A few years ago Mat and I decided to sneak away to Maui. The kids were completely jealous and wanted to go to Hawaii as well. Of course Maui was fun but we kept catching ourselves thinking of how much fun the kids would have in Hawaii. When we got home we started a fund and a few months later had the best vacation we had been on with the kids soaking up the tropical rays.
This past April/May Mat and I of course took Bailey on a Caribbean cruise and of course kept thinking how much the boys would enjoy it. Periodically I would glance over different cruise lines sights in hopes of finding a good deal on a cruise. Of course the one cruise line I really wanted to use was Disney but sadly every time I looked at the prices I talked myself out of it. Mat and I talked about trying to find another family or two to take the kids on a cheap Carnival cruise for Spring Break 2012. We were planning on booking the cheapest possible cruise and figured when all was said and done if we kept it under $2,000 we could do it.
In August as I was on my way to Las Vegas to go school shopping with the girls I got a phone call from my mom saying that Disney had super rates for travel agents. I called Mat and asked him to look into it. After many back and forth conversations he said we would be able to sail on a seven day Disney Cruise for $1,800 with everything like tips and port charges included! I told him to book it! My only hesitation was that the weekend we were booking was most likely going to be the same time as Bailey's first cheer competition of the season. To book a different weekend would have been $1,000 more. So I bit my over-competitive tongue and we booked. One of my friends shopping with me wanted to go also and we were able to secure her family cabins on the trip for the same price. With her kids being close in age to mine I was ecstatic. When we came back home we had another friend wanting to go and after some fancy room reworking we were all booked on board the Disney Wonder ready to sail on Nov. 27, 2011.
What we didn't know at the time was that A'mee and her friends as well as my parents, and Monica had all booked their families to sail on the exact same date.
Of course I had all the crazy motherly thoughts of the kids falling overboard and getting kid-napped in Mexico but after 5 minutes on board I had no control over where they were or what they did anyhow. The older kids scampered off with their friends and luckily we were able to locate them every night for dinner.
Peyton could have cared less to hang out with mom and dad as well. With the many friends and cousins her age on board she wanted to be off playing princess in the kids club or swimming with friends. She LOVED dressing up like Cinderella and getting her "fancy" dresses on for dinner.
The boys did not enjoy dressing up in their Sunday clothes but did as we asked anyways.
Bailey and her friends spent the majority of the time on board looking out for hot guys yet said they weren't able to find even one.
It was super hard for me to let the kids roam the ship unattended. There were so many kids there wasn't much any of the parents could do but sit back and enjoy the excitement from the little ones.
Every morning Peyton needed to look out the window and watch the waves. The happiness in her eyes the entire time makes me wish we could afford it more often.
Of course there were also the days off the ship at the Mexico ports. Our first stop was Puerto Vallarta. We didn't start our first excursion off on the best foot. We decided to save the taxi fare for the 14 of us going and walk the to meeting point. That in itself was quite the adventure. The road we were walking along wasn't exactly a calm slow moving road. At one point we ran out of sidewalk and had to cross the street. The street was quite wide and had several medians separating sections of it. We all lined up 9 kids and 5 adults in one big wall of white people and ran to one medium stopped, the next stopped, and so on. Of course the meeting point was on the other side of the road once we got there so we got to cross again. So fun. Of course once we arrived at the meeting point we were told the time we were going off wasn't the correct local time and that instead of being 15 minutes early we were indeed 45 minutes late and had missed our ride to the jungle. After some phone calls in Spanish we figured that we could take a taxi and still do our excursions. Of course as we waited we realized the "disco" we were waiting at was indeed a strip club. Once again 9 kids and 5 adults all white sitting in front of a Mexican strip club. Why oh why didn't I take pictures?
Luckily the excursion of zip-lining through the forest more than made up for our rough start and the kids loved every minute of it. We ate lunch at the restaurant there and the kids swam in the river, tried out water slides, held tarantulas, and even did service. There were three locals taking cement blocks two at a time across the river to build a house on the other side. There wasn't a road or a bridge so they just found the shallowest spot and spent all day walking the blocks across. We were waiting for our bus to go back to the ship so half of the kids picked up the cement blocks and started trucking them across the river as well.
Our next stop was Cabo San Lucas. The ship was docked there for two days. We rented a boat the first day with our friends and while the dads went scuba diving the moms relaxed on the beach with the kids snorkeling to their hearts content. The second day we took the older kids para sailing and they got to shop for their souvenirs.
The trip could only have been improved by the ride home. The kids were all completely exhausted from their adventures that they bordered just slightly on the ornery side. So much that they lost out on their next family vacation.
The staff of the Disney Wonder were incredible! The activites and shows on board were wonderful. It made it so much more enjoyable to have the other families aboard. It was certainly hard to come home and not have our chocolates waiting on our pillow...
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