Cruising the Atlantic with a few HUNDRED of my DIS friends

[MagicMe]

So I’ve decided to go ahead and start a trip report for my upcoming transatlantic cruise! I'm definitely not as entertaining as some of our trip report writers but I can tell my point of view (hopefully). I will be flying to Barcelona in less than a week and cannot believe now how fast it has come (although ask me a few months ago and I would tell you it’s taking forever to get here)

Background:

I am traveling solo in my own cabin but my DS and DIL will be traveling in the cabin next to me. This will be my fourth cruise (two 4-day and one fantastic magical 7-day Double Dip) and my DS and DIL’s second cruise (they were on the Double Dip with me). My DS (DBK1029) and DIL (TheDisneyGirl02) got engaged just before the Double Dip Cruise – . I mean that literally – they spent a week at WDW before the cruise and he proposed to her in front of the castle.

After a wonderful cruise with our DD friends, we decided we needed to book again. Good timing since the new itinerary came out shortly after our return. We booked the Westbound Transatlantic, joined our DISmeet thread and then waited and waited and waited. We were meeting some old friends and many new friends on our DIS thread. Some of our friends from the Double Dip booked and we were so excited to be traveling with them again. Unfortunately, a few of them had to drop out over time but we still have a few that will be on the cruise. On top of that, we have approximately 300 new friends!!!!

During our waiting period, life continued on and my DS and DIL had their beautiful wedding in October 2009. A great time and the wedding had a few little Disney touches (of course)! So now we only had one year to go…..

 

[MagicMe]

When I last left you we had one year to go. Late 2009 and most of 2010 were spent on the DISmeet thread . It’s been a VERY active thread – at this very point we are on #9 ready to head to #10. Everyone has been so great! We have so many activities planned (not including the activities DCL will have). Our buddies from the DD, Erik and Jason, kindly offered to head up our lanyard group and have organized, designed and printed out 300 lanyards for the group! We will have the usual fish extender exchange although we had to break this up in groups. Not just for the quantity but to cut down on the weight for traveling purposes! . We also have organized a candy exchange, a post card exchange, a secret mickey and a scrapbook exchange. On top of this, we have tastings organized for just about every alcohol you can thing of . Not to mention our cabin crawl and our champagne girls event. I’m sure I am missing something!

Well, time passed and suddenly, the weeks have sped up like crazy!!! . Booked hotel in Barcelona (I think DISer’s will be occupying over ¾ of the small hotel!!), booked flight (got a terrific sale – one way US Air from Phila to Barcelona for about $450), booked WDW hotel for two nights after the cruise, booked the MNSSHP tickets for 03OCT, and unfortunately, had to book the flight home. The flight home was interesting as I originally booked on AirTran and a couple of months ago, I was just browsing to see (I am OCD and constantly check these things!) and found that my seats no longer matched what I had booked. That was what I noticed first. Then I realized that it wasn’t even the same flight and they had us leaving first thing in the AM. Seriously, after a MNSSHP??? So I called and they had nothing else direct until late in the day and since we were flying home on my DIL’s birthday, we wanted to get back by mid-day so she could go to dinner with her family (especially since the day before is her father’s birthday and she shares a birthday with her twin –obviously – and her Mom!). So we ended up canceling those tickets and actually turned out as I was able to get us on a Southwest flight and I even saved a few bucks!!

So here I sit. It’s one day less than a week from when we leave and one day more than a week from sailing. I think I have most everything together but it’s all in a pile in my spare bedroom. I’ll be spending the weekend separating the pile into smaller piles (you know clothes, shoes, gifts, etc) and then try to mush it all into a suitcase!

.

 

[TotallyAngelic]

Hi Melodie .... at last someone else is writing a trip report from our cruise it's getting really really exciting yet anxiety-inducing at our end. Seem to be doing lots of stuff but getting nowhere fast. See you in Barcelona

 

[anewmac]

OHHH just happened to see if ANYONE from your cruise was writing a report and found ya YEAH! cant wait to read more Im so excited for you all!!!

