Wonder in Alaska - August 9 to 15

[cyclenut]

My first trip report here on the DIS. I am going to post in stages. I'll update with a few photos along the way. Feel free to ask questions.

Warning. We had a wonderful time on our cruise but we felt that Disney did not live up to expectations. If you don't like to read anything negative, then don't read this report. It isn't that I'm going to bash Disney or DCL here, but we felt DCL did not live up to the expectations we have of everything Disney. I will share the specifics and you'll get to decide for yourself if those things would have bothered you like they did us.

I also spend some time over on CruiseCritic (same name) but I'll post my trip report here first and then, once I'm done, I'll post a full review over there.

UPDATE:
I posted my review on CruiseCritic but it is not published yet. My final score. 4 out of 5 stars.

Here are the links to the two other threads I mentioned in my subsequent posts.

Excursions:
http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=42286486&postcount=463

Tracy Arm Pictures:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2781900

Hope this trip report proves helpful. Please feel free to ask questions.

 

[WDWJonasGirl]

I was there!!! I think I met you.

 

[cyclenut]

Our pre-cruise experience was through DisneyCruise.com. We created multiple reservations but had to call to get them linked. Once linked, we were able to use this to book all of our excursions, etc. I found the process to be a bit confusing but it worked well. The system knew the ages of all guests and only showed guests that were eligible when booking adult only excursions and things like Palo and Spa treatments.

The online check in process was nice and smooth. We added passport information and determined who could charge to their KTTW cards as well as which stateroom would be responsible for charges. Very well done and easy to manage. You can "lock out" your "kid" from being able to use their KTTW card for charges and you could even decide whether or not you were going to allow charges to flow into a particular stateroom or remain with the stateroom associated with that guest.

We were able to get all of our excursions booked on line but were disappointed that most of the Palo spots were all taken and none of the brunch spots were available. I think DCL is going to need to rethink the way they arrange for priority bookings here. Maybe only the highest level castaway members should get early bookings or maybe there should be some sort of a lottery ... or maybe they could save a few tables for first time cruisers.

What we didn't like about the linked reservation idea is that we never could treat this cruise as a single booking. Even though we were all together and I was personally paying all charges for all three rooms, there was no way to make these look or act like the same reservation. We had to log into each reservation to do the online check in even though they were linked.

We did need to speak with a cast member by phone for booking the reservation, but only once. There is no way to link reservations on line.

We also pre-ordered the birthday package for one of the staterooms. That phone call went very smooth and the charges went directly to credit card. The decorations were there in the room when we boarded as was the cake. Very cool!

We also called to notify DCL of a peanut allergy. That information was provided to the ship and was given to our head server who approached us on the first night of the cruise.

We booked all of our airfare and transfers through Disney as well. That process was a little frustrating, but mostly because we just were not patient enough. Disney does take care of things. When we finally received our spiral bound notebook in the mail, all the flight information we needed was right there.

We were on Alaska Airlines out of Orange County (SNA). We went on-line the night before and did the on-line check in with Alaska. They had all the information just like if we had booked it ourselves. We did have to put in all the passport data again. It would have been super cool if Disney had provided that to the airline as we did give it to Disney. Not a big deal though.

In all, very smooth pre-cruise. We had everything we needed and we were ready to go. All we had to do was arrange for transportation from our house to the airport and back again.

Next up ... embarkation.

 

[seamour]

I would love to know who the entertainers were on your cruise. Thanks!

 

[WDWJonasGirl]

Love the update!! I was on the same cruise.

 

[cyclenut]

When the morning of our cruise arrived we were still at home. This was by the design of the Disney booking agent. We live on the west coast and would fly into Vancouver the day of embarkation. I was nervous right up until the moment we boarded the ship. But it worked.

We left our house via SuperShuttle and arrived at the airport so early that nothing was really even open yet. We waited for 30 minutes before we could check in and an hour before boarding. The check-in process was super smooth having done everything online earlier that morning. I knew this was going to be the case but we didn't want to leave the car at the airport the entire time. It was actually cheaper to book SuperShuttle than pay the parking fees. Flight left at 6:45 am, on time.

We transferred to Horizon Air in Portland and boarded a plane that was specially painted for the Oregon Ducks. It was propeller driven and small but it was a very smooth and relatively quick ride to Vancouver. When we arrived in Vancouver is when we had to go through Canadian Customs. The airline handed us the customs forms on the plane and we had them filled out already when we reached the line. This is where we made a mistake.

Our party was of 7 people consisting of myself, DW, DD22, DS20, DD18, DD16 and the boyfriend of my DD22. There are only four names allowed on each Canadian customs card. We allowed our party to split up based on who was with each card. We kept the minor with us. Well, it was the boyfriend who got the third degree. The border agent just didn't believe his "story" that he was there to go on a Disney cruise. Lesson learned there, stay together.

