We're back! And the freezing cold temps and the snow piled high was right here waiting to greet us! We are about 6 pounds heavier (combined) from all of the awesome food we constantly had available to us. We aren't too tan- the weather wasn't always ideal. But we had a fabulous time away from winter's blast in Kalamazoo!
We started off with a visit with my grandparents in The Villages, about an hour north of Orlando. It was so nice to be able to kick back and relax with them. I've always loved visiting them in The Villages. I have great memories of when they lived there in California and I love their place in Florida. Maybe someday Dan and I will live there ;) Where else can you drive to Barnes and Noble in a golf cart?
Here they are dancing in the town square
Here's where they sit and do their video chats with us
Dan relaxing on the sun porch
Billy, the baby
Those are all golf carts. :)
We were there for just a day and a half. The original plan was to be there for two, but we left around 11pm on Saturday night so we could drive down to Cape Canaveral to camp out until 4:30AM--The launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavor. Dan and I parked in a parking lot that wasn't too close or too far from the beach and tried to sleep in our rental car until it was show time. It wasn't until this point that I realized I had left my only heavy item of clothing at my grandparents' place. The overnight temperatures were in the 30's and we hadn't packed anything really warm....I would fall asleep for like 15 minutes and then wake up asking Dan to turn the car back on to get it warm again. (Yes, we considered getting a hotel, but everyone else had the same idea. That and the Superbowl was in Miami the next day. There was no chance of us getting anything anywhere!) After so many of my grumpy attempts to get warm and comfortable, we finally made our way down to the overcrowded beach for the big moment. Over-crowded is an understatement. After waiting for the shuttle blog to load on Dan's iphone and trying to catch small glimpses using our binoculars for what seemed like forever, we heard someone shout "SCRUBBED!"...The mission had been scrubbed all together because of a low cloud ceiling and they postponed it for the following day. And why can't a shuttle launch into the clouds but planes can? It sucked. And we had no official plan for what to do afterward. It was still only 4:30AM. We made our way down to Cocoa Beach and parked by an apartment building at the beach and slept for two hours. Around 7:30AM, we were shopping in the Ron Jon store, sipping Starbucks and freshening up in the bathrooms. I bought a warm sweatshirt and then we made our way to the Disney Cruise dock.Still cold out, but I was so excited!
Here's me at the beach the morning after sleeping in the car at Cocoa Beach, looking at a few large boats off in the distance. (Notice the 5 layers of clothing?)
Kids, no kids or big kids at heart- The Disney Cruise is absolutely fantastic! I'm going to jump right into our photos so you can see for yourself :)
Our first glimpse of the ship
The port that Disney made for their excluisve use
Talking to Mom...Hi Mom!
first helping of food
the view of the shuttle from the ship....still there after the unfortunate delay; cool to see though from the ship
The three pools...
Here's us at the front of our Disney Cruise with a Royal Caribbean ship next to us
Our window
Our room
A picture of the bathroom. We actually had two...one with a toilet and a sink, another with a shower and a sink.
Mandatory drill time. We had to report to our station in our life vests for our safety drill
The Anchor's Away party as we sailed away from port
We had a different animal in our stateroom each night
Because we left on Superbowl Sunday, that night, they transformed the middle pool into an outdoor theater so anyone could watch the big game on their big screen. We stopped by a few times so Dan could check the score, I didn't care really.
This is one of my favorite pictures-Formal Night with Mickey and Minnie! Characters would frequently show up for a photo op throughout the cruise. We stood in line after our formal dinner in Triton's Resturant to get this picture! There was a pianist playing Disney classic songs each night, too. Just made it extra fun to sing and dance around!
Here's me posing where they held the Pirates IN the Caribbean party! Similar to our Anchor's Away party, but this time all the characters came out to party and then Captain Hook came to "steel the ship". But our hero Mickey saved the day and we celebrated with fireworks! They are the only cruise line with a fireworks show at sea!
Dan snuck a picture of the first night's broadway style show, The Golden Mickeys. Awesome show full of my favorite music! Each night was a different show before our dinner
Each night we had dinner in a different resturant. We had the later seating of the two options...6:30 or 8:15. the later one worked best for us anyway because we always had a late lunch. Plus, I think the familes with kids were more in the earlier seating. Each resturant had a theme. My favorite one being the Animator's Palate, where throughout dinner, drawings on the wall became colorful and eventually the entire room was "animated!"
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