You left the kids where?? Our "kid-free" 4/10 MR cruise on the Wonder - Updated 5/1

[DisFanInCO]

Hi there! I know there have been a ton of TRs on the Mexican Riviera cruises lately, but since my DH and I were cruising without our kids this time, I thought we might be able to give a little bit of a unique perspective. So, first a quick introduction to us and how we wound up on a Disney cruise while our kids stayed behind.

My DH (John) and I (Holly) cruised the Eastern Caribbean last January with our kids and loved it so much, we decided to rebook onboard. DH has been trying to get me to Mexico for the last 15 years, so I figured a Disney cruise would be a good way to go. To save some money on the deposit, we just booked the two adults with the intention of adding the kids later on. Fast forward several months and as we’re looking at DS8’s school schedule we realize that not only will he not be on spring break during the week we booked but we will have just taken him out of school for a few days for a Father/son trip to Disneyland about a month before the cruise, so we decided to leave the kids at home with Grandma. Thank you Grandma!!

With that, let’s dive in! Oh, but first – one small warning. I am seriously horrible at remembering to bring our camera to activities like dinner, so while I do have lots of pictures, I’m missing some pics of things that might be important to some of you, like food. I figure there are enough other “food porn” threads on the boards that can tide you over, so hopefully you won’t be TOO disappointed

 

[DisFanInCO]

As some of you know, I am a planner and I like to make sure there’s as little stress as possible at the beginning of our vacations, so we decided to fly out early on Saturday morning just to make sure we got there in plenty of time.
DH likes to make fun of how much I love Disney, so he took this photo of me at the airport with my DVC bag, my Mickey Mouse suitcase and my D23 Scavenger Hunt t-shirt. (Yes, I’m fully aware that I AM a nutcase )

Living in Colorado, we pretty much try to go to the parks whenever we have a chance, so the logical choice for us was to spend the day at Disneyland. We flew into Orange County and had a town car take us from the airport to Disneyland Hotel. We were checked in and on our way into the parks by about 11am. We’ve been to DL a lot, so while we have our “must-do” rides that we always do (Indy, Buzz Lightyear, Space Mountain) we also decided to do a few things we haven’t done in years.

After fighting the evil Zurg (DH won AGAIN) and grabbing a FP for Indy, we rode the raft over to Tom Sawyer’s Island (er, I mean Pirate’s Lair) and found some pirate “booty”:

Got “trapped” in the skull cage:

And saw lots of signs that it was spring, including this cute family of ducks roaming around

We decided this will be a must-do on our next visit with the kids. My DS8 will LOVE exploring all the caves and any chance my DD2 gets to run around is good for her. The park was pretty busy that day and while there were people on the island, it certainly wasn’t very crowded. I think it’s a great way to get away from the craziness for awhile!

We headed over to Indy which is one of my all-time favorite rides and it didn’t disappoint. Even got to hear the “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” line (did I mention I’m a Star Wars geek too??), which cracks me up every time.

After Indy we had late lunch reservations at Blue Bayou. Now I’ve been going to Disneyland for many years, but have never eaten here before, so I was looking forward to it. We asked for a table by the water, so waited maybe an extra 15 minutes, but it wasn’t bad at all. Of course I forgot to take pictures of our meal, but we both started with the gumbo and then had the deliciously artery-clogging Monte Cristo sandwich. It was really good and the service was excellent, but for the price, I probably won’t make this a “must-do” restaurant every visit. There were a bunch of band and cheerleading groups in the park that day and unfortunately we sat next to a group of the band kids who felt that it was necessary to holler at EVERY boat that went by, so lunch wasn’t exactly a “relaxing” experience, but hey, what can you do?

After lunch we made a quick stop in the "tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room" and then headed over to DCA and rode Tower of Terror (another favorite of ours) and then headed over to visit ElecTRONica. I am a HUGE Tron fan, so it was a pretty big geek moment for DH and I to visit Flynn’s and play the original Tron game.

