Days 8 & 9- Coco Cay and home!

Friday, June 30- Perfect Day at Coco Cay

Friday was our last real day of vacation!! (Saturday/ travel day doesn’t really count, IMO.)

Our final port of call was Royal Caribbean’s private island, located in the Bahamas and called Coco Cay. They refer to this port as “Perfect Day at Coco Cay”, because, how catchy. 😉

This was the port the kids were all probably most excited about, because we had tickets for the main attraction- the Thrill Waterpark.

I was up early and happened to catch the sun rise over the ocean, just after we docked in Coco Cay:

Here’s the view of Coco Cay from my balcony. It’s not a very large island; it’s basically just a big playground for kids and adults alike. It has the waterpark, a wave pool, beaches (of course), several pools, etc.

They had said the gangplank would be down by 8 am, so we planned to try to be down there and ready to go right at 8. My sister had read the wait times for the big slides can get very long, so the kids were going to race straight there and try to get on them immediately, before crowds appeared.

This plan worked! We were I think the 3rd or 4th group waiting at the door for them to let people off the ship.

They had music and people dancing to welcome us to the island. Very festive.

My parents stayed behind for a bit to take it a little slower and have a more leisurely breakfast before meeting up with us. My mom took this neat pic from the breakfast buffet restaurant, looking down on Coco Cay from the 11th deck.

The boys immediately raced off to the slides while Ivan and I went to stake out some chairs near the wave pool. We were literally the first ones there!

I then put my phone away and headed for the slides, too, with Ivan. We went straight for this super tall red one.

It was very fun and exhilarating. The only thing I didn’t like was that in a bikini, I could feel every little “bump” on my back as I sped over the seams inside the tubes. I wished I had been wearing a rash guard or something.

The boys hit all the major slides right away. I did several, but opted out of the “drop slide”- one where you stand there waiting and then the floor drops out beneath you, sending you down the tube. I am okay with most thrill rides, but the idea of the anticipation and waiting for the floor to literally drop out was too much for me!!! (I ended up feeling like a chicken because everyone else, including my almost 8 year old niece, did it… well, besides my parents and the littles who were too small.)

Later in the morning we spent quite a while in the wave pool. Water temp was amazing and the younger kids had a lot of fun here, too.

In our haste to get to the island in the morning, we hadn’t really eaten much breakfast, so by late morning we were hungry. There was “free” food for us (well, included with the price of the cruise), since the island is owned by Royal Caribbean. I had an exceptionally delicious cheeseburger that very much hit the spot.

After lunch I wanted to go check out one of the beaches for a little bit. The kids were just wanting to stay in the waterpark, so just me, my Dad and Ivan walked over to the beach.

Took a few pics of some slides on the way past, since I had my phone with me:

The line was super long for this group tube slide (pink and yellow one below), so Ivan and I never made it on this one. But my brother-in-law and the 2 girls went on, as well as the boys. My nieces are both total daredevils!! They ended up having to go backwards on the big drop, so it was extra scary, but they were all in!! I was impressed, actually! My younger niece just turned 6 at the beginning of June, and the older is still 7, turning 8 soon. I asked the 7-year-old how she liked that big tall red slide (see above) which is among the tallest water slides in the world, and she replied immediately and very earnestly, “Oh, it was terrifying- I loved it!!!” Hahaha!!! Best response ever.

Anyway, we didn’t spend too long at the beach, but we did go in the water for a bit. Which was great, until I saw a tiny jellyfish floating near me! Time to go. LOL.

Technically this is the Bahamas, but obviously it’s not like visiting the “real” Bahamas, since no local people actually live on this island or anything. It’s just used for tourism. Still beautiful though.

Back into the Thrill Waterpark:

By afternoon I was kind of done with waiting in line for the slides, so I spent a long time in the wave pool. We kind of rotated the little kids around between us so my sister and her husband could hit the slides, too. (Only my oldest niece was tall enough for all the slides- the younger two could only do certain ones.)

This mat slide was a big hit for all of us; we went on it MANY MANY times. It was really fun, and 4 people can go at a time and “race” down it. You lay on your stomach on this one. Kinda thought I was gonna lose a contact lens at the end given how much water was splashing in my face, but I was okay. 🙂

Here’s Asher posing with my oldest niece, proud to have conquered ALL the slides!! My Dad also did a bunch of them with us, including the mat slides above, plus that steep blue one shown in the pic below.

