A WONDERful first Disney cruise - San Juan to New Orleans - updates x 3 including wrap up - 11/15!!!

Day 5 - Pirates in the Caribbean

After a lovely day at Castaway Cay, we washed up and got changed into scurvy pirates before heading to dinner!

We (meaning my mom and me) had DIYed our costumes pretty inexpensively before we left and I was very pleased with how they turned out. So of course we had to stop for photos!

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After photos, we headed to dinner at Triton’s. I had read some negative reviews of the Pirates’ night menu, so I went in with low expectations. But I was pleasantly surprised. I had the crab cake appetizer and the Jack’s Treasure-of-the-Seas (seafood pasta) as my entree.

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Both were very good. My dad and I both had the rum soaked chocolate cake for dessert and my mom had the cheesecake tart.

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I believe James and the kids had more Mickey bars. We were all pleased with our desserts! 😋

They also did a little parade around the restaurant with all the waitstaff dressed up, which was fun to watch.


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We definitely enjoyed the food and the ambience in the dining room on this night. So even though others have said they usually skip this menu in favor of specialty dining, I would have a hard time skipping this one.

We were all full and sleepy, but no rest for scurvy scallywags - we have a party to get to!


Next update: the Pirate Party
 
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Day 5 - Pirates IN the Caribbean

It was finally time for something else we had been looking forward to since we booked this cruise...


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...the Pirates in the Caribbean deck party

Unfortunately, Annie saw none of it. Not one minute. 😪 It was just too much, between a long tiring day in the heat, no nap, and a late night. I would definitely prefer to do this party on a night other than Castaway Cay night as it was just too much for one day. Even Luke was yawning while dancing. 🤣 🕺

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Luke, my parents, and I definitely enjoyed the party. (James was at the back holding a sleeping Annie, but he enjoyed what he could see.) Luke really enjoyed the music and characters.

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Luke, though tired, danced like a maniac!

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This was one happy boy...

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And of course, ziplining Mickey and the fireworks were awesome!
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Definitely a fun ending to what was unanimously our favorite day of our Disney cruise! ❤🚢🏝🎇
 
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Day 6 - Another Fun Day at Sea

This was a big day - it was my dad’s birthday and we had lots of plans today. Here is the day’s Navigator:

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Since we had a birthday to celebrate,
we started our day with some presents!

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I think he was happy and surprised! (It’s definitely hard to pack
and set up surprises on a cruise!)

After presents we grabbed a quick breakfast at Cabanas. Then up next we had the Frozen Gathering booked. Both kids enjoyed meeting Elsa and Anna, but Annie was particularly smitten! 🥰

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This was a great meet and greet and I loved what they did with Animators’ Palate to make it feel like an ice castle!

After the meet and greet, we did a little exploring the ship. We took some group photos and some of the kids.

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Continued next post....
 
Day 6 - Another Fun Day at Sea (part 2)

After our group photos, Annie “discovered” herself in the mirrored windows and started dancing and having a good time. So the diners at Palo got treated to a dancing, twirling princess through the windows! 🤣❤️

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I am biased, but it was adorable! ❤️ After the impromptu dance session, we walked around and explored the ship a little more.

Here are some photos of the kids’ pool and water play area:

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And here of the family pool:

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And finally one of the adult pool:

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Next on our tour we stopped at the sports deck/area.

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James played a little basketball while the rest of us tried to teach the kids how to play ping pong. 🏓 In case you’re wondering, it was not particularly successful. I think you have to be older than 3 to appreciate ping pong. 🤣

After our exploring, we headed back to the room for an outfit change. Because we were headed to the Buena Vista Theatre for a movie that was still in theaters at the time - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker! We changed the kids into some cute Star Wars outfits, but sadly I don’t appear to have any pictures of the kids in their outfits. (This was actually a 3 outfit day for the kids since we started with Frozen clothes, then Star Wars, then formal attire! 🤣)

Here is our view in the theater

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My kids are big Star Wars fans and we really enjoyed the movie and thought it was very cool to be watching it at sea while it was still in theaters.
After the movie we grabbed a quick lunch and headed to the pool. We had a great time splashing, but unfortunately we only had about an hour to play before we had to get ready for our next activity. We alternated between the family pool and the kids’ area and my parents visited the adult area again.

