travels, races, and other musings

Disembarkation I woke up at 7 AM, showered, got everyone else up and we all finished getting ready and packing. We got ready somehow in record time and had some time to chill before breakfast. I feel like this was our least stressful disembarkation morning in memory. I think we're getting the hang of it. I think it helps to hang on to one regular suitcase to put everything we have left into. We used to try to stuff things into little bags and stuff and it was a mess. We just leave the suitcase outside the restaurant. It works fine.  We ate breakfast at Lumiere's and then tried to find a bathroom that didn't have a mile long line. We finished up, joined the line to disembark, which was growing shorter by the moment and went to find our other suitcase before proceeding to border control and out the door. Then we bypassed the insanely long line for people waiting for a parking lot shuttle and walked the one minute walk to our car in the express lot. Worth. Every. Penny.  Final...

I actually really like sea days. When I was a new cruiser, I wasn't so sure about them, but now I find that they can bring a nice balance between activities and relaxation. I woke up at 7 AM before anyone else, put on my workout gear and headed for the gym. It was surprisingly not busy once again. I found a piece of real estate, of which there is quite a lot compared to the larger ships in Disney's fleet. The gym on "The Classics" is definitely the best with the best view.  After my workout I went up to Deck 9 to grab a snack since Roger was just beginning his run, having slept in a bit. Around 9 AM I went back to the room and showered then Roger returned and showered and then we went to breakfast at Cabana's.  After breakfast we returned to the room to regroup before setting out for Star Wars trivia. Emmaline went off to hang out with her friends. We didn't do too badly at Star Wars trivia (but not good either). Then it was time for another drawing class, thi...

If you've read any of my previous trip reports you know that we don't usually book ship sponsored tours. But the port situation in Progreso is a little unique and the main tour that we wanted was also offered as a DCL sponsored excursion at around the same price so we just decided to push the easy button and book the tour through DCL: Mayapan Ruins, Lazy River Tubing and Cave Swim.  Our meeting time was 8:30 in the Walt Disney Theatre so we woke up at 7 AM, had breakfast at Cabana's and arrived right at 8:30. We waited there for about 15 minutes where about three full rows of people arrived for our tour and I worried that we made a horrible mistake.  They took us off row by row and we loaded onto tour buses of about 40-45 people per bus. From there we drove for about an hour to  Cenotes Hacienda Mucuyché . On the way, one of our tour guides explained the region, the people, how the cenotes were formed, what was farmed at the haciendas in the area (a certain species o...

At Sea I usually get up early and go to the gym or running on Deck 4. I must have been really tired because I slept all the way until 7:30 which is really unusual for me. I rolled out of bed, tossed on my workout costume and headed for the gym which was dead. Only about four other people were there. Weird. I did my workout there while Roger ran on Deck 4 and then went back to the room and showered. We got Emmaline up and went to breakfast at Lumiere’s.  After breakfast Emmaline went to meet up with her friends, Roger went to the room and I decided to go to drawing class. It said that it was going to be Mickey. Even though I have taken a Mickey drawing class before I figured it was always good to practice. I was happy to find that this was a slightly different version of Mickey and I was also a little disappointed to find that it wasn’t a live teacher doing the class, but instead a video. Womp womp. I get that they can’t always have members of the entertainment team that can draw re...

Embarkation We seem to like cruising in January. To be honest, it's nice to get away after all the craziness of the holidays. And our anniversary is in January so we get to celebrate with a little vacation. In fact, we've already booked for our anniversary for next year!  As for this one, we decided to push the easy button and sail out of Galveston once again. Even though the itineraries aren't usually super compelling, we decided to give Progreso a try since we'd never been there and we found some interesting looking excursions we thought we could do. And we haven't been on the Magic in over five years so it seemed like time.  We left the house around 8:30 in the morning. We had originally intended to leave earlier. You never know what the traffic will be like, especially through Houston. We made good time though, even with two stops for bathrooms, snacks and gas (so we wouldn’t have to get any on the way home). We arrived at the port at 12:30. Last time we paid to...