Wanderlust & Wishes

Episode 74: Post Trip Report - Disney Cruise (Halloween on the High Seas) - Part 1

• Julie & Krystle

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Julie is fresh off the Disney Magic Halloween on the High Seas sailing — and we’re spilling all the details! In Part 1 of our post-cruise recap, we dive into embarkation day, first impressions of the ship, and the magic of Castaway Cay, including the unforgettable Stingray Experience. Julie also shares her thoughts on dining, favorite meals, and a quick stop in Nassau.

Whether you're a seasoned cruiser or first-timer, join us for all the deets! 

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Wonderlust and Witches, the podcast where we explore the world one destination at a time. I'm Julie. And I'm Crystal. As travel agents with fantastical vacations, we are here to share our passion for travel and help you turn your wonderlust into reality. From hidden gems to bucket list adventures, join us as we dive into the sights, sounds, and stories of our favorite destinations. So grab your passport, pack your bags, and let's embark on this journey together.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi everybody. Welcome to episode 74 of Wonderlust and Wishes. Today we're going to talk about post-trip report for the Halloween on the high seas cruise that my family and I took. It's been two or three weeks since we've recorded because we pre-recorded a lot of things to be prepared for me being in an area with not a lot of great internet. So I feel like I haven't talked to Crystal in forever. Even though we have, it's we are not recording.

SPEAKER_00:

No, my my evenings, my recording nights have missed Julie. And I've tried not to ask her a bunch about the cruise because I wanted to get this meantime. So it's good to be back. But also because of that, we've had a lot of news buildup.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, we have. Some of the stuff that has happened, Walt Disney World finally, finally, finally released November and December of 2026. They also released some new promotions. So there are still Walt Disney World and Disney Cruise Line promotions out there. There's multiple out there. So if you have any questions or you're interested, just let us know.

SPEAKER_00:

I thought this announcement would ping pong the Universal 2026 more options, but it it did not. We're still waiting. So instead, we got a Universal Holiday. They changed their holiday tour to 1 to 5 p.m. instead of like half after hours events type tour that would end at 11. Pros and cons is a family. You still get priority meets with the Grinch and Santa, but it's a full park. So you're wasting your park day. And you end with priority seating at the parade. There's not any Christmas lights or show on Hogwarts included. I'm not sure why they did that. I feel like a lot of people are not happy with that. No, and like I get like doing it earlier in the day for little kids, but how do you keep my kids up for this? It's like just doing like an after hours Disney party or something.

SPEAKER_01:

I agree with the same thing. I uh having the after hours part of it is was one of the huge benefits because you don't have so many people and you have lower wait times and things like that, which is such a huge benefit to those types of things. Just a quick cruise update. Celebrity Cruise Line released their 2027, 2028 Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand itineraries. So if you're looking to plan a cruise that's pretty far out, and we talk about that if you want to get the best price, you need to book early. So those are all available right now.

SPEAKER_00:

Cake Bake Shop, since we already talked about our Christmas episode, this had not been released yet, but Cake Bake Shop on Disney's Boardwalk is doing a special dinner with Santa Claus event. This event will feature a three-course meal, take-home gift, holiday cocktails, and hot chocolate, and a professional photograph with Santa Claus. This event will take place on November 18th, November 25th, December 2nd, and December 9th. If you are interested in more information about this event, you can contact their concierge events team and find more info on their website.

SPEAKER_01:

That looks really nice. I'm sure it's probably gonna be really hard to get into with only four dates. I can't imagine that they're gonna have a whole lot of availability. But what an experience. I know it sounds so fun. We talked about this a little bit ago that uh Tapu Tapu would be discontinued at some point, that it was coming. So they have officially discontinued Tapu Tapu at Volcano Bay. At this point, guests will have to stand in a queue, just like you do for any other area. There's no virtual line. It does look like they are issuing a one white wristband, basically, for each family or each group that's with your, you know, with your party to allow for locker access. Because that was one of the huge things that we talked about is the whole thing with having Tapu Tapu is you didn't have to worry about having anything like with you, and that you could put up your money and you didn't have to carry around a ticket and all of those things. So for now, that is their solution is to use the white wristband to get into a locker.

