Trip Report Day 1: Very Merrytime 7 Night Western Caribbean Cruise on the Disney Wonder

Note:  You can see the daily navigators for this cruise here.

I am so excited to get to share all of the details of our recent 7 night Very Merrytime sailing on the Disney Wonder!  We sailed on November 6, 2015 and it was the first Very Merrytime sailing of the Wonder this year.  The people who got off the ship the day that we boarded had just sailed through the Panama Canal and were on the ship for Halloween, so the crew went straight from Halloween decorations to Christmas decorations overnight.  I did hear that they started building the gingerbread house 8 days prior but kept it hidden from the Panama Canal guests until the final day.  As we were boarding, the Christmas tree and decorations were still being put up in the atrium.  They turned it around quick though!  By the first night, the ship was totally decked out for Christmas.

 Our vacation actually started the day before when we drove about 4 hours from our home to Galveston.  During the drive we saw the most amazing rainbow.  It lasted a really long time and after all we have been through the last few months, with my husband living in another state, my cancer diagnosis, and not even knowing if we could go on this cruise until a few weeks prior, we felt like this was a sign that we were supposed to be going on this cruise.

It had only been 5 weeks since my double mastectomy and I was in the process of reconstruction, so this cruise was so badly needed!  I was still weak, tired, in some pain/discomfort, and had surgical drains coming out my sides (sorry if that is TMI!), but my plastic surgeon said that as long as I took it easy, this would be a great thing for me to do.  Looking forward to this was one of the only things that had kept me going over the past 5 weeks.

We stayed the night before the cruise at the Comfort Suites on 89th St.  This was our third stay there before a cruise and we have always found it adequate.  Great price, relatively new and clean, and a decent hot breakfast.  The rooms actually sleep 5 with a pull out love seat (a must for us) and also have a refrigerator and microwave which we find helpful.

 We woke up the morning of the cruise and got ready.  It is a tradition for our girls (and sometimes me) to Disneybound the day we get on the ship.  If you’re not familiar with Disneybounding, you can read about it here.  This time I cheated a little bit and recycled two of the outfits – one of the benefits of having all girls!  Because of my surgery, I did not have much time to prepare or pack for this cruise so I just used what I already had.  I am grateful that my younger two don’t really care what they wear yet and were okay with me telling them what they were going to wear.  I let my oldest choose her character and luckily put the outfit together pretty easily.  So, the Snow White and Ariel outfits were used 2 years ago, but the Elsa outfit is new:

The younger two always have to do a crazy shot as well:

 On the short drive to the port, we spotted the ship for the first time which is always exciting!

For those of you who have never sailed out of Galveston, it is nothing like Port Canaveral.  Disney obviously doesn’t have their own terminal here.  There are 2 terminals that are primarily used by Carnival and Royal Caribbean.  Disney does do a decent job of putting up banners and signage though.  My husband dropped us and the luggage off at the curb and drove across the street to EZ Cruise Parking to park the car.  While we were waiting for him I took these pictures:

While were waiting I met a very nice lady who had just gotten off the Panama Canal cruise.  She and her husband had taken it to celebrate their 40th anniversary.  She told me how wonderful it was and I asked her a million questions because Alaska and Panama Canal are the top 2 on my wish list right now.  We had a great time chatting and then my husband showed up so we got into the line to enter the terminal.  Pubic service announcement:  once inside the terminal you are NOT allowed to take pictures.  They take this so seriously that you would think they would make it obvious with some signage or something, but no.  I took 2 pictures right after walking inside and within seconds a security person was at my side telling me to delete them and she even watched me do it.  I then looked around for a sign and found nothing.  Some signage would be helpful, folks!  I also asked the security person if there was a sign that I missed and she ignored me so I took that as a no.

Anyway, we got through the security line relatively quickly and then got into the concierge check in line.  They have moved it since we sailed out of Galveston 2 years ago.  It used to be all the way down on the right where most people probably missed it, but now it is right in front of the security station so it is impossible to miss.  They also moved the concierge waiting area to the opposite side of the terminal, right next to the check in line, and I think it works better this way.  When we checked in we got these:

We sat down in the waiting area about 11:15 and I expected to start boarding about 11:45 because that is what we have experienced in the past, and that is what the invitation above says is the starting time for the concierge reception.  While we waited, Captain Mickey came out for pictures and the line never seemed to get very long.  Well, 11:45 came and went and there was no sign that boarding would be happening soon.  My kids were getting antsy.  I think it was about a few minutes after noon when they announced the family of the day and then let the concierge guests start boarding.  Sorry guys, no Mickey ears to walk through here – just a boring door.

We went through the whole routine of swiping our cards and going up the escalator, and before we knew it we were walking along the gangway and onto the ship.  In hindsight I wish I had taken pictures of this, but I only took video and it is terrible quality and very shaky (sorry!) but worth showing you so you can see how they had it set up.  There are some partitions on the left that aren’t normally there, but they were still in the process of setting up the Christmas tree over there so I guess they wanted to hide that.  Obviously it does not make for as grand of an entrance, but it is what it is:

We have made it a habit to always make a beeline to the concierge reception, which on the Wonder is in the Cadillac lounge.  We have found that if we are some of the first ones there, we can talk with our host pretty quickly and thus leave fairly quickly to go eat lunch before the restaurants get super crowded.  We walked into the Cadillac lounge, chose a seating area and right away one of the youth counselors came over to get our kids their bands.  I had already registered them online, but the counselor verified allergies and our secret password and put the bands on their wrists.  The bands are almost identical to the ones in the parks and looked like this:

They cost $12.95 each if you either lose one (like we did) or choose to keep it, or you can turn them in at the end of the cruise and your account will be credited.

