Panama Canal Trip Report: Day 2 At Sea

Day 2:  At Sea

 If you would like to start this trip report from the beginning, click here.

Note: I do not feel right posting pictures of fellow cruisers who have not given me permission to use them on the blog, so I will blur out the faces of people in the background of my photos. I’m sorry if it looks funny, but I want to respect their privacy.

Also, anytime you see red text, it is a link to either product information or another one of my blog posts that gives more detailed information about that topic.

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Today’s Daily Navigator was the 1 page version that DCL recently switched to (actually all of them except for boarding day & Panama Canal day were the short versions).  You can see it by clicking here:

 Daily Navigator Day 2

First of all, I want to start off by saying that I left an important fact out of yesterday’s trip report (I have since gone back and added it).  I forgot to include the number of guests between the ages of 0-18 for this sailing which was 256.  There are usually 1200+ kids on the Wonder so this is an incredibly small number.  Let me tell you, we could really feel the difference throughout the entire cruise.

Okay, back to day 2.  I was the first one awake about 8:00 am and turned on the TV to watch the morning show with Darren (cruise director) and Anthony (asst. cruise director).  I have never seen this on a cruise before and I am not sure if they recently started doing it on all sailings or if they just did it because this was a longer sailing.

It was only about 15 minutes long but it was very funny and they talked about what would be happening that day on the ship.  It was played repeatedly from 6:00 am to noon and they did one every day of the cruise.

My husband went up to get us coffee from the drink station on deck 9 while I checked my email and caught up on my trip notes.  I was especially excited about today because we had reserved Palo brunch at 10:30 am.  It has become a tradition for us to do Palo brunch on the first sea day of the cruise.  This is the invitation we received the night before:

We got the girls up and took them to Cabanas for breakfast about 9:45.  Here I noticed the hand washing stations that were added to both entrances to Cabanas during the dry dock.  I liked them and we always used them.  It seemed like most people used them although they were still handing out the wipes so I’m sure some people just did that instead.  We never experienced a line or backup at the sinks, but I can imagine that it might occur on a sailing that has more people on it.

After Cabanas we dropped the younger two off in the Club/Lab which they were not too happy about.  I don’t know why, but my kids have never really liked them.  They will tolerate going for 1-2 hours while we do brunch but they never want to go voluntarily.  Most kids love them so don’t let this worry you.  I was hopeful that with fewer kids they would enjoy them more than normal.  Stay tuned for the answer.

We let our 12 year old, for the first time, be on her own and go wherever she liked.  I was a bit nervous about this, but we had set up her iPod with the texting app and I told her to always send me a message when she changed locations.  She also is very familiar with the ship layout.  I told her to stay out of Greg’s way if she went to the rooms and he was cleaning.  She said she was going to start off in the Edge and see what was going on there.

Here we are on our way to brunch.

We checked in at the entrance and were assigned Susana (Portugal) as our server.  She was a doll and we really liked her.  She showed us to a table next to the windows and offered to lower the shades as it was really bright outside.

Palo brunch has changed a bit since we last did it on the Wonder 1.5 years ago.  They have started using this printed menu for the kitchen items instead of the plate displays on the bar:

The items on the menu above are slightly different than what they used to offer.  Susana told us to help ourselves to the buffet and to just let her know when we were ready to order anything from the menu.

I tried to discreetly take photos of the buffet without people in them:

This is what our plates looked like:

Susana kindly offered to take our picture:

At some point we decided on a few items to order from the menu.  We noticed that the popular grape & gorgonzola pizza was not on the menu, but Susana heard us talking about it and said it was not a problem for the chef to make one for us.  Here is it (after we had already taken a piece each):

This is the chicken parmesan:

This was the eggs on toasted muffin with smoked salmon and hollandaise:

It was all so, so good.  We barely had room left for dessert but managed to waddle over to the dessert table anyway.

This is what our plates looked like:

We didn’t finish all of the desserts, we pretty much just took a bite or two of each.

After we had been there about 2 hours and could not eat another bite, we paid the bill and left.  As we were leaving, Susana encouraged us to make another brunch reservation so we did that on our way out.  We got a reservation for 11:00 the following Monday, exactly one week later.  We briefly discussed making a dinner reservation, but decided not to.  We have done Palo dinner once in the past and while it was lovely, we much prefer brunch.  Plus, I really like the main dining room experience and didn’t really want to miss any nights in there.

We left Palo and decided to stop by the future cruise sales desk before we picked up the girls.  Unfortunately it had just closed a few minutes earlier.  Next we went to the Club/Lab to pick up the girls and they were glad to see us.  They said that they didn’t enjoy it any more than usual even though there were fewer kids.  Bummer!  My 10 year old specifically said that it was too “babyish”.  I guess that’s what happens when 1 space has to accommodate ages 3-12.  I understand why they do it but I do think that kids on either end of the age limit sort of get the short end of the stick.

Next we went to the gift shops.  Our 12 year old had just texted us that she was in our room so my husband went up to grab her and meet us back at the shops.  Apparently she had gone to the Edge but nothing really was going on (I think it had been an open house period where anyone can come), so she ended up spending some time by the pool watching funnel vision and had then gone back to the room to watch TV.  Our girls LOVE those classic Mickey cartoons that they play on the ships.  They could watch them for hours and usually have that channel turned on every time they are in the room.

