DAY 14: So Long, and Thanks for All The Fish
Mood:  celebratory
Today is the day the Magic docks in the port of Los Angeles, and we leave the ship to go to Disneyland. I am staying at Disneyland until Monday, May 30, when I have a flight back home to Washington from the Long Beach airport.

The ship docks at 7 AM and I am not getting up to see the docking. I know a lot of people who did. I do get up when my usual alarm clock goes off – the ship shudders while docking.

Amy and I still have luggage to haul downstairs to breakfast. We have to get the last minutes stuff thrown in, the luggage put together, and get it out the door and down to Deck 3, where our breakfast is scheduled in Lumiere’s for 8:45. We are pretty early, so we get ourselves chairs in the atrium. Soon we’re joined by Scott and Lynn. Lynn has a bag of dried mangoes she’s trying to finish, since we can’t take open food off the ship. We ate some mangoes and talked to all the disboard people who wander by waiting for their disembarkation.

There is a staggered disembarkation procedure, based on when your dinner seating is, which determines when you’ll be eating breakfast and where, which determines the order in which you will be permitted to leave the ship. We are in the Donald group and get stickers with Donald Duck on them from our head server, Maclean. Amy and I are taking Disney Cruise Line transfer transportation to the Grand Californian, and our tablemates have rented a van together that leaves the port at 10:30, so we are taking our time at breakfast, talking to Pema and Silvio about how much food the ship has run out of. They’re out of lemons and limes, and some of the milk in cartons has gone bad. Breakfast is the same breakfast you can always order in the dining rooms. I’ve only done this once before because I generally prefer Topsiders breakfast.

When we’re done, we hand out tip envelopes and say goodbye to Silvio and Pema and Maclean. Everyone takes their luggage upstairs to Deck 4, where we’re lined up on the deck with everyone else wearing Donald stickers. Behind Amy and I are Russell and Kendra, the sommelier from Club 33 and his wife who wrote the book about Disneyland. Amy pulls out her book and asks Kendra to sign it, which she is glad to do. She signs it with a pen I just happened to have that was a gift from the Adventurers Club before I left Florida. I had it stuck into my personal bag, which I haven’t used since the day we got on the ship, so it was handy. Amy had been meaning to ask Kendra to sign the book, and she did get it done at the last second.

We’re led off the ship and into the port authority building, where we have to pass through customs. You’re sent up to a little window behind which sits a government employee who checks your passport or birth certificate. Remember me? I’m the one who forgot the passport. I think this process is going to take forever for me, but the guy looks at my copy, makes sure I know where my passport is, asks if I have any plants or alcohol (I almost forget that I have tequila) and sends me through.

There is a big room where they lay out all the luggage according to where your stateroom is and what character is on your luggage tag. We have Daisy Duck on our tag, so we find the Daisy Duck section and pull luggage out. Fortunately Amy’s luggage is all together, and I only have one piece that was sent out. We grab all the luggage and pass the agriculture inspection, where they take your customs form and ask you again if you have any fruit or vegetables. We keep expecting them to ask if we have pins. When you say no, they send you outdoors.

Disney has a bus waiting that’s going to Disneyland. We have them throw our luggage on and find seats on the bus, carrying my backpack and Amy’s map and our very large lithographs. This is when Amy discovers that she has been dragging a bag containing some various things since she left the stateroom, and a hole has been worn through the bag and through a bottle of sunscreen that was inside the bag. The sunscreen leaked all over the bag and has run a bit onto the floor of the bus. It’s gotten onto the corners of our lithographs, which were in the same bag, but it isn’t much and once the lithographs are framed it won’t even show.

The bus takes off for Anaheim, which isn’t far, but it shows Mickey Mouse cartoons on monitors to waste time. There is also some commentary from an ersatz couple that apparently has just gotten off a Disney Cruise Line Mexican Rivera cruise (they haven’t bothered making a special video for the Panama Canal cruise, since there are only two of those). We pull off the highway into Anaheim after passing Knott’s Berry Farm, and the bus follows its usual procedure when I’m waiting to go somewhere. We are on our way to the Grand Californian, so of course the bus stops at the Disneyland Hotel first. It takes awhile to get through the gates because there is apparently some sort of convention there and there is a line of cars going through. The bus drops off a couple of passengers and rolls over to the Paradise Pier hotel. Here we run into a couple of problems. There is a guest in the bus in a big electric wheelchair who is getting off here, and the driver is apparently unable to lower the wheelchair ramp. Not only is the woman in the wheelchair stuck on the bus at this point, but the rest of us aren’t going anywhere. Finally the guy gets the ramp to lower and takes the wheelchair off the bus. He puts the bus back together and heads out to take the great majority of his passengers over to the Grand Californian. He has to take the bus back around to the rear of the hotel, where there is another bus unloading and blocking the street so our bus can’t get through. Our driver has to get out of the bus, go find the other driver, and get him to move his bus over slightly so that our bus can pass him.

