PTR- 5 Year Anniversary, DREAM come true!

[myrtleturtle]

Welcome to my first ever pre-trip report! I’ve been reading pre-trip and trip reports for a long time now and I’ve learned so much from them, I see this report as a way to give back to the Dis Community.

Here is what I hope to cover:

The Basics
Planning and Booking
Now What?
My Cruising Fears
Packing
The Night Before

The Basics:

Who's Going?
Me: I’m a 33 year old stay at home mom to adorable twins (19 months).
I’m the family Disney nut, which comes from my grandmother. When I was 3 (1984) my Pop Pop passed away and my Grandma didn’t want us to be sad. So for Christmas she took the whole family (8 in total) to Disney World. From then on, Disney was our special connection and I always feel her presence when I am there.



DH: He is 39 years old and is a pilot for both an airline and the Air Force Reserve. He is the best husband and tolerates my Disney ramblings.

Who Isn't Going?
The Twins. They’ve been to WDW twice (once for our Babymoon and once at 10 months) and this time they are staying home with my amazing SIL and niece.



What's the Itinerary?
We will be going on the 4 night Bahamas cruise leaving Port Canaveral. This cruise will stop in Nassau, Castaway Cay and have one day at sea.

Where Are We Staying
We have cabin 9560 on the Disney Dream. This is a 5a, Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah.

When?
We set sail June 8, 2014. Normally we vacation in off peak times, but my SIL is a teacher so we have to wait until school is out. Right now the plan is to fly down June 7th, stay at the Hyatt at MCO then take Disney transport to Port Canaveral.

Why?
Does everyone have an objective for their vacations? We always seem to! First, this trip is to celebrate our 5 Year Anniversary. According to Hallmark, the 5 year gift is supposed to be either wood or silverware. I’m hoping to buy one of the Animator’s Palate knives, so I hope that counts!

Second, this trip is our first time away from the kids. I hope I don’t sound like a bad mom, but I’m home alone with them a lot. DH’s jobs require him to be gone about 18 days a month, leaving me to be a “single parent” to two active toddlers. Additionally, he was deployed for 72 days last summer and was gone all but 6 days in December. Momma needs a break and a cocktail!

Third, we’ve toyed around with the idea of cruising before, so this trip is about recon. We booked a 4 day to “get our feet wet.” And oh yeah, DH gets sea sick on small boats, so we want to see if he can tolerate a cruise. If all goes well we will consider booking a longer cruise and bringing the kids when they are 3.

How am I supposed to wait 36 Days?

 

[myrtleturtle]

Winter where we live was awful this year. We got the third most snowfall in recorded history, dating back to 1890. Then in January my SIL offered to stay with the babies once school got out if we wanted to take an anniversary trip. This got our vacation planning wheels turning, but where to go?

WDW is always my first thought, but we had just been there in October and since we would be kid-free we thought we should do something we wouldn’t do with them. Paris? Germany? Italy? Back to Jamaica where we had honeymooned? Luckily DH’s BFF (do men have BFFs?) went on a cruise with Celebrity and was telling him how awesome it was. So I dared to ask, Disney Cruise?? Standard DH response: how much?

I was prepared and whipped out my spreadsheet. I knew Disney did amazing military rates, so I put in tips, excursion, ground transport, internet cost, and petty cash (for cash tips, drinks, and souvenirs). My estimate was acceptable and he agreed! His only caveat was we had to have a balcony so he wouldn’t feel claustrophobic and maybe wouldn’t get sea sick.

Now which sailing? Here’s the trouble with an amazing military rate… you only get them last minute. My SIL was open for all of June, so that narrowed it down. We wanted to go on a shorter cruise, so it looked like 3 or 4 days were our options. I read on the Dis that a lot of people find the 3 day cruises rushed, so that narrowed it down to a 4 nighter. But we would wait to actually make the booking if/when military rates were announced for June… to be continued...

All of the Dream sailings in June are Itinerary A which means:

Day 1- Port Canaveral
Day 2- Nassau
Day 3- Castaway Cay
Day 4- Sea Day
Day 5- Port Canaveral

For our Nassau day we are thinking either the catamaran and snorkeling trip or just taking a walk to the Queen’s Staircase and Fort Fincastle, with maybe a stroll through the straw market. The only plan for Castaway Cay is to head to Serenity Bay, lounge, swim, and drink some conch coolers.

I’m not sure how to plan the sea day. I like the idea of not having a plan or agenda, but I also want to have some idea of what we can do. The best research I can do on this is pouring over the Navigators from recent cruises. I’m thinking some sort of mixology or tasting, Rainforest Room (I would like to buy 1 day passes ahead of time but I fear it will be a zoo on the sea day), a movie, and pool time. Oh yeah, and maybe a towel folding class or a guided tour. See, too many ideas and only 1 sea day!

 

[myrtleturtle]

As I was planning our trip and waiting for June discounts to come out, my SIL called and said my niece was accepted to this special 4H camp for rising seniors. (Side note, my niece is this amazing kid who does 4H and FFA, raises goats, rides horses and does this Dairy Academy thing that I don’t really understand. She is so awesome and wants to be a vet like her dad.)

This meant we could only do the June 8th sailing of the Dream and I started to get nervous. That was putting all our eggs in one basket, I needed Disney to release a discounted rate on that sailing or else we’d miss the boat! So starting in February I was checking the DCL website daily for that discount, even though I knew they weren’t going to release it until April, but more likely May. I started checking out which cabins were still available by starting a reservation for that cruise on the DCL website and trying to select a cabin. By doing this I knew that there were at least 8 cabins unsold in every category for the cruise we wanted.

Fast forward to April, I was still checking and starting to get nervous. For May it seems they were not discounting any of the 4 day sailings. Maybe a 3 day with 2 park days? By Easter I was starting to despair that I would not be able to get on Mickey’s boat.

On April 24th, I was having one of those days. Nothing was going my way, the kids were screaming and teething. I told DH we should decide on Plan B because there was no way Disney was going to discount our sailing. We decided to look for an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean. But first, let me check the DCL cruise website one last time.

Find a cruise, click.
Where do you want to go? Bahamas, click.
When do you want to go? Jun, click.
Special Offers Available? Enter offer code, MTO
Check Availability, click.
See Mickey swimming…
2 available cruises match your search. Wait, what?? There it is, June 8, 4-Night Bahamian Cruise on Disney Dream.

“Our Cruise Is On Sale,” I yelled to DH over and over. The Mickey Magic had come through and it looked like we were going to cruise after all.

My cruise/ cabin stalking had led to a tab where I was tracking available staterooms and cross referencing them to stateroom reviews on the Dis and Cruise Critic. This told me a few things:
• I wanted starboard side for the (likely) nice view of Castaway Cay.
• I didn’t want to be on deck 10 because most of the reviews said you could hear deck chairs being moved. DH is a light sleeper, so this would most likely bother him.
• It would be nice to be close to the stairs that go up near Cove Café, since we will be spending a lot of time in the adults only area.

Then I read a report of room 9560 from horizons 1983:
Excellent stateroom! Such a great location with easy access to both mid and forward elevators. Up two flights (easy walk) to Cove Cafe and the pool deck. I would select this room again in a heartbeat.

This sounded like the stateroom for us, so I highlighted it in green. And I had been checking every day to make sure it was still available. And it was!!

Since I knew I wanted to book with Dream Unlimited, I had drafted the message that I was going to send, asking for the stateroom, dinner seating etc. Once my heart stopped pounding at the available discount I put in my request. The quote came back just what we expected and we used the provided log in to pay in full and ta da!

We are all booked to set sail.

 

[myrtleturtle]

We got our cruise documents in the mail today! Getting excited!

 

[dsjrmomma2010]

Congrats on 5 years! I see you are in KY as well. We are in KY close to Indiana. My DH & I are celebrating 5 years being married on June 6. We plan to take our first cruise next year!

 

[myrtleturtle]

Congrats on 5 years! I see you are in KY as well. We are in KY close to Indiana. My DH & I are celebrating 5 years being married on June 6. We plan to take our first cruise next year!

Congrats to you too! We live right outside of Cincinnati.

 

[myrtleturtle]

Let me start by saying I don’t know how you folks who book a year out do it! We travel about 2-3 times a year and never plan trips more than 3 months out. Partly because we never know what DH’s schedule will be and partly because we are flexible. Before we had kids, there was a time DH looked at me and said, “I want a margarita.” Four days later we were sitting on the beach in Cancun, drinks in hand. I’m pretty impatient, so I admire your ability to wait.

But here we sit, cruise booked… nothing to do but wait 26 more days. Actually, there is a lot to do, so I made a list of tasks, created a calendar and assigned a task to each day of the waiting period. Here are some of the items on my list:

Order Rain Forest Room day passes
Book Hyatt MCO for night before
Get cash for tipping
Write out instructions for SIL who will be watching the twins
Make list of things to buy for cruise
Buy things for cruise
Make packing list
Do prepacking laundry
Pack
Write Pre Trip Report (I’m so type A, this is actually on there)

And there are a few extra pounds I’ve picked up over the past 18 months that I would like to get rid of before we cruise. This means I’m walking a lot (trying to do 5 miles a day) and using My Fitness Pal to track my calories. When I’m hungry, I just tell myself I’ll get to eat on the Dream!

I’ve also been keeping busy with crafting some stuff for our stateroom door (thanks DISigners!).

 

[myrtleturtle]

I hope that in a few weeks we return from our trip and all my fears seem silly, but sitting on this side of the trip there are a few things that keep me up at night. Kinda like first date jitters… if it goes well it could be the best thing ever, I just hope it doesn’t go Titanic-ly wrong.

Ok, doesn’t everyone kind of think that the boat might sink? I mean, yes, the first date I ever went on with a boy was to see Titanic so maybe that is driving my fear. But after the Costa disaster we said we would never get on a cruise ship. I’m putting my faith in the Disney brand because I feel they do everything really well and probably have a lot of safety redundancies built in.

Then there is the gastro-intestinal aspect of cruising. I can get a little car sick if I read while driving. DH gets really sick on small boats and had a terrible scuba diving incident where he made a lot of chum. I have the bonine and patches all ready to pack, plus a fancy anti-nausea band that sends an electrical pulse through your wrist. It was the only thing that kept me out of the hospital when I was prego with the twins. Even if we avoid sea sickness, there is the stomach bug lingering on every surface, waiting to infect us and ruin our vacation (at least that’s what it is doing when I lay awake at night worrying).

And for me, since this is the first time leaving my kids, I worry that they will hate me when we get back. Or that they will get sick while we are away. Or that my SIL will give them juice, sugar, and candy in an effort to get them to not cry constantly. A friend pointed out last night that going on a Disney cruise was a bad idea because there will be kids everywhere so I will miss them constantly. Great, one more thing to worry about…


This pre-trip report needs more pictures, so here are the kids hunting easter eggs.

Other random fears include: the ship being really crowded, the extras costing a lot more than I budgeted, the ship sinking, having horrible table mates that either bring dolls to the table and pretend like they are kids or floss with each others toe hair, the ship sinking, not being able to avoid “forced fun” like congo lines, no mickey bars available from room service, the ship being boarded by actual pirates, my luggage not making the plane or being left at the Hyatt, and finally tasting a conch cooler and not liking it.

In case you didn’t realize, I’m a chronic worrier. And since most of the things I worry about never really happen, here’s hoping that just the act of writing these fears down and sharing them with you fine people will be enough to keep them from coming true.

Oh my goodness, what if the ship does sink and they read this trip report on CNN? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?

 

[myrtleturtle]

I’m a Rick Steves girl when it comes to packing. I’ve done a week in Europe using only a carry-on. This was in winter, so I packed sweaters and boots! This skill comes in handy since we fly stand-by which means checking a bag is risky. There’s always a chance we won’t make a flight but our bags will, or vice versa. Since we are planning to bring alcohol on the trip we are going to check one bag and bring on another.

Now that we are about three weeks out, time to start my process!

Step One of my packing process is to make a list. Since we’ve never been on a cruise, I culled the internet (and the boards) to find what others pack. Then I cross referenced that list with my standard packing list. Finally, I went through the 5 page list with an editing eye. For example, I nixed snorkel gear and added the rental fee to our budget. I also deleted film, which was on one packing list. Does anyone use film anymore? My final packing list is 2 pages printed in 14 point font.

Step Two, create a list of things I need to buy. I try to keep this to a minimum, but we need bonine, wine, etc.

Step Three, start to gather items. I like to take a sticky note for each day and write what we will be doing on it. Then I put the clothes that I want to wear that day in a pile with the note on it. This keeps more organized so I can put each day’s clothes into a separate packing cube or space bag. The weather has been helpful with this part as it is still far too cold to wear shorts or warm weather clothing here.

So I will just keep slowly adding stuff until over the next two weeks and then it will be time to break out the suitcase!

The piles begin.


Clothing piles with post it notes.

I made this lanyard, it was pretty easy to do!

My hat with a pin to Mickey it up.

The "bottles" of wine are equal to 1.3 regular bottles. They must have had cruisers in mind.

Candy for the theatre, and some random things that I'm sure we won't use but will need if I don't bring them.