Leaving Items to Be Signed on the Ship

[trikefam]

Hello all. My travel agent was telling me that on the Disney ships you could leave an item (like a pillowcase or photo mat) to be signed by the characters and then pick it up at the end of the cruise. I was wondering if anyone has in fact done this and how many items we could leave. I'd really like to leave 2 pillowcases (one for each child) and a photo mat for me. Is this too many items? Would we need to provide a fabric pen/marker with our pillowcases? Where do we leave the items?

We are cruising two weeks from today on the 3/24/11 Disney Dream! We can't wait!

Thank you for any help!

 

[JennLK]

Hello all. My travel agent was telling me that on the Disney ships you could leave an item (like a pillowcase or photo mat) to be signed by the characters and then pick it up at the end of the cruise. I was wondering if anyone has in fact done this and how many items we could leave. I'd really like to leave 2 pillowcases (one for each child) and a photo mat for me. Is this too many items? Would we need to provide a fabric pen/marker with our pillowcases? Where do we leave the items?

We are cruising two weeks from today on the 3/24/11 Disney Dream! We can't wait!

Thank you for any help!

No that should be fine. Put them all together in a bag with your room # and name on it - with sharpies in the colors you want the signatures - and drop off to guest services your first night on the ship. If there are character preferences let them know as well. A cm dropped off the signed photomats to my room on the last night !

 

[kthomas618]

I haven't done this, but my sister i law did and it worked out great!

 

[blessedmomofboys]

I left 3 photomats with guest services along with 2 sharpies on the first day. Our stateroom host dropped them back in our room on the last evening.

 

[mousetravel]

I'm hoping it will be OK for me to leave a birthday card to be signed. I've only heard of photo mats & pillowcases getting signed, so I don't know. DD will be having her 16th birthday while on the cruise.

 

[AquaDame]

Im sure that would be fine too! I left an 11x14 mat to be signed with 8 sharpies in different colors and they made certain to even mark how many sharpies I had. There was no issue or question, he knew exactly what I wanted and they have a form they fill out. The mat was delivered back to my stateroom around 8pm on the last night and looks great with a pic from shutters on my wall.

 

[trikefam]

Thanks for the help everyone! I'm really excited about seeing how our items turn out!

~Rachel

 

[MouseLovinMom]

I'd also recommend writing your name and stateroom number right on the bag containing your items and sharpies (we used one of those big ziplocs), that way if the small form Guest Services attaches to your things gets separated they'll still be identifiable. Enjoy! Our signed photo mat is my favorite souvenir of all time.

PS...Don't forget to tell them which way you would like the mat oriented for the signatures.

 

[csharpwv]

On Our December Cruise my wife and I each bought the BIG blank Vinylmation figures and left them to be signed.

I have a Red one and DW has a yellow one - they were signed by all the characters and dropped in our room on the last night of the cruise.

We have them in our offices at work and we each get tons of comments on them!

Definitely leave something of quality with clear instructions and provide your own color specific/coordinating sharpie markers. You will get your markers back!

We left a few colors that would look good on each - we got all of them back.

We left a $5.00 tip in each box. I hope it was appreciated by the CM- because we definitely appreciated not having to wait in line to get them signed!

 

[tdizzle]

I read this suggestion on another thread here, include a bag of candy with your stuff to be signed as a thank you to the CM's taking care of your request. Of course you don't HAVE to, they'll do it anyway but I'm sure it's appreciated. Everybody likes a treat!!!

 

[Goofygoof]

great idea , taht would make such a lovely souvenir

 

[KAZPRINCESS]

In answer to how many things you can get signed, I asked the same question on another thread - Answer came back 1 per person in cabin.

 

[awatt]

Re the mats- what size photo do you put in the mat 6 x 8 or 5 x 7 etc?

 

[lbgraves]

I'm hoping it will be OK for me to leave a birthday card to be signed. I've only heard of photo mats & pillowcases getting signed, so I don't know. DD will be having her 16th birthday while on the cruise.

