It Was A Bittersweet Night.

I don't even want to blog about it. I want to pretend I'm still enjoying life on a beautiful ship. But here it is, the final night.

What you don't see in the vlog is Beauty and Beast. There are no photos or video allowed in the theater, so obviously we didn't share that. The show was great! Katura really loved it. It is a legit Broadway style show, with this version being based on the live action movie more than the original cartoon. It was fun to see the same actors that we saw the night before in Believe, just in different roles. Both Shawn and I noticed that Lumiere from Believe was NOT Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast!

The princesses were VERY chatty this evening. And of course Katura, being a little girl, was in heaven. But we parents were ready to get to dinner! I don't like to be late. I feel like that would be rude to our awesome servers, so we did have to kind of shuffle Katura along.

Before cruising I had watched promotional videos of the ships and Animator's Palate always looked like the most incredible experience. And it DOES live up to the hype!! The food is so delicious here, and the atmosphere literally speaks for itself! I cannot wait to take my mom here soon. We haven't experienced it on the Fantasy yet, but I know it is going to be delicious!

The sad part of the night... saying goodbye to Noel and Ikbal. I genuinely felt sad. Isn't it crazy that I am the pickiest eater in the world and could live off of the pizza on the pool deck, but our dinners every night are my favorite part, and I can truly say that Noel and Ikbal were a huge reason for why it was our favorite!

The other sad part, and slightly stressful... packing. On the final morning you can haul all of your luggage yourself and get it through all the customs stuff, but doesn't that sounds like too much work? Yes. So we opt to have our luggage picked up the final evening and we are then reunited with our bags in the customs area after they have already done whatever they have to do. What does that mean for the final night? 

• Get everything packed!
• Do NOT pack what you need to wear the next morning!
• Do NOT pack your toiletries that you will want to use that night or in the morning!
• Keep your passports accessible since you need those at security.
• And get all packed and outside of your room by 10pm.
  
  

As you may recall, we do second seating for dinner. We were assigned to show up for dinner at 8:25pm. Then Katura had an evening reservation for the Oceaneer Club. So we had to get all packed up and organized right after getting on the ship at Castaway Cay. Then get us all dressed for dinner, but leaving out the above mentioned things. Hurry to the main atrium so we can do our final evening photos on the way to dinner. Have our delicious dinner. Then get Katura to the Oceaneer Club and back to the room to finalize all the packing so the luggage can be picked up and we can avoid trying to cart it all around in the morning. 

So you do hear me panting in the vlog. Running all over the ship in a mask in the heat while talking to the vlog.... how can I not sound like I'm wheezing? But we pulled it off and took care of everything just in time. We slept great, but it was sad to lay down for that final sleep. 

Clearly there is one solution.... Go on another cruise!