Yeah, just so nobody is confused Jen's group and our group did a back to back (4d/3d) so the reports will include the 9/26 4 day as well as the 9/30 3 day.
They did have some computer issues and even though the Webmiester group was in the
Castaway Club line, it took about an hour to get through. Then our IDs wouldn't print. They had to take our pictures 4 times before they had one that would print...ack!
Once we were onboard, we went to Parrot Cay (the sit-down buffet). As Jen said, they try to push everyone upstairs to the mass hysteria buffet on deck 9, but we were savvy sailors and knew to insist that we would wait. Of course 2 minutes later we were called and told to hurry so that no newcomers would see us gettign seated. Half the tables were empty when we got in. I guess it makes sense, they can't fit everyone in there.
Food was great, just as we remembered...saw a bunch of leis and speculated at who was who from the DIS. We pegged Jen and Victoria by Victoria's hand made sailor outfit (adorable!) but waited to say hi until the meet.
We went to our room after we ate and dropped our stuff. Then we went to the meet in the Promonade Lounge. We ended up being a bit more shy than usual and sort of inched in...then we started meeting a bunch of folks and chatted away until we had to go to the lifeboat drill.
After that it was normal cruising for us. We were placed with a nice family with 3 girls (one was a niece) with the youngest being Peanut's age. Turns out they lived an hour from us...kinda cool.
To sum up the first 9/26-9/30 cruise, it was a lot of fun. Our last cruise was a 7 day and we could definitely feel the slight 'rush' of a 4 day.
Food was great. I practiced my portion control strategy where if I wanted 2 of the items of a course, I'd order both and not finish either. (I used to finish one and not have room for the other)
We ended up booking one night at Palo and a couple of hours at the spa. Both were excellent as usual. Roy was our server and he had been with the Wonder since a month after it first sailed. We talked with Marco (the Palo manager, not the ship captain) for a long time and he said he'd book us at Palo for our second cruise of the B2B for any day we'd like. We took him up on it and he guaranteed us a window seat on the Nassau day (we don't get off the ship there, yuckie).
The Wonder hit a tropical depression and we missed both opportunities to get to
Castaway Cay. That stunk but we figured we'd have a shot on the 3 day.
I'm a sailor , so the rockin and rollin didn't bother me...it actually helped me sleep better. Spent each evening enjoying a cigar on deck 5 starboard or deck 9 at the adult pool, depending on my mood. Probably one of my favorite parts of each day....
We got in all the character pictures that we wanted but didn't bring the autograph book as we had gotten all of the signatures we wanted on the previous cruise....until we saw the newest princess, Tiana. Oops! We'll get her next time!
We did buy an awesome embroidered pillow from Jen for Peanut. Jen was so kind as to drop at the front desk to have all the characters sign. (Minnie embroidery with Mickey/Minnie/Donald/Daisy/Pluto/Chip&Dale sigs). Thanks Jen!!!
I'll see about posting a pic of it signed and a link to Jen's Etsy page later.
One thing we did this cruise differently than the previous ones was that we talked to the staff more. Asked about how long they'd been with
DCL, if they had family, where they want to go next, etc. It was very impressive to learn about them.
There was a server that we had for breakfast in Triton's and
I'm curious if anyone had her as their "Main" server for dinner. She is from India and her name was
Amita. She was so awesome with Arden that we tried to get her for our second cruise as our main server, but the dining rotation didn't work out... She told us that she had 2 kids, 8 and 5 back home. She wanted to switch to the Dream when it went active so that she could stick with 3 & 4 day cruises. Apparently she can only talk to her kids between sailings, and the Wonder was heading to the West coast for extended cruises. Hearing that just broke our hearts, so we wrote a letter and gave it to the manager at the front desk telling them how great she is with kids (Peanut LOVED her) and that we hoped they'd grant her request.
Ok, hands are tired.....I'll write about the second leg (3 day) another time.