Next up: a wild and crazy evening
 


Day 6 - Open Bar and a Lesson Learned

Our next activity was one that was organized by our Facebook group. It was an open bar. We paid a set price and could try unlimited beverages (only certain liquors were included) for the hour. I was really excited to try this as we had been unable to get into any of the mixology/ other tastings sponsored by Disney.

It was actually really fun and allowed us to try things we normally wouldn’t have risked trying lest we pay for them and not enjoy them. HOWEVER, I will note for others reading, that it can be a LOT of alcohol. They have servers that come around to the tables and take drink orders. Each time they would bring a drink, they would take the order for the next drink. I don’t drink much usually. Maybe a glass of wine or a cocktail once or twice a month on date night. So drinking nonstop for an hour with no food took a toll on us. Here are some photos maybe halfway through.

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Yes, I said halfway! 🤣. So we were definitely feeling good when we left. We went and got the kids from the kids’ club immediately after. We had no time to rest because we had to get ready for formal night and Shutters!

In my planning (prior to finding out about the open bar), I had thought a Shutters session right before dinner on formal night would be perfect because we would be all dressed up in our formal attire, but this was a lot after the happy hour, especially since we had to rush back to the room and get everyone dressed up in their formal attire quickly to make it in time. I had brought a Cinderella dress for Annie and I wanted to do a kind of DIY Bippity Boppity Boutique, so I also brought glitter hair gel. Since I was rushing around getting myself and Luke ready, I asked my mom to do Annie’s hair for me. (This will come into play later.)

Our Shutters session went great and we set up a time to view the photos after dinner. After Shutters, we were planning to get some group photos done at some of the backdrops around the ship. But my mom realized her wedding ring was missing and panicked. She ran all over before realizing she had taken it off to do Annie’s hair. By the time she found it, though, there was no time for photos. 😢. Honestly, though, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because we tried to get a photo of me and DH and the kids while she ran back to the room, and this is the kids while we were waiting in line for that photo...

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Yeah, not really in a photo mood. 😩 So we just gave up and got out of line.

This became relevant later. So I’m going to skip forward and come back to dinner later so that I can discuss my biggest trip fail....

So after dinner we headed to Shutters to check out the photos. They were wonderful! Really beautiful. BUT....I had mistakenly assumed that photos taken here would go into the same bank of photos to choose from on your onboard account (so like $15-20 a photo for the rights). In retrospect, I definitely should have looked into it more. But I was thinking it was similar to the Photopass Studio at Disney Springs.

I really kick myself for not looking into it more - I’m a Disney travel planner after all. However, even now, trying to search for a price list to show you guys, I find there is very little out there. And when you search for price lists for the Portrait Studio, it keeps coming back to the basic Shutters pricing (the 10 for $150, etc.). So it’s easy to see how someone would get misled. But I know now so I can better inform my guests (and you guys).

So after showing us all these amazing pictures, they bring out the price guide. Y’all, it was all I could do not to visibly let my jaw drop. 😲 Since I can’t find the price list, I can’t share it with you. But I do remember that the least expensive option was around $600 for 5 digital files. And the photo books/albums ran right around what I paid for the entire cruise. 😳. Now I am by no means knocking the service. The pictures were amazing, truly. And I imagine they would be a great option for lots of families. But I personally would rather stick with the basic photos and save the extra money for another cruise.

The saddest part about all this is that we never got a group photo on formal night. Since we didn’t purchase anything from the Portrait Studio and we didn’t stop at any of the back drop photographers, we don’t have any pictures of our group all dressed up together from formal night. 😭😭😭

So there you have it...my biggest cruise fail/regret. But we will just have to go on another Disney cruise to remedy this! 👍
😁

Next up: circling back to Formal Night dinner at Animator’s Palate!
 
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We haven't ever done the open bar activity - it looks like it would be fun and your photos really make me wish we were going to be in Crown & Fin sometime soon. We love it in there. 😊

The saddest part about all this is that we never got a group photo on formal night. Since we didn’t purchase anything from the Portrait Studio and we didn’t stop at any of the back drop photographs, we don’t have any pictures of our group all dressed up together from formal night. 😭😭😭

Aww...this is such a shame. I hadn't ever even thought about the fact that those photos wouldn't be included if you purchased a photo package - but I guess in some ways it makes sense that they aren't. It's too bad they are charging so much for them especially as you didn't get any others taken that night. :sad1:
 
Day 6 - Formal Night Dinner at Animator’s Palate

Our dinner tonight was in Animator’s Palate. This is a great restaurant to be in for formal night as it is such a neat atmosphere.