SPEAKER_00:

And last but not least, this is something that we've heard about for a while, but we have not been able to release it because we've not had any official information. But Universal is opening a kids' resort, it's an all-new theme park that inspires the unbridled creativity of kids through play, discovery, and imagination in a way that engages the whole family. So this is opening sometime in 2026, we don't know when, in Frisco, Texas. And they're going to be seven vibrant lands, Isle of Curiosity, which had Gabby's Dollhouse pictured, Trolls Fest, Shrek Swamp, Puss and Boots, Minions versus Minions, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Jurassic World Adventure Camp. So to me, this reminds me a lot of the uh Dreamworks Land Universal. Yeah, it has a lot of value. So it'll be interesting to see uh how big and we've I've seen construction updates, so more info, I guess, coming soon. Is that an actual resort there on the right? And then okay, and with a pool and everything. Kind of similar to like Helios with Epic, where there'll be the resort and out the back is the park. So that will be exciting to see and hear more. So when we know more, we can share now to the main event, the cruise. Remind everybody what your cruise was, who you went with, all the nitty-gritty details.

SPEAKER_01:

So our cruise was from October 3rd to October 5th. So it was a five-day or five-night Halloween on the high seas cruise on the Disney Magic. We visited both of the Disney private islands and we also visited Nassau. We went with it, it was my family. So my husband, my husband, and my two daughters, and then my parents went on the trip. And I have lots of thoughts. I may not be able to squeeze all of them in, but I'm gonna do my best to not get too wordy, but at the same time, get some good information out to everybody. So kind of starting off, we traveled down. So the day that we left was a Friday. So we traveled down on Thursday. We are near the Charlotte, North Carolina area, so we're close enough to Florida that we can we can make it without flying, and it's not a crazy too long drive. So we left right after school and work on Thursday, drove to Jacksonville. We already had reservations at a hotel in the Jacksonville area. So we stayed overnight. We only had about two, two and a half hour drive to Port Canaveral on Friday morning. So that was that made things very easy. We were able to get up, get breakfast at the hotel, not feel like super rushed, and our check-in time was 12:30. So we really needed to be there around 11:30, 11:45 to give us enough time to get our park and give our luggage over and then start the check-in process. One of the things that we learned as we were getting in line to drop off our luggage, we got in the wrong line. So yeah. So we there's basically two lines. There's a or there's it's one line, but it's two lanes. So on the left lane, you go directly into the garage, the parking garage. And it doesn't mean that you can't like it's fine if you do it that way. It just means that you don't drop off your luggage first. And it and that just means that you have to park and then you have to carry your luggage across the street because the parking garage is across the street from the terminal. So we got in the left lane, didn't not realizing that you needed to be in the right lane only to be able to drop off your luggage. Like I said, it would have been probably easier to be able to drop your luggage off first and then park and walk and just walk over without having to carry anything, but it wasn't the end of the world. It was it was fine. So we parked and you pay for the whole week up front, got all that taken care of, and then we're able to drop all of our luggage off. That part was really easy. Obviously, we had already put our luggage tags on. We had done that that morning before we left from the hotel. So everybody that was giving over a bag had to have a luggage tag. We had, I think, eight, maybe eight luggage tags, six or eight. I don't know. It was definitely more than I was expecting. Like I was thinking we were each gonna get one, and we definitely got more than that. So that was nice because I may have packed two extra bags. So I needed an extra one out of my book. I'm overpacking. And another thing that was really fun, just as we were driving in, we happened to get behind the DCL bus that, you know, is coming from the airport and from the Disney, the Disney World resorts. My parents were driving separately and they weren't right behind us, they were close. My mom decided she had to stop at Bucky's, and I don't even know how long they spent there. So they were like 15 minutes behind us, I think. I texted her a picture that I think we're going the right way because we were behind the the DC Out bus. And so we obviously followed it in. So as far as timing, I went through all my pictures, just kind of looking at this is just kind of first day timing. We got in line at the terminal in our car to go to the parking deck at 1148. I have another picture where we were boarding the ship at 1247. So basically, between it took us about an hour to drop off our luggage and then get in the line. And it's literally just like an airport. Like you get in this security line where everybody's just lined up and they have probably 10 or 15 people that are taking your IDs and verifying your information. And you do have to have either the paper printed out that they sent to you for your cruise that has the QR codes on it, or you have to have a screenshot of it. You have to have something to be able to give to the person so that they can go through and scan that and verify your information.

