Almost "Live from" Disney Wonder to Alaska! My Second Disney Experience

[lovely_serenity]

We first headed to the atrium:

 

 

And made our way to the elevators. (Jean vest: Bro, Pink on the right: 30’s girl cousin, Black cardigan next to her: her mom, Stripes: my mom)

 

 

All of our rooms were on the same floor (deck 6), so we all headed there. When we arrived on that floor, everyone separated to check out their rooms and agreed to meet back up at the midship elevators.

 

This time around, our family decided to pick some more interesting rooms. We had staterooms 6521 (kids) and 6515 (parents). They were special inside cabins that opened up sideways as opposed to regular cabins.

 

 

 

Although the square footage is the same as a regular inside cabin, it felt a lot bigger. Upon entering the room, this was what I saw in front of me:

 

 

To the left:

 

Edited September 1, 2014 by lovely_serenity

[lovely_serenity]

The t.v. is to the left. It's cute as it swivels and pulls out of the wall. It can also get pushed back into its own little crevice. Something to note however, the reception sometimes is very static-y and broken, just pull the screen in or out. Just move it a bit and it'll fix itself.

 

 

In front of the bed: (to the left is a relatively large chest to store things in. Good space. Apparently my cousin’s inside cabin (regular orientation) didn’t have one.

 

 

To the right:

 

 

Inside that closet: (along with a safe beneath it and life jackets above)

 

 

The bathroom to the right of that last picture:

 

(To the left side, stuck to the wall is the hairdryer. It activates when you pull it off of its base. They’re connected by 2 strong magnets. One thing to note is that after a few minutes of use, the hairdryer gets REALLY hot, literally too hot to hold. It will burn your fingers. This is why I strongly suggest the use of the tiny towel next to the sink to hold it.)

 

 

(Quite small. Later in the cruise, there was a weird urine smell that came from the toilet that wouldn’t go away. It’d briefly disappear after it was cleaned but quickly returned when the toilet seat was opened. The sink’s faucet didn’t work either. It had an oddly weak stream of water and it was only producing boiling hot water. It got fixed promptly after reporting it to our stateroom host. We didn’t even know it was broken until my parents noticed ours’ was different from theirs’.)

 

 

(Another note: They provide us with the worst tissue paper in the entire world. This paper gets ripped into shreds of broken pieces whenever your try to pull a piece out. It’s even worse when your hands are wet. -_- It leaves little pieces behind on yours hands (literally, the toilet paper was better.) and make you very frustrated. I hated it.)

Edited September 1, 2014 by lovely_serenity

[lovely_serenity]

Very cute bathroom products:

 

 

(Shampoo & conditioner bottles impossible to open with fingers, very tightly clicked shut. I used the metal soap rack in the bathtub to crack open top LOL)

 

The shower/bathtub:

 

 

(The bathtub was REALLY small and the shower water stream hurt. It was sharp and painful. It became better after Bro fiddled with it, but it was still a narrow stream of water that was difficult to use. Very small coverage of water.)

 

 

After scoping out the bathroom, I came back to the main living space and checked out the present that had been left for us on our bed.

 

P.S. In case anyone cares, our room’s closet had 21 hangers, so each of us got 7 :P

 

 

Our Silver Castaway Club member Welcome gift! (DCL cruisers with 1-5 cruises)

 

 

Inside it was a magnetic dry erase board and pen: (very strong magnet by the way. Many people stuck it on the outside of their stateroom doors)

 

[lovely_serenity]

And a cute highlighter to highlight the things that we wanted to do in the Navigator! (I actually forgot to bring mine, so this was very handy! :D)

 

 

I also spotted something interesting next to our bed!

 

 

This was useful, but we only used the iPhone/iPod music function once because it caused us to sleep in when we didn’t want to. Listening to music all night desensitized us to noise and made us wake up too late.

 

 

Following that, I checked out our vanity:

 

(Our WavePhones that we never used because there was like a $50 fee for losing it LOL.)

