Alaska Cruise – Part 9 – Sea Day

Day 7 – Sea Day

This was our last full day on the cruise with no more stops until our return to Vancouver. Nancy and I had planned to eat brunch at Palo. We didn’t quite know what to expect, other than what we had read online (and that it had a dress code). We made sure the kids had lunch, then headed off to change and go to Palo for brunch.

Palo is the adult only upscale Northern Italian dining venue on the Wonder (and the Magic). It has an additional charge of $30 per person. I won’t try to do a full review of it, since it has been done so well in other places. Needless to say, the food, view and company were outstanding. It was the best food we had eaten on the cruise. To this day, six cruises later, we always schedule brunch at Palo.

Ship Tour

After lunch at Palo, our oldest daughter wanted to take one last tour of the ship. So off we went for a walk on the Deck 10, the top deck. We also stopped at the Goofy’s Sports Deck (Deck 10 forward) to a few games of foosball. It was really windy up on the top deck, or at least that is what I kept saying after I lost each game. We tried ping pong, but the wind didn’t cooperate.

Fish Extenders

One aspect of Disney cruising that I hadn’t mentioned before is a Fish Extender Group. It is similar to a Secret Santa program between cabins. We registered for a group via the DISboards.com, where we found a fish extender group for our cruise. When you sign up, you get a list of all the cabins and their occupants that want to participate and then prepare/acquire small gifts for all the people on the list. Some people prepared gifts related to the cruise and some prepared items related to from where they live.

To exchange gifts, people hang pockets on the fish ornament which hangs outside of their staterooms. (The fish ornament is partly decorative, but also serves as a place where the Disney Cruise Line staff can leave you messages, such as dinner or spa reservation details). To distribute your gifts, you place the gifts for the cabin in the pockets (most people had one pocket per person in the stateroom); you can do this at any time the cruise. The gift bags we put together included Alaskan pens with a nautical-themed small notebook for the adults. For the children, we had President-themed pencils and Mickey & Minnie stickers. We also included a Washington DC-themed post card with a recipe for cherry cobbler in each package.

I wish we had a picture of our fish extender, but I don’t. We also neglected to take pictures of the gift bags we made up for the other cruisers. Here are some pictures of some of the wonderful gifts we received.