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Castaway Cay (Disney's private island) was our stop for today. It is gorgeous!!! There is so much to do, we were a bit overwhelmed with where to start. This post is loaded with tons of information- so stick with me here!!

Our cousins participated in the Castaway Cay 5K, they got to be the first ones off the boat. We probably should've signed up and joined them, but we were too busy eating more delicious food, I'm sure.

Before we headed out onto the island, we grabbed breakfast at the Cabanas buffet. We all love that place!

We hung out with Grandmother in her rented cabana a lot of the morning. The Disney staff was so wonderful to get her a "cab" (a golf cart) from the tram to her cabana. Then at the end of the day, they just drove her straight from the cabana to the boat. It was so nice to save her all that walking.

The cabana was a great place for her because she could lounge in the shade (and we could take a break from the sun with her!), they had complimentary sodas and waters in a mini fridge, fruit, sunscreen, a fresh water wash off spigot, hammock, port a crib (which we used for James' nap- even though it was short), and a little private beach just for people with cabanas. It was super pricey- but it was really nice. We had #17, which was a long walk from the regular beach area, so that made things a bit tricky since they were strict about only 6 people being in the cabana, and we had 60 people in our group.

Unfortunately, we wasted a lot of time miscommunicating and walking a lot of needless steps to meet up properly today. The Disney Navigator app is handy for a lot of things, but it doesn't always work when you're on the island. I was able to get reception, and had free international texting through T-Mobile, but Warren still had his phone on airplane mode, so that didn't help us anyway. I think one of the hardest things on this cruise is to not worry about wasting time, especially when you are frustrated you can't hook up right when you had planned. But instead, to just enjoy making the memories while you're waiting and just enjoy being here. I'm working on that! Always....

Just a side note on the Navigator app. There are some great things about it. It gives you a great look at the schedule as far as what is going on each day. You can pick items you want to be notified about etc, all that is great. The texting works and that is nice, too (and all of this doesn't charge you wifi), but the texting can be really slow. Often to get messages you to have to go in and out of the app repeatedly. This was really frustrating for our group. It was hard to coordinate in a timely fashion. Also, it only tells you the time the text was read, not the time the text was sent. So if you sent a text off that you're heading to dinner- the recipient has no idea what time you said that. Hopefully Disney is working on that....

Once we had finally found each other, we enjoyed playing in the sand at the beach, and did some snorkeling. The kids (and some adults) did run into some patches of sea lice in the kelp and sea weed- so watch out for that!! It happened a couple times. You always knew when it happened because there was a lot of screaming and rushing to shore. I would say the bites are probably most like flea bites. They hurt! It's like kicking over a fire ant hill, but you're in the water.

I love watching my kids play together, especially when they are all getting along!!

For lunch we ate food from Cookies Too- a BBQ buffet- and it was delicious!!! I had ribs, couscous fruit and corn on the cob.

A lot of my extended family really enjoyed their time at the adult only beach. We didn't have a chance to go over there with all the kids in tow, but it sounded pretty awesome.

The boys found this sea creature- I guess it's a sea cucumber? They had a pretty fun time playing with that for awhile.

Such a beautiful place to spend the day!!

Riding the tram back to the boat. I wish I would've gotten the guy announcing the stops in his island accent from the tram because Hallie loved his voice. She was so cute about it.

After wearing ourselves out at the beach all day, we headed back to the boat for a much needed shower. The kids wanted to have some time at the Oceaneer's club, but we just couldn't fit it in. They had to settle for watching movies in our cabin while everyone finished getting ready. One really cool thing is, if you turn on your TV and go to "on demand", you can pull up almost any Disney movie that you can think of to watch. That was fun for our kids, but we really only used it as waiting time, not for it's own fun activity. I had cousins that really enjoyed hiding out in their room and ordered the free room service. It has been fun to see how everyone is enjoying the cruise in their own way.

Next we headed to dinner at the Royal Palace. I liked the meals I had better at the Enchanted Garden, but the soufflé dessert I had at the Royal Palace was AMAZING!! Cassidy and Warren both got the crème brulee, which was really tasty, too. But the soufflé... definitely order that!!

The food I got was fine, but I felt like I made all the wrong choices when we were tasting each other's food. For my app I had the Duck Confit- which was pretty much like chicken salad. Not really what I was looking for. Warren and my cousin both had the escargot- I ate a snail for the first time!! I went into it with an open mind, and it was actually really good. The snail was whatever, but the garlic sauce it was served in was one of the tastiest appetizers I've had yet. My cousin got smart and dipped her bread in it. Wow. The French Onion Soup looked fabulous, but I struck out with a salad that wasn't up to much. The red pear one. For the main course I got the salmon- which was actually quite nice, but I wasn't feeling fish. I should've ordered the lamb or the duck. The lamb looked super fancy.

Our show for the night was the Justina and Daniela Magic Show. There were mixed reviews from our family about this one. Some of us really loved it, and some thought it was a bit cheesy. Warren skipped it and stayed back with James, so he could get the poor baby to bed. James was a disaster at dinner tonight. The sleep deprivation is definitely catching up to the exhausted little guy.