Vacay Days, part 3

Excursions off the ship.

On Tuesday the ship docked at Nassau, Bahamas. You could disembark and just wander around Nassau looking at things and shopping. If I went on this cruise again, that’s what I would do. But as it was, we had signed up ahead of time on the Disney Cruise app to take a ferry to Blue Lagoon Island, which Tony and I weren’t impressed by but Baby Girl loved. The ferry takes about 30 minutes to get you to the island and you are warned multiple times when to get back on it for it to head back to the ship.

When we got there, it started pouring on us. The water in the lagoon was warmer than the rain so Baby Girl and I went ahead in while Tony took cover under a large umbrella. I had to take my glasses off so I couldn’t see anything at all. It rained for about twenty minutes and that was it. Thank goodness! This is the island where you could also do the dolphin or sea lion encounter but these things cost a lot so we didn’t do them. You pay for all the excursions – the Blue Lagoon Island itself was, I think, $89 per person for me and Tony and $70 for Baby Girl. Or something close to that. All child tickets end at age 10. After that they are considered the adult price. Plenty of people were at the island, and I think they weren’t all from the boat. I bought a beach towel that said The Bahamas on it and we chilled out and watched Baby Girl play. She made a couple of friends that had sand toys so they really enjoyed themselves with that. Of course, once we were on the ship again it was impossible to find these kids again! Lunch was provided and we were given lunch tickets and drink tickets. I used the tickets to get three Dr. Pepper’s which we stowed away in our bag to take back to the ship since there was no Dr. Pepper on the ship, a sin for us Texans! Baby Girl discovered that she likes hot dogs, which cracked me up as I’ve been trying to get her to eat them for years and she always refused. Don’t worry – they were all beef hot dogs.

There were two sides to the Blue Lagoon – the lagoon side and the sea side. The sea side had lots of rocks and waves, and very clear water. We found lots of interesting things on the rocks including some sort of slugs which disgusted Baby Girl and I laughed at her for chunking one of them in the water when she figured out what it was. I didn’t like the sea side because of all the rocks so we took ourselves back to the lagoon side where there are no waves and no rocks. There was also a sort of floating playground that looked interesting but you had to have a life jacket to play on it and I couldn’t see where to get one so we didn’t get to do that.

At any rate it was a pretty good day and my ankle tan started to fade. Nobody got burned but I did notice the sun was a lot stronger in the Bahamas than it is here in Texas. We made it back to the ship in time and had a lovely dinner then watched a movie on the deck while Skylar swam. We went back to the stateroom but later learned that there were fireworks that night which we missed! We hadn’t heard about it.

Wednesday was the “day at sea.” Baby Girl complained about not feeling well and just wanted to stay in the room and watch movies. Tony and I left her there for a little while and went shopping and exploring the ship. She agreed to swim at lunchtime and she and I went on the tube ride that went around the entire top of the ship. We had to wait in line for awhile and the ride was short, but fun! We only did it once though. It’s actually a bit cold at the tip top of the ship with the wind blowing gales when you are wet. So we went back down to where we had left Tony eating lunch. I got free ice cream for Baby Girl and myself and then we headed back to the stateroom. The pools and deck were incredibly crowded since everyone on the ship was out there and if you know me, know that I was pretty overwhelmed by that. I ended up doing some laundry – they had a really nice laundry room on board. The washer and dryer cost $3 each and the detergent was $1 each. But I didn’t mind – it gave me something to do and it was nice to have clean clothes to bring home instead of a mountain of laundry. The whole day was pretty quiet and we finally convinced her to check out the kids’ club that evening before dinner for thirty minutes.

On Thursday we had the excursion to Castaway Cay, which is Disney’s private island. The entire island is just one big extension of the ship. Tony and I were much more impressed by this island than by the Blue Lagoon. There were shops and bars and the lunch was interesting and pretty tasty. Baby Girl got another hot dog! We had rented three tubes to float in, but unless you are all planning to be out there at the same time, that is a waste of money. One or two tubes is plenty. Baby Girl wanted to go snorkeling, and since it was her birthday that day, we went over to the snorkeling area and asked if she could do it. At first they said they didn’t have enough equipment (we hadn’t signed up ahead of time) but I guess the look on Baby Girl’s face was priceless because the guy said wellll maybe I can find the gear for her, but not for the adult. We said that was fine. Tony would just go out in the water with her to make sure she was safe. I told the guy it was her birthday and he had just made her day. He didn’t even charge us! I think she enjoyed the snorkeling, but there really wasn’t much to see in the water. It’s not like we were on a reef or anything. And there were tons of people doing it, so I’m sure all the fish were scared away.

There was a playground in the water with slides but Baby Girl wasn’t interested as you would have to land in the ocean water and swim back and it was quite deep. She was happy eating her watermelon flavored snow cone and looking at the boat through the telescope. After lunch, which included more free ice cream, we made our way over to the area where you could do the paddleboats, kayaks and water trike’s. We had rented a water trike on the app ahead of time, so Tony and Baby Girl went out on the water – Tony said it was a lot of work! I got some good pictures of them with the Disney Wish behind them.

After that we headed back to the boat in time for Baby Girl’s birthday dinner and then she went to the kids’ club for an hour afterwards. We had to pack all our bags and leave them outside our stateroom door to be picked up and delivered to the port the next morning. You didn’t have to do this – if you wanted to save time you could just take your suitcases to breakfast with you. We went to breakfast at 6:45 am and had to be off the boat by 9 at the latest. We were done by 8 so followed the crowd heading off the ship. The ship had to be cleaned and ready to go for another sailing that same day! Once we were in the port building (I don’t know what it’s called) we were able to find our suitcases fairly easily and headed to the line for the airport bus (again, paid for upfront).

Once at the airport we hauled our luggage to the right terminal then waited in line for the help desk. Apparently it was going my way that day because even though our original flight wasn’t until 5 something pm we were able to get on an earlier flight at 1:55 at no extra charge. Must’ve been my lucky socks!

So we made it home safe and sound and if I could leave on another cruise tomorrow I would totally do it. I hope all this was interesting and helpful to anyone planning a cruise or wondering if they should do one!