It was finally time to get on the boat! We woke up super early (we were still on East Coast time), so Nancy decided to go for a run to the beach while the girls and I headed to the market at the Hyatt to grab some coffee and breakfast. Nancy’s first stop was Mission Beach.
She then found the Belmont Park amusement park to get some great photos while the place was empty.
Nancy returned to the hotel to shower and get ready. The girls and I returned from the market with breakfast. We packed up all the luggage and put on the luggage tags as well. We didn’t have a port arrival time since we are Platinum Castaway Club members. The downside of that is that we didn’t have a minimum time, which is a problem since we like to arrive on the early side. We decided to order an UberXL around 9:00 am or so. I figured that would get us to the port around 10:00 am. The Uber driver arrived at 9:15 am and we headed off to the Port of San Diego. As we headed towards the port on I-5, we could see the Wonder tied up at the International Cruise Ship Terminal.
We had the Uber driver drop us off as soon as we could, which was around 9:45 am. We took our luggage out of the car and proceeded to walk down towards the terminal building.
Of course, we had to stop a couple of times and take some pictures of the Wonder! She is really our favorite of the four ships. I think it is mainly because we have been on the Wonder the most (five our of our twelve cruises).
As we continued down the walkway, we got to the Port of San Diego terminal. Terminal is strong word for this building. Large empty warehouse would be a better name. It certainly isn’t comparable to the Port of Miami Terminals we have been in. It isn’t even close to the Disney Cruise Line Port Canaveral Terminal. But, we only spent an hour or so in the building, so no harm was done.
The taxi area at the Port was insane. We later found out that it was because they were still disembarking passengers while new passengers were beginning to show up. There was also another ship from Holland America Cruise Line at the port as well, adding to the congestion.
We found a security guard near the entrance to the terminal who checked our paperwork and told us where to go, as well as where to drop off our luggage. The entryway was next to the terminal building. The signage isn’t very good, so it wasn’t easy to determine where to go or what to do with your luggage.
While going down the walkway, several port workers told us to take our luggage across this crosswalk to the porters across the taxiway to drop it off. We headed across and handed our bags over. The port is really setup for passengers to arrive via taxi and not to walk or take an Uber.
We then headed inside the terminal building, which was rather sparse. There were two seating areas. The one on the left was really small with only a few rows of seats. The seating area on the right was larger and included a set of bathrooms. The security line began between the two seating areas. When we arrived, there were already a few families standing a the entry of the security line.
Nancy and the girls sat down while I got in the security line. Several times, various port employees came out and asked people to take a seat, but nobody left the line. Everybody was a bit too excited to start their vacations.
After about 30 minutes, they opened security to begin screening passengers. By that time, Nancy and the girls had joined me in the line. We headed in to the screening area.
You are not allowed to take any pictures of the security screening area. There were several lines and we got into an empty one. We are pretty efficient at going through security screenings, so despite being about four or five families back in the line, we emerged from security first. The terminal building was divided in half at this point, The left side was setup for check-in to Holland America Cruise Line. The Disney Cruise Line check-in was to the right, so we headed off that way.
We were handed a health form as we entered and we headed for the Platinum Castaway Club/Concierge check-in line. We quickly checked in and received our Key to the World Card and Platinum Lanyards. We then moved as quickly as possible down to the Supervisor’s Desk to check for upgrades.
We originally had booked stateroom 2512 for this cruise, which is the same room we had on the Magic on our Very Merry Christmas Cruise. We loved the location of the room on the Magic and thought we would enjoy it again. The Verandah rooms were a bit out of our price range for this cruise, costing an additional $1500 or so. We always check to see if there are upgrades available though, because you never know. You can always turn them down if you don’t like them.
The ship had four verandah rooms available. All of them were Category 6A Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah, which are handicap accessible staterooms on the aft portion of the ship. The price to upgrade from our Oceanview room to the Category 6A room was only going to be $268 for the entire five nights. We quickly took the upgrade. We selected stateroom 6654 from the list and they reprinted new Key to the World Cards for us. We were really excited about the room, because it had an enormous verandah. (Note: nobody had booked these rooms, so we weren’t displacing anyone that needed the accessibility features that the room offered).
By the time we had finished processing our upgrade, the check-in lines had started to get busy.
We then went over to the seating area to wait for our boarding group number (we were assigned to the first boarding group) to be called.
We had to go looking for a paper Navigator. They were handing them out at the entrance to the check-in lines where we received the health form. We must have gone through before they were available. We settled down to read it and see what activities we were interested in.
We talked to some fellow cruisers near us that were also from the Washington DC area. They had also gone to the Supervisor’s desk to see if there were any available concierge rooms available for upgrade, but had come away empty handed. They had already booked a Verandah room, so declined what was available.
After waiting for about an hour, they announced the family of the day. They then announced boarding group one, and we headed on board the Wonder!
Next up, we will have boarded the Wonder for the start our cruise!
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