After playing a few more games, we met up with one of my coworkers and his DW and rode Soarin’ and then headed over to the Uva bar for a couple drinks and snacks. Uva bar is a cool place to people watch and we often have a drink or two there when we visit, but I must say, their menu totally cracks me up. DH ordered buffalo wings which came with a side of “micro celery” and my flatbread included “micro cilantro”. We asked the server what the heck “micro” was and he said it was just someone trying to be fancy. After we got our food and DH’s wings didn’t include celery, we decided it must be a way out for them if they forget to add the garnish. They can just say “Oh, it’s there, but it’s micro so you can’t really see it”

After our “micro” snacks and drinks, we headed back to the hotel to get some rest. Just a quick note about the Disneyland Hotel – as you probably know, it IS under quite a bit of construction these days. We were in the Magic Tower which is the last one to be renovated so did not have a newly renovated room. Definitely a little dated, but it was clean and totally fine, especially for one night. While GC is our favorite and is our “home” DVC resort, I’d stay at Disneyland Hotel again, especially with the great AP rate I got.

 

[AnimalPrincess]

Hi Holly! Even though I spend a fair amount of this trip with you I am looking forward to going along with you and seeing your photos!
I am writing a journal right now about the trip (I didn't do it every night) and neither of us have any idea what we did tuesday night lol!

 

[DisFanInCO]

Hi Holly! Even though I spend a fair amount of this trip with you I am looking forward to going along with you and seeing your photos!
I am writing a journal right now about the trip (I didn't do it every night) and neither of us have any idea what we did tuesday night lol!

Hey Leslie, thanks for reading! Hmm...I'll have to look at our notes for Tuesday and figure out what we did. We most likely ran into you guys

 

[DisFanInCO]

I forgot to mention that it was FREEZING (well for SoCal at least) when we were in Disneyland with a pretty chilly breeze, so we were very happy to wake up on Sunday morning to much warmer temps and no wind.

Since I was going for the “no stress” beginning to our vacation, I decided to book the Disney transfer to the port and then to the airport after the cruise. I’ll talk more about that later, but for now, it meant that we had several hours in the morning to hang out because the shuttle wasn’t picking us up until noon. We did some shopping and decided to head into DL for one more ride on Indy.

We were back at the hotel by 11:45 to meet the cruise line rep. Interestingly, we were the only ones taking the shuttle from Disneyland Hotel, so as soon as the shuttle arrived, we boarded quickly and were off…to two more hotels Luckily, there were only 20 or so people to pick up between PP and GC, so the process went quite quickly. We were on the road by 12:30 and they showed the video about the ship while we made our way to the port. For those of you who have taken the Disney transfers to Port Canaveral, it’s the EXACT same video they play there, which is honestly a little disappointing since things are a little bit different at Port of Los Angeles. Oh well, it gave DH and I an opportunity to doze a little bit…
Of course, dozing meant that we totally missed out on taking any pictures as we came to the port, sorry about that

We got to the port in record time I think so were there just after 1pm. A Disney cruise line rep was waiting at the entrance to the port and he boarded the bus for a minute to give us a quick briefing on what would happen when we unloaded the bus and to tell us to visit…Cabo Wabo. I thought that was a little strange. Did Sammy Haggar pay to have Disney pitch his restaurant? Anyway, we pulled up to the entrance to the port, got out, showed our paperwork to the security person at the door and were on our way.

Now I know there are a lot of people who like to get to the port as early as possible to try for upgrades, etc. but we were not planning on doing that for this cruise, so honestly, I was VERY happy with our arrival. There was literally NO line (we went to the Castaway Club line, but I didn’t see anyone waiting in the new cruiser line either) and after turning our paperwork in and getting our pictures taken, we went straight through security, got our embarkation photo taken and were on the ship within 10 minutes at the most. It was great!

Our rooms weren’t going to be ready until 2pm, so we headed up to deck 9 and decided to sit in the Quiet Cove area for awhile. This was definitely the emptiest we saw it all week :

DH wandered around a bit taking pics of the port and the other ships. He took like 50 shots of a helicopter for some reason, so I won’t bore you with those, but we thought the cargo ships were kind of interesting and it was fun to watch the cranes moving the shipping containers around:

Right at 2 we headed to our room and did some unpacking. We had stateroom 5020, one of the “secret porthole” rooms and we were very happy with it. The view was hardly obstructed at all. I’m not finding the picture we took right now, but I’ll post it when I find it. At 3 we headed to the Promenade Lounge to meet our fellow disboarders. It was great to meet everyone and it seemed like the kids in the group hit it off pretty quickly.

We ended up leaving port a little bit late (not sure why), so we didn’t get to watch as we moved all the way out to sea, but watched for the first couple minutes. We did get to see a sailboat being chased down by two police boats because they were heading straight for us, and well, they wouldn’t have won that game of chicken!

We had late dining for this trip, so that meant our show was at 6:15. The first night’s show is cute and I love to hear the collective “ooohh, ahhh” from both parents and kids as the characters come out on stage for the first time.