SPEAKER_00:

Because you had the QR code, did you need to present your birth certificate or a passport?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, you have to have your passport available ready to give them. So basically, I had the printed piece of paper because I just felt like that would be easier. I handed over the piece of paper and she scanned each of us. And as she scanned, you know, she scanned, you know, the first barcode or the first QR code, then she asked for the ID that she had to verify, you know, and she went through each of us. We maybe waited in line 20-ish minutes. It might have been longer than that. It didn't feel that long. It felt like it went really fast. And then after we did that, we went through security. So you have to like put your bags and everything through um in your phone and all of that stuff. You have to go through security just like you do at the airport. It was very similar. From there, you just walk into the terminal because it was at 12 30, it just wasn't very crowded. There was just barely anybody in the terminal, no one was waiting. We were boarding the ship by 1247. Like I have a video of Ella. Ella was in front of me, and we were walking onto the ship at that time. I feel like it went very smoothly. I didn't feel like it was an hour at all. I felt like it was like one thing to the next. Like we didn't have to wait a long time for anything.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think that backed everybody up is Disney announces every family. So that's like the holdup for everything.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. No one was really in front of us, so we went basically straight onto the ship. And I think if we had had an earlier boarding time and maybe had to wait in the terminal, you know, or like wait around, you know, we may have had a different experience where we felt like we were waiting a long time, but I didn't feel that way at all. After boarding the ship at 1247, we went basically went up to Cabana. So that was probably around one o'clock. Around, I was pretty much 1.30. I think that we were thinking we're gonna go check on our room to see if our room's available. The app said two o'clock, but the lady that checked our ID said you should be fine by 1.30. So we walked up to find our room. We were on the seventh deck. We found our where our room was, our luggage, except for Rob's bag, which it eventually showed up, so it was fine, was already outside of our room. That was at 147. Um, I have a video of me being out on the balcony taking a video of basically the terminal because that we had a view of the terminal. Our muster drill, that was, I think that was at like 3:30. Everybody has to do it at the same time. They give you an area where you're supposed to be, and we were on deck 10 for the sale of wave party by 356. So as soon as they let us go from the muster drill, we basically like hauled butt to the deck so that we could at least get a spot where we could see. We didn't get the greatest spot, we got an okay spot. I was able to get some video and we were able to see the screen, and the pool deck is actually deck nine, but we went up one more deck so we could see down. The horn was blowing by 409. Actually, after the horn blew and we knew everything kind of settled down, we went to the back of the ship to watch them take like the rope or whatever it is that's you know keeps the ship from sailing away from like floating off. Yeah, so they disconnected everything, and we were back there when the ship started moving, and that was at four around 4:34. I have a video of taking a video of the ship moving away. We had early dining, um, which is at 5 45. We were sitting at our table at Lumiere's, which was our first restaurant, at 5 40. The pumpkin tree lighting was that evening. We walked out of dinner and basically everybody was already crowded around waiting for the pumpkin tree lighting. That was at 7:30. And we were back in our stateroom to basically crash by 7:44. That was in a nutshell. There's other things in the middle there. We we did do some exploring of the ship a little bit.

SPEAKER_00:

You did get a lot done in that first half day.

SPEAKER_01:

It was a lot. I don't know. It kind of doesn't seem like it was a whole lot, but it was a lot of moving around, and we were definitely ready to crash when we got back to our room. Like I had no complaints from anyone that they wanted to go do something. We all basically went right back to our room and we were ready to crash. The seas were very rough the first two days. So I'm really glad that I had my dramamine and seasickness stuff. I did not get sick. I didn't feel sick at all the entire time. When we got up from dinner after sitting down, we all kind of stumbled. Like that's how much the ship was rocking around.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and it was raining when you you sent me a video of it raining when you It was, it was, and it did stop.

SPEAKER_01:

It stopped before the Sailor Wave party, thankfully. So it was clear before we left. There was a major difference between the little like area of water where the port is. You could see the difference when we came out into the ocean. The waves were so rough. It was a major difference. We did go to Cabanas for our meal. We didn't do the you could do go to Rapunzel's. That was an option if you wanted to go to the dining room, but we just went to cabanas. It was very chaotic. I will say that breakfast at cabanas was fantastic. And I'm not saying that the food wasn't good. I mean, it was a buffet, and it they had pretty much anything and everything that you could possibly want. But I preferred the other options of the ship for lunch than cabanas. I love the breakfast, but the lunch not so much.

