2015 Disney Cruise Day 5 - The End

When we last left our Disney Cruise trip report, we were settling in for our final night of sleep. Which means this is the end. Sniff.

Friday, June 5, 2015

We woke up early, but not by choice. Maybe waking up like that on the last morning is harder because of the late nights you have had over the last few days. Or maybe it is harder because of all of the food you have eaten over the last few days. Or maybe it is harder just because you don’t want to give up all of the fun you have had over the last few days. I’m going with that last reason, because it is probably the most accurate one.

Because we had put our luggage outside of our room the night before, we didn’t have much to pack up, besides the few things that we had left, which mainly included all of the souvenirs and such that we had purchased on the ship and in Nassau. But most of those could be consolidated into a couple of big bags. We actually didn’t go overboard, so to speak, with all of our purchases this time, which was good. Because going overboard on your spending is sometimes almost as bad as going overboard on the ship. But in a different way.

Hello, Terminal Building! Not as nice to see you now as it was when we were starting our cruise.

The Riedels were up and packing, too. We didn’t spend any much time out on our verandahs, because we just would have had a view of the terminal building, and that isn’t that exciting to see when you are arriving. So except for a few quick photos, we just stayed in our rooms, checking a few times to make sure we had everything that we needed to take with us.

One more look at one of the deck chairs on our verandah, since we couldn’t fit it in our suitcase to take home with us. And by “it” I mean the whole verandah.

Once we all had everything, we made our way out of our rooms, seeing our room host Dennis one last time on our way out. We then went down to the Enchanted Garden restaurant for our breakfast, since breakfast on the last morning is always at the same place as your dinner the night before. Unless of course you choose to skip breakfast. But only crazy people and people with really early flights do that, right? And since we aren’t crazy, and since we had our own cars, we didn’t fall into either of those categories. So off to breakfast we went.

Evidently, the people at the seating before us had taken a good bit of time for their breakfast, so our table wasn’t quite clean yet when we got there. But we weren’t in a huge hurry, so that was fine with us. Constantin and Potchara quickly got things ready for us, and we sat down to a delicious a la carte breakfast. Not being a big breakfast eater, I didn’t have all that much, just a donut and some fruit, along with a glass of orange juice.

Once we had finished eating, we said our goodbyes to Constantin and Potchara, thanking them for their excellent service during the week. We even got a group photo with our servers, and then I got a photo with Potchara, since we had the Thailand connection. Not much of a connection, but still a connection, since he is from there and I had been there recently.

All of us with Potchara on the left and Constantin on the right. Two great guys!

Two Thailand guys. One of us was from there, and the other of us had just come from there.

We then made our way back up to the Atrium Lobby for one last walk through the ship and out to the terminal building. It had been a great sail on the Disney Dream, and we were already hoping to be back sometime in the not too distant future.

Getting through customs and all wasn’t too much of a problem. We did think we were missing a bag for a few moments, but we eventually found it by looking underneath the table that most of the bags were sitting on. So that was a big relief. Not sure what the procedure would be if there were a lost bag, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have been fun. Once we had all of our bags, the line moved pretty quickly, and then we were officially back in the United States. Yay.

Our plan was to drive to Walt Disney World and spend the day at Typhoon Lagoon. That had actually been our plan after our last cruise two years earlier, but a tropical storm and all of its associated rain had changed our minds back then. So we were hopeful for this time.

But then when we got to our cars, the Riedels’ car wouldn’t start. We looked at everything, and I hoped it wasn’t something in the keyless ignition system, because who knows what you might have to do for that. And of course neither of us had jumper cables in our cars. We usually have some in our own car, but I hadn’t grabbed that bag for our rental car. Laura went to find a security guard, who said he would come help us as soon as he could get away from crosswalk duty. Some other kind folks stopped as well while we were waiting, but they didn’t have any jumper cables, either. Fortunately, the security guy did have some in his truck. And even more fortunately, the Riedels’ car started right up when connected to his battery. So it sounded like one of the Riedels’ souvenirs from our trip was going to be a new battery for our car.

The security guard told us where there was an AutoZone and a couple of other car places in town, so the Riedels chose AutoZone to help support our Memphis-based businesses. We drove there, and one of the staff even installed the new battery for them, and then we were back in business. But we had also used up enough time that we decided to skip Typhoon Lagoon once again, because it wouldn’t quite be worth it to be there for just part of the day when we were paying for a full day.

So we spent the rest of the day visiting outlet stores, checking into our condo, and going to get something to eat for dinner. It was a nice day overall, and a bit relaxing, but very different from the days that we had just had.

The next morning, the Riedels started for home, while us Burnses stayed around for a few more days in Florida before heading home ourselves.

It had been a great vacation. Spending time with your family is always fun. Spending time with friends who are like family is also always fun. And spending that time on a Disney Cruise is even better!

And that’s all there is for our cruise report! If you have read the whole thing, thanks! And if you haven’t, you can find a list of all of the parts at the 2015 Disney Cruise page.