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

[rentayenta]

All the pictures from the port and the ship are taking me right back to my March trip

Me too! Isn't it lovely?

LOVE those fried zucchini at Carrabas!!!

Me as well. I like Olive Garden better for the entrees but find Carrabas appetizers more enjoyable.




Dinner looks fabulous. Bummer about the headache during the security screen. Glad nothing was damaged and that the gentleman was okay.

 

[franandaj]

So I'm going to get a jump on the update to come on land by replying to the responses now.

Big spoiler. Fran is sleeping off the last day at sea before dinner. It wasn't the Palo Brunch or the Chocolate tasting that did her in, but at the Tequila tasting there was a kind of "free for all" that I will get to eventually, but suffice to say, this bartender who ran our Mixology class and Tequila tasting probably learned a lesson today. First off make sure your Patron Coffee Liquor is only 1/4 full when you invite the guests up, and don't invite a guy who is a bartender or wanna be bartender in the raffle. Let's just say that the class went quite awry and we had a lot fun, hence why Fran is sleeping off the Tequila tasting. We have two hours to dinner so I think she'll be OK.

I have our suitcases basically packed up and ready to put outside our stateroom by 10PM tonight. We were at 3/4 of our internet usage around noon today, so I have some MB left and can finish replies before we get off the boat. Tomorrow night hopefully I'll have an update on why everything changed, and probably a title update as well!

Your dinner looks yummy!

OMG, what a incident getting through Security! I'm glad no one was seriously hurt.

Yay for getting onboard!

Jill in CO

Dinner worked out well, I enjoyed it even for a chain! I know! Folks who think they can help, need to think twice, I know they mean well, but it was not fun at the time.

Getting on board was way more fun than I imagined!

I am here.

That is a busy day you had before leaving.

Looked nice and relaxing at the lounge.

That Lobster Roll looked so good.

Is it wrong I find it funny that she ran his foot over. Okay maybe it is.

Glad you are on the ship. Have fun on the remaining time you have.

No I don't think it's wrong that you find it funny she ran over his foot. I told him to leave it and I would take care of it. He got what was coming to him!

We have had a great time and still have one more dinner to enjoy, plus breakfast, I pledge not to let the breakfast bring me down, it is the last of a great time, they aren't rushing me off the ship! We have all the time in the world, five more days in Ft. Lauderdale!

 

[franandaj]

Dinner looked delicious. It was so nice to see the Wonder again. Yes, I can definitely understand how the clarinet got through. Silly man.

Corinna

Thanks, when do you see her again, or is there a plan.

Yes the clarinet was probably totally an afterthought after all that drama.

Love the dinner! I think I would have been happy with the Lobster Rav.

Speaking of Rav....rev! rev! I'm LOL here picturing the scooter running over the guy who knows better. I'm glad that no one got hurt; but really! What a fuss over nothing. He should have just let you go through as normal.

Good thing you had the taxi booked for earlier in the day.

I'm always planning for earlier because Fran and I run so late, I figure everyone else does too. I like to be early!

The lobster ravioli was so good, and yes I can't believe that guy was invading our personal space by trying unload stuff, when I told him I would take care of it. I know he was trying to be helpful, but in the end he wasn't.

I am also picturing the guy that knows better being run over by the wheel of a scooter. It truly sounds like a comedy of errors.

So you love arancini, huh? Here in NY we just call them rice balls and they're available at every single local pizzeria in Brooklyn! They have a choice of either regular rice ball (mixed up with lots of cheese!) or filled with meat and also mixed up with lots of cheese. Then there is the rice ball special...which is a nice big rice ball sliced in half, and then topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella and baked. My cousin in Canada gets as many rice balls as she can every time she visits us! My son recently got into them and they're fantastic!

It was a total comedy of errors.

I can't believe that in NYC they are common! I know one place in LA where I can get them and ever since I discovered them they have been one of my favorites!

Ohhhhh, there is my ship

So sorry about all the trouble at security...ugh.

