Thursday was the last full day of our cruise, but instead of a port day, it was a cruising day- so we got to spend all day on the boat enjoying everything it had to offer.
I, of course, woke up earlier than Asa, but at least the sun was already up. So, I was getting better at sleeping soundly on the ship.
We had been wanting to eat at Windjammer for breakfast our whole trip, but with getting off the boat so early both days, it just wasn't working out (for Asa, specifically, he's not a morning person), so we had ordered room service. I did mention that we could get room service for our coffee the last morning on board. Continental Breakfast is complimentary, and doesn't have a sur charge like a hot breakfast or any other meals. I need to at least eat something when I get up, so I ordered a muffin. Not sure where the lines got crossed- but they gave us two of everything. Still, this way before we adventured out into the ship Asa got to have his coffee, and I at least had a little something in my tummy (though note, if you order hot breakfast, they seem to be a bit more prompt- if you order continental, you're likey to get it at the very end of your time window, instead of begining. Or maybe it was a total fluke.)
I did tell Asa I wanted to do some things on the ship as soon as they opened, so we headed out for 10 AM rock climbing. When Asa did it the other day, he found the wall so hot it was nearly burning his fingers to hold on. So, ad Floridians, I know that's an early in the day activity.
But this time, I brought my socks too, so I could also climb!
I appreciate the angles at which Asa took these pictures, it seems as though I'm up a lot higher. But, I got really freaked out actually about the height of it. I climbed up part way and was like 'yea, that's going to do it for me'.
Asa, however, made it all the way to the top. I know I could have climbed higher- though think I would have freaked out having to repel back down.
After the rock climbing wall, we headed on over to the Sky Pad. The last few days things like the Flo rider, the rock wall, and the sky pad had very limited hours. But on our sea day, they were open all day. Still, we were trying to beat the crowds. This time Asa wanted to try the Virtual Reality part of the Sky Pad. He loved it- there was some sort of game that went along with it. I, for obvious, motion sick reasons, did not attempt it.
We were crusing out along the Florida coast at this point, in fact, off in the distance, you could see Miami. I think we took a different way home because of the hurricane. They assured us they would make sure we stayed in calmer waters.
After our rock climbing and jumping, we headed down to Windjammers in time for breakfast. I was in heaven. Before we left, I kept asking Calib if he thought I'd be able to get "Mega Breakfast". What's Mega Breakfast, you ask? Well, thats when you can get pancakes, waffles AND french toast. Usually you have to pick just one. But, sometimes you get lucky with breakfast buffets and they have them all. In all honesty, breakfast was probably my favorite meal of the day on this ship.
After all that we headed back to the room, which Ida had made up for us. He was so good at sneaking in whenever we were out.
And we changed to hit up the only pool on the ship we hadn't swam in yet- the adults only pool. In all honesty, I liked the other pools better, but this one had a little bar area to sit at, which we did for just a bit. The water was colder in this pool too. It spends a lot more time in the shade.
We had yet another gorgeous, sunny day on our hands.
But, that was enough time on the top deck in the sun for us, so we went off to explore the rest of the ship. We spent a little time gambling in the casino. (I think I lost $4 in there. Bummer).
And then it was off to napkin folding at the Schooner Bar. I was slightly disappointed there was animal towel folding, but napkin folding was alright.
After napkin folding we were headed down to Deck 2 to reserve our spot for ice skating, because our ship had an ice skating rink! There's a show here the first couple nights, but we had missed it. On the last day they open it up for a free skate. You have to go line up for a time slot, since there is limited availability, but we showed up about 10 minutes before sign up started and were the second group in line. That meant we got our pick of times- and we picked the very first one (the orange group, apparently).
We signed our waivers, and then because our time was just 20 minutes away we went back to our room to change into pants and grab socks- both things you'll need for ice skating. Then, we made our way back to the rink. When they're ready for you, they call the whole orange group down to the floor.
You do have to wear helmets- but everything is complimentary, including your skates.
We got out onto the ice- to get our ice-sea-legs under us.
It wasn't too long before I had the hang of it again-
Except then we got yelled at for taking pictures. Apparently that's a no-no. But, they did then offer to take pictures for anyone who wanted them. Even "yelling" at guests are in the form of "friendly reminders".
You get about 20 minutes on the ice, but after about 10, I was done. The boat moving, along with skating in circles started to get to me. Asa, however, kept going.
But, now we can say we ice skated at sea! We quickly changed out of our pants and back into more summer-y clothes and made it back up to the top deck in time for the very popular belly flop competition.
Since we had such a big breakfast, there wasn't a lot of need for big lunch- though there's always room for coffee. We still had a couple punches left on our coffee card. So while Asa ordered, I walked over to the food counter and ordered a mudslide cookie. The lady was like 'I'll get you one of those, but they aren't great- let me show you what I have that's much better' and she pulled out this whole tray of desserts. I told her I trusted her, so she got me a plate of other desserts. Asa took this picture while we were discussing all this, without me knowing.
We took my desserts and our coffees and headed down to the Schooner Bar for trivia. We looked around for our trivia buddies, but they were no where to be found, so we grabbed our own seat.