 

 

Our dining tickets! Our rotation this time was TAPTAAP (T=Triton’s, A=Animator’s Palate, P=Parrot Cay). Disney has their DCL exclusive rotational dining that we quite like. Your servers follow you to each rotation and you keep the same table numbers. Besides their regular rotational dining menus (the regular menus of each specific restaurant), there were themed dining nights in which everyone at every restaurant would eat the same thing (Golden Mickey’s formal night menu, Toy Story semi-formal night menu, Taste of Alaska Menu, and Till We Meet Again farewell menu).

 

 

Inside the vanity was the room service breakfast menu:

 

[lovely_serenity]

 

*Note: The room service menu is in this leather book left on your vanity. It’s like a few pages in, so you kind of have to hunt for it. We couldn’t find it initially until our mom told us where it was.

 

After we were settled, I hung my FE gift collector on my metal fish outside my room :D. Just FYI, this is just an FE I made myself. Other people have legit FEs (Refresher, FE=Fish Extender. The gift collector extends off of the metal fish, and hence … Fish Extender. LOL) that you will see later when I go give some presents out! Real FEs have pockets with everyone’s individual names on them. Mine’s a Rilakkuma bear bag I hand decorated :-).

 

 

 

After that was done (I secured it with some zip ties so no one could steal my bear bad LOL), we met with our parents and started heading to the aft (that’s what I meant earlier ^^”) elevators (our rooms are very forward).

 

 

 

From here, we waited for all of our relatives to gather. After everyone had, we didn’t really have any plan of what to do next, so I just suggested we explore deck 9.

 

 

And so that’s what we did! :)

[lovely_serenity]

We took the elevators and wound up right in front of Beach Blanket Buffet! It appeared to still be open! We took a disinfectant wipe (you have to use them to enter eating venues and kid’s clubs), cleaned our hands and entered the buffet to check out the embarkation lunch there.

 

 

It was basically the same thing we ate, but in a squishier venue.

 

 

(To the left in the pink is my 10 year old girl cousin and the white is my late-20s girl cousin)

 

 

Buffet drink station (contrary to what I had heard, the cup sizes were large, not tiny)

 

 

The dessert table (plus some kid LOL)

 

 

After we had seen all the food, we headed out the back door to see the open deck seating area.

 

[Jules.]

Subscribing, thank you :)

[lovely_serenity]

2 NOTES:

 

1.) The fee for losing the WavePhone is actually $250 per phone

 

2.) Look at the tickets below. Something many people seem to miss is the character breakfast details at the bottom. I'll go into more detail about it later when we actually get to those pictures, but just make sure you go to the character breakfast. It only happens once.

 

Edited September 2, 2014 by lovely_serenity

[Ex techie]

2 NOTES:

 

1.) The fee for losing the WavePhone is actually $250 per phone

 

2.) Look at the tickets below. Something many people seem to miss is the character breakfast details at the bottom. I'll go into more detail about it later when we actually get to those pictures, but just make sure you go to the character breakfast. It only happens once.

 

Looking at your photo's, it's no wonder people miss that!

It looks like a disclaimer or something!

 

They really could increase the opacity of the background colors and DCL logo, start using a more friendly font than Times New Roman, even Arial if they cannot use a more DCL style font.

If they cannot do that, print out additional tickets in a bigger bolder font for the Character Breakfast.

(or maybe they don't do either to keep the number of people down)?

 

Hmmmmm! :p;)

 

ex techie

Edited September 2, 2014 by Ex techie

[lovely_serenity]

Subscribing, thank you :)

 

Thank YOU! ;)

[lovely_serenity]

Looking at your photo's, it's no wonder people miss that!

It looks like a disclaimer or something!

 

They really could increase the opacity of the background colors and DCL logo, start using a more friendly font than Times New Roman, even Arial if they cannot use a more DCL style font.

If they cannot do that, print out additional tickets in a bigger bolder font for the Character Breakfast.

(or maybe they don't do either to keep the number of people down)?

