4/25-5/2/2009 Eastern Magic w/ Tortola - no kids, DETAILED + 1,172 photos!

[aznaphrodite]

Introduction
My husband (Chris) and I are both 30-years-old and we have no children. We are both Disney fans and were employees of Disney Consumer Products in Burbank/Glendale when we lived in California. We used to go to Disneyland almost every month and prior to that, I was an Annual Passholder. (We now live near Dallas, Texas.) Chris proposed to me in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland. Our honeymoon was 3 nights at the Grand Floridian at WDW followed by a 4-night Bahamian cruise on the Wonder so you can say Disney has always been a big part of our lives!

We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary with the 7-night Eastern Caribbean w/ Tortola cruise on the Disney Magic from April 25 to May 2, 2009. It was the inaugural cruise for the Tortola port of call.

Trip Planning
I planned for this trip obsessively and I am an extremely detailed oriented person. See a list of the resources I used


Trip Report
WARNING: My trip report is painfully detailed and is very photo heavy!!

Below are links by day to my DETAILED trip report with photos:

+ Day 0: Hyatt Orlando Airport
+ Day 1: Embarkation at Port Canaveral
+ Day 2: At Sea w/ Spa Villa & Formal Night
+ Day 3: At Sea w/ Character Breakfast
+ Day 4: Tortola & Pirate Night
+ Day 5: St. Thomas & St. John
+ Day 6: At Sea w/ Galley Tour & Beer Tasting
+ Day 7: Castaway Cay
+ Day 8: Disembarkation at Port Canaveral
+ All 1,172 photos from my cruise
+ DCL Navigators & other papers from my cruise

I hope my report and photos help out future cruisers!

[Alice_on_WONDERland]

Your TR is awesome! I haven't even started reading the actual trip details yet, but your "homepage" is awesome! I love how organized and detailed it is!

(I'm an obsessive planner myself! Takes one to know one, huh?)

[sunburnin]

Sigh....

And here I sit at work one month after that fantastic cruise day dreaming of going back again. Great report Rebecca and thanks for all the pictures! I'm in several of them here and there. Sorry we never met up!

Now... onto planning for the next one!

[Dizzyworld]

I could get this to load up.

aznaphrodite's Personal Itinerary


What am I doing wrong? Thanks for the help.

[aznaphrodite]

Originally Posted by Dizzyworld

I could get this to load up.

aznaphrodite's Personal Itinerary

What am I doing wrong? Thanks for the help.

Sorry, the URL was wrong! I fixed it!

[bdtmoult]

Hi Rebecca,

Report is great but I'm finding that day 3 is pointing back to 0-2. Can you fix it...I have to read it all!!!!!!!!

[Macavity]

I just wanted to say thanks for a terrific report - DD and I are on the
July 18th cruise to Tortola, and it was great to get a peek into your trip.

Macavity

[RLccweems]

Thanks so much for the detailed TR...I spend hours reading it and looking at your pics!! I can't wait to go on my on June 20th.

[Aquagirl]

Great report! I absolutely LOVE your blue diamond ring!!! I want a blue diamond ring. We are going on the 4-day cruise in 10 days, maybe I will find one in Nassau.

[aznaphrodite]

Originally Posted by ilovecraigandcooper

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVED THE TRIP REPORT! the more details the better in my opinion! thank you so much, it was great reading material!

p.s. i clicked on your blog and read some of your other entries and because i heart all animals i have to ask, was colby okay?! you wrote earlier in may about having to take him to the vet...let us know!

OT: i just read that you do the grocery game, is that not the most awesome thing ever!!! i tell my husband all the time, i clip coupons so we can cruise more!

Yes! I love Grocery Game! There's a ton of us in my town that do it though so things are often sold out!! But the money we save is SO worth it!

Thanks for asking about Colby! I sent you a PM!

Originally Posted by Aquagirl

Great report! I absolutely LOVE your blue diamond ring!!! I want a blue diamond ring. We are going on the 4-day cruise in 10 days, maybe I will find one in Nassau.

Thanks! I hope you find something nice in Nassau! There are so great stores over there. I bought a gorgeous Dooney & Bourke suitecase at a great discount with no tax during our 4-night cruise in 2006.

[aiken4mickey]

Originally Posted by aznaphrodite

Introduction

My husband (Chris) and I are both 30-years-old and we have no children. We are both Disney fans and were employees of Disney Consumer Products in Burbank/Glendale when we lived in California. We used to go to Disneyland almost every month and prior to that, I was an Annual Passholder. (We now live near Dallas, Texas.) Chris proposed to me in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland. Our honeymoon was 3 nights at the Grand Floridian at WDW followed by a 4-night Bahamian cruise on the Wonder so you can say Disney has always been a big part of our lives!

We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary with the 7-night Eastern Caribbean w/ Tortola cruise on the Disney Magic from April 25 to May 2, 2009. It was the inaugural cruise for the Tortola port of call.


Trip Planning

I planned for this trip obsessively and I am an extremely detailed oriented person. These were the resources that made my trip a success:

+ Dreams Unlimited Travel: I booked both Disney cruises with them and have nothing but good things to say! The onboard credit was fantastic!

