OUR OHANA's Back-to-back cruises w/ pics, navs, menus ** UPDATED Food pics **10/19

[OurOhana]

To help me (and hopefully others) navigate this trip report a little better, I’ll update the index on this first post as I move along. I’m also doing this more by topic, than by day though I'm trying to do it in some order. But I’m sure I’ll forget something and want to add it later. Because of things I'll likely add late, and since I have a lot of photos for some things, some topics may have more than one post number.

INDEX
**Back-to-Back process and thoughts (Page 3, Post 35)
**Crew (Page 4, Post 50)
**Door magnets (Page 2, Post 22)
**Embarkation (Page 1, Posts 5 and 13)
**Food (Page 3, Posts 42, 44 and 45, Page 4, 48 and 49)
**Kids' Club thoughts and pics (Page 2, Post 17)
**Navigators (Page 3, Posts 32 and 36)
**Parrott Cay Embarkation lunch (Page 1, Post 14; and Page 2, Post 16)
**Swimming Pools (Page 2, Post 29)
**T-shirts (Page 2, Post 21)



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Aloha

On Thursday, we’ll be on the DCL for back-to-back cruises – and we can’t wait. I thought I’d get the report started ahead of time.

OurOhana:
Me

DH

DD(4)

DG (My mom, but more important - DD’s grandma)


First cruise: We went on the Magic Jan. 31-6, and loved it!!!

Second/third cruise: We received the $99 bounce-back offer per person when we booked for our first cruise. So we decided to go on our 3-night cruise (which is the bounce-back deal) and add a 4-night cruise. We leave Sept. 17 and then take the second cruise Sept. 20.

We decided pretty soon after returning from our first Disney cruise that we needed to return. While the economy has been rough, the bounce back offer was huge for us. But the thought of three days just didn’t seem long enough – so we added the other cruise.

Then DH thought – why not bring my mom. Yes, my DH wanted to bring his mother-in-law along. We’re going to be staying in a category 4, but it’s going to be a bit tight in the room (it’s the same category we stayed in the last time.)

So our daughter still doesn’t know about the cruise. We have used our office to pack our bags – and tried to do everything while she was in the bath or sleeping (yes, I encouraged really, really long baths so I could sneak into her room to get her clothes out.) She’s been wondering where her favorite shoes disappeared to. I’ve blamed it on her messy room.

While DD will be ecstatic when she learns about the cruise- which hopefully won’t happen until Thursday morning – she’s going to be beside herself when she learns grandma is coming. This is a child who was pretty sure for a long time that Cinderella’s godmother was actually Cinderella’s grandmother. It might have something to do with the fact that DD’s grandma gives her everything she wants – I’m just guessing.

So now with DD, who is always entertaining, and my mom, who doesn’t mean to be entertaining but can’t help herself, we’re set for our next big adventure.

We're pretty well packed. After reading the disboards, we purchased some packing cubes from ebags. They helped us save some space. So far, I like them. We've purchases all of our fish extender gifts (we're doing the fish extender exchange on our second cruise - it seemed easier on a four-night.) And we'll be meeting up with the couple and their daughter who we ate with on our January cruise. We met them on that cruise, and became friends. It was nice that we could arrange another cruise together so our daughters, the same age, could see each other again.

I’m hoping we get tons of pictures this time around, we even have an underwater camera now, which has worked well when we went to the pool.

Thanks for reading.

By the way, if anyone has questions ahead of time about cruising, DCL or the Wonder - please let me know. We can try to find the answers while we're on the ship, if possible!