4/24/2010 Med cruise: Friends, Romans, Countrymen lend me your Ears

[Lhagerty]

Hello Everyone,

Decided to jump in and introduce myself since the final payment has been made and there is no backing out now. On this trip there will be my husband and our 12 yr old son. Our 17 yr old son will not be coming with us due to prior school commitments. This is only our second Disney Cruise and first Med cruise so we are very excited. I'm trying to read as much information from these boards so that we can plan some great excursions. It looks like many of you have done a tremendous amount of research already. I hope you don't mind all my questions.

LuAnne

 

[NC_Tink]

Hello Everyone,

Decided to jump in and introduce myself since the final payment has been made and there is no backing out now. On this trip there will be my husband and our 12 yr old son. Our 17 yr old son will not be coming with us due to prior school commitments. This is only our second Disney Cruise and first Med cruise so we are very excited. I'm trying to read as much information from these boards so that we can plan some great excursions. It looks like many of you have done a tremendous amount of research already. I hope you don't mind all my questions.

LuAnne

Aboard LuAnne and family!!! My son, Connor, will be happy to know that there's another boy his age in the group! And, no, the group doesn't mind questions -- let 'em roll!

 

[Lyrah]

Welcome LuAnne and family!

I have a daughter that will celebrate her 12th birthday on the cruise. I am happy to see that there will be others her age there. On our last cruise she would not participate in the activities. For some reason she was uncharacteristically shy. I think if she would have become involved on the first day and made some friends, she would have enjoyed it. So I was thinking that if anyone who has kids in that age group attends the meet the first day, maybe we could introduce our children so that she might know someone at the club. DH and I could really use some quite time

 

[skoi]

Another welcome to LuAnne and family, but I'll use a different smilie...


It's so great to see the thread filling up. I was all alone on it for so long.

This is going to be a great cruise.

Julie

 

[grlzmom]

To LuAnne and family!

Wow our group is growing and our meet thread is getting more active!

 

[shushh]

Good morning everyone! And welcome to LuAnne!

Ok this may be a silly question but with the lanyards...
What kind of attachment does it have at the end? it how does your KTTW card attach onto it? Also, do we have to design/make our own nametags?

 

[friend of tinkerbell]

just something I saw on the internet.

http://www.eportreviews.com/Europe/Valletta_Malta1.htm

 

[Lhagerty]

Thank you everyone for such a warm welcome. It will be fun to get to know everyone on this thread.

LuAnne

 

[skoi]

just something I saw on the internet.

http://www.eportreviews.com/Europe/Valletta_Malta1.htm

Thanks for this.

Julie

 

[auntlynne]

Good morning everyone! And welcome to LuAnne!

Ok this may be a silly question but with the lanyards...
What kind of attachment does it have at the end? it how does your KTTW card attach onto it? Also, do we have to design/make our own nametags?

There will be a 4" x 3" vinyl name tag & KTTW (Key to the World - room key) holder which attaches by a metal "hook.". Have you ever been to a pharmacy or other medical convention and gotten a lanyard?

I'll make name tags (personalized for everyone) and can give you a picture when i return.

These will be softer than the DCL scratchy ones.

Today's high of 80 - more than 25 deg C.

 

[shushh]

Thanks Lynne!

25 degrees, just like Sydney today. Nice!

 

[Lyrah]

just something I saw on the internet.

http://www.eportreviews.com/Europe/Valletta_Malta1.htm

Thank you for sharing this, the pictures are great. I am so excited to visit this city.

We are going to do this port on our own, so I thought that I would post our plans and maybe there will be information someone can use. Also if anyone else has info on something here, please share.

Bus tickets are 3.49 euro for an all day pass and you can purchase these at booths, ticket machines and from the driver (you will need exact change).

We are first going to Mdina. It is a 30 minute bus ride on those cool buses in the pictures. We plan on spending the morning here and maybe lunch.