Our dining rotation was APPTAPT, which is not my first choice as Parrot Cay is my least favorite of the restaurants. I called to change it, but it was just the voicemail for the restaurant manager, so I just decided to leave it alone. I’m glad I did because our tablemates were great, as were our service team. We’ve always had good luck with the tablemates we have, and this cruise was no exception. I don’t know how Disney does it, and maybe it was just coincidence, but both couples sitting at our table just happened to have kids that they had left at home too! We had fun getting to know them a little bit and enjoyed the Animator’s Palate show. I’ve seen it a couple times, but it’s always fun to see the “surprise” visit at the end of the night. The dinner menu wasn’t super exciting that night, so I chose the black bean chipotle cakes. They were just “ok”, but the mushroom risotto appetizer was good. I didn’t get pics of the appetizer or dessert for some reason, but here’s a pic of the black bean cakes:

After dinner we headed over to WaveBands for the adult entertainment. We’ve never had a chance to go to any of the later shows because our kids have needed to go to bed early, so we were really excited to have a chance on this cruise. We had a great time every night we went and we’re trying to figure out how to get there each night on our cruise next year (kids will be along this time ). Tonight’s entertainment was Wonderquest, which they advertise as a scavenger hunt, but I don’t really consider it to be a true scavenger hunt since you don’t leave the room. The “hostess” (Tisa, in this case, who was AWESOME) asks various questions like “I need to have a woman from each team come up to me wearing men’s shoes”, then a member from each team runs up to her and points are awarded based on how fast you get up there. The “quests” get a little more risqué as you go along, but it’s still Disney so nothing REALLY bad. We teamed up with AnimalPrincess, her husband and a couple of their tablemates and ended up winning! We each got nice Disney Cruise water bottles which we used a lot at the Deck 9 drink stations throughout the week. We were pretty beat, so headed off to bed at that point. I know some people have had problems with the “squeaking” of things in their rooms at night, but our room had hardly any of that, so we drifted off to sleep very quickly.

Next up, our first day at sea, character breakfast and formal night!

 

[MagicMe]

Nice start. Haven't done a MR cruise and not sure I will but anytime on the Wonder is great!!! Looking forward to hearing more!

 

[Mindyjoy]

Woohoo, great start! And I love your DL report. We like a lot of the same rides and places. We LOVE Uva bar and relax there whenever we can.

I think we were in Quiet Cove around the same time on Day 1. We hung out at a table by the side windows from around 1-2pm. It was so nice and quiet.

 

[AnimalPrincess]

Holly, loving the report so far! SO I looked at that photo of you on deck 9 and recognized the people in the back of the picture, bc we were there around the same time, so I look closer at the picture and those are Keith's feet all the way on the left!! Seriously we were meant to meet each other lol. Or we just like to do the same stuff at the same time, all week lol!

 

[DisFanInCO]

Nice start. Haven't done a MR cruise and not sure I will but anytime on the Wonder is great!!! Looking forward to hearing more!

Thanks for reading! This was our first trip on the Wonder (we've cruised the Magic twice before) and we also loved this ship!

Woohoo, great start! And I love your DL report. We like a lot of the same rides and places. We LOVE Uva bar and relax there whenever we can.

I think we were in Quiet Cove around the same time on Day 1. We hung out at a table by the side windows from around 1-2pm. It was so nice and quiet.

Thanks Mindy! You and Tim will have to try the "micro celery" the next time you're at Uva

Holly, loving the report so far! SO I looked at that photo of you on deck 9 and recognized the people in the back of the picture, bc we were there around the same time, so I look closer at the picture and those are Keith's feet all the way on the left!! Seriously we were meant to meet each other lol. Or we just like to do the same stuff at the same time, all week lol!

No way! Seriously, John just checked another pic we have from a slightly different angle, and yep, that's you and Keith. John says if you guys suddenly show up in Colorado he's REALLY going to freak out


Ended up being a busy day at work today, so I'm trying to get the next installment up tonight, but just might not happen. Ugh...it's so hard to get back to reality...

 

[SoCaOC-Mom]

Checking in and loving it

 

[Mindyjoy]

Ugh...it's so hard to get back to reality...

That's for sure ......

 

[sunshine girl]

Loving the report!! can't wait to read more...

 

[acpalmer]

Hello fellow Coloradoan! We were just in DL without our kids, too. We will be cruising the MR next March with the kids (but they don't know that, the trip is a surprise) and are debating a day in DL on Saturday before the cruise.

 

[DisFanInCO]

Loving the report!! can't wait to read more...

Thanks for reading! Day 2 is coming shortly

Hello fellow Coloradoan! We were just in DL without our kids, too. We will be cruising the MR next March with the kids (but they don't know that, the trip is a surprise) and are debating a day in DL on Saturday before the cruise.

Hi Anne! Glad to see another Coloradoan on the DISboards We knew we wanted to fly in the day before, just to make sure we would still make the ship if we had any kind of delays and since we don't really care to do anything else in the L.A. area, a quick DL trip was pretty much a no-brainer for us! We were worried about it being CRAZY busy due to Spring Break, but it wasn't TOO bad. Not sure if March would be better or worse, but it was certainly doable for us although without kids we're able to power through things faster

 

[DisFanInCO]

This morning was our scheduled character breakfast, but since we were on the late dining rotation, it didn’t start until 9:45 which meant…SLEEPING IN!! We don’t get many opportunities to sleep in since my daughter is usually up and bouncing around by 6:45 every morning, so this was a nice treat for us. Of course, we still woke up around 7:30, but at least we didn’t have to jump right out of bed.

At breakfast, we ordered and got our food quickly so we had some time to eat before the characters started coming around. I didn’t get pictures of breakfast, but I ordered the pancakes with strawberry compote and DH ordered the “I Can’t Decide” which was eggs, sausage, bacon, ham and hashbrowns. They were both good, but nothing exceptional.

The characters started coming around 20 – 30 minutes into breakfast. We saw Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto and Chip. Dale was also there, but we decided not to wait to get a pic with him. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the interaction being rushed, and they do try to move quickly, but all the characters stopped for pics with us, even though we didn’t have kids and they interacted with us a bit, so I didn’t feel like it was a problem. They spent more time with the tables with kids, of course

We were a little surprised when we got to our table because our tablemates weren’t there, and, as it turned out no one from any of the other tables in our section showed up either! We joked that maybe there was something wrong with us and we scared everyone away (that ended up not being the case, of course, but we did have a good laugh). That gave us some time to get to know our servers a little better and that was great! Our server was Vicky from Hungary and she was awesome – really took care of us all week. Her goal was to “add a couple more kilos” to me (not that I need them at all! ), and she’ll be happy to know that she succeeded! Ajit was our assistant server. He is new to Disney, but had worked on Carnival for a few years before coming to Disney. He was still learning and had a few slipups over the week but overall did a great job and we had a lot of fun teasing him.

One of the things I love about Disney cruises is meeting people from countries all over the world, because as an American, I feel like I live a pretty sheltered life and it’s good for me to learn about other cultures and broaden my horizons a bit. And, getting to know my servers and several other crewmembers over the week really gives me such a great appreciation for everyone who chooses to work on a ship. No matter how much they miss their families back home, what troubles they may be dealing with in their personal lives, or how difficult life on a ship can be, everyone always works their hardest to make our vacation as great and memorable as possible, and for that, I feel truly grateful and blessed!

Whew, ok, I got a little emotional there, let’s get back to the trip report

After breakfast we decided to spend some time in the sun. It was not super warm out, maybe mid-60s, but the sun felt great and there was a light breeze so it was actually perfect weather for getting a bit of sun without feeling like I was frying. Tisa (super-awesome cruise staff member) kindly pointed out that “if you hear a sizzling noise, like bacon, that’s you, and you should probably get out of the sun!” So true, and boy, did we see a lot of “fried” people through the course of the week. Just remember, sunscreen is your friend, even if it’s not 85 degrees out!!

In the afternoon we headed over to the DVC member presentation to try and win the $300 OBC. No such luck of course – that went to the member with over 2000 points and 23 cruises under his belt. Boy, would that be awesome! Something to aspire too, I guess The presentation DID make us decide to part with some more of our money, as we decided to add on some points to own at Aulani. Can’t wait to get out to Hawaii sometime soon.

The rest of the late afternoon/early evening was spent with resident “adult beverage expert” Romy, the bartender at Cadillac Lounge, for a tequila/margarita tasting. This was a bit of a mini-meetup as several of our fellow DISers joined in the fun as well. We learned some interesting facts and had some yummy drinks, although I was a little surprised that all the tequila that was used was Patron. Don’t get me wrong, I like Patron, but I was hoping to be introduced to a few Mexican tequilas as Patron is owned by the Paul Mitchell guy and is generally disliked in Mexico. Oh well, It was still fun and lead to some danger for me later in the week (more about that later, I’m sure!).

