EBPC December 9, 2012!!! Who's in????

[LindaBabe]

Good Morning, Happy Cruisers!

Welcome, Cayucan and family! How many of you are there? And where ya from?

It's a rainy morning here in upstate New York.

I woke up at 4 and thought if I go back to sleep, I won't make it to the gym, so here I am. What a struggle it is - the hardest exercise of all is prying myself out of bed!

If y'all want to do a scavenger hunt, I know someone who might have a list. But one of you enthusiasts will have to organize it, if I get the list for you. Beware, though! Sometimes things change on the ship without notice to the list maker, which leaves one

Happy Day, All!

 

[WVURunner]

Thanks holula, Tammy and Jeff (hope I didn't miss anyone) -- we will definitely plan to be there well before the park opens on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Back to the issue of Early or Late Dinner: Based on everyone's great advice I'm still conflicted about whether we should do the early seating or the late seating with DD (8) and DS (6). A case can be made either way....and perhaps for us it will come down to whether there are other Dis folks with kids at the late seating.

Is anyone else with preteens doing the late seating? (I didn't see any discussions re who is going to the late seating, but could've missed it.) I think I might be bummed to miss out being in the same seating area as the large group with and w/o kids that's already forming for the early seating. I'm glad we have early seating so that we have the option to go either way, but we're sort of leaning towards late seating if we wont' be there by ourselves.

We are doing late seating and always have. We like not being rushed and the kids love the dine and play. My DH and I are late eaters normally since we don't get home from work till after 8.

My sister requested that we have our own table but we won't mind being seated near other dis'ers for the late seating if someone wants to organize it. Nephew is 9 and niece is 6 with 3 adults.

 

[cayucan]

We are a total of 9. My wife and I, our 2 daughters and spouses and 3 grandchildren. Our grandson is 8 and already is saying he plans on spending the whole time in the pool. Twin granddaughters are 4 1/2. We all live on the Central Coast of Calif, half way between LA and SF. Right now I'm having fun reading past posts and getting a lot of tips.

 

[Land Park Tudor]

We like not being rushed and the kids love the dine and play.

I read something about that in one of the earlier posts -- is that where kids club folks come to dinner and pick up the kids to take them back to the kids club a little before the grown ups are done eating? I've never seen that for the early seating so I assume the servers bring the kids food out (inc. dessert) a little faster.

 

[WVURunner]

I read something about that in one of the earlier posts -- is that where kids club folks come to dinner and pick up the kids to take them back to the kids club a little before the grown ups are done eating? I've never seen that for the early seating so I assume the servers bring the kids food out (inc. dessert) a little faster.

Dine and play is only during the late seating. The kids club CMs come 45 min into dinner to get the kids. If you let your server know you are doing dine and play, they bring the kids meals out with the adult appetizers so the kids will be finished with their meals in 45 minutes. The adults can enjoy their entrée and the rest of dinner kid free.

 

[MaryLou1962]

Dine and play is only during the late seating. The kids club CMs come 45 min into dinner to get the kids. If you let your server know you are doing dine and play, they bring the kids meals out with the adult appetizers so the kids will be finished with their meals in 45 minutes. The adults can enjoy their entrée and the rest of dinner kid free.

You can definitely ask for your child's meal to come earlier at the early seating as well. Even when we have done late seating it was much more likely that my husband or I would take our son to the Club. It doesn't take long at all to run up--especially when they are so motivated to get there themselves!!

 

[abbyar]

We're doing late seating - I hope it will work for the kids.

We have a dd who just turned 5 and a ds who just turned 3, if anyone's interested in requesting seating.

 

[holula]

I am getting a table together for the late seating
Chrissyt27 and DH
haileyboo and her DH

so we have room for 2 or 4 more, may have 2 from the FB page.

Can you add this to the website? Thanks!

You do have two from the fb page, me and my BF.

 

[Travelbee]

Back to the issue of Early or Late Dinner: Based on everyone's great advice I'm still conflicted about whether we should do the early seating or the late seating with DD (8) and DS (6). A case can be made either way....and perhaps for us it will come down to whether there are other Dis folks with kids at the late seating.

Is anyone else with preteens doing the late seating? (I didn't see any discussions re who is going to the late seating, but could've missed it.) I think I might be bummed to miss out being in the same seating area as the large group with and w/o kids that's already forming for the early seating. I'm glad we have early seating so that we have the option to go either way, but we're sort of leaning towards late seating if we wont' be there by ourselves.

