Disneyzellin through the Panama Canal,12/9 - 12/23 on the Wonder Updated 4/15/13

[pharmjenn]

Love reading about your first day. We hadn't met yet, but Billy and I were also at the spa raffle. He did about 5 minutes on the elliptical while waiting. I don't think I can do that long, even without any tension set.
I was chuckling at your Dina comments, and Jim questioned me. I think I may get Jim to read your report!
As Linda said, great to read about what we "did" the first day, since a lot of it matches.

[bbangel]

My mom talked about the Kahlua creme brule the whole trip! We didn't link our dining with you guys and I was regretting it as of the first night. Will know better next time!

[tokyodisneydad]

Finally climbing aboard....thanks for the link. I bet you didn't even see me stowed away in that lifeboat, did you? Looking forward to all the hilarity and useful tidbits.

[Grooovertoo]

Just in time for the new year...that's right!

A DinseyZell Cruising TR!!!!

Followed you over from all your other TR's and I feel so lucking to be getting in on page 2 of this one. Keep up the good work.

Happily joining in for this yarn.

[QuiltTeddy]

*slips in quietly and yawns*

[DisneyZell]

Originally Posted by LindaBabe

Loving it! Thank you for reminding me what I did,

ha! you are welcome. I suppose that's better than reminding you of the things you would rather forget. Yikes. Let's hope I don't do that!

Originally Posted by dededisney

Dh is off to a good start...everything he is saying actually happened! It already seems like so long ago that we were on the ship. It is always good to re-live the cruise and DH makes it so much more exciting than my journal. Way to go Drew

woohoo! I do like it when I share things that actually happened. Let's not go crazy here and assume that this will continue to happen throughout the report. Just sayin'.

Originally Posted by figment52

Loving the report. I did the PC cruise in 2008 and would love to do it again. You are going to love the 14 days on board but I'll warn you, it is hard to leave.

Can't wait for more....

I hear you...it was hard to leave. But then again for the first time after a cruise I was looking forward to going home. Was that because the kids weren't there or it was time to go...not sure. But it was definately different!

Originally Posted by iloverags2

Total enjoyment already and it's only Day 1...can't wait for more then! BTW, your Gold CC gift is waaaaaaaaaaaay better than the one I received on our October 2012 Dream cruise...totally jealous!

Well you just need to cruise again so you can get a new one.

Originally Posted by pharmjenn

Love reading about your first day. We hadn't met yet, but Billy and I were also at the spa raffle. He did about 5 minutes on the elliptical while waiting. I don't think I can do that long, even without any tension set.
I was chuckling at your Dina comments, and Jim questioned me. I think I may get Jim to read your report!
As Linda said, great to read about what we "did" the first day, since a lot of it matches.

ha! That's so funny! I can see him on the elliptical. and I can see the CM's eyeballing him and hoping he doesn't fall off or anything so they would get in trouble. Too bad I never saw the inside of the workout area again. Yikes! I gave away part of the trip! Hopefully Jim will cimb aboard, I'd love his comments as a part of this, that is for sure!

Originally Posted by bbangel

My mom talked about the Kahlua creme brule the whole trip! We didn't link our dining with you guys and I was regretting it as of the first night. Will know better next time!

That was a risk that we took, we had no idea how that would turn out. Of course it turned out great. I don't think all the tables had as good a time as ours did...but we sure had alot of laughter with us. So I guess it is likely hit or miss. but you can always ask to be reseated if it doesn't work. I got stuck with a bunch of Canadians...and somehow made it through. HA! just kidding guys!

Originally Posted by tokyodisneydad

Finally climbing aboard....thanks for the link. I bet you didn't even see me stowed away in that lifeboat, did you? Looking forward to all the hilarity and useful tidbits.

Welcome! I didn't notice you stowed away...you stayed hidden well! I know you are in the run-up to your cruise...bet your excited! Welcome aboard!

Originally Posted by Grooovertoo

Just in time for the new year...that's right!

A DinseyZell Cruising TR!!!!

Followed you over from all your other TR's and I feel so lucking to be getting in on page 2 of this one. Keep up the good work.

Happily joining in for this yarn.

Well now, you are making me blush. or putting alot of pressure on me, I'm not sure which. since you read my past ones...and this is a tip for everyone that I haven't shared, make sure you look like this: with a large cup of coffee. I cannot be held responsible if you fall asleep and bang your head on the keyboard. I'm tired of the hate male with pictures of backwards letters on people's foreheads!

