Cass, Rob & Kira - Christmas on the Wonder 2019 - "Seriously??? We just ate!!!"

Finally got a chance to read the trip report! Looks like you are off to a great start. I agree with you on the iPhone 11. My husband has it and I’m loss without the home button. Looking forward to reading the rest... Tina
 
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December 19th, Part 3

Rob was very happy to explore this area and we all had some fun with it. 🤣

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I have no idea what my daughter is doing but she was having a blast! :rotfl2:

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Rob pointing to the patch of the very last space shuttle mission, Atlantis STS-135, the one launch he actually got to see back in 2011.

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This is where they show you your printed photo. Rob, of course, was a sucker and bought it, as per usual. :rolleyes2 (shown down below)

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Back to the main plaza where we watched more of this amazing light show...

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Then Rob & Kira went on one of the VR simulators.

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They chose the jet flight, which was an extra $10 each. I wasn't interested so I watched them on the screen, which was pretty funny! :rotfl:

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We explored the rest of the main plaza area...

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Kira made pretty colours with this and then she scared the crap out of her dad by sneaking up on him. She didn't know I was watching but I was and it was the funniest thing to watch her do it. I wish I had recorded it. :rotfl2:

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We strolled through the gift shop, where Rob, surprisingly, did not buy out the whole store. :rolleyes1

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Just part of it. ;):lmao:

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We enjoyed a few more minutes of that light show and then headed out, back to the hotel.

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Here's the photo we bought....

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I wanted to show you the difference between my phone and Rob's so here's a small sampling of the photos that Rob took that night. You can clearly see his photos, for the most part, have much better definition and sharpness to them...

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And no, Kira and I did not bedazzle our hoodies. :p Bright lights sometimes mess up the iPhone cameras. I notice this a lot more when I take video.

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That's no moon....:rolleyes:

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Kira pointing to her home, Calgary.

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And lastly, Kira enjoying the lights...

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I have just a few more pics to end the night with but I am at my photo limit again so I will finish up in the next part. :thumbsup2
 
Wow that Galaxy lights stuff looks amazing!
And did you happen to notice just how tall Kira is in that pic Rob bought?! Beautiful young lady!
 
December 19th, Part 4

This will be a very short chapter as we are just finishing up our night. ;)

We headed back to the hotel for a bit before our next and final adventure of the day. Oh look, I found the pool. :rotfl2: Too bad it wasn't heated...and had a hot tub. :rolleyes:

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We chilled for a bit in our room until about 10:30, although Rob was very impatient and wanted to leave much earlier. He was a little excited :darth::chewy::ewok::yoda:

Star Wars Rise of Skywalker was coming out tomorrow and as always, theaters were playing it this evening. We knew it would be playing on the ship but we wanted to watch it for the first time in a regular theater, without being interrupted with kids crying/yelling or people coming and going that inevitably happens during every movie on the ship. :rolleyes2

I actually bought these tickets before even booking the cruise LOL! :lmao:

We didn't know 100% that we were going on this cruise until the end of October and the SWROS tickets went on sale well before that so as a good omen and positive thinking, I got tickets on the second day that they were on sale. I really should have gotten them on the first day because the only seats left were for the late shows. Our movie started at 10:50pm but they had 30 minutes of previews and commercials. We knew this was going to be a late night and a relatively early morning tomorrow but we were all okay with it. The theater was across the street so that was handy! I told you our hotel was in the perfect spot. ::yes::

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And guess who bought himself a shirt? :rolleyes1

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It was late and everyone was still kinda full from dinner and didn't want to eat so late so there was no massive popcorn this year. :rolleyes:

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We found our seats, got comfy and waited for the movie to start. I love these luxury loungers, they recline all the way so you're feet and legs are horizontal to the floor. Our theater at home is nice too but they recline just shy of being flat, so my legs are hanging down a bit.

I felt a little sorry for Kira because the guy next to her was snoring for about half the movie and it was loud! :eek: He must have been lost every time he woke up, a lot happens in this movie :rolleyes2 :rotfl2:

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I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet but we all LOVED it!! :lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc

I think Rob didn't want to like it but it was just so good that he had no choice :rotfl:

I think JJ Abrams had such enormous shoes to fill! It was such an impossible task to finish off an epic tale that, not only had to complete this amazing story that so many people are hugely invested in, but also flow well with the previous episode and also have it's own story line and be good enough to stand alone as a Star Wars film. I actually didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did but I absolutely loved it!!! :cool1:

Well done, JJ :worship:

We were so tired by the time we got back to the hotel, I'm glad we didn't have far to go because it was around 2am when we got to bed! :oops:

Tomorrow is cruise day!!! :sail::banana::woohoo:
 
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I"m glad to see you posting another trip!!!! Can't wait to hear more. When we were visitng the dd over New Years, I wondered if I would be able to find another trip report from you...and here it is lol.
 
