Day Seven---and on the Seventh Day God rested...because he was bored.

Cheeta the towel monkey greeted us when we arrived back from dinner

This would be our second day without a port. Tomorrow would be our last full day of the cruise so we knew the end was in sight. But, it wasn’t here yet, so we still had sun to soak up and things to do. After we slept in, of course. We missed our normal breakfast, but nobody complained. Finding food was not exactly hard. There were several spots up on Deck 9 that served food. There was Goofy’s Galley, that specialized in hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken fingers, and the like. Near by we have Pinocchio’s Pizzeria. Pluto’s Dog House had healthier fare, fruits, light sandwiches, and roll-ups. To counter act that, right next door was the ice cream station.

Margo and I ate at Pluto’s Dog House and the girls went their own direction. Afterwards we sat and people watched for awhile, taking in the beautiful weather and watching the water go by.

With nothing better to do we went to Shutters and the other shops to look around. They really had not changed things since the last time we were there. We did do a little shopping for rememberances and stuff for people back home. We also noticed that the Captain would be down to sign autographs in half an hour or so. We decided to get a Disney Cruise logoed photo album (a bargain at only $20!) to put our 8x10s in, and have the Captain give it his seal of approval. The Captain, Tom Forberg, is from Norway. He signed as “Captain Tom”. The album is nicely done, and we will really enjoy it years from now.

Margo had been completely enamoured by the towel animals our room steward had done for us each night at turndown. We had been greeted by a swan, monkey, dog, and elephant, when we arrived after dinner. When she noticed that there would be a towel folding class, at 2 PM, she was all over it. I wasn’t that interested, but did remember to warn her off buying the book. I told her Santa had a copy, and she took the hint. There was a Pub Trivia contest going on at Diversions at 3 PM, so that was my destination. I like to think I am decent at trivia, so I thought it would be fun. When I got there, I watched the tail end of a Giant Jenga game. Jenga is game where you stack identical blocks of wood in a column. There are three blocks per layer, layed side by side. Then the next layer is laid crossed the layer below. You repeat the process until you have a tower. Then each player takes a turn pulling a block out. They made it to about 30 moves, before it crashed to the ground. I think I heard the record was 32. That had to be on very calm seas. As they got to 30 you have an idea of the nice weather we were having.

My trivia game was a bit of a letdown. He just asked 20 questions, and we wrote down our answers. No snappy banter or witty comments on the questions. No hilarious psuedoanswers or smart comebacks. He read. We wrote. There were about 20 people, in about 10 groups. Most people were in pairs and played as a team. There was one group of three or four. They won, with 17 of 20. They had the most combined brain power. I came in third with 14 of 20. The second place went a husband and wife couple. But she didn’t appear to be too deeply involved.

Back at the cabin I found our that Margo had had fun  at her towel class and that the girls were out watching a movie. Enchanted had premiered yesterday and there were several showings today. It was barely 4 PM, and there was nothing on the schedule that Margo and I wanted to do. We had 4 ½ hours until dinner. We ended up getting a snack to eat and going down to guest services. We had discovered that we had lost our small black luggage cart. We hadn’t missed it until now, when thoughts of packing started to loom larger. In addition to that we wanted to avoid the rush and take care of getting our tips done for our waiter, assistant waiter, room steward, and staff manager. The staff manager (or whatever his real title is), John from Scotland, was essentially Toto and Gavin’s boss in the restaurants. He would handle special arrangements and problems. Other than the macaroni and cheese of the other night, which I have no idea if he was involved in, we had nothing he would have been a part of. But we were supposed to tip him, so we tipped what it said in our handy, dandy guide book. He had introduced himself and stopped by our table once or twice, so at least he wasn’t a stranger. To do the tips, we got vouchers to put in the envelopes that Disney had provided. We would give them to them tomorrow after dinner.

From there we went to Shutters and did our photograph dance. Look for new photos, see if we like them, add them to our collection, rinse, lather, repeat.

There was a 5:45 PM showing of Enchanted and Margo & I decided to go. We liked it. When we talked with the girls later we all decided we loved the chipmunk, Pip. The ending was good too. Again, the kids in the crowd were all well behaved. Margo and I had read up on the Disney cruise, and we had heard time and time again, that you shouldn’t be scared away because there will be a lot of screaming children around. There will be, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that the ship was big enough, and had enough adults only areas that you take the kids in whatever increment you were able to handle. We all had a blast, and a lot of them were just down right cute. You could do a ghost Aunt or Uncle kinda thing (see, no touch) and watch all the cuteness and then if they fall-down-go-boom, and start to cry, you can go get a hamburger and come back later to see how it all turned out.

After the movie we headed back to the cabin to change and get ready for dinner. We would be on our second go around at Parrot Cay. Dinner had settled into a routine, and even the girls managed to find something to their liking. Tonight, I had veal for my entrée. This was not a popular choice with any of the girls, and my daughters in particular. They asked me if I knew that veal was “baby cow”? I told them “Yes, but it is yummy, baby cow” This witty response garnered me a couple of dirty looks, and in unison they hopped their chair one jump farther away from me. Margo later claims that they did this just to get closer to each other to work on their crossword puzzle, but I’m telling this story and I say it was in protest to my dinner selection. The veal was yummy.

That crossword puzzle came into play not long after we ordered dinner. Gavin, our assistant server noticed that the girls were huddled together doing the puzzle and chided them for not spending quality time with us. Margo came to their rescue pointing out that we all working the puzzle. And it truth we were. They would routinely ask for help with one or another, and both Margo and I would offer a possibility. Gavin gave in graciously, and went about doing assistant waiter stuff.

There was nothing special going on after dinner, so after our nightly ritual of checking out Shutters, Margo went back to the cabin. The girls went off to socialize a bit, and I just took a walk. After half an hour of so of seeing the same things as the past five days, I decided to go back to the cabin and watch TV, for awhile and then off to bed. I decided I did not like the days at sea. There was just not enough to do that I enjoyed. Tomorrow would be our last full day of the cruise, so good, bad, or ugly we had better enjoy it.