 

Hmmmmm! :p;)

 

ex techie

I know, right?! We wouldn't have known about it if our server hadn't told us about it! I definitely agree that they should make a separate ticket for the Character Breakfasts!

 

(&& LOL good point :D :D :D)

[karin5]

Yep, our family missed the character breakfast on our last cruise. We didn't see it on the ticket, and it was the last day of the cruise, so I couldn't reschedule. Oops. It won't happen next time.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatal

[Latorre]

Hi Sarah!

 

Love your reviews! I'm taking my first Cunard cruise next year and thinking about booking something for december but haven't decided wich line. Can you make a comparison between Cunard and Disney? I mean about the atmosphere of the ships... Congrats on the excellent work!

[lovely_serenity]

Yep, our family missed the character breakfast on our last cruise. We didn't see it on the ticket, and it was the last day of the cruise, so I couldn't reschedule. Oops. It won't happen next time.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatal

 

Aw, how unfortunate! The bad thing about it is that they only happen once :/ One for the early seating and once for the late. They even told us that is that if you miss a character because you go to the washroom, chances are they aren't going to come back either!!

[lovely_serenity]

Hi Sarah!

 

Love your reviews! I'm taking my first Cunard cruise next year and thinking about booking something for december but haven't decided wich line. Can you make a comparison between Cunard and Disney? I mean about the atmosphere of the ships... Congrats on the excellent work!

 

Hi!

 

Thanks for reading my reviews! I hope you have a great time on board (: && But of course! These are my favourite kinds of questions ;)

 

Ship in general: Cunard = Disney

Ship size: Cunard > Disney

Service: Cunard = Disney

Dining Room Food: Cunard < Disney by a long shot

Buffet: Cunard > Disney by a long shot

Alternative eating venues during the day: Cunard: Golden Lion Pub, Buffet (ALWAYS OPEN), Queen's Room Tea time > Disney: Buffet (ONLY OPEN AT SPECIFIC MEAL TIMES. ANNOYING.), Goofy's Galley, Pizza, Pluto's Dog House *HOWEVER, Pluto's Dog House chicken strips are delicous

Ice cream machines: Cunard has 2 flavours, Disney's changes every day and has 4 flavours.

Youth Activities: Cunard < Disney

Adult Activities: Cunard = Disney, not much for both LOL. At least Disney tries their best and has many 18+ areas. They're very strict about not letting kids in.

Staterooms: Cunard's Deluxe Inside > Any of Disney's Inside

otherwise, Cunard average stateroom dimensions < Disney's average stateroom dimensions. They're known to have some of the bigger than average rooms

Bathrooms: Cunard > Disney

Beds: Cunard > Disney

Room Storage Space: Cunard > Disney

Atmosphere: Cunard > Disney

Gym: Cunard > Disney

Theater: Cunard > Disney

Pools: Cunard has 1 good one, Disney has 2 tiny kids one and one okay adult one

Shows: Cunard < Disney (However, Cunard had very good shows overall in comparison to MOST ships. Disney is just unbeatable. They have BROADWAY shows. -_- How do you beat that??

 

Notes:

*Disney has characters roaming the ship, there's nothing much to do on board for Cunard

*Cunard has afternoon tea, Disney doesn't

*Disney has included soda, hot chocolate, soft drinks. Also juices in the dining rooms. Cunard doesn't. They just has water, iceD tea and cranberry juice.

*Disney has no casino

*Cunard separates their staterooms into classes and they separate their dining rooms into classes and so ... yenno... if you aren't in the Grill Suites .. you feel lower class LOL o_o

 

I'll put some more if I remember any, but this is the best I can do for now! :)

Edited September 4, 2014 by lovely_serenity

[lovely_serenity]

It was actually quite nice!

 

 

From here we could see Canada Place up close!

 

 

The adults kind of congregated at a table and us kids kind of … snuck off to eat ice cream LOL.

 

“C’mon guys! This way! >:D”

 

 

I was pleasantly surprised, as last time I had sailed with Disney, they had had only 2 flavours: Chocolate and Vanilla (as well as the twist option) which, they did!

