12/19/2009 - 12/26/2009 Magical Christmas Cruise! It's not that far Away?

[3DAN]

I just realized that I need to get into the spirit of the cruise again. My trademark is,,,,,,,,,,,and they need NOOO introduction,,,,,,,,
THE DANCING BANANAS


Where have you guys been,,,,,,,,, I have missed you sooooooooooooo
much!!!!!!!!!!!!! It must be time for a cruise on Disney!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bill

 

[itutorfortravel]

Hi Bill I've got your family on the roll call & I love your enthusiasm for the trip!!! Your plans sound wonderful! Your son's GF is so lucky to have your family to treat her to such a magical time. If she has never been to WDW or on a Disney cruise, it is going to be quite an experience for her - WOW! It will be hard to "top" the trip you have planned for her.

In regards to the earlier posts about what our kids are going to do, our DD is 7 and will definitely be doing the clubs! She loved them last time and is excited about them again. However, I think that's normal at her age. We're happy to have her be able to do Oceaneer's Club one more time before she tops out of that group. There's no way she could have possibly done all she wanted to do last time, and with it being Christmas my guess is that they will have some terrific things planned. Now, as far as my step-DD who will be 19, my guess is that she will be hanging out with Dad a lot and hopefully be able to attend the college mixer they have on board to make a couple friends, too. We are taking this trip with DH's family to celebrate his parents' 50th wedding anniversary, so I'm sure she will spend some time with her cousin, aunt, grandparents, too...

 

[riggins]

In regards to the earlier posts about what our kids are going to do, our DD is 7 and will definitely be doing the clubs! She loved them last time and is excited about them again. However, I think that's normal at her age. We're happy to have her be able to do Oceaneer's Club one more time before she tops out of that group.

My DDs are 6 and 8, so this is my oldest's first trip in the Lab. On our last two cruises, the girls have been in the same age group, which works beautifully. In August 2007, my oldest, who was 6 at the time, moved down to the 3/4 year old group to be with her younger sister. She was bored and didn't like hanging out with the "babies." So when we sailed a few months later, she stayed with the 5-7 year old group, while her sister stayed with the 3-4 year old group. But our oldest didn't like not having her sister with her and she didn't want to spend a lot of time there. So, I'm not sure how we'll handle it on this trip. I'm afraid its a no win situation!

 

[disneyday3]

The plan is to show her the time of her life and enjoy watching the expression on her face as she sees things brand new. YOU guys know,,, Remember the first time you actually saw the ship??????!!!
Bill

Helloooooooooo Bill

We did the exact same thing last year with DD's boyfriend. He had never been on vacation, let alone flying or cruising and had the time of his life.
He can't come with us year, as he joins the Army in mid Nov so he is not a happy chappy

I'm sure your DSGF will have a great time

 

[itutorfortravel]

Okay, I am taking an informal poll...those of you who celebrate Christmas, are you putting up a tree this year or skipping it? That is the burning question in our household right now! We normally do a live tree but I don't know if I'm comfortable with that with our being gone so long...and buying an artificial tree wasn't exactly part of my vacation budget - LOL! Can it possibly feel like Christmas at home without a tree??? And where could Santa possibly leave the gifts that will be waiting for DD when we return? Boy, am I stressed (hee hee...)

Seriously, though, what is everyone else doing?

 

[owensjro]

Hello all. Been awhile since I posted and here I am about to post bad news.

Oil closed at $70.30 today which puts it over the mark DCL set for refunding the fuel fee. Not sure if they will give it to us anyway since it was so close or whether we'll get stuck with it.

Anyway, we paid it off today at least so we're finally all done with that. Of course I still have to pay the credit card, but at least DCL has our money

Our DD7 would love to exchange letters or something with any other girls around the same age. She always seems lost in the club because she is not very outgoing. She still loves going in but would really love to have a friend on board as well! If anyone is interested let me know.

