Ndfan89

Great blog.  Looks like you are both having a wonderful trip!

Thanks for the report. I found it very entertaining and did not think you were whining at all.  Call a spade a spade - my type of lady! 🙂 Thank you for taking us along with you and your family. 
 
I will be boarding the Wonder on Sunday, July 9.  I will not be in a suite but excited to experience the Wonder of the Seas.   I did buy the UDP to try to avoid 4000 of my closest friends for dinner.  I also ordered the Evian water 👎.  
 
I do not feel like I would be a very good blogger but I will try to update of any craziness.
 
Thanks again and I love your writing style and sense of humor.  

Thanks for the report. I found it very entertaining and did not think you were whining at all.  Call a spade a spade - my type of lady! 🙂 Thank you for taking us along with you and your family. 
 
I will be boarding the Wonder on Sunday, July 9.  I will not be in a suite but excited to experience the Wonder of the Seas.   I did buy the UDP to try to avoid 4000 of my closest friends for dinner.  I also ordered the Evian water 👎.  
 
I do not feel like I would be a very good blogger but I will try to update of any craziness.
 
Thanks again and I love your writing style and sense of humor.  

July 9th - Wonder

July 9th on Wonder 

Following - I get on the Wonder 7/9.. Soooo excited 

We are booked ... B2B for birthday 11/4/2024

Great review.. I will be there July 9 - July 16.  I am so excited 

Great review.. I will be there July 9 - July 16.  I am so excited 

Thank you so much 

I won $2700 on Harmony and my husband won $3500 

I won $2700 on Harmony and my husband won $3500 

I won $2700 on Harmony and my husband won $3500 

Here is the casino brochure for Enchantment of the Seas.
 

Wonderful Blog! Thank you for taking the time to write. 

My son represented the state of Alabama in 2016 in Warner Robins, GA at LLWS.  We lost.  
 
TheRick have a great cruise! So looking forward to following along.  I will be checking-in this time next Sunday ! It is our first cruise since November 2019.

Great writing! Have a wonderful cruise. 

I’m still not quite sure about how good I’ll be at this, but I figure I’ll give it a shot.  I’m neither a writer nor especially witty, but I thought our experiences may be of help to someone who is coming to Galveston for a cruise for the first time (like us).  On that note, thank you @Galveston Stevefor your thread about Galveston.
Please forgive any spelling, grammar, tenses, or other mistakes.  I may ramble, too.  I’m more of an in-person communicator, so I have no problems with constructive criticism. My cameras are an iPhone 12 and an iPad Mini.  I’m not a photographer, so my apologies in advance.  🙂
Background:

My wife and I originally booked this cruise in January 2020 while at Next Cruise on Adventure.   We booked it as wedding present for my stepson and his fiancé who were getting married in July 2021 on the 10th anniversary of their first date.  Because of Covid, everything got pushed to 2022.  A huge thank you to @michelle for rescheduling everything for us.  (Edited to add..another thank you to Michelle for helping us upgrade from Interior cabins to Balconies). 
 
On the surface, it may seem weird that parents are going on a honeymoon cruise with their son and new wife.  However, they are both on the autism spectrum.  High functioning to be sure, but a trip from Maine to Galveston, then boarding a cruise ship is more than they feel comfortable navigating on their own.  
 
Our original plan was to fly into Houston’s Hobby Airport the day before and spend one night in Galveston.  After some cancellations and changes of our flights by American, as well as all the uncertainties with flying nowadays, we decided to fly in two days early.  After a few calls to American, we decided to fly into George Bush International rather than Hobby in order to have one layover and arrive in Houston early in the afternoon.   We are still departing for home from Hobby on September 4th.  

Day 1 (Friday 8/26): 
We departed Portland, ME on time at 6 am and arrived in Philadelphia at 730.  Our connecting flight was delayed by 30 minutes, so we had plenty of time to walk from terminal B to terminal C.  On a side note, this was the first time we’ve connected in Philadelphia and not had to run from terminal F to terminal A or B.  It was nice. 
 
Our flight from Philadelphia to IAH left promptly at its rescheduled time.  Interestingly enough, we touched down in Houston one minute earlier than the original arrival time (1218 pm).  
 
We booked a shuttle to our hotel in Galveston through Galveston Express.  The meeting place is right outside Terminal A at IAH….literally a stone’s throw from the baggage claim we were assigned. 
 
The Galveston Express driver (Ernest) texted us to let us know he arrived.  He was driving a Mercedes Sprinter van that was very clean, and the a/c worked fine.  We made a stop at Hobby to pick up another couple then we were dropped off at our hotel.  Obviously we only have this one experience with Galveston Express, but based on it, we’d use them again. I’ll follow up with our experience on the trip from Galveston to Hobby.  The cost for four adults from IAH to Galveston was $140 and the cost from Galveston to Hobby is $120.  Travel time from IAH to our hotel was about an hour and a half.  There was some construction outside of Hobby that snarled up traffic for a bit.  I’m not a good passenger, but I had no issues with Ernest’s driving. We felt safe at all times.  

We are staying at Springhill Suites on Galveston Island.  We booked here because we could pay partially with Marriott points.  It’s located on the right shortly after you come on the island.  
 
The hotel is clean, modern, and the staff is very pleasant.  Our room has the typical sleeping area and sitting area we’ve seen in hotels in the $200-$300 range.  We have a small balcony with a couple chairs, but so far it’s been too hot and humid for our northern New England blood to sit out there.  It was very quiet last night, which is a change from staying in hotels near the Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports.
 
