Dec 5, 2009 -- now traveling to Tortola

[NHdisneylover]

Packing: Items are being sorted and piled on the table now. The kids and I plan to pull out the suitcases on Saturday We love to pack The kids actually coordinate their outfits from day to day (it's like having my own little Ryan and Sharpay). I also mailed our formal wear (Dave's tux and my formal night dress) to a friend in FLorida before we moved to Germany. We will pick those up from her the night we land in Florida plus getting thigns she is kindly buying for me that are cheaper in the USA than here. Some of htose things, like dress pants for Rio, I jsut won't pack--we can wear the new stuff

Barry--I, like you, keep reading the packing cubes thread and comming up confused. We have medium sized rolling duffles for the kids and one medium sized rolling bag with matching "carry on" sized rolling bag and a matching garment bag (they all nest together and then DO fit under a DCL bed). At least three of those is always close to the weight limit anyway--often only the garment bag is no where near the line. I don't think we would be served by the cubes because it would just throw us over the limit. Maybe I pack denser than most people already? I do not think I do anything all that special.

FE bags--we always assemble them once on board (though might not this time since we are such a little group). It is easier to pack that way and I do not have to live in fear of a TSA search ruining my work.

I agree with searches. I'm all for the searches too and taking shoes off, ect if that's what it takes to keep us safe. I remember reading an editorial in the paper once by a woman "humiliated" that she had to take her shoes off at the airport. As she put it, she was a first class passenger and they had no business treating her like that. Well, there were some "first class" passengers that changed this country forever.

One of the first flights we had after the no shoes took affect was from Manchester, NH. It is a small airport and often (at quieter times of day) has only one security line open. We were waiting, jackets and shoes in hand (the kids traveled plenty and knew the drill inside out and upside down) and a lady in front of us was arguing with the TSA agent about having to take of her "strappy heels that obviously couldn't hide anything" A line formed where there is usually a steady flow as the lady went on and on arguing. Marika (I think she was 7 at the time, maybe 6) HAD it and sudenly piped up loud and clear with something like "Excuse me Ma'am, the rules are for everyone's safety including yours. If you do nto want to follow the rules will you PLEASE get out of the way so the rest of us can get to our flights!?" The lady turned beet red and moved aside and the three business men behind us actually appluaded I didn't know wether to be proud of Marika or mortified by her rudeness. I am still kind of both. She did get the self sentered lady out of the line though

 

[NHdisneylover]

Danielle (Hanover)--I was jsut browsing through the final FE list and noticed you are exactly one day older than I am--looks like we are both celebrating 37 on the cruise. I jsut thought that was fun I will have to remember to hunt you down and wish you happy birthday.
Dave's brother and sister who are twins share my birthday (but they are 6 years older). We usually call each other and sing happy birthday to us

 

[DisneyCruisin']

Sent out the final list, Please check your information to make sure I put it in correctly. Thanks.....

I didn't get it - can you send it to me?

Thanks!!!!

 

[Tower]

Barry--I, like you

Well Garsh! I like you too Hadley!

 

[NHdisneylover]

Well Garsh! I like you too Hadley!

 

[carmie3377]

Danielle (Hanover)--I was jsut browsing through the final FE list and noticed you are exactly one day older than I am--looks like we are both celebrating 37 on the cruise. I jsut thought that was fun I will have to remember to hunt you down and wish you happy birthday.
Dave's brother and sister who are twins share my birthday (but they are 6 years older). We usually call each other and sing happy birthday to us

Happy early birthday to both of you! I would love to spend my birthday at Disney one of these days. Both of the kids and I all have our bdays within 10 days of each other and that would be awesome to celebrate all 3 of our bdays either on the cruise or at WDW/DL. I wanted to this year to get DD in as a "child" one more time and DS in as an "infant" one more time, but we couldn't do it. I went from having a "child" and free "infant" one day to having an "adult" and "child" 2 days later.

 

[NHdisneylover]

Happy early birthday to both of you! I would love to spend my birthday at Disney one of these days. Both of the kids and I all have our bdays within 10 days of each other and that would be awesome to celebrate all 3 of our bdays either on the cruise or at WDW/DL. I wanted to this year to get DD in as a "child" one more time and DS in as an "infant" one more time, but we couldn't do it. I went from having a "child" and free "infant" one day to having an "adult" and "child" 2 days later.