+ Passporter's DCL Guide Book: The fastest and most organized way to learn about DCL. Read it cover to cover first. (I also read their "Disney Cruise Clues" e-book and found that nearly all of the tips were in the guide book or can be found on DIS DCL Board.)

+ DIS DCL Board: Start by reading the DIS DCL FAQ and then read posts on a daily basis to learn new things, tips, and updates to things covered in Passporter's. You'll soon become a DCL expert!

+ Cruise Critic: The Ports of Call section was extremely helpful in planning days at ports of call. Got great tips on what to do, how to get around, and where to eat. The Tortola forum was also helpful in learning more about Tortola since Disney hadn't been there yet.

+ Frommer's Caribbean Ports of Call Guide Book: Extremely helpful in planning days at ports of call. Got great tips on what to do and where to eat. Also has great maps.

+ 2disneycruzrs's Packing List & Cruise Tips: There are several packing lists floating out there but I found this one to be the most thorough and up-to-date

+ aznaphrodite's Personal Itinerary: This is the personal itinerary I made for our trip. It includes a lot of the info I collected about Tortola, St. Thomas, and St. John on what shops to see and where to eat. It also includes some DCL tips as well.


Other Useful Info

We stayed at the Hyatt Orlando Airport Hotel the night before our cruise. We used DCL motorcoach transfers from the airport to the port and back. We also participated in Onboard Airline Check-in. Our flight home didn't leave until 4:25 pm so we spent the day at the Orlando Airport. Details for all of this can be found in my trip report.

DCL excursions:
+ Tortola: Tour to Virgin Gorda
+ St. John: St. John Island Tour
+ Castaway Cay: Castway Ray's Stingray Adventure


Trip Report

WARNING: My trip report is painfully detailed and is very photo heavy!!

Below are links by day to my DETAILED trip report with photos:

+ Day 0-2: Hyatt Orlando Airport, Port Canaveral, and At Sea

+ Day 3: At Sea w/ Character Breakfast

+ Day 4: Tortola & Pirate Night

+ Day 5: St. Thomas & St. John

+ Day 6-8: At Sea w/ Galley Tour & Beer Tasting, Castaway Cay, and Orlando Airport

+ All 1,172 photos from my cruise

I hope my report and photos help out future cruisers!

What great pictures! What type of underwater camera did you use?

[ilovecraigandcooper]

UGHGHGHGHGHGH it wouldnt let me PM you back because i have less than 10 posts (even though i feel i spend the majority of my day on here, lol) so i went to your blog to message you and i sent you a message on your ladyrebecca site, i hope thats okay. now i feel like a crazy stalker (since ive tracked down all of your websites and messaged you) but i promise im not i just hated to hijack your cruise thread! anyway keep me updated!

[aznaphrodite]

Originally Posted by aiken4mickey

What great pictures! What type of underwater camera did you use?

We don't have an underwater camera. We used the Dicapac waterproof camera case with our regular digital camera:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...ailormoontop20

It worked out pretty well! I was very happy with it.

Originally Posted by ilovecraigandcooper

UGHGHGHGHGHGH it wouldnt let me PM you back because i have less than 10 posts (even though i feel i spend the majority of my day on here, lol) so i went to your blog to message you and i sent you a message on your ladyrebecca site, i hope thats okay. now i feel like a crazy stalker (since ive tracked down all of your websites and messaged you) but i promise im not i just hated to hijack your cruise thread! anyway keep me updated!

LOL! Don't be silly! I'll respond to your e-mail shortly! Thanks!!

[Jennifer48]

Thanks for sharing your report Rebecca!! You did a great job and I love all your details and photos!

One question, did you leave all your photos in Shutters and then the last day decide which ones to take? Or did you take some everyday and then just swap some out that you didn't want? I would like to get one of those packages too but I don't want them to throw away any of the photos that I didn't want.

Awesome deals on your jewelry. Everything was gorgeous!

[aznaphrodite]

Originally Posted by Jennifer48

Thanks for sharing your report Rebecca!! You did a great job and I love all your details and photos!

One question, did you leave all your photos in Shutters and then the last day decide which ones to take? Or did you take some everyday and then just swap some out that you didn't want? I would like to get one of those packages too but I don't want them to throw away any of the photos that I didn't want.

Awesome deals on your jewelry. Everything was gorgeous!

Here's what we did:

Day 5: Gathered all photos we've taken so far and discarded ones we were definitely not going to buy. We didn't have a chance to go through all the photos so we left the ones we wanted to buy or didn't go through yet in a stack and put them back on the wall. (Make sure if you stack your photos that the front photo matches all the other photos around in on the wall.)

Day 6: Finished going through all the photos. Purchased photo packages and took photos we wanted with us.

Day 7: Purchased the remaining photos we took between Day 6 & 7 and got a refund/downgrade on unused photo packages.

I definitely do not recommend going through your photos for the first time on Day 7. That place is CRAZY.

There's also no harm in purchasing your photo packages early in the cruise and just changing the packages as you go. We just wanted to wait until Day 6 so we had a better idea of how many photos we were going to buy and there were more photos to sift through by then.

Also, you don't need to be concerned about them tossing your photos either. All your photos are stored on your KTTW card and you can look at them at the photo kiosk and tell Shutters to reprint them.

Hope that helps!