I'm back!

Well, it's been a while but I am back for a quick update!

As I last wrote, I made it to the end of my contract... the next day was much easier than I thought. I realised the key was to go to do everything 15 minutes earlier than they said, which meant I beat the queues of the other 150 people getting off (biggest debark group for the year) so I got my luggage scanned at the x ray machine, picked up my final pay, settled my crew account, said goodbye to everyone and then went to D-Lounge. As I was getting off as a guest on an ESTA it meant that I was the first crew to get off the ship so that was easy and suddenly... I was free!!!!!

It honestly felt amazing to get out of the terminal building and know I didn't have to go back at 3pm. I was excited for vacation, the sun was shining and I was super happy to be off the ship after the most crazy last two weeks. I waited around for Nick 1 to pick me up and then we went to his house. He had work in the afternoon so I just tried to sort my luggage out (packing in a tiny cabin is a nightmare by the way) and then had a bath (amazing) and fell asleep on the sofa watching TLC.

So, I had a lazy few days around Disney - caught up with lots of my friends who were in and around Orlando which was nice. Then on the Thursday my mum flew in from England and we checked into the Caribbean Beach Resort. It's okay, better than I thought it would be but it is huge. We had a pirate themed room which was cool. On the Saturday we went to Port Canaveral to join the Disney Fantasy for a week!

It was awesome going through the embark process as a guest! In fact, the whole cruise was awesome. We went to St Thomas and St Maartin, did port adventures for both to explore the ports. We ate SO MUCH FOOD which was yum yum. My favourite thing was the Palo brunch which was on the last sea day, incredible. We also had Palo dinner as well. We went to Castaway Cay and it was a little cold but Mum seemed to like it. Pirate night was fun. We had a nice room with a balcony which was so nice to go and sit out on. Overall it was just a great experience!!

After that I flew to California where I met Nick 2 and we had another fantastic week. We stayed in a hotel about 15 minutes from Disneyland which was such a big room it was more like an apartment. We went to Disney a couple of times, went to Magic Castle (which is an invite-only restaurant/magic experience... pretty cool!!), went around the Santa Ana/Anaheim Hills area and mostly just relaxed and caught up on sleep. Sadly, after a great week I had to go home and finally got back to Bristol where I stayed for the next 5 weeks not really doing much - going to the gym, staying inside from the horrible weather and catching up with people before I left again.

We went to the Harry Potter Warner Bros studios which was awesome as well. All too soon it was time to pack up again, do three more flights (thanks Disney!) and get back to Orlando. On return, I went to Citricos with Nick 1 and Eric before joining the ship the next day... more on that soon!!