Wonder(lots of pics)-8 people, 4 nights and 2 trips to CC–July 27-31 (complete w/WDW)

vatchr

Mouseketeer
Joined
May 29, 2006
First Time Wonder – 8 people, 4 nights and2 trips to CC – July 27-31

Having never done a trip report, I decided to give it a try. I have loved reading everyone’s reports before our first Wonder cruise so I thought I’d share our trip. We combined our first DCL cruise with four days at Disney World before the cruise. It was our third trip in three years to DW and we loved our three nights at the Wilderness Lodge (our home away from home), but we were even more excited about waking up on Saturday morning, finishing our Animal Kingdom day and then taking Magical Express back to the airport to meet up with the rest of our family flying in for our cruise which leaves “tomorrow!” We all decided to stay the night before at the Airport Hyatt and be ready to board the DCL bus early the next morning to head to the port.
So…here goes….first the cast of characters for our trip (and I do mean characters)!

Me – Laura – Disney planning fanatic – elementary school teacher, wife and mom
DH – Don – husband to Disney planning fanatic, great dad, and also elementary school teacher
DD1 – age 8 – going into third grade
DD2 – age 6 – going into first grade

Here's a pic of us from our beach trip 4 days before we left for our Disney trip.(We love both being teachers and being able to travel all summer.)
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The rest of the characters that joined us are:
“Rina” – my mom and grandma to DD’s
“Nana and Bubba” – DH’s parents and grandparents to DD’s
“LizzieTish” – nickname for DH”s sister, beloved aunt to DD’s

So, after four quiet days at Disney World with just the four of us, we were now arriving back at the airport to find the Hyatt, check in and let the craziness begin with the other 4 that would be joining us. Nana and Bubba were flying in from Pennsylvania and Rina and LizzieTish were flying in from Virginia. We were all meeting at the Hyatt and gearing up for four nights of fun!

Let me start by saying that the Airport Hyatt was the best choice I made for our pre cruise night. It was beautiful, convenient and made our beginning of our journey so smooth. We arrived back at the Hyatt at 3:00 pm, Nana and Bubba were already checked in, so after we got settled in our rooms, we headed straight to the roof top pool for some fun with the grandparents. Rina and LizzieTish were not scheduled to arrive until about 6:00 pm.


Here's DD2 looking out at the view from our Hyatt room - straight down into the airport terminal - very cool!
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and the view from our balcony
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the girls with Nana and Bubba at the rooftop pool
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it really was a beautiful pool
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Up next... Rina and Lizzietish arrive, dinner, we lose Nana and Bubba - lots of sleep and off to Port Canaveral.
 
:banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:

Yeah! A new Trip Report!!!!

And pictures, too!!

Trip reports are my favorite thing about Disboards. :cloud9:

Can't wait for the next installment.
 


So after swimming, we changed and got a call that the others had arrived. The girls and I headed down to the Airport terminal to wait for them. They found us, we got them checked in and then we all headed to dinner at the Hyatt Restaurant. It was a very nice restaurant, a bit pricey, but we knew that we wouldn’t be “paying" for food for the next 5 days, so we splurged.

After dinner I headed up with the girls to get them ready for bed and to watch “Hannah Montana’s Concert in 3D” on Disney Channel. The others chatted at the dinner table.

Well, to make a long story short – after dinner, the elevators were crowded to get back to the rooms so Bubba didn’t make it into the elevator, so we left him in the lobby. Nana was in the elevator, but was chatting with another lady and missed getting off on our floor – so the doors closed on her. Neither of them travel much and they were unaware of how to use the room keys to make the elevators go to the upper floors. Should we be worried that they won’t get back to the room? I asked my husband, he laughed and said, “Nope, they’re on their own.” Oh well, this was the first of many times that Nana and Bubba would be on their own.

We ended up getting a GREAT night’s sleep after four long days in the parks, woke to a great room service breakfast and were down in the lobby by 9:15 a.m. registering with the DCL table and at 9:30 a.m. we were on the first bus out of MCO! We’re on our way to Port Canaveral!!!!! Nana and Bubba were there, so I guess they figured out the room key thing with the elevators.

Here are the girls enjoying their room service breakfast:
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The bus ride to the port was a lot of fun. They show cute movies about the cruise line with the characters pretending to go on a cruise. My DD’s loved them, well actually, so did I.

We knew were getting close when this came into sight far in the distance…..
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Then closer…..
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Then we were finally there.

The whole check in process was so smooth. We got boarding pass #3, I was so excited. We wandered around the port and registered the kids for the kids clubs, took lots of pictures and then sat and waited.

Waiting for #3 to be called:
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It wasn’t long before they started boarding. We were on the ship and they were announcing our name before noon.

Yay!!!


Coming up...lunch on deck 9, finding our staterooms, and the sailaway party!
 
more, please:worship: :worship: :worship: :worship:
Your girls are very beautiful:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

Lucy
 


After reading the DIS for a full year before our cruise, I knew we wanted to go to deck 9 for lunch and the girls had their suits on under their clothes, so they were ready to experience the pools before the crowds hit.

Here we are on Deck 9:

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But where was deck 9 and how did we get there? Everyone was so nice, definitely the Disney Customer Service we were used to from the parks. They tried to send us to Parrot Cay, but we found Beach Blanket Buffet and loaded up our plates with our first of many great meals. It was definitely hot (Florida in July!), but we were on a cruise ship so we found tables outside and enjoyed our meals. The waiters and servers carried the girls trays to the table and even helped Nana and Rina get their trays and drinks to the table. Wow, were we going to be spoiled!
Enjoying lunch:

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Rina and Lizzietish at lunch:
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What’s our first meal on the ship without a sailaway drink? (and a souvenir glass)

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After lunch we found the pools and the girls enjoyed the Mickey pool for a little while and then had to try out the Goofy pool. DD2 couldn’t touch in the Goofy pool, so that didn’t last long.

