Eventually,e made our way to Deck 5, where we found this:
I remember reading in the Personal Navigator that the
Oceaneer Lab was holding an open house, so we decided to pop in to take a look.
Continuing the tour, we found our way back to the atrium:
We then decided to hop up to Decks 11/12 to see what Nassau
looked like and to hopefully grab a few pictures. We walked out of Cabanas on the starboard
side and, as I stepped on the stairs up to Deck 12, we felt raindrops start
hitting us. It was just a sprinkle, so I
continued up…with every step up, the rain’s intensity increased. Since we had the camera with us, we decided
to head back down. With every step down,
the rain tapered off more. It was almost
getting comical, so I decided to head back up.
FLASH….. (that looked like lightniBOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!)
Well, we were going to be heading to one of the top decks of
the tallest ship in port, and that lightning bolt struck pretty friggin’ close
to us.
We thought it might be a decent idea to get inside. Besides, I needed to change my underwear
anyway.
Everyone was heading inside as quickly as they could as more
thunder rumbled around us and echoed around.
We decided to head back to our stateroom and chill for a little
while. I thought it better NOT to head
out on the verandah, as yet another BOOM was released. We got into comfy clothes, and, knowing that Sheri
would likely be asleep within a few minutes, I looked around at what else was
on-demand.
Waking Sleeping Beauty.
This has been on my “to-watch” list for a few years
now! I watched the first 45 minutes or
so of it, not realizing a lot of the history of the Walt Disney Company in the
late ‘80s. It was mesmerizing yet
gut-wrenching at the same time, and I didn’t even get to the last portion of
the movie (we’ll get to that later).
I needed a little bit of uplifting, so, after verifying that
we would not become torched by lightning, I asked wifey if she wanted to try
the Aquaduck. I figured that the timing
was good…we were in port, the rain had just stopped, and it was about an hour
or so until lunch, so I was guessing most wouldn’t be in swimming attire. We changed and headed up to Deck 12 and were
pleasantly surprised to find a line that took less than 15 minutes to get on the
Aquaduck. There were cubbies around to
place personals while you ride. Just
before we were to hop on, the lifeguard at the top had to ask a customer to
take care of a hand-held camera that was not allowed on the raft. Then we were off!
For a ship-based slide, I’ll give the Aquaduck a
thumbs-up. Granted, I was recently in
Wisconsin Dells at the Great Wolf Lodge, so it’s not really fair to compare the
Aquaduck to my most recent waterslide/tube experience. It was definitely fun, and you get a nice
cool-down while you’re on it. The views
are really good up there, too!
Had the line been the same as it was when we first arrived,
I think we would have hopped back in for an encore performance; however, with
the sun now out in full force, the line had extended to well past the 20-minute
mark. We grabbed our stuff from the
cubbie and decided to walk around to the forward portion of the ship. A Goofy
Movie was playing on Funnel Vision, but not too many were watching this
one. We flitted past Fillmore’s
Favorites and paused a moment to look at Tow-Mater’s Grill and Luigi’s
Pizza. We had heard of “meh” reviews of
the pizza, but it looked fairly decent (no, we didn’t try it, though LOL). We passed the Cove area and took the stairs
up to Deck 13 to see how crowded this area was.
There were only a few other couples up there, and we saw nobody in the
Concierge area at all.
After walking around the front of the ship and watching Enchantment of the Sea’s turn in the bay
and back-in to dock, we headed back down to Deck 11 and decided to see what was
going on at the Cove Bar. I got a
Captain’s Mai Tai, and Mama Mush managed to make do with the muddled mint of a
Mango Mojito (mmmmmm). As we sipped and
talked, we watched the bartenders doing what they did best. One of them, Myrna, caught a brief respite
from the slew of orders coming in from the mobile servers taking orders from
the chairs, and I jokingly said that she should sit down and that I’d make one
for her.
That won me a few points; I should have ordered another
drink to see how strong the pours would have been LOL.
After settling up, we started making our way back to our
room, stopping at Eye Scream for some of the world-renown self-serve ice
cream. I was boring and went with
vanilla, while Sheri got the banana (yeah, the banana was gooood!). We contemplated just having more ice cream
and calling it lunch, but she wanted to have a little more sustenance, since
she had a drink in her already and had a Mixology class later on in the afternoon. As we walked by, we noticed a pretty neat
portable beverage cooler and noted that we might have to look for one of those
later on.
