Fjords and Kilts and Hot Springs, Day 12 -- At sea

Day 12 -- At Sea Partly Sunny, 65º

Since this was our last day on board, I decided to be lazy and I slept in a little, since we'd have to get up early to disembark the next day. I had my usual breakfast in Cabanas, and I was generally very pleased with the food quality in Cabanas over the course of this cruise. As a general comparison, it was better than the buffet food that I've had on Royal Caribbean, but not as good as the buffet food that we had on the Grand Princess during our Hawaii cruise.

It was a very quiet morning for me. I decided not to do any of the ship's activities. I just wanted to enjoy the Magic on my last day on board. Sailing down the east coast of England, there was still some fairly heavy motion of the ship. Thankfully, it wasn't bothering me. It was almost warm enough to sit up on the deck, and there were people in the pools and even riding the AquaDunk. It was my last chance to ride the AquaDunk, but I decided to pass. For those of you who might not be familiar with it, the AquaDunk is a waterslide with a very steep drop and then a portion that puts you out over the edge of the ship so that you're over the ocean.

Kathryn and Molly attended a Q-and-A session with the Walt Disney Theater cast in O'Gills. There were four cast members on the panel, and they took lots of questions from the audience. Most of the questions were pretty typical, asking about the cast members' favorite shows, the length of their contracts with DCL, etc. They talked a (very) little bit about the new Rapunzel/Tangled show that will be coming to the Magic in November. One thing that they would not talk about at all was whether they worked as characters around the ship.

I wandered around the ship for most of the morning, taking pictures. When lunchtime rolled around, I wasn't all that hungry, so I grabbed some pizza at Pinocchio's. They had a BBQ chicken pizza with olives, but I don't like olives, so they made one for me without the olives. The funny thing was that he asked me how many slices I wanted before he made the pizza. Then he made it and just left the olives off the portion of the pizza that he would be cutting up for me.

After lunch, the girls went back to O'Gills for a Q-and-A session with Michelle Mallardi, who had performed in the Walt Disney Theater the night before. I went to another showing of Inside Out. It had originally been scheduled in the Buena Vista Theater, but I think they realized that it was going to be packed, so they moved it the Walt Disney Theater. I still enjoyed it on a second viewing!

After the movie, I went back to the room and. . . started packing. :bawling:

Our last dinner was in Lumiere's. For appetizers, I had the goulash soup, which was very good. I liked it a lot. Molly had the Ahi appetizer, which was excellent. And Kathryn had a potato and goat cheese stack, which she said was also excellent. For my entree, I had the veal schnitzel, which I liked very much, but was just way too big. (It seemed to me that the portion sizes were very random on this cruise. Some meals, I felt that I had just enough food; but other times, my portion was double what I could eat. I never knew what to expect.) Kathryn's entree was the Tandoori Lamb Two Ways. It was a chop and a tenderloin. We've discovered that if you don't say anything, the lamb is served medium well done. So Kathryn asked for it to be not as well done, and it came out about medium rare. And Molly had the Beef Wellington, which she liked very much.

After dinner, I decided to watch a little bit of Tomorrowland in the Buena Vista Theater. But I left early to get to the main show in the Walt Disney Theater. As it turned out, I ended up being a little bit late for Disney Dreams. The theater was packed by the time I got there and I ended up standing in the back. I missed about the first 15 minutes, but I'm so glad that I didn't just miss it completely because they made some changes in the show just for our sailing. You might be sick of Frozen by now, but they inserted a segment with the Frozen characters: Olaf sang "In Summer", and Elsa sang "Let It Go" -- and she was amazing. Additionally, there were new lighting effects throughout the theater as she sang. The Alladin segment and Lion King segment were also different. The Circle of Life added projections of animals in the plains to the walls on each side of the stage. It was a really cool effect.

For me, Dreams is heavily dependent on the quality of the two leads -- Anne Marie and Peter Pan. If Anne Marie tries too hard to sound like a little girl, it's hard to listen to her for the whole show. But in this performance, both leads were terrific and the overall show was great.

After the show, we had to finish packing and get the suitcases into the hallway by 10:30. Then we headed to Fathoms for the Crew Farewell, which always includes the "If I were not upon the Sea" skit. In the past, they've done some audience participation, some jokes and then they closed with "If I were not upon the Sea". But this time, the opened with the skit and then had a DJ play music for those who wanted to stay and dance.

If I were not upon the sea, a taxi driver, me: