207. Rediscovering the Disney Magic

Think of a cruise that gives more than sunsets and selfies. We set out from San Juan on Disney Magic after a 15-year gap, fresh off real-life health hurdles, and built a trip around slow joy: a food-forward Puerto Rico layover, a rum masterclass at the Bacardí Founders Experience, and a calm-first plan onboard with concierge comforts, spa therapy, and long, quiet reads on the veranda.

San Juan set the tone. The Flavors of San Juan tour steered us to small, soulful hits—guava-butter croissants, passion fruit paletas, ceviche, alcapurrias, and DIY mofongo—before a standout dinner at La Central reset our steakhouse expectations. At Bacardí, we tasted the spectrum from raw, punchy spirit to oak-softened elegance in their rackhouse, then bottled and waxed our own distillery-only reserve. Pro tip: skip the ferry and rideshare straight to the pavilion for smoother timing.

Onboard, we leaned into what felt good. Animator’s Palette still crescendos to Sorcerer Mickey, while Rapunzel’s Royal Table brings ruffian comedy and a lantern-lit second act. Palo remains the surest bet—go a la carte at dinner for gnocchi and soufflé bliss, and protect brunch appetite for savory stars. Soul Cat Lounge became our hangout, with Soul Duo’s live sets turning evenings into an easy groove. Not everything sparkled: bar service across ship and islands felt green and slow at times. Kind people, longer waits—worth noting if timing matters to you.

Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point impressed. The landscaping has flourished, shade is thoughtful, and Serenity Bay’s sand feels like powdered sugar underfoot. The water clarity blew us away, and the Goombay Cultural Center’s Junkanoo celebration added authentic Bahamian culture you don’t get at Castaway Cay. Speaking of Castaway, our short day still delivered familiar joy and a peek at upgrades coming to Serenity Bay. We wrapped in Galveston with decompression time and an unexpected Wicked screening, then headed home grateful for an itinerary that prioritized restoration.

If you love Disney Cruise Line, San Juan food, rum tasting, Lookout Key insights, and real-world tips for sailing concierge, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a Disney-loving friend, and drop a review with your pick: Lookout Key or Castaway Cay—and why?

----
Adventures & Mousecapades is a passion project from Alicea & Nathan Novak - two Seattleites addicted to The Mouse. We are not affiliated with Disney, nor are we travel agents. Opinions are our own.

Instagram, Threads, Facebook, Twitter: @ourmousecapades
OurMousecapades.com
[e-mail]

Episode Transcript

Nathan (00:03):
Please stand clear of the doors.
For favor, mantengan seal thebuttons.

Alicea (00:16):
Please stand clear of the doors.
Hello everyone, I'm Alicia.

Nathan (00:25):
And I'm Nathan.

Alicea (00:26):
Welcome to episode 207 of Adventures and Mouse Capades.
It has been 15 years since thelast time that we were on board
the Disney Magic.
Back then, she was doing theseven-night Eastern Western
Caribbean itineraries, and ourdaughter, who can now drink with
us in public in certainjurisdictions, was only five

(00:47):
years old.
The third restaurant was stillParrot Key.
The aqua duct didn't even exist,and the so-called duck tail on
the back of the ship also didn'texist.

Nathan (00:59):
So we went looking for an opportunity to rediscover the
magic and not in the match ormate game show kind of way.
What we found was arepositioning sailing from San
Juan, Puerto Rico to Galveston,Texas, neither of which we had
been to before, with a stop atDisney's newest private
destination of Lookout Key,which we also had never been to

(01:24):
before.
Pile on a significant medicaldiagnosis and open heart surgery
for Alicia over the summer.
And what resulted was arelaxation and celebration
vacation that we both absolutelydesperately needed.
Yes.
So let's do a trip report, shallwe?

Alicea (01:41):
All right, let's dive in.

Nathan (01:43):
Yeah.
And just a point of order, youmay or may not hear a little bit
of extra noise from uh Alicia'smicrophone as we record while
she talks.
Um, welcome to Seattle inNovember, December.
Welcome to a significantatmospheric river.
This is a category fiveatmospheric river.
It's raining.

(02:03):
And I know that may sound weirdbecause it's Seattle.
It does that all the time, butit's actually legitimately
raining here.
Yeah.
Not just like drizzle.
It's actually raining.

Alicea (02:14):
It rains here, but it doesn't rain here, but it does
rain here.
Yeah.
That totally makes sense.
But it doesn't rain here.
Unless you unless you live hereand know exactly yes, exactly.
That's how it is.

Nathan (02:26):
Exactly.
Think think London.
Think Misty.
It's raining.
You can walk through a normalSeattle rainstorm and not get
wet.
That is why we don't useumbrellas.
Because you don't need them.
You need right now, though.

Alicea (02:42):
You do absolutely right now.
Yes.
Yes.
All right.
Let's dive into our actual trip.

Nathan (02:49):
Oh, wait.
You actually want to do like apodcast on the podcast of stuff?

Alicea (02:54):
Talking about warmer weather.

Nathan (02:56):
Yeah, let's do that.
All right.
So starting off, we had sometravel drama.
Well, we had potential traveldrama that actually turned out
to be very smooth.
Yeah.
But um we left in early Novemberwhen uh the government was
starting to cancel flights down.

(03:19):
It was it was great.
It was just so fantastic.
So we spent days on end going,like, are our flights going to
get canceled?
Because, dear reader, neitherAlicia nor I do red-eye flights.
Yep.
They're just not our thing.
I made the mistake of doing onelast year.
Uh, it was a mistake.

(03:40):
I will not do that.

Alicea (03:41):
I get migraines from them, and then I can't do
anything for the next couple ofdays.
So yeah.

Nathan (03:48):
So to get from Seattle to Puerto Rico, um uh it it's
it's a long way to go.
It's about 10 plus hours in theair, if my math is mathing-ish.
Uh so we decided to do anovernight in Atlanta, which
meant uh, you know, we should befine and until the government
shuts down and then the theythey start making uh airlines

(04:09):
cancel flights.
And so we're like, oh, oh boy,do yeah, are we hosed?
Uh no, we were not.
So thankfully we were good togo.
So we did uh uh have anovernight in Atlanta, which was
nice.
We took a a mid-late morningflight out of Seattle.
We didn't have to get up at thecrack of dawn, it was fantastic.

(04:30):
We took the little plane trainthingy d in Atlanta uh over
well, like one stop away to ahotel.

Alicea (04:37):
And yeah.
And it was uh 32 degrees there.

Nathan (04:40):
Yeah.
What's up with that?
It was freezing in Atlanta.
Literally.
And then we uh uh took a anothermid-morning flight uh from
Atlanta down to San Juan, PuertoRico.
And um, yes, I I did look at theschedule and chose this flight
for a reason because it was on a767 wide body and we had lie

(05:03):
flat seats, even though this wasa shorter flight, only about
four hours or so.
It was nice to have some someroom up front, as it were.
Uh more room than normal.

Alicea (05:13):
Yeah, did you lie flat?
I did not.

Nathan (05:15):
I tried it and then I said no.
Um because I didn't I didn'twant to do that.
I was reading at the time, soyeah.
Um yeah, uh San Juan was hot, uhbut quite really nice.
Uh we stayed at the CaribHilton, which is kind of on the

(05:37):
uh directionally, that would bethe eastern end of the island
that old town San Juan is on.

Alicea (05:43):
Yeah.

Nathan (05:44):
And it was just passing, yeah.

Alicea (05:47):
A hotel.
And it is also the hotel, Idon't know if it's the only one,
but is the hotel that Disneyuses um when people purchase
travel packages for theircruises from correct.

Nathan (06:00):
And we'd heard some good things about it.
It wasn't a bad hotel.
No.
Um would we stay there again?

Alicea (06:09):
No, probably not.
No, it's not near anything atall.

Nathan (06:12):
Yeah.
No.
And I I think there are I thinkthere are better if you're not
gonna leave the hotel and youdon't really care um about being
near things, it's fine.
But I also think you could findbetter hotels to stay at.

Alicea (06:27):
Yeah, and we were in San Juan for a day or two.
Two and a half days, two and ahalf days, and um we were doing
things.

Nathan (06:35):
So it was fine.
It was it was like a a a sevenor ten minute Uber ride to get
to Old Town, uh, which we did acouple times.

Alicea (06:45):
Yeah, and supposedly this hotel is the birthplace of
the Pini Calada.

Nathan (06:50):
Yeah, them and probably 45 other places.

Alicea (06:53):
There's only like I think there's only like three or
two, or there's two or threethat list themselves as the
birthplace of the um pinacolada.
And there's there's differenttypes, so they're all
technically correct becausethere's a non-frozen one and
there's a frozen one, and then Ithink there's one other kind.

Nathan (07:12):
So this was the frozen one.
This was the frozen one.
The slushy.

Alicea (07:15):
Yeah.

Nathan (07:17):
How did you find your rum slushy?

Alicea (07:20):
Rum malicious.
Nice, excellent.
I love rum.

Nathan (07:24):
There you go.

Alicea (07:25):
And it was very good.
Anything else on the hotel?
I did a rum flight, and it wasgood.

Nathan (07:30):
You did?

Alicea (07:31):
Yeah, you shared.
Yes, I did.
Shared.

Nathan (07:33):
Yeah.

Alicea (07:34):
You were ready to go to bed, and I'm like, I want a rum
flight.

Nathan (07:36):
So I was like, oh, okay, this is this is what we're doing
tonight.
Yeah.

Alicea (07:41):
Nothing else really in the hotel.

Nathan (07:44):
Um We never got in the pool.
There they had a lot of pools.
It looked like a really nicefacility.
They had a really nice beach uhto swim in.
It looked great.
We just this whole trip was justrelaxing and chillaxing, and a
lot of reading and a lot of justsitting on our butts and reading

(08:05):
and enjoying being away from theour regular life.
Yep.
And we started that off here forsure.