I can't wait to hear more about the trip

It will be back on our coast soon enough, well maybe not soon enough.

I will have many updates once we get off the ship. With a limited data connection I don't want to use it up loading up photos!

What an interesting and unusual appetizer! Never seen/heard of that before. The rest looks yummy too

Good idea to have to left overs for brekkie!

Oh my re security incident. I can just picture that. How stressful. Fancy asking you to carry all that through! But you were soon on board that lovely Wonder. Looking forward to more

I'm sure you have plenty of stuff in England that we haven't heard of either!

Since the hotel had nothing really for breakfast it only made sense to eat what we had since it was much more hearty than a breakfast bar or oatmeal sack.

All the pictures from the port and the ship are taking me right back to my March trip

LOVE those fried zucchini at Carrabas!!!

That 'helpful' old man did NOT know what he was doing...

I'm very curious what was 'interesting' about Grand Cayman. Hopefully you had a good day.

I can't wait to hear about the end of the March trip!

Yes the helpful old man didn't know what he was doing. You'll find out in due time about Grand Cayman.

Ooops... Looks like I'm a little bit late. I hope you're having a great time on your cruise!

We've had a great time and I hope you enjoy hearing about it!

Ah, this all looks familiar to me. We were on the wonder for a 5-day cruise back in February (it feels so long ago). Curious to see if we see any familiar faces in your pictures...

I don't have a lot of CM pictures and I'm not sure how many guests are the same, but we'll see how we do!

well that would be fun! Did you guys get around to doing that?

No, we didn't do much with the FB group other than a planned Mixology class.

David loves the lobster rav also.

It looks like dinner was good and you guys got some good sleep before the cruise.

Sorry about the security incident, but glad you go on the boat without much trouble.

It was very good, and yes we did get good sleep before the cruise. I couldn't believe the guy trying to "help", sorry if his foot hurt the next day!

Me too! Isn't it lovely?

Me as well. I like Olive Garden better for the entrees but find Carrabas appetizers more enjoyable.

Dinner looks fabulous. Bummer about the headache during the security screen. Glad nothing was damaged and that the gentleman was okay.

I've never been to Carrabas before but it was decent. I enjoy Olive Garden if we're going for the chain experience. I like their Taste of Italy.

I just wish folks would listen when we say we have it under control. If I want help I ask for it, but when we have things delicately strung together like her scooter like that, only myself or Fran should be undoing it, and mostly me. Even she messes things up when trying remove them. I hate it when people don't listen when I say that I can take care of it.

Oh well, he got what he deserved. Listen and learn.

 

[dolphingirl47]

Thanks, when do you see her again, or is there a plan.

We hopefully see her again in December 2015. I really want to do one of the Merrytime Cruises on the Wonder after I loved the one on the Magic so much last year. All going well, we will cheat on the Wonder with the Dream in May.

Corinna

 

[franandaj]

We hopefully see her again in December 2015. I really want to do one of the Merrytime Cruises on the Wonder after I loved the one on the Magic so much last year. All going well, we will cheat on the Wonder with the Dream in May.

Corinna

Cool! We are actually cheating on the Wonder in April as well. Our first time on one of the big ships as well!

But we will be back on the Wonder for three more cruises in 2015, a B2B in May and then one with Jenny and Pam in October.

We have been spreading good cheer on this trip and hope that it holds over until our May cruise where we plan on continuing the good cheer. It's really fun to spread good joy! More details to come!

 

[eandesmom]

Oh my goodness! That is quite honestly one of the most unique and yes, a bit entertaining, embarkation stories I've ever heard. After all that the clarinet better have made it through! He meant well but OY!

Ah, the Wonder, my first love. DCL love that is.

for tequila tastings gone awry.

 

[ACDSNY]

Well I guess you can say you made a grand entrance, at least through security that is.

I'm glad you're having a great cruise.

 

[franandaj]

Oh my goodness! That is quite honestly one of the most unique and yes, a bit entertaining, embarkation stories I've ever heard. After all that the clarinet better have made it through! He meant well but OY!

Ah, the Wonder, my first love. DCL love that is.

for tequila tastings gone awry.

Yes, I'm glad no one was hurt too. He was a little man, she could have mowed him down good!

The tequila tasting was a real good time! We had a bkast!

Well I guess you can say you made a grand entrance, at least through security that is.

I'm glad you're having a great cruise.

Ha! Grand entrance with security in attendance as well!

All done on the cruise now. But at least we have more fun in store. A cooked to order breakfast for the next five days will ease us back into reality gracefully.

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

Hope Fran managed to sleep off the booze cruise lol..can't wait to hear more!

 

[Leshaface]

Gotcha on the security system. I was thinking you had to deal with wires and such, that doesn't look too bad.

Uh, your day sounds crazy! How did you survive on like 3 hours of sleep is beyond me. You're either quite the superwoman or a crazy woman, or a bit of both!

I'm shocked that you actually needed something to fall asleep considering your long day that day and the day before, but glad that you eventually relaxed.

A bag of margarita? Interesting. Does it taste good?

Is it bad that I may have chuckled that he got his foot ran over?! What a way to start the boarding process.

OH MY GOSH! I can't wait to hear the tequila update! Pics I hope

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

I am wondering how the updates are going with the entering and exiting your house as recorded by your nifty new security system. Is your house sitter feeding the cats on schedule? The temptation to also install wifi camera... With sound..talking to your beloved pets is also a must.

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

Very busy embarkation day...you win for funniest security line story!

I think that falls into the "no good deed goes unpunished" category.

The tequlia story sounds like a good one too!

 

[franandaj]

Hope Fran managed to sleep off the booze cruise lol..can't wait to hear more!

She's pretty resilient and bounces back easily!

Gotcha on the security system. I was thinking you had to deal with wires and such, that doesn't look too bad.

Uh, your day sounds crazy! How did you survive on like 3 hours of sleep is beyond me. You're either quite the superwoman or a crazy woman, or a bit of both!

I'm shocked that you actually needed something to fall asleep considering your long day that day and the day before, but glad that you eventually relaxed.

A bag of margarita? Interesting. Does it taste good?

Is it bad that I may have chuckled that he got his foot ran over?! What a way to start the boarding process.

OH MY GOSH! I can't wait to hear the tequila update! Pics I hope

The security system wasn't bad, just tedious. We had some large pieces of furniture in front of some of the windows, blocking the shutters and that was the hard part.

I'm not sure how I made it through with that little sleep. I'm definitely getting too old for this!

It was just the same as buying a bottle of Jose Cuervo Premixed Margaritas. Not great, but OK in a pinch.

I think everyone is chuckling about his foot getting run over. It will be a little while before the tequila update, but I will definitely get there!

I am wondering how the updates are going with the entering and exiting your house as recorded by your nifty new security system. Is your house sitter feeding the cats on schedule? The temptation to also install wifi camera... With sound..talking to your beloved pets is also a must.

Well, I turned my phone off two days after we got the system updated, but this morning when I turned it back on I got a whole bunch of updates. He's pretty consistent, arrives around noonish, comes back in the late evening. I know that he's spending a good amount of time with them because he likes our house better than his. He sent me a few detailed reports, the most recent listed the kitties in affection requirement order, meaning who is the neediest and who is most aloof or just skittish.

Very busy embarkation day...you win for funniest security line story!

I think that falls into the "no good deed goes unpunished" category.

The tequlia story sounds like a good one too!

Yay for the funniest embarkation story! Definitely in the "no good deed goes unpunished!" I know he was only trying to help, and it all happened so fast. I bet his foot hurt that next day!

Tequila tasting was great fun! We actually weren't the ones to get slightly out of hand!

 

[franandaj]

She said it wouldn’t be boring.

​

That’s what she told me about 17 maybe 18 years ago. Whatever may happen to the two of us, she promised that boredom would not ensue. I thought that sounded like a pretty good promise. My previous marriage had been pretty lacking in spontaneity. If it was evening, we would be at home on the couch watching TV. If it was a weekend, we would be spending most of the day watching TV. The only variation was a trip to see one of our parents, and I won’t get into the rest. It’s just too boring.

So this is the problem with creating a title for your trip report before the trip begins. It’s based on the expectations that you have for your trip. If you read my first post, I “expected” to dress up on Halloween night hence the “Haunt”, we would “plunder” on Pirate night, and I can safely say that we will still have a Fiesta Caliente this Saturday night. The T-shirts have been printed, it’s on the interweb, so we know it’s true. But all that previous stuff, well, it didn’t quite happen the way that I planned it. In fact, pretty much nothing did. Good thing that I’m flexible!

Back to the Trip Report at hand…So what made the next few hours, days, cruise different? Well first off, Fran doesn’t like to take pictures. We’ve only taken two cruises in the past two years, but back 13 almost 14 years ago, we had been on three cruises in four years. So we had just walked across a long catwalk at the Port of Miami and we come upon the obligatory “Boarding Picture” for a Disney Cruise. I’m thinking, “we’ll totally be skipping this like on the last cruise, we didn’t buy the photo on the previous one.”

Fran says, “Shall we go ahead and take the picture?”

OK, who are you and what have you done with my partner? It actually came out pretty decent!



We go on to board the cruise and everything is going as normal. However we had noticed in the Navigators, that tastings could be booked at the Guest Services Desk on Deck Three upon embarkation. We head there first and Fran is up for every spirits tasting. I tell her that the Cognac is at 10:30PM so we decided to rule that out as we’re pretty tired after dinner. The Martini tasting conflicts with our dinner one night, so we nix that. All that is left is the Chocolate Tasting and Tequila tasting on the last sea Day. We are already booked into a Private Mixology tasting on the first sea day.

I also read that if you want to meet Anna and Elsa you have to get a special ticket at the Port Excursions desk. I figured that with the lines at Disneyland and WDW as crazy as they are, why not score a ticket on the cruise line and get that one out of the way? Here we are in line for the tickets there. See what I mean that we load Fran up like a Pack Mule?



They had these Pumpkins on display at the Port Adventures Desk.





I’ll enclose photos of the Navigators here. I hope to scan in the rest of the days once I get home, they have a much better resolution that way.













Then we went to Parrot Cay (as usual) for our embarkation lunch. But some photos along the way











The portholes are so cute!





The hall by the Promenade Lounge



We were seated at a table nearby the buffet and started on our lunch. I was thrilled to find these divided plates so that my food wouldn’t touch. They always look at me as if I’m crazy and try to hand me the regular plates as if I don’t know that they are there. Why are these cool plates restricted to kid usage?



As usual, I started off with a salad of leafy greens. I mean, I’m going to practically develop scurvy in the next few days with my choices of meats and lack of veggies. I might as start off with a good salad of roughage!



And plenty of toppings for the salads.



Of course they had the Peel ‘em and Eat ‘em Shrimp



They had macaroni salad, beef salad, and I think there was cole slaw.



There was an assortment of Cheeses



[Continued in Next Post]

 

[franandaj]

[Continued from Previous Post]

I thought that this was gravy, but it was Calabalazo soup, next to it was mashed potatoes, so you can see my confusion.



There were some stir fried vegetables and roasted vegetables. Fran said the stir fried were pretty tasty.



Beyond this there was some Penne Pasta, Pork Schnitzel, Spicy Chicken and carved Roast beef which I didn’t get pictures of for some reason. There was an assortment of breads and rolls.



And of course dessert





Here is Fran’s plate



And mine



I went back for a second helping of meat and potatoes. Now before you all think that all of a sudden I gained an appetite, I couldn’t even eat half of this!