SPEAKER_00:

How did cabanas handle your allergy?

SPEAKER_01:

Good question. They have someone that's in charge, and you go up to them and you give them your order, and then they give you a a number on like the little table stand, I guess, and they put the number on the end of it. They give you that, and then they basically come find you. If you know where you're sitting, then obviously you can tell them like we're sitting right over there, so it make it easier on them. But they just come and find you and they leave it for you when whenever they find your number. One of the things we talk about is the rotational dining and that your servers go with you. Our head server took my order as of that first night. He took my order for the next day at wherever we were going to be that night. So on Friday night, our first night there, once he realized that I had to do gluten-free, he took my order for the next morning for breakfast at Cabanas. He took my order for Castaway Key, and then he took my order for Animator's Palette, which was our next day's restaurant. And he did that, he did that every night moving forward. He took my order so that at Cabanas in the morning, I just showed up and said, Hey, I already have an order. This is my room number. And then they would get it and give me the number and find me.

SPEAKER_00:

That's nice though, because then it's like hot and you're not like holding up the entire party because they're scrambling to start something from scratch.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they uh it was that part of the experience was fantastic. They definitely were great, and that is probably I I would say of all the things, that was probably Rob's favorite thing was eating breakfast at Cabana's because he loved pretty much everything they had, and I think he would go back like at least twice to get more. He felt more comfortable with the breakfast options, and so he was very he's very happy with that.

SPEAKER_00:

What did you think of your room?

SPEAKER_01:

First impressions. The room was fantastic. I love the room. I love that we had the veranda. I don't think that I would have liked it as much if I did not have that extra space. I would have been okay, but I think because of the rough seas, it just helped to have the extra space. If you would go out on the veranda, even whenever it was rough, there was something about being out there where it didn't feel as like it was rocking and rolling, like whenever you were inside.

SPEAKER_00:

You can't see the rail against the sea going crazy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

The first night laying in the bed, like we were literally swaying back and forth. Like Ella was terrified that she was gonna get thrown off of her bed because she was on the higher bunk. And I mean, that's that's how like it was rocky. I, you know, had joined the Facebook group for the cruise. We had a shared WhatsApp group that you know, where everybody kind of communicated things throughout the cruise, and there were a lot of people that were down for the count. They were sick because it was so rough. So I feel really lucky that I didn't get sick. And I don't know if it was because of the dramamine and I had already started it. I also had the patches for behind the ears, like I had all the stuff, or if I just it just didn't impact me the way that I thought that it was going to. I've heard that.

SPEAKER_00:

They're shipping ride rides, but they're just perfectly fine on a cruise.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. The ship moving did not bother me at all.

SPEAKER_00:

That's good. Did you ever go to your parents' room? Because they didn't have a balcony, right?

SPEAKER_01:

I didn't. I don't know why I didn't. We just never, they never, I don't think they ever came up to our room either. I think we just kind of met each other wherever it was that we were going. And so they had a ocean view room. So they had the one like big kind of porthole for on they were on deck two, I believe. And yeah, so they had the one big window. They just didn't have the veranda. And as far as I know, they they liked their room. Their room was great. It had so much storage with the amount of stuff that we had that I probably overpacked and our girls probably overpacked. There was plenty of space for us to put things. I did a video of of the room just to show all that storage. They had storage under the bed, they had storage as soon as you walked in. There's like a closet to the left where the TV is sitting, all that had drawers. There was a ton of storage. That was very nice. And of course, it had the two bathrooms. You had the bathroom with the sink and the toilet, and then you had another side of the bathroom that had another sink and then the shower. It felt much more spacious than I thought it was going to. I was worried about it. It was funny though. We went to the Riviera for a couple of nights after our cruise, and when we walked into our room, we were like, whoa, this is huge.

SPEAKER_00:

I was gonna ask about a comparison because it's like twice the size.

