Only 86 Days left says the
Disney Cruise Navigator app! It's hard to believe we're under the 3 month mark!!
We've reserved a few excursions and activities. Here's our itinerary of activities booked so far:
Day 1 Boarding Happy dancing, Remy Dinner
Day 2 (Sea Day) Nothing booked
Day 3 (Sea Day) Palo Brunch
Day 4 (St. Maarten) Randomwind sailboat non-
DCL activity in St Maarten, Palo Dinner, Pirate Deck Party!
Day 5 (San Juan) Old and New City Tour (adult only)
Day 6 (Sea Day) Remy Brunch
Day 7 (Castaway Cay) Cabana, yay!
Day 8 (Disembark) Cry, go into mild depression
We booked a dinner and brunch at both Palo and Remy. I was considering moving the Remy brunch up to maybe day 2. I've heard some people don't like the brunch as much as Palo's. I was thinking if we had both brunches early on if we 'really' liked one we would be able add and extra one later on. I was also a little on the fence about Remy day 1. A lot of people recommended this. The food is the freshest, the main dining rooms tend to be chaotic and Remy itself typically isn't as busy. Of course you miss out on getting introduced to your servers the first night. I'm also working out how to make sure I keep a suit ready to wear or be able to have it quickly pressed before dinner (jacket required) if needed.
We weren't sure about San Juan but decided to do an adult only Old and New City Tour. We will leave the kids in the kids club for a few hours while we do the tour. It's probably the only time we would feel comfortable in a foreign place to actually leave the kids somewhere so we can enjoy an adult activity (off the ship).
My wife and I weren't that impressed with the DCL St. Maarten excursion selections, at least not much really cried out to us. After a lot of back and forth I just put down our deposit for the randomwind (randomwind.com)! It's a private 54 foot sailboat. It has excellent reviews all over the forums here as well as tripadvisor and looks like a great day. I'll be sure to post reviews afterwards but it includes drinks, food, sailing around to several spots through the day. Something that both the kids and us parents will enjoy. Also, they cap it at 22 ppl max, usually less which should make it a nice, not so crowded event.
Undecided on a few other things. We were considering whether or not we wanted to have the kids do the Pirate League for pirate night. We are doing the randomwind at St Maarten during the day but expect to be back on the ship by 4PM-ish. But then we have Palo reservations at 6PM. So feeling like adding in taking the kids to BBB to get piratized might be really rushing it. We could move the Palo reservation back I suppose. We wanted to make it early enough to enjoy some of the later pirate night events with the kids. If anyone has done this before, let me know your thoughts!!
We picked this night for Palo because it was pretty universally recommended due to pirate night having the least favorite meal for others.
I'm also probably going to do a BBB (bibbity bobbity boutique) appointment for my daughter. I'm thinking day 2 (formal night) would be the best time to do it so she's all dolled up. Probably not much you can do but it seems with all the pool activites, etc I don't know how long the styling is going to last. It's a lot of $$ to spend if her hair gets jacked up after a few hours, lol.
Even with all the scheduled activities booked I'm also very much looking forward to just relaxing and getting to explore the ship on our own. Hanging out by the pool with the kids and checking out the adult areas with my DW. I can't wait to just explore the ship and walk around to get the lay of the land. The deck plans and maps are all great but not the same as getting your bearings on board. I workout regularly and fitness is pretty important to me so while I intend on being completely indulgent and enjoy as much delicious food as I can I do plan on working out at least a few times. So I'm hoping they have some good weight lifting equipment to balance out the soufflés!
Counting the days... tick tock tick tick