 

[MagicMe]

Well, except for a few of my buddies, I'm talking to myself. But that's okay as I will use this trip report as a guide for when I scrapbook my pictures (probably months if not years down the road!!! )

The last full weekend before we leave on this cruise has just flown by. I did manage to get somethings done!

I'm pretty much packed!!! This is an accomplishment for me as I normally have things in stacks and then pack the night before! I say pretty much packed as there are still those last minute things to throw in (chargers, curling iron, etc).

I organized my candy bags for the candy exchange and the bags for my scrapbook swap. Printed out more magnets (you can never have enough, right ).

So except for the last minute flurry, I have been spending time on the cruise thread saying goodbye and safe travels to all those traveling before me. Our on-line numbers will dwindle over the next couple of days.

Tonight's objective - clean! Yeah I'm one of those that prefers to have everything clean and tidy as I walk out the door so I don't have to worry about what it looks like when I walk back in!! I planned this for tonight in case I get home and just flop - I have one more night built in!!!

Wednesday night will be spent traveling around to pick up my DS and DIL and to visit my sister for her birthday so I want to be pretty much wrapped up. Of course, there is that last minute wash!

It's so strange. I've spent the better part of the last two years talking about and planning this trip. Now it's almost here and I'm really having a hard time wrapping my brain around that fact. Guess it will hit me when I'm leaving work on Wednesday, or getting to the airport on Thursday, or at least by when I arrive in Barcelona - right???

 

[MagicMe]

OHHH just happened to see if ANYONE from your cruise was writing a report and found ya YEAH! cant wait to read more Im so excited for you all!!!

Drea - you would have loved this trip!!! We have private tastings set up (yeah private ones set up in like Animators Palate, etc) since there are so many of us involved. AND, we will have one for wine, cognac, martini, tequila/Marguarita, mixology, mojito and beer tastings. I'm hitting all except for the beer. And apparently we will be the "guinea pigs" for the mojito one since they haven't offered that previously!!!

 

[anewmac]

oh man that would be RIGHT up my alley.. probably better though i dont need to be kicking more trashcans.. and i can only get such great pics of mickey at the shows, half blurry half cut off LOL.

Cant wait to see and read more. The plane ride always makes it "real" for me!

 

[UKANGEL]

yay! another brave person who's doing a trippie! I always start them but never finish!

Think I shall just add bits to others! lol


See you soon!

 

[CustardTart]

Great start, Melodie!!! Love your chatty style - I feel like I'm living it with you... OH WAIT, that's because I am!!! See you on Saturday!!!

I've just posted a basic pre-trippie over on the UK Trip Reports section (clicky clicky!). I'm planning on doing a live, day-by-day account so will no doubt miss loads out - but hey, I wanted to give that format a try...

 

[iloverags2]

Looking forward to hearing all about your cruise!

 

[nenner1]

Hi Melodie!!!
I don't know how I missed this before, but I'm ready to hear all about your fantastic cruise!!!!

 

[anewmac]

ok youve been home for a week.. do we get a sneak peak LOL

 

[podsnel]

Oh- this is going to be FUN!! Can't wait to hear all about it!

 

[MagicMe]

Well - as you all know - we are back! I know, I know... it's been almost three weeks since they kicked us off the ship. In fact, she's been through dry dock and is back cruising and I'm just now getting back to my report.

What can I say - I've had a seriously long attack of PCW (Post Cruise Withdrawal)!!! You know the deal - no bed being made then turned down, no meals ready whenever I want, no one cleaning up my crumbs and worse; no comfy blue deck chairs where I can take a nap - I mean relax with the gentle sounds of the ocean. I'll admit, I tried to sneak one of those deck chairs home but there's just no way to hide it and after 14 days on the ship, I couldn'[t afford the oversize luggage charge anyway!! I experienced short bouts of PCW after my two four day cruises and remember having a bit more difficulty after my seven day double dip cruise two years ago, but this has been alot harder!

