Allure of the Seas

My job is so hard.  In order to be the best I can be at my job, I have to travel all over and experience all I can in the world of travel.  Last week was one of the worst things I have had to do yet.  I had to go on the biggest cruise ship in the world, Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas, and have a 4 day getaway with my husband for Valentine's.  Don't feel sorry for me.  What?  You don't?  Yeah, you really shouldn't.  It was awesome!

The whole trip was pretty rainy, so I didn't get a ton of good pictures, but I will post what I have.  The first day, we got on the ship, dropped our stuff off at our room and headed out to explore.  This ship has many different 'neighborhoods', and we went to the Boardwalk first.  It was probably my favorite area of the ship.  They had a donut shop, hot dog stand, ice cream shop, carousel, Johnny Rocket's, Rita's Cantina, a little jungle gym type thing for kids to play on, and this is also where the big OceanAria show is with the big Cirque style water show.  We decided to grab a bite at Rita's...

Pretty sure the salsa was Pace Picante from a jar, but everything else was delicious!  I had a red snapper with grilled peppers and onions.  SO good.

Here is a shot of the carousel.  Bella would have loved this!

After lunch we continued our tour and it started raining on us, but we managed to still have a good time.  This is Jason in the Central Park neighborhood.  They have umbrellas out when it rains so you can still walk around, and they had a covered bar...

There are many pools up top, with a great kids play area.  There are also a ton of deck chairs, and a lot of umbrellas if you wanted to lay by the pool and not get scorched. 

The first night we ate in the normal dining room.  It was just ok.  I feel like in general, cruise lines are starting to put pretty mediocre food in the 'free' dining areas to drive you to spend money in the restaurants that cost extra.  The last Royal Caribbean cruise we took was on the Freedom of the Seas and I remember being impressed with the food, so maybe it was just a bad night.  We only ate there one night!

The next day we went to the spa, which is outrageously priced, but still pretty nice.  Then just kind of did some relaxing.  I also got to tour some of the different rooms of my coworkers to get an idea of the different layouts.  I think one of my favorites was the one with a balcony over the Boardwalk.  It was really quiet if you had the balcony door closed, but if you sat out there it was great people watching, you could see the ocean off the back of the ship and you could even watch OceanAria from your balcony!

That night we ate at the Italian restaurant Giovanni's.  Man.  Was it good!  I mean I wanted to eat every bit of what we ordered, but I knew there were more and more courses, so I couldn't.  Jason and I both said if it was a restaurant in Dallas, we would go there often.  SO good.

We also stayed up until about 1 am on this day.  I cannot tell you the last time I stayed up that late.  Seriously.  But it was fun!

The next day we decided we needed some greasy Johnny Rocket's after our late night out.  It is $4.95 per person, and you can order anything on the menu, as much as you want.  This is what they bring out for you at first...

Pretty sure I ate all the onion rings and then felt really bad after, but they were goooood.

That night we ate at the Wine Bar there.  They serve tapas so we just ate a bunch of those, which were all really good, and then went to bed early.

The process getting off the ship was super easy.  We did the express where you just take your own luggage off.  There was no waiting at all to get off the boat, we went straight to customs.  There was a little bit of a wait once we got there, but that is pretty usual.  I have to say, on all cruises I feel like I always am waiting on elevators and sometimes the restaurants feel crowded.  But as many people as there are on this ship, I never felt like it was crowded.  I don't remember ever having to wait for multiple elevators or anything. 

There were a ton of things I wanted to do and didn't get to because of the rain.  There is zip lining, rock wall climbing and several shows, including Chicago. All in all I really liked this ship and would definitely recommend it.
This is a pretty drink I had, just had to share the pic with you guys.  Nothing says "I'm on vacation" like a drink with an umbrella in it...

Also, I think I have told you of my love for towel animals a time or two (thousand).  We only got one, but he was cute. =)

Disney Dream Cruise 2012

After saying a tearful goodbye to our beautiful room at the Polynesian, we headed up to the Main House to eat breakfast at Kona Cafe.  I love this place for breakfast.  They have Tonga Toast (banana stuffed french toast), Macadamia nut pancakes, Lilikoi juice and Kona Pressed Pot coffee.  SO delicious.  Here is Amanda, mom and Bells after our sugar rush of a breakfast.

Then we headed out to meet our bus to go to the port and our ship!

Isabella fell asleep on the bus.  We hadn't taken a nap the day before and a full day at the parks is a loooong day for a 3 year old.

I have been on a lot of different cruise lines, but never upon entering the ship have they asked my party's name, and introduced us to the entire ship as 'Welcoming now the Trent party!'.  What a nice way to start!  They then hand you off to a person who tells you where your room is and tells you when it will be ready and what is available while you are waiting for your room to be ready.  SUCH great service.

They told us where to find food and let us know that Donald was up on the balcony if we wanted to meet him.  Isabella was SO excited, so off we went.   

The rooms were really nice compared to others I have seen.  Cruise rooms are small in general, but these were definitely bigger than the Royal Caribbean balcony room we had the year before, and there was a curtain that closed the bedroom part off completely from the couch/tv area.

Once again with the towel animals.  Love it!

I had told Isabella that they let you order milk and cookies from room service before bed, so we had to do that!

Our first day we stopped at Nassau.  That is where Jason and I went for our honeymoon and we only had four days so I didn't want to get off the ship.  But we had a pretty sweet view of the Atlantis from our balcony!

Isabella claimed the top bunk the first night.  We were a little hesitant to let her have it, but she LOVED it and had no problems falling off or anything.

One of the great things about the Disney cruises, is that there are characters everywhere all the time.  So your kids aren't waiting in line for an hour to meet one princess like they would in the park.  They have dance parties with characters, meet and greet times all day, and Isabella met several characters not scheduled to be out, they were just walking around talking to people.

Isabella went crazy over Minnie.  I honestly didn't even realize she was such a fan.  But she would just hug on her and would not let go.  It was so sweet!  I may have teared up a bit...

And who says just the kids want to meet Minnie?

Isabella has been obsessed with Peter Pan for a long time.  Out of all the Disney movies, this is the one we act out at home the most.  I am Peter and she is Wendy and all sorts of craziness ensues.  So when she saw Peter just standing around, I think she was starstruck.  She didn't say a word and just stared.  I think he thought she didn't know who he was - Peter Pan isn't exactly Ariel - so he sat down with her and asked if she knew who he was.  Her eyes were so big and she just nodded.  I wanted to say 'if you only knew!'  So I love this picture.

 

The princess on her throne...

This is the restaurant we ate at the second night, the Enchanted Garden.  The first night was Animator's Palette but I didn't get any pictures of it which is a shame!  That was my favorite.

We came back to the room to find Little Dog already asleep.  She must have been exhausted.

The next day was Castaway Cay, Disney's private island.  There is so much to do there.  We had been to Royal Caribbean's island the summer before and I thought that was pretty cool, but this one blew theirs away.  It was so nice, had so much more on it and was just more developed.  There were all kinds of fun things to do in the water like this play area.

And the Pelican Plunge water slides.

There is a great long beach and we had no problem getting chairs.

One of the many bars on the island.

The view of the ship.  Ain't she a beaut?

They have a barbecue lunch with great options.  I remember there being couscous and stuff like that.  Not your regular barbecue fare!  Oh, and the cookies here and on the ship were SO good.  There is self serve ice cream and people were making ice cream sandwiches with them.  I would highly recommend that.

Amanda with the gang...

There is a pirate night on every Disney sailing where you are encouraged to wear pirate regalia or at least tropical themed clothes.  I wish we had gone full pirate because we were basically in the minority in our 'tropical' clothes.  They had a cute show up on deck and they do fireworks.  Until recently they were the only cruise line to do fireworks at sea.  Now the new Norwegian Breakaway will have them too.

Isabella is also really in to pirates so she loved this night.

The next morning we had brunch reservations at Palo.  I think it was a $15 surcharge to eat here and you need reservations.  This was our view from our booth.  The food was excellent and it was a HUGE spread.  It is an Italian restaurant so they had a bunch of pizzas and pastas you could order on top of the regular brunch fare.

We went on this cruise as part of a group.  The way I found the company that I work for was by listening to a couple of podcasts that they sponsor.  One of them is WDW Radio hosted by Lou Mongello.  He is pretty much a super star in the Disney community and my company helped sponsor Lou's Cruise.  There was a door decorating contest so we made a Texas wreath to show our roots!

The last couple days of the cruise, my mom unfortunately was really sick.  She didn't even leave the room and Isabella got a touch of it the last day too.  So Amanda and I would just kind of check on them and then explore the ship on our own.  They have a fun Midship Detective Agency thing where you go all over the boat exploring and finding clues to solve a mystery.

