Our first WONDER-filled cruise!

[bcwife76]

So we just booked our first Disney cruise - in fact our first cruise ever (we usually book all inclusive resorts to Mexico!) Super excited!!

It's a 4 day repositioning cruise on the Wonder from Vancouver to San Diego - a good length, we thought, to get our cruise legs ;-) Plus our kids (who will be 4 & 7 at the time, we don't cruise til Sept 2015) will only miss a few days of school.

Will have so many questions I am sure; for now I was wondering about pool temperatures (weather I know, being a west coast gal). Are the pools heated on the Wonder? If we travel with carry on luggage only (for our flight home, we want to bring carry on only to avoid luggage fees and I'm a pro at travelling with carry on only on flights) does that mean we won't have to wait for our luggage to be brought to our cabin? How early can we board the ship if it leaves port at 4pm? how late can we stay on the ship our last day if it docks at 7:45am? TIA

 

[wendydarling33]

Congrats - should be a good cruise! We were booked on the same itinerary a few years back but then I got pregnant and couldn't sail so we switched to an earlier Alaskan cruise. To answer your questions, the pools should be heated. In Alaska they were really warm - I forget the temp but it felt like a warm bath. The air on the other hand was quite chilly so no laying out by the pool. I remember watching my son swim - he was having a blast in the water while I was wearing mittens outside watching him. I'm guessing the Pacific Coast will be pretty chilly too.

I believe you can lug the carry-on with you on the ship but you will have to keep it with you until the room is ready which can be a pain. You could pack a smaller day bag and then just check the carry-on. We've never had to wait too long to get our luggage.

Your boarding time depends on your assigned port arrival time which you get when you check in online. The earliest times will probably be 11 ish.

On departure day, they generally get you off the ship pretty early. Everything is pretty much shut down that morning except for food anyway - it's actually kind of depressing IMHO. There's a time when you have to be out of your stateroom (dependent on which dining you have) I want to say most people are off the ship by 9ish.

 

[bcwife76]

Awesome, thanks for all the info

 

[bcwife76]

Our stateroom is on deck 6, where is this in relation to the kids club, restaurants and theatre?

 

[Heard02]

Deck 5 hosts the kids clubs! You will LOVE the wonder! I think its my favorite of the four!

 

[mhingher]

We just did our first cruise last month. We did the 5 day Western Caribbean, but in the Wonder and our kids are 4 and 7! We all had such a great time that we booked another cruise for this December on the Dream! Hope you enjoy it as much as we did My kids loved spending time in the kids clubs and at the pool. It was nice to spend time with them and have adult time also!

 

[bcwife76]

Awesome, thanks everyone!

 

[svanda]

I've never been on a Disney cruise before, my first will be this June, can't wait. I've been on other cruises before and I can assure you that it's the best way to vacation. You will not regret it.

 

[bcwife76]

Oh my gosh I totally forgot to update my PTR! Not that I think anyone is following, esp since I dropped the ball

Well now we are only 161 days out and some more plans have been made. After our WONDERFUL-cruise docks in San Diego we are taking Amtrak up to Anaheim and going to DL/DCA for 3 days!! Eventhough it won't be 3 full days *sad face* because we won't arrive until nearly noon on the Thursday and we have a 9pm flight home on the Saturday, I went ahead and bought 3 day park hoppers (one was free as I had enough Airmiles!) because we LOVE to park hop. So we'll drop our bags at the Castle Inn & Suites (not my first choice but my DH scored a kick-*** deal with a corporate rate through his work so it will have to do) and we'll head to the parks for some full-on fun! Here's hoping my land legs come back quickly enough.

Since this is my first cruise I'm wondering how the whole sea-legs-train-legs-land-legs thing will go ;-)

 

[bcwife76]

75 day mark! Did our online check in last night at 9:01pm (PST) - got an 11:30am PAT and a 10am Palo ressie for brunch on our first sea day!
Not planning on getting off the ship in Victoria to do any excursions since we've been there multiple times. Still thinking about doing a spa treatment, still on the fence about that.

ETA: Ok just booked the Exotic Rasul treatment for dh and myself - eeek!