Time to get into the cruise even more! You can read Part 1 and Part Two to catch up if you'd like!
As mentioned before, due to weather and craziness, we wound up spending even more time onboard than expected. The weather limited lots of outside activities but we were still able to try most things!
Activities:
1. Swimming: There are four TINY pools. As in, each has a posted capacity of like 25 people. And that's it for the entire ship. They are all on the top deck and were closed for hours and hours at a time when weather was bad. When they actually were open, the water was ice cold and only the most die-hard swimmers swam. I never got in the water. Not once (except for a few minutes in an insanely crowded/gross hot tub) but my girls and their blue lips swam anyways. There was a little splash park area that was fun for them for a few minutes but this whole aspect of the ship was actually pretty disappointing. There's not much my girls and hubs hope to do on an "warm" vacation more than swim.
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| Free unlimited ice cream around the pools was a daily necessity! |
2. Flowrider Surf Simulator: I hadn't seen anything about this online, but there are height restrictions on this. My almost 8 year old, who was just surfing for real in Waikiki a few months before, wasn't allowed to do this at all. My 9.5 year old was tall enough to try it laying on a boogie board but wasn't allowed to try to stand up surf (she was also just surfing for real in Waikiki over spring break). We weren't expecting these rules and it was pretty disappointing when the only one who could do it was Papa. The lines were long and the hours were irregular, so even he only did it a couple times.
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| The kid who was allowed... |
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| The biggest kid ;) |
3. Ziplining: This looked amazing online but in reality was a super short zipline than ran diagonal over a very short section of the ship. The girls were still super pumped to do it but weren't allowed to. Again, restrictions we didn't know anything about until we got there. Riders have to be a minimum of 75 pounds and neither of them are.
4. Rock Climbing Wall: Yippee!!! Something they were allowed to do! Haha! And, boy, did they rock climb! This was the first time any of us had tried a rock wall like this and the girls were obsessed! They went multiple times, on all levels of difficulty, and were some of the rare kids onboard that were able to reach the top and ring the bell!
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| Climbing obsession! We want one at home now! |
5. Ice Skating: The hours didn't really work out for us to ice skate on the rare occasion that the water was calm enough and it was actually open. No biggie, my girls aren't huge fans anyway.
6. Dreamworks Character Experiences: I think there were some meals with characters available, but we didn't do any of those. There were several parades that were lots of fun for the kids. We were able to meet most of the characters by walking up to various times posted on daily schedules. One super annoying thing, though, was that we were often not allowed to take our own pictures. Um, WHAT? Even Disney takes photos with the Photo Pass then lets you take your own. This resulted in me coaching my kids to try to look over at me on the side so that I could snap a quick picture before I got scolded (again) for taking my own. So annoying. A couple of photo ops let us take our own and the couple that I bought from the ship were cute. Whatever.
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| The girls thought the parades were fun! |
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| So many creeper pics from the side. So annoying. |
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| But a few of my own that were cute! |
7. Kids Club: Another thing we didn't do because of a rule issue. The girls were 7 and 9 and were going to be put in separate rooms, which the 7 year old didn't want. We never use the free babysitting on vacation like this but were going to let them do some art or something for an hour on one of the rainy days. Fail.
8. Dance classes: These were super fun! We went to the Beyonce Class and the Country Line Dance Class. Super informal, all ages welcome, and a nice little surprise workout! There were lots of other options that we didn't do and things like Zumba, that we saw when walking by!
9. The Boardwalk: The outdoor "Boardwalk" area was a fun place to hang out. This is where the rock wall is and also has a carousel and the Aqua Theater which has shows, shows movies, etc. This whole area was shut down during the bad weather times but when open there were often ship employees here hosting free games and face painting and stuff for the kids. The Mexican restaurant here was amazing, btw! ;)
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| "brown bear" and "panda bear" :) |
10. There are lots of other things around the ship that we tried for a minute or two: ping pong, basketball, miniature golf, karaoke, pay to play Bingo. There is a big teens-only club that my 9.5 year old was drooling over and a pay arcade that we never stepped foot in.
I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting, but I think I've hit all the big ones! One more post coming on onboard shows/entertainment. Again, if there's anything specific you'd like to know, please ask! This is such a pricey family vacation and I'm hoping to do my part in helping people be informed consumers!! :D
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