2015 DVC Alaska Member Cruise 5/25-5/31/15

[poison ivy]

Good idea to use the CC#. We'll try that if all else fails. This will be the 2nd Disney cruise for my BIL and his wife. So we just have to find their Castaway Club numbers.

thanks.

 

[Tigger1313]

I live in the Washington, DC area (Annandale, VA) and would like to fly to Vancouver. The best option appears to be Air Alaska out of DCA. The trip takes about eight hours and cost $1,833.54 for two round trip.

Does anyone have a better option?

Is there anyone else from this area?

We got two tickets from BWI to Vancouver on Air Canada, $1,100 for both of us

 

[Tigger1313]

We would like to sign up for the FE exchange, Cathy and Dave stateroom 2629

 

[nrexxma44]

WOW i better get planning, you all are making me feel like a slacker. LOL I am so excited about this cruise. We are long time DVCers, and will be taking our first Disney Cruise to the Eastern Caribbean on December 27. The members cruise will be our second. It seems like there are quite a few "veteran" disney cruisers here so I hope to benefit from all your experience.
My husband and I will be cruising to Alaska, and would like to do FE, I have never done it before, but it looks like such fun. I will PM you our details.
I am off to look for transportation, and book our hotels for before and after the cruise. I will be leaving from Boston, so wondering if anyone else is, and if they have any tips for me? I am also trying to decide if we should spend a few days in Disneyland, and then fly up to Vancouver on Sunday....
I am looking forward to planning with you all over the next few months, and meeting you all in May!!!!!

Nancy

 

[Jay Kat]

WOW i better get planning, you all are making me feel like a slacker.

Welcome, Nancy...I agree that everyone is so much more buttoned up than I am. I made the reservations and I am looking at a lot of options for excursions, etc., but nothing in stone. We are still looking forward to a F and W trip this fall!!!!! Welcome, and I look forward to getting to "know" you, too!

 

[MMouse2]

Greetings, we are new to DISBoards and it is time for us to join! This DVC cruise will be our second member cruise and second Alaskan cruise. You all look like you have so much fun with the FE thing, can somebody please tell us how to join the group and have fun along with you?

 

[stayfos]

We are flying out of Baltimore and currently looking at Air Canada. Using the times that work best for us as far as debarking the ship we will be over 24 hours getting home, just under counting the 3 hour time difference. Leave Vancouver at 7:30 PM and arriving home the next day at 9:53 AM, two stops in between Vancouver and home. Cost is 1229.56 for two, but there is a LOT of waiting time.

We are still looking.

Be sure to check WestJet and AirCanada on Tuesdays…. there are always seat sales then…. find them on FaceBook and like their pages to be notified when the sales come up. It is VERY expensive to fly into/out of/ and within Canada!! We always drive 3 hours down to Bellingham, WA to fly anywhere…. saving us thousands! Good luck with your search! oh and the further out you book with our greedy airlines, the cheaper. The last tip is a big one…. try not to land in multiple Canadian cities on your way here… we have ridiculous airport taxes for every landing and take off… it adds up fast! (part of the reason the costs are already so high!)

Have any of you looked into flying into and out of Bellingham instead of SeaTac?????

 

[stayfos]

Be sure to check WestJet and AirCanada on Tuesdays…. there are always seat sales then…. find them on FaceBook and like their pages to be notified when the sales come up. It is VERY expensive to fly into/out of/ and within Canada!! We always drive 3 hours down to Bellingham, WA to fly anywhere…. saving us thousands! Good luck with your search! oh and the further out you book with our greedy airlines, the cheaper. The last tip is a big one…. try not to land in multiple Canadian cities on your way here… we have ridiculous airport taxes for every landing and take off… it adds up fast! (part of the reason the costs are already so high!)

Have any of you looked into flying into and out of Bellingham instead of SeaTac?????

Bellingham Airport (BLI) is only about 10 minutes down the I5 from the Canadian Border and all of the rental car agencies have kiosks and cars there!! Alaska Airlines and Allegiant Airlines have flights all across the US into and out of Bellingham!

 

[poison ivy]

Greetings, we are new to DISBoards and it is time for us to join! This DVC cruise will be our second member cruise and second Alaskan cruise. You all look like you have so much fun with the FE thing, can somebody please tell us how to join the group and have fun along with you?

MMouse2 welcome to our cruise meet and welcome to the DIS!
Glad you decided to join us. I can't think of a better place to jump right in than our little DVC cruise meet to Alaska. Really glad to have you aboard.