Thanks for those kind wishes. I jsut htought it was a pretty neat coincidence

ouch on those price jumps

We are actually going to celebrate Rio's birthday early so he can celebrate on the ship. He and Marika both have birthdays Christmas week and they know we will never spring for the cost of a Christmas cruise again (we did it in 200 but it was a very weird situation--anyway that cruise left the day after Rio's birthday so he has never celebrated on board). The last day of school before Christmas break falls on Rio's birthday and Dave will be out of town taht day so it just seems nicer to move it ahead a couple of weeks for our family celebration

 

[Tower]

We are actually going to celebrate Rio's birthday early so he can celebrate on the ship.

We're doing a similar deal with Christine's birthday. Her birthday will have passed (Nov 14), but she does not observe a birthday, or birthweek, but a birthmonth! So, the cruise falls well within a month's time of her birthday.

We were at MK on her birthday once, but it was 1.5 months before they started the free on the birthday promotion. Just the same, she still has that button and I told her to bring it along

We leave Canada 6 weeks from today!

 

[rowst3]

Is anyone's daughters (or I guess even sons too) Hannah Montana fans? For my dd's 6th birthday we had a Hannah Montana party and I have five birthday lanyards left.

Let me know.

Thanks! Rosemary

 

[rowst3]

We're doing a similar deal with Christine's birthday. Her birthday will have passed (Nov 14), but she does not observe a birthday, or birthweek, but a birthmonth! So, the cruise falls well within a month's time of her birthday.

We were at MK on her birthday once, but it was 1.5 months before they started the free on the birthday promotion. Just the same, she still has that button and I told her to bring it along

We leave Canada 6 weeks from today!

My DH and I took our first cruise the week of my 30th birthday. It was fun to celebrate on the ship. When we booked the cruise we didn't tell them we were celebrating anything, but I suspect DCL figured it out from my birth date. The funny part of the story is that on the day after my birthday all the waiters came to our table with a cake and sang Happy Birthday. My DH told our servers afterwards my birthday was actually yesterday. Nevertheless we had a good laugh and another desert

This time around we are sailing 6 days after my birthday, so no worries about singing waiters.

Thanks! Rosemary

 

[carmie3377]

Is anyone's daughters (or I guess even sons too) Hannah Montana fans? For my dd's 6th birthday we had a Hannah Montana party and I have five birthday lanyards left.

Let me know.

Thanks! Rosemary

Wow, I was going to ask the same thing! I've been picking up FE gifts over the months and picked up a few Hannah Montana things. However, no one noted her as a favorite. Does your DD still like her? I know how quickly interest can change.

 

[rowst3]

Wow, I was going to ask the same thing! I've been picking up FE gifts over the months and picked up a few Hannah Montana things. However, no one noted her as a favorite. Does your DD still like her? I know how quickly interest can change.

Yes, she still does. She is in the Wizards/Hannah/Suite Life/iCarly phase. Sometimes its hard to keep up. I'm just hoping to give some of the party leftovers away. There isn't enough of them to sell on ebay plus the lanyards I got online at the Disney Store after they were marked down. Needless to say they probably aren't available anymore.

 

[rowst3]

We've been collecting pins from our various Disney trips with the idea of participating in Pin Trading during our trips to Disney. Has anyone done this before or plan to while on the cruise? We did it once with a Cast member at the Animal Kingdom lodge a few years back.

Thanks!
Rosemary

 

[fluvannaj]

My daughter Jessica is still into Hannah Montana. Not sure I'm liking 16 y.o. Miley doing an "R" rated movie but Hannah is an ok show.

Fluvanna

 

[fluvannaj]

I just checked on-line and they have finally assigned a room to us. It still says cat 12 but the color in the brochure says that room number is a cat 11 so I guess it is an upgrade.

Getting very excited about the cruise!!

Fluvanna

 

[fluvannaj]

Hi!

I saw on the FE gifts page a link to a place that did inexpensive custom ribbon. Was thinking of doing some with the dates of the cruise and Disney Magic. Just thought I'd ask.

