Melcatfish
<font color=990099>In full planning mode!<br><font
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2002
England to Espana Repo & Med Cruise B2B July\August 2010
NOTE: This trip report stalled with the loss of my trip notes! I have used photos and vague memories to finish it as we only have a month before we go on another Med cruise and I wanted to complete this report before we go. It only took THREE YEARS to finish the report! Oops
**Scroll To Bottom For MAJOR Update!**
OK I am going to make a start on our trip report. This will be our third DCL cruise and last time I was determined to write a trip report as I have thoroughly loved reading other peoples and living vicariously through them in the times when we have not had a cruise countdown in my signature!
Our trip in August 09 was part of a 17 night visit to WDW; 5 nights at OKW, a 7 night Eastern to Tortola which changed into a 7 night Western double dip due to weather problems, followed by 5 more nights in Orlando in a villa. I did really well with the first half of the trip report and then somewhere in the middle of the cruise I stopped writing. It is still on my laptop and I have some notes so maybe I will get it written but for now, THIS IS IT - I am going to complete a trippie for this cruise!
So hang on, Who is the WE I am talking about??
Me - Mel, 31 loves WDW and DCL this will be cruise number 3 on DCL
DH - Darren, 37 not the biggest Disney fan but loves cruising on DCL
DD1 - Isabelle, 5 Talks every week about going on "Mickeys Special Boat"
DD2 - Olivia, 2 Loves Disney films, wasn't so sure about life size characters!
Here we are on Castaway Cay last summer
and again in a lifestyle portrait taken by Shutters
We live in Suffolk in the UK about an hour and a half drive from London. It is such a treat for us that we will be able to cruise on The Disney Magic WITHOUT the 9 hour flight across the Atlantic to Florida!
This cruise was not in all honesty our first choice. Before the itineraries were announced we knew there were rumours of a Baltic cruise on DCL in 2010 and DH has always wanted to go. What we didn't bank on was the price. We are very lucky in that I am able to stay at home most of the week to look after our two young girls. At the time neither were in school and I was working just one day a week teaching. DH teaches full time. However, on one wage and in the middle of a house rennovation there was no way we could swing the Baltic cruise so we decided we wouldn't be cruising in 2010.
Fast forward to our 2009 summer cruise and we were utterly hooked on DCL. Our first cruise was on the Wonder and was a three day before the children were born. I loved it Darren thought it was "ok." Our 7 day totally upped his opinion of it. The food was better than he remembered, he realised that you could minimise or maximise the "Disneyness" (for that read characters etc...) as you wished and the best thing of all was that our kids loved the programming.
Now don't get me wrong, it is a family vacation and we like to spend lots of time as a family, but it is also OUR vacation too and the fact that they were so happy in the club \ flounders meant that for the first time since having the girls we felt like we actually had a vacation too!
I rebooked a dummy date onboard for August 2011 thinking we wouldn't cruise in reality until 2012 when we hope there will be either a Baltic return or an Eastern Med cruise which we can save for.
When we got back we really didn't want to wait that long and I had a little look at the other 2010 itineraries. DH didn't want to do a standard Med as we cruised there (not on DCL) for our honeymoon and he wanted to try different ports so although for me the ports didn't look great we switched to the Dover to Barcelona cruise. It has the advantage of only one short flight, it is 8 nights so a little longer than our last cruise and the good news is the ports are really growing on me! It further appealed to me right before Christmas when a great 12 rate came out - our cruise price including transfers went from $around $6500 to $2660. No way could I get us a cheap package tour to Spain in the school summer holidays for less than that and yet here we were going on the Disney Magic for 8 nights at what we consider an absolute bargain price! Woo Hoo!
**Update! - Our cabin assignment was made around 43 days out and we got an upgrade! We knew we would get at least a cat 11 as there are 4 of us book in a cat 12 but we got a cat 8!!! Room number 5010, just down the hall from the SPH room we had last year which is great not only because we love the upgrade we got but we also loved the location too **
I am going to stop waffling now and post replies in the next few boxes so I can fill in the spaces and it will read easily and coherantly when it is finished. Did you see what I did there, "WHEN it is is finished", now I have posted this I will just HAVE to make myself write it all out as I have made a commitment to finish it!
If you survived to the end of this lengthy waffly intro, well done for making it this far. I will fill in info before hand about our plans and then we will see how it all pans out!
**UPDATE 6th July**
I have been watching for cat 12 prices on the august 7th Med cruise, they appeared, we couldn't decide if we should book it and then they disappeared. Well there is NOTHING like realising you can't have something to make you realise you really want it! The rate popped up again yesterday and we booked. So our 8 night cruise just turned into a 19 night B2B cruise Woo Hoo!
