Day 3: Sea Day
Monday, May 26, 2014
Sunrise: 4:29 AM
Sunset: 9:14 PM
Temp: 50’s
I woke up at around 3:30 AM and noticed light coming through the curtains on the verandah so I got up to see what I could see. This is what I saw. Sunrise!
Sorry for the blur, it was only 3:30 in the morning!
After snapping some photos, I went back to bed. We woke up later to clear sunny skies this morning, and it made for some beautiful photos.
Overnight we had sailed west of Prince of Wales Island to just below Baranof Island. Today we would be taking the Chatham Strait, east of the island, up towards Icy Straits, go through Icy Straits, sail right by the entrance to Glacier Bay and then out towards the Pacific Ocean to sail south to Sitka along the west coast of Baranof Island. We were very excited as we were in for quite the treat scenery wise.
Since we ate at Animator’s Palate last night, our character breakfast was scheduled this morning for 8:15 AM. This was our Palo Brunch day as well at 10:00 AM. Only 7 of us went to the breakfast for the kid’s sake and had just a small bite as we anticipated eating very well at Palo. We met 4 characters dressed in their sailor outfits this morning, Minnie, Goofy , Pluto and, of course, Captain Mickey
. They move through very quickly, so have your cameras and autograph books ready. The characters kind of chose the poses, so make sure your kids are sitting together if you want their pictures with the characters.
Steven and Shane made us all napkin hats. The three girls on our side of the table were Minnie. DH was a pirate, complete with dreadlocks, DD was Tiger Lily while DNJ and DSisterJ were each Peter Pan. After breakfast we went up on deck 10 to take pictures and watch for whales and take pictures of scenery.
Just before 10:00 AM we arrived at Palo for our brunch. We were so excited to be in the private dining room. Last cruise, we had a table of 8 next to the piano by the windows. Which was a lovely space, but they couldn't accommodate our group there this year. We were escorted back to Palo’s private dining room and sat at the table with the Alaskan Set Up. Basically 4 of us were facing the windows looking over the beautiful scenery while 2 others sat on either side with a view out the windows as well. On Tracy Arm day, they put up signs on Deck 10 and no one is allowed in front of the Palo windows. Not too many people went by today and it didn’t bother us. The room was beautiful and had beautifully done mosaic tile murals along the wall. The centerpiece was also lovely.
Judy was our server and was very friendly and helpful. We all ordered complimentary mimosas and then she started by giving us a tour of the different food stations; anti-pasta, seafood, bread and cheeses, baked goods and desserts. She also told us what was available to order from the kitchen. All the food is amazing. Instead of just crab claws, they had entire Alaskan king crab legs. Yum! However, my absolute favorite item is the sticky buns! They are just to die for.
No, this was not all mine, DH and I shared.
After sampling from the buffet, I ordered the cold strawberry soup and the chicken parmesan. They were both delicious. Most everybody in our group ordered the chicken too. As usual, the food was delicious and the scenery floating by wasn’t bad either.
After they rolled us out of Palo, we went to our room and changed. We ran into Jun and asked him to change our clock, which he did. We also asked him to replace our Wave phone charger as the previous occupants had pulled the plug out of the charger so it wouldn’t work.
I then met DD and her friends in the Promenade lounge for Wonder Hunt, an Amazing Race type scavenger hunt game throughout the ship using wave phones at 12:30. JD and Sarah ran the game. While your team searched the ship for the answers to the clues, one stayed in the promenade lounge to provide the answers to the staff and get the next clue. You used the phones to communicate. DNDDC and DNDDM joined us. We didn’t win, but had a great time none the less.
At 2:30, I returned to the Promenade Lounge to play Disney Tunes Trivia. I met Della, from Chandler of all places; it truly is a small world. We teamed up to play. Ashley from the Crew Staff ran the game while Tom Scott, the onboard pianist, played the tunes. Tom was amazing! We heard him play quite a bit in the Atrium for character greetings. Together they made the game a lot of fun. Tom would play a tune and we would have to name the song, the movie it is from and answer a bonus question. I was better at the bonus questions than the songs. I have to say, Della really knew her Disney tunes. We came close, but didn’t win.
After trivia we headed up to Shutters. Every time we walked through shutters the photographers were usually glued to the port holes watching for whales. By the way, this was a great place to watch for whales as it was cold and windy on Deck 4 and the port holes had nice cushions to sit on. It seems that the cast members were as, if not more, excited than the passengers to see whales. One photographer, Dom, stood out as the most ardent whale watcher. He was a lot of fun and probably sold more binoculars than the others just by standing by the window looking through them. He even helped spot a few whales. You could see their spouts from very far away and they just looked like black logs in the water. From shutters, my DD actually spotted a Humpback whale breaching. But alas, no picture.
Before dinner I changed the magnets on my door to my Alaska theme and took some more pictures.
Dinner was Casual in Parrot Cay with the Caribbean Island Cuisine menu, which meant banana bread! As usual, dinner was very good. We were usually done about 7:30 PM each night.
After dinner DH, DD and I went to see Magic Dave’s show at the Walt Disney Theater. We saw a bit of his act during the All Aboard show and he was hilarious. Before the show started he was going through the audience doing card tricks, he did one with our DD, which was pretty cool.
The kids he recruited out of the audience of course stole the show, particularly one 4 or 5 year old boy. When asked what animal he wanted out of balloons, he said a bunny. Well, of course, Dave already had a dog made, but told the boy to pretend it was a bunny. Then Dave asked the boy to name his bunny. The boy said “Tonka.” Too cute! Magic Dave was very funny and his act didn’t disappoint for this show.
We were visiting our first port tomorrow, so we went up to the stateroom and prepared for the day and went to bed.
Our towel animal that night was nothing less than a . . . wait for it . . . . BUNNY!
Guess what we named it? You got it, TONKA!
Next: Sea Lions, Whales, and Otters, Oh My!
He was very informative and easy to listen to. Unfortunately, that was the only live talk I was able to make for the entire cruise. Fortunately, they ran his talks in a loop on one of the channels in the staterooms so we were able to catch the ones we missed. We ran into him several times during the cruise, and he was always willing to talk or answer questions. He even gave everyone his stateroom number to call or text him on the wave phones. 
If I remember correctly, I met up with DH and went through Shutters, but our photos hadn’t been put into our binders yet. I really liked the way that Shutter’s has been redone. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of it. You now swipe your KTTW card at a kiosk and it will tell you which Character (representing a book shelf), which color (there are 4 for each character) and which binder number on the shelf. For instance, we were Pluto Brown 1. No more looking through rows and rows of everyone else’s photo to find yours. Once you have swept your KTTW card while having a photo taken, all your photos would be put in your specific binder. If a photo was not printed, there are kiosks to order them or work on a photobook. 
We are booked on the Sept 1st cruise, and like others have said, it's great to read these reports to pass the time until its our turn! 
So that is how Jim named his boat.
