OhioStateBuckeye
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2007
Well, it's been a few days now and my boyfriend and I are back from our first ever cruise. I'm going to do a little bit of a report, maybe it can help some other newbies. I remember what I was the most confused/concerned about, so I'll address all those things here. If anyone has any other questions, feel free to ask.
This did turn out long, but I have everything listed by category so feel free to jump around.
My boyfriend lived in Puerto Rico for a few years while growing up, so he wanted a few extra days to visit. So our travel dates were Thursday Jan 25- Monday Feb 5. We would have left on Sunday after the cruise but we didn't book airfare until late because of a separate issue so it was very expensive to fly out on Sunday as opposed to Monday.
Puerto Rico:
Since we had a few days we rented a car. We rented from Dollar, we had to take a shuttle from the airport but it was essentially painless. We ended up getting upgraded and got a Jeep, so we were excited about that.
Driving was much easier than my boyfriend remembered. The only problem is that the further out from San Juan you got, the fewer red lights were actually working. So you pretty much had to be forceful to be able to turn.
We tried to seek out local restaurants and we never had an issue with not speaking Spanish. We even went to a small grocery store and the clerk spoke English.
There were also giant iguanas everywhere:
-Hotels in San Juan:
All of our hotels were approx $100 a night. I would highly recommend all of them.
Ocean Pearl Inn for Thursday-Saturday. This hotel is located in Luquillo. Luquillo is a coastal town about 45 minutes east of San Juan. If you want to visit the El Yunque National rain forest this is a good hotel for you.
It is a little boutique hotel with about 10 rooms that is directly on the Playa Azul (Blue) beach. The hotel employee was very friendly and welcoming and gave us lots of good recommendations. The hotel has beach towels and chairs to use free of charge.
Just a fair warning, the hotel did not have a TV but was amazing otherwise.
Tres Palmas Inn for Saturday night. This is a San Juan boutique hotel. Once again, it was located right on the beach (Ocean Park) and they had chairs and kayaks. It was about a ten minute drive from the airport.
This hotel had an amazing upstairs patio with a hot tub and an amazing view of the beach. The hotel was approx a 12 minute drive from the Port.
Da'House for Sunday night after the cruise. This hotel was in the dead center of Old San Juan, which also means it was a 5-10 minute walk to both the forts. It reminded me of European hotels, no TV and no elevators. We did have to lug our bags up two floors but that was ok with us.
It was a ten minute $15 taxi ride from the Port.
Activities in San Juan:
-El Yunque National rain forest. We had a rental car so were able to drive ourselves there. It is not very close to San Juan so you'd have to have a car. The rain forest was really nice, except it had been damaged in the hurricane so the visitor center, part of the road and some trails were closed. We enjoyed driving through it and were able to do one trail.
-Bioluminescent Bay kayaking in Fajardo, in Las Croabas Bay. We used Eco Adventures. We had three excellent tour guides who gave a 'how to kayak' talk and we were ready to go. It was 2 people per kayak. We left from the beach and quickly entered the Mangrove channel. It was really neat to kayak through the Mangroves, on our way back some members of our group had headband lights and we were able to see some giant iguanas sleeping in the tree branches.
Once we were in the bay we were supposed to be able to see the lights. The guides had a tarp to cover the kayaks with in case there was too much light at night. To be honest, I wasn't too impressed with the lights, it was just like some vague fireflies in the water, but I have heard that other people have had better experiences with being able to see the lights.
-The Forts in Old Town: Castillo San Cristobal (the bigger one) and El Morro (on the cliffside). The forts are part of the US National Parks Service. I really enjoyed walking through both of them, though, fair warning, Cristobal will take you several hours if you want to see the entire thing. There are some great views of the Port from up there.
-Old Town in San Juan: these streets are so much fun to walk through. It reminded me of a cross between San Francisco and New Orleans. There are also a lot of great restaurants in the area.
The Wonder:
Neither one of us has ever been on a cruise before, so we really have nothing to compare it too. I have heard that some people think the two newer ships are too big. I really loved the Wonder. Maybe you always love your first (hah). It was great being able to leave your room 5 minutes before dinner and not be late. Or to see that Mickey was meeting in 3 minutes and still make it. Try doing that in a theme park.
Our Cabin:
We had an inside stateroom, 6643. When we first saw our room we thought it was tiny, though by the end of the cruise it felt like the perfect size. I thought the bed was amazingly comfortable. The bathroom was tiny but wasn't that bad.
I loved the Disney movie channels, there was an old animated movie station, a new animated movie station, a Marvel station, a live action station (which played Rogue One) and a new Mickey cartoons station. I also liked the station that had information about the ship's route.
The only bad thing about the cabin was that it was located at the Aft part of the ship, we felt that we had a long walk to get back to the cabin.
Weather:
According to other people on the cruise, we had some very unusually rough weather. We ended up leaving San Juan several hours late because of high winds. The ship was rocking pretty intensely that first night, the captain said the swells got up to 18 feet.
We didn't get sick, but I think plenty of people did and it did kind of suck at night, since the rocking kept waking us up.
Luckily, it was only bad that first night. It rained a little off and on, but I think for the most part we had nice, sunny warm weather.
Antigua:
This island was our first stop. Our excursion was booked through Disney (they all were). We did the stingray and kayak excursion. There were about 18 people in our group, all adults and one maybe 12ish year old boy. We were picked up in the port by van and had about a 15 minute drive to the excursion area. We kayaked through mangroves first and had a great time. Next we traveled to a boat dock and were able to use the bathroom before taking a 15 minute boat ride to the sand bar where the sting rays were. These were wild sting rays that still had their barbs. They had been slowly trained by food to come to the area by the tour company. It was a really good experience, except the water was very choppy and it was incredibly windy and I'm not a great swimmer so I wasn't pleased that the waves kept coming up to my face. We had a chance to hold a stingray and get a photo with it, they took one and we were allowed to take one with our own cameras. We had a waterproof Go Pro that worked excellently. After pictures we were given small squids to feed to the stingrays. We had snorkel equipment they provided, but it was way too windy for snorkeling so we traveled back. We were offered rum punch and had a chance to buy our photos. We got ours which was lucky, as ours were not that great that we took.
I would do this excursion again, my only complaint was the weather and the rough waters, but I think that was a pretty rare occurrence.
We didn't really buy any other souvenirs here besides the picture, and I think we ended up getting right back on the Wonder after our excursion. There were some shops near the dock but nothing that interested us.
The island felt safe enough to us, and the terrain was flat with some hills (at least the area we went to).
St. Lucia:
This island is very mountainous and forested. You can take a very short walk and be in the city, Castries. There are tons of little local merchandise shops right there.
We did the Soufrierre Island Delight Adults only tour. We were in a small van with about 20 people. We had our favorite guide of the trip, Zander. He was amazingly entertaining. He gave very good info on everything we drove by, and I feel like we got to see a lot of the island. We drove by banana fields and he stopped at a stand and got us all bananas, then we bought some plantain chips and banana ketchup. We did another stop where a local had one of the local species of snakes, a boa constrictor. For a few dollars you could get a pic with it...I did not. Then we stopped at another stand and we bought some locally made alcohol, passion fruit rum. We went to a great picture stop for the Pitons, two ancient volcanic made mountains. We went to a drive in volcano then ended in a sugar plantation where we had lunch.
I really liked this tour. I feel like I experienced a lot the island had to offer. I would recommend it in a heartbeat, just make sure Zander is your guide.
Bonaire:
This was Disney's first stop at this island. I have to say, this was far and away my favorite island. The water around the entire island is an ecological preserve and it is beautiful. The island was very flat and had flamingos.
Our excursion was not until the afternoon so we brought our snorkel gear and took a $10 taxi to Airport beach (or Nesting beach). The beach was mostly empty since there were no facilities or snorkel/chair renting places. My boyfriend snorkeled and I attempted it. I'm not a great swimmer and I was pretty uncomfortable trying to float along and trust my equipment. I was able to do it a little bit but also ended up bashing my knee into coral and I still have the mark. My boyfriend had a good time though. We had asked our taxi to return and we made it back to the ship with barely enough time to change and meet up for our excursion, which was Donkeys and Salt Flats.
Bonaire has a donkey sanctuary. After modern tech came to the island, people abandoned their donkeys. The donkeys did ok during the rainy season, but really suffered during the dry season so the sanctuary was started. The sanctuary had 700 donkeys, and there were estimated to be 400 wild. The sanctuary does neuter the males. We were in an open air jeep, there were ten of us. We were given two giant buckets of carrots when we entered the preserve and we slowly drove through it (it was huge) some of the tamer, wiser donkeys trotted after the jeep trying to get carrots. The donkeys were all incredibly gentle and would take the carrots from us. We ended up in the little corral for the older donkeys and the pregnant ones (these had been pulled from the wild). They even had a two month old baby we all got to take pictures with. At the end there was a small gift shop.
After that, we had a 15 minute spot at a gorgeous beach, Sorobon beach.
Then we drove over to the salt flats, which were a very pretty pink. Our guide gave us each a small salt rock. We even saw some wild flamingos in the distance. By the time our tour was over it was almost time to board the boat, we walked around a bit near the dock and I bought the best tasting alcohol ever.
Cute story...so since it was Disney's first time at the island, families kept bringing their kids to look at the ship. All the characters were out on the 4th floor deck waving at everyone at one point. And as the ship pulled out all the characters went out again to wave goodbye.
This was definitely my favorite island, and according to every other guest we spoke with their favorite as well.
Aruba:
I liked this island, but it seemed the most commercialized of all the islands we saw. There was just luxury hotel after luxury hotel. The island was very flat and seemed to be either beach or desert.
We did the semi sub and sightseeing excursion. We were on a big bus and we stopped at the California lighthouse, the Caribas rock formation and the Natural Bridge.
The highlight was the semi sub tour, where we took a water taxi out to the semi sub (which is exactly like the Finding Nemo subs in DL). The best part was actually seeing a giant sea turtle out in the open ocean while traveling to the semi sub.
I was actually a bit disappointed in this, we circled the Antilles shipwreck, which was where all the fish were hanging out. This meant that only one side got to see the fish at a time, though. And the water was a bit cloudy. It was ok, just not as good as I expected.
After the excursion we went back out on our own and walked to Eagle beach to see the sunset. Our time on the island ended up being extended to 2 am. Apparently it is a super safe island so Disney felt comfortable with us being out there late.
Entertainment on the Wonder:
We had a 7 night cruise. There was a premier show scheduled each night. There were 3 Disney shows and the variety acts.
