12/9/06 December Double Dip DIS Geekorama Part 1 (cruise completed) pretrip added 1/8

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Here are our pirate night pictures from Shutters. I especially like the close up of the kids.

 

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I absolutely LOVE your DD's dress for pirate night! It is fabulous.
The video cracked me up. That's hilarious. Thanks for sharing, it's another great installment.

Thanks! It was at Target this past Halloween. They had it in navy blue and burgundy and I think that it was called the rose queen or something like that. It just made me think of little Elizabeth & thankfully DD loved it.

 

[kritter]

Oh Lisa,

What a great trip report and your pictures are great too...Makes me want to take a holiday cruise one day..Thanks for sharing....

 

[pjpoohbear]

Lisa, thank you for your wonder telling and great pics!

Pj

 

[jaimee1024]

Lisa! What a fabulous trip report. I love the pictures! Your kids are gorgeous. And, you my old friend are beautiful as well. You have a lovely family. (by the way...I mean "old" as in we've been friends for um...34 years, not as in you are old!) I love that dress you found at Target. I wish I had seen it. Caroline only has one Princess dress that she will wear (the Belle Christmas dress I bought online that is not "scratchy". She wore it three times while we were at Disney). So...now we want to take a cruise. When the time comes will you help me plan?! You amaze me!! I'm glad you had a great trip!

 

[CRSNDSNY]

Imagine my excitement when I logged on today only to find A NEW INSTALLATION IN YOUR TR!!!!

What a way to start the day!

Ok - Here are my random thoughts. LOL

How neat to be able to attend a wedding onboard! The bride looked absolutely beautiful! EB and I have already decided that we’ll pay every last penny of our daughter’s wedding only if she agrees to get married in WDW or onboard the cruiseline! LOL How terrible are we??!!

Your family portraits are beautiful! They really turned out very nice!

Isn’t it amazing that no matter how many times you see Disney Dreams, you still cry like a baby??!! That always makes us laugh, but we just can’t help getting teared up!

It’s really amazing how things have improved with the Twas the Night Before Christmas reading. When we were on the Magic for Christmas in 2001, they didn’t have the choir with Mrs. Claus. That looks just so nice! What a great addition.

I think my favorite official picture so far is the one of your kids in their Pirate garb. Those are really nice shots.

Thanks for posting more! I hate to see your trip coming to an end – that means no more TR!!! Wahhh!

 

[Ski-and-Sea]

Soon after making the DIS rounds and being able to sit with his family I saw the character manager enter the dining room and make her way to their table. Apparently guests on the other side of the room were upset that Jack Sparrow wasn’t going around with the photographer, who knew nothing of an appearance in AP. So…he called BJ who knew that CJS was signing autographs at preludes at that moment. OY!!!

That was absolutely hysterical!!!!!

BTW Lisa, did you get any time to relax yourself? You seemed to be nonstop on this cruise doing things for other people.

 

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The wedding was actually suppose to be on the secret deck 7 verandah. Since she could only have 20 people there, we were suppose to be on deck 9 looking down and taking pictures for them. When the weather made them move the cerimony inside, she had to get permission for us to attend. We sat in the very back of the room...in shorts and tshirts. We were all armed with bubbles and Bobby Banana joined in the festivities when the champagne and cake were served. One of the DISers took pictures of Jodie getting ready since the DCL photographer didn't go with her before the cerimony began.

Paul and Jodie are very nice people. We thought that we would scare her off when she joined our meets thread a few months before the cruise but she jumped right in. They even got married in the terminal in our group lime green shirts. At one point the Captain ... as in CJS ... was to escort her down the aisle but he had to shave before semiformal pictures that night.

 

[lbgraves]

Lisa! What a fabulous trip report. I love the pictures! Your kids are gorgeous. And, you my old friend are beautiful as well. You have a lovely family. (by the way...I mean "old" as in we've been friends for um...34 years, not as in you are old!) I love that dress you found at Target. I wish I had seen it. Caroline only has one Princess dress that she will wear (the Belle Christmas dress I bought online that is not "scratchy". She wore it three times while we were at Disney). So...now we want to take a cruise. When the time comes will you help me plan?! You amaze me!! I'm glad you had a great trip!

Good to see you here, girl! You had better let me know when you start thinking about doing a cruise!!! Book it 1 1/2 - 2 years out.

 

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Here is a short clip of the Night Before Christmas. It isn't great but gives you an idea of what happens.

 

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Yeah Baby!!! We are going to pull into Castaway Cay again this morning. It was a bit overcast but still warm on deck 9. I made sure that I had my ID with me before we went up to breakfast. Since we had slept in a bit, we ate quickly so that we could get off the ship ASAP. We found that the beach was pretty much deserted again.

DH picked up the floats and while the kids got in the water with Auntie PJ, the rest of us sat and gabbed. I had remembered to pack our Jolly Roger flag as well as my ID so we hung it from the umbrella so any DISer could easily find us during the day.

Most of the excursions were cancelled for the morning. We didn’t think the island tour would be done at 1:15 but had to wait a little while before we could confirm that. It actually worked out better that way. The kids played in the sand and the water all day and we didn’t have to go anywhere.

 

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On our way to Cookie’s we saw the pirate parade.

DD wasn’t interested in seeing anyone until she got something to eat. It turned out that her eyes were bigger than her tummy … although she insisted that she NEEDED every speck of food on that tray.

She did end up getting up to dance with Mickey and pals when the music got going.

Even Bobby joined in the fun!

