Panama Canal: Day 2 – Castaway Cay

Before I kick off today’s post, I wanted to share a strange picture I took yesterday during the life boat drill…

Today was fantastic weather, if perhaps a bit humid (it’s the ocean, there’s lots of water, what was I to expect…). Beci and I slept in a bit, and then at about 10 decided to head out to the adult beach at Serenity Bay for a swim and a bit of a layout. The Island is looking great right now. The trees and smaller plant life have all fully recovered from the two hurricanes that have come thru in the past 10 years, and the little improvements they have made all add up to an even better day on the Cay.

The most interesting thing about or day as Castaways this trip was the demographics of the ship. We’re still in the school year, this is a very long cruise, and I think that parents are just not willing to take their kids out of school for two weeks to go on a cruise. So almost everybody is a member of the Castaway Club, and the ratio of adult to kids favors the adults more than on any cruise on which I’ve been. And they were all out on the beach at Serenity bay. Just about every lounge all the way out to the end of the beach was full, at 10:00 in the morning. Luckily Beci remembered that the Family beach hadn’t looked all that full, so we headed there to see what was up.

Empty. We walked onto the Family beach and beci asked me where I wanted to sit, and I told her “Under an umbrella, in the front row, not a pink umbrella.” No problem. We had a choice of about 6 umbrellas. perhaps one in 15 lounges was occupied. The Teen beach was deserted. So we had a pleasant afternoon on the beach and in the water. I didn’t bring the camera along, but you all know what Castaway Cay looks like.

Later in the day Beci turned in the new pin purchase form. This form is Disney’s way of saying, you all have a chance to get all of the pins, and you can all have one of each of the port pins. Please don’t sleep on the floor waiting for the pin sales to open. The form is a bit confusing still, but the idea is sound and there were plenty of staff available to help figure out the finer points of the form.

Once the pins were done we decided to go to the fitness center to work off our lunch on the island. This was (shockingly) the first time I’ve been in the fitness center in my 12 or 16 Disney cruises. If you’ve never been up there, I think one of the best views on the ship is found while standing (walking) on the treadmills in the fitness center. We both did a couple of miles on the treadmill, and then beci did some weights while I did about 5 more miles on the Cycle. I’ll be going back every day, and every cruise, because frankly, an hour in the fitness center is more fun than the hour I normally take napping, and I feel better after I get of the stationary bike than after the nap.

Dinner tonight was at Animator’s Palette, and just as somebody at the table commented about 10 years of exactly the same show they threw us a slight curve. When the restaurant staff came out of the kitchen for their nightly march around the room they were lead by everybody’s favorite mouse. It’s amazing what a little Mickey can do for an old show…