Are we only DREAMing of our vacation cruise???

nkochrn

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jun 25, 2012
I just got off the phone with Rachel at Disney cruise lines after getting an error message on the website!!! Our family cruise for January 13, 2013 is officially BOOKED! I might be completely crazy, but I was sooooo freaking excited when I called that I almost cried! lol. :goodvibes

I might be a little early with my PTR, but I'm just SOOOO excited! :woohoo:

Here's our cast of characters:
High School Sweethearts, approaching the 7 year itch this summer: :love:
DH-29 y/o, Auto Detail Specialist (aka Carwash boy). Also does paintless dent repiar on the side.
Me-28 y/o, Full time IT nurse. I also take ambulance call on the side.
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The little Monsters:
Marissa- Age 4, will be 5 in November, Loves technology (especially Aunt Hannah's IPhone), swimming, & being a princess.
Ryan- Age 3 as of June 22nd, Fearless daredevil, Loves Mickey Mouse, trucks, tractors, and being a Superhero.
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Hurry up and Wait!
Styling in my Mickey Gear!
Prepping with Pirate Gear
Racking up some Onboard Credit
The Unknown
Kid's Club and HAPPY news!
Prepping for the LONG road trip
Passports and Printables
Poop Quarters!
Pirates and Mice
Gearing up for the long roadtrip!
Life throwing some curves:worried:
Looking to reschedule
REBOOKED!!! :cool1:
 
I guess I shoulda given our names! I'm Nichole and DH is Bob.

Now that I got DH convinced that this is gonna be the best vacation EVER, he's already talking about our next cruise! lol. :yay: We're thinking maybe a 10 year anniversary Alaskan cruise in 2015 ;)
 
IS it January yet?????? J/K, as much as I want it to be here, I also don't want all my afternoons by the pool to be ending anytime soon! :cool1:

I've scheduled a call from Mickey Mouse to the kiddos for the day before we leave, with a reminder to be emailed to me of course or else I'd forget. I've also got all of our forms for Passports filled out, but it's so tempting to not spend the money on them since we'll likely not need them. It's too scary to think of what could happen if we don't get them though, so I'm sure next month I'll get that all taken care of.

I wanna do SO much planning right now, but there's not much I can do, other than plan our driving route. DH is google earthing every possible way to get there. We plan to head south first so we don't end up in a blizzard, we'll be watching the weather VERY closely in case we need to head out a couple days early to avoid bad weather. I'm not gonna miss my cruise for anything unless it's a life or death situation!!! lol :rotfl2:

The tentative route right now is, head from way up here in the northeast corner of Kansas towards Springfield, MO on Jan 10th, go a little bit out of our way to hit Leslie, AK and visit my Great Aunt (who I only see every few years and will adore seeing the kiddos). Either stay there the first night (save us a night of paying for a hotel) or drive a couple more hours in the evening. DH thinks he wants to take the route through Pensacola, Fl. We plan to make the drive 3 days long so we have plenty of time to stop and let the kids run as needed.

I also mentioned to DH that we could take my Grandparents, drop them off in Leslie, AK (my Great Aunt is my Grandfathers only sibling) and then pick them up on the way home. I have not mentioned this to my grandparents yet and I'm not sure if they'd take us up on it. We have plenty of time to think about it before we ask them, which I'm sure we'll end up doing.
 
I am with you on the excitement factor!:cool1:

I can't wait until March but also don't want to wish my summer away. PTRs (and hopefully TRs) like yours will help me to get through.

You have a beautiful family-what a special vacation!
 


Looking forward to hearing more! How about Palo ressies, excursions, pirate costumes, etc.? We are taking our first DCL in Oct. 2013 (Fantasy) and are also considering a 10 yr anniversary DCL in 2015 to guess where? Alaska! Not sure on the date yet (anniversary is actually Feb., so obviously later) and we may even consider a vow renewal. How about you? I met a lovely family in our condo pool yesterday that took a family DCL to Alaska last summer. It was great to talk to her. Very exciting! :cool1:
 
Pooksma- I've been checking the trip reviews SEVERAL times a day just to see all the pictures. I feel like I already know the entire ship thanks to all the pics.

We3travellers-Our anniversary is July 23, so we'll be going to Alaska sometime around then, we probably won't be taking the kids on it, so it's possible we'd try out another cruise line. It's also possible that we'll be so blown away by DCL that we won't wanna get on any other boat :)

My baby turned 3 last month and I finally got around to sending in for his birth certificate. Yes 3 years, NOT 3 months. I have a little bit of a procrastinating habit when it comes to paper work. I will be making absolutely sure it's all done for the cruise though, I'm too excited about it not to.

We aren't able to actually do any of the online check in and planning until October, but my DH would like to do Palo for dinner one night and I want to do a dolphin encounter along with the kids. Other than that we plan to hang out on the beach at castaway cay, enjoy the shows, ride the aquaduck, and spend lots of time poolside.
 
I'm with you on wishing I could start planning now, but with being a first time cruiser as well, we can't book anything until October. We've decided to get passports, just in case, too. Luckily we already have our daughters birth certificate, because we fly a lot. Just realized today I don't have mine! Don't go too crazy between now and October!!
 


Missy-I'm HORRIBLY unorganized! I know I saw my birth certificate not that long ago, but I can't find it! Ok, so I haven't really looked very hard for it either. :confused3

My children are soooo spoiled rotten!!! They are the ONLY grandchildren on my side of the family. That means every year their 3 aunts each feel the need to get them b-day and xmas gifts, no big deal, BUT then MY 3 aunts and 1 uncle each get them gifts. Even a couple of my cousins get them gifts. Then there is the 2 sets of grandparents AND 2 sets of great grandparents in the gift giving chaos!!! :upsidedow. No wonder I can't see the floor in the toy room ever!!!

