The cast of Characters for this cruise are DW, DD (13) and Me, DH.
We had planned for our first Disney cruise for almost a year. Our original plan was for a 4 day cruise on the Wonder to Nausau, Castaway Cay, and the day at sea then return to WDW for 3 days with other members of our family and some pin trading at the annual 3 day Disney Pin Trading event at EPCOT. Lets just say that our plans changed.....
This adventure really starts 2 days prior to scheduled sailing (Friday) when it becomes apparent that we are called by our airline (Jet Blue) that our flight from Syracuse to Orlando won't be happening due to Hurricane Frances. At the time it looked like we might be able to get into Tampa so I changed our flights (at no charge by airline) to Tampa and changed our Car Rental and 1st night stay reservation (was to use DVC points and stay at Old Key West). On Saturday night we received another call from the airline to inform us that Tampa Int'l would also be closing. At this juncture I called DCL to find out the status of our scheduled sailing on the Wonder. We were told that it would be cancelled and that we could sail on the Magic from Port Canaveral on Tuesday (normal time).
I then called back Jet Blue and changed our flights (for Monday) to the city in FL closest to WDW which was Ft. Myers. So I again changed the car rental reservations and our night stay (chose the All Star Movies resort at WDW) as we have AP's and received a rate of $55.00 for the night.
Our flight out of Syracuse left on time at 6:20 am and landed at JFK airport right on time. Our conection left just 45 minutes and we landed in Ft. Myers at 10:40 am. The flight into Ft. Myers was very turbulant with many airpockets. On final aproach we hit one that dropped the plane about 4 thousand feet. We had one passanger that went into a panic attack. The pilot stated that the crosswinds (from remains of hurricane) were gusting at 30+ MPH. We then collected our luggage and picked up the rental car without a hitch and headed off on our 200 mile trek to WDW.All this time we never received a call from DCL. I made a call to DCL when we landed in Ft. Myers to check the status of our departure. We were then told that the Magic was still sailing at the scheduled time from Port Canaveral. We reserved the rental car for the week as the rate was $103 for the week and planned to just park it at Port Canaveral rather than turn it in.
Along our drive we saw much of the destruction that was caused by Hurricane Charley. Roofs blown off buildings, billboard signs snapped like toothpicks. In addition to the destruction we also saw additional fludding from hurricane Frances.
We arrived at WDW's All Star Movies resort at about 3 pm and checked in without a hitch. We inquired at check in about what was operational. We were told that MK and EPCOT was open but MGM, AK, and DTD were all closed. We quickly settled in and discussed what to do next. We chose to go to MK and have dinner at Cinderella's Castle. The park was empty and we walked right on every ride. We made PS reservations for 6:15 and were seated right on time. The lighting inside the castle was dim as the windows were still boarded up from preparations for the hurricane. At 6:23 I received a call from a DCL CM informing me that they had a hotel room at Port Orleans for us and that they had arranged transportation tomorrow morning to take us to Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale. I told the CM thank you for their kind jesture but that they were a bit late with the information as we had already flown 1300 miles, drove another 200 with a rental car we had reserved for the week, and made a reservation prior to leaving Syracuse NY at the All Star Movies resort, and had already checked in to the room. I asked if there was anything that they could do since we already paid for the room at All Star. My response was that I could send an email to guest relations at DCL and they would "see what they could do". I am still waiting to see what they will do about all of our additional expenses.
Also had to change our plans for our stay that was to follow our cruise due to the change in the sailing dates. DVC was very accomidating and placed our points back into our account without penalty.
The CM at DCL I spoke to gave us some choices as to what resort we could leave from (All Star Movies was not one that the DCL buses were picking up guests). We chose the Boardwalk resort as that was where we were staying upon our return (Saturday night) from the cruise before we returned home on Sunday.
We had a nice night at MK and ended it with the Wishes fireworks before returning to our room.