For the FE you simply need to click on our FE list post right here on our DIS cruise meet thread and add your information to sign up.

or provide everything here and we'll add you in -

1) cabin number(s)
2) first names in your party and ages of children
3)allergies / special celebrations / other things you'd like noted

feel free to ask for help if you get stuck.

 

[poison ivy]

Bellingham Airport (BLI) is only about 10 minutes down the I5 from the Canadian Border and all of the rental car agencies have kiosks and cars there!! Alaska Airlines and Allegiant Airlines have flights all across the US into and out of Bellingham!

Thanks for the tip stayfos. So I did a quick check out of PHL for Alaska Airlines and of course all flights are routed as connections thru Seattle. Right now the prices are over 500.00 R/T but I'll check tomorrow to see if any Tues deals exist.

We're still looking at Southwest as our preference hoping the fares they list on the earliest release dates are around 175.00 or less each way.

I haven't found anything comparable anywhere in our area and since we need to buy 5 tix. the savings are big! United is still the cheapest PHL to YVR running around 460.00 r/t but once I factor in bag fees we're over 500.00. They still have a ton of seats to sell so for the past 6wks, the prices have remained unchanged.

Waiting for southwest to publish next May / June is requiring quite a bit of patience on our part but we're hanging in there hoping for much better fares.

Wow! The DC area fares are even crazier than PHL! I'm just not ready to commit to those prices if we can possibly avoid it.

The excursions are going to be expensive enough - especially all the great ones we're looking at!! Can't wait to start talking about them with everyone here.

 

[therina]

I feel like a slacker too! Haven't even checked into any flights/cars/etc. We're headed to Disney this weekend and have been spending all my time planning for that! We're doing the Frozen Summer Fun Premium Package at Hollywood while we're there so I'm sure I'll be ready to start planning my "cold" vacation when we get back. We'll be flying out of Birmingham, AL for our cruise so I'm open to suggestions!

 

[tidefan]

I feel like a slacker too! Haven't even checked into any flights/cars/etc. We're headed to Disney this weekend and have been spending all my time planning for that! We're doing the Frozen Summer Fun Premium Package at Hollywood while we're there so I'm sure I'll be ready to start planning my "cold" vacation when we get back. We'll be flying out of Birmingham, AL for our cruise so I'm open to suggestions!

Well, we will have to touch base! We are from the Birmingham area too!

 

[MMouse2]

Thank you for the information! I will work on getting 10 posts which will probably be more difficult than expected...I'm usually an observer

 

[DisneyBelle99]

I think we have two facebook pages for this cruise????!!

This is the one that I know about

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[myxdvz]

I wanted to get our air done because I'm using award miles and with award miles, the earlier, the cheaper.

I was originally able to get ORD > YVR for 25K miles which was a steal. But they only have 2 of those, and my kids will need 80K each. Ack!

So we switched to ORD > SEA instead. My kids still got MileSAAvers, but and hubby and I used 40K miles each. Still not bad. Pretty much emptied out by AA points, 210K miles in all.

Once I get my car booked, I'll be forgetting about this trip until it's closer

that's interesting. Did you try to rent from the port to Seattle as well?

I never tried the Sea/Tac to Port direction, only the opposite way, and kept receiving the same error message as maburke, that the "cruise port" location was closed on 6/1.

I booked one way SEA to the Cruise port without problems. This way I don't have problems going to the port on Monday and we can stay anywhere in the area. You are right that I can't pickup from there on June 1. I think you can drop off at the Cruise Port but there is no "desk" there. You'd have to go to the Sandman for any pickup unless its September - May.

 

[eeyorejanet]

Thank you for the information! I will work on getting 10 posts which will probably be more difficult than expected...I'm usually an observer

Me too!

 

[eeyorejanet]

All this planning is kind of overwhelming.

 

[MMouse2]

How do we PM on DisBoards...I'm sure it's simple, I'm just having trouble getting used to this site.

 

[MMouse2]

I'm at nine, might this one count for ten? Now how do I send a PM to join the FE, anyone? Anyone?

 

[poison ivy]

All this planning is kind of overwhelming.

I'm at nine, might this one count for ten?

You both are doing great!

eeyorejanet, just keep posting here and you'll get to 10 in no time. but you can actually input your information directly into the Fish Extender document once we get it linked here.
I agree the planning for this trip is overwhelming. You should see my word doc where I've dumped any and all information I have come across so far that I may want to refer back to when the real planning starts. It's a confusing mess right now but has the potential to become an excellent resource!

MMouse2 all you need to do to PM is click on that particular DIS name from any post of here and choose "send xxxxx a private message" from the dropdown menu that comes up.


hope it works out!