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Unfortunately, this whole evening after the open bar is kind of a blur, so I definitely didn’t really get to enjoy the restaurant as much as I had hoped to. But we took advantage of the beautiful surroundings to take some photos...

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For my appetizer, I got the Black Truffle Pasta Purseittes that everyone raves about!

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These were definitely delicious and lived up to the hype!

As a main, I ordered the Ginger Teryaki dusted Angus Beef Tenderloin.

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For dessert I had the Warm Sticky Date Pudding.

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I don’t remember anything standing out about these two dishes, but I think they were both good, just not memorable.

Continued in next post....
 


Day 6 - Formal Dinner (continued)

While were eating, the lights and screens were changing.

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The kids were completely entranced and thought this restaurant was so cool!

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I would love to eat there again to appreciate it better!

Then at the end of the meal we got treated to two Mickeys! One was Sorcerer Mickey who the kids were super excited to see walking around the restaurant. (You can see him in the background of the above photo.)

The other was this Mickey cake that my mom had ordered for my dad’s birthday...

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Absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t feeling well enough to enjoy it.

Jonathan and my dad were goofing off with the Mickey face...

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After dinner, we had planned to see the Frozen musical, but I think we were all tired and not feeling great, so we decided to scrap it and call it a night. The ship’s photographer did get this photo with most of our group...

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(Luke looks so enthused! 🤣)

And that’s a wrap for day 6! Next up, another sea day.
 
Day 7 - Our Last Day at Sea

Then dawned our final day at sea. 😢 Definitely bittersweet, but we were ready to make the most of it. Our first activity for the day was the Princess Meet and Greet. Annie was looking super cute gazing out the porthole while waiting for our turn...

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We also saw Mickey while we were waiting in line. Annie didn’t want a picture actually with Mickey, just one of his backside. 🤷‍♀️🤔

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Then Cinderella led us over to meet the princesses.

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We met Cinderella...

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Ariel...

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Tiana....

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...and Belle!

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Annie LOVED this activity. Luke liked it okay, but mostly just went along for his sister.

This post is a little photo heavy, so I’ll continue in the next post.
 
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Day 7 - Our Last Day at Sea (continued)

After the Princess Meet and Greet, we dropped the kids off at the Kids’ Club so we could head to Palo!

I have to add some backstory here. This was our first Disney cruise, so we were in the last group to pick onboard activities. And when I got on to book the morning we were able, everything was gone. 😢. We did get the two meet and greets, but every tasting, mixology, Palo brunch, Palo dinner, etc. was gone. I later heard that even a lot of golds had trouble getting them, so we think our cruise had quite a few platinums on it. So I had mentioned in my cruise FB group that I was a little disappointed not to have gotten these and a lovely lady from my group reached out to me and said that she was sailing concierge and would we like to join them for Palo Brunch? ❤❤❤. I am just amazed by the friendships that are forged through a mutual love of Disney. Heather, if you are on the Disboards, I am so grateful for your kindness. 🤗



So we took Heather up on her sweet offer and booked brunch for this last full sea day. So we met Heather and her friend/travel companion for a 10:30 brunch at Palo.

Here are some photos my mom took of the buffet items...

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For our plate items, I ordered the artichoke ravioli (I forgot to take a picture, so I got this one from Ziggy Knows Disney).

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This was absolutely delicious! It appears my parents got the pennette pasta and the egg muffin with smoked salmon and hollandaise.

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I know they enjoyed their dishes. I forgot what James ordered and I have no photo to remind me, but he liked his dish as well.

I also had to order the famous grape and Gorgonzola pizza for the table. 😋

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This was as good as everyone says. After our plated entrees, we sampled the desserts.

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We were completely stuffed after this meal and pretty much had to roll ourselves back to our cabins. 🤣

Overall, we had a lovely meal at Palo. The only downside was that it was pretty choppy on this morning and being at the far back of the ship, you definitely feel more of that motion. It didn’t affect me much, just made it a little more difficult being so full, but it definitely took a toll on our dining companions ability to fully enjoy their meals. 😢

Up next...more ship fun
 
My husband and I were on the same cruise celebrating our 20th anniversary! I have not seen us in any of your pictures lol, though we did spend a lot of time in the adult areas since we left the kids at home!

