Day Two - Bridge tour

Our second day, we were at sea. We got little newsletter type pamphlets every night telling us what the next day had in store on the ship. We got separate ones for the kids and one for the teens. Matthew and Dillon thought it was funny because theirs said, "today is day two, and we are in, The Ocean."
We slept in and had room service delivered to our room. The kids thought that was great fun.
Then we just mozied around in our room, totally relaxing and watching the water out our porthole.
In the afternoon, we met with Brett for our bridge tour.
This was so exciting. We met with the captain and his crew. The captain was so great. He talked with the kids about the controls. They all got binoculars to look with.
We watched guests go to the front of the ship and do the classic Titanic, "I'm the king of the world!!" move.
The captain arranged for us to have tickets on a roller coaster type ride we would be seeing the next day at Haiti, and invited us to dinner at the captain's table Thursday night.
The rest of the day was spent swimming and just hanging out on the ship.
I will add that we did go to the front of the ship to do the Titanic move, then turned and waved up at the crew, who all waved back. So much fun!!



This picture reminds me of Star Trek.




Doesn't he just look so nice?

Day One: Getting acquainted with the ship

Without further ado....the daily entries!
I thought I would do days one and two in this entry, but then I rambled. So you can wait for day two!
We boarded and checked out our rooms. We dropped off our carry on luggage and headed to the Windjammer for lunch. This is where we were first introduced to the food that would fatten us up all week long. Yum-o!
After lunch, it was time for our muster station drill. I think that's what it's called, who knows. We all lined up on the decks to be given instructions on what to do in case of emergency. The guy in charge of ours left us a bit weary. They went through and marked off everyone who was there because it was mandatory. We gave him our name, and he marked off someone elses. We had seen our group on a different page, but he did not mark them. Then, when other stations were calling for their missing people, our guy was not. Thankfully, we had all the faith in the world that we wouldn't sink!

Our life boats
After the drill, we headed to the pool. We had eaten lunch late, so knew we wouldn't be doing our six o'clock dinner in the dining room. The pool area was so amazing. There were several pools and this splash zone area for kids. We later learned that babies weren't really allowed in the other pools, but we didn't know that, so for the first day, Nannie went everywhere.




This is a little lazy river type thing with glass walls.





Like I said there were several pools. These are just pictures of the kid splash zone area. It was amazing.



After we swam and got dressed, we headed back to the Windjammer for dinner. Then, we headed upstairs to Adventure Ocean to meet Brett and to sign the kids up for the program. On our way, we watched an amazing sunset.



This picture was taken at the end of the week, but it shows that we all fell in love with Brett. He took such good care of us, and we adopted him into our family. He may not want to be part of our family, but that's ok, he'll always be family in our eyes!

Matthew and Dillon headed off to the teen area to play dodge ball. We hung out with the workers and got to know everyone.

While Matthew and Dillon played dodgeball,we played a bit of ping pong, then some miniature golf.




We were given free Bingo games, so headed down to Pharaoh's palace for Bingo.

A random bridge on the promenade deck that I thought looked cool

The first of our towel animals, a stingray.
It was such a fun start to an amazing week.

Freedom of the Seas

I want to retell this story, day by day. However, I have so many pictures of the ship that I want to share with you.
These pics won't really fit in with other posts. They are just things we thought were cool enough to take pics of.
So, prepare for picture overload from the Freedom of the Seas!!


The ship...duh





Our rooms. Emily is in our room, it had a king sized bed and two beds that pulled down from the ceiling. It also had a sitting area where the picture taker is standing, with a chair and coffee table. There was a TV and counter with drawers and chair opposite the coffee table. The kids had an identical room, but their beds were not pushed together to make a king sized bed. You can see that Collin and Zachy are standing in between two beds and you can kind of tell in the scorpion picture that it is a twin sized bed.



Marble staircase at forward end of ship







In front of Pharaoh's Palace. This is where games were played. We played Bingo here, but it was the only time we actually went here..other than to take pictures.



The Elevators



These jets are at the top of the elevator area. At the other end of the ship there were stop lights hanging down.



This car was in front of a pub on the promenade deck





The pool decks were above the promenade deck, so this lady dove through the pool, to the promenade



Matthew really liked these statues and learned all about them. This is at the aft end of the promenade deck. Aft, means...not forward. :)



Ben and Jerry's

The maps of the ship



This is a glass sculpture. I wish we had a closer picture of it, because this picture doesn't do it any justice. It was so intricate, and simply amazing.

This dog was tied up outside a restaurant. Zachy and Emily absolutely loved it and had to pet it every time we walked by. I told Zachy he could definitely have this kind of dog. :)

I'm digging through over a thousand pictures. I think the others I want to share can fit into other entries. This is just the promenade deck. The ship has fifteen stories, so this is a tiny taste of it. It truly was awe inspiring.

The Beginning

We just got back from our Make-A-Wish cruise and I want to tell you the whole story about our trip!
Make-A-Wish is such an amazing organization and I want to start at the beginning.
Zachy's wish process actually started two years ago.
A friend told me we should apply for a wish for Zach. We were skeptical because we were under the impression that you had to have a life threatening illness to be considered for a wish. As it turns out, we were told that at some point you had to have a life threatening illness. Not necessarily right now.
I'm not really sure whether it was just having TAPVR or also being paced that qualified Zachy. I'm also not sure if Nannie will ever get a wish granted. Time will tell.
So anyway, the volunteers came to our home and talked with us and with Zachy about what he wished for. He isn't a very talkative kid, so it was really hard to get anything out of him. He really wanted to be Ben 10, but since he is a human, and not a cartoon, that is kind of impossible. He then stated that he wanted to live on a ship like Zack and Cody. The volunteers got the idea that he wanted to meet the actors from The Suite Life. So, we went with that.
When they first started to look into it, the show was in hiatus. So we waited to see if it was going to continue. By the time we got word that it was, indeed, going to run another season, Zachy was over wanting that. He still wanted to live on the ship though. So the natural direction to go was for a cruise.
We were advised through MAW to choose Royal Caribbean. MAW only works with Disney Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean. They told us that Royal Caribbean treated their wish kids amazingly. We chose the cruise line, then started looking at the ships. We got to choose the cruise we wanted, and they did the rest.
The time came near for us to depart and we had a going away party with the MAW volunteers. They took us to Chuck E Cheese where Zachy was treated like the guest of honor. They brought him some goodies for the trip, and we just had a great time.







We then got ready to leave.



We flew Air Tran to get to Florida. When we arrived in Florida and claimed our luggage we saw a piece come around that was all taped up. Naturally, you hope it isn't your bag when you see that. However, it was ours. Matt took it to the baggage area and the next thing I knew, he was transferring our stuff to a brand new London Fog suitcase. SCORE!


We took a shuttle to the Marriott. We were supposed to have two rooms with queen beds. The wonderful people at Marriott upgraded us to a king suite with three rooms. Even with everyone having their own beds, they still ended up with us!


The next morning we got a bus to head down to Cape Canaveral. When we pulled up to the port we were greeted with a ginormous ship, and we knew right away it was going to be a week to remember.



We just didn't realize how memorable it would be!