Mel
x
NOTE: This trip report stalled with the loss of my trip notes! I have used photos and vague memories to finish it as we only have a month before we go on another Med cruise and I wanted to complete this report before we go. It only took THREE YEARS to finish the report! Oops
**Scroll To Bottom For MAJOR Update!**
OK I am going to make a start on our trip report. This will be our third DCL cruise and last time I was determined to write a trip report as I have thoroughly loved reading other peoples and living vicariously through them in the times when we have not had a cruise countdown in my signature!
Our trip in August 09 was part of a 17 night visit to WDW; 5 nights at OKW, a 7 night Eastern to Tortola which changed into a 7 night Western double dip due to weather problems, followed by 5 more nights in Orlando in a villa. I did really well with the first half of the trip report and then somewhere in the middle of the cruise I stopped writing. It is still on my laptop and I have some notes so maybe I will get it written but for now, THIS IS IT - I am going to complete a trippie for this cruise!
So hang on, Who is the WE I am talking about??
Me - Mel, 31 loves WDW and DCL this will be cruise number 3 on DCL
DH - Darren, 37 not the biggest Disney fan but loves cruising on DCL
DD1 - Isabelle, 5 Talks every week about going on "Mickeys Special Boat"
DD2 - Olivia, 2 Loves Disney films, wasn't so sure about life size characters!
Here we are on Castaway Cay last summer
and again in a lifestyle portrait taken by Shutters
We live in Suffolk in the UK about an hour and a half drive from London. It is such a treat for us that we will be able to cruise on The Disney Magic WITHOUT the 9 hour flight across the Atlantic to Florida!
This cruise was not in all honesty our first choice. Before the itineraries were announced we knew there were rumours of a Baltic cruise on DCL in 2010 and DH has always wanted to go. What we didn't bank on was the price. We are very lucky in that I am able to stay at home most of the week to look after our two young girls. At the time neither were in school and I was working just one day a week teaching. DH teaches full time. However, on one wage and in the middle of a house rennovation there was no way we could swing the Baltic cruise so we decided we wouldn't be cruising in 2010.
Fast forward to our 2009 summer cruise and we were utterly hooked on DCL. Our first cruise was on the Wonder and was a three day before the children were born. I loved it Darren thought it was "ok." Our 7 day totally upped his opinion of it. The food was better than he remembered, he realised that you could minimise or maximise the "Disneyness" (for that read characters etc...) as you wished and the best thing of all was that our kids loved the programming.
Now don't get me wrong, it is a family vacation and we like to spend lots of time as a family, but it is also OUR vacation too and the fact that they were so happy in the club \ flounders meant that for the first time since having the girls we felt like we actually had a vacation too!
I rebooked a dummy date onboard for August 2011 thinking we wouldn't cruise in reality until 2012 when we hope there will be either a Baltic return or an Eastern Med cruise which we can save for.
When we got back we really didn't want to wait that long and I had a little look at the other 2010 itineraries. DH didn't want to do a standard Med as we cruised there (not on DCL) for our honeymoon and he wanted to try different ports so although for me the ports didn't look great we switched to the Dover to Barcelona cruise. It has the advantage of only one short flight, it is 8 nights so a little longer than our last cruise and the good news is the ports are really growing on me! It further appealed to me right before Christmas when a great 12 rate came out - our cruise price including transfers went from $around $6500 to $2660. No way could I get us a cheap package tour to Spain in the school summer holidays for less than that and yet here we were going on the Disney Magic for 8 nights at what we consider an absolute bargain price! Woo Hoo!
**Update! - Our cabin assignment was made around 43 days out and we got an upgrade! We knew we would get at least a cat 11 as there are 4 of us book in a cat 12 but we got a cat 8!!! Room number 5010, just down the hall from the SPH room we had last year which is great not only because we love the upgrade we got but we also loved the location too **
I am going to stop waffling now and post replies in the next few boxes so I can fill in the spaces and it will read easily and coherantly when it is finished. Did you see what I did there, "WHEN it is is finished", now I have posted this I will just HAVE to make myself write it all out as I have made a commitment to finish it!
If you survived to the end of this lengthy waffly intro, well done for making it this far. I will fill in info before hand about our plans and then we will see how it all pans out!
**UPDATE 6th July**
I have been watching for cat 12 prices on the august 7th Med cruise, they appeared, we couldn't decide if we should book it and then they disappeared. Well there is NOTHING like realising you can't have something to make you realise you really want it! The rate popped up again yesterday and we booked. So our 8 night cruise just turned into a 19 night B2B cruise Woo Hoo!
Mel
x