"Princesses and Genies, Candlesticks and Kings!" - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 2

In today's post, I'll be talking about the food and entertainment we experienced during our Disney Cruise.

First, a brief explanation of how dinners work on Disney Cruises.  When you get your Key to the World Card (room key/on-board charge card/thing that gets you back on the boat/tiny but vitally important item that an OCD sufferer must check over and over to make sure it's on their person), it will have one of three codes that explain your dining schedule.  We had the coveted APLAP, which meant we were eating at Animator's Palate the first night, Parrot Cay the second night, and Lumier's the third night, then cycling through Animator's and Parrot again for the last two nights.  Since the last two nights each had unique menus, we had an entirely different experience for each dinner during the voyage.

All that said, you will always be eating with the same group of people at your table and you will always have the same wait staff.  This is a terrific idea that actually works out, as your wait staff gets to know you during the voyage.  They are extra sympathetic to any special dietary needs you may have (for example, they reviewed the next night's menu with one of our dining companions to discuss what would be safe for her to eat), and will input such information to a profile accessible by all food areas by inputting your room number.  Our wait staff and dining companions were all very nice.

Now the food Disney serves you on the cruise is... decent.  In general, they focus on dinner, and the food during our other meals was pretty lackluster.  We liked all the appetizers, and all the deserts were very nice.  The main courses were, again, decent.  Nothing especially stands out, but I should note that the seafood was just frightening.



We only had one "signature cocktail" since the one from the first day (a pina colada/daiquiri combination I dubbed Brain Freeze in a Souvenir Glass) was so blah.  We never even invested in what dad and I excitedly referred to before the cruise as the "every hour is happy hour" mug since the beer on tap selection was so abysmal. The smartest thing we did was opt to pack out own wine, which Disney is remarkably lenient about.

Without question, the best gastronomic experiences on the boat were the Art of Entertaining cooking classes, which came with a free sample of the demonstrated dish and an accompanying wine, and a wine tasting we bought $15.00 tickets for on a whim.  It ended with a glass of the sparkling wine pictured above, which is normally only available at Disney theme parks, etc. to the tune of $15.00 a glass!



Now as far as the individual restaurants go, Animator's Palate is by a wide margin the most fascinating, but not for the food.  Here, you get dinner and a show.  And up until the very finale, it turns out the show is more subtly presented than I ever would have expected given what I'd heard.  It's one of many aspects of the Disney Magic I wish I'd been less cryptic about, because nobody else at my table noticed what was happening until I told them to stop chatting and pay attention for half a minute.  Heck, the only people in the entire restaurant who seemed to be keyed into what was happening around them was a group of small children at the table next to ours who absolutely lost their minds over it -- much to the annoyance of their parents who wanted them to just sit down and shut up and eat.

So here's the concept of Animator's Palate.  You enter a restaurant that is almost entirely monochrome aside from giant "magical paintbrushes". The walls are covered in line art of various Disney characters, ranging from the famous to the obscure to the "I can't believe they're even acknowledging them!?"



The ambient music is all instrumental versions of signature songs from Disney Animated Canon films. As each song plays, the artwork of the characters from the film starts to change through a pretty impressive special effect, and, in the words of one of the excited children from the neighboring table, the paintings "REALLY b'come REEEEEEAAL!!!"



(The effect is more impressive in person, I promise. Also, obligatory: animation does not work that way!  Though I suppose CAP Technician's Palate or Animator's Tombow Mono Pencil doesn't have the same ring to it.)

So this is really cool and it sucks that most of the people in the middle of it are just there to eat and don't give a crap about the changing scenery.  It feels as though this restaurant would be much happier in one of the theme parks, where the show would be the main attraction.

The finale happens right before dessert and consists of a montage of mood-whiplashy clips from almost every film in the Canon shown on screens throughout the now-darkened restaurant.  It's then that most of the diners realized anything special was going on.  After the montage, this happens:



This is as good a time to mention, since I don't think I have already, that anytime Mickey Mouse showed up in person (?), everyone completely lost their sh*t.  Which doesn't sound too weird given that it was a Disney ship.  But I don't think I have emphasized the demographics of our cruise enough: this was a school week and there were by FAR more parties consisting only of adults than there were parties of families with young children on this cruise.  Hmm...  Also, most of the people on the boat had taken several cruises on this same boat (we met a person who'd cruised on the Magic eighteen times before), and had presumably seen all this before.  I knew Disney fans could get frighteningly loyal but...?

