A Disney Fantasy comes true! Inaugural Eastern sailing TR--Now updated 5/10/12- Remy

[Quicklabs]

Page 1 - Introductions
Page 1 - Our travel day finally arrives
Page 2 - We're aboard!
Page 2 - Sail away
Page 3 - First night and Day Two at Sea
Page 5 - Four and a half hours in Food Heaven- Remy

Hi everyone!

Mr. Quicklabs and I are back for a whole week now from the first Eastern sailing of the Disney Fantasy from 21-28 April. I've never written a TR before, so I'll let some of my pics do the talking for me.

The cast of characters is short:
Me - 54 y.o. retired AF officer, now living the good life in retirement
Mr. Quicklabs -- 60 y.o. hubby, still working for the AF, mostly so that we can have more $$ for more cruises. We've been married for 32 years. I'd like to think that our love for Disney and each other keeps us young at heart.

We had to leave our two kids with their own nanny at home. Their names are Augusta and Grace, and for some crazy reason, Disney probably would refused them boarding privileges if we tried to bring them along.

Me with Kid #2, Grace. (Do ya like my Mickey Santa hat? It lights up, too!)

Both my kids.

Anyway, I promised a lot of pics, so let me put up one that will hopefully grab your interest as I invite you to travel along with us.

She's beautiful, isn't she?

Now before I get too much further along, I have to tell you that Mr. Quicklabs and I booked this cruise before the Fantasy's keel was laid. We watched the Meyerwerft website obsessively for 14 months--I got teary when she sailed out in Papenburg, Germany for the first time. We listened to the Podcast team describe the Christening and we looked at every single picture that Corey posted on the Podcast blog. Every Saturday at 5 since the Maiden Voyage, we watched on the webcam to see the Fantasy sail out of Port Canaveral. So I had lots of time to prepare for the cruise. In order to while away the months and days, I made my own autograph album, dreaming of the moments that my Disney character friends would sign it for me. Instead of regular paper pages, I did individual tags and configured the album to include places where I could paste pictures of them and me hanging out together.

Here's what I came up with:

Tags for signing

Inside opens for the pictures

Back of the ship for the back of the album. I managed to make Dumbo in 3-D.

And there's even a place to hold our Cruisepass/room key.

So, I'm kind of an artsy-fartsy type, though at my age, more of the fartsy sometimes than the artsy.

Signing off for now. Got to get a bunch of pictures loaded up for ya! I've also got to figure out a way to make these pics smaller. Thanks for reading and looking this far with me. See you real soon.

 

[mamaprincess]

Your autograph book is truly a work of art! The characters and CM's must have went crazy for it! I am excited to hear about your Fantasy cruise trip! We will be enjoying her in June. Can't wait!

 

[Quicklabs]

Someone told me I should make and sell them. Um, no-- Disney's lawyers would be bigger and scarier than any Disney villlian that I can think of. LOL

Your autograph book is truly a work of art! The characters and CM's must have went crazy for it!

 

[Toria]

Absolutely love the book. Can't wait to hear more.

 

[jedijill]

Your kids are beautiful! I can't wait to hear all about your cruise as I'm on the Fantasy 10/6 Eastern!

Love the autograph book too...so creative!

Jill in CO

 

[luvslikepi]

Sweet! I've been waiting (impatiently) for Eastern Fantasy TR's and I cannot wait for more!!

 

[MagicMe]

Can't wait to read all about it!! I'm set for an eastern Fantasy cruise in September (and yes booked it back in Feb 2011 before it was bookable on line and had to call in!!!). Very excited to hear how it went.

 

[onejellyshelly]

Can't wait to hear more about your trip. I thought my 8 month wait was long!

 

[LuvEeyore]

Arent your 'kids' service animals? Mom is trying to make the puggle a service animal. Cant wait to hear more!

 

[rmcildw2m]

I was on this same cruise with you and it was awesome .

 

[jennyjinx3]

Hi! I am here too! I am following along closely as I am TRYING SUPER DUPER HARD to talk my cruise doubting husband into a 2013 fantasy cruise! Your dogs are adorable!

 

[bobbi565]

I've got over a year of breathless anticipation before we board the Fantasy! Been looking forward since you guys set sail for you and your shipmates to return and report. Can't wait to read about your adventures!

