*Midship Detective and More

(Sunday, February 23, 2014 – PM)

I had to laugh when the very first thing Hannah asked to do after her BBB makeover was to go swimming!  Um…nope!  Sorry kiddo.  Nana and I quickly redirected her and asked her if she wanted to do something else she’d been asking about since we’d boarded the day before.  We made our way down to Deck 2 and registered her to play ‘Midship Detective’.  Midship Detective is an interactive game that involves pieces of art that hang throughout the ship and cards that interact with these works of art.   Interacting with these pictures provide clues to a mystery that she was assigned to solve.  It’s really a neat family game and also a great way to get to know the layout of the ship too.

The majority of the time one of these art pieces looks like any other piece hanging on the wall.  Then, someone walks by it and it suddenly comes to life!  Hannah found some of them and had fun making them change.

The game itself takes it up a notch.  At each of the special 20 pieces of art scattered throughout the ship Hannah would stand in front on it and show her Midship Detective Agent Card.  In this picture you can see how her detective badge was displayed in the art work.  This is what causes the picture to come to life and provide her with her clue to her mystery.  It’s neat too that each person is working on their own game so that even if the person in front of you is attempting to solve the same mystery as you, their clue would be different.

Some pictures provided information for us to record in our clue booklet or potential suspects to cross off.  This cute little stateroom door was also a fun find!

Other pictures required Hannah to use her card in a certain way to provide the information she needed.  It’s designed for slightly older kids but she did great!!

It probably took us about 90 minutes to complete our challenge and we had a lot of fun doing it.  Hannah was ready to go for another challenge when the first one was done but we left that for another day later in the week.

Tonight’s dinner we were assigned to, ‘Royal Court.’  Something unique to Disney Cruise Line is rotational dining.  Our family was always at Table 16 with our new friends from Illinois and together we, along with our Server, Assistant Server and Head Steward rotated between 3 restaurants together.  What a great concept and each restaurant was so unique!!

As with all cruise ships safety and cleanliness are of upmost importance.  Each time we enter a restaurant (and also before we entered the ship at each port), each person was handed a sanitizing cloth to wash their hands.  I’m glad they take this so seriously!

Hannah chose spaghetti with meatballs for supper that night.  One of the nice perks for Mommy on the cruise was that sweet Tina cut up Hannah’s meals for her.  Bonus!  All these little things are such special added touches.

The food the entire cruise was nothing short of amazing!!  I tried all sorts of new things (caviar, duck, scallops, truffles and more) and every meal was absolutely delicious!!  I was glad we were walking and swimming as much as we were because I was enjoying each meal and all that it offered. 

Hannah is not a huge dessert person and often decided not to order dessert at all.  This night I mentioned to Tina that she liked maraschino cherries and asked if she could get 2 or 3 for her.  (Truth be told, I was tired of her digging them out of my cherry coke each evening!  LOL!)  This was what Tina surprised her with – and she ate every single one!!

Sunday evening was formal night so since we were all dolled up for the evening, we stopped after dinner for pictures on the grand staircase.  Disney has a number of professional photographers on board the ship and they took some beautiful shots.  These are ours but I did end up purchasing a couple of theirs.

We quickly formed an evening routine that worked well for us.  After supper we would wander around the ship a bit, take some pictures and then make our way to the theatre for the live evening show.  5 different nights they had live productions that we amazing!!  On this night the show was Aladdin which ended up being too intense for Hannah so we left Nana to watch the end of the show and went into the hallway.  We were just in time to meet Minnie which worked out great for Hannah!

By now it was about 9:30 but the night was still young for Hannah and I.  Nana would enjoy some time to herself and contact Papa to share the adventures of our day with him.  Hannah and I would run to our stateroom and change into bathing suits, hoping to make it to the 11th deck in time for one last Aquaduck ride each day.  (More about the Aquaduck later.)  We’d then hop into the Mickey pool and swim for half an hour or so.  Depending on what was showing on the funnelvision we might watch that for a bit and then head down to our room to crash for the night.  I can’t believe how hard Hannah would go and most nights it was almost midnight before she was asleep and then awake by 7 or 8 the next morning, ready to start again!