Next our concierge host Joanne (from Scotland – we loved her accent!) introduced herself and gave us our folder full of all sorts of goodies.  The folder looks like this:

Inside, we had a welcome letter:

Confirmation for our Palo brunch:

An invitation to the Castaway Club reception later the next day:

A list of toddler events during the cruise:

A map of the ship:

A list of DVDs we could borrow for our room:

Tickets for both the Princess and Frozen (Elsa, Anna, Olaf) meet and greets:

A ticket to the Gingerbread House making event:

Instruction for the Connect @Sea internet service:

Our personalized itinerary for the week:

And finally, an invitation to the concierge reception later in the week:

Joanne asked us if we would like any spa appointments (no), beverage seminars (no),  and if we had any other requests.  The only thing we requested was a second Palo brunch reservation which she arranged for us.  At this time she asked our daughters about their favorite things about Disney cruises and our middle daughter shouted out “Karaoke!”.  She loves to sing, perform, and be on stage and she never misses a family karaoke night on a Disney cruise.  Joanne then asked her what her favorite song to sing was to which she answered “Home” from the Beauty and the Beast Broadway show.  Joanne got all excited and told us that Susan Egan (the original Belle on Broadway) had just been a performer on the previous Panama Canal sailing and sang that song in one of her shows.  We were so bummed that we had just missed her!!!  Joanne asked if my daughter would like to sing in the family talent show at the end of the cruise (um, yes!) and told us that she would sign her up for it.  More on that later in the trip report……

 We wrapped things up with Joanne so that she could move on to other guests and we could move on to drop our things off in our stateroom and eat lunch.  We got to our room and like any good blogger, I drove my family crazy by making them and their belongings stay out of the way while I took a ton of photos.  You can see them in my stateroom review here.  In our room, we noticed that there is a lot of construction going on at the Galveston port:

We also found our FIRST Gold Castaway Club gift!  It was a bag and photo album.  We were hoping for something other than the bag because we already have 3 of the same bags in silver but hey, at least this one is gold!

We also found our dinner tickets that tell us our table number:

And our statements about our on board credits:

If you want to read about using a travel agent to receive an on board credit, you can do that here.

And our Palo brunch invitation:

Next it was time for lunch.  The cast members always encourage you to go up to deck 9 to the Beach Blanket Buffet to eat but in my experience, finding a table can be difficult so we always go to Parrot Cay.  At Parrot Cay, it is still a buffet but you are shown to a table and a waiter brings you drinks.  Much easier with 3 kids in my opinion.  The girls followed their Parrot Cay ritual of using the napkins as hats:

I liked how the restaurant was subtly decorated for the holidays:

After lunch we went to check out the Oceaneer’s Club/Lab.  On the way, we noticed that they were almost done assembling the Christmas tree in the atrium.  When we boarded, it was only about half way done:

We also checked out the Gingerbread house – it smelled SOOOO good!  We debated the whole cruise whether it was the real smell of the materials or if they sprayed it with something to make it smell so good:

In the Oceaneer’s Club & Lab, I also noticed the holiday decorations and thought it was a nice touch:

After we let the girls play for a few minutes, we went to check out the tween club (11-14), Vibe.  Our oldest is almost 11 so we wanted to see what she has to look forward to on our next cruise.  It seemed like a fun (but small) space and was also decorated for the holidays:

 Before too long it was time for the safety drill.  As usual, we were outside on deck 4 standing in the heat, sun and humidity, jealous of all of the people who were sitting in the air conditioned restaurants and theaters.  Oh well – at least that means we would be first to get on the life boats, right???

After the drill we went up to the pool deck for the sail away party.  Some clouds had just blown in which really cooled things off nicely and made for a comfortable party.  Somehow she always talks Dad into holding her:

Streamer?  Check!

Let’s get this cruise started!!!

Here is a video of bits and pieces of the party:

After the party we headed back to the room to get freshened up for dinner.  For some reason, we had not actually started sailing away during the sail away party like normal.  I guess we were waiting on some people.  While we were in the room we went out on the balcony and waited for the ship to start moving.  While we waited, we noticed that it was starting to get really foggy.  You can see it a little bit here:

We also noticed some dolphins playing in the water and I actually managed to get it on video:

After a few minutes the ship started moving and I couldn’t believe how foggy it was:

I have heard about it being too foggy for cruise ships to enter/exit the port of Galveston, but I guess it has to be even foggier than this!

On our way to dinner, we noticed the pilot boat following along side us:

For dinner, we prefer first seating which was at 5:45.  Our first night was in Parrot Cay and we met our wonderful servers, Manuel and Vilroy.  They were outstanding, as was our head server, Simone.  I highly recommend them.  Dinner was great, and then it was time to head to the atrium for Mickey’s Tree Lighting Magic ceremony at 7:30.  I thought it was well done.  They had an area right in front of the steps for all of the kids to sit down so that they could actually see everything, and the adults stood behind them.  I didn’t take any photos, but a got most of it on video:

Next it was time for the evening show, “All Aboard! Let the Magic Begin” featuring the comedy and magic of Shawn Farquar.  Because I was only 5 weeks out from a MAJOR surgery, I was exhausted and skipped this one while my husband took the kids.  I went back to the room to go to bed and found this:

Our stateroom host’s name was Neil and he was awesome.  He did everything perfectly and we appreciated him so much.

The hubby and kids eventually came back and said they enjoyed the show.  It had been a long day, so we talked our middle daughter out of Family Karaoke at 10:15 with promises of a lot more karaoke throughout the cruise (we delivered!) and we all crashed into bed.

Click here for Day 2

As always, be sure to like me on Facebook (click here) and follow me on Pinterest (click here) for all of the latest Disney Cruise Mom Blog updates!