So I've decided the best way to get over it is to just jump in and continue with my report.

Before I start, I will tell you that I would do this all over again in a heart beat.

 

[MagicMe]

Last Day at Work

I was excited that it was my last day but knew that I had a lot of work waiting for me. I headed in and started going through my “to do” list that I wanted to accomplish before going on vacation. My co-workers decided to go out to lunch to the Olive Garden (we often go for the soup and salad special) and I was pleasantly surprised when I found that they were treating me as a “bon voyage” for my trip. They’ve been hearing about this trip for 23 months!!! Maybe they are happy that it's finally here and I won't be giving them a constant countdown!!

I had spent a lot of time early in the day training a co-worker to hold down the fort and after lunch I buckled down to finish my to do list. I managed to get quite a bit of it done but it became evident that I was not going to finish. As quitting time came, my co-workers came to escort me out of the building!! I was asked what still needed to be done that they could handle the next day and the one big thing could wait until I returned. So they made sure that I started my vacation on time!!!!

After leaving work, I went home where I finished up a few more things, ate some left overs and then headed to my sister’s for her birthday celebration. After that I had to go up to Quakertown to pick up my DS and DIL along with their luggage, and then back to the house for the night. It was close to midnight when we arrived back. Being a bit excited to sleep, we watched a little DVR and finally headed to bed.

 

[MagicMe]

Wednesday, September 16th

After just a little sleep (yeah you know that old saying – “too excited to sleep”), we decided to grab breakfast at Bucks Bagels and went over to visit my Mom. After spending some time with her, we made a quick stop at AC Moore and the bookstore and went back home. One last load of wash, final packing and we were ready!! At 1:30 my sister dropped over to load up the five suitcases and several carry on pieces to take us to the airport. We arrived at the airport with no issues and said goodbye.

We headed in to check in and through the security which took us about ½ hour. It was now only about 3PM and our flight didn’t leave until 6:25PM so we had a late lunch/early dinner at Chickie&Pete’s where we ran into a couple that was taking the same flight and would be sailing with us. Shortly after eating, we went back to the gate and ran into Terri (Tinker1Bell) and Stephanie (Steffy). We laughed, shared our excitement about our upcoming adventures and picked up snacks for the plane ride. Finally they were boarding and we were officially going to be on our way – or so we thought. The weather had begun to turn and we hoped that we would get off before it got too bad but oops – seems someone misplaced their passport. The announcement came over for everyone to check their passport to ensure that they had the correct one. Seriously, you show them your passport just before you go down the gangplank and they lost it between then and getting on the plane. Another announcement informed us that they would like all men to please check their passports. They couldn’t take off until they found the passport since he obviously needed it to get into Spain. Apparently somewhere during this time they found it. I’m not sure what happened but I heard that he had put it in his pocket and during the process of putting his luggage up and getting himself situated, the passport had fallen out of his shirt pocket.

So we start to taxi out and are getting set to take off when the pilot comes on and informs us that weather has delayed us and we have been asked to pull over to the side, shut down the engines and wait. Strangely, we never did shut down the engines and the pilot eventually came on and told us that they were re-routing our flight over JFK which was going to allow us to leave. So at around 8PM we took off going east and we were on our way to Barcelona.

Amy and Dave

At this point I should note that my DIL is a very nervous flyer. A few drugs helped but she still had a tough go of it. The flight was normal except for the lady in front of me who immediately after take off put her seat all the way back and promptly fell asleep. I had planned on being able to watch a few movies on my laptop on the way especially since I had already seen the first in flight movie. Well, her position made that impossible. Still I was going to make the best of it and just sat back to watch the movie on the airplane. However, I really was not happy when they began to hand out dinner. With her all the way back, I could barely put down my table and my dinner hardly fit. My DIL had to take my drink so I could maneuver to cut my chicken. Then I had to hold the food up since it was difficult to lean over as the tray was right up against me. The flight attendant told me that as long as the woman was asleep, she could not wake her and ask her to put her seat back in the upright position. So she was restricted from bothering her but it didn’t matter that my flight was disrupted. Go figure.