Originally Posted by QuiltTeddy

*slips in quietly and yawns*

Ahem...yawns because you are so bored, or because you just woke up. that could be taken either way. Welcom QT, glad to have you aboard as usual, and it's been a long time!

thanks everyone for your nice comments...another episode coming your way today!

DZ

[QuiltTeddy]

Originally Posted by DisneyZell

.
Ahem...yawns because you are so bored, or because you just woke up. that could be taken either way. Welcom QT, glad to have you aboard as usual, and it's been a long time!


DZ

I know you missed my humor up to here and you were probably deep in depression while on the cruise merely wondering what I was up to, while being left unsupervised. (Yes, yes, we really do need to plan to take a cruise at the same tiime....)

What??? Page 2 and NO mention of pizza yet?!?!?!?!????

I must go back and re-read the beginning of your TR, as I thought you said you departed on the 8th of December and were writing this TR while actually on the cruise. I must have missed the portion of the TR that indicated you were on a month long cruise!

I guess that means.......we wait......

[DisneyZell]

Originally Posted by QuiltTeddy

I know you missed my humor up to here and you were probably deep in depression while on the cruise merely wondering what I was up to, while being left unsupervised. (Yes, yes, we really do need to plan to take a cruise at the same tiime....)

What??? Page 2 and NO mention of pizza yet?!?!?!?!????

I must go back and re-read the beginning of your TR, as I thought you said you departed on the 8th of December and were writing this TR while actually on the cruise. I must have missed the portion of the TR that indicated you were on a month long cruise!

I guess that means.......we wait......

ha! Believe it or not I didn't do much Pizza this cruise. Not sure why...just other stuff going on, and because I wasn't by the pool much I wasn't within easy reaching point of it!

Nice to have you back digging on my slowness. To everyone else reading this I'm doing just fine. Only you know it may be 6 months before I'm done.

DZ

[QuiltTeddy]

Originally Posted by DisneyZell

ha! Believe it or not I didn't do much Pizza this cruise. Not sure why...just other stuff going on, and because I wasn't by the pool much I wasn't within easy reaching point of it!

Nice to have you back digging on my slowness. To everyone else reading this I'm doing just fine. Only you know it may be 6 months before I'm done.

DZ

For the pizza lover you are, I find it shocking that you didn't have much on this cruise. Guess a childless cruise led to fancier food and drink.

WOW! A new record.....you plan on having this one done in six months?? Yet another shocking relevation. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone.

We are actually contemplating a 2013 new year's cruise. Who knows, you might be ready for another one by then.....

[4everluvDisney]

[QUOTE=DisneyZell;47056472]

That was a risk that we took, we had no idea how that would turn out. Of course it turned out great. I don't think all the tables had as good a time as ours did...but we sure had alot of laughter with us. So I guess it is likely hit or miss. but you can always ask to be reseated if it doesn't work. I got stuck with a bunch of Canadians...and somehow made it through. HA! just kidding guys!

And to think that on a couple of nights the Canadian contingency outnumbered you....just saying....

[DisneyZell]

Day 3: First day at sea
My number one goal (other than trying something new every day) was really very simple. As much sleep as possible. I think that is a good goal, and one that I will continue to strive toward. You know, you have to have goals!

DW decided to hop up and go work out. I know, i know, she is a little bit crazy, but you do have to love her, don't you? I, of course, slept. Again, I feel that once you set a goal you need to strive to meet it! This is part of why a balcony was important for us, DW gets up earlier than I do, and with a balcony she has a place to go to hang out while I sleep. We had a guarantee indoor cabin when we booked, so we didn't know if the balcony would be there for her to use. But on Black Friday I picked up a 7" Samsung tablet for her to use on the cruise should we be on the inside. This was key because her Kindle doesn't have a backlight on it….and I loaded it up with the books from her Kindle. I gave this to her as a present on the first day…although I don't know that she will use it. The big disadvantage of the tablet is that it is hard to read in the sun sometimes. So I don't know how much or even if she will use it. Luckily I bought it at Costco…and in the first 90 days we can take it back for any reason. Nice. That's why I belong! . Ha! I wrote this on like day 4...and no she didn't use the tablet. It will be going into the box and back to Costco most likely.

On another note...and about the balcony. The rooms have a privacy curtain that can be pulled across to give privacy (thus the name) to the king bed area. So when DW would get up she would close that curtain, open the curtain to the balcony and go out. But she didn't close the black-out curtain to the balcony...and that privacy curtain might as well be a white sheet. It was like having the sun shine on you. Took a couple of days of me whining and complaining for her to slip out and leave the black-out curtains closed. If only I could figure out a way to make DW sleep more!

but I digress (as usual!).

I did eventually make my way out of bed and it was up to BBB for buffet breakfast. If you have read any of my TR's you know what I had to get. Yup, big plate of bacon and syrup to dip it into. you betcha. The only issue was that at least on this day the bacon was so crispy that it was hard to not just crumble. This was unusual for our past experience! But I still enjoyed it…as I am on vacation! woohoo!

After the Buffet it was back to the room as it was time to do some FE delivery.

DW sorting the FE gifts

I forgot to mention that we decorated our door. Here is what it looked like. I think a few people have mentioned the paint on the door getting so thick that the magnets do not stick as well. A tip for this...make sure your printed magnets do not bend in your luggage. A few of ours did and they fell out continually. In fact we moved a ton of magnets to the inside doors as they fell off. I think we had more door magnets inside our Stateroom than outside.

Oh, and another digression, not sure if I will talk about this later, but when we were decorating a women walked by and asked about the magnets. She also asked if we had any extra which we did...so I gave her a couple and she went away happy. Little bit of for her!

And I also needed a shower. TMI, I know. But we lovingly call the showers on the Wonder and Magic the Shub. Shub - by definition and originally coined by Sleepydog whom I have never heard from since the first TR that I ever read years ago (and loved because this guy was absolutely hilarious!). Shub is not quite a shower, and not quite a tub. Shub.

************tip***********
but alas I have discovered a tip for you all. While I'll try to redo tips from past cruises, it has been quite a while since I have discovered any brand-new, never before read or written tip for all of you. Or at least for the larger people in the world. I'm 6' 4" 230ish pounds (the exact weight is irrelevant, and lord only knows what I will weigh after the cruise is over! Ahem. But anyway I was taking a shower in the Shub, and it is annoying (to me) because the curtain in constantly on my arm, and since my arm is wet it is sticking to my arm and just gets in the way. So at some point I pushed it away from me and created a little pocket of curtain outside the tub (the bottom of the curtain was stuck to the inside of the tub, but it hung outside. Some water had gotten there and it held for a minute *without touching my arm*.

Ah, that was nice. So I grabbed a couple of the shampoo bottles and dropped them in several locations along the tub, moving the curtain out about 2 inches…which was perfect. No more curtain sticking to me. yeah! I know this sounds silly…but trust me if you are on the Wonder or Magic..you are going to want to do this to give you a little extra room! DW doesn't care. But she also isn't 6'4" and a lot of pounds like me. Good to be short. ha! I'm sure I'm going to hear about that one! Mainly because she isn't short...except to mountain giants like me.

*******tip about the tip***********
so DW tried this. When you do that there is water that gets in the little loop you created with the shower curtain. So when you are done with your shower, take out the two (or more) bottles from the shower curtain and pull at the bottom of the curtain. This will pull the water into the tub, rather than dumping it all over the floor like DW did. I stepped into the bathroom which was also the house for our rolling cooler full of beer and ice and the floor and towel were SOAKED! I thought maybe the rolling cooler leaked more than normal...but noooooo, it was DW on the attack!

Anyhoooo, it was back to FE delivery and off we went. DW was intent on getting the FE gifts done ASAP, and so we had FE stuff all over our floor organized.

Here is what I did while DW did all the sorting work. Yes, I was a lazy bum.

so I think I kind of covered what we did…there was an envelope painted black and red to look like Mickey to store your cruise stuff, the older kids got clipboards customized and painted with their names, etc, coloring books for the younger set, and a music CD for everyone. Again, it took up an entire suitcase. So we will be much lighter on the way home!!

After walking the halls and delivering FE gifts (and noting that it is really cool looking down the hall at all of the Mickey envelopes. We had to put them on top of the fish…so it was like the whole hallway was decorated with Mickey Mouse. Pretty cool looking, and had I thought of it I would have taken a picture. Note the lack of picture so you can draw your own conclusion there! ), we headed to Cove Cafe for a seminar on detox. And no, not detox as in getting drugs out of your system. I would suppose this seminar counts as something I have never done.

