Food

You can’t do a cruise without mention of food.  Food, food, and more food. Disney does things differently in this regard. Rather than having one dining room, they have three (actually four when you count the speciality dining room) and while keeping the same table staff, you rotate among the three venues for different experiences. Animator’s Palate, Parrot Cay, and Lumiere’s are the three primary venues on the Magic.

Our table staff was wonderful! Giuseppe is from Italy and Avril is from St. Lucius. They were all done up in pirate garb for Pirate’s Night which we appropriately celebrated in Parrot Cay.

I developed such faith in Giuseppe’s recommendations that I told him one evening that I was going to leave it up to him for my selections the next evening which happened to be at Lumiere’s.

He selected escargot for my appetizer and Jeff selected it for his as well. He was excited about trying it until his sweet wife started talking about the banana slugs we grew up with in the northwest. I enjoyed them.

The second course was excellent French onion soup.

The main course was sea bass on a mushroom risotto. Very nicely presented but we were quite surprised at the different portion sizes. Three of us had sea bass with two of the portions easily twice as large as the third portion. These widely varied portion sizes happened on other meals as well. The risotto had a wonderful flavor but was still slightly crunchy.

Dessert was Crème Brule but didn’t last long enough to get a picture.

The grandson wasn’t quite as adventurous, selecting Mac & Cheese with mixed vegetables and fries most evening. His ice cream bar did feature Disney’s reputation for attention to detail – note that some of the sprinkles are Mickey shaped.

We had breakfast most mornings at the buffet on the fantail on deck 9. Food was good, and the warm weather with a light breeze make it even better.

All in all, the food was consistent with comments we read before the cruise. Beautifully presented by excellent table staff, but the food prep, portioning, and seasoning wasn’t as consistently well done as other cruise lines.

Georgetown, Cayman Islands

Our stop at Grand Cayman was the only one that required the use of tenders.  The reefs near the shore were quite shallow with less than sixty feet under the bow where we anchored and over 1000’ feet under the stern.

With the exception of international banking, the primary business in the Cayman Islands appears to be diving and other water sport.  Jeff and Carleta went diving as planned, while BJ and Kelli went snorkeling.  Had I known beforehand that there was a hydro jetpack available, I would have joined the others in getting wet.

Instead, I went hunting for the Burger King since they had free wireless available so that I could post the Key West post.  You'll note in the foreground of this picture people snorkling on Cheeseburger Reef - no joke!

The area near the docks was built up with lots of shops, most wanting to sell you diamonds.  BJ tells me she picked out a very nice necklace priced at $90,000 U.S.  She left it where she found it!  Housing prices seem to be commensurately expensive so we won’t be settling here, not even in the area advertised as having good (10’) elevation. 

Back to the ship for me.

Sorry the trip posts have been slow - I'll have three more posts about the Disney cruise, coming up in the next few days.

Key West

The Pilot came aboard about 10:30 a.m. to assist with the approach to Key West which gave every appearance of being both narrow and shallow.

Even the Coast Guard checked us out.

There was other traffic in town, including another cruise ship but Kelli expressed preference for the Princess Sarah, tied up next to the Westin Hotel.

Town was an interesting mix of new and old.

It reminded me of an American version of Bali. Loved the weather and it likely had a lot going for it once you get beyond the tourism feeding off the cruise ships.

Everyone was due back on board by 5 p.m. so that we could turn around and head back the other way. Now we'll have a tailwind for much less breeze on the deck. The porch of the old Customs House is on the right.