We get to the Grand Californian, literally across the street from the Paradise Pier, about 20 minutes after we pulled into the Paradise Pier. Then some of our passengers found out that the bellmen at the Paradise Pier had mistakenly unloaded their luggage. Amy and I have our luggage, so we get a Grand Californian bellman to take the bags inside.

We wait in a long line full of people in Disney Cruise Line regalia to check in. Our room isn’t ready, so we wait until Jeff calls us to say he and Jen are checked into the Coast Hotel, then give our lithographs to bell services and go out to Downtown Disney to meet them.

Jeff says that when they walked through the plaza where the ticket gates are, Disneyland looked very busy, so we decided to start off in California Adventure. Jeff works at Disney World and is able to get tickets for four people. Amy already has tickets, which came with her room package, so the three of us get a supervisor to clear his identification from Disney World and we get one day park hopper tickets. The good thing about the cast tickets is that I need to be with Jeff in order to be issued the ticket, but once I get it I can come and go from either park as I please as long as I get a hand stamp.

Amy has checked the times guide we got at the hotel and finds out they have an improv comedy act in California Adventure. She does not do rides that have drops, so she goes off to find them while the rest of us get a fastpass for California Screamin. We rode the sun wheel first; it makes Jen nauseous, so we buy some Coke (they want $2.75 for cokes at Disneyland! This is in contrast to $2 in the WDW parks for the same bottle of Coke). Next we ride the Maliboomer. This is a freefall ride that has a spit shield on the harness that goes over your shoulders (apparently they wish to prevent spitting by riders). The shield makes you feel like you’re in a blender. The thing springs up in the air once and comes back down, then moves up and down for awhile.

Next we decide to ride the Orange Stinger, a swing ride. Jeff and I then ride the Zephyr, which does too much spinning for Jen. Our fastpass time comes up, so we go ride the coaster. It’s an excellent coaster, Jeff says he will give it a 7.5 out of 10.

We meet up with Amy, who sings the praises of the improv comedy group, so we go see them. They’re very funny. They do a show where they take audience suggestions for activities to write down, then two of them act out the activities without using words (they can use only mime and gibberish) and the third guy has to guess what they’re doing. We laughed at them like crazy.

Then we decide to go over to Disneyland. Jen has not been to Disneyland since she was a baby and has been asking why it is that you can’t see the castle even from the top of California Screamin. She finds out exactly how small the castle is when we get over to the park. It’s much less than half the size of the one in Florida.

We look for something to do that doesn’t have a ridiculous line, Jeff wants to go check on whether they’ll let him drive the monorail (they reciprocate with WDW monorail pilots) so we ride it around the park. Then we try Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. We called Rob while in line and harassed him about the fact that we were riding Toad, which you can’t do in Florida since they replaced it with Pooh.

We rode Pirates of the Caribbean and went back to California Adventure for dinner at the Vineyard Room. This cost a whole bunch but was great. The women had wine pairings and Jeff kept an eye on us. Our sommelier was Mark, who put up with us really well and brought each of us great wines.

We went back to the hotels to get our luggage situated and met up at Disneyland. Amy and I saw the fireworks, which put Florida’s show to shame. Jeff met us at Buzz Lightyear Blasters after having watched fireworks from the Coast Hotel. Jen had gone to bed.

We rode Buzz (improvement on WDW), the Haunted Mansion (my favorite, though I like WDW’s better) and got in line for Indiana Jones, which promptly broke down; We all called it a night and went back to hotels.

DAY 13: What did I see? I saw the sea.
Mood:  rushed
The time change is wreaking havoc since I'm up at 6:30 AM. Amy is up at 3 AM. We're exactly three hours off our usual schedules, ha.

It is friggin COLD outside, too cold to sit out on deck. Everyone is running around in sweatshirts. A week ago we were sweating through the Panama Canal. Heck, just yesterday we were cooking ourselves at the outside table in Cabo Wabo.

This is the last sea day before we pull into Los Angeles and leave the ship for Disneyland. If the captain had to haul butt to make up for the delay in Cabo San Lucas, we can't tell.

We had our character breakfast this morning. Cold pancakes are okay, no, really, if they're drowned in butter and honey. Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto came around for photos. Chip and Dale were present but they just danced around and were obnoxious.

Then I waited for the cabin steward to clean the stateroom so we could start packing. Packing means getting the suitcases ready to go outside the stateroom, where they'll be picked up by the attendants and readied to unload from the ship. I have three bags and two of them are going to be carried off by me, not by Disney. They get to take the big one. I think all the stuff we got on the cruise helps. I'm losing the heavy wine, but gaining tequila.