Jim

 

[ps17]

Okay, I am taking an informal poll...those of you who celebrate Christmas, are you putting up a tree this year or skipping it? That is the burning question in our household right now! We normally do a live tree but I don't know if I'm comfortable with that with our being gone so long...and buying an artificial tree wasn't exactly part of my vacation budget - LOL! Can it possibly feel like Christmas at home without a tree??? And where could Santa possibly leave the gifts that will be waiting for DD when we return? Boy, am I stressed (hee hee...)

Seriously, though, what is everyone else doing?

We always leave town for the Holidays. We always put a live tree every year. It usually goes up Thanksgiving Sunday. We get about 3 weeks of use out of it until we typically leave town around Dec. 19. We are diligent to water it and when we leave, we obviously unplug it (as well as lower the heat).

When we get back into town, usually Dec. 28, Santa (AKA our neigbor) has found his way down the chimney and left gifts. Oh yeah, we usually are in a hotel room for DEc 24 and Santa finds a way to leave a "mini gift" in our room - courtesy of "Disney resort gift delivery".

Also, we are subscribed to this thread but have cancelled our Dec cruise plans. We instead are moving the cruise to Spring Break and going back to WDW instead.

Hope you guys all have a great trip!!!

 

[momtomari]

so what excursions are you guys planning in st maarteen? i think that we will have a beach break. my daughter is only 6 and im not into shopping

 

[itutorfortravel]

We always leave town for the Holidays. We always put a live tree every year. It usually goes up Thanksgiving Sunday. We get about 3 weeks of use out of it until we typically leave town around Dec. 19. We are diligent to water it and when we leave, we obviously unplug it (as well as lower the heat).

When we get back into town, usually Dec. 28, Santa (AKA our neigbor) has found his way down the chimney and left gifts. Oh yeah, we usually are in a hotel room for DEc 24 and Santa finds a way to leave a "mini gift" in our room - courtesy of "Disney resort gift delivery".

Also, we are subscribed to this thread but have cancelled our Dec cruise plans. We instead are moving the cruise to Spring Break and going back to WDW instead.

Hope you guys all have a great trip!!!

You will love the cruise at spring break time! That's when we went earlier this year and the weather was divine

So, your tree did not get watered for approximately 9-10 days and it did okay? That is encouraging...

 

[owensjro]

so what excursions are you guys planning in st maarteen? i think that we will have a beach break. my daughter is only 6 and im not into shopping

This will be our third eastern and I think we've just about perfected our routine now.

We will get off the ship right after breakfast and find a taxi to Orient Beach. Our daughter is 7 and could care less about nudity so we wander down to the Pirate as it is less crowded and chairs are cheaper. We'll play and swim till lunch time and then taxi back to the ship. We change and eat lunch on board for a few reasons....it's cheaper, we like to change out of our wet/sandy clothes, and this gives us a bit of downtime. At this point our routine will probably change a bit and we will taxi over to Maho to see an afternoon landing of a large plane. The last trip we took the water taxi to downtown to do some shopping. Once done at Maho we will probably end up either back at the ship or shopping. Depends on what everyone is in the mood for.

Jim

 

[riggins]

Our DD7 would love to exchange letters or something with any other girls around the same age. She always seems lost in the club because she is not very outgoing. She still loves going in but would really love to have a friend on board as well! If anyone is interested let me know.

Hi Jim - My girls are 6 and 8 and I'd love for them to make some new friends before getting to the club. Unfortunately, this trip is a surprise, so they don't know they are going. If all goes well, they won't know until the day we leave. But, we should try to make sure that our meet time and place on boarding day makes is easy for the kids to get to know each other a little. I know there are a couple other little girls around the same age that are part of our meet group. I think it would be great if they got to meet each other early.

Leslie

 

[owensjro]

Hi Jim - My girls are 6 and 8 and I'd love for them to make some new friends before getting to the club. Unfortunately, this trip is a surprise, so they don't know they are going. If all goes well, they won't know until the day we leave. But, we should try to make sure that our meet time and place on boarding day makes is easy for the kids to get to know each other a little. I know there are a couple other little girls around the same age that are part of our meet group. I think it would be great if they got to meet each other early.