We made it through customs, then through baggage claim and eventually turned our customs card into a final customs officer and we were off. We found the Disney transportation area easily and left our bags with them. We had followed instructions and pre-tagged the bags before we left the house with the DCL baggage tags.

TIP: Even though the airlines charges for checked bags, DCL doesn't. We carried on one bag and one personal item each. Next time we'll each keep a backpack with that one change of clothes and check the carry-on luggage with DCL. That way we won't have to carry so through the DCL process.

In any case, we were right on schedule. We checked with the DCL transportation people and they told us that the ship had just started boarding and that the bus to take us to the ship would be there shortly. We waited comfortably on a set of benches outside. The next time we would see our checked luggage was outside our stateroom door later that day.

The trip from Vancouver airport to the cruise terminal was uneventful. We watched a DCL video on the bus and had a chance to see some nice areas of Vancouver.

TIP: Sit on the right side of the bus. When the bus pulls into the terminal area, you will get your first glimpse of the Disney Wonder. You can't really see anything from the left side of the bus.

(I know, next year it sails from Seattle so that tip probably isn't worth much for long).

After leaving the bus we went through another security checkpoint at the cruise terminal and then we had to fill out some other paperwork before we got in line to be checked in. We all went together to the same agent and he checked us into the staterooms. Everything was in order and we went through that process quite quickly. Somewhere along the line we were given a boarding number. We were told to wait until our number was called. We didn't have to wait long. We were headed on our way ... to another line.

The lines moved quickly though and before you know it, we were getting our picture taken. This is the first place where we really noticed how much "carry on" luggage we had. Then we had our first of what would be MANY experiences with the hand sanitizer. Sort of funny really because here we were carrying all this stuff that we had to set down to "santitize" our hands, only to pick up the same bags (with the same hands). Not sure there was anything to be gained there.

We walked up the loading platform and onto the ship where they announced us as having arrived. I almost cryed. We were finally there!

A CM pulled us aside and explained what we would need to know for the next hour or two. We got on board at 1:30 but nobody had eaten a decent meal since the night before adn they were hungry. Staterooms would be ready by 2:00 and we had 7 people, each with two carry-ons. We headed up to BBB and tried to find a couple of tables. After a few minutes, a CM came over and helped us out. We were really getting used to the Disney touch already. After a quick meal (I'll discuss food later) we heard that our cabins were all ready from over the loudspeaker. We headed down to deck one where we had two adjoining cabins first. Our DS18 was surprised with the Birthday banner and cake that we ordered and while they were all complaining about how small the room was, DW and I were marveling at how large it was compared to other lines we had been on. Perspective I guess.

We eventually left and headed up to our room on Deck 6 (somewhere around 3:00) where we had a verandah. It was technically a Navigator's Verandah but it had a partially obstructed view (very partially) so they downgraded it and we got lucky and got it.

So far, so good. We made it on board, we had something to eat and we were in our rooms. No luggage yet, but that was to be expected. Nevertheless, after such a long day, we sat down to relax a little and get a few things organized. We headed down to the Promenade lounge where we I was able to briefly say hi to some of the DISers that had agreed to meet there around 3 and started to look around for our muster station. We had misread the schedule somewhere and thought it was at 4:00 instead of 4:30, althougth that didn't matter much as our muster station was inside Animators Palate. Nice. We just sat down to relax and discuss the day.

We were on the ship and our epic family vacation was under way. Everything was going well and we headed up for the sail-away party. This is where we sort of got lost. Having been separated for the muster drill we were trying to figure out the wave phones and get back together with the rest of our party for Sail Away. That didn't happen. It was still fun but we wanted to share the experience together. We just weren't familiar enough with the ship yet to tell each other where and how to meet up in advance and we failed to get things straight over the wave phones with the large crowd all packed in to see Mickey and friends.

All was well though. We were on our way to Alaska!

Our luggage arrived at a very reasonable time and we were able to get a few things organized before dinner.

Our overall experience with this entire embarkation and sailaway was amazing. We've sailed twice before and the entire experience was super smooth and very timely. Amazing is all I could say.

Next up ... Dining aboard the Disney Wonder.

 

[seamour]

I am reading as fast as you are posting, keep the tips coming!

I am happy to be sailing out of Vancouver rather than Seattle myself!

 

[Joanna71985]

Following along. Enjoying the TR so far!

 

[breced]

very nice!

 

[cyclenut]

This one gets a little complicated.

Our rotation was TAPTAPT.

That put is in Animator's Palate for formal night, which was nice and again for Pirate night, which was OK too. But that meant that we had the Animator's Palate show on Pirate night. A little odd but not bad. I guess that is the luck of the draw with rotational seating. Sometimes the theme fits and sometimes it is just a little off.

We chose late seating. We had done this before with a cruise and we thought that would work best for us here too. But this is where things get a little off and an area where I'm not really happy about the way DCL does things.

Dinner is a very "fancy" affair, even if the attire is cruise casual. That means dinner takes almost two hours. We were not done with dinner until 10pm or later most every night. By then, a lot of things were closing down on the upper decks. The night life is starting to kick into high gear around then down on the lower decks, but if you want to go for a swim, you are out of luck. We tried to get our server to speed things up a bit but apparently, that just isn't the way service in these places works. The best we were ever able to do is 9:45 and we go there right on time every night.

I am not going to go into every dish ordered, primarily because I just don't remember, but also because I know that there are plenty of food reviews out there. My intention here is to discuss the overall dining experience instead of focusing in on particular dishes, unless something really stood out.

Kerry was our head server. Steven was our assistant server and our server was Vijay. Everyone was super kind and very willing to help but I got the impression very early on that they were a little disorganized and didn't communicate well. Steven brought drinks but frequently during our trip let ours run dry. After he took our order on the first night, he pre-poured every drink but he sometimes forgot which person in our party ordered what. When we ordered a special drink he didn't understand what we were asking for and ended up bringing the wrong thing. He then went to the back and ended up bringing us the right drink.

Vijay tried very hard to be helpful but he was really only able to read us the menu. When we asked about a particular ingrediate he sometimes knew but most times needed to go back and check. He also didn't get the food placed correctly according to our order. I mentioned some of our concrens to Kerry and we did see some improvement by about the third day but it never really recovered completely. DW and I were really the only ones who were put off by this. Everyone else in our party were happy enough and Vijay and Steven were both very friendly so we never asked to change servers. Maybe we should have.

We had one in our party with a peanut allergy. We called ahead of time and Kerry was there to help with the menu. He was very kind and had a quick wit about him. He was obviously very experienced and sometimes even stepped in to help Vijay out on occasion. There was one nagging issue though. His approach made our DD with the allergy very uncomfortable. She didn't really want a "special" meal. She just wanted to know what she could order that didn't have peanut and was happy to order MAC and CHEESE off the kids menu. Kerry didn't want that and kept steering her to make other choices. I know what he was trying to do but we even asked if there was a problem ordering from the kids menu and he said no, but went right back to trying to find her something that she liked that didn't have a problem with peanuts. All of this menu selection was done at the end of the meal for the next night.

Dinner was overall a very disappointing experience. It wasn't BAD, it just wasn't what I expect from any cruise line, much less Disney.

What was even worse than that was the character breakfast. Everything was rushed. The food was cold and the characters barely stopped for anything other than a VERY QUICK picture. The cast members taking the characters around were even just a little bit short with us, even though we knew exactly what we wanted in the way of a picture. It was almost like they wanted us in the pose before the character arrived. We've done character meals in the parks and it wasn't like that at all. To make matters worse, our servers were always slow with things like pepper, syrup and dressings. Not just for the character breakfast, although that was proabably the most frustrating, but for everything. We would sometimes be half way done with the dish before they would come around with pepper or ask if we wanted cheese or something like that. Yes, we always wait until everyone has their food before we begin.

With late seating dinner we were often out late doing one thing or another and as a result, we were late risers. Well don't be too late or there is nothing really to eat until they have lunch ready. The schedule seemed inconsistent. It was always published in the Navigator but still hard to keep track of.

TIP: Order the breakfast for your room if you have late seating dinner or are out late, or just plan on not eating until lunch. We didn't even see the door hangers for breakfast until day 6. I know it was mentioned on the DIS but there is so much information that us first timers can't possibly remember it all. Write this one down somewhere.

We ordered room service once. We got the cheese and crackers and a Mickey bar. It took about 40 minutes and by the time we got it, the Mickey bar was completely worthless. I took one bite and the bar fell apart. It was nearly liquid inside.

We had lunch at the BBB most days when we had lunch on the ship. Probably the best dish I ate all cruise was at Palo for dinner and the second best was at a place called the Twisted Fish in Juneau right at the dock. That dish was a Penne pasta in Alfredo sauce with smoked salmon. Large chunks and plenty of it. Amazing flavor.

The BBB was good as buffets go but it was a bit hit and miss at times. Day 6 there were crab legs but they were not very good crab legs and they ran out quickly. They also had a "Chicken and Seafood gumbo" that had no meat in it. When I asked the staff about it they said they would get more meat. I left and came back later to the same thing. They told me this time that it wasn't supposed to have meat. I showed them the sign and they then pulled out their tray under the counter. Turns out they weren't stirring before putting it into the pan. All the meat had settled to the bottom of their tray. They gave me some directly out of their tray and I have to tell you that while it was good and it was much warmer, the pieces of meat were TINY.