Costumed characters were the main attraction for most of the deck parties, so let's segway into those.  The most surprising thing for me was, given that some deck parties were built up as major events, they were all really short!  The characters only put in a few minutes appearance in each party from my reckoning, and once they left there was no real incentive to stick around.  I'm guessing this has to do with the fact that these ships, and their traditional scheduled events, started in much hotter climates.  They never bothered to modify them for the cold north Atlantic.



Hell, it's even still Pirates IN The Caribbean even though... they aren't.  Now on the ship this was one of two much-hyped shows, so we were expecting something huge and elaborate and unforgettable.  What we got was less impressive, and not really even all that fun.  Extenuating circumstances are partially to blame here; we'd literally just eaten a big huge dinner, we'd had a hectic day of racing through hilly uneven terrain in Halifax, and I was exhausted.  This was the only time I wasn't happy with our wait staff; I felt as though they were pressuring me into dancing and partying during our dinner and it really felt like everyone was giving me a hard time since I wasn't as into it as I would have been if I wasn't about to puke and/or flat-out snow crash any second.  I'm guessing this event usually happens on a sea day when there's a lot less going on, and therefore plays very differently.

Anyway, the deck party itself is another twenty minutes of random costumed characters dancing around to very not-piratey music.  We arrived just in time to not miss the highlights of the show: Mickey ziplines down from one of the ship's funnels to school all the other pirates and starts a fireworks show at sea.  The fireworks are launched right off one side of the boat, apparently, and are pretty cool to see - if you happen to be standing in exactly the right place when they go off.  They aren't the most elaborate pyrotechnics Disney has ever done, but they are awesome because you are on a boat.



And frankly, the "it's awesome because we're doing it on a boat" assessment can go for most of the live stage shows as well.  The Walt Disney Theater is an impressive piece of work, to be sure, with trap doors and moving sets and other, crazier stuff.  We lucked out and saw each night's performance.  "Adventures Away" was at once informative and hopelessly cheesy.  It has to be seen to be believed, but it was a good introduction to our entertainment staff and some of the performers.  I missed the beginning of "Twice Charmed" but saw enough to come to the slow realization that -and I am not even kidding here- I was basically seeing a stage show version of "Cinderella 3".  One night was given over to a premier of "Finding Nemo" in 3D.

The most hyped of all the shows, the one that everyone assured us was the best of the lot, the one that had won multiple awards we were told, was "Disney Dreams", the final live show of the cruise.  It's the show pictured above.

Now, call it a lack of whimsy on my part, but I'm not sure what the big deal was here.  I am not even sure how to describe it.  We open on what can only be described as a 21-year-old preteen girl sitting in her room full of Disney toys.  She wishes on a star for "Princesses and Genies, Candlesticks and Kings!"  (Yeah, I don't know either.)  In flies Peter Pan to bring her on a magical adventure so that she won't grow up into a skeptical adult and will forever stay a faithful child with a wonderful imagination!  (*sigh...*)  And what does this wonderful imagination dream about?  Why, random Disney characters wandering in, singing songs from their films, and leaving!  Of course! 

Needless to say, given what we've seen Disney do with limited space and resources in the park shows, we were less than impressed.  There were a lot of technical problems during our show (the houselights right above us kept fading in and out in random scenes, and certain on-stage effects just flat-out failed to work), and that did not help our opinion one bit.

But then...

Oh, but then...

In the middle of the week, in the middle of all the other sappy saccharine stage shows, they had an unheralded, underhyped show with the title "Villains Tonight!"  We expected absolutely nothing at all from this show and, go figure, it turned out to be the best of the lot!  Heck, it might be my favorite experience on the ship as a whole!  I think it's because the villains are the only "face" characters who are allowed -and even encouraged- to be (gently) rude and sarcastic.  This resulted in a screamingly funny show!  It's seriously one of the most surprising and unexpectedly un-Disneyish things I've ever sen Disney do, and all the other live shows couldn't help but look hopelessly square after this one.

Man, reliving this magical voyage is exhausting.  Next week, I'll talk about our port adventures.

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Seascape of the Day!

My Little Cruise Ship: Canada is Magic! - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 1

The Disney Magic is the oldest ship in the Disney Cruise Line fleet.  Built in 1998, she's been sailing the seas since 2000.  This past summer, she made her way to New York City.  As my family are Disney Vacation Club members, we received a special email offer for Disney's first excursions up to the Canadian Maritimes from New York City.

Since we've always been curious about Disney Cruise Lines, this was too good an offer to pass up.  We opted for the September 12-17 cruise, which happened to be the final date for this particular itinerary before the ship sailed down to Texas for her winter schedule.

