The trip
Here it is, the run down of our eventful trip! Some of it might be TMI. :)
For my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary they took the whole clan (all 15 of us) on a 3 day Disney cruise. We had no idea it was going to be the way it was. The kids had been excited for a long time. in retrospect I should've seen that the buildup of expectations was perhaps too great for them (and for me).
On Saturday we boarded the train to go down to Orlando for a 17 hour trip. But you must understand that I got on recovering from a nasty intestinal flu. I threw up before we got into the car (after a morning of diarrhea -- and I knew that it was the complete contents of my stomach so there was nothing left in me). But I will say that this is a quick flu. My stomach was better by the time we were on the train, and I got a root beer and had saltines. The kids got pizza. Perhaps a mistake, as an hour after eating Rose threw up. Several times through the evening. And the the diarrhea hit her in the middle of the night. This is hard enough on a kid, but on a train with barely functional restrooms this was torture. And not just for her.
We got into Orlando late, but our driver was there for us. A bit over an hour to the dock at Cape Canaveral. Where we got off and unloaded bags and sent them with the handlers to be sent to our stateroom. And then as we were in the first checkin line Rose threw up again. The crackers and water we had let her have that morning came up (maybe from the van ride, but also because I think she took more water than we told her she could have). Yay. More checkin stuff, which included more paperwork because while you can do the online registration if you do not print out the stuff you have to do it again in person. Was this clear on their website? Of course not. sigh. Because we had illness the dr had to check us out to see if we could even get on the ship. He cleared Rose since she had no fever and no other symptoms.
We went on ship, and even got put to the front of a few lines because we had a sick kid. :) A bit of a wait for the room to be ready, and then we were in and she was able to curl up and sleep. I slept with her while James and the other two did a bit of exploring and registering kids for the club program. Rose slept through to the next morning basically, and then was fine for the rest of the trip. However, the rest of the family then started falling like dominos. And it was not just ours, because the other family units had sick children as well. (The only time all 15 of us were together was at a picture taking on Tuesday night, and the last breakfast on Wednesday!)
Susan and James got it in the wee hours of Monday morning. So that put them out, but they rallied to do a glass bottom boat tour at Nassau that afternoon. Big mistake. First Richard got sick on that little choppy boat, and then Susan did as well. So they were down for the count, and James was down once we got back to the ship. Sigh.
Tuesday was the day at Disney's private island. Susan was better, so I took the two of them down to the beach for swimming. But while the water was warmish and the temps in the 70s, there was too much wind for them and they got cold. Back onboard for lunch, where we found that most of our food options were closed since they expected almost everyone to be on the island. Richard lost it again after lunch, but everyone else was fine. So while James took Rose back to the island for swimming and snorkelling and fun with her cousins I took Susan up to the ship pool (it was heated) and let Richard sleep on the deck chair all afternoon. So the girls were happy at least.
We were all better by morning to eat breakfast before getting off the boat. Then it was a ride back to Orlando and the train station and a very long wait for the train. Everything seemed fine. Got on baord the train and were off and running. And then, around 7 that night Susan threw up again. I think it was more motion sickness combined with spicy dorito chips, because once she emptied her stomach she had no more episodes. But it made for a rough ending to the train ride.
We got into Richmond at 5 am, greeted by a neighbor who came to pick us up instead of my mother (since the weather conditions predicted wintry mix). We were home just after 6 am. Naps, breakfast, Wii time, computer time, (in different orders for different people) brought us back to normalcy.
There were some really down times in there. Plus, except for a few occasions there was not one time where there was not an adult and 1 or more children in that little stateroom. Made it crowded at times. I would've loved more time to do stuff in Nassau or at Castaway Cay, but that was not in the cards for this trip. I didn't care about the evening shows (no one in my family is a Disney fan), but it would have been nice to spend time with others. The food (at dinner) was overly rich for my taste, although it was good. If we had been travelling in our own small family unit we probably would've made more use of the casual dinner options instead. All the portions were overly large for us, and that includes the kids portions. I know some people expect that on a cruise, but it was too much at times.
Oh well. Maybe with some planning we could try to save for a nice trip in 5 years or so.