From the Sea to the World - Holiday Edition - Completed

[Flossbolna]

Welcome to my newest trip report about our cruise on the Disney Fantasy and our week at Saratoga Springs Resort at WDW in early December 2014 - and a pre-cruise night at Vero Beach.

Table of Contents:

Here you will find links to all the upcoming chapters. If you find any non-working links, please let me know!

**Update: The links are temporarily suspended! It appears that every time I change the title of the thread when a new update is posted, the links break. Therefore I am going to add the links once the TR is finished. Until then I will post which page the updates are on!**

Introductions (see next post)

November 23-27:
If we did not need a vacation before...

November 28:
Off to Rural Florida!
The most magical butter ever!

November 29:
Embarkation Day
Rushing From Meet to Muster
Another Kind of Passport - page 7

November 30:
Flying Bacon - page 8
A Relaxing Sea Day - page 8

December 1:
Snacking around the Ship - page 9
Santa's Winter Wonderland Ball - page 10

December 2:
Paradise!! - page 11
Some History of Denmark - page 13
Pirate Food! - page 13

December 3:
Arriving in San Juan - page 14
If you had been from Mainz... - page 15
An update with only food pictures – and one blanket animal - page 16

December 4:
Fire and Ice - page 16
Wow! - page 17

December 5:
A Lazy Day on the Beach - page 17
How We Destroy the Fantasy - page 18

December 6:
A Tale of Two Busses - Part 1 - page 19
A Tale of Two Busses - Part 2 - page 20
Continuing the Cruise Pattern: Dinner and Show - page 21

December 7:
Michael Throws Me Out - page 21
Lights! Spectacular Lights!! - page 22

December 8:
Boats Hate Us! - page 22

December 9:
A Very Merry Party - page 24

December 10:
Meeting the Goblins - page 26

December 11:
Holidays Around the World - page 26

December 12:
Sorry Katharina! - page 27

December 13:
Juicy Lucy - page 28

Final Thoughts and Outlook - page 28

 

[Flossbolna]

Introductions:

Let’s start with some background to the trip!

People:

Me: I am your trip report author. My name in real life is Magdalene (and in case you ask, no there is no abbreviation for it, I make all my friends use the long form of my name ;-)). I am in my early 40s and have been in love with Disney’s theme parks since my first visit to Disneyland in 1992 and recently became a fan of cruising. I am German and live in Nuremberg in Germany, a lovely town with a real life castle. For previous trip reports, see my signature.

Michael: my boyfriend. He might be the bigger Disney geek of the two of us and has an advantage over me in Disney theme park experiences. Not only because he has already lived through more years than me, but also because his parents took him to WDW when he was a kid. And he grew up in Southern Florida, where he still lives today, so trips to WDW were much easier for him. He does not want a picture of himself posted on the internet, so you will only be able to read about him, not see him. ETA: He has now decided to add some comments to my updates. Michael will appear in the lovely brown color you see now.

This is me at Castaway Cay on the current trip:

Origins of the trip:

(If you don’t enjoy long explanations, skipped down to the summary of our plans…)

You might have noticed that Michael and I live pretty far from each other. It is not ideal and we both hope very much that this is something that will be resolved, if not short term, so at least medium term. But for the moment having an ocean between us is what we have to live with. So far, we make it work thanks to modern technology that makes it possible to chat over the phone without worrying about cost. But of course, the important question is always: When will we see each other next.

My first cruise was in April 2013 - more about this in the original From the Sea to the World trip report. In May 2014 we had done a long nearly 4 week trip together that included a Panama Canal Cruise on the Disney Wonder and a week at Disneyland. You can read all about it in my trip report from that trip: If You See It - Eat It!

After the cruise on the Wonder we both felt a bit “cruised out”, but we really really wanted to see the Disney Fantasy. We thought it might be nice to cruise in early 2015, so we got a rebooking for a Fantasy cruise for February 2015.