What follows is an honest assessment of the cruise as experienced by me and my family (but mostly me; it's my blog after all).  Overall, we were all very happy to finally satisfy our curiosity about cruising with Disney after so many years.  We met a lot of very nice and interesting people and had a lot of unique experiences.  I'll assure my Canadian readers right away that we loved St. John and Halifax and dearly wish we'd had more time to explore them further (though you'll have to wait until next week for specifics).  And we did have fun.  We did!

But overall, our reaction to our first Disney Cruise ever was and is... mixed. Over the years, the Disney Cruise Line has essentially been built up in such a way that we essentially expected the Magic to be a Disney Theme Park at sea. The Magic is very definitely not that, but she isn't a conventional cruise either.

Now, if you've been reading my blog practically from the beginning, your prize is that you've made me very happy.  You have no idea.  But more immediately relevantly, you recall that I went on a cruise on the Norwegian Spirit some years ago.  As it happens, that is the only other cruise I've ever been on. 

And reading my trip report again, I feel as though I did it a disservice.  Because given the choice between taking another cruise on the Spirit or another cruise on the Magic, I will opt for the Spirit, hands down, no contest, no second thoughts.  And since I know some of you are blown away by this because you've never been on a Disney cruise and have heard just how incredible and breathtaking and incredibly awesome they are all these years, let me tell you why.

In two words: time and space.



Upon entering the terminal before boarding the Disney ship, you are given a schedule of the day's events.  When you look at the schedule, it will appear as though you will have loads of free time.  Well, simply put, and especially if this is your first cruise with Disney and you don't want to miss anything important, you won't.  It sounds unbelievable from here, but it's true.  As the song goes, there is always something happening and it's usually quite loud.  You won't have any quiet time for yourself unless you actively seek it out.  Hell, I only got about forty minutes of pool time!

See, events are scheduled every fifteen minutes rather than, say, on the hour.  This means the schedule is crammed with activities every waking moment and that you will have to make some tough decisions.  (Or, to be honest, not so tough.  For example, "Brave" in Disney-approved 3D easily beats the crap out of Songs Your Mom Likes Dance Party and Publicly Out Yourself As a Huge Disney Nerd Trivia Night.  Anyway, I already attended the latter.  Three times.  And won twice.  My prize is a nifty pin lanyard and also that I am a grown-ass adult who watches a ton of Disney movies.  Eh, at least I was among my people for five days.)

As I said, since this was our first cruise with Disney, we felt obligated to see all the major shows and attend all the special events.  As it turns out, most people attend the deck/atrium parties and stage shows anyway.  Deck parties never run against the stage shows, and the stage shows are each performed twice a night.

Now here comes the biggest wrench in the system.  As I said, my only other cruise experience was on Norwegian and they've got a signature system called Freestyle Dining.  You get to eat on the ship wherever you want and whenever you want.  Nearly every other cruise company does not do allow you to do this.  I am willing to bet that this kind of system works much better on ships where dinner is your only big scheduled commitment every night.

Disney schedules you at a different restaurant every night, and for every night of your trip, you will either be eating at around six or around eight and watching the main stage show at around six or around eight.  Given that we were three adults who had a hard time adjusting to such a schedule (eat that much food at eight and all you will want to do afterwards is sit up and digest for a while and then sleep), I can't even imagine how families with small children handle this.

The good thing is that there are a ton of child-only events.  We saw very few children at all during this voyage since they were busy having fun on their own -- but also because this was a school week and there were only maybe ten-fifteen families with children on the boat.  In any case, the children's programs might be the single most outstanding feature of Disney Cruise Lines.



On to the issue of space.  This is the "Grand Atrium" of the Disney Magic.  The photographer I randomly caught here gives you a sense of scale.  From here. it looks pretty big and roomy, doesn't it?  Well... 



Here's the same atrium, full of people.  I naturally focused on the grand gathering of characters here, but the crowd of people in the corners hopefully gives you an idea of just how congested this area could get.

As an aside, character greetings were especially badly thought-out.  The major ones took place in the atrium, in front of the stairs leading to the entrance to Lumier's, one of the three major restaurants (see the doors Goofy is standing in front of there), and the line snaked down a very thin-feeling major corridor.

Overall, the Dream felt very "small", which sounds absurd in writing, given that she's actually longer (though perhaps skinnier) than the Spirit.  In any case, the atrium, the corridors, our stateroom, and even the pool deck felt really claustrophobic at times.

