A DREAM come true cruise - Concierge and a Proposal! COMPLETED 2/13

[FSU Girl]

We went back to our room and I took a couple pictures outside on our balcony. We had a nice view overlooking the courtyard. I think I was the only person outside.



Two people walked out on that deck and went right back inside. It was really cold at this point.



Off in the distance you could see the pool. I was sad we didn't get to use it, because it looked really nice. It's a good reason to go back



One more close up of the pool. The day before I had seen lifeguards by the pool, but no one was in the water. At least they had warm clothes on, I felt bad they had to be there all day.

For breakfast the next day we decided not to have Roaring Forks. We wanted to get on the road early and would just eat on the ship.

Up next, day one on the Disney Dream ​

 

[FSU Girl]

Definitely a rough start! Congratulations on your engagement and great pictures too . I heard it had been freezing this week

It was a rough start to the vacation, but it got a lot better Thank you! It was absolutely freezing the entire trip. A cold front had gone through and it was Florida's one week of cold weather. Not the best time for it since I was sick, but it was a lot nicer than sweating in the parks like normal.

 

[AnnaS]

Too cold for me and I feel for you being sick..........stinks.

 

[weluvdisney5]

Congrats - sorry you were sick!

 

[FSU Girl]

Too cold for me and I feel for you being sick..........stinks.

It was freezing, not what you'd expect with a tropical cruise vacation. I agree, being sick is no fun.

Congrats - sorry you were sick!

Thank you

 

[TestingH2O]

Your parks trip still sounds fun. I'm getting more and more curious about checking them out but more for the resorts and food than the parks themselves.

 

[sleepydog25]

Sorry to hear of your troubles on the trip. Nothing degrades fun quite so quickly as a severe cold or other illness. . .and the cold weather doesn't help that, either. Your quick views of RF pretty much echo what most others are reporting--the food quality is mediocre as is the service. We used to love RF's Mickey waffles as they were made to order right in front of you, and you could choose various toppings. Now, they're mass produced (and taste like it to us) with gloppy sauce. I don't like the idea of baskets as the main option, either. We, too, had long wait times for our food and the place wasn't even crowded. Hard to imagine that they took a decent QS and made it worse. . .but they did. Anyway, sorry for the digression. Following along!

 

[pepperandchips]

Saying hello and subscribing I didn't realize you'd gotten so far on the cruise report, and I'm looking forward to catching up and reading about the proposal!

 

[FSU Girl]

Your parks trip still sounds fun. I'm getting more and more curious about checking them out but more for the resorts and food than the parks themselves.

Lol it was fun

Sorry to hear of your troubles on the trip. Nothing degrades fun quite so quickly as a severe cold or other illness. . .and the cold weather doesn't help that, either. Your quick views of RF pretty much echo what most others are reporting--the food quality is mediocre as is the service. We used to love RF's Mickey waffles as they were made to order right in front of you, and you could choose various toppings. Now, they're mass produced (and taste like it to us) with gloppy sauce. I don't like the idea of baskets as the main option, either. We, too, had long wait times for our food and the place wasn't even crowded. Hard to imagine that they took a decent QS and made it worse. . .but they did. Anyway, sorry for the digression. Following along!

Thanks for following along. I definitely wish I hadn't been sick for this trip, but even with being sick it was one of the best vacations I've ever had. It was terrible timing on Florida's part to decide to finally be cold. As soon as my trip was over it was starting to warm up again. I had read about the bad reviews of Roaring Forks, but it was convenient when staying at the hotel to eat there. When I stay there again I'll try the other options the hotel has to offer. It's strange they changed something that sounds good to something mediocre at best.

 

[FSU Girl]

Saying hello and subscribing I didn't realize you'd gotten so far on the cruise report, and I'm looking forward to catching up and reading about the proposal!

I've been trying to update both my dining report and this one at the same time since they had the Disney trip overlapping. Now it's on to the fun cruise part of my trip

 

[sleepydog25]

Thanks for following along. I had read about the bad reviews of Roaring Forks, but it was convenient when staying at the hotel to eat there. When I stay there again I'll try the other options the hotel has to offer. It's strange they changed something that sounds good to something mediocre at best.

