7/13/13 ~~ Eastern Mediterranean Mouseketeers!

[JimmyJackJunior]

We did shopping too. Bought ourselves four carry on bags/backpacks from Rick Steves store. That is all the four of us are taking. Also bought some UnderArmour shirts for all of us for touring around in the heat.

Went to the Rick Steves travel conference and went to courses on the French Riviera, Athens, Rome and packing light. Got a bunch of questions answered and the presenters were awesome. Way above my expectations. For all three places it was the person that wrote the chapter of the book for Mediterrean cruise ports.

 

[tinkerbelltwins]

Hi Tinkerbelltwins!

I'm not sure we have been added to the rollcall. When you have a chance, could you please add us! Thank you!

Sorry that I missed your request -- you've now been added to the Roll Call. Welcome Aboard!



Beth

 

[scrapycruiser]

Just noticed that we are still on the FE exchange list.
Very sad to say we are no longer booked on this cruise !
Hope everyone has a fabulous time !!

 

[WDW Princess 71]

Speaking of the FE, is eleblanc still in charge of it? I was wondering what the stats are so far- how many signed up, deadline, are we doing one big group or breaking into a few smaller ones?

 

[FloridaMom3461]

Speaking of the FE, is eleblanc still in charge of it? I was wondering what the stats are so far- how many signed up, deadline, are we doing one big group or breaking into a few smaller ones?

The spreadsheet link is in post 4 - looks like about 25 families. I believe that Eileen (eleblanc) is still organizing....

 

[FloridaMom3461]

Just starting our excursion planning and loving all the great information here - thanks everyone! Please add us to the roll-call.

ynspire (Yvonne), with DH Blair, DS (Blake, 9), and DD (Ariane, 9) from British Columbia, Canada, First Seating, Stateroom 7094, yes to Fish Extender.

Welcome ynspire and family.

 

[tajz90]

Can't wait to see The Lone Ranger. Planning to hold off until our cruise.

 

[buddwaur]

Sorry that I missed your request -- you've now been added to the Roll Call. Welcome Aboard!



Beth

Thanks so much Beth!

 

[Eleblanc]

Hello everyone, hope you are getting excited for our trip in a few months and your planning is going well.

I am still organizing the fish extender and secret mickey exchanges and wanted to start getting it all together. If anyone is interested in joining and has not signed up yet, please do so on the first page, post #4.

The original idea was to break the fish extenders into groups of 25, but when I last looked at the sign up sheet we had a total of 29 interested parties. There are a few people that have contacted me with interest that have not signed up yet, so I am thinking we could have a total of about 32 in the end. The question then is should we keep it as one group with 32 people, or is that too big of group and we should break it down into two smaller groups of about 16? If we did the two smaller groups people could be in one or both groups.

Please send me your thoughts.

For the secret mickey I was thinking of assigning those the end of April so everyone has time to organize and shop for those gifts. Since it is suppose to be secret, I will send private messages to everyone with their info.

If anyone can think of anything I am missing, please let me know!

 

[Hanover]

Has anyone used before/booked Barcelona Day Tours? Just got a quote and thinking of booking them the day we land (7/12) at 9AM for a tour and then transfer to hotel. We figure we wouldn't be able to check into hotel that early and will try and hold off sleeping until early evening.

 

[WDW Princess 71]

Hello everyone, hope you are getting excited for our trip in a few months and your planning is going well.

I am still organizing the fish extender and secret mickey exchanges and wanted to start getting it all together. If anyone is interested in joining and has not signed up yet, please do so on the first page, post #4.

The original idea was to break the fish extenders into groups of 25, but when I last looked at the sign up sheet we had a total of 29 interested parties. There are a few people that have contacted me with interest that have not signed up yet, so I am thinking we could have a total of about 32 in the end. The question then is should we keep it as one group with 32 people, or is that too big of group and we should break it down into two smaller groups of about 16? If we did the two smaller groups people could be in one or both groups.

Please send me your thoughts.

For the secret mickey I was thinking of assigning those the end of April so everyone has time to organize and shop for those gifts. Since it is suppose to be secret, I will send private messages to everyone with their info.

If anyone can think of anything I am missing, please let me know!

Thanks for the FE and Secret Mickey update! I'm so excited we are getting into the final planning stages on both. Makes the cruise feel so much closer! I think that we should stick to one large group. I've always had about 20-30 rooms on my cruises and it was managable, even with this cruise having luggage space/weight concerns, there are so many gifts you can make or buy that are small and lightweight. I only thought splitting the group was something done if there were like 100 staterooms or something large like that.

I think end of April sounds great for Secret Mickey. Thank you so much for posting this update- I had forgotten if I even signed up for SM way back then, so your post led me to check the Google spreadsheet, and I noticed I hadn't even updated that I'm no longer sailing solo, my dad is joining me! So I added all of our new info, good thing I noticed!

