We cruised 2 weeks ago on Wonder and loved the ship. We have done 10 cruises on RCCL's larger ships and enjoyed the "intimate" feeling of the Wonder. We took the 5 day cruise and have only 2 complaints; the cruise was too short and the ship hardly rolled (the seas were super calm the whole time)!
The public rooms on the Wonder are all in fantastic condition. I did not notice any torn carpets or damaged furnishing. Disney takes very good care of the ship. The ship was extremely clean. I guess it happened by magic; other than the pool deck staff picking up towels and snack dishes from the pool areas I never really saw the staff cleaning the ship. Every restroom I was in was super clean. We were in cabin 2112 and 2116 and they have not been renovated yet. The corridor walls near our cabin and the walls in our cabin are in desperate need of new coverings. You can tell they have tried to patch them over the years; they look awful (dirty, scratched, dented). The dirty, nicked walls in the corridors and our rooms were the only noticeable deficiency on the ship. Hopefully the room renovations include re-covering the walls in the cabins and the stateroom corridors. The rest of the ship was beautiful for being 15 years old.
The adults only spaces seemed very under-utilized on our cruise. We ate a Palo one night and had fantastic service and a delicious dinner. The pool areas were nice and the kids had a great time in the Mickey and Goofy pools. There were always available deck chairs in the adult pool area. It was a struggle to find a couple of open deck chairs in the kids and family pool areas during peak sea days, but we managed. Having the lifeguards in each pool area was great to see and comforting for me as a parent.
The Beach Blanket Buffet was nice; it is an old school buffet line (compared to newer ships that have stations). But I liked it. It reminded me of my first cruise in 1998. The aft deck off the Beach Blanket Buffet was the best outdoor dining area I have seen on any ship I have sailed. Breakfast on the back deck was so beautiful. We ate breakfast and lunch here a couple of times and did not find it overwhelmingly crowded.
Mickeys pool area had a cheeseburger food stand that served quick style foods. The French fries were great. Goofys pool has a pizzeria with great hot pretzels (the pizza was terrible frozen pizza; Disney could do better here).
My kids loved the kids club and asked to go each night. They staff would text us on the two cell phones allocated to each room when the kids wanted to be picked up. The wave phones are a great feature on the ship and eliminate the need for everyone to be using those annoying 2 way radios. I have not seen wave phones on RCCL and am surprised because they are a great idea.
Dinner each night was good and each dining room and menu was unique. I was surprised and rather disappointed to see there was a kids menu even for the 10 year olds in our group. The menu typically consisted of a salad and three or four entrees (macaroni and cheese, cheese burger, hot dog, chicken tenders, pizza). Our older kids did end up ordering dinners from the main menu a couple of nights but I felt like our waiter was sneaking them the entrée. I found the dining rooms to be very loud and it was extremely difficult to hear conversations at my table especially in Parrot Cay. I feel Disney needs to address the acoustics in all three dining rooms and work in some sound absorption materials. We had first seating and liked the 5:45 start as it is approximately the time we eat at home. I heard the kids club staff comes to get the second seating children about 45 minutes into dinner so the adults can enjoy the meal and was surprised they dont do this for first seating. The children at our table were served dinner when we received our appetizers. On the third night, we finally started taking our kids up to the club after they finished eating. One adult would take all the kids at our table to the kids club after we finished our salads and before the entree was served as the kids became quite bored sitting there.
There are tons of kids, family and adult activities all day and into the night. There is no way to do everything.
Castaway Cay is the best private island we have been to. It is well laid out and had plenty of chairs for our ship (they said it has over 5,000 loungers).
We did not feel like we were being nickeled and dimed on board like on Carnival and RCCL. The wait staff was always available for bar service but were not constantly hovering or openly pushing drinks every second. The complimentary drink station by the Mickey Pool was great.
We will definitely sail Disney Wonder again.
