If You See It: Eat It! Via Panama to Disneyland - Completed and Link to New Trip Report 2/24

[Captain_Oblivious]

Hooray for embarkation day! I never realized how many advantages the Castaway Club members get, but it sure does seem like it makes the cruise extra special.

I had to laugh at the luggage picture--I read your statement "we had very little luggage" and then thought everything in the picture was yours! I had to go back and read it again to get it right.

Looking forward to the cruise! I'm excited to see the Panama Canal.

 

[Flossbolna]

Garnelen schälen und essen.

Once you translate it, it makes it so obvious that it is totally not needed to mention that you eat the shrimps that you peeled. For what other purpose would you peel them??? I don't know how we would say Peel and Eat Shrimp in German. Maybe Shrimps zum Selberschälen (shrimps for peeling yourself)?

Yes, from Hamburg originally!
I have also looked at other cruise lines and found Celebrity appealing, but their "German prices" for the cruises I looked at were really high. I also looked up a few other cruise lines (if briefly) and it really seems that Disney is the cheapest of the lot, because they do not have separate prices for Germany or the Euro area (more expensive ones, like so many other companies). What was your experience, did you find anything more affordable than (but not too different from) DCL? Maybe I just need to look more.

Hamburg is such a great city! I would love to be able to board a cruise ship there. When we were kids we spent a family vacation in Hamburg and took the ship to Helgoland. I still remember cruising up the Elbe. Can you imagine doing that on a Disney ship???

I know what you mean about "German prices". Since I never booked with them yet, I am not sure how to get around them. But if you use an American website to check prices, you get the dollar prices. I like the search engine on priceline.com. Of course, who knows what happens if you try to book through them?

(Ok, seems like Germany just scored... Am not very patriotic and am DISing during the game, but could hear the roars from outside...)

Okay, when I recommended "our" Miami sightseeing tour to you before your trip, I very much expected that would come much too late since you would have everything planned out already long before ... But now I see that you weren't staying in Miami anyway, so it wouldn't have worked at all!

Sorry, I meant to answer your recommendation, which was very much appreciated! I had actually been in Miami in 2004 and did lots of touring then, so don't feel like I need to repeat it. I would love to get back to South Beach though!

Oh neat, I hadn't heard about that, that is useful. I hate fiddling with the lanyard pouch to open the door when I have, say, cups of coffee in both hands. I hope they have updated this on the Magic as well.

Yes, the Magic got them in the refurbishment last fall. It definitely makes things so much easier!

Yeah, we always do that at the embarkation brunch too - usually changes by the first dinner though

Well, what are you supposed to do? Do you want to make your servers unhappy by not eating a lot for your first dinner????

 

[Flossbolna]

Ok, Germany scored, but then so did Ghana...

Eine weitere deutsche Sprecher hier! Ihr Bericht is wunderbar!

Herzlich Willkommen und vielen Dank!

I did have the chilled Pineapple and Coconut Soup and really enjoyed it, but it was not Strawberry Soup.

Ah, yes the Pina Colada soup!!! Was the strawberry soup like the one at Palo? I was expecting to love that, but then was not as in love with it as I expected...

 

[Flossbolna]

Great update ~ love embarkation day!!

Yes, it's interesting how we all have our little "first foods, first activities, etc" on the ships isn't it? My DCL breakfast is always the same; their Eggs Benedict & a Mickey Waffle. Yum!

I think this is your first post here, so

Embarkation day is so full with excitement! It is really a very special atmosphere.

And I can understand your love of eggs benedict.

Hooray for embarkation day! I never realized how many advantages the Castaway Club members get, but it sure does seem like it makes the cruise extra special.

There are even more benefits if you are one of the higher levels. But you are a Silver Castaway Club member, too, aren't you? So, take good note for your next cruise!

I had to laugh at the luggage picture--I read your statement "we had very little luggage" and then thought everything in the picture was yours! I had to go back and read it again to get it right.

(Ok, lot's of not happy shouting outside - did Ghana score another goal??)