Speaking of tequila, Jen and Jeff and I did the tequila tasting in the Sessions lounge. We tasted two margaritas (top shelf and strawberry) and three types of tequila shots. The last one was Patron Silver, which Jen loves.

I bought a new camera at the photo shop since mine is dead. It cranked up this morning long enough for me to take a photo out the porthole and then gave up the ghost. The new one is the same little Nikon compact digital, only with three years worth of improvements - good price and no taxes! Unfortunately, it doesn't come with rechargeable batteries, but it does come with two sets of long life batteries which will probably get me through the port of LA and Disneyland. It also doesn't come with a memory card, but it has about 14 mgs of internal memory and I have my laptop, so I can take about 125 photos at the lowest resolution and then download them. My favorite part about the new camera is that it will take movies, with sound, for as long as you have memory available to store them. If I buy a big enough memory card, I can film entire Adventurers Club shows. This makes me happy.

Somebody affiliated with the disboards is staying in the Walt Disney Suite and invited everybody up to look at it. The new camera took a few pics and they downloaded to the laptop without incident.

Amy found out her standup routine has passed screening for the talent show. Bob Saget apparently didn't do as well; there seems to have been some complaints about his show being not so kid-friendly. It'll be a long time before they have another comedian performing on this ship. I have a suggestion: Muppets, and some more Muppets.

I have been all over the ship today when I'm not packing, just wasting time and talking to people, in my Cabo Wabo tee shirt that says, got tequila? It's very popular, lots of people seem to wish they had one (ha). Amy and Jen have knitting lessons. Spent some time with Dr. Bill from the disboards helping him to plan a vacation for a family he knows to WDW. He asked Jeff, since Jeff works at WDW, but we were all throwing suggestions in.

We managed to get our stuff packed by afternoon, after which I went down to the store and bought MORE STUFF. All the stuff went into suitcases.

Amy had some trouble finding her pins, which were probably the most valuable item anybody had anywhere in the stateroom, so it was with great relief that they were finally located. Never mind that she only has two pins.

I had a pint at the pub before the talent show, and needed it. Amy was the only act over the age of 10 except for the cowboys, and the less said about the cowboys, the better. They were sort of like Hee Haw slowed down. Those of us who attended were not pleased having to sit through singing kids and cowboys who sing "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?" The dog who could read (he's an assistance dog, so he's already smart - yes, that's what a dog is doing on the ship) was cool, though.

After the show, we had dinner. This was in Lumieres and featured whatever the ship hadn't run out of already. We didn't care because of Jen and Jeff's apple schnapps. I had a lot of that. It shows in the fact that I didn't finish the chocolate.

We received tickets to breakfast at Lumiere's way too early in the morning. We have to be there, because otherwise we're not allowed to leave the ship, or something like that. My ticket is in my camera case, so I won't lose it.

After dinner Amy and I went upstairs to put our suitcases out in the hall and there on the beds were two friggin huge commemorative lithographs. Now, this is a really nice gift, which I'm not complaining about, except that the airline only allows two carryons and I've got my two and this thing is so big that it won't fit into anything else. Not only that, it's matted, so just try rolling it up or something like that. I can't check my duffel bag. Things will have to be readjusted in Disneyland.

We went to British pub night, which featured beer and a really funny performance by the cruise staff, which I recorded in movie mode on my camera as an experiment.

British pub night ends the events for this cruise. Tomorrow we will be kicked off the ship in Los Angeles, probably rather unceremoniously because we arrive at 7 AM.

DAY 12: Look Kids...Big Ben...Parliament...Cabo San Lucas...
Mood:  silly
This ship still shudders whenever it pulls into port, even though we aren't docking at Cabo San Lucas, we're anchoring out in the harbor and tendering in to shore. We anchored at about 7 AM and who can sleep while the shippy shippy shake is going on? I got up even though my shore excursion wasn't meeting until 9:20.

Amy came back from breakfast about 7:30 and let me know that there was chocolate lava cake from last night's dinner that I didn't make due to migraine. I had the chocolate lava cake for breakfast. I think the lava congealed by that time, so we renamed it chocolate truffle cake. I had that with some diet Coke from Topsiders and read my book until time to go down for the shore excursion.

This excursion was the Los Arcos Sea Kayak Adventure. Jeff and Jen were again on the same excursion. The group met up in Diversions and got our Simba sticker that identified us as one group and went out to get into the tender boat. These are much smaller than the tender boats we were used to in Grand Cayman. We got on the boat and waited around while more tender boats lined up to pull up to the ship and load passengers. Still our boat waited. Then we loaded the dive group, which Lynn and Scott were part of, so we said that we'd been waiting all this time for Scott. The boat didn't move until we loaded some crew members and then we left for the pier.

