Jillian's Cruise- Day 1 6/12/04

We arrived at the Cruise Terminal at noon. After a dropping off our luggage and a painless trip through the metal detectors it was time to turn in our cruise paperwork for our stateroom, room keys, ship map, and all that fun info. After a little bit of time in line we got to stand in a new line- the one that gets us on the ship! Once we got inside that the gang plank we took our Welcome Aboard photo. We walked around the ship, wow it’s big! Lunch was at Topsider, the buffet at the top of the ship, we got a window seat- great view. I had chilled orange and mango soup that was really good. We finished lunch just in time to be able to get into our stateroom. We were on the same level as the Buena Vista Theatre and the Oceaneer Lab/Club. We were pleased to see that the kids weren’t all over the place even though all of their “hang outs” were right there. After dropping our carryon in the room, we decided to do some serious looking around

We saw all the restaurants, clubs, pools, the awesome view while in port, made our Palo reservations, and then ice cream. We returned to our room so we could go do the mandatory boat drill. That was fun- we got to sit around in Animators Palate in our life jackets, so it wasn’t nearly as bad as the people that had to do it outside in the heat. After that was the big Sail Away Celebration deck party. We didn’t go but could hear some of it from our room. We opted to stay in our stateroom for the sail off. It was neat to see all the people on the docks waving good bye to us. DCL CMs had the Mickey gloves as did one of the restaurants down from the terminal. After hanging out listening to the party and checking out our room we got ready for the Welcome Aboard Variety Show. The show was pretty neat- Disney Dancers, David DiMuzio and Michael Harrison performed. The dancers did a segment on the ship; they were dressed as all different kinds of crew and introduced all the head people. A quick search on Google pulled this about David- “The comedy and variety of David DiMuzio is the perfect blend of world championship juggling, unicycling, gymnastics and stand up comedy. Playing songs on three recorders while juggling them at the same time, balancing an electric guitar on his chin while juggling three microphones and singing “Old Time Rock n' Roll”, or flailing about the stage with machetes in hand on a six foot tall unicycle: It's controlled insanity at its finest!” It’s a pretty accurate description of his act. The recorders and Old Time Rock n’ Roll weren’t shown in this performance though. He pulled a guest out of the audience whom we later found out was going to be at our dinner table, and was also a CM, for the rest of the cruise. Michael did some stand up work, some magic and then his big thing. He picked a child from the audience, sitting behind us (it was fun to watch his family while he was up there) and turned him into his ventriloquism dummy. It was hilarious. After the show we went shopping- I started my soon to be daily trek into the merchandise shops where I got to know Jonathan (my favorite merchandise guy) very well! Time for dinner at Lumiére’s, where the menu of the night was French food. I tried the escargot, since if I didn’t like it I could get something else. It was great until I started thinking after the first one that it tasted very familiar and I’ve never had it before. Then it hit me- it tasted like sautéed mushrooms. Sure enough, Andreea confirmed that they did make theirs with mushrooms; unfortunately I’m severely allergic to mushrooms. Luckily there wasn’t enough there to make me sick. I had a delicious four cheese pasta for my entrée, it was so good. After dinner we decided to walk around the top deck because I hadn’t seen it at night before, it was so pretty but very windy! Off to bed since it’s a long day at sea tomorrow.

Studios Central: Jillian's Cruise- Day 1 6/12/04 - Studios Central