The first night was Be Our Guest, which we actually ended up skipping. We really wanted to see the ship leave port and since our departure was delayed several hours, we missed all the show except the titular song at the very end, Be Our Guest. We had taken the 'welcome to the ship' tour earlier in the day, so we knew that this first night's show was just a preview of what was to come. So we felt ok missing it. We talked to our crew member friend Elizabeth later on the cruise and she said a lot of props had to be left out of that show because of how rocky the water was that first night.
The other Disney shows were the Golden Mickeys (loved it, we met Ensign Benson on the final night and told her she was our favorite), Disney Dreams and Frozen. Frozen was good and I liked the puppets at the start, but we are totally Frozen'd out. We saw the show in DCA, the sing a long in DHS and the Broadway rehearsal in Denver. It's just a bit much.
One of the premier shows was just a showing of the movie Coco, so we skipped that.
There were two variety shows, one with a ventriloquist magician, Taylor Mason. I was skeptical about his show but it ended up being hilarious. I kept finding myself laughing at things that I probably shouldn't have laughed at, but it was a good time.
Our other variety show was a comedian named Marcus Monroe, we missed his show because we desperately needed a nap.
The Golden Mickeys was both of our favorites, but we really enjoyed them all.
Daily Activities on the Wonder:
Since this was our first cruise we went a little crazy trying to experience everything. The Navigator app was very helpful, you could sort activities by everyone, adults only, then all the different levels of kid's clubs.
Movie Theater: I love movies so this was one of my favorite places. They play the most current movies, on our sailing we had the live action Beauty and the Beast, Thor Ragnarok, Star Wars The Last Jedi, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Cars 3 and Coco. They even had 3d showings.
Funnel Vision: Until about 1 in the morning Disney movies were constantly playing on the funnel vision, which is a giant movie screen on the funnel by the main pool. Some of the movies that were played were Enchanted, Lion King, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Lilo and Stitch. I loved watching the movies out here once the sun went down.
Trivia: I really loved the trivia events since I am super competitive. Just some of the sorts of trivia they had: Disney, Disney Villains, Disney Tunes, Pub Trivia, General Knowledge Trivia, Songs of Different Decades (70s, 80s, 90s, 00s). There was always a little prize for the team who won, there were medals with Mickey ears, cruise line keychains (we finally won the Villains trivia and we got these little beauties) and luggage tags.
Games: There were lots of random games. Some were family games, some were adult only. A example of the adult games (which were usually held later at night) was the Match Game, which is always hilarious. One of the family (which just means everyone) games was themed towards Pirate night and the teams spun a wheel and participated in various challenges. I was picked to be on Who Wants to be a Mouseketeer (who wants to be a millionaire). The prize was a Mickey medal and you got a Mouseketeer pin for participating. I ended up getting to the 4th question (out of 5) and missed it. The question: what animal bothers Mickey in Steamboat Willie? The choices were a parrot, a cat and two others I forget. I had no idea so I asked the audience and a few people said cat. I went with that and it was actually a parrot
It was still a fun time.
Bingo: People on Disney ships love bingo. I didn't realize how popular this would be. I guess since there isn't a casino this is the only gambling game. Cards were an additional charge, but you could sit and watch for free. The hosts and guest were super entertaining. I finally learned the meaning of the phrase "Shake it up Betty!"
Ship Tour: This was great. It was a free tour led by Tamsin. We got to learn all about the design choices for the ship starting at Palo. Since the Magic and Wonder were built in Italy, they decided to theme the high end restaurant after Venice. So if you notice the poles inside Palo look like gondola poles. There are masks decorating the restaurant from a local vendor in Italy. The guest books are all made by hand by another local vendor in Venice, as are the plates.
The designers wanted the ships to be Disney, but also to hearken back to the classic ships of the 1920's. The ship has Mickey's colors, the bottom of the ship is a dark blue (since black would have been too hot). The blue is an original color called Monica blue, for the woman whose pants ended up being the exact shade of blue they wanted. Disney had to get special permission from the Coast Guard to make the lifeboats yellow, instead of the usual orange. The funnels are predominately red. Only one funnel is functional, the other holds the teen club.
We learned all about the different kinds of carpets and their functionality. If you are in a stateroom hall, there are 5 pointed stars on the carpet. The top of the star always points to the forward part of the ship. If you follow that you'll never be lost.
The 5th floor is where the kids clubs are located. That floor is actually shorter than the rest so that the kids will feel at ease. The section of the ship with the adult only area is one of the taller areas so the adults feel more childlike.
We also learned about all the different types of music played on the ship, there is no music in front of the movie theater because the show is inside.
I highly recommend this tour, we learned a lot more.
Food:
counter service
-Pinocchio's Pizza: the pizza wasn't the best, but it was decent. I liked the BBQ pizza, and they had a different pizza of the day.
-Daisy's Delites: I was obsessed with the Turkey Cranberry sandwich here, but to be honest I thought all the sandwiches were good. The chocolate chip cookies here were the best. I liked getting the cookies then going to the soft serve ice cream station and making myself a cookie ice cream sandwich.
-Ice Cream Station: I wish they had bowls available here, that is my only complaint as I've never liked cones.
-Pete's Bites (I think that was the name): the burger and hot dog station. It also had a shwarma station which we probably used the most. The fries here were really good, and they had a sandwich of the day as well.
-Room Service: we never ended up using this. I really wanted to, but the timing just never worked or we were stuffed.
I know some people have complained about the counter service food, but we both really liked it and felt that we had enough choices.
Cabana buffet
-three words: corn dog nuggets (that may tell you a lot about my palate). I was impressed by the breakfast and lunch buffets. Breakfast had my favorite Eggs Benedict. I think there was pretty much any breakfast food you could want. The omelet station was fantastic. I was very pleased with the POG juice. For lunch I was happy with the shrimp and crab station.
table service
The Wonder had 4 table service restaurants. One is the extra cost Palo which we did not attend.
-Animator's Palate: I loved loved loved this restaurant. I had heard before that the restaurant started out in black and white and moved to color. I don't think they do that particular show anymore, the first name there were sketches on the screens and at the end of the night Sorcerer Mickey came in to lead a parade and movie clips were shown. I really liked the second night's show, we all drew a character (I can't do people so I did a penguin) and they were brought to life on screens at the end of the night. Also...has anyone ever seen cuter butter knives??
Tiana's Place: This restaurant was a close second. Since we like characters, we loved having Tiana sing, and Louis came in to visit. There was a live jazz band which we also enjoyed, but some of our table mates thought the band made it a bit too loud and I could see that.
Triton's: This restaurant was pretty, but I didn't see anything spectacular about it.
Food Quality
The food quality was a bit confusing. I had some of the best meals of my life, and then other nights the food just fell flat. This was actually ok, as there were many other food options.
Table Mates
I was really worried about this going into the cruise. We ended up being matched with two other couples, and we actually had a good time. We were the only first time cruisers so the others were able to give us some tips.
We had a good time at meals chatting about what we did during the day, and we even met up a few times to play trivia.
Crew Members:
We loved the crew members. Our head waiter was Ronald from India, I was amazed he could remember our names and details about us since he had so many guests. Our server was Jose from Santo Domingo, we all loved him. Our assistant waiter was Cristal from Mexico and she was fantastic too.
I really liked all the entertainment people. Jo was our adult entertainment hostess, then we had Skipper Steve (gotta love the Jungle Cruise jokes), Tamsin...and a few others whose names I forget
We also made friends with Elizabeth, who was working character lines. We were also pretty sure she was good friends with Ariel, who we always had great interactions with.
Pirate Night:
I liked Pirate Night. We didn't go all out with costumes but we had some striped clothing and other subtle things.
We had a good time meeting all the Pirate characters. We ended up getting a spot for the show and fireworks about an hour early on the second deck dead center. One of our table mates had never seen the fireworks and wanted to be sure to have a good spot.
I thought the pre-fireworks show went on a bit long. It just seemed like dance after dance. The best part was when the dads came up for air guitar, they all really went for it and it was great. Oh, there was also one of the boys dancing with the kids on stage who I think is destined for Broadway. He had some moves.
To be honest, I just thought the fireworks were ok. I mean, compared to the theme park fireworks they weren't great. I know we're at sea and on a ship, but I just wasn't too impressed.
Characters:
Thought we are adults, we like to meet the characters. We had a good time on this trip meeting characters because they had lots of different outfits that you can't see on land (yep, we just love the characters). On our cruise, we had:
Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Pluto. These characters had formal outfits, cruise outfits, casual outfits and pirate outfits.
Stitch: casual outfit and pirate.
Ariel, Cinderella, Tiana (in her princess dress and silver dress while in the restaurant), Belle (gold gown and blue dress). You needed a special ticket (it was free) which you could sign up for either before or right when you get on the ship.
Anna, Elsa and Olaf. These characters also required a special ticket. They had a great set up in Animator's Palate.
Pirate night: Captain Jack Sparrow, Tinkerbell, Hook and Smee.
Marvel: Black Widow, Spiderman, Captain America.
Disney Junior: Doc McStuffins and Jake the Neverland Pirate.
We also did the free character breakfast on our last day and that had Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto in their regular park outfits.
I very much appreciated how character meets worked. There was a time listed on the navigator. So say Pluto was meeting at 9:30 am. You could get in line up until 15 minutes after the listed time (so 9:45) and you would be guaranteed to meet that character. At that point they cut the line and the character stays to meet everyone.
Tips we picked up along the way:
-If you want to book a cruise placeholder, you don't have to do it at the special cruise booking desk. We kept putting our name on the list and the wait was so long that by the time we were called (hours later) we were doing something we didn't want to leave. Apparently you can just do it at guest services and it took about 2 minutes.
-Don't be afraid to ask for multiple dishes at dinner. We had a table mate who definitely ordered three main courses for one dinner.
-Talk to the crew members. All of them were super friendly. One of our best interactions was talking with a crew member about our Aruba excursion, after he listened to us he was so excited to talk about his own experience getting off the boat.
Extra Charges:
-Bingo
-popcorn and movie theater snacks
-alcoholic drinks (there is an alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink of the day for $5)
-spa services
-port excursions
-smoothie stand
Honestly, I thought there really weren't a lot of extra charges unless you went looking for them. No one ever came up to me asking if I wanted something, except drink servers in the bars or lounges. And it was perfectly acceptable to say no thanks, or to bring food from up top down to a lounge or bar.
Overall thoughts:
Well we booked a placeholder so that should say everything.
We both had a great time. It was way more relaxing than the parks.
It was a great way to get a Disney fix, yet still see other locations.
I think the only thing I could ask for would be a dark ride on the bottom level of the ship, then I would be 100% happy.
I know we should probably give other cruise lines a chance, but I really don't want to. We don't gamble so we don't need a casino. I am very Disney obsessed, so I'd miss the Disney themed shows and the characters. The movie theater and funnel vision were also one of our favorite things.
