Our friend Wes and his family recently went on the Disney Wonder in June 2023 on a seven night sailing from Vancouver. They selected Stateroom 6052, which is a Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah (Category 5B). It is located on Deck 6, Port (left) side behind in front of the midship elevators.
Our friend, Sarah Coggins, recently went on the Disney Wonder in May 2022 for an Alaskan Cruise. She sent us a picture of the Princess menu from Tiana’s Place with some Alaska Inspirations on it: Follow Sarah Coggins on x or check her awesome blog. She has a great article about her trip as well.
Here are her pictures (the dessert menu pictures are from our prior sailing on the Fantasy) :
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
Our friend, Sarah Coggins, recently went on the Disney Wonder in May 2022 for an Alaskan Cruise. She sent us a picture of the Frozen menu. Follow Sarah Coggins on x or check her awesome blog. She has a great article about her trip as well.
Here are her pictures:
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
I had the great privilege and honor to be invited on The DCL Dude podcast (my favorite DCL podcast!) again to discuss the recently released Fall 2022 Itineraries. Work got in the way of me posting immediately when the show came out. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider leaving a review for Wes on iTunes.
The DCL Dude Podcast is a show dedicated to all things Disney Cruise Line! They talk recent DCL news, share travel tips, interview guests, go over the best and worst (ok, mostly best) that DCL has to offer, share trip reports, and hopefully interact with their listeners!
You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Make sure to follow them on Facebook and X (@theDCLdude) as well!
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
One of the worst aspects of any cruise vacation is the fact that you actually have to pay your final bill! (Just kidding). If you’ve never cruised with Royal Caribbean before, I wanted to share exactly what that final Guest Account Summary will look like once you receive it. This final statement is from our Ovation of the Seas cruise that we took to Alaska. It was waiting for us the morning of disembarkation. You can also go to Guest Services at any point on the cruise to get a printed version of it (for charges up to that point).
One difference between the Disney Cruise Line final bill and the Royal Caribbean one has to do with excursions. On Royal Caribbean, anything booked before the cruise such as excursions, dining, and drink packages are paid for when they are booked. That lightens the final bill quite a bit.
On the first page of this bill are my charges followed by two of Nancy’s (which continued onto the next page). As you can see, I had a number of charges from various bars around the ship. They don’t differentiate the charges for the beverages from the gratuities that we added (in addition to the automatic 18% gratuity that is added). I also had the gratuities that we added at the specialty dining places, but not the charges for the meal itself. We paid for those up front by purchasing a four night specialty dining package. Some of the other charges for the specialty dining were from alcoholic beverages that we purchased in those restaurants. There were also charges for some shopping that we did while on board. There are a lot of shops on Ovation of the Seas.
We each had a charge for the Royal IQ App that we added while onboard that was supposed to give us messaging for the duration of the cruise. I thought it was for messages within the Royal IQ App. Once we purchased it, we discovered that we could message each other with the iMessage App on our iPhones, so we decided to just use that. The messages always got delivered and we didn’t miss any notifications. Even if it cost us each $7.95 to be able to use iMessage, it was well worth the money. It is possible that iMessage would have worked without that charge, but we didn’t test that out before we purchased the Royal IQ App onboard.
We had two credits that were placed on our account. One was from our travel agent, Michelle McKnight (michelle@touringplans.com). I have no idea where the other $150 credit came from. I don’t remember booking the room with any sort of credit associated to it, but it got re-priced to a lower price several times before we actually sailed, so one of those re-bookings could have attached a credit to our room. The final payment for the room went on a Visa card that we added at check-in to settle our final charges.
The second page of this bill continues Nancy’s charges (although likely these included my drinks as well that she put onto her card). It appears that she paid for the additional beverages and gratuities at Chops Grille when we went there. The Fish and Ships charged under communication was actually a deep fried candy bar, I have no idea why it ended up in that category (it was really good). The last two sets of charges were for our kids, who didn’t purchase very much using their cards even though they had full charging privileges.
The last page of our bill was just random notifications and small print.
You can also obtain a running version of this in the Royal IQ App.
The app also allows you to enter your email address so you can get your final onboard account balance (and all transactions) sent to you after you have left the ship.
I hope this helped explain one of the saddest aspects of cruising!
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page or our Royal Caribbean Cruise Line Information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
I had the great privilege and honor to be invited on The DCL Dude podcast again to discuss our top 5 favorites Ports of Call. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider leaving a review for Wes on iTunes.
The DCL Dude Podcast is a show dedicated to all things Disney Cruise Line! They talk recent DCL news, share travel tips, interview guests, go over the best and worst (ok, mostly best) that DCL has to offer, share trip reports, and hopefully interact with their listeners!