So here we were. Dinner was too fancy really. We are more meat and potatos people and the buffet was good but was more like Hometown Buffet quality than what I've seen at Goofy's Kitchen in DTD (that is a good buffet). Sure, we ate well. Too well. But I expected more. Much more. We certainly didn't let this ruin our cruise, but it has really caused us to think long and hard about sailing DCL again. We have spoken to the powers that be on the ship and we've been promised a follow-up phone call. I have not asked for, nor do I expect, anything in return. I just want to make sure Disney understands what went wrong and that they could very well be losing a future customer (me). I've experienced better on other lines and I've experienced better from Disney here on shore.

I want to finish this on a positive note. Our final night was Palo. It was absolutely wonderful. It was everything that people have said it was and more. I had a rack of lamb that was truely exquisite and my DW had a seafood pasta that was equally amazing. I had the orange soda float for desert. How truely unique! We really finished our cruise on a high note with that dinner. So glad we did it on the last night.

 

[WDWJonasGirl]

Love the trip report so far!!

 

[cyclenut]

I've already provided my report on the excursions we all took in the Alaska Excursions thread so I won't repeat that here, but I will take a little time to go over the process that Disney uses for shore excursions.

When we arrived in our stateroom, the excursion tickets were already there. A nice touch. Other lines delivered them much later. In the evelope with the tickets was a letter about travel into Canada since some of our excursions included a trip into the Yukon area. Again, a nice touch, but I wish that information had been included in the spiral notebook. That notebook included the excursion names and could just as easily included this information as well.

TIP: If any of your excursions include a trip into Canada, be sure to look into what additional forms might be required, especially if you are taking a minor child and one of the parents will not be there. You'll need extra forms.

We recieved phone calls during the cruise reminding us about the various conditions and restrictions, which was also super nice. The port adventures desk was very well organized and well run. We had one glitch that we covered pretty quickly with one excursion that included a sandwich for lunch. No big deal. This glitch did lead to a conversation with the person who ran the desk. I must say, this individual was outstanding and really embodied the spirity of a Disney CM. He asked and wanted to know if there were any other issues or concerns that I had while on board, even if it wasn't a port adventures issue. He wanted to follow up with his fellow CMs in other areas if need be. It is attitudes like this that help make the Disney experience different than any other. He even called back the final night of the cruise to wish us well, thank us for sailing with DCL and that he hoped to see us back.

Now for the process.

Printed on the ticket is a time and location to meet. Sometimes Wave Bands, or the Walt Disney Theater or the like. You will go there and they will check that you have all the paperwork you need for your excursion and once again remind you of the restrictions. They will then give you a sticker representing a Disney character. You are asked to sit in the appropriate section and wait for your character to be called. Once called, they will escort you off the ship and to your bus/van. This is where the adventure begins and your guide/driver will take your ticket as you board. Super smooth operation. No scrambling around trying to find your tour. Everyone is already together so once you board, you are off.

One drawback of this process is if you have a later excursion. If you disembark the ship early for shopping or doing your own thing, you will have to reboard to meet your group on the ship just so you can get right back off and head to your bus/van. I talked to the port adventures head about this and he aknowledge this was an issue for some people but that they didn't have a good solution for that. Other lines will have you meet at the dock and that often means large groups of people standing around looking for the appropriate bus or guide. It resembles chaos and is just not acceptable to most Disney guests. I agree. The way Disney does it is far superior, you just have to plan for that return to the ship.

We booked all our excursions through DCL and that costs more, but they take care of everything. For some, that peace of mind is worth the extra cost.

 

[cyclenut]

We've been on board now for less than 24 hours and we've had some amazing experiences and a few let downs. Everyone, except one, was over 18. This became a bit of an issue later on.

I'm going to back up a bit to the first night aboard the ship. After the muster drill and sail-away party we all went back to our cabins to get things organized. With late seating dinner we were slated to take in the early show. "All Aboard, Let the Magic Begin". We left it up to everyone in our party what they wanted to do. The only requirement was that we meet for dinner every night.

One of the things I did was go check out the spa and fitness center. While there I talked to some of the fitness center staff about spinning classes and checked out the spin bikes. They handed me a fitness class schedule and advised that I follow that instead of the Navigator as they didn't always have things right there. I was advised that if I wanted a spin bike, I needed to arrive 30 minutes early. I opted to skip it and go to the gym on my own.

DW and I went to the show. The rest, well, they hung out in their room, ate birthday cake and basically got unpacked and decided who was going to sleep where. The show was pretty typical of a sail-away type show on most ships, but it ended in fastastical fasion with "Be Our Guest".

