Tangled in Nassau

We got up this morning to watch as the Disney Magic slowly made its way into port at Nassau, the same port that pirates used with frequency back in the day, the same port that we've been to a few times recently.  This time we decided we'd actually get off the boat and look around though.  It was a great day to do that, as ours was a smaller boat and additionally the only other ship was the Carnival Elation.  It was a small crowd onshore to begin with.  Later on, a Norwegian Cruise Line Ship would show up, but we didn't have any crowds to contend with at the onset.

But first, breakfast!  Given Mom's dietary concerns, we like the sit-down restaurant a good bit, and it's a bit more relaxing in some ways too, a bit less chaotic at times too.  This morning we had a nice breakfast, and everyone was all smiles.  

Okay, nearly all smiles.  We were taking a few goofy pictures there before we disembarked.  And that we did, committing ourselves to just do a bit of a walk-around the newly refurbished area at the dock.  

We had a nice time walking along the area.  First we just went for a nice stroll along the dock, looking at the shops there and the restaurants and posing in front of various backdrops.

We wound up purchasing a few things here, and it was pretty sparse as far as crowds go - we were just walking around and looking at the upgrade.  

We stopped at the Museum of Junkanoo, which we read about online earlier and determined we'd drop by this morning.  

Having learned quite a lot about Junkanoo yesterday, this was the perfect accompaniment to our education, a visit to a museum with a lot of pictures, story, and samples of costuming and instruments.  

The atrium area had a massive piece, somewhat like a parade float.  It was a few stories tall and quite colorful.  The material these are made of is delicate and hastily put together to meet the timing of the parades, and it looks fantastic.  I took several pictures of this one piece, which shows the history of the Bahamas.

Okay, this is the one side of the design, and yes, that's a mask that shows the African heritage of the culture.  BUT... this side just reminded me of the character Forte from "Belle's Enchanted Christmas"!

Okay, so after this we were looking around at the smaller costuming, and reading some of the history of Junkanoo.  Really we did learn quite a bit here - it was a fascinating visit, and the displays were vibrant and just amazing to see.

Early Junkanoo used crepe paper - like we did yesterday.

Earlier still, costumes were made of newspaper.

I have a fever, and the only prescription is more of this!

Costumes were built from nature - as a result, some of the earliest costumes were made from sponges.

In the movie "Night at the Museum," things came to life at night inside the museum.  If that were to happen here in Nassau, I would be terrified.

This is another large room with projections on the wall, instruments in the center, and just a lot of loud Junkanoo music playing.  Costumes lined the other walls, creating a festive atmosphere.  It was fun!

So yes, I would recommend a visit to the Junkanoo Museum.  It's a quick visit, but we learned quite a bit and enjoyed the craftsmanship and designs.  And afterwards, we went across the street to one of Maddie's favorite places - now in a new location.  It was a Del Sol!

We got three t-shirts for Maddie here.  Plus one for Hannah for her birthday.  We were glad to stop by here, and surprised - last time we heard that this store had moved down the street quite a bit.  Good to see it within walking distance from the cruise ships.

Speaking of which, it was time to head back to the ship.  We were glad to get off and look around, and now we were heading back to do some trivia, and maybe grab a bite to eat.

We were at the Soul Cat Lounge for some general Disney trivia, and on the whole, we once again did pretty well!

Maddie was coloring in some sheets too - these were made available here for the younger ones, but we were all coloring in this week too!  As for the trivia, there's this one guy and his wife, and they've been dominating everyone pretty much at quite a few of these trivia games, winning up all the medals.  They did not win today, but came close.  We were off by two questions, but we still had a good time.  Maddie likes trivia, even these funny interruptions when the ship's captain had a few announcements:

We had some pizza from Pinocchio's, and a lot of fries - with hot sauce for Maddie, of course.  We watched another cruise ship pull up as people disembarked.  Big crowds just arriving!

Oh, and the Bahamian Naval vessel, complete with the crew standing watch on the deck there. 

So yeah, we were back at Cove Cafe for another coffee.  They have free pastries there as well, and my-oh-my some of them are so good.  Maddie and I kept trying to not eat all of them.  But yes, we'd get some coffee and a pastry of course, and it was all very nice.

This is a nice shot of us in the atrium.  Look how empty it all is!  We had one of the game hosts take this photo of us as he was straightening things up, and he was really great in waiting for everyone to be out of the shot before taking this photo.  These came out just as well as the portrait photos we had on our photo pass!

So this is as close as we were going to get to a picture with Stitch today.  We could have waited another half hour, but there was something else going on downstairs, and we just thought that might be better.  The line for Stitch was enormous, and that makes sense given that the movie just came out.  He's a big star right now!

We went downstairs to deck three, and cooled off there, resting in those wonderful windows.  We were a little early for something to get started in Fathoms, so we enjoyed chilling in the windows there.

And here's what we came to see - The Emperor's New Game Show.  It was really fun!  It was a family style game show, something similar to the pirate game show, but with a theme tied to "The Emperor's Ne Groove."