It was upstairs in Cove Cafe…which I didn't even know existed before today (the upstairs portion, not the Cove Cafe itself, I'm not that dense!). There is a circular staircase inside. Who knew. While I'm at it, there are also little snacks in there as well that you won't find anywhere else. And that don't cost anything. My favorite through the cruise were chocolate chip squares on a stick (sometimes it was oatmeal raisin). But good stuff nonetheless, and not to be missed!

We made our way upstairs where the folks in charge of the exercise room proceeded to tell us about the toxins in the world. I could bore you with a ton of information about the toxins, or I can just ask you these three questions. 1. Do you breath? 2. Do you eat? 3. Do you drink anything? If you can stop doing those things you are in good shape because pretty much anything you eat, drink or breath brings toxins into your body. While I don't disagree with their assessment, what can you do? They did sell some pills that you could take (naturally rice wrapping with seaweed type of things inside), which costs about $100/month. It takes about a year to do the full treatment. In their defense, they did not push what they were selling, that only came out when someone asked if you could but the stuff at your local pharmacy or whatever. Naturally the answer was yes, but that it would not be as good. Not sure if I will use this knowledge or not…but it was pretty interesting. The main part of interest was that when your liver starts to get clogged with toxins it starts to store the toxins in your fat cells…and surrounds the cells in water to keep them separated from the rest of your body so the toxins can't hurt you. That is why some of us have a stomach that is hard to get rid of…no amount of exercise can affect certain areas of your body because the water keeps your bloodstream from using the fat stored there. No wonder I have a problem! I like this as a way to divert attention from all the food I eat. So if you detox that causes your liver to start working normally again and it will then release the water around those cells so the fat can be burned. Hmmmm. I ended up boring you even though I said I wouldn't. My bad.

The spa offers a treatment which will get rid of the water around these cells and it will reduce 1-8 inches around your body. It's the water that they will get rid of…and note that it will come back if you don't do something about it. Needless to say I didn't want to spend the money at the spa…so no idea if it reduces the size of you or not! But now you know when they talk about reducing inches....it's water you are getting rid of, not the fat. I need someone to be able to remove the fat in an hour...and no I'm not doing Liposuction!

At 1pm we went to the Gold and Platinum Castaway Club reception. We hung out with Lindy and Denver at the reception. Remarkably those two apparently were not put off by the cocktail sauce all the way up to my elbows in embarkation day! They brought around a few appetizers (whew…I was really concerned that there wouldn't be food there, it's hard to find food on the ship), and fruit, etc, and mimosas. Always good to take advantage of the free alcohol. Even though I won't likely drink all that I brought on board. Ask DW, I'm a firm believer in having it and not needing it vs. needing it and not having it! The reception was ok. The officers walked around and chatted with people. We talked to Captain Thord for a few minutes but that was it. Mickey and Minney arrived, did a little dance together and posed for pictures for a few minutes. All-in-all I wouldn't rate it at the top of my list of things to do, but if you don't have anything else to do…then why not? And again it was something I have not done. Chalk that one up too!

After that we headed back to our room…I changed into my workout clothes…it was time to exercise. I headed down to deck 4, cranked up my tunes and headed out. Rack this up as #3 thing (or is it #4, I'm losing count)I had not done was walk all the way around on Deck 4. I had been in the area where the anchor is, but had never been on the other side where you kind of wind around. The walk, in general, was good. but there were several incidents. One was when I was trying to get by a couple that was walking very slowly. I said "excuse me" and the lady looked like she wanted to kill me. Apparently it was wrong for me to want to walk faster than they were. another time a woman was walking the wrong way. Not really sure why, other than she apparently just wanted to. This is no big deal most of the time, but some of the areas in the stern of the ship are pretty tight….and even by the bow where the last one happened. This was with a woman that was jogging…she had gone the same way as me for a long time, and then apparently needed to go the other way so she was running the other way. I came around a corner and nearly took her out…luckily we both moved pretty quickly…ok, she moved quickly and we didn't get hurt. Seriously people…the thing says to go one direction. It's not that hard! . I ended up walking 4 miles. I was pretty proud of that. I'm writing this particular section in the second week of my cruise and I'd like to say I had repeated that feat during the cruise…but…uh…no so much. ha!

