After cruising on the Magic in July of 2009, I was completely hooked. So much so that I actually booked another short three day Christmas time stint aboard the Wonder a mere few weeks after we got back home. But as I’ve said before, things change. We had several unanticipated obligations crop up that autumn.
Ultimately I was forced to see reality for what it was (cold, cruel and uncaring), and found myself canceling that particular trip. I would like to have gotten aboard the Wonder again before she transferred to the left coast, but it is also true that I really wanted to go on a longer sailing. That being said, I would have settled for any amount of time on any ship just about anywhere.
Well… probably not here:
Hay… I’m obsessed, not foolish.
Yet the idea of being involved with Disney in some fashion during the Christmas holidays stayed with me and was one of the driving forces behind out 2010 excursion to POR. Thoughts of cruising however would have to be shelved for a while. There just wasn’t any getting around it. Now was there?
Surprise #1
“I think I feel a change in the wind, says I.”
Well… Actually there was a slight change in the wind. About midway through 2010, the folks at Disney started to unveil the dates and itineraries for the Dream’s inaugural cruising season. Being fanatics we jumped on-line and took a look at what was being offered.
What we encountered got our scheming minds going pretty quickly. First of all
DCL was planning to have a number of five day sailings. Believe me when I tell you that those extra couple of days make a difference. This was long enough to be worth our time and money. So we kept digging. The next thing we found was that there would be several of these longer cruises in late June. That was key. Due to current employment restrictions and school requirements, June is the only time we can travel for extended periods. Things were looking up. When we found that the cruise setting sail during the last week of June was also scheduled to visit Castaway Cay…
TWICE… we were absolutely beside ourselves. We weren’t sure how we were going to be able to afford it, but we had better then a year to figure it out. The pertinent websites got accessed, and associated servers went into “hyper-active hyper-drive”, and in jig time, we’d booked a inside cabin on the July 26, 2011 sailing. We slapped the down payment on the “Disney Visa” (which gave me six month to pay off that off before interest would be applied) and crossed our fingers.
Surprise #2
Then came the monitory change that made it nigh on to certain that we might just be able to make the trip. Tamara had been a stay at home mom for a few years now. There were a number of reasons for this choice, but the bottom line was that we were working solely on my income from a financial standpoint for a while. She had started looking to get back into the work force way back in 2009, but as y’all are surely aware, the job markets have been in a slight state of disrepair for the last few years.
(Like I said…)
Well after a whole lot of looking and a whole lot of applying, she finally got a realistic hit toward the beginning of this year. A local country club offered her a part-time spot in the front office. Not exactly what she was hopping for, but nothing to be sneezed at. The up shot of this for our household was obvious. We now had extra Benjamins flowing into the coffers. If used wisely, these little portraits of one fine elder statesman might just take care of a lot of the gremlins that would otherwise prevent us from actually traveling on the Dream.
Surprise #3
This is the fun one. When we booked this adventure, we didn’t tell Max about it. Since we really weren’t sure that it was going to happen, it was just something he didn’t need to be worrying over. Like all teens, he had enough on his plate just trying to survive high school. Our initial plan was to surprise Max on his birthday (his 16th one by the way) and then head off only a couple of weeks afterward. We’d sail on the Dream then stay another couple of nights in Canaveral and maybe visit the Kennedy Space Center or spend some time on the beach before heading home. But… (and you knew there’d be a “but” didn’t ya’) …but, the folks at Disney tossed us another bone to chew on.
(Surprise 4?)
They started offering up substantial room only discounts at their resorts during the same time frame.
: Hummmmmm…. A good crunch of the numbers revealed that we could stay at a deluxe resort (which is normally out of the question) and it would only add about a hundred-ish bucks to our original bottom line. There’d be no way in heck that we could add park tickets on to this, but it still seemed like a good idea to the adults. The thing was, we didn’t know which version of the trip would suit Max the best. Since we need his input, the time had come for us to let him in on the secret.
Easter Sunday was chosen for the unveiling, and it took the form of a type of scavenger hunt. I took pictures of a number of random spots all over the house and printed them out. I then put a picture in each spot that pointed to the next spot. You follow this trail of tears… I mean clues… until you finally get to a box that would spill the beans. I actually tried to get this event on video, but the camera I had at the time was limited on the amount of space available. I succeeded in running out of said space just before Max got to the final pay off (and I can’t express just how disappointed this made Tamara) Even still, it was a lot of fun having the boy flying all over the house trying to figure out what was at the end of the trail. I did yank a couple of images out of the partial video for ya’ though…
Here’s where it started…
…up the stairs and into the guest room…
…back down the stairs…
…hidden amongst the Disney DVDs
…anyway you get the picture. When he got to the end of the rainbow he found a note from Mickey himself along with a paper model of the Disney Dream.
(This one right here)
His first reaction was: “I thought we couldn’t afford to do this?” You see, he’d already asked us many times (and I do mean “many”) when we’d be cruising again. Our stock answer was: “as soon as we can make it happen”. When we told him that we’d finally figured out how to “make it happen”, he was pretty excited (well… as excited as a teenage boy will allow himself to be in front of his parents that is).
We boarded near the Opry and cruised to downtown Nashville while we ate and then stepped outside to enjoy the city from the vantage point of the river. The return trip was a variety show that I'd say was comparable to Hee Haw but with a bigger focus on the music than the comedy. Well worth doing it once, but it isn't something I'd put as a top priority to experience again, nor would I beat myself up had I never done it.
The show that night was impersonators, including Elvis, Tina Turner and Elton John. The show was great, but Elvis looked like he was going to have a heart attack there on the stage.
There were other performers too, but I can't remember for the life of me who they were. I just remember Elvis because he was a little bit.... off
I just can't get enough of the live music in the Nashville bars. Usually the bar hopping part ends once I hit The Stage or Tootsies and they've got really good performer on stage.
We're still using that one.