Once on the pier we met our tour guide, Waldo (his real name is Ubaldo but he uses Waldo for tour guide purposes) who put us on another boat and took us to a beach where the sea kayaks were all lined up. Yikes, they're all two person kayaks and I am not a team player. So, I got distressed enough that the poor fellows leading the tour actually put me in a one person kayak. This is a good thing, they were going to match me up with some dude from the ship, and I don't want to be spending the entire ride with some strange guy sitting behind me telling me to row differently from the way I'm rowing. This is probably a metaphor for my life somehow.

So we got put in the kayak and rowed out to sea. It turns out to be easier to do than I thought it was. So Ubaldo rows us out into the middle of the ocean and has us gather around so he can talk to us about the area. In kayaks! And it works, although we can't always hear him. Not only that, but in Cabo there are always boats racing past - racing boats, sightseeing boats, party boats, whatever. He has us row into a cove to see an arch where the sea goes through, then over to a nearby rock that I can't figure out until this critter raises its head and looks at us - and I realize the rock is full of sea lions. They don't care about the kayaks, they just look at us.

Ubaldo tells us something very important - not to go into the ocean on the Pacific side when we get into the beach. If we want to swim we need to go in on the Cabo bay side.

We beach the kayaks. There goes my paddle - into the ocean...and off it goes, floating away. The tour guy who isn't Ubaldo has to go out and retrieve it.

The boat shows up with our stuff (it was all put onto a small boat which followed us) and we got our cameras and things and went down to the sea on the Pacific side, since the water is too cold to snorkel. This is one of the prettiest places I've ever seen, but no way we're going in the ocean, it's busy punishing the rocks and you never saw so much foam and swirling water. Jen and I stood near the edge so it would wash over our feet, and the water was damn cold. I had my camera with me, which Jen warned me about, but I was sure I could hold it over my head when the wave came in. One wave eventually came in OVER my head, so my digital camera is now apparently a sacrifice to the Pacific, which is mocking me.

Eventually we got back in the kayaks to return to the original beach. While the tour guy who was not Ubaldo was dragging me into the water, a wave hit my kayak and flipped it right over. I got up within a couple of seconds to the tour guides' obvious relief, but I now had sand in places where sand was not meant to be (such as in my hair).

We paddled back to shore, turned in our stuff, got back in the boat and headed to the pier. Jeff managed to get directions to Cabo Wabo (Sammy Hagar's cantina in Cabo) so after a stop in the malodorous public restroom, we walked over there.

Jen and I discovered the Cabo Wabojito. This is like a mojito made with tequila. We had four of them apiece. Jeff just laughed at us. we also ordered a pizza called the Cheezy Greezy. It had five or six kinds of cheese on it and enough oil to fix the shortage (are you listening, President Bush)? It was the best food we'd had in ages. We ate it and ordered another one. Jen and I bought shirts in the gift shop and a bottle of tequila each.

The second pizza took a while so we got it to go. Jeff carried it and Jen and I just staggered. While Jen went into a store to buy postcards, Jeff opened the pizza and we ate it while sitting on the curb in front of the store. All three of us ate a couple of pieces of pizza. We got back to the ship in enough time for departure, which was supposed to be 4 PM.

4 PM came and the ship started shuddering, and the view of Cabo San Lucas out our porthole changed. Amy had come to the room by then, so we kept looking to see where we were going. The ship went around in a big circle and showed us the other end of Cabo San Lucas. It still shuddered but it wasn't going anywhere. We started getting ready for the show and dinner (it's formal night again) before we got an announcement that they were having difficulties pulling the anchor up and we'd be delayed in departing until 6. The ship kept turning around and showing us more of Cabo San Lucas. By the time we got ready to go to the show, we'd finally gotten under way. I don't know what the story is with the anchor yet.

The show is "Twice Charmed" which is a musical that tries for Broadway and doesn't quite make it, which makes it perfect for a cruise ship. It's about Cinderella's evil stepmother hiring a fairy godfather to turn back time so that she and the stepsisters can destroy Cinderella's other glass slipper before the Grand Duke shows up at their house, forcing the Prince to marry an ugly stepsister. It sort of works, for awhile. There were a few technical difficulties and a scene that seemed like the Prince was getting ready to give up on finding Cinderella and run off with the Grand Duke, but other than that it went off fine.

Jen came over to our cabin before dinner looking for some ibuprofen. She has the migraine now. We talked about the show. Jeff was on the internet, working. We went down for dinner and he joined us later. We ate and told anchor jokes. The turkey dinner wasn't as good as the Cheezy Greezy, but I had a mojito and that was good. We managed to get some contraband - an old menu with the "essence of leeches" typo in it.

After dinner Amy and I went to the second Adult Night in the Oceaneer Club, which describes rather well what happened when an experiment involving two men, three women, some balloons, baking soda and vinegar went totally awry. I remember the last time I laughed that hard...it was at the Adventurers Club and something had gone particularly awry there (but that didn't involve baking soda and vinegar).

