zeldacruiser
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2005
- Messages
- 140
(Footnotegirl, loved your report of the woman strolling to the ship as it pulled away! I think I may have shared a hot tub with you and your husband one afternoon late in the cruise.)
My intention here is to make it through the whole week; we'll see how long I last! This was our third Disney cruise and first 7-night, with "we" being myself and my 17-year-old daughter (yes, we made it through the whole cruise without killing each other!).
We flew down Friday, arriving at MCO about 6:30 p.m., after an hour flight delay; glad we weren't driving to Port Canaveral that night. Took the shuttle to the Quality Inn Airport. I had tried to get one of those fabulous 3-star hotels on Priceline at a rock-bottom price but never made it (my last bid was about $50, I think). Quality Inn was about $72 for the night - serviceable, definitely not a place to spend a lot of time but clean, and it had a free continental breakfast.
I had planned to rent a car, drop it off in Port Canaveral and then rent another on return to port and drop it off at the airport, but when I printed out my Orbitz reservation for the Quality Inn, I noticed a line at the bottom that said "transportation to Port Canaveral $35 per person roundtrip." I called the hotel and checked it out; they said the van leaves the hotel around 11:30 to noon, which was later than I wanted, but I figured it would be better than messing with the rental car pickup/return/shuttle/pickup/return. Not too bad on the the picking-up part - of course we left at noon, not 11:30 - but on disembarking day at the end of the cruise, they ("they" being Laura's Shuttle) picked us up at 9 as planned and then we had to hang around the port another 90 minutes while they picked up two other parties from two other ships - ugh! Price was good, but I don't think I'd do it that way again - good learning experience.
So we arrive at the port only to find lots of people in the parking lot, waiting to board the ship. Don't know for sure what happened, but the story being told onboard later was that the bomb-sniffing dogs found someone's suitcase suspect, so they wouldn't let anyone else board until the luggage was OK'd, maybe two hours later. We stood in the parking lot for about 90 minutes, telling ourselves that at least we were in warm sunshine and not in Pennsylvania snow, and very glad to share the single Little Debbie brownie I found in my carryon bag. Cast members distributed bottles of water. Finally, we were allowed into the terminal, where we were handed cold bottles of Evian at the top of the escalator. Castaway Club line got me through a little quicker than if I had joined the regular line (I kept an eye on the guy I would have been behind). DD laughed at me for being so excited that we got the PLAPLAP dining rotation, meaning we'd be in Lumiere's on formal night.
We skipped the welcome-aboard photos and went straight to our room, which was a category 12 on deck 2. Luggage wasn't there yet, and it was 3:45, almost time for the lifeboat drill. I called guest services and found that the drill was moved to 4:30 and that Pluto's and Pinnochio's were still open, so I went upstairs and ordered three slices of pizza for each of us, then looked at the plate and switched to four slices for my daughter (after all, it's all "free"!).
Since we were so beat from the parking lot wait, we were happy to find that our lifeboat station was in the Walt Disney Theater, so we got to sit in the air-conditioning. Back to the room, took the first of our nightly non-drowsy Dramamine, still no luggage, so we went up to see a bit of the sailaway celebration and grab our first of many free sodas from the deck 9 drink station.
Luggage finally arrived, and we had late dinner seating, so we changed clothes and went to the Welcome Aboard Variety Show, which featured lots of characters, dancing, juggler David DiMuzio and comedian/ventriloquist Michael Harrison. Harrison did one bit that was absolutely hysterical - brought a boy on stage, put a mask on him with a moving mouth and made him into a living "dummy." Sounds silly, but we laughed so hard.
Caught the tail end of the Mickey Mania Game Show before heading to Parrot Cay for dinner at 8:30. Met our tablemates - a mom about my age, her five-year-old son and college-age niece. I thought Disney did a nice job of matching us with fairly comparable tablemates, if that's the right word. Our servers were Julio from Peru and May from (I think) Thailand. DD ordered a ginger ale that first night, and another appeared right after she sat down every night the rest of the week. Tonight was the regular Parrot Cay menu. Hopefully someone else will report on food, because one delicious meal has rolled into the next in my mind, and I can't remember what I had at any particular time.
After dinner we were beat; plus, we knew we'd "lose" an hour of sleep that night as we had to turn the clocks ahead one hour, so we went back to the cabin. I started to watch a movie on TV but quickly realized I wasn't going to make it to the end, so we hit the lights.