We headed back to our stateroom after the show and pulled in our luggage. We had only one garment bag so we had get some of the clothes and things to the others. After taking care of that we got ready for dinner and headed to Tritons. This is where we, quite unknowingly, made our another mistake.

Brefore we went to the show, we should have gone up to Vibe and become acquainted with the area and the staff. It would have made our teen much more comfortable and we would have known more about the area and the staff there. We were still learning to read the navigator, which is quite confusing for us first timers. We noted that "The Download" was occuring for Vibe at 10:30 so that is what we focused on.

TIP: Use the time after Muster drill and before the show/dinner to go to the "clubs" and get oriented. This is obvious for the younger set where you've got registration to deal with, but it is also important for the Edge and Vibe. We missed that step. You shouldn't.

After dinner is when we started exploring the clubs and our teen headed up to the Vibe, for about 10 minutes. Everyone had already been there for awhile it seemed and the staff didn't seem to do what was needed to get through the shy outer shell that many teens have. She felt alone in the crowd and left.

We wrapped up the night and headed for bed to take on the next day.

 

[WDWJonasGirl]

I was there at the Vibe the first night. I was wearing an orange shirt with the number 78 on it.

 

[cyclenut]

I was up and at the fitness center by 8:30. The scenery was wonderful but there was one thing I was disappointed in. All of the cardio machines had these nice screens on them. You could watch various programming, which was cool, except we were heading for Alaska and had some of the best scenery ever to enjoy right out the window. Except, you couldn't really see out the window. The screen blocked your view and if you were able to see around it at all, the windows were fogged up. I rode the recumbant for 30 minutes and left. Interestingly enough, this is about the time the "group cycling" class for the day was supposed to start. The bikes weren't all full. I guess it wasn't really as popular as they thought it was going to be. Trouble is, the next class was at 4:00pm on Tracy Arm day ... right about the time we would be closest to the glacier. I don't guess they had many customers then either.

I stopped by the BBB and picked up a few things that I took back to the room for myself and DW.

With nothing in particular to keep us going and a VERY long day the day before (we left the house at 3:45 am), most everyone else slept in ... and missed Breakfast. The BBB closed at 10:45 and unless you wanted a hot dog or pizza, you were going to have to wait until noon. Moral of that story ... you snooze, you lose.

There were plenty of things to do but our group didn't really get moving until noon. We studied the navigator for things to do and went our separate ways. This is when we started noticing a few things that made us a little curious. My kids love Mario Kart and saw the Mario Kart Challenge ... only to see that it was for Oceaneer Lab. That was out. Finding things to do was going to be easy, but a bit tricky. We were going to have to pay attention to what was considered age appropriate.

Some headed for the Disney Tune Triva, which was very fun, but it got hard when they went to the TV shows. Some went to the "Art of the Theme Ship Tour" later that day. Most decided to go to the Golden Mickey's show at 6:15 and just wander around and catch activities as time allowed. DW and I went to a Bingo session, which was packed. UPDATE: After Bingo I went to deck 10 at the bow of the ship to take pictures of the inside passage. I was sort of scoping out the view for Tracy Arm. There were several people with some very fancy camera setups on this cruise. I use a Canon T2i kit that I purchased from Costco just about 2 months ago. Here are some photos from that.

Sometime during this time I cracked the glass on the UV filter for my longer 55-250 lens. Not sure when that happened but fortunately it was only the filter, which I promptly screwed off and threw out. It was a cheap $10 Rocketfish from Best Buy. I guess I'm going to have to invest in something better, even though the lens itself is just a kit lens.

DW and I had a spa session during the Captain's Welcome Reception time so after my picture session we headed over there. We actually had two sessions on the cruise. The spa and the staff was very friendly and nice and seemed to know what they were doing. Although, we were a little concerned at first when one of the desk staff there had us down for the wrong spa treatment. We had our card that was in our stateroom when we arrived that had the right treatment on it. It took a few minutes to get this straight and we were on our way. We did purchase a few of the products but when we got home we noticed that we didn't have one of them. The receipt didn't match what we were charged to our stateroom either. We still haven't figured that out. I'm going to have to place a phone call and see what we can do but I'm afraid that now that we've left the ship, there may be little that we can do. One thing we noticed about the spa is that the relaxation room is directly under the basketball court on Deck 10. The quite was "enhanced" by the constant pounding of feet from above. It is generally pretty quiet there so every sound is very pronounced. We had a second treatment for later in the cruise so when we went back to our room we checked our cards carefully. This is when we noticed we had an extra envelope that was for a spa treatment for someone else. Turns out it was for the next cruise. We took that back to the spa and gave it to them.

In summary, the spa was great and I would recommend at least one spa treatment while on board, but they suffer from the same general lack of communication and attention to detail we saw other places while on board.

We headed back to our stateroom to get ready for formal night and then head to the Golden Mickey's show. Most everyone in our party attended the show and we headed to dinner at Animator's Palate after. By this time we learned all of our over 18s had clicked in with the Collge Club and were having a blast. Our under 18 was feeling left out. We decided we would all meet up at 10:15 to see John Charles. This was billed as an adult only show, but we all went anyway and we laughed ... a lot. John Charles is an amazing entertainer. By the time the show was over, it was 11:00 and we were ready to call it a night. The over 18s headed out to do College Club activities with Jess, who was excellent by the way.

 

[cyclenut]

Today was our Character Breakfast day at Parrot Cay. This meant everyone was up and nobody missed breakfast.

An earlier post covered most of the dining experience so suffice to say that we were done at around 10:30 and ready to enjoy some of the breathtaking views.

Somewhere in here (not sure which day) DW headed to the scrapbooking event. I know, a random note. But arriving "on time" for these things isn't good enough. The event was in Animators Palate and they didn't clear off enough tables for everyone who was there, and nobody offered to fix that either. After a few minutes she decided to pick up the pages that were offered and head back to the stateroom. They didn't seem very prepared and didn't have much to offer to help build pages either. It was a little disappointing.

There wasn't much going on unless you wanted to see Toy Story or play Bingo so we hung around the ship until lunch. We had heard about the Salmon bake and were not going to miss it. After shuffling through the BBB line we headed to the aft seating area where there was a line waiting for more Salmon to be finished. I had both a small steak and the Salmon. Others in our party tried the chicken. All of it was VERY GOOD. What an awesome addition to the ordinary lunch. It was super cool to have Disney do this. We had a great view next to a window and ejoyed our lunch. Much better than breakfast that morning. MUCH.

After lunch. DS and I went around Deck 4 a couple of times before heading up to Deck 10, but only after heading back to his Deck 1 stateroom to pick up a jacket. We took the stairs. This is when it was confirmed for me how really out of shape I was. We didn't go slow but by the time we reached the top I was way out of breath and very glad we weren't on the Dream! After walking around and enjoying the view from above, and taking several pictures, we headed back down to the rest of the family. We were in Tracy Arm!

This is where we noticed that the tables at the BBB were not very ideal for viewing. The narration wasn't audible and the glass prevented good pictures. DW and I had a verandah and we invited everyone to our room. They declined. We went to our room and turned on the narration on the TV. You can see my photos in the Tracy Arm photos thread.

This brought us right up to the John Charles family show, which we all went to, again. Seriously. This guy is THAT good!

After the show we headed for dinner and then we went to see Ed Alonzo. He was great, but had a real shock factor. We can see why he works at the Knott's Berry Farm Halloween Haunt. I'd love to see his full show. After that, DW and I headed for our room while the rest of our over 18s partied with the college club.

This day ... was done.

 

[cyclenut]

Love this little town. Everyone was up and got in their breakfast before heading out. As with most every port, we were cleared to disembark a few minutes earlier than was published. Never late. We had a great location in port.

Everyone pretty much had a similar departure time for their excursions and it was around 8:30 or so. I provided excursion reviews in the appropriate thread and have already covered the port adventures experience so I'll pick up here with our day after our return from the shore excursions.

I had to hear about how my DW walked away from a great deal on some jewlrey. Be wary. There are great deals to be had but Skagway is almost all jewlrey stores offering what appear to be crazy discounts. We are not experts so we didn't feel comfortable making any major purchases here. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Use your own judgement.

Being that I am a weekend cyclist and took on this 38 mile bike ride that started in the rain, I had some clothes that needed to be washed, and right now. I headed for the laundry room after boarding then headed for the shower. The laundry facility is easy to use but I would advise you bring your own laundry soap if you plan to use it. The soap they have there is fine but the machines didn't always work for me. I did do two loads of laundry, on different days. Once it worked fine and the other time I spent $3 on a $1 box of soap and never did get any soap ... if you know what I mean. The machines were always going on our deck and if you are not on top of it when your cycle is done, your stuff can end up out on the bench in the laundry area. I used the cloth laundry bags to transport laundry to and from the laundry facility. This is a very nice touch that I haven't seen on other lines. Just use your KTTW card. Some people seemed to be doing several loads, perhaps to avoid the issue of mounds of dirty laundry when they got back. We just did what we needed.

The day was wet in the morning but cleared up by the afternoon. The rumor was that some of the early helicopter excursions had to be cancelled due to low clouds and fog. Not sure if that is true or not. We were not really back early enough to catch Cars2 or the Pirates movie that were showing that afternoon. We just sort of hung out until dinner.