Tuesday morning would provide new challanges for our DCL adventure....
We had planned for our first Disney cruise for almost a year. Our original plan was for a 4 day cruise on the Wonder to Nausau, Castaway Cay, and the day at sea then return to WDW for 3 days with other members of our family and some pin trading at the annual 3 day Disney Pin Trading event at EPCOT. Lets just say that our plans changed.....
This adventure really starts 2 days prior to scheduled sailing (Friday) when it becomes apparent that we are called by our airline (Jet Blue) that our flight from Syracuse to Orlando won't be happening due to Hurricane Frances. At the time it looked like we might be able to get into Tampa so I changed our flights (at no charge by airline) to Tampa and changed our Car Rental and 1st night stay reservation (was to use DVC points and stay at Old Key West). On Saturday night we received another call from the airline to inform us that Tampa Int'l would also be closing. At this juncture I called DCL to find out the status of our scheduled sailing on the Wonder. We were told that it would be cancelled and that we could sail on the Magic from Port Canaveral on Tuesday (normal time).
I then called back Jet Blue and changed our flights (for Monday) to the city in FL closest to WDW which was Ft. Myers. So I again changed the car rental reservations and our night stay (chose the All Star Movies resort at WDW) as we have AP's and received a rate of $55.00 for the night.
Our flight out of Syracuse left on time at 6:20 am and landed at JFK airport right on time. Our conection left just 45 minutes and we landed in Ft. Myers at 10:40 am. The flight into Ft. Myers was very turbulant with many airpockets. On final aproach we hit one that dropped the plane about 4 thousand feet. We had one passanger that went into a panic attack. The pilot stated that the crosswinds (from remains of hurricane) were gusting at 30+ MPH. We then collected our luggage and picked up the rental car without a hitch and headed off on our 200 mile trek to WDW.All this time we never received a call from DCL. I made a call to DCL when we landed in Ft. Myers to check the status of our departure. We were then told that the Magic was still sailing at the scheduled time from Port Canaveral. We reserved the rental car for the week as the rate was $103 for the week and planned to just park it at Port Canaveral rather than turn it in.
Along our drive we saw much of the destruction that was caused by Hurricane Charley. Roofs blown off buildings, billboard signs snapped like toothpicks. In addition to the destruction we also saw additional fludding from hurricane Frances.
We arrived at WDW's All Star Movies resort at about 3 pm and checked in without a hitch. We inquired at check in about what was operational. We were told that MK and EPCOT was open but MGM, AK, and DTD were all closed. We quickly settled in and discussed what to do next. We chose to go to MK and have dinner at Cinderella's Castle. The park was empty and we walked right on every ride. We made PS reservations for 6:15 and were seated right on time. The lighting inside the castle was dim as the windows were still boarded up from preparations for the hurricane. At 6:23 I received a call from a DCL CM informing me that they had a hotel room at Port Orleans for us and that they had arranged transportation tomorrow morning to take us to Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale. I told the CM thank you for their kind jesture but that they were a bit late with the information as we had already flown 1300 miles, drove another 200 with a rental car we had reserved for the week, and made a reservation prior to leaving Syracuse NY at the All Star Movies resort, and had already checked in to the room. I asked if there was anything that they could do since we already paid for the room at All Star. My response was that I could send an email to guest relations at DCL and they would "see what they could do". I am still waiting to see what they will do about all of our additional expenses.
Also had to change our plans for our stay that was to follow our cruise due to the change in the sailing dates. DVC was very accomidating and placed our points back into our account without penalty.
The CM at DCL I spoke to gave us some choices as to what resort we could leave from (All Star Movies was not one that the DCL buses were picking up guests). We chose the Boardwalk resort as that was where we were staying upon our return (Saturday night) from the cruise before we returned home on Sunday.
We had a nice night at MK and ended it with the Wishes fireworks before returning to our room.
Tuesday morning would provide new challanges for our DCL adventure....