 

 

BUT, with a nice modification. The machine next to this one had fruit flavours that changed every day! :D

 

 

Sis had Strawberry:

 

[lovely_serenity]

My 10 year old cousin had Mango:

 

 

And so did I:

 

 

To the right of the ice cream machines was Goofy’s Galley: (LOL the crew members posed for me :D)

 

 

This place has healthier food. It goes without saying that us kids didn’t eat there much LOL.

 

(Fruits)

 

 

(Paninis and Wraps)

 

 

(Salads)

 

[Scrapnana]

Enjoying your latest "live" report.

 

I agree with your Cunard/Disney comparisons except for the beds. My bed on Fantasy beat out the QE, but only slightly.

[Katgoesonholiday]

Thanks for posting your review. I will be following along with eager anticipation as we are doing our first Disney cruise (and my kids very first cruise) in December so am hoping to pick up all the hints and tips that I can - #1 being to check our dining ticket for the character breakfast!!!

[Shmoo here]

Thanks for posting your review. I will be following along with eager anticipation as we are doing our first Disney cruise (and my kids very first cruise) in December so am hoping to pick up all the hints and tips that I can - #1 being to check our dining ticket for the character breakfast!!!

 

Hate to tell you, but if you're talking about your Dec cruise on the Magic, chances are there won't be a Character breakfast. While they are only offered on the classic ships (Magic & Wonder) on cruises of at least 7 nights, they also have to have 3 sea days (or 2 sea days and a late port arrival day) to accomplish all the seatings necessary for the breakfast.

 

Your western itinerary only has 2 sea days.

[Latorre]

Hi!

 

Thanks for reading my reviews! I hope you have a great time on board (: && But of course! These are my favourite kinds of questions ;)

 

Ship in general: Cunard = Disney

Ship size: Cunard > Disney

Service: Cunard = Disney

Dining Room Food: Cunard < Disney by a long shot

Buffet: Cunard > Disney by a long shot

Alternative eating venues during the day: Cunard: Golden Lion Pub, Buffet (ALWAYS OPEN), Queen's Room Tea time > Disney: Buffet (ONLY OPEN AT SPECIFIC MEAL TIMES. ANNOYING.), Goofy's Galley, Pizza, Pluto's Dog House *HOWEVER, Pluto's Dog House chicken strips are delicous

Ice cream machines: Cunard has 2 flavours, Disney's changes every day and has 4 flavours.

Youth Activities: Cunard < Disney

Adult Activities: Cunard = Disney, not much for both LOL. At least Disney tries their best and has many 18+ areas. They're very strict about not letting kids in.

Staterooms: Cunard's Deluxe Inside > Any of Disney's Inside

otherwise, Cunard average stateroom dimensions < Disney's average stateroom dimensions. They're known to have some of the bigger than average rooms

Bathrooms: Cunard > Disney

Beds: Cunard > Disney

Room Storage Space: Cunard > Disney

Atmosphere: Cunard > Disney

Gym: Cunard > Disney

Theater: Cunard > Disney

Pools: Cunard has 1 good one, Disney has 2 tiny kids one and one okay adult one

Shows: Cunard < Disney (However, Cunard had very good shows overall in comparison to MOST ships. Disney is just unbeatable. They have BROADWAY shows. -_- How do you beat that??

 

Notes:

*Disney has characters roaming the ship, there's nothing much to do on board for Cunard

*Cunard has afternoon tea, Disney doesn't

*Disney has included soda, hot chocolate, soft drinks. Also juices in the dining rooms. Cunard doesn't. They just has water, iceD tea and cranberry juice.

*Disney has no casino

*Cunard separates their staterooms into classes and they separate their dining rooms into classes and so ... yenno... if you aren't in the Grill Suites .. you feel lower class LOL o_o

 

I'll put some more if I remember any, but this is the best I can do for now! :)

Wow! Thanks a lot Sarah! The only thing that got me really thinking was the dining room food wich you put Disney in front of Cunard "by a long shot" : is Cunard so bad?