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Then again, we lost Nana and Bubba – they must have gone exploring. They didn’t appreciate the heat. Rina and Lizzietish are from Virginia (where we are from), and we are used to 100 degrees and high humidity.
We explored and walked around for a while and then realized it was 1:30 p.m. – time to see our stateroom!
We found deck 7 and then our rooms. The four of us were in 7586 (Cat 5 with verandah), Rina and Lizzietish were next door to us and Nana and Bubba were three doors down the hallway.

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No luggage yet, but we had fun checking out the room and meeting our stateroom hostess, Nyrene. She was great and would be taking care of all three of our rooms. Rina and Lizzietish changed into their suits and took the girls back up to the Goofy pool for a little while. AAhhh….quiet time. The first break from the girls in 4 days. It might be fun to cruise with family !

I was too excited to relax, so I went up and found them all in the Goofy pool and took some pics and then it was time to get ready for the Lifeboat drill and then the Sailaway party.
The lifeboat drill went smoothly, but was long out in the heat with the life vests on.

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After the drill, we hustled back to the room, dropped the vests (still no luggage) – should we be worried? And headed up to deck 9 for the party. The girls wanted to be front row to see all of the characters.
As we were walking down the hallway, Nyrene had 2 pieces of our luggage. Don stayed back to collect them and hopefully the other 2. He met us up on deck 9 right before the party. All of our luggage had arrived safely!
The Sailaway party (Adventures Away) was great! It was so exciting and full of energy. We got our streamers that the cast members were handing out and got ready to party! Rina, Nana, Bubba and Lizzietish chose not to be among the chaos and found great spots on deck 10 overlooking the stage where they could watch us, and not be in the mmiddle of the chaos! We….were in the middle of the chaos, but also ended up on the Aerial View many times. It was fun!

Here are some pics:
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Here are Nana, Rina and Lizzietish on deck 10
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The horn sounded! I finally heard it live – I had been hearing it on our computer for the past month. My husband found the sound file and made it our email signal. Every time we received email for the last month the horn sounded. Now it was real and we were moving.

13 months of planning and we were on our way!!


Up next: Oliver, Nyoman and the Golden Mickeys!
 
Loving this report, look forward to more. Your pics are very nice and crisp. Your daughters' smiling faces says it all, priceless and so cute.
 
love the report. We will be doing out first Disney cruise in Nov on the Magic. I love all the pics your sharring to.

How do you get the horn on the computer for your email? I would love to have that.
 
love the report. We will be doing out first Disney cruise in Nov on the Magic. I love all the pics your sharring to.

How do you get the horn on the computer for your email? I would love to have that.

We've got the sound file on our computer. If you want to PM me, my DH can send it to you.
 
We left before the Sail Away party was over because we had Main seating and had to be ready for dinner by 5:45 p.m. It was already after 5:00 when I looked at my watch. We got back to the stateroom and all of our luggage was there. Yay! I quickly unpacked and hung up all of our dinner clothes for the 4 nights. I was surprised at how many hangers they give you. I was expecting less, and had actually packed some extra wire hangers. I also had an over the door shoe holder and it was a godsend for the five days. It definitely helped clear some of the clutter, as well as the girls shoes.
We were all dressed for dinner on time and we headed to Tritons.
Here are the girls in front of the entrance:

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Our rotation was TAAP. Since we had 8 in our party, I had been told that we would have our own table, and sure enough we were all seated at table 59 and our first dinner was beginning.

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I had heard about the servers being one of the highlights of the cruises, so I was anxious to meet ours. Well, they were great. Nyoman and Oliver were our servers for the cruise and they treated us like royalty! They also took such good care of the girls. We wanted for nothing all week.
We ordered our drinks and DD1 was excited to order a Shirley Temple.

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The food was great. Triton’s has a French food theme, so of course Escargot had to be ordered. Don ordered and shared with DD1. She wasn’t that impressed

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Dinner went very smoothly, but did last long. We were seated at aboaut 5:45 p.m. and didn’t leave until after 7:45 p.m. The next three nights weren’t that long, thank goodness. The girls were getting very antsy.

The first night was The Golden Mickey’s and we were all going to see that, except for Nana and Lizzietish. They headed back to the rooms.
The Walt Disney Theater is beautiful.

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Here's Rina with the girls (my mom is a retired High School Theater Teacher, so she loves these type of shows)
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We got there by 8:00 p.m. for the 8:30 p.m. show and found great seats and settled in. We were early enough that servers were wandering around taking drink orders, so we took advantage of that and just waited for the show to start.

And DD1 with our drinks...
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The show was great! No flash photography allowed, but I got a few pics with no flash. The pics didn't come out that great, but for what it's worth...

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After the show, it was about 9:15 and according to the Navigator, Cinderella and Belle would be in the Atrium at 9:30, so we rushed down and found them with short lines. Actually, we worked the lines...my mom got in one line and I got in the other and it worked out that they saw Belle, and then went over to Rina's line and were there just in time to see Cinderella.

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After greeting the princesses, my princesses were exhausted, so off to bed on our first night at sea.

Up next: day 1 at Castaway Cay, stingrays, parasailing, snorkeling and more…
 
I love this TR... We were on the 4-day Double-dip that left on 8/3... I miss it already... :) I still need to get my pictures off the camera!!

Mark
 
Really loving your trip report so far - your girls are so photogenic. I would love to do a Double Dip - can't think of anything better than 2 days in the most heavenly place on earth :)
 

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