OCSC Mike

Waiting to board Wonder now & express boarding is up & running. The agent said it started a few weeks ago.

Waiting for boarding to begin. Bad news: only one lane was open to park in the garage so there was a backup until we were maybe 6 cars away, then they opened the others and we went right through. Not really a big deal. Good news: Express boarding is up & running. The agent told us it actually started a few weeks ago.

Packing done. Off the the port in a bit b/c we get there exceedingly early. Will update about express boarding and if there's a queue outside the doors with separate arrival time sections like last month (assuming we get there before the doors are open again).

Last update for ya... sadly Aqua Nation was not in the app yesterday and I didn't ask anyone onboard or see any posts about it. I'll just expect the worst and hope for the best.

My initial thought was that’s kinda cool… except for the not working part. Hope everything went smoothly after that.

Speaking of normal schedules… my sleep schedule is screwed up as usual and I didn’t sleep much last night. Let’s pretend it’s just excitement b/c it’s cruise day! I’ll let my wife sleep a little longer then finish packing, have my last cup of cheap, basic coffee for a week and get on the road in a couple hours.

Yeah, the only reason I'm not overly bothered is that we're early risers and off the ship ASAP anyway and it normally takes a couple hours for the area by the Oasis Lagoon where we always sit to fill up so I'm sure we'll get seats. After that, if I have to wait in line for my Snack Shack food, so be it.

Back to packing... My wife is basically done. I haven't unzipped my empty suitcase yet but I have everything sitting out or hanging up and it just needs to be folded and packed. In other words, we're on our normal schedule.

While rarer, CocoCay has been a replacement. Sincerely, Guy who was supposed to be at CocoCay alone Monday but is now being joined by Allure.

Apparently it's not so new as others have gotten it at various ports... except they didn't actually have an express boarding lane, lol. We'll see if Terminal 1 does tomorrow (T5 reportedly didn't have one as of today). Boarding goes so incredibly fast at PC it's not really a big deal.

Thanks. Boarding at PC goes so quickly it's not a big deal. We'll see if T1 has it.

Will do. It will be in my live blog if I don't remember to report back here.

Well this is new at PC, AFAIK…

Unless I missed it, I hadn’t heard of any port besides Miami participating before.

We're not big on pictures (maybe no kids plays a role) but I noticed this too. My wife constantly volunteers to take pics of others (she's a lot nicer than I am) but we often wind up with almost nothing but the 2 Diamond freebies we get.

The comics finally appeared in the app and one is indeed from our October cruise, just not the one we were hoping for, lol. I don’t think we disliked this one though. The other seems new to me. If anyone cares, the one we are seeing again co-wrote the book “He’s Just Not That Into You” that was made into a rom-com with Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, and a bunch of other big names about 15 years ago. We’ll obviously be packing later while I periodically check the current sailing in the app to see if Aqua Nation pops up. Despite all my planning & posting, cruise day always seems to sneak up on me at the very end.

Safe drive tomorrow!

Bad news... She's having some sort of issue with Royal accepting her medical clearance to go back to work so she's not able to join Utopia (or any other ship) for now. Sorry. Really hope it works out for her.

Was good on Wonder last month too (per your recommendation). You're the only reason I'm only ordering the panna cotta at Giovanni's this time... b/c I really need a 4th dessert there, lol.

I just spent a little while picking 7 polos to match the 7 outfits my wife picked out... my underwear can clash.

Packing Update #2... Wife decided to skip the dresses altogether this time around. She has rompers and tops that are just as cute as the casual dresses in my eyes and since I couldn't care less about how dressy we are, my standard advice is to wear whatever you're comfortable in. We used to use taking pictures as an excuse (even though we only ever take our 2 freebies) but recently we've stopped choosing any generic ones where we're just standing next to each other in one of the standard RC poses. We've been opting for more casual poses on the fun/silly side and if we're wearing shorts in them, who cares?

Packing update... Wife just started taking out clothes and will do some ironing once she's picked out her nighttime outfits. I pulled out a few things but basically won't do anything until tomorrow. I shouldn't have hardly any ironing to do so I may do what little there is after she's done. As most of you know, the dressiest we get is a casual dress for her and casual pants for me on the two formal nights to go with the polos I wear every night. Thankfully, packing is pretty painless for us at this point. Somehow I always manage to remember underwear and we don't gamble beyond our free play so no special color choices are required.

Yes, I remember getting small printed notes when we've had a balcony in the past.

Pics of the Pesky Parrot look great and according to @Matt they also have special pina colada flavors like peanut butter.

Pesky Parrot looks great!