May 2019 EBTA - Taking the Magic eastbound across the Atlantic (and bonus non-DCL Mediterranean cruise!) - Update 8/3/2022

[lilsonicfan]

Forgot to post these. I tried to get a good pic of thug/DS interaction but it all happened a bit quickly. All great fun though!

While DH went to play poker, I got room service. No, I did not need more food, but it went well with my late night movie (love that Magic has on-demand movies now). I absolutely love the tiny salt and pepper shakers and contemplated whether I could get away with hiding these in my luggage. I didn't go through with it, of course. These are the chicken tenders (I wonder if the room service galley is up on deck 9 as these were basically what you get on the pool deck - delicious), the All Hands on Deck cheese plate (cracker type varied) and a fruit bowl. I may have eaten most of this on my own. Ha.

 

[lilsonicfan]

They tend to offer the group photos on the longer cruises. on our EBTA they also offered one with about 5 of the "gang" in a Pirate outfit. They are truly awesome photos to get.

Yes! I think I missed the pirate one, too bad!!

 

[TikiThunderPirates]

Looking forward to hearing how adapting to all of the time changes affected you. Even more so, because you already started ahead 3 hrs. from your normal time (BC->FL). Wondering if changing incrementally is easier than doing it in one chunk when flying to Europe.

We found losing 1 hour every day or every other day didn't have a huge effect on us except in one area. We slept in. LATE. Like 11:30am late, and we never went to sleep any later than midnight, the entire cruise. It wasn't just us either. The entire ship seemed to sleep in. So much so that the cruise staff ended up opening Cabanas later for breakfast, I think 9am-11:30am during the later half of the day, because no one was apparently arriving for an hour or more at the start of breakfast! Otherwise the days just sort of seemed "shorter" but we were on vacation and not exactly watching the clock either so losing an hour wasn't to huge a deal.

We use "trick" to prevent jetlag (we've gone all over the world and haven't been jet lagged in a decade), so I can't speak to how it "effected" us vs coming back from Europe, since we don't have any issues with jetlag on the return flight home.

 

[lilsonicfan]

Day 4 - Frozen Day

As I mentioned this was the second day of moving two hours forward, and we definitely did sleep in. Not super late - I think we were probably up around 9:30am or so, and we headed off to Cabanas. I will say that I would love if DCL would consider leaving Cabanas open as a buffet for most of the day instead of closing it off between breakfast and lunch.

I skipped Anyone Can Cook because it was to be "Pickled Watermelon Salad" - of those three words the only thing I like is watermelon, so no thanks!

Day 4 was a fairly windy day and it was a little cloudy as well, so the kids decided to put off swimming till later. I guess that answers a question earlier, as to whether it was possible to swim every day. Well, some kids definitely did swim - well okay you can only see one kid in this picture plus the pool deck in general is fairly empty.

Not overly choppy, just a little chilly.

The boys decided they wanted to head off to Oceaneer's Club (which they always preferred to the Lab, for some reason) so DH and I went to the Bridge Virtual Tour in Fathoms. This was a very cool event. I didn't take any pictures, but am super glad I went. It was led by Chief Officer Fabrizio (so my notes say) and he had a slideshow prepared to tell us a little about how the Magic operates, its maximum speed (for most of our sea days, we were at max speed - I want to say 21 knots), what happens on the bridge, what the various officers do, harbour pilots, etc. He talked about how one gets into working on a ship, I gather there aren't that many schools at which one can gain this sort of naval training, and in the US many of those schools are military based. He himself had wanted to be in this career since he was very young.

After the slides, he did a Q&A and that itself was also pretty interesting. Two nights prior it had been a touch rocky, and one woman said that she had fallen off her bed at night because it was so, so rocky. I was pretty surprised by this - it wasn't THAT rocky. Then again, we were deck 2 midship, maybe she was higher / more aft / more forward. Anyway, her question was, why would the ship sail into a storm? The CO's response: "We would NEVER sail into a storm!" Haha! I think the gist of his full answer was, "weather happens". Anyway - highly recommend doing this, especially since you can't go onto the actual bridge any more.

When the seminar was over, DH and I headed upstairs to get some food. Why not, right? This was one of my favourite places to have a little snack/light lunch - the Build a Bowl station. It's upstairs on deck 9 and aft. Selections were different every day, but I often came here for some rice or noodles (as mentioned - I miss Asian food a lot). My favourites were the chilli beef ramen and the chicken biryani. You can also build salads, it isn't all noodles and rice.

We missed the cheese seminar, which was on my list, really too bad. Oh well. Instead, we went and lined up for Olaf! I am not sure how often Olaf is on the cruises - I seem to think he was not on our Fantasy 7 night cruise but have seen reference to him turning up at the Frozen gatherings. I didn't sign us up for a Frozen gathering this time, as the kids decided they are absolutely NOT into meeting Anna and Elsa again. Boys, I tell ya. The lighting used for this background is really weird; even the Shutters pics didn't turn out much better than this, so anyway. Here's Olaf! Olaf must be played by a rather short CM, maybe my height or so (5'2").

Oh, that reminds me that another fun little event happened on this day, it was Anna's Chocolate Chase, a scavenger hunt that you do around the ship looking for symbols from Frozen. Really cute. After you complete it and leave it in the stateroom, the next day your stateroom host brings you....drum roll....chocolate. Lol. But they are nice sized chocolate bars, bigger than the standard Ghirardelli square. I am pretty sure I didn't actually complete it, because one clue was at Preludes, but Preludes was closed until the evening show. Anyway, still got the chocolate.

so Frozen is one of those movies that I have both seen a million times and not seen at all. This is because we own this movie on DVD and when it first came out, the kids often requested it at night when we were RV'ing (just long weekends and such). But as I was always busy cleaning or doing dishes, I've actually never sat down and watched the whole movie. So I had no idea what the Oaken's Maypole thing is all about. I should look that up.

The atrium all decked out for Frozen night:

 

[lilsonicfan]

Day 4 continued

After the kids came out of kids club again, we ran into Stitch. It's really fun to have spontaneous character interaction. There seemed to be quite a bit of it this trip!

We went to watch Family Feud in the Promenade Lounge (technically it's called The Feud... haha) and that was pretty fun, lots of good audience participation. R (youngest DS) got chosen to participate in one round, but lost when he couldn't name a single Disney princess. And that is the fun of having all boys, everyone

Due to the time change, kids were feeling a bit tired, so they all went back to the room for a rest/nap (as did DH) and I headed up to Deck 4 to walk some laps and read for a bit. I'm not sure that the time change from west coast to east coast really would have been an issue if we weren't tacking on more hours as we went along. I only walked two laps, but better than none I guess? It can be really windy on Deck 4. I saw lots of people jogging throughout the cruise, though. Were I an early riser, this would have been a great idea. Oh, and somewhere on Deck 4 you'll find the water bottle filling stations.

Did I mention that dinner rotation time on board this cruise was 6:00 PM and 8:30 PM? I believe it was 5:45 PM and 8:15 PM on our Fantasy cruise. I am guessing they slightly adjust the time due to longer days in the European ports on the Med itinerary (not very long port days on this cruise, though). Non, our server, told us that for folks on those long port days in the Med, he tells them to come to dinner even if they are running late, he says he knows they are tired, and having a good meal even if you don't start till 7, is a good idea. I thought that was very nice.

Anyway tonight we were dining in Lumiere's for the standard Lumiere's menu. I had the French Onion Soup, the Iced Lobster and Jumbo Shrimp (which Non warned me was just a slice of lobster plus some shrimp, in case i was expecting a full tail I guess hehe) and the Oven Baked Salmon Royale.

I liked the appetizers, but the salmon was rather dry. I did trick L into eating some "mashed potatoes" which was really cauliflower puree. He said it was weird. Ha. DH had the escargots, which is never my fave except I do love the garlic butter.

