Lily’s Best (Summer) Week Ever: Disney Cruise Line

Hi, it’s Lily again. I’ve got an exciting surprise this week for the grand finale for my best summer week ever. I went on a cruise. I went on a Disney cruise. I went on an 11-night cruise on the Disney Fantasy! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I traveled with my parents and two of my grandparents (my mom’s parents).

We got on board and had lunch at Enchanted Garden. Then we went up to the room on deck 9. This is the view from my balcony. We were parked next to a Carnival ship.

The sail away party was inside because it was raining outside and people might slip. It’s interesting to watch the sail away party inside. It was very crowded.

After we left, it stopped raining, and there was a rainbow!

On this cruise, there were four sea days, and I went to the AquaLab on some of them. The AquaLab is a lab run by Huey, Dewey, and Louie. The water is leaking from different parts of the lab. You can even “run” the AquaDuck. It’s a LOT of fun and you get VERY wet.

My grandparents and dad went to an animation class. We learned how to make a scene using animation, and we learned how to draw Winnie the Pooh.

I spent a lot of time in the kids’ club. There are many different rooms and areas. The first side is the Club, and the other side is the Lab. In the Club, there is Andy’s Room, an indoor playground. There’s Pixie Hollow, which is a craft room. Then, there is the Star Wars room, which has a lot of electronics. You can fly your own ship. This is a picture of me in the Marvel room. It’s based off of a Marvel school. I am playing with one of the magic portals that Doctor Strange uses. On the Lab side, there is a craft studio, an animation studio, Pirate’s Cove (which is a place where you can sit down and relax and play on iPads), and the media lounge (where you can sit down and watch movies). There is also a gaming area in between the Club and the Lab with cafeteria tables and board games.

This is me with my grandma and grandpa. We are making our own passports for arts and crafts time.

I decided to get a treat before formal night dinner. We went to Sweet on You, an ice cream and sweets shop. There is ice cream, gelato, candy, and more, but I got two macarons. My favorite was the vanilla one. The chocolate was too much.

This is the atrium on deck 3. There are balconies on decks 4 and 5. I was dancing to the music playing before we had dinner. The atrium is beautiful!

One of my favorite things to do on a sea day is the Mickey 200. The Mickey 200 is where you carve a potato and a carrot to make a race car. Then, we race the race cars on a ramp. Most of the race cars break at the end. I like doing it. This time, my race car didn’t break. I did not win, though. It definitely won the award for sturdiest if they had a prize for that.

Our first port was Aruba. As you can see, it’s One Happy Island!

On Aruba we went on a port adventure. At our first stop, we saw this unique-colored lizard.

At our next stop, I ordered a pastechi. It is a pastry filled with different ingredients. The one I got was a pastechi filled with cheese. I liked it.

Then we went on a boat and a submarine. We saw a shipwreck from the submarine.

We also saw lots of fish. They were eating stuff that was on the submarine.

In the evenings, there were different featured shows. This show is a magic show. People were allowed to get up and examine the trunk for the magic show to make sure there was no fake lock, opening, or anything. We also wrote our names on it to see if it got switched out during the act. It was pretty incredible.

We got to celebrate the 4th of July at sea. It was going to be a late night, so I got a chocolate coffee from Vista Cafe. It made me so I could stay up late and it was taaasty!

 

There was a fireworks show and dance party for the 4th of July.

The fireworks were amazing!

Our next port was Barbados. This is a picture of one of the homes in Barbados and some land on the beach.

We went to Orchid World. There were many different types of flowers. But my favorite thing was the turtle fountain in one of the greenhouses. I love my turtles!

Next we went to Martinique. A thing different about Martinique is they speak French there. My daddy knows a little bit of French, and that’s the most in our family. We were able to manage, though. We walked to the Fort St. Louis. We didn’t get to tour it because tours left every hour and we came at 9:15. It would be another 45 minutes before we could get a tour. Instead, we walked around the outside. It’s a decent sized fort.

We stopped for ice cream because it was hot out. I got the chocolate ice cream. We think it was dark chocolate. It was very rich but good!

This is the towel animal we got on Pirate Night. We think it was supposed to be Davy Jones. I’ve seen all the Pirates movies except the most recent one. I saw them on other Disney cruises. You can watch them on TV on demand in the stateroom.

In St. Kitts, we wandered around the town. This is a picture of a fountain in one of the local parks.

At night after we left St. Kitts, we saw a lot of lights. It was an island. It looked a lot like a star formation, though. Those lights are going up a hill on the island.

We ordered a All Hands on Deck–a cheese platter–from room service. My favorite was the cheddar (the orange cheese).

On a sea day, my dad entered Chip-It Golf. Goofy and Max decided to play too. My daddy scored some points, but then lost them all on the double point ball. But he scored better than Goofy! (Only Max scored a few points for the Goofy and Max team.)

We met up with one of my dad’s sisters when we stopped in Puerto Rico. We walked up to the fort, and saw an iguana.

We also saw a crab!

On our last sea day, we did hide and seek with the ship’s officers. They made themselves dress up as different people. Our cruise director, Trent, dressed up as Diane from Merchandise. She took over the announcements one time, too. It was very funny.

There were all kinds of special shows on this cruise. Some of the theater people and Christina who does bingo did a show where you had to guess whether they were telling the truth or a lie about very funny words. Christina’s dress was made of bingo cards! She said one of them was a winning one.

Our final stop was Disney’s Private Island, Castaway Cay. One of the things we did was the family whale dig. Mickey decided to show up, too.

I went swimming in the ocean and I was looking for fish. I found a lot of fish. Some were near the beach. They were pretty big. There was one lady in the water who was afraid of the fish. But I’m not afraid of fish!

 

This is my last article of the summer. In a couple weeks, I’ll be going back to school. So I want to say thank you to some people. Thank you to Ms. Laurel for letting me write about my summer. Thank you also to my mom and dad for taking me places. Thank you to everybody reading this and for all the nice comments. I hope your summer has been as fun as mine. And I’ll see you real soon!