Fluvanna

 

[NHdisneylover]

I just checked on-line and they have finally assigned a room to us. It still says cat 12 but the color in the brochure says that room number is a cat 11 so I guess it is an upgrade.

Getting very excited about the cruise!!

Fluvanna

Yeah It is always so good to know where you will be. Yes, trust what the online maps show as your room category. Your reservation will ALWAYS show it as the level you booked--no matter what level you ned up with. SO, we paid for the upgrade to a 9 and it shows the room number for our 9 but still says category 11 (because that is what we booked). I think it has to do with people going for paid upgrades at the port. This tells the staff what you actually paid for to begin with.

We're doing a similar deal with Christine's birthday. Her birthday will have passed (Nov 14), but she does not observe a birthday, or birthweek, but a birthmonth! So, the cruise falls well within a month's time of her birthday.

We were at MK on her birthday once, but it was 1.5 months before they started the free on the birthday promotion. Just the same, she still has that button and I told her to bring it along

We leave Canada 6 weeks from today!

I'll have to remember to tell her happy birthday then too! A birthday month--that is cute. I'll have to watch for her pin. We feel like December is THE birthday month with 4 out of 4 of us having birthdays then plus another 4 memebers of the extended family. It is kind of one long party.

 

[mrstbalt]

Yeah It is always so good to know where you will be. Yes, trust what the online maps show as your room category. Your reservation will ALWAYS show it as the level you booked--no matter what level you ned up with. SO, we paid for the upgrade to a 9 and it shows the room number for our 9 but still says category 11 (because that is what we booked). I think it has to do with people going for paid upgrades at the port. This tells the staff what you actually paid for to begin with.



I'll have to remember to tell her happy birthday then too! A birthday month--that is cute. I'll have to watch for her pin. We feel like December is THE birthday month with 4 out of 4 of us having birthdays then plus another 4 memebers of the extended family. It is kind of one long party.

We did the upgrade too...for $300 a cabin from a cat 9 to cat 6. We were
not planning on spending any more money but it seemed like a good deal.

 

[Hanover]

Thanks for the early birthday wishes!

Hadley--I have a fraternal twin brother. He was the only one I knew with the same birthday until last year when I met someone on our cruise with the same birthday.

This will be my 4th birthday in a row on DCL. The 1st week of December is a great week for us to cruise with DVC points being pretty low in our pre/post cruise stays and it is between football season ending and before wrestling matches starting. I love seeing the ship decorated for Christmas and I love being in warm weather when it's freezing at home!

Sounds like people got great deals on upgrade offers. We picked our rooms (4midship cat 6 ) in 2007 and we asked them to keep us there since we love that location. We have been upgraded twice by DCL on past cruises. Once we got a cat 4 from a cat 6 and in February we were GTY cat 6 and got a 5. They put us in the very last room on the left on deck 7 which was handicapped accessible. They said they didn't have any others available (none of us are handicapped and I didn't want a hp room if someone needed it). The room and balcony were huge but it was next to the "secret deck" and we constantly had people craning their necks over our balcony and looking in the room so we had to keep the drapes over most of the time!

Rosemary--last December we got to see Miley Cyrus doing a stage performance at the Magic Kindgom the day they filmed the Christmas parade. Her dad also came out and sang a separate song. I think they are filming on the 5th this year so we'll miss that but I read they may do some of the taping on the 4th but I'm not positive. I heard that she's supposed to be there again but that's just what I've read somewhere on this board in the last few weeks.

 

[rowst3]

Rosemary--last December we got to see Miley Cyrus doing a stage performance at the Magic Kindgom the day they filmed the Christmas parade. Her dad also came out and sang a separate song. I think they are filming on the 5th this year so we'll miss that but I read they may do some of the taping on the 4th but I'm not positive. I heard that she's supposed to be there again but that's just what I've read somewhere on this board in the last few weeks.

Thanks for the info. Because of Madalyn's school (they're not being nice about the fact she will miss 6 days) the earliest we can leave is Friday morning. If we could leave sooner that would be pretty cool to see and I know Madalyn would just die if she had a chance to meet Miley.

Thanks! Rosemary