You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Make sure to follow them on Facebook and X (@theDCLdude) as well!
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
While on a recent Royal Caribbean cruise on board the Ovation of the Seas, we got the opportunity to try the Windjammer Buffet. The Windjammer restaurant was located on the aft portion of Deck 14. We went to the buffet for breakfast one morning.
When you first arrive at the buffet, you will be directed to the hand washing stations located on the side near the entrances.
The buffet is set up as a series of island stations in the center of the restaurant, along with the kitchen in the aft portion. The sides of the restaurant contain seating for patrons. I definitely don’t think there is enough seating during the busiest times. We spent a long time looking for seating on the sea day morning that we decided to go to the buffet for breakfast.
Here are some of our pictures from the breakfast buffet. I certainly couldn’t capture everything, but there was no shortage of breakfast items. The usual breakfast meats, cereal, eggs, toast, and fruit were plentiful.
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page or our Royal Caribbean Cruise Line Information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
Today was our last day in Seattle. We had decided to get to the airport early and get breakfast there. We ordered an Uber to take us there. We probably arrived around 8:20 AM or so for our 10:20 AM flights. Nancy’s flight was on time, so after breakfast, she and my younger daughter headed to their gate.
My flight (along with our older daughter), wasn’t until 11:20 AM. We started getting notifications soon after we got to the airport that our flight would be delayed. We already had a tight connection in Denver, so I was worried we wouldn’t make it.
We decided to go wait in the United Club. I asked the desk agents what we could do if our flight was delayed. They said we would have to spend the night in Denver if we didn’t make our connection because there were no additional seats leaving Denver going to Dulles.
Luckily, our flight took off and made up time on the way to Denver. Nancy made it to Chicago and had a 3 hour layover before continuing on to Dulles.
We landed in Denver and ended up running to our other plane, making it with about 5 minutes to spare before the door was closed. Once we landed at Dulles, we got a text from Nancy telling us she had landed about 15 minutes before us. She met us at our baggage claim where we picked up our bags. We jumped in a taxi and returned home.
We had a great first time trip on Royal Caribbean! Alaska is one of our favorite travel destinations and it was nice to be able to enjoy the natural beauty from an affordable verandah balcony. You can read about our comparison between our Disney cruise experiences and this Royal Caribbean experience.
Planning | Travel | Seattle | Boarding | Exploring | Sea | Juneau | Skagway | Glacier | Sea | Victoria | Disembarkation | Travel
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page or our Royal Caribbean Cruise Line Information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
Today was the last day of our cruise, disembarkation day. We arrived back in Seattle very early, but we still had quite a long time to go before we would get off the ship. We had arranged to stay over in Seattle an extra day so we wouldn’t have to rush off to the airport. Once we’d given this information to Royal Caribbean, they gave us the latest disembarkation group.
We had been assigned luggage tag #33, which meant we would be in The Royal Theater and wouldn’t disembark until 9:50 am. That did allow us to get up late and get a light breakfast from Cafe 270. After we finished our breakfast, we headed to the Royal Theater to wait for our luggage tag to get called.
While I was excited to get a late disembarkation group (so we could sleep in), it all came crashing down as we exited the ship. Why? Because we were at the tail end of a LONG line to get a taxi. We had a hotel in Seattle to go to, but needed to take a cab there. Instead of getting a porter for our bags (who had a much shorter line), I thought it would be easier to carry our own bags and wait for a cab. Big mistake. We ended up standing in this line until almost 11:30 am. In hindsight, a porter would have had us on our way in less than 15 minutes. Eventually, we did get a cab and headed off to the Olive 8 Hyatt.
Our initial thought was to drop our bags off with bell services and then head out to get some lunch. I approached the desk at the Olive 8 and asked to check in. The gentleman that was helping me looked up my reservation and said our room wasn’t ready quite yet, but asked that I wait a minute. He looked on the computer and said he had a room that was available now, but it would be a slight increase in cost. In the interest of getting into the room and dropping our stuff off, I agreed to the charge and he handed me the keys. He smiled and said to let him know if I liked the room.
What he had upgraded us to was the presidential suite, which was awesome. Nancy and the girls were definitely impressed. The room opened to an enormous dining room table, with seating for 10.
There was a smaller four person table at the other end of the room.
There was a living room area as well with a television and three couches, one of which folded down to a bed.
The kitchen had two coffee makers, a wet bar, and microwave.
The separate office had a computer and multi-function printer.
The master bedroom was located in the back of the suite with a king size bed. There was also a dresser and television in the suite as well.
The most impressive part of the suite was definitely the master bathroom. The mirror has a television in it.
