Let's get this cruise started! Yippee--embarkation day! (Monday, May 22)
We got up in the morning and saw all the posts in our Fb group that the Wonder had arrived! So we went for a short run down to the port area, and snapped a few photos.
Food for us to eat!
My husband works in food distribution, so this was interesting to me.
We ran back up to the hotel, stopping at Tim Horton's near the hotel because I really wanted one of their donuts. yum! Then we got cleaned up, ran a few more errands (down to Spokes to replace the water bottle I lost the day before, to Safeway to get some bandaids and extra toothpaste, and to the liquor store to get a bottle of prosecco to bring on board). Packed the rest of our things, then checked out.
A taxi was hanging out right outside the hotel on Robson, so we piled aboard for the very short ride down to the port. I decided that we had already walked enough with our bags on Saturday, no need to lug them any further.
There wasn't too much traffic, since it was a holiday in Canada, and I think we were the only ship boarding at that time. The cab driver dropped us off (fare around $8-10), and the
DCL porters were right there to collect bags.
At Canada Place, there were plenty of people to direct you where to go-- we just kept following their directions, and following other people. Easy enough. When we got to the DCL check-in area, the room was arranged with multiple check-in stations. There were a few lines: one for concierge/platinum
Castaway Club, one for gold/silver Castaway Club, and one for the rest of the people. When I told one worker we were Silver, for some reason, she directed us to the first time cruisers line. It had a lot of people. Our PAT was something like 11:30. I finally figured out we were in the wrong line, so we jumped over the silver line, which moved a little faster. This probably took a good 40 minutes altogether.
Once checked in, we got our silver lanyards and continued through the rest of the process.
Mickey was just leaving the photo area (to get the ship ready to leave), so Minnie was there in her cruise director attire. So cute! Almost no line to get a photo.
We then went through the line to have the security people check our prosecco, then on to the ship!
Pretty shortly after boarding (I should have taken better notes of the time frame of all of this-- so sorry, readers), we went to Triton's for lunch. On our first cruise, we had gone to the buffet at Parrot Cay, it was nicer here to just sit down and let someone bring the food to us. Since it was (maybe 1 pm?) a bit crowded, we told the server that of course, we don't mind sharing tables, so they found 2 seats at a larger table of adults.
And.. I don't remember what I ate.
by the time we were done, we were able to go find our room-- perfect! Deck 6 with a great view. Our luggage wasn't all there yet, though we checked back a couple of times.
I was tickled to see that our TA had sent a bottle of prosecco for us, which was on the counter with a nice note, and glasses were provided. (I think hard plastic, actually)
We stopped by Azure ("Azzzzzuuuure" in the accent of the cruise director
) to sign up for an adult beverage tasting-- I would have liked to do the champagne tasting, but it was offered when we had an excursion. So we signed up for wine tasting for our first sea day.
We took a few photos of the ship. Who doesn't have a zillion photos of this smokestack?!
The new chandelier (sorry, not a great photo). I liked the old one better, though this one is supposed to represent the flower in Ariel's hair.
Our Facebook group had a meetup at 3 pm. I was happy to meet the person who organized it, and a few others, though it was fairly crowded and it's hard to try to match online with actual people. So we didn't stay too long. We did end up meeting several others of the group at our dinner seating (several of us adults had linked seating), and at other activities.
Muster was at 4 pm, and we were assigned to Animator's Palate, so that was easy enough.
Finally, SailAway!!
On our first DCL cruise, it was raining when we left Miami, so we had SailAway in the atrium. It's MUCH more fun outside on a gorgeous sunny day! So much energy and excitement! I had brought prosecco up with us to toast our departure. With all the music, dancing, and clapping, it was so much fun! We toasted each other, the ship, Vancouver, and waved to all the people watching our departure from Canada Place. I got teary-eyed at a couple of points, because I was so happy.
When we sailed under the Lions Gate bridge, people were up there waving down to us.