In November 2016, Wayne and I were fortunate to be on the newly refurbished Disney Wonder.
This cruise we had an early port arrival time, however, we decided that rather than have to sit and wait in the port after checking in, we’d arrive early afternoon. It was great! The line to check in wasn’t long, and because of the selected arrival time we chose, we were able to just walk on the ship after we checked in. Our boarding group had already been called before we arrived, so we didn’t have to sit around in the waiting area!
We arrived on board shortly after 1:00 pm, so we still weren’t able to go to our stateroom (which is typically 1:30 pm), so we took our two bags with us and went to lunch. Right after we ate, we went to the stateroom and unpacked the two bags, then went exploring the ship until it was time for the muster drill.
After the muster drill, we opted to go to our stateroom rather than go to the sail away party on the pool deck. I’m glad we did! We went out onto our veranda and as we left the port, we were able to watch dolphins seemingly playing with the ship. They swam alongside. It was the first time I saw dolphins in the wild. We weren’t able to get any good video or pictures, because you never knew where they would pop up to the surface, but we did get one, while not really good, it did show a dolphin.
Another thing we were able to watch as we were leaving the Galveston harbor was the harbor pilot leaving the ship. We had a great view from our balcony and my husband got some video of the boat the pilot hopped on to get off our ship.