Settling In
Our room wasn’t going to be ready until 2, so after lunch, we headed to a table near the Goofy pool on deck 9 to hang out until then. We were immediately approached by a server who offered us a drink in the commemorative Alaska mug for only $9.95 each. Gee, what a bargain! We each bought one with smoothies for the kids and the Drink of the Day (plantar’s punch) for Colorado Dad and I.

When our room was ready, we headed down to check it out. Since we’ve cruised before and are members of the Castaway Club, there was a gift waiting for us when we arrived.

After several years of the same red bag, they’ve finally changed the gifts to these backpacks, which I like much better!

Our luggage hadn’t arrived yet, but we put a few things away and hung out until it was time for our Disboards meet down in the Promenade Lounge on Deck 3. We visited with our fellow Disboarders for a few minutes and then it was time for the Lifeboat drill. You no longer have to wear your lifejackets to the drill, which is nice.

Bon Voyage, Seattle!
From there, we headed to the Sailaway party so the kids could see the characters and dance a little bit. Yes, Colorado Boy IS dancing a jig in this picture

After the party, we headed back to the stateroom so I could unpack everything and get ready for the show. Tonight’s entertainment was “Let the Magic Begin” which Colorado Dad and I have seen 4 times and could have skipped, but the kids enjoyed it.

Dinner at Parrot Cay
We had the late dinner and our seating wasn’t until 8:15 so we did a little exploring around the ship until then.

Trip Tip #3: I always see a lot of questions about which dining to choose – early or late. Honestly, I think it depends on your family – you know your kids best – but, there are a couple things to consider. We specifically asked for late dining for two reasons – first, so we didn’t have to rush back from excursions to make the 5:45 early seating time. Second, with late seating, you see the show first (at 6:15) and we felt like it would be better for the kids to be “fresh” for the show, rather than dinner, because we could always feed them early if necessary. What we didn’t take in to consideration was the time change. Cruising to Alaska meant that we were two hours earlier than at home, so a dinner time of 8:15 was really 10:15 for us. Needless to say, dinner that late just did not work for Colorado Princess and I think it was a big cause of her grumpiness throughout the week. If we had been cruising off the East Coast, where an 8:15 dinner time would have been 6:15 at home, it would have been fine. So, just keep that in mind when you’re deciding which dining to choose with kids!

Our dining rotation started in Parrot Cay, the least favorite of the restaurants for me, but we enjoyed a nice dinner, getting to know our tablemates and our servers, Yusuf and Buyani. I know a lot of people love pictures of the food but after 4 years of almost the exact same menus, with the same food, I was pretty lax about pictures, so I apologize in advance. The menu was the Island Dinner menu which you can see here - http://disneycruiser.info/menus_w2011/parrotcay.htm.

I had the Ahi Tuna, Parrot Cay Salad, Jerk Seasoned Pork Chop and the French Toast Banana Bread. I was not very impressed with dessert, but everything else was really good

Colorado Dad had the Crab Dip, Cream of Asparagus soup, Mixed Grill and Creme Brulee cheescake. He ate everything, so I’m assuming it was pretty good

The kids had Macaroni and Cheese and a hamburger along with a special treat

One nice thing about the late dining rotation is they do something called “Dine and Play” which allows the kids to enjoy dinner in the dining room but then they are picked up at 9:15 to go play in the kids’ club so parents can enjoy the rest of dinner in peace. Unfortunately, this first night, the club crewmembers came before the kids got their dessert, so they missed out on their Mickey Bars!

After dinner, we were exhausted so we just went to pick the kids up and headed off to bed, where the first towel animal of the week was waiting for us.

Next up: A day at sea

Monday morning dawned cloudy and cool, but luckily it was not raining when we woke up.

Getting to the Port and Checking In
Since we were staying in one of the Disney hotels, we could have signed up for the Disney shuttle to the port ($30/per person/one way). The shuttle is kind of nice because they take care of getting your luggage from the bus onto the ship. But when we found out the first bus wasn’t going to leave until 11:30, we decided to cab it instead because I wanted to get to the terminal as early as possible (I’ll explain why in a bit).

