Day 3: Wednesday 4/27/16, Part 1
Today’s the day we’ve been waiting for since January 2015! I woke up about 5:30am. Having read that the ships usually arrive in port earlier than that, I decided to take a look. YUP! The Wonder was there, all lit up, just waiting to get rid of its previous passengers so that we could get on board!
From that point on, I was too excited to sleep. Unfortunately, the sun rises about an hour later in Florida than it does in NH, so I even had to wait a long time to be able to occupy myself with the sunrise. But, eventually, morning light started to appear, and I did some picture taking.
We were in no rush this morning. Google maps was showing a 10 minute drive to the port and our port arrival time wasn’t until 11:30. So I attempted to be quiet and let Nick sleep, despite the fact that I felt like I could easily turn into a human Tigger and bounce off the walls from excitement.
Eventually Sleeping Beauty woke up and we got serious about getting ready for the day. Given that we had all morning, we had left the packing for today. We don’t unpack per se when we’re vacationing, but somehow, all our stuff had multiplied, and we had a bunch of packing to do.
But before that, we needed nourishment. We had that banana bread, so I went down to the deli to get juice, and Nick’s request of chocolate milk. He was sure he had seen Hershey’s chocolate milk there the day before. But it was actually Muscle Milk. After a series of text messages, we finally got choices made, and I paid and headed back upstairs with 2 bottles of juice.
The banana bread from Robert is Here was FANTASTIC. So much banana. It was incredibly moist. I’m pretty sure we’d go back there just for the banana bread (and we really liked those milkshakes!).
After eating, we got serious about the packing. It took awhile, but it got done, and we still had an hour to kill before we would leave. I decided to go up to the pool deck and take a few pictures of the hotel and the view of the port from the pool deck.
Shortly before 11, I called down to valet to get the car brought around, hoping that they had parked it in the garage instead of in one of the parking spaces along the driveway. We then grabbed all our luggage, and headed for the car, stopping long enough to drop off the keys and let the front desk that the water stain in the ceiling over the sink seemed to have grown overnight.
A word about the hotel. The Doubletree Grand Biscayne Bay is kind of an interesting set up. The same overall structure houses both a hotel and a high end apartment complex. It’s made up of a couple of towers. I suspect that it was originally all apartments, and they’ve redone some of the units to be hotel rooms. They have a HUGE variety of types of hotel rooms. Everything from standard rooms to condo units. It’s visibly an older building that they’ve tried to make “grand”. They’re on the right track, but they’ve got some finishing touches that need work...like the grout around the bath faucet and whatever was leaking over our bathroom sink. I did notice a section was closed for refurbishment and the hotel was VERY clean. Service was very friendly and efficient. Good place, and with some finishing touches, could be a great place. Very convenient location to the port, and close enough to the South Beach area to be a cheap Uber ride, without paying the South Beach premium.
Once we had checked out, we went out and found the car waiting for us. We had packed effectively, so loading the luggage into the car was quick, and within minutes, the GPS was programmed and we were on our way to the port!
Since it was after rush hour, there was minimal traffic, and within minutes of leaving the hotel, we were crossing the bridge, trying not to be too distracted by the sight of the Wonder as we tried to navigate the port area.
Signage at the port was ok, but there were hundreds of orange cones that seemed to be placed randomly, so it wasn’t the easiest to figure out where we were going. We eventually decided to just follow a minivan, since that’s a logical vehicle to be transporting people to a Disney cruise. It worked!
Once we got to the Disney section of the curb, the porters were really good at directing traffic. We hopped out of the car to unload the luggage, and I got my first big taste of what was to come: people looking to Nick first.
Random rant: I’m no feminist, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m a little too independent for my own good. I get that there are certain cultural subsets that write off women, but seriously...it’s 2016. You don’t always have to look to the guy first, particularly when you saw the female driving the car.
So the porter looked to Nick first for answers to his questions. He got the picture when, in the time it took for him to ask Nick the questions and Nick to look to me for answers (remember, I’m the trip planner!), I had hauled the luggage out of the trunk on my own. The porter then turned to me and gave me directions to the garage. NOW we’re on the right track!
We hopped back in the car, after the porter double checked with me that we still had our cruise documents and passports in our hands and not in the luggage we had just given him, and headed for the parking garage. We parked, took the obligatory picture of what level we were on so that we could find the car again after a few days of too much sunshine, and started the hike towards the terminal.
In Miami, Disney typically sails out of Terminal F. Terminal F does not have a garage right across from it. Garage G is the next closest (it’s a super complex naming strategy that they have at the port!), so you park there and hoof it to the terminal.
Along the walk to the terminal, we got to see how they keep us secure. Nick referred to them as mobile security units. They basically had those storage pods set up along the side walks, with x-rays inside them that they sent the luggage through. Then the luggage got crated and sent towards the ship. Very interesting.
We also got some perspective about the size of our ship as we walked toward the main entrance.
Once we made it to the main entrance, we found two mini lines, where documents were being checked. As per the norm, I picked the line that didn’t move. The people ahead of me didn’t have their documents, so they were trying to find them on the roster manually. It wasn’t going smoothly.
After at least 5 minutes, we were able to shuffle over to the other document checker, and a few seconds later we were inside the terminal and on the escalator up to security.
We got a little nervous when we reached the top of the escalator and discovered it was Allied Barton doing security. We’re used to seeing them as mall cops, and, at least around here, they’re beyond useless. We were VERY pleasantly surprised to see that the line barely stopped moving, despite it being evident that they were being very thorough. Hmm...maybe we just figured out who the TSA needs to take lessons from!
Less than 5 minutes after stepping into line, we were briefly chatting with the CM who was directing everyone into security lanes. After a very short amount of time, he was telling me to “watch out for monorails on the ship”, (I was wearing my “Please stand clear of my vacation” shirt with a monorail on it), and we were cruising quickly through the metal detectors.
Time to check in!
No comments:
Post a Comment