libpetersen
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2007
- Messages
- 341
Hello,
I just returned from a wonderful trip yesterday and can't wait to upload the photos. We have many great pixie dust moments on this trip, and could not believe how nice it was!
The boarding process was great. We unfortunately arrived later than we had hoped, just before 11 am. By that time, the boarding number being given out at the front of the Castaway line was 15! Our traveling companions had already checked in, and were 9, so we did not pick up a boarding number. When we went to the check in person, she explained that we were supposed to have a number 3, as we had checked in online to arrive between 10:30 and 11:00 am! Yay! Our first pixie dust, she wrote in 3 on a card and handed it to us. My husband dropped us off to take the rental car back to Avis. It did not take him long to drop off and take the shuttle back to the port. The person at the gate as we entered explained that we had to wait before going through security until he came back, but what he meant was that we had to wait before going through on to the boat. I had no trouble going through security, filling out the health form, and checking in before my husband even returned. There were virtually no lines, even though when I checked in they told me that the boat was just 16 people shy of being sold out to capacity at 4000 people. The only thing my husband had to do was get his picture taken after we went through the "ride line" to hand over our key to the world cards to board.
We had prepared a scavenger hunt for the girls, but it was so crowded they really could not easily get around. We had a stroller too, which was a challenge. I went to the area near the bathrooms just to get a little space.
The one process everyone complains about is so true. The number of people who "hang out" blocking the entrance is unbelievable. So that brings out the aggressive side of many people, and it was a real battle just to get through. Our group got separated when a group of women in their 80s pushed between us! We had to "meet up" again after we were in the "ride line" past the crazy group congegrating at the entrance! That is not a nice way to start the trip and I wish that Disney would do something to keep people back.
We took our welcome aboard photo, and had to hand over our key to the world card. The system for Shutters is now much better, as the boat uses facial recognition software to keep all the photos together. Then, when you want to look at the photos, you just tap your key to the world card on the side of the photo "books" and it tells you exactly where your photos are located.
Once on board, they announced our name, and a nice gentleman explained both dining options and asked us if we had any questions. I tried to give over my Disney gift card to guest service, and to ask for any cancellations on the Cabanas on Castaway Key, but no dice on either. You have to wait until the ship is sailing to put gift cards on the account. Several others were handing over things to sign by the characters, and guest services was really sticking to the only signing two items per cabin.
We went straight up to deck to get some drinks and chairs. We wore our bathing suits, so we were off right away! It was nice as there was plenty of room for our stuff between the deck chairs on the sides. We felt like we had the whole deck to ourselves for awhile. There are tons of people offering drinks, and it was interesting that almost everyone asked if they were free. (They are not, but very delicious. However, I will say that there is a huge difference in the amount of alcohol in Disney's Bahama Mama verses the Atlantis Bahama Mama - more on that later.)
After some drinks, the group took turns heading into Cabanas for lunch. We ate on our deck chairs, and the staff cleaned up our plates very quickly. The old purell system is now replaced with purell wipes, which works fine. The best part of the lunch was the seafood of course, really yummy sauce for ship and crab claws. The shrimp needed to be cleaned, but the crab claws had been pre-cracked, so all you had to do was pull the claws out. Everyone found something they liked.
We had a great time swimming in the pools, and really liked the new set up where the pools were closer together and there was a shallow beach area for sitting and playing around both pools. My two year old loved, loved, loved the Nemo play area with the little slide, which was surprisingly fast. It was a great compromise, and I wished that everyone followed the rule that only truly potty trained kids should swim in the Mickey pool. Unfortunately, around 11 am on sea day - the busiest pool day of them all - a child had an accident. This literally closed the Mickey pool for the majority of the day. That left only one pool open for all kids, and it was a real issue. But more on the sea day later.
Once the rooms were open, we ran down to put our carry ons, as they included many valuables. We loved the adjoining rooms, and the verdana partition was pushed back to make one large verdana. We were in the deluxe family cabin, which was much roomier than our regular veranda room on the Wonder. Everyone loved the rain shower and round tub, which also made you feel that the shower was very roomy. The under bed area was plenty big enough to store one car seat, one huge suitcase, our large box with FE gifts and two smaller roller bags. One one car seat did not fit, but it made it into the closet.