Then we are planning a ride on the Tourist Train (melitatrains.com). It is located just outside the gates of Mdina At the Domus Romana in Rabat. It is a 30 minute scenic little trackless train ride. I think they leave on the hour. The cost is 4.00 euro for adults and 2.50 euro for children.

Then we will head back to Valletta. We thought that we would tour here last so that we are closer to the port. In Valletta we plan on doing the following:

Upper and lower Barracca Gardens.

The Magisterial Palace (Triq Ir-Repubblika)

St. Johns Co-Cathedral 6.00 euro

Dghajsa boat ride - at the Grand Harbour

I found most all of this info on visitmalta.com. Hope it is helpful.
Have a great day!

 

[Lhagerty]

Good morning,

I'm working on our flights and so far aerlingus is the best for us out of Boston. They are running a special through Jan 21st for $719 round trip. My concern is that the return flight is at 10:50 on that Wednesday that we get off the ship. I'm thinking of taking the chance but not sure what to do. Any advice?

LuAnne

 

[skoi]

Good morning,

I'm working on our flights and so far aerlingus is the best for us out of Boston. They are running a special through Jan 21st for $719 round trip. My concern is that the return flight is at 10:50 on that Wednesday that we get off the ship. I'm thinking of taking the chance but not sure what to do. Any advice?

LuAnne

Belinda will have some information on this. Maybe she can pass it on to you.

A few other people are considering it. We did, but decided against it, due to not wanting to rush off the ship.

We do have a very short layoff in London, so we'll probably miss our flight home and have to stay over. Of course in olden days, close to two hours for a layover, even international, wouldn't be a problem.

Julie

 

[skoi]

Charyl Lee:

That sounds like a great itinerary. We were considering doing Mdina and Rabat too, but I was concerned we wouldn't have time to do that and see what we wanted to in Valletta.

Thanks for posting that.

Julie

 

[susanowen27]

just something I saw on the internet.

http://www.eportreviews.com/Europe/Valletta_Malta1.htm

Thanks, this is exactly what I've been looking for!

 

[susanowen27]

Thank you for sharing this, the pictures are great. I am so excited to visit this city.

We are going to do this port on our own, so I thought that I would post our plans and maybe there will be information someone can use. Also if anyone else has info on something here, please share.

Bus tickets are 3.49 euro for an all day pass and you can purchase these at booths, ticket machines and from the driver (you will need exact change).

We are first going to Mdina. It is a 30 minute bus ride on those cool buses in the pictures. We plan on spending the morning here and maybe lunch.

Then we are planning a ride on the Tourist Train (melitatrains.com). It is located just outside the gates of Mdina At the Domus Romana in Rabat. It is a 30 minute scenic little trackless train ride. I think they leave on the hour. The cost is 4.00 euro for adults and 2.50 euro for children.

Then we will head back to Valletta. We thought that we would tour here last so that we are closer to the port. In Valletta we plan on doing the following:

Upper and lower Barracca Gardens.

The Magisterial Palace (Triq Ir-Repubblika)

St. Johns Co-Cathedral 6.00 euro

Dghajsa boat ride - at the Grand Harbour

I found most all of this info on visitmalta.com. Hope it is helpful.
Have a great day!

That is perfect, we will be following you every step of the way, so don't get spooked by the old couple!! HaHa

 

[shushh]

Good morning,

I'm working on our flights and so far aerlingus is the best for us out of Boston. They are running a special through Jan 21st for $719 round trip. My concern is that the return flight is at 10:50 on that Wednesday that we get off the ship. I'm thinking of taking the chance but not sure what to do. Any advice?