Tonight is also the dessert buffet. I dropped in on it while waiting in line for the internet. There must have been 50 decorated cakes in there. The one I tried was coconut and almond with a chocolate straw on top. Best thing I've had all day other than a Cheezy Greezy.

Day 11: The Hottest Town in Mazatlan
Mood:  on fire
Took the tour of Mazatlan. It was called "Tequila, Saddles and Huraches."

We got loaded onto a bus and introduced to our tour guide, Cesar Salad. I don't think that was his name but that is how he introduced himself. The bus was air conditioned and had comfortable seats, which was great, because we were driven up into the hills somewhere to an agave plantation to see tequila being made.

By law, hey can't call it tequila unless it's made in the Mexican state of Jalisco, so they're selling this stuff in blank bottles (I couldn't haul a whole bottle back with me. I'm waiting for Cabo to buy tequila). We got to sample the final product (cut with Fresca) and check out the process. I think a lot of honeybees must get mashed up in the stuff, because where they process the agave it's just crawling with bees. We're told this particular tequila factory is over 200 years old.

Then we're loaded back on the bus and taken off to the hottest town in Mazatlan, maybe in all of Mexico (no, Acapulco was hotter), a place called La Noria. There we're shown leatherworkers making saddles and huraches (Mexican sandals) and given a snack of tortillas, Mexican cheese, guacamole, and (thank goodness) Coca Cola. There's also a Mexican vanilla drink in bottles. I slipped a bottle into my tote bag and will have to try it later. They also gave us some milk candy (with cinnamon and sugar) to try, it's quite good.

We walk around La Noria some more, followed by the school kids who've figured out they can get dollar bills out of the tourists. (I only had 20s and didn't give them any). The same kids greeted us lined up outside the school waving little Mexican flags and chanting "Disney! Disney! Disney!" Cesar shows us the woodworks where they make the hard portions of the saddles before wrapping them in leather, and a place where a guy is making purses out of coconuts. I didn't buy any. Then we're taken to see a guy make terracotta pottery out of dark clay. Everybody gets a little teacup.

Then we're herded back onto the air conditioned bus (whew) and driven back down into Mazatlan, into the tourist district, to have lunch at a restaurant where they apparently do exclusive business with tour groups. My lunch came with one beer and I bought another for $1, getting my first change in pesos. This place had okay food (much better than the Acapulco lunch, or so I've heard) and really, really good salsa. I just put the salsa on everything.

Two guys from our group didn't get seats in the dining room and they ended up out on the plaza looking at the ocean with free margaritas. Lucky guys. Then somebody came along and handed them some little tabloid publications called Sex Y Playa (Sex and the Beach) which had English translations apparently done by someone who didn't know much English. I'd repeat some of them here but I don't know who's reading, this isn't an adult blog. There were various captions on photographs of bikini contest winners that were hysterical. I wish I could have bribed the guys to part with one of these publications, but I'd bet they won't take anything for them.

After we drove back to the pier and tipped Cesar, I got to do a little shopping and ended up with a tee shirt that says Federal Bureau of Intoxication, Mazatlan, Mexico (ha! ha! ha!) and a fish thermometer (a thermometer shaped like a fish sitting in a piece of coral). Whee. Big Spender.

Amy and I went to the show tonight. I wasn't going to because the headliner was Bob Saget, but there were supposed to be Muppets present and I am a Muppet freak, so I guess I could put up with some of Bob Saget.

Kermit the Frog (who calls himself KTF now since Disney likes acronyms) opened the show and did lots of ad libs about pin riots and that sort of thing. There was a short film showing the Muppets running amok on the ship. It was quite funny, actually. Bob Saget tried but he couldn't reach Muppet levels, or maybe I just don't get jokes about Full House, which is really what he spent most of his act talking about.

After that I was getting a headache. I think once we got into the show and everyone was taking flash photos in a dark room, it set off a migraine. I went back to the room and took some ibuprofen. Amy stayed down in the Studio Sea room to view "Fathom This" the Balderdash-cup like but not really game show. I went back down to join her for the show. Unfortunately the headache got worse, which was too bad, because the guy doing the bad Wolfgang Puck imitation was cracking me up (same actors as last time; the characters are beauty queen Sally Cone, chef Ben Hungry, and pharmacist Patty Scription. Ha. Ha). He was asked what the name of his new restaurant was and responded "Eat Yourself." When the host said "That's your new restaurant?" the guy said "The first was 'Eat Me' and the second is 'Eat Yourself.'" So much for the family aspect of the show.

After this show we went back to the cabin for awhile and I understood I wasn't leaving it to go to dinner. I spent the rest of the night with my head under a pillow because the creaking of the ship was causing head pain. Such is a migraine.

