At the time this post goes up, Chris and I are on vacation again – this time in Europe!! I wanted some things to go up on the blog while we were gone so I queued up a few videos and posts to go up, including part 3 of the Very Merrytime Cruise we went on in November! On this day we set out to Cozumel for a wine and chocolate tasting, followed by relaxing on the ship for the rest of the day. All was going well until the ship started getting rocky – and we were unfortunately both really affected by it! Read on to find out how we fared with seasickness:
DAY 3 – NOVEMBER 14, 2018
At our meeting place we were given stickers for our group – we got Princess Anna:
And then we were escorted out to meet our guide! After a short drive we were at our destination.
It was a super cute little place with stations set up for us to use later to make our own chocolate! The view was really beautiful too as it was right next to the ocean.
The hosts greeted us first with chocolate martinis to get the fun started right away!
After that, they explained to us how chocolate is made and told us all about the sources and plants that it comes from. It was really interesting and soon it was time for us to jump in and make our own! Each party had their own grinder to use to make our chocolate.
They walked us through the steps of grinding the beans, adding vanilla and cinnamon, and mixing it all up together to create our own chocolate.
It was so fun!
Soon we were left with a little circle of chocolate!
We put our chocolates into molds, and they took them off to cool down while we did the second part of the activity – tasting! For this part they presented us with two types of wine and 10 types of chocolate one by one. They explained what each type was as well as which wine to pair it with. It was a really fun and interesting activity! I took photos and noted each one so I could remember. First we were given the two types of wine – a chardonnay and a red cabernet blend. We started with the chardonnay.
The first chocolate we had was a white chocolate with coconut!
Next was a dark chocolate with hazelnut:
I realize these photos are not anything exciting but here they are haha
Next up was 60% dark chocolate with cactus! This one paired so well with the wine and ended up being my favorite overall!
Last one with the white wine was a dark chocolate with chilis. Apparently I didn’t take a photo of this one but I did get the front and back of the wrapper so…here’s that.
Next we moved over to the red wine for pairings. The first chocolate we were given for this was a white:
Then a plain milk chocolate:
Then a pure 60% dark chocolate:
Followed by a dark chocolate with cinnamon – this one tasted better with the wine than by itself:
Then, a slightly more intense 70% dark – again I realize that I did not need to take all these photos individually BUT here we are lol
And finally, a 60% dark with coffee. This was my least favorite as I don’t like coffee!
They were all good though and fun to eat! Once we finished all 10 chocolates, they brought out our homemade ones for us to take home.
We also had the option of buying the photo they took of us – instead I just took my own photo of it:
Then they ended it all with a piece of chocolate cake and another delicious little beverage. It was so much fun!
Overall it was such a fun and different activity than we’ve done before and we both really enjoyed it! The cost was $60 per person but it was run through an outside company, so I wonder if booked outside of Disney if it would have been the same cost. Either way, it was a fun indulgence for us and we had a lot of fun!
After our excursion we started making our way back to the ship.
And she looked so beautiful that we stopped to take some photos!!
Chris also caught me vlogging:
But then he made up for it by taking some of my favorite pics:
The Wonder looked so pretty and it was great to finally be able to get some great photos, since you don’t really get a chance to at the start or end of the cruise.
Soon we were back on board. We didn’t really have any afternoon plans, so we walked around the ship a bit and explored/took photos of whatever we hadn’t seen yet!
Beautiful Ariel mural behind the front desk:
Some fun details in and around the pub – we also played some trivia in here!
And a quick stop at Daisy’s De-Lites. We also got a snack here:
Once we’d had our fill of that we went back to the room, where I ordered some room service as lunch/a snack. We had dinner plans at Palo that evening and I wanted something to hold myself over until then. I got some buffalo chicken wings and a baked mac and cheese, which were both great!
As I was eating, we were leaving Cozumel and the captain came over the speaker to let us know that we would be sailing into some turbulent seas due to bad weather, and that there may be some rocking as well as “banging and smashing”…. I got a bit nervous but we assumed it would be okay.
Following my snack I had a post-meal nap. Once I woke up, we started getting ready for our dinner at Palo, which was at 8pm.
It turns out that the captain was NOT joking when he said the seas would be shaky – we were rocking SO MUCH, it was the worst I’ve ever felt in the 3 cruises I’ve been on! It was seriously so shaky we were having trouble walking. We got ready anyway, hoping that it would get better.
Unfortunate spoiler alert: it did not get better!
I don’t want this post to be a total downer so I’m going to spoil you and let you know that this was by far the worst time of our trip but it did NOT ruin our entire vacation! One little dark spot didn’t hurt the rest of the fun that we had and now we honestly look back and laugh about it. That being said – omg that night was awful! We got all ready and went up to Palo, and our server saw us and actually asked if we wanted to reschedule because we both looked so sick and uneasy. It was even worse up at Palo because it was on a higher deck than our deck 2 room, so you could feel the shaking and rocking even more. It was so rough! Everyone was gripping handrails as they walked and we could see other diners with an iron clad grip on their wine glasses.
When he asked if we wanted to reschedule, I was at first disappointed but then honestly relieved. He said he didn’t think that we would be able to fully enjoy and experience Palo like this, and asked if we wanted to come back another day. We were so grateful at how he handled the situation because we were truthfully so disappointed at the situation and that we were having to experience the restaurant in this way. We immediately said yes and thanked him profusely for being so kind and understanding!
And then we hobbled back downstairs to grab some ginger ale and scurry back to the room 😄
Surprisingly, when we returned, our stateroom host had already done up our room in that short time with a new towel animal, and our paperwork for our spa reservation the next day!
I also took this photo of our safe so you could see that it had actually fallen out of its little shelf due to all the rocking:
It was madness!
So we were back at the room, slightly disappointed, pretty queasy, and REALLY hungry – after all, we had just skipped dinner, and it was too late to go to our regular rotational dinner. Note to self: on future cruises schedule an early Palo so we can at least still have food in case the seas get rough! We ended up ordering a bunch of room service so we could at least have something to eat. By the time it arrived we were feeling a little better thanks to the ginger ale and were able to eat our makeshift dinner.
We got a cheese plate, a fruit plate, 2 pizzas, and a grilled cheese. It was all pretty good and light – just what we needed.
After we finished eating we decided to try and go to bed and hopefully wake up the next day feeling better. It seemed like the weather outside was really bad, but we were going pretty fast. It seemed like they were trying to get us through it as fast as possible! I think – I don’t know anything about sailing. But despite the rocking and rolling and weird noises, we eventually both got to sleep.
That’s all for day 3 of the cruise! It didn’t end up being as pleasant as we had hoped but like I said – we didn’t let this one unfortunate experience ruin our whole trip. It honestly ended up being fine, especially because we had just gone to Palo in April and we knew we would be going back on this very ship on our next cruise to Alaska. It was disappointing, but we didn’t let it get to us too much!
I hope you enjoyed this post, despite the massive shift in tone about halfway through haha! There’s plenty more to come for our last day on board so I hope you’ll stay tuned for that, as well as my Europe vlogs coming soon 🙂 Thanks for reading & watching!