Back in the stateroom (“Hi, Reuben”), we changed clothes and
decided to head down to Royal Palace (as Cabanas looked to be a bit busy,
though there were still plenty of tables available). We were seated immediately at a table with
just us. I had not yet seen a menu for
lunch in the rotation dining rooms, so this was going to be an entirely new
experience. Emily was our server, and
Tatia (I think that was the spelling), poured the water. She missed my glass and got a little water on
the tablecloth. She immediately
apologized and grabbed a couple of napkins to place on top of it. I let her know that it was completely fine…it
was water LOL.
We got an appetizer, a main entrée, and a dessert (and we
could have ordered as many of them as we wanted to). For the appetizer course, I went with the
seafood sampler, while Sheri got a really good mango soup (she describes it as
a melted mango ice cream). Now, my sons
and wife won’t admit it, but I can take care of snow crab legs without the crab
crackers with no waste at all; I failed miserably with whatever crab these
claws came from, though. There was crab
meat flying everywhere except in my mouth (grrrr).
Tatia stopped by to refill our waters and splashed a little
out of my glass again onto the napkin that was soaking up the first
deluge. She just shook her head as I
laughed it off. I decided on the angus
burger for my main course, and Sheri decided to go with the lemon chicken salad
with papaya and a coconut-lemon grass dressing.
No complaints at all on the food!
While we waited for the dessert course, Tatia stopped one
for one final refill. I saw her coming
and, as she reached for my glass, I ducked down held up my napkin as a
shield. She got this puzzled look on her
face until she realized what I was doing, and then she burst out laughing. “I had that one coming, didn’t I?” she said, as
she was fighting off tears from laughing.
Luckily, Sheri wasn’t at the table as I did that, or I would have been
in quite a bit of trouble.
Both of us ordered the Key Lime Pie for dessert, and, while
it was not the absolute best I’ve ever had (that title will forever go to our
home-made one where I helped squeeze the juice out of 19 key limes), I’d still
give it a thumbs-up. All in all, it was
a very good meal – especially for being complimentary.
After lunch, we took the long way up to the stateroom so I
could gather a couple more clues for my Detective-ing. Reuben had been in there and supplied us with
bandanas for Pirate Night. Sheri wanted
to chill for a bit, so, while she caught a few z’s, I turned Waking Sleeping Beauty back on and, as most who have seen the movie probably experienced, I struggled
to make it through the Company’s first losing Howard Ashman and then losing Frank
Wells without shedding a tear. I never
knew the backstory of Wells, Katzenberg, Eisner, and Roy Disney during the time
that I thought was a golden era for the Disney Company. If you’re a Disney fan and have not yet seen
this film, I recommend checking that one out.
Sheri was still sawing logs, so I decided to grab the camera
and head back out to get some more pictures of the ship and the area. It was around 2:30, so I had some time yet
before our 4:00 mixology with Don in Skyline.
I headed up to Decks 11-13 and started snapping pictures.
Nice shot of Atlantis
I have to admit, Norwegian
Sky’s hull art did look neat… I
can’t wait to see the Breakaway, Getaway,
and Escape in person someday to see the respective art on their hulls. Oh, and, yes, I do plan on having the ability to sell all these cruise lines in the future!
Nope...the fog didn't roll in; that again is the condensation that happens when taking a camera
from a cold, drier room to the outdoors where you seem to need gills to breath
better. I’d often pop into the forward
elevator area or the Cove Café to change the lens.
Around 2:45, I headed back to our stateroom (via the Atrium
in an attempt to try getting the settings right on the camera to show the
glimmer of the chandelier #fail) to get ready for our 4:00 Mixology class in
Skyline. Sheri had just woken up and was going to hop in the
shower. I decided to do a little
people-watching out on the verandah and grabbed a few more shots.
The area was buzzing with people returning from their day in
Nassau and heading back to their ship. I had to laugh as I noticed a few
families jokingly heading towards the Dream
as though they were going to sneak on.
When I opened the door up to head back into the stateroom,
Sheri was hollering, asking where the heck I was. After telling her, she asked if I heard
everything.
Huh?
She left the door to the shower section open, and apparently
the smoke alarm was triggered, making a piercing sound all over (except for the
verandah, apparently). The alarm is linked
to the phone in our room, so that was going off, too. Sheri, sopping wet in the shower, couldn’t
get a hold of me.
Can I just say that the sliding door to the verandah is
really soundproof?
Luckily, Christian, our Cruise Director (along with Reuben),
didn’t knock down the door with the entire firefighting unit and subsequently
escort us off the ship to the airport in Nassau. My guess is that it’s not an uncommon
occurrence.
Continued HERE.
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