In my ongoing recap of our wonderful 4-night cruise aboard the Disney Dream, I last left off with our super-smooth embarkation. You can read all about that if you haven’t yet.

So what was the first thing we did when we boarded the ship? Well, we have our priorities. We went straight to the Aquaduck! I’d heard that the lines can get really long, but since we were aboard the ship by noon, we were among the first to ride, with only a handful of other kids and parents there.

It did not disappoint!

Decks 11 and 12 were practically empty!

According to Mini-MouseChow, Aquaduck is Awesome!!

So after riding a few more times, we sauntered over to Cabanas on Deck 11 for lunch. Cabanas is a HUGE buffet which circles Deck 11. There are two almost identical sides, and it’s really easy to get turned around and lost while moving through the buffet. If you start seeing the same stations you already passed, turn around. It’s themed with Finding Nemo characters, including a beautiful mosaic.

One side of Cabanas

The other side

Super cool mosaic

Mine! (Watch your food!)

A few of the many buffet stations. It’s not a line – just walk up.

Sushi! (My kid’s favorite food.)

Crab claws. Too much work if you ask me.

Pretty good chicken roulade.

A little heavy for lunch, but still good.

There’s always room for Jello

Should we sit indoors?

Heck no! We filled our plates and headed outside. I should mention how great Disney is about cleanliness, too. There was a cast member greeting us at the entrance to every restaurant with wipes for our hands. Then when taking our food outdoors, the doors opened automatically – no touching germ-y surfaces, and no jostling full trays of food. Perfect. We sat on the deck, and grabbed the drink of the day as the cast member passed by with a tray full.

Fruity drink is de rigueur.

While my husband and I hung out drinking our drinks and studying the Navigator (the daily itinerary of on-board activities) our kiddo left us to take a few more rides on the Aquaduck.

We had been told that we could get into our stateroom after 1:30pm, so at around that time we gathered up the kid and headed over to check it out. (Though she didn’t want to leave the pool area.)

We stopped for just a moment to savor one of the many comfy porthole seats on the way to our room.

Great spot for curling up with a book.

Then we started down the long corridor to our Deluxe Family Stateroom with Verandah,  stateroom 6112.

We loved our stateroom. It was really everything we could hope for. (My favorite part of this video is when Mini-Mousechow says, “And if we’re out here at the same time as our neighbors, we can say Hi!” and I say, “hmmm…” We are not alike in this way.)

There was plenty of storage for our bags under the bed, and the closets were very roomy. What’s not captured in the video was me telling my family to unpack and put everything away, both of them complaining, and me putting my foot down. It was a great thing to do and kept the room organized and tidy the whole time.

We also did use the over-door hanging organizer. I forgot to take a pic, but on the wall across from the bed there are three hooks on the wall. Our organizer came with three hooks as well, so we hung it on the wall hooks. It was perfect and I really do recommend it. Here’s the one we purchased from Amazon.

After we were all unpacked and changed out of our wet suits, we headed to the Sail Away party on Deck 11. This wasn’t our scene – I love the characters, but really it was just crowded and loud. Mini-MouseChow wanted to check out Edge, so we walked her over there, took a peek inside, and met the counselors. The entrance to Edge is located on Deck 12, conveniently close to the adult-only areas of the ship. We couldn’t pull our kid away from Edge once there, so we left her behind with her Wave Phone (which we’d practiced with in the room) and walked to the front of the ship to watch it pull out from the Port.

My daughter’s favorite place in the world

Heaven for tweens ages 11 – 13

More about the adult areas in a later post.

We had the second dinner seating, so regrouped at around 7pm to change, and headed down to our first rotational dining restaurant, Enchanted Garden. I don’t have pics of food because I tried to wear my new contacts, which messed up my vision so badly I couldn’t read the menu or see what I was eating. (That was the last time I tried to wear the contacts. You might remember my ridiculously vain post from the day prior to our trip…) Anyway, here’s what Enchanted Garden looks like inside. My daughter loved it. I thought the lighting was too cool and made it feel sort of clinical.

Enchanted Garden

Entering the Enchanted Garden

Wish we had one of the round banquettes.

Cute fountain.

So that was our first day aboard the Disney Dream! Stay tuned for Day 2, in which we swim with Dolphins in Nassau.