The bed was a huge improvement over the Wonder beds. We loved them and everyone slept like babies.
We loved the sailing away party, but I had to miss some of it because I went to get a glass of wine just before it started. The bar had run out of plastic wine glasses, and the bartender ran to check two other bars, but no luck finding more than one. I needed two, so the bartender very nicely filled my glass to the absolute rim and only charged me for one glass. Amazing service all around on this trip.
We went back to the room to unpack and get settled, and I immediately ordered room service. I'm not sure whether it was because we had run out of ones and tipped $5, but the rest of this trip, it never took more than 10 minutes to get room service! So we kept tipping well. We loved the mickey bars (not on the menu). In fact, we had no trouble getting many things "off the menu" from room service without a charge. Room service also brought us a wine opener and wine glasses.
One note to keep in mind. The room steward explained that he could not remove glasses from our room, but he could bring us as many clean ones as we needed. So we lined up the glasses in the hall when done. They were picked up promptly. We all commented on how unbelievably clean the entire boat was! We brought our own wine on a rolling cooler, along with some beer and red bull. Just keep your ice in plastic bags, otherwise you can cause issues on the x-ray machine (which happened to Gina when she was bringing the cooler in from Castaway Key!).
We took our own wine in the glasses from room service to the first show, "The Golden Mickeys." There is also waiter service for drinks and snacks, so if you want either and the line outside is long, just wait to order inside. There were plenty of servers. The best improvement in the shows is that security is everywhere stopping people from pulling out their cameras during the show. It drove me crazy that I would be trying to watch the show on the Wonder and all you can see are 50 camera LCD screens recording the show. I loved the show of course, but my husband could not understand why Disney was using such esoteric characters - Quasimoto I had to agree.
We skipped our regular dining room for Palo the first night, and if you were looking for a detailed review of the regular dining rooms, it won't be here. We dinned in Palo two nights, and Remy on one. We only ate in the Royal Palace dining room. More on that experience later!
More later... please let me know if you have any questions.
I just returned from a wonderful trip yesterday and can't wait to upload the photos. We have many great pixie dust moments on this trip, and could not believe how nice it was!
The boarding process was great. We unfortunately arrived later than we had hoped, just before 11 am. By that time, the boarding number being given out at the front of the Castaway line was 15! Our traveling companions had already checked in, and were 9, so we did not pick up a boarding number. When we went to the check in person, she explained that we were supposed to have a number 3, as we had checked in online to arrive between 10:30 and 11:00 am! Yay! Our first pixie dust, she wrote in 3 on a card and handed it to us. My husband dropped us off to take the rental car back to Avis. It did not take him long to drop off and take the shuttle back to the port. The person at the gate as we entered explained that we had to wait before going through security until he came back, but what he meant was that we had to wait before going through on to the boat. I had no trouble going through security, filling out the health form, and checking in before my husband even returned. There were virtually no lines, even though when I checked in they told me that the boat was just 16 people shy of being sold out to capacity at 4000 people. The only thing my husband had to do was get his picture taken after we went through the "ride line" to hand over our key to the world cards to board.
We had prepared a scavenger hunt for the girls, but it was so crowded they really could not easily get around. We had a stroller too, which was a challenge. I went to the area near the bathrooms just to get a little space.
The one process everyone complains about is so true. The number of people who "hang out" blocking the entrance is unbelievable. So that brings out the aggressive side of many people, and it was a real battle just to get through. Our group got separated when a group of women in their 80s pushed between us! We had to "meet up" again after we were in the "ride line" past the crazy group congegrating at the entrance! That is not a nice way to start the trip and I wish that Disney would do something to keep people back.
We took our welcome aboard photo, and had to hand over our key to the world card. The system for Shutters is now much better, as the boat uses facial recognition software to keep all the photos together. Then, when you want to look at the photos, you just tap your key to the world card on the side of the photo "books" and it tells you exactly where your photos are located.
