Fantasia Sam
I've been here so much longer!
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2000
Hi guys! We are back. I will eventually do a trip summary (not a full report) simply due to time constraints, but here is some of our relevant info:
Our itinerary: London (3 nts), Barcelona pre cruise (3 nts), DCL Med Cruise, Paris (4 nts).
Embarkation: We deliberately went late and got to the Port at 2pm. Poolside by 3pm.
Disembarkation: Easy. No customs or immigration. We ate in the room, had time to go up at 7:45 am to Deck 10 for last minute pics. Walked off the ship at 8:10 am and was curbside by 8:25 am.
Stroller situation: As I noted in my original post which started this thread, transporting my kids was a major concern. My 3 YO ended up walking almost everywhere where a stroller wasn't practical. My infant was Ergo'ed. We brought 2 cheap Target $15 umbrella strollers which were very useful and thrown away at the end of the trip.
Monaco, Monte Carlo, Eze: HORRIBLE port excursion through DCL. Really really bad. Some people on our bus got left behind and the guide almost left us as well. So many people complained that next day DCL sent out DCL guides
to monitor.
Portofino, Santa Margherita: A wonderful surprise. DCL excursion.
Florence, Pisa: My family members did this DCL adult only excursion. Someone in their group was almost robbed in Florence. A group of women walked up to a lady in group and tried to rip her neck wallet off her neck. Everyone screamed, a tussel ensued and the women ran away.
Rome-- we put together our own day by booking transfers and a Vatican museum tour through Walks of Italy. We booked the UndergroundTour with the Colosseum and cabbed to the Vatican ourselves. Walks of Italy was excellent. They were great w/reservation modifications and their guides/driver were awesome. We left Rome at 4:40 pm and got back at 5:50 pm. When we were leaving we saw DCL groups barely meeting up to leave, so we felt comfortable with the time we had going back.
**One thing about Walks of Italy, the stated 10% cancellation fee and "no modification" policy in case the cruise ship missed the port gave me some hesitation with the company. If you decide to book with them, clarify the policy with the owner and see what they will do in case the ship misses the port.
Since my dad and I couldn't walk much, opted instead for the Scavi tour rather than the Vatican tour. Go to the Vatican website for more details. It was simply amazing.
Pompeii, Positano---while the sites were great, the tour company "See Amalfi Coast" was a MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT. They are #1 on TA. Well, they suck. Our driver didn't show up on time, he was incredibly sleazy, and he took us to a tourist trap restaurant to make commission, thereby cutting our Positano time to 1 hr and we had to skip Sorrento. Expensive and disappointing. I tipped him anyway (bad habit), but would not recommend them to anyone. Please avoid
Barcelona-- mixed feelings about Barcelona Day Tours. We paid 343 Euro for a 1/2 day Montserrat tour. Well it rained and basically we got 20 minutes at Parc Guell and we went to a Tapas restaurant afterwards. I'm going to email them and see if they will apply a courtesy discount of some sort. I paid in advance. The driver was nice, though.
DCL related-- character lines were incredibly long compared to what we were used to. Food was very average but our dining team was amazing. Loved them. The new navigator format sucks since the schedule is only an insert and they sometimes were missing. They also did not state all activities. Our cabin was DIRTY DIRTY upon check in (brown smears toilet seat, door jam, sheets were dirty). Rectified at 2am in the morning. Whole thing was a hassle.
Overall-- this was a trip of a lifetime for us. Our group included extended family members who do not travel with us often and we all appreciated the journey together. There are moments, as you are sitting there, which you knew were incredible and you'd remember for a lifetime. The trip itself was physically exhausting (especially b/c we had 1 early pregnant lady, me post-surgery, my dad pre-surgery, and 2 small kids]). Despite all our obstacles it was simply an amazing and wonderful trip. I loved every minute.
I had subscribed to this thread a long time ago and I am glad to read that overall it was the Trip of a Lifetime and only with a few hiccups which of course I was disappointed for you when I read them.
I am with you on the Navigators - my husband would complain about it every night LOL he never got over the new format for the same reasons as you state!
Your mini report confirms my fears about DCL excursions but sounds like the Portofino one was good so I may try that one next time We avoided this time round because we just found them sooo expensive.
We did Cinque Terre on our own that day and bar the long wait for tenders at La Spezia it would have gone totally according to plan but we still had a great day and including lunch, 2 taxi rides, train journeys we paid for 4 people the same price Disney were charging for 1 person!
Monaco/Monte Carlo we also did on our own and bar the rain at the end of the day and the mad dash walk from the bus back to the tender at Villefranche we really enjoyed walking around the Principality!
I was however a bit surprised to read your review on See Amalfi Coast only because we used them on the same day and had the most wonderful time but with a couple of changes. What a shame they were not consistent for you and very frustrating for you indeed.
We must have lucked out as we had a driver and a tour guide plus we paid for another tour guide at Pompeii which was well worth the money. They picked us up at 8am and we were at Pompeii for opening.
Originally the company wanted to take us to La Tagliata overlooking Positano but it wasn't my sort of place so we requested that they take us to Ristorante Constantino - which yes was full of tourists but the view was amazing - we didn't want the prix fixe menu which they were trying to push onto us but we know what we like and we wanted the a la carte so our lunch took a little longer but it was actually cheaper than the prix fixe and we had wine and bottled water too.
Because we had chosen to linger over lunch our Driver was concerned about time and getting us back to Naples because I wanted us to be back at 5pm even though the all aboard time was 5.30pm (OCD). This meant they gave us the option to go down to the lovely less busy Positano or go to Sorrento - Sorrento was a must do for us.
I then came up with another plan as we were concerned about traffic on the way back to the city. We only wanted about 50 minutes in Sorrento (in that time I managed to do some damage on the credit card and buy gelato - it's very touristy and I am sure Positano would have been less crazy but I needed that pin in Sorrento LOL). When we got back to Naples we still had tour time and so our driver dropped us off and waited for us whilst we walked around Naples for a little bit - this worked out well and given how we felt DCL were running the place down a bit (dangerous, traffic etc) honestly everything that DCL were telling us they could have said about NYC and London and I really thought there was a lot of scaremongering - After walking around Naples we found it to be a beautiful city with a lot of culture and we were grateful to See Amalfi for keeping us on track and being so flexible.
I just wanted to put that out there because I think Trip Advisor puts See Amalfi Coast as #1 for a reason but of course I appreciate that there are companies out there that I have used that I too thought were not worthy of their accolade only to hear that others had a wonderful experience.