Thank you Jeff. You are right, of course.
WindyJudy - I think one of the keys of having a "great DIS time" is communication prior to cruising. The first time we cruised was in 2000 and there seemed to be only 2 other families from the DIS cruising then on that particular cruise. We knew of each other cruising but did not communicate much. One couple was Inkognito and we spent the sailaway party with them blowing bubbles off the back of the ship. We had fun and we never saw them again on the ship. And that was fine. The other family, I bumped into the wife during fire drill. And that was it. And it was fine too. The communication at that time was brief and not deep but it served its purpose in allowing us to meet two groups of people from different parts of the US.
Ahh, but our second cruise - which was our first 7-day cruise - that was an extra special cruise which turned into Cruisetoberfest I. There were a few DISers who thought it would be a great idea to make contact with fellow cruisers and reached out to others. First contact for me, I believe was approximately 9 months prior to cruise date. A cruise thread had been started and was going strong along with participation in Friday night cruise chats and special chat time on weekend mornings so we could communicate with our German cruise couple. Lots of joking around and bantering back and forth happened during those chats and on the thread.
We were hesitant, I'll admit, many of us were. Internet communication was new to us - "you're not an ax murderer, are you?" became a favored quote.
Some people were concerned about spending time with a bunch of strangers. But the beauty of this whole thing is that you WILL be on a cruise ship spending time with a bunch of strangers and as our RellingTwin stated - getting to know some of these strangers prior to the cruise may help to make it a little more enjoyable. And it does!
Some people we never saw again after sailaway party (if I remember correctly, some people never even showed up at it). Other people we would see all the time - we arranged to have dinner with fellow DIS'ers which turned out so great. On first cruise we had dinner with another family (non-DIS'ers) that
DCL set us up with and while it was not awful, it was not great.
During the week of Cruisetoberfest, we would run into people that we "knew" and sometimes we would sit down and have a chat and other times we would just wave in passing. It was great fun rooting for a fellow DIS'er that we "knew" during the married couple game show. And when I was picked for WWTBM, I could hear a fellow DIS family rooting for me while on stage with blinding lights in my eyes (I was SO nervous). On Cruisetoberfest II, many DIS'ers were rooting for our friend, Eric, (aka Viking) as he sat in the hot seat for WWTBM and we went wild when he answered all questions correctly and won a cruise!
Things like this are going to happen anyway -- going to game shows, sitting next to people at pool or lunch time -- how much nicer it is when these people turn out to be people that you sorta "know".
Doesn't mean everyone is going to be everyone else's best buddy and hang out together. That's an unrealistic view, especially for people traveling with a large group already. Everyone respects everyone's desire to have their own vacation with their own family in their own way. But, I have to tell you too, some of these people felt like my family by the time we finally got to meet on Deck 10, 9/22/01, and cruising just wouldn't be the same without them.
Bringing gifts for one another, going on excursions together, dinners together and such, if it works out, is icing on the cake. But for me the more important thing is just meeting other people, even only briefly. I can be a shy, somewhat reserved, introvert IRL, especially with strangers, and breaking the ice meeting new people prior to cruise helps so much. Meeting people from all over the states and Canada and Europe is just so thrilling. No way would I have met any of these people if I had not the DIS boards as a catalyst.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
And writing this out, makes me realize that I have NOT been good with communicating on this thread. Partly because the cruise is (or was initially) so far off in the future and partly because time doesn't permit it for me this time around. So, writing this out reinforced for me that in order to allow this set of Cruisetoberfest people to get to know me, and for me to know them, I need to POST MORE OFTEN!!!
So, what IS the story with Friday night cruise chat? Does anyone go there anymore? I can't this weekend (or next come to think of it) but perhaps in June I will visit the chat room and find some Cruisetoberfesters there?
I too, would like to learn more as details become available. Prayers /\ and Pixie dust .*.*.* heading their way.
I am assuming that is you and Mama? We just missed seeing them when they were in Orlando and have not been any where near them while they are on tour. Lucky you! Dinner sounded yummy too, by the way!
). This lady asked us the typical questions like:
