DCL for the non-Disney crowd: Eastern Carib. Fantasy Jan 26 - Feb 3 2013 - all done!

[Conorama]

Welcome followers, and I hope this is helpful to someone, and not boring - my high and lofty goals in life.

Originally Posted by Linda67

Count me in, it sounds like you are going to have a really interesting perspective on a DCL Cruise

I'll try to stay interesting!

Originally Posted by bellasmom10

Looking forward to reading your trip report..

Especially your thoughts on Air Canada...

Oh - no shortage of AC thoughts ... stay tuned!

Originally Posted by ilovemangoes

A fellow Ontarian planning our 2nd DCL cruise...looking forward to reading more.

Enjoying our real winter this year? I was happy to escape for a week, but I confess I actually love real winters.

Originally Posted by kittymamma

It's always fun to read a TR when the author has a sense of humor, which this one obviously does, so I am anxious to read the rest.....

I try very hard to direct the sense of humour at myself (OK, at my husband and kid too - they're just easy targets. )

Originally Posted by wiigirl

I'm in!

Originally Posted by GoHabsGo

I feel like you are my biographer - similar story here but we flew out of DTW for our trip.

***Spoiler Alert*** We really enjoyed our Dream cruise (so much so that we're on the Fantasy in two weeks)

We're on the other side of TO, and we decided that we didn't want to contend with unknown (to us) roads in and around Syracuse (our nearest US airport) in January. See notes above re: excessive wimpiness when it comes to these matters!

OK, back to business. Pre-trip countdown, part 4, I think???

[tracylkj]

I'll be reading! We live in Winnipeg (grew up in Ontario) and we booked our first Disney Cruise in January 2014! And like you, we aren't big Disney people either

[cleophus12]

So far I'm impressed--especially with the advance booking of everything. I am just about to hit that mark, and your experience is helpful. Looking forward to the full report.

[k3chantal]

Curious.......

[Conorama]

The (annoying) last 2 months before the vacation - part 1

So, if you blink after your 75 day booking date, you find yourself a mere 2 months before you leave. This is where I found myself after getting home from a business trip - so we were at the beginning of December, and I had to entire the planning zone big-time.

The List and a Cautionary Tale

NOTE: While we are DCL newbies, we are experienced "go South, you Canadians" vacationers from our previous all-inclusive experiences, so we know about the packing/planning thing.

DH and I have, well, let's call them "differing" packing styles. No, he is not the guy who asks the day before the trip if he should pack yet. He's the supremely annoying person who is basically fully packed 1 month before the vacation, and then acts all superior to the rest of us.

However, last year, he had a spectacular packing fail with this system, in that we found ourselves in the hot Caribbean sun, and he did not have any sun shirts to cover his pasty-white-sun-burn-prone-Canadian skin. Ha! He is also 6'6'' so buying stuff while on a resort is a challenge, so he had to fork over megabucks to buy a too short shirt.

I have a very sane and sensible plan that involves a spreadsheet (OK, maybe 3 of them) that is colour coded (because why not?) that I use to figure out what needs to be packed, what is packed, what needs to be checked for fit, and what needs to be purchased. I pack carefully over about a 3 week period, with one (marathon) session the night before with double/triple checking.

No, this is not excessive. Yes, I am sure of this. No, I am not anxious ... much ... well, a lot, when it comes to packing, actually.

He (mostly) stopped making fun of my lists after the Sun Shirt Episode. I, however, couldn't fully enjoy his shame last year since we had an incident that proved I needed to fix The List.

**If you don't want to read irrelevant, but hopefully amusing stuff... skip to the next heading below***

Picture this - last year, we are happily hitting the road on a sunny, and sub-freezing cold January Sunday morning, heading out on our 2 hour drive to Ottawa, to stay overnight prior to our morning flight off to sunny climes. We're flying down the 401 (one of the more boring stretches). The 3 year old is happy. I'm amazed we got away early, and we've had no glitches (cue the dark and stormy foreshadowing music here).

We stop for a Starbucks refill in small town Ontario, and Conor asks for something - I check for his suitcase and... it's not there.