I think he had the Chateaubriand for an entree, but I can't actually remember! For dessert, I chose both the Grand Marnier Souffle and the Tahitian Vanilla Creme Brulee. Small mixup b/c I thought that L and I would share the Creme Brulee (his fave, so he was also ordering one) but in fact he ordered 2, so we had 3. Lol.

I feel like people rave about the souffle. It was very good; Grand Marnier isn't my favourite flavour though. That's not the souffle's fault. I had a kid in our church youth group once who made souffles for us, but he pronounced it as "Soo-full" - so now I must say it that way even though I know it's soo-flay!

Here's L with his three desserts lol.

This picture reminds me of two things. First, a lovely lady in our social media group (one of the admins actually) made and gave out the bracelet you can see to my son's right. It says 2019 Eastbound Transatlantic and lists all of the ports. This was one of my favourite souvenirs and she was so, so kind to gift us these as well as a few other fun goodies. Second, I am a nail polish fiend, so I brought polish onboard (I can't get gel manicures) and during late nights when the kids were asleep and DH was off at poker, I did my nails. These are sort of a turquoise blue. Pretty matchy for Frozen day actually.

Anyway, I absolutely love the creme brulee as well, so I'm pretty sure I didn't let my kid eat that third one. The little boys really enjoyed ordering sundaes on this trip, I think it's a bit more special than just ordering ice cream.

When dinner was done, we went back to our rooms to grab these fun snowflake necklaces that our stateroom host had left us:

Up next: Freezing the Night Away.

 

[Strawberry's mom&dad]

Small thing I noticed: when the kids/families were asked where they are from, they all tended to name their state. So L said that we are from BC. Well, we are, but when people ask, sometimes I say Canada, but usually I say Vancouver. Maybe because it's a big city and I assume everyone will know? But they won't know what BC is? Anyway.

If asked and you said Vancouver, I would of asked BC or Washington.
We live in Washington State. When we are on the East coast and someone asks where we are from if I just say Washington, They assume DC. I now reply I am from Seattle. Seems everyone knows where that is.
I am truly enjoying your trip report. It is fun to see the trip through someone else.

 

[lilsonicfan]

If asked and you said Vancouver, I would of asked BC or Washington.
We live in Washington State. When we are on the East coast and someone asks where we are from if I just say Washington, They assume DC. I now reply I am from Seattle. Seems everyone knows where that is.
I am truly enjoying your trip report. It is fun to see the trip through someone else.

Thx for following along! I'm going to guess that outside of WA, not many people would think of Vancouver, WA! But a good point!

 

[lilsonicfan]

Day 4 - Freezing the Night Away, etc.

We are not known for arriving early to things, so it was no real surprise that Deck 9 was pretty packed by the time we arrived. There's a roped off section in the middle that is for kids only.

We took up a spot on the forward part of Deck 10 instead. Our view was slightly obstructed by the gazebo, but no big deal. The lady in black is an ASL interpreter, there were two on this cruise and they were both amazing, we saw them at several shows. I can't even imagine having to know or be familiar with that much content and to be able to interpret on the fly as well.

The show was scheduled for 7:30-8:30, but if I recall correctly, a great deal of that time is spent waiting for the show to start... then there's some DCL staff-led dancing, followed by Olaf. And then Elsa and Anna show up. Okay, quite honestly, this show was fun, but not particularly memorable, likely due to the fact that I'm a little over the whole Frozen thing.

I did get some cool sunset pics though. Early on:

And right before the show started:

There were also Shutters photographers wandering around and we got this delightful one:

When the party ended, we decided that we would watch Dumbo (2019) instead of seeing Junnk. This was a tough call because I think my kids would have enjoyed Junnk, but IIRC the next showing of Dumbo was going to conflict with something else we wanted to do. Which brings me back to my comment about how the movies were really scheduled oddly - why not play them in the daytime when people don't have to choose between that and the evening show? I mean I know they probably wanted to mix in some old movies in the Buena Vista Theatre in the daytime to change it up a little (e.g. ET, the Goonies), but... I dunno. Not a fan.