These kids are racing to stack up potion bottles, all while wearing llama hoof hands!  There were also trivia questions asked, and I got one right - what was one of Yzma's soldiers turned into, the one who wanted to go home?  A cow, of course!

That was great fun though, the whole game.  There were potion stockings, and this one game where you had to identify menu items by their slang names - something Kronk did so well in the movie, and of course something that Mom was really good at.  Fun time!

And it ended in just the right way that we could return to the Soul Cat Lounge for one more try at trivia.  We didn't see our nemesis there, so we thought we had a better chance.  The place was packed, but we found a seat, and were ready to try our hand at Star Wars Trivia!

And here came the tension, and the thrill of getting obscure questions right.  What does TIE Fighter stand for?  That one was a stumper that came early, but we wrote down the letters and kept coming back to it until I managed to remember "Twin," and then the rest sort of spilled out:  "Twin Ion Engine."  And for an extra point, someone at each table could make a noise like Chewbacca.  Maddie did it for us, taking one for the team!  It all added up, and at the end, we got 20 out of 20!  But oh no!  It was a three-way tie for first place, and there would be a tie-breaker.  The question asked, if you added the first three movies' times together, how many minutes long would it be?  Somehow... I got the closest answer, and we won!  Maddie was so excited she was still shaking!  We won a free Disney Cruise bag, a fidget spinner, and most importantly, our Disney medals!  

And here's the sound effect that catapulted us to victory!

It was a highlight for Maddie of the entire cruise.  We'd been playing a few of these trivia thus far and had come close, but this victory was especially satisfying.  Oh, and speaking of Star Wars, check out this photo session we did at the atrium.  I snapped a few of these, but you can tell which ones the photographers were taking with their cameras for our photo pass:

 

Afterwards, we stuck around the Soul Cat Lounge to do some Star Wars paper craft, and that was fun.  We're adding bits of papercraft and origami to our room each day.  Speaking of which check out the interior door in our stateroom, also decorated with magnets:

Ah, Maddie is ready for tonight's "Tangled" theme!  Her outfit has the repeating pattern on it, themed to the movie "Tangled."  Tonight it happened that we were to see the musical on stage and eat at the restaurant, which was pretty awesome.  Also pretty awesome?  Just in front of the theater there was a place to pose for pictures with the Tangled lanterns, something else to put on the photo pass:

These came out so well!  We were near the front of the line for these because I knew it'd be a popular destination.  We were able to do these photos, and then get to the theater for some really great seats for the production.  

It was the best theater production of the cruise, a real highlight.  I enjoyed this one more than "Frozen" a few months ago, and all three of us just loved seeing all the huge dance numbers, the showstoppers, the incredible performances, the puppetry, the lights, the stage sets... it was all so amazing.

We stepped out from there and went down to the D Lounge, because we had some time to kill before dinner.  It was there that we saw another family game show, this one now based on the movie "Inside Out."  

They even let us pose with the command set afterwards!  As for the game show, it was pretty fun!

There were some great ideas here, stuff we might use later at KidPak.  It was similar to the other family game shows, and this time there was a really big crowd on hand to watch.  We had a great time here!

Afterwards, you can see we've headed down to wait in line - almost time for dinner!  We were seated at he Soul Cat Lounge about five minutes before we went in to our next destination:  Rapunzel's.

There's Pascal, hiding in various places throughout the restaurant area.

Rapunzel walked around to meet with friends, posing with Maddie here.

This was great.  It's Rapunzel's birthday, and we were all invited to the celebration.  Musicians strolled around playing quietly, and characters interacted with us - Hook-hand, Flynn Rider, Rapunzel, and even the helmet-wearing Atilla.  And as for food, it was delicious - my personal favorite of the cruise too!

Angel hair pasta - long and yellow like Rapunzel's hair, along with scallops.  Super delicious!

Hook-hand pays Mom a surprise visit!  That was funny!

I took this picture of Mom and Maddie here, and you can see the lanterns gleaming all around.  But later on, one of the Disney photographers came by to snap all these photos below, ones put on our photo pass:

Oh my!  Maddie and Mom asked Flynn to give us his best smolder!  That usually works....

Oh, and this desert!  Sweet bread served in a skillet - because you know how Rapunzel is with those iron skillets, right?  

This was a really great restaurant, and we had such a wonderful time here with characters, music, and food.  Characters sang songs and interacted with us, and Maddie just loved meeting Rapunzel.  We loved it so much.

Afterwards, we were over at the atrium once more, and yes, they had some more photo backdrops.  Why not take a few more for our photo pass.  The photographers did such a great job with some of these:

Oh boy, what a day.  You know we were really tired heading back to the cabin tonight.  We were done with activities, although they still go on with this cruise, late into the night.  But we're planning on getting up earlier in the morning, so yeah, it's time to race off to bed.

We got to our room, and there was an elephant to greet us, another gift from Antonio.  We read from our Kingdom Keepers book, and we said our prayers.  It was easy to get some sleep tonight - we were quite tired from such a full and fun day!