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

[Flossbolna]

Fun update! I love your dress and that is a lovely lovely picture of you with the captain.

Thanks!

I have heard great things about Jimmy, I don't think you are his only fan!

Yes, recently I have come about more mentions of him. So, he wasn't the cruise director when you were in Alaska?

I really hope they get the dining situation fixed so you get lots of alone time!

There will be more news on that in the next update!

A bit of a mixed review on dinner but overall sounds like it was ok but maybe not exceptional.

You summed it up very well - unfortunately that was the trend for most of the cruise...

Interesting thought on the B2B cruisers, you are right, we may be 2nd class citizens! Almost got into it with someone on FB who is a B2B. He intended to NOT pay tips on his first cruise (which I didn't know you could do, actually opt out!) and pay it all at the end.

Which I, and several others, thought was rather crummy. It's weekly (or per cruise) income to those folks I would imagine and just because he is on a 3 week trip doesn't mean they should have to wait that long.

Huh? What is his reasoning in that? What if one of the servers leaves after the first cruise? Our wonderful head server Josip got off the ship in San Diego for his time off. And I am pretty sure that until he tells his servers what he is doing, they will treat him with a little less enthusiasm on the second leg...

Some cruise lines seem to even "package" back to backs into longer cruises that they then sell as 14 night cruises or something like that. I wonder how they deal with tipping in these circumstances.

It does make me wonder though, I've always had it added to our bill (or pre-paid usually actually) but it would be nice to physically hand it to the servers.

I have always handed the little paper slips to our servers. To be honest, I don't like that anyway. I would prefer the cruise fare to just include those tips.

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

I am still a bit annoyed at myself that I did not make the trip up there. Meyer Werft has a nice visitors center where you can get tours that explain the ship building process. And they even have an exhibit about the imagineering of the Disney ships. Hey, but there are strong rumours around that they are in the process of getting contracts for the next two ships and from what I have heard Disney was very happy with the product they got from Meyer Werft, so maybe there is soon again a reason to travel there. Would be great!

I'll have to remember this when I'm planning my trip to Germany in about 40 years!

Really?? Chicken with cinnamon and powdered sugar? I would have bet that you would not want to be seen near something like that!

Sure! It's like a chicken donut!

 

[rentayenta]

Nice update. Dinner looks delicious. I don't blame you one tiny bit for requesting a table alone. I hope you got it.

 

[Flossbolna]

I'll have to remember this when I'm planning my trip to Germany in about 40 years!

Who knows wether they will still be around by then...

Sure! It's like a chicken donut!

Ok, that explains it all!!

Nice update. Dinner looks delicious. I don't blame you one tiny bit for requesting a table alone. I hope you got it.

The table question is soon about to be resolved!

 

[Flossbolna]

 

[Flossbolna]

Day 6, May 3

Key West, USA
Distance from Miami:161 Nautical Miles
Average Speed: 12.6 knots
All Fast: 6:52am
All Aboard: 4:45pm
Cast Off: 5:10pm
Dress Code: Cruise Casual
Dinner Menu: Taste of the Caribbean
Show: The Comedy & Ventriloquism of Lynn Trefzger
Weather: Partly Sunny, 78°F/26°C

For whatever reason I did not sleep well that first night on the ship. I kept waiting up. And then the alarm was still set from the people having to get up early the previous day for their debarkation. It started ringing at 6:45am and at first we had no clue what had happened. I think Michael accused me of setting the alarm… We were a bit put off, I actually do think that a good room attendant would check for that and just deactivate an alarm when turning over the room. But I have had it happen to me in hotels as well. Well, at least for the next few hotel stays I guess we both will remember to check…

I got up at around 8:30am finally and had instructions to let Micheal sleep in until 9:30am. So I just headed out for a nice morning stroll through the ship.

First I encountered the “foggy lense syndrome”:

I had seen this on so many trip reports, but believe me, this was the first time it ever happened to me!