We ended up literally closing out the wave pool at 4 pm. We were the first ones in, and the last ones out. Haha. FUN DAY!! The kids freaking loved this place.

Here’s Asher heading back to the ship for our 4:30 all aboard time:

Since we weren’t back on the ship until 4:30, we had to rush to get ready for 5:30 dinner! It was our last night, so we didn’t want to miss it.

It was hard to believe it was our final night already!! 😦 Got my last yummy dessert, a brownie this time:

I mentioned them before, but our waiters were the BEST!!! Miss them!! Ashroff from India on the left, and Igusti from Indonesia on the right. They were both so great.

A few final pics of our last dinner….

We went to the 7:30 p.m. Farewell show and we told the boys to come to this one. The boys usually were not that interested in going to the shows (I think they would have really liked all of them, but they are teen boys and just wanted to go do other stuff, I guess…). But the comedian from the first night was going to be back and he was SO FUNNY. They also thought he was hysterical and they were glad they went. 🙂

After the show they went off to do their own things for a while, and some of us went for a couple final drinks at the Pub!! Eventually everyone else turned in, since we did need to pack, etc. It would be an early morning the next day to disembark.

BUT… Ivan wanted to check out the casino. That’s one place on the ship we hadn’t made it yet. We grabbed some cash and headed there around 11 p.m.

I am not really the gambling type, lol. I literally don’t know how to play all those casino table games really, so you’ll never find me at a poker or blackjack table. (I kind of wish I knew how though! Are there classes in Vegas??) I stuck $10 in a slot machine and immediately lost $7 after 7 spins. LOL.

But then!! With $3 left to go, I won a little!! Boom, $26 richer. High roller over here. hahaha!! I immediately cashed it out. 😂😂

Ivan basically lost another $10 in a different machine and we called it a night. 😉

The casino was super busy though!! I don’t know if it was that busy every night or just people hoping to make back some of the money they’d spent on drinks all week before ending the cruise, but it was very full.

We stopped by the photo area to purchase a group photo of our entire group. (I thought we’d have access to select and buy the professional pics they took even after the cruise ended, but we learned- nope! You had to buy them on the cruise or not at all.)

I briefly debated buying this family shot of us, but the prices for a single print seemed $$ and anyway, we had some nice ones on my iphone. I just took this pic of the screen instead. Hahaha! I did buy 3 copies of the formal night shot of all 11 of us together though, one for each family, since that’s a special one.

Saturday, July 1st: FLL –> MKE

Saturday morning we were done! We pulled back into Fort Lauderdale super early and my mom got these nice shots of the port:

We did the “early walk off” option where we hauled our own luggage, because we had a fairly early flight (~11:50, I think) and wanted to make sure we got to the airport on time. We had a transport van waiting. The whole disembarking part wasn’t really that fun. It’s rather early, it’s pretty chaotic with all the people leaving, etc and who ever likes it when vacation is over??

Flights were fine on the way home, but for some reason it seemed to take forever. Or at least longer than it should to get from Florida to Wisconsin, which is not that far! We had another layover in Detroit. All was well, but it just felt like a very long day to me. Maybe the busy week with SO much activity, late nights and early mornings was finally catching up to me. 🙂

And that’s a wrap on the 50th Wedding Anniversary Super Family Vacation!!!!

I’m having a bit of a hard time comprehending that it’s over already. We started planning this over a year ago now, and we just spent so much time and energy figuring it all out, planning it, anticipating it, being excited for it… that it’s a bit sad it’s all over now. 😦

I think it was a really great trip! I know cruising may not be for everyone, and I’m not claiming it’s the perfect mode of travel, but in this case I think it worked out really well. The goal of this trip was for it to be something unique and special the whole family could enjoy, and for it to be something out of the ordinary from our typical vacations (a regular hotel, resort or Airbnb, etc.).

I think this trip will always stand out in our minds not only due to my parents’ big wedding anniversary + all of us being together, of course, but also because a cruise was a brand-new experience for (most) of the group. 🙂 I personally walked away from it with a great number of fantastic memories filed away in my “happy memory bank”. 🙂 And the kids already asked, “Can we go on another cruise next year??” hahaha…. so I think they really liked it, too.