Disney Wonder Repo Cruise Sept '11 with DL/WDW back to back

[missj1975]

We woke up bright and early to enjoy Victoria. In our desk I noticed a door hanger that was for ordering breakfast delivered to our room. I filled it out the night before and had breakfast waiting for us in the morning. Bagel was good, not impressed with the glazed donuts...but St. Louis has Krispy Kreme so it takes a heck of a glazed donut to beat that.

More FE gifts. I loved all my FE gifts but I especially loved the Mary Kay bag. My husband loved the chocolate.

As soon as we could leave the ship, we did. Disney takes their disinfecant very seriously.

Area around the port.

We original were going to do a whale tour but as time for the cruise got closer, we decided that the tour would take up too much time and we really wanted to explore Victoria. I think it was a good decision cause we did enjoy exploring Victoria.

When you leave the ship, there was a shuttle service taking cruisers to the main shopping strip of Victoria. There is also a walking path that would take about twenty minutes to get to the heart of Victoria. We chose the walking path.

I did have an ulterior motive in walking...geocaching. There were several geocaches in the port area.

We enjoyed the walking path. It went through several neighbors with everyone having really cool landscaping.

 

[missj1975]

After walking for twenty minutes we reached the heart of Victoria. Here is a picture of the Empress hotel.

We stopped by the Visitor Center and picked up a map.

Found a squished penny machine.

Took tons of pictures and found a whale .

We visited several gifts shops and I bought some souvenirs. I bought a t-shirt, jacket, a purse, and some gifts for my sis & nieces. Bob bought tons of smoked salmon. I'm assuming the salmon was good cause DH inhaled it as soon as we got home. He does love salmon. I personally can't stand salmon.

It was getting close to noon and we were getting hungry. We saw several places to eat in Victoria but we decided to just head back to the ship and eat an already paid for lunch.

On the way back to the ship, I talked DH into stopping for one more geocache. I'm the geocacher, he just humors me whenever I want to geocache. He doesn't mind geocaching with me but it isn't his first choice of things to do. The geocache was hidden in garden among businesses. Very cool garden that most people probably don't even realize that it is there. That is one thing I love about geocaching, it takes us to out of the way places that we normally wouldn't see if it wasn't for geocaching.

The geocache was well camo'd in this plant. This geocache actually took a couple of minutes cause we had to wait for an older couple to leave. One main rule of geocaching is never pull out a cache in front of non-cachers, discretion is key.

On the walking loop back to the ship, we stopped by Fisherman's Wharf.

 

[missj1975]

I loved Fisherman's Wharf. It was fun to look at all the brightly colored houseboats.

I could have spent all day taking pictures of this seal. He was so cute. The fish shop across the dock kept throwing him scraps so he wasn't going anywhere. I think we watched him for about twenty minutes until my stomach started growling.

We headed back to the ship and had lunch at Triton's.

The lunch was very good but it was hard to enjoy cause the table next to us had a family of four and the wife just wouldn't quit staring at me. I don't think she approved of me taking pictures of my food. Maybe she recognized me from the disboards but since she never said anything, it just freaked me out. If I would have recognized her from the disboards I would of said something cause I have no problem talking to strangers but at this point I was kind of tired, cranky, and not in the mood to talk to eagle eyes. I made a mental note not to stare at people cause I just realized how annoying it is to be at the receiving end. Ahhh, who am I kidding? I love to people watch, I'm just better at being discrete and the lady next to me definitely needed to take some lessons.

We decided to head back to the room to relax and take a shower. Oh look more FE gifts, yeah!!!

Did I mention that when I tried to take a shower that morning, that I had no water pressure? It was next to impossible to wash my hair. The water just came out in a slow small stream. Thank goodness for the red cup in the gift exchange cause I had to wash my hair with a cup. It sucked big time. So that morning we called housekeeping and they promised someone would come fix the shower.

Six hours later my shower wasn't fixed. Still no water pressure. I was very ticked and called housekeeping again. I think they said they thought someone fixed it but she said she would send someone else. Well someone did come but they didn't fix the shower, they changed the air filter in the vent. ***Apparently my husband had complained the air conditioner wasn't working right***

I need a shower and I needed one bad. My husband who looks like a total prep is actually quite the Al Boreland. He took the showerhead apart and had it fixed in no time. So I finally took a shower with water pressure and laid down for a nap. After two hours of napping and relaxing, we started to leave the room when housekeeping called. They were just checking to see if the showerhead had been fixed. I was like yeah but not by your staff.

While I was taking a nap, DH decided he was hungry. He was a sweetie and brought me back a sandwich.