I have an instant vision of it sitting in the closet at home - we had to hide it to keep the 3 year old from repacking it. (Read - taking everything out that is ESSENTIAL for happy kid-ness on the plane.)

Profanity ensues, out of the earshot of the child.

We decided to drop me and Conor at a (sorry) rather awful little mall to while away the *2* hours that it would take for DH to turn around, drive home, get the bleeping bag, and come back and get us.

We survived at the mall (I had my Starbucks, which was key) by running up and down in the (empty) halls, hitting the bookstore (yippee!), and, in my case, caving to my 3 year old son's insistence that I buy a $10 pair of sparkly, leopard print ballet flats. (Desperate times call for desperate measures.) Of note, I a) hate sparkly things, b) hate leopard print, and c) can't wear cheap ballet flats without taking out my back. However, the kid wanted me to get the "pretty" shoes, and it wasn't worth the fight.

Thankfully, we were driving up the day before, so we could afford this time.

So, we fixed The List to include a checklist of bags. Stop laughing at me!

Pre-packing

This, I have mastered. See notes re: The List (capital letters are required to convey its importance) above. I usually start to make the list at the 2 month point, since I might have to order hard to find stuff on-line.

However, the pre-packing process actually starts at the end of the summer when I sort the summer clothes before putting them away - I have learned to toss everything we might need for our summer at the end of January into an empty suitcase. I also pick up stuff the next size up for Conor on clearance at the end of the summer (you know, like, in July, according to the stores...) I've just been burned too many times by his annoying last-minute growth spurts. The nerve of the kid!

To be continued... (I do have photos, honest! However, none that are relevant to this post...)

[Conorama]

Originally Posted by tracylkj

I'll be reading! We live in Winnipeg (grew up in Ontario) and we booked our first Disney Cruise in January 2014! And like you, we aren't big Disney people either

Ah- I cannot speak of Ontario winters, then, since you're in Winnipeg- and yes, you will enjoy a cruise in Jan 2014! (Even with the non-Disney thing. Honest. I'll get there!)

Originally Posted by cleophus12

So far I'm impressed--especially with the advance booking of everything. I am just about to hit that mark, and your experience is helpful. Looking forward to the full report.

Good to hear! Advanced bookings is something I'm good at.

[Conorama]

The (annoying) last 2 months before vacation - part 2

OK, so at last report, I was working on The List (and ignoring my husband's eye rolling), was awaiting my Etsy booty (and ignoring my husband's eye rolling), and seriously considering methods to prevent a last-minute growth spurt in the kid.

FE and other Disney-ish stuff arrives

Happily - all my November planning was paying off, and stuff was arriving in the mail.

Here is the FE:



Yep - piratey. (That's a word.) That's just how we roll around here. We plan (read: I hope) to use it somehow around the house now - suggestions, anyone? (Right now, it hangs in my kid's room.) It took about 1 month to arrive from Texas, I think and was well worth the wait (from BullfrogsButterflies - you can find her on Etsy).

Here are a few FE gifty things - remember - must be small/light to make the shipping something I can contemplate without freaking out.



Pirate bottle cap thingies. A vast array. I also got some Dad-friendly (or at least, Dad-inoffensive) ones with cool map things on them - I found a nice Canadian person who does the bottle cap things (PARTYCAPZNBOWS), and we purchased these images from Cobra Graphics on Etsy (image below) and she made them with zipper pulls on them - I figure if folks like them they can turn them into keychains if they want.



I found some nice magnets from a woman in Florida - and I have some extras somewhere and I will find them soon ... I hope.

Finally- my somewhat graphically inclined husband was persuaded to make some door magnets.



After that, I topped up with some small local stuff - pencils with Canadian flags (I told you I wasn't going to win any awards for originality), glow sticks, Canadian chocolate/candy, more piratey stuff (when you find something that works for you...).

(There is more to the FE saga... to come!)

Pillow case

Here is the personalization part of things. It's not crooked - that's just my bad photography skills!



Getting close to being done the planning. I'm blathering on, though, since this is the stuff that helped me. Presumably, you're not reading this unless you want to!