Oh, I also want to say that Paige O'Hara, the original voice of Belle, was on this cruise and I somehow managed to miss EVERY.SINGLE.EVENT with her. I have no idea why or what else I was doing. Well in all honesty I think I missed a lot of the adult only stuff (except, see below), which is par for the course when you have 3 kids I suppose.

Anyway. Dumbo was great! Very entertaining. I can't remember the original movie at all, but I thought this one was fairly well done (and also, glad I didn't spend $70 or so to watch it in a real theatre here - instead I spent thousands on a cruise, hahaha)

After Dumbo, it was already around 10ish PM. Kids weren't tired, so they headed off to Oceaneer Club and DH and I got to go to the Adult Exclusive Open House in Oceaneer's Lab. The adult exclusive open houses only happen on the longer cruises and honestly if you are on a longer cruise, make it a point to go to one. It really is adult exclusive, I saw some kids get turned away even with parents. We first spent some time drawing postcards for the kids "from their stuffed animals" lol.... then DH tried out the "virtual Ironman game". Pretty neat.

Then, we got to participate in Super Sloppy Science! This is a popular kids' club event and it was so neat to do it as adults. There were probably about 15 of us, and the event was led by a "mad scientist". He was super quirky and super loud and perhaps could have used a touch less sugar that day, but all in good fun!!

We got to make "snow":

which we then used to make a picture of the mad scientist's face:

And then he did an experiment where "mickey and all of his friends" (balloons) entered a "party" (tiny container of liquid nitrogen) and when they came out they expanded to regular size. It was pretty darn cool.

Liquid nitrogen does not like soap.

And lastly there were Mentos/Diet Coke rockets. So fun.

And then we called it a night and the Navigator reminded us that we would be losing another hour (3rd one!). By the way, the stateroom host kindly changes your room clocks for you (though not any clocks you might bring with you). That was handy. At some point during the trip, my phone did not like the time change thing and that was another issue with the app - if your time wasn't set correctly then of course the app would mix up when a certain activity was happening. So bring a watch with you!

Up next: Day 5.

 

[lilsonicfan]

Forgot to include Day 4 Navigator:

 

[lilsonicfan]

I'm sure you can guess where this is going. I woke up every half hour wondering where the bags were. Tracking showed - suitcases had arrived at MIA baggage claim. Sigh. Finally, around 3:15am, I went to the front desk and chatted with the clerk, who told me that honestly I might be better off going to collect the bags myself. He offered the 4am airport shuttle and told me to just call again from the airport and they would come and get me.

Dutifully following the advice given to me I went to the airport at 4am and found my bags at baggage claim, behind four AA staff members who were literally just moving bags from one side of the area to the other. They were less than helpful and I could have left with all of the bags because they didn't scan them out or even check that they were mine. So yeah, great that the tracking works, but it doesn't mean they'll actually deliver. I'm still annoyed at American, but I'm not sure any other airline would have been better?

As an update to my first day post, I contacted American to request my money back that we paid for the luggage ($30 CAD each plus taxes) due to this ridiculous situation. I finally got an answer two days ago, and they refunded these fees to us. So that's good!

 

[lilsonicfan]

Day 5- sea day #4!

You might think by now we would be tired of sea days - but honestly i cannot think of a single moment when I thought that at all. I was tired for sure - we had now lost a total of 6 hours being west coast. But it's so easy to just relax on a cruise sea day

Got up late again and headed to Cabanas for my delicious congee. It was never too difficult to find a seat at Cabanas, which was a pleasant surprise.

