Disembarking the Disney Dream & Disney Springs

Well, here we are in August and before we blink, it'll be Christmas time once again! In my thinking and reminiscing about Christmas at the parks, I was reminded that I never finished our November trip recaps, so here's the final one for you today! :)

Although we disembarked the Disney Dream on this day and it was technically our last full day before flying home, we seriously didn't waste a single minute of it! 

We awoke to the sunrise that morning in Port Canaveral and it was beautiful! It was definitely a mix of emotions as we enjoyed being able to split this trip with land and sea, but we were sad to only spend 4 days on board the Dream!

This was our very first time to utilize the pull out couch, so I had to capture our final morning! :)  At least we didn't have "chocolate face" that morning!! Hah!

Breakfast on our disembark day was at Animators Palate and it was nice to be able to say goodbye to our servers.

Something I noticed on our previous cruise were these signs in the hallway, just before boarding the ship and just after disembarking the ship. One side says "Welcome Aboard" when you're walking the hallway towards the ship and the other side says "See You Real Soon" when you're walking away from a ship. What a play on the emotions, huh? :)

For  our trip back to WDW, we used Happy Limo again and everything was great! They text the name of our driver to me while we were eating breakfast and our timing worked out great.

Goodbye Disney Dream!

Something I loved about this trip was the way we split it into pieces. Our first segment was at Walt Disney World for the Wine & Dine Half with a stay at Pop Century. We then boarded the Disney Dream for a four night cruise, followed by a one night stay at All-Star Sports and a trip to the Magic Kingdom for the very first Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party of the season!

All-Star Sports was a new-to-me resort and another one marked off my list!

Although it was not yet updated (like Pop Century) during our trip, I found everything to be in working order and just fine!

 

Our room was located in the tennis section and I thought it was super cute!

After getting settled in our room, we hopped a bus to Disney Springs for lunch at the Polite Pig and to check out the Christmas Tree Trail (both new-to-us experiences)!

Lunch was delicious! Jason, Brayden, and I all split this tray and it was perfect! I'll definitely be back! :)

Even though we were stuffed, we still left room for our trip-tradition, ice cream from Ghirardelli! Note to self, paper straws are terrible with shakes - always pack reusable straws in the future!

We LOVED the Christmas Tree Trail! Everything was so cute and festive! The trees truly reminded me of the old character themed trees in the (now non-existent) Camp Minnie Mickey at Animal Kingdom, these were just on a much larger scale!

See what I mean?! How cute!

I also loved the little extra touches that surrounded the trees.

Take this poster next to the Mulan tree for example!

My husband (who truly earned his magic band name of "bah humbug") said this was his favorite tree of them all. He knows I always go overboard for Christmas, so there's that...

A few of my favorite trees included:

Toy Story

TANGLED!

Fantasia

They were all so cute, it was hard to pick a top favorite.

Remember those magic bands I mentioned? Well, we all decided to order red magic bands for this portion of our trip and theme them with Christmas names (hence Jason's "Bah Humbug")! Mine was Noelle from the soon-to-be-released Disney Plus movie of the same name.

Spoiler alert: the movie did not disappoint!

After leaving Disney Springs, we returned to our room to drop off our purchases and change our shirts for the Christmas party. We were so excited to spend the evening at one of our favorite places during one of our favorite times of the year! If you'd like to check out a recap of our night at Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, (and a video recap on YouTube), check out the links below! :)

We loved being able to spend this vacation with our friends and hope to be able to do so in the future. It truly was a wonderful trip, one I'll cherish and remember for the rest of my life!

Thanks for coming along with us! Have a magical day!

Disney Travel Day: Wine and Dine Expo & Animal Kingdom
Disney Day 2: Wine and Dine 10K & Kids Races & Hollywood Studios/Epcot
Disney Day 3: Wine and Dine Half Marathon & Magic Kingdom
Disney Day 4: Boarding the Disney Dream
Disney Day 5: Castaway Cay
Disney Day 6: Nassau
Disney Day 7: At Sea Day
Disney Day 8: Disney Springs and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

Disney Dream Day 4: At Sea Day

Our final day on the Disney Dream was a day at sea! It was relaxing and enjoyable and just the way we like it!

When Brayden woke up that morning, he had a random dark substance smeared all over his face and the bed sheets. Imagine my surprise when I realized it was actually a melted chocolate coin from Pirate Night the night before! Jason said Brayden fell asleep holding all three coins and was unable to locate one of the three in the dark. He assumed it fell down somewhere but was apparently still in Brayden's hand and it melted everywhere! After stripping the bed, I alerted the room attendant that the substance wasn't....you know....and we all had a good laugh over it! (Including Brayden)

Brayden still talks about the melted chocolate coin to this day!

Although we were scheduled for Palo Brunch that morning, we still wanted a small bite to hold us over, so we ordered a little room service. It was yummy, too! :)

Our first stop after breakfast was the Art of the Theme Ship tour. This is a tour I've taken on all four ships and pretty much each Disney Cruise I've done. It's a fantastic way to learn about the history and decor of each ship. If you have a chance to do it on your next cruise, I highly recommend it!

Palo Brunch, anyone?

Our plans for this brunch included the other couple from our travel party. They were first timers and we couldn't wait to hear their thoughts!

Palo brunch includes four tables for the beginning (and middle, and end) of your dining experience. 

