Cruise Saturday - Boarding the Ship

Saturday morning we were up bright and early to load up our stuff at the hotel and get ready to head to the port.  The girls were SO EXCITED!

We had to take a special shuttle bus from our hotel to the port...it was hilarious.  The people in the front were clapping everytime someone would get on and being all crazy Disney.  We were like "oh my gosh is this how everyone is going to be?"  And of course then Ryan and Jason had to get in on the craziness and sing Disney songs and cheer for everyone...hilarious!

Emory is quite obsessed with Uncle "J J" as she calls him.  She LOVES her some Uncle JJ!

Sarah the crafting guru was working on Disney projects as we drove in the shuttle...hilarious!

And then we drove up and saw this!  The girls couldn't believe how huge the boat was!

Getting our luggage to the right place...

We walk in this huge boarding area and they were playing Disney music and all of a sudden I hear Emory yell "MIMMIE!"  Well Minnie and Mickey and some characters were standing there waving and taking pictures with people and I just lost it...like I seriously started crying!  HA!  Ryan was dying laughing and calling me "Rene" but it just kind of hit me how excited the girls were and how fun this was going to be.  Anyway - thankfully the sappy moment passed before too many people saw me and were probably laughing at the crazy lady crying while looking at Mickey HAHAHAHA!  (Unless of course they heard Ryan yelling "oh my gosh Whitney are you crying?  Seriously?  Let me take a picture and send it to your mom...are you CRYING?   Jason...Whitney''s over here crying when Emory saw Mickey...YADA YADA YADA!"  HA!)

We were so ready to get on the boat but there are so many little steps to cross off...places to check in, take your luggage, sign your kids up for stuff, etc.  We were waiting in one line and I was trying to keep Emory occupied and I was trying to get out these beads and pipe cleaners.  Somehow when I pulled the bag out I pulled it upside down and I seriously spilled an ENTIRE LARGE BAG of colored pony beads ALL OVER the tile floor.  Like...THEY. WENT. EVERYWHERE.  YIKES!  And funny at the same time.  I had to just laugh.  People from all over the place were coming up handing me beads...GOOD TIMES...

Finally it was TIME TO BOARD!

When we walked through the walkway and actually walked into the "lobby" (can you call it a lobby...whatever the huge beautiful middle area you walk into is called?") it was just GORGEOUS!  They announced "please welcome to the Disney cruise the Bandermann family" and people were cheering and the girls were so excited.  I'm not sure if we took pictures because we were filming...but it was so neat!  (I'm having trouble loading any more pictures into this post so I'll try to post those pics later)

Then we set off to explore our ship!