SPEAKER_01:

It was funny. We were all like, This thingy, this has so much room. But I think it was great for a cruise ship state room.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and the magic is one of the first ship. Yeah, it's smaller. So it is a lot smaller and it's they learned a lot from that ship, things they did right and things they did wrong. But to start out, they've only improved. So to go back to such an it's not that it's a bad ship, it's just the first ship, the OG. And still feel like, oh, like we have a lot of room where not bagging on another cruise line, but if you go on some of their first, second, third ships, you feel like you're in a coat closet compared to their brand new ones.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And to be honest, some of the other cruise lines we've heard from Dan and Leslie are agency owners that go on cruises a lot, and they say like the regular state room with their family of four, that there would be blood spilled if they all had to spend a full week in one of those rooms, you know, without a bigger space. So it I felt like it was it was very comfortable for our family of four. I could see how if you had a family of five, you would need the larger option.

SPEAKER_00:

The oversized family veranda. Yeah. WWE.

SPEAKER_01:

And then we had our room attendant that was there every day. He was fantastic. He came in, obviously cleaned the room up, he made our bed, he put up a sofa, he put it back into a sofa, and then he put the upper berth back up into the ceiling. He had that done every day. And there were a couple of times whenever Rob was in the room for like most of the day, or he was around in that area most of the day, and he just went out on the balcony and he took care of it and it was fine. He was really nice, he was super sweet. We definitely gave him a little bit extra for gratuities because he did a great job.

SPEAKER_00:

All right.

SPEAKER_01:

So day two, where are we? What are we doing? Okay, so day two is a castaway key. We had two excursions planned. We had the stingray encounter, and then we also had the double kayaking encounter. The kayaking encounter got canceled because of the weather, because of the seas were too much. They did have kayak rentals that they were still doing, but they were in kind of contained area. The excursion that we had was more like farther out, and so anything that went outside of their kind of contained little spaces that they had defined, they they canceled a lot of the excursions because the stingray encounter was um it was an open ocean, and I'm so glad we were able to do that. So we probably got up, we went to breakfast. I think we were getting off around 9:30 or so. Um, I think that they opened up the ship at nine, maybe to get on the island. You do have the option to take a tram. We did not take the tram because it was not that far of a walk. And even though the girls complained, like it's not that far, guys. It was seriously like a five-minute walk to where all that where the area is. And there were so many chairs available. It wasn't even remotely close to being full. I mean, it was or at capacity.

SPEAKER_00:

Like you were rope dropping, like, did you feel like there were a lot of people, or do you feel like you were still one of the first off the ship?

SPEAKER_01:

I don't think even when we left, probably at like I think we left around 3-ish, 3 30, and we went back to the ship, it still wasn't crowded. Castaway never felt crowded at all. And the space where we were in was just one of the spaces for where you could sit and use a chair. I think every single chair had or set of chairs had an umbrella. So there was no issues with not having an umbrella. I don't think the water was overcrowded. Ella and I did go get in the water for a little bit after we got there and before our stingray encounter. We walked, we did walk around to get a feel for where everything was. It was very easy to, I just felt like it was very intuitive. Like we talked about, they don't have any food really or breakfast items or anything like that. There's nothing truly available food-wise, except for fruit. They did have a fruit stand and they did have the Coke station, you know, with the drink with all the drinks and everything that you could have as much as you wanted. But food-wise, that was at 11:30 whenever it was time for lunch, and that when that opened up. But they also had little beach bars, a couple of those, but it was, yeah, it was very easy to get around. I didn't feel like it was chaotic or overly crowded or any of those things. Then Ella and myself and my parents did the stingray encounter. It was so fun, and I'm so glad we did it. Ella was absolutely in her element. I think she was a little nervous at first just because she'd never done anything like that before. But we had the reservation, I think it was at 11. Their signage was very there were signs everywhere. So it was there was no way that you're gonna like miss this. So we found the where we checked in, they gave us a light jacket and snorkel gear, and they told us to go over to this little area where we would have orientation. So we went in there, we got all of our stuff kind of on, and they did this orientation that was super fast, maybe like five minutes. Um, they talked about the stingrays. Um, they talked about how to safely touch the stingrays. They also talked about that they did not oh yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Finger down the middle of the back.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and they basically said, for the most part, like you can touch pretty much all of the areas except for their eyes. And he's like, just like you don't want to get poked in the eyeball, they don't want to get poked on the eyeball. They're not gonna be happy with that.