I agree about San Juan, we really liked it there. Would go back, I sooooo want to see the bioluminescence. Stayed at the decanter hotel in old San Juan and went to chocobar too! Yum!

We also had Palo brunch scheduled for that last sea day, but sadly ended up having to cancel because the rocking boat got to my husband and he didn’t want anything to do with food for awhile!
 
Day 7 - Our Last Day at Sea (continued)

After our brunch, we went to pick up the kids from the kids’ clubs. When we got there, the kids were finishing up a kids’ version of Anyone Can Cook. I didn’t know they did these. Both my kids really enjoyed this as they love to cook. Which reminds me I forgot to share the day’s Navigator...

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After picking the kids up, we took them to Cabanas for lunch. They really wanted to visit the pool, but unfortunately with the choppy seas, they had the pools closed. (Probably for the best as the water in them was sloshing pretty violently, it would have made for a rough swim!)

So instead, we had a lazy afternoon. We took a nap and wandered around checking out the ship some more. At some point we ordered room service to get these beauties....😋

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Before long, it was time for our last dinner of the cruise 😢. We were back at Tiana’s Place with the Mardi Gras menu. This timing worked out perfectly, because even though we were sad about having to disembark the next morning, this got us excited about our upcoming days in New Orleans!

Fun fact: this season (Spring 2020), was the first season that Disney has had sailings out of New Orleans. So our family made history by being on the ship the first time a Disney ship ever docked in New Orleans!

The kids enjoyed pretending to play their menus! 🤣

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Then our dinner host starting making her way around! Luke enjoyed his visit with Tiana, but Annie was just over the moon! ❤

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After our visit with Tiana, Louis also made his rounds...

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Will continue with dinner in the next post....
 
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Day 7 - Our Last Dinner at Sea (continued)

For appetizers, we got the shrimp and grits, the charcuterie, and the boudin sausage fritters. (My parents got the same, I believe.)

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These were all delicious! For my entree, I went with the sea bass.

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I’m not sure what anyone else got, but mine was excellent. Perfectly tender and flaky.

Annie had some spaghetti that she shared with her dad, Lady and the Tramp style!


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For dessert, I had the white chocolate bread pudding. It was also delicious. I forget who ordered the sorbet and beignets, but I remember I didn’t as we’d be in New Orleans the next day and I wanted to save myself for the real things. The kids had more Mickey bars.

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After dinner, we went to the late showing of Dreams.

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Photo from disney fandom

This was another fantastic show (although I liked The Golden Mickeys a little better)! And after that, we were all exhausted.

We checked out our final towel animal...

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...and then we headed to bed, knowing we would wake up in New Orleans!
 
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My husband and I were on the same cruise celebrating our 20th anniversary! I have not seen us in any of your pictures lol, though we did spend a lot of time in the adult areas since we left the kids at home!

I agree about San Juan, we really liked it there. Would go back, I sooooo want to see the bioluminescence. Stayed at the decanter hotel in old San Juan and went to chocobar too! Yum!

We also had Palo brunch scheduled for that last sea day, but sadly ended up having to cancel because the rocking boat got to my husband and he didn’t want anything to do with food for awhile!

Loved San Juan! The Chocobar was wonderful. You should definitely go see the bioluminescence if you ever go back.

I’m sorry you didn’t get to do your Palo Brunch. It didn’t affect our enjoyment, but it definitely did for our friends. 😢
 
Day 8 - Welcome to New Orleans!


Our first Disney cruise had come to an end. 😢. But we had arrived in New Orleans and we still had a couple days left of vacation!

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Our final breakfast this morning was at Tiana’s Place and we had the early breakfast since we had the early dinner seating. I had the Route 66 off their See Ya Real Soon menu. We were tired and pictured out, so we didn’t get any photos at breakfast. But it was standard breakfast fare - scrambled eggs, ham, sausage. It filled our bellies, but wasn’t particularly memorable.

After breakfast, we went to Azure to await our departure group. We grabbed a couple atrium photos on the way. Goodbye beautiful Wonder atrium!

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Annie wanted one more photo in the porthole window...

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It seemed like it took awhile, but finally they called purple Daisy and we were on our way. Finding our luggage and going through customs was relatively quick and painless. Then we found a taxi that could take all 6 of us back to our car. We decided to consolidate and just use one car for New Orleans since there was limited parking at our AirBNB. So we threw our cruise stuff in my parents’ car at the hotel and took all of us and our New Orleans’ stuff in our car.