I was just browsing and thinking, I wonder if there is a new Timon trip report.... :cool1: glad to have found it!!
 
It's probably a good thing he wasn't with us, he would have bought half the store.

I thought that too when I saw the star wars pictures.

What a fun day. That light show is amazing. Such a neat experience.

We saw Star Wars that day too. We loved it. I thought he did such a great job. The movie before was just awful and he fixed a lot of the crap that played out in that movie.
 
December 20th, Part 1

I woke up around 5 am so that I could check my Maritime App to see if our ship was in or heading for the channel yet. If you've read my previous Christmas trip reports, you will know that fog is a huge factor in Galveston and it can cause delays. We've been on both ends of those delays and while it's something that we can easily handle, I would like to be prepared if there's going to be a delay. If it was delayed, we would have stayed in bed as long as possible and would not have been in a hurry to get to the port.

When I checked though, I saw that she was just heading into the channel so no delays for us. :woohoo:

I went back to sleep for a bit and then woke up around 9am to get showered and ready. I checked our FB group and someone posted this pic of our ship backing into her spot.

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I later checked the countdown one final time because this is probably the best thing ever... :cool1:

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After getting ready, Rob and Kira left to grab some breakfast downstairs because it's free and quick. I packed up all of our stuff and put our DCL tags on. :banana:

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What we didn't realize was that the free breakfast had limited hours and by the time they got there, just about everything had been put away except for some fruit.

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It looks like there's some pastries there but they didn't eat much they said.

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We hauled all of our stuff down to the car and headed out.

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See you soon Webster! :wave2:

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Rob was a little hangry and our exit detoured just down from a Waffle House so I told them to stop and get something to eat. I stayed in the car to watch the rest of my episode of Castle Rock that I had forgotten to finish on the plane. It was about to expire and I can't re-download it until I am back in Canada because iTunes is dumb and I wanted to watch the rest of the season on the flight back.

Kira and Rob were happy campers and filled their tummies.


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I gotta say, that looks like the cleanest WH I have ever seen! 🤣



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Then it was off to the port! :stitch:


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We dropped off our three big suitcases, tipped the porter and then headed for Lot A to park.

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When we got there, they said they were parking in Lot B today, which was a first for us, so across the street we went!
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Rob had pulled off to the side for me to go and run in.

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Then we parked and grabbed our carry-ons and waited for the shuttle bus.

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There was no line outside when we got to the terminal, yay! :flower:

And the line for security wasn't so bad!

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They checked my Christmas lights, as they always do and Rob had so many electronics that they made him separate them and run his bag through again. Then we were off to check-in.

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We filled out the health questionnaire and then took our pics and got our lanyards and key to the world cards. I don't use lanyards so I handed my Platinum one to Rob so he could use that. This was his last cruise as Gold so he gets his own Platinum lanyard next cruise. :thumbsup2

As we headed for the escalator, I recognized one of Kira's chat friends who was right in front of us, talk about timing! :rotfl:

She had been texting a group of three girls her age, who would be on this sailing so they could get to know each other ahead of time and hopefully have some built-in friends on the ship. She's a little shy at first but is just fine and quite outgoing once she gets over that initial shyness. I pointed her friend K out to her and told her to go say hi but she was being shy and just sort of waved a little. I'm not sure if K recognized her or was also being shy or just trying to keep up with her family but they didn't connect at this point. I tried waving them down but I was also trying to get photos and video. I figured we could just go and chat with them once we get up to the second level but they made a beeline to meet Goofy so we just got in line to board as they were already calling groups 1-11. K is right in front of Kira here, with the pink back pack, talk about a small world. :goodvibes

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Almost there!!! :cool1:


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Me and my lovely! 🥰 The Wonder is my favourite DCL ship! There was a time, not so long ago in fact, where I thought I would never get the chance to sail on the Wonder but also that I never had the desire to and now she's my favourite 😍


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Kira went so far ahead of Rob that she wasn't even in the Welcome Aboard video that I took. :rolleyes2 She probably stayed away from Rob so he didn't scream in her ear like in previous years. He gets a little excited :rotfl2:

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We headed straight for Fathoms to see if we could get a Palo Brunch reservation for Rob and I.


