Lessons Learned

This is probably going to be a post that gets revisited as I’ve got time to think about our vacation. Overall, the vacation went flawlessly. Are there things we learned? Absolutely!

1.  Do I regret taking Lily while she was so young? Absolutely not! She had a marvelous time and the experiences we had were priceless! That being said, I can’t wait to take her when she’s potty trained, if for no other reason, packing all those diapers was a huge pain and a half!

2. I wouldn’t do shore excursions or venture around town much at ports. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the shore excursion we did, but if I had to do it over again, I’d rather stay on the boat or just hit a couple of the “last minute” tourist shops near the boat than wander deep into town and spend time looking around. The deals weren’t as exceptional as I had hoped (maybe I’m just that good of a bargain shopper), and with the exception of guavaberry liqueur, I don’t think we’d be repeat shoppers at any of the stores. I do want to buy the maximum of guavaberry liqueur, however. That stuff was INCREDIBLE.

3.     I will be very glad to go back on board now that I know my way around the ship. It took a few days before I really felt comfortable knowing where things were, and even by the last day, the moebius strip that is Cabanas confused the heck out of me. (It is because it covers the aft of the ship, so if you enter it on the port side and keep walking far enough, the buffet lines repeat and suddenly you’re on the starboard side. There are subtle differences in the chairs and in the décor, but I never fully got it figured out. To make matters worse, the aft elevators are right in the middle of it, so if you enter from there, you’re entering the restaurant in the middle of the restaurant and get totally mixed up. Then to make it even more crazy, the elevators Aft don’t go down to deck 2, which is the deck we’re staying on, so that meant that I had to find my way back to Midship to figure out how to get home!)

4.    Character meet and greets are a must! Typically at Disney theme parks, you can expect to wait 20-30 minutes on a good day for a picture with any character. On the ship, aside from a couple special nights (formal night and pirate night), you have typically a 5-10 minute wait tops.

5.  Likewise, do the portraits as well as the characters. I do wish we had taken advantage of more of the portrait settings, but Lily really wasn’t up for waiting in line after dinner.

6.     I want to make an ice cream cookie sandwich on the next trip! By the time I figured out this was an option, I was down with “cruise crud” and was avoiding dairy—but they have chocolate chip cookies at Flo’s and they have soft serve at Eye-Scream. You see where I’m going with this? Uh huh.

7.  Order that mint tea punch drink earlier. On almost the last day there, I happened to look at the bar menu as I was cutting through the adult pool area and saw the mint tea punch (tea, mint, cranberry juice, pineapple juice—YUM!). I finally got around to ordering it on the last day, and I could have easily ordered more than one of those. Also, don’t be shy about using the skills of the drink server at dinner—and maybe order AquaPanna most nights. ;)

8.    Do something at the spa. Not being a spa gal, no idea what would be the best thing to do, but I do want to try something there!

9.     Spend some time in the quiet adult pool. That place looked wickedly good to enjoy.

10.  Do Goofy minigolf—when it isn’t windy. We went up there for the scavenger hunt, and the course looked very fun, but it was incredibly windy that day.

11.  Just do more of everything. I would absolutely want to do more of everything.

12.  Bring medicines even if you don’t think you need them. I’m looking at you cough and cold pills!

13.  Bring other people, if possible. It was nice meeting new people at our table, but it would be really awesome to share the experience with people we know. Cannot. Recommend. This. Enough.

14.  Bring less toys (and supplies in general). We packed a huge bag of toys for Lily, along with sippy cups and the like. She rarely touched any of them because she was so busy when she was awake (which meant we were out of the room) and when we were in the room, she was so tired that she was on her way to sleep. She also did just fine with the straw cups, and hopefully by the time we go next time she won’t be obsessed with only one brand of juice.

15.  Try for Palo brunch. Dinner and the tea were great. Brunch sounds wonderful.

16.  Don’t be scared about the square footage of the room, because the room seems much bigger in person than it does on paperwork. If you’ve ever seen the Ikea “my house is only 349 square feet” things, it’s like that. We not only had room for us, but all of our stuff was able to be put away very easily.

17.  Eat at Flo’s—I didn’t realize until the end that they had daily sandwich specials that looked awesome, and that the way they did wraps was to make a wrap and then slice it into snack-size pieces. This meant that you could try a bunch of different wraps for just snacks or things.

18.  Get the museli from day one. I’m telling ya, it was awesome!

19. Arrive a day early! Amtrak is wonderfully good about getting there on time or early. Given the trouble we had on the way down, though, if we had arrived the day we were set to leave port, I would have been a total basket case. 

20. That being said, don't arrive too early or stay too long afterwards. I think this vacation, although wonderful, isn't one I could do length-wise again and enjoy as much as I did with the adrenaline that I had this time. Staying the extra day at Disney really was tougher than I pictured. At the very least, I shouldn't have made dining reservations--it was too much.

21. Bring extra bags in your suitcases. I have no idea how we filled up two extra bags, but we did. I want to be prepared next time, just in case!

22. Decorate your door! Even though we did it this time for a contest, it was tons of fun because we had pictures of us on it--and that meant people we didn't know were coming up to us and saying "Hey, I recognized your door!" That was a pretty neat feeling.

23. Skip the 5K. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt--literally. Although it was fun once, I don't think I'll do it again until/unless Lily is old enough to want to do it--and then I might just cheer with an umbrella drink in hand.

I think that’s all I’m thinking of at the moment, but I’m sure that either Erwin or I will have more to add later on. Thanks for reading all this, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments!