We were on this cruise, and it was not what I expected. We drove down 95 and if we really wanted to go to Charleston we would have stopped on the way.(G) I wanted to experience the warmth of the Bahamas. We did go on a carriage ride that was ok, the people were real nice, but I wanted a beach. I wanted to get away from reality for a while. That did not happen. Another thing that bothers me is that the seas we experienced seem to have been a bit worse then what the Magic had, the pools on the Wonder were closed most of the time, I have read the pools on the Magic were open, but wavey. Don't know if the day difference in departure made the difference in where we were able to go, but wish they could have done a better job. I was also surprised at the prices of the excursions they offered at Charleston. Disney's excursions were all around $50 per person. We did the carriage ride on our own for $36 for the three of us, they didn't charge us for our 4 year old. I also kept asking for a map of the area, and the excursions desk could not help me. When I asked the night before I was told I could try the internet cafe. I was not willing to pay the price, if they thought of that why didn't they do it as a guest services measure? In the morning they still didn't have a map. When we got off the ship, there was a table set up with tourist information booklets that Charleston tourism was providing us, they contained a map. It would have been nice if Disney could have helped us out with this, or at least known that we would be met with information at port. Made me wonder if they were working on commision at the excursion desk.
We did get all the shows, and what we saw were great, finishing up with the amazing Disney Dreams, just fantastic. The weather really put a damper on things, I think some of the crew had problems cleaning up after all those that were sick, as well as those dumping their beverages ( I did that at the buffet, when the table I tipped into with a wave moved, all the other tables are very steady the omlet station is not)
One other problem we had was with the kids club on the first night, we were paged that my older daughter wanted out, when it was really the younger one. By the time I got to the youger one she was quite upset, and didn't want to go back. She worked through it and did make it back the third day for a short stay and the forth day long enough to eat with the kids, and let us have the best (by far) meal of the trip at Palos.
Castaway Cay was beautiful. We had a wonderful day there, just wish we had more time. Rented a couple of tubes, and bikes. Very relaxing, food was Ok, cookies were good. Service at the barbacue was wonderful, wish we had some of that wait service on the ship. My little one fell off the bench onto her butt and head, luckily the butt took most of the force. The castmembers were there instantly, almost in time to catch her it seemed. She calmed down real fast, and we couldn't feel a bump, so we didn't bring her to first aid. The castmembers kept coming by to see if she was alright or if we needed anything. (the service was just as good before the fall as after)
I wasn't as happy with this trip as I expected to be, but for the kids I feel I would be willing to go again, only thing is my DH was sick 3 of the 4 days and he isn't as willing to give it another try. Guess we will have to go back to WDW for a while, and maybe after a while DH will forget.