Very little CARRY-ON luggage. We each had a very big bag (they are off to the side in the picture, mine is the one with the Tinkerbell luggage tag). But wow! If we had taken all those bags just for us, we would not have been able to move around in our stateroom!!!

Looking forward to the cruise! I'm excited to see the Panama Canal.

Yes, the engineer wants to see the engineering stuff! As a daughter of an engineer, I totally understand!!

(yes, Ghana did score, now it is 2:1 for Ghana - but there are still 25 minutes of playtime and who knows what happens in overtime. There are team that have lost important titles thanks to overtime goals...)

 

[dolphingirl47]

Ah, yes the Pina Colada soup!!! Was the strawberry soup like the one at Palo? I was expecting to love that, but then was not as in love with it as I expected...

The strawberry soup that they used to have at the embarkation lunch was lighter and also contained mint so it was really refreshing.

Corinna

 

[Flossbolna]

The strawberry soup that they used to have at the embarkation lunch was lighter and also contained mint so it was really refreshing.

Corinna

Sounds great!

(Lot's of cheering outside - another goal for Germany???)

 

[dolphingirl47]

Sounds great!

(Lot's of cheering outside - another goal for Germany???)

I have no interest in football. Graham is watching it in the living room and I am hiding in the bedroom with my laptop and a glass of wine.

Corinna

 

[Flossbolna]

I have no interest in football. Graham is watching it in the living room and I am hiding in the bedroom with my laptop and a glass of wine.

Corinna

Oh, I am just listening to the sounds from the street - you can figure out the whole game that way here in the city...

 

[Flossbolna]

As I had mentioned before, we just had booked a certain category, not a specific room. (if you were confused by that update, I actually rewrote it to make it more clearly). And we were assigned a stateroom that was a higher category, but still an inside stateroom. So we had gotten an upgrade. Our stateroom was 2077. This was on deck 2 (where we had been on our last cruise as well and liked it), pretty much in the middle of the ship. It seemed a great location.

And this is what it looked like:

We were surprised to see the bunk bed down as we did not need that!

On the desk you can see all kind of papers:

The brown book with Donald on the cover is kind of the general information about the ship (like the folder you would find in most hotel rooms). It also contains the room service menu (room service is included in your cruise fare) Much later in the cruise we realised that this was already the book for the Alaskan cruises, it had a lumberjack Donald on the cover and all kind of info on Alaska in it. Made us want to go and book an Alaskan cruise…

Then there is some advertising from the shop about jewellery and on top of that two yellow tickets. Those are the dining tickets, which tell you when and where your dinner is. On Disney cruises you have a set dinner time, main dining (5.45pm) or second dining (8:15pm) and there are three restaurants. You are assigned to a specific restaurant each night and then move on to the next one the next night. Your serving team moves with you. So, those tickets are kind of important to know where you are eating, they list every day and the corresponding restaurant. They also have your table number printed on them. However, you can also figure it out from your room key (Key to the World, KTTW). There is a letter code for the restaurants printed on as well as your table number.

For illustration purpose, I took a picture of our dining ticket and the KTTW card (and the Cove Café coffee card that was in my lanyard):

As you can see, while the dining ticket lists all the restaurants with dates, the KTTW just has APT on it. That meant that the first night we ate at Animator’s Palate, the second night at Parrot Cay and the third night at Triton’s and then we repeated that 5 times for the 15 nights of our cruise. You can also see that we had the second seating at 8:15 and our table number. On the KTTW you see a large H. That is our muster station.

Then there was a leaflet about the internet usage. Just a few months before our cruise there had been a change in pricing for this. It used to be that you were charged per minute. Since the connection out on sea is not a very good one, the internet is slow. So you might end up eating lots of minutes for something small. This never appealed to me at all. Now with the new system you are charged per MB. There are different packages, the more MB you pre-purchase, the cheaper it gets per MB. But the smallest package was for 100 MB for 19 $ and I did not intend to use nearly as much. We were just planning on using the internet for a few emails back home to our families. If you don’t buy a package, you can still sign up and then you pay 0.25 per MB. So, that’s what I ended up signing up for.