Some more pictures around the ship as I made my way to the drinks station for some tea. First the lifeguards were having some kind of training session

The ship was rather wet, so obviously it had rained at some point, but currently it was rather cloudy. I also took in the view of our first port – Key West:

We were not rushing off the ship that morning as we had just plans to wander around on our own in Key West.

Once I had my tea I mad a beeline to one of those lovely chairs:

You can see that I also acquired some tiny breakfast pastries from the Cove Café. The mini muffin was good, the croissant was not. It was rather soggy, not flaky at all.

Sitting there I enjoyed the view and continued reading my book until it was time to wake up Michael.

We decided to get a nice breakfast before heading out (why pay for food on land if all food is free on the ship?). I am not sure why, but we decided to head to Parrot Cay – maybe because we thought it would put us into the mood for Key West?

Parrot Cay is a buffet for breakfast and lunch – just like on embarkation day. So we approached the podium to ask for a table and were greeted by Josip. It turned out that our dining room team was working there this day. Josip had a big smile on his face and greeted us with: “Good Morning! Remember table 14! That’s where you will eat tonight!” Yeah!! He had been able to arrange for us to have our own table!!!

We got great seats at a table at the window and enjoyed the view out towards the south (so away from Key West). We had a nice lady bring us our drinks and then we went to explore the buffet. My trip notes say that I really liked eating breakfast there – don’t ask me why I never returned for any breakfast there later… I guess because I realised after a visit to Beach Blanket Buffet that the choices are actually better there? I tried the “müsli” there for the first time as I had read so many cruise reports who loved that. It is actually very tasty! I had it a few more times during the cruise. However, the one that I had last fall at the breakfast in a hotel in a National Park in the Swiss Alps is still the best I ever had (and that was on a morning where I still felt a bit sick from overindulging on the cheese fondue the evening before…).

During breakfast we started talking about the issues in our room and that they were really bothering us. So we decided to talk to guest services about it before we got off the ship as this morning they would certainly not be too busy. Being the organiser I am, I suggested writing a list, so that we would not forget anything.

So, after breakfast we headed back to the room and wrote a list of the things being wrong in the room. We started off with the broken handle on the safe, the wobbly table, the totally banged up door frame of the connecting door and then found a few more thing to add which just had started to bother us, like a strange stain of yellowish paint, a not really well closing bathroom door etc. A number of them were minor, but should be taken care off and since they would send some maintenance people in anyway, they could also look at those.

We headed up to guest services with our list and I was very friendly about it. We went through some of the list with the person there and then Michael explained what was wrong with the safe, that the handle was broken off and now there was a sharp edge poking out. The CM at guest services was really concerned and went to get a manager, so next we are speaking to a manager. They took our things really seriously and asked whether we would be out of the room during the day and we confirmed that we were about to head into town now. They said that they would look at the room and see what they can do and they would arrange for the Hotel Manager responsible for deck 2 to come and speak to us. This all sounded promising!

So, after this we were finally off the ship! And I was able to get a nice picture of the Wonder docked in Key West:

We just started to wander around. Directly where we were docked, there was this building.

There they had these artsy statues displayed:

They had more of them and they were so lifelike, it was scary!

Further into Key West:

And then we started to walk along Duvall Street. I guess I am only going to explain this for Katharina, but since she is one of my most important audience members, she will get her private explanation: Duvall Street is the main street through Key West and it is filled with bars and lots of souvenir shops – some of them with rather questionable merchandise.

This is Sloppy Joe’s:

But supposedly it is not THE Sloppy Joe’s where Mr Hemingway used to hang out at, that is around the corner:

Along Duvall Street:

A very different Hard Rock Café:

I have to say, that there were some really nice houses along Duvall Street, this was definitely one of them!

Then we stumble across something that was called “The Oldest House”:

It said that entrance was free, so we decided to check it out.

This is the garden:

The inside of the kitchen house:

A nice dining room:

There was a lady inside, I think she was a volunteer for the society who is responsible for the house, and she told us about the history.

Bedroom:

Children’s room:

Living room:

It was a really neat little find that we had not expected!