Now all we have to do is settle on the cruise itinerary that we want to do next time
This did turn out long, but I have everything listed by category so feel free to jump around.
My boyfriend lived in Puerto Rico for a few years while growing up, so he wanted a few extra days to visit. So our travel dates were Thursday Jan 25- Monday Feb 5. We would have left on Sunday after the cruise but we didn't book airfare until late because of a separate issue so it was very expensive to fly out on Sunday as opposed to Monday.
Puerto Rico:
Since we had a few days we rented a car. We rented from Dollar, we had to take a shuttle from the airport but it was essentially painless. We ended up getting upgraded and got a Jeep, so we were excited about that.
Driving was much easier than my boyfriend remembered. The only problem is that the further out from San Juan you got, the fewer red lights were actually working. So you pretty much had to be forceful to be able to turn.
We tried to seek out local restaurants and we never had an issue with not speaking Spanish. We even went to a small grocery store and the clerk spoke English.
There were also giant iguanas everywhere:
-Hotels in San Juan:
All of our hotels were approx $100 a night. I would highly recommend all of them.
Ocean Pearl Inn for Thursday-Saturday. This hotel is located in Luquillo. Luquillo is a coastal town about 45 minutes east of San Juan. If you want to visit the El Yunque National rain forest this is a good hotel for you.
It is a little boutique hotel with about 10 rooms that is directly on the Playa Azul (Blue) beach. The hotel employee was very friendly and welcoming and gave us lots of good recommendations. The hotel has beach towels and chairs to use free of charge.
Just a fair warning, the hotel did not have a TV but was amazing otherwise.
Tres Palmas Inn for Saturday night. This is a San Juan boutique hotel. Once again, it was located right on the beach (Ocean Park) and they had chairs and kayaks. It was about a ten minute drive from the airport.
This hotel had an amazing upstairs patio with a hot tub and an amazing view of the beach. The hotel was approx a 12 minute drive from the Port.
Da'House for Sunday night after the cruise. This hotel was in the dead center of Old San Juan, which also means it was a 5-10 minute walk to both the forts. It reminded me of European hotels, no TV and no elevators. We did have to lug our bags up two floors but that was ok with us.
It was a ten minute $15 taxi ride from the Port.
Activities in San Juan:
-El Yunque National rain forest. We had a rental car so were able to drive ourselves there. It is not very close to San Juan so you'd have to have a car. The rain forest was really nice, except it had been damaged in the hurricane so the visitor center, part of the road and some trails were closed. We enjoyed driving through it and were able to do one trail.
-Bioluminescent Bay kayaking in Fajardo, in Las Croabas Bay. We used Eco Adventures. We had three excellent tour guides who gave a 'how to kayak' talk and we were ready to go. It was 2 people per kayak. We left from the beach and quickly entered the Mangrove channel. It was really neat to kayak through the Mangroves, on our way back some members of our group had headband lights and we were able to see some giant iguanas sleeping in the tree branches.
Once we were in the bay we were supposed to be able to see the lights. The guides had a tarp to cover the kayaks with in case there was too much light at night. To be honest, I wasn't too impressed with the lights, it was just like some vague fireflies in the water, but I have heard that other people have had better experiences with being able to see the lights.
-The Forts in Old Town: Castillo San Cristobal (the bigger one) and El Morro (on the cliffside). The forts are part of the US National Parks Service. I really enjoyed walking through both of them, though, fair warning, Cristobal will take you several hours if you want to see the entire thing. There are some great views of the Port from up there.
-Old Town in San Juan: these streets are so much fun to walk through. It reminded me of a cross between San Francisco and New Orleans. There are also a lot of great restaurants in the area.
The Wonder:
Neither one of us has ever been on a cruise before, so we really have nothing to compare it too. I have heard that some people think the two newer ships are too big. I really loved the Wonder. Maybe you always love your first (hah). It was great being able to leave your room 5 minutes before dinner and not be late. Or to see that Mickey was meeting in 3 minutes and still make it. Try doing that in a theme park.
Our Cabin:
We had an inside stateroom, 6643. When we first saw our room we thought it was tiny, though by the end of the cruise it felt like the perfect size. I thought the bed was amazingly comfortable. The bathroom was tiny but wasn't that bad.
I loved the Disney movie channels, there was an old animated movie station, a new animated movie station, a Marvel station, a live action station (which played Rogue One) and a new Mickey cartoons station. I also liked the station that had information about the ship's route.
The only bad thing about the cabin was that it was located at the Aft part of the ship, we felt that we had a long walk to get back to the cabin.
Weather:
According to other people on the cruise, we had some very unusually rough weather. We ended up leaving San Juan several hours late because of high winds. The ship was rocking pretty intensely that first night, the captain said the swells got up to 18 feet.
We didn't get sick, but I think plenty of people did and it did kind of suck at night, since the rocking kept waking us up.
Luckily, it was only bad that first night. It rained a little off and on, but I think for the most part we had nice, sunny warm weather.