And finally you see a white envelope that contained all our tickets for our excursions. We had booked through Disney in 4 of our 5 ports, so there was quite a bunch of them! They detail where your meeting place is and when you have to be there.

This is the view back towards the entrance:

You can see two doors leading into the bathroom, that’s because it is a split bathroom, meaning one bathroom has a tub with shower and a sink, the other had the toilette and a sink.

Here is a picture of the one with the tub:

The bed:

And on the bed we found gifts:

The bag was the gift for all silver Castaway Club members. Inside the bag was a magnetic white board that you could attach to your stateroom door – some people had it outside, we actually put it on the connecting door that was in our room, so it was kind of on the wall of our room. With it came a pen to write on the white board that had a magnet on its cap, so that it could be placed next to the white board. And we also got a highlighter called “Navilighter” for the Navigators. I liked the gift much better than what Michael had gotten on our last cruise, which was a backpack, cheesy crackers (that were awful) and a key chain. This year’s items seemed much more practical. You could tell that the beach bag was very popular as it seemed that half the ship took them with them to the pool and on excursions. I would have been scared of not being able to find mine again in the sea of identical bags. Oh and the gold members got yellow bags, the platinum members got black bags. I really liked the grey one the best!

Opposite the bed was a small cupboard:

It’s called a steamer trunk – as it is designed to look like one. But it just has shelves inside. It was very practical as I managed to store most of my clothes in there besides the stuff that needed to hang.

However, as nice as the room looked, as soon as we walked in I noticed a few things (and if you know me, if I notice things, then they are very obvious). The door frame of the connecting door was very banged up and had lost quite a lot of paint (the metal was coming through). And the small coffee table that is in front of the sofa did look very worn. When I pointed that out to Michael and touched it, I also noted that it was very wobbly. Still, we were happy to be on the ship and I really liked the look of the inside stateroom. I was a bit scared, but it had kind of a comfortable cave like feeling to it.

We also met our stateroom host and asked her to fold up the bunk bed as we were not going to need it and asked for some ice. She seemed nice, but a bit confused.

None of our bags had arrived yet (not surprisingly, it was just 1:30pm), so we had to find other things to do. Our first stop was at Studio Sea, which is a place where they have certain shows. On the first day it was the place to go if you had any wishes regarding dining. Like a reservation for Palo or changes to your rotation. The reason why we went there was that we had requested a table for just the two of us. Disney Cruise Line actually does not have any table for two, but you can still request to be seated on your own. So, that’s what we requested. Since we don’t see each other for large chunks of time, we really wanted to be able to chat just between the two of us during dinner and not have to make small talk with others, however nice they might be. So, we wanted to check whether our request had been granted. Besides a table for two, we had also requested our head server from our last cruise, Josip from Croatia. We thought he was really excellent and had enjoyed chatting with him. We had noticed that he was very attentive as to how the servers in his section were doing their job. Besides checking on whether we had gotten a table just for the two of us, we also wanted to request our Palo server from the last cruise, Sasha, also from Croatia. At Studio Sea we found out that Sasha was on vacation, he had just left the ship two weeks ago. And we found out that we were placed at a table for four with one other couple. We were not happy with that. They told us that they were seeing what they could do for us and might leave a message on our phone and otherwise speak to our head server that evening.

Then we went up on deck. We kind of started to just wander around, trying to become familiar with the ship again. It had been exactly one year that day that we disembarked from the Wonder in 2013.

A view of Miami from deck 10:

And then I steered Michael to the pool bar. I was going to have a drink of the day. I remembered how last year my cruise had started properly once I had my first drink. So I decided that I needed one this time as well to celebrate being on the ship. And I think that is my embarkation day tradition that I intend to keep up!