SPEAKER_00:

Our our stingray uh excursion at our zoo, uh, as you walk in the door, the guy's like, two fingers down the middle of the back. And so we walk in and call her, and Harper always hold up their two fingers and start like waving like yes we now, sir.

SPEAKER_01:

That's so funny. And then once we got through the orientation, we started, you know, to go out onto the beach area and they assigned us a number. So there were probably thinking like maybe five stations, and they were kind of semicircle or like horseshoe-shaped stations, and you stood around them. The guide for that station was in the center, and they had these little ramps where the stingrays would come up the ramp and they would go around the little horseshoe shape, and we all had either a piece of shrimp or some type of fish disgustingness. I don't know what it was. It was basically like a cube of like fish guts or something. It was, it was, it smelled, it did not smell good, but they loved it, of course. And they told you like how to how to feed them. Um, you basically just like hold it out to where they they pretty much like suck it up underneath. Then obviously you can like touch them or pet them. I think there were maybe eight or nine of them. Um, so each one of them came up. The guide knew, of course, all of them by name, knew exactly which one was which. It was funny because there were a couple of them that had specific personalities. Like some of them were, you could tell, were a little bit more stubborn. Some of them they would kind of try to like back up so that they could go through again. And you had to like get them to go through because they were trying to like game the system. It was funny. And that was, I don't know, that was maybe like 10 minutes. And then for the rest of the time, we were able to use our snorkel gear and go swim out in this little cove area and see them in their natural habitat. And of course, I had my phone and my little trusty like water case, and so I got lots of video of them and of Ella. She had the best time. I mean, we basically stayed until like we couldn't we were done. Like, you know, like a lot of some people I think started to kind of get out of the water after a little bit. Like we stayed as long as we could possibly stay. Yeah, she had the best time. It's a fantastic memory for me for sure. Fine. So what did you do after that? I think we went back and we had food. Both islands basically have barbecue, and they do have barbecue, they have like hamburgers and cheeseburgers and like mac and cheese and potato salad and stuff like that. I think everybody, for the most part, like everybody liked what they had. I had to go over to a specific section and let them know I already had an order for that for that day for lunch, and they um I waited on them. They also had the soft surf stations that the girls took advantage of on the boat and at the islands. They loved the soft surf stations. Stations and I loved the drink stations where they could just get as much as they wanted. Ella probably was the one that ate the most ice cream out of like she she probably had at least two or three a day. She potentially had more than that. That was definitely a favorite thing for sure. After lunch, we just kind of hung out on the beach. Ella and I actually found some hammocks and we hung out there for a little bit. And then I think maybe I think it was around like 3 or 3:30. We went back to the to the ship and took showers. I think the girls probably every day we had a photo session where the girls got ready. I love that. I need to do all these. And they wanted to get pictures on the ship. We had dinner. Dinner was at, like I said, we had the early dining at 5 45. We went to Animator's Palette that night. So the whole room is basically in black and white. They have these columns that are in the shape of paintbrushes. And on the walls, they have TVs or screens all around the room. They have kind of a in a loop. They start drawing a particular character and they show like drawing through the entire process. And then they'll get the whole whatever the scene is or whatever the character is, and then they'll blink out and they'll start a new one. They did that the whole time. Towards the end of dinner, they started to actually color in the character. My phone died, and I was so sad. Yes, I was very sad at this point. But they had this show, and it was like a typical Disney emotional, just emotional overload with the characters and music. And yeah, it was Animator's Palette was my favorite restaurant of all of the restaurants. And I was actually really surprised that that's the case. That was not what I was thinking was going to happen.

SPEAKER_00:

Didn't you have a special guest come visit? Did Sorcerer Mickey not come through? Oh yeah, he did.

unknown:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, sorcerer Mickey did come through. He came through and did like and walked around and kind of like danced and did his, you know, did his arms, did his like sorcerer Mickey arms as part of the show itself.

SPEAKER_00:

Did your mom do her 5K?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, she did. I think she got started later than she wanted. And I also think she ended up, I don't know if it's because of like what she ate for breakfast or or what she ate for lunch or whatever, but she ended up like not feeling great the rest of the day. I don't know if it was the heat, I'm not sure, but she did it and she got her medal and she was very excited about it. So because she got a later start when we did Lighthouse Point, she made sure she was up and out and ready to go earlier.