There are so many things to do on this ship that we didn't even have time for.  They have a movie theater showing regular and 3D movies.  While we were on they had Brave, Wreck It Ralph (that had literally come out the day after we sailed), The Avengers.  I wish I had had time to do that.  There are also many adult only areas, probably more than on regular cruise ships.  So if you don't want to be surrounded by the characters and kids all the time you don't have to be.

They had the Oceaneers Club for Isabella's age and we would drop her off there for a couple of hours at a time.  When we went to pick her up she always had on a different costume (Minnie, Ariel, Belle) and would ask to stay longer.  They had story times, craft times, computers for them to play on, reading rooms, these huge interactive floors that they would walk around on and play games.  It was amazing.  And she had a wrist band on to get in and out so they always knew where she was.  I would go to pick her up and they would say 'oh she is in the Nemo room'.  And you have to have a password to be able to pick them up, so I felt really safe with her in there.

Our last day came too soon and we had a very long wait at the airport.  Isabella and Amanda killed time taking silly photos of themselves.  Bella took the pics of Amanda so they were a little (lot) blurry...

It was an absolutely magical vacation and I can't wait to go again!

Walt Disney World 2012

In November, Isabella, my mom, Amanda and I went on a Disney girls trip.  We started our trip at Walt Disney World for a couple of days, then went on a 4 day cruise on the Disney Dream.  It was such a special trip, because my sister is expecting and so who knows when we will get to do something like that again.

We stayed at the Polynesian Resort in a theme park view room.  It was my first time to stay here and I had always wanted to.  It did NOT disappoint!  We could walk out on our balcony and see the castle in the morning or the fireworks in the evening.

Here are some views from our room...

I am such a nerd, but I love towel animals in the rooms.  I get so excited when I come back and there are little towel creatures waiting for me!

The first day, we got in, Isabella and I rushed over to the Magic Kingdom just to get a couple of rides in before dinner.  We went just before the New Fantasyland expansion opened, so we didn't get to see that, but we did see the new Dumbo with the kids play area and we rode the Barnstormer, which I had never ridden before.  I wasn't sure how Isabella would like a roller coaster, even though it is pretty tame, but she was just giggling the whole time!!  She LOVED it.  If she had been tall enough to ride Big Thunder, I think she would have.  Next time!

The first night we went to dinner at 1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian hotel.  They do a dinner with the characters from Cinderella, whom Bella was obsessed with at the time!  She wore her Cinderella outfit from Halloween.  The dinner was a buffet and the food was really good!  You just ate at your own pace and waited for the characters to come around.  The story behind the dinner is that you are at the prince and Cinderella's engagement party.  So before they start walking around they come out and dance first.
   

The first to come around was the prince.  This picture cracks me up!  Makes me a little worried for things in the future too...

Next up was Cinderella...

Next came the Stepmother.  Bella kept saying all night "I think the Stepmother is really nice, just not to Cinderella".  I think she was just trying to psych herself up to not be scared.  I think she was still a little intimidated...

The Stepsisters were hilarious.  Bells had her little dolls with her and they threw a fit over dolls that looked like them.

The next morning we went to Epcot.  I was so hoping Isabella would get to ride Soarin', but she is just a little too short, so I figured we would just see how lenient the cast member working the ride was.  I think luck was with us because she was being super strict, but somehow mistook Bella for a girl she had already measured and waved us through.  We were like 'walk fast'!!  So she totally got to ride it!  It is so fun to experience things for the first time with her.  She is a lot like me in that she gets SO excited about things, and I love it.

We had a quick breakfast at Sunshine Seasons, which is my favorite counter service meal in the whole of WDW.

Bella has been in to this pose where she puts her hands under her chin, so we have lots of pictures like this.

Mom and Isabella in front of the ball at Epcot!

We went back over to the Magic Kinddom later, because Amanda was meeting us there that day.  One of Isabella's favorite rides was the Magic Carpets of Aladdin.  There is a camel that spits on you and I got soaked because I didn't know it was coming.  She thought that was about the funniest thing ever and kept trying to steer us to the camel's level every time.

Towards the end of the day, she was pooped!

That night she got to see the Main Street Electric Parade while eating a Casey's Corner hot dog.  A great way to end the night!  Next up was the cruise...