DIS Holiday Cruise - Day 3 - 12/19/04 Key West!
After a good nights sleep (I love sleeping on the ship with the gentle rolling) we were up and about for our first full day of the cruise.
We started the day with our Character Breakfast in Parrot Cay. Ken and his family joined us but the others must have slept in. This was a great way to start our first morning on board.
Disney had a Catholic priest on board so we were able to celebrate Mass - a nice touch. After that we headed to Diversions for the DVC Member presentation and were joined by a number of our friends from the DIS. We all got red DVC hats (to fill out of collection as we already have the blue and the white). You enter a raffle and when they call your name you answer a question and win a prize. Our group did well with all the DIS'ers in attendance winning something (except for us - yes Karen one more gripe about it).
After this was over we headed up to Topsiders for lunch. Today was South of the Border buffet which Mark enjoyed. I stopped at Pluto's for some chicken fingers.
Once lunch was over we headed out to Key West. Our first stop was a walk down Duval to check out the stores and pick up some groceries. We had stopped at a store called Fausto's on our last trip and stopped there again. http://www.faustos.com/ Great place to pick up pop, beer, or snacks. We picked up a case of Holiday Spice Pepsi and some island snacks.
We made a quick stop back at the ship to drop off our snacks and then headed out for the rest of the day. We met up with Stacey on the pier who was walking off some "wedding" day jitters. She was doing a vow renewal later that day. We also met up with 3/4's of the Scuba clan who were heading out on jet skis. It is really great to have so many friends on board to share things with.
One thing we had wanted to do on our last trip, but didn't was to go up in the Key West lighthouse. That's was one of our plans today. We took a nice walk over and on the way saw the end of US 1. The walk up the lighthouse is a steep one on a winding staircase, but the view is more than worth it. We got a beautiful view of the island and the ships in port!
After the lighthouse we headed over to the Butterfly Conservatory. We did this on our last trip and enjoyed it. The butterflies are beautiful!
Our last stop was the Duval Beach Club for Stacey's Vow Renewal. We got there early so stopped for drinks and some nachos. After a while Paul & Pam showed up, then Virgil and his family, followed by the Gose (aka Goose) family, and then the "bride and groom". It was a beautiful ceremony. Unfortunately it was running late and with Mark and I on early seating we only had time to stick around for the ceremony and toast.
We walked back to the ship heading up Duval one more time and had hoped to get back to enjoy sunset from our balcony. It was a little too cloudy that day and the sunset wasn't anything like we had seen back in May of '03.
Dinner tonight was in Parrot Cay and tonight was the Tropicalifagilisticexpialidocious deck party so we were greeted with leis at our place settings. Since we are doing a 10 day we got both the tropical party and the pirate party later in the week.
The show in the Walt Disney theatre tonight was the showing of The Incredibles. We love this movie and had seen it at home, but the chance to see it on the big screen here was fun.
We then headed up to the deck party, but it seemed to be not very well attended and I was tired. So Mark went off to Cove Cafe to update his live from the Magic reports and I headed off to bed. I did get a look at the tropical buffet and saw a cute holiday greeting on a watermelon. It was a great day!
The Key West lighthouse
View of the Magic from the lighthouse.
Stacey and Jay celebrating their vow renewal with their children Jordan and Jared.
Happy Holidays Magic style!
