Calling All 8/19/06 Special Western Cruisers! AKA "The Cruisin' Castaways" Part 2

[Ct_TiggerFan]

HI all from our second night on the road home.


Tonight and tomorrow we are spending the nights in a cabin outside of Gaitlinburg TN.

Ate at the Alabama grill, had lots of country music stars gold records and pictures an items. food wasnt too bad, but its not disney lol.

I find that's the item I miss most, not the food itself, but the service and not having to pay for the food lol

I woke up this morning and for a brief moment I thought I was in my cabin, and then reality set in


Glad I rebooked and hold date until 2008 comes out.

Ed

 

[sandygirl]

HI all from our second night on the road home.


Tonight and tomorrow we are spending the nights in a cabin outside of Gaitlinburg TN.

Ate at the Alabama grill, had lots of country music stars gold records and pictures an items. food wasnt too bad, but its not disney lol.

I find that's the item I miss most, not the food itself, but the service and not having to pay for the food lol

I woke up this morning and for a brief moment I thought I was in my cabin, and then reality set in


Glad I rebooked and hold date until 2008 comes out.

Ed

We are glad you rebooked, too! It was such a pleasure meeting you and Bev and Caitlin.

LOL I know I woke up this morning wondering where in the world my breakfast tray was! Man, I miss room service...

Gotta' get up at 4 AM to head to the hospital, so good-night.

Darlene

 

[Verandah Man]

Gotta' get up at 4 AM to head to the hospital, so good-night.

Darlene

Best Wishes and Many Prayers are headed your way, please keep us posted on Stan's recovery. My mom said she had a nice conversation with Stan Friday morning at Topsiders.

 

[SeaSpray]

Well, after a delayed flight and having to spend almost 2 hours on the plane before departing, and then having to circle the airport before landing, WE'RE HOME!


We had a wonderful time! I want to go read all of the posts that I missed so far, I'll post again either later on, or tomorrow!

 

[PaulaM]

Last week at this time we were recovering from a tiring, but oh so beautiful Castaway Cay and looking foward to a relaxing day at sea.

We also rebooked, but are thinking about going in July '08 to celebrate my daughter's 18th birthday and High School graduation.

Well I will now go to bed where I will have to turn the bed down myself and put my own mints on the pillows.

How many more days 'til vacation?

Paula

 

[HawkinsCrew]

Hi All!

We had a wonderful trip! I always enjoy my vacation even more once I'm home and realize the house is intact and our sweet pup is okay! I was delighted to meet those of you I was able to. I said a quick hello to as many folks I recognized while I was chasing my little terror, no! I mean boy around, and I was particularly pleased to be able to have some actual conversations with Diane and family (AllShookUp)!

We arrived home yesterday after a blessedly uneventful 13 hour drive. We only had one stop on the side of I-95 to switch seats to soothe our two year old. Sadly, my ten year old daughter is moping about a looootttt. We did make a reservation to be changed to a summer 2008 date, but it is just not concrete enough for her! Not being on the Magic and fifth grade at a new school looming large is bringing her down. We actually let her watch Pirates of the Carrbbean 1 on ABC tonight to cheer her up. She normally doesn't do well with scary movies of any sort, but Pirates has so many ties to her beloved DCL that she forgives the creepy factor.

We had a great time:
Saturday -- got our leis! found Mickey ears on door! Fish mail! Thank you!
Sunday -- DD and I met the stingrays and loved it! Our family took a bike ride that most of us loved. Our DD felt there was too little swimming while on the bike. I snorkeled while the clouds threatened, but I saw more fish than ever before!
Monday -- Brunch at Palo! It is hard to put into words my true, deep, abiding love for Palo's.
Tuesday -- I roamed the ship with the little man while dh and dd went with David and Ivan to Chacchoben ruins, they loved it. If you were there dd had a personal fan and a tall handsome dad. Dinner at Palo's, yum!
Wednesday-- Went with family to Playa Mia and had a really nice time (open bar helped). DS ruined all good memories for riders of bus 24 by rolling on the floor and screaming. Many apologies. Pirate Night! but ds passed out in cabin and dd loved it but couldn't abide the loud music apparently even though she was wearing a t-shirt that said "If its too loud, your too old"
Thursday -- missed group photo to see "The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" I read the books with my daughter last summer and hadn't seen the movie yet. loved it! 50 min. well being massage! yipee!
Friday -- dd and dh went on hike and kayaking. They said their guide was absolutely wonderful. met andy and wife at family beach! Even more warm and kind in person (if that is possible) Much swinging in hammocks, snorkeling, and getting sunburned was done by my sweet family. magnets were pilfered, but I salvaged some and I hope whoever got them loves them!

Chuck and Tina, I'm sorry for your loss. My family was a couple of groups behind you on pirate night for your white backdrop photos -- you guys looked amazing!

My family and I were particularly struck by how kind everyone was on the ship. I think I will target DIS heavy and/or many repeat cruiser cruises if I can find out such information. I hope everyone's travels are going well!

 

[Walsh clan]

Tina, I sent you a PM.

You are in our prayers..

M.

 

[Walsh clan]

And all I can say is WOW! We really enjoyed ourselves, so much so that we changed our dummy date of December 07 to next August for the repo cruise!

We met so many wonderful people on the cruise who made it extra special.. the first people we met in the US were Denise W and Jazzman, who came to the Poly to meet us! The nicest people you could ever meet.. they supplied us with our names and lanyards that we used for the remainder of the cruise and are packed away and ready for next August!

Hopefully, we will do a three in a row and also go in 2008! Or until the money runs out!!!

Darlene, hope all goes well in the hospital, as we say over here Stan is a pure dote! He managed to make me feel better when I was going parasailing, thankfully it was taken out of my hands when DCL cancelled! Hope Sandy's arm is improving!

John and Mary O'Brien, I loved meeting your family, it was great to meet you so many times at the lift!

Terry, keep this thread going and I hope to see you all again in 2008.

Ed, hope the remainder of your hols is going well..

And here's to Doreen and family, the last person we met as we left in the airport!

Moira.

 

[Verandah Man]

Post Cruise Visit with DISfriends

Saturday evening my family and I had the pleasure of meeting up with some DISfriends Caril (GrandFloridian4) and Ned at their house for dinner and desert. We cruised with this family in January 2005. Caril and Ned moved to Lake County, Florida about one month before my mom moved to Lake County, Florida in 2004. It's a Small World After All!!!!!

We had so much fun sitting around and talking about Disney cruises of the past and Disney cruises planned for the future.

We also talked about "old" TV shows, and enjoyed watching the kids faces when certain shows were named, LOL!!!

My daughter had fun playing video games with the couple's sons, Fraz 15 and Cam 21.

Thanks for a great evening Ned, Caril, Cam and Fraz, it was great seeing you all again!!!!!!!!!


It's now our last full day in Florida for this trip and I need to get some much needed rest, as I have to return to work on Wednesday and I am fighting a head cold that started the other day, it should make for an enjoyable flight home on Tuesday, LOL!!!

 

[castoff]

Andy: I think we got the same head cold. This morning I woke up with a raw sore throat and the nose has been running ever since. I have been taking my airborne but it doesn't seem to be doing anything.




Shirley: One of the highlights of this cruise was fishing with Ron & Ace. I am sure Chuck would like to do again in 2008.



Bev:Thanks for everything ! What happens in the air stays in the air right?


Darlene: So glad to have met your family, know your in my thoughts today.


I only wished I could have met more diser's, those that I have met it was great to finally meet. The fish mail was awesome and we really enjoyed how creative people were !


For those that are still traveling home............safe journey.

Probaly will be off the boards for a couple of days. I am curious of one thing though..................who ended up with the dis tags ??

 

[Ski-and-Sea]

Well, we don't have the tag as we never got tagged.

We were on deck 8 way forward and that area of the ship was like a ghost town. Really only saw CMs in the hallway all week. I know Slash and family were on the starboard side in the front. So maybe the Saudi royal family was up near our room. And they left the ship for good on Wendesday.

Hey, at least all of my door signs were there all week.

Even though we were forward on the ship, I still heard noise on deck 9 in the middle of the night. I've had big problems staying mid ship with the dragging of the deck 9 chairs in the middle of night on prior cruises so we tried staying forward in the hopes we wouldn't hear that noise.

Well, it wasn't scraping of deck chairs......but rolling carts at 2am. I just can't win with that. Next time I'll do what others do and bring a small fan to create white noise.

We've had cloudy and rainy weather since we got home. By 10am this morning my kids were complaining they are bored. The laundry is done but I'm still going through mail and last week's newspapers.

I'll post a detailed trip report later but I wanted to mention that Costa Maya turned out to be a total triumph for us. I know that many do not like Costa Maya because its rather poor and the sellers are extremely aggressive but we viewed it as an adventure and were well rewarded.

We took a short taxi ride to Majahual. That was the little village just down from the port (near the light house). I knew from internet searches to look for a beach/restaurant/hotel called Pez Quadro. It was located at the end of the Majahual Avenue (which is a dirt road closed to cars).

We had the perfect beach day. Since the Magic was the only ship in port that day, the place never got really crowded. The lounge chairs were far more comfortable than the ones on Castaway Cay. There are reefs located offshore in Majahual so the waves break on the reefs and the water near the shore is extremely tranquil and very shallow. Perfect for small children.

