DisneyZell
Likes Adventures on the High Seas
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2004
I'm Baaaack!
For those of you who gave a large sigh of relief that my Mexican Riviera TR was finally done (although it took me over 2 years to finish the one from 1998 so you should be happy), unfortunately I'm back already. I've never done a PTR (that's Pre-Trip-Report for those of you who don't yet speak DIS) this far in advance. But What the heck...strange things always seem to happen to us in preparation of our vacations...so why not go ahead and bore....er...document it here for all of you?
First and foremost...our cast:
DH - That's me! Name's Drew, I'm 40 and when you are reading this report will be the main scribe under the nickname DisneyZell.
DW - My lovely and frequently correct bride, Deanna. When you are reading anything that seems intelligent under the nickname DisneyZell that would be her.
DS12 - My oldest son, Nick. Big sports kid...loves to have fun...and loves cruising and pizza. AKA (also known as for you non DISers ) Bacon Boy. Long story. Ask me sometime and I'll tell you, or go read my past TR's and you will find out.
DS8 - My youngest son, Connor. Skinny as a rail...never eats...needs to be entertained constantly. That's him! AKA Chocolate Boy. I don't think that one takes much explanation except to say when we say Chocolate...we mean just that. Not candy bars like snickers...just plain chocolate.
A different set of friends are cruising with us on this one. They are neighbors on the next street over. The husband and I coached youth football together a couple of years ago and ended up becoming very good friends. We now chat frequently and pretty much make fun of everyone, so be prepared. they will be joining us on the cruise portion (oh, I didn't tell you we are hitting the World the week before the cruise). Here is their cast of characters. I'm taking a good chunk of this verbatim from the e-mail they sent me...so here we go :
DFH (Disney Friend Husband. I had to use something different since our other neighbors have gone with us a couple of times...these guys deserve a new three letter initial!) - Brian. If you have read previous TR's you will note that I have frequently brought too much beer and had to give it away at the end. I don't anticipate having to do that with Brian as he can drink me under the table. In fact, I will be working my tolerance up to a high level as soon as possible.
DFW - Jennifer. According to Jennifer she will be sleeping in and will not be attending breakfast. She is more of a brunch person. Also she will be giving her kids the run of the ship with the Wave Phone as she plans on spending the entire 5 days in a lounger by the adult pool. She certainly does NOT want her kids hanging all over her. Ha! She talks a big game....
DFD11 - Ellie - She will almost be 12...and is a fireball. My guess is she will have 15 friends the first day.
DFS10 - John - Quite the ski phenom and very good athlete...John will also have a ton of friends very quickly. He's a quick thinker and very funny.
So there you have our crew. We may have others to add for the Disney World portion of our trip as our friends apparently don't want to spend any more time then they have to with us (we invited them to come to the World with us...but they said something about having to wash their hair???
My Cousin and his family may join us for the first part...but then again why am I telling you this? I can always add it later. Just pretend this paragraph didn't exist. Or I could delete it. Well, that just wouldn't be my way. How can I put people to sleep if I delete my boring posts....er...ACK! now you know my secret!!!
So for the cruise, our itinerary is a double dip (can you say yeehaw! No really, say it. I'll wait. anytime now...ok, moving on).
7/10 - Port Canaveral
7/11 - Castaway Cay
7/12 - Nassau
7/13 - Sea
7/14 - Castaway Cay
7/15 - Port Canaveral
We are in stateroom 7120 if you want to come and visit us...or leave us presents. I prefer small bills. We are in a Deluxe Family Ocean Stateroom with Verandah which according to the paperwork I'm looking at means we have a 04C. At one point we had an adjoining cabin with our friends...but they conveniently "forgot" to pay at the right time so they lost their cabin assignment and we are no longer connected. Hmmmmmm Somethin' smells fishy.
I distinctly remember someone commenting when I did my first post for the Mexican Riviera that he didn't read posts that didn't have any pictures. So here is a picture.
this, apparently, is very similar to the hair dryer that will be in my stateroom.
Unlike the last cruise we do not plan to upgrade at the port, so I don't know that we will get there too early. Our official port arrival time is 10:30 - 11:00am. As we were concierge last time it will be very disconcerting to stand amongst the common folk. But alas, it is what it is.
Yeah, it's gonna be like that.
so pre-trip preparations. It's my responsibility, typically, to find the hotel room and rental car for these trips. On that note I have failed miserably as DW took the lead and booked the car. And the hotel. I suck. Clearly I suck. or she has too much time on her hands. She is quite the planner that wife o' mine. We are staying at the Courtyard Cocoa Beach the night before the cruise and at a Residence Inn the night before our flight home. Can ya tell we are Marriott people?
We rented our car from Budget...the plan is to have it for the week before and then drop it off by the port...and then get another car when we arrive back. Did I make any of these reservations? no. and in fact I'd have no idea what we were doing if it were not for DW's organization and putting them all nicely in a folder for me to see.
this is much like it is for my entire life. She puts it in a folder and I go along for the ride. Not bad, not bad at all. is this incentive for me to do my job and do the rental cars and hotels? I think not.
AH! But the week before the cruise, I have to talk about that. We are staying at a Marriott Timeshare that we traded into...which has 3 bedrooms...which is why our friends *could* have stayed with us...but I digress. DW spends alot of time on the DIS boards and bumped into this program through Disney called, ok, I don't know what it's called, but DW will chime in and help out here. It was originally set up for home schoolers but has been opened to everyone now...and you go to a free class inside the parks (I think we are doing an ocean one...but there are a whole bunch), and if you do that you can buy heavily discounted park hopper tickets. I believe (and again DW will pipe in if I'm wrong (one of my benefits, ahem)) that we ended up getting 5 day park hopper and 5 days in the water parks and Disney Quest. Heck of a deal if you ask me.
Now, if you look at the dates of the trip you will note that we are going to be there during the summer....I hate summer...because it will be very busy. Well, here is where you would be happy to be married to DW. She will know down to the minute which park we should be in...which ride in that park we should go to first, how we should do our fast pass tickets...etc. She rocks and I've been telling her for years she should start her own Disney travel agency and start making some money for our passion about Disney. But alas that has not yet happened!
So I think that's it for now...hope you grabbed your coffee before you started reading...and if not, check the mirror before you leave to make sure you don't have keyboard marks on your forehead.
Next up: No idea....but I'm sure I'll bore you with somethin'
DZ
For those of you who gave a large sigh of relief that my Mexican Riviera TR was finally done (although it took me over 2 years to finish the one from 1998 so you should be happy), unfortunately I'm back already. I've never done a PTR (that's Pre-Trip-Report for those of you who don't yet speak DIS) this far in advance. But What the heck...strange things always seem to happen to us in preparation of our vacations...so why not go ahead and bore....er...document it here for all of you?
First and foremost...our cast:
DH - That's me! Name's Drew, I'm 40 and when you are reading this report will be the main scribe under the nickname DisneyZell.
DW - My lovely and frequently correct bride, Deanna. When you are reading anything that seems intelligent under the nickname DisneyZell that would be her.
DS12 - My oldest son, Nick. Big sports kid...loves to have fun...and loves cruising and pizza. AKA (also known as for you non DISers ) Bacon Boy. Long story. Ask me sometime and I'll tell you, or go read my past TR's and you will find out.
DS8 - My youngest son, Connor. Skinny as a rail...never eats...needs to be entertained constantly. That's him! AKA Chocolate Boy. I don't think that one takes much explanation except to say when we say Chocolate...we mean just that. Not candy bars like snickers...just plain chocolate.
A different set of friends are cruising with us on this one. They are neighbors on the next street over. The husband and I coached youth football together a couple of years ago and ended up becoming very good friends. We now chat frequently and pretty much make fun of everyone, so be prepared. they will be joining us on the cruise portion (oh, I didn't tell you we are hitting the World the week before the cruise). Here is their cast of characters. I'm taking a good chunk of this verbatim from the e-mail they sent me...so here we go :
DFH (Disney Friend Husband. I had to use something different since our other neighbors have gone with us a couple of times...these guys deserve a new three letter initial!) - Brian. If you have read previous TR's you will note that I have frequently brought too much beer and had to give it away at the end. I don't anticipate having to do that with Brian as he can drink me under the table. In fact, I will be working my tolerance up to a high level as soon as possible.