[DisneyWhirled]

Subbing. Great so far!

[Murse09]

Learning a lot, thank you....doing the air canada thing out of North Bay in Feb of next year to TO then Miami for 5night on wonder....this is def giving me insight....maybe planning and being prepared is a Canadian thing

[Conorama]

The (now really annoying) last 2 months before vacation - part 3

So, between December 1 and departure day (Jan 25), I had something of a hectic schedule. I was working my usual full-time schtick, but the timer was running out on my grad degree, so I had a lot of deadlines to meet. I worked straight from Dec 17 to 24th (including the weekend), had 5 days off (no complaints!), then had to work all but 4 of the days between Dec 30th and Jan 25th.

Clearly... planning was needed.

A Perfect Gift

Planning = delegation if you're me in this situation. I convinced DH to call Shirley's people, and we got our basket ordered. We asked for mostly healthy stuff (as much as can be expected) so we got bottles of water, some juices (health is relative in these situations), Goldfish and other crackers, popcorn, plus the sand pail/digging gear, and some Disney/pirate/Jake stuff for the boy. We got the tote bag thing you might have read about, too.

Why the health kick? We recognized the futility of the gesture, but it seemed important and the time.

Good grief - more on packing?

So, I was working LONG hours, and in my "spare" time, I was assembling all of our stuff. I know from previous experience that I can cut way back on what I pack (and I can also usually convince DH), but it's just impossible to cut back on what you need for a dirt-magnet/4.5 year old boy. I had read the Great Laundry Debate posts, so I didn't want to count on being able to do laundry, but we hoped we could. However, his stuff is small, so easy to pack, so I didn't sweat it. Yes, he had 3 bathing suit/swim shirt combos, and we used all 3 in one day, so that was needed.

I had some very well-meaning advice offered to me about getting sand off my son (baby powder). I tried to accept it graciously, but, unfortunately, these people have not met my son. If there is sand, he will get it EVERYWHERE. It is minus 10 around here most days now, and he still manages to come home with his snowsuit covered in sand from school. I packed his rain boots (more on that in a minute) and was supremely annoyed when a not-so-small mound of sand came out of the boots into the suitcase- and yes, I should have known better.

So, I decided to really cut down what the adults packed. I will say (after the fact) that there was very little that we packed that we didn't use, so I was pleased. The high points (hoping it helps others) were:

• Cutting down my stuff by about 30% - and packing "smart" so that stuff could be worn more than one way. Yes .. I WORE THE SAME CAPRI PANTS A FEW TIMES, and IT WAS OK. I, unlike my son, do not roll around in sand, and two of these served me fine for all non-formal MDR nights.
  
  
• I did read all the packing threads (most of them anyway), but, having traveled a lot, we knew we could skip some stuff. We did NOT bring a power bar (especially after it appeared they might be banned?) and that was fine. I did bring an over-the-door shoe holder, which... (spoiler here...) we did NOT use. Ditto the pop-up laundry hamper - since I had it, I un-popped it to put our laundry in on the day I ventured in to the land of laundry, and then I put it away - totally could have done without. (Disclaimer- we had an amazing room with more storage than we needed... so that's probably why.)
  
  
• I am a worrier with respect to winter travel, so although we leave our heavy winter gear checked at the hotel in YYZ, I don't want to be stuck if we're redirected to "middle of winter storm, USA" unexpectedly, so I do pack strategically, at least for Conor - so he had jeans, long underwear, splash pants, boots, a hoodie, a decent rain coat, and hat and mitts. Layer him up and he's ready for anything. This is, essentially, a form of insurance, but I have BAD travel karma, so we need to plan for these things. Modified (much) version of the above for me and DH.
  
  
• I contemplated backing off from my "emergencies" medical kit that I take when we're away, since we had insurance and I know they have the gear on the ship, but I couldn't do it. (If you want to know more about the kit, just ask.) This trip, we didn't need any of it (except Advil, which doesn't count), but I have used most of it on other trips, so I'm attached to it.
  
  
• (Controversial statement here) I didn't pack super-fancy stuff for Conor. He's 4 - really. On formal night, he wore beige cargo pants, his Keen "shoe-boots" as he calls them, a blue dress shirt (long sleeves) and his very first tie (we're not so very dressy around here). That worked just as well for semi-formal night. (Photos to follow.) He did wear pants every night to dinner and a shirt with a collar, so as not to upset anyone, and that was easy - we got by with 3 pairs of pants for him, easily. We followed the dress suggestions/code/law otherwise, with no exceptions.
  
  
• Otherwise, we packed as we usually do - due to skin sensitivity issues, we bring our own bathing and personal products. We always have Conor's "actual noise earmuffs" (noise-reducing headphones) when we travel, since the world is very loud. We placed a moratorium on how many stuffies could come, and Conor was allowed to pack his one little suitcase (that we did NOT forget), and that was it. We did pack a portable potty seat, since we have the kid who needs it (small bum!)
  
  
• DH packed his swim shirts. He also had 1 jacket, 2 ties, and 2 dress shirts, 1 pair dress pants, 1 pair dress shoes, in addition to his usual vacation stuff. Life went on.
  
  
• FE stuff was spread between our 3 checked bags and that was fine. Small = easy to pack = good things.
  

Random stuff

In this month, we also:

• Told Conor's teacher we were being naughty by taking him out of JK for a week - she gave us her blessing, fortunately, and we just need to help him do a presentation now that he's back (he's keen on these).
• Got my hair cut - phew.
• Got the car tuned up for its upcoming road trip.
• Arranged cat sitters/house checkers/mail picker-uppers and driveway plowers.
• Circulated contact info to those who needed it.
• Reminded the school Conor would be away. (Foreshadowing here.)
• Double/triple/quadruple checked flights and hotel reservations (can you tell we've been burned before?)
• Received pirate shirts - laughed hysterically at how ridiculous we would look - regained composure, and tried to minimize the ridiculous part, to no avail.
• Checked the weather compulsively to see if one of our more annoying storms would hit the "Greater Toronto Area" when we were driving in - because, you know, those 14 day forecasts are SOOO accurate this time of year (any time of year???)

And with that, I'll pause, and say good night.

I think, tomorrow, we might actually leave on the bleepin' trip - but I have abs class (UGH) so it might not happen until Thursday.

Good night!

[Murse09]

Good night to you too...and the med kit...I bring mine everywhere, and I'm in the medical field so you can imagine what's in it, and yes have used it a ton too... Cheers

[Conorama]

Finally- on our way to Orlando

Time to get us actually traveling in this review.

In the days leading up to Jan 25th, we checked the weather a bunch more times and decided we could safely cancel that first hotel night in TO. Happily, that didn't backfire on us.

The night before we left

I arrived home on Jan 24th after work (which included doing the happy dance when I stuck my "out of office" message on my email), to find out that Conor had a great day at school, dumped his milk on his pants, and ... we couldn't get them back at the end of the day due to the classroom being locked. (Don't worry - he had on his back-up pants!) Great - those will be in AWESOME shape after 10 days.

After a quick supper, and getting Conor to bed, we spent the evening at our usual last minute rituals, which includes the comforting aspect of constantly asking one another - "did you pack X? where is Y? What did you do with Z?"

I engaged in the final great suitcase shuffle, which goes like this:

1. Open all 3 suitcases and 3 carry-ons on the living room floor.
2. Remove at least 2 full outfits of clothing per person from each suitcase.
3. Redistribute these to the other suitcases.

If you're wondering why I do this - clearly, you've never been on the lucky receiving end of having a bag go missing for a few days. (Guess who has? Yes, yes, lucky me.) This way, no one person is without underwear for 2 days -essential to happy traveling.

I then did the checked bag/carry on reshuffle, where I change my mind 3 times about what needs to go in the carry on - this is based on 2 key principles a) what do I need on the flight to keep the kid happy? and b) what do the rest of us need to survive for 2 days if our luggage is lost? (Again, voice of experience here.)