SPEAKER_00:

My other question is, did you see any characters on the island?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I didn't.

SPEAKER_00:

I think they like to hang out up there by the what do they call that? The Mount Rushmore of the buoys.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I didn't, you're right. I didn't see, I didn't see any. That doesn't mean there weren't any there, but I did not see any. We may have also just not been, like you said, in the area wherever they tend to show up.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. What did you do after dinner?

SPEAKER_01:

What did we do after dinner? Did you do any shows? So let me actually rewind back to I didn't realize that the Rapunzel show or the Tangled was only on day one.

SPEAKER_02:

Like and so Oh no, it was only your favorite.

SPEAKER_01:

I didn't yeah, so I didn't see it. Yeah, I didn't that was the one show that I really like wanted to see, and I didn't realize it was on the first day. I will say I struggled a little bit with not knowing the schedule beforehand. That was really hard for me. I think as a Walt Disney World goer, I have a good idea of what the schedule looks like ahead of time, and we may or may not be able to do everything on that schedule, but I'm aware of that schedule. I know what's happening, I know when the parades are, I know when the you know the fireworks are, I know when, you know, the different just all the different things, like and I know when our dining is and all of that stuff. I felt very discombobulated that I didn't know the schedule beforehand. And so when you get on the ship and there's so much to do, it's overwhelming. I think for next time, I will probably need to just take that first like hour on the ship or something, or like make myself go sit down and look at the schedule because I feel like I missed things just because I didn't even know what was happening, because there was something happening every freaking minute, and there were multiple things happening every freaking minute across the ship. You're definitely not, you're definitely not. You have to prioritize what you want to do, but I think because I didn't know what I didn't know, I missed on some things that I probably would have done. I think we went to see Freaky Year Friday that night because that was not Halloween night, and that was not Pirate Night. So Freaky Year Friday was playing. What else did they have on rotation in the theater? They had lots of different things, but they had they had Elio, Fantastic Four, Toy Story, they had the newer Lilo and Stitch, they had obviously Freaky Year Friday, they had Hocus Pocus. So yeah, so that was just in the theater. So they had two different theaters. They had the Buena Vista Theater, and I cannot remember the other one's name, but it was actually like it's like a theater, like when you go to a movie theater. But then they also had the big screen, it was called Funnel Vision on the deck, the pool deck. That was one of our favorite things. We freaking loved that. We sat on the deck and watched movies multiple times. They had we watched The Descendants, we watched Frozen 2, we watched Princess and the Frog, we watched Oh, we watched Coco. What's the other one we watched? I don't remember, but we we watched several, and those basically were all like very like classic Disney animation type movies for the most part. On Pirate Night, I wish they had played it an another time. Like I wish they'd had another option. They played Pirates of the Caribbean, but it was at 11:30 p.m.

SPEAKER_00:

All the pirate stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Did you go to bed after Freaker Friday? Yeah, I think so. And then you woke up on day three. Where were you at on day three?

SPEAKER_01:

Day three was Nassau. We did get off the ship for a little bit. I would definitely plan if I were going to go back to Nassau to do something, maybe plan an excursion that is more educational, like look at some of the more historical things there. Because when you get off the ship, you're basically in this really not so great part. Well, like if you go beyond like where the shopping is, you're in this this part of the the city that it's not the greatest part of the city. It's very run down if you go in in a certain direction. But then there's another main section that they want you to go to is where all the shopping is, and they want to pull you in, and everything is very overpriced, as you can imagine. They also, as soon as you step out like of the actual kind of port section, there's people trying to coming after you, asking you if you want to go on a tour, you want a taxi. If I were to go back, I would definitely want to have something already pre-booked. We did not do any of those things. But we did, however, spend$70 on getting Ella's hair braided because we did not know it was going to be$70. We fell victim. Rookie mistake. She I don't think you're the only one I've heard that before. Well, it's really funny because the lady, because all she did, she basically did a braid and then she wrapped it in thread. That's what Ella wanted, was like the thread thing. And they only take cash, which we had not$70 of. We did have cash, but we did not have that much. So we had to go to an ATM and get cash. Also, I yes, the the lady said uh she told me the price, she said$70. And I said$17. And she said no,$70. And I was like,$70? Um, so so yeah, so uh we we did all of that, and of course, you know, that's that's what she does. That's her that's her trade. So and of course, Lena had to get a sweatshirt that said Nassau Bahamas that I can get off of Amazon for probably like 30% of what it was there, but whatever. We did not stay on the on the island for very long. We got we came back. Cabanas was open for lunch because it was not a Disney Island day. So and actually cabanas was open every day, but when we were on the Disney Islands, the available options were very limited for lunch because they were expecting people to be off the ship and not utilizing the cabanas buffet.

SPEAKER_00:

And most of the workers on the ship have to run the island, so they're also just like little stock.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they don't have they don't have a ton of options on the the port days. It is open, but it's just doesn't have the extended, it doesn't have the expansive buffet options that it does otherwise. But I will say my favorite food, other I mean we obviously had great food at the restaurants, but my favorite food was the Pinocchio's pizza. They had gluten-free and I got gluten-free pepperoni pizza. I got that like four times. To me, that was much better than cabanas. They also had McDonald's duck-in, they had fries and cheeseburgers and options there that we never ate at the Daisy's Delights. We just didn't go, we just never went over there. But we liked the other options other than cabanas for lunch better. And you could go up and get as much as you wanted. So it's not like there was any difference in pricing or anything, you know? So yeah, that was our that was our favorite spot to go. And of course the ice cream. All of that was on deck nine, so it was very easy when we were out there sitting on the deck watching a movie to just go get whatever we wanted. So what did you do? Where were you at that night? Was that Pirate Night? No, we were at Rap Rapunzel's that night, and I think that might have been Halloween night was that night. Rapunzel's was really loud, like almost overwhelmingly loud. You almost couldn't speak to each other. It was so loud because they had performers up on stage. It was beautiful. The restaurant was beautiful, they had the lanterns, they had Rapunzel and Flynn, they also had the guy with the hook from the and then they also had one of the other guys. He has like a he had a some kind of like mask on, and they were all working walking around and interacting with everyone. So that was that really was fantastic. And their performers were fantastic, their their voices were beautiful, but I feel like they could have probably like taken the volume down a notch just so that you could actually have a conversation. It was so loud. And then they had like the show where Rapunzel and Flynn got up and sang, and that was that was fun. I like that. After dinner, we went up to deck 10 to be able to see the Halloween, like the masquerade party. Something that I will note and think something that I will definitely strongly consider and think through the next time around. Because I we had early dining at 5:45, it typically was around an hour 45 minutes to two hours. So we were getting out of dinner around 7.15 to 7 between 7.15 and 7:30. The parties, like well, the the pumpkin tree lighting, the mouse carade, they all started at 7:30. And so by the time we were able to get to deck 9 and 10, there was nowhere to go. It was very difficult to see and get any like decent pictures or videos of the characters, or really even see the characters or the party, because everyone else was already there or had already kind of camped out and got a spot in front of the stage, or directly across from the stage on deck 10 where they could look down. And the same thing with the trick-or-treating, all of the trick-or-treating was at like I think six and like six thirty or something. And that was like right in the middle of our dinner. I understand with like the the like masquerade party and all of that. Like, I get that part. Like they need to have like one time. But for like the trick-or-treating, I was really shocked that they only had it at like six and six thirty and that they didn't have like a second round for those that were at the early dinner to go trick-or-treating. So I don't know if the people that had kids that were at that had early dining just didn't go to dinner that night. I don't know. Like I'm not really sure what they did or if they just didn't do trick-or-treating. Even if we had had the, you know, the ability or we'd had the timing right, we probably would not have done the trigger treating just because when we walked by, the lines were like wrapped around all the way around the floor. Yeah, it was bananas. I probably would have like let the the littles, like we wouldn't have taken, we wouldn't have done that, you know, because we of all the littles that wanted to experience it. I feel like we went to see another movie that night. Or maybe we went, maybe that was the night we went out, we went on the deck and we watched Ascendants. That's probably what that was. That's probably the night that we did that. So we're going to split this episode into two because there's a lot of information to cover. We will be back in a couple of days with part two of this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Wonderlust and Wishes.

SPEAKER_00:

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SPEAKER_01:

And remember, the world is full of wonders waiting to be explored. Until next time, happy travels. Bye for now.