Alicea (08:14):
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
We did, I did book us a foodtour, though.
Yes.
I booked us two things for whilewe were in San Juan.
The first of which was theFlavors of San Juan food tour,
which I highly recommend.
This was really nice.
I very much enjoyed it.

Nathan (08:29):
Yeah.
Now, I wanted to go visit thefort because that is definitely
something that pretty mucheverybody in San Juan goes to
see when you're visiting.
Um, yeah, remember that wholegovernment shutdown thing we
were talking about?
Yeah, guess what?
Uh uh, guess what's a nationalpark?
Uh it it's it's the fort.
So it was closed.
So no.
No.

(08:49):
Um we drove by it.
It looked really cool, quiteimpressive, actually.
It's like quite imposing.
Um, but uh also closed.
So anyway, back to the foodtour.
This had five stops, startedover in old San Juan.
It was, I don't know, what, uhuh two and a half-ish hours,

(09:12):
maybe three, somewhere in thatneighborhood.

Alicea (09:15):
Yeah, two and a half to three.
Yeah.

Nathan (09:16):
Yeah.

Alicea (09:17):
And she said it was around two miles.

Nathan (09:19):
No way.

Alicea (09:20):
I did not think it was no shot.

Nathan (09:23):
No.
I I could now it you did need towalk around.
Yeah.
It was probably a total distanceof I don't know, maybe eight or
ten blocks total.

Alicea (09:37):
Like it was not a huge amount of walking.

Nathan (09:40):
No.
I I could see it maybe being amile total.

Alicea (09:44):
Yeah.

Nathan (09:45):
Maybe.
Maybe.
Over the course of three hourswith five stops.

Alicea (09:49):
Yeah, that's fine.
Yeah.

Nathan (09:50):
Yeah.
The first stop was a littlecoffee shop called Quattro
Sombras.
This is uh uh translates as fourshades because this is a very
special Puerto Rican coffeewhere they actually planted
trees around their uh the thecoffee trees.
They planted other trees to giveshade to the coffee plants.

(10:13):
So four shades, quattro sombras,ta-da.

Alicea (10:17):
And neither of us drank coffee.

Nathan (10:19):
No.
So we had tea, which wasn't toobad.

Alicea (10:22):
It was like um it was a hibiscus tea, and it was very
good.

Nathan (10:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh we also had a uh a fresh uhhouse-made uh croissant with uh
ham and cheese and guava butter,and it was good.
That was fantastic.
That was delightful.
Yes, that was excellent.
Next up, we had kind of ahistory stop um on kind of part
of the old wall uh around thecity, and our guide went and got

(10:54):
everybody a passion fruitpopsicle from Senor Paletta, and
that was an interesting taste.
I like passion fruit.
I don't know that I'vehistorically had an opinion.

Alicea (11:09):
And it does have a very distinct flavor for sure.
Yeah, yeah.
It was kind of neat to juststand there and look out over
everything too, because you'reon the wall.
Um, you're up a little higherand you can see out over um the
other parts of the island.
And yeah, it's neat.

Nathan (11:25):
Yeah.
Now, when we say wall, likeyou're up on this wall, uh it
really kind of seems more likeuh a 30-foot tall cliff.
Yeah.
Um and and you you really likethe wall is I she said, but it
was like 60 feet deep orsomething, or wide, like around
the point where we were, andthey've filled in behind the

(11:48):
wall.
So it's really, it really isjust a cliff.
Yeah.
Um uh but uh yeah, it was it wascool.
And she gave a bunch of historyabout the area and and all sorts
of fun stuff.

Alicea (12:00):
Our third stop was Cafe El Punto.
I don't know if I said thatright.
Sure, close enough.
Okay.
And oh gosh, I'm gonna mess bothof these up.
We had a ceviche spoon.
Actually, I know how to sayceviche, even though it's not
spelled correctly in our notes.
That's okay.

Nathan (12:20):
Hey, you got it.
Yes.

Alicea (12:23):
Uh ceviche spoon and uh beef alcapuria.

Nathan (12:28):
Sure.

Alicea (12:29):
Uh-huh.

Nathan (12:30):
I would have called that an empanada, but from what we
got from the guy.
Yeah, it's a that was reallygood.
It was really good.

Alicea (12:39):
Both I thought both of them were very good.
I think the ceviche spoon wasgrouper, maybe.

Nathan (12:43):
Yeah, uh something like that.

Alicea (12:45):
I know you're not a fan of ceviche.

Nathan (12:47):
Um I've tried it a f a couple times.
It is one of those things that Iam up to try.
It is not something I would everparticularly go out of my way to
order.

Alicea (13:00):
It's a very fresh taste.

Nathan (13:03):
Yeah.

Alicea (13:04):
Crunchy, fresh, not super fishy.

Nathan (13:06):
Yours was crunchy?

Alicea (13:08):
Yeah, because of the onions.

Nathan (13:10):
Oh, yeah.
The fish wasn't crunchy.
I was like, I I hope your fishwasn't crunchy.
I don't know how you burn withceviche, but I mean, I guess
technically you could, butwhatever.
Anyhow, it was it was good.
And I'll say, like, this placeand the next couple places that
we stopped at are all like theseinteresting settings.

(13:33):
It's like, yes, it's arestaurant, but it's like in the
middle of a building that youhave to like walk through some
like front shops to down thislike weird hallway, and then
there's a restaurant in themiddle of the building courtyard
or something like that.
Like it would be very difficultfor you to find these places on
your own without somebody whoactually knew where they were.

(13:53):
Yeah.

Alicea (13:53):
Yeah.
Our fourth stop was Bari, and wegot to make kind of our own food
here.

SPEAKER_02 (14:00):
Yeah, it was cool.

Alicea (14:01):
We got to make uh mufongo, which is plantains with
butter, garlic, olive oil, and achicken stock, basically, or
chicken broth.

Nathan (14:11):
Yeah.

Alicea (14:11):
And you mash it all together.

Nathan (14:13):
Yeah.
You you mash up the plantain,the butter, and the garlic and
the olive oil, and kind of makeit into a mashed potato-y paste
kind of thing.
And then they bring around thethe chicken and broth and dump
it in and keep mashing.
Yeah.
Keep yeah, do your thing and eatit.

Alicea (14:28):
I really liked this.

Nathan (14:30):
Yeah.
The pina the pina colada wasn'thalf bad either.

Alicea (14:33):
Yes.
So we had mufongo, we had creolechicken with broth, um, rice and
beans, red beans.
Was it red beans?
Black beans.
I don't remember.
It was beans.
Any pina colada.
And all of this was absolutelydelicious.
Like I would go here to eat,definitely.

Nathan (14:51):
If if you could find it, yes.

Alicea (14:52):
If I could find it, yeah.

Nathan (14:55):
And our last stop was this kind of local, I don't know
what you steakhouse.
Steakhouse, yeah, called uhvodka brava.
And we just had a dessert there,which was a cheese flan.

SPEAKER_02 (15:09):
And that was really good.

Alicea (15:11):
That was really good.
Like there's multiple people whoare like, um, I will just order
one myself right now.
Thank you.

Nathan (15:17):
Right.
Because we only got like a abite-sized uh serving, and uh
well, maybe a two-bite-sizedserving.
It it was not big enough.
And yeah, so that was the end ofour tour, and everybody kind of
like dispersed from there.
And um several people for suresaid, Nope, we're um we're going
to order a plate of this.

Alicea (15:38):
It was good.
I I enjoyed that tour, and I'mdebating whether or not we do
that again with the kids.

Nathan (15:46):
I don't know that we're gonna have enough time.
So we are doing a cruise on thebrand new Disney Destiny that as
we record this just launched aweek ago is the main voyage.
Um week and a half.
And we do have a port of call onthat sailing that is in San

(16:07):
Juan, but I don't think we'regonna be there long enough to
really do a food tour,especially because of the other
stop that you really want to goto, which is Alicia, where we
went the next afternoon.

Alicea (16:22):
Yes.

Nathan (16:23):
You wanna tell about your your next discovery of what
to do in San Juan?

Alicea (16:28):
Oh sure.
So I didn't know this because Ijust didn't.
Um Bacardi, their headquartersis in San Juan.

Nathan (16:38):
Yes.

Alicea (16:38):
And um Bacardi is rum.
And I like rum.
All these things are true.
Yes.
So we did a tour and we did thefounder's experience tour
because why not?

Nathan (16:52):
Right.
One in Rome, let's go.

Alicea (16:55):
Exactly.
So, as a part of this package,there is a ferry across the bay
from old San Juan across thebay, and then you catch a bus
and it brings you over to theirfacility.
And it's specifically a Bacardibus.
So they don't check.
I mean, technically you couldjust get off of the ferry and
get onto the bus and whatever.

Nathan (17:15):
Yeah, that was interesting.
Yeah.
Uh I don't think the driverspoke any English.

Alicea (17:20):
No, that's okay.

Nathan (17:21):
Yeah, that's fine.
Um, this was a fantasticexperience.

Alicea (17:26):
I loved this.
I really did.

Nathan (17:28):
Yeah.

Alicea (17:29):
Um, I'm kind of bummed that that Sterling is not gonna
be of age for us to do this whenwe're there.
Uh we definitely can't do thefounders experience tour because
that is 21 and over.
Yes.
Um and 21 or 18?
Oh, it's 18.
Sorry, it's 18 and over.
He's not quite there yet.

Nathan (17:48):
He's not there yet.

Alicea (17:49):
No.
And um I guess we can talk aboutthe tour, huh?

Nathan (17:55):
Yeah, let's do that.
Well, first off, you you get totheir facility, and I will say,
yes, you can take the ferryacross the bay.
I don't know, even if we werestaying in town and did this
again, I might just take an Uberthere.