I decided that I wanted the drink of the day. It was called Sea Breeze and was something with grapefruit juice and cranberry juice (and vodka?). The good thing about the drink of the day is how cheap it is. It’s just under 5 $. To me that’s a great price. And they were rather generous with the alcohol in them usually. Michael does not like grapefruit juice, so he went for a standard drink from the pool bar drinks menu and got the Captain’s Mai Tai. It was very good!

Here is a picture of our lovely drinks:

And while we were there, a picture of the pool:

You can see a guy with a guitar on the other side of the pool. He was one of the musicians on board and he regular played music at the adult pool during the cruise.

We decided to continue on our journey of getting re-acquainted with the ship and headed up to one of our favourite spots, the Outlook Café. This is kind of above the adult pool on deck 10 (the pool is on deck 9). Only the Wonder has this, it was added for the Alaska cruises. I wrote about how much we loved this spot in my last trip report. Somehow it is one of my favourite places to just sit and hang out. Last cruise it was mainly empty. This time there were days when it was really difficult to find a spot in there and they also had added chairs that were obviously coming from somewhere else. I guess that’s what happens when you cruise with lots of adults and repeat cruisers. They know where the good spots are!

So, this is me with my Sea Breeze in the Outlook Café:

Once done with the drink, we continued the tour of the ship. This was the direction we were going to head out towards San Diego soon:

view back to Miami:

Kiddie pool being cleaned:

We wondered whether this was still planned maintenance or the first accident…

The sandwich offerings at Goofy’s Galley

We did not get anything that day, but on later days (and I failed at taking pictures of what we got then, I am sorry!!). But I found it interesting for future reference that this is actually an option for lunch on embarkation day as well.

And then we ran into the proprietor of Goofy’s Galley on deck 5:

Yay! First character sighting of the cruise!!

One of the life boats was lowered:

It does not have a kind of flowery pattern on it, that’s a reflection of my dress in the porthole.

Our next stop – and the reason for being on deck 5 – were the Oceaneer’s Club and Lab. These are the kids clubs, I think for 3 to 11 year olds. I had read that you can check them out during open house on embarkation day and I wanted to have a look.

This is the cute bathroom:

I found them interesting, but not overly exciting. I actually had wanted to check out the clubs for the older kids, Edge and Vibe, as well, but we did not get around to do that.

Just when we left the kids club we ran into one of the CM working there and he asked whether we wanted to see a magic trick. We thought why not and he proceeded to show us a card trick that totally baffled us. It was quite amazing! He told us to come to the crew talent show later in the cruise as he would be performing there.

We were in an excellent mood by now, we had started our vacation, were a little tipsy, had seen characters, were just wowed by a CM magician. So what do you do next? Unpack of course. So back to the room. This time both of our bags arrived in a timely manner. Not like last year when mine was horribly late!

At some point it was time to go to the muster drill, so we went up one deck and stood there for a while, then got our instructions. I was contemplating again how different those were than from what they tell you on an airplane. Of course on an airplane, there is no chance to go back to your stateroom, change into warm and comfortable clothes and bring your medication with you. I am not sure in case of a real emergency I would be calm enough to do all that, but one can hope… Or better even hope, that you never have to test it out!!

After the muster drill we finished the unpacking and stored our empty bags under the bed, happy that we were settled in and would not have to bother with bags until San Diego! At least that’s what we thought.

After we had finished packing I wanted to head up to the top deck to see some of the sailaway (not necessarily the party, but the actual leaving the port) and Michael could not wait to get into a pool. At some point I took a picture of the atrium:

And then headed to deck 9. I think this was when we first took our new cups with up. I had gotten us reusable insulated cups from the Disney Store (online) when they were on sale and had them shipped to Michael’s place. He was rather baffled as to why I would purchase something like that for our cruise. But he did not complain too much as I got him a nice blue one with Donald. Since I never got pictures of our cups, here is one of my Minnie cup:

We managed to catch the end of the Sailaway party. I think on my next cruise I will try to really watch it. But we got little blue tinsels. Those were fun and added decoration to our cabin.

