The next moring, we awoke bright and early to a wake-up call from Mickey and Stitch-followed by the alarm on my phone, followed by the alarm clock going off. Can you tell that I wanted to make triple sure that we were up on time? Hopefully we didn't disturb anyone in the rooms beside us!
My goal was to be at the port by, or a little before 10. We'd never been there at opening before, so I wanted to see what the teminal looked like empty, plus I really wanted to get a low boarding number for the first time!
We showered, dressed, had everything re-packed, and were out to the car by 8:00. Our next stop was Classic Hall as we wanted to grab a quick breakfast before we headed out.
Thankfully, the food court wasn't very crowded, and we were able to get our food pretty quickly. Mike and I chose the same station--I had a cheese omelet with potatoes and chocolate milk, and Mike had the breakfast platter that came with French Toast, eggs, bacon, biscuit and potatoes with orange juice. I have to say that my omelet was REALLY good--I love cheese, and this had lots of it!!
Once we were done there, we headed over to check-out. Mike took some pics of some of the different shadow boxes from our generation while I was in line.
I like this one, because I remember the Wendy's "Where's the Beef" commercial so well. Not only that, but I think my Grandmother may have had those same mushroom decorations in her kitchen at some point in time:
And this one featured the Dukes of Hazzard in the top left corner--that was one of both mine and Mike's favorite shows. In fact, my sister and I had 2 weiner dogs that we named Bo and Luke!
After we scoped out all the cool stuff, it was finally time to head for the port. But first, we had to make a stop at CVS to pick up some extra batteries for my camera. Luckily, one pulled up right away in the GPS, and it turned out to be less than 5 minutes from the resort!
We were in and out of CVS in less than 10 minutes and were then finally on our way to board the Wonder!!!!
It was a beautiful day, and we were both so excited about cruising on the Wonder one last time. Before we knew it, she had come into sight:
We followed the signs and easily made our way to the terminal:
It was 9:45 by the time we arrived, so I was really excited that we'd made it before 10!! We grabbed all our luggage and walked across the street. There was a line that had already formed for people who were waiting to get in, as the terminal hadn't yet opened. I jumped in line while Mike took our luggage down to drop it off with a porter. Next time, we know that it will be easier for him to drop me and the luggage off, then I can get in line while he parks the car. The way we did it this time was fine, it just would have been easier to not have had to haul the luggage across the street. We would've done it that way this time, but with people still getting off the ship, there was a bit of traffic still coming and going, so that made it a bit confusing as to where we were supposed to stop and unload. No biggie though!
I think we only stood there for about 10 minutes or less before they began letting us in. We went through the normal security scan, and of course Mike and I both beeped when we went through the metal detector. So, the guy with the wand had to wave us over...turns out it was just our belts that made us beep, so we were free to go.
We headed up the escalators and found this beautiful sight before us:
It was practically empty! We had all our forms signed, so we headed straight to the CC line where we walked right up! Normally, there is someone there handing out boarding numbers as you get into line, but the CM who was there was actually answering a question so she didn't give us one. Thankfully she caught us as we were walking away, and look what we got:
It was really neat seeing the terminal so empty!
By the way, just as a side note, you no longer have to go to the separate area to have your photo made. The CM who checked us in actually took the picture right there. And he was actually able to take both ours at the same time. We just stood together, but not to close as he actually has to separate them, which was pretty cool. It saves a little bit of time, which is a good thing. It looked like the whole picture area was gone, so I don't know if this is a permanent thing or not.
We grabbed a seat close to the model of the ship so that we'd be close by when Captain Mickey came out. Before long, it began to get really crowded!! An within a few minutes, here came Mickey! I knew that when we got up, there was no getting our seats back, but we weren't going to miss the first photo op of the day!!
That line was all the way to the back of the terminal within 10 minutes, so I was glad we got up when we did!!
After meeting the Captain, we found a spot in the floor over by the windows and sat there. I messed around on Facebook and updated my status as we waited:
And Mike and I decided to get a self-pic as we anxiously awaited to board!
It seemed like forever, but it really wasn't that long when they finally called boarding group #1. Of course, this is when everyone decided to get up and crowd around until their number was called. This is one of my peeves, that I wish
DCL would do something about. I wish they had a system that would make it less chaotic to board the ship. By the time our number was called, which was only a couple of minutes later, we literally had to fight our way through the crowd. It was just ridiculous!! Either way, I wasn't going to let un-courteous people ruin my day!
We made our way down the hall and stopped for our boarding pic, then made our way onto the beautiful ship! Man, that feeling that you get when you step into the atrium as they announce you never gets old!
I'm sure the security guy at the guard shack thought we were crazy when we asked him how to get to FW. He told us that we had just missed it. So, we turned around and realized, that yep, we'd driven right past it!! Imagine that!!
You totally need to blow that up and frame it! Garmin sharmim, not too happy with mine lately.... the next place I want to stay is Wilderness Lodge, my kids LOVE that crazy restaurant (can't think of the name)! We stayed at AKL last time we did WDW and they have the same set up which I really liked. The WL looks so fun!
Seriously sheets and towels should be the first things sorted out, right?!?!
