Disney Cruise: Day 7 (Going Home)

The next day was our final day of vacation.  We woke up and ate our last meal on the ship.  We attempted to take a picture of our final moments, but Mike needs some help in the selfie-taking department because it turned out a little blurry.  But, after all the fun we had over the past 7 days, we were all probably feeling a little blurry, so I think it's appropriate...

After eating, we all watched out the porthole as we pulled back into the Port of Miami...

And then, it was time to get off the ship.  {{Super sad face}}  As we were stepping off the ship for the last time, Connor said to me, "I think I'm going to cry."

I responded, "I think I am, too."  It had been such a magical vacation that it was hard to see it come to an end.

After that, we waited in line for awhile waiting to get through customs...

And finally checked back in with the rest of the world, like you see David doing here.  It was actually pretty nice to be totally checked out from everything for a week...

Once through customs and back out into the real world, we got our final view of our ship, The Disney Wonder.  It was such an amazing boat...

And, we got one final family picture while waiting for our van to the airport...

Then, we were off...

Notice how in the above picture Viv was happy as could be.  She thought she was just going on another fun shore excursion and that she'd be returning to her "Mickey Boat" that night.  She wasn't too happy when she realized we would be going back.

We boarded our plane a few hours later, and we were on our way home...

Sad faces to show our displeasure with our vacation being over...

But, happy that we would always have all the amazing memories to keep with us the rest of our lives...

After a short layover in Minneapolis, we were home and our Disney Cruise vacation was officially over.  It was such an amazing adventure!  Like I said in the first post, it's hard for me to describe in words how awesome it was!!  All I can say is BEST.VACATION.EVER!  We all loved every second of it, and are so happy we got to have such an incredible experience together.  --Lindsay

Disney Cruise: Day 6 (At Sea)

The next day was our last full day on the ship.  We were so sad that our vacation was beginning of wrap up, but we were bound and determined to make our last full day a great one, and boy was it ever!

We started the day out by heading up to the pool.  Unfortunately, some child decided to...do their business in the pool.  Yummy!!  So, the Mickey pool & waterslide were closed and had to stay closed for a couple hours.  That meant the Goofy Pool was packed!  We decided to find something else to do, and come back up to do some swimming after lunch.  So, instead, we went to the "Frozen Sing-a-Long."  Connor & Aiden didn't think that sounded very fun, so Aiden headed to the Oceaneer's Lab and Connor went to the Edge Club for a couple hours.  But, Cohen, Viv, Mike and I all went to the sing-a-long in the Buena Vista Theatre.  They showed the movie "Frozen," but whenever a song came on, words would pop up on the bottom of the screen and everyone would sing the songs along with the characters.  It was hilarious to see all these kids singing the songs at the top of their lungs.  Viv was in heaven!!  She kept jumping out of her seat so that she could dance in addition to singing.  So fun!

After getting out of the theatre, we picked Aiden up from the Oceaneer's Lab and then happened to run right into a character dance party in the lobby of the ship...

So, we stopped and did a little dancing ourselves...

It was a fun little party!  Aiden got tired of dancing after awhile and found his favorite place to hang out--a porthole.  He seriously could have spent hours laying in these things watching the ocean...

Connor met up with us at this point and we all went back up to the (freshly cleaned) pool...

Cohen got really comfortable with swimming under the water during this trip...

It was really fun to watch him...

The kids also spent a little time at the splash pad...

They had some fun water toys out at the splash pad and Viv had a blast playing with them...

Aiden had a great time at the splash pad too...

He loved standing underneath Mickey's wand, which would randomly send down a shower of water to whomever was standing below...

Fun times all around...

The boys, of course, went down the waterslide again and again and again.  They decided, while in line, to play a little game called see-who-can-splash-Mom-the-best.  I--the unknowing victim--was trying to get pictures of them at the bottom of the slide.  Here's Connor's attempt...

Not bad.  I got wet, but mainly just on my lower body...

Aiden's turn...

Now, I don't know what Aiden's secret is, but that kid was able to send water flying everywhere when he splashed down.  He clearly won to contest.  I was drenched from head-to-toe.  So was my camera...

Next was Cohen's turn (even though Aiden already had the competition wrapped up)...

Here he comes...

Smiling all the way...

Cohen's splash...

Not very impressive, but at least he gets points for being cute...

Here's Viv hanging on the sidelines with Grandpa...

She was hesitant to get in the water again...

But, finally got up the courage to jump to Daddy...

Once she realized she could jump in the pool without dying, she decided to do it over and over again...

Cute daddy-daughter picture...

And here's a picture of the three of us  The only reason I am putting this picture on the blog is so you can see  just how soaked I got from Aiden's splash...

We also ran into a few friends at the pool--like Chip n' Dale...

And Mickey Mouse...

The wild and crazy Stitch...

And, on our way back to our stateroom, we ran into Captain Hook as well...

When we got back to our staterooms, we found a white envelope attached to the fish clip next to both our stateroom doors and a larger brown envelope attached to one of them...

When we opened the white envelopes, we found out that it was an invitation to a private character party later that night...

Inside the brown envelope, we found a signed picture of all five of the princesses.  Viv is still obsessed with this picture.  Just today, I caught her looking at it and even talking to it as if the princesses could hear her...

Now, remember how I told you that when we met the princesses earlier in the week, Princess Ariel's "helper" had come up to us and said, "Princess Ariel has requested I ask for your stateroom number?"  Well, we're pretty sure that was the when we were chosen for this private party.  So, a huge "thank you" to Princess Ariel for choosing us.  And, a huge "thank you" to Vivvie for being super obsessed with Disney Princesses and for hamming it up with them when we met them!  We were so excited, and couldn't wait until later that night!