Michael headed to the adult pool which was already very busy. Another thing that was different from our previous cruise when the adult pool never got very busy on the first day. I headed up to deck 10 and was waiting for the ship to start. I watched all the other ships in port leaving. And was texting a little bit with family in Germany who were sitting in front of their computers and watching the Miami port webcam and were complaining why the ship was not leaving at 5pm (11pm for them) as I had told them. Of course it really wasn’t my fault, but I felt guilty that they were up late and did not see anything happening.

At some time, I think at about 5:20pm, our captain, Captain Fabian, made an announcement that our departure was delayed as they were still loading the ship. I guess taking stuff on board for a 14-day voyage takes longer than normally. We finally left at 5:40pm.

Next up: Let the Magic Begin
http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=52105295&postcount=146http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=52105295&postcount=146http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=52105295&postcount=146

 

[tiggrbaby]

Your drink looked yummy! And I was wondering why the lifeboat was flowered until you explained!

 

[rentayenta]

Wonderful photos! Our tradition though we've only been on one cruise is to grab drinks then pizza and relax by the pool upon embarkation. It was the perfect way for us to begin the cruise so m thinking we'll do it the same way next time. My crew will always choose outside vs inside if the temp allows.

The drinks look delicious and I agree, they are not expensive. I found them generous with the alcohol too.

I didn't realize you were on the same cruise with Corinna, too fun!

 

[dizneeat]

Great embarkation day! It is so different to what it is like in Port Canaveral, and we have only gotten onto the ships there. Should be interesting in Barcelone in 5 weeks.

Love to see the inside room. We had not planned on cruising more than once, so went all out the first time around and had a veranda. Well, 13 cruises later we always talk about getting another stateroom, but then end up with one of the higher decks and a balcony again.
But your room looks quite roomy. I am so afraid of it being dark with having no windows. Did you mind having no windows at all?

Drink of the day! Yeah, nothing more relaxing, isn't there? I get myself quite a few of those over the course of a cruise.

Magdalene, I had to when you said that you liked the beach bag and that the silver one was the one you liked best. I love mine too and for me the black one was the one I liked best.

More please!!!!!!!!!!

 

[franandaj]

It was great to finally see a picture of you since this is the first TR of yours that I have followed! Nice to meet you!

I love a DOTD to start a cruise, but if I don't like it, they are certainly priced fairly well that another one will do. I have never had an inside stateroom and am also concerned that I would go stir crazy, but I've heard that many folks sleep really well in the complete darkness. I'm still not sure, but like to hear other people's takes on it. We always have to leave a light on in our house or hotel rooms. Often we leave the curtains open so the sunlight can make it's way in.

It's always nice when the luggage shows up sooner rather than later. I like to get unpacked and then be done with it. I've never seen a ticket with so many dining options that they list them out by night. Thanks for showing that, normally they just read something like PTTAPTA, or ATPTPA or something cryptic like that. I can see with 15 nights you would really need to know which restaurant which night and not just have some abbreviation.

My next Disney Vacay is a cruise out of Miami, so this whole sailing process is exciting. I really enjoyed Corinna's description of Chankanaab (though I still have to comment on her TR) and may consider that for our Cozumel excursion. I will love to hear what you do for yours. This time around my partner Fran is much more mobile and is even cleared for water excursions, so we have quite a few options other than the last time we visited Cozumel where we were quite limited.

 

[annichan]

Hamburg is such a great city! I would love to be able to board a cruise ship there. When we were kids we spent a family vacation in Hamburg and took the ship to Helgoland. I still remember cruising up the Elbe. Can you imagine doing that on a Disney ship???

Yes, that would be wonderful! What we did see though, was the Dream in Hamburg before they brought her over to Port Canaveral for the first time. That was the coolest but weirdest sight, the Dream docked at one of the Blohm & Voss docks at the port of Hamburg, with snow all around

(Ok, lot's of not happy shouting outside - did Ghana score another goal??)