Leslie

I must be in need of more sleep. Yeah, this is a surprise for our daughter too. Silly me. We'll definitely need to do a meeting once on board and maybe figure out what some of the activities are that the kids could do together.

A few weekends ago our daughter decided to "play cruise" and so the entire weekend we pretended we were on one. Now she has decided we are going to take a Christmas cruise too. So we're planning it all out and she is thinking the entire thing will be a pretend cruise at home. I cannot wait to see her reaction when she finds out it is real! I just think it is so funny that she came up with the pretend idea on her own.

Jim

 

[bpescar]

In answer to the christmas tree dilemna, we always put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. It stays up till January1. When we are gone there have been times we have had neiighbors check to make sure it does not get too dry since we live in sunny San Diego. Even though we turn our heat off sometimes it is dry. So our neighbor waters our plants and our tree. We will be celebrating Christmas on the cruise ship this year which is unusal for us. Usually we come hoe and celebrate at home also. This year is different. Our daughter and son live in Utah and we will be seeing them during Thanksgiving. My husband's family have not said their plans but last year was the first year in eighteen years they spent Christmas with us. They live in Long Beach Ca so we may see them when we return. This cruise is a big celebration for us because we have always taken the daughter and grandchildren or other people with us. Our Christmas will be very special. I still have to put up a tree though. It would not seem the holidays without it.

As for the people surprising their children, you are going to have a great time. The last cruise we went on we surprised my husband, he had no idea the daughter and grandchildren were going till they met us at the airport. It was great!

 

[itutorfortravel]

Hi Jim! My DD would have loved to have been a penpal before the cruise! We did that last time with another little girl and it worked out great. But I can see where that would not work if you're making it a surprise - LOL! We made our spring break cruise a birthday surprise for our DD and it was sooo much fun!!! I would have loved to have made this upcoming cruise a surprise too but we are traveling with extended family and I was just worried someone would "slip" and say something to her before we went. And I wanted to be the one to tell her

Anyhow, my DD will definitely be interested in meeting your DD and the other girls her age on this cruise...I think there are a few of them all around the same age. It should be great!

BTW, for our DD's birthday gift we got her the Barbie cruise ship to go along with the theme of her birthday party and surprise. So anyone looking for something to have waiting from Santa when they get back home, it might be a really cute idea!

 

[robynchic]

My parents are DVC members (courtesy of my cast member discount!). Kerry (DH in 17 days!!) and I use it the most, though, since we go to WDW the most frequently. Our cruise was booked through DVC. But for this trip, we won't be staying in a DVC resort. It's my lifetime goal to stay at every resort on property; we only have one value resort left, and we decided to book it. So we'll be staying at All-Star Movies after the cruise.

 

[Downrivermama]

Okay, I am taking an informal poll...those of you who celebrate Christmas, are you putting up a tree this year or skipping it? That is the burning question in our household right now! We normally do a live tree but I don't know if I'm comfortable with that with our being gone so long...and buying an artificial tree wasn't exactly part of my vacation budget - LOL! Can it possibly feel like Christmas at home without a tree??? And where could Santa possibly leave the gifts that will be waiting for DD when we return? Boy, am I stressed (hee hee...)

Seriously, though, what is everyone else doing?

I was wondering too. Usually we put it up the weekend of Thanksgiving and take it down Jan1 or 2. I have a small house so I have a 6' alpine tree I put up, it's very slim. Since I'll have time this year I might put it up for Thanksgiving day. I think I will put it up though. This is the first year I won't have to worry about playing Santa (sniff, sniff)

 

[itutorfortravel]

I was wondering too. Usually we put it up the weekend of Thanksgiving and take it down Jan1 or 2. I have a small house so I have a 6' alpine tree I put up, it's very slim. Since I'll have time this year I might put it up for Thanksgiving day. I think I will put it up though. This is the first year I won't have to worry about playing Santa (sniff, sniff)

Hi Tina! DH says we have to have a tree...I love Christmas in general and totally love having the tree, but it would be kind of nice to not have to come home to the task of having to take it down this year. I think we will probably spring for an artificial tree this year and maybe put it up the weekend of Thanksgiving so we can enjoy it longer and then not have to worry about it being a fire hazard while we are gone.