There was a wardrobe closet complete with a pair of robes. (No, we didn’t have enough clothes to fill the closet.)
There was also a tub and shower, complete with rain shower head.
After looking around the suite, we grabbed an Uber and headed for the nearest Teddy’s Bigger Burger. During a trip to Hawaii, we found the burger chain and loved it. I don’t know that it is that much better than any other burger chain, but we associated it with all the fun we had in Hawaii. Once we discovered they had a few franchises in Seattle, we knew we would have to visit.
We got dropped off at the Teddy’s location in Greenlake and had a great lunch. Then we decided to take a walk around the lake and see the neighborhood. We walked most of the way around the lake before we gave up and got an Uber back to the hotel. We ended up ordering dinner to the hotel and just relaxed for the rest of the evening.
Tomorrow, we would be headed back home!
Planning | Travel | Seattle | Boarding | Exploring | Sea | Juneau | Skagway | Glacier | Sea | Victoria | Disembarkation | Travel
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page or our Royal Caribbean Cruise Line Information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
Today was our “distant foreign port” stop of Victoria, British Columbia. We have been to Victoria twice before, but really love it, so we were happy to stop here again. I got up and went to get breakfast for everyone at the Solarium Cafe. I brought back breakfast while everyone got ready. We had a quick bite to eat, then we headed off the ship.
We didn’t have an excursion scheduled for the day, instead being content to walk around the downtown area. We were docked at the Ogden Point Cruise Terminal, which is about a mile or so away from the downtown area. Luckily, there are handy markings on the path to show you which way to go.
Here is the path we followed to get to the downtown area. It is really easy to navigate through a mostly residential area.
After a brief walk (with beautiful weather in the lower sixties), we arrived at the Parliament building for the Legislative Assembly for British Columbia. This is a beautiful building set on a fantastic lawn. We took a couple of pictures and then headed over to the Royal British Columbia Museum.
We have been to the Museum twice before, so we decided to skip the visit to the museum and instead just headed into the gift shop. Nancy had lost a bet to my younger daughter, so it was time to pay up. She won a stuffed bear (whichever one she wanted) in the bet and she wanted to collect it at the museum gift shop. We looked around the gift shop for about 15 minutes while she collected her prize.
After leaving the gift shop, we headed past the Empress Hotel, which is the other iconic building in Victoria along with the Parliament building. High tea is supposed to be quite the event at the Empress, but we were just passing by on our way to do some shopping.
After we passed by the Empress, we went into a number of shops to look around. We didn’t really buy much other than a few snacks. We eventually stopped to get some coffee and use the wifi to update all the apps on our phones. After topping up on caffeine, we headed back out to look in various shops and explore the port area.
Around noon, we decided to duck into Bard and Banker for some lunch. This restaurant was opened in a former bank. The lunch (and beer) was really good.
After our lunch, the girls and I were ready to head back to the ship. Nancy wanted a longer walk, so we decided to split up. She went on a monster walk around Victoria while the girls and I headed back to the ship. We ended up walking along the shore for a bit, which gave us a great view of the Ovation.
We got back to the ship and went to the room to drop off our bags. Unfortunately, waiting in our room was our departure luggage tags and letter. It indicated that our bags had to be out by 10 pm, which was going to be tough with our dinner being at 8 pm. I gave Nancy a call to check on her return time. She was almost back to the ship, so we would eventually meet back in the room to get everything ready.
After dropping off our stuff, the girls and I headed back to bumper cars to get in another ride before the cruise ended.
Nancy got back on board, so we went to meet up with her. We had to get back to the room to start packing up the room. We had dinner scheduled for Wonderland at 8 pm and our bags had to be out by 10 pm, so we were a bit tight on time. Nancy made pretty good time packing our bags and finished by 6:30 pm or so. We decided to head over to Windjammer to get some of the pies they had set out for dessert that we had seen the night before. Unfortunately, when we got there, they had only put out cakes. Nancy was really disappointed, although the cakes looked great.
We decided to skip dessert and just head over to Wonderland for dinner. While we liked the food at Wonderland from a visual standpoint, not everybody did. Our youngest daughter didn’t enjoy the taste of some of the items and ended up going back to the room early. The rest of us finished dinner, and then went back to the room to put our bags out quickly before they collected them all. Once we set the bags out and checked on our daughter (who was doing fine), we went back to the shops one last time on the cruise.
We didn’t end up getting anything else, and eventually headed back to the room to get some sleep.
Tomorrow, we would be headed off the ship!
Planning | Travel | Seattle | Boarding | Exploring | Sea | Juneau | Skagway | Glacier | Sea | Victoria | Disembarkation | Travel
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page or our Royal Caribbean Cruise Line Information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
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