DW wanted to see "The Help" but it didn't start until 10:30 and that was just too late for us. We were too tired to stay up until it finished at 1:00am. So, we toured Deck 5 and some other areas of the ship we had not seen yet then headed for our stateroom. This is another thing that is nice about having a verandah. We could sit out on the deck and just watch the night go by. Very relaxing.

The "kids" all had their own things to do and based on what we heard the next morning, they had a lot of fun well into the night. They watched "Match your Mate" in Wave Bands and did a number of other things too. We were done and looking forward to Juneau.

 

[cyclenut]

It was another port adventure day for us and we were really looking forward to it. We didn't do too much in the morning. I sat out on the Verandah and watched the ship come into port then went up to Decks 9 and 10 to take some pictures of the ship. It was going to be a most excellent day. Forecast was sunny in the mid 60s and it was every bit of that, if not low 70s. We all did our own thing on board before getting ready to head out on our excursions for the day. We should have planned a little better though. My excursion was over and I was back in port just in time to see my wife and daughter board the Mt. Roberts Tramway. With a little more planning my son and I could have joined them on the trip up for what I think was $27 per person. Instead we wondered around the local shops near the port and chatted with the tour brokers until they were done. We then headed over to the Twisted Fish for a most excellent lunch. It was a little more expensive than I expected but the food was great. I had a smoked salmon pasta dish in an alfreado sauce and my wife had what amounted to a salmon filled bread pocket.

After lunch we headed around the shops together before boarding the bus to head back to the dock. We could have walked, but it was a longish walk along a very boring road. The shuttle bus provided by Disney was better.

Ironically we saw a very long line of people trying to board the Carnival Spirit, which had the prime dock position on that day. The line snaked all the way down the ramp and through the back of the parking lot and appeared to be moving real slow. I can't remember the exact time but it was around 3:00 or so. I asked one of them when they were supposed to be on board and they said it was somthing like 2:30. Wow. This was another time when I was glad our Alaska adventure was aboard the Disney Wonder.

We confirmed our entire party was back on board by 4:00, well ahead of the 4:30 on-board time. We were looking forward to seeing Toy Story the Musical later that night. This was also Pirate night and we really didn't know what to expect, but if it was anything like the Sail-Away we figured it would be too crowded.

Memory of the details is beginning to fade already but after a good lunch on shore and a fun day of excursions we decided to relax in our stateroom. I sat out on the verandah and watched all the comings and goings, including the steady flow of people and buses heading to the ship. It was interesting to me to note that the lines to reboard the Wonder never really materialized. It was a steady flow over time. We went to Diversions and played some backgammon and just relaxed. We headed back to get ready for dinner and see the show when we received a phone call from one of our kids that Toy Story was starting at 6:00 and not 6:15. The previous three shows had all started at 6:15 and I still don't know why they started this one early, but we missed the first 10 minutes of the show by the time we got down to the theater and found some seats.

I wish we would have missed the whole show. It wasn't very good. The performers were great, but the show fell flat. It was based entirely on the original Toy Story storyline and in my view didn't even use the most interesting parts. Yes, Buz Lightyear did fly through the air, but SLOWLY. At that speed it almost wasn't worth the affect. The whole thing moved slow. The best part of the show was the ending both because they did a good job with the final song and because it meant the show was finally over. I thought maybe it was just me, but all of the people in our party who saw it thought it was disapointing, and they saw the whole thing. We were excited to see the Animator's Palate show that was coming later though.

Since we didn't sit together for the show, we met up outside the theater and did a little shopping. We purchased shirts, some pins and a model of the ship as well as a few other things. We had already purchased a couple of scrapbooks and the fleece throw. We were disappointed with the overall lack of shopping available on the Disney ship. I know, not everyone would agree, but with just two shops stuffed mostly with Disney merchandise and the ports being almost exclusively jewelry, my wife and girls were looking for something more. This is where we really started to become frustrated with the overall cruise experience. We had already stopped by the future cruise desk looking for a better price on our already booked Fantasy cruise in June of 2012 only to find out that we already had the best price, by several hundred dollars. We were beginning to wonder why everything Disney had to cost so much. We took another look at some of the other itineraries and decided to stop by the future cruise desk to have another talk with them. Turns out that would have to wait until the next day. We headed back to the room to deposit our new purchases and then it was off to dinner.

I have to tell you, we really loved the Animator's Palate show. Some of the screens appeared to need repair as they were not displaying colors correctly but overall it was pretty awesome to watch the room transform, capped off by a visit from Mickey. I loved the colorful vests and ties. I wish I could buy one somewhere. I would so wear that thing! We ordered a couple of non-alcoholic drinks for our "kids" in the lighted pirate glasses. Funny that we had to point them out to our server and ask about them. They were never offered. One of the two didn't even work. At the end of the meal our assistant server went back and got two new glasses that both worked. Even by this time, service just wasn't yet up to our expectations in the dining area. (no ... it wasn't just the glasses).

