Disney Cruise Day One

Well hello! (blows dust off). I find myself here again! How's it going? I'm not sure anyone will read this, but we did a fun thing and it's easier to share here, so here goes. In February Joe and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. Thirty years! Crazy huh? On our 25th anniversary, where we did exactly zero fun things, Joe and I made a pact that for our 30th we going to do something fun. No matter what. Fast forward 5 years, and here we are. We (I, but Joe went along with it), decided on a Disney Cruise. We both love Disney, and one of us likes cruises (me-Joe had never been. He was in the Navy, but he says that doesn't count. LOL) Anyway, a Disney Cruise. Wahoo! But Disney cruises are expensive. When we ran the numbers for other fun things, like Hawaii, or a week long road trip, we realized that it really wasn't that much more expensive because all the food and entertainment was included. With a huge gift of money from my sister, and lots of saving, we were able to pull it together. It was mostly paid off when Joe got sick in November (and almost died). We had to rescheduled it until we got on our feet, and like I said, a huge gift from Lisa and we were finally able to schedule for last week. So last Sunday we boarded the Disney Wonder out of San Diego, CA, on our way to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. I'm just going to do a breakdown of each day, to make it easier. Sunday, April 30th: Embarkation Day We made our way to San Diego by car. It's only about an hour and a half from our house. Got to the parking place, got on the shuttle and finally arrived at ship. She's not a very large ship but perfect for our first cruise. The weather was a little cloudy and windy and slightly chilly. I had only brought a light jacket because it was going to be warm in Cabo San Lucas but I didn't think about the fact that most of our days were either at Sea or in port. Oops! So much for my summer clothes. The jacket did just fine. Finally around 3:00 we boarded the ship. As you enter a Disney cruise ship, the staff members announce your name and everyone claps. Not gonna lie, I teared up a little. This was such a dream come true for me. And Joe too. We walked around and explored a bit while they got our room ready. When choosing our room on this trip we were going for the cheapest we could find. That put us on deck 2, with an inside room. Joe immmediately vetoed the inside room because he gets claustrophobic (yes, he used to live on a ship-it's the reason they took him off of it). So that left us with a room with a porthole. We were both fine with that, however, our travel agent told us that those rooms are pretty low to the sea, and if we get rough seas, sometimes the ocean hits those windows. Ummm, no thanks. So I vetoed that room. SO that left us with deck 3 or above, with a port hole window. As we were deciding our travel agent e-mailed us that certain sailings in the spring were going to be 25% off with a So Cal discount (Southern Californian). With that 25%, we were able to get a room with a verandah (a fancy name for a balcony) for free! Yes please! So we decided to do that. The only glitch was that the cruiseline gets to pick which room you are in, you don't, and you don't find out until two weeks before our cruise(but it was a guaranteed type of room/deck). It was hard to not know our room number, because we wanted to research it, but in the end it was kind of a fun surprise not to know it until the end. More on the room later.

Views from or room:

Right away Captain Mickey came out to visit:

Our television:

You could see a camera view from the Bridge of the boat here too. It was cool.

I didn't take a ton of photos of the exterior of the ship.

I decorated our room for our trip

Here's our veranduh. It was a white wall instead of a clear plexi glass, which can be considered undesirable, but we didn't mind. We did spend a lot of time out there though, having coffee or watching the sun set.

On Disney cruises guests decorate their stateroom doors with magnets.  I didn't get fancy, but I did order this personalized one to put on our door commemorating our anniversary.  We also put up a "Fish Extender", which is a device in which other passengers put gifts in your hangers and you do the same.  We had four other people in our group.  There is also "pixie dusting", where random people put fun little gifts in your extenders.  I brought a lot of stuff to pixie dust to others.  This is SO FUN!  I loved every minute of it.  Gifts is my love language so giving and receiving little gifts the entire cruise was the best!  Can't recommend it enough, if you are into that kind of thing.

The Atrium

We had a bit of Disney Magic happen on our trip. When we got into our room there was a beer mug there. It had a card with it saying someone purchased it for us but the card wasn't signed. Our travel agent said she didn't do it, and Lisa hadn't mentioned it. I called guest services and they said they can't tell who purchased  it, but if there was no name on the card it was likely them. SO nice! Basically it takes a discount off of the cost of the beers you buy. Hey, We'll take it!

We did a little exploring

We had a late lunch at Cabanas(the Buffett).  It was ok. They had some yummy items but I'm not a huge fan of buffets in general.  I feel like by the time I get my food to the table most of it is cold.  The breakfast buffet was amazing though. I just wasn't that impressed with lunch.  Huge variety though. 

Next it was time for the first show.  It was called "The Golden Mickeys" and it was fun. No photos of that.  Not allowed.

After that it was time for dinner at Triton's.  So beautiful in there and I didn't take one photo, except for the food!  Darn it.  The food was amazing. Our dinner was the late seating at 8:15.  It seems late for dinner, but we actually liked it.  We got to see the shows first, and then go to dinner. It worked out great for us, and there were less kids there (Yes, we knew there were going to be a lot of kids on a Disney cruise and we were fine with that, of course.  But sometimes it's nice to eat in peace). There were still a lot of kids there. It was fine. We sat with two other couples who didn't bring their grown kids.  Super nice people.We ate with them the whole cruise.

OK, I'll admit I was pretty tired and didn't take that many food pics  at Triton's. I just plain forgot!  I did take a photo of my appetizer, because it's not something you eat every day.  Duck Confit.  It was ok.  I think Duck is too rich for me. I also had the French Onion soup and Herb Crusted Salmon and both were delicious. I also had two desserts but darn it if I can't remember what they were!  I was tired at this point. It had been a long day.

Well guess what?  After dinner Joe gets a burst of energy and decides he wants to see Avatar: The Way of Water at 10:45 pm!  I figured we were on vacation, so why not?  Except that movie is over 3 hours long and we didn't get back to our room until 2:00 a.m!  Talk about a long day. I was so tired I fell into bed and went right to sleep.