One table has fruit, pastries, and amazing sticky buns while the others host seafood and savory options. The fourth table is my favorite though...it's dessert!

My starters! So good!

We also took the opportunity to split several of the main menu items with our friends so we could try out more dishes!

The calzone...

...lasagna... (my personal favorite!)

...parmesan crusted chicken...

...and the sirloin steak!

My favorite part was dessert!

After Palo, we tried our hand at the Ultimate Disney Trivia!

Tisa was our cast member for this trivia challenge and I don't know if you've ever played Tisa's ultimate trivia before, but it's HARD, y'all! She asks questions on things no one ever thinks to look at our count! By that I mean.....how many movie tiles are on Prince Charming's Regal Carousel. Like...what??

The next stop was back in our rooms to change into regular clothing once again. We also might have shopped a little on our way back to the pool to meet up with our friends!

Before dinner that evening, we played our final trivia challenge this one, we WON!

It ended in a 3 way tie and I was able to snag it in at the tie breaker question! "Idiots on a Cruise" reign once more! :)

My trivia medal added to the collection!

The gingerbread house was being built the entire duration of our cruise. We were sad to miss the Merrytime cruise celebration by just a few short days, but we still had Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party to look forward to!

That evening, we took part in a must-do of any Disney Cruise, the "Kiss Goodnight"!

Various characters are out and about in their cruise attire to say goodbye to their guests.

Brayden had a chance to see Daisy, Goofy, and Captain Mickey!

Ahoy, mate!

Although we were sad to say goodbye to the Disney Dream, we still had Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party to look forward to, and we couldn't wait!

Stay tuned for the final update of our November trip (finally) from Disney Springs!

Disney Travel Day: Wine and Dine Expo & Animal Kingdom
Disney Day 2: Wine and Dine 10K & Kids Races & Hollywood Studios/Epcot
Disney Day 3: Wine and Dine Half Marathon & Magic Kingdom
Disney Day 4: Boarding the Disney Dream
Disney Day 5: Castaway Cay
Disney Day 6: Nassau
Disney Day 7: At Sea Day
Disney Day 8: Disney Springs and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

Disney Dream Day 3: Nassau & Pirate Night

Picking up where I left off on our most recent Disney Dream cruise is our day at Nassau which also included Pirate Night. We were not used to a "backwards" itinerary of Castaway Cay as the first stop, so this day felt a little off to us. Nonetheless, we still had a great one!

If you missed any posts from our recent cruise on the Disney Dream, check out these links below:

Disney Travel Day: Wine and Dine Expo & Animal Kingdom
Disney Day 2: Wine and Dine 10K & Kids Races & Hollywood Studios/Epcot
Disney Day 3: Wine and Dine Half Marathon & Magic Kingdom
Disney Day 4: Boarding the Disney Dream
Disney Day 5: Castaway Cay
Disney Day 6: Nassau
Disney Day 7: At Sea Day
Disney Day 8: Disney Springs and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

Initially, we didn't plan any excursions for Nassau and we weren't even sure we would get off of the ship. A couple of our travel buddies told us they had never been to Nassau, so instead of staying on the ship all day, we decided to disembark and walk around the port area to explore the town a little bit.

For starters, we began the day with breakfast...which included Mickey waffles, of course!

We literally had zero plans for Nassau, so we disembarked the ship and began to wander. The straw market that I remember encountering directly off the ship was under construction, so I'm interested to see what that looks like once we return next time!

We shopped around a bit and I found a some "authentic" cadbury chocolate to take back home with me. (It's so much better than the stuff made in the states.) I also purchased an Alex and Ani bracelet with the Bahamas logo on it.

We really didn't spend much time in Nassau (maybe a couple of hours), and our final stop was at a Starubucks!

We couldn't pass a Starbucks and not stop!

I've never had a chance to "wander" around Nassau and although we didn't go very far, we still enjoyed seeing a little more of the island!

Right outside of the parliament area was a few park benches where we sat and enjoyed the gorgeous day!

Of course, we had to take a few pictures on our way back to the ship.

A HUGE plus for us with cruising Disney is the hospitality when returning to the ship. We were met with ice cold towels as well as fruit infused water and juice!

This was so refreshing on such a warm day!

That afternoon, we enjoyed lunch, took a couple of rides on the aqua duck, swam in the pool, and had a nap! It really was a productive vacation day in my books!

For Pirate Night that evening, we all dressed in (somewhat) matching shirts and Brayden was our little pirate!

I love how our shirts turned out!

The Pirate Night meal on Disney Cruise Line is one of my favorite menus and offers so many delicious choices. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I'm sad for the loss of the pot-stickers (dumplings) off this menu, but there are so many other delicious choices to choose from!

After dinner, we walked up to deck 12 to catch the fireworks. There was a huge crowd and we were quite late, but we still managed to snag a decent spot to see the show!

My sunglasses were the star of the show for the towel animal display that evening!

See those gold coins? I have a funny story to tell about them in the next cruise blog post - we still laugh about it when we talk about it today!

I love the Disney cruise ships all the time, but especially at night! It all just feels so magical!

Oh yes, and one other funny story that happened that day - so as I was walking around passing out fish extender gifts, I happened across this cabin where he was asking for funny jokes. Jason helped me think of one, so I sent it and this was my response....

Isn't that too funny? I wonder if he received any other jokes the rest of the cruise? :)

Stay tuned for our final day on board the Disney Dream - our at sea day with brunch at Palo!! :)