Glad I Did/Wish I Did posts are a fun way for me to quickly share with others what worked and what didn't. It's been really helpful for us to refer back to over the years when preparing for our next cruise.

Glad I decorated our Stateroom Doors

Door decorations are very popular on Disney Cruise Line, and I'm always glad to partake. In the past, I've printed the door decorations onto magnetic sheets. This time, I made the door decorations out of metallic cardstock because I wanted Mickey's hat and shorts to be shiny and festive for New Year's. To magnetize them, I used super strong Neodymium magnets that I stuck to the paper with double-sided removable glue dots which ended up sticking to the door much better than the magnetic sheets. Because I went with fancy paper, I wouldn't say this is a cheaper way of making magnets than with the magnetic sheets, but at least this way I can reuse the magnets for our next cruise door decor.

On Day 4 of our New Year's Cruise, the Disney Fantasy arrived in Grand Cayman. After dealing with tender boats and a mostly closed port the week prior on our Celebrity Summit cruise, I was happy with our decision to stay on the ship today.

We started our day with 10AM brunch at Palo, one of the two adult-only restaurants on the Disney Fantasy. In the past, I've had not-so-great dinner experiences at Palo, but we really enjoyed brunch at Palo on the Disney Dream.

This was my first time in Mazatlan, and maybe I should've done more research because I didn't realize what an industrial port it was.  My plan was "go to the beach" but apparently that's not a popular tourist thing to do in Mazatlan.

When we got off the ship, we boarded a tram which took us through the shipyard to the tourist center.


We were immediately bombarded with people selling tours. All types of city tours. But I still wanted to go to the beach! We located a quiet bench to sit down, regroup, and decide what we really wanted to do. We had collected brochures from different tour groups, and there were beaches that they went to... but the idea of boarding a bus did not sound great to me. I wanted to ride in a Pulmonia, one of the open-air golf cart-looking vehicles.

This morning we arrived in Nassau.  However, we decided to treat today like a sea day and not get off the ship.  We've been to Nassau many times, and it's not our favorite port of call.  The public beaches are no match for those of Castaway Cay, and the private beaches, like Atlantis, are expensive (you have to pay just to walk inside Atlantis Resort).  Since we only had a few days on the Disney Dream, we figured that today would be better spent enjoying the ship.

May 13, 2014 - Grand Cayman

Rachel had gotten up early that morning to run laps around the promenade deck and do her own yoga.  I was waiting for her to come back, but she had been gone for over two hours, so I figured that she must have gone to Mom and Dad's.  I called their room to see if they had her, and then asked them if they wanted to go to Disney Animation class with me.  Rachel was still nowhere to be found, but we went on to the D Lounge for animation class.

Disney Animation - Persistence of Vision

There was a series of four animation classes offered throughout the week, and I had missed the first two (that's okay... I can draw Mickey Mouse on my own time).  The class we attended was entitled Persistence of Vision and covered how Disney animation has evolved over the past 85 years.  We learned how to draw Buzz Lightyear.  The cast member (on the entertainment team... I forget his name, but his slogan was, "Whoop! Whoop!" which you were supposed to call out to him whenever you saw him on the ship) prefaced the lesson by making us swear that we would not judge our own drawings or anyone else's - his included.  Buzz Lightyear is also a very challenging character to draw, especially since he is a three-dimensional character that we were drawing two-dimensionally.

Throughout the class, the instructor draws on a giant sketch pad with a black marker, and his sketch pad is projected onto a large screen, much like at Animation Academy at the Magic of Disney Animation at Disney's Hollywood Studios.  However, unlike Animation Academy, the characters change between each class (unless it is a repeat of the class later that day) and progress in difficulty throughout the week.

My annoyance with the Disney animation classes is quite similar to my annoyance with my freehand drawing class (which I took last semester in architecture).  It frustrates me to do step-by-step drawings.  In freehand drawing, I wanted to draw the landscape/building in the order that I wanted.  And in animation, I really just wanted them to flash up the final drawing of Buzz so that I could draw him.  I think that also may be why I much prefer written tutorials as opposed to video tutorials... I can just scroll to the bottom of the page and see the final result, then go at my own pace.  Now, that being said, there is great value to step-by-step instruction and breaking down drawings into little steps.  I learned a lot of great technique, as well as method, in my freehand drawing class.  As painful as it was for me to wait for the next step, drawing (what felt like) blindly, I'm really glad that I endured it (it was an elective I chose to take that I considered dropping) because now I have a new perspective on how to construct a drawing.... just like I now know how to set up the guides for Buzz.

I know I promised not to judge, but I don't think that my Buzz Lightyear looks much like Buzz.  I mean, maybe there is a slight resemblance.  But his mouth is far too large and crooked.  I was also really wishing that I had a thick pen... like a Pentel sign pen... to draw with.  But in all honestly, I'm not the best in drawing characters or anything that is supposed to look how it actually is, for that matter.