Just off the Wonder (EBPC Nov 8-22)

Arianabtd

Mouseketeer
Joined
Sep 24, 2016
Me and my mom just recently completed our first panama canal cruise ever! It was crazy fun, and we haven't been on the Wonder in ten years so it was nice to see her again!
Here are just some thoughts (and pictures :p )

Some info about our party : We were two gold castaway Adults with main dining, and we stayed in a Navigator Vernadah.

🌺Cruising out of San Diego was so EASY! We stayed at the wyndham bayside, and just walked across the street with our bags embarkation morning. Loved it.
Disembarking from Galveston on the other hand... It took a really long time for them to call the tags that can leave the boat. We didn't get called to leave the boat until maybe 8:45. And customs took a while too.

🌺Cruise director was Darren, and the assistant cruise director was Mike! They were both so fun and engaging the whole cruise, we really enjoyed them. We've had Darren before on the Magic and enjoyed him there.

🌺CHARACTERS!
They brought out so many characters and different outfits I was busy every day :rotfl:I especially loved when they brought out pairs together like Mickey and Minnie, and the group shots with 8 characters.
The only bummer I really had was I had heard usually they have Marvel characters on board for these voyages, but they only had spiderman this cruise. I'll take what I can get though :p

🌺Mickey's (and Minnie's) Birthday
We all got a button for Mickey's birthday, but they didn't really do anything else special to celebrate. I was hoping for more!

🌺Internet 😔
About day two of our 5 days at sea (counting the panama crossing) the internet went down all over the ship! They weren't able to get it working again until we hit Cartagena. It was what everyone was talking about all over the ship... It was frustrating but we all survived. I've never seen it be down for so long before. We all were guessing they needed to get someone on board to fix it.

🌺Navigator Verandah
We have never had a navigator verandah before but we LOVED IT! We saved so much money vs a regular verandah, and we loved having the little bench. We still had a great view too. Would definitely book the room again. We were aft on deck 7, and it was such a quick run to cabanas and back we found ourselves eating out on the verandah a lot.

🌺MDR
We ate at the MDR every night, and every night the menu was different! I found my new favorite dessert from the Frozen themed menu. The Olaf white chocolate dome 😭

🌺Frozen Deck Show and Frozen 2 Premiere
They ended up not doing the Frozen deck show on our cruise! Every day I would check the navigator to see when it was, but it never happened! It only hit me that they didn't do it when I was at the 11pm Frozen 2 premiere the last night of the cruise :rotfl:No idea why they didn't do it... Kinda bummed but whatever!

🌺Pin trading!
They had 3 pin trading events total (two officer one cast member)
All very fun! The Cast member trading I could have sworn Darren during his announcements called a children only trading, but in the navigator it didn't say that so I wasn't sure If I should have been trading there or not 😬

🌺On Demand
We were so excited to hear that they added the on demand to the stateroom tv's... but it didn't work well at ALL! With Disney's IT the way it is I should have expected it, but I guess I wanted to dream...


That's all my brain can rattle off for now... If anyone has questions I will try my best to answer them!
This cruise was AMAZING and I'd love to do it again in the future. The Wonder looks so nice with the latest updates, and we hope to sail with her again soon.
We loved the 2 weeks because we made so many friends with cast members and our serving team. Still missing them all :sad1:

Here are some random pics under the cut
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Thanks for the updates. A question, since you're offering to answer:

1) I heard there used to be a toddler play area near the Promenade Lounge, but that whole area was remodeled of course. to make way for the French Quarter bar. Do you know if/where they relocated the toddler play area to?
 
Sounds like a fun cruise. I think the Frozen deck party is only done on Alaskan cruises. Did you see it listed on previous navigators?
 
Thanks for the updates. A question, since you're offering to answer:

1) I heard there used to be a toddler play area near the Promenade Lounge, but that whole area was remodeled of course. to make way for the French Quarter bar. Do you know if/where they relocated the toddler play area to?
They moved it into the D Lounge, I think there's a picture on the DCLBlog's twitter!
 


Sounds like a fun cruise. I think the Frozen deck party is only done on Alaskan cruises. Did you see it listed on previous navigators?
I did! The frozen menu is also an alaska only thing, but since it is such a long cruise they pull stuff from those itineraries.
Some people on board I talked to that have done the panama canal before were also expecting the deck party to occur.
 
I did! The frozen menu is also an alaska only thing, but since it is such a long cruise they pull stuff from those itineraries.
Some people on board I talked to that have done the panama canal before were also expecting the deck party to occur.

Well that's disappointing they didn't do it. I didn't know the extra stuff they did on longer cruises were things from other cruises. I thought they just brought extra entertainers or speakers. We did an Alaskan cruise in 2014, before they started doing the Frozen things. I was bummed we missed it also. Odd that you got the menu but not the deck show.
 


Great write up! Who was the club host, and who were the cruise staff members on your cruise? Also, who were the variety acts that you got to see? Was there a wide variety of activities during the day, and did you go to any of the adults only activities in the evening?
 