DFW - Jennifer. According to Jennifer she will be sleeping in and will not be attending breakfast. She is more of a brunch person. Also she will be giving her kids the run of the ship with the Wave Phone as she plans on spending the entire 5 days in a lounger by the adult pool. She certainly does NOT want her kids hanging all over her. Ha! She talks a big game....
DFD11 - Ellie - She will almost be 12...and is a fireball. My guess is she will have 15 friends the first day.
DFS10 - John - Quite the ski phenom and very good athlete...John will also have a ton of friends very quickly. He's a quick thinker and very funny.
So there you have our crew. We may have others to add for the Disney World portion of our trip as our friends apparently don't want to spend any more time then they have to with us (we invited them to come to the World with us...but they said something about having to wash their hair???
My Cousin and his family may join us for the first part...but then again why am I telling you this? I can always add it later. Just pretend this paragraph didn't exist. Or I could delete it. Well, that just wouldn't be my way. How can I put people to sleep if I delete my boring posts....er...ACK! now you know my secret!!!
So for the cruise, our itinerary is a double dip (can you say yeehaw! No really, say it. I'll wait. anytime now...ok, moving on).
7/10 - Port Canaveral
7/11 - Castaway Cay
7/12 - Nassau
7/13 - Sea
7/14 - Castaway Cay
7/15 - Port Canaveral
We are in stateroom 7120 if you want to come and visit us...or leave us presents. I prefer small bills. We are in a Deluxe Family Ocean Stateroom with Verandah which according to the paperwork I'm looking at means we have a 04C. At one point we had an adjoining cabin with our friends...but they conveniently "forgot" to pay at the right time so they lost their cabin assignment and we are no longer connected. Hmmmmmm Somethin' smells fishy.
I distinctly remember someone commenting when I did my first post for the Mexican Riviera that he didn't read posts that didn't have any pictures. So here is a picture.
this, apparently, is very similar to the hair dryer that will be in my stateroom.
Unlike the last cruise we do not plan to upgrade at the port, so I don't know that we will get there too early. Our official port arrival time is 10:30 - 11:00am. As we were concierge last time it will be very disconcerting to stand amongst the common folk. But alas, it is what it is.
Yeah, it's gonna be like that.
so pre-trip preparations. It's my responsibility, typically, to find the hotel room and rental car for these trips. On that note I have failed miserably as DW took the lead and booked the car. And the hotel. I suck. Clearly I suck. or she has too much time on her hands. She is quite the planner that wife o' mine. We are staying at the Courtyard Cocoa Beach the night before the cruise and at a Residence Inn the night before our flight home. Can ya tell we are Marriott people?
We rented our car from Budget...the plan is to have it for the week before and then drop it off by the port...and then get another car when we arrive back. Did I make any of these reservations? no. and in fact I'd have no idea what we were doing if it were not for DW's organization and putting them all nicely in a folder for me to see.
this is much like it is for my entire life. She puts it in a folder and I go along for the ride. Not bad, not bad at all. is this incentive for me to do my job and do the rental cars and hotels? I think not.
AH! But the week before the cruise, I have to talk about that. We are staying at a Marriott Timeshare that we traded into...which has 3 bedrooms...which is why our friends *could* have stayed with us...but I digress. DW spends alot of time on the DIS boards and bumped into this program through Disney called, ok, I don't know what it's called, but DW will chime in and help out here. It was originally set up for home schoolers but has been opened to everyone now...and you go to a free class inside the parks (I think we are doing an ocean one...but there are a whole bunch), and if you do that you can buy heavily discounted park hopper tickets. I believe (and again DW will pipe in if I'm wrong (one of my benefits, ahem)) that we ended up getting 5 day park hopper and 5 days in the water parks and Disney Quest. Heck of a deal if you ask me.
Now, if you look at the dates of the trip you will note that we are going to be there during the summer....I hate summer...because it will be very busy. Well, here is where you would be happy to be married to DW. She will know down to the minute which park we should be in...which ride in that park we should go to first, how we should do our fast pass tickets...etc. She rocks and I've been telling her for years she should start her own Disney travel agency and start making some money for our passion about Disney. But alas that has not yet happened!
So I think that's it for now...hope you grabbed your coffee before you started reading...and if not, check the mirror before you leave to make sure you don't have keyboard marks on your forehead.
Next up: No idea....but I'm sure I'll bore you with somethin'
DZ