December 24, 2011 Celebrating a Magical 6-Night Caribbean Christmas Cruise

[KaryCam]

Today is Oct. 24 - two months from today is the start of our cruise!!
And one month from today is Thanksgiving and the day we tell DS12 about the cruise.
My door magnets are all made and have also finished making my FE. Today I start making the pirate vests for DH and DS.
Hopefully more people will join our cruise FE group.

Looking forward to DCL releasing the special cruises for 2013 - hoping for Alaska. Kind of hoping it's after our cruise so we can book on-board.

Fall has finally arrived in SW FL. The temps today are 84/64. We had a cold front come through last week after 3 days of rain and it was in the 70's.

Looking forward to meeting you all - have a good day.

 

[tinkerbell_29]

57 more days until we leave!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited
Hope everyone is doing well.

Melissa

 

[hiclarke]

I've been on the fence to sign up since things have been pretty busy, but I think this sounds like fun so go ahead and sign my family up. It would be me, DH and DD10 and DD6.

Do I PM you our room #?

Hanne

 

[Bursley2010]

59 days until we sail and I've already added Christmas music to my usual Disney playlist on my iPhone... I think given the circumstances of this Christmas, that I'm allowed to listen to some holiday music 2 months out from the actual holiday...

 

[scaldwel]

Hello from future staterooms #5012 and #5018 (and one stateroom # unknown).

Me: 42
DH: 43
DS: 11
DS: 9 1/2
DD: 6
DM: 70
DB: 39
DSiL: 34
DN: 4
DN: 2

Looking forward to it!!!
Stephanie

 

[Cruella 66]

Hi all! I'm going to have to back out of the FE. I am running so short of time I just won't have enough to pull something together. I have been lurking the FE threads and I am WWWAAAYYYYY to busy to do something like I see on there. So, you all have fun with it and we'll see you around the boat!

 

[KaryCam]

Hi all! I'm going to have to back out of the FE. I am running so short of time I just won't have enough to pull something together. I have been lurking the FE threads and I am WWWAAAYYYYY to busy to do something like I see on there. So, you all have fun with it and we'll see you around the boat!

I have been lurking on the Homemade FE thread too. Please don't think that you have to have something as over-the-top as some of those people. Most people don't. There are some people that only give a cabin gift, not individual things to each member in the cabin. Some people give something that relates to where you are from. I remember reading about a person from NJ gave each cabin a small box of salt water taffy that is famous there or a Georgia person made a pack of Southern recipes. It doesn't have to be expensive or complicated.

I hope that our little group here gets to have a "Meet" on the ship to put faces with names. Looking forward to seeing you all.

 

[Bursley2010]

I hope that our little group here gets to have a "Meet" on the ship to put faces with names. Looking forward to seeing you all.

I think it would be great to have some kind of a meet as well-- nice to put names to faces after all the planning and chatting.

55 Days, 22 hours... so excited! It seems like it was just the start of the school year and we just started doing the double digit dance , and now the time to wait has almost been cut in half since then...

 

[charliez]

Been a while since I checked in... we are havng a pre-cruise planning "party" tonight with our friends who will be cruising with us... they are newbies, and this will be our third cruise, so we are having loads of fun telling them about our past cruises and planning what we'll do this time. We just saw the post about the pirate night on 12/26, and we're all excited because we thought there might not be one on the 6-night cruise.

On a non-DCL note, I also just made our rental car reservations for getting to Cape Canaveral from MCO and then from the port to WDW when we get back from the cruise. (We're doing New Year's in the park.) We use Budget, and just to share the love, we used a Budget BCD discount code (Y937800) to get an AWESOME rental rate - we got a minivan for $136 for a 12/22-24 and only $60 for 12/30. (Thanks to Mousesavers.com for the code.)

 

[TimmyTown]

Hello from future staterooms #5012 and #5018 (and one stateroom # unknown).

Me: 42
DH: 43
DS: 11
DS: 9 1/2
DD: 6
DM: 70
DB: 39
DSiL: 34
DN: 4
DN: 2

Looking forward to it!!!
Stephanie

Welcome aboard Stephanie & crew! We have a DS12. Perhaps our sons will meet up at the Edge (the tween club). See you in December!

 

[Bursley2010]

Hi Everyone! Just 49 days until Christmas Eve and we all board the Magic for some Magic!

I'm starting to get a little paranoid about flights... we are flying into Orlando and staying at the Hyatt on Dec. 23, but our flight doesn't leave Detroit until 8pm. I'm really concerned between the high traffic of the holidays and the weather potential that we aren't leaving early enough, however I work on Dec 23 until 4pm, so we can't fly out any earlier. Does anyone have any experience with buying trip insurance and can suggest a good company that will cover the cruise in case our flight is delayed/cancelled? I've stalked a few threads on here, but there are so many options, that I thought I would ask our little group on here. I hate to even think about the possibility, but I want to at least make sure we are covered if something were to happen...

 

[jitsb]

Oh my, Bursley, you must be so nervous! I wish I had some information to give you, but we've also never used trip insurance before, I'm sorry! We traveled at Christmas time last year and all thought it was very close, we did make it for the holidays; I can only hope it will go as well for you! Wishing you the best of luck!