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This was the Palo manager who was very helpful and very welcoming, more on that later but we managed to get a reservation for Brunch the next day. :thumbsup2

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While I did that, Kira was able to set up her account in the DCL app so once I was done, I also did that so that we could chat on board. I wasn't sure yet if we could iMessage each other, I know they were rolling that feature out to all of the ships but was unsure if it would work for us. Just so you know, it did work, so you can send iMessages to everyone back home but not photos or videos. :thumbsup2

We actually mostly sent each other iMessages instead using the app because the app messages sucked. I would often get them hours later and the text was tiny and I couldn't see them without my glasses so I'm glad that iMessage worked. ::yes::

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Once she was all connected and started chatting with her three friends, she asked if it was okay if she went off on her own. After 4 straight cruises of her spending most of her time in the room watching TV, I said "Yes! Please do!!" :rolleyes1:lmao:

I told her to be back in the room by 3:30 for the safety drill, otherwise, please go and have some fun! :rolleyes: :teeth:

Other than the basic personal safety rules she needed to follow, the only requirement we had for her this cruise is that she have dinner with us. She was free to have fun with her friends at Edge or in other age-appropriate places on the ship any time but we wanted to have dinner as a family every night. Our schedules at home don't allow for the three of us to eat dinner together a whole lot so family dinner is something we look forward to on the cruise.

Normally we eat at Cabanas together on boarding day but they had just eaten at Waffle House an hour ago so they weren't even that hungry. I, however, was starving so Rob and I headed up to the buffet.

The weather was perfect to sit outside so we did just that. :cloud9:

Rob wasn't super hungry but he still managed to find a few things to eat. :rolleyes2

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I got my usual :rolleyes1

It was deeeeelicious!! :love:

They even had honey mustard sauce for my chicken strip! :thumbsup2 This was, by far, the best embarkation buffet meal I have ever had. Normally I try stuff but don't think it's all that great so I grab a hot dog and fries from Pete's but this was so good, no need for another stop.

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The beach chickens were out in full force, as per usual. :lmao:

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It was almost 1:30pm now so we headed down to deck 5 to check out our room. 😎
 
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Wow, I would’ve loved that light show!! It looked sooo pretty!

And those trees......

Wish you were there to see it 🥰

So happy to find this today! Kira is so grown up now.

Glad you found me :goodvibes Can you believe it, we have a teenager! o_O:D


Finally got a chance to read the trip report! Looks like you are off to a great start. I agree with you on the iPhone 11. My husband has it and I’m loss without the home button. Looking forward to reading the rest... Tina

Yay, Tina :cool1:

Plus it's bigger than my 8 and I don't like big phones. :crazy2:

WooHoo!! What an awesome start!!

Thanks, tammy :flower1:

Loving your report so far! Galaxy lights looks amazing!

Thanks! It was so good, I'm really glad we went! :flower:


Wow that Galaxy lights stuff looks amazing!
And did you happen to notice just how tall Kira is in that pic Rob bought?! Beautiful young lady!

I don't think we have many trips left with her being shorter than us :rolleyes1:p

I"m glad to see you posting another trip!!!! Can't wait to hear more. When we were visitng the dd over New Years, I wondered if I would be able to find another trip report from you...and here it is lol.

Glad you got to see your DD for the holidays! :thumbsup2

Wonder no longer :p


I was just browsing and thinking, I wonder if there is a new Timon trip report.... :cool1: glad to have found it!!

Seek and ye shall find. :p:cool1::rotfl2:

I thought that too when I saw the star wars pictures.

What a fun day. That light show is amazing. Such a neat experience.

We saw Star Wars that day too. We loved it. I thought he did such a great job. The movie before was just awful and he fixed a lot of the crap that played out in that movie.