Antigua:
This island was our first stop. Our excursion was booked through Disney (they all were). We did the stingray and kayak excursion. There were about 18 people in our group, all adults and one maybe 12ish year old boy. We were picked up in the port by van and had about a 15 minute drive to the excursion area. We kayaked through mangroves first and had a great time. Next we traveled to a boat dock and were able to use the bathroom before taking a 15 minute boat ride to the sand bar where the sting rays were. These were wild sting rays that still had their barbs. They had been slowly trained by food to come to the area by the tour company. It was a really good experience, except the water was very choppy and it was incredibly windy and I'm not a great swimmer so I wasn't pleased that the waves kept coming up to my face. We had a chance to hold a stingray and get a photo with it, they took one and we were allowed to take one with our own cameras. We had a waterproof Go Pro that worked excellently. After pictures we were given small squids to feed to the stingrays. We had snorkel equipment they provided, but it was way too windy for snorkeling so we traveled back. We were offered rum punch and had a chance to buy our photos. We got ours which was lucky, as ours were not that great that we took.
I would do this excursion again, my only complaint was the weather and the rough waters, but I think that was a pretty rare occurrence.
We didn't really buy any other souvenirs here besides the picture, and I think we ended up getting right back on the Wonder after our excursion. There were some shops near the dock but nothing that interested us.
The island felt safe enough to us, and the terrain was flat with some hills (at least the area we went to).
St. Lucia:
This island is very mountainous and forested. You can take a very short walk and be in the city, Castries. There are tons of little local merchandise shops right there.
We did the Soufrierre Island Delight Adults only tour. We were in a small van with about 20 people. We had our favorite guide of the trip, Zander. He was amazingly entertaining. He gave very good info on everything we drove by, and I feel like we got to see a lot of the island. We drove by banana fields and he stopped at a stand and got us all bananas, then we bought some plantain chips and banana ketchup. We did another stop where a local had one of the local species of snakes, a boa constrictor. For a few dollars you could get a pic with it...I did not. Then we stopped at another stand and we bought some locally made alcohol, passion fruit rum. We went to a great picture stop for the Pitons, two ancient volcanic made mountains. We went to a drive in volcano then ended in a sugar plantation where we had lunch.
I really liked this tour. I feel like I experienced a lot the island had to offer. I would recommend it in a heartbeat, just make sure Zander is your guide.
Bonaire:
This was Disney's first stop at this island. I have to say, this was far and away my favorite island. The water around the entire island is an ecological preserve and it is beautiful. The island was very flat and had flamingos.
Our excursion was not until the afternoon so we brought our snorkel gear and took a $10 taxi to Airport beach (or Nesting beach). The beach was mostly empty since there were no facilities or snorkel/chair renting places. My boyfriend snorkeled and I attempted it. I'm not a great swimmer and I was pretty uncomfortable trying to float along and trust my equipment. I was able to do it a little bit but also ended up bashing my knee into coral and I still have the mark. My boyfriend had a good time though. We had asked our taxi to return and we made it back to the ship with barely enough time to change and meet up for our excursion, which was Donkeys and Salt Flats.
Bonaire has a donkey sanctuary. After modern tech came to the island, people abandoned their donkeys. The donkeys did ok during the rainy season, but really suffered during the dry season so the sanctuary was started. The sanctuary had 700 donkeys, and there were estimated to be 400 wild. The sanctuary does neuter the males. We were in an open air jeep, there were ten of us. We were given two giant buckets of carrots when we entered the preserve and we slowly drove through it (it was huge) some of the tamer, wiser donkeys trotted after the jeep trying to get carrots. The donkeys were all incredibly gentle and would take the carrots from us. We ended up in the little corral for the older donkeys and the pregnant ones (these had been pulled from the wild). They even had a two month old baby we all got to take pictures with. At the end there was a small gift shop.
After that, we had a 15 minute spot at a gorgeous beach, Sorobon beach.
Then we drove over to the salt flats, which were a very pretty pink. Our guide gave us each a small salt rock. We even saw some wild flamingos in the distance. By the time our tour was over it was almost time to board the boat, we walked around a bit near the dock and I bought the best tasting alcohol ever.
Cute story...so since it was Disney's first time at the island, families kept bringing their kids to look at the ship. All the characters were out on the 4th floor deck waving at everyone at one point. And as the ship pulled out all the characters went out again to wave goodbye.
This was definitely my favorite island, and according to every other guest we spoke with their favorite as well.
Aruba:
I liked this island, but it seemed the most commercialized of all the islands we saw. There was just luxury hotel after luxury hotel. The island was very flat and seemed to be either beach or desert.
We did the semi sub and sightseeing excursion. We were on a big bus and we stopped at the California lighthouse, the Caribas rock formation and the Natural Bridge.
The highlight was the semi sub tour, where we took a water taxi out to the semi sub (which is exactly like the Finding Nemo subs in DL). The best part was actually seeing a giant sea turtle out in the open ocean while traveling to the semi sub.
I was actually a bit disappointed in this, we circled the Antilles shipwreck, which was where all the fish were hanging out. This meant that only one side got to see the fish at a time, though. And the water was a bit cloudy. It was ok, just not as good as I expected.
After the excursion we went back out on our own and walked to Eagle beach to see the sunset. Our time on the island ended up being extended to 2 am. Apparently it is a super safe island so Disney felt comfortable with us being out there late.
Entertainment on the Wonder:
We had a 7 night cruise. There was a premier show scheduled each night. There were 3 Disney shows and the variety acts.
The first night was Be Our Guest, which we actually ended up skipping. We really wanted to see the ship leave port and since our departure was delayed several hours, we missed all the show except the titular song at the very end, Be Our Guest. We had taken the 'welcome to the ship' tour earlier in the day, so we knew that this first night's show was just a preview of what was to come. So we felt ok missing it. We talked to our crew member friend Elizabeth later on the cruise and she said a lot of props had to be left out of that show because of how rocky the water was that first night.