(18:16):
Yeah.
Like the ferry did not save youany time.
It's a really easy drive around,and an Uber can get you right to
the front door of where all ofthe tours and everything
happened.
So I yeah.

Alicea (18:31):
Now I know.
I mean, it it was included inthe price of the tour.

Nathan (18:37):
That's true.
That's true.

Alicea (18:39):
I think.

Nathan (18:40):
You're uh Yes.

Alicea (18:42):
Okay.

Nathan (18:43):
Yeah, it was.
It was.

Alicea (18:44):
And there's different tours available as well.
We did the the top-notch one.

Nathan (18:49):
Because bougie.

Alicea (18:50):
Because uh because of what it had in there, and we'll
talk about that as we go down.

Nathan (18:54):
So yes.
Well, the first thing it had inthere was a complimentary drink
when you check in.
Yes.
And I had a rum-basedold-fashioned, and it was
fantastic.

Alicea (19:05):
I had some sort of mojito, I think, but it was like
a fancy mojito.

Nathan (19:10):
Yeah.
All these things are good.
And you got a a uh uh a safetyvest for the day.

Alicea (19:16):
Yes.
As part of the founder'sexperience, they give you I
don't know, it was it wasn't avest.
It was like straps.
Yeah.
Was some sort of weird brightorange and yellow contraption.
I was like, what is even is thisthing?

Nathan (19:30):
It is high viz safety gear.
Mm-hmm.
You were it was your personalprotective equipment.
Didn't you feel safer havingthat on?

Alicea (19:40):
Yes.
Yeah, I did.
Okay, so I had I had somethingcalled a sunset spice.
And what it has BacardiSuperior, guava, cucumber,
honey, lime, and ginger beer.
It's a fancy mule.
It was delicious.

Nathan (19:57):
And I just had the the Ocho old-fashioned.
Which is uh uh Bacardi ReservaOcho with honey and angostura
bitters.
And yep, I wish I had two ofthose.

Alicea (20:11):
And this and it's nice, there's like this little gazebo,
not little, it's like a giantgazebo.
Um I don't even know that I'dcall it a gazebo.

Nathan (20:20):
A concrete poured structure, large, large
structure for check-in, sittingdown.

Alicea (20:26):
There's probably like 20 tables underneath there to sit
around at and some nice sofasand whatnot.

Nathan (20:33):
Which was nice because it was raining.

Alicea (20:34):
Yes, it was raining really hard.
Yeah.

Nathan (20:36):
Um and and we got to, yeah, and there's a tour you get
in this uh fancy uh ginormousgolf cart kind of thing.
And you they take you all aroundthe uh facility.
Uh 85% of Bacardi's uh uhworldwide production comes from

(20:58):
uh this spot in Puerto Rico.
Now, Bacardi did not start inPuerto Rico, they started in
Cuba.
Um, there were some things thathappened in Cuba, uh, and they
moved.
Yeah.
So um they get most of theirmolasses from Central America if
memory serves.

(21:19):
I wasn't taking strong notes,y'all.
So forgive me.
I'll have to go on the touragain.
Oh no.
Um, but uh we did uh uh reallyget to see how they process all
of that molasses and then barrelit.
They uh it was a later tour inthe day, and they had kind of
finished their production runfor the day.

(21:40):
So there wasn't it was actuallykind of nice because I think
that tour wasn't getting ineverybody's way.
Um they run about, I forget theexact number, it was somewhere
around 185 barrels, plus orminus a few, uh, that she said
that they they do a day.
And these are 53 gallon Americanwhite oak barrels.
Most of them have been likebourbon barrels from you know

(22:02):
big labels in the US that theythey reuse and then they age
their uh um their their productthere on site, um, which we got
to go into one of their rackhouses.

Alicea (22:13):
We have to take we had to take off all of our
electronics.
Yes.
You don't want you don't wantany sparks happening or anything
like that.
Not in that location.

Nathan (22:20):
It was um it smelled it smelled alcoholic.

Alicea (22:25):
Very it smelled honestly, it smelled really good
because it smelled alcoholic andmolassesy and uh uh and we got
to sample like a week old thatreally hadn't been aged much.

Nathan (22:40):
That was that was harsh.
Yeah, it was rough.
Uh-huh.
That was rough.
Literally, you could if youdidn't want to finish it,
because she's like, you youprobably don't want to finish
all this.
Like it literally it notliterally, obviously, but it
punches you in the mouth.
Yeah.
And and if you still have someleft in your glass, literally,
if you just throw it out, likeflick your glass to to you know,

(23:03):
fling the rest of that liquidout, it pretty much all
evaporates before it hits thefloor.

Alicea (23:08):
Yeah, it was it was it was a thing.

Nathan (23:11):
Yeah, quite quite impressive.
And then we got to sample therein the in this the rack house,
an eight-year-old, eight, eightor nine-year-old barrel.

Alicea (23:21):
And and these are like right out of the barrel, like
the barrels have taps on them,and that was that was kind of
cool.
Or not all of them do, they hada setup, so it was right.

Nathan (23:29):
They had a setup with us with several barrels for this
reason, and they just put tapsin the barrel and put it on its
side, and it's good.
Oh my gosh.
It was good.

Alicea (23:39):
And then we got to do the tasting.

Nathan (23:43):
Yeah, yeah.
And Alicia and I were sitting atthe end of the table with all of
these like really, really oldBacardi bottles behind us on
these shelves.
Like there's bottles.
Now, I can't we joked aroundwith our tour guide, like,
cannot guarantee that thecontents of the bottles are
either A, any good anymore or Boriginal.

(24:06):
Yes.
But some of these bottles werelike 120, 130 years old.
Uh it's like some of them whenwere from the original bottling
plant in uh Santiago de Cuba.
Uh is really cool.
There's a so much history.
She said they have to inventorythat shelf every time.

(24:28):
Like I think they do it twice aday, just to make sure nobody's
walked off of the bottle.
Yeah.
But we got to sample three orfour different rums there.
And then I think she made acouple different drinks for us.
Yep.
Uh, we were all having goodtimes, and then because they're
excellent marketing people,guess what happens after you

(24:51):
drink all of the rum?
You go to the gift shop.
Yep.
Uh, so we we may have we we mayhave purchased a bottle of rum.

Alicea (25:00):
So I will note that I did look online to see what we
could get in the States, what wecould get where we are.

Nathan (25:08):
I'm like, Because there were a few things that were
like, oh, we should get this.
And then Alicia's like, we canget that at total wine.

Alicea (25:14):
So no.
Yeah, I looked it up and andlike the price is exactly the
same, and we wouldn't have toworry about getting it onto the
ship.

Nathan (25:23):
Yeah.

Alicea (25:24):
Onto an airplane.

Nathan (25:24):
Yeah.
Back home.

Alicea (25:26):
So yeah.

Nathan (25:26):
But we did do a bottle where we actually made our own
bottle.
We got it engraved with ourname, and we got to write out
the label.
We got to f wash it and fill itand dip the the neck or cork it,
dip the neck in wax, imprint it,uh, put all the labels on and

(25:48):
everything.
It was really kind of cool.

Alicea (25:51):
And this is their special reserve that you can
only get there at thatdistillery.

Nathan (25:57):
Yep.
Yep.
So uh we will we will have to beopening that bottle for
something special.

Alicea (26:03):
Yes.

Nathan (26:03):
TBD on what that is.

Alicea (26:06):
But and they did tell us that there's a birthday or an
anniversary or somethinghappening next year.
Yes.
And so they're changing thelabels and everything.

Nathan (26:18):
It'll look different.
So we'll have to go back.
That's maybe.

Alicea (26:22):
Yeah.

Nathan (26:22):
What do you mean maybe?
No, yeah.
You are very clear that we'regoing back.
So that is that is one thingthat is absolutely on our list
of things to do when we're inSan Juan.
I think we're getting a we'rehiring a driver or something
like that.
We'll we're figuring that out.
But we want to hit the old town,uh, you know, drive around a
little bit, see the forts uhthat we missed this time, and

(26:44):
and the Picardy distillerybecause priorities.

Alicea (26:47):
Yes.
Yeah.
That evening we went to arestaurant called La Central.
Oh.
And this was a very goodrestaurant.
So good.
It's uh La Central by MarioPagan or Pagan.
I don't know.

Nathan (27:05):
Pagan?

Alicea (27:06):
Pagan.

Nathan (27:08):
It was it it's it is a fantastic, fantastic Puerto
Rican steakhouse with all of theflair of Puerto Rico.
Like the food was incredible,the service was stunning, the
drinks were amazing, likeeverything was just so well
done.

Alicea (27:28):
And you got a was it the tobacco infused old fashioned,
basically?
Is that what you yeah.
You were just gonna get aregular one and the bartender's
like, hmm.

Nathan (27:38):
You sure about that?
No.
Yeah.
It was um ruined tobacco, and itwas an añejo rum with a tobacco
infused syrup and bitters, andthen it was smoked.
And it it my dad smoked a pipewhen I was growing up.
He doesn't anymore.
And oh, it just the flavors ofit, the smell of the tobacco,

(28:02):
the fresh tobacco smoke, justyep, took me back.
It was that was amazing.
I could totally go for one ofthose right now.
All right, moving on.
Uh the food was fantastic.

Alicea (28:14):
This meal is delicious.
We'll probably visit here again,too, because both of our kiddos
are carnivores and we greatlyappreciate this restaurant.

Nathan (28:21):
Yeah, but we we have to figure out how much time we have
in port.
We may not have enough time todo all of these things.
That's true.
Uh, your eyes are bigger thanyour stomach in terms of timing.
Lunch.
We'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 (28:32):
Yeah.

Nathan (28:32):
We'll figure it out.
So, Alicia, I think I know theanswer to this question because
of what what you keep talkingabout and things that you keep
putting on our list, but wouldyou spend time in San Juan
again?

Alicea (28:44):
Yes, I would.
Like, I think there's otherparts that I'd like to see.

