7/25/2013 Med. Mickey's 12 Night Italian Job - with Nice, Valletta and Dubrov !

[Figment_Fan]

Ah, the speculation begins - and maybe hope for a lower price offering?

http://www.bing.com/travel/content/...a+Europe+In+Crisis&cid=msn1250733&form=HPTRAV

 

[disneycrazy2004]

And the group grows. I mentioned to DD about chatting. She's thinking about it.

We had a hiccup over the weekend. Spend Saturday night at the emergency room with DD experiencing pain in her right side. So far no explanaition. All blood levels are normal. No gallstones (okay, who ever heard of gall stones in a skinny 11 year old???) and no kidney stones. Everything functioning normally. Now, more tests. The doctors are leaning toward scoliosis and displacement of organs. The curve was very slight a few months ago, I haven't noticed any changes, but she grow about 3 inches in the past three or four months.

Anyway, we got to see her on morphine. She's was in the emergency room quoting Mel Brooks movies.

Now she has vicodin for the pain. The pain is enough that she doesn't even get loopy from the medication. I hope this resolves soon.

Any suggestions on making the roll call better??

Any links for exploring?

I hope your DD feel better soon....

 

[Figment_Fan]

DD is feeling better. Looks like a scoliosis back brace is in her futuer. I guess that is better than many other things.

I hope all of you are doing well. Just had a little of that hope we are all healthy at the time of the cruise feeling.

Lately while watching the food network, all I can think of is:: gee, that is the type of food we'll be eating on the cruise . . . sigh.

 

[K8T]

Thought it worth giving the thread a 'bump'!!

 

[Figment_Fan]

Hey, K8t. That bump didn't last long.

Made the decision last weekend to go to WDW for Spring Break. Thought we'd not do anything until this cruise and save money.

Last Friday, the kids had a snow day. DD put together a power point on why we should go during spring break. She won me over - okay, with Disney, it doesn't take much. Her mother helped with figuring out the costs. 4 of us for 4 days, under $1500. It helps to be DVC, the room is paid for so the majority of cost is tickets. Another ~200 gets us 6 days. Thus, we're gone.

I feel so technologically deficient. I wondered how much of the power point DW did, then she reminded me that DD did a speach on power point at school last year, so DD did 90% of the presentation. Ouch - I'm really not tech savvy.

Anyway, just something to keep me distracted from thinking about the cruise for a few days.

 

[helenreed]

Hi guys,
Boy this thread is quiet! 4 months today till we go to WDW, so excited! Hope we get some people here soon!

 

[Melcatfish]

Hi all,

We are also booked on this cruise, we booked on the first day that us lowly silver castaway members could book but as we are sailing this summer I totally forgot about joining the meet thread!

Our group will be

Me - Mel
DH - Darren
DD1 - Isabelle who will be 8 at time of sailing
DD2 - Olivia who will be 5 at time of sailing

We picked this cruise because of the 12 nighters it was the only one entirely within UK school holidays and as DH and I are both teachers there are no term time vacations for us!

I see a few familiar names on the list from our cruises gone by. This will be our 6th DCL cruise for DH and I and 4th DCL for the girls. We sail this summer on a 5 night to Canada which is going to seem WAY too short as back in 2010 we lucked out and got some great rates for back to back 8 night Dover to Barcelona and the following 11 night cruise - 19 nights onboard and I still wasn't ready to get off!

I am very excited about Venice, it is on my "bucket list" and an overnight in port will be awesome. A few of the stops are repeats from our 2010 adventure but for me that is a good thing. We loved Valletta even though we got lost and lots of things were closed! This time we are definitely going to go to the Blue Grotto in Malta. In La Spezia we went to Cinque Terre which was beautiful but it rained and we didn't time it well so we may go back for a second go. We stayed on board on our Rome day because the kids were too young for a long day out and DH and I had previously been on a long weekend to Rome, we will see how we feel but maybe we might take a day trip with them this time.

It is a long way off but I have been thinking about doing a Romeinlimo tour in Naples. Possibly Sorrento, Positano and Pizza School as my kids would love it. If we decide to go ahead we may also look for another family to share the trip with as for a family of 4 it is 500 Euro but for two families of four it is 600 Euro making it much better value! http://www.romeinlimo.com/kid-naples/pizza-school.htm I have read loads of good feedback for this company and they do tours from all of our Italian ports.

Phew, what a long post - I promise it did start out as a please add me to the list post!

Mel
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[cindy18]

Hi Mel! Good to see you on this thread as well as elsewhere!

We want to do Romeinlimo for Naples also, but I can't sign on with you for the pizza part, because we really want to see Pompeii. For us, that incredibly full day will be Pompei, Sorrento and Positano. Will definitely be one of the highlight days of the trip for us. I didn't realize that getting more than one family to do it with you changed the price so significantly. My guess is that once we get closer and this thread gets more active, people will buddy up pretty easily to do tours together.

 

[Melcatfish]

Cindy have you been to Pompeii before? I went as a teenager with my parents and then again on our honeymoon cruise with Darren, it is amazing and your girls are old enough to really take it all in and appreciate it. Sorrento is simply beautiful too.

My girls will still be too young for Pompeii but I know they will love pizza making and so will we!