Frequent use of the luggage scale is essential in this shuffling - beware! Love our luggage scale. Best invention ever, I think, for my peace of mind.

Finally, we pack one extra bag... the "leave in Toronto" bag, which is the the bag of stuff you need to miraculously transform back into someone who is ready for winter weather.

And then, I went to bed.

True confession: At no point in this did I have any trouble sleeping - the non-Disney in me, I guess? Or sheer exhaustion?

We hit the road

In my world, if I think we need to be leaving the house at 10:00 a.m., I proclaim to my family we need to leave at 9:00 a.m. I am not faultless in this, but my husband, the king of the "triple check" always underestimates how much time that last bit of running around takes.

So, with a 9:00 a.m. plan firmly in place, and a 4.5 year old determined to help us pack, we did leave the house at 10:00 a.m. (after triple checking that all bags were IN the car).

Here he is, and do NOT ask me why he put both his stuffies on his head - it took him 5 minutes to pose for this pic.



Note the one and only Disney shirt - purchased on mega-sale at Old Navy, when I was on-line to get him new underwear and socks (it's all glamour, all the time around here.)

First stop - you guessed it - Starbucks, then hello 401. It was an easy drive mostly - the weather was good both in and out of the car (4.5 year old had new TV to watch and new games on his "phone" (my old i-pod touch). Toco Robot rocks, by the way, if you need a new app for your 4 year old. We made one short pit-stop to have our usual conversation.

"Conor - come on bud, we all need to go in to pee."
"I don't need to pee."
"Yep, bud, we should all pee. We have another hour and a half to drive and we need to all make sure we have peed."
"I don't have any pee."
"Buddy- remember, every time we talk about this, you say you don't need to pee. Every time we go in, you try, and you find out you have sneaky pee, that's hiding."
"No - I don't have any. My p**** is empty" (Yep - my kid is inventive.)
(At this point, you want to avoid precipitating a meltdown - you're in public, you have to get another long drive in, and you've just started vacation, so you resort to creativity as opposed to "mom says...")
"Well, bud, why don't you come in and help me pick out a donut?"

Yep - Tim Hortons to the rescue. How Canadian are we anyway?

Needless to say, once in the building, suddenly someone decides that maybe he should check for "sneaky pee" (his term) and voila, it's there. (Sorry for TMI!)

Back on the road - in the throes of the ugliness that is the 401 across Toronto, snow squalls start, which just adds that extra je-ne-sais-quoi as one is trying to get to YYZ in one piece. Happily - we made it fine, and found a good parking place "indoors", so to speak, near the hotel. Then, realize we don't want to be trucking our luggage up one level in the parking garage, so we get BACK in the car, and Conor and I and all the luggage get dropped off at the hotel, while Brian hopes the spot is still there. (It was.)

YYZ tips

In the end it was just after 1:00 p.m. when we got to the Sheraton - it's in Terminal 3, if you've not been there before. Our flight was leaving, of course, from Terminal 1.

(If you didn't know, one of the perks of staying at the Sheraton Gateway is that you can leave a bag there for the duration of your trip - so we leave that "winter transformation" bag - complete with everything we'll need the night we return.)

The only downside of the Sheraton Gateway (other than the cost) is that there are no luggage carts there (officially speaking) so you have to truck your stuff down to the monorail to terminal 1. This was not awful, but interesting with me corralling the over-excited 4.5 year old, so I couldn't take as much as I normally would.

Fortunately, not far into Terminal 1, we located carts, and we were on the way.

We found our check-in line. (Cue the Air Canada complaints.) For some reason that NO ONE has ever been able to explain, most of the time, we can't check in an advance. I am the person who LOVES doing these things in advance - be it on-line or at a little booth thingie. Nope - we are rejected. We don't know why, so we have to stand in the check-in line.

This was a typical line -we were there for about 20 minutes. (Happily - the aforementioned new rocket app on the i-pod touch was good for all that.)