Me and my mom just recently completed our first panama canal cruise ever! It was crazy fun, and we haven't been on the Wonder in ten years so it was nice to see her again!
Here are just some thoughts (and pictures :p )

Some info about our party : We were two gold castaway Adults with main dining, and we stayed in a Navigator Vernadah.

🌺Cruising out of San Diego was so EASY! We stayed at the wyndham bayside, and just walked across the street with our bags embarkation morning. Loved it.
Disembarking from Galveston on the other hand... It took a really long time for them to call the tags that can leave the boat. We didn't get called to leave the boat until maybe 8:45. And customs took a while too.

🌺Cruise director was Darren, and the assistant cruise director was Mike! They were both so fun and engaging the whole cruise, we really enjoyed them. We've had Darren before on the Magic and enjoyed him there.

🌺CHARACTERS!
They brought out so many characters and different outfits I was busy every day :rotfl:I especially loved when they brought out pairs together like Mickey and Minnie, and the group shots with 8 characters.
The only bummer I really had was I had heard usually they have Marvel characters on board for these voyages, but they only had spiderman this cruise. I'll take what I can get though :p

🌺Mickey's (and Minnie's) Birthday
We all got a button for Mickey's birthday, but they didn't really do anything else special to celebrate. I was hoping for more!

🌺Internet 😔
About day two of our 5 days at sea (counting the panama crossing) the internet went down all over the ship! They weren't able to get it working again until we hit Cartagena. It was what everyone was talking about all over the ship... It was frustrating but we all survived. I've never seen it be down for so long before. We all were guessing they needed to get someone on board to fix it.

🌺Navigator Verandah
We have never had a navigator verandah before but we LOVED IT! We saved so much money vs a regular verandah, and we loved having the little bench. We still had a great view too. Would definitely book the room again. We were aft on deck 7, and it was such a quick run to cabanas and back we found ourselves eating out on the verandah a lot.

🌺MDR
We ate at the MDR every night, and every night the menu was different! I found my new favorite dessert from the Frozen themed menu. The Olaf white chocolate dome 😭

🌺Frozen Deck Show and Frozen 2 Premiere
They ended up not doing the Frozen deck show on our cruise! Every day I would check the navigator to see when it was, but it never happened! It only hit me that they didn't do it when I was at the 11pm Frozen 2 premiere the last night of the cruise :rotfl:No idea why they didn't do it... Kinda bummed but whatever!

🌺Pin trading!
They had 3 pin trading events total (two officer one cast member)
All very fun! The Cast member trading I could have sworn Darren during his announcements called a children only trading, but in the navigator it didn't say that so I wasn't sure If I should have been trading there or not 😬

🌺On Demand
We were so excited to hear that they added the on demand to the stateroom tv's... but it didn't work well at ALL! With Disney's IT the way it is I should have expected it, but I guess I wanted to dream...


That's all my brain can rattle off for now... If anyone has questions I will try my best to answer them!
This cruise was AMAZING and I'd love to do it again in the future. The Wonder looks so nice with the latest updates, and we hope to sail with her again soon.
We loved the 2 weeks because we made so many friends with cast members and our serving team. Still missing them all :sad1:

Here are some random pics under the cut
So happy you had a great time. We are on the one going back west in March. It will be our second WBPC cruise, since we loved the first one so much. If I remember correctly, I was surprised that there was no Freezing the Night Away last time as well. Love your pink dress!
 
So happy you had a great time. We are on the one going back west in March. It will be our second WBPC cruise, since we loved the first one so much. If I remember correctly, I was surprised that there was no Freezing the Night Away last time as well. Love your pink dress!
Thank you!!
Even before we got off the ship my mom wanted to go on the March sailing :rotfl:
We are still talking about it, but if all works out we will see you there!
 
Great write up! Who was the club host, and who were the cruise staff members on your cruise? Also, who were the variety acts that you got to see? Was there a wide variety of activities during the day, and did you go to any of the adults only activities in the evening?
We didn't end up doing any adult things in the evening! We had a weird ritual of my mom going to the rainforest room, me visiting characters, and then us conking out back at the room :rotfl:So sadly I cannot for the life of me remember the club host's name 😔 hopefully someone else who was there knows?
I'm also wracking my brain for the cruise staff names but they are not coming to me and I feel so bad 🙃🙃🙃 they all were a lot of fun though. If their names come to me I'll be back!

The two variety acts I remember the most were Eric Jones the magician (very good), and Flight Crew who did jump roping and double dutch stunts. I really really enjoyed them! There was a bunch more acts but we were so busy we ended up not seeing them 😬

There was so much to do during the day. LOADS of trivia (that we didn't even attempt), they brought out a new papercraft to do every day, and lots lots lots of crafts.
The only thing I noticed was they only did the gingerbread cookie decorating three times over two days. None of the times worked for us so we didn't go but I thought they would do it more?
 
Club host was Deano, who was very disappointing after having Jo on previous PC cruises!

urrggghhhh :mad: .... well... there goes our entertainment in the evenings for our march 2020 cruise... more reading at cove cafe and time at the hot tub in the evenings I guess...a bad/mediocre club host is such a buzzkill, DCL should put more effort into hiring outgoing/entertaining hosts, especially given how few adult activities are during the day.

