Disney Christmas: Day 5 of 8

We reached Disney's Castaway Cay Island early Tuesday morning. A skeleton crew of lifeguards live fulltime on the island. Most of the workers come from the ship and disembark early to setup for the cruisers. They were letting people leave by 7:30 am. We took our time and enjoyed the nearly empty ship.

Album for these photos

All photo albums

The elevators had glass walls and you could see different Disney scenes as you went up and down

The elevator door opened and Donald invited us to join him

Ratatouille was playing on the big outdoor Funnel Vision screen

Derek and Adam ate most of their meals at Flo's Cafe. Derek said he tried all the food but liked the pizza best. He must have eaten 6 or 8 slices of cheeze pizza a day. Adam was mainly into the chicken fingers with an occassional hot dog for variety. They preferred the convenience and independence of Flo's over joining us for table service meals.

With the ship mostly empty it was a good time to ride the AquaDuck water slide

And then warm up in the hot tub

Taking a dip in Donald's pool

We finally decided to leave the ship and meet up with Derek who had left hours earlier

We went to Gil's Fins to pick up snorkeling equipment

Adam had some discomfort with the equipment and Helen spent quite a bit of time trying to help him before Adam decided to just build sandcastles. Helen eventually joined up with me and Derek. We saw a number of big schools of colorful fish and there were a lot of sunken ships and things to explore. We thought it was really fun and went back to get Adam.

I made Adam power through the discomfort and it didn't take long before he was leading the way and motioning for us to come look at all the cool things. He even spotted a sea turtle and we spent some time following it around. At one point the turtle surfaced a few feet away from Adam. We all had a good time but we were tired after swimming around the lagoon twice.

By the time we were finished snorkeling most everyone had gone back to the ship. We had a couple hours until final boarding but the workers were already cleaning up and shutting things down. We discussed how we always get thwarted by closing times. We assume things will stay open and fully functional until the stated closing time but then the workers start cleaning up and shutting things down well before closing. We were still supposed to rent bikes and we didn't even get to eat lunch on the island. Thankfully we weren't in any danger of starving on the ship.

They still had not closed down the water park so Adam swam out and played some while we watched

The workers were collecting the huge load of towels and hauling them back to the ship with a tractor. The planning and execution required for such a huge ship is pretty amazing. 

The worker checking us in said there were still 10 other cruisers on the island so we weren't the last ones back on the ship

Our room hostess left this stuff on our bed for Pirate Night

The cruise director always led off the show each night. This night it was a dad dance off. We discussed whether or not the cruise director really was that pumped about things or if he had to fake his enthusiasm. I can't imagine anyone would be that excited all the time but I also can't imagine having to fake being excited all the time. It just seems wrong to knowingly fake it. 

The entertainment for the night was illusionist Mike Super. Adam joined us and liked it so much that he talked Derek into going to the later show with him, which meant they skipped dinner with us again. It was the only show Derek went to on the cruise. We tried to tell him he was missing some good shows, but he preferred to run around with the friends in his tween club.

Our dining room assignment for the night was Animator's Palate. Since it was Pirate Night all the dining rooms were serving the same menu.

After dinner Adam joined us for the big Pirate Night fireworks and deck party. We never saw Derek and he didn't come back to the room until after 1:30 am. He and his friends decided to catch the late night Pirates of the Caribbean movie.