Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 11 years and 5 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

After turning in late (early) last night I ended up sleeping in a bit this morning. When I woke up around 8:00am my daughter had just woken up herself and my wife had gone to exercise in the fitness center. At some point overnight (or earlier that morning) the Dream had docked at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in the Bahamas.

Around 9:00am, after the family was reunited in our stateroom, we headed up to Cabanas for breakfast before debarking for a short day on the island. Unlike Nassau we did have planned excursions today, the first of which was bike riding. After taking the tram from the dock to Palm Central Station, we checked in at the rental kiosk and picked out our bikes and helmets. Nothing fancy here, just your basic one-gear coaster bike, but the trails were all paved and flat so nothing more rugged was required (although there are no baskets or carriers either so we had to leave our beach bag at the rental kiosk). We spent the next hour tooling around on the nature trails, with stops for beautiful vistas at the Lookout Tower and Serenity Bay.

Shortly after 11am we had returned the bikes, retrieved our belongings, and managed to stake out a small relatively shaded area at the family beach. The weather was in the lower 70s, and the water was chilly, but that didn’t stop my daughter from swimming out to the Pelican Plunge, a floating waterslide. After that, a nice lady near us on the beach lent us one of her rented inner tubes as she wasn’t using it. I spent a little time swimming in the amazingly blue water with my daughter, but eventually I decided the water was a bit too chilly for me and retired to warm up back on the beach.

By early afternoon we were ready for lunch we we had at Cookies Too (island barbecue fare) while my daughter watched the hermit crab races. Then it was time for us to split up for a bit: my wife had a massage scheduled over at Serenity Bay and my daughter and I were going parasailing! We walked back to the boat docks near the Dream, taking in the scenery and activities of  the island we had missed by taking the tram earlier in the day. We checked in at Marge’s Barges and soon we were off on the boat with our guides Derreck and Eugene (locals from the nearby Abaco Islands) and a family of four from Mississippi (mom/daughter, dad/son paired up) for our adventure. I’ve been skydiving twice before but my daughter had never been up in a parachute before. She loved parasailing, as did I. The views of Castaway Cay, the ocean, the water (only about 20 feet deep), the relaxing atmosphere of gliding above everything … it was really cool. My daughter had requested a “dip” by our guides so we got a little wet on the way down. Strangely, the water seemed warmer out in the open ocean than it had at the family beach.

My wife was waiting for us when we returned to the dock after parasailing so we all went back onto the Dream to clean up in the stateroom. The ship was scheduled to depart at 4:30pm but we wanted to get a few nice family photos for the Christmas card before that so we debarked again to get a few scenic photos.

Once the Dream had set sail for Florida once again we caught a showing of “Frankenweenie” in 3D in the Disney Theater. I love Tim Burton/Danny Elfman movies and this latest stop motion offering doesn’t have the great soundtrack of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” it does pay great homage to classic and modern monster movies like Frankenstein (obviously), Godzilla, Gremlins, etc. Like “Wreck-It Ralph” it works for kids and parents, even if they don’t catch all the references.

After the movie we went back to the stateroom to dress up for the last night of the cruise. We got our family photo taken on the staircase in the atrium and mingled with crowd there, most everyone dressed up for dinner and the See Ya Real Soon! departure party. We had a light snack during the movie, but no first dinner, so we were all pretty hungry by dinner, this time at the Animator’s Palette, the Pixar-themed dining room complete with interactive Crush screens (like the Turtle Talk with Crush attraction at Epcot). My daughter really enjoyed the Nemo cast’s antics on the screens but I found them a little distracting while eating (and the food, again, was excellent).

Done with dinner, we let my daughter head to Edge for the “info swap” and dance party with her new friends while we checked out our on-board photos at Shutters. Since we were planning on walking off the ship with our luggage in the morning (using the Express Walk-Off service) we didn’t need to have our bags packed by 8:30pm like everyone else. We all met back at the stateroom around 11:30pm and finished packing before turning in. As Captain Henry had warned earlier in the day we were back in the choppy seas as we got closer to Florida and already we could feel the rocking of the ship, but it eventually rocked us to sleep (awwww).

It’s hard to believe the cruise is over and tomorrow we’ll be back home.