Continued in Part 2

 

[Flossbolna]

Continued from Part 1:

More views of Key West:

Then we came across the San Carlos Institute http://www.institutosancarlos.org which is kind of a Cuban Cultural Center I think. It had some exhibitions on the ground floor and it was free to explore. So That’s what we did.

Next we came across what must be the most bizarre Walgreens in existence:

I thought it was a shame that the lovely cinema was now a pharmacy. But it was better to repurpose it than to tear it down I guess.

There were plenty of really nice shops along Duvall Street besides the one selling touristy crap. Of course those “art galleries” were selling stuff for tourists, too. Just things I appreciated more than t-shirts (or underwear) with questionable inscriptions…

I ended up buying a lovely necklace at one of the nicer stores. It turned out that lady making the jewellery that I so admired was actually the person selling it and we had a nice chat about how she made the jewellery. We started talking about Germany and she and her husband had been on a big trip to Germany a few years ago driving all over the place and really loved Nuremberg. I felt that on that first port stop I already had found a wonderful souvenir from the trip!

A nice house:

And a light house:

And then we finally were at our destination:

The Ernest Hemingway House.

It was not a far walk at all, but it had been through the sunshine in really warm weather and we were both quite happy when we were told that we could wait for our tour to start in the shade.

Up Next: But He Said "GIANT"!

 

[kerstfan1]

key west looks great only 2 more weeks until we bring her back to pc

 

[Mickey4me!]

Signing up!

 

[franandaj]

I'm glad you're over your work project and back to updating. I'm enjoying the amount of information contained in your report. You're covering the ship and activities nicely. I'm looking forward to hearing more. Your timing on wrapping up the report sounds perfect for me! Since you have a week at DL at the end of your report hopefully you'll finish the cruise part by Halloween, just in time for me to board the Wonder!

I can't wait to sit in the dining rooms and be taken care of by the servers again! Until then I will live vicariously through your experience!

 

[englishrose47]

Key West is definitely some where I want to visit some day !! It looks very interesting !!!

 

[eandesmom]

I adore Key West. It is quirky, questionable and above all, just very much it's own thing. And in a world not so full of things that have such distinct personalities well, it is refreshing.

I am SO glad to hear that your dining situation was fixed but somehow I have a bad feeling about the "fixes" for your room, that perhaps that does not go nearly as well.

I enjoy the museli on the ship, generally speaking there isn't much I am that excited about at the buffets so it is a great fall back option for me.

SO frustrating about the alarm, that happens to me on work trips all the time.

 

[jedijill]

I've never been to Key West yet but it looks like a great place. So much history there (Ernest Hemingway and Harry Truman) and lots of fun too!

Jill in CO

 

[glennbo123]

Judy, the kids, and I got to visit Key West while on a cruise also (Royal Caribbean though). It's a neat town to visit. I'm surprised that you haven't mentioned all of the chickens running around.

 

[darnheather]

Loving your trip report! I had no idea check-in would look so much like an airport.

A few questions.

Cherry Coke, made with coke, syrup and cherries

Was this included in the free drinks or extra? My girls would love this but we are on a bit of a budget. If extra can you tell me how much they are?

You state that Michael didn't like his steak. I've heard that people sometimes order second main courses. Is that true?

Glad to hear that the Disney muesli passes muster for someone visiting from Germany. I remember every hotel in Germany always had muesli on the breakfast menu and I miss it.

 

[Flossbolna]

key west looks great only 2 more weeks until we bring her back to pc

Hope you have a great cruise! I think it will be a different kind of cruise if you have those 4 sea days before the canal. But great nevertheless!

Signing up!

 

[Flossbolna]

I'm glad you're over your work project and back to updating. I'm enjoying the amount of information contained in your report. You're covering the ship and activities nicely. I'm looking forward to hearing more. Your timing on wrapping up the report sounds perfect for me! Since you have a week at DL at the end of your report hopefully you'll finish the cruise part by Halloween, just in time for me to board the Wonder!

