This was our 3rd DCL cruise and our first seven night cruise.
Friday:
We flew out of O'Hare to Orlando on Friday, rented an Avis minivan and drove to Cocoa Beach. We originally had ressies. at the Hilton, but found a better deal in a book that we found in the Waffle House. The book featured "walk-in" rates at hotels all over Fla. an had one for the Hampton Inn.
After lunch, we stopped at the Hampton and found that they had several oceanview rooms for $89.00. After calling the Hilton and cancelling the our reservation, we spent the night at the Hampton Inn.
Saturday:
After raining a good part of Friday, Saturday morning was nice and sunny. We walked out of our room to go to the Continental breakfast and stopped to look towards the port. By straining our eyes, we could make out Mickey on the smoke stack...The Magic was there waiting for us. After breakfast we finished packing, loaded the van and drove to the port. I dropped off the family at the port and returned the van to Avis. They drove ma back to the Magic.
We were checked in and in line by 11:00. We had been told that we would not board until 1:00 that day because of a Coast Guard inspection. (Oh thats why they had the port side life boats down. Has never seen them down at Port Canaveral before. We were the second family in line, and soon had met FlFamily of 4 and NZ KIWI who were in line behind us.
At 12:30 they started boarding. We were not announced, but had the welcome aboard picture taken and were off to Parrot Cay for the brunch. After eating we made our way to our cabin, 7509 an inside catagory 10 cabin. None of our luggage was there yet, but we had swim suits packed in a carry on bag and after changing our dinner rotation in Studio Sea, we went up to the pools until the life boat drill.
The reason we changed our rotation was because we had requested that Jelidi & Willy be our servers. We agreed to be changed from LAPLAPL to PLAPLAP. We enjoyed this rotation better because we were in Parrot Cay for Tropical night and Lumiere's for the first formal night. Were very satisfied with Jelidi and Willy. They were both surprised that we found out about them from the internet. (A thread here entitled "Who are your favorite servers?")
Following the drill, we dressed for dinner (first seating) and headed up for the sail away and a DIS get together. We were delayed 40 minutes while the ship waited for a family of four to arrive from the airport. The horn blew at 5:40 and we were off!
Dinner was great, we went shopping and up to deck 10 for a walk afterwards.
More later.
:
Friday:
We flew out of O'Hare to Orlando on Friday, rented an Avis minivan and drove to Cocoa Beach. We originally had ressies. at the Hilton, but found a better deal in a book that we found in the Waffle House. The book featured "walk-in" rates at hotels all over Fla. an had one for the Hampton Inn.
After lunch, we stopped at the Hampton and found that they had several oceanview rooms for $89.00. After calling the Hilton and cancelling the our reservation, we spent the night at the Hampton Inn.
Saturday:
After raining a good part of Friday, Saturday morning was nice and sunny. We walked out of our room to go to the Continental breakfast and stopped to look towards the port. By straining our eyes, we could make out Mickey on the smoke stack...The Magic was there waiting for us. After breakfast we finished packing, loaded the van and drove to the port. I dropped off the family at the port and returned the van to Avis. They drove ma back to the Magic.
We were checked in and in line by 11:00. We had been told that we would not board until 1:00 that day because of a Coast Guard inspection. (Oh thats why they had the port side life boats down. Has never seen them down at Port Canaveral before. We were the second family in line, and soon had met FlFamily of 4 and NZ KIWI who were in line behind us.
At 12:30 they started boarding. We were not announced, but had the welcome aboard picture taken and were off to Parrot Cay for the brunch. After eating we made our way to our cabin, 7509 an inside catagory 10 cabin. None of our luggage was there yet, but we had swim suits packed in a carry on bag and after changing our dinner rotation in Studio Sea, we went up to the pools until the life boat drill.
The reason we changed our rotation was because we had requested that Jelidi & Willy be our servers. We agreed to be changed from LAPLAPL to PLAPLAP. We enjoyed this rotation better because we were in Parrot Cay for Tropical night and Lumiere's for the first formal night. Were very satisfied with Jelidi and Willy. They were both surprised that we found out about them from the internet. (A thread here entitled "Who are your favorite servers?")
Following the drill, we dressed for dinner (first seating) and headed up for the sail away and a DIS get together. We were delayed 40 minutes while the ship waited for a family of four to arrive from the airport. The horn blew at 5:40 and we were off!
Dinner was great, we went shopping and up to deck 10 for a walk afterwards.
More later.
:
