Update 12/01 - Twice Charmed with Disney Shows!! 10/21; Part 2
Tonight our dinner was at Animator’s Palate.
We headed down to deck #4 on the aft elevators. As we got off the elevator and turned towards the port side, we saw that there was another line of people heading towards the restaurant! I was hoping that it was another photo line like we ran into last night at Lumiere’s, but, no, it was the dinner line, we saw our tablemates as we got closer to the line. Apparently they hadn’t opened the doors yet and the line went all the way through Shutters and past the entrance to StudioSea! If you haven’t been there, get out your trusty DCL Passporter and check out the deck plan for deck #4… this was a long line! After a few minutes, though, they opened the doors and the line moved very quickly and we were soon seated with our new friends, Marilyn and Keith. For an appetizer, I ordered a wild mushroom risotto; soup was butternut squash; entrée, fillet mignon; and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Dinner was very good.
The “show” at Animator’s Palate, as you might suppose, is not to be missed. That being said (and I know I may alienate some of you here), DW and I were both a bit underwhelmed. I wonder if you would agree that too much research can sometimes be a bad thing? Here is what I expected: I thought everything would start out black and white, then, as the dinner progressed, small amounts of color would be added until, finally, at the end of the dessert course, all would be completely transformed into full color.
That’s what I was expecting…. That’s not how it is. Not being a wordsmith, I have been trying to decide how to describe what really happens. I have come up with this: You know how a golfer will take a few practice half swings before hitting the ball, or how a diver will walk down the length of the diving board a few times before finally making the dive? That is the show at Animator’s Palate. It starts in black and white, then you notice subtle color changes as you are eating, then back to black and white, then more color, black and white… and so on with various and sundry amounts of color and picture changes until dessert is ordered….
Then the wait staff goes out of the room like they are going to get our dessert orders, the lights go out… the music stops… ALL OF A SUDDEN, the lights go up, the music comes back, and Mickey Mouse comes out leading a parade of all the Cast Members in their full color vests around the room!
It was not what we expected, but it was impressive just the same. I think we were a little disappointed, but we wouldn’t have wanted to miss it.
Twice Charmed was the show tonight, so, after a quick stop at the stateroom, we went on down to the Walt Disney Theater. Disney calls this “an original twist on the Cinderella story”. Well, OK, but I call it “a continuation of the Cinderella story”.
The guy in the whites on the left of that last picture is "Our Cruise Director, Brent", from Austrailia!
The Cast is well rehearsed and they make this musical a wonderful ending to the evening. We enjoyed it very much. I had been keeping our new Pentax camera in my pocket for fast access, so, as I was leaving the theater, I bumped against the seats in front of us and broke the camera! This was not a good thing, but, I was glad I had packed the old camera as a backup!
The Future Cruise Desk was open when we came out of the show, so we stopped by to see if we could talk to Jocelyn. There were several people in front of us, so by the time it was our turn, it was time for Jocelyn to close up. She stayed long enough to take our information, though, and said that she would work up a quote for the 2010 Westbound Transatlantic Cruise and send it to our room.
We got some pictures from deck #4, overlooking the Atrium as we waited:
We went on back to the stateroom and ordered coffee from room service and had our Irish Coffee out on the veranda again.
We found this cool pig on our bed:
I added a prop and made a "cool Passporter":
As we were leaving Grand Cayman today, it started to rain, and they were calling for rain and storms all night and into Wednesday! We were just hoping we didn’t get rained out of the Dolphin Swim tomorrow!
Anyway, we sat out on the veranda and drank our Irish Coffee. The rain had stopped for a while and the veranda was quite dry. After a while, we called it a night and went to bed with Dolphins in our heads…