It is strange the quality at RF dropped so precipitously. We used to make a special trip over to WL any time we stayed at other resorts just for the made-to-order Mickey waffles. After our last stop at RF, that romance is gone. I also meant to add that we enjoy Morimoto Asia and have found a dish worth making the effort to dine there--the buri bop served table side. Yellowtail (or hamachi) is quick seared on the side of a smoking hot bowl. As it cooks, the server mixes in an egg yolk into steaming rice that contains a variety of spices and vegetables which gives the whole mixture a creamy feel (and also serves to cook the yolk). Immediately after folding in the yolk, the server places the hamachi on top of the rice, and you have an amazingly fragrant, unctuous dish. It's only available at dinner. Looking forward to hearing about the cruise!

 

[Plucker001]

Enjoying your trip report. Sorry to hear you were sick. Disney can chew you up and spit you out on a good day, let alone when you are sick!

 

[FSU Girl]

It is strange the quality at RF dropped so precipitously. We used to make a special trip over to WL any time we stayed at other resorts just for the made-to-order Mickey waffles. After our last stop at RF, that romance is gone. I also meant to add that we enjoy Morimoto Asia and have found a dish worth making the effort to dine there--the buri bop served table side. Yellowtail (or hamachi) is quick seared on the side of a smoking hot bowl. As it cooks, the server mixes in an egg yolk into steaming rice that contains a variety of spices and vegetables which gives the whole mixture a creamy feel (and also serves to cook the yolk). Immediately after folding in the yolk, the server places the hamachi on top of the rice, and you have an amazingly fragrant, unctuous dish. It's only available at dinner. Looking forward to hearing about the cruise!

Your meal at Morimoto sounds good. We'll probably go back one day, but it's not high on our list at the moment.

Enjoying your trip report. Sorry to hear you were sick. Disney can chew you up and spit you out on a good day, let alone when you are sick!

Thanks for joining Disney is a rough place to be when sick. I don't normally walk 20 mile days so it was a little rough, but Disney is my happy place so I'd rather have Disney while sick instead of no Disney at all

 

[FSU Girl]

Cruise Time! 12/11/17

First, Happy New Year everyone! I had a great new years at home with the fiance and we live streamed the Magic Kingdom fireworks at midnight I hope everyone had a great New Years!

It was finally time for our cruise. This would be my first four day cruise and I was a little worried it would feel really short. When I woke up this morning I actually felt better. I wasn't coughing and thought the cold was finally over (big mistake to follow) Since we were sailing Concierge we didn't have a port arrival time. I wanted to get there as early as possible to enjoy the most out of the cruise. We woke up around 8am and were on the road by 9:30am (I'm a girl I take a while to get ready)

The drive to the port was pretty simple. We got on some highway (I wasn't the one driving) and headed east until we hit the ocean. While we were in the city of Orlando the traffic was a bit heavy due to rush hour, but once we were outside the city limits there were almost no cars on the road.



Big bridge that would take us towards Port Canaveral. Once we got into the port area it was pretty simple to figure out where to go. There were signs everywhere saying which ship was in which terminal.



There's the Disney Dream in the background. I didn't even notice the lawn man until I was looking back through these pictures.

This was our first time paying to park for a cruise. I live near Port Everglades and somewhat close to the Miami port, so normally I just have family drop me off. Or I'm in a foreign location without a car and take a taxi to the port. Since neither of those options were viable for this cruise we had to park. Parking is expensive! It cost over $80 for us to park for our four night cruise. We didn't look ahead of time at the cost and were both pretty shocked when they said the total. Luckily they took credit card because we didn't have that much cash on us.

As we were pulling into the garage the strangest thing happened. The windshield cracked. We weren't even moving when it happened. I heard like a popping sound and noticed a long line forming along the window that looked like a snake. I've never experienced this before and it was annoying since we were about to leave our car here for days. We called some company to arrange for them to come and fix it when we got back on Friday. I was a little worried we'd come back to the entire window shattered, but there wasn't really anything we could do since we had to get on a boat.

By the time we finished with the phone call and everything it was around 11am. Now here is where I do something really stupid. Remember how I said I was feeling all better? Well I wasn't. But I felt great, so I decided to leave all my medicine in the car except for a bag of cough drops. This would come to bite me in the butt later on.

Check-in was really simple. Concierge has their own private area away from the masses. I knew they ask you if you are sick and can potentially quarantine you or prevent you from getting on the ship. So we said we were both healthy, which wasn't completely a lie since I was feeling better at that moment.

After getting our cards and both getting lanyards (yay for being Silver now!) they whisked us past the huge line and right to take a picture then onto the ship. Once on the ship I was about to start taking pictures of the lobby when another lady came up to us and escorted us up to concierge. They told us to go to the lounge to check in. We went in, but there was a huge line of people so we decided to go to our room for a bit. Another cool part of being in concierge, our rooms were ready at 11am.