This Christmas I plan to let all my family know that these kids have more toys than they know what to do with. Actually I think I've tried to tell them that before! :scratchin I am going to let them know that any kind of activity they can do in the car would be greatly appreciated (example: Color Wonder Books, they must be one of the greatest inventions ever), as well as several new movies they haven't seen, and some DS games. I've started adding things to my Amazon wishlist, including pirate costumes!

This pic is from DS's 3rd b-day in June. He had a Mickey Mouse themed party and he got lots of Mickey Mouse themed gifts! He now has a Mickey hat, sunglasses, personalized beach towel, swimming trunks, and 2 pairs of flip flops. He's ready to hit the DCL pools! Well almost, theres a lot of potty training work that needs to go on first!
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Got my $50 gift card from Disney Visa today! I didn't realize it'd come as a gift card, I thought I wouldn't get it until we got on the ship and it was added as onboard credit. I can actually use it at disneystore.com now if I want to!
 
I somehow missed your opening post...your little ones are adorable!! We're also in potty training mode though our DD isn't quite yet 2. I'm really hoping she'll be trained by January. I love the pic of your son; you can never have too much Mickey gear!
 
Got Ryan's pirate costume ordered today! I found one on amazon for $8.00. (actually it was less than that last week.) Couldn't find Marissa one for under $20, might have to wait until the after halloween sales for her or the fall garage sales ;)

I was just browsing pinterest and found some storage containers I wanted for 13.95, so of course if I spent a little more I'd qualify for FREE shipping. Since I had a $33.00 gift card balance on there I decided to throw in the pirate costume and a color wonder book with case that I was planning to get for the trip. The colorwonder part will actually be part of his X-Mas gift ;) I don't know if I've ever bought an X-Mas gift so early.

Now I'm gonna have to get work on building that amazon gift card balance back up! I was planning to use it a lot for x-mas gifts this year and some more cruise necessities.
 
Got my planning brochure in the mail from Disney Cruise Line today :) It was soooo exciting, even though it didn't really tell me anything new. I also check out the rewards on my Disney Visa and since I paid off the balance from booking the cruise, I now have $24.??. Yay, add that to my $50 gift card I got for signing up for the visa plus $50 on board credit for using my Visa to book and I've got a pretty good little start to paying for an excursion.

Speaking of Excursions-I'm still torn between the Atlantis day or the Dolphin encounter.

DH and I are celebrating 7 wonderful years of marriage tonight, off to eat at my favorite Mexican restaurant with AWESOME Margaritas then over to the in laws to pick up the kiddos and do a little wine sampling. (Not nearly as fancy as it sounds, imagine a sorta redneck wine sampling. lol)

DD always loves being the center of attention and has been very excited to announce to anyone that'll listen that she lost her FIRST tooth this afternoon, with another to shortly follow and two more already growing in behind them! She is growing up too fast, she's only 4!
 
Awesome score on the $8 pirate costume! I like the Izzy costume on the Disney Store's website, but not enough to spend $30. Hopefully if goes on sale before Halloween! Congrats on your anniversary!
 
I've finally taken a break from thinking about everything Disney every second of the day, UNFORTUNATELY it's because I'm now thinking about cancer every second of the day :eek: My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma is currently getting treatment for it. He will be 54 in a few days.

There is a lot of unknowns right now and no way to tell what will be going on by January. I'm praying he'll be in remission. I've also suggested that I reschedule the cruise for September and our whole family takes a big vacation together! Right now we have to focus on his treatment and I know once he's done with that he'll be wanting to go back to work especially b/c he's worried about how all the bills will be paid. I just wish I could find a way to tell him to enjoy life as much as he can when he starts feeling better from the treatment.
 
Nichole,

So sorry to read about your Dad. Thoughts and prayers with you and yours.:grouphug:
 
Things are still pretty iffy right now. Dad's been hospitalized due to some complications after a treatment, hopefully we can get him feeling good enough to come home and enjoy at least a few good months if not years!
 
Dad's looking good now and home from the hospital awaiting his oral chemo meds to be sent! Anything could happen between now and January so we are just going to keep planning for the best.

I logged in to disney cruise line today to check out the updated site and saw that I was able to register the kids for the kid's club. I hope I can remember my password for that long! LOL. I have about a billion passwords to remember for work already! (okay, maybe it's only 4 or 5.) It was pretty simple, enter a password, click my hubs could pick them up and enter my name at the bottom. I'm not sure what the reason is for registering them online, does that mean I don't have to do it later? :confused3 Is it just another thing to get me all excited about the cruise, because if so, it totally worked!:cheer2:

and this is completely off topic, but.... I'm going to be an AUNT!!!!! WOOHOOO:cool1:. My sister was married 13 weeks ago and is now 11 weeks pregnant, mission accomplished. This is my first niece or nephew other than DH's niece. I'm already trying to plan the baby shower and find ways to spoil him/her!!!
 
I'm glad your dad is doing well!

I believe the online registration is so you don't have to do it on the boat (just a time saver).

Congrats on becoming an auntie!!
 
I got a few more things in the mail this weekend for Christmas. I got the kid's each a color wonder tote with markers to give them something to do on our 3-day car trip to Florida! I also plan to get some travel bingo cards, probably the Melissa & Doug set. I already bought a bunch of used Disney movies for $3/movie! I plan to give them to the kid's for Christmas, so they can watch them in the van during our trip.

Each time I order something from Amazon, I add a few things from my Disney Wishlist to make my order more than $25 and get free shipping. My gift card balance is getting low now, gotta earn some more swagbucks & Bing rewards :)
 

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