Just back from the LONGEST Disney cruise *Part 3 added!*

[LiserAnn]

Sounds like most everyone...both DCL and the guests...made the best out of a horrible situation. And how lucky for you to see the Wonder the way you did....that's so awesome. Thanks for the report, looking forward to the rest.

Lisa

 

[Hygiene99]

Thank u Seaspray

Seems I Remember your Cruise When it was just in the planning Stages... Not that u Seemed hesitent But alot of Questions...

Glad a good Time was had .. We will Be over to See the Video..

on Nov 4th 2004 LOL

And How lucky u Are...

We also had a chance to Cruise Pass the Magic
on the Wonder That is when the
MAGIC WAS SICK

But Crew on Board Was Waving to Crew on Board and us as well

I Can Feel The Feeling u Are Describing .....

VERY NEAT...



Well Did u Reebook ON BOARD ?????

 

[NancyDVC]

Seaspray,
Wondeful report!
I'm sure that seeing the Wonder was a great moment!

 

[DisneyNutMary]

SeaSpray, thanks for posting this.
I have read so much negative information this past week, I am glad to see someone is able to be positive.

I am enjoying reading about your cruise, and I look forward to your comments on the food, your servers, and pirate night.

 

[AnnaS]

I am enjoying your report and waiting for more. We are also waiting to hear from our friends who were on the same cruise.

 

[snelsonbrown]

Welcome home Seaspray,
I am so glad everyone had such a great time - I had no doubt DCL would not go to any lenght to keep everyone safe, but happy as well - Thank you for taking the time to post and most of all sharing your travel log experience - it will be forever a wonderful memory and never to be forgotten. Stay safe
Much love always
Shirley and Norm

 

[gdulaney]

Terry,
You made it home!! We did too...unfortunately. If only Capt Tom was worse at the whole navigational thing. We could have stayed out forever!

Ginny
(the other one)

PS... Shirley, we drove down to check on you, but you'd boarded up the shop (probably the best thing to do). It looked like the Perfect Gift was okay...I hope you and Norm's place was too. Thank you again for the Key West info. We didn't get to stop there, but I'm working on Andy. Maybe we can go down for a long weekend.

 

[SeaSpray]

Part 2

The food/restaurants!

Breakfasts: We had breakfast in a few different locations. We had room service breakfast a couple of times; one time was the champagne breakfast which was included with our Romantic Escape at Sea package, and included hot foods. The other room service breakfasts were only continental breakfasts, but were good anyway.
A couple of times we had breakfast in Lumiere’s, and I believe once we had breakfast in Parrot Cay. It was nice to meet other servers, and even though we weren’t their “regular” guests, we had excellent service from every single one of them. J We enjoyed the breakfast foods. The scrambled eggs were MUCH, MUCH better than the scrambled eggs we had on Royal Caribbean last year. You could order eggs any way you like them. I had them poached one morning and they were great. My husband and sons had fried eggs and they said they were good, too. They had Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast, too, in addition to croissant, muffins, bagels, English muffins, toast, etc. They also offered cream of wheat (with brown sugar on the side, very good!), oatmeal, and a variety of cold cereals. My husband and I both thought that the coffee was a bit strong, but our brother in law drank a lot of coffee and he really seemed to like it. They had a variety of Twinings teas to choose from, too. They had a variety of fresh, sliced fruit. We LOVED the pineapple! It was sweet and juicy….DELICIOUS! J They also had assorted yogurt, and mueslix.

Lunches: We often had pizza, burgers, or chicken fingers by the adult pool. All of these items were good, and we never encountered lines, even at prime lunchtime. The chicken fingers were very good, and the burgers were the larger thicker type, not those thin, dried out patties that you see sometimes (again, comparing to Royal Caribbean). They had a station with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, cucumber slices, carrot sticks, relish, ketchup, mustard, mayo, BBQ sauce, and honey-mustard sauce, so you could dress up your food however you liked it. A few times we went to Lumiere’s for a sit-down lunch, and it was good, usually several different items, along with a hot sandwich (for example, a reuben sandwich), and a cheeseburger.

Dinners: Dinners were a lot of fun. I LOVED rotating through 3 different restaurants. Last year on Royal Caribbean I really got tired of the same old table, in the same old restaurant, each night. Our servers were Toto and Oppie. Our head server was John Cunningham from Scotland. They did an excellent job. Toto always would greet us, and then explain some of the different menu items. These servers really work hard at each meal. They never stop moving.