LuAnne

Don't how useful I will be but here is the info that DCL gave us. Although it appears that they are not consistent. Jeanne has got very different answers and she called multiple times.
-Ship expected to be cleared by 0645. They don't expect this to be any hassles and expect it to be quick. Guest can debark as soon as ship is cleared.
-First DCL bus scheduled to leave at 0700. It will leave as soon as it is filled up.
-No special considerations will be made for those with early flights. THis is contradictory to what others have said for 2007 where DCL itself booked 1030 flights for passengers.
- Average time from port to airport about 30 min. 20 in no traffic and up to 45 min in traffic. (If it is true that we get off at 7am then traffic will be ok, traffic usually towards the city in the mornings)
- We were advised to make sure that we were one of the first to get off the ship. To do so, they suggested skipping breakfast, lining up early and keeping our luggage with us and taking it down ourselves.

Oh and by the way, we are one of the crazy ones taking a 1025 flight back home!

 

[grlzmom]

Don't how useful I will be but here is the info that DCL gave us. Although it appears that they are not consistent. Jeanne has got very different answers and she called multiple times.
-Ship expected to be cleared by 0645. They don't expect this to be any hassles and expect it to be quick. Guest can debark as soon as ship is cleared.
-First DCL bus scheduled to leave at 0700. It will leave as soon as it is filled up.
-No special considerations will be made for those with early flights. THis is contradictory to what others have said for 2007 where DCL itself booked 1030 flights for passengers.
- Average time from port to airport about 30 min. 20 in no traffic and up to 45 min in traffic. (If it is true that we get off at 7am then traffic will be ok, traffic usually towards the city in the mornings)
- We were advised to make sure that we were one of the first to get off the ship. To do so, they suggested skipping breakfast, lining up early and keeping our luggage with us and taking it down ourselves.

Oh and by the way, we are one of the crazy ones taking a 1025 flight back home!

I don't think you are crazy with the 10:25.

I want to be on the 10:45 and hope to be in line with you in the a.m. with luggage and skipped breakfast lol, and think it is easily doable if we could be sure and get off at 7. My big concern is unsure if we will have more security time/measures going back to US requiring early check in than previously (which you won't have to worry about)?

I'm gonna call DCL again today so far they are sticking by the 12:30 recommended earliest flight departure.

What would really help if we could find someone who has purchased DCL airfare and see what their departure time is

When I read my TA cruise meet thread, there are posts about how bad the BCN airport is with wait times, security and check in being slow.

Would sure like to be back in the US that day as we have stuff going on here on the 7th.

Anyone who gets any more info, please post, I think alot of us are interested!

Hope everyone is having a great day, I am going to make a packing list and see if there is anything we really need purchased.

 

[NC_Tink]

Okay - HELP! I'm having a "brainless" moment -- for some reason I wrote some crazy itinerary in my personal date book and now I'm second guessing myself on everything. Can someone please tell me that the following is the correct itinerary? I got this off of the DCL website for the 4/24 sailing..

Day 1 (Saturday, April 24) - Barcelona
Day 2 (Sunday, April 25) - At Sea
Day 3 (Monday, April 26) - Valetta, Malta
Day 4 (Tuesday, April 27) -Tunis, Tunisia
Day 5 (Wednesday, April 28) - Naples, Italy
Day 6 (Thursday, April 29) - Civitavecchia, Italy
Day 7 (Friday, April 30) - La Spezia, Italy
Day 8 (Saturday, May 1) - At Sea
Day 9 (Sunday, May 2) - Ajaccio, Corsica
Day 10 (Monday, May 3 - Villefranche, France
Day 11 (Tuesday, May 4) - At Sea
Debarkation - Wednesday, May 5

So, I booked my private tours -- checked my date book and somehow mixed up several of the dates/ports -- but if the above itinerary is correct (which I think it is) then somehow I booked my tours correctly (guess I didn't use my date book when I booked? I have no clue - a mystery that may never be solved -- but just hoping that I have the itinerary right now and won't have to go back to the tour companies and tell them I need to change dates

I think I've rechecked my airline reservations about 5 times just to make sure I didn't screw that up -- okay - can we say a little scatter brained right now? And, a lot OCD????