It was by this time we were starting to doubt whether Disney wanted anyone to enjoy late seating. We were already 15 minutes late for Pirates and ... the buffet. What?! There was no way we wanted to miss the Animator's Palate show so we were NOT going to skip dinner that night but there really was no point in joining the Pirates deck party. We just had dinner, were already "late" and we suspected there wouldn't be any place to stand and watch by that time. Besides, we weren't "In" the Caribbean. This just seemed really stupid to be honest. Disney is usually all about the details and this was one set of details that really missed the mark.

I'm not even sure I remember what we decided to do but I know we spent time looking through pictures at Shutters and going over future cruise plans before we called it a night.

 

[seamour]

dude you are now typing faster than I can read! Not that I am complaining. LOL! Love reading your take and comments on things as well as your families. I have often wondered about the scrapbooking even on DCL and guess I just will let it remain a mystery to me, doesn't sound like it's worth my time. The Salmon grill however sounds like it is more than worth my time!

 

[cyclenut]

All of the days sort of run together. I know we had breakfast at Parrot Cay on one day, but I can't tell you for sure if it was on the morning of Ketchikan or Juneau. All of our excursions were later in the day for Ketchikan so part of me wants to say that most people slept in because the ship wasn't even in port until noon.

Whichever day it was, I was much more impressed with the buffet breakfast at Parrot Cay than the BBB or the character breakfast. Maybe it was because it was indoors and the food didn't get cold just looking for a table or maybe it was because we could find what we wanted and eat when we wanted. Whatever the case, this might have been the best breakfast we had on the ship the entire cruise. Light, fun, hot food was hot and cold food was cold, variety. Loved it.

At some point we made our third trip to the future cruise desk. We found that the repo cruise in September of 2012 from Vancouver to LA to be of our liking and relatively inexpensive. We booked it and paid the 50% deposit. We figured we could move this to another date in 2013 if we wanted. At least we locked in the discount and onboard credit. Plus, it was cruise we thought might be fun. We looked at several other options before settling on this one and by the time we were done, a line had formed. We had our next two cruises booked and were now hoping that our Alaska adventure ended on a high note. The day was still young.

One think I do know is that we were going to meet for lunch around noon bu before we went got started we looked closer at the schedule and realized that there would be zero opportunity for any shopping after our adventures since they all came back late. A couple of people wanted to go ashore early for shopping and this is when we realized how silly it sounded to have to meet back up on the ship for the excursion. Nevertheless, that's how it was. So, instead of lunch, two headed ashore for some shopping. The rest, went to grab something to hold us over until dinner.

Our jeep and canoe adventure was the lastest for our party, coming back at 7:15 with all aboard being at 7:30. No worries. we were back in plenty of time. Dinner was moved to 8:30 seeing as we were so late leaving port and we were given updated dinner tickets with the new time plus there were several announcements to that affect.

Well, we were now done with all of our Alaska trip and it was starting to sink in that this cruise was now heading home. We were too late getting back to catch the Ventriloquism of Michael Harrison, which was moved to 7:15. We had to get ready for dinner, this was semi-formal night and after our shore trips we didn't feel like we wanted to go to dinner in those clothes. Several in our party wanted to try their hand at the Disney Tune Trivia again, this time in the Promenade Lounge. That made them a little late for dinner, but that didn't matter.

This is where the wheels sort of fell off the wagon. As we finished desert we were informed by our server that there was a late night desert buffet at 11:00 (maybe it was 11:30). Remember, dinner was already pushed back to 8:30 so it was now less than an hour away. This wasn't in the Navigator, but we were told that it was. Really, it isn't there. We headed over to Studio Sea for Karaoke but the card was filled for the evening. I'm sorry but it was no fun listening to some of those who were pretending to sing when we knew there was no chance that anyone in our party would make it up there.

We headed up to watch a movie on Funnel Vision when I got a call from my wife who told me people were already lined up and they were starting to let people in, early. We asked the person at the door how we were supposed to know about it and they, very rudely, replied that it was in the Navigator. It wasn't.

We were still full from dinner so we mostly admired the food and setup and just sampled a couple of things and then left. We studied the Navigator more to really see if we could find it and when we couldn't, we decided we had enough and went to see Guest Services. We were first told it was in the Navigator. When he couldn't find it either, he went back and checked. The answer we got was that they decided to stop publicizing it. That was it. No reason. No explanation. That was it. This really was a minor issue but combined with all of the other minor issues we had seen on this cruise, we asked for someone to call us to explain how Disney had let their standards fall to the point where they no longer cared about such details as communication with guests. I was asked when the best time to contact me was and I told them, 10am the next morning.

We were done for the day.