crazycatperson goes a-cruising!

It's so hard to believe that this amazing cruise will be over in just a couple of days. We still have Disneyland to look forward to, but I'm still going to miss this ship.

A little reassurance for anyone who's avoiding cruising due to motion sickness: I never got sick once. I'm sure the scopolamine patches had a lot to do with that. One boarding day I felt nothing, but we were in the sound till after bedtime. In the middle of the night the increased motion of the ship let me know we'd reached open ocean; Tuesday was a bit rough (what they call "moderate" seas, and although I never crossed the threshold into real seasickness, it wouldn't have taken much to get me there. I also had several moments when I didn't think I could take much more of the ship's rocking, but that feeling never lasted long. That feeling went away after a couple of days; since then we've had a couple of days with rough seas that didn't bother me at all. So give it a try, folks.

Today's excursion is beach day on Maui. We bussed over to a resort hotel and have use of most of their amenities. The beach chairs you see in the first two photos are complimentary; umbrellas, reclining chairs, and cabanas cost extra. We upgraded to a cabana, see bottom photo. Absolutely worth the extra $47. We also got vouchers for one free drink each and also a voucher for a buy one, get one half off lunch.

When I bought this new swimsuit for the trip, I had no idea how much cleavage I'd be revealing. Aside from here at the beach I wear a shirt with it.

The island across from our beach is Lanai. We don't stop there.

Sunrise in Honolulu and a look around. There's a Princess ship docked nearby; I expect it's the same one we've seen around since Vancouver. And then a tugboat hauling a barge into port.

Today's excursion is a visit to Pearl Harbor and a bus tour of the city.

Only one more day on the Wonder - and no more days at sea. I wish we could stay on for another ten nights.

The Princss ship is indeed the Pacific Princess, the ship we saw in Vancouver and Hilo.

Today's excursion is a tour of Honolulu followed by a visit to the Pearl Harbor memorial. Any who's seen Hawai'i 50, either version, should recognise this building.

Pearl Harbor.

Our awesome dining room team: Aaron, our server; Manuel, assistant server; and Geffrey, head server. And our stateroom host, Wayan. We also really appreciated our spa team, Sharon and Neren, but don't have a photo of them.

There are lots of feral chickens in Hawai'i.

Departure morning. On to Disneyland.

Waiting at the Amercan Airlines check-in counter. NOBODY is working it. And we've been waiting a good half hour already, maybe longer.

Oh, yes; we're at our gate now and still have nearly two hours before our flight departs. Disney got us to the airport super early. The line was an annoyance only.

One cool thing about the airport in Honolulu is how open it is. Aside from at the gates, it's all open air. Ceilings but very few walls, even in the ticketing and bag check area. And here's the walkway from security to our gate.

A few scenes from the farewell party last night.

Our first room at the Grand Californian. Tomorrow we switch to a 1-bedroom. We haven't seen much of the resort yet, but so far we like it.

For the first time in almost forever, I got queasy during a flight. Just during landing, but it was pretty nasty. Of course, my last scopolamine patch came off yesterday.

Tomorrow we're going to sleep as long as we like and not worry about early extra magic hour. I need to sleep off the motion sickness.

I woke up at 9:30 this morning and made it into California Adventure about two hours later. So far we've wandered around, gotten fastpasses for World of Color and Radiator Springs Racers, ridden Toy Story Midway Mania on standby, and shared Thai coconut curry chicken at the Paradise Pier food court. And somehow I'm not missing the Disney Wonder nearly as much as I did yesterday.

Oops, the food court is at Pacific Wharf. Feels strange not knowing where we are.

The Monsters Inc. ride is adorable!

Waiting for World of Color. The highlight of the day was Radiator Springs Racers - SO much better than Test Track!

I was afraid World of Color would be a letdown after waiting over an hour to see it. It wasn't. Totally worth the wait. Amazing show.

Our one-bedroom Grand Californian villa. Very nice.

Pirates of the Caribbean isn't running! Booooo! But Haunted Mansion is done up for the holidays, so yay!

Took these for Alicemouse.

I don't have a lot of food photos from this trip, but here's today's lunch. We ate at the French Market while killing time on a FastPass. I had the shrimp po' boy; hubby had red beans and rice with andouille sausage.