Nathan (28:49):
Yeah.

Alicea (28:49):
San Juan is a very small portion of this island, and just
talking with uh the lady who isgiving us the tour for the the
flavors of San Juan, um, seemslike there's a couple other
spots in Puerto Rico that Iwould like to see.

Nathan (29:02):
Yeah, I I think it would be a a fantastic spot.
Um, you know, Disney doesSouthern Caribbean sailings out
of here, other cruise linesoriginate out of San Juan as
well.
Lots of options.
I could totally see us uh doingmore than just another port of
call in and Puerto Rico.
So yeah.
I'm with you.

(29:23):
I'm with you.
We'll do we'll we'll we'll dothat.

Alicea (29:25):
Yeah.

Nathan (29:26):
I guess we should actually talk about the Disney
part of the trip, huh?

Alicea (29:29):
Yep.

Nathan (29:31):
I'm there's a lot to talk about.
It had been 15 years.

Alicea (29:34):
Yep.
Okay.

Nathan (29:35):
All right.
Again, this was a six-nightcruise from San Juan to
Galveston.
It hit Lookout, Castaway, and ithad three sea days.
It was absolutely glorious.
It was the perfect itinerary forus.
Uh, embarkation was in San Juan,and just a note that Disney
sails out of the San Juan CruisePort Terminal, which is not the

(29:59):
uh not there in Old Town SanJuan.
Uh it's in kind of thecommercial port area.
I think Royal and Carnival sail.

Alicea (30:08):
I saw yeah, those were the two ships that were there
while we were there.

Nathan (30:11):
Yeah.
Um they actually originatecruises out of San Juan from
that other port.
And when Disney hits San Juan asa port of call, the ship pulls
into that terminal area over byOld Town.
Uh, but when they're doingembarkation and disembarkation,
that's from the commercial port.
So uh they're not super far.

(30:33):
San Juan's not that big of atown.
Like you can Uber everywherefairly inexpensively.
So uh just keep that in mind.
Uh I would say I wrote downhere, uh, I would say it's
definitely not as polished asPort Canaveral or Fort
Lauderdale, but it wasn't adedicated.
Right, exactly.
It wasn't horrible though.

(30:53):
Uh it definitely helped be inconcierge, which we were.
One thing that we did know, sowe got there about 11:15.
Uh, there were people when wegot there who were already
there, which is fine.
I expected some you know earlybird rope droppers to to show
up, but there were people in the1245 p.m.
port arrival time queue.

(31:14):
Yep.
Folks, folks, folks, come on.

Alicea (31:18):
Like Disney does say do not show up early.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Nathan (31:23):
I don't, I I don't I don't get it.
I don't get it.

Alicea (31:26):
I understand trying wanting to beat the rush, but
that seemed a little excessive,and some of the small children
did not seem to appreciate it.

Nathan (31:33):
No, no.
Uh also one note about the hitthat port terminal there.
Uh, at least for right now, youare embarking and disembarking
uh onto a Disney ship on the uhdeck one forward gangway, just
as if this was a port of call.
Uh, I saw a bunch of peopleonline confused and wondering

(31:53):
why.
And then we saw the portbuilding and more specifically
the uh the big movable gangwaythat would be what you use to uh
get on the ship on deck three orfour or whatever it is.
Uh that thing is rusted out andis like a complete danger to
anybody who even looks at it.
So uh it's not usable.

(32:14):
Now, there were signs all overthe facility that they're doing
some major refurbishment.
Uh, it's supposed to becompleted in 2026.
Uh, I am checking my watch.
Um, they have a lot of work todo because I don't think they've
even started on that gangway,and that was a huge, huge piece
of uh uh infrastructure thatthey need to replace.

Alicea (32:31):
So 2026 is 365 days long.

Nathan (32:35):
Yeah, I I don't I don't think they could replace that
whole thing in a year.
I'm just saying I would besurprised if this is finished in
2026.
It was really weird having yourfamily name announced uh into
the elevator lobby there on thefirst floor.
It's just like, yeah, yay, yay.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, this is awkward, but youknow, what have's.

Alicea (32:58):
They also did have a little concierge area roped off
in the um in the port area.
Yes, yes.
So there's there's just chairsand they had some munchies and
some drinks there.
Yeah.

Nathan (33:10):
Uh we went to the concierge lunch and Lumiere's
with visits from Shanti from thespa.
Hi, Shanti, if you're listeningto this, uh, and Alice from the
uh concierge lounge.
She's the concierge manager.
Hi, Alice, if you're listeningto this.
Uh Shanti did not have to worktoo hard.
Uh, we were ready to give herour money and signed up for

(33:33):
reservations.
I enjoyed two of the bestmassages I've ever had uh on
this cruise from Miss Shanti.
Uh she was if you ever comeacross Shanti, I think she's
from South Africa, just say yes,just go with the flow.
I did 100-minute massages likethe first day or so, and then

(33:57):
like the last day.
And uh it, you know, I didn'tknow what I wanted, whether a
hot stone massage or a Swedishmassage or this or that.
She's like, Well, I can just doa blend of all of them.
I'm like, Yes, please.
Yeah, and it was so nice.

Alicea (34:13):
And I got a facial and it was glorious.
Yes, yes.
Because I can't do massages.

Nathan (34:20):
I am too toxic.
You are too toxic.
Yes, all of the badness comesout of your muscles, and and you
get another, you get a migraine.
You're toxic.
100%.
I I can't.
I have to now this is gonna getcopyright flagged.

Alicea (34:38):
No, it won't.
That was a parody.

Nathan (34:41):
Oh, got it.
Um let's talk about our room.
Alicia, we were in 8528, whichis what?

Alicea (34:50):
It's the concierge family veranda room.
It's basically a standard roomwith upgraded finishes, plus, of
course, access to the conciergelounge and services and perks.
We were on the starboard side uhforward, kind of between the
forward and the mid-elevators,next to the Roy O.
Disney suite.

(35:11):
Yes.

Nathan (35:11):
And uh we wanted to make friends there and it didn't
really work out.

Alicea (35:15):
That's okay.

Nathan (35:16):
I got to look at their deck.
It's very nice.

Alicea (35:18):
I got a card.

Nathan (35:20):
Oh, that's true.

Alicea (35:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Ganesh was our stateroom host.
He's been with DCL for 14 years.
All of those on the magic.
He is very happy to be on themagic.
He wants to stay on the magic.
He's he very much likes whathe's doing.

Nathan (35:37):
And he was incredible.
Yes, yes, probably one of, ifnot the best stateroom hosts
we've ever had on Disney.
And this is our 17th-ish cruise,plus or minus.
I mean, you have plus two, but Idon't remember if it was my 16th
or 17th, or I don't know.

(35:58):
I just work here.
He was so good.

Alicea (36:00):
Uh he was very personable, yeah.
Um, great with withconversation, just talking with
us about stuff.
Um, sometimes we get some very,very shy hosts.

SPEAKER_02 (36:09):
Yeah.

Alicea (36:10):
Um, and yeah, he was up to chat chatting with us.
It was great and joking aroundwith us too.

Nathan (36:15):
Yeah.
Yes.
He's a Manchester City fan, soyou know, it is what it is.
Uh a lot of people wonder howmuch time you'll spend on a
veranda and is a veranda roomworth it.
And it is a personal thing.
I think it really depends on whyyou're cruising, who you're

(36:37):
cruising with.
Are you the type of people whoare gonna go, go, go and try to
experience everything across aship?
Or are you there to relax?
We knew we were there to relax.
And I spent I spent so much timeon the veranda.
I spent a lot of time.

Alicea (36:56):
I spent um a bunch of time outside of our room.
I was in the concierge lounge alot because the chairs are more
comfortable.
Um, I was also out on deck fourquite a bit on the promenade
lounge in a in the lounge chairout there.

Nathan (37:13):
Promenade deck.
The promenade lounge is doesn'texist anymore.

Alicea (37:16):
Yes, promenade deck.
Um, I mean, that's a hugeveranda, right?
Yes.

Nathan (37:22):
With a running track.

Alicea (37:24):
With a running track, yes.

Nathan (37:25):
That you can actually get all around the ship.
I didn't do that.

Alicea (37:28):
I meant to do that, but I didn't.
We'll have to do that inFebruary.

Nathan (37:30):
We'll have to do that in February.

Alicea (37:31):
Yeah, I was like, it's always it's a good place to just
sit and read.
Yeah.
And occasionally you'll havecharacters walking by too.
It's kind of fun.

Nathan (37:39):
Yeah.
Now, this is our first time,obviously, it uh this is our
first time on the magic in 15years, but uh so this is our
first time in Concierge on theMagic.
Uh these ships, the Magic andthe Wonder, did not have a
concierge room originally.
They had a few one-bedroomsuites and then the the Walt and

(38:00):
Roy Disney two-bedroom suites uhoriginally.
They've since added some uh uhthe family veranda rooms, like
we had two concierge, andthey've closed in and kind of
taken over the second story ofthe Cove Cafe.
That all used to be public spaceand actually some open deck

(38:20):
space as well.
That's all enclosed now and isdedicated to concierge.
That is where the conciergelounge is on the magic and the
wonder.
I I thought they did a reallyfantastic job.
Um, the only complaint I have isis these ships could absolutely
benefit from having the kind ofelevator where you choose which

(38:44):
floor you're going to, and thethe system tells you which
elevator car to get into becausenot every elevator goes all the
way up to deck 11 or deck 10.
The concierge is on 10 on themidship elevator, and half of
those elevators only go up tonine.
Yeah.
And it was so many times I hadto switch elevators on deck

(39:09):
nine.
Um, I just went up the stairs.
Well, with my, yeah, yeah.
That wasn't that wasn'thappening.

Alicea (39:16):
Even the new ships don't have that.

Nathan (39:18):
No, I I it's okay.
It's okay.
I'm okay.
I'm okay.

