She said it wouldn't be boring!-WONDER WB Caribbean cruise - Bonus Posts Wrap up

[jetskigrl]

We're you on the Jan. 2011 Panama Canal cruise with us? Most of our cruise days have been on the Wonder so it's special to us too.

Oh, I wish! The PC cruise is still on my bucket list. One of these days I will do it. I will probably need a travelling companion though since they are always during the school year so the kids can't go and my DH would not be able to handle two weeks (with all those sea days). He would go stir crazy

We have been on the Wonder 5 times now. 2-night in Jan '11, MR in April '12, Pacific Coast in Sept '12, 2-night in May '14 and then Alaska in August '14. The Wonder is definitely my home away from home.

I would totally get a set for use poolside! Being that they are plastic.



I think so far the Wonder is my favorite, but we haven't been on the big ships yet. We had a number of servers at Palo, but they were all men.

Oh, the one I thought was our previous server was in the MDR. In Palo, we had Cipri last time and he was great

OMG...I just loved the story about your cat sitter

 

[ACDSNY]

Oh, I wish! The PC cruise is still on my bucket list. One of these days I will do it. I will probably need a travelling companion though since they are always during the school year so the kids can't go and my DH would not be able to handle two weeks (with all those sea days). He would go stir crazy

We have been on the Wonder 5 times now. 2-night in Jan '11, MR in April '12, Pacific Coast in Sept '12, 2-night in May '14 and then Alaska in August '14. The Wonder is definitely my home away from home. :

I thought my DH would go stir crazy with the sea days and he loved that cruise so don't give up hope. Between DCL & DIS activities he was never bored.

 

[rentayenta]

Can't wait to see KVC/CN in just a few weeks. Tell Jim we need a full reenactment. I'll bring the popcorn.


Of course you should be spoiled on vacation; that's what vacation is for. I love living through your decadent adventures.




Angela, your trip is in 3 days!!!!!!

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

I was absolutely astonished that Fran was interested in leaving the cabin, but even more so to take a spa tour. She was even asking if I thought that the people at the spa would be OK with her feet and giving her a pedicure. This was definitely not the way I had envisioned our cruise starting, but I was OK with it.

Might as well take that news and run with it!

I mean, how was I to get the clothes out of the suitcase and organized if I was going to be at the spa?

#firstworldproblems

As we were waiting a gal walked up to us and said, “I love your Trip Reports on the DIS! I read them all!” And just walked away to her Muster Station.

Drive-by compliment!

So here we are at the muster drill and I received an email from our cat sitter, Jim.

Oh my goodness. There's a movie script in here somewhere.

Our bread service. I had to chuckle about each of the bread services. I never would have noticed had Magdalene not pointed it out on her TR, but every night they mentioned a “special bread” that was in the basket. However, there was usually only one or two pieces of the special bread and most of it was just plain white rolls or sourdough bread.

Magdalene seems to have turned a lot of people onto that trick!

For appetizers we went with the Breaded and Deep Fried Brie (which was absolutely Yummy!)

The food choices look really tasty. I remember that souffle being really good!

We both chuckled about our table number.

Perfect!

 

[franandaj]

Lol re Jim that is very funny. Like an episode of Modern Family!

Your spa treatment looks amazing. What a lovely way to sail away. How thoughtful of Fran to pick out items you might like from the store your dinner looks yummy. What a beautiful restaurant! I love the colours. Oh yum re lamb. We noticed that about the bread too lol. We call it lucky dip special bread. Only one person finds the crumb in there..but like you the white bread and rolls are nicer anyway! The special bread choice is always weird. Like a herb you can't quite place..

Now that soufflé I would love Jo to try! It looks divine. Jo fell in love with that deep fried brie. Those sundaes are so cute

Yeah, it was a pretty funny story. I might make that my sail away regimen of choice. That was one of our favorite meals on the ship!

I just thought of something...on my last couple of cruises, the spa was running a 10/20/30 special meaning you book 3 treatments and got 10% off 1, 20% off the second, and 30% off the third. They let me combine the Alone Time with a couple other treatments and I got 30% off. It made it quite the deal.

Jill in CO

We thought that we were booking the 10/20/30 special, but when it came down to paying for the last treatment and we asked about the discount, they said that none of the services that we booked were “signature services” and therefore did not qualify for the 10/20/30 discount.

For us that bites, that they let you apply the Alone time to the discount, they told us it wasn’t one of the options. For you it was good that you got the discount!

The Jim story is priceless I would have been rolling.

What an amazing way to start the cruise. I'm not a big wrap fan but oh the combination of everything sounds heavenly. Way to be flexible and roll with it, that just sounds like torture!

Nice job on getting the last Dooney, pays to be first to the store.

You look so relaxed and happy in that picture, I love it!

It was such a relaxing way to start the cruise, this wasn’t a very invasive wrap, It would barely be considered a wrap, I’ve had some where the bundle you up in a giant cocoon!

