June 27, 2013 - Magic in the Med (Venice)

[Wynn]

We flew out from JFK in 2009 and paid about $1100 per person. But by the time we paid for transfers, we problably should have just left from Philly. I think we'll try that this time hopefully a lot less stressful.

[Cliffside]

Originally Posted by MrsScooby

We wound up flying out of JFK for our Baltic cruise because it was so much cheaper than flying out of Dulles. We saved about $200 pp on airfare. Hated the extra driving, but we needed to save the money for excursions.
I think the tickets were around $1000 or a little under.
Definitely stalking all the websites to get the best airfare helps.

I hear what u mean about saving for excursions...hoping to fly continental/united non stop...hoping close to the $1000 ticket price...for the one we have to buy...

Last summer we were very lucky that we were able to use just 25,000 miles a ticket for round trip Newark to Vancouver because the excursions in Alaska were crazy expensive..the "free" airline tickets was the way I convinced dh to go on the Alaska cruise...and it was wonderful.

[Deb T.]

Originally Posted by nzdisneymom

Our TA did let us know that our OBC is $700. That takes care of tips plus a wee bit more, so that's good news. I'm figuring $12/day per person for 12-nights so that's $144 per person.

That amount is right on! Current recommendation per person/per day is:
Server $4
Asst Server $3
Head Server $1
Stateroom Host $4

[jel0511]

Originally Posted by Cliffside

I hear what u mean about saving for excursions...hoping to fly continental/united non stop...hoping close to the $1000 ticket price...for the one we have to buy...

Last summer we were very lucky that we were able to use just 25,000 miles a ticket for round trip Newark to Vancouver because the excursions in Alaska were crazy expensive..the "free" airline tickets was the way I convinced dh to go on the Alaska cruise...and it was wonderful.

Your welcome on the air tip!!!!!!!

We are also hoping for 1k per ticket. We might have enough on continental for a free ticket especially after this summer. We have a lot of miles on delta prob enough for 2 tickets, but that would mean having to fly out of JFK.

[MrsScooby]

Originally Posted by nzdisneymom

Our TA did let us know that our OBC is $700. That takes care of tips plus a wee bit more, so that's good news. I'm figuring $12/day per person for 12-nights so that's $144 per person.

Gotta love the OBC you get from TAs

Originally Posted by Wynn

We flew out from JFK in 2009 and paid about $1100 per person. But by the time we paid for transfers, we problably should have just left from Philly. I think we'll try that this time hopefully a lot less stressful.

We have family in NY that helped make JFK easier for us to do. If it wasn't for that I don't think we would have gone that route.

Originally Posted by Cliffside

I hear what u mean about saving for excursions...hoping to fly continental/united non stop...hoping close to the $1000 ticket price...for the one we have to buy...

Last summer we were very lucky that we were able to use just 25,000 miles a ticket for round trip Newark to Vancouver because the excursions in Alaska were crazy expensive..the "free" airline tickets was the way I convinced dh to go on the Alaska cruise...and it was wonderful.

Yeah I'm expecting these ports to be pretty expensive. Baltic was not too bad for most of the ports, Berlin and St Petersburg were expensive, but the others had great low cost options.
I can see Rome, Florence, Naples and Venice being really pricey for us.

[jel0511]

Originally Posted by MrsScooby

Yeah I'm expecting these ports to be pretty expensive. Baltic was not too bad for most of the ports, Berlin and St Petersburg were expensive, but the others had great low cost options.
I can see Rome, Florence, Naples and Venice being really pricey for us.

after you see the Alaska excursion prices the Europe ones look cheap!!!! We paid over 2k for one excursion for the 4 of us. It was the BEST money spent IMO!!!!!

[MrsScooby]

Originally Posted by jel0511

after you see the Alaska excursion prices the Europe ones look cheap!!!! We paid over 2k for one excursion for the 4 of us. It was the BEST money spent IMO!!!!!

Ours weren't that bad cost wise, but close. But I know what you mean by being worth the cost

I couldn't find anyone to share our Berlin excursion so we just covered the whole cost of the private tour. But boy were we spoiled!! The driver grew up in East Berlin and was great to talk to about the old days and the tour guide was an American student that fell in love with Berlin and decided to stay. Best tour ever! Best lunch of the cruise!

St Petersburg was our next stop and the tour company just wasn't as good. We were lucky enough to share the cost of that tour with 2 other families but we were all a little bit disappointed with the way our tour was handled. The sites in SP were amazing of course and we saw alot, but the Berlin tour was handled so much better.

Hey! For those of you that have done the Med before, what was your favorite excursion???

[jel0511]

Originally Posted by MrsScooby

Ours weren't that bad cost wise, but close. But I know what you mean by being worth the cost

I couldn't find anyone to share our Berlin excursion so we just covered the whole cost of the private tour. But boy were we spoiled!! The driver grew up in East Berlin and was great to talk to about the old days and the tour guide was an American student that fell in love with Berlin and decided to stay. Best tour ever! Best lunch of the cruise!

St Petersburg was our next stop and the tour company just wasn't as good. We were lucky enough to share the cost of that tour with 2 other families but we were all a little bit disappointed with the way our tour was handled. The sites in SP were amazing of course and we saw alot, but the Berlin tour was handled so much better.

Hey! For those of you that have done the Med before, what was your favorite excursion???

Flavors of sorrento And timeless Pompeii. It is a DCL excursion. You get a small tour of sorrento and some time to explore. You're dropped off at a shop with the most beautiful inlaid wood works. After your time in sorrento you go to a local farm where you will eat the best food of your life! Then you get a guided tour of Pompeii. It was SO HOT in Pompeii but still nice to be there. DEFNITELY book this one for naples!!!!!

[ame]

Originally Posted by nzdisneymom

Laurie - You made me laugh about not wanting your DMiL to know about your plans. We haven't told any of our extended family yet, but we've told friends and coworkers. I don't know why it's different - guess I just don't want to hear about it for 16 months We will tell them sometime later this year.

Same here. Our friends and co-workers know but no family. I just don't want to hear about it at all from anybody who is anything less than supportive or interested.

Our plane tickets are going to cost us in the 2-2.5k each range unless the golbal economy melts down again That's why we're going to extend it to m ake the whole trip just shy of 4 weeks. We have the cruise mostly paid for as it was a t/fer from a cancelled Mexico cruise that we had PIF, so just need to have the plane money saved by July when plane tickets go on sale.

IO haven't really done too much planning as I'm headed to Alaska in July with DS3 who will be turning ten ont he last day of our Alaska cruise.

[Cliffside]

Originally Posted by jel0511

Flavors of sorrento And timeless Pompeii. It is a DCL excursion. You get a small tour of sorrento and some time to explore. You're dropped off at a shop with the most beautiful inlaid wood works. After your time in sorrento you go to a local farm where you will eat the best food of your life! Then you get a guided tour of Pompeii. It was SO HOT in Pompeii but still nice to be there. DEFNITELY book this one for naples!!!!!

Hey...u stole my answer....we were lucky enough to be on the same excursion and it was awesome....that is why I am so glad we are going to go back to Naples...I am looking forward to going back to sorrento spending more time there and possibly seeing positano and more of the Amalfi coast...I booked this excursion after listening to the dis podcast review and they also raved about it...also had great company on the excursion so that made the excursion a blast

[nzdisneymom]

Favorite excursions from the Med? Hard to say! I can tell you what we did, though, and what we liked about each one. We did all of our excursions through DCL and most of them with the "For Families" tag at the end since we had the boys with us who were 9 and 11.

Naples: We did Isle of Capri / Sorrento / Pompeii. Fabulous. It was our second port day. We took a hydrofoil to Capri but didn't have a whole lot of time -the one we did was for families and took us on a boat ride around the island which was fun and interesting, but when we got our free time on Capri, we didn't have time to take the funicular up to the proper town. So we just stayed in the harbor, did some souvenir shopping, and found a restroom Then back on the hydrofoil over to Sorrento which I loved that town. We did the same souvenir stop with the inlaid wood which was interesting and just a part of what we had to do. Then a delicious lunch at a nearby restaurant and a little bit of free time - then off to Pompeii which was the highlight of that day. However, our time in Pompeii was in the afternoon and if I had to do it again, i would want to start there, especially with children as they were getting tired at that point.

Rome: We did an all day that took us inside the Colosseum and to the Vatican and to the Trevi Fountain. We wanted to see each of them, we wanted to be sure our excursion took us inside the Colosseum and not just outside, and we didn't want to spent half a day at the Vatican - so we looked at each possible excursion to find one that fit us the best. It was an early morning train - about 1+ hours so there was time for children to doze off. We loved our tour guide who we thought was the best of all of our excursions. Her English was excellent, she was quick, and she made sure no one dawdled and delayed us. The only thing we didn't like about this excursion is that there was an extra CM who joined us and put us one over the number of people who should be on the excursion - which meant the train ride had us not able to sit together and at the lunch, they were short by a person and space and our family ended up having to sit on the side and barely got served. I was aggravated about that and the fact that many of the others on our excursion paid no attention to arranging themselves so that they could sit together and still allow others to sit together. We would have had to sit two, one, and one - and with the boys still as young as they were, we weren't going to split up like that - if one person had gotten up from a table that had one of the one's and gone to the other table, then we could've split up two and two, but no one would... it was because we had the odd person ... But we learned a lot from that experience about jockeying for position within an excursion group don't be first on the bus or you'll be last off unless you take up the front seats - but those aren't the best seats. Better in the middle We were always trying to be courteous and load the back first but apparently that's not strategic. Oh well. Live and learn - and we did! Chalked it up to experience - and that certainly didn't ruin our enjoyment of our day in Rome.