Do you happen to know where Jo ended up going? Fantasy or Magic?
 
urrggghhhh :mad: .... well... there goes our entertainment in the evenings for our march 2020 cruise... more reading at cove cafe and time at the hot tub in the evenings I guess...a bad/mediocre club host is such a buzzkill, DCL should put more effort into hiring outgoing/entertaining hosts, especially given how few adult activities are during the day.

Do you happen to know where Jo ended up going? Fantasy or Magic?

Jo's not on the Magic. Just off of that ship and the club host was Tony (#tonyfromSpain). :)
 
urrggghhhh :mad: .... well... there goes our entertainment in the evenings for our march 2020 cruise... more reading at cove cafe and time at the hot tub in the evenings I guess...a bad/mediocre club host is such a buzzkill, DCL should put more effort into hiring outgoing/entertaining hosts, especially given how few adult activities are during the day.

Do you happen to know where Jo ended up going? Fantasy or Magic?
It's possible that Jo is on break right now and could be back on the Wonder (or another ship) by the March cruise. I think they get a few months off between contracts.
 
urrggghhhh :mad: .... well... there goes our entertainment in the evenings for our march 2020 cruise... more reading at cove cafe and time at the hot tub in the evenings I guess...a bad/mediocre club host is such a buzzkill, DCL should put more effort into hiring outgoing/entertaining hosts, especially given how few adult activities are during the day.

Do you happen to know where Jo ended up going? Fantasy or Magic?
[/QUO

maybe ask on this thread

https://disboards.com/threads/current-cruise-staffs-all-ships.3298488/page-15#post-61154894
 
I thought that I read somewhere that John Charles was onboard.
 
I was on this cruise as well and there were a couple of incidents that kind of cloud things for me - the first was our tour guide in Cartagena (on a DCL excursion) having a yelling match in Spanish with another guide, before loudly telling our group, which had many children in it, that the other guy's tour was "bulls**t". It really put a dampener on the tour for a lot of people, and I know there were complaints lodged over it. The other was my partner and I being followed into the Deck 9/Quiet Cove bathroom by another guest, who cornered me and asked for sex when I was alone. It was reported to security immediately but I felt so sick and shaken that I couldn't even make it through the show that evening.

I too was a little disappointed there was no Freezing the Night Away, and thought it odd that they offered the Frozen menu at dinner on a different night to the musical (I'm guessing that is the night that the deck party would have been scheduled for). Deano was certainly quite so-so

On a positive note, we had the most amazing servers in Midori and Albert (we've had Albert before so it was great to finally get a repeat!) and met some really nice people. The weather was great for the most part, even if we were rocking and rolling after leaving Puerto Vallarta.
 
I was on this cruise as well and there were a couple of incidents that kind of cloud things for me - the first was our tour guide in Cartagena (on a DCL excursion) having a yelling match in Spanish with another guide, before loudly telling our group, which had many children in it, that the other guy's tour was "bulls**t". It really put a dampener on the tour for a lot of people, and I know there were complaints lodged over it. The other was my partner and I being followed into the Deck 9/Quiet Cove bathroom by another guest, who cornered me and asked for sex when I was alone. It was reported to security immediately but I felt so sick and shaken that I couldn't even make it through the show that evening.

I too was a little disappointed there was no Freezing the Night Away, and thought it odd that they offered the Frozen menu at dinner on a different night to the musical (I'm guessing that is the night that the deck party would have been scheduled for). Deano was certainly quite so-so

On a positive note, we had the most amazing servers in Midori and Albert (we've had Albert before so it was great to finally get a repeat!) and met some really nice people. The weather was great for the most part, even if we were rocking and rolling after leaving Puerto Vallarta.
oh my god!! That is so disgusting and I hope they were dealt with properly... aka immediately thrown off the side of the ship. I hope you are okay 😔

It is interesting you mention your spanish fighting match experience, because me and my mom took a different excursion in puerto vallarta (DCL sea lion experience) and there was only maybe 6 of us total. We were lead to a van, where our tour operator had already vanished. As were were about to get in our driver started being yelled at by a different driver yelling (in spanish) that he "stole his job."
(We found out later these drivers are paid per drive). Me and my mom were the only ones who understood spanish in the group and so we weren't even sure we should get in the van... They were cursing at each other and It was frightening as we had no tour operator with us.
We all ended up getting in the van but then our driver got back out to yell at the other driver and we all sat there just like ??? not really knowing what to do. We ended up getting to the excursion okay, but we DEFINITELY went to complain. The actual sea lion experience was lovely but getting there 😬😬😬
The one bright side is we ended up meeting and becoming really good friends with Dwayne at the port adventures desk :rotfl:.

I think we were in the same dining rotation! I remember Midori for sure.

The weather was so nice except that one rough morning at sea? Woke up at 3 am and almost fell out of bed :rotfl:It didn't make me feel sick but It made me so disoriented. We had the character breakfast that morning and it was rough o_O
 

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