My kids were in heaven playing in the water. They found all kinds of neat shells and saw plenty of fish. They even played a game of catch with some of the other kids. A few vendors came around but they weren't aggressive at all. There were 3 massage tables under the trees.

I read that the restaurant has good food and boy we were not disappointed. We had nachos for appetizers and they were delicious. Then we ordered a single plate of beef fajitas to try. Well, it was so tasty that we kept on ordering more fajitas. My kids said it was the best fajitas they ever ate. Our lunch bill was $50.

The owner of the place is a young Italian. Think tall, dark and handsome. The bar on the beach is really neat. Instead of bar stools, there are hanging swings.

There are wandering dogs in Majahual but they looked well fed and healthy. We saw a little puppy sitting under a tree that my daughter had to stop and pet. We ran into a family whose stateroom was near ours and the mother found a broken coconut shell and filled it with bottled water and fed it to the puppy.

The sun came out in the afternoon which made for a beautiful day. You could see the Magic in the distance.

I took some really neat pictures of the place. When I figure out how to post pictures I will post them.

Just as a funny thought......twice on this cruise I somehow picked the spot on the beach next to the European women with the perfect bodies wearing skimpy bathing suits.

Didn't everyone just love Andy the cruise director.......we've known him for a while now. He always greets us so warmly. I wish I snapped a picture of him on pirate night because he was wearing a cute pirate outfit. But he has such a "choir boy" face that he looks far from a real pirate.

I had a lovely chat with Pikey. He's so happy with his promotion but it means he and the others will rotate between the Magic and the Wonder. But I think he said he will be on the Med cruises next summer.

Hey, the sun is trying to come out here. Sigh, now I have to go grocery shopping. My cats have been attached to my hip since I got home. I've had two of them fighting to sit on my lap every time I'm at the computer.

 

[SeaSpray]

Got to bed last night around 2:30am, got up at 6am to help John get ready for work (I can't believe he went into work today. lol), then went back to bed until a few minutes ago. I purposely took off today from work

Tina and Chuck: My condolences to you and your family

Darlene: Hope all goes well with Stan's surgery today. It was so great to see you all onboard the ship.

I've added the countdown timers for our February 2007 cruise, and also a countdown timer for August 2008. I chose August 11th as the date only because it's the middle of the month, but I'll change it once we actually book a specific cruise.

Here are the cruise highlights for our family:

Taking DS18 Craig for his very first dinner at Palo! That was THE highlight of this trip, and the picture that the DCL photographer took that night of the three of us came out great!!

Floating in the water at Castaway Cay with my DS15 Robby (neither of my sons like the beach). We got the boys to come into the water because I wanted to take a few pictures, and Robby ended up really enjoying relaxing on the floats, and the two of us ended up having a wonderful conversation while floating on the waves for a couple of hours. Craig came down with a cold a couple of days before the end of the cruise, so he wasn't feeling well that day. From what I've just read, it seems like a few people came also down with colds. Hope all feel better soon!

Watching "Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Men's Chest" in the Walt Disney Theater with John and the boys at the 11pm showing on Pirate Night.

Dinner every night was a lot of fun. Thanks Jaclyn and Karen for being great table mates!!

The Cove Cafe and bumping into various DISers there, especially Mary Rose and John

The Lifestyle portrait (the pictures with the ALL-white backgrounds) that we took (thanks to the DIS board people who gave great tips on this!) is already in the Disney frame we bought at the Magic Kingdom on Saturday, and is on the mantle of our fireplace. I love this casual-looking picture of the four of us, and it's a wonderful souvenir of this trip. Since we have so many formal pictures from the 2004 cruise, this was a great alternative, and the photographer took many different poses. I ended up buying 2 poses that have all four of us in them, and also a picture of just the boys, and a picture of just John and I.

Late nights at Rockin' Bar D! We had so much fun with Doreen and her family, Mary Rose and John, Dori, and everyone else!!! It was great having DS Craig there, and now I can't wait until DS Robby is 18 so all of us can enjoy the shows together

All of the fish mail was a lot of fun! Thanks to everyone who put so much thought and effort into that. Next time, my fishmail will be better than a small piece of lime green posterboard with a greeting written on it, but it was a last-minute decision to do fish mail at all! Also, I only had a chance to write out about a half dozen cards, next time I'll do this all BEFORE the cruise, and not the last day OF the cruise. LOL Also, all of our door magnets survived all week, none were taken off our doors!!

Well that's all I can think of off the top of my head; and I have food shopping to do, so I'll add to this list later. I hope many of us book a future cruise together again!

 

[Ski-and-Sea]

Cove cafe was great....but didn't see any DISers when I was there. Just people who were smoking. DCL needs to make the entire ship smoke free.