Once on board, they announced our name, and a nice gentleman explained both dining options and asked us if we had any questions. I tried to give over my Disney gift card to guest service, and to ask for any cancellations on the Cabanas on Castaway Key, but no dice on either. You have to wait until the ship is sailing to put gift cards on the account. Several others were handing over things to sign by the characters, and guest services was really sticking to the only signing two items per cabin.
We went straight up to deck to get some drinks and chairs. We wore our bathing suits, so we were off right away! It was nice as there was plenty of room for our stuff between the deck chairs on the sides. We felt like we had the whole deck to ourselves for awhile. There are tons of people offering drinks, and it was interesting that almost everyone asked if they were free. (They are not, but very delicious. However, I will say that there is a huge difference in the amount of alcohol in Disney's Bahama Mama verses the Atlantis Bahama Mama - more on that later.)
After some drinks, the group took turns heading into Cabanas for lunch. We ate on our deck chairs, and the staff cleaned up our plates very quickly. The old purell system is now replaced with purell wipes, which works fine. The best part of the lunch was the seafood of course, really yummy sauce for ship and crab claws. The shrimp needed to be cleaned, but the crab claws had been pre-cracked, so all you had to do was pull the claws out. Everyone found something they liked.
We had a great time swimming in the pools, and really liked the new set up where the pools were closer together and there was a shallow beach area for sitting and playing around both pools. My two year old loved, loved, loved the Nemo play area with the little slide, which was surprisingly fast. It was a great compromise, and I wished that everyone followed the rule that only truly potty trained kids should swim in the Mickey pool. Unfortunately, around 11 am on sea day - the busiest pool day of them all - a child had an accident. This literally closed the Mickey pool for the majority of the day. That left only one pool open for all kids, and it was a real issue. But more on the sea day later.
Once the rooms were open, we ran down to put our carry ons, as they included many valuables. We loved the adjoining rooms, and the verdana partition was pushed back to make one large verdana. We were in the deluxe family cabin, which was much roomier than our regular veranda room on the Wonder. Everyone loved the rain shower and round tub, which also made you feel that the shower was very roomy. The under bed area was plenty big enough to store one car seat, one huge suitcase, our large box with FE gifts and two smaller roller bags. One one car seat did not fit, but it made it into the closet.
The bed was a huge improvement over the Wonder beds. We loved them and everyone slept like babies.
We loved the sailing away party, but I had to miss some of it because I went to get a glass of wine just before it started. The bar had run out of plastic wine glasses, and the bartender ran to check two other bars, but no luck finding more than one. I needed two, so the bartender very nicely filled my glass to the absolute rim and only charged me for one glass. Amazing service all around on this trip.
We went back to the room to unpack and get settled, and I immediately ordered room service. I'm not sure whether it was because we had run out of ones and tipped $5, but the rest of this trip, it never took more than 10 minutes to get room service! So we kept tipping well. We loved the mickey bars (not on the menu). In fact, we had no trouble getting many things "off the menu" from room service without a charge. Room service also brought us a wine opener and wine glasses.
One note to keep in mind. The room steward explained that he could not remove glasses from our room, but he could bring us as many clean ones as we needed. So we lined up the glasses in the hall when done. They were picked up promptly. We all commented on how unbelievably clean the entire boat was! We brought our own wine on a rolling cooler, along with some beer and red bull. Just keep your ice in plastic bags, otherwise you can cause issues on the x-ray machine (which happened to Gina when she was bringing the cooler in from Castaway Key!).
We took our own wine in the glasses from room service to the first show, "The Golden Mickeys." There is also waiter service for drinks and snacks, so if you want either and the line outside is long, just wait to order inside. There were plenty of servers. The best improvement in the shows is that security is everywhere stopping people from pulling out their cameras during the show. It drove me crazy that I would be trying to watch the show on the Wonder and all you can see are 50 camera LCD screens recording the show. I loved the show of course, but my husband could not understand why Disney was using such esoteric characters - Quasimoto I had to agree.
We skipped our regular dining room for Palo the first night, and if you were looking for a detailed review of the regular dining rooms, it won't be here. We dinned in Palo two nights, and Remy on one. We only ate in the Royal Palace dining room. More on that experience later!
More later... please let me know if you have any questions.
