Private island – Bless Your Heart

Friday, February 3, 2o12 Castaway Cay

Today is the day we’ve been looking forward to all week! Castaway Cay! Castaway Cay is Disney‘s private island. They have 3 separate beaches– the family beach, the sports beach, and the adults only beach called Serenity Bay. Paradise I tell you!

We woke up early and had breakfast in our room. Look at that view! Just as we were about to put on our swim suits and SPF, a message came over the loud speaker. It was the captain telling us they were having technical difficulties. Boo! So there was a 2 hour delay getting to the island. One of the ships’ side thrusters (used instead of tug boats) was malfunctioning. They got it running again and the next thing you know we were docked at Castaway Cay!

We got off the boat and went to wait for the tram. On the way to the gangplank we ran into Donald. Then CSP got stopped by Minnesota people who recognized the TC (Twin Cities) on his shirt and had to talk baseball!

We walked over to the tram station. On the way we passed the post office. Chip and Dale were there! We took the tram (even the tram route is pretty) to Serenity Bay and got lunch(since it was so late now) before we picked out our chairs on the beach. Lunch was a buffet and I didn’t take pictures. But it was great! Mahi mahi, ribs, chicken, burgers, hot dogs, lots of different salads, fruit, ice cream even!

CSP and I picked out our chairs (there are hammocks too!). I didn’t bring my good camera on the island so these are all iPhone pics, but not too shabby eh? This was the view from my chair. We went out into the cool water and swam and swam. Or bobbed and floated! There were some snorkelers nearby who warned us of giant starfish and stingrays. We saw lots of fish and I was calling for a dolphin baby to come see me but no real wildlife. UNTIL…we decided to go chill out on the beach. We were really far out in the water and were doing the stingray shuffle as to not step on one. I noticed some holes in the sand under our feet and pointed them out to CSP. I reached down to see what it was just as CSP saw the tail. It was a stingray! CSP started yelling “Crocodile Hunter!” and tackled me to get out of the way of the tiny baby stingray who just wanted to hang out with me! CSP is not a fan of wild animals. We made our way back to our chairs. CSP went and got us some cocktails. We relaxed on our chairs for a while. Reading books and I may have nodded off a bit. We eventually noticed people making their way back to the ship so we packed up and hopped back on the tram. Back on the ship we went up on deck to get some shots of the island.

We went back to the room and packed up our luggage since this was our last night on the cruise. 😦 Then we got ready for dinner. Dinner tonight was in Animator’s Palate. We haven’t been to Animator’s Palate since the first night of the cruise. CSP’s appetizer was a sesame seared tuna tartare. So pretty! He also had some sort of seafood mixture. I can tell that’s shrimp and scallops and maybe salmon. Not sure why I didn’t write this down.I had the chicken sate . If you’re wondering how I remembered all the things we ate, I brought a tiny notebook and put it in my purse. Then after we ordered I’d write down everything we ordered. Just before bed I’d write down everything we did that day. There’s no way I’d remember everything on my own!

We both had soup- CSP had lobster and crawfish bisque while I had potato leek soup. Our entrees included orange roughy stuffed with crab for CSP and seafood pasta for me. Lobster, scallops, shrimp and clams. I put those clams on CSP’s plate immediately. I can’t stand the idea of their shells touching my food! Dessert was a yummy strawberry and creme cake called Celebration Cake for me and the trio for CSP. It included chocolate mousse,a chocolate tart and a little celebration cake. During dinner service there was a little show. The man waving is Val, our waiter. We love Val. He’s from Romania and his wife works on the ship too. There are over 55 countries represented in the dining staff alone!