DAY 10: Back At Sea Again
Mood:  lazy
We have been running up the Mexican coast today on the way to Mazatlan. The seas are not so choppy.

I spent most of today reading. I ate lunch with Amy at the Topsiders buffet where they were having Mediterranean day. They had tomatoes with feta cheese, best thing out there.

Amy gave Jen more knitting lessons. We sat in Jen and Jeff's cabin and drank Lambic beer (raspberry). Good stuff. Scott and Lynn dropped by and we went down with them to the repeat cruisers party in Beat Street. We had some free drinks (not strong, just free) and some canapes that used ingredients like cheese whiz and tuna. They were okay, but looked better than they tasted.

Boyz 2 Men are performing in the Walt Disney Theater and Amy went to see them.

DAY 9: Acapulco and A Pirate's Life for Me
Mood:  silly
The ship pulled into Acapulco today.

There is a guy named Roberto who works at the port authority in Acapulco who has been posting at the disboards. Some time back he offered a port authority tee shirt to whoever found him standing in front of the port authority building first. DCL didn't like this much and sent out notices that nobody should be running down the gangplank.

Jeff wanted to be in the tee shirt race. He went to do that, and Amy and I stayed with Jen in their cabin. Amy is teaching Jen to knit. I was reading. We waited around until Jeff came back with his port authority tee shirt. He also had some painted bookmarks, so we got some of those. He said he had one real competitor, but she was wearing flip flops and those slowed her down. They didn't begin to run until after they'd exited the terminal.

I was going ashore with Jen and Jeff and Amy had an excursion. So the three of us got off the ship and ran the gauntlet of taxi drivers. We went to the port authority terminal to say hello to Roberto, who was able to post to the disboards that Jeff won the tee shirt race. He went off to a meeting then.

Taxis in Acapulco are different makes and models, but most of them are old Volkswagen beetles. The drivers get in your face and stay there until you've told them "no" three or four times. We picked up a guy who wanted us to go to his sister's store and wouldn't leave. Jen and I let Jeff talk to him, since Jeff knows a little Spanish. We meandered for awhile and when we got to the shop, the sister managed to sell Jen and Jeff a ring for a friend. We left the downtown after that.

There are also buses in Acapulco. Every bus has a theme. They're all painted with movie scenes, cartoon characters, airbrushed art, whatever. I don't know if they're public buses or privately run transportation.

It was extremely hot and humid in Acapulco and we needed to get back to the ship, since the heat was draining. We had lunch at Topsiders - fajitas were on the buffet, they weren't bad. The desserts were excellent today. Mine all had chocolate in them.

We got back off the ship intending to go to Carlos & Charlie's. We hired a taxi driver called Rodolfo who insisted that we needed to go to Senor Frog's instead - they had a view. We took him up on it. He turned out to be right - Senor Frog's, while further away, had a spectacular view of the entire Acapulco harbor.

We had drinks. I had a couple of margaritas and something called an amaretto colada. It sounded better than it tasted, but after I got through about half of it, I didn't care. Jen and I bought Senor Frog tee shirts. Rodolfo came back for us after a couple of hours and returned us to the ship. We did some more shopping in the port terminal.

This is pirate night on board, so I had to go get into my pirate costume. It's way too hot for Acapulco but I managed to get through the night.

There was a huge photograph taken of all the disboarders in their pirate regalia. I'm the one who had to move so they could insert Mickey Mouse into the group. If the picture ends up posted, I'm the one kneeling in front of the big cheese. He nearly knocked my hat off.

Dinner was pirate themed, of course. The servers wore pirate hats and the menus were treasure maps. Everyone got a red bandanna. It was too short to tie around my waist, which is what I wanted to do with it.

The pirate deck party was loud and way too obnoxious for someone who drank too much in Acapulco. They did shoot off fireworks from the fort in the city. There was a special showing of "Pirates of the Caribbean" in the movie theater, but they started it long before they said they would for some reason. I didn't get to the film, because once I got out of the pirate threads and lay down on the bed and started reading, I didn't want to get up again.

Day 9: Still At Freakin' Sea
Mood:  happy
This is another sea day, the last one before we dock at Acapulco.

Amy and I met up first thing at the culinary demonstration, in which a chef from Walt Disney World with a thick German accent prepared potato salad with basil pesto and potato pancakes with smoked salmon. We also got a glass of wine and a glass of beer, and a talk from the same sommelier we saw yesterday, who didn't say anything about wine tasting like shale or cat pee on a gooseberry bush, but did convince me to sign up for the beer tasting later in the day. The beer tasting apparently sold out soon after he recommended it.