We had our first dinner of the cruise in Animator’s. It’s an adorable restaurant, but I don’t think the whole room-changing-color thing was working correctly! I thought the room was supposed to gradually change to full color, but it didn’t exactly look that way, that night. My 16 yr old son was on the Wonder a few years ago and he said the “show” back then was different than what we saw this time. Still, it was a very nicely themed restaurant! J
We loved Parrot Cay. As you’re walking down the hallway to this restaurant, be sure to listen for the parrots’ sounds, just before you enter J Another nice Disney touch! This is a fun and festive restaurant. Very relaxing, too. I loved the backs of the chairs, some had carved pineapples, some had carved palm trees. I just love detail like that.
Lumiere’s was a very nice restaurant, too. I loved the mural of Beauty and the Beast, and lights with the red roses and some fallen petals. I liked the openness and airiness of this restaurant, with the glass walls, one of which looks right out to the hall full of large portholes. (Parrot Cay and Animator’s don’t have windows, but they don’t feel claustrophobic at all).

Palo: These meals were wonderful. We were fortunate and had Gemma as our server for brunch and dinner. She really added a lot of fun to our meals. Of course I told her that I “knew” her mom, and that I knew she was going home soon. She was excellent at explaining the dishes, and making recommendations. Her service was the best we’ve ever had at any restaurant; she was very attentive and pleasant. On the comment card at the end of the cruise, we specifically wrote down her name as being someone who really added to our cruise experience.

Room service: We had room service delivered for a few breakfasts, and some snacks. The morning room service was on time, and when we ordered in the afternoon or evening, it was always delivered within the time frame promised, which was usually about 20 minutes. The food arrived hot, and was tasty. We tipped each delivery person a few dollars.

Cove Café: This turned out to be one of my husband’s and my favorite spots on the entire ship!!! On the second or third day, we wandered in there looking for something refreshing to drink that wasn’t alcoholic, and didn’t have caffeine. A WONDERFUL CM named Lourdes made us up her own version of decaf-caramel-coffee-smoothies, and sometimes we’d get them iced, instead of frozen. (This wasn’t on the coffee menu, she listened to what we wanted and made these up herself). She even remembered our names each time we returned! She’d make up our coffee drinks and place them on a large square plate, along with a cookie. There were biscotti, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, and an almond bar with raspberry or apricot jam. This became a regular stop for my husband and I, each afternoon. The Cove Café has very soft comfortable chairs, and soft bar stools. We kept running into Travis there, too!! We really miss seeing Lourdes’ smiling face in the afternoon, and seeing her serve us her wonderful coffee creations! I included Lourdes’ name on my comment card where it asked for CMs who added something special to our cruise.

 

[oybolshoi]

thank you for sharing these wonderful details with us! it sounds like you had a great experience and reading about your trip is making me that much more excited for my own!

 

[pppiglet]

I had goosebumps reading about you video taping the Magic & Wonder together with all the cheering. I could just picture it and I have never seen either of them "live" yet. Only everyone here's trip pictures!

 

[O'BWV]

Hi Terry!

Me & John enjoyed Cafe Cove very much too! After a few day Lourdes remember which iced coffee we liked to drink and would make it up for us. Thanks when we started to think - hey, maybe we have a coffee habit LOL! It really was a nice spot to sip coffee and go on the internet too!

Glad you're home safe & sound!

-Mary Rose

 

[allears]

Seaspray,

Great posts, we're loving the trip report!!! We sail in a couple of weeks, and your decriptions just make us more and more excited.

Speaking of excited, JOHN CUNNINGHAM, he's our most favorite. My family has been stalking him for several years now. He was our server on our first 7 night cruise in 2002 and we he was just awewsome. Our DS, who at that time was 6 just fell in love with him and John made every moment a real treat for him. Our son Joshua was so won over that he has written John on and off since then.

When we were on our second 7 night cruise in 2003, John was then a head server and we made sure we were in his station. While our serving team was, to use a Johnism, excellent, Joshua didn't think our server was quite as good as John. John made a big fuss over him and all of us and we were once again treated to incredible service.

In fact we just got a reply from him to our latest e-mail. He will still be on the ship on the 25th, so we will once again arrange to be in his section.

It is so cool to hear about favorite cast memebers from so many different passangers.

