Disneypoor's Alaskan Cruise June 7th, 2011 - Page 8 - The DIS Discussion Forums

Politzania · 06-24-2011, 09:26 AM

Another groupie checking in - GREAT trip report & can't wait for our cruise in August!
Appreciate the tips on laundry & thrilled that you had a good time with Island Wings, as we're booked with Michelle as well.

disneypoor · 06-24-2011, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ariel39

weren't you going to be on our cruise, July 26? I just realized you were on our thread......

We were originally on the July 26th cruise. However, when DCL came out with the "Kids Sail Free" promotion, we were able to upgrade our category and still save $1000, so we switched.

Susan

disneypoor · 06-24-2011, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Politzania

Another groupie checking in - GREAT trip report & can't wait for our cruise in August!
Appreciate the tips on laundry & thrilled that you had a good time with Island Wings, as we're booked with Michelle as well.

You're in for the excursion of a lifetime with Michelle! She's wonderful! I love how her company is small--only a few employees, so when you arrive, you talk to the same person you talked to on the phone. When we were there, the paper had done a huge article on her! She's been there for a long time, and all of the locals know her. In fact, when we first got off of the ship and were walking around, vendors were trying to get us to book an excursion, and we told them we already had a float plane excursion, and almost all of them asked if it was with Michelle. They all had nothing but wonderful things to say about her and said we'd LOVE the excursion! Have a great trip!

Susan

eandesmom · 06-24-2011, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by disneypoor

I thought the weight limit for our ziplining in Juneau was 70 pounds, and they didn't weigh them, so I think he'd be close enough. I didn't think about the age limit though.

As for the laundry, my son changes clothes several times a day. He should have been my girl.

I would have been ticked if housekeeping stole my dirty laundry! No tip for housecleaning.

Susan

I could see myself being the one to slip as well, what a drag!

Right now we are booked for ziplining in Skagway. He's 10, almost 11 but not at 70 lbs. His brother, 12, just broke 70 about 2 months ago so given how they look I could see us getting weighted and don't want to risk it. That one, with the lower age limit, I have a feeling is a lot more lax and it is less $$, only drawback is giving up the train.

We're doing the Enchanted Taku in Juneau and then possibly the Rainforest canoe in Ketchikan. I could swap ziplining into Ketchikan and then get the train back in Skagway but am worried about the weight issue and don't want to risk it.

But...I hate giving up the train.

UGH.

Fun plane trip! If we weren't doing the one in Juneau, that was next on our list.

Question on the DVC. Do you have to go the presentations to get a quote or can you just request a quote? What kind of OBC was being offered if you bought on board?

disneypoor · 06-24-2011, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eandesmom

I could see myself being the one to slip as well, what a drag!

Right now we are booked for ziplining in Skagway. He's 10, almost 11 but not at 70 lbs. His brother, 12, just broke 70 about 2 months ago so given how they look I could see us getting weighted and don't want to risk it. That one, with the lower age limit, I have a feeling is a lot more lax and it is less $$, only drawback is giving up the train.

We're doing the Enchanted Taku in Juneau and then possibly the Rainforest canoe in Ketchikan. I could swap ziplining into Ketchikan and then get the train back in Skagway but am worried about the weight issue and don't want to risk it.

But...I hate giving up the train.

UGH.

Fun plane trip! If we weren't doing the one in Juneau, that was next on our list.

Question on the DVC. Do you have to go the presentations to get a quote or can you just request a quote? What kind of OBC was being offered if you bought on board?

As far as DVC, I would think you'd be able to get a quote because what they offer is the same for everyone on the sailing, I believe. For us, they were selling BLT at WDW, and it started at $140 per point. However, you got a discount based on how many points you bought. The minimum number of points you could buy was 160, and I believe that if you bought the minimum, the cost per point was $118 or real close to that. They give you all of this information in the presentation, so you really don't have to meet with them on an individual basis if what they are offering doesn't interest you.

They also offered an OBC if you purchased. Apparently, what they were offering overall was a good deal. Of course, I hadn't researched DVC at all before we went because I didn't think my husband would ever attend one of those presentations again, and I thought maybe we were on a "DO NOT LET THEM ATTEND" list.

You'll enjoy the ziplining no matter where you do it. You get to see beautiful views on the train ride, but the train ride itself wasn't that big of a deal. Of course, my DH was ticked that we weren't doing the steam train, but I just told him he could start planning the vacations if he wanted to, and that quieted him down.

Susan

Pocahantas · 06-24-2011, 09:59 AM

We are booked with Michelle for our day in Ketchikan and I can't wait!! Thanks for sharing your experience with us. And my family would have been laughing hysterically if I fell

! Our family motto is "never a dull moment" too! Maybe we should arrange to be at Disneyworld at the same time if you (don't get kicked out of the DVC reps office) and end up buying into DVC.

disneypoor · 06-24-2011, 10:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pocahantas

We are booked with Michelle for our day in Ketchikan and I can't wait!! Thanks for sharing your experience with us. And my family would have been laughing hysterically if I fell

! Our family motto is "never a dull moment" too! Maybe we should arrange to be at Disneyworld at the same time if you (don't get kicked out of the DVC reps office) and end up buying into DVC.

It would be fun to be able to meet up at WDW, but I fear that we could get in a whole lot of trouble. Not you and me, but our families. You know, now that I think of it, the WDW section of the DIS has trip reports too, so it would make for good writing material. We'll have to ponder this one.

I knew before I even stepped out of that plane that if anyone was going to fall, it would likely be me. I didn't intend on falling twice though. I mean, that was just uncalled for! Glad I could provide entertainment for the family though. Believe me, I laugh at them when they do stupid things!

Susan

disneypoor · 06-24-2011, 10:48 AM

Okay, the waves seemed as if they were almost to roll the ship over, and I felt very under the weather. In fact, I wasn't even sure if I would be able to get ready for our DVC meeting at 10:00. (Just kidding! I would have gone to that throwing up if I had to!

) Even Brianna was feeling sick from the waves. I asked my husband to turn on the t.v. to see how big the waves were, and I was fully expecting to see something like 25 to 30 feet, but it said they were 8 to 13 feet (I think they lie) and that conditions were rough. I could hardly even take a shower because the ship was rocking and about to knock me over!

Eventually, the movement of the ship finally calmed down, and both Brianna and I started to feel a bit better. In the meantime, I had been casually discussing DVC with my husband. I don't want to go into details of our conversation because I'm afraid it might come across as me being the begging type, which I'm not.

Anyhow, I told him about all of the white hat people I had talked to and how we tend to almost always vacation with Disney involved in one way or another. Of course, we are going to Hawaii next spring break and already have that booked, so he had to throw in my face how that was just a big waste of money because if we were thinking of doing DVC, we should have just stayed at Aulani. I quickly reminded him that it would be very unlikely that we could get Aulani this close (I really didn't know that but he didn't know I didn't know that) and besides, Aulani is on Oahu, and we wanted to go to Maui. I didn't press it too much, but I made darn sure I pointed out the positives. He showed just a slight bit of interest, and that's when I really started playing my A game.

So, long story short, we go to the fancy inside stateroom office of our DVC representative, and we bought in to DVC!

Because we bought in on the cruise, we also got a $500 onboard credit, and since we'd been traveling like rock stars, we could use that! We set up a meeting for 4:30 to close on the deal. My husband immediately put on his "white hat".

I continued to stalk all of the white hat cruisers. I'm not at all afraid to talk to complete strangers. Trust me. My family thinks there is something wrong with me. I tell them I'm just nice like that.

Brianna went to play bingo with Toni, my friend that was traveling with us, and Brandon went to a free throw contest. I headed back to the room to start the whole dreaded packing process. I must say though that having a sea day on the last day of the cruise was quite nice. In past experience, I'm just a straight you know what because I'm so stressed about getting those darn suitcases out by 10:30 p.m. For this cruise, I was as happy as a lark on the last day, which I'm sure my family totally appreciated.

We headed up to Beach Blanket Buffet to get some lunch and found out they were doing a BBQ outside of Beach Blanket. It was yummy! They had chicken, steaks, and disgusting fish (remember--the smell of seafood makes us almost vomit). They also had stir fry on the buffet, and it was scrumptious!

Since we were rock stars and were feeling lucky on this cruise, we headed to the Walt Disney Theater at 3:30 for a final round of bingo. Turns out, the final day of bingo is NUTS! They didn't start on time, and we ended up having to ask for our money back because we had to go sign the papers to spend thousands on DVC.

They were fine with refunding our money, so it was no big deal.

We headed to the fancy DVC reps office again and closed the deal. He presented us with a few goodies from DVC and reminded us we'd be getting the $500 OBC. It was as easy as that. So now, part of the reason I've been slow at getting my report done is because I've been on a whole new section of the DIS for me--DVC!!!!!

After we finished closing on the DVC contract, we headed to Diversions to watch the Stanley Cup game between the Canucks and the Bruins. They were serving yummy chicken wings and chips and salsa. It was nice. This was the 6th game (the Canucks lost

), and we decided we really wanted to watch the entire game, so we skipped Disney Dreams. We've seen it many times though, so no big deal. Forgot to mention, that the Rock Star lifestyle came out a bit more--I scheduled a hair appointment for Brianna at 5:30. They did a great job though!

We went back to the room before dinner to set out our suitcases, got our tip envelopes ready, and met our tablemates for one last dinner at Triton's. We told everyone we wouldn't be at breakfast because we had to meet in the Walt Disney Theater by 7:45 to get off of the ship early due to our 12:15 flight time. I should also say that for the first time ever, we gave our head server in the dining room extra money in his tip envelope. In all of our DCL cruises, we hardly ever see the head server and aren't sure what he does. For this cruise, our head server was awesome! He came and talked to us every single night, and he made his presence known. We gave extra money to everyone we tipped, but I felt really good about giving it to the head server this time!

We said our goodbyes and this ended our fabulous Alaska vacation.

I'm not going to do a separate post for the day we got off of the ship, but I will say that it went smoothly. We took a bus to the airport, had a layover in Minneapolis, and made it back to Kansas City safe and sound. I will add though that I was separated from my family on the flight due to the seat assignments, and I got to sit with two people that were DVC! My family couldn't believe it! They said we never shut up the entire flight!

Seriously, I've already emailed the lady and we've talked DVC a couple of times since I got back. They were just great people and so excited about DVC and said it was one of the best things they've ever purchased. Of course, I made sure my husband heard that!

Thank you all for reading! I hope I've been able to help out at least a few cruisers with some tips and advice, and I hope you all have happy sailings in the future. As for me, I gotta get off here. I'm meeting my sister in Kansas City for lunch today, and I think the Coach store is calling my name. What? You didn't think I would give up the Rock Star lifestyle that easily, did you? This will be it though. Today is the end. NO MORE ROCK STAR SPENDING AFTER TODAY. Well, maybe after tomorrow, but we'll see.......Just don't tell my husband!

Besides, we won $407 in bingo and got a $500 OBC, and it should all be mine. I'm the one that plans these darn things!

Susan

KathyM2 · 06-24-2011, 10:54 AM