Alicea (39:23):
Uh-huh.

Nathan (39:24):
I'll be okay.
Okay.
I'll be okay.
I thought they did uh afantastic job with the concierge
lounge here.
Super comfortable.
The only kind of nitpick I havewith the design is the bar
space, and that it's it's verycramped for them, especially
right before uh the the dinnerseatings.

(39:44):
Uh, you end up having a bunch ofbartenders all on top of each
other trying to work from a veryconstrained space, and it it it
got a little difficult for themum and caused some
inefficiencies there.
But you know, they persevered.
Uh and The the whole crew, thebar service team, the concierge
crew was absolutely fantastic.

(40:06):
Uh which they're alwaysfantastic on Disney.
Yeah.
Uh it's just I wish we couldsail concierge more often.
Um unfortunately we have kids.
Unfortunately, um uh I did likethat they have uh snacks all

(40:27):
day.
The concierge lounge is open 7a.m.
to 10 p.m.
They actually have hot breakfastthere uh uh items available uh
first thing in the morning.
They have some cold breakfaststuff there too, but they had a
couple.
But they had a couple warmeritems of uh memory serves.
Uh we never uh partook of thebreakfast stuff.
Uh they have sodas and watersalways available, and then that

(40:48):
bar is open from five to ten.

Alicea (40:51):
Yeah.
Sodas, waters, coffee, and teaare always available.

Nathan (40:55):
And the hot chocolate out of that machine was really
good.

Alicea (40:57):
Yeah, it is.

Nathan (40:58):
Because again, we don't we don't drink.

Alicea (41:00):
Yeah, we don't drink coffee.

Nathan (41:01):
Well, we drink, we just don't drink coffee.

Alicea (41:03):
I said coffee.

Nathan (41:04):
I didn't I didn't hear you.
Anyhow, moving on.
Speaking of consuming things,let's talk about food.

Alicea (41:12):
Food.
We did prima note at Palo, whichmeans first night.

Nathan (41:16):
Which we will keep doing because I love that.

Alicea (41:19):
It's very good.
Yeah, so great.

Nathan (41:21):
Uh yeah, it means that you don't see the show on the
first night.
Oh no.
That's okay.
Wamp whamp.

Alicea (41:28):
Yeah.
And and we try to do the earlierone, which is I think 6 15.
That way we can still get todinner if we need to.
Um and this was in the privateroom for Polo.

Nathan (41:40):
Yes.
It was very fantastic.
And I think pretty much at leastthree quarters of that uh of
that room were from theconcierge.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it was a good introduction toall of the people that we're
gonna be hanging out with forthe for the next six days.
Uh dinner that night was atAnimator's Palette.

(42:03):
It was the original kind ofclassic show.
Uh, it's been a little bitrevamped over the years as
technology has been changed, butit's, you know, the the walls
turn different colors.
And then the the favoritemoment, the highlight of my
cruise, of course, is Sorcerer'sApprentice Mickey shows up at
the end and they play theFantasia theme, and I just do my

(42:26):
little happy dance in in myseat, and it's just the best.

Alicea (42:30):
Yeah, it's always good to see Sorcerer's Apprentice
Mickey.

Nathan (42:33):
Yes.

Alicea (42:34):
I stumbled over that, but you all know what I meant.

Nathan (42:36):
Exactly.
And he was right next to us.
Yes.
That was at the end.
So we had really great seats.
We did.
We did.
Yeah.

Alicea (42:45):
Day two, we had Apollo brunch because you must.
Yes.
Required.
So good.
Mm-hmm.

Nathan (42:52):
So good.
You do not need to uh haveeverything that's on the menu.
Highly recommend skipping kindof the the breakfast, uh uh what
do you call it?
The the sweets, breakfasts, thesweets.
So like pancakes, yeah, yeah,exactly.
The pancakes, the waffles, likesave the room in your system uh
for everything else that'sfantastic from that experience.

(43:15):
But uh oh yeah, just Palo waswas really good on this cruise,
was really good to us.

Alicea (43:23):
Dinner that night was Rapunzel's Royal Table.
This is our very first time everhere.
Right.
Um You mean Parrot Key?
Yes, Parrot Key and thenkaraoke's or maybe the other way
around.
I don't know.

Nathan (43:34):
No, that was parrot key first, then karaokes, and then
Rapunzel's Rapunzel's RoyalTable, yeah.

Alicea (43:40):
And um, this was so fun.
So the first show was uh withthe ruffians, the thugs, yeah,
whatever you want to call it,and they were hilarious.

Nathan (43:52):
Oh, they were so good.
Yes, they were so, so good.
Uh very interactive.

Alicea (43:58):
Hook hand and I I can't remember the other guy's name.

Nathan (44:01):
I can't either.
Shame on me.
I he wears the bucket helmet.
I forgive you.
Okay.
You're welcome.
Uh we were right on the centeraisle, and so we really had got
to see what was going on, anduh, they were so just so fun.
We we had just uh the greatesttime and the food I thought was

(44:21):
really good.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh we got to see Rapunzel and nonotes.
I thought it was fantastic.

Alicea (44:29):
Yeah.
Good food.

Nathan (44:34):
Yeah.
This was supposed to be ourApollo night, and we moved it.
Yes.
Because we thought this wasgonna be a pirate night, and
then it turns out there is nopirate night menu on this
sailing.
Nope.

Alicea (44:44):
Um, so and you needed your escargot.

Nathan (44:47):
I needed my escargot.
So mission accomplished.
Uh no notes.
It was it was fine.
Good.
Everything I wanted.

Alicea (44:55):
We enjoy the food.

Nathan (44:56):
Yep.

Alicea (44:57):
Uh next night was animators again.
It had the animation magic show,which is always fun.
You get to draw a character on aplacemat and they do some magic
with it.

Nathan (45:08):
Yeah.
I cannot draw.
I am a world-classdisappointment to my
professional artist father.
Visual arts are just not mything.
I I just I did not inherit thatgene.
Performing arts, yes.
Uh visual arts, no.

Alicea (45:26):
I made a Mickey head.

Nathan (45:28):
Mine looks like a four-year-old did it.
It's fine.
I'm happy with it.

Alicea (45:33):
And we actually did something we haven't done
before.

Nathan (45:36):
Yes, we had room service.

Alicea (45:38):
Yes.
I don't know if we'll do thatagain.

Nathan (45:42):
No, I was really disappointed with the the
selection for breakfast.
There weren't really a lot ofhot options.
Like I could have gone with somescrambled eggs and some bacon
and stuff, and that that wasn'ta choice that you could make.
Yep.
Um, but they did bring us freshice for our champagne uh uh uh
bottle bucket, and um, you know,mission accomplished.
Yes, it was breakfast, it wasfine.

(46:04):
Yeah.
Uh then that night, uh, that wasour second C Day.
So this is after uh Lookout andthen Castaway and then a C Day.
That was when we had our roomservice.
And then we had Rapunzel's againthat night, and it was the
Lantern Festival, which Ithought was really, really well

(46:26):
done.

Alicea (46:27):
That was cool.
And Flynn was there too.

Nathan (46:29):
Yes.

Alicea (46:30):
And um PSA parents.
Keep a rein on your kiddos.
Oh my gosh.
They do not get to go up on thestage.
No, they do not get to play withthe props on stage.
It is not okay to let them dothat.

Nathan (46:46):
No, they don't get to like hide behind the curtains
and start pulling on them.
Yeah.
Like it is the closest I've everseen somebody who is friends
with a character break.
Yeah.
Because Flynn almost had to gointervene.
Like, it was it was bad.
It was so bad.

Alicea (47:07):
And yeah, and the parents were um over it?
No, they were like encouragingthe behavior almost, which is
you're kids.
You just can't learn.

Nathan (47:19):
No.
There was one evening where themom was definitely over it.
And I'm like, oh, okay, butyou're still encouraged.
And then that yeah, they weretotally encouraging their okay,
we need to move on.
Just anyway.
Uh then our last full day at seawas another sea day as we were
uh cruising.

(47:40):
What?

Alicea (47:41):
Our last full day at sea was another sea day?

Nathan (47:44):
You're welcome.
This is the kind of insights youcome to me uh for.
Uh this was, of course, churroMickey Waffle morning in
cabanas.
So um it was interesting.
We woke up early every day onthis cruise.

Alicea (48:02):
Never do this.
We never do this.

Nathan (48:04):
Did not set an alarm.
No, it just we woke up.
Yeah, and it was usually with Iit was actually kind of gorgeous
because the sun was just comingover the horizon and it was all
like these beautiful hues andglows.
Just like our window, eventhough the curtains were drawn,

(48:25):
was just like glowing justgorgeously.

Alicea (48:27):
Yeah, and it wasn't like a uh really bright one or
anything, it was a nice glow.
Yeah.

Nathan (48:33):
Uh it it was it was nice.
So we ended up rope droppingcabanas, yeah.
And uh had uh nearly first dibson uh Mickey Waffles and uh
churro Mickey Waffles.
Churro Mickey Waffles, excuseme, yes.
Uh no well, I would say nocomplaints.
I have notes.
I don't know why I keep doingthis to myself.

(48:56):
Yeah, but I keep gettingscrambled eggs on Disney Cruise
lines.
This is your own fault.
I don't know.
It's like, oh, of course I wantsome scrambled eggs, and
something in the back of my mindis going, you idiot.

Alicea (49:08):
Like it's okay if you know they're gonna be bad.
It's okay if we do it at one ofthe restaurants, like one of the
sit-down ones.

Nathan (49:16):
Yes, because they actually do them fresh.

Alicea (49:18):
Yes.
But on the buffet, no, don't doit, don't do it, don't do it.

Nathan (49:22):
I um yeah, I I did it.

Alicea (49:25):
And you complained about it.

Nathan (49:27):
I did.