LOL, totally right? Even I couldn't get away without buying him two shirts. :rotfl:

I actually loved all of the latest SW movies and obviously I love the originals. It's the prequels I can't handle. 🤢 I really love that the recent ones have a good sense of humour 😜 Like when Kylo Ren throws a tantrum and the storm troopers go the other way...best part ever! 🤣
 
What a great light show, loved your tour of it! So Cass, Kira is so fun this trip! I remember the "tweeness" of some of your trips, it looks like she's past all of that and on to just plain fun with Mom and Dad. I am soooo happy she found friends too! oh yes, food pictures, yum YUM, bring it all on my friend :)
 
December 20th, Part 2

We headed to our stateroom where we met our wonderful stateroom host, Alex, and he opened up the barrier for us. :thumbsup2

We have stayed down this exact hallway twice before, once in 2005 on the Magic and once on our 2017 Christmas cruise on the Wonder and we love it. It's quiet, close to the aft elevator, which is where I always like to be, close to the movie theater and deck 5 is a great deck to walk down if you need to go to midship or forward as there's stuff to look at, unlike decks 6, 7 & 8 where you see only rooms. Although we did miss seeing everyone's decorated doors after a few days so we made sure to check those out a few times.


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I was actually able to order the room decor package with the blanket, first time they haven't sold out by the time I booked the cruise. I did get the decor package in 2016 but it was just the basic decorations, nothing else. This package was great and included the blanket, PJ pillow, decorations, holiday fish extender hanger and a cute magnet Christmas countdown calendar.

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Also, for the first time, I ordered us the specialty cheese plate. Our friend Brenda had ordered this for my friend Nancy and I back in September 2018 and we loved it.

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Looking out on the verandah, they were getting us all fueled up for our voyage.

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A peek at our verandah, which is a little smaller than the ones on decks 6, 7 & 8 but it was roomy enough for the two of us so it suited us just fine. 😊

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The blanket is super soft and since we have returned home, Kira has stolen both the pillow and blanket and is now using them in her bed. :rolleyes:

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The xmas countdown calendar...so cute!

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No more little toiletries. I know some people hate that they've switched but we don't use any of it so it didn't bother us. Nice to see that they added a black make-up cloth. :thumbsup2

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Close-up of the FE...which I think I will get customized with our names on it somehow. :scratchin We have a great FE from my good friend Nancy that we love that we will use on our non-Christmas cruises but I just love the colours of this one for Xmas cruises. :lovestruc

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PJ pillow...it has a zipper on the bottom, meant for your pj's :teeth:

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They got new phones since our last sailing on her...

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One of our favourite things about sailing over Christmas is that we always bring our Christmas lights to decorate our room with. I always make sure to pack them in our carry-on so that we can get them up ASAP. ::yes::

Rob did a fantastic job this year putting those lights up. :love:

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I got started on decorating our door! I used some of the same ones from last year and I made a few new ones too. :goodvibes

While I was doing that, I met some of our neighbours. We hardly heard any noises from any of them this entire cruise, probably the best neighbours we've ever had. :cool1:

If you've read some of my previous reports, you will know we tend to have terrible luck with cruise neighbours but on my recent sailing on the NCL Escape with my brother, we had next door neighbours from hell, so after that debacle, I was due some good ones, I think. :rotfl2:

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Once I was done with that, I stocked our little fridge with the Diet Coke and Dasani water that we had picked up in Target. I find the DC in the dining rooms okay but the swill they serve up at the free drink station is disgusting and since I prefer to eat lunch in my room anyway, having some cold DC in the room is super handy! :thumbsup2

I didn't have time to take photos of the Navs in the terminal, so here they are now...

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It was now almost 3:30 and this kiddo showed up...

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I joked with her about not recognizing her but really, it was nice to have her out of our hair while we set up our room. Our suitcases had arrived and I unpacked us all and got us organized for the week.

She told me that she loved all three of the girls from the chat group and that she had already had two ice creams and 4 cookies. :rotfl:

It was all music to this Momma's ears because that means she was having fun and I had hoped that she would be having so much fun with them that she wouldn't spend hardly any time in the room. That meant Rob and I could have some quiet alone time too. :love: While I enjoy some of the on-board activities, I'm a huge introvert and I avoid crowds as much as possible so I enjoy being in our room and on our balcony and both get used a lot on our cruises. ::yes:: This is my 13th Disney cruise and Rob's 10th so we've seen a lot of the entertainment before and even many times over in some cases, so we don't feel the need to see and do everything anymore. We like to be with each other, we love being in our beautifully lit room, especially at night, watching movies or reading or enjoying the gorgeous view of the sea passing us by.

