Jan 8, 2012 Mexican Riviera

[suzanneaz]

My girls are younger so I didn't really pay attention but in the club, there are movies, computers and crafts. The computers are in another room from where they have the group activities. I played one of the games and you have to begin guessing and then use the information from your guesses to figure out where the hidden object is. Clearly this is not for the little kids.

Again I am not the person to ask about older kids. I can tell you there were a lot of kids running around the ship on their own from midnight to 2am. On the last night there was a mom freaking out because she hadn't seen her 12 year old daughter since 6pm and it was 2am. I would never allow that but everyone parents differently. Something to think about....

I gained so much from these boards I am happy to help. (well sort-of try to help)

 

[Canadian Disney Mom]

I thought I would post the fish extenders we gave out as only one or two of the ones we gave out said who they are from. I hope you enjoyed them, he have never been on a Disney Cruise or participated in an FE before.

1) Personalized Magnets for everyone in the cabin (Stick Figures and Name Tags)

2) I am from Canada, so I thought I would give a little piece of home: Mini chocolate bars for everyone which I am told are not available in the US, some Canadian Tattoos, and a pin from my hometown (Quispamsis, NB)

3) A calendar I made using those little plastic photo albums. I personalized the week of our cruise with the itinerary and put little Disney related photos on each of the holidays

4) A CD I titled "The Disney Wonder Pirate Jam"

5) A little necessity/shore excursion kit with Hand Sanitizer, kleenez, mints, hand wipes, q-tips, and the piece de resistance - HOCKEY CANADA BAND-AIDS!

6) In honour of pirate night, I made everyone in each cabin a bookmark and gave glow in the dark bracelets, and some treasure - Disney Princess candy bracelets for the little girls, rocket pops for the boys, Cars pop rocks for the kids, and chocolate loonies and pirate tattoos for all!

7) I made some home made trinkets for everyone in the cabin, some of which likely look pretty familiar!

Bracelets for the adult ladies:

Pony Bead Keychains for the men:

Pony Bead Bracelets for the boys:

For the girls 17+:

For girls < 17:

 

[Canadian Disney Mom]

Did anyone else get sick on the ship?

Ethan got very ill vomiting the night before we got to Cabo (started around 2am). He was okay enough to leave the ship around noon so he could participate in the excursion. We think he had food poisoning because of how quickly it came & went.

He and Paul then proceeded to get what appears to get a flu (head pain, fever, coughing). It hit me on the last night and I suffered with it through the travel day yesterday - not fun!!!!

 

[suzanneaz]

Ah, you are the one who gave out the amazing bracelets Candian Disney Mom!!! People loved them and many people asked me where we got them. We loved all your FE items!! Thank you!!

Thank you everyone for all the great FE items. We loved the FE and felt completely spoiled the entire trip. My girls kept saying, "mom we have more mail".

 

[SarahSs]

Wow! You really made some amazing gifts. We loved having the magnets on our door, and Michaela loved the cd. Big thank you to everyone for the FE gifts it was a great experience and we will do it on our next cruise.

We got sick too. Isabella and Michaela both threw up once or twice and the baby had some particularly nasty diapers somewhere around Thursday and Friday. Brought them to the health center and they said not to worry unless they vomited more than three times. Shawn was completely out of commission starting Friday afternoon he did not even leave our room for dinner, it lingered a bit into Saturday am. He had it worst of all. Our server said "oh he got the virus". As if there is something like that that people commonly get on the ship. We have never been on a cruise before so we were not sure if it was a common thing or not.

I would be interested to see who else was sick too.

 

[Brumbie13]

I'm sorry to the people who got sick.
Neither of us got sick.

But now we're both homesick for good ole' 7541, for our awesome waiters Acung and Dan, for our stateroom host Eric, and for Trent from Wavebands.

 

[Brumbie13]

Thank you all so much for the FE gifts!
It was a lot of fun to participate in!

We didn't take pictures of our gifts, but this is what we did:

- For the two babies, we found stuffed Mickey and Minnie dolls that opened up into pillows.

- For the young'uns, the Nikole made small bags with colouring books, crayons, bubbles, and a few other goodies in them. I don't know why she didn't put handles on the bags. I think she didn't think of it until it was too late. Boys got Buzz Lightyear bags and girls got princess bags.

- For the teens and almost teens, they got pirate drawstring backpacks and lots of pirate gear. Some of it was modern stuff, and some of it was more piratey.

- And the adults, they got Brumbie's Bare Necessities, goodie bags full of stuff people tend to forget, or wish they had. It had some individually wrapped aspirins, some Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, etc. We weren't too creative with the adults, sorry.


And for those wondering how we decided what age groups we put kids in, we didn't have a specific age cuttoff. We looked each family and tried to think about what the kids would want based on the age groups. So, if a family had kids that were 14,13,10, and 5, we would give the 10-year old the pirate gear, because we figured the 10-year old had more in common with his older siblings than his younger siblings. Also, we know that kids generally want to be like their older siblings instead of their younger siblings. So, in case you're wondering why we didn't use the Disney age groups, that's a small explanation as to why.

