Masters of the Seven Seas

Well – just as we’re preparing to head out on another adventure, here’s a tale from this June’s Florida excursion.

While we were at Disney we decided that we would spend one evening at the DisneyQuest facility at Downtown Disney. We had been there before when the kids were smaller and we had quite a bit of fun. Since the kids are older now – and taller as well – more options were open. My son and I took a turn on CyberSpace mountain. We designed our own coaster and then took the ride in one of their virtual capsules. Needless to say, we each had fun.

The kids played a whole bunch of games and tried their hand at sketching a cartoon character, but the best part of the evening was to be found on the first floor of DisneyQuest – Pirates of the Caribbean, Battle for Buccaneer Gold. We went through this attraction at least half a dozen times.

For those of you who have not been here or seen it, here’s the gist of the game. Your group is the crew of a pirate ship. One person mans the wheel and sets the speed of the ship. The other members of your team man the cannons – these cannons fire virtual cannon balls that you can see and aim. All really cool. The point of the game is to attack other pirates and take their treasure – the more you amass, the more points you score. Toward the end of the game, Davey Jones or some bad-ass skeleton pirate really starts to come after you and steal your treasure. Once the game ends, you receive your pirate rating, ranging from Swabbies to Masters of the Seven Seas.

Well, as I said we played and played. Each time we did well and consistently scored as Conquering Captains, but there was once level that we had not reached. As luck would have it, we returned to the first floor and decided to give it one more go before we headed out into the night. For some reason, this time we figured it out. With some excellent piloting by my wife, the rest of us crewed the guns and kicked some virtual pirate butt. We amassed a lot of treasure and successfully defended our horde from Davey Jones or whoever the skeleton guy is. At the end, we took anxiously watched as our rating came up. We did it, we rated as masters of the Seven Seas!

We left DisneyQuest feeling pretty good about ourselves that night. It was a fun time that let the entire family play together.

OK, well that’s all for now. More later!