I then went to Anyone Can Cook for the Seared Scallops edition. But I guess there was a mixup, because it was actually Pan Seared Salmon! Even the sommelier was a tad perplexed; he had chosen a lovely red wine for scallops - and he said it's a myth that seafood can only be enjoyed with white. I think it was called Seven Sisters Pinot Noir.... anyway, really enjoyable. Again, chef David was great at instructing and gave some great tips overall. And it was delicious! it was accompanied by some cauliflower puree and rainbow cauliflower - I did not even know that cauliflower came in any colour other than white, but there is also green cauliflower (or "broccoflower" I think), and purple. Check out that bokeh in my wine glass, haha - still learning how to use my camera!

I'll have to insert the recipe here, I have to take a pic still.

Today was also the day I intended to do laundry; I'd roughly planned to do laundry 2-3x on the ship, because DCL has self-serve laundry but MSC does not. However I'd bought a 40-piece laundry package for the MSC cruise so I wasn't too worried. But then, with three kids, it doesn't take long at all for laundry to pile up. I purchased laundry bags at Ikea (slightly larger than the DCL one that hangs out in your closet and costs $1000 if you lose it - j/k, maybe $20? not sure!). I brought tide pods with me as well as laundry sheets. Pro tip: you can extend the cycle on the washing machine, you don't have to use the "normal" setting. However, if you do use a longer cycle, don't rely on the phone notification. It notified me early (15-25 min early) every time. I just set a timer on my actual phone. It was all fine; the laundry is on deck 2 aft. I felt badly for the folks who had a room directly across from the laundry!! More on this later.

While I did laundry, the kids and DH went up to the pool deck for some swimming, french fries, and ice cream. Not sure what order, but today was the day they discovered blueberry and pineapple soft serve! I mentioned this earlier. Both were great. Pineapple could have been a bit stronger.

Tonight was also super exciting because it was Coast to Coast Character Campout night in the kids clubs. I believe I mentioned this earlier, but this is an event that I've only ever seen turn up on the long cruises - transatlantic and Panama Canal cruises. Maybe others can say whether they do it on 8-9 night cruises. Anyway, I signed up for this on day 1 even though it wasn't in the Navigator. They only allowed 100 kids to sign up. Each kid received a small orange drawstring backpack and a big Disney Store plastic bag (not the new reusable tote - but the kind they used to give out!) and these were in our stateroom 1-2 nights before the campout day. Basically the backpack and plastic bag were used to hold their own items. I am not sure what everyone else took with them, but we sent our kids with a pillow from the stateroom and the packable blankets they had brought from home (for the flight) as well as their stuffies.

Anyway before we get there... we went to watch some Chip-It Golf with the Steering Committee. This looked like a lot of fun, and was played with a big velcro "golf green" and felt golf balls; guests and crew vs each other I guess. Pretty neat. It's held in the atrium/lobby area.

And then we saw Chip and Dale in some European style outfits. Okay, I'm terrible at this. Was it supposed to be Greek outfits?? Ugh. I'm just awful at guessing.

R and I also went to Promenade to try to do some 3D crafts, but we were a bit late so instead of Pooh and the Hunny Pot - all they had was the Hunny Pot. Meh. I will say, I am not a huge fan of the whole 3D craft thing. I feel like it could be a lot better - but it's basically gluing tiny edges of paper together in a pre-designed format after you cut it out. Perhaps I lack the crafty bone.

 

[olafLover]

.

 

[lilsonicfan]

Following along! We were also on this cruise! Loved it so much, love to read other peoples stories!

They were there 3 times, the cruise outfits, the pirate outfits (which indeed included Stitch) and the French outfits (pretty random )

It was such a great cruise!
Ah yes - so I think I missed them on Pirate day, boo!

 

[olewnikpe]

Looking forward to reading about the rest of the cruise.

 

[lilsonicfan]

Day 5 continued!

I am pretty sure my pictures are out of order, but I suppose it doesn't really matter!

We checked out Oceaneers Club for an open house event - it was not at all crowded, which was nice.

There are a lot of screens available to kids in Oceaneers Club/Lab.

Also some pretty cool Marvel stuff (although, since the kids don't get to play with it, I wonder if it really has any value beyond initial sight!

I love the slinky dog slide!

