A Very Merrytime Cruise on the Wonder

[BrookeMQ]

Thank you for the great review and details!! We are going on our first DCL in Feb on the Wonder and this is helping immensly!

I am sure you will have a great time. I wish I was going again!

 

[dee slack]

Thank you for sharing your trip with us, I so want to take a Holiday cruise in 2016!

 

[BrookeMQ]

We stayed at the beach a little longer and then headed back to the ship. Probably after 2.

We loved Castaway Cay. It is so nice to be able to just get off the ship and not worry about catching a taxi, paying for food, being haggled to buy stuff. It was the best part of our cruise. If we take another disney cruise it would have to stop here.

On our way out we stopped to take a picture with Olaf at the post office.

We also saw Stitch before we boarded.

Back on the ship reality is setting in that the cruise is ending and I started packing. Its always so sad

 

[BrookeMQ]

Before dinner we went to the lounge where there was a live singer. Amelia loves to dance.

Then we had dinner at Tritons again. Here was the menu:
http://disneycruiselineblog.com/menus/till-meet-dinner-menu/

I had the leek soup, the beef wellington, and the chocolate cake. All were ok. Nothing that great.

We gave our waiters their gratuities and thanked them. I didn't see us being up and ready for the 6:45 breakfast they assigned us the next morning.

After dinner Amelia said she wanted to see Minnie one last time.

The kids wanted to go to the kids club one more time. I decided to go look thru our pictures and purchase what we wanted. More on the photo services at the end of my review.

After I picked up the kids we ran into Belle in her Christmas dress. Amelia was so excited. Of course I had no camera or cell phone. And this wasn't a set meet n greet so no photographers were there. Always carry something!

We got our last towel animal.

Mike and Hayden went to see the movie. Amelia and I watched the Dreams show on the TV. She fell asleep. So we did not make it to see the farewell party.
I liked the Dreams show but enjoyed the Golden Mickey's a little more.

 

[BrookeMQ]

i forgot to add that on our last evening we go our signed items that we dropped off at guest services the first day.

Here is a picture of the ornament (the other was just a piece of paper for my scrapbook)

Front:

Back

I was happy with it. The ornament was $1 at Michaels Craft Store and they had other shapes too.

At some point we also went to purchase some photos. I went thru and looked at all of our pictures from our camera to see what ones didn't turn out or if I didn't have them. We needed quite a few so i decided to buy the 10 photo package. My husband wanted to get the the CD. If you buy the CD you take it home and pick your 10 pictures when you get home.

Here is my complaint: The thumbnails were tiny and a lot of the photos look the same. But my 3 year old eyes were not always looking at the camera. I could not tell which ones i wanted when I got home. I picked wrong on one of them with Minnie and she is not looking at all. Not a big deal to some, but for how much I paid for that one picture I feel it should be the one i want.

I also just printed some just as 4x6 and they are not very clear. There is no way they would print at a large size and look good. I am going to have to research both of these issues some more and see what i can do.

 

[BrookeMQ]

That night around 3 am we are woken up by an announcement "Bright Star" for a certain cabin. I said a prayer for whomever it was and tried to go back to sleep. I didn't get much more sleep.

We woke up and took our time getting ready. We did not make it to our assigned time for breakfast in the dining room. We packed up our things and went to the buffet by the pool. I hate the last day.

I thought we would be able to hear the announcements of when your group could get off the ship. I didn't hear them in the buffet or anywhere else we were at. So we eventually just walked off.

We got our luggage. There were plenty of porters there to help us. Then we found the shuttle for our rental car place. We rented a car because my husband and son were flying home from fort lauderdale. I was taking my mom and my daughter to Orlando to visit my sister. I didn't tell my son until that morning so he wouldn't be upset the entire cruise. He took it way better that i expected.

Back on track...the shuttle took us to the rental car place. We rented thru hertz. I was not very happy with the service there. We got there and only had about 5 people in front of us. It took over an hour and a half to get our car!!! I don't know what was going on. The line just kept getting longer and longer. The next shuttle came. Those people probably waited hours. There was no where to sit and my mom stood outside with our luggage in the parking garage because there was no room.