The Cove cafe is where DH and I saw Slash arm in arm with a woman walk by. Fortunately he was wearing a t-shirt.

All the CMs on the ship were extremely friendly. Loved talking about Slash and the royal family with the CMs. Everyone thought it was such a funny contrast.

 

[AboutTheMouse]

Hi all - back to the grind here along with the rest of you.

We flew back on Saturday. Was one of the first off the ship, since we had a flight at 11:37am. Got to the American check in to find out that they re-booked us on a direct flight, instead of the one-stop that we were originally on. Yeah! No switching flights in St. Louis.

I, too, have had a bad cold since Friday evening. Thanks Moira for the Airborne. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to work. Still feeling pretty lousy today but I'm slowly getting better.

Tina, I am so sorry to hear of your loss. Your family will be in our thoughts and prayers this week.

Darlene, we will be thinking of you, too, today. I hope that your ordeal will be over with soon.

To everyone else, it was a pleasure meeting many of you throughout the week. Having so many familiar faces made this trip truly memorable. Loved all of the fish mail, the door magnets, seeing all the t-shirts. Hopefully many of us will be able to cruise again sometime. We've got a dummy reservation and are potentially looking at 2008.

Denise

 

[ElliotFan]

Greetings All!

Devin and I made it home safely at about midnight (Pacific time) on Saturday night. I would have posted sooner, but because yesterday was my last day of vacation, I actively avoided booting up the computer any sooner than I had to.

Andy & Bev - I truly enjoyed dining with your families. I hope that we can meet up again on another cruise. Wasn't Prageeth an absolute character? Ya gotta love his sense of humor!

Terry, Darlene, Mary Rose, Karen & Doreen - It was so great to see all of you again! It was so nice to be traveling with familiar faces on board.

Becky, Moira, Tina, Jeff, Kris, Sue & all the other new faces - It was so nice to meet all of you and I hope to hear more from you in the future. Here's hoping that we sail together again some time.

Anna & Curtis - It was nice to see you guys again too. (Can you believe that the office has been closed for a year now?) Thanks so much for including us in your travel plans the night before we all left. I know that Devin enjoyed his time with Lucas and Trevor. We should definitely see about getting the boys together again soon.

Well I better get back to trying to catch up on all the stuff that happened at work while I was gone... (SIGH! I'd rather still be playing with the Mouse!)

Take care and I'll talk to y'all later!

Dori

 

[Verandah Man]

Hi Dori,

We had a great time meeting you and Devin as well, and yes, Prageeth is quite the character, LOL!!! We really miss him and Younces, we were talking about that the other night at dinner, when we had to get our own drinks and food. And what's the deal with no chocolates on the bed at night???

We are still here at my mom's and are in the process of getting our suitcases re-packed for the trip home tomorrow. At least we will get out of Orlando before Ernesto arrives!!!

Gotta go, my mom needs the phone line, I really miss my cable internet service.

Bye For Now

 

[sandygirl]

I need to thank EVERYONE! Everyone who smiled, everyone who conversed, each hug, each laugh, all the kindnesses shown...

Stan had the BEST cruise! This is the man who would never leave Williamstown if he didn't have to!

I have to share a funny story from his surgery today. When he was waking up from the anesthesia and still groggy, he had a smile from ear to ear. I asked him if he was ok because he really looked serene and it was a little eerie (if you know what I mean). He said, "I'm still cruising" and went back under. How awesome is that?

A little later he asked if Mickey and Goofy could come and sign his scar. LOL

Now that he is awake he keeps asking me questions about the Med repo cruise. OMG! Way to go guys, I think we created a cruising monster!!

Seriously, Stan tolerated the surgery well and did not require a colostomy bag. That is a big positive. I left him resting and he has a morphine drip for the pain. He saw Andy's post wishing him well and I believe that all the kind thoughts and words coming his way have a healing power.

Thank you,
Darlene

 

[winnyis]

Darlene - I am so happy to hear that Stans surgery went well. I saw pictures of you all on the other site and he looks so happy. Im glad you all had a wonderful time and wish him a speedy recovery.

If all works out with school we will be on the med repo too so keep your fingers crossed.

 

[ElliotFan]

Darlene - Give Stan a BIG hug and kiss from me and tell him that he needs to recover so we can meet up on a cruise again! I was so happy to see you guys this cruise and want to do so again in the future! I'm so glad to hear that things went better this time.

I better get back to work. After all, I'm not being paid to cruise the DISboards.

Dori

 

[SeaSpray]

Darlene: Thanks so much for sharing the good news. I've been thinking of you and Stan throughout the day. Here's a pic I took of you at dinner at Palo last week: