Slowly but surely, the girls got dressed. They put on nice dresses, because we had tickets to meet the princesses after breakfast. We got a picture with the Minnie statue before going to a sit down breakfast.
After breakfast, Jeff and Vivian went back up to the room, while Elena and I stood in line for a picture with princess Minnie.
Viv was on the fence about whether or not she was too old for princesses, so she missed her chance to take a picture with Cinderella, and she almost missed Belle. She got there just in time, which is good because Belle and Tiana are her favorite princesses.
After princesses, the girls changed into their bathing suits, and we got ready for our Grand Cayman adventure. There wasn't a shore excursion that covered everything we wanted to do, and a lot of the things were for five and up, which excluded Elena. After some research, Mom and I decided to charter a boat for the eight of us, so that we could do what we wanted to do at our own pace. It turned out to be a great decision and made for (in my opinion) the best day of the cruise.
Getting from the cruise terminal to the smaller harbor where our boat was waiting was pretty easy. There were lots of "taxi" vans waiting, and we paid in dollars. After going over some logistics, we were on our way with Mandy and Andrew, our guides for the day. Elena's smile captures the way we all felt once we got out on the water.
Our first stop was Stingray City. This is a sandbar where fishermen had historically cleaned fish and thrown what they didn't need overboard. The stingrays started coming in such big numbers, that someone got the bright idea to make it a tourist attraction. At this point, the stingrays are used to humans, but, to keep them healthy, there are regulations in place for how much people can feed them. Our guide Mandy clearly loved stingrays and on the ride over she taught us all kinds of interesting things about them, including that they're even smarter and better at recognizing people than dogs.
It was already quite crowded when we got there, but our crew maneuvered us around to find a spot all our own.
They found a large female named Shark Bait for us to make friends with. The females are larger than the males. There were tons of stingrays swimming all around, so Mandy recommended doing the "stingray shuffle", basically shuffling your feet to move, so that we didn't accidentally step on one.
The girls were happy just petting them.
Supposedly, kissing a stingray brings you seven years good luck, so a bunch of us went in for a smooch.
We also got to hold her. She nuzzled like a water puppy.
She even gave back massages!
It was a lot of fun, but tiring, because there were waves coming through, so after some play time with the stingrays, we were ready to get back on the boat and have a rest and a snack on the way to our next stop, Starfish Point.
Starfish Point was much shallower, calmer, and less crowded, but the water was just as clear and full of starfish.
Our starfish rules were that it was fine to hold them, but we had to keep them under the water, so that they could breathe.
We also had a starfish race, where we put three of them on their backs and watched to see which one turned over first. Jeff and Vivian's starfish won. Mine and Elena's came in second, and my mom's didn't move the whole time, so we turned it over ourselves.
After all that marine animal excitement, the land animals needed to be fed lunch. Luckily, there was a lovely beach front restaurant on the other side of the point with a pier for our boat.
We tried some conch fritters, and I had a drink which was basically a coconut with rum poured in. Yum!!
The girls, as usual, finished eating well before the adults. Since the beach was right there, they went to play, and Andrew went to keep an eye on them, so that the rest of us could enjoy our meal, which was really nice of him. I tried to get a picture of the girls playing, but the sun was behind me, and they didn't appreciate the attempt.
Eventually, we had to leave our little slice of paradise to make it back to the port in time for the last tenders back to the ship. Jeff captured our feeling of relaxation as we were sailing back through the mangrove channel to the little harbor.
He also got some great shots of our ship as we were sailing back towards it on the tender boat.
The excitement continued with another dinner at Animator's Palate. This time, we were the animators. We got special sheets to draw on, and then during the meal our drawings came to life on the screens.
The fun just kept on going with the show that evening, a shortened version of the Aladdin musical. It was a full house and a lot of fun. Elena got a dance in with Goofy before the show.
I also got a cute picture of the two girls. I love that with all the characters and princess around, Elena's favorite is still her big sister.
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