The other Disney shows were the Golden Mickeys (loved it, we met Ensign Benson on the final night and told her she was our favorite), Disney Dreams and Frozen. Frozen was good and I liked the puppets at the start, but we are totally Frozen'd out. We saw the show in DCA, the sing a long in DHS and the Broadway rehearsal in Denver. It's just a bit much.
One of the premier shows was just a showing of the movie Coco, so we skipped that.
There were two variety shows, one with a ventriloquist magician, Taylor Mason. I was skeptical about his show but it ended up being hilarious. I kept finding myself laughing at things that I probably shouldn't have laughed at, but it was a good time.
Our other variety show was a comedian named Marcus Monroe, we missed his show because we desperately needed a nap.
The Golden Mickeys was both of our favorites, but we really enjoyed them all.
Daily Activities on the Wonder:
Since this was our first cruise we went a little crazy trying to experience everything. The Navigator app was very helpful, you could sort activities by everyone, adults only, then all the different levels of kid's clubs.
Movie Theater: I love movies so this was one of my favorite places. They play the most current movies, on our sailing we had the live action Beauty and the Beast, Thor Ragnarok, Star Wars The Last Jedi, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Cars 3 and Coco. They even had 3d showings.
Funnel Vision: Until about 1 in the morning Disney movies were constantly playing on the funnel vision, which is a giant movie screen on the funnel by the main pool. Some of the movies that were played were Enchanted, Lion King, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Lilo and Stitch. I loved watching the movies out here once the sun went down.
Trivia: I really loved the trivia events since I am super competitive. Just some of the sorts of trivia they had: Disney, Disney Villains, Disney Tunes, Pub Trivia, General Knowledge Trivia, Songs of Different Decades (70s, 80s, 90s, 00s). There was always a little prize for the team who won, there were medals with Mickey ears, cruise line keychains (we finally won the Villains trivia and we got these little beauties) and luggage tags.
Games: There were lots of random games. Some were family games, some were adult only. A example of the adult games (which were usually held later at night) was the Match Game, which is always hilarious. One of the family (which just means everyone) games was themed towards Pirate night and the teams spun a wheel and participated in various challenges. I was picked to be on Who Wants to be a Mouseketeer (who wants to be a millionaire). The prize was a Mickey medal and you got a Mouseketeer pin for participating. I ended up getting to the 4th question (out of 5) and missed it. The question: what animal bothers Mickey in Steamboat Willie? The choices were a parrot, a cat and two others I forget. I had no idea so I asked the audience and a few people said cat. I went with that and it was actually a parrot
It was still a fun time.Bingo: People on Disney ships love bingo. I didn't realize how popular this would be. I guess since there isn't a casino this is the only gambling game. Cards were an additional charge, but you could sit and watch for free. The hosts and guest were super entertaining. I finally learned the meaning of the phrase "Shake it up Betty!"
Ship Tour: This was great. It was a free tour led by Tamsin. We got to learn all about the design choices for the ship starting at Palo. Since the Magic and Wonder were built in Italy, they decided to theme the high end restaurant after Venice. So if you notice the poles inside Palo look like gondola poles. There are masks decorating the restaurant from a local vendor in Italy. The guest books are all made by hand by another local vendor in Venice, as are the plates.
The designers wanted the ships to be Disney, but also to hearken back to the classic ships of the 1920's. The ship has Mickey's colors, the bottom of the ship is a dark blue (since black would have been too hot). The blue is an original color called Monica blue, for the woman whose pants ended up being the exact shade of blue they wanted. Disney had to get special permission from the Coast Guard to make the lifeboats yellow, instead of the usual orange. The funnels are predominately red. Only one funnel is functional, the other holds the teen club.
We learned all about the different kinds of carpets and their functionality. If you are in a stateroom hall, there are 5 pointed stars on the carpet. The top of the star always points to the forward part of the ship. If you follow that you'll never be lost.
The 5th floor is where the kids clubs are located. That floor is actually shorter than the rest so that the kids will feel at ease. The section of the ship with the adult only area is one of the taller areas so the adults feel more childlike.
We also learned about all the different types of music played on the ship, there is no music in front of the movie theater because the show is inside.
I highly recommend this tour, we learned a lot more.
Food:
counter service
-Pinocchio's Pizza: the pizza wasn't the best, but it was decent. I liked the BBQ pizza, and they had a different pizza of the day.
-Daisy's Delites: I was obsessed with the Turkey Cranberry sandwich here, but to be honest I thought all the sandwiches were good. The chocolate chip cookies here were the best. I liked getting the cookies then going to the soft serve ice cream station and making myself a cookie ice cream sandwich.
-Ice Cream Station: I wish they had bowls available here, that is my only complaint as I've never liked cones.
-Pete's Bites (I think that was the name): the burger and hot dog station. It also had a shwarma station which we probably used the most. The fries here were really good, and they had a sandwich of the day as well.
-Room Service: we never ended up using this. I really wanted to, but the timing just never worked or we were stuffed.
I know some people have complained about the counter service food, but we both really liked it and felt that we had enough choices.
