The first thing that everyone instinctively does when they
board a ship for the first time is look around.
We looked up and saw the famous chandelier hanging in the atrium. Pictures simply don’t do it justice…you have
to see it in person to get a full appreciation of how beautiful it is.
The next thing we looked at was Admiral Donald. Every current DCL ship has a bronze statue in
the atrium with one of the company’s famous characters. It just so happens that Donald has always
been my favorite; after helping a family snap a picture with everyone in it, I
hopped up and grabbed a picture with Donald.
I looked at Sheri, and I received that “this is so cool”
face from her as she looked around the atrium.
This part of the ship was absolutely beautiful. We still had a little time before we could
get in our stateroom (we boarded around 1:10 pm), so we moved to the starboard
side and headed toward the forward portion of Deck 3, where the shopping area
and the Walt Disney Theater were located.
I explained that the shops onboard would remain closed whenever they
were in port. We continued around and
found ourselves by the Bon Voyage bar, located on the port (left…to help you
remember, both “left” and “port” have 4 letters) side opposite where Guest
Services is located on the starboard (right) side. We then took the stairs up to deck 4 and
started heading aft (towards the back of the ship). Sheri had seen pictures of the art gallery
online, so I pointed out where it was as we passed the Vista Gallery. Sheri also looked to her right and snapped a
picture of the Halloween decorations that adorned one of the windows.
As we continued down the corridor, we found the D Lounge,
where quite a few gatherings/events would take place during the cruise. I had another area I wanted to explore,
though…the District!
The District is family-friendly until later in the evening;
around 9:00 pm, it becomes an adults-only location. It is comprised of a number of venues,
including the District Lounge (often with live music), Pink (Champagne bar, which
will be discussed later), 687 (think Sports pub), Evolution (Dancing center),
and the place that ultimately became our second stateroom, Skyline. We walked into the District and immediately
found ourselves in District Lounge. Pink
was just off to our right, and we had heard so much about it that we had to see
it for ourselves. We walked in, and
Sheri immediately started snapping pictures, all the while exclaiming how neat
it looked in there. Pink is designed to
elicit the feel that you’re actually in a bottle of champagne.
Sheri’s more of an “automatic” picture-taker, whereas I am
the one that fiddles with the white balance, shutter speed, etc, to try getting
the “perfect” picture. Yes, I am also
the one that forgets to turn the settings back to the default and the mode back
to auto (which, in the process, incurs the wrath of my wife…Hell hath no fury
like a woman who misses a good shot because the camera was not set up to auto). After she took a couple of pictures, I switched settings to try to get a better “ambiance” set of pictures in Pink. We would definitely be back here (hint:
foreshadowing). I valued my life and
turned the settings on the camera back to Auto before handing the camera back
to Sheri.
We left Pink out the back door, which deposited us at the
entrance to Skyline. I have heard a lot
of good things about this one, so I immediately made a beeline to the entrance,
and the doors automatically opened for me, as if to say, “Welcome, Mush. We have been expecting you. Please do come in and make yourself
comfortable.”
Hey, who was I to argue with a set of automatic doors? We went in…
…and found that we had the entire place to ourselves. Kewl!
I explained to Sheri the reason for the name of the
location. Behind the bar had screens of
the Chicago Skyline displayed, complete with a little animation if you looked
closely. Also, music from Chicago was
playing (“My Kind of Town”, selections from the Broadway musical, Chicago, etc.). Sheri grabbed a picture but was cursing at
the flash:
Mush and his obsessive need for the perfect pic to the
rescue:
(for those photo geeks, ¼ second shutter, 3.5 on the F-stop,
auto white balance, ISO 400)
I was pretty sure we’d be coming back to this one, too (of
course…I already said that this became our second stateroom). I immediately fell in love with the
atmosphere of this place. Its maximum
capacity was probably around 30 or so patrons.
We exited and looked around Evolution for a minute or two...
…before making our way to the aft elevators/stairs. It was around 1:25, which meant that they
were to start opening up the stateroom areas in the next few minutes. The elevators appeared to have a bit of a
wait, so we opted for the stairs as our stateroom was only 3 decks up from
where we were. As we started up the
stairs, we were welcomed by the various Disney/Pixar art that was located all
throughout the ship. The art in the
stairwells were much bigger than the ones located near the elevators, and we
paused for a brief second to look at what welcomed us at the stairway
landing.
I decided that we were going to need an art tour of the ship
J .
Deck 5 was still roped off to guests, and we turned to
continue up the stairs and saw the rope at Deck 6, too. We fully expected that we were just a few
minutes early as we ascended up the final set of stairs to our temporary home
on Deck 7.
There was no rope blocking guests from the staterooms.
We could go to our room?
WE COULD GO TO OUR ROOM!!!!!
I think we were one of the first to enter the hallway. As previously mentioned, 7158 was on the port
(remember? four letters…just like “left”), and it was located only about 10-15 feet away
from the stairwell. I noticed that we
had our Remy invitation/letter waiting for us, but I left it up there for Wifey
to see.
As we approached our stateroom
door, our stateroom attendant, Reuben, popped out of a door that we didn’t
initially see and immediately smiled and introduced himself to us. If you have seen the movie Mr. Deeds with Adam Sandler, he popped
up next to us in a similar way that the butler in that movie did to
everyone. He let us open the door and
then showed us how to use the Key to the World (KTTW) card to activate the
lights in the room (FYI: any credit card-shaped card worked, but we just used
the KTTW card). Reuben told us that he
would be around if we needed anything from him at all.
He closed the door, and Sheri and I got our first look at
the stateroom.
In my preliminary research of cruise lines, I knew that
staterooms often had a small feel, but that Disney Cruise Line was continually
rewarded for having some of the larger staterooms among all of cruise
lines.
I agreed…definitely not a bad size. I immediately started looking to see if we
could have brought the boys with us and could have stayed in this room without
killing each other.
King bed for Sheri and me.
The sofa converts to a single (Aaron could handle that), and the notch
in the ceiling let me know that we could bring that berth down for Eric. Yep…4
could fit in here, and there was even a curtain to pull between the king bed
and the remaining living area. We
immediately noticed what we have read before: the king bed was raised so that
guests could store their luggage underneath.
Sheri grabbed the camera and started taking pictures around the room
before I destroyed it with bags:
I (eventually) figured out how to start cooling the room
down. I peered out our window without
opening the verandah door (to help keep it cooler in the room), and I saw that
we had a good view of the Carnival
Sunshine nearby. I then grabbed the
current day’s Personal Navigator.
Continued HERE.
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