There was a lot of time before we were due for Amy's improv meet for the disboarders at 1, so I got out the rest of the pirate names and Amy helped me sort them all out. She helped deliver them to decks 2 and 5, and I took 6, 7 and 8. I had to go all over the ship to get these things delivered. We sorted them out in the hall so that our cabin steward could clean the cabin, and while we were sitting out on Deck 5 we saw the disboard scavenger hunters come by looking for Goofy eating a hot dog. I couldn't tell anyone where that is if it's not in the murals by the pool. I understand that Linda (seaulater) won the scavenger hunt.

Amy's meet took place in the Diversions pub. There were 5 of us playing and maybe 10 watching, not a bad turnout. I did pretty good at the 99 game and with a Michael Jackson impression, but that's about it. Jeff and Scott did a pretty funny version of the ABC game, they play off each other well.

I stayed in Diversions for the beer tasting. This is run by the cutest little Englishman you ever saw who certainly knows about beer. We had 4 beers to taste from different countries. I did okay with beer trivia - I got a score of 8. The winners got 13 of a possible 16.

We had dinner at Palo tonight. I ate with Amy and Jen and Jeff. Jen and Jeff requested their favorite server, Sasha from Croatia. Sasha takes your order and then brings you every damn thing on the menu anyway. We had a lot of food. Then we went down to Animators Palate and sat with Scott and Lynn while they ate, just to see the Mouseketeer show they put on after dinner. We got limited edition Mouseketeer buttons, whooopeee.

DAY 8: We Can't Get Much More Pacific Than This
Mood:  not sure
We passed into rough seas overnight (4 to 8 feet, which when someone says it to you sounds more like 48 feet and makes you wonder why we aren't reenacting the Poseidon Adventure) with rain.

Someone has been seasick in the aft staircase between decks 4 and 5 (5 is our deck) and the smell is unbelievable.

I wanted to get some decongestants for my sinuses. They'll sell you some in the health center on Deck 1, but they want 10 bucks a box for Nyquil. They sold me a half box of Nyquil and a half box of Dayquil, maybe that will help and I won't end up with a sinus infection.

The wine tasting we signed up for had gotten switched from 3 PM to 10 AM. Who does wine tasting at 10 AM? At least we're not driving anywhere. Unfortunately our group had Palo brunch at 11. So the four of us going to the wine tasting got started early, and on an empty stomach. Whee.

The guy doing the wine tasting was really into smelling the wine and describing the odor. Then you were supposed to taste the wine and describe the taste. He wanted specific descriptions like fruits, flowers, earth. So, we're tasting wine that tastes like mud and smells like grapefruit. The sommelier himself gave a description of a certain wine as "cat pee on a gooseberry bush" so we didn't feel so bad for saying "asphalt" "essence of leeches" and in Jeff's case, "Rome burning in Spaceship Earth." Only on a Disney ship would that have made any sense to anyone at all.

We had 8 wines (half glasses so we actually had 4 glasses of wine) and we had to leave early to go to Palo. The entire group at the wine tasting was getting rather silly by then.

At Palo I had a big plate of mozzarella cheese (and my mealtime companions are still giving me a hard time about the cheese), some meat, a cinnamon roll and a mushroom pizza, and a piece of Scott's pizza which had pepperoni, mushrooms and tomatoes on it. I had a champagne cocktail to go with all the wine and some crab claws that were really difficult to crack. They score them for you, but that's assuming you haven't had 5 glasses of wine. Nobody could handle dessert, that'll be for tomorrow night.

I'm afraid that wine plus huge amounts of food plus Dayquil equals zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. That's what I did all afternoon and I rarely sleep during the day. Our cabin steward didn't even get to clean up the cabin because I was in there zonked out. Amy went to see Fat Albert the Movie. She doesn't recommend it.

We got dressed for dinner (it's semiformal night) too early because Amy didn't set her watch back and I didn't even look at mine. We had to go watch bad karaoke because we were too early for dinner.

I had appetizers for dinner because none of the entrees turned me on (although Lynn had the fish and she said it was really good). Best thing I had was tomato soup.

I'm turning in tonight with my supply of Nyquil, but no wine.

DAY 7: It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Isthmus
Mood:  lucky
8: 32 AM

It's absolutely hot and sunny out here and there are a lot of bugs. However, it's cool in the internet cafe on Deck 9.

A half hour ago, we passed through the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal. This is the first of three sets of locks. We're cruising the Gatun Lake on the way to the next set (they're called Pedro Miguel Locks), but the captain says we're being held here in the lake for an extra half hour since we're ahead of schedule.

At 5:30 or so this morning we picked up the pilots for the canal transit. They pulled up in a little boat just underneath our stateroom and boarded the ship. I ended up on Deck 10 with a bunch of the disboarders. Jen and I stood on one of the bins that holds towels on the pool deck and we actually had a pretty good view of the entry to the canal. Jen has this monstrous video camera that has a killer zoom lens on it, so she got footage of most everything.

