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After posting quickly at Starbucks we headed to the Midway Museum, a retired aircraft carrier right beside our dock in the next berth. The Wonder is a bit bigger, but it's also a lot newer. The aircraft carrier is a BIG ship. Impressive. We toured the ship quickly as by this time we only had about 2 hours before we wanted to head back to check in for the next cruise, but we got to see a good chunk of it, from the bridge to several decks below. We took a few pictures, but didn't have time to see everything or hear all the audio that came with the tour through a portable info device with headphones.
We left and made the short walk back to the Wonder at 2:30pm and start our cruise plan updates, starting with switching our dinner back to second (late) seating. Second seating just works better for us. With all the food on board, we're not usually getting hungry until after 8pm anyway and it's nice to catch the main show in the theatre before dinner rather than after, because if you're tired after dinner, you don't feel bad cause you already caught the show.
We updated our Key's to the World cards to reflect that dining time change and again when Stacey's key wouldn't open our room door.
We started unpacking our room, since this would be our home for the next 2 weeks, go at 4pm for the mandatory safety drill and then back to the room to finish unpacking.
We have a new Cruise Director for this cruise, Jimmy. The Cruise Director for the last cruise, Peter, left the ship in San Diego for holidays. Love the new guy. His opening announcements on the ship included him playing some of Van Halen's "Panama". Appropriate for our cruise. I would later suggest to him the Scorpians "Rock You Like a Hurricane" for later in the cruise which he thought was brilliant. We'll see if he uses it.
The ship was late leaving port. It was supposed to leave port at 4pm but I could still see them loading some baggage or supplies at 4:30 pm, and the Captain would later announce they were waiting for a passenger whose flight was delayed and having some traffic issues? More on that later. The ship finally left port at 5:55pm, well after the scheduled Sail Away party had ended on deck.
In the main show theatre, Jimmy the Cruise Director would introduce Captain Guus (Gustav) from the Netherlands who shows us 19 slides showing storm positions and where we are heading to avoid it. You can tell the Captain isn't used to public speaking with a large audience like that, but he manages it brilliantly, and with a bit of humour, whether he intended it or not.
The bad news is, we are going to be missing Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarrta due to the storms proximity. In fact, the Captain said Cabo called and told us not to come since the port would be shut down. The storm, tropical storm Odile, at this point looks to miss hitting the towns directly, but they will both definitely be hit with strong wind and water surge. Not safe for cruise ships. Safety first! So now our 14 day cruise goes from 4 port days to 2. That's a lot of sea days! We are going to head south, and try to beat Odile past Cabo San Lucas there and be past it to miss the full effects. We probably will see some 10 to 12 foot swells though on the backside of it, so it's gonna be rough for Stacey and I who don't do that well in rocking seas.
There is a quick show in the theatre after the Captain leaves and we go to our cabin to change for dinner.
We get seated at a table for 8, and are first to arrive. We're joined shortly by a newly wed couple, followed by another couple and finally two younger women. During the course of dinner we find out that they have a common connection. They are all cast members. Disney talk for employees.
The 2 women work on the Disney Dream cruise ship. One of them is taking her first crusie as a passenger.
The second couple's wife works at Disneyland.
The first couple's husband works at Disneyworld. His wife, however, is not looking happy. Stacey recognises that look! No, no, she's not mad at her husband! Why'd you think that first? She's feeling seasick. We suggest seabands, accupressure bands for your wrists that they sell at the gift shop. She gets up quickly and appears a few minutes later with seabands, but it's not instant relief, and she decides to go back to the cabin.
While her husband escorts her back to the cabin while the crew works to box their dinner to go, Stacey suggests I go get them some Gravol from our cabin, as the husband said they had no meds at all. We've got lots, so I run up to our cabin and return with some Gravol for his wife before he returns to pick up some dinner.
Since we have new servers for this cruise, we again have to re-explain Stacey's dietary restrictions and setup to preorder the next day's meals.
We were going to do laundry today, but dinner lasted until 10:30pm and Stacey is starting to feel sick. Not nauseated, but started with an earache and sore throat and is now starting to lose her voice. Too much hand sanitizer I think??
Time for bed. A couple of quick facts we learned from the Cruise Director Jimmy at the show.
This cruise has 1857 passengers out of a possible max capacity of the ship of 2700 passengers. There are just over 1000 crew on board. There are less than 300 kids on this cruise. We noticed that it was an older group this time.
WYWH
Kim =) and Stacey :)
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Cam Don't get too sick!