Alicea (49:28):
I did.
I just I'm like, I know exactlywhat I put on my plate and I
will eat it.

Nathan (49:34):
So bad.
Just they're so bad.
So anyhow, the churro mickeywaffles were great.

Alicea (49:40):
Yes, mission accomplished.
I am hearing rumors that some ofthe ships aren't having this
anymore.

Nathan (49:47):
Yeah.
Uh the destiny has not had uhchuromickey waffles on board at
well, at least for theplebeians.
Evidently, it shows up in theconcierge lounge for breakfast
on one morning, but it hasn'tbeen in Marceline Market.

Alicea (50:03):
Yeah.
Very interesting.
I'm interested to see if if thiscontinues on other ships or if
this is just maybe uhintroductory destiny thing that
they're doing.

Nathan (50:14):
Yeah, maybe they weren't ready.

Alicea (50:16):
Yeah.

Nathan (50:17):
So we'll we'll have to these these are the important
things.

Alicea (50:21):
We will keep our fingers crossed.
Yeah, because we are notconcierge on the destiny.
No.

Nathan (50:25):
No.
Okay, no.
I was thinking for a briefmoment, I thought, like, we
should check this.

Alicea (50:32):
No, moving on.
No, no, no, no.
I have looked at prices.
We are not doing concierge onthe destiny.

Nathan (50:38):
Okay, fair enough.

Alicea (50:41):
That evening, we did Palo dinner for our last night
instead of Lumiere's.
Yes, it's so good.

Nathan (50:49):
It was it was fantastic as well.

Alicea (50:51):
Both of us, yeah, both of us ordered um off the a la
carte menu instead of doing theprefix menu.
Uh just because there's a couplethings on there.
I was like, I want that, I wantthat, I want that.
I had the most deliciousasparagus.
Oh, they know how to cookasparagus.
Yes.
And meat.
I had the gnocchi.
Yeah, the gnocchi.

Nathan (51:12):
So good.

Alicea (51:12):
So good.
Um I had a souffle, but I didnot have the chocolate souffle.

Nathan (51:22):
No.

Alicea (51:22):
I had the amaretto souffle.

Nathan (51:26):
With chocolate sauce.

Alicea (51:27):
I asked them to do chocolate sauce and vanilla ice
cream because it comes with acoffee ice cream.
I don't like coffee.

SPEAKER_02 (51:35):
Yeah.

Alicea (51:35):
So I was I asked if I could be very particular with my
dessert, and they readilyagreed.
And it was glorious.
It was so good.

Nathan (51:45):
Let's see.
Other food thoughts, duck food.
Um the chicken tendies.
The chicken tangies are insane.
I I don't they have to be lacedwith crack.

Alicea (51:55):
I it's just they are laced with something addictive.
There's some addictive qualitythat they throw in there.
Oh, so good.
So good.
Yeah.

Nathan (52:03):
Yep.
Yeah, everything was fantastic.
Yeah.

Alicea (52:07):
And I had, let's see what else did I have.
I had pizza.
And then at the duck and dinerfor one of the chef's specials,
they had a grilled steak and eggsandwich.
So I got that.

Nathan (52:20):
That sounds good, was it?

Alicea (52:22):
It was.
It was very good.
Um, I brought it up to thelounge.
I got that, and I got a chickentender and that was good.
I'm trying to remember if I hadpizza.
I think I had pizza a coupletimes too.

Nathan (52:34):
Yeah, I know I had some pizza.
It was good.
It was it was good.

Alicea (52:40):
I'm like, did I have any soft serve?
I did.

Nathan (52:43):
Oh.
I didn't know.
But I think it was just at oneof the I have a reputation to
uphold.
I did not have any soft serve.
I love soft serve ice cream.
I just end up never having it ona Disney cruise because I'm
insane.

Alicea (52:54):
We weren't doing anything.
We were just chilling.
Exactly.
We were happy with our stuff.
Yeah.

Nathan (52:59):
Well, we were largely hanging out at some of the
lounges and more specificallythe Soul Cat.
Yeah.
Because Soul Cat Lounge, this isuh based on the movie Soul,
decorated off of the movie Soul,which is uh uh about jazz
musician, and and um that isright up our alley.
Yeah and it's comfy.
Loved this venue, yeah.

(53:20):
It was super comfortable.
The theming, the decor, um, justjust all the touches from the
movie, just so well done fromImagineering.
Um, and speaking of Soul, weactually caught uh several sets
from Soul Duo were on ourcruise.
They um uh got on board alongwith us uh uh that same day, and

(53:43):
uh they will be there throughwhen we're there in February.
So very much looking forward tosee them.
I didn't realize they were gonnabe there.
I actually follow them onFacebook, and I hadn't seen that
they were gonna be on board.
And I remember the first nightwe were going up the uh midship
elevators past the lobby, and Isaw them in the elevator.

Alicea (54:01):
I was like, oh my gosh, it's Sold Dubo! It's Sold Duvo!

Nathan (54:04):
We gotta like like yeah.

Alicea (54:05):
Explain how you know them, please.

Nathan (54:07):
Uh we we came across them it was on one of the other
cruises we were on.
It was yeah, it was anotherDisney cruise.
I could not tell you which one.
It was before in the beforetimes, before the pandemic.
They were not on The Wonder withus in 2020.
But uh I I had been followingthem since I I ever saw them.

(54:32):
It's it's a it's a duo.
She's from Brazil, if memoryserves, and he's from England, I
believe.
And they're just fantastic uhsingers and guitar players.
She plays saxophone.
Uh, she also plays piano,obviously not at the same time.
Um, and they're just they're sogood, they're just wonderful.

(54:56):
And I follow them on Facebook,and through the pandemic, they
would do, I think it was likemonthly, uh, if not a little bit
more often, uh, concerts, likelive stream concerts uh of an
hour or so and take requests uhuh from their audience uh via
the live stream and stuff.
And uh it was really cool to seethem again.
Uh if if you are on one of theDisney ships and come across

(55:20):
Soul Duo, you will not bedisappointed.
They're absolutely fantastic.

Alicea (55:24):
It was yeah, it was good to listen to them.
Yeah.

Nathan (55:26):
Other venues, keys.
What did you think?

Alicea (55:30):
It was okay.
I kind of I like the CadillacLounge better.

Nathan (55:34):
I do too.

Alicea (55:35):
One of the things that I did on the ship was a
behind-the-scenes tour typething.
I can't remember.
The art of the theme is calledArt of the Theme Show tour.

SPEAKER_02 (55:43):
Yeah.

Alicea (55:44):
And there was something in Keys that really got on my
nerves.
And apparently it gets oneverybody's nerves who is a
musician because the piano hasone black key and then two black
keys and then three black keys.
That is not normal for me.

Nathan (56:03):
That's not how that works.
No.

Alicea (56:05):
I'm like, why did they do this?
I know somebody had to know thisis wrong.

Nathan (56:09):
Yeah.

Alicea (56:10):
Now they do know it's wrong.
They did that for.

Nathan (56:13):
For clarity, this is this is a border up on the up on
the ceiling.
So it is, it goes throughout thewhole space.
It's very prominent.
Yes.
And it's it's triggering.

Alicea (56:22):
Yeah.
And it's actually um, I thoughtit was wallpaper.
It's not.
It's like uh it's like a brasssculpture type thing.

SPEAKER_02 (56:29):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Alicea (56:30):
Uh anyway, the reason it is that is because the Sherman
brothers, their favorite timesignature is 3-4.
So it's one, two, three, one,two, three, one, two, three.

Nathan (56:42):
I like that.
Yep.
That makes it less triggering.
I don't know that I'm still okaywith it, but it's it's less
triggering.
It was intentional.
Yes.

Alicea (56:54):
It'd be nice if there was like a little plaque or
something like in homage of theSherman brothers and my favorite
time signature.

Nathan (57:00):
But you know, no.
Uh otherwise it's justtriggering if you don't.
Anyhow, yeah, it's it's not thesame as Cadillac Lounges on the
Wonder.
It's the same space, it's laidout the same.
It's not as comfortable for us.
It's I like the ceiling's alittle different.

Alicea (57:17):
I don't know.

Nathan (57:18):
Yeah, it's it's yeah, it is.
Uh anyhow, it's another reasonthe wonder is still favorite
ship.
Yeah, yeah.

Alicea (57:25):
Oh, gills, we never really had a chance to hang out
here.
It's the pub.

Nathan (57:29):
Yeah.
Um I wanted a pretzel.
Never really never reallymaterialized to happen, but uh
case.
You hit Cove Cafe a few times.

Alicea (57:38):
I did.
I wanted a chai.
Uh so I I went up there.
The first time I was given a hotchai, even though I said ice
chai, I'm like, eh, whatever,I'll still drink it.
And then second time I got acold chai, ice chai.

Nathan (57:51):
So there you go.
Yeah.
I really missed having that uhelevated adult bar backed by
Polo.
Um obviously there's no Remy oron Shantae, but like so like a
Meridian on the the uh Dream ofthe Fantasy or the Rose Bar uh
on the wish class ships.

(58:12):
I I uh I I missed having that.
There is a bar in Polo.
We actually wanted to go liketry to eat there at one point.
We never we never did.

Alicea (58:23):
Maybe, maybe in February.
I I know our cruise is shorter.
Yeah, we'll we'll see.
We'll see.
It would have been like alunchtime thing, I think.

Nathan (58:30):
Yeah, yeah.

Alicea (58:31):
Fathoms.
We went the first night, butnever went back.

Nathan (58:37):
Yeah.
We just I don't we just didn'thappen.
We ended up going to Soulcat andlistening to music or doing
something else, and it was fun.

Alicea (58:48):
I can't even remember what show we saw, but it was an
adult.
I don't know, one of the adultum game show things, and it was
fun.
We just yeah, we didn't go back.

Nathan (58:56):
We just it's fine.

Alicea (58:58):
And we weren't there with kids, so we didn't do
anything at D Lounge.

