Life under the Lintel: Castaway Cay

First stop on our cruise was Disney’s private island in the Bahamas, Castaway Cay (pronounced “key”). Which means that although when we sailed away from Florida it was rainy, when we woke up and opened the curtains next morning we were in the aquamarine, sunny Bahamas!

We didn’t waste time getting breakfast and got off the ship early.

It was the first time we could actually get a good look at the whole ship.

We could’ve done the long walk to the beach, but we took a tram that looked more fun.

After much deliberation we settled in some beach chairs in between the kids’ water slide area and the snorkeling lagoon. I stuck my toes in and very quickly went back for my wetsuit, which I did indeed receive for Christmas. What a great Christmas present. It made the difference between playing in the water and not playing in the water; between just dipping my face in near the shore and snorkeling for almost an hour to my heart’s content. I sang the praises of my wetsuit so much throughout the week that my family was thoroughly sick of hearing about it, but I was so incredibly glad I had it.

I swam out to the water slides with Caleb and Liz and promptly got half the Caribbean Sea up my nose when I went down a slide that was faster than I expected. After playing there for a while, we checked out a second water playground where the kids did various forms of rope monkey bars. Fortunately there was a sign that you had to be 14 years old or younger to do them, so I was unable to display my skillz.

Meanwhile Jason and Jeddy had already checked out the snorkel lagoon and met a sea turtle and Barry the Barracuda, who has apparently been in there for the past twenty years and presumably hasn’t eaten any Disney vacationers yet.

After monkeying on the playgrounds, we all suited up and went in. The kids turned back pretty soon (because they were cold, because they didn’t have wetsuits), but I went on alone. They have various underwater “shipwrecks” and Disney character statues to find, so by the time I had seen most everything, I looked back to shore and realized how far away I was. By the time I hauled myself on shore, I had to stagger up the beach to get back to our chairs.

A lovely outdoor buffet lunch was provided, including soft serve ice cream, after which I was content to relax and watch the kids play.

Eventually my desire to explore the ship outweighed even my desire to sit on the beach, so Jeddy and Ada and I went back and decided to explore each of the fourteen decks.

Highlights of our tour included very exciting “circle bathrooms” in the bar area—the stalls are perfect circles with round pocket doors and there are big gorgeous mosaics on the wall—and Goofy’s mini golf, a 9-hole course on the upper deck.

Having explored the ship, we got ready for dinner, this time in Enchanted Garden, but with our same beloved servers and heaps of fabulous food again. The kids managed to squeeze in a kids’ club visit before we stumbled across a dance party on deck.