Kira was telling me all about the girls and how much fun they were having when Rob snapped this pic.

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About 10 minutes later, it was time for the safety drill, which was in Animator's Palate for us. I love it when you can sit down at your muster station. :woohoo:

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K & her family ended up being about 5 tables over from us so after it was done, Kira joined her friend and off they went again. :thumbsup2

Rob and I peeked out to see what the weather was like as they had announced that the Sail-a-Wave party would be held inside in the Atrium.

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Yup, wet and cold, not very conducive to a great sail away party.

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We had just a tiny bit of time to head back to our room and snack on our cheese tray. I didn't really care for the crackers though so we didn't eat much. I wrapped it up and put it in the fridge.

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It was now time for the evening show, which was Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker, which was showing in 3D in the Buena Vista theater and non-3D in the Walt Disney Theatre. On the way, we passed my favourite Christmas tree. 💙💙💙💙

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It's just a little one but it's there every year and I just love it!!

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I don't like 3D nor do I like the BV theater so we headed to the WD theater...





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Oh look who we ran into 🤣

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They pretty much spent most of the cruise together. 🥰

There were some things that Kira wanted to do that the other girls weren't interested in, like the Sports Deck but for that, she had her friend R, a boy she had sailed with last Christmas. She ended up having a nice little group of 7 or 8 friends this cruise and was almost always with one or more of them.

This made for a very happy Kira and an even happier Rob & Cass. 😁🥰🥳
 
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I don't often reply to trip reports, but I just have to say: I love your writing style, perfect balance between information and pictures, your family is fun and I love how you vacation! :) Keep on writing!
 
Hi guys :wave2:

We recently returned from our fourth Christmas Cruise on the Disney Wonder. We have been incredibly lucky to continue this amazing tradition that started back in 2016 and we hope to continue it as long as possible. :lovestruc

This cruise was definitely our favourite Christmas Cruise and I'm excited to share it with you all. :goodvibes

If you've read my previous Christmas cruise reports, you will find a lot of similarities but of course, we always try to have some new experiences while we enjoy our traditional favourites :thumbsup2

As for the title of this trippie, instead of making you wait until we get to the part in the trip where the quote was actually said, I'm going to throw you a bone and spoil it now. :p Let's just say that I am the one that said it and on more than one occasion. :lmao:

It usually pertained to my husband eating his body weight on the cruise but it also referred to the fact that I felt like we were always eating. :rotfl2:

I know on a cruise, you are supposed to indulge, it's one of the best parts, right? After switching to a mostly ketogenic diet three years ago and adding regular fasting to my diet for health reasons, my body is just used to eating much less. So on vacation, when I take a break from it, especially on a cruise, where I tend to indulge more, my body goes into full rebel mode. :rotfl:

It got to a point where I was actually tired of eating all the time. :lmao: Sounds crazy, right? 🥴 😜

Well, sit back and let me share this tale with you and then you can decide for yourself if I'm crazy or not. 😉


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Spoiler Alert....I am. 🙃
 
December 20th, Part 3

About 30 minutes into the movie, I decided to leave. We had just seen it less than 24 hours ago and I was more interested in watching our sail away from Galveston. Sadly, I was about 5 minutes too late to watch us pass the pier webcam but I was just in time to watch us sail past Seawolf Park so I took a couple of quick pics on this side and ran over to the port side.

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This is something we have tried to do for the past 3 years and it just never worked out for us. I had decided this was the year to do it, right after the cruise, however, when I went to look up the hours, I noticed that it was temporarily closed, so that makes it four years in a row we've tried to visit and failed. :rolleyes:

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It was very windy and cold and still sprinkling, otherwise I would have gone up to the top front deck to watch us sail out of the channel.

When I went back in, I noticed the popcorn buckets that were for sale this cruise. Rob had already gotten the plain Star Wars bucket, otherwise I would have told him to get the tree one. I have threatened him to stop buying the buckets because they just sit in our pantry and take up way too much room in our suitcases but I really liked the Mickey tree one and would have used it for decoration too. :rolleyes:

Oh well, maybe next year when he doesn't pack clothes for 27 days. More on that later :rolleyes1

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I went back to the room so I could enjoy some quiet time with our lights, now that it was dark out. :love:

We had brought even more lights than last year and although Rob said he would have liked to have a few more sets, I think it was perfect. :thumbsup2

