Vancouver to Alaska on the Disney Wonder, 8/26 - 9/2 2013 : Part 1

Guest Writer Wednesdays

By: Gaylin

Departure Day
Disney Wonder
Vancouver to Alaska, August 26 - September 2, 2013

My usual vacation involves going to Walt Disney World so going on a cruise that leaves from the city I live in, what a treat. The usual flight to Florida starts with getting up at 3:45 a.m. and traveling all day. Our boarding time for the cruise was 11:30 a.m. and I didn't even have to call for the cab until 10:45. Awesome. I was traveling with a friends daughter and we were both pretty excited to be going.

First view of the ship!

You have to go outside the cruise terminal to see the ship, the taxi drops you off right inside the building, you check your luggage right there and go through security to the check in desks. The process was easy, waiting for our boarding group number to be called was not so easy!
We took a few photos while waiting, the terminal is a concrete bunker . . . Disney does try to dress the place up a bit to start the magic. We weren't concierge guests but were willing to pretend.

The first photo op with Mickey. Funny thing, most people were just ignoring this big banner.

  Walking down the dock to board, I had to get a close up of the ship name.

 Upon boarding, wow, this chandelier in the lobby/atrium. Amazing glass art.

Time for lunch at Beach Blanket Buffet. We were greeted by this terrific ice sculpture, which I didn't get a good photo of and now I can't remember what it really was . . . a pegasus?

Finally we got to see our stateroom! This is an inside deluxe stateroom, room 2103. It is a cozy 200 square feet, we were okay with 2 people in the room. With 3 or 4, it would have been too small. If you were to book a room this size and had 2 small kids (max occupancy is 4 per room), you would have to spend a lot of time outside the room, there is not enough space for little kids to burn off any energy! This was the only time the room looked this tidy, 2 people can spread a lot of stuff around.

Here is one last photo from our first day, we went for a walk after dinner and ended up on Route 66. The young lady I was traveling with is 16, so she wasn't going to be going to the nightclubs in this area and I don't drink alcohol, the only time we spent there was while the clubs were closed so we could take photos!

 

Dinner our first evening was at Triton's. Our table mates were 3 women from Richmond, Virginia and they were awesome. Our servers were Fitzroy from Jamaica and Megan from Scotland. They were a lot of fun right from the beginning. Our meal was good, the photos I took of the meal, not so good.

We spent a lot of time the first day, walking around, learning where everything was, something I highly recommend doing on a cruise. We even liked the safety drill because that meant we would be departing soon.

Editor's note: Barbie and I took the cruise to Alaska on the Wonder out of Seattle last year. For random photos of the Wonder from Barbie, please check out this post, and for random photos of what we saw, please check out this post.-Nick