Just looked at your signature and realised I don't have one for 2013 so much rectify that!

Mel
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[cindy18]

Never been to Pompeii and have always wanted to go!!!

 

[GarakDS9]

Never been to Pompeii and have always wanted to go!!!

I think that Pompeii was our favorite excursion in 2010. Obviously I am planning on doing different things this time around but I am having the toughest time overcoming the temptation of seeing Pompeii again.

 

[helenreed]

Hooray! It looks like this thread has finally woken up!!
We used Rome in Limo for a guided tour around the Vatican city last year and couldn't recommend them highly enough, our guide Carla was exellent, she really tailored the tour to my kids ages and they had a ball!

We did the Disney half day trip to Pompeii which was excellent, very well organised and informative. Next year we would like to see Sorrento and Capri, which I think we will probably do with Disney but I am going to book RomeinLimo to pick us up in Civitavecchia and do a guided tour around Rome.

It is so exciting to be planning already!

 

[Celestine]

Pompeii is one of my few "must dos". Hoping to do both Pompeii & a hike up Vesuvius (Hermione has selected the smilies here!). Have done no real planning yet, but have ben bookmarking lots of sites

Celestine

 

[Lisacope]

Hi - We are booked on this cruise as well! We are Me, DH, DD(13 on the cruise) and DS(20 on the cruise) We are going on the cruise to celebrate our 25th anniversary! I am excited to show the kids around Europe!

We are on a ~30 day countdown for our first Disney cruise on the Dream! I am hoping to try to "reshop(?)" our med cruise and see if I can get the %10 discount - is this possible?

 

[Figment_Fan]

Welcome to new posters. I have added you to the list on page one. Again, if anyone notices problems, send me a message and I will fix it. I may put the list in alphabetic order at some point, but will wait for more.

I am looking forward to Pompey. I haven't been in many years. I went with my high school Latin class. We were disappointed, the graffiti on the walls was the same is it is today. Name calling, "vote for so and so". It was missing "for a good time call . . . " for obvious reasons, but if they had phones, I'm sure it would have been there. There were directions for the equivalent carved in the roadways. We had to ask our teacher for certain words as they were conjugated in different ways and a couple were not in our dictionaries.

Learned much that trip. I can't wait to see how much more has been excavated. Seeing how people lived. And, seeing the casts of the people. I remember a dog cast, and think of it when I have seen our dog roll into the same position, on her back with legs up and mouth open, twisted to the side while she is scratching her back on the grass.

I have read the description of the eruption by Pliny - can't remember if it was the elder or the younger, it has been a long time. But, it stayed with me, the description of the consumption of the city seen by him from a boat. I guess maybe I should brush up on my Latin as well as learn some Italian.

Anybody know when they will post the excursions? Or, have they already and I missed it.

 

[Figment_Fan]

Lisacope, you should be able to re-book without a problem and get the discount. You might have to cancel one and schedule the other. Ask, they have always been helpful with us on booking or re-booking.

Have fun on the Dream!

 

[Melcatfish]

Anybody know when they will post the excursions? Or, have they already and I missed it.

No excursions posted yet - it was not that long ago that they posted excursions for my 2012 cruise so I am not expecting to see excursions until around this time next year.

Of course you can get an idea of some from reading the trip reports from previous Med cruises. Villefranche, La Spezia, Civitavecchia, Naples and Valetta are all repeats from years gone by. I am interested in seeing what they offer for Venice and Dubrovnik but as there is only really an afternoon in Dubrovnik I doubt we will do anything more than explore the port area.

In Venice I have been reading up and most places recommend exploring the city on foot and by boat.

I wonder if there will be some kind of DCL signature excursion event in Venice in the evening. When they did the Baltic they did a royal ball in the Summer Palace - Venice is famous for masquerade balls so I suspect there will be some lavish event offered there, for around $300-$400 a head! I am sure they will do it wonderfully but at that price point that is a big chunk towards a future cruise!

Mel
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[Lisacope]

Lisacope, you should be able to re-book without a problem and get the discount. You might have to cancel one and schedule the other. Ask, they have always been helpful with us on booking or re-booking.

Have fun on the Dream!

I did my original booking through my TA - will I be able to cancel/rebook on board the ship or will I need to do a dummy booking, have her cancel the original booking, and then have the dummy booking changed to this cruise? I really like my TA and would like to keep her on this cruise.

 

[GarakDS9]

I did my original booking through my TA - will I be able to cancel/rebook on board the ship or will I need to do a dummy booking, have her cancel the original booking, and then have the dummy booking changed to this cruise? I really like my TA and would like to keep her on this cruise.

I just did this exact thing two weeks ago on my MR cruise. Book this sailing on board and tell them to assign it to your TA. You will chose a new cabin #. Your TA can then cancel the old reservation and then transfer your old cabin # to the new reservation, if desired. The old deposit can either be refunded or transferred to the new reservation. The new deposit will be smaller as they on require 10% on board. Good luck and have fun.

 

[Melcatfish]

Is anyone planning on adding pre or post cruise stays in Barcelona (or anywhere else in Europe)

Even though it is just a short flight for us I am thinking we may add on one or two nights before in Barcelona. We might save up our Hilton points for it so it is "free" or try to find somewhere relatively inexpensive.

Mel
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