Disney Alaska Cruise - pt 2

The last time we cruised Disney, we booked a room with a small balcony - which is almost standard in any new ship built these days.  It was nice......but......we only went out on the deck a handful of times because I was scared to death that our daredevil son would be curious if he could climb the railing....and then drop over the side of the ship....unable to swim.  We were on deck 5 or 6 mid-ship, which is considered best since it usually doesn't sway as much as the rest of the ship. 

Well, that was always going through my mind.

And then when I am in a new place, especially on travel, I usually have a hard time sleeping.  Thus, between 10:00 and midnight, while the rest of my family was sleeping, I would wander the ship.  A couple of times I went down to the 1st and 2nd decks where I saw some open doors with rooms that faced out (there are rooms that in the interior of the ship with no windows) and saw that they had the large portholes (2nd deck) or on the 1st deck rooms that had two small portholes.

Hmmmm, I filed that away for the future.  These rooms are typically around $1000 cheaper than the rooms with the outside deck.  Thus, we got one of these rooms for this cruise.  You can see that the level of the 2nd deck is just a few feet off of the dock.  And you can see the size of the window in comparison to the Boy.

If you take the bow (front) of the ship and that points to 12 O'Clock then our room was roughly at the 5 O'Clock location.

So, we got a room cheaper.  We got a room I didn't have to worry about the Boy falling off the ship.  We saved money because it was cold and windy most of the time that NO ONE was sitting out on their deck.  Yay!

But.

It was the worst sleep of any cruise I was on.  There was rhythmic "thumping" of machinery or something going on during the night.  It wasn't the same sound each night, but it was some thud or thwack that went in a cycle during the night.  It was about the 5th night before we realized that our room was probably right under the "Parrot Cay" restaurant.  That would explain the chair dragging we heard at night.  But there was some other machinery going on.  I would say that of the 7 nights we spent in that room about 2 nights I slept through without getting woken up at night.

Hmmm, next cruise we might have to pay for the more expensive rooms to be out from under machinery.

And we had front row to the loading of cargo onto the ship while at port in Seattle.

We cruised leisurely and it took about a day to get out into the Pacific.  Incoming cargo ship at the far left.

Then dinner.

They provide you a schedule of where you eat for dinner, and sometimes lunch (if you wish).  Dinner is rotated amongst one of the 3 main restaurants.  As other cruise lines, your servers rotate with you.  So, we had two servers: Rose (from India) and Putra (from Indonesia).  Our kids (really the Boy) loved them and they loved him.

During dinner, most nights, various characters come by and you can have your pictures taken with them.  Disney has profession photographers follow the characters and they allow you to snap your own pictures and then they offer to take pro shots (that you pay $$$ for later during the cruise).

Our table was always number "57".  The first trip and this one, we were always seated as a 4-top.  However, like last trip, it's obvious that Disney "stitches" together various families to make up a whole table.  Thus, families get to know each other during the week.  The table to the left of us was "54".  They were made up of a husband-wife-daughter and then another family of husband-wife-daughter-daughter-MIL.  Thus the 3+5 made up an 8-top.

What was different this time is that every meal we had, the kids waters were already sitting there with lids with their names written on the top of the lid, as you can barely see at the top of the Girl's lid.  And...from seeing that she has pancakes on her plate, we must be having breakfast at Parrot Cay.

And this is just sitting in the chairs looking at the schedule of movies or live entertainment or where the characters will be at various parts of the ship for more photos.