We were a bit worried about getting all our luggage to fit in the trunk of a cab, but it all fit without a problem. At about $15 for the 10 minute ride to the port, I think cabbing it was the way to go, even though we had to handle our own luggage. Way cheaper than the $120 it would have cost for the 4 of us to ride the bus!

We got to the port around 10:30 and walked right in to drop our luggage off at the xray scanner and then went upstairs to wait in a pretty short line to go through security. There are lots of people standing there to explain what you need and to answer any questions, so it was a pretty smooth process. After getting through security, we had to sign the requisite “is anyone in your family sick” questionnaire and then we were able to go over to the check-in booths.

They don’t like people taking pictures in the terminal area, I guess for security reasons, but Colorado Dad was able to get one picture while I was standing in line. The picture below shows the basic setup of the terminal – you enter at the very far end of the room (back of the pic) where the security checkpoint is located and then come over to the middle section where all the check-in booths are. Colorado Dad took this picture from the seating area where there are a whole bunch of seats set up and then behind that is where you enter the ship.

After checking in, I moved over to the supervisor’s desk (you can see me standing in that line in the foreground of the pic above) to check on…an upgrade!

Trip Tip #1: If you’re interested in upgrading your stateroom, you might consider waiting to do so until you get to the port on embarkation day. Here’s why – If rooms are available, you can upgrade for a significantly reduced cost to what it would take to upgrade if you did it before sail day. Why? Well, at this point they’re not going to sell those rooms to anyone new, but if they upsell to an existing passenger and get some additional money, why not! The upgrades go pretty quickly and aren’t always available, so  if you want to try for this, get to the port as early as you can!

Our initial room was one of the secret porthole rooms, which provided us with a porthole that was obscured but for the price of an inside room. Definitely a great value, but for Alaska we felt like having a verandah room would be nice. There was one available so we went for it. One thing to mention here – if you do upgrade, they’ll ask if you’re expecting any stateroom gifts to be delivered so they can make sure to get it to your new room. If you are a Castaway Club member or a DVC member, make sure to say “yes”! We did not do this and it took several days for everything to get sorted out with the DVC desk (they give gifts and do trivia phone calls all throughout the cruise).

After upgrading, the kids and I went over to get a picture with Minnie (which didn’t turn out ) and check-in at the kids club. The line for the kids club check-in was pretty long, so if you want to, you can wait until you’re on the ship and just do it later in the day.

Trip Tip #2: All kids in the kids club get a “Mickey band” which is a plastic bracelet with a scannable plastic piece on it that is used to keep track of them. It’s about the size of a large wristwatch. You have the option of either putting it on the kid’s wrist or around their ankle. For young kids, I would recommend doing the ankle. We originally put it around Colorado Princess’ wrist, but in order for it to not slip off, it had to be really tight. Over the course of the first couple days, her wrist swelled a little bit and the band ended up cutting into her skin. Luckily, it’s easy enough to cut off and get a new band, but we would have saved her some pain if we had done the ankle originally!

Heading Aboard!
After all the check-in stuff, we sat down to wait until they called our boarding number. When you get to the terminal, they give you a card with a boarding number on it after you’ve filled out the “are you sick” questionnaire. The numbers start at 1 (for concierge guests) and go up from there. We got group 6, which wasn’t too bad. I think our group was called about 12:15 or so. When they call your group, you have the option of having an embarkation photo taken or just heading straight to the ship. We opted for the pic

and then headed to the gangway. We boarded on deck 4, which was a little different. Normally you go in on deck 3, so your first impression is of the 3-story atrium with the awesome chandelier.

Not sure why they didn’t do it, but regardless, we were still “announced” as we boarded. From there, we headed to Beach Blanket Buffet for lunch. I took zero pictures of our food and honestly cannot remember a thing I ate, but I guess it was pretty good I guess I was too busy taking pictures of the view to remember much else.

Up next: Sailing away to an Island-inspired dinner.