 

[missj1975]

We went to the early show of the Golden Mickeys. We've seen it before but still enjoyed it.

After the show we decided to enjoy one of the adult games. We stopped by Diversions for The Feud.

Five minutes into the game and DH excuses himself to go to the restroom. He didn't return right away so I hunted him down. Apparently he got sick, pukish sick. My DH was feeling major sea sickness and he wasn't the only one. Half the ship was experiencing major sea sickness. Apparently the Pacific Ocean was way more turbulent then the Atlantic. I personally never notice and never got sick but hubby sure did. We went to the medical office every night and got free sea sick pills for DH since he ran out of his personal stash the first day.

I started noticing the yellow "wet floor" cones everywhere. A cone meant someone got sick and a cast member had disinfected the area. I personally never saw anyone puke but I did hear lots of guests talking about everyone getting sick all over the ship.

I definitely felt the ship moving on this cruise but it never bothered me. In one of the geocaches, I found a toy car. The toy car came in very handy. We used it gauge when the ocean was turbulent.

We would put the car in the middle of the table and watch it roll back and forth. Yeah I'm easily amused.

Dinner was at Animator's Palate.

I can't find a picture of my dessert so that means I had creme brulee again. I think hubby had ice cream.

After dinner, we walked around for a bit, had another drink, and chatted with our tablemates for awhile. Eventually we made it back to the room, tired but happy.

 

[TheThomsLuvDisney]

Hello MissJ, subbing and enjoying your TR....again! We actually met on the Dream last year and I saw you were writing another TR and had to read along!

I'm glad you enjoyed Seattle! My sister actually lives on Angle Lake, her house is straight ahead on the right hand side of your picture!

Loved the seal picture, they are so stinkin' cute!

 

[jenseib]

That seal is too dang cute. I would've been there forever taking pictures....and so excited to see one in the wild so close up.
Too bad DH got sick. I've been lucky so far, and I pray we have calm seas in Nov. because my sister would be the one to get sick first.

 

[missj1975]

Hello MissJ, subbing and enjoying your TR....again! We actually met on the Dream last year and I saw you were writing another TR and had to read along!

I'm glad you enjoyed Seattle! My sister actually lives on Angle Lake, her house is straight ahead on the right hand side of your picture!

Loved the seal picture, they are so stinkin' cute!

I remember, we met waiting in line to board the ship. You were the lucky one to do back to back cruises. Thanks for joining the report.

So cool that your sister lives on Angle lake. We definitely want to go back and visit Seattle for more then one day.

That seal is too dang cute. I would've been there forever taking pictures....and so excited to see one in the wild so close up.
Too bad DH got sick. I've been lucky so far, and I pray we have calm seas in Nov. because my sister would be the one to get sick first.

The seal was so cute, I wanted to take him home so bad. He just hung around, swam around, begging with his cute big eyes.

Yeah it was a bummer that everyone was getting sick on the ship. DH always takes sea sick medicine on each cruise but I never do. This is our third cruise and this is the first one he felt sick on.

 

[missj1975]

First day at sea was very dreary.

We skipped breakfast cause we were having Palo brunch at eleven. Before brunch we walked around and took more pictures.

DH tried to not get sea sick again.

Finally time for Palo brunch. I love love love Palo brunch. We did one on the Dream in February and loved it. This time on the Wonder did not disappoint. Well the view sucked cause the weather was dreary but the food was awesome.

 

[missj1975]

I really don't remember what we did during the afternoon of the first day at sea. I know we played ping pong and Bingo. We just relaxed and had a great time.

The musical for the night was Toy Story the Musical. Yeah we've seen it several times but I still love it each time. I do love the actor/actress who plays Sid, always does a great job.

It was also Pirate Night. We were worried that there would be no fireworks cause of the crappy weather but the fireworks were on and the deck party went on as usual.

Dinner was at Parrot Cay with a pirate theme. I thought the food was good. The scallops were awesome.

 

[missj1975]

Pirate Deck was great...a little chilly but great. The fireworks were great. I don't remember if there was a food buffet. If there was we didn't go to it.

 

[Linda67]

I'm really enjoying your TR

Great photos by the way

Victoria looks lovely, I'd love to visit there someday

Shame that your DH got sick; we are taking only our second ever cruise in May and I must admit it really worries me

 

[Tehanna]

Loving your TR, as we are booked on the September Wonder Repo cruise this year. Thank you for taking so many photos!

 

[missj1975]

Second Day at sea started with a character breakfast. I love character breakfasts. It was a nice surprise cause Disney doesn't have character breakfasts on 3 to 4 day cruises. This was our first five day cruise so I was pleasantly surprised by the character breakfast.

The breakfast was in Parrot Cay. The characters were Mickey and friends. The characters were great and we had lots of character interaction.

We spent most of the day participating in the Trivia games, attended one of the Animation classes to learn how to draw Donald Duck. Oh we won the Cruise Trivia Game...what can I say, I know my cruise trivia...all thanks to the disboards. We won a key chain.

We also did laundry. Yeah it took me a couple of tries to figure out how the machine worked. I didn't realize computerized laundry machines were so complicated, give me a quarter machine any day.

DH grabbing his free dose of sea sickness medicine.

Oh and another stop by the medical center to get another free dose of sea sickness medicine for DH. I thought that was really nice for Disney to give out free sea sickness medicine.

Disney has really great customer service on even the littlest things. I can't remember if it was this cruise or the February cruise but when we boarded I ran out of personal products (female readers you know what i mean )...gift shops weren't open yet...and we didn't have our luggage yet with my extra supply. The bathrooms on the cruise ship do not have personal product vending machines. So I went to the guest relations desk and explained the situation (thankfully to a female cast member) and she gave me a huge bag of free personal products. I was so happy and thought that was really neat for them to do that. Cause I've had this issue before at a non-disney hotel and they weren't very understanding at all.

We had lunch at Beach Blanket Buffet. It was good. I prefer the sit-down restaurants on the cruises but sometimes DH feels like a buffet.

 

[missj1975]

We had afternoon tea at Palo, loved it. We had the best waiter ever. He was from Russia. He was so into serving the tea and we talked a lot. He loved working for Disney had been with Disney for like nine years. I was impressed.

The evening show was Dreams. Great as usual. After the show we went and watched the Adult version of the juggling show. He was hilarious. Then we went to dinner at Parrot Cay.

I have absolutely no idea what we did after dinner. Probably got a drink in one of the clubs or walked around the ship. We walked around the ship a lot. I just love exploring the ship, can never get enough of it.

 

[TheThomsLuvDisney]

Great update! Palo brunch is my FAVORITE! I never gave Palo tea a second thought but now I'm totally interested, maybe because I'm starving right now!!!

 

[squirrel]

I'm on the Repo cruise this year.

The Grind is quite the hike. I forget what the record is for it but it's way too short for the average person.

I only get gravy on my fries if it's a poutine, and even then it has to be good gravy.

 

[Linda67]

Palo looks wonderful

The character breakfast looks like a lot of fun as well; are you seated with your usual table mates for this?

 

[missj1975]

Great update! Palo brunch is my FAVORITE! I never gave Palo tea a second thought but now I'm totally interested, maybe because I'm starving right now!!!

Lol, tea is great. Definitely have an early lunch the day you do tea cause the mini sandwiches and desserts are so good. I'm not a huge tea person but the menu has lots of choices so I found one I liked.

I'm on the Repo cruise this year.

The Grind is quite the hike. I forget what the record is for it but it's way too short for the average person.

I only get gravy on my fries if it's a poutine, and even then it has to be good gravy.

Yeah when I researched the Grind, I kept reading that the average person could hike it in forty-five minutes....it took us two hours. I got passed a lot but it was a beautiful hike. I don't regretting doing it but I definitely would never hike it again.

Palo looks wonderful

The character breakfast looks like a lot of fun as well; are you seated with your usual table mates for this?

For the character breakfast, yes you do sit with your table mates, same table you have during regular dinner. For the breakfast, the characters visit everyone, not just tables with kids. I mention this because on the Dream, there is a dinner where the princesses only visit tables with kids, irritates the heck out of me. I just found it odd on the Dream because at all the Disney resorts for any character dinner, the characters visit everyone, not just kids. I am not for sure why the Dream does this, seems very unDisney like to me.

 

[jenseib]

I have to ask about the character breakfast. I had forgotten they were offered on longer cruises. Do you have an assigned day to do it? I think I read that before...but my mind is so full of Diney knowledge, that some things start to slip out at times.

 

[missj1975]

I have to ask about the character breakfast. I had forgotten they were offered on longer cruises. Do you have an assigned day to do it? I think I read that before...but my mind is so full of Diney knowledge, that some things start to slip out at times.

Yeah you get an assigned day. I can't remember if it was printed on our dining ticket or if our servers told us. I think it was also listed in the daily navigator. It was one of the best character breakfasts I've been to. Goofy was the best but Chip and Dale were great too.