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We were both awake before our dreaded alarms went off so we got ready and headed up to breakfast at 7:45 a.m. - pausing to say one final goodbye to Neil, our outstanding stateroom host.
Cabanas breakfast was our normal fare - lots of carbs and virtually no protein. (By our choice, not Disney’s fault!) While we were eating breakfast, we did get to watch about 80 new crew members go through the paces of being brought on board. Their bags are searched by dogs and then they stand in line waiting to get checked in one by one by uniformed crew members. It looked like a very slow and arduous process. (We hope that Carlos, our server, made it to his early morning flight to Amsterdam to board the Disney Wish this morning.)
While we were eating breakfast, instead of starting to announce colored character tag groups, they announced that the ship was cleared for all guests. We experienced this on our last two cruises as well after the first group or two disembarked - however with about 2500 people on this cruise and it feeling much, much fuller, we definitely didn’t expect it.
When we got down to the Atrium, we found that they shouldn’t have made this decision to announce the entire ship was cleared to depart. The line to disembark wrapped all the way through the Atrium, around the elevator bay, and back into the shops area! THERE WAS NO REASON, WHATSOEVER, FOR THIS. Don’t get me wrong. I know that people likely complain about having to just sit in a lounge and wait, but the tangle of people and the slow moving line were just as bad if not worse. This was our WORST-EVER disembarkation experience - by far. And it created lines EVERYWHERE else. There was a longer line at Customs (which also didn’t have enough ropes out to indicate the correct start location of the two different lines - hence someone had to stand in the middle of the line-up area and shout that there were two lines - OVER and OVER again. It also made for a bit of a line-up at the airport buses, but by the time we got there we’d basically pre-sorted into our groups.
The transfer to the airport was uneventful. Since we had hours to wait until our flight, we stayed on Level 1 for a bit in relative quiet before we headed up to check in for our 2:55pm flight.
I’d wanted to watch “King Richard” for a while. Ensuring my Southwest App was up to date and I knew exactly how to click through the links, I was able to watch the entire movie just within the time of our flight for no additional cost.
Kara’s arrival home was her favorite, as her sister had brought home her beloved puppy, Kona.
Links to all the posts
Thanks for coming along on this journey with us. If you stumbled on this post first, these links will let you cruise (see what I did there) back through all the other posts with ease:
Disclaimer: I (Gayle) am a travel agent with Authorized Disney Travel Planner agency - Off to Neverland Travel. Contact me today for a no-obligation quote!
As to Disney artwork, logos, and properties: ©Disney | Ship Registry: The Bahamas | CST# 2090317-40 / Fla. Seller of Travel Ref. No. ST37203