check it out.  It was PACKED!  I am talking standing room only, shoulder to shoulder people in there.  We quickly left.

Next we decided to go hang out at the Quiet Cove Pool.  We didn’t have our suits on but we didn’t really feel like changing so we just found a table by the windows, relaxed, ordered a drink, and people watched.  It was very crowded which was typical for this sailing.

After a while we decided to go to the shops and look around to see if they had added any merchandise.  We didn’t notice anything new, but it was nice being able to browse without the kids.

About 3:30 we went back to the room to get the girls for Disney Tunes Trivia in the Promenade Lounge at 4:00.  The older 2 didn’t want to go and preferred to stay in the room watching TV, so  my husband and I took our youngest and headed down.  When we got there at about 3:45, it was PACKED with not an empty table in sight.  A craft session was finishing up, but none of the crafters seemed like they were going to be packing up and leaving.  We just stood there for a while waiting to grab some seats if they opened up.  While we were waiting, a nice woman approached me and asked if we would like to team up with her and her husband for trivia as they had 2 empty seats at their table.  I was so grateful for the offer!  We sat down and introduced ourselves just as trivia was starting.  We actually got a lot of them right (35 out of 45) which surprised all of us, but we did not even come close to winning.  We really enjoyed talking with them and ended up staying for quite a while after the game was over just chatting.  The man had a fascinating job and I just couldn’t stop asking him questions about it.  I think we talked with them for almost an hour and then I noticed that it was almost time for dinner.  I texted our 2 daughters that were in the room and asked them to meet us at Tiana’s Place.  They arrived shortly and we all went to dinner.

I though these lily pads on the table were so cute:

Tonight’s menu was the Tiana’s Place rotational menu.  At first I was confused because I thought the rotational menu was the one with beignets for dessert, and Levy had already told us that tonight was not the night for beignets.  I asked him to clarify and he said the beignets were on the Mardi Gras menu (which you will see later) and that this was the rotational menu.

It wasn’t long before Tiana came out and introduced the band, the “Crawfish Crooners”.  They began to play and it was really fun!  I have read complaint about the noise level being a problem, but I personally never thought it was.  We never had a hard time hearing each other or our servers.

I enjoyed the live music this night.  It made for a very festive atmosphere.

For the appetizer, my husband and I both got the Louisiana hot crab dip.  It was VERY good!

For the soup I ordered the cream of wild forest mushroom soup.  I am a mushroom lover, but thought this was just okay:

My husband must have skipped this course tonight.  For our entree, we both ordered the lime-marinated jumbo shrimp which was very good:

During the meal, Tiana stopped by the table to say hi:

Louis started making the rounds as well, although he could only visit the tables that were next to one of the larger main aisles.  He was too big to fit in between the tables so he wasn’t able to come to ours.  I guess there is nothing DCL can do about that since his costume is so big, but it was a bummer.  Here he is dancing with kids near the stage:

This is the dessert menu:

I ordered the tiramisu which was pretty good:

I also wanted to taste Prince Naveen’s flourless chocolate cake which was excellent:

My husband and the girls ordered the Tiana’s Place Sundae:

After a fun dinner, we went to the D Lounge for So You Think You Know Your Family.  Our 10 year old and my husband were chosen as 1 of the 4 parent/child combos to participate.

First, the parents had to answer 4 questions about their kids.  They would write the answer on a dry erase board and then the child would have to guess what they put.  Then, they switched places and the kids answered the questions while the parents guessed what they put.  Our team only got 1 out of 8 correct.  None of the teams did particularly well.  I think the winners only got 3 or 4 right.  It was entertaining to watch though.

Next it was time for one of our favorite shows, The Golden Mickeys.  We grabbed some seats while my 10 year old waited to be interviewed on the red carpet.  I took this picture from the theater during her interview:

The show was great as usual.  They had added a few new segments since we last saw it 1.5 years ago and it was really neat to see the additions.

After the show, 2 of the girls wanted to go to bed so we went back to the room.  I went to get a drink from deck 9 and then watched TV while waiting for family karaoke to start at 10:30.

Just before 10:30 we headed to the D Lounge for karaoke.  There weren’t very many people there, so everyone got to sing a few songs each.  Goofy stopped by at one point to listen in:

Once karaoke ended at 11:15, it was time for bed.  These were our towel animals for the night:

Up next:  Day 5 – At Sea

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