The Disney Dream
Every winter, our family takes a trip to someplace warm(er) than our home in Montana. In past years the CerealBoxMonsters have travelled to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; San Diego, California; Phoenix, Arizona; Disney World, Florida; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. This year we wanted to try someplace new and were up for a little adventure, so we decided to book a Disney cruise to the Caribbean!
On the day of our departure, the temperatures all across the US, even as far south as the Gulf of Mexico dropped to below freezing, causing quite a number of flight delays. What would a family trip be without first being delayed half-way to our destination??
With an unscheduled overnight stay in Dallas/Fort Worth, and an early departure, three hours later we found ourselves in sunny Fort Lauderdale and bound for Port Everglades where the ship awaited. The cruise ship we were to embark upon was the Disney Dream, a beautiful, spectacular, and HUGE vessel!! These ships definitely have something to do for everyone, and we all eventually found some part of the ship that became our favorite. The replica Millenium Falcon cockpit and Tween Lounge were a big hit, as was the theater, the themed dining rooms, the AquaDuck water slide, and Mickey's pool. My personal favorites were the all-you-can-eat self-serve ice cream snack bar, and a near-empty adult deck that overlooked the bow of the ship.
Our Voyage Route
By mid-afternoon, the ship was underway and at sea, and we were off on our Carribean adventure. After a night at sea, we awoke to the ship docking at our first port of call - Nassau, The Bahamas. I was pretty excited to disembark and explore, as I had done some research prior to our trip and downloaded several locations for us to visit (which, of course, also contained geocaches). Fortunately, this day on land coincided with a day I needed to find a cache to keep my 365/366 streak alive. After a wonderful breakfast on board, we departed the ship and took a 15-minute walk to the Queen's Staircase and Fort Fincastle, one of Nassau's three historic forts.
The Fort, one of the oldest structures on the island, was built in 1793 under the direction of New Providence's governor, Lord Duncan, and served to keep the island safe from pirates and rival European empires. As a fort, it is pretty limited; just a few ramparts with replica cannon and two small rooms with information plaques, but it provides a great view of the harbor and the Atlantis resort. The staircase, with its 66 steps, were carved out of solid limestone rock by 600 slaves in 1793/94 to create an escape route from the fort above. For us, however, the landmarks not only provided a history lesson, some great vantage points, and some good locations for photos, but also several geocaches. Here, we found a traditional cache, GCA6J0Q Queens Staircase and two EarthCaches, GC5QC27 The Queen's Staircase Earthcache and GCAX4AH Fort Fincastle Earthcache.
Making our way back to the port, and before we reboarded the Dream, we stopped by two interesting locations that were also virtual geocaches: GCC41F Parliament Square and GCAJKC0 Capital of The Bahamas.
CerealBoxMonsters & TheseBees at Parliament Square
The next day, GCA2025 Where's 25? - Locationless Cache was published, and was our first opportunity to log this type of geocache. We decided that since the Dream had anchored off of the island Eleuthera (at N 24° 36.787 W 76° 09.872), and Disney was also celebrating 2025, we stopped to snap our photo with the required sign before deboarding and setting off for another adventure.
GCA2025 Where's 25? (Notice the soft-serve ice cream)
Once ashore, as we stepped into the queue for the tram, I was surprised to look down at one of the many information signs describing some local fauna, as part of the Nature Discovery Trail, to find a geocache stuck to the back of it. It was clearly a geocache (small, green aluminum nano container, with an empty logsheet) but according to the geocaching website, there was no listing nearby. Odd. Regardless, we signed the log, replaced the cache, and went about our day.
Once at Disney's beach, three of us went swimming and snorkeling in the amazingly turquoise water. We even had a great experience swimming with some of the fish that made this island water's their home. After lunch (and a brief rainstorm) we took a hike along the Nature Trail Loop, which provided more educational information about some of the local flora and fauna, and turned around at the end of the island, where a historic lighthouse stands. Along the way, we discovered an EarthCache, GC5QYM1 Pink Sands of Eleuthera and a traditional geocache GCMZAC Bannerman Town Lighthouse Cache - Eleuthera. Incidentally, after returning home, I did some research into that unaccounted-for geocache. It was never listed on geocaching.com, nor was it on opencaching.us, terracaching.com, or letterboxing.org, so it remains a true mystery cache.
The next day of our cruise was spent entirely at sea, and we were able to enjoy all the food, activities, and amenities of the Dream. On the last day of our adventure at sea, we arrived back at Port Everglades and debarked the ship early in the morning.
With beautifully clear and sunny skies, we decided to head to the beach where two of the monsters swam and played in the sand while the other sat with momma monster and soaked up some sun. I took a walk along the beach, finding all sorts of treasures (shells mostly, although I cannot pretend that I hadn't hoped to find some lost gold doubloons) and another EarthCache, GC2N82N White Sand Dreams.
All in all, we traveled to two Caribbean islands and found 2 Traditional geocaches, 4 EarthCaches, 3 Virtual geocaches, and 1 Locationless Geocache. We avoided pirates and jellyfish, braved the open seas, and made it back to tell the tale! What an exciting adventure we had this year - I can't wait to see where we go next winter.