 

[Quicklabs]

Finally, it was time to get on the plane and go!! We were headed to Disney World for three days before the cruise, staying at the Boardwalk, our Disney "home".

We decided to upgrade to business class on Air Tran. Two hours and two Irish coffees later, we were in Orlando and feeling GREAT! We were expecially lucky to be able to walk right onboard the Magical Express bus, which headed out within a few minutes to the BW. The bus driver proudly annoucned that we were on a brand new bus that had just been put on the road that day! He also said that Disney busses typically have about 6 MILLION miles on them. That seemed hard for me to believe! Do you think he was exaggerating a little bit? Anyway, it was a very smooth ride.

We were at the Boardwalk in less than an hour after our plane landed.

Now, this was really only the bump in the road. Two months ago, I tore my meniscus, my medial collateral ligament, and sustained a bone bruise when I had an accident while running Grace in an agility trial. My knee is pretty messed up, and needing surgery, for which I have to wait. So I had called several weeks in advance to request a room that was near the elevators and told them why. No such luck. They put us in one of the FARTHEST rooms in the Crest of the Wave building (1007). They had no place to move me. They said I should have asked for an accessible room when I made the reservation (back in August, 2011!). I was surprised by such a cold response from TWO different BWV people, but decided not to let it bug me. We had planned on getting an ECV if I couldn't walk, so that's what we had to do. Well, I wasn't injured then! Anyway, we got a scooter from Apple.

I gotta say, I was surprised to have been met at the door by a lovely young woman (sorry, can't remember her name) who gave us our room keys and our folder with the park maps and all. Very friendly and we didn't stand in any lines at the reception desk.


Our room wasn't ready, so we went shopping. We decided to rent a car for two days. We picked it up right at the Dolphin hotel for $32 a day. Not bad, and it helped me get to the parks much more easily than if I had to use busses. But truth be told, we wanted to get off site to buy some adult beverages for the cruise! And we always make all our meals in our room, so usually we get pre-made stuff from Whole Foods. There is a very nice adult beverage store right down the road from the Whole Foods store on Sand Lake Road. For those of you on the fence about a Disney cruise, they sure are nice about letting you bring all the liquid refreshment you can stuff in a carry on suitcase on board! Our choice was Limoncello and a bottle of Rum to mix with the coke at the beverage stations on Deck 11. They were gone by the end of the trip. We also brought on some Sangria and a few bottles of wine. We carried the wine in the stateroom glasses down to dinner on some nights. Our wonderful assistant server, Injanda, who calls himself "Ninja" simply poured the wine into the wine glasses on the table. Nice.

Anyway, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. The Flower and Garden festival was going on. I really wanted to see that, since we usually go down to Disney in December, when there are less flowers. The parks are beautiful in the Springtime! I was blown by the imagination and skillfulness of the Disney landscaping and floral team in creating such lovely displays.

They had a butterfly house that was really neat.

Since I had the scooter, we could hit the highlights in all the parks. I was so happy to see the Main Street Electrical Parade again!

I thought this guy at AK was adorable.

"Who you lookin' at, lady?"

Now, I won't go into all the details of the days in the parks. You're here for the cruise part, right? But suffice it to say, we had a great time getting into cruise mode at the parks and at the BW.

The BIG DAY finally arrived on 21 April! We had purchased transfers from the BW to the Port. They told us to have our regular (not our carryons) bags ready for pick up between 0800 and 0900. We barely used them anyway. At 0755, we got a call from bell services, asking us if we were ready for our bags to be picked up to be tranported to the ship. Yep, sure enough. They arrived at 0800 on the dot and we were free to hang at the parks in the morning. We scootered right over to the DHS and had TWO rides on Toy Story and one on the new Star Tours before going back to the BW for a pick up in the Bellevue Lounge at 1200.

The Disney tranfers couldn't have been easier. We got to the port at about 1:30 p.m. Now, if you are doing Disney transfers from the resorts, I advise you to be sure you have as many advance ressies made as possible because that's kind of a late start.

What a thrill it was to see the Fantasy sitting in port, waiting for us. She looked truly majestic. I got teary again just looking at her "in person" for the first time. Truly the most beautiful ship I've ever seen. Mr. Quicklabs just kept saying "Wow!" quietly over and over again.