 

[MagicMe]

Friday, September 17th - Part 1

After a long night (sleeping and plane travel do not necessarily work together – unless you are in first class) everyone started waking up, heading to the bathrooms and just standing up to stretch. We were getting our morning Danish and coffee and low and behold, sleeping beauty woke up and I was actually able to enjoy my breakfast. In no time at all, we were landing and we were actually in SPAIN!!!!

We sat until most people were off the plane and then proceeded into the airport. We made a quick bathroom stop and then proceeded to customs. That was a breeze as we got out passports stamped and proceeded to pick up our luggage. Wow, our luggage was already coming out so that was really quick. We followed the exit signs from the luggage area which took us into the airport. We stopped at the ATM machine which dispenses EUROs and then proceeded to the taxi area. At this time we were still with Terri and Steph. As we got to the taxi area, they move you along pretty quickly. They do not usually have large taxi cabs and the driver was already putting our luggage into his car. He was only able to put four pieces into the back and placed the fifth in the front seat (seat belting it in). That left the three of us to get into the back seat. Now I did mention that these are not large vehicles but I should also mention that we are three pooh sized individuals. Let’s just say there was no need to worry about seat belts in the back since we were not going anywhere!!!

So the driver asks us where we are going. Amy tells him Praktik Ramblas. Well, that’s nice but what is the address? DUH – why did we think he would automatically know where it was??? I started looking through my paperwork and luckily one of the pieces of emails I had printed and put in my document holder had the address. So we were able to hand this to him and he was able to mark it in his GPS and we were on our way. About fifteen – twenty minutes later, we were on a corner and he was telling us that it was just about three doors down the road. We paid him (about 28 euros) and wheeled our luggage to our hotel.

First impressions – the most adorable boutique hotel!!! I had heard about this hotel from a posting on our DIS meet thread and after checking it out on line, booked one single and one double for the three of us. Of course, check in was not until 2PM so that stored our luggage. Dave wanted to relax a bit so we went up one floor to the little lobby area they had upstairs which also opened up to the cutest outdoor area. It was just so cute. After a few minutes we decided that we were hungry and needed to get something to eat. We walked around a bit but were still unsure so we decided since we had circled back to the hotel that we would ask their recommendation. As we were walking into the hotel, we saw Terri and Steph had basically just arrived. They apparently did not have the wonderful easy transport from airport to hotel that we did. It began when they realized that they did not have an address for the hotel. They did have a phone number and although asked several times for the driver to call, they finally were able to find the address and get the driver to take them to the hotel. Now they only had two people but a few more pieces of luggage (although smaller than ours) and their trip cost them almost double ours. I’m not really sure why – whether they were “taken” which could have happened by the route the guy took or another explanation could be that the meter was probably running the entire time they were trying to figure out the address to the hotel (since I remember that our driver turned on our meter immediately after getting us situated in the vehicle). So once they stored their luggage, we went next door to a small place for tapas (which are basically small portions of items – sort of like appetizer size).

Tapas menu

Terri and Steph

We enjoyed our meal and found that after eating, our rooms were ready. So we got out luggage and went up to our rooms (boutique hotels do not have bellboys so we were responsible for our own luggage). Dave and Amy were on the third floor. The elevator was not huge so they took their three pieces of luggage and themselves up to the third floor. I waited for the elevator to return and took my luggage up to my room. The room of course was very small.

Okay - time for a break...off to bed for the night...to be continued...

 

[anewmac]

ohh man i hate when people lay down in their airplane seats and it bothers my time... not if its me oh well but hate when they interupt my flight LMAO

Glad to hear all the luggage was delivered and not lost yeah! Cant wait to read more! Btw what awesome coworkers.. mine would have said you better stay late to finish LOL

 

[Marcy Mouse]

Can't wait to read more!