Nathan (59:00):
Yeah.
It I wrote down it exists,shrug.
Shrug.
Yeah.
Um I will say, you know, andmaybe one of the reasons we we
didn't kind of prioritize goingback to Fathoms or some of these
other places, I it felt likethey had a very green bar and
service crew.

Alicea (59:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nathan (59:18):
And uh there was there was a few folks who knew what
they were doing and wereefficient.
And then I'd say most of thebartenders and those service
folks were just really slow,like really painfully slow.
And and that was our experienceat most places on the ship.

(59:39):
It was our experience at mostplaces on on Lookout and at
Castaway, like fantastic people.
Yeah.
Just taking a long, long time toget stuff.
And then weird decisions like,oh, I'll I'll go get like and
help restock a bar or go getsome stuff, and then We were at

(01:00:00):
Serenity Bay on Castaway, uh,and they had one bartender there
with a huge line for like 20 or30 minutes.
It was taking people 10 or 15minutes just to order a beer.
Yeah.
Like and we we spent the whole,I know I'm skipping ahead a
little bit, but we spent thatwhole day out on that deck at I
forget the name of the bar inSerenity uh on Castaway.

(01:00:24):
Um it's like the air castawayair bar or something like that,
because it's it's airportthemed.
It's yeah right off that um theairstrip.
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah.
And I never saw a server on thedeck.
I never saw a server walk thebeach.
It never happened.
And that always has happened, nomatter the ship.

(01:00:47):
Like it's not like when we'rethere on the wonder, that always
happens.
And the bigger ships, you know,they have more staff, so I guess
it's easier for them to do it.
But it was it was a noticeable,it was actually the one thing I
think we we had a negativecomment on on our survey at the
end of the cruise, was it justfelt like a general miss of

(01:01:09):
service level from the the bar,um the bar staff and the and the
servers.
So yeah, I don't want to prolongsome.
I I have a lot of thoughts onand theories on why, but uh
we'll we'll carry those outelsewhere and and I think I've
said them on here before.

Alicea (01:01:23):
So for entertainment, yes, we saw the tangled show and
I loved it.
I thought it was great.

Nathan (01:01:30):
Yes.

Alicea (01:01:31):
I really liked Tangled.

Nathan (01:01:32):
I it was it was it is not at the top of my list of
Disney shows.

Alicea (01:01:39):
I thought it was good though.
I I missed having Pascal though.
There's no Pascal in that one,and I love Pascal.

Nathan (01:01:45):
Yeah.
Uh it it does, you know.
I I think some of those othershows on the newer ships are uh
just a little bit better becausethey have a little bit more
technology, they can do somemore stuff with the stage and
stuff like that.
It it but it was it was great.
I uh the performers werefantastic.
Uh the show's great.
Yeah, loved it.

Alicea (01:02:05):
Yeah.
And we saw twice charmed thereas well.
Yes.

Nathan (01:02:09):
That was cute.
It was.
That's a twist on the Cinderellastory.

Alicea (01:02:14):
Yes.

Nathan (01:02:14):
Yeah.
And yeah, they were they weregood.
Enjoyed them.

Alicea (01:02:19):
Yeah.
The other set that was there,um, they were showing Tron
Aries, which we were notinterested in.
Nope.
Um, there was, I think, acomedian and a ventriloquist,
and we didn't do either ofthose.
Nope.

Nathan (01:02:30):
Again, we were focused on relaxing and chillaxing, and
just those weren't calling ourname.

Alicea (01:02:38):
Nope.
Yeah.
Let's talk about lookout.

Nathan (01:02:41):
Yeah, this was our first time to look out.
And uh look, excuse me, lookoutkey at Lighthouse Point.

Alicea (01:02:46):
Yes, this is Disney's newest destination.
Yes.
Private destination, whateveryou want to call it.
Yeah.

Nathan (01:02:53):
Lookout is really focused on the Bahamian culture
and nature.
And so, as part of that, theydid not dredge out a spot to get
the ship uh close to shore witha pier.
So there is a long causeway tolock uh walk down.
Now, long isn't that long.
Um, we are two very slow people.
I I have a uh literally,actually, as you are uh hearing

(01:03:18):
this, if you hear it on the daythat it drops, uh uh two days
ago I had my knee replacedagain.
Uh anyhow, um, so I wasn'twalking very fast.
I still made it from the thestepping off the gangway onto
the pier uh to the you know thethe end of that pier was 12

(01:03:39):
minutes of of slow peoplewalking.
So I can definitely see how thiswould be uh an issue if it was
hotter in the summer.
Yeah.
Um, they definitely have anopportunity to you know string
some some shade umbrellas orsomething like that from some of
those light stanchions or addsome things um there.
I think they could add somesignage that talks about like

(01:04:02):
the nature and what people areseeing on the water, like give
some stuff, but um it's not thatbad.

Alicea (01:04:09):
No, it's well, yeah.
For us it wasn't that bad.
Um, we also were not totingsmall screaming children.
Very true.
They do have wagons that you canuse for their for your kids.
Um, and if you do requireadditional assistance to get
down there, you can request thatahead of time too.

Nathan (01:04:32):
Yep.
Uh it was actually, I think youwent to a may have been the D
lounge.

Alicea (01:04:39):
Yeah.

Nathan (01:04:39):
It was there, they announced it that morning, like,
hey, if you need assistance on acart, um, you know, early in the
morning, I think it was for thefirst two hours or something
like that.
It was go to a location, yeah,and they would, you know, batch
people up and and get you getyou down uh onto the island with
a cart.
So which kudos to them, whichabsolutely fantastic.

Alicea (01:05:00):
And the day that we were there was the very first day
that they had Christmasdecorations and music up.

Nathan (01:05:06):
Yes, which is kind of cool.
Yeah, it I thought it lookedfantastic.
It sounded great.
Alicia made a playlist onSpotify of of all the island
songs.
It's about an hour and 40minutes long.
So if you need a Christmas inthe Caribbean uh kind of vibe
going on, uh you know, just justcheck it out on Spotify.
It's there.
Uh I will note a lot of peoplewere very concerned about how

(01:05:32):
new and and like the vegetationhadn't grown in when when
Lookout first opened, whichyeah, it had just opened.
The landscaping hadn't grown inyet.
Uh it's been a little over ayear, I think, since then.
Uh but it it looks like it'sbeen there forever at this
point.

Alicea (01:05:51):
Like it's fleshed out quite nicely, and I'm sure it's
gonna grow even more.

Nathan (01:05:54):
Yeah, it looks fantastic.
Um, I will say they have a uhthey they have some
opportunities for improvedwayfinding on those boardwalk
areas.
Uh we got a little bit confusedon exactly how to get over to
Serenity Bay.
It could have used a a littlebit more um uh obvious signage.

(01:06:15):
Uh, but uh it was it wasfantastic.
Really, really loved the spotand the the decor and just the
whole vibe of everything was wasbeautiful.
That beach.
Oh my gosh.
It's the softest sand.
Softest sand.

Alicea (01:06:30):
It's like power, it's like stepping in powdered sugar.
It is so soft, it's so pretty.
It's like this beautiful pinkcolor.
Yeah.
And like a light, light, lightpink.
And the water was phenomenal.
It was a little chilly.

Nathan (01:06:48):
It was 79 degrees, according to my Apple Watch.

Alicea (01:06:50):
A little chilly.
Uh, but it was great once yougot it.
And you could see everything.
It's like the clearest waterwe've ever had.

Nathan (01:06:58):
Yeah, there's probably 15 plus feet of visibility in
the water.
It was kind of crazy.
It was great.
Yeah.
Really, really loved beingthere.
We scored a table under the uhunder the roof and an umbrella
uh on the side of the bar thereat Castaway.

Alicea (01:07:14):
Not Castaway, at Serenity Bay.

Nathan (01:07:16):
Sorry, Serenity Bay and Lookout Key.
Lookout, yes.
At Lighthouse Point.
All the names.

Alicea (01:07:23):
All the names.

Nathan (01:07:24):
Yes.
Sorry about that.

Alicea (01:07:25):
One thing that was quite interesting is there were bees
everywhere.
Not flies.
Not flies.

Nathan (01:07:32):
When there was you've probably heard that there was
quite a hubbub about flies andfood at Lookout when it first
opened.
I I saw no flies.

Alicea (01:07:43):
No, but there was a lot of bees at the bar areas, and
the cast members that we talkedto said that this was new.

Nathan (01:07:50):
Yeah.

Alicea (01:07:50):
This this hadn't happened before.

Nathan (01:07:52):
So, like uh some sort of season was going on and um they
were out.
Now, they were incrediblydocile.
Um, they were just super chill,they weren't going after people.
They were I could see I'm sure alot of people were freaking out,
but it was it was just a thing.

(01:08:13):
They were going after anythingthat was sweet.

Alicea (01:08:16):
They were drunk on sugar and alcohol.
Yes.
There was a couple.

Nathan (01:08:20):
I think one fell into your pina colada.

Alicea (01:08:23):
And I fished him out, and um, he was kind of I don't
know.
You could tell he was feelingthe drink.

Nathan (01:08:34):
Lunch was really good there.
It was um loved all the food,and then uh towards the end of
the day, we removed ourselvesfrom uh Serenity Bay and headed
over, I think, towards the uhGoombay Cultural Center.
Yes, that's the that's the wordthat was trying to come out of
my face.
And we watched the uh theafternoon, I think it's a 2 p.m.

(01:08:56):
or something like that, junkanoocelebration.
Yeah, lots of uh uh dancing andand music and a little band and
uh marching band and stuff likethat.
It was it was fun.
I thought it was it was great toto get that part of the uh
bohemian culture that you reallydon't get at castaway because
castaway is a completelydifferent theme.