It was very quick and easy at the port. We got into line and went right up to an open counter. Processing was very, very fast and within just a few minutes, we had our ship passes/keys. We short walk down the ramp, a quick boarding picture and we were on the ship. Couldn't have taken more than 15 minutes from the time we got off the bus.

Thanks for reading along.
Next up: We're on the ship!

 

[nunzia]

Enjoying and following along

 

[Dallas_Lady]

With an autograph book like that this is bound to be a great TR!

 

[Quicklabs]

We stepped through the door into the atrium. I was so awestruck, I don't even think I was conscious of our family being announced. It is so breaktakingly, jaw-droppingly gorgeous that I'll just let the pictures do the talking for me here. (These were actually taken early on a port day, so that I could get the best possible images).

The Mademoiselle herself!

See what I mean?

Mr. Quicklabs reminded me that we had a ROOM to get to, as well as lunch, so he promised me we'd come back later.

The central elevators were pretty crowded, but they weren't too bad during the rest of the cruise. If you can, though, you're better off using the aft or the forward elevators. We sailed with 900 fewer people than capacity, so I'd imagine things could get pretty jammed up when the Fantasy sails with her max capacity guests.

We had no trouble at all finding our deck 10 stateroom. Now, I'm gonna say right here that next time, we're doing a Deck 9. There is a lot of traffic on Deck 11 and we heard a fair amount of noise. Not enough to disturb us significantly or to keep us awake at night (Pirate Night excepted), but if you're a light sleeper, try to avoid Deck 10.

I love presents, so I was happy to find this nice backpack sitting on the bed. This is the Silver Castaway gift.

I was surprised at how roomy the stateroom was. We moved about with great ease. See the gallon of water on the counter? That had been placed by Special Services for my husband to use with his CPAP. I am always thrilled when there is good follow through, and Disney came through with flying colors for us. On that counter, I also found a card announcing the wine package that my sister, BIL and mom bought us as a Christmas present. I guess they didn't want us to have to drink sea water if the ship ran out of iced tea! Thanks, family!

The bathrooms on Disney ships are great. And oh, those H20 products! I hoarded those like a squirrel packing away nuts for the winter (Quicklabs hangs her head in shame). They are verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry nice. I especially liked the body butter. You won't need to pack shampoo, conditioner or body butter for your cruise, but they don't provide shower gel (the soap is excellent, though).

I found the bed to be very comfy. Only my good conscience prevents me from trying to "borrow" that lovely red pillow for use at home. It has a "Daytime" side, as you see here and a nighttime side, which I'll show ya later. Again, Disney does the details so well.

The luggage was already on the ship when we arrived in our stateroom. We decided to forego unpacking for a bit. While I snapped pics, Mr. Quicklabs went up to the Senses spa to book a length of sail pass for me in the Rainforest. He got back pronto and were headed up to Cabanas for lunch. And WHAT a lunch! Now, I should have eaten lightly, because our dinner was at 6 p.m. But once I saw that buffet, my common sense went out the porthole! Everything looked delicious, but for me, the standouts were the Frenched lamb chops, a Pork and glass noodles dish, and of course, the shrimp. I'm sorry that I don't have pics of the food. One can't handle a camera when one is stuffing food into one's face. (Hangs head in shame again). But here are some pics of Cabanas for ya. We always ate out on the open deck. Nice. I've gotta say, the food was really, really good on this ship. Much, MUCH better than I remember eating on the Magic in 2005.

This made me laugh.

One of the fabulous mosaics in Cabanas.
The mosaics throughout the ships are gorgeous. I'll have lots of those to show ya, if you hang in a bit.

Dining al fresco! What a treat! (This pic taken in St. Maartan)

Thanks for looking. See you real soon.
Next up: The Sail away!

 

[McNabrat]

subbing...so excited to read more!

 

[kmaria]

Soo excited to hear more about your trip!! I cannot wait to sail on this baby for our honeymoon

 

[kmaria]

Oh! and I forgot to mention that i LOVE your autograph book. I really need to try and make my own version like yours... it really is wonderful! I love scrap booking and playing with paper, but I've never attempted anything that ambitious! Amazing job

 

[LLOC33]

Subbing