Well, I can understand being disappointed about your DD not believing in Santa anymore...but look at it this way - at least you don't have to drag a bunch of gifts with you on the ship if you don't want to!!! LOL! You should see what I am going to try to lug with us. I will need an extra, large bag just for the gifts and FE stuff. DH is going to looovve loading the car this time. Ha ha.

 

[3DAN]

Hellllooooooo dere,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,(like Lisa from Green Acres)
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII,mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm baaaaaaaaaaaaack.
It's great that you guys are going to surprise the kids with the cruise.
I am going to surprise the kids with Mickey's very merry christmas party on the 18th and then some surprises of shore excursions during the cruise. Since Kathleen has Never been on a trip of any significance, then this should take the cake. No tree for us. I won't have time after we get back. Angela and I are both doctors and will immediately go back to work. I dread it.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPS,
Forgot,
AND NOW PREMIERING FROM INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA,
YOUR FRIENDS AND MINE.
THE DANCING

BANANAS



Okay, boys,,,,,,, hoof a few for us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Let's see,,,, Well, I've set up a few things for the trip. St Marten, Orient beach in the afternoon. Through DCL. Hope to do the jet ski thing. We all have wet suits to wear in the ocean. Shorty wet suits. We will do the ski lift thing on St Thomas. Not sure yet on Castaway Cay.
Hey,,,,,, I can see things here in 3D.
WHICH reminds me,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, YES,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, We do have tickets to see Miley Cyrus on Nov 16 here in Indianapolis. Oh,,,, Yeah,,,,, WHO'S DA MAN?
teehee,,,,,
Bill

 

[itutorfortravel]

Hellllooooooo dere,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,(like Lisa from Green Acres)
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII,mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm baaaaaaaaaaaaack.
It's great that you guys are going to surprise the kids with the cruise.
I am going to surprise the kids with Mickey's very merry christmas party on the 18th and then some surprises of shore excursions during the cruise. Since Kathleen has Never been on a trip of any significance, then this should take the cake. No tree for us. I won't have time after we get back. Angela and I are both doctors and will immediately go back to work. I dread it.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPS,
Forgot,
AND NOW PREMIERING FROM INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA,
YOUR FRIENDS AND MINE.
THE DANCING

BANANAS



Okay, boys,,,,,,, hoof a few for us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Let's see,,,, Well, I've set up a few things for the trip. St Marten, Orient beach in the afternoon. Through DCL. Hope to do the jet ski thing. We all have wet suits to wear in the ocean. Shorty wet suits. We will do the ski lift thing on St Thomas. Not sure yet on Castaway Cay.
Hey,,,,,, I can see things here in 3D.
WHICH reminds me,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, YES,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, We do have tickets to see Miley Cyrus on Nov 16 here in Indianapolis. Oh,,,, Yeah,,,,, WHO'S DA MAN?
teehee,,,,,
Bill

Hi Bill, I'll update the roll call with your hometown!

DD and I have tix to see Miley Cyrus the week after you, so I look forward to hearing how you like the concert

Now that I see you are from Indianapolis, I must ask if you've ever been to the Indy 500? That is DH's dream to go one year. Perhaps he can live vicariously through you if you've been.

Tonight's the night that all DCL newbies can book shore excursions...so for those of you staying up till midnight, good luck! I will be up with you, as I am booking for my in-laws.

 

[robynchic]

Tonight's the night that all DCL newbies can book shore excursions...so for those of you staying up till midnight, good luck! I will be up with you, as I am booking for my in-laws.

If I can make it to midnight, I will! I'll be dead tired when I go to work, but it will be worth it!