We were headed to the Audubon Zoo! I hadn’t been here since high school and my husband and kids had never been. The kids really enjoyed this zoo!

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The kids especially loved all the water features.

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Next up....bring on the animals!
 
Day 8 - Audubon Zoo continued

We had lots of great animal experiences...

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We saw an actual cat fight...

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The kids were really hamming it up for photos...

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They actually love each other... ❤️

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Up next...final installment of Audubon Zoo
 
Day 8 - Audubon Zoo (part 3)

We had a couple more close up encounters of the tall and the scary varieties...

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Next up we visited the petting zoo area. Of course, my kids absolutely loved the petting zoo....

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Apparently all three of my kids loved the petting zoo, even the big one...🤣

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🤣❤️ After the animal cuddling we practiced jumping...

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And rolling down the big hill...

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🤣🤣🤣. I really loved that the Audubon Zoo gave my kids lots of areas to just run and play and be kids. They had an absolute blast. After a decent amount of energy was run off, we headed out of the zoo and off to lunch.

We were headed to Dooky Chase‘s Restaurant. For those of you who haven’t heard of Dooky Chase’s and Leah Chase, it is worth reading up on. Leah Chase was considered to be the Queen of Creole cuisine and the inspiration for Disney’s Tiana. So it seemed like a perfect place to visit after getting off the Disney Wonder. Unfortunately, it was not to be. While the restaurant was still open for lunch when we arrived, they said they had so many people already waiting that they weren’t taking any more people on the wait list for lunch. 😢. I was pretty disappointed as we really wanted to try the famous buffet and it was only offered for weekday lunch, so this was our last chance. But we moved on. When my parents had arrived in New Orleans prior to our cruise, I had recommended Willie Mae’s as a dining option to them, and they enjoyed it so much that they suggested we go back. 👍

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We all had the famous fried chicken.

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It was delicious (and this is coming from someone who’s not a fried chicken fan). It really is the best fried chicken ever. Would highly recommend to anyone visiting New Orleans!

Next up...the rest of our afternoon/evening in New Orleans.
 
Day 8 - Mardi Gras Fun!

After a delicious lunch, we stopped by a grocery store to pick up some items for breakfasts and snacks in our AirBNB. I texted our host that we were on our way and he met us at our AirBNB to give us all the info. We loved this AirBNB. It is actually a historic building in New Orleans and he gave us some of the history of the building. But I didn’t write it down and I no longer remember. Sorry guys. But it was a very nice rental. It had one parking spot included for free (rare in downtown New Orleans) plus a full kitchen and it was in convenient walking distance to transportation and many of the sights. I will say that there was some street noise, so that is something to be aware of. But otherwise, great rental.


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We settled in and had a light dinner after our late lunch, then we walked a few blocks to catch a Mardi Gras parade!

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The kids were very excited!

Side note: I spent quite a bit of time researching Mardi Gras parades. I have read that the parades can be pretty risqué and that people watching can get pretty rowdy. With having young kids, I wanted something that was going to be age appropriate and safe. I even went to the trouble of emailing some of the Krewes to ask about content. I found a few that sounded family friendly, but the one that worked best with our dates was Krewe Boheme. This worked out well and I would recommend them to others looking for a family friendly parade.
The closest spot to our rental was the very end of the parade route. This worked well because it was not crowded, but the only downside was that I think some of the parade broke off before making it to where we were. Here are some photos of our first Mardi Gras parade...


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This was definitely fun, and the Krewe was super excited to see children and gave them lots of little toys, necklaces, etc. The kids enjoyed this and I would definitely go to another Mardi Gras parade if we are in New Orleans at the right time of year.

After the parade, it was late, so we walked back to our rental and headed to bed.

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It was a fun day in New Orleans, but we still had one more full day to go!
 
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We did the open bar once on a cruise. It was a blast. What is the "chocolate" drink in your photo? Look yummy!

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Aww, so much fun! The last pic of Annie in the porthole is great!

As kids, we visited our grandparents in New Orleans every summer and would go to Audubon Park. That hill was funny to us—created so that the children of New Orleans would know what a hill was! As our upstate New York home was on a hill, we couldn’t imagine not knowing a hill. Of course our dad also had to explain to us that he hadn’t seen snow until he was about 10, so it was even crazier that we not only had a hill but we could also sled on it in the winter.

Thanks for your report!
 

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