Fran does has Olympian quality shopping genes!

Sleeping off Tequila sounds like fun. LOL. Hope she made it to dinner.

The buffet looked good.

Nice room.

great that she wants to do things.

I would try each drink on the bottom of the map you had. No beer being I cannot drink it.

The cat sitter story is funny.

The dinner looked good. Pretty restaurant.

It was even more fun drinking the Tequila!
We barely had time to sip drinks at the bar. Getting in the DOTD was a challenge!

Oh, the one I thought was our previous server was in the MDR. In Palo, we had Cipri last time and he was great

OMG...I just loved the story about your cat sitter

I think I got a picture of our servers at the end, their names were Midikas (sp?) and Artha. They were a good team.

Can't wait to see KVC/CN in just a few weeks. Tell Jim we need a full reenactment. I'll bring the popcorn.

I don't know, it's getting pret-ty cold here!

Of course you should be spoiled on vacation; that's what vacation is for. I love living through your decadent adventures.

I think we will live up to your expectations on this trip!

Might as well take that news and run with it!



#firstworldproblems

I know huh?

Drive-by compliment!:

Exactly!

Oh my goodness. There's a movie script in here somewhere.:

I think we've all seen that one before, just not experienced it in real life!

Magdalene seems to have turned a lot of people onto that trick!



The food choices look really tasty. I remember that souffle being really good!



Perfect!

And it would never have occurred to me until she mentioned it!

Everything that night was really good, that is by far my favorite menu!

 

[franandaj]

A WONDERful day at Sea


I don’t know what has come over me this year, for a long time I couldn’t wake up before 9AM. It wasn’t always that way, long before everything got crazy with Fran’s parents and the health issues, I was really an early riser. Back when my job was 40 hours per week, I had to be there at 8AM, which meant when I spent the night in Long Beach, I had to be on the road at 6AM.

Fran and I used to show up at the gym (when I still lived in Northridge) when it opened at 6AM and would be done by 7:15 and each head to our respective jobs. This was before the RA diagnosis, but even after that diagnosis, I still used to get up early. I’m not sure if the parental health decline did it to me, the morale of living in the old house or what, but I used to regularly sleep until 10AM each day.

That all changed on the trip to Monument Valley this year. I was up every morning at Sunrise taking photos and generally just restless and unable to sleep any longer. Since moving into the new house, I no longer cringe at the morning sun creeping into the bedroom and I’m generally up and atem before 9AM even though there is usually no compelling reason to get up, other than I need to get up to start my day.

It was no surprise that on the first morning of the cruise, I was awake before 6AM. I was overjoyed to find that the sun was rising off the verandah. I threw on a covering and grabbed the DSLR camera to capture this beautiful event. Now I’ve picked only my favorite shots, believe me there were many, many. Many. More.

Beware: Photobabble ahead: My first three shots were toss aways. I assumed that since it was dark out that I would need the maximum ISO (which I think is 12800), it wasn’t until the fourth picture (I reduced the ISO one stop at a time until I reached 1600) that I actually captured the sky as it truly appeared that morning. I was up before dawn and I didn’t want the pictures to look like the sky was bright.

Throughout these pictures, I was constantly adjusting the shutter speed, which is a given, the more light produced the less time you need for the exposure. As the sun rose in the sky, I eventually changed the ISO to 200 for daytime shots. However, this whole process was quite a learning experience for me.

For those who don’t know Fran recently bought this new lens, a Sigma DC 18-250mm. It’s kind of a “jack of all trades” lens. It takes great pictures without the zoom, but it has a zoom feature almost as high as our zoom lens. What I didn’t know is that the more you zoom in, the Sigma lens makes a smaller aperture. I had set it to 4.0, but on some of the zoom shots, it went as high as 5.6. For a time this boggled my mind and I thought I had done something to ruin the camera and it’s settings. Finally I watched the display as I zoomed in and saw the aperture size change right in front of my own eyes. Mystery solved. [/Photobabble]

As I said, I have limited my pictures to the best of pre sunrise, sunrise and sun rising.











I tried to vary the closeness (which I think is more intense) with the shots that give you an idea of just how vast the ocean is when you are sailing out there for an at sea day. We did see Cuba as we passed by that day, but for the most part, all you see is ocean for miles and miles.











Then we got a phone call. It seems that our room service breakfast was arriving and the CM was right outside our door. He must have knocked so quietly that I didn’t hear him. Fran didn’t wait for me, she grabbed her English Muffin and drank her OJ and was working on the chocolate milk before I could get a shot in!



And it finally hit me. Jenny was right. The coffee was vile. I didn’t find it so bad before, but I couldn’t drink it today, just terrible. This was my last room service breakfast for this cruise.

Then I was back to the verandah for more pictures.







