WBPC May 6th 2013 Wonder

[houseofduck]

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[MrsMork]

I'm a long time lurker coming out of hiding! We want to participate in the FE, so I had to join!

We will be on this cruise too. It's me, my husband, daughter and two sons. (I can't bring myself to use the acronyms yet! I'm sure I'll get over that soon.)

Welcome!

 

[houseofduck]

Does anyone know if there will be a priest on board for this cruise? I saw on another thread that sometimes there is a mass on board if a priest is sailing.

 

[kbishop2013]

Mine are 8, 6, and 4.

Super! My son is begging me to ask - what does "houseofduck" refer too? He's sure because you (like he) is a massive UofO fan...

 

[braysmommy]

I'm a long time lurker coming out of hiding! We want to participate in the FE, so I had to join!

We will be on this cruise too. It's me, my husband, daughter and two sons. (I can't bring myself to use the acronyms yet! I'm sure I'll get over that soon.)

Welcome! My son is 6....nice to see some more kids in the group

 

[houseofduck]

Super! My son is begging me to ask - what does "houseofduck" refer too? He's sure because you (like he) is a massive UofO fan...

Sorry to disappoint, it is just that we are fans of Donald Duck. Instead of "House of Mouse," we came up with houseofduck. But, we can cheer for UofO too!

 

[Lexa]

I'm a long time lurker coming out of hiding! We want to participate in the FE, so I had to join!

We will be on this cruise too. It's me, my husband, daughter and two sons. (I can't bring myself to use the acronyms yet! I'm sure I'll get over that soon.)

Welcome aboard

Welcome! Happy to hear more kids are on the boat! Mine are 7 and 10, sneaking out of school for this adventure!

Yep...mine too....they will miss last 10 days of school. Mine are 7 and 8.

Welcome! My son is 6....nice to see some more kids in the group

I like it because there is quite some kids close in age....they will have a lot of fun

 

[kbishop2013]

Sorry to disappoint, it is just that we are fans of Donald Duck. Instead of "House of Mouse," we came up with houseofduck. But, we can cheer for UofO too!

Hah! That's fine with me - I went to OSU so the Ducks are my sworn enemy!

 

[MrsMork]

Hah! That's fine with me - I went to OSU so the Ducks are my sworn enemy!

Go Beavs!!!

 

[Beauty & the Best]

Welcome Houseofduck.

It is hard to pick screennames on here isn't it? When I joined I really wanted to be DisneyLizzie, but that was taken (never actually "met" DisneyLizzie!) and I'm not very clever about these kinds of things.
After about 20 other choices I went with my current screenname.

You've booked the WBTA too? Great! I am so incredibly excited about having two 14-night Disney cruises ahead of me, I can hardly contain myself!

Oh, and are you as overwhelmed as I am with the activity on the WBTA thread? There is absolutely no way I'm going to be able to keep up!

How nice for us! We are lucky ladies.

The WBTA group has many people who have sailed TA's before, so it might be a little clique-y I think. Everyone is lovely, but when people know each other so well, groups form I guess!

Yes the thread is overwhelming and we'll probably end up with 6 or 7 new threads having to be created before its all over . But it is definitely better than having a dead thread you know? I think they're going to do weekly updates so people won't have to read every little thing.

We've started designing our door magnets - but haven't decided whether to do the magnet printer paper or print on photo paper & stick magnets on. I still have FE gifts to work on, but don't want to get too far into those until I know how many cabins to plan for.

The question is, how good is your printer? I've broken one printer doing magnets (oops! husband was not a happy camper on that one ) but our new printer does them like magic. If your printer can handle it, print them on magnet paper

 

[kbishop2013]

Go Beavs!!!

Yeah!

 

[GoinPlaces63]

DH went to NIU.

We live about 25 miles from there!

 

[GoinPlaces63]

Where abouts in Northern Illinois. We are from Central Illinois.

Kendall County... What about you?

 

[SchneiderFam]

We were down at the Port of Los Angeles today (San Pedro) for a whale watching trip. There was a Princess Cruise ship docked. We talked it over and we figured it would be up to us to bring the Disney Wonder back to San Pedro. It wasn't a bad thought that the next time down there would be aboard the Wonder.

Based on this Board, I guess we'll have some help bringing it back to LA.

 

[aan1701]

Based on this Board, I guess we'll have some help bringing it back to LA.

I would love that. They really dropped here in L.A. Of course the problems in Mexico did not help and those started after the signed their lease with the port. Still, I would love for them to come back.

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[Meghatron]

I would love that. They really dropped here in L.A. Of course the problems in Mexico did not help and those started after the signed their lease with the port. Still, I would love for them to come back.