Now that we are finally through the month of October, I can actually spend some time focusing on the cruise! w00t!! My boys' formal and semi-formal clothes are ready and the DH is all set; now I just need to find a pretty dress for my Christmas dinner outfit! I have our door magnets all saved on the computer, now I just need to find a print shop to laminate them for me... and I wanted to see what people thought about this idea for a FE... What if I just got a long velvety, heavy rope to put on the fish and then hung our own stockings from that?? That way, we can have Santa "bring" them their presents on Xmas Eve night and use them for the rest of the week for our FE gifts... does that sound like a good idea to anyone else, or am I just nuts? Well, I mean... I AM nuts, but is it a good idea??

So are we going to set up the Cruise Meet? The one I went to last year was early on in the cruise, but with our first 2 days being Xmas Eve and Xmas Day, I'm not so sure that would work? Does anyone have any votes for a day/place?

Super-excting time... can't wait!!

 

[jenedpey]

I wanted to see what people thought about this idea for a FE... What if I just got a long velvety, heavy rope to put on the fish and then hung our own stockings from that?? That way, we can have Santa "bring" them their presents on Xmas Eve night and use them for the rest of the week for our FE gifts... does that sound like a good idea to anyone else, or am I just nuts? Well, I mean... I AM nuts, but is it a good idea??

It is definitely possible to use stockings as shown below, but the space is limited without getting into the way of the door or the hallway. We went with attaching the stockings to each other (using lots of safety pins) in order to shorten the total length and keep it clear of the floor. We also folded in the toes on the top so they didn't stick out in the hall. The only bad thing about using stockings is that small items fall all the way to the bottom, and my daughter couldn't get things out of the top stocking. The good thing is that most items weren't visible to people passing by. The stockings worked well, and we will be using them again for this , but of course we have to come up with a new FE for our summer cruises.

 

[Bursley2010]

We are using stockings too! These are the stockings I made for our group of 8... we are using them for our own mini-FE between our families for Christmas. I bought up the stockings cheap on E-bay, then took some sharpies to them to write each person's name on them with the Disney font. It was a lot of fun, and cost less than $20 total, including the sharpies and all!

 

[KaryCam]

What if I just got a long velvety, heavy rope to put on the fish and then hung our own stockings from that?? That way, we can have Santa "bring" them their presents on Xmas Eve night and use them for the rest of the week for our FE gifts... does that sound like a good idea to anyone else, or am I just nuts?

So are we going to set up the Cruise Meet? The one I went to last year was early on in the cruise, but with our first 2 days being Xmas Eve and Xmas Day, I'm not so sure that would work? Does anyone have any votes for a day/place?

Cute idea about the stockings. And if the gift is too big for the stocking or any FE, they can put it in a bag and hand it from the fish.
After seeing these Christmas-themed FE's, I might have to add some touches to mine. I finished making it a few weeks ago and it is "all-purpose."

Would like to do a Cruise Meet also. My only concern about waiting too long to do it is what if someone's cabin number changed at the port, they won't be able to tell everyone.

I am finishing up the treasure hunt we have planned to tell DS12 about the cruise. Thanksgiving Day can't come soon enough. He is going to freak.

 

[KaryCam]

Just got off the phone with DCL.

The Dining theme nights are still:
1 Port Canaveral – dining rotation
2 At Sea – Formal - Prince & Princess menu
3 Cozumel – Pirate – Pirate menu
4 At Sea – Semi-Formal - Captain's Gala menu
5 Key West – dining rotation
6 Castaway Cay – dining rotation

I also verified that DH's info said, "allergy to tree nuts" and I made a request to dine in Lumiere's the 2nd rotational night (night 5).

They also said that the ship is full up. Which makes me wonder why they still show cabins open on the DCL website.

 

[CanyonRider]

Hi Everyone! Just 49 days until Christmas Eve and we all board the Magic for some Magic!

Does anyone have any experience with buying trip insurance and can suggest a good company that will cover the cruise in case our flight is delayed/cancelled? ...

We always buy travel insurance from Travelex Insurance - well worth the minor cost. Unfortunately, they require you to buy it within 30days of booking the travel - for obvious reasons.

 

[jenedpey]

We booked an 11c GTY and finally got our cabin assignment today. No pixie dust here though ... we got assigned an 11c. We were on this same last year and were upgraded to a cat 9. We won't let this ruin our cruise though ... it will still be lots of fun!

 

[Bursley2010]

We also got our 11C-- glad that all of us in our party are all right next to each other though! Looks like the linking of our reservations worked!

 

[KaryCam]

We booked an 11c GTY and finally got our cabin assignment today. No pixie dust here though ... we got assigned an 11c. We won't let this ruin our cruise though ... it will still be lots of fun!

We also got our 11C-- glad that all of us in our party are all right next to each other though! Looks like the linking of our reservations worked!

We are in an 11B, but on deck 6.
Make sure you all update your FE status with your new cabin number. Thanks.