Alicea (01:09:17):
Yeah, different theme, different vibe.
Yep.
Lookout was great.
Yeah, it's newer, obviously.
There's more there's uh newerstuff to do for the kids.
There's a whole splash pad areafor the kids.
Yeah, there's a lot more coverat Lookout than there is at
Castaway.

Nathan (01:09:36):
Yeah.
The Serenity Bay Beach is kindof just kind of right next to
the family beach, but it didn'tseem like an issue.
No, there wasn't a lot, thereweren't kids running down, it
wasn't super loud or obnoxiousor anything, and so it was it
was really, really quite nice.
So yeah, I I'm excited abouthitting lookout on on additional

(01:09:59):
cruises.
Uh it seems like a fantasticspot.
Um we also got to go toCastaway.
It was a short day at Castaway,though.
Uh we had an all aboard at 2 30p.m.

Alicea (01:10:08):
We took our time getting there too.

Nathan (01:10:10):
Yeah, we didn't get off the ship until about a quarter
to 10.

Alicea (01:10:12):
Yeah.

Nathan (01:10:13):
But we still got a chance to hang out with uh all
of our uh our uh Disney friendsand get a bunch of pictures
there on the island and thenmade our way over to Serenity
Bay at Castaway.
And I've talked a little bitabout that uh before, so I won't
rehash all of that.
Uh I think we were two, threeweeks uh before they opened up

(01:10:37):
the new Serenity Bay eaterythere on Castaway and the new
cabanas.
And all of the new cabanas,yeah.
So they looked really great as Iwas peeking over the fence and
taking some pictures from thebeach and and things like that,
but we didn't get to enjoy thosethings.
So I'm excited to uh to see whatthat's all about on a future

(01:10:57):
cruise.
And I will say it looks likethey've replaced the um Serenity
Bay barbecue location uh for uhadults with that that hangar 98
barbecue location.
I had thought was going to bededicated only for the cabanas.
I could be wrong here, but I'mpretty sure I saw other folks

(01:11:20):
who did not have a cabana.
That's where they were gettinglunch there at Serenity Bay.
So kind of kind of cool.

Alicea (01:11:26):
Yeah.
And we also revisited the headsup bar at Pelican Point.
Um, Nathan wanted to have goodmemories there.

Nathan (01:11:33):
I needed to like overcome some prior
happenstance.
Um let's just say decisions weremade that I may have later
regretted.
And not this time.
Not this time.
I was successful.
Speaking of successful, uh, wewe got another selfie with the
security team as we made our wayback towards the ship.

(01:11:56):
Slowly, slowly.
Hey, I was being polite.
I hung back.
I was being everybody'sphotographer who was offering or
wanting to get uh a couplesnapshots with the boat, and uh
I I wasn't you know prolonginganything for too egregiously,
but um, you know, we did get aselfie with the with the

(01:12:16):
security team uh coming behindus on a golf cart.
And then we got oh, it wasgreat.
They this was the last time fora long time.
I think there is another thenext scheduled stop of the magic
back to lookout is gonna be likelate 2026 or castaway.

(01:12:38):
Excuse me, castaway, yeah.
Uh, because it's gonna be out ofGalveston and then West Coast uh
for the most of next year.
So it's not gonna hit Castawayvery much anymore.

Alicea (01:12:48):
I think it's 2027, February, January or February
2027.
That's the next time it's gonnabe over there.

Nathan (01:12:54):
And so there was a bunch of officers who were on shore,
and um we may have gotten apicture with I would say
probably a dozen senior shipofficers with um the the
castaway uh Christmas treethere.

Alicea (01:13:12):
Um it never hurts to ask.
I was like can we can we get apicture with all of you?
And they're like, yeah.
So we did that.
It was awesome.

Nathan (01:13:20):
Yeah, it was so cool.
It was so cool.
And then mission accomplished,Alicia was guest number two
remaining on castaway.
I was guest number one, I wasthe last guest on Castaway.
I did it.

Alicea (01:13:36):
You did it now.
Both of us have done it.

Nathan (01:13:37):
Yeah, winning.

Alicea (01:13:41):
And that was that was our last day.
No, we had a C Day after that,didn't we?

Nathan (01:13:45):
We had two C Days after that.

Alicea (01:13:46):
Yeah, two C days after that.

Nathan (01:13:47):
But we had one C Day and then Lookout and then Castaway
and then two C Days.

Alicea (01:13:51):
That's right.
I prefer that.

Nathan (01:13:53):
Yes, that was great.
That was amazing.
Um, we ended off in Galveston,which is a city on the coast in
Texas.
Yep.

Alicea (01:14:04):
Um We were there.
How how many days were they wethere after?
Two?

Nathan (01:14:11):
We spent two nights.
So like sorry, yeah.
Yeah, we basically had the wholeday when we first got there.
Yeah, which I don't know how,but the the local movie theater
was running Wicked.
Like it supposedly didn't openuntil the next day, but we saw
Wicked for Good on Thursdaynight.
It was for good.

Alicea (01:14:29):
It was for good, yes.

Nathan (01:14:30):
It was amazing.
Um, and then yeah, we just hungout in uh a hotel.
We got a really nice hotel roomat the Tremont House, and uh
yeah, it was super relaxing,just did a lot of reading and um
went down to the I don't knowwhat it's called in like the old
town area of Galveston.

Alicea (01:14:50):
We had a nice lunch down there and yeah.

Nathan (01:14:54):
I was hoping that Galveston would be an
interesting a more interestingplace than I found it.

Alicea (01:14:58):
Yeah, it was also not tourist season, so it was very
very barren.

Nathan (01:15:03):
And evidently we missed bike week by like uh oh uh I
think 10 or 14 days or somethinglike that.
And they would have had like40,000 people and motorcycles
and stuff.
And uh I'm glad we missed that.
Yeah.
So then we flew home via Houstonand Detroit and Detroit airport.
Wow.

(01:15:23):
Skyrocketing to the top of mylist of favorite airports.
This is a fantastic location tospend a few hours waiting for
your connection.

Alicea (01:15:30):
So we we are gonna hit Galveston again in our on our
February cruise because it'sgoing out of Galveston.
Although I honestly was was notvery taken with with that port
with Galveston at all.
No.
I don't know that I wouldactively search for cruises

(01:15:50):
going out of there.

Nathan (01:15:52):
Well, Sterling needed to get on the magic.
It's the one ship he hasn't beenon, and this lined up with our
midwinter break.
So it is what we're gonna dothis time, but I'm with you.

Alicea (01:16:03):
It's just not easy to get to not from not from
Seattle.
Not from Seattle, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's the that's the kicker.

Nathan (01:16:10):
Yep, yep.
It was a fantastic trip.

Alicea (01:16:13):
It was a fantastic trip.

Nathan (01:16:14):
Yeah.
Uh would would honestly would dothis itinerary again.
Yeah.
I wouldn't spend an extra day inGalveston, but I would do this
itinerary again for sure.
Actually, I have a quickquestion for you.
What's your favorite Lookout orCastaway?

Alicea (01:16:32):
Um I wish I could blend the two together.

Nathan (01:16:35):
Yeah.

Alicea (01:16:35):
I really do.

Nathan (01:16:36):
Yeah.

Alicea (01:16:37):
Um, if I had to pick one over the other, it would be
Lookout because of my fair skinand there is shade at Lookout,
and the sand is just gorgeous.
Yeah.
I like the theming of Castawaymuch better, and everything's a
little closer in Castaway too.

Nathan (01:16:56):
Mm-hmm.
Cosigned.
Yep.
They're both absolutelyfantastic.
I think that's about it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:17:05):
Yeah.

Nathan (01:17:05):
Big thanks to my mom, uh, who uh who herded cats, and
those cats are named Sterlingand David, i.e., our son and my
dad.
So thank you to my mom fortaking care of the home front
while we had a relaxationcelebration, uh, celebrating

(01:17:27):
Alicia's uh recovery from uh allthat was with open heart surgery
and stuff.
Uh she's back to work, and herbody is trying to remember how
much energy that takes and hasbeen crashing in the evenings.
Um, but uh uh we're doing doingreally well.
Yeah.
Um, as I alluded to earlier.

(01:17:47):
I am right now recuperating frommy eighth major knee surgery on
my left knee, uh, upgrading froma partial replacement to a full.
Uh evidently you're supposed tohave cartilage in your knee.
Who knew?

Alicea (01:17:59):
So I knew, I knew that.

Nathan (01:18:03):
Yeah, so uh I I've done this recovery before, and um,
you know, it was a 90-day uhafter surgery, five castaway
five key.
5k key.
Uh-huh.

Alicea (01:18:15):
Castaway key 5k.

Nathan (01:18:17):
That one.
Uh I I walked it, I did not runit.
Unfortunately, the timingdoesn't work out for 90 days
after.
Uh, but uh like 60 some odd daysafter we'll be back on the
magic.
So we'll see.
I don't think I'm gonna be doinglaughs around the ship, but
we'll see how it goes.

(01:18:38):
I'll be hobbling around, it'llbe fine.

Alicea (01:18:40):
And with that note, remember we are not affiliated
with Disney or theirsubsidiaries.
These are personal opinions andsuggestions based on our own
experiences.
We recommend working with atravel agent or contacting
Disney directly to plan yourperfect vacation.

Nathan (01:18:57):
If you have questions or suggestions, or would like to be
interviewed on our show to shareyour Disney experiences, please
send us an email to podcast atourmousecapades.com.

Alicea (01:19:08):
You can follow us on socials.
We are at OurMousCapades.
You can find us on Instagram,Facebook, threads, and YouTube.

Nathan (01:19:15):
Please do give us a rating and a review in your
podcast app.
That really helps people findus.

Alicea (01:19:21):
And of course, don't hesitate to share us with your
friends and fellow Disney loversof all ages.

Nathan (01:19:27):
Thanks for listening.
We'll be in your ears next week.
Thank you for flying Star Tours.
Bye bye.