Cinnamon Bear Cruise

Every year my Auntie takes my girls and myself somewhere fun to start off the Christmas Season. This year she took us on the Cinnamon Bear Cruise in Portland on the Spirit cruise ship the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Cinnamon Bear is a radio program that has been on since the 1940's which tells the story of Judy and Jimmy who go to the enchanted world of Maybeland to recover their missing Silver Star that belongs on their Christmas tree. They are accompanied by Cinnamon Bear and meet all kinds of characters, getting into mischief along the way. It is a great story that the girls enjoy listening to each Christmas on our local radio station.

We boarded the boat at noon meeting Captain Taffy on our way and then enjoyed some tasty hot cocoa, blueberry scones, fruit, and cinnamon bear cookies. After a while we were introduced to Cinnamon Bear and told we could walk around the ship and meet the other characters.

Auntie, Mikaelas, Sean, L, K and me.

Captain Taffy

Cinnamon Bear coming in to say hello and take pictures with the kids.

The girls got to meet The Crazy Quilt Dragon and learn to steer the ship with Captain Taffy. They received a certificate and everything. They also listened to Queen Melissa tell an abbreviated version of Cinnamon Bear read from a book.

Crazy Quilt Dragon

Learning to drive the ship with Captain Taffy.

Queen Melissa

Towards the end of our stay we were entertained by Mr. Presto the Magician who showed us many tricks. He even showed us how to perform one of the tricks. He took a white plastic egg with a small hole hidden in the back and held it in his hand so that we could see what he saw from the back. He pushed a red handkerchief into the egg hole without the audience seeing. It was a pretty easy trick for the kids to learn and then use on their friends but then he took it a step further. Once he was done, he showed the egg to the kids and peeled off a red dot where the hole with the red handkerchief had been sticking out. He then cracked the egg open while trying to make cookies but that failed and he ended up with a rabbit instead of dough in the bowl. Such a silly performance.

Mr. Presto the Magician

After the show the girls received a picture of them with Cinnamon Bear and went around to have it autographed by all of the characters on board. They had such a fun time!

K eating her tasty treats.

L with her Cinnamon Bear cookie

The whole cast waving goodbye as we disembark.

I bought the girls each a silver star to put on our tree and a stuffed animal to commemorate the event. K got a crazy quilt dragon and L got a cinnamon bear. If you have young kids at home or grandkids near by, I highly recommend taking them on this cruise. It was a lot of fun. You should also start listening to the radio program. They play 15 minutes of it each night at 7pm starting around Thanksgiving. I know that 99.1KOOL fm plays it here in Eugene and K103 fm plays it in Portland. Both of their websites feature all of the episodes that have already aired if you would like to catch up on this for this year. Such a fun tradition to start with your family.