It wasn't long before our trivia buddies shoed up and we joined forces. We did pretty good on cartoon trivia, and then Asa and I were getting ready to go, when they insisted we stay for 70's music trivia. We insisted we didn't know anything about 70's music, but they were so fun to hang out with, we stayed. For trivia, they'd play these tiny little snipets- and you had to identify the song. We thought they were basically all the same thing. Asa believed every song was "Stayin Alive"- and none of them were. And then Asa had a very Asa losing something outburst about it. We did find pizza buddy Jenna too, so she came over and chatted and took a cruise ship buddy picture of us all. We then agreed we'd all meet up in the Star Lounge for Disney trivia, as a sort of super trivia team.
As we headed out to play some shuffleboard, we spotted piano guy.
Asa once again beat me at shuffleboard. I feel like we were the only ones who played suffleboard on the ship, but it was in an awesome spot, out on the deck four balcony which was usually pretty quiet.
With the sun starting to go down (or at least it wasn't heat of the day), we made our way up to Deck 13 to play some putt-putt. It was much busier up there- so we shared a ball, and were just as terrible about it the second go around as we were the first time.
Deck 13 also has some quiet seating, you can always find empty lounge chairs- either in the shade (our preference) or the sun.
Back in our room, it had already been turned down for the night by Ida, and this time we got a crab towel animal.
At this point, Asa wasn't feeling great. The movement of the boat was getting to him. So, I gave him some dramamine and the other set of my writst bands to put on. It's worth noting, I never had to take any Dramamine. I did fine with just my wrist bands- plus, I never felt like the boat was going all that fast. Anyway, since he didn't feel that well, we watched the sun set from our room instead of going out to the balcony.
And then I gave him all my seasickness pointers. Lay down- get some water, a little cool air, and for the love of god- do not read anything!
After all my tips, Asa was feeling a little better, and he insisted we not miss Disney trivia- especially since we promised everyone we'd meet them there. So, we put on our matching Disney shirts and headed up to the Star Lounge. Our super team (complete with a few Disney fantatics and a Disney cast member) did pretty well, but we didn't know what word Bambi taught Thumper, or what year Disney bought Marvel, so we lost.
But we had fun doing one last trivia with all of our cruise ship buddies. Maybe we'll run into Jenna at Epcot, or our cruise buddies on another ship. They were super fun!
After we said our goodbyes, we headed up to Windjammer before dinner time was over. Of course I got one more plate of desserts.
But also our plates were very different on our last night of our cruise, than our first. At this point, I was like, man, I need some veggies. So, except for a roll and some mashed potatoes, that's basically all my last plate was.
We swung by for some decaf afterwards. The free stuff wasn't nearly as good as the speciality stuff, but it got the job done. And after that, we were walking through Playmakers and we noted that not only was Thursday night football on, but there was an empty pool table. So, we spent some time in there.
Despite the motion sickness incident (note: by Asa, not me- I never once had to resort to Dramamine), we had a lovely crusing day, where we really took advantage of everything the boat had to offer. Turns out I like road trips with just Asa, and I like cruising with just Asa. A good thing, with our nest getting roomier by the day.
I am going to go ahead and include Day 5 in here. But, we got off the boat so early Friday morning, it barely counts. Still, I managed to get an elevator picture!
Our time to be off the ship was 8:00. I wanted to make sure to get one more breakfast in, so I set the alarm for six am. When I woke up the sun was just coming up and we were just pulling back into Port Canaveral.
Asa was taking a minute to get up, so I suggested I just run up to Windjammer to get breakfast on my own, which he totally agreed with (while I like to eat when I first wake up, he hates it). On my way up to Deck 11 one last time, I swung out to the Deck 4 balcony to see us docking.
I tried to take the stairways, but a bunch of them were closed off. I may have possibly crossed under a few to get where I was going.
And I made it to the Windjammer one last time. I grabbed myself a plate, filled it up, and headed back down to our room.
One last mega breakfast. (I even got Asa a pile a bacon, which he refused- if he won't eat bacon that early, he won't eat anything!)
Once I came back with my food, he went up to Cafe Promenade one last time to get us our last two coffees. I'm going to miss the "Free" starbucks.
And then I packed up the rest of the room- which honestly, was just throwing everything in our big suitcase. I brought our laundry bag/backpack, and with all of our dirty clothes in there, there was tons of room in the suitcase to throw everything else and not worry about packing. Plus, the bonus of living within driving distance of port is not worrying about what you'll need before you get home, or even how much your bag weighs!
And that was it- we were headed off the ship. It was such a good time, we were sad to see it end. Although, we agreed 4 night cruises are awesome. There's a lot of cruise/drink/buffett fatigue that comes in when you are on a 7-nighter. But with four, you don't really have that. Though, we agreed 5 might be the sweet spot. We'll see, if we can get good deals like this, cruising might be our go-to vacations for awhile.
While our new cruise buddies tried to convince us to go to Disney on Friday after getting off the ship- we coincidentally all had Epcot park passes for the day, and our other cruise buddy was working that evening in Epcot- we decided it was too early of a morning to want to go to Disney. Instead, we headed right home and got to chill with all the pets that were happy to see us.
I did end up unpacking on Friday- here's my newest collection of magnets.
And, while Peyton was in the UK, Calib and Hayden had kept it down at home. However, when we're gone, Hayden usually sleeps in our room because Phenom is used to sleeping in there, so it just makes him happier. Well, turns out, Phenom had been stashing my chapstick under the bed- something Hayden discovered while we were gone- and we came home to a collection of them.
Of course, then we came home to all the Hurricane Ian madness. Thank goodness we were spared. Since I've already done those blogs though...
Next Up: Tom Brady, in person! We went to our first Bucs game in THREE years!
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