Sandy's travels

March 2017, Spring break, Orlando Florida   Universal Studios

Monday, March 27th was travel day. We arrived at our rental house in the dark and quickly sorted out the six bedrooms! Tuesday morning arrived....late morning, as we were all exhausted after our 3 am morning call to get to our respective airports for 4! We mainly spent the day shopping for food and getting unpacked and organized. Wednesday, yesterday, we were up and out the door just before 8 and headed to Universal. What a great fun day. Basically we did the rides throughout the park, although the "Hulk" roller coaster was not on my agenda, my granddaughter Cass, who is 11 loved it and would have gone again! The two boys, Jared and Jacob went off on their own for a bit, but we all met for late lunch at two, then again for 7:30 when it was time to leave. The rides were awesome, the 3D. Effects with the glasses brought the video to life! In King Kong, you actually felt like the T Rex was coming right into your face and the gigantic gorilla....you could almost feel h...

Upon leaving the USA, we flew from Houston Texas to Edmonton, arriving late in the evening.  I spent 2 nights and a day at my son and daughter in laws and then flew from Edmonton to Fort McMurray.  Evidence of the major forest fire earlier in the year was clearly seen flying in!  My eldest grandson was there to meet me and drove me into town for a bite of lunch and then to see his place.  One of his friends, a lady who pulled some strings, made arrangements to get me a tour of their worksite on the tar sands.  I was geared up with work boots, a safety vest, goggles, hard hat and gloves, plus a guest tag with my info on it and we soon had a company truck to use on our tour!  And what an interesting tour it was.  Cameras aren't allowed so I was able to enjoy listening and looking at what they were describing and showing me!  You can google information on the tar sands to learn more about how it is mined, extracted, processed and its impact on the e...

All good things must come to an end but....then you go on to something just as good, or fun and exciting! After leaving Cozumel we made our way across the Gulf to arrive at Port Canaveral. We arrived in the early morning and tied up next to another Disney cruise ship bigger than us. We had all packed up the night before so we just needed to dress and head off to early breakfast prior to departure. Taking our luggage with us we made our way by bus to the car rental outlet. After some issues were ironed out with a vehicle we were in a van and on our way to Orlando. Thank goodness for GPS on the phone!we checked out a Disney outlet mall and stopped for lunch prior to finding our adjoining condo rooms at the Sheraton Suites. We had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, laundry facilities and full kitchen. The pool was just outside our door. We had picked up some food and drinks before arriving at the condo and enjoyed a light meal in our room. After dinner we decided to head to downtown D...

Looking back through my photos, I found a few I'd taken as we began going through the locks. There is a lock side building, I'm still not completely sure what it is used for, maybe a hotel or Welcome Centre. As we were traversing through we could see the verandas packed with people. Lots of school children and adults. They were holding up signs 'Hola Mickey, and Hola Goofy'! And looking down, there was Mickey and Goofy on the pilot deck waving to all these folks. Such a fun time and exciting for the children there. Everyone around the world seems to know Disney. Something I did not know until this trip, the Disney Wonder is the only one of the four Disney ships small enough to go through the licks, until this year when the larger ones opened! Perhaps there will be a change to the Disney ships itinerary now.

One of the coolest things about cruising is the dining. On the Disney Wonder you receive a lanyard with a plastic tag holder and on the name card are the initials TAP. This tells you your first night of dining is in T for Triton, followed by A for Animators and lastly, P which means Parrot Quay. Your dinner rotation will always be in this order for the duration of the cruise so you know which dining room to go to. All of your serving staff will follow you in this rotation so that you really get to know them and they you. It's great fun! You do have a menu each night to choose your meal from. I like to take photos of the meals and desserts! Thought I'd post a few here from our nightly dining experience. Just to clarify though, this cruise was the last prior to a two month refit in Spain and many changes are in store, particularly the restaurants and other venues. There are also two or three (??) bars....lounges which will also receive redesigns. I can't wait to s...

Once we left Cartegena we headed north for Cozumel. It is a small island off the coast of Mexico, but is part of Mexico. It's main claim to fame seems to be its popularity as a cruise ship port. We had booked a shore excursion by bus to one of the islands many resorts Playa Mia, for the day and were off as soon as we reached shore. Our day included all the drinks we wanted, beach chairs, access to the pool, which was wonderful, a buffet lunch, pedal water bikes, kayaks and of course lots of little shops selling the usual Mexican wares. The best part as far as all our younger gang were concerned was the enormous floating water park with climbing icebergs, trampolines, seesaws, etc., We had three other young people come with us so they sure enjoyed the fun. Once our bus picked us up we had about an hour to do a little more shopping should we like prior to boarding the ship again. The water here is crystal clear and sunburns could happen really quickly!