Disney Cruise: Travel + Day 1

(These posts are going to be long and have a LOT of selfies.  You've been warned!)

We were planning on just making the 12-hour drive to Cape Canaveral on Sunday, but then there was snow in the forecast early Sunday morning and we got nervous (and Adam got even more nervous for us than we were!) so we decided to just leave Saturday.  

Because our lives are always more complicated than they ought to be, of COURSE this particular Saturday was the day when I have a 3-hour choir rehearsal, so we couldn't leave until after that.  So basically, I spent the entire morning running around doing laundry and getting us all packed, then I headed to choir and left an extremely long to do list for Craig, which he did a GREAT job of plowing through.  He packed up food, loaded the car, cleaned our guest bedroom, did the dishes and generally tidying around the house, and somehow still found time to trim back our butterfly bush!

I got home and we ate frozen pizza, finished up the dishes, and hit the road!  Craig drove for a couple hours, then I took over and he figured out a hotel for us, and we stopped in Fayetteville, North Carolina for the night.  Slept terribly, but enjoyed our free breakfast, and got right back to driving.

Everyone bought sunglasses at various rest stops

Camille really likes free breakfast!

We got to Cape Canaveral a little after 4pm and got into our hotel right away.  We spent a few minutes splashing in the hotel pool and hot tub and finally found cheap Tex-Mex for everyone:

"Rock the Guac" was delicious!

Then we watched the first half or so of the Super Bowl.  Mostly we were just waiting for the halftime show, which we enjoyed immensely.

Another bad night's sleep.  This hotel looked really cool, but it was not set up well for all of us.  When anyone used the bathroom in the middle of the night, the opaque sliding bathroom door lit up the entire room and woke everyone up!  Not cool, Spring Hill Suites, not cool.  

Waiting until our time to report to the dock was TORTURE but we tried to make the best of it.

FINALLY we could check out of our hotel and drive!  We kept catching these tantalizing glimpses of our ship!

Because of Craig and my tireless work collecting doctor's notes and covid tests and uploading them to the Disney website, we were able to skip the Hunger Games tent because we were already cleared to sail, so that was AMAZING and fast.  Phew!  Then we just had to wait in the terminal until it was our turn to board.

They had a cool model of one of their cruise ships that you could look at

And a deck where you could look at the real deal!

Once we finally got on board, they announced us as if we were royalty or something and Mickey and Minnie were there dancing to greet everyone!  It was such a happy moment!

For various reasons we'd ended up upgrading our connecting rooms so we had a veranda also, which was delightful!  Our steward removed that flap, so it turned into one long veranda.

Kendra borrowed my hat and was even cuter in it than I am.  What a (cute) jerk!

The hot tub had great views (including a glass floor!)

From the pool deck you could watch Disney movies up on a big screen on the ship's funnel, so that was called Funnel Vision

We didn't bother with a lot of the character meetings, but Craig did manage to take Camille to meet Mickey!

All-you-can eat soft serve was a big hit!

Okay, okay, ALL the desserts were a big hit!

Our first day on the ship was Valentine's day!

Camille upon learning the desserts were ALL all-you-can-eat!

At bedtime, our steward would set up bunk beds in one room.  C&C got them the first couple nights-- they were very excited, and Colton shocked us by sleeping latest the first morning!  I... can't remember that ever happening!  He was meant to be a sailor!

We saw the show Believe our first night.  The plot was nothing to write home about, but the music and special effects and singing and dancing was great, so it was still a lot of fun!  We don't manage to take our children to live theater very often, so I was glad we could take advantage of the chance here!