Cabana buffet
-three words: corn dog nuggets (that may tell you a lot about my palate). I was impressed by the breakfast and lunch buffets. Breakfast had my favorite Eggs Benedict. I think there was pretty much any breakfast food you could want. The omelet station was fantastic. I was very pleased with the POG juice. For lunch I was happy with the shrimp and crab station.
table service
The Wonder had 4 table service restaurants. One is the extra cost Palo which we did not attend.
-Animator's Palate: I loved loved loved this restaurant. I had heard before that the restaurant started out in black and white and moved to color. I don't think they do that particular show anymore, the first name there were sketches on the screens and at the end of the night Sorcerer Mickey came in to lead a parade and movie clips were shown. I really liked the second night's show, we all drew a character (I can't do people so I did a penguin) and they were brought to life on screens at the end of the night. Also...has anyone ever seen cuter butter knives??
Tiana's Place: This restaurant was a close second. Since we like characters, we loved having Tiana sing, and Louis came in to visit. There was a live jazz band which we also enjoyed, but some of our table mates thought the band made it a bit too loud and I could see that.
Triton's: This restaurant was pretty, but I didn't see anything spectacular about it.
Food Quality
The food quality was a bit confusing. I had some of the best meals of my life, and then other nights the food just fell flat. This was actually ok, as there were many other food options.
Table Mates
I was really worried about this going into the cruise. We ended up being matched with two other couples, and we actually had a good time. We were the only first time cruisers so the others were able to give us some tips.
We had a good time at meals chatting about what we did during the day, and we even met up a few times to play trivia.
Crew Members:
We loved the crew members. Our head waiter was Ronald from India, I was amazed he could remember our names and details about us since he had so many guests. Our server was Jose from Santo Domingo, we all loved him. Our assistant waiter was Cristal from Mexico and she was fantastic too.
I really liked all the entertainment people. Jo was our adult entertainment hostess, then we had Skipper Steve (gotta love the Jungle Cruise jokes), Tamsin...and a few others whose names I forget
We also made friends with Elizabeth, who was working character lines. We were also pretty sure she was good friends with Ariel, who we always had great interactions with.
Pirate Night:
I liked Pirate Night. We didn't go all out with costumes but we had some striped clothing and other subtle things.
We had a good time meeting all the Pirate characters. We ended up getting a spot for the show and fireworks about an hour early on the second deck dead center. One of our table mates had never seen the fireworks and wanted to be sure to have a good spot.
I thought the pre-fireworks show went on a bit long. It just seemed like dance after dance. The best part was when the dads came up for air guitar, they all really went for it and it was great. Oh, there was also one of the boys dancing with the kids on stage who I think is destined for Broadway. He had some moves.
To be honest, I just thought the fireworks were ok. I mean, compared to the theme park fireworks they weren't great. I know we're at sea and on a ship, but I just wasn't too impressed.
Characters:
Thought we are adults, we like to meet the characters. We had a good time on this trip meeting characters because they had lots of different outfits that you can't see on land (yep, we just love the characters). On our cruise, we had:
Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Pluto. These characters had formal outfits, cruise outfits, casual outfits and pirate outfits.
Stitch: casual outfit and pirate.
Ariel, Cinderella, Tiana (in her princess dress and silver dress while in the restaurant), Belle (gold gown and blue dress). You needed a special ticket (it was free) which you could sign up for either before or right when you get on the ship.
Anna, Elsa and Olaf. These characters also required a special ticket. They had a great set up in Animator's Palate.
Pirate night: Captain Jack Sparrow, Tinkerbell, Hook and Smee.
Marvel: Black Widow, Spiderman, Captain America.
Disney Junior: Doc McStuffins and Jake the Neverland Pirate.
We also did the free character breakfast on our last day and that had Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto in their regular park outfits.
I very much appreciated how character meets worked. There was a time listed on the navigator. So say Pluto was meeting at 9:30 am. You could get in line up until 15 minutes after the listed time (so 9:45) and you would be guaranteed to meet that character. At that point they cut the line and the character stays to meet everyone.
Tips we picked up along the way:
-If you want to book a cruise placeholder, you don't have to do it at the special cruise booking desk. We kept putting our name on the list and the wait was so long that by the time we were called (hours later) we were doing something we didn't want to leave. Apparently you can just do it at guest services and it took about 2 minutes.
-Don't be afraid to ask for multiple dishes at dinner. We had a table mate who definitely ordered three main courses for one dinner.
-Talk to the crew members. All of them were super friendly. One of our best interactions was talking with a crew member about our Aruba excursion, after he listened to us he was so excited to talk about his own experience getting off the boat.
Extra Charges:
-Bingo
-popcorn and movie theater snacks
-alcoholic drinks (there is an alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink of the day for $5)
-spa services
-port excursions
-smoothie stand
Honestly, I thought there really weren't a lot of extra charges unless you went looking for them. No one ever came up to me asking if I wanted something, except drink servers in the bars or lounges. And it was perfectly acceptable to say no thanks, or to bring food from up top down to a lounge or bar.
Overall thoughts:
Well we booked a placeholder so that should say everything.
We both had a great time. It was way more relaxing than the parks.
It was a great way to get a Disney fix, yet still see other locations.
I think the only thing I could ask for would be a dark ride on the bottom level of the ship, then I would be 100% happy.
I know we should probably give other cruise lines a chance, but I really don't want to. We don't gamble so we don't need a casino. I am very Disney obsessed, so I'd miss the Disney themed shows and the characters. The movie theater and funnel vision were also one of our favorite things.
Now all we have to do is settle on the cruise itinerary that we want to do next time
