Well, what a crazy few days its been! I was really wanting to save some money on this cruise so I asked DH if he would mind cat 12's if they became available. He said that wouldn't work because he gets seasick and needs a veranda to see the horizon and get fresh air. Here's the crazy part: how did he do his 2 active duty weeks on a ship??? He was in the Navy for 18 years!

He once spent 2 weeks on an aircraft carrier and they were out to sea for several days. Granted most of his Navy career was reserve time, and his "ship" tours when he was full time Navy were spent with the marines on land (he was a Navy dentist). I know the junior officers quarters he shared with like 4 or 5 other guys didn't have a veranda!

So he said lets save the money and we both agreed that we should cancel the cruise (we already have another
DCL cruise booked for July 2010). So I broke the news to DS and DD. They were both really looking forward to this cruise, so I decided to suggest the unthinkable

- a cruise with just me and the kiddos! With DH's blessing

I started stalking the DCL web site to see if I could spot any cat 12's for us!
I had found one 2 nights ago but it was gone by the time I tried to grab it! Then I got a great idea.

I asked my sister, who is godmother to our kids if she would like to go with us, then emailed the TA to have her look for 2 cat 12's - one for DS and me and one for DD and her. I figured that finding one cat 12 for all 4 of us was going to be impossible, and since the 12 had popped up before, I just knew there had to be some out there! So the TA got busy looking today and I did the same, said a few prayers and lo and behold around 2pm today, a cat 12 popped up when I was on the site! I emailed her right away asking her to "grab it" and she came back with 2 cat 12 rooms for us! My sister has been on numerous WDW vacations with us, esp when our kids were young, and now her husband has the Disney bug (they just got back from a WDW vacation in Jan). So now he's joining us too!

This will be their first
Disney cruise!
So here's our new cast:
Me: DW - Taina
DD: Kaitlyn (age 13 - almost 14 by cruise)
DS: Ben (age 12 by cruise)
Sister - Beatrice
BIL - Stephen
We got those unbelievably great rates

so if anyone needs to save some money, those cat 12's are out there! Just keep looking (constantly) and get your TA to do the same (I used DU - they have been awesome!!! PM me if you want her name - not sure if we are allowed to reference specific TA's on this board) And here's the best part: 2 cat 12's for 5 people are costing us almost $1000 less than 1 cat 6 for 4 people at the military rate!