Tomorrow: Our first warm, sunny day at sea!
My intention here is to make it through the whole week; we'll see how long I last! This was our third Disney cruise and first 7-night, with "we" being myself and my 17-year-old daughter (yes, we made it through the whole cruise without killing each other!).
We flew down Friday, arriving at MCO about 6:30 p.m., after an hour flight delay; glad we weren't driving to Port Canaveral that night. Took the shuttle to the Quality Inn Airport. I had tried to get one of those fabulous 3-star hotels on Priceline at a rock-bottom price but never made it (my last bid was about $50, I think). Quality Inn was about $72 for the night - serviceable, definitely not a place to spend a lot of time but clean, and it had a free continental breakfast.
I had planned to rent a car, drop it off in Port Canaveral and then rent another on return to port and drop it off at the airport, but when I printed out my Orbitz reservation for the Quality Inn, I noticed a line at the bottom that said "transportation to Port Canaveral $35 per person roundtrip." I called the hotel and checked it out; they said the van leaves the hotel around 11:30 to noon, which was later than I wanted, but I figured it would be better than messing with the rental car pickup/return/shuttle/pickup/return. Not too bad on the the picking-up part - of course we left at noon, not 11:30 - but on disembarking day at the end of the cruise, they ("they" being Laura's Shuttle) picked us up at 9 as planned and then we had to hang around the port another 90 minutes while they picked up two other parties from two other ships - ugh! Price was good, but I don't think I'd do it that way again - good learning experience.
So we arrive at the port only to find lots of people in the parking lot, waiting to board the ship. Don't know for sure what happened, but the story being told onboard later was that the bomb-sniffing dogs found someone's suitcase suspect, so they wouldn't let anyone else board until the luggage was OK'd, maybe two hours later. We stood in the parking lot for about 90 minutes, telling ourselves that at least we were in warm sunshine and not in Pennsylvania snow, and very glad to share the single Little Debbie brownie I found in my carryon bag. Cast members distributed bottles of water. Finally, we were allowed into the terminal, where we were handed cold bottles of Evian at the top of the escalator. Castaway Club line got me through a little quicker than if I had joined the regular line (I kept an eye on the guy I would have been behind). DD laughed at me for being so excited that we got the PLAPLAP dining rotation, meaning we'd be in Lumiere's on formal night.
We skipped the welcome-aboard photos and went straight to our room, which was a category 12 on deck 2. Luggage wasn't there yet, and it was 3:45, almost time for the lifeboat drill. I called guest services and found that the drill was moved to 4:30 and that Pluto's and Pinnochio's were still open, so I went upstairs and ordered three slices of pizza for each of us, then looked at the plate and switched to four slices for my daughter (after all, it's all "free"!).
Since we were so beat from the parking lot wait, we were happy to find that our lifeboat station was in the Walt Disney Theater, so we got to sit in the air-conditioning. Back to the room, took the first of our nightly non-drowsy Dramamine, still no luggage, so we went up to see a bit of the sailaway celebration and grab our first of many free sodas from the deck 9 drink station.
Luggage finally arrived, and we had late dinner seating, so we changed clothes and went to the Welcome Aboard Variety Show, which featured lots of characters, dancing, juggler David DiMuzio and comedian/ventriloquist Michael Harrison. Harrison did one bit that was absolutely hysterical - brought a boy on stage, put a mask on him with a moving mouth and made him into a living "dummy." Sounds silly, but we laughed so hard.
Caught the tail end of the Mickey Mania Game Show before heading to Parrot Cay for dinner at 8:30. Met our tablemates - a mom about my age, her five-year-old son and college-age niece. I thought Disney did a nice job of matching us with fairly comparable tablemates, if that's the right word. Our servers were Julio from Peru and May from (I think) Thailand. DD ordered a ginger ale that first night, and another appeared right after she sat down every night the rest of the week. Tonight was the regular Parrot Cay menu. Hopefully someone else will report on food, because one delicious meal has rolled into the next in my mind, and I can't remember what I had at any particular time.
After dinner we were beat; plus, we knew we'd "lose" an hour of sleep that night as we had to turn the clocks ahead one hour, so we went back to the cabin. I started to watch a movie on TV but quickly realized I wasn't going to make it to the end, so we hit the lights.
Tomorrow: Our first warm, sunny day at sea!
nice that the 2 of you were able to do this trip together 