When I got back we ordered the all-hands-on-deck cheese platter, and DW wanted to order some Buffalo wings which we had not ordered before. They both arrived very quickly…but apparently lost in the translation is the buffalo part of the buffalo wings. These were honey barbecue. However, they were very good and we would definitely order them again. The cheese platter, however, was lacking in Brie cheese. I think you get one maybe two small slices of Brie. We would take care of that another day. Taking care of this proved quite simple...just ask for extra of what you want. We asked for extra Brie the next day and got so much that we ran out of crackers. So we asked for Extra crackers and we were all set. Extra Brie and extra crackers. Remember it!

Now it was time for dinner, With my glass of wine in tow. Dw had (according to her journal) shrimp cocktail, onion soup, angus fillet and creme brûlée. Apparently I don't rate high enough to make it into her journal anymore..but I know I also had the onion soup which was way to strong..almost like they had boiled it down for to long.

I continued to throw my crazy humor at Dina...she seems to be picking it up. We spent a couple of weeks in Australia a few years ago so we talked about that a bit. Also found out she has a boyfriend on the ship and he is from Cartehena, Columbia...so she will be getting off the ship to meet his family. Pretty cool timing there!

We ran back to change after dinner, we were going to go to the show, but wanted to pop into Diversions to watch some of the Patriots/Texans game on TV. When we walked in the Patriots were killing the Texans…but shortly after they started doing badly. apparently we were not very good luck! We had a show to go to so we headed out, hoping we didn't kill their chances!

The show was The Comedy and Ventriloquism of Kevin Johnson. This was the show we got a preview of the night before. The show overall was very funny, except he moved away from the puppets and had a kid up on stage trying to be funny with that. I didn't like that part as much as the puppets and feel he should have stuck with them. But it was overall very good, one of the better shows we have seen on the ships. Now thinking back I wonder if Disney told him that he had to interact with the crowd in some way so he had to do that. I don't know for sure, but it was just kind of a weird part of the show. Funny thing is we ran into the kid who was up on stage over and over again after that.

If you have ready my TR's, you know that frequently we do not make it to the later shows. I'll admit it….I'm really quite lazy. I can be in bed by 9 if possible. But we had decided we would try to go to the late shows, and tonight at 10:30 was an adult show called Buckets & Boards. This consisted of two guys who did some drumming on plastic pails and tubs mixed in with some guitar playing and attempts at comedy. Mediocre at best in my opinion. And no reason for it to be an adult show either. This is one I would skip if given the opportunity again, which I will be tomorrow! They are the main show on Tuesday.

way beyond my bed time, it was time to hit it…quick snap of our animal towel and it was off to bed.

An angel. This angel stayed up the entire cruise.

Sorry about the lack of pictures...this will change deeper into the cruise. Sea days there just isn't much to take pictures of!

Next up: Day 4: Cabo!

[dededisney]

Just wanted to clarify a few things for everyone (including you, Drew). For the FE gifts, I had ordered 60 clipboards for the kids thinking it would be way more than enough since at the time, not too many people had signed up for the exchange. Well, I was wrong! I think I was like 7 clipboards short, so I had to figure something out. I decided that the oldest 3 teen boys probably would not want a decorated clipboard, so I got them some collapsible water bottles, candy and some brain teaser cards. For the 4 youngest babies, I found little Disney books. Not coloring books, reading books. I have a picture of all the clipboards, but I think Drew put those on our other computer, so he will have to find that picture and upload it. I really liked how the clipboards came out, so now, for my clients who have kids, I will be making them clipboards as well to go in their gift basket. And I know Drew says he was lazy and didn't help with the FE (he actually did the music CD, so he did do something), he did help distribute the gifts which was no small feat!

[Grooovertoo]

Will pictures of the FE gifts you gave be following soon? I'm interested in what the envelopes looked like.

[dededisney]

Originally Posted by Grooovertoo

Will pictures of the FE gifts you gave be following soon? I'm interested in what the envelopes looked like.

I will take a picture of the one envelope I kept and have Drew upload it (I still don't know how to post pictures on here even though people have given very detailed directions!) We are off to a movie but I will persuade DH to do it when we get back!

[jstkpswimming]

Loving your trip report! My fiance (though he will be my husband at the time) and I will be on the May Panama Canal sailing for our honeymoon! Can't wait to read more about your journey!