The Gatun Locks have three chambers, each one lifts the ship about 28 feet and then it moves on into the next chamber. There are little locomotives that attach onto the ship with lines and pull and push it along. There are also tugboats to help push. I wandered the deck after we entered the first chamber and took a lot of photos.

The crew seems to be just as excited as everybody else. They're all running around taking photos of each other.

Once we passed the third chamber and were on our way out of the locks, the ship blew that Disney horn and everybody started yelling (I was standing on the aft deck at this time because it was close to breakfast).

I couldn't handle waiting around for an omelet so I had a bowl of that muesli stuff that Amy likes. It isn't bad.

While I was waiting to get on the internet, Peter was here and he showed me that someone has already posted the canal webcam pictures of the Magic passing through. They've posted about 50 photos that were captured from the webcam.

UPDATE
There are three sets of locks on the Panama Canal. There is a long stretch of canal between the Gatun and the Pedro Miguel, and our ship sat in the lake at anchor for awhile waiting for its turn in the canal. I don't remember seeing other passenger ships, but there were lots of cargo ships and a tanker or two.

The modus operandi for the day was to stay on deck and wait until something came along worth taking pictures of. I changed into a swimsuit and just hung around on deck 9. There was a barbecue on deck for lunch, so I was able to scarf down a caesar salad and a big plate of shrimp and salmon kebabs with garlic butter, and tomato salad. For dessert I went into Topsiders and had some butterscotch and pineapple bread pudding, which everyone else told me was the superior dessert. We aren't used to striking out on desserts at Topsiders, but the tasters said nothing else was really good.

After you get through the canal part (there's a long thin bit of the canal called the Galliard Cut that you have to traverse) you get to the Pedro Miguel locks, which have one chamber and start lowering the ship back down to sea level. Just beyond Pedro Miguel is the Miraflores locks, with two chambers. At Miraflores all the little locomotives that pull the ships through the lock started blowing their horns, and they've got loud damn horns. So the Magic blew its big obnoxious horn a few times.

We have a historian aboard who talks over the ship's PA every time we hit a point of interest. She said they were blowing the horns to 1) welcome the Magic and 2) bid farewell to a lock worker who was retiring. Fortunately my camera doesn't record sound.

After the Miraflores locks you pass under the Bridge of the Americas (another huge suspension bridge) and you're in the Pacific Ocean. In case you didn't know, running back and forth across the deck taking pictures and then running downstairs to take pictures from your verandah is exhausting. I went to bed after we passed the Canal. Got up for dinner, which was the special menu for the crossing day. We got to keep the menus. No leeches on this menu. I had some portobello mushroom ravioli and asiago cheese risotto and interesting stilton cheese soup with cranberries in it (although when Jen ordered one they didn't put any cranberries in hers). Scott was awake and in a crazy mood, so he kept the rest of us entertained. Our assistant server (her name is Pema and she is from India) was worried about me because I didn't order a drink.

Dessert was coconut ice cream sundae, although Amy's caramel panna cotta was good (we all tried that one).

This is the first night I couldn't stay up and do anything after dinner, but taking photos all day is just way too tiring.

DAY 6: Turn Back Your Clocks Before Hitting The Locks
Mood:  spacey
There is a time change in a couple of minutes - we're going back an hour.

The first event of the morning was the Pirates of the Caribbean presentation. It started off pretty good until the imagineer guy said he got in trouble for going overtime on the Haunted Mansion talk and had to make sure he brought this one in on time. He did, but by the end of the show he was just zipping through his slides. He spent a bit of time chatting with the sommelier of Club 33 and the guy's wife, who wrote some book about Disneyland; that cut down a bit on the pirate stuff.

Next we hit the murder mystery. Turns out the installment we missed had most of the clues in it. Ira Bow did it. When the security guy removed him from the room, he stepped on my foot. Maybe they'll lock him up forever.

Had lunch in Parrot Cay. They had mozzarella cheese, so that's pretty much what I had for lunch. There were a few books exchanged. I am not finished with my book, but Jen gave me a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Before the martini tasting I managed to sort out and deliver some of the pirate name tags. I still have a bag of them that haven't been sorted out yet.

The martini tasting was led by two young ladies with pretty much unintelligible accents, but they were playing around and having fun and it was fun watching them. After two mini martinis the whole group started getting giggly. There were three pretty good martinis, one with too much mint in it, and a dirty martini. I like olives, but those are kind of like drinking the liquid out of an olive jar.

Amy went to the magician show and I watched some Monty Python shows with Jen and Jeff, and Lynn and Scott. We made some drinks with Jeff's Curacao liquers and milk.

Dinner was in Animators Palate and we had the whole show thing with the lights and Mickey walking around and all the servers marching around the room. Bet they love doing that.

The Oceaneers Club was opened to adults after our dinner. I spent most of the time painting a Mickey Mouse cel which is now hanging on our cabin door.