Just to note, we used magnets to hang these, no glue or tape. ;)

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Notice that I kept the hanging decorations for above our bed but gave Kira the Minnie one. :rotfl2:

You repeat readers know why. :p


🚫 ::MinnieMo

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Just then I remembered that the stores were open and most people were either watching SW or eating dinner so it was the perfect time to check them out. :smickey:



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I ended up buying a few things, including this xmas throw which was $30 with $60 purchase. I think I was able to wash this sucker and put it away without Kira stealing it first. :earboy2:

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I checked out the TV as I had read somewhere that the classic ships had finally switched over to an On-demand system like the Dream & Fantasy! Yay, I finally won't have to watch the same movie, in parts, 8 times over the course of 7 days. :rotfl2:

It's super cute when you first turn it on, like the inside room portholes on the newer ships, if you watch long enough, different characters will show up quickly for a few seconds. I saw Dumbo, Dash, the house from Up, Spiderman, the Millenium Falcon, Captain Marvel and several others that I can't recall at this moment.

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I don't know if it was our remote or just the system itself but it was sooooo slow!! You would press a button and nothing would happen for about 10 seconds so you press something else and then eventually it would do the first thing and then eventually the second thing, but by then you've moved onto another screen and don't want it to perform that second function but too late, you've already pressed it! Good Lord, choosing a movie often took 5- 10 minutes if you weren't super patient because it's set up like Netflix but it's hard to see which box/movie is actually selected, so you scroll up and down to figure it out but it takes so long, that once you are on the right line, you are moving to the right to choose your desired movie but it's like 6 years later when it chooses it and it's always on the wrong line :rolleyes2:rotfl2:

So it was a better system but aggravatingly slow. :badpc::badpc::badpc:

There were also times when the system just didn't work, mostly when we were in port or channels disappeared and you couldn't find what you were looking for, even though it was right there a second ago. So yeah, fun times with the TV. :happytv:

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Rob went to take some pics of the tree lighting for me but it was a zoo and he couldn't get a good spot.

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He came back to Kira and I snuggling, watching Doctor Strange together. :laughing:

I found out that Kira and K left the movie early too, I think they were bored and the Edge was calling them. Maybe some more ice cream and cookies too, I think. :scratchin:teeth:

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We were just passing time until dinner because, well, it's been at least three hours since we have eaten, so we were starving! :rotfl:

Actually, they had popcorn, so it had been less than an hour for them. :rotfl2:

Our first dinner was at Animator's Palate so we headed down and joined the absurdly long line to get in, as usual. :rolleyes2

Our table number was listed 99 on our cards but they don't go up to 99 so this confused several of them. :laughing:

Two of them went to go check with their head server so we waited off to the side. For some weird reason, I took this photo. I don't even remember taking it but if you stay tuned for our second dinner tomorrow, you will find out that it foreshadowed our fate. :earboy2:

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So, we waited a few minutes for Boohla, one of the head servers to help us out. We recognized him right away from previous cruises. He explained to us that because I had requested a private table, like I always do, and because they didn't have anything available for us, they issued us table 99, meaning they would be assigning us a table when we got there. He told us that they were a very full ship, with 2685 people on board and a capacity for 2700 and they didn't have a private table for us so we would be joining another family.

Honestly, I wasn't very thrilled about dining with strangers. 😕

I'm terrible at small talk and I don't get along with most people. I already told you that I was anti-social but there are many other reasons I prefer to eat at a private table. The main reason is that the service takes so much longer and I am not a drinker or social butterfly so I like to eat and go. I loathe two-hour long dinners and I like to enjoy the pool and hot tub every night because I can't swim during the day because of my Lupus but the pool closes at 11pm so that leaves me with about an hour after dinner and even less when the service is slow. :worried:

Also, I like to take photos and videos, which I feel very awkward doing when strangers are seated with us and I also hate feeling squished when I am eating, which is why you will notice that Kira and Rob always sit across from me during meals. :rolleyes:

Two other reasons...we don't get to eat together at home very often and when we do, it's often in front of the TV so I actually look forward to chatting with Rob and Kira at dinner every night. We can catch up on stuff, Kira can tell us about her day and we don't have to worry about offending or including other people. And lastly, my family are huge bread/bun hogs, as I have mentioned and they literally fight over the bread basket, especially on cruises, almost embarrassingly so :p

Having said that, Disney is great at pairing people up and maybe we will make new friends and everything will be fantastic. You never know, right?