There is no reason they can't do 3/4 night cruises to Catalina and Ensenada. The mistake was only offering 7-night cruises, especially during the school year. For some bizarre reason they forgot that a new product has to be offered in sampler size in order to get a customer base. I got two other families to book the 2014 2-nighter on opening day with me, and am working on several more. All of them heard the same pitch from me about the MRs for two years but couldn't commit the total price or time investment. It was incredibly stupid on DCL's parts to not take into account how much of the Disneyland population are annual passholders who have had huge yearly price jumps for their passes thrown at them the last few years and are doubting the cost value of their Disney investment, not to mention the arrival of AP events that are extra cost and the parks closing early to everyone for ticketed events that are also more money. They are not going to shell out $3k on a cruise and use up vacation time on something they have not already experienced. 2/3/4 nighters would have been a much easier sell. The 2-nighter, which is not even on the official flyer, is apparently going very fast just by word of mouth.

 

[aan1701]

Meghatron. I know you are a huge advocate if the 2 night cruise. While I agree that more of them would have been a great way to introduce the CA and west coast to DCL, they are in my opinion, way to expensive. We looked at adding the two night to our WBPC next year and decided in comparison to what we are paying per night for 15 nights, it's a rip off. I know you are really looking forward to it, I hope you have fun. But when they are asking 250 a night for a inside that's kinda high to me. Still enjoy. Also on a different note I think DCL is making a lot of mistakes these days. Like not offering transfers between Ft. Lauderdale and the port of Miami or Hobby airport and the port of Galveston, or even San Diego and Disneyland are all huge mistakes on there part. Also I don't like the cruise choices from Miami. They really had a chance to offer some great trips and fell flat.

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[Meghatron]

I know the 2-nighter is not for everyone. But the only reason we could even consider the up front cost of a 14-night cruise was the fact that we had been saving up for a multi-family vacation for five years along with air miles to get there, the fact that taking time off from school and work was possible, AND the 50% discount. If there weren't a market for 3/4 night cruises, DCL wouldn't offer them in Florida. Some people would rather take shorter cruises more often, for whatever reason. Relying on people having saved for years to sail 7+ nights on the west coast, or do one-way repos that require air travel, clearly does not make enough money to keep a ship in LA.

All I'm saying is that from a market standpoint, it was incredibly stupid to open with the more expensive, riskier product and I cannot fathom what they were thinking. I want to book the 2014 4-nighter from Vancouver to San Diego for my birthday but the travel expenses, at the lowest possible prices I can estimate, make it comparable per person per day to the 2-nighter. So more money upfront for the same value. If I go with Disney air to cut my risk, it's even less value for my money than the 2-nighter. Having used up our miles for the WBPC this year, travel for four people easily eats up the value of the lower per person per day cost of the longer cruises, plus the loss of pulling us from school and work.

Longer cruises works for you because you work for an airline and get a break on travel expenses. And that's perfectly fine. But for a company like DCL to not take into account what a typical family is looking for has been boggling for me to watch. I want to take DS on a cruise for his 3rd birthday but it's not going to happen, because our only options August are going to be the two most expensive itineraries the classics offer (Europe and Alaska) or the over-inflated prices for the Dream and Fantasy. ALL of which will require travel expenses on top of cruise fare and tips.

 

[aan1701]

It's not that the 2 night does not work for me, it's the price per night that doesn't work for me yes working for a airline helps, but one reason we will never get to do a WBTA on DCL is the airfare costs to Europe. I am not going to fly stand by to get to Europe to get a cruise. When we almost did the WBTA in 2010 we could have gotten a rate similar to what we are getting on this one. The only problem was the airfare now was costing the same as the cruise. No way we could justify it. Also I can do the longer cruises cause SWA very generously gives me four weeks vacation. It took ten years to get that. For us it's about price per night making sense. We feel that about 150 per night is our go/no go point.

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[Meghatron]

It's not that the 2 night does not work for me, it's the price per night that doesn't work for me

Yes, I understand that. My point is that when I have to take travel expenses into account for the total per person per night cost for my family, the 2-nighter out of my local port is the same per person per night as pretty much any longer cruise DCL has to offer. This year on the WBPC is an exception because of many years of saved up air miles. After this trip, the per person-per night goes back to being out of reach except for shorter, local cruises that do not take our vacation days or risk my and my child's education. Since we used the bulk of our savings on paying the VGT rate for the WBPC, we don't have reserves to pay for a longer cruise without starting the 5-year saving process all over again. If DCL would give us the 3/4 night cruises out of LA or SD, I could take my family on vacation once a year or more.