Disney Cruise - DAY 4

Day 4 began with us waking up parked at Castaway Cay, Disney's private island between the Bahamas and Florida.  We were so excited about this day because we would have the opportunity to enjoy sitting on the beach most of the day. Here is the view we saw from the boat.

This was such a fun island.  As we were walking in we saw Goofy and couldn't help but get a picture.  I didn't even realize it at the time but it seemed that the 3 of us color coordinated pretty well :)  Logan was there as well but was all pictured out from the previous 3 days.  

Ryan and Granddad got down to the beach early so that we could have a great spot with 3 umbrellas and several beach chairs to enjoy.  The water was crystal clear and there were millions of beautiful seashells all up and down the beach.  As you can see Logan enjoyed collecting a ton of them.  By the time we left this beach I believe we had about 3-4 cups full.  Here are some other pictures of our surroundings.  One of the coolest things was the playground that they had out in the water that kids could go and play on.  

 The water was so clear that we could see fish swimming right by our feet just a couple feet out in the water.  We were able to rent a few snorkels and Camille got to go out with Marci for a few hours.  They had a blast looking at all the fish and Camille actually was able to dive down and get 2 really cool conch shells.  We were so excited to have them until we were going back on the boat and they told us we couldn't keep them.  But they let us keep all the other shells and they are being displayed in our front room of our house currently.  The boys played in the water most of the day and loved every minute of it.  There was also a big playground that went on with a huge slide leading to the ocean.  There was fresh fruit out all the time that we could enjoy, free sodas, and of coarse FREE ICE CREAM!  Our kids personal favorite :)

 

While we were on the island they had international crab races.  They had boxed up several crabs from around the world and they would take the box off and let the crabs go to race to the finish line.  It was hilarious!!  Our kids enjoyed that.

But our ABSOLUTE FAVORITE experience at Castaway Cay was the Swimming with the Sting Rays excursion that we signed up for.  At first they had set up these feeding areas in the water where the Sting Rays would swim through and we could feed them.  So how we did this was taking a shrimp or other fish, putting it between our fingers, and then waiting until the sting rays would come over the top of our hand and suck up the food.  At first it was pretty freaky because it felt like they were sucking up our fingers into their mouths but after a while we got the hang of it and LOVED feeding them and petting them as they swam by.  After we fed them they let us put on snorkel gear and swim with them.  They had a designated area fenced in where there were probably 200 sting rays swimming around and we got to snorkel all around where they were swimming.  It was AWESOME!! 

 

On our way back to the boat we took we took a picture by Mount Disney Rustmore!  Here are a few more pictures of this cool island.

When we got back on the boat we went to another amazing performance called Disney Dream.

After the show we went to another amazing dinner and said our final goodbye's to our AMAZING waiters.  We had the same 2 waiters the entire time and they did an amazing job.  RaShawn was from Jamaica and Roberto from Paris. As you can see Roberto is cutting Brayden's stake because I was slacking on my parental duties. 

The other fun thing Brayden got to do this night was a detective scavenger hunt.  He got his detective badge and this screen below told him what his mission was.  Apparently a Disney villain had stolen some paintings and Brayden had to go locate them.  So after getting his mission he explored the entire boat to find clues to these paintings.  After he would find a painting he would hold his card up to it and it would come alive and tell him the next clue.  He LOVED this!

Since Ryan and Marci are from Wisconsin we had to watch the Packers playoff game on the top deck.  And who said you can't eat pizza, french fries and fry sauce as a late night snack :) 

After eating so much we had to work it off somehow.  So we headed up to the basketball court for a little 2 on 2 action.  We had a lot of fun trying to make baskets with the wind blowing the ball all around.  It was pretty awesome that we could play basketball while sailing on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean.

Another AWESOME day and again we were EXHAUSTED!! 

Disney Cruise - DAY 3

I know that each of these posts are lengthy with tons of pictures but at the end of the day this blog is a family record that we print out every year and I want to make sure that we captured every moment of this amazing vacation.  So Day 3 we woke up and could see land, which happened to be Nassau, Bahamas.

 

After exiting the ship the first thing we did was walk over into the Bahamas and get on another ship.  This ship was much smaller and was a snorkeling boat.  We all gone on the boat and headed out for about 20 minutes to a reef in the middle of the ocean so we could snorkel.  We were all amazed by how green and clear the water was.  While snorkeling we were able to see tons of colorful fish and the guys from the boat threw a bunch of fish food in the ocean which made them come even more.  At first Brayden and Logan were freezing in the water and a little freaked out about sticking their heads in the water with a snorkel on.  But after a little while both of them decided to give it another try and had fun.  I had told them that the water would be warm and it wasn't exactly warm even though it was warmer than the ocean we are used to.

 

 

 

 

 

 On the way back we had some fun experiences.  One of them had to do with Logan and I will not go into the details on this blog but if you want to ask me sometime I will tell you "off the record".  The other part that made it fun was the guys who were on the ship cranked up the music and were leading everyone in dances the whole way back.  We had a blast dancing and enjoying the scenery.

 

 We made it safely back to the Bahamas and quickly went onto the Disney Ship to eat some lunch and drop Logan off at the kids club.  After dropping Logan off we went back over to the Bahamas for some tourist shopping.  There is a little place called the Straw Market in the Bahamas which is very similar to a flea market.  Every 5 feet is a different person trying to pitch on their products.  The funny thing was they were all selling the same things so we just shopped for the lowest price.  I was impressed by many of their sales tactics but some were a little pushy.  I was also impressed by Brayden's bargaining skills as illustrated in the picture below.  The reason Logan is not in the picture below is because he refused to be in it.  I guess he felt we had taken enough pictures.  Especially after that Mickey sticker one :)  The other cool thing we got was an authentic painting of the Bahamas beach with a artist on the street and we had to take his picture.  That has fit nicely into our home. 

 

After shopping for a few hours it was time to come back aboard the Disney Dream.  We picked up Logan and got ready for PIRATE NIGHT!!  This was a really fun night.  When we got back to our room we each had pirate bandanas laid out on our beds, 4 golden chocolate coins and of coarse a funny towel monkey hanging from the ceiling with my sunglasses on. Pirate night started first with dinner. The food was wonderful and the staff was all dressed up in pirate attire.

 

After dinner we went and watched a quick show before the pirate party. This night it was a magic show.  It was one of our favorite shows of the week and we have still talked about some of the tricks that we saw that night.  In fact since returning our boys had magic shows every night for the first several nights.

 

Logan got to take a quick picture with one of his buddies that he hung out with at the kids club, Stitch.  

THEN CAME THE PIRATE PARTY, FIREWORKS, AND DANCE PARTY!!!  The pirate party started with a show featuring Jack Sparrow and his pirate crew.  After this show they had a firework show for about 10 minutes which was AWESOME!!  Then they turned the entire top deck into Club Pirate dance party.  It was fun to watch the kids get their groove on.  They even set aside some time for a quick sword fight.  We let it slide being pirate night at all :)

Another amazing day!!  We all crashed pretty hard tonight after a long fun day!