Ahoy Mateys!

Its been a week since we returned, tissues in hand, from our four night Disney cruise to the Bahamas and it was fantastic! If you have children and the means, you have to do this cruiseline! Although I have no basis for comparison, I did verbally survey several people during our trip and the results are unanimous - Disney knows what they're doing!

I won't bore you with every detail of our journey, but I will say the food was "wow", the entertainment was incredible, Disney's private island Castaway Cay was awesome and the whole journey from beginning to end was choreographed with perfection by Disney. Amazing!

We only took Jake this time (we wanted a vacation out of it too), so big H stayed home with Oma and Opa, but we will definitely take both boys again in three years!

Here are some pictures to document our excursion:

On the bus from the Orlando airport to the port in Florida, Jake sees the ship for the first time through the bus window while sitting on Daddy's lap.

In our cabin waiting for the evacuation drill on the first day. The evacuation drill is mandatory by maritime law and it was interesting to wave at the Royal Caribbean guests across the port doing the same drill at the same time. This drill of nearly 4,000 guests and crew took about 15 minutes. Disney has got it down! (Luckily we didn't need these orange duds again during our trip.)

Jake at breakfast the first morning eating a banana and a Mickey Mouse waffle, of course! The harbor at Nassau, Bahamas is through the window behind him. (Note the Longhorns jersey. How did that get in his suitcase?)

A little trivia: 5,000 eggs are consumed daily on the Disney Wonder.

My first picture of the full ship while we walked to the Nassau port. Incidentally, while this is not nearly the largest cruiseliner out there, it does weigh a paltry 90 million tons.

Jake digging in the sand on the public beach at Nassau. Jason is in the background "catching some waves."
One of those waves caught Jason and with humanlike precision, yanked off his hat and sunglasses and depants him. He claims he barely recovered his shorts, managed to find his hat floating nearby, but lost the sunglasses. The beach visits were Jake's favorite part of the cruise (next to foosball on deck 9 of the boat).

Yes, I did exist on this trip. Jason snapped this one (among others that will not be shown) after I played with Jake in Nassau.

I couldn't resist taking this postcardish picture from our stateroom balcony as we left Nassau. A real live lighthouse!

The playground in the water for the kids at Disney's private island, Castaway Cay! Jake ventured up the ladder and across the bridges, but wouldn't follow the big kids to the monkey barlike ropes. "Falling in the water is too scary," he said.
Cori especially liked the lifeguard variety that stood apost at the top.

Jason and Jake watch the fireworks on deck 9 during the Pirate Party that were shot from the ship at sea on our third night. Disney claims they are the only cruiseline in the world that still does fireworks at sea.

This is Das. He is from India and was our server every night (during our rotations through 3 different restaurants) and at the final breakfast before we departed. He was incredible as our server delivering Jason as many entrees as he wanted and when we finally got to visit with him personally, Cori found him to be extremely smart and interesting. Das' wife was from Brazil and she also worked as a server on the ship. Das has been with Disney for five years.

Jake and Cori on an inside ship balcony overlooking the main atrium. We were waiting for all of the characters to arrive for the "till we meet again" party. (Note the Texas A&M shirt. Jason wouldn't pose with Jake while he wore this. Ok, not really.....)

THE CHARACTERS JAKE MET
(This was a Disney cruise, after all. Oh, and Jake did meet princesses too and Minnie Mouse, but those are GIRLS!)

Jake would pose with everyone alone except Captain Hook, who he said was scary.

By the way, Jake did NOT wear his A&M shirt the whole time. We caught the characters mostly on the last night. Hope you enjoyed this little electronic scrapbook of our trip. The great thing about the boat is that even though its Disney, the focus is not on Disney crap, so shockingly I am not completely sick of Disney. I fear I will not return from Disney World with the same feeling.