Fran climbed back in bed, we didn’t have any appointments until 9AM and it was still before 8AM. She did say that she was still hungry. I didn’t want to fill up on a big breakfast as I had a plan for lunch. So I decided to head up to Goofy’s for a little bit more light fare to snack on. This is our elevator landing for the aft section of our deck.



The ship was still pretty empty, the deck hands were cleaning things like crazy, so I decided to take some pictures of the empty ship.







Sadly Jenny, this is as close as I got to watching a movie on Funnel Vision, unless you count watching the credits roll by as I ordered a drink of the day.







Here’s where I was headed







I got a chocolate croissant and some of all the fruit. For some reason, the camera wouldn’t take a picture of the food. I don’t know why and by the time I got back to the cabin, we were devouring it, so I don’t have a picture.

[Continued in Next Post]

 

[franandaj]

[Continued from Previous Post]

We had checked out the Navigators before going to bed the night before and there were plenty of things we wanted to do today.













After this snack, we headed down to Animator’s Palate where the Anna and Elsa meet was taking place.

This worked out really well. Everyone pretty much showed up at their appointed times and we didn’t have to wait long at all. I have no idea what we’re all chit chatting about here, but we seem to be having a marvelous time!



















I took a shot of Animator’s Palate all empty as we left, our dining rotation took us here tonight, but we had other plans.



After our brush with royalty, we went to the soda station to fill Fran’s mug.



I walked her to the spa and sent her off for her treatment.











I had a date with a chef!

 

[PrincessInOz]

I am catching up!

Totally laughing at Jim. My tummy is sore from my recent bout of sickness and the laugh is not helping matters!!!

The treatments have me green with envy.

Love the food porn.



And Alison!!!!! I think you're hooked on the photobabble.
Great shots of sunset. I can't wait to see what else you've been taking with your new lens.

 

[Leshaface]

Lovely sunrise shots, especially the last two.

I sooo miss reading through the Navigators at night, planning out our next days activities.

What a fun meet with A&E! I love the one of you looking at Elsa over your glasses

Oooh a date with a chef?!

 

[jedijill]

Those sunrise photos look amazing as I'm sitting here freezing my rear off (I wish I could *literally* freeze my rear off!).

Even on days I can sleep in, I can rarely sleep past 7. It's terrible!

Disney's room service breakfast isn't that great. In fact, I really don't love any of their breakfasts.

I'm pretending I understand the photobabble!

Love love love the pics of you guys with A&E. I want Fran's shirt!

Jill in CO

 

[ACDSNY]

Love, love, love, the sunrise photos!

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

That is great news that you have restored your morning vitality. I'll have what she's having lol..

I love your sunrise photos. What a morning delight! Now you def have need to upgrade to conceirge on The Fantasy or The Dream. That 20,000 coffee machine will have you as happy as clams.

I love the fact A & E were on your ship. What a great bonus. Great photos of you. Fran not tempted? I know you said she's not super keen on photos of herself. Not even with the princess A & E?

Looking forward to hearing about dinner tonight! Sounds like you might have Palo's or something equally as great....

 

[rndmr2]

Beautiful sunrise pictures!! That's one of the best parts of a veranda on a cruise.

The Anna and Elsa Meet looked fun. I just love Elsa's dress.

 

[pierresgirl]

Love your report so far! Your cat man story had me giggling! what a sight! The sunset/sunrise pics are really beautiful!

 

[HermanTriplets+1]

I want to thank you for the photobabble! I am taking a photography class right now to try to learn how to better use my DSLR. Until now I stuck with the automatic settings, and it's pretty amazing to learn how to get better pictures! So thanks for the discussion on ISOs (just learned that this week!)and please continue the babble (that's the closest to a camera I could find!)

 

[chirurgeon]

Fantastic sunrise photos! If I wake up that early on my next cruise I might have to play with the camera.

 

[skier_pete]

Geez - a M&G with Anna and Elsa with no real wait? Almost worth the price of the cruise!

 

[rentayenta]

My upcoming vacation is truly the only thing keeping me sane......as I post this from work. I am SO excited for our day!

Love the room service too but how do you make the coffee drinkable? I tried for 5 mornings but couldn't figure it out. Its just terrible.

LOVE LOVE LOVE your sunrise photos. They are stunning. Can I steal one? May have to use one for my FB cover photo.

No FunnelVision? No worries between Pam and myself, we'll catch a movie with you in October. Its one of my favorite things to do.

Cute A&E pics.

 

[dgbg100106]

beautiful pictures, I like the jack of all trades lens also, I have an 18 -200mm that I lug along for most things.

your character meet looks like fun, I wonder what you were saying with that look over your glasses?


I like Fran's "let it go" on her shirt, it matched your met up.

 

[ShellB8585]

Just wanted to say hi and thank you for your TR. I love reading them - helps during long boring days at work (don't tell the boss )

Its all looking WONDERful so far, cant wait to read more

TC