Rant here - why were we in line this long? Not, I will say, because of Air Canada (this time, anyway). The line was slow due to the 2 families who apparently don't read the rules so they had bags that were, oh, 60 lbs, and they didn't want to pay for overweight. So, the rest of us sit there watching them argue and move things around in bags. (No, ma'am, I do not think that you moving your kid's diapers out of that bag is going to get you down 10 lbs. - try moving the men's shoes!) ARGH! Then, they didn't know they had to pay for their bags even if they weren't overweight (yes, it's annoying, but it's well advertized), so they argued about that, then spent seemingly forever finding their credit cards. ARGH again!

By the time we checked in, it was about 1:45 - we were organized, and our bags were underweight (thank you luggage scale) and our documents were in order, so we were done in 5 minutes. We were directed to, I think, the "f-gates" (?) which is where we got ready to clear American customs or whatever that is called. You fill out that form, and then you stand in line some more. This line was moving pretty quickly (it wasn't too busy that day) so we were through in about 15 minutes.

We then get in the next line (don't you love traveling?) to go through security. Since the great luggage reshuffling process also includes prepping for going through security, we were ready. We did have a stroller (don't judge) which kept the 4.5 year old happy (it's a rare event for him) so this got us in the special line. The only glitch here was the usual last minute negotiation about the fact that Sockie would have to go through the scanner. Fortunately, that day, Sockie was keen, so long as he could stay with Teddy, so we got through that OK.

All in all - we emerged on the other side of security, intact, and after our customary "Don't you have the passports?" moment of panic, we headed straight for lunch, as it was way late - 3:00 p.m.

Yes - tactical error- so tip for all - it took 2 hours to get through all of the lines at the airport - so our plan to get lunch right after we checked in fell apart - so we were all hungry and grumpy.

Air Canada - my metaphor - skip this if you don't care what I think about them!

4 years ago was the last time we traveled to the US and we decided we didn't want to take Air Canada for once. We had taken AC for years not so much due to choice, but rather due to the fact that they are the only airline that fly out of our local airport, and with an infant, it was just easier. (Also - they have a near-monopoly on places we go often to visit family.)

We flew on an American airline, and, to be blunt, it was awful. They were not even polite when we explained we couldn't do the advanced check-in - they made us try again (with a 9 month old) at the kiosks, then they patronized us and tried to help us use the kiosk, only to proclaim with great astonishment "Oh, it's not letting you check in!"

After various experiences like this, we had our last leg of the flight on Air Canada. It occurred to me that while AC frequently loses my bags, runs late, has near-monopolies on certain destinations, and changes their rules with great frequency, they are, to us, like a co-worker you don't really like, but with whom you still have a very productive working relationship. You're never going to go for drinks after work, but you understand each other's weaknesses, and you know how to deal with them.

We've tried West Jet - very fun, but their flights rarely work out for us, and what's the deal with the no milk on board? We've tried to book Porter - once again - the flight times never work out.

So, even though we can now drive to one of 4 other airports within 3 hours of our home, we end up on AC more often than not. So, yes, we appear to keep working together. Since this trip was on points, I really shouldn't complain... much.

And, I will leave you here, as we were eating overpriced lunch in Terminal 1, before heading to our gate.

Later!

[Conorama]

Originally Posted by DisneyWhirled

Subbing. Great so far!

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Murse09

Learning a lot, thank you....doing the air canada thing out of North Bay in Feb of next year to TO then Miami for 5night on wonder....this is def giving me insight....maybe planning and being prepared is a Canadian thing

Sounds fun! I'll put in more Air Canada stories as we go on - I have a ton. As for the planning, what else am I supposed to do on cold winter nights? I think it's just my coping strategy, though.

Originally Posted by Murse09

Good night to you too...and the med kit...I bring mine everywhere, and I'm in the medical field so you can imagine what's in it, and yes have used it a ton too... Cheers

Ditto as to the job front and the need to bring too much medical gear. It has kept me/us out of the ER so far!

[lizzyb]

Joining in!

As a fellow canadian we always fly out of the US ( Buffalo in our case). I hate flying out on YYZ.

[Flossbolna]

I am really enjoying your report! And I love all your planning details and the story about the sneaky pee! Can't wait for you to finally get on that ship!