Alaskan Cruise: Day 0 - Las Vegas, and Day 1 - Leaving Vancouver

Saturday, July 15, 2023

Grandma and Grandpa went to pick up Erik at the airport while the rest of us stayed behind at the Airbnb. After Erik arrived, we all went to Excalibur for the Tournament of Kings dinner show. We got to sit right in the front center, which meant that we had to cheer for the bad guys. The show was pretty good, complete with singing, dancing, fighting, jousting, fireworks, and fire. We ate rolls, corn on the cob, small chickens, and strudel for dessert.

Elisa and Ian on a bed in the rental house. The kids always love exploring our air bnb rental houses!

Me and my Ian

Merlin called out Erik, Ian, and me for not doing the cheer, so he made us stand up and do it again with the spotlight on us.

Cheers!

Yummy dinner, but there was no way I could eat all of it

So much food for a kid!

It was nice to have such good seats!

After the show, we found some crane games in the arcade that must have been malfunctioning. We played the crane game almost a dozen times and won several packets of M&Ms.

Back at the rental house, we considered trying out the hot tub, but both the water and the air were way too hot. Instead, we tried to go to bed early to catch our flight the next day.

Day 1: July 16, 2023

We all woke up super early so that we could leave at 5:30am. I think we could have slept in another half hour because we sat around waiting to board the plane.

The plane ride was only 2.5 hrs. We had screens to entertain us. Unfortunately, I only had one pair of headphones, and I gave them to Ian. I just read a book and played a few soundless games on the screen. We got our luggage and went through customs pretty quickly at the airport. From there we went straight to our shuttle van. It was a 30 minute drive from the airport to the cruise terminal. Despite a smooth, quick time in the airport, the cruise terminal was a different story. We waited in the customs line for an hour and a half even with global entry. We finally got on the boat just before 2:00pm. We ate a small lunch at the Park Café. I had a garden salad; it wasn’t that great. I took Ian swimming, but a few minutes into it, he said his thighs hurt (???). We went back to the rooms.

Ian swam for 2 minutes. I thought the kids would swim more than they did.

On the balcony off our room

We had to rearrange our rooms so that the kids could all sleep in one room; there were enough beds available only in one of the rooms. We explored the ship until dinner. Elisa found Isabelle! Everyone kind of went off on their own.

They finally found each other! Best best cousins!

Dinner was at 5:00pm, but the Park family thought it was 5:30pm. We sat around the dinner table until they finally came. I ordered the artichoke dip and escargot for an appetizer. The artichoke dip was really bland, so I didn’t finish it. For my main entree, I ordered an Indian chicken saag, mostly because nothing else on the menu looked good to me at the moment. It was okay. The naan was gross. I ordered a sugar free chocolate pudding for dessert which was also just okay.

There weren’t any shows that night. I was really tired, so I laid down for most of the evening. We all went to bed early(ish). Turns out there was actually a comedy show this night, I was bummed when I found out we had missed it. How did that even happen??

Ian almost got blown away while exploring around the climbing wall.