As far as our stateroom, we got a veranda on deck eight and I thank the gods old and new that we did since this is apparently the largest standard room available.  The good news is that the room has two smaller bathrooms instead of one large one; one contains a toilet and sink and the other contains a shower and sink.  It also has thick curtains to separate the room in half, allowing -ehhh- *some* privacy.  The bad news is that the room is small.  Like the boat as a whole it feels long but not wide.  There's barely enough room to maneuver around the large main bed.  Pure hell when two people are trying to retrieve things from the same end of the room.  Supposedly this room could sleep five grown adults but I cannot even imagine how this would be possible without nightly fistfights breaking out, as space is even more at a premium in the rooms I saw where all five beds were deployed.

As for the pool deck, well, mentioning it brings up one of my big issues with the Magic, and the most likely reason why it was so large but felt so small.  Have a look:



Note the "cages" around the entire pool area, the giant television screen, and especially the position of the deck chairs.  All of the attention on this boat, ALL of it, is centered inward, away from the ocean.  Disney basically wants you to forget you are on a ship at all.

This is my strangest and most lasting memory of the entire cruise.  For me, looking out at the endless sky and deep sea is part of the appeal of being on a cruise, and my father and I can stare out at the water for hours.  We loved how the Spirit had many quiet places where you could sit indoors out of the wind, yet still have an almost uninterrupted panoramic view of the whole ocean.  The Disney Magic had nothing like that.  It isn't like there weren't any windows at all, but they were all either small, blocked by bars and fences, or filthy.  All three pool decks were almost entirely encased in plexiglass and thick metal bars.  I get the safety issue on a boat that usually has lots of children on it, but it felt really excessive.



My favorite moment that exemplified this issue happened on the morning we pulled into Halifax.  Mom was enchanted by the lighthouses and islands, so when we headed to Lumier's for breakfast, I asked if we could sit at one of the many empty tables by the (small and filthy as seen above) windows.  I had to request this of three servers before we finally met one who got it, and we did get our window seat.  But not before we were asked, "Wouldn't you rather sit where you can see the Princesses?"

On that note, I'm going to pause.  Next post, I'll discuss the food and entertainment on board the Magic.

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Seascape of the Day!

If I learned anything from the two cruises I've ever taken, it's that I love doing seascapes more than landscapes.  No idea why, but here's the first one I managed to squeeze in time for.

Further Trip Reportery: I Was on a Boat.

And I have seen the near-legendary Walt Disney / Salvador Dali insane crossover film "Destino" under the most convoluted circumstances imaginable.
Our story begins on board the Norwegian Spirit. As you recall from last week's post, she brought me and my family to Bermuda and back. The journey took two days coming and two and a half days going.
Having never cruised before, I enjoyed it a great deal and would highly recommend it. This is the first trip in a while where I can honestly say I feel brand new. It really changed me, and it made me want to go on more adventures once I got home.
This is largely because there's such an offbeat variety of things to do on the ship. Each night, we got a schedule from the Cruise Director of the next days events. They would include everything from musical reviews to wine tastings to Karaoke contests to Wii tournaments. Picking and choosing among the events is usually coupled with the thought-provoking fact that you will probably only know the other people who attend for a week, giving you that bravery of anonymity. Just to cover what I did:
* - I kicked all kids of ass at a Pictionary tournament that, sadly, had no prizes other than bragging rights. But they did serve Bellinis. I poked mine.
* - I swam in an Aquaswim pool. Because it was there. Because I love "GATTACA". Because I was on a ship in the middle of the cold north Atlantic at the time and I wanted to say I did.
* - I fell in love with Yellow Birds. I drank one out of a pineapple because I couldn't leave the subtropical Atlantic without saying I did.
* - I did a lot of things, mostly with my cousins and sister, that were awesome and very unlike me. Trying to describe them would be like trying to explain why that one party you went to was so amazing.
* - And, as stated above, I saw "Destino" under remarkably convoluted circumstances. Namely, the ship hosted a semi-daily art auction and they happened to be screening it, as they had an exclusive deal with Disney to show the film and sell prints of the artwork afterwards.
It is worth noting that there was free champagne at this auction.
The film is short, but it is amazing. It reminded me of the sequences from "Fantasia 2000" (which this was originally meant to be a part of), but it also reminded me a great deal of the more surreal sequences in the Anthology Films. Just consider for a moment the logistical complications of making Dali's artwork move and you have an idea of just how incredible the film is. Rumor has it that eventually we'll get a DVD release.
Eventually.
"Fantasia 2010" would be nice at this point too. I'm just sayin' is all.

