Today is Chinese New Year! It's the year of the Horse, or, credits to Gemini, more specifically the year of the Fire Horse - a rare, high-energy, and transformative year. Symbolizing freedom, speed, and passion, this year favors decisive, fast-moving action. It is a time for taking risks, pursuing ambitions, and adapting to rapid changes, but also requires careful management to avoid burnout.
Because I am always trying to maximize the Chinese heritage connections for the twins, I set up a red envelope exchange with a few other cabins on board who were celebrating as well. Oh my gosh the kids were so cute in their traditional garb!
After we handed out all of our envelopes, it was almost time for our lunch reservation at adults-only Enchante. The twins had a plan to catch a showing of Zootopia 2, so the four adults headed up to the 13th floor. The entrance is actually the adults only Rose bar/lounge.
It's very quiet, nice chairs, kind of overpriced drinks but I guess that's the cost for the serenity and view!
I'll run through all the food photos because someone might find our review helpful if you go on the Destiny. Or I figure enough folks just like food photos. 😊
Starts off with these little starters - one was creamy and the other was chickpea based. I think I liked the chickpea one more. High presentation points:
What's a French restaurant without some good bread and butter:
Laoye actually says he prefers his butter pre-salted because he's not very good at using the little salt spoon. They claimed the butter came from 57 different sources? Is that like 57 different...cows? 😆
Then a second palate cleanser, little radish rolls sitting in a green tomato sauce. Did the job as a palate cleanser I suppose?
Next up was the scallops, which came as three parts - a cerviche:
And an actual scallop along with a foamy soupy thing with bits of charred shrimp and scallop inside.
Here is the second tasting course, langoustine (had no idea they were this long when fully unshelled!), which was well prepared...but the sauce was a little too salty for us.
We ordered one tasting per couple and then the second person would supplement with some a la carte off menu items. Here's the chicken dish that Baba picked as one supplement. He said the highlight was the butter foam that he applied liberally to each bite.
The tasting menu seafood item was some kind of white fish. This was my least favorite dish of the meal. Pretty bland, texture felt a little rubbery, not my thing.
By contrast, the pigeon pie was really really good. Maybe my favorite item of the cruise -- though I'm always a sucker for foie gras.
LaoLao chose the lobster supplement here - it was, as expected, quite nice. But when is lobster ever not good, eh? Again, beautiful presentation.
Baba got another add on dish -- Wagyu (which I was surprised wasn't on the main tasting menu). It actually wasn't as memorable to me as the Pigeon Pie. Also, I feel like we've had some very nicely done steaks in the main dining rooms. But Baba seemed to enjoy it.
And to move towards the end, we had a cheese plate with 5-6 different cheeses (I forgot to take a photo of, but my favorite was the goat cheese with honey and LaoLao and LaoYe preferred the blue cheese.
And finally, dessert, which was this chocolate thing that was WAY too much chocolate. Even for me.
And of course a number of little bites that we decided to largely pack up and bring to the kids. They were pretty bummed that they couldn't come to Enchante -- maybe this is how Disney gets the kids to come back after 18!
After our lunch (which, I think because of our half tasting menu, half a la carte selection left us not OVER stuffed), we caught the Maleficent mini show. These shows aren't in and of themselves that impressive...but for people who like theatre and Disney character improv, help the whole cruise feel more immersive in the Villain and Hero stories.
After that it was time for pin trading. This is when I felt like L & R don't fully appreciate monetary value of things yet. I silently cringed a little everytime they just gave away a pin or traded away a pin we actually bought from a Disney Park - but I guess they can stay innocent and naive kids of privilege a little longer before the real world comes for them eventually!
At this point I was getting a little tired too so Baba and I headed up to the adult only pool area for some quiet reading and resting time. I would have stayed longer except I didn't want to miss today's stretch class. Laolao already went once on the first sea day and said she came out sweating and feeling very challenged. I am proud to say my splits were the closest to the ground. 😁
After stretch class we were headed to dinner, back to 1923. L got the beef with sweet potato mash.
R got a really lovely chicken and tagliatelle mushroom sauce entree (she added salt, but after that it was very good -- would recommend!).
I opted for the duck breast salad -- the vegetable in the salad and the dressing sauce were actually really nice..but the duck wasn't for me. A little too thicky sliced and gamey for me.
Our server came by to show us another card trick (the first one last night I was a little meh on but this one was very impressive!)
In honor of New Year, we all helped Baba with his wine package (he bought a 3 bottle package, which we weren't sure would be a good deal at first but we are now already into the last bottle).
Classic family shot! I am glad all the outfits worked out so well.
Some more food shots from dinner - here is the apple pie. Laolao and Laoye liked it better than the lava cake because it wasn't as sweet.
Sweetness not a problem for R! She thoroughly enjoyed the lava cake.
L opted for the mint chocolate chip sundae today. And she finished it all before I could turn back from phototaking to ask for another bite.
This was the sugar free option -- a chocolate mousse thing I believe? I actually liked this more than the lava cake. Perhaps my taste buds are losing their sweetness tolerance - horrors!
Moving backwards -- here's the chilled dill marinated shrimp - not bad but I think I've concluded Disney does shrimps pretty well so they're all starting to blend taste wise.
Baked oysters! Low on oysters, heavy on breading. But overall decent. Would recommend if you like oysters.
Baba went for the three cheese souffle - he liked it, he describes it as cheese on cheesy shortbread.
Since we got all dolled up, we had to get some more backdrop photos. Nighttime Destiny:
And lucky gates:
The twins liked their dresses enough that they kept them on all evening. The rest of us swapped back to normal clothes. Tonight was an encore performance by Bradley and Hiba for adults only - Baba actually though Hiba was better - both quite impressive still.
The towel animal today - Wall-E (Baba originally thought this was Baby Yoda 😆):
L really wanted to go to the silent dance party...I think she underestimated how embarrassing Baba and Mama could be:
I would have stayed longer except I didn't know most of the songs (you'd think they would have one channel that only does Disney tunes or something!)
So after 10 minutes or so we called it quits to catch the second half of Hercules again. I do really like that show. Except for the Phil parts, those are both musically not as interesting and hard to understand.
After the show we decided to check out the Family Game Show (alas, we did not get picked). Maybe next cruise!
At this point it's 11pm and time for bed. Tomorrow is Castaway!