We had originally thought that Michael would be able to come and visit me in Germany in fall 2014. But then scheduling was difficult as there were a number of family events and other obligations for him in the US and it looked like it might be November until he could come. We both did not really like that as Michael had been in Germany last time over Christmas 2013, so he already had seen Germany in winter. I rather wanted him to see a prettier time of year. And we started to think about maybe changing things around and me coming to Florida in late fall/early winter instead. We found a few sailings on the Fantasy that could work as they were not too expensive yet. And then looking at dates, we realised that we could combine it with me visiting Michael and his family over Thanksgiving.

And then everything just fell into place: I would fly to Miami, spend the week of Thanksgiving with Michael in Southern Florida, then we would go on a cruise on the Fantasy and end up with one week in Orlando from where I would fly back.

This was late July. I looked at flights and found a great price for a Lufthansa flight from Nuremberg via Frankfurt. I love flying out of Nuremberg, but there are basically only two airlines that I can fly with: Lufthansa and Air France. I like both, but I have a credit card that collects miles for Lufthansa, so flying with them makes sense.

I own DVC, so we decided to see if we could get a DVC resort for the one week after the cruise. But early December is one of the most popular times for DVCers at WDW, so availability was very low. I kept checking and saw that Saratoga Springs Resort was the only resort that still had more than just single nights available in a studio, but still not a full week. I had been watching the availability while we were discussing the trip and once I had booked the flight and the trip was officially happening, I jumped over to the availability tool on the DVC website that let’s you search availability for a certain time frame over plenty of different resorts and room types. I knew from having done that search just the day before that there was nothing available for our whole week. But I put in the week anyway. I got results from the different resorts, most saying “no availability”, some saying “limited availability” (which means that only some of the days you checked are available) an then down the page when I got to Saratoga I saw “best availability” – that means that all days of my time period are available. I could not believe what I saw and immediately clicked on book this resort. I was successful and we got a full week at SSR! It was really not my first choice of resort, but I thought that the ability to walk to Downtown Disney would be nice. I did some searching on the DIS about SSR and the more I read about it, the more I got excited about it. I found a thread with beautiful pictures that really took away the last doubt of whether I would enjoy my stay there.

We moved our onboard booking to the November 29 Eastern Caribbean Fantasy cruise. We got a 11C Category stateroom which is an inside cabin. It actually is the cheapest category that exists. On the Fantasy the inside staterooms have something called “Magical Portholes”. This is a virtual porthole, i.e. a TV screen which shows you a picture that is at that moment recorded by a camera on the outside of the ship. What makes it magical is that you get a special cartoon visitor now and then. We thought that that was a neat feature that we would like to see, so why pay more for a real window? However, at some point Disney offered a special reduced rate for Florida residents (which Michael is) and we were able to change our reservation. In this process we saved 300$ and went from an inside stateroom to one with a balcony. So, we did not get to try out the Magical Porthole, but I got to experience a balcony.

Once the big things were into place, we started to think about the smaller things. Like how to get from place A to place B. Michael did not want to have his car parked for a week in Port Canaveral and we looked into rental cars to go up there and then for our time at WDW. It turned out that with what parking costs at the port it was not so much more to get rental cars. I was hunting for discount codes and such and was able to get pretty good deals on both cars. We also decided to get the Disney shuttle to take us to SSR. If you have read my previous trip report you know that on my last cruise we had so much trouble leaving the port in San Diego. There I was so envious of the people who just boarded the Disney busses. I wanted that this time to be sure that it would not turn into a big hassle again!

I also started to look into WDW tickets. And got quite a shock. I didn’t remember them being soooo expensive! But then it has been a long time since I bought a normal ticket. The last trip I had an AP for a special limited time DVC price, the trips before were on special UK 14 –day tickets that were discounted. And the trips before that had all been packages where you don’t see the ticket price… In the fall DVC started to offer a new kind of ticket for a limited time, which was a 4-day ticket without park hopper that could only be used at each of the parks once (so one day MK, one day Epcot, etc, you could not repeat parks). I also thought of buying a 10-day ticket with the no expiration option to have days left over. In the end I bought a ticket from Undercover Tourist which had the largest discount and that was a 5-day park hopper. I thought I would need 6 days, but I could always add one more day when I was there.

Once I had my ticket (it was mailed to Michael, but he could give me the number on it), I was able to connect it to my My Disney Experience. I played around a bit to find out how booking FP+ works. And then I was starting to think about what I wanted to book for when. And I nearly had a nervous breakdown! I absolutely hated the idea of having to make plans of what to do which day and how to schedule those FP+ best into the day. Many, many years ago, in the fall of 1990 we had an exchange student from Poland living with my family for a year. Poland had just gotten a democratic government that year and she had grown up through the times of socialism – and therefore was used to shortages in all consumer goods. Just before school started my mother took me, my sister and her to get some new clothes for the new school year. She kept telling us how horrible of an experience that was for her as she just was so totally unable to make any choices when confronted with what we think of as a normal clothes store. She grew up having the choice between one dark blue and one black trouser. Being confronted with the choices of FP+ I felt like our Polish exchange student in 1990! Well, I somehow put something together. Mainly I tried to get us FP+ for the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train coaster as I had not yet been on it. Everything else I just put around somehow and hoped for the best!

Finally I was thinking about how I did not want to drive all the way up to the port at Port Canaveral from Southern Florida on the day of the cruise. My trusty readers might have picked up on the fact that Michael is not a morning person. I know that he can get moving if he has to for travel. But I know that he hates it and I know that I hate that he hates it. So, why start the trip with a potentially unpleasant drive. And I know that I am the type who worries about missing the ship because the car breaks down etc. So I started to research hotels in Port Canaveral. It was a holiday weekend so prices were rather high and none of the hotels was so nice that I felt excited about staying there. But then I remembered the DVC at Vero Beach and looked it up and saw that it is not that far from the port at all. So, I checked and they indeed had still that one night that we needed open in a room category called “Garden View Inn Room”. Those Inn Rooms are like hotel rooms with two queen beds, not the usual DVC studio set up. And the “Garden View” is a view of the parking, but for one night that was fine. It also was the lowest in points one could get there. So, we booked that!

We made some more plans in advance, like that we would go to Universal for one day and that we would go to the Hoop Dee Doo Review with friends of Michael. We also decided that the Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party was not something we wanted to spend money on. And as the cruise came closer they announced that the pre-Christmas cruises would have special entertainment and would be called the “Very Merrytime Cruises”. I was really looking forward to experiencing the holiday season in the US!

Summary of our Plans:

Sunday November 23:
Magdalene: Fly from Nuremberg to Miami
Michael: Pick Magdalene up at Airport in Miami

Monday-Wednesday November 24-26:
Spend time in Southern Florida with Michael

Thursday November 27:
Thanksgiving with Michael’s family

Friday November 28:
Travel to Disney’s Vero Beach Resort, stay one night

Saturday November 29 – Saturday December 6:
7-Night Easter Caribbean cruise on the Disney Fantasy with stops at St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands), San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Castaway Cay and three sea days

Saturday December 6 – Saturday December 13:
Studio at Saratoga Springs Resort, visit WDW and Universal

Saturday December 13:
Magdalene: Fly home to Germany
Michael: Drive home to Southern Florida

 

[Flossbolna]

If we did not need a vacation before...

November 23 – 27:

I will not go into a lot of detail about that time as it is not of general interest for the typical DISboards reader. And not a lot happened during those days. It was mainly just visiting with family.

And some hick-ups that were thrown in unnecessarily. It started before the trip with Michael’s father getting seriously ill. By the time I arrived he was starting to feel better, but had given the whole family a big scare. Then on the flight over after a very very early morning start I got a horrible migraine headache that did affect my stomach. I spent the last two hours of the flight feeling terrible sick and that was when we had turbulences and had to stay in our seats. It was not pleasant. Once I finally met Michael I was a little better, but still very weak and told him to not talk to me for the whole drive from the airport. Fortunately I felt much better the next morning… Then the fridge at Michael’s parents died the week before (on top of his father being sick) and they had gone out and purchased a new one that was due to be delivered on Wednesday. The delivery got delayed and the fridge did not arrive until 7:30pm on Wednesday evening!! Once the delivery guy arrived Michael and I left to go to Publix to buy food. No point in buying a turkey if you can’t cool it. We actually ended up getting a pre-cooked Thanksgiving dinner in a box from Publix that turned out to be very delicious! Michael’s mother was very sorry that my first Thanksgiving was so untraditional.

