Continuing our sailing on the Disney Wish in November 2022 – today we look at our fifth and final day on the Wish.
Typically this day isn’t worth writing a post about, because you (maybe) eat breakfast and get off the ship early. We often have other plans so we try to exit as early as possible, sometimes around 7 or 8am. This had been our original plan, as we were supposed to be a Universal by 9am for a travel agent training I was participating in. That’s not exactly how things worked out though.
We already had had a different itinerary than originally expected – instead of the Bahamas we ended up going to Mexico because of a tropical storm. It turned out that the port needed to be cleared by the coast guard to allow ships to dock after the storm, and that hadn’t happened yet. So all the cruise ships which were supposed to dock were just kinda hanging out in the nearby area until we were given the go-ahead.
That also meant that we didn’t know when we’d be getting off the ship. I will say Disney did their best to keep us as updated as possible, and we know it was out of their control (of course they wanted us off so they could get the next group on!). They made announcements every half hour or so to either let us know if there was an update, or to tell us they hadn’t heard anything yet.
So we got to sleep in, and have a more leisurely breakfast. We were originally hoping that we might be able to at least leave by 9 or 10am and still make most of the training, but it was soon clear that wasn’t happening. I was just grateful that I was only missing that, and didn’t have to deal with flights or other really important plans.
Added Activities
Even though Disney hadn’t expected to have us on board longer, I think they did a pretty great job offering additional activities and things to do while we were there.
There were pop-up things to do around the ship. We hung out in the pub for awhile, where they had “adult arts and crafts.” I think they pulled things from the kids club for us to do, but I enjoy coloring and crafting! They also had a drawing video, so we were able to draw a Disney character Ursula).
I believe some of the other rooms and areas of the ship had trivia or other small games or crafts going on too.
In addition, they were showing Black Panther 2 several times that morning, so I ended up going to watch the second half around 11am. I was kind of hoping that we would be able to leave the ship once the movie was done, but by 1:30 it was still no luck.
They opened up at least parts of the buffet for lunch, though it was very crowded since everyone was going to the same spots around the same time. Jason and I ended up taking turns running to get some food and bringing it down to our spot in the pub since we had seats there.
Finally getting off the ship
I was around 2:30pm when they finally announced we could leave. Normally Disney has a pretty regulated process for the order in which you can disembark, but this had all kind of gone out the window… and of course everyone wanted to leave.
The lobby was packed and the crew did their best to line us up in an orderly fashion, but not everyone was getting the same messages, and it was just wildly chaotic.
Eventually we did all shuffle off the ship, and I was glad Jason and I had chosen to carry our luggage ourselves so we didn’t have to wait for that either. We were outside by around 3pm and calling an Uber.
Leaving the port
…which took almost an hour to arrive. Of course we weren’t the only ones trying to get a ride share, and there was a ton of traffic everywhere around the port. Drivers were assigned to us and then cancelled, and time kept ticking by. Cell service, wifi, and 5G were also iffy as a ton of people were all trying to access their phones at the same time, so I was also trying to figure out if a driver might be arriving and I just wasn’t getting notifications.
We talked to a Disney cast member, who basically confirmed that everyone seemed to be having similar problems. She offered us the alternative of getting on a bus that was going to the Disney resorts, with the suggestion that we could then uber over to Universal from there.
While it was tempting, because the bus was right there, I declined because I figured even if it took a bit longer to get on the Uber, it would still be better to just get there directly.
I am beyond glad I made this choice, because I heard so many horror stories later.
People in the facebook group for our cruise were posting that they were on the buses for 3-4 hours. It seems between the traffic and them stopping at a number of different resorts, it took forever. According to stories I read, some buses stopped at 6 different resorts, one broke down on the side of the road, and one of the roads they used to get to the Disney was down to one lane for awhile due to an accident.
Many of these people had tickets for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, and I felt quite bad because they didn’t even get to the party until around 8pm or later. I am just very grateful I trusted my gut and didn’t get on one of those buses.
We did eventually get an Uber, and got to our Universal hotel (Royal Pacific) around 5pm. I had missed my whole day of training, but we were still going to be able to make it to the dinner with my travel agency at 5:30! (turns out many of the agents didn’t make the training because of flights cancelled during that week with the weather, so I wasn’t the only one).
We checked into Royal Pacific and learned that our room type (standard) wasn’t available because people had stayed longer due to the storm and cancelled flights, so we were being upgraded. Cool! Well, not just any upgrade… they were putting us in the presidential suite because that’s what they had available.
Look for some posts on the Royal Pacific, our presidential suite, and our time at Universal coming soon because it all turned out to be pretty fantastic! But what a wild way to end our Disney Wish cruise.
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How would you have felt with this disembarkation day? What looks like the most fun on board the Disney Wish?
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