Anyway, somewhere in there, DH and I found time to relax at Cove Cafe and I watched the water go by. Then it was off to dinner at Animator's Palate. Tonight was a different menu - Seasons. I believe when these menus are brought out, all three restaurants serve the same menu.

We had the North Atlantic Lobster Ravioli, which was honestly delicious and one of our best appetizers all cruise:

Entree: Chilean sea bass - pretty good, but sea bass isn't my favourite fish.

Another entree: grilled garlic jumbo shrimp with orzo. Super yummy, although sometimes I think sundried tomato is a little over done. The shrimp were so tasty.

I neglected to take a picture of the dessert menu but you can find it here on Scott's blog. The desserts were nothing to write home about. We had the chocolate indulgence and the strawberries & cream cake - neither was worth the calories. The kids had the brownie sundae though and found that delicious!

 

[lilsonicfan]

Day 5 - Evening!

After dinner, we headed up to see The Magic & Comedy of Danny Buckler. This was a request of my kids; they saw him the first night and really wanted to go back. The other choice was Ralph Breaks the Internet which we hadn't seen - but was showing later on the cruise, at least. Anyway, Danny Buckler is great. I believe he's fairly regular on Disney cruises. We tried to sit closer to the front as DS1 really wanted to be chosen, but alas, luck wasn't on his side. Oh well, no big deal. It was a really entertaining show, we had a fabulous time.

After the show, it was time to get the kids up to the Coast to Coast Character Campout. I mentioned earlier that you need to sign kids up early for this. At the check-in, I saw many parents with disappointed kids; it's too bad they can't open it up to more kids, but if you're reading this and you're on a TA or PC cruise, go to Guest Services on Day 1 (or wherever it says to go!) As mentioned, kids received an orange drawstring backpack and a plastic Disney store bag to carry their stuff. At check-in, the staff applied stickers (pre-printed with their names) to all of their items. Somehow we still managed to lose a backpack, sigh. You also receive a piece of paper telling you that you MUST pick up your child by 8:00 AM, and ideally between 7:00-7:30 AM. Let me tell you - this is a MISTAKE. The Campout goes from 9:30PM to midnight (games, party, I believe Stitch showed up) and I highly doubt the kids went quietly to bed at midnight. Spoiler alert, when we picked up the kids in the morning they were super grumpy. Oh, and it was also another day to move the clocks forward - so... really, they hardly slept at all. I commented on this on our survey, but I would suggest to Disney that they keep one side of kids club closed until 9-10am the morning after the campout so that kids can sleep in.

DH and I headed off to find some kid-free things to do. We ran into these fine fellows again, this time in their chef/French outfits - random but cute!

Then, we went to "Seriously?" in Fathoms, a game show setup. This is where we first encountered Tisa, the club host. My goodness, Tisa has an amazing level of energy and ability to get a crowd into it. She is an absolute delight. I enjoyed the game show and it was nice to sit in the adult lounge for a change, without kids. There was a game where a lady was blindfolded and made to go through a lineup of male volunteers to find her husband. However, it was beyond easy b/c her husband had long hair, which none of the volunteers had. Lol. We stayed in Fathoms to watch the Beverly Belles - which was .... I dunno, maybe it's just not my type of music. Then after that show it moved into One Hit Wonders, and then I was out - too tired!

It's amazing how tired you can be on a sea day, lol.

So, as mentioned, this was our 4th night in a row of moving the clock forward. I will preview Day 6 for you by saying - I was exhausted. It was weirder than I expected to move so many hours in a row and it was hard to really motivate myself to get up in the mornings. But the nice thing is that we had a break after this, because Ponta Delgada, our first port, has a 4 hour time difference from Miami. Phew.

 

[lilsonicfan]

Looking forward to reading about the rest of the cruise.