We currently have late seating but may still change. Our thinking is that with early dining means eating dinner at 5:45 Eastern time by the end of the cruise. We may come home and want dinner at 2 pm! We are usually early birds but figure there are so many sea days and most likely a DARK room (IGT), we can stay up late and sleep in and won't know its time to get up. DD (10) adjusts well to most things so we're not too concern about her. That said... we may still be switching back to early seating...?? We'd love to share a table with another family with kids!!

Good Morning, Happy Cruisers!

If y'all want to do a scavenger hunt, I know someone who might have a list. But one of you enthusiasts will have to organize it, if I get the list for you. Beware, though! Sometimes things change on the ship without notice to the list maker, which leaves one

DD and I did the hidden mickey scavenger hunt. She really enjoyed it. It was an Edge activity (Out and About series) but I wasn't comfortable with her roaming the ship completely unsupervised (the counselors do not go with the teams) so we just took the list from them and did the hunt on our own.

 

[MaryLou1962]

We currently have late seating but may still change. Our thinking is that with early dining means eating dinner at 5:45 Eastern time by the end of the cruise. We may come home and want dinner at 2 pm! We are usually early birds but figure there are so many sea days and most likely a DARK room (IGT), we can stay up late and sleep in and won't know its time to get up. DD (10) adjusts well to most things so we're not too concern about her. That said... we may still be switching back to early seating...?? We'd love to share a table with another family with kids!!

If you look backwards, you'll find a list of families getting together to do the Early Dining.

It will be our first time with Early Dining. There's pros and cons to both ways.

 

[Cruise]

I checked in at 4 am this morning and only got the 11:30 check in time but I think a few people have said on other threads that in LA they let you show up early if the line isn't full. Anybody know if that's true?

Thanks! We're getting excited now that it's *booked*!

I checked in 15 days ago and got the 11:30am time.

11:00am was taken by mostly golds and a few silvers. I checked in around noon on "silver" check in day, so I definitely wasn't the first silver using the website that day.

 

[Gilland18]

DH got a $40 stock dividend check Mon. Tues. I booked brunch at Palo!

 

[holula]

I checked in 15 days ago and got the 11:30am time.

11:00am was taken by mostly golds and a few silvers. I checked in around noon on "silver" check in day, so I definitely wasn't the first silver using the website that day.

We checked in as silver at around 11am and got the 11:00am time! We must have been lucky which never happens to me!

 

[adnil530]

With all the talk about early/late dining. I wonder if we can switch half-way? 7 days of early and 7 days of late? That way, I can have dinner at my normal time and by the time I get to the East Coast, I will be eating late dining which would be my normal dinner time in CA.

In all seriousness, is this possible?

 

[Jeff Spencer]

So I'm finally getting around to booking flights to LA and from Miami. I'm seeing a significant different ($100-200 per ticket) on being able to leave at 10:15 am on 12/23 versus afternoon. Any DISers that have booked flights out of Miami before noon? DCL advises against it; however, on 4 previous cruises I also know that DCL gives debarkation priority to those with early flights out.

 

[Jeff Spencer]

If you look backwards, you'll find a list of families getting together to do the Early Dining.

It will be our first time with Early Dining. There's pros and cons to both ways.

One reason we've always chose late dining in the past is that we didn't want to be rushed to get back to the ship from shore excursions. However, given this trip is mostly sea days and even when we are in port our onboard times are so early, this becomes a non-issue.

 

[Liz Arjay]

I'm new to this group and to cruising. Our family is really looking foreword to this DCL experience. Any tips and advise would be greatly appreciated.

WELCOME cayucan! I was a doubter for my first cruise (DCL 3 day) which my boss got us as a gift. We had so much fun that we had booked another within a week of disembarking. That was 6 cruises ago, and they keep getting longer. You are brave to start with a 14 day trip, but I think you will have a wonderful time.

 

[dededisney]

WELCOME cayucan! I was a doubter for my first cruise (DCL 3 day) which my boss got us as a gift. We had so much fun that we had booked another within a week of disembarking. That was 6 cruises ago, and they keep getting longer. You are brave to start with a 14 day trip, but I think you will have a wonderful time.

Wow, I want your boss! What a nice gift...of course that "gift" has cost a lot more than you bargained for since booking so many more

Cayucan, you will love DCL...we always thought the 7 night cruises were too short, so we are very excited about the 14 night trip.

 

[Travelbee]

If you look backwards, you'll find a list of families getting together to do the Early Dining.

It will be our first time with Early Dining. There's pros and cons to both ways.

I checked with DH and he definitely prefers early seating so I'll be emailing our TA tomorrow for that change.

 

[cayucan]

We're all looking foreword to 14 days. Our 8 year old is super excited about the Panama Canal transit. Together we've watched every TV program and video dealing with the canal. He's become a mini-expert.