 

[nenner1]

The weather had begun to turn and we hoped that we would get off before it got too bad but oops – seems someone misplaced their passport. The announcement came over for everyone to check their passport to ensure that they had the correct one. Seriously, you show them your passport just before you go down the gangplank and they lost it between then and getting on the plane. Another announcement informed us that they would like all men to please check their passports. They couldn’t take off until they found the passport since he obviously needed it to get into Spain.

UGH- that would so be me. I am so good at doing things like that!! I'm THAT GUY. LOL!

Amy and Dave

Adorable! Now look, what was all this nervousness nonsense- look at that smile!

At this point I should note that my DIL is a very nervous flyer. A few drugs helped but she still had a tough go of it.

Amy is such a trooper!! Dave's doing a great job keeping her calm with his arm around her- or is that to hold her down! I'm glad she did well on the flights (-er well I know "well" may not be the best choice of words but all three of you did survive in one piece!)

The flight was normal except for the lady in front of me who immediately after take off put her seat all the way back and promptly fell asleep.

Yeah, remind me why I hate flying. I always get that too, and I am also always in the one seat on the plane that WON'T recline so I am stuck with my face in the back of a chair for however long.

The flight attendant told me that as long as the woman was asleep, she could not wake her and ask her to put her seat back in the upright position. So she was restricted from bothering her but it didn’t matter that my flight was disrupted. Go figure.

Ok now that's just crazy. maybe the flight attendant could have let you come sit in HER seat so you could eat properly. Ack- so frustrating! (you're a better person than me, I would probably be cutting that meat like I was chopping down a tree with a hacksaw, she would have been awake then! (I'm so bad!)

Friday, September 17th - Part 1
We were getting our morning Danish and coffee and low and behold, sleeping beauty woke up and I was actually able to enjoy my breakfast.

In no time at all, we were landing and we were actually in SPAIN!!!!

They do not usually have large taxi cabs and the driver was already putting our luggage into his car. He was only able to put four pieces into the back and placed the fifth in the front seat (seat belting it in).[/quote]

Hilarious! Wouldn't want those precious undies hurt in a crash, now would we?

That left the three of us to get into the back seat. Now I did mention that these are not large vehicles but I should also mention that we are three pooh sized individuals. Let’s just say there was no need to worry about seat belts in the back since we were not going anywhere!!!

Too funny! I hear ya!

So the driver asks us where we are going. Amy tells him Praktik Ramblas. Well, that’s nice but what is the address? DUH – why did we think he would automatically know where it was??? I started looking through my paperwork and luckily one of the pieces of emails I had printed and put in my document holder had the address. So we were able to hand this to him and he was able to mark it in his GPS and we were on our way.

I don't think it's unreasonable for a taxi driver who obviously picks up a lot of people from the airport to know where popular hotels are. Of course we are probably the last family on earth without a GPS so we are used to kickin' it old skool mapquest style! Ha ha!

About fifteen – twenty minutes later, we were on a corner and he was telling us that it was just about three doors down the road. We paid him (about 28 euros) and wheeled our luggage to our hotel.

The room of course was very small.

It is adorable, but oh so tiny! Looks like a cruise stateroom puts it to shame.

Now they only had two people but a few more pieces of luggage (although smaller than ours) and their trip cost them almost double ours. I’m not really sure why – whether they were “taken” which could have happened by the route the guy took or another explanation could be that the meter was probably running the entire time they were trying to figure out the address to the hotel (since I remember that our driver turned on our meter immediately after getting us situated in the vehicle).

Yikes!

So once they stored their luggage, we went next door to a small place for tapas (which are basically small portions of items – sort of like appetizer size).

Tapas menu

MMM! Looks delish!

Okay - time for a break...off to bed for the night...to be continued...

Can't wait for more!