Thank you so much for keeping up!! I apologize that it's taking me so long. Aiming to do a post a day! We'll see

 

[lilsonicfan]

Day 6 - Sea Day #5

As mentioned, DH went to get the kids early in the morning and they were not at all pleased to have been woken up, lol. So they went back to bed for a bit. I went up to Cabanas and got everyone breakfast to eat in the room since my kids are fancy and prefer a hot breakfast

I wanted them to get up early though because today Thor, Spider-Man, and Captain America were appearing for pictures! Everyone had speculated based on the 2018 EBTA Navigators that there would be no Marvel characters this cruise - I am really glad they were wrong!

My oldest DS mentioned to Thor that we had seen some lightning and heard thunder off in the distance a couple of nights back - Thor said "Oh yes... I stubbed my toe that night and was angry..." Haha!

Here we are showing off our superhero masks to Thor:

Webs with Spider-Man, of course:

Shields up (?) with Captain America!

Lots of fun.

Next up: DH and I headed off to the only liquor tasting I ended up keeping - it was Chocolate and Liquor. I may have said this already but there were a ton, and I mean a ton of liquor tastings available when we boarded. I had absolutely no trouble getting pretty well anything I asked for, though as mentioned, I did end up cancelling 2-3 others. Even if you aren't on a cruise with as many sea days, I am thinking liquor tastings will be abundant, so check when you are on board, and check every day as well because people do cancel them!

 

[lilsonicfan]

Day 6 continued

Well, due to Marvel pictures, I missed Anyone Can Cook which is a shame as it really was Seared Scallops day - and I love scallops! Oh well.

DH and I headed to our Chocolate and Liquor tasting in Keys. We really didn't spend any time in Keys other than this, but it's a beautiful bar. Others have noted this, but the price increase to $38 is made up for in the last drink, which apparently costs around $35 on its own.

Here is the spread that is in front of you when you arrive at the tasting.

I am really more of a chocolate eater than a liquor drinker, so I am no doubt going to screw up all of this, so I will tell you how the tasting went and you can pretend that my information is 100% accurate as opposed to being a little bit made up

Our tasting was hosted by Joyce, who is a member of the bar staff, possibly in Palo, I can't remember. She was just lovely, the perfect combo of being animated but not too animated. Lars, the sommelier on board for the cruise, was also in attendance.

The spread is meant to be enjoyed from left to right. The first glass is empty, but I believe we were served some sort of rose wine, it may even have been sparkling, let's just call it champagne. We were told to try the wine, then to try it after eating some of the chocolate to accompany - a mix of white and milk chocolate, melted. Goodness, the chocolate was delicious. I'm sitting here typing this, wishing I could try more.

The second wine was - I think - a John Lasseter winery red wine. It was accompanied by three nibs of chocolate. By the way, all of the chocolate is Valrhona chocolate, which is entirely made in France. Dark chocolate is my fave, so I really enjoyed this one. The wine was quite good as well; apparently Lasseter wines are somewhat difficult to find outside of Disney.

The third drink was a port. Port is supposed to refer exclusively to the fortified wines produced only from a certain region of Portugal and I gather it's typically enjoyed for dessert. So this was actually accompanied by a chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano - also a food item that cannot be named thusly unless it originates from the very specific region of Italy encompassing Parma, Reggio Emilia (which I seem to recall is also a name for a type of educational style?), Modena, and I can't remember where else. Parmigiano Reggiano is pricey; Joyce told us that Disney pays around $700 for a wheel of it. The only places it can be enjoyed on board is at Palo, or at the Chocolate and Liquor tasting. It was delicious and paired really well with the port.

And finally, time for the Glenmorangie single malt scotch. This was the money shot, literally. It was paired with a melted, thick dark chocolate, which was my favourite accompaniment of the tasting.

The scotch was - well - I am not much for scotch, so to be honest, it burned and I didn't really enjoy it. DH finished it for me I hope that isn't a blasphemous thing to say given the price of it! I will say it burned less than a lower quality scotch, but I'm definitely glad I did not keep a "whiskey tasting" I had booked prior to the cruise.

 

[Burgundy Rose]

I'm really enjoying this TR! The tasting sounds lovely. Thank you so much for sharing