1/15/23 Royal Caribbean Wonder of the Seas

January 15, 2023

We left the Norwegian Prima around 8:30 am. We got stopped because we had a credit on our account. We assumed they would just credit back the card. Nope. They wanted to pay us in cash. No problem. The pier had facial recognition so clearing customs and immigration was breeze. We headed to Target to buy a couple things. We made it to Wonder of the Seas boarding just as they opened up the ship. Perfect timing.

Check in was easy. We were onboard by 10:33 am. We decided to film the tour of the upper decks while it wasn’t too crowded. It was cold so a lot of people stayed inside. We did about an hour and a half of filming. The ship made a great first impression. 

So many places to be and things to do. We are sailing with around 6,600 other guests. We had lunch reservations at Mason Jar – the southern restaurant. Erol, our waiter, was from Turkey. We was floored when we said he’d been to his hometown just outside of Troy. He was so happy. The food at Mason Jar was terrific. We had the deviled eggs, cinnamon roll, Johnny cake with pulled pork and Nashville Hot fried chicken sandwich.

After lunch, we headed to the cabin to unpack. We waited a couple of hours for suitcase, but it didn’t arrive so we headed up to deck for sail away.  The Caribbean music band was great. We checked out the Diamond Club happy hour. It had a lot of servers and a good snack buffet.  We won Beverages trivia. (There were only two teams playing.) The casino had opening night free play. We got $8.00 and promptly lost it. When we got back to the room, our luggage was there. YAY!

We had 8 pm dinner reservations at the main dining room. It’s huge and very busy. We were done in 45 minutes. The tomato soup was great. The Maryland crab cake was pretty good. I had the Indian Chicken Saag. I really liked it. After dinner, we listened to the Latin band in Boleros. We went to the Welcome Aboard show. The 9 piece orchestra is terrific. Mike, the Cruise Director, is a lot of fun. He did a fun magic trick. The two comedians were okay. The first comedian had a great concept for a show – how was Martin Luther King as a dad? It just didn’t land. The second comedian was an insult comedian so he struggled a bit with a clean, family friendly show. We headed to the pub to listen to the guitar player and then the party band. We tried so hard to make to the balloon drop at midnight, but I was fading.

Overall, a great first day onboard.