Finally we got our SUV and were on our way. My husbands flight didn't leave for several hours and he didn't want to go to the airport. I was exhausted and just wanted to get my drive to orlando started. It is a few hours away. Well we ended up going to check out South Beach. It was a little chilly so we just walked the beach a little and let the kids play at a play ground.

Eventually we dropped the hubby and son off and we drove to orlando. It was an easy drive but boy was I tired. I was happy to make it to my sisters house.

Her husband works for Disney and she suprised us by taking us to the park two time during our stay. So my reivew gets to continue!

 

[BrookeMQ]

While visiting my sister we were lucky that she was able to take us to two parks. We go to go to Hollywood Studios later one afternoon.

I took a quick picture of Amelia with the hat since it will be gone soon.

The main reason we went was just to take Amelia to the Frozen Sing a long. It was cute. Some people think it is dumb. But I figure it takes a long time to make a ride and this is something that gets frozen into the park fairly quickly while its so popular.

Amelia loved it along with tons of other little girls.
I will admit I actually enjoyed it. The story tellers were quite funny and I found myself laughing out loud a few times. I say its something you should do at least once.

Afterwards we went to the snow area. Its basically like a giant sandbox but with icy snow. Cute if you never see snow. We get snow all of the time so no big deal to us. Warning: it is super slippery. It was hard to walk around on it.

Amelia's favorite show is Phineas and Ferb so we stopped to meet them.

We browsed the shops. Amelia also loves nightmare before Christmas so the villian shop was a must do. We got a sally doll and some figures.

That was all we did in Hollywood Studios. We have been to disney many times so just a quick little stop to see something new.


That evening we went to downtown Disney.

Amelia was tired and had no interest in shopping but I told her if she was good i would take her on the merry go round. Surprisingly it wasn't too expensive.

We ate at earl of sandwich. Best value at Disney. the line was huge. Don't let this stop you. They are very efficient and it moves pretty quickly. We did plenty of shopping.

 

[BrookeMQ]

We lucked out and my sister got to take us to the magic kingdom one evening to see the Castle lighting and ride a few rides (Disney has really been restricting cast members from going to magic kingdom lately).

We tried to get some last minute fast passes. All we got was small world, jungle cruie and mickeys philharmagic. Oh well.

We arrived to the park just in time to get a spot to watch the parade.
While my sister and mom saved ours spot Amelia and I went to say hi to Pluto. She told me she didn't want to meet him on the boat and wanted to meet him here.

The line was not long but it took forever. Finally we squeezed back into our spot and watched the parade. Amelia loved it. She waved to everyone and was so excited when they waved back.

She didn't like the fire breathing dragon though.

Then we headed to fantasyland and let amelia ride the merry go round. She loves that ride.

The frozen princesses were a 2+ hour wait. So glad we saw them on the boat!

Next we headed to ride its a small world. Amelia really wanted to ride the Little Mermaid so we stood in line for that. It was about 40 minutes. I am not used to waiting in lines. We go when its a little less busy and I am organized with a good plan. But we have been so many times that we just did whatever today.

We also rode the jungle cruise.

Then we went to see the castle lighting with anna and elsa. It was hard to get a decent spot with all of the construction going on. We were off to the side but i was fine with that.

Amelia loved it. I enjoyed it. I always love seeing the castle all lit up. Its my favorite part of all my trips. Its just so pretty.

We were pretty tired...honestly I was struggling with "sea legs" the last few days. That doesn't usually happen to me after cruising. So we headed out. Tinkerbell was listed as a ten minute wait so we stopped to see her. It was only like 5 minutes. The area was cute.

Well that is it for most of my review. I will come back and do a final comment about how the disney cruise compared to our others.

 

[Queenk333]

Fantastic trip report! Beautiful family. DH and I are on the Wonder on Christmas this year, and your report just amped up my excitement! Thank you!