I can't wait to sit in the dining rooms and be taken care of by the servers again! Until then I will live vicariously through your experience!

I am glad that someone likes a lot of detail. It's the way I like the reports that I read, so that's why I am writing it like that. And I just can't be less detailed, not my nature...

Oh! And don't count too much on my schedule! I would love to get it done by then, but I really can't guarantee anything!

Key West is definitely some where I want to visit some day !! It looks very interesting !!!

I thought it was a very beautiful place. But I think I would like to stay there for a few days, not just visit by cruise ship the next time.

 

[Flossbolna]

I adore Key West. It is quirky, questionable and above all, just very much it's own thing. And in a world not so full of things that have such distinct personalities well, it is refreshing.

I agree that it is one of the towns that don't look like Everyplace, USA or Überall, Germany. Even the chains look different there. However, I am not sure I would appreciate the party atmosphere on a weekend night there. But I think it is a very lovely place that deserves to be explored more than our brief visit.

I am SO glad to hear that your dining situation was fixed but somehow I have a bad feeling about the "fixes" for your room, that perhaps that does not go nearly as well.

Yes, there will be more about the room...

I enjoy the museli on the ship, generally speaking there isn't much I am that excited about at the buffets so it is a great fall back option for me.

I used to be a buffet lover, but somehow with getting older, I am getting more bored with buffets. I also think that there are better buffets to be found in the cruise ship industry than on the Disney Wonder (even the other three Disney ships seem to be better...). I actually had lots of fruit for breakfast, but after 10 days, melon and pineapple does get a bit boring...

SO frustrating about the alarm, that happens to me on work trips all the time.

It is frustrating and I think it is a service issue. But I never complained to a hotel about it either.

 

[Flossbolna]

I've never been to Key West yet but it looks like a great place. So much history there (Ernest Hemingway and Harry Truman) and lots of fun too!

Jill in CO

Yes, I think it would be a great destination for a short trip. We thought about the Truman house, too, but took a more relaxed approach to our touring.

Judy, the kids, and I got to visit Key West while on a cruise also (Royal Caribbean though). It's a neat town to visit. I'm surprised that you haven't mentioned all of the chickens running around.

I had no idea you ever went on a cruise! And yes, we did see some chickens, but not so many actually. Maybe they were all asleep midmorning when we got off the ship?

 

[Flossbolna]

Loving your trip report! I had no idea check-in would look so much like an airport.

A few questions.

Was this included in the free drinks or extra? My girls would love this but we are on a bit of a budget. If extra can you tell me how much they are?

You state that Michael didn't like his steak. I've heard that people sometimes order second main courses. Is that true?

Glad to hear that the Disney muesli passes muster for someone visiting from Germany. I remember every hotel in Germany always had muesli on the breakfast menu and I miss it.

Thanks!!

I think check-in at Port Canaveral is a little more whimsical, but generally it is very much like at an airport, you even go through the same type of security. The only difference is that there is only one gate!

The cherry coke is (currently) included in the dining room. You can get sodas for free from the drink stations and then during meals in the dining rooms and at the buffet. The dining rooms have a few more options that are not available at the drink stations. Like the cherry coke, my drink the club soda. I have also read reports of ginger ale being available, but recently someone said that this was no longer the case. Generally when we ordered something that was not included (for example the buffet turns into an alternative table service restaurant for dinner but does not have the cherry coke, they would have gotten a can of cherry coke from a bar), we were alerted that this would be an extra charge. There are a few threads on the cruise boards about which drinks are included and where. For example juice is free in the dining rooms and from room service, but soda is not free from room service...

Yes, you can order as much of everything as you want. Last cruise I had ordered something which I just did not like out of personal taste and my servers sprang into action to get me something else. I think with the steak he was not aware about how not so good it was when he was eating it, but with hindsight he realised how much better the other steaks during the cruise were.

Müsli is indeed a breakfast staple here! Can't you get it at home? It is actually quite easy to make yourself.