Bermuda Trip Report: In which Trish Feels the Lo-ooooooove...

Note that much of the following post will just be me repeating the text from this set of photographs, but it'll be a little more coherent.
So I went to Bermuda for a family reunion. We had planned this trip over a year ago, and we were partially inspired by this:

We knew that my Grandfather was stationed in Bermuda during World War Two for a while. After he passed away, we found this beautiful scrapbook he kept during that time period. It was remarkably well preserved. It turns out that, sixty-seven years ago (if I'm doing my math right; it was in 1942), he arrived in the archipelago on the same day we arrived. Very cool; we toasted him several times during the trip. We decided early on that we'd try to visit as many places as possible that he mentioned frequently.
We went to Bermuda by boat; specifically, the Norwegian Spirit. She's a big, beautiful ship and I am still digesting the cruise itself. It could easily fill another whole post. For the most part, trying to describe the fun my family and I had would be like trying to explain why that awesome time you had once in college was so much fun. There are a few specific events worth mentioning later. One of them involves Salvador Dali.

Really, the biggest highlight overall was the fact that it took me only this one week to fill an entire Arches Carnet de Voyage. I usually act like it's the hardest damn thing in the world to fill a Sketchbook in one month, so this was a pretty big deal.
Landscapes usually aren't my thing; turns out SEAscapes might be my thing. The one above might be my favorite. This little (Barn?) Swallow flew along our ship for a while, then flew off to God knows where in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Think about this for a second. I can add swallows to my list of animals who have unexpectedly turned out to be pretty badass.

We docked in King's Warf. This used to be the Royal Naval Dockyard and I'm not sure if it's still used by the military, but it was a very crucial Naval base not too long ago. All of the buildings are very old, but they are still in use. The building in the picture above is the old Commissioner's House, and it's now the main building of the Maritime Museum. The Museum contained a lovely collection of Wartime memorobilia, a herd of invisible sheep (seriously, I kept dodging their poop on the ground but saw neither hoof nor horn of them), and something called DolphinQuest.

This is how I spent my Towel Day, appropriately enough. On the one hand, you are a mere seven feet away from an alien intelligence. On the other hand, you are also seven feet away from tourists who have payed upwards of $300.00 to touch that alien.
Can't help but think that, when the human/dolphin communication gap is finally breached for good, we will not enjoy what the dolphins have to say about us.
Honestly, in hindsight, King's Warf was the nicest of all the ports we visited. We hit Bermuda's other two main cities: Hamilton and St. George. They were both very nice in their own respective ways, but King's Warf wasn't as crowded as either of them and was relatively quiet.
Also, we only had two and a half days to play on the islands. Of those days, everything was closed for a day and a half. See, we arrived on the Sunday before Bermuda's national holiday. Visiting Hamilton (or any city, really) when nothing is open and there are almost no people hanging out was eerie. Fortunately, we spent Bermuda Day snorkeling, and that made up for it:

I did the first painting after a shore excursion (funny how Norwegian calls them shore excursions even though most of them in Bermuda took place at sea) to the Seagardens, an offshore series of coral reefs. The second painting I did on-sight at Tobacco Bay, a well-known beach near St. George. Both places were amazing for completely different reasons and they are two of my top three highlights from Bermuda. I think I'm hooked on snorkeling. I just need to figure out the logistics of snorkeling off Wollaston Beach...
My third favorite place in Bermuda was the Crystal and Fantasy Caves park. This was my one "if I don't get to see this, I will be very sad" must-see place. It defies description but I will say this: you half expect to turn a corner and see a half-eaten Doozer construction. Jim Henson's art directors absolutely did not make anything up. I caught glimpses of "Labyrinth" and "Dark Crystal" as well as "Fraggle Rock" down there. Fine time for my camera to run out of memory.
I can honestly say that I was sad to leave the islands. But the ride there and back again is a story all it's own. I'll cover that in a future post.
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I just rescued all of Nessie's reviews and they can now be found on The All-New, All-Different Realm of Mad-Ness. Happy Independence Day!

I just got off the Norwegian Spirit a few hours ago.

She took me and my family to Bermuda and back, in case you were wondering where I was this past week. Right now, I'm just reading the thirty-something emails in my inbox.
Now, I already have the Chronological Animated Disney Canon set to be posted (kind of a dumb move on my part, I'll admit), but that's going to give me time to decompress after this adventure and get all the photos and drawings ready to share. I'll probably end up writing about the cruise somewhere in the middle of the Disney movies.