We hope everyone enjoyed their gifts! We had a lot of fun making them and getting them from all of you.

We really did have a great FE group! It was nice getting to know all of you beforehand on here and on Facebook so that there were familiar faces all around the ship! I think that was one of the best parts of the cruise was "catching up" with people we saw randomly around the ship!

 

[LEDFuller]

Wow! What a trip-- reality seems a bit harsh today after the great week we had.

Thanks to all for the amazing and incredibly generous FE gifts! We had never done this and I feel our gifts were not nearly enough-- we will be "paying it forward" next cruise.

Canadian Disney Mom-- Jackson loved meeting Ethan!

Leah got sick Saturday on board-- with a fever and a "barky" cough. She is still sick, but our doc said to wait until tomorrow and bring her in if she is still running a fever. I assume it was a virus. We all washed our hands constantly, but we also ate more sweets and the kids were up so much later than usual. We are "bedtime nazis" at home but they each got to stay up past midnight one night!

 

[suzanneaz]

My daughter also came home with a barky cough and had a fever last night. We layed around the house yesterday and she woke up excited to go back to school. None of us were sick on the ship.

Our gifts were the Mickey pocket calendar and post it notes. The fake mustaches, compass and eye patch bags. We gave the Disney watches to most the kids, with the older girls getting the eyeshadow and the real little ones getting the light up balls.

We loved the FE and thank you all again!!!

 

[ichabody]

My boys (Andrew and Kyle) got sick right after we boarded the Wonder on the last Cabo day. For some reason our tender boat hung out in the bay for about 15 minutes in rocky water so that was enough to get them a little seasick! One good thing about staying in the tender was watching the anchor get pulled up...that was neat! They stayed in bed the rest of the day and I hung out with them watching Disney movies...it actually turned out to be one of the most relaxing times of the week! They started feeling better so we ordered room service for dinner. Just after the food came my wife brought a plate from the Captain's gala dinner that Alessandro and Gigi (our servers) prepared for me! How nice!

I'm with Brumbie...I miss our servers terribly and the thought that someone else is sleeping in 8520 is heartbreaking.

 

[Brumbie13]

Well, if any of you just couldn't get enough of the Brumbies and want to know where we'll be cruising next, we'll be going to Alaska on the Wonder on May 27, 2013!

 

[ichabody]

Man, that is like $8,000 for our family to go! That was the quote on the DCL Website...anyway to get the price down?

 

[Brumbie13]

I don't think so bro.
We're paying $3,900 for the two of us on a navigator verandah.

The prices for Alaska are just really high in general.
The only way we can afford it is because we're booking so far out. We can make payments every month.

 

[PizzieDuster]

My boys (Andrew and Kyle) got sick right after we boarded the Wonder on the last Cabo day. For some reason our tender boat hung out in the bay for about 15 minutes in rocky water so that was enough to get them a little seasick! One good thing about staying in the tender was watching the anchor get pulled up...that was neat! They stayed in bed the rest of the day and I hung out with them watching Disney movies...it actually turned out to be one of the most relaxing times of the week! They started feeling better so we ordered room service for dinner. Just after the food came my wife brought a plate from the Captain's gala dinner that Alessandro and Gigi (our servers) prepared for me! How nice!

I'm with Brumbie...I miss our servers terribly and the thought that someone else is sleeping in 8520 is heartbreaking.

I just read a trip report of your cruise (I came back to look at those great Fish Extender gifts for ideas). She tells of the tender boat operator taking them closer to seals, whales, whatever, and getting better shots of them with the ship in the back ground. That's probably what the 15 minute extra time was.

Those FE gifts are the best! Doing bracelets for some birthday/anniversary celebrating girls! Great idea!

 

[suzanneaz]

Hahaha!! That was me that received special treatment on the tender!!!! We didn't see them bring the anchor up so it probably was another tender. (and ichabody would have recognized me). However, Pizzieduster is completely correct that our tender driver would slow down for us to see the seals and went out of the way to take our picture with the Wonder. We did think that people on the tender probably were thinking the guy was lost.

 

[suzanneaz]

I would sail with all of you again!!! We are on the repo from Vancouver to LA in Sept. I won't the same mistake of forgetting to rebook on board. I think we will wait until the girls are a little older to do Alaska. Miss you!

 

[Brumbie13]

We miss everyone as well.
It sure was an awesome group!

 

[carreyw]

Just a month ago we were all on vacation! I wish we were still on the Wonder heading to Mexico.

Miss you guys! You're the best!

 

[ichabody]

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about being on that wonderful boat. Miss everything about it

 

[Brumbie13]

Hey there WONDERful people!
I hope you're all doing well!