Is anyone else under 90 days now? We are leaving July 10 so I was so excited to say yesterday that we are only 90 days away, it really sounds so much closer than months and months!!

 

[Newfoundland Sailor]

Hello everyone, hope you are getting excited for our trip in a few months and your planning is going well.

I am still organizing the fish extender and secret mickey exchanges and wanted to start getting it all together. If anyone is interested in joining and has not signed up yet, please do so on the first page, post #4.

The original idea was to break the fish extenders into groups of 25, but when I last looked at the sign up sheet we had a total of 29 interested parties. There are a few people that have contacted me with interest that have not signed up yet, so I am thinking we could have a total of about 32 in the end. The question then is should we keep it as one group with 32 people, or is that too big of group and we should break it down into two smaller groups of about 16? If we did the two smaller groups people could be in one or both groups.

Please send me your thoughts.

I have been keeping an eye on the FE list over the past couple of months as I have been preparing my giveaways. My husband is going to kill me if I don't stop coming home with FE stuff!!! I can't see the list on my iphone but if I recall from last night - the list was still below 25 (I think 23 - if you took off a duplicate and a couple of those names which were no longer on our cruise).

I personally love the idea of keeping the group to a maximum of 25. This might sound selfish on my part but where we had listed we were maxing at 25 I have already been purchasing in groups of 24. An extra one or two I can do something else for a couple - but an extra seven starts me over again. And my family is travelling prior to going to Barcelona so I am trying to limit one suitcase specifically to FE. [Especially where it is me travelling alone with the kids and all their stuff!]

Maybe we could set a deadline for signing up and confirming participation -- and then revisit then....maybe it will be a moot point?

 

[WDW Princess 71]

I definitely agree there should be a deadline to sign up for the FE. Otherwise people will just keep adding and adding up til the cruise. This happened on my recent Fantasy cruise, but fortunately we had set a deadline of a month prior to the cruise otherwise another 10 or so rooms would have signed up and by then people have already finished buying or making gifts. I agree with the PP that I usually buy my gifts in packs of 25 or other increment and it just doesn't work if you keep having to buy more and more.

I'm pretty sure all the FE's I've ever done had a deadline of 4 to 6 weeks pre cruise to allow time for buying gifts and taking into account that some people leave much earlier than the cruise for pre cruise travel and may not even have access to an FE list that keeps getting updated until the last minute.

 

[ky71]

My family is travelling prior to the cruise and we were hoping to keep the FE list to 20 cabins max.
This may sound selfish but not only do we need to transport items TO the ship but we also need to take gifts received home (first time cruiser and I have no idea how big or small the items may be).
I sincerely want to be a part of this exciting event but if the group is too large I would prefer not to be included rather than risk the space issue.

 

[Eleblanc]

Good point so far that I forgot to mention, I will definitely be setting up a deadline to join the fish extender group. I was thinking about two months before, so that would be about May 13th.

 

[FloridaMom3461]

Has anyone used before/booked Barcelona Day Tours? Just got a quote and thinking of booking them the day we land (7/12) at 9AM for a tour and then transfer to hotel. We figure we wouldn't be able to check into hotel that early and will try and hold off sleeping until early evening.

We booked with them for this pre-cruise also but dont have experience before. Selected them based on web reviews.

Randi

 

[FloridaMom3461]

I agree with the others that have posted.... I've already gotten our FE gifts and checked that off my planning list. I've got 25 gifts and thus that's what I can commit to.
Randi

 

[Pengwend]

My husband and I did this cruise in 2011 for our honeymoon, and it was fantastic. Now, we're thinking about doing it again because the ports of call are different. Unfortunately, we hadn't planned for it and we have to do some shenanigans with point renting and/or transferring. But, fingers crossed that all that works out, we'll be booking this cruise soon! In the mean time, I guess I'll try to catch up on this thread. Also, I have all the Personal Navigators and attendant shopping info sheets as well as the Port Adventures booklet from our 2011 cruise. If anyone is interested/would like to see them, I can scan them.

Hope to be able to join the FE/Secret Mickey Swap too!

 

[ejw]

I agree with the others. We need to have a deadline for joining the FE group.

I also think the current people on the FE list need to be confirmed. We all signed up a long time ago and some might not be on the cruise anymore or not interested in participating anymore.

Ellen

 

[disneycrazy2004]

My husband and I did this cruise in 2011 for our honeymoon, and it was fantastic. Now, we're thinking about doing it again because the ports of call are different. Unfortunately, we hadn't planned for it and we have to do some shenanigans with point renting and/or transferring. But, fingers crossed that all that works out, we'll be booking this cruise soon! In the mean time, I guess I'll try to catch up on this thread. Also, I have all the Personal Navigators and attendant shopping info sheets as well as the Port Adventures booklet from our 2011 cruise. If anyone is interested/would like to see them, I can scan them.

Hope to be able to join the FE/Secret Mickey Swap too!

Would love to see the navigators and all the info you have from the previous cruise. Hope it works out for you and book this one