After a dinner of delivery pizza, we fell asleep early.
Day 2 (Saturday 8/27):
Breakfast is included and is what we’ve come to expect from complementary breakfasts.  There are typical offerings…scrambled eggs, sausage, waffles, cereal, fruit, yogurt, muffins, bagels, etc.  
Our plans for today are to run to Target (across the highway from the hotel) then explore Galveston a bit. 
This is the view from our hotel balcony.  We look out to the southwest, so if we wouldn’t have fallen asleep so early, the sunset would have been nice.  
 
 

Sorry I missed posting this last night.

Day 5: St. Kitts, the dolphin experience
We started with breakfast in the main dining room, we set an alarm and everything. I loved the classic Benedict, I’m a sucker for hollandaise sauce, a hash brown, and the corned beef hash. The hash brown was small, and I could’ve eaten 13 dishes of the corned beef hash, it was that good.
Next was St. Kitts. My wife brought cash and her iPhone. I figured since we didn’t have service in St. Kitts, there was no use in bringing my phone. Remember the last part because it is on the test later.
We split from our group and went on our dolphin excursion. As we were waiting, we went shopping at the shops. The workers in the shops were a little pushy, but not overly aggressive. We got souvenirs for the grandkids and some of our kids, but only the ones we like.  I’m just kidding, we love all three of our children, but one son wants something from the Kennedy Space Center, so we are holding off on getting his gift until Sunday. My other son, wants an island girl. 
After shopping we got into line for our excursion. We were early, we just didn’t know how early we were. While in line we figured we were in the 10:30 am excursion line and ours was at 11:15. The excursion person said he could get us on the earlier excursion and put a green wrist band on both my wife and myself. This too is important to remember for later. On the bus I noticed some people were wearing different colored wristbands, but being the introvert, I didn’t ask, which I should’ve.
When we arrived, we put our stuff in a complimentary locker, which was an ease on my mind and it was then time to get fitted for life jackets. The man brought me a large one, how cute is that. He soon realized I needed an extra large one. After instructions, we were in the water with the dolphins. One of the most exciting things in my life. We did commands, petted, gave belly rubs, shook fins, and touched the dolphins, and it was fantastic, my wife loved it too, but was a little disappointed because we were supposed to be pushed and pulled by the dolphins. I grappled with removing my life jacket, and for a split second, I thought I might win, but winning was not in the cards for me, but luckily, one of the workers tapped in like a WWE tag team partner and we were victorious. My wife was already off to inquire about the pushing and pulling. When I caught up with my wife the employee said the person at the dock put the wrong wristbands on us, if only someone spoke up on the bus, stupid introverted me.
They accommodated us by allowing me to struggle back into a life jacket and took us back into the water just my wife and I. They kind of separated my wife and myself, which is a little problem because I have severe hearing loss and couldn’t take my hearing aids in the water with me and I rely on her a lot to communicate with me. If you are following along with my live blog you have found out I’m super sized, have hearing loss, and sleep with a CPap machine, you are probably wondering how my wife snagged such a catch, she probably wonders too.
We had a quick push and pull by the dolphins and then it was shower off, get dressed, and off to the gift shop to buy photos.
We realized we forgot our debit card, we didn’t have enough cash for photos at $40 a piece, but they did take PayPal. I have PayPal but my wife doesn’t. My wife had her phone, I didn’t. They were pushy when it came to selling the photosand I asked if it were possible to get a link and buy them when we get back to the ship. Their response was now or never. I tried for about forty minutes to log into my email on my wife’s phone to buy the photo package which was 2 for $80 or all forty-five photos for 100. Because my iPhone uses Face ID to log in and I’m not very smart ( my wife is so lucky to have me), I finally gave up and lo and behold, they suddenly came up with a link to buy the photos when we got back to the ship, but they were quite rude to us about it. I know I seem to complain from time to time, but really we are having the time of our lives and will never forget what a great time we are having.  Back on the ship I ordered our photos and after several emails back and forth, we got the link to the photos a few hours later. The photos are great, but we are only able to get 42% of the photos to download on our phones before we get an error message. The link is only good for a month so we will need to figure it out.
Back on the ship was dinner at the main dinning room. Our waiters are the best on the ship. Unlike me, my brother is a big personality and both our waiters are drawn to him for most of our meals. I ordered the ahi tuna, but since I don’t like my fish seared, our waiter had it made well done. I know the chef probably cried himself to sleep last night because he had to cook it well done, but it tasted wonderful.
After dinner was the headliner show, a singer, comedian, and impressionist. His voices of other people were spot on, but the show was mostly geared toward gen X and baby boomers. My nephew and niece knew almost none of the people he was impersonating.
Then it was off to sabor for margaritas and off to bed.
Stray observation:
Our room steward is amazing.
I have a bartender who not only remembers my drink order, but also my name which is cool because I’m pretty forgettable.
In the public men’s rooms, I like the comic strip panels over the urinals even though they are lacking in plot, character development, and a character arc.
Next up is sea day two. We have three sea days this week.

Yay! Enjoy! 😊

I feel your joy! We received three negative test today too! Our first cruise since COVID.  I truly can’t imagine having suitcases packed and getting a positive.  I would be heartbroken. 

Congrats!  We are heading to Bermuda on Saturday and the 4 of us tested negative this morning, so I totally get it!

I feel your joy! We received three negative test today too! Our first cruise since COVID.  I truly can’t imagine having suitcases packed and getting a positive.  I would be heartbroken. 

Have an amazing time! 😍

I feel your joy! We received three negative test today too! Our first cruise since COVID.  I truly can’t imagine having suitcases packed and getting a positive.  I would be heartbroken.