I tried to do this on the PC repo in 2008 for DD. Her birthday was two days after we got off the ship so was hoping to surprise her with this special keepsake. There was an issue with it being a copyrighted item and the characters could not sign it because it would be an endorsement of that company I think is how it was explained to me. You could make a card on your own without anything on it except maybe happy birthday with a sticky note on it asking them to sign inside. You could then add decoration to the front after you get it back -- or attach the signed paper to the inside of a card you have.

I was also told that if a child has a birthday on the actual cruise they will get a card signed by the characters on that day. This was told to me by a CM in the lab so I don't know if they do this for the teens but you might want to ask about this. They already have the list of birthdays and room numbers.

 

[mousetravel]

I tried to do this on the PC repo in 2008 for DD. Her birthday was two days after we got off the ship so was hoping to surprise her with this special keepsake. There was an issue with it being a copyrighted item and the characters could not sign it because it would be an endorsement of that company I think is how it was explained to me. You could make a card on your own without anything on it except maybe happy birthday with a sticky note on it asking them to sign inside. You could then add decoration to the front after you get it back -- or attach the signed paper to the inside of a card you have.

I was also told that if a child has a birthday on the actual cruise they will get a card signed by the characters on that day. This was told to me by a CM in the lab so I don't know if they do this for the teens but you might want to ask about this. They already have the list of birthdays and room numbers.

What if the card is a Hallmark Disney card? I found a few Disney themed birthday cards at the Hallmark store.

 

[lbgraves]

The card I asked them to sign was POC themed.

 

[cboyer]

We are doing a b2b in May and during the 2nd cruise, I thought it would be neat to have pillow cases already signed for the kids of the friends that are joining us. So I'm thinking of having them signed and pack gift bags and ask the staff to have them waiting in our friend's room. The only problem, we have about 10 other kids joining us. On the first cruise it is 3 families who have cruised 3 other times, so I am thinking if each room asked for 3 or 4 cases- it would be easier to get- Thoughts?

 

[Ephany]

On Our December Cruise my wife and I each bought the BIG blank Vinylmation figures and left them to be signed.

I have a Red one and DW has a yellow one - they were signed by all the characters and dropped in our room on the last night of the cruise.

We have them in our offices at work and we each get tons of comments on them!

Definitely leave something of quality with clear instructions and provide your own color specific/coordinating sharpie markers. You will get your markers back!

We left a few colors that would look good on each - we got all of them back.

We left a $5.00 tip in each box. I hope it was appreciated by the CM- because we definitely appreciated not having to wait in line to get them signed!

Did you use regular Sharpie brand markers if you don't mind me asking and did they smear at all? I'd love to do this with a large white vinylmation, but that color always seems to be out of stock on disneyshopping.com so I'm stalking the website regularly hoping to get lucky.

 

[mufasa0505]

They lost our photo mat on the Magic last week but they gave us a lithograph (from Barcelona) signed by a bunch of characters. It wasn't a huge deal to me.

I noticed at dinner the last night, a couple of people at a nearby table had purchased the white DCL hat and had the characters sign that. It was really cute and I thought it was a great idea.

 

[Ladyshopper]

It is 4 items per stateroom, as I found out last week when I had 5 things! Luckily a very nice lady happened to be at Guest Services the same time as me, heard the conversation, and offered to put my t-shirt through on her stateroom, which was very kind of her (and then stupidly I lost her stateroom number, but I had given her mine and she very kindly left it outside my room, so even more thanks!!).

They seem quite strict about sticking to the number. They have pre-printed slips which say what the items are, how many pens you've included, and if you want main characters or princesses only. We ticked main characters on all, and on the kids 4 items this didn't include princesses, but on my t-shirt which had gone through on the other room it also included princesses, so I think main characters can be hit and miss!

I didn't put candy in mine due to bad planning and not visiting shops before I boarded. Also have heard of people not getting their pens back, or getting different ones, but I got exactly the same back.

I was told these would be delivered back to staterooms on the last full day (so the Saturday), but they actually got delivered on Friday just as we were heading down for dinner. They looked great.