But, there was still lots of daylight left, so we took advantage of every minute of it.  We found Donald Duck and got his autograph in our autograph books...

And, of course, got a picture too...

Then it was time to head to our final Broadway-style show for the cruise, "Dreams: An Enchanted Classic."  Here's some of us selfing it before the show started...

This show ended up being my favorite of the cruise!  It was the story of a little girl who discovered the power of her dreams with the help of Peter Pan, Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, and a bunch of other characters--plus a little faith, trust and pixie dust as well.  It was an amazing show!  The set was great, the visual effects (like the "pixie dust" and even *snow* that filled the theatre) were so cool, and we loved seeing so many of our favorite characters.  We all really enjoyed it!

After the show was over, we went back to our staterooms for a few minutes, and found another towel animal.  This one was probably our favorite of the cruise...

The reason we went back to our staterooms was to pack up all our suitcases and place them outside our doors, so that the ship employees could take them off the ship for us the next day.  {{Super sad face}}  We decided, since we wouldn't have access to our suitcases the next morning, we would just change into the clothes we were planning to wear on the final day of the cruise.  That way, we wouldn't have a bunch of clothes to carry around in our carry on bags the final day.  Here are the suitcases all ready to go...  {{Another super sad face}}

Then, we went to our final dinner of the cruise.  We had to get a picture of the boys with our server, Andrei.  He was from Romania, and was always really sweet with our crazy family.  He catered to our every need...

After dinner, it was time to go to our private character party.  We showed up at Studio Sea with our invitations and discovered that we were one of only FIVE families there!!  I guess I assumed it would be a much larger party with hundreds of people there.  Nope!!  There were only about 25 people total--and our family was 9 of those 25 people!!  One-by-one the characters were announced and entered the room.  We were just free to mingle, dance, and have fun with them.  Here's Cohen getting some one-on-one pirate advise from Captain Hook...

Unfortunately, Viv had fallen asleep at dinner, so when we woke her up to go to the character party, she wasn't in the most cheerful of moods.  That girl definitely needs her beauty sleep--and if she gets woken up too early, it ain't pretty.  Both Rapunzel and Ariel came right over to Vivvie and tried to cheer her up...

But, even two of her favorite princesses couldn't cheer her up...

Here's a family picture we got with them.  You can see Little Miss Grumpy Pants over there on the right hand side...

We also got to meet "Simba."  He was part of the "Dreams" show we had watched earlier that night.  He was very good in it and had a great voice...

We also met Miss Daisy Duck, who had alluded us on the cruise until this point...

Grandpa and Grandma got a picture with Minnie--although they are sort of in the shadows of this picture...

We also got to spend a little more time with Belle.  Even Belle couldn't cheer Miss Vivvie up...

Cinderella couldn't either...

Grandpa and Grandma also got to meet Mickey...

And we got photobombed by Stitch...

And, here's our regular picture with Cinderella...

Aiden spent some time with Peter Pan.  He was also really great in the show earlier that night.  All the cast members were amazing...

While we were chatting with Peter Pan, Connor got a little surprise.  Princess Tiana came up and asked Connor to dance...

He was super embarrassed...

And a little twitterpated too...

It was so cute...

Since the princesses hadn't had much luck cheering up Miss Viv, Mickey decided to take a crack at it.  He went in for a hug, and the edges of Viv's mouth finally came up a little...

Leave it to Mickey and his gal pal, Minnie, to finally get a smile out of this pouting princess...

And, now that Vivienne was finally happy, we decided to try to get a family picture with all five of the princesses together.  But, now that Viv was happy, she couldn't take her eyes off the princesses--even for the picture.  Oh well...

After about 30 minutes of time one-on-one with the characters, it was time to say goodbye so they could go do their "final farewell" show in the lobby.  But, before they went, we got a few more pictures, and Peter even gave Cohen a few tips on how to perfectly fold your arms the way Peter does.  I'm hoping he also gave Cohen a few tips on how to never grow up...

Uncle David finally jumped in a picture too.  He had volunteered to be the cameraman for the party, so he wasn't in any of the other pictures.  Luckily, Rapunzel suggested a selfie so that everyone knew he was there as well.  So cute...

The character party was the cherry-on-top of our cruise vacation!  It was so much fun to see the kids hanging out and playing with some of their favorite characters.  I'm not exactly sure how we got lucky enough to be invited, but I'm so grateful that we were!  It was amazing!!

Since we had just spent 30 minutes with the characters, we decided to forgo the "final farewell" show, and went up on deck to watch "Bedtime Stories" at the Goofy pool.  It was drizzling and a little on the cool side, but we just got some hot chocolate and cuddled up in pool towels to watch the movie...

Viv got a piece of pizza to eat, since she had slept through dinner...

It was a nice, relaxing end to the day.

Then, we took one last ride in the elevators.  We loved the elevators on the ship.  They were oval-shaped and had glass walls so you could see out.  Here we are passing through the lobby.  It was so pretty...

Once you got above the lobby, they had murals you could see through the glass.  Viv's favorite was this mural of Ariel on floors 6-8.  Yep, that mural is three stories tall!  It was pretty impressive...

When we got back to our room, we found a bonus towel animal for the day.  This cute little turtle...

It was time to hit the hay for the final night of our cruise.  It had been a great last full day!  We were so sad to see it all coming to an end, but were so happy that we had been able to have all the fun experiences we were able to have!  --Lindsay