[Shmoo here]

Hi guys! Sarah here! :)

 

So, this is going to be my third ever trip report! (You can see the first HAL one HERE and the second Cunard one HERE. First was to Alaska, second one was in the Greek Isles). This time around, I’m going to be reporting on the Disney Wonder going to Alaska (7 Night Vancouver to Vancouver)! It ran from August 18 – 25. This was my second time on Disney, my 4th time going to Alaska (I could basically become a tour guide of the place LOL) and 9th overall cruise. ...

 

OP, I'm enjoying your report. We sailed on the Wonder 3 times a couple of years ago, and I miss her! I'm interested in any comparisons you may make between the different cruiselines you taken re: the actual Alaska experience during the cruise.

 

Keep the info flowing!

[lovely_serenity]

The drink station is very close by too!

 

 

Right in front of Goofy’s Galley is the Mickey Pool:

 

 

(Notice the life guard?)

 

Pluto’s Dog House:

 

 

(The menu up there says: Hot Dog – Bratwurst/Fish Burger/Tomato Salad/Chicken Strips (these are SO good)/Hamburger-Cheeseburger/Veggie Burger/Cajun Chicken Breast)

 

The Goofy Pool with Disney’s state-of-the-art “funnel vision”. (It’s a t.v. you can watch while you’re swimming :D)

 

 

(Notice this other life guard? Cruise ships don’t normally have them. I’m quite certain Disney now has them because recently, a child drowned on one of their ships in the Caribbean. Very sad. Now they’re being extra cautious.)

 

Pinocchio’s Pizzeria:

 

 

(The pizza’s really good when it’s FRESH)

 

We slowly make our way forward and happen upon the arcade.

 

[lovely_serenity]

 

My 20-something year old guy cousin requests that we stop by for him to check it out. (LOL As if I have a problem with that. *takes camera out* I was going to go in there already! ^^)

 

 

Here’s the recharge station (you have to pay to play)

 

 

When we come back out, my cousin expresses his disappointment with their arcade. He says they have no shooting games. ^^”

 

We keep walking and arrive at the Quiet Cove Pool (Adults only, 18+ && HAHA I FINALLY MADE THE AGE CUT. I was so frustrated last time I was on this ship because I was like … 16 or something and so they wouldn’t let me in ANYWHERE. I HAVE FINALLY AGED SUFFICIENTLY.):

 

 

 

After exploring deck 9, we return to the buffet outside deck to look for the adults … AAANND they’re gone. =_=” (Note: Although most of my cousins ARE indeed adults, and technically I am too, I shall refer to “the parent group” as the adults, and the “their offspring group” as the kids, regardless of their age). Since we couldn’t find them, we just headed up to deck 10 because I saw my 20s-sibling-duo cousins’ mom wave at me :D She was gesturing for us to join her. I pointed her out to my cousins and we headed up. On the way there, my mom and 2 of her sisters appeared out of nowhere and asked me where their other sister was. I then pointed at she who had just waved at me.

 

[lovely_serenity]

From up there we had a nicer view of the Mickey Pool. (To be fair, this time around, the kid’s pool water doesn’t look so murky)

 

 

It had this really interesting Mickey’s hand water slide:

 

 

We walked around and came across this big block of white. Apparently it was Palo:

 

 

Above the pool, Goofy was taking a dive:

 

 

And of course, my favourite funnel in the whole world:

 

 

 

Disney has the only horn that plays actual music :D Have you seen the videos? The older ships only play “When you wish upon a star~~”, the newer ships also play “Makes no difference who you are~~”! ^^ I love it! They also play a few more songs too! (Like “Be Our Guest”, “Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life For Me”, “It’s a Small World After All”, “Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee” and “A Dream is a Wish You Heart Makes”)

 

By the way, if you couldn’t tell, I’m a SERIOUS Disney fanatic (: IT’S MY CHILDHOOD, OKAY.