I usually post photos of our towel animals, and it occurs to me I haven’t done that yet. Here is the towel animal that was waiting for us when we returned to our cabin last night – it’s always one of my favorites:

This morning we docked in Costa Maya quite early – about 6:30 – and it was quite noisy. I haven’t written much about our stateroom. First, let me say that we HAVE a stateroom on the Disney Fantasy’s Maiden Voyage, and I’m very happy about that! But that said, it’s not what I would have chosen. We are on the stern of the ship, so we are looking behind us instead of on the side where we can see more of where we are going. There’s a nice large verandah, but maybe because it’s on the back of the ship it’s doesn’t seem to get much of a breeze most of the time. (Lee has a much more favorable opinion of the stateroom than I do.)

We seem to experience quite a bit of noise and vibration where we are. Not just us, but others who are also in this section. The vibration hasn’t really bothered us, but we’ve heard some people compare it to the sensation of having that oin-operated “Magic Fingers” massager going on all of the time. 🙂

This morning when we docked in Costa Maya it seemed to take quite a while, and there was a lot of noise from the stern thrusters. The sea was very choppy and even after we docked we still seemed to be moving around a lot, and sometimes it felt like we were going over a big log or something like that. We were joking that we were actually experiencing more motion while we were docked than we had in the three days we’d been at sea! 🙂

The water here is an absolutely beautiful blue, as you can see below, and the port area is very colorful. Unfortunately what you see in this photo is just about all there is in the port area. If you don’t do an excursion there’s not very much to do.

It was quite windy today, and as I mentioned the sea was choppy, so a fair number of the excursions were canceled. The Bahamian flag flies just below our room, and you can see what kind of breeze there was!

We really didn’t have any plans to go ashore today, though. We tried to sleep in a bit, but, as I mentioned, it was noisy. Lee went running and I went walking on deck 4. I like the jogging track on the new ships – they have enclosed the bow and stern areas so they don’t usually have to close them during the docking process like they do on the Magic and Wonder. It’s a really nice surface, too. 2.5 laps is supposed to be 1 mile, but I think that’s a bit optimistic. I haven’t been able to measure it with my GPS (being in motion and also going inside the bow nad stern confuses it), but I know how fast I walk, and 2.5 laps just isn’t quite a mile. (I ran with my GPS the first day, and had to laugh – because we were underway, it thinks I traveled 15.84 miles in my 40 minutes of jogging! Don’t I wish! 🙂 )

While we were out this morning we saw the maintenance staff already hard at work. Here we are, a brand new ship on its Maiden Voyage, and already they are repainting the railing and re-finishing the deck chairs. But I’m sure they have a schedule, and to make sure all the railings get repainted on time they have to start now! The ocean is a harsh environment, and we’ve always noticed how good the Disney cruise ships look.

We had a chance to try out the new “photo” game on the Fantasy. Outside Shutters there is a large touch screen monitor. If you activate it with your room key it accesses your photos and brings up a few games that you can play with them. We tried the “Snapshot Smackdown” – it displays your photos and some stock photos, and you have to touch only the photos that are yours. I thought it was a nice addition.

Although we didn’t have any interest in going into Costa Maya, we still got off the ship so that we could walk along the pier and take some photos. There was some nice wave action on the rocks along the shore.

The light wasn’t great for photos of the Fantasy, but we took some anyway (the breeze was also blowing the smoke from the stack towards us, making it a little hazy).

We got back on board at just about lunchtime, and happened to meet up with our tablemates Mike, Lori, and Aaron, at Royal Court, so we all had lunch together. It was really good – I’ve been disappointed with some of the lunch menus in the past, but this had interesting selections, and everything I had, and that my tablemates had, we enjoyed. There will be more in the food blog, but I have to say that the Double Chocolate Cake is the best chocolate dessert that I have had on this cruise – it was a very rich chocolatey flourless chocolate cake with ganache and chocolate mousse on top. Yum.

It was a short port day – everyone was due back on board by 2:30. We left port about 3:00. We were up in the Satellite Pool area enjoying the sun and waiting for our departure, and the lovely Miss Minnie Mouse joined us! It was very nice to see her hanging out in the Adult area for a change, and a lot of people took photos of her – but of course I didn’t have my camera. Lee was able to get a shot with his iPad, though.

Lee went to the “Conversation with Joe Lanzisero” presentation. Joe is the Senior Vice President of Walt Disney Imagineering Creative, and has been very involved in the design of the Dream and Fantasy. He’ll share some details of that in a future blog.

Tonight we’re dining in Animator’s Palate, and it’s supposed to be the new animation show, which we have been looking forward to experiencing. And we’ll see the new Wishes show, also.

Day at sea tomorrow!

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