Panama Canal: Day 1 – Departure Day

Thursday night we jetted out from Seattle (after a 60 minute delay to fix a bad light on the coffee maker or something) and winged it on one of the only two direct flights from SEA to MCO. We both wanted to get to Florida early, because finding alternate flights at the last minute from Seattle is both difficult and wicked expensive. So we arrived in Orlando early Friday Morning and made the long trek to the airport Hyatt, where we both went to work remotely. Luckily, the view wasn’t about to distract either of us. While the view of a runway may not be everybody’s choice of perfect, the walk from the security exit of the terminal to the hotel is all of about 75 feet, and we were able to check into our room and then walk down to baggage claim and still get there a few minutes before our luggage came out. The free wifi is nice too.

This morning we got up early-ish and marched down to get in line for the ship. The amount of baggage in the halls of the Hotel was impressive, and so was the line when we got to the lobby. The first bus full of people (the Capt. Mickey bus) left just as we got into line, and the second bus (Pluto) filled just before we got to the front of the line. That put us as the first people on the third (Goofy) bus.

As we left on the bus I sent a simple text message to several of the rest of our party that were already on their way toward the port in a town car, simply saying “The bus is rolling”. This started a text-storm the likes of which has never been seen outside of the popular girl’s lunch table at the middle school of your choice. I was not involved, but Beci was getting what seemed like several texts per mile, and sending as good as she got. A few thousand messages later, we rolled into the port, about 5 minutes behind Deb’s group in the town car. Beci had managed to get us into the first row of seats on the bus, so we were first off, and right into the right-hand security line, which was surprisingly short. As we neared the front of the line I spotted our other group who had been ahead of us on the road swamped near the back of the left-hand line. So Karma had balanced out our line experience for the day. By the time the other group had made it through the security line, we had finished our check-in.

Boarding was the normal smooth Disney process, and shortly after noon we were were starting to board. This was my first experience with the (relatively) new numbered boarding card method, and while some of us went right at the start, most of the group were in the 11th and 12th sets. Those of us that got on early went right to Parrot Cay for lunch, claimed our table, and started the feeding frenzy.

After lunch we predictably started to run out of steam, so the night was quite and short. We did the sail away party, had a nice dinner at Lumier’s, and then went to bed. I did get some nice clean cabin pictures and a look at the swag they gave to Castaway Club members for this special sailing.

More tomorrow.