We headed straight to the Golden Mickeys show, which I’ve seen a couple times before, but I still enjoy. It is kind of sad that Bob Iger has taken Roy E. Disney’s place in the show. We were on the ship last year just a bit after Roy passed away, and his part was a nice tribute at the time, but I guess it makes sense to update since he’s no longer with us.

After the show we headed back to the cabin to get ready for formal night. We very rarely have an opportunity to get dressed up, so we like to go pretty fancy for this night. No tux for my husband, but he did wear a three-piece suit and a pocket square (which I consider to be SO fancy). My hubby is always behind the camera, so we don’t really have any pics of him, but this is the pic my hubby forced me to pose for while we were waiting in line to have our pic taken by the professional photog

We were in Parrot Cay for dinner and the menu was the Golden Mickeys. DH ordered the melon wrapped prosciutto (pretty good), mixed baby greens salad (good), the roast turkey (good) and crème brulee (totally disappointing) for dessert. My husband LOVES crème brulee, and orders it pretty much whenever it’s on the menu, but he was consistently unimpressed by the crème brulees he had on the ship. I ordered the scallops on risotto (good, no fishy taste at all), the broccoli and blue cheese soup (mostly broccoli flavor with barely a blue cheese taste to be found, but still pretty good), the NY strip (good, cooked medium just as I asked) and the sweet temptations, which was raspberry cheesecake (pretty good), crème brulee (eh) and golden mickey chocolate cake (good)

After dinner, we headed over to WaveBands for the comedy stylings of Alfred and Seymour. They’re advertised as “hip hop comedy” but I don’t really think that description does them justice and it might turn some people away. The room was PACKED!!! so I’d suggest getting there early if you want a good seat, and DON’T be late – you WILL be called out. DH and I both thought these guys were hilarious and consider them a “must-see” if they’re on your cruise. We sat next to an older couple (I’d guess maybe in their 70s) and they were literally howling with laughter, so it seemed like the show had pretty wide appeal.

We were pretty tired after our busy day of relaxation, so after the show ended, we headed back to the room for another great night of sleep. I really love that we’re literally rocked to sleep by the movement of the ship!

Next up: Palo brunch, an “Exotic” experience and Trouble (with a capital “T”) with Tequila

 

[jetskigrl]

I am really enjoying your TR!! We just booked a MR cruise on the Wonder for next April while we were on the Dream earlier this month. I absolutely loved the Dream but even with the B2B, it was very rushed to be places. I felt like we were always on the go and didn't get to "just chill" enough. I'm looking forward to a full 7-night cruise with more sea days to relax and enjoy the ship.

 

[Mindyjoy]

Tell DH I was disappointed with all the Creme Brulees, too!

 

[AnimalPrincess]

No way! Seriously, John just checked another pic we have from a slightly different angle, and yep, that's you and Keith. John says if you guys suddenly show up in Colorado he's REALLY going to freak out

Seriously right!!

We missed our character breakfast bc we were at Palo, good to know that it wasn't the best thing ever.

I had the same dish as John that night and it was one of my favorites, it was like Thanksgiving and that stuffing, YUMO!!

 

[SeaSpray]

Great trip report and great pics!!

 

[DisFanInCO]

I am really enjoying your TR!! We just booked a MR cruise on the Wonder for next April while we were on the Dream earlier this month. I absolutely loved the Dream but even with the B2B, it was very rushed to be places. I felt like we were always on the go and didn't get to "just chill" enough. I'm looking forward to a full 7-night cruise with more sea days to relax and enjoy the ship.

Thanks for reading! I have been thinking about doing a B2B just to be on the dream, but I really do like the full 7-night cruises!

Tell DH I was disappointed with all the Creme Brulees, too!

He said "Woohoo! I like Mindy, she knows what's she's talking about"

Seriously right!!

We missed our character breakfast bc we were at Palo, good to know that it wasn't the best thing ever.

I had the same dish as John that night and it was one of my favorites, it was like Thanksgiving and that stuffing, YUMO!!

Yeah, I'd say Palo was the right choice there I mean, we like getting our pics with the characters, but we've done that SO much, it's not like it was our one and only picture with Mickey

Ah yes, the stuffing...John loved that too and said he could eat those mashed sweet potatoes all the time

Great trip report and great pics!!

Thanks for reading!

Part 3 coming shortly