Okay, that seems to be the difference between your neighborhood and mine (I didn't watch that game either but just heard the reactions from outside): lots of cheering at Germany's goals, but only deathly SILENCE when Ghana scored

As you can see, while the dining ticket lists all the restaurants with dates, the KTTW just has APT on it. That meant that the first night we ate at Animator’s Palate, the second night at Parrot Cay and the third night at Triton’s and then we repeated that 5 times for the 15 nights of our cruise.

Last year we still had all 14 letters on the card because they didn't repeat in exactly the same order - they hardly fit on the card!

Besides checking on whether we had gotten a table just for the two of us, we also wanted to request our Palo server from the last cruise, Sasha, also from Croatia. At Studio Sea we found out that Sasha was on vacation, he had just left the ship two weeks ago. And we found out that we were placed at a table for four with one other couple. We were not happy with that. They told us that they were seeing what they could do for us and might leave a message on our phone and otherwise speak to our head server that evening.

Oh no, I hope they managed to get you a table for two after all. We have now requested tables for two twice - the first time I never checked up on it and it still worked, and the second time we went to Dining Changes after embarking only to check, and the cast member chuckled and said "Well, it almost worked. They put you on a laarge table, with 6 other people!". He was able to get us a table for two immediately, though, no waiting for a later message. So I really hoped this worked out for you in the end!

A view of Miami from deck 10:

We decided to continue on our journey of getting re-acquainted with the ship and headed up to one of our favourite spots, the Outlook Café.

So, this is me with my Sea Breeze in the Outlook Café:

Oh, I loved sailing out of Miami ... and I loved the Outlook Cafe, too! I guess I really truly will have to do another Panama Canal cruise sometime. Oh, and I also really like your dress, by the way!

 

[dolphingirl47]

Those drinks look lovely. I did not manage to have a single Drink of the Day this time round. I was too busy with all the tastings.

What a shame that your cabin was a little rough around the edges.

Corinna

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

We were surprised to see the bunk bed down as we did not need that!

You didn't even try it out for fun?

Made us want to go and book an Alaskan cruise…

I would love to do this! (Alaska is the only state I have not visited)

I liked the gift much better than what Michael had gotten on our last cruise, which was a backpack, cheesy crackers (that were awful) and a key chain.

You definitely made out better this time around!

Only the Wonder has this, it was added for the Alaska cruises. I wrote about how much we loved this spot in my last trip report. Somehow it is one of my favourite places to just sit and hang out. Last cruise it was mainly empty. This time there were days when it was really difficult to find a spot in there and they also had added chairs that were obviously coming from somewhere else. I guess that’s what happens when you cruise with lots of adults and repeat cruisers. They know where the good spots are!

I always feel a little sadness when the secret is out. I remember eating at Le Cellier years ago before it became so popular, and thinking it was one of the best-kept secrets at WDW. Not anymore!

These are the kids clubs, I think for 3 to 11 year olds. I had read that you can check them out during open house on embarkation day and I wanted to have a look.

I hope you tried out the slide too!

 

[mimmi]

I admit that I had to look for the guitar guy quite hard .

 

[wilma-bride]

Hooray, you are sailing

Love the latest update. I have some similar concerns to yours, particularly whether I will find it difficult to be confined to the ship for such long periods of time (we don't stop at Key West or Castaway Cay so even more sea days for us). I will be interested to see how you fared.

Your Sea Breeze looks lovely - since DH and I will be sailing sans kids in May, I am looking forward to the opportunity to enjoy the Drink of the Day more than on previous cruises.

 

[Grumpy's Wife]

I can't even imagine your excitement level of setting sail on a 15 day cruise.

 

[DWGal210]

Those DOTD look delicious! I'm with Michael, I am not big on grapefruit so I would probably go with his choice.

That's odd they had the pull-down bed in the room. Maybe the hostess was just on auto-pilot and forgot to look at who was in the room.

I have always liked Inside staterooms. I sleep great; you never know when you wake up what time it is!

That picture of Goofy and Pluto is just precious! How sweet!