OMG this room. This room has completely spoiled me. I felt like the first class passengers on the Titanic. Before this cruise I had sailed one time in a balcony room. Every other time I was either in a window or interior cabin. This time we were in a one-bedroom suite.



They had a welcome basket of fruit waiting for us. I put this in the fridge and completely forgot about it so we never ate it. I could have really used the vitamin c from that orange.



They had a card waiting for us that we were supposed to bring to the lounge.

But first I needed to take some pictures of this room. It was huge! There was this long hallway with a million doors. I've never seen so many doors in a cabin before.



This is a view of our living room. The couch can fold out into a bed. It was really soft. It faced a huge TV and the mini fridge was located here. They asked me before the cruise what I'd like in it and I changed a few of the standard sodas to gingerale and orange soda. That gingerale was a life saver. When I originally told them I said it in case we got seasick, since this cabin is all the way forward. I've never been seasick before, but wanted to be safe. It came in handy with how sick I got though.



Here's our bedroom. The walls that go around it open and close. We had them closed at night to block out the light in the morning and then had them opened for the day to make the room feel bigger. This bed was super comfy and I had requested some special pillows from the pillow menu. We had these forever cold pillows, that were really nice.



Here's the master bathroom. Which became my bathroom because there were TWO bathrooms in this room. The other bathroom is by the front door and came with a shower, toilet and sink. So that was his bathroom.

This bathroom was pretty awesome and I'm really sad I never used that giant tub. There was also a TV in the mirror.



Here's our dining table. I think this room you're allowed to order the MDR food here, but we never did. We did eat breakfast here a few times.



And here was our giant balcony. It stretched from the dining table all the way to the living room. We had a port side cabin (I think? We were on the right side of the ship) The first Disney cruise we had a cabin on the other side so I thought we'd switch it up this time.



We had a view of the port from our room. We watched as they loaded luggage onto the ship. At one point a bag fell off the little trolley thing and no one seemed to notice for a while. Finally someone went back to get it and threw it on top of other bags on the cart. Be sure to not pack breakable things in your bags, they are not gentle with them. The bags on the bottom of the cart looked pretty smooshed too.

After soaking in our awesome cabin we decided to head to the concierge lounge. Our room was directly across the hall from the lounge, where a side door was located. It was really convenient to pop in and out throughout the cruise.









​

 

[sleepydog25]

Love cruising with Disney, though it has gotten to be supremely expensive so we haven't been in a couple of years. Have never done the concierge level, always a room with a balcony, however. Those pictures make me really want to do concierge, though. As for the correct side of the ship, if you were on the right side of the ship as you faced forward (which it appears you did), then it's the starboard side--and that's always our choice.

 

[FSU Girl]

Love cruising with Disney, though it has gotten to be supremely expensive so we haven't been in a couple of years. Have never done the concierge level, always a room with a balcony, however. Those pictures make me really want to do concierge, though. As for the correct side of the ship, if you were on the right side of the ship as you faced forward (which it appears you did), then it's the starboard side--and that's always our choice.

I'm directionally challenged I never would have thought I'd splurge for concierge, but it was really amazing. If you're worried about the cost, but want to try it, look into the three or four day sailings. Mine was expensive, but not outrageously expensive. I am considering another concierge cruise for my honeymoon, but it'll probably be the last time we do it for a long time.

 

[sleepydog25]

I'm directionally challenged I never would have thought I'd splurge for concierge, but it was really amazing. If you're worried about the cost, but want to try it, look into the three or four day sailings. Mine was expensive, but not outrageously expensive. I am considering another concierge cruise for my honeymoon, but it'll probably be the last time we do it for a long time.

So is my wife! Well, for our 5th anniversary this summer, we're heading to Disney Land and staying at the GCV, so the cruise will have to wait. Maybe we can save enough for our 10th! It does look amazing. . .

 

[TestingH2O]

Those 1 bedroom suites really are the best. I'm worried about your cold!

 

[FSU Girl]

Those 1 bedroom suites really are the best. I'm worried about your cold!

The room was really so amazing. I'm like 98% sure we are going to sail in one for our honeymoon part 1 that I'm planning lol. And this cold was absolutely horrible. It lasted almost a month. I'm finally better now.

 

[Sandbtwmytoes]

I've been following along and I'm anxiously waiting to hear about the proposal!!!