Fran got some, and luckily she did have an appetite. She could finish some of what I couldn’t, so it didn’t go to waste.



I got a few desserts, and let Fran finish half of them.



Here’s a few shots of the restaurant.









Buy this time it was 1:20. Staterooms were supposed to be ready at 1:30, so we headed up to Deck 7 to see how the rooms were coming along. We found quite a group of people hanging around in the foyer with the same idea. It wasn’t long before one of the officials in a white suit came by and dropped the line keeping us from entering the halls.

We headed to our room. Here was our home for the next five nights.







This is our bathroom





This nice artwork was next to the bed.



The balcony



And our view







So we started to get as settled in as possible (without our luggage). We unloaded the scooter, put away all the beverages, and got the various other packages put away. Normally on a cruise, Fran would lay down at this point, and I would wait for the bags to arrive and begin putting away the luggage while she slept. We would do the muster drill and she would sleep until dinner. That’s how I’ve counted on our cruises going. Our bags started to arrive promptly by around 2:30PM.

I told her that I wanted to try and have a Drink of the Day every day that we were on the ship. She tells me “That’s fine, we can both get one on our way up to the spa for the raffle.”

“WHAT??????” OK, who ARE you and what have you done with my wife?

To be continued later!

 

[jedijill]

Wow! What a difference in Fran! I'm so glad she is feeling better and is raring to go! I love the first buffet...it means I'm on the boat! Good for getting all the tastings you wanted and A&E tickets!

Jill in CO

 

[Pinkocto]

Me too! Isn't it lovely?

I'm ready to go back

Me as well. I like Olive Garden better for the entrees but find Carrabas appetizers more enjoyable.

Nobody makes fried zucchini like Carrabas, and nobody makes Alfredo sauce like Olive Garden

 

[Pinkocto]

I love that Fran was ready to have some fun!

All the Halloween decorations are just too cute!

Your room looks great.

You had me laugh out loud at the scurvy comment

Bummer the cruise is over, hopefully the rest of the vacation is lovely as well

 

[eandesmom]

Wow, she really is feeling a lot better, how exciting!!!!!! Love the embarkation picture

 

[franandaj]

Wow! What a difference in Fran! I'm so glad she is feeling better and is raring to go! I love the first buffet...it means I'm on the boat! Good for getting all the tastings you wanted and A&E tickets!

Jill in CO

Yeah, I was really surprised with a lot of the things that she wanted to do. Somethings ended up back as we expect, but that's OK. I realize that her illness makes her tired, but she was really a trooper this entire cruise which caused for a lot of changing up, not to mention Disney changing it up. It will all be revealed as I weave the tale!

I love that Fran was ready to have some fun!

All the Halloween decorations are just too cute!

Your room looks great.

You had me laugh out loud at the scurvy comment

Bummer the cruise is over, hopefully the rest of the vacation is lovely as well

I couldn't believe that she was into the spa treatments and stuff, that was so cool!

They totally had it together with the Halloween decorations, and I love that room. We'll have to see how our next Wonder room is. We have it on the B2B and the one with you and Jenny. It's one floor lower, but looks just as spacious.

I totally think I'm going to get scurvy on the cruise. They rarely serve iceberg or romaine lettuce in salads, and I can't stand weeds (mixed greens) and I can tolerate Arugula or Rocket Greens, but don't like them, so the only choice I have for veggies are the asparagus, green beans or broccoli that they serve as accompaniments. I love spinach, but you rarely see it, so I'm always afraid I won't get my greens. You'll see in a future update where Fran chooses a salad as she recognizes the problems with a meat and potatoes diet.

Wow, she really is feeling a lot better, how exciting!!!!!! Love the embarkation picture

It was great that she felt so much better, she goes in and out for the cruise, but for the most part she feels better than the ones before and we really get a lot done. I think that's why she has been crashed out ever since we got to the hotel post cruise. I'm trying to get her to go out and get some dinner at some place that doesn't gauge you like the hotel restaurant.