 

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Today was a lazy kind of day that actually seemed to last longer than our other visits to CC. If DCL ever offers another double dip cruise … we will be there!!! The sun came out after lunch and we enjoyed a beautiful afternoon with our friends. I was actually confronted by the group at lunch. Many of us were already booked on a cruise in 2007. There were three dates that we were scattered between … 12/1, 12/8, and 12/15. I booked my family in 5520 on the 12/1/07 when the dates were released and was quite happy with that. Our friends were in 5522 and friends from our first cruise were in 5020 with 2005 cruise buddies in 5524. John told me that he had to talk to me and had been chosen as the group’s spokesperson. DH wasn’t going to talk to me about it until we were driving home but they didn’t want us to miss out on the onboard rebooking discount. THANKS GUYS!!! All week they had been trying to figure out when most of us could go in 2007...and it wasn’t 12/1. The 12/8 cruise would allow four families from the 2005 & 2006 cruises along with two more new families from this cruise … and one that we are working on. HI CARLA!!! When I said that I would have to check with Mike, John told me that it was ok with him and he had said that he wanted a porthole this cruise. I returned to the ship at 3:45 so that I could rebook when the desk opened at 4. We are now in 7002 12/8/07. So now you know when Geekorama Part 2 will happen.

 

[lillygator]

good thing it wasn't too hard to convince you!!!

 

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Of course we needed to get a few more pictures of the ship on our way back to The Magic. Seeing the Flying Dutchman there was pretty neat.

While I finished packing and got the suitcases out into the hallway, DH took the kids for a stroll around deck before dinner.

I have not waited until the last day to pack since our first cruise when I didn’t get out of the room to do anything after dinner and was very stressed out. Now I empty the hamper that we keep behind the stool under the desk on Monday and Thursday into trash bags and fill up the big suitcases under the bed ~ two bags packed by Thursday morning after breakfast. Next up is Thursday afternoon when I pack up everything except Pjs, swimsuits, 2 outfits each for dinner, an outfit for us to wear to Till We Meet Again, and one for getting off the ship in. This trip we were taking two days to drive home so I also needed a small bag with a change of clothes for that.

Kaitlyn said hello to Daisy on our way to dinner. You don’t see her very much on the ship.

She also stopped by the gingerbread house one last time. It was sad to see that people were breaking off pieces of it. All of the candy had been pulled off of the front with the white icing left behind with the color on it and the arms and legs of most of the gingerbread men were missing. This is the first time that I had seen this happen in three years. I honestly do not know why someone would want to eat something that had been sitting out in the open being touched by lots of kids for weeks.

 

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Dinner Friday night was a lot of fun. I tried to get around to everyone’s table to say goodbye at some point. Kaitlyn was holding nothing back tonight.

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She floated between our table and Isabella’s. The girls had such a good time together all week. This was the first time that Kaitlyn had made friends before the cruise and wants to keep emailing them.

We found out that our server William should be on board 12/8 so we are going to request him. He and Putu were fabulous making us think of the servers we had on our first two cruises.

Since the packing was done, we had the entire evening to play. The Farewell Variety show didn’t disappoint us … and once again resulted in tears. It was nice not to be the only one tearing up at the show this year ~ THANKS, PJ! We quickly changed out of our dressy clothes and packed those into the last bag to go out in the hall. We ended up in the Atrium with time to spare before the Till We Meet Again. This is a great way to get some of the more uncommon autographs from the show characters. I knew that the step sisters would be there so I made sure that we had Kaitlyn’s story book for them to sign.

They also got Simba and Nala’s autograph along with a few others.

It was then time for them to sign the Mickey Mouse see you real soon song…so more tears.

I had really hoped to go to Pub Night but it was not meant to be this cruise. That is why we keep booking another one, right? The kids went to the theater to watch Santa Clause 3 with the dads while the moms took care of picking up the pictures at Shutters and getting some last minute deals from the shop. We chatted while waiting in the long line then hit the shops. I found a couple more bargains then went to sit outside the theater to wait for the movie to end. Carla and I got to chat and were then joined by Vanessa and crew. Not even her girls wanted the night to end. I had known that this cruise would be different from the others in so many ways. We walked slowly back to the stateroom not wanting the next morning to arrive.

 

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That was our original plan. We figured that if 250 of us linked arms thru the railings on deck 4 they wouldn’t be able to remove all of us from the ship before 11:30 so some of us had a chance to remain onboard for the Christmas cruise. Instead we were in Lumiere’s holding back the tears as we hugged goodbye. No one wanted to leave the dining room. Savannah came in with Kim and Steve and we followed them to Parrot Cay to say goodbye to the late dining DISers. This is when the tears started flowing. I am tearing up just remembering. The only way I was able to leave and get off of the ship was knowing that we would see some of our dear friends again next year and some before then.

It was good to see that the sign was back after missing last year.

Way too soon we were let off the ship and heading to the parking lot.

We visited Shirley for a little bit before starting on our drive. It was wonderful to finally meet her after chatting with her for years on the board. She is just as sweet in person. We made a stop in JAX to visit SIL, BIL, and their kids before stopping for the night in South Carolina.

 

[lweigard]

Hi there... I'm a newbie and I've read on a couple of threads about a mysterious 'Shirley'. Does she make gift baskets for the cruise? Or are you restricted to only purchase the ones that DCL offers? Thanks for any info you can provide!

 

[kritter]

Lisa,

Loved reading your trip report it was GREAT!!!!!!