But it was not all chaos, we spent some time at the beach, I spent two hours investigating the wonderfulness of Target offerings (I bought the loveliest place mats there!) and I loved watching the Thanksgiving parade on Thanksgiving morning! And of course we had a lovely dinner with great company on Thanksgiving despite it being out of a box!

However, after all this excitement we definitely felt like we needed a vacation. How convenient that we had one booked already!!

Here is a random selection of some pictures to lighten up the huge amount of text (or “lead desert” as we would call it in German…).

“sunrise” at Franfurt airport where I had to change planes:

neat little self service coffee/tea stations in the Lufthansa terminal:

My tea with some hot milk to pour into it once the cup was a little less full:

Selection of drinks at the coffee machine:

My plane at the gate (an Airbus 380):

Settling in (still feeling great):

(there is no vodka in the tomato juice!!)

Lunch:

My newfound love for extensive shopping trips:

Up next: Off to Rural Florida!

 

[ShellB8585]

Looking forward to joining you on this TR

 

[franandaj]

Signing up! I will be back to read everything!

ETA, OK I read it all! I love all the background and information. I can't wait to meet you! So many fascinating stories you have!

I'm glad Michael's father got better. There Is nothing worse than an appliance going out Thanksgiving week! It's America's #1 eating holiday.

That's awful you got such a migraine. I've never had one, bit everyone says how bad they are. I would have gone for the night at Vero as well. We aren't good in the morning really either.

 

[nodnol]

You started! I'll be back tomorrow to read more thoroughly and to comment!

 

[dolphingirl47]

Checking in. What a shame that you felt unwell for part of the flight and that things did not always go according to plan for the first part of your trip.

Corinna

 

[kid-at-heart]

Yea! Another report. Off to read now.

Target, my favorite store. I am glad you also enjoyed it.

Kate

 

[wendiloveswalt]

Hi! I read your last report and looking forward to this one.

 

[DnA2010]

On board! Have enjoyed your other reports!

 

[dizneeat]

Yeah! New TR, so on board, now going back to read!

 

[lizzyb]

Joining in!

 

[dizneeat]

All caught up! (Thanks to a nearly broken toe, that "prevents" me from going to work)
I really enjoyed reading along on all the planning - isn't it just interesting how things fall into place sometimes.

So sorry to hear that you were suffering from a headache while flying - it is one of the worst things you can have. But even though Michael's dad struggled with his health, and the fridge deciding to die on his family, it seems to have been a really nice Thanksgiving for you.
Shopping at Target, hm, need to make a note of it. We have never tried that.

Can't wait for the next installment.

 

[glennbo123]

Thanks for the heads-up Magdalene! I'm watching!

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

I'm in! Will be back to comment further soon.

 

[Steppesister]

Yippee!!!! (Not that I finished the last one...)

 

[LLM]

Count me in too!

Lisa

 

[nodnol]

Me: I am your trip report author.

Nice to meet you!

Michael: my boyfriend.

Hello there!

This is me at Castaway Cay on the current trip:

I really like this picture of you! You look so happy!

So, we did not get to try out the Magical Porthole, but I got to experience a balcony.

I secretly hope that this is a trend with you - not staying in the originally booked inside cabins….

But then I remembered the DVC at Vero Beach and looked it up and saw that it is not that far from the port at all.

I'm looking forward to this part as well!

We made some more plans in advance, like that we would go to Universal for one day and that we would go to the Hoop Dee Doo Review with friends of Michael.

More things to look forward to!

I spent the last two hours of the flight feeling terrible sick and that was when we had turbulences and had to stay in our seats. It was not pleasant. Once I finally met Michael I was a little better, but still very weak and told him to not talk to me for the whole drive from the airport.

I felt so sorry for you when you texted me!!!
And I'm very impressed that both of you did manage not to talk for the whole drive

I loved watching the Thanksgiving parade on Thanksgiving morning!

And fortunately you even had company on the other side of the pond via e-mail, if I remember correctly

 

[chirurgeon]

Reading the offerings on the beverage machine, one can't my eye. Wiener Melange?????

 

[kimkwoods]

Joining in! I loved reading your Panama Canal report!