Transatlantic - Sea Days 1 & 2

Our cruise started out with 6 days at sea in a row before our first port of call.  

Sea Day 1

   Every day for the first six sea days, there was a special presentation by Ian Gooding who works for Disney animation.  He was the production engineer for Moana.  He is an artist and animator and has worked on many Disney animated movies.  The topic for his first talk was "Bringing Characters to Life."  He spoke about how they researched Moana, came up with characters and the work that goes into creating the look for each of them.  No photos were allowed at any of the presentations but I always took a photo of the starting slide before the presentation began.

e    Our next activity of the day was seeing the Disney Nature movie, Born in China.  We usually see all the Disney nature movies and had missed this one when it came out a few week ago but figured we would catch it on the ship.  We weren't alone as it was pretty crowded.  It was a nice little movie and we enjoyed it.

   The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, reading and there may have been an afternoon nap.  

     Our evening activities included the show, Twice Charmed which is a Disney musical production show that is a twist on the Cinderella story.  We have seen it before and enjoyed it.  It was just as good this time.  Our dinner tonight was at Carioca's which replaced Parrot's Cay when the ship was remodeled so it was our first time dining there.  
  
    The Navigator's and menus for Sea Day 1 are below:

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Sea Day 2
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   Started out today attending an "Anyone Can Cook" presentation.  I have attended these presentations before on Disney cruises.  A chef will prepare a dish in front of you and you receive the recipe and a sample to taste.  The recipe today was for Pistachio Baklava.  It was fun to watch and the chef was funny as he explained how to make it.  It is not something I would make at home as I know that working with phyllo dough is a pain.  We each got a little taste and it was really really good.

By the time this ended, I had enough time to meet Chris for the second presentation of Ian Gooding.  (He did a 10 am and an 11:15 am session daily.  And if you missed it, they showed the presentations on a loop on the stateroom televisions.)  Today's topic was Costume Design.  The amount of detail and research that went into the costumes for Moana was amazing.  Because of the use of computers now, they actually research the weight of the fabrics and then input that information into the computer.  Then when the character moves, the clothing moves the correct way in terms of the size and weight of the fabric.

   We moved right from the presentation to Champagne Tasting.  Disney Cruise Line offers a variety of beverage tasting throughout the cruise.  Typically, you can book the tastings when you board or at any time at Guest Services.  In this case, I was part of a Facebook group of people that were all going on this cruise.  The woman who organized the Facebook group also organized several on board activities.  Chris and I have always wanted to do champagne tasting but have always found it to be sold out on previous cruises.  So when we saw we could sign up through this Facebook group, we went ahead with it.  
    We met our group at Keys, one of the adult clubs on board,  There was about 20 participants and our places were set with 4 samples of champagne.  We had 2 more samples added later as they needed to be kept chilled.  The session was led by a bartender who gave information about champagne in general and then started the tasting.  He wanted us to try to guess the brand name of each champagne.  We don't really know brands so we weren't very good at that, but we enjoyed the tastes.

Wow, looking back now, this was a busy day.  We finished the tasting and went to a cheese seminar.  Each place setting had 5 little cups with a sample of different cheeses.  In the center of the table, there was a plate with some crackers and grapes.  It turned out to be a very popular activity and they had to keep adding seats for guests until the room was completely full.  When it started, a chef gave a presentation about cheese in general and then some information about each specific cheese while we tasted.  I was hoping to try some cheeses that I had never tried before.  Unfortunately, there was nothing really exotic but it was still a good activity.  

It was about 2:30 when we finished, so we still had time to relax a bit and get in an afternoon nap.  

The evening show was "The Edge Effect," which was an acapella music group of five guys.  They did a mix of pop music and some Disney songs.  I am a fan of acapella music and I enjoyed the show.  Our dinner that night was at Lumiere's and we had their menu there.  

   That evening they offered a Star Gazing activity on the top deck.  One of the officers led the group and said he had charted out four stars that we should be able to see clearly.  The lights from the ships and some cloud cover made it challenging so he ended up having us walk to each end of the ship to see if we could improve our view.  We didn't see as much as we probably could have but we did see a lot of stars and found two of the four that he had charted out.  It was a fun activity to offer.