So, we are assigned to table 28 and someone escorts us to a table with a single mother and her three kids. The kids were either younger or older than Kira and we had nothing in common. It doesn't help that no one looked very comfortable and there was mostly awkward silences the entire meal. It would have been much worse if Kira hadn't been such a social butterfly and chatted up the 17-year old next to her. They were the only ones talking at the table basically, apart from the usual questions/answers (where you from, how old are you, how many cruises have you been on, etc.)

To make things worse, we were seated at a round table, which gives you much less space than a rectangular one, in my opinion and Rob was almost on top of me, he was so close.

To be clear, Rob is very social and has no problem talking to people, actually he loves it! He's constantly making friends wherever we go and I'm always rolling my eyes at him. :rolleyes2

Sometimes, though, people just don't gel. It is what it is.

I didn't feel comfortable to take menu pics, sorry....

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Notice how close Rob was? :crazy2:

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So dinner was good, servers were okay, a little slow but fine. Our table mates were well-behaved and polite, it just all felt very uncomfortable, you know? 😬

I spoke to Dee, our head server, once our table mates had left and asked her very nicely to find us a private table for the next night. She could tell that there was tension at our table and she had already put us on the list but there were two families ahead of us on that list and she couldn't promise us anything. I told her we would switch dining rotations or take a spare table from anyone that might be eating at Palo.

There were three empty tables of four around us, in our section alone, which kind of frustrated me. I know it's probably people that just didn't show up for their dinner and they couldn't give their tables away I guess but it was still frustrating. This is our 4th Christmas cruise, they have always been full but I've always requested a private table and we've never had issues before.

I personally think that Disney needs to get rid of all of the round tables and use only the rectangular ones. That way, they are more easily adjustable. I felt like our table had tons of wasted space in the middle but we all looked (and felt?) a little cramped.

Cry me a river, right? :charac2::rolleyes1

After dinner, Kira headed off to Edge and we headed back to the room...


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This was waiting for us...which Rob thought was very sexist since I was the one who actually made the reservation. :rolleyes: I kind of had to agree with him on that.

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I quickly changed into my swimsuit, Rob grabbed his book and off we went to the Quiet Cove pool.

If you've read my previous reports, you will know that there is nothing I love more on vacation than a night swim and a dip in the hot tubs. ::yes::

Last year I didn't have the best of luck with that. It was closed on the last night due to the weather and every night but one, I had to deal with loud/rude people.

I will tell you now that this year was AMAZING when it came to my pool time. Apart from one night when it closed due to us rocking so much, I was practically alone. Not only was I able to get a lot of swim time, hot tubs weren't too crowded most nights but it also rained several nights I was in there, which made me a happy camper because I LOVE the rain. :love::love::love:

I did see many people try to get in the pool with me but only two other people actually braved the water with me the entire week and really, they didn't last very long. :lmao:

To be fair, I run hot so I can tolerate cool temps more than your average person and well, most of this sailing was filled with Texans, who are not used to cooler temperatures so I would imagine that most passengers felt that this water was freezing. I will admit, there were two nights where it was almost too cold for me but I braved it knowing that I could dip into the hot tubs at any time to warm up. Mostly though, it was the perfect temperature for me and I enjoyed every single second of my hot tub/pool time this cruise. :cloud9::cloud9::cloud9::cloud9:

Rob always joined me, poolside or outside the Cove Cafe in those comfy chairs with his book and some blankets since he is the opposite of me and does not handle cooler temperatures well, like I do. He's also not a pool guy but he sure got a lot of reading in this cruise. :p

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I swam every night until they kicked me/us out and then we headed back to the room.

That was when I remembered that they no longer leave the next days' Navigators in your room for you. Rob went down to the lobby to grab it for me and snapped a couple of photos of the Atrium with the now-lit tree and garlands. :lovestruc

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We did ask Alex the next day if he was able to deliver it to us at night and some nights he was able to but some nights he turned down our room before they were printed so on those nights, one of us ran down to grab them. They sometimes weren't on the side where the others were, you would have to ask them for it at the desk.

As much as I love the app, I also love having the paper version to get a good overall sense of what was going on. Sometimes I would miss something in the app but I would see it in the Nav. Also, sometimes the app was just wrong and the Nav always seemed to have the correct information.

Here's day 2 for you...



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