Pisa - we opted for Pisa over Florence because the boys wanted to climb the Leaning Tower. However, it was only offered in the morning so we were not able to book it because it was sold out - but we kept watching online and they eventually added an afternoon excursion so we booked that one - and it was our favorite day - for one thing, it was the day after Rome and we were exhausted so it was nice to not have an early excursion the next day. The rest did us good - we had taken the 10-night rather than the 11-night - the 11-night had a sea day between Rome and Florence/Pisa. It was a nice relaxing day and the bus ride to Pisa was interesting. We had tickets that let us go up the tower - it was amazing - and the kids loved it.

Villefranche - while the excursion wasn't my favorite, this port was my favorite! We did a bus ride over to Nice and the little toursit train took us around and we walked through the old city and market. Our tour guide was the worst of all we had this trip --- you could tell she wasn't overly experienced, but we liked Nice enough. This port was nearing the end so we were pretty much excursioned out by this point which we knew we'd be so we did just a morning excursion. Back on board for lunch and then DH and I spent some time in the little town there on our own for the afternoon. The ship stayed late so they could take guests into Monte Carlo for the evening, but we didn't go.

[mjhoward]

Hi All,
We have just booked this cruise, our first ever cruise and we are so excited.
Has anyone got any hints or tips for our disney experience?
Look forward to hearing from you all.

[nzdisneymom]

Originally Posted by mjhoward

Hi All,
We have just booked this cruise, our first ever cruise and we are so excited.
Has anyone got any hints or tips for our disney experience?
Look forward to hearing from you all.

Hi mjhoward! Welcome to the Meet Thread and to DISBoards! You'll find a lot of great information here - and keep hanging out with us here and you'll get lots of hints and tips for cruising with DCL! Some of us have cruised in the Med before, too, so we're sharing our previous experiences and memories as we have a long ways to go until it is time to sail! have you cruised before?

I'm Cindy D and will be sailing with my DH and two teenage boys. The first post of the thread has a list of those who are sailing and we'll also be putting announcements there as we schedule things like a Meet and Greet or other activities.

[carpenta]

In 2007 we did the same trip to Sorrento and it still is one of our favorites. In 2010 we did the Sorrento excursion where the kids made pizza in a local restaurant. Our daughter loved it and the local workers they hired were as if they had WDW employees transfered to Italy. Very very kind to the kids.The inlaid wood shop in Sorrento will ship your purchase home for you and we took advantage of this feature (alot). The only thing you should be aware is that you do pay import fees on said item which was $20.00 or so. On our 2009 Royal Carribean trip we went to Capri and it was beautiful to see BUT the trip to the farm for lunch with Sorrento and Pompeii is still the best and we are leaning to re-book this excursion next time.

[MrsScooby]

Originally Posted by mjhoward

Hi All,
We have just booked this cruise, our first ever cruise and we are so excited.
Has anyone got any hints or tips for our disney experience?
Look forward to hearing from you all.

Welcome Aboard

You certainly picked an intense experience for your first cruise

Disney does a great job of taking care of you so you'll have a great time

Luckily we have quite a few folks that have cruised the Med with Disney before and have their advice and experiences to draw from.

Since we are more than a year from our cruise date it is a little early to make solid plans. Airfare won't be available to purchase until sometime this summer. Hotels in Barcelona can be booked now but I was told their best rates for next summer won't come out until this summer.

If you can manage it I would advise planning to arrive in Barcelona at least a day before the ship sails as a delay in flights can cause you to miss the ship.

You also need to consider trip insurance. The trip insurance sold by Disney does not cover pre-existing conditions so if that is a concern you need to purchase it elsewhere at most 10 days to 2 weeks past the day you book. There is a website that alot of people use (insuremytrip.com) that is a good place to compare different policies.

Try not to get overwhelmed by the amount of information on this Board. The FAQ thread has gotten huge as we have alot of folks who like to plan every detail of their trips. We'll start planning more details as we get closer to cruise time-like Cindy D said above

If you have any specific questions you can go ahead and post here or on the main forum. I would caution against asking about dress code on the main forum as that tends to be a hot topic

Those of you that have cruised the Med before can fill the rest of us in on what you saw as far as dress during past Med cruises