Thanks again for the reports, we look forward to the new parts.
:thewave:

 

[SeaSpray]

Part 3

The Vista Spa & Salon

We had a couples’ massage on our first at-sea day, which was Monday. We didn’t know exactly what to expect, it was the first real massage for both of us. We had taken a short tour of the spa on the day we boarded the ship so we’d at least know where to go on Monday. We checked in at the desk and the CM there gave us forms to fill out. We remembered to write “No sales pitch, please” on the bottom, and it worked fine, we didn’t get any sales pitches at all. The CM gave us each a wicker basket with a robe in it and in a few minutes our masseuses came and got us. They led us down the hall to the men’s and women’s changing rooms. They told us to get as undressed as we were comfortable with, and to wait there till they came back to get us. I got almost entirely undressed, just left my underpants on. (Good thing I did because we ended up walking with just the robes on down a hall way to get to the massage rooms, and we passed lots of other people! LOL) We were directed to our massage room and there were 2 massage tables that we were told to lay down on, face down, then drape a towel over ourselves. We got ready and in a few minutes the masseuses came back. I had a petite young lady named Pavi. She did an excellent job. I don’t like pain, and she wasn’t too rough, but used just the right amount of pressure. She started right at the tips of my toes, on the bottom of my feet, and worked her way up to the back of my neck. At that point they held the towels up so we could roll over onto our backs. Pavi then began the facial. Layer after layer of soft lotions, rough salts, then more lotions, more salts….I was beginning to wonder just how many different creams she was using. LOL Then they massaged my scalp, which I LOVED. At the end of the massage they use a cooling gel on your back and your face, to remove most of the lotions. After the massage was over they told us to get back into our robes, while they stepped out. They then came back and we signed for the massages and added in a tip. Then we went back to the changing rooms. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my face was NOT splotchy at all. I had read that having a facial could cause red marks or spots on your face. I even asked Pavi about this before the facial, since that night was formal night, and I didn’t want to have red spots on my face! She said it’d be fine, and she was right. If anything, all I had was a “healthy glow” after the facial. After getting dressed, we headed to Palo for our brunch…..ahh…it was a wonderful morning… :}

Our other experience with the spa/salon was several days later. When we heard that we’d on the cruise for a few more days we decided to go for pedicures. My husband is diabetic, so I thought that food massages would be good…. You know, for “medicinal” purposes. Heheheh! We opted for the pedicure because it included a foot massage, and the pedicure process would remove dead skin, etc. We booked them for the same time, so it was almost like having a couples’ pedicure, except it was out in the open, in the salon area of the spa. John ended up with the same lady who did his massage, while I had someone else. She did a great job with the pedicure and the nail polish on my toes still look as shiny as glass, as the day she applied it. Near the end of the pedicure, when I was picking out a color, my ever-so-comical husband asked why he wasn’t asked to pick out a color! Startled, she told him they did have some nail polish in shades of blue. LOL I think she wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. LOL

All in all, our experience with the spa and salon aboard the Disney Magic was wonderful, and I highly recommend them!

 

[Dreamer04]

I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed your trip report! It is so refreshing to read positive, wonderful descriptions of DCL!

Thank you and Keep it up!

Ursula

 

[MamaCrush]

Thanks so much for taking the time to fill us in with such loving detail! Just makes me that much more excited!

 

[jerry112]

I'm really loving these reports! Makes me wish I were stuck on the magic for 10 days. Glad you made the best of things and please, keep those reports coming!!

 

[Dancind]

We booked the former "first" 10 day Magic cruise on purpose! You got a great deal! Glad you enjoyed it.

 

[KyCruisinSusan]

SeaSpray, your wonderful trip report, especially the part about the massage and facial, have me greatly anticipating our upcoming cruise.

DH and I also have the REAS pkg booked and I have been looking forward to experiencing the Spa since we booked it.

Neither of us has ever had a massage either, and I'm sure that after spending 4 days at WDW and then 5 days onboard ship, we will me more than ready for it.

Thanks for your great report. It just makes me want to be there NOW.

 

[ohMom]

thanks for all the great info!!!

one question -- we are looking forward to Cove cafe too -- what are the costs for the different drinks, if you remember? was there a charge for biscotti/cookies, etc??

thanks!

 

[cruisnfamily]

Seaspray-I'm curious as to how your sons liked "the stack" and the teen activities. How did they spend most of their days?