In the shops the girls started picking out some souvenirs.  We told them they could each spend $50 for the whole trip and it was up to them to decide how they were going to spend it.  Our youngest picked out a Stitch stuffed animal, our 10 year old a pair of sunglasses, and our oldest chose a few pins.

Next, the girls were dying to go swimming so we went back to the room to get ready for the pool.  On previous cruises, we have not gone to the pools very much for 2 reasons.  One, the pools are usually so incredibly crowded that it is hard to enjoy them.  Second, I feel like swimming is something we can do at home and that we should spend our time on the ship doing things that we can’t do at home.  But, there were so few kids on this cruise, and we would be on the ship for so much longer, that those reasons went out the window and we ended up spending A LOT of time at the pools throughout the entire cruise.  They were never crowded (except for the adult pool) and I didn’t see them closed even a single time for cleaning.

This was our first sea day at about 2:00.  I think there were more empty chairs than full ones.

The girls were anxious to try out the new slide:

There they are waiting at the top:

Before long they were ready for lunch.  This was one of MANY poolside lunches to come:

Then of course we had to get ice cream.  Today’s flavors were chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and mango.  I was excited because I love all things mango but it wasn’t as good as I was hoping.  The mango flavor was pretty weak and it tasted more like vanilla than mango.

About this time we noticed that Stitch was about to make an appearance at the gazebo next to the pool.  All 3 girls love Stitch, but only the 2 youngest wanted to meet him.  Here we are waiting in line:

We hung out by the pool for a while longer just relaxing and watching Enchanted on funnel vision.  I noticed that the Navigator showed a different movie was supposed to be playing.  This happened several times during the cruise.

About 3:15 we went back to the room and started showering and getting ready for formal night.  Belle was going to be out at 5:00 and my youngest wanted a picture with her since she was going to wear her new Belle dress that night.

We all got ready and headed to Preludes at 5:00 to meet Belle.  Here we are waiting:

She wanted to make sure I got a good picture of her hairstyle:

I also got a good picture of all 3 of them while we waited:

Finally Belle appeared and we got our picture:

After this we had a few minutes before dinner so we went to the atrium to get some more pictures:

This is one of the 3 pictures that I ended up buying from Shutters at the end of the cruise.  The line to get this photo wasn’t very long but it was slow-moving. We were only about 5 groups back when we got in line, but ended up waiting about 20 minutes.  I’m glad that it turned out well.

Dinner tonight was in Triton’s.  Right after we sat down, our youngest asked if she could go to the room and change dresses because her Belle dress was hard to sit in.  I ran her up to the room to quickly change.

Tonight’s menu was the Triton’s rotational menu:

For an appetizer we both ordered the iced lobster and jumbo shrimp which I really enjoyed:

For the soup/salad, I got the farmhouse salad which was very good:

My husband ordered the red wine bosc pear salad:

For the entree we both got the chateaubriand-roasted filet steak which was pretty good:

The dessert menu:

While we waited for dessert Putu gave us a crayon puzzle.  We remembered this one from a previous cruise so we solved it right away.

For dessert, my husband got the classic opera gateau:

I ordered the duo chocolate slice and it was one of the best desserts I ate the whole cruise.  I should mention here that on this cruise, I noticed that the desserts in the main dining rooms were much, much better than we have experienced in the past.  On all of our previous cruises I remember thinking that they weren’t that great, but on this cruise, I thought almost every single one I ordered was excellent.

After dinner we went straight to family karaoke in the D Lounge.  Thank goodness they were having it earlier tonight at 7:30.  They did this a few times throughout the cruise which I really appreciated.

Since it was early, the other 2 were forced to tag along.  Can you tell how thrilled they are?

Only 1 other person besides our daughter showed up, so they just took turns singing songs.  I think she ended up singing 5 times.  At one point, a reader named Tami came over to say hi.  We had corresponded through email before the cruise and it was so nice to meet her!

Chip and Dale also stopped by to watch for a bit:

When karaoke ended at 8:15, we had a few minutes before the show and we all wanted to go change out of our formal clothes so we went back to the room.  Then it was on to the Walt Disney Theater for tonight’s show, The Comedy of Mary Ellen Hooper.  My husband and girls thought she was hilarious, but strangely enough I didn’t think she was very funny.  I say strangely enough because I usually laugh at EVERYTHING, so much so that my family makes fun of me for it.  I thought a few of the candid pictures of her kids she shared were funny, but that was about it.  The crowd seemed to really like her though.

After the show we were all tired and went back to the room to relax.  I went to the drink station and the pool deck was totally empty.  It was a bit strange since it wasn’t all that late.

Tonight we were told to turn our clocks back 1 hour so that we would be in the correct time zone for Cozumel the next day.

For the life of me, I could not figure out how to change the time on the clock.  I tried for ages and even asked my husband to try and he couldn’t figure it out either.  Then I thought maybe it was broken, so I went to the other room and tried to change that clock.  Nope, couldn’t figure that one out either.  I actually ended up somehow changing the time on our clock (I still couldn’t tell you how I did it) to something like 4 hours ahead and eventually just covered it up so that I wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night, forget what had happened, and think it was totally the wrong time.  I am still baffled by that clock.  I wasn’t sure if the time on my phone would automatically update since it was in airplane mode, so I didn’t know whether to change it or leave it alone.  I finally decided to change it and then just check the TV in the morning to make sure my phone was right.  Greg ended up fixing them both for us the next day.

Here were our towel animals for the evening:

Up next:  Day 3  – Cozumel

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