Today was Castaway Cay day, one of our favorite stops!  We had a lot of plans for the day and were eager to get started.  Nancy and our friends were going to run the Castaway Cay 5K and then head to one of the cabanas on Serenity Bay Beach, the adults only beach.  My older daughter was planning to spend the day with her new friends from Vibe.  My younger daughter and I were going to head to the family beach and then meet our friends for a jet ski excursion late in the day.

Nancy was up and out of the room early to get some food at Cabanas.  We were a bit slower to get out, but eventually ended up in Cabanas as well for breakfast.   It seemed to me that the ship was a bit late getting to Castaway Cay.  Before the ship docked, I received this unfortunate message on the DCL App.  We didn’t notice anything bad about the wind or ocean conditions, so we were pretty bummed to miss the jet ski excursion.

Meanwhile, Nancy and our friend met up in the Walt Disney Theater for the Castaway Cay 5K.  They were given their race bibs and eventually led off the ship to the race starting line.

The participants are led from the ship, on foot, all the way to the start line.  The start line is located down near Cookies Too. 

Once the race started, Nancy and our friends decided to just walk over to the adult beach and not finish the race.  It was pretty hot.  The path to the other beach took them down the runway on the island.

Here is what the water looked like at the adult beach.  I would have stopped running and just flopped into the ocean.

There are tons of chairs and umbrellas at the adult beach.

After checking out the beach, they headed back to find the cabanas they had rented for the day.  Unlike the family cabanas, there is no separate section of the beach for cabanas guests.  The cabanas are set back off the beach.

They were located in Cabana 23.

The cabana was very similar to the cabanas on the family beach.  We have discussed the cabanas in a previous post.

It has all the amenities of the family cabana, including sun screen and fruit tray.

The fridge was stocked with sodas and waters.

There is a safe and the cabanas has plenty of towels.

There is a lot of seating (more than three adults could actually use at one time).

There is a hammock as well.  Near the hammock is the fresh water shower and a stack of floats for use by the cabanas guests.

Here is the view of the beach from the adult cabana.

Meanwhile, back at the family beach, my younger daughter and I rented a float and grabbed some chairs at the far end of the family beach.  We usually setup down here because of its proximity to the bathrooms and Cookies Too.  The beach also doesn’t tend to be too crowded down here because it isn’t as wide.  There are only two or three rows of chairs in this section.

My younger daughter and I spent most of the day down here until about 2 pm or so.  We alternated between resting in the chairs and using the float in the water.  The water temperature was fantastic.  We took a break for a bit to grab some lunch as well.  Around 2 pm, we decided to head over to the rental area to grab an Aqua Trike since we didn’t get to do jet skis.

We got our Aqua Trike and headed out towards the Fantasy.

We had a GoPro with us, so we were determined to get as close to the Fantasy as we could for some good pictures.  Despite both of us paddling away, it was taking a long time.  I had forgotten how much work the Aqua Trike actually was.

We eventually did get pretty close, although go pro makes it seem like we were farther away though.

As we turned around, we noticed that we were racing a storm back to the beach.

Nancy happened to be headed back to the ship as that time, so she managed to catch a picture of us while we were headed back in.  It took us a while to get back to the shore though, that Aqua Trike is quite the workout.

We dropped off our life vests and started walking back towards the ship.  We got in touch with our older daughter to make sure she was headed back to the ship.  She was almost there as well, so we waited around until she was there. 

Before we got back on the ship, I made sure to get a picture of the outside of our room.  Our room is the one circled in red below.  I actually really liked my friends’ room (8165) that was one deck above us.  It was also an obstructed view verandah, but the obstruction was much smaller.

We got on board to begin cleaning up.  As always, Nancy watched the sail away from Castaway Cay to see the “wave goodbye” that the crew members on the island give the ship as it leaves.

The kids went off to find their friends while Nancy finished up the packing.  While we didn’t plan on putting our suitcases out by 10 pm, she still wanted to get everything done before dinner.  We planned to take advantage of Express Walk-Off to leave the ship with our suitcases in the morning as soon as the ship cleared so we could start driving back home.  We had found the debarkation procedure letter on our bed when we got back on the ship after our day on Castaway Cay. 

Dinner tonight was the Til We Meet Again Menu in Animator’s Palate.

After dinner, the kids went off for one last night in the clubs.  We headed back to the room exhausted after being in the sun all day at Castaway Cay. 

Tomorrow we would disembark the ship and start the long drive home!

Boarding | Exploring | Sea Day 1 | Sea Day 2 | St. Maarten | St. Thomas | Sea Day 3 | Castaway Cay | Disembarkation

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