February 23, 2008 Magic Western

[hjensen]

ONE YEAR TODAY!! WOOOO HOOOOO!!!And tomorrow we can say "in less than a year..." Now the looooong wait really begins!! Have a great weekend Kim!!! Still can not believe that nobody else has joined this thread!!

 

[Hockeychic]

I wonder if Feb is a low cruise time. I don't think there are any school holidays, at least not up in my neck of the woods. Still debating on bringing DD.

Kim

 

[hjensen]

Ok...ok....I just had to say it....we will be cruising in LESS than a year!!! There are no holidays for us either at that time of year. We have blizzard warnings for us tonite!! So, so ,SOOOO tired of this weather!!!

 

[Hockeychic]

Holli: I am sorry to tell you after starting this thread we have changed our cruise.

We are going later in 2008.

I hope you have a awesome time and some people came in to chat soon.

Kim

 

[hjensen]

Well I am really sorry to hear that! I hope you have a wonderful cruise! I enjoyed chatting with you!!! Its still early....I'm sure people will be joining the thread!!!

 

[cdndizzylizzy]

Hi folks,

Well I will know for sure shortly, but the current plan is for me and my family to be on the Feb 23, 2008 Magic Western Carribean. We actually just left the Magic as you were all celebrating your "one year to go". We sailed Feb 24 - March 3, and almost booked the exact same cruise while still on board but needed a few weeks to consider. We looked at some other cruise lines but in the end we are just coming back for more!

Looking forward to a year's worth of looking forward!

 

[cdndizzylizzy]

Just confirming my last post - we are booked! Hence the ticker!

Hope to hear from other cruisers soon!

 

[hjensen]

Hi Elizabeth!!! I am so glad to have someone finally join the thread!! I knew that I couldnt be the only one going on this cruise!! How was the weather for you on your cruise this year? I hear from the boards that Feb. is a hit or miss month as far as the weather. We went last year and the weather was awesome!! Well....welcome and I look forward tio chatting with you!!!

 

[cdndizzylizzy]

Hi Elizabeth!!! I am so glad to have someone finally join the thread!! I knew that I couldnt be the only one going on this cruise!! How was the weather for you on your cruise this year? I hear from the boards that Feb. is a hit or miss month as far as the weather. We went last year and the weather was awesome!! Well....welcome and I look forward tio chatting with you!!!

Hi Holli,

The weather was absolutely excellent. It had been cold the week prior in Florida, but by the time we got to Orlando on the Friday the weather was in the mid 70s, and that was what we enjoyed on Saturday while in port and also at Key West. We had calm seas, no rain at any time during the week, and of course Grand Cayman and Cozumel were High 80s. On Friday at Castaway Cay it was a bit overcast when we first arrived, but the sun broke through and we had a great beach day. The water felt a bit chilly to the touch, but we got used to it quickly.

Hopefully we will get more of the same in '08! Our two DDs (will be 6 and 11 in '08), are very fair, especially DD6, so we prefer Feb to April and later...

Looking forward to lots of chatting in the months to come - it always seems closer when you spend a few minutes dreaming about it every few days!

 

[hjensen]

Hi Elizabeth! I'm glad that you guys had great weather! I just watched a clip from another thread about a cruise ship caught in a cyclone. I should have never watched it!!

We are very fair here too! It was upper 70's to low 80's on our last cruise and we still all burnt. Even with sunscreen! My son will turn 6 as soon as we get back from our next cruise. We also have 2 older children. My son will be 20 by the next cruise and my daughter will almost be 18. My older son isnt sure he wants to go. He thinks he will be too old for Disney! I tried to explain to him that you are NEVER too old for Disney!!

Have a great day!!!!

 

[Audiologynet]

Hello all,
I was just looking to see if anyone was talking about the cruise already. I am thrilled to see you guys here. We actually have a group going that is currently 8 of us.We have a couple of kids going. My sister who is 23 and will be graduating from MU is coming. So, If there are any 20+ year olds thinking about coming with their family. My sister will be coming. We also have 2 Grandmothers (76 and 58 both very cool) and one Grandad (60 also very cool) We have gone to the Western Caribbean several times. This will be our first Disney cruise. We are really excited!! If anyone has any tips I would really appreciate it!! Thanks for your time!

 

[Audiologynet]

Hi guys,
I just emailed my Dad and my sister to get them to get in on the thread. I am not much on the whole dressing up for dinner. Coming back from port and dressing up kills me. So, if anyone has sometime, can you give me the low down on the dining options for us? Some people have talked about the kids dining by themselves, or did I misunderstand? I understand about how there are 3 main restaurants and you rotate. I have heard about Palo's. I LOVE room service!! What I don't know about is the buffet, and other casual dining places, and the character breakfast. When so they have a buffet? It sounds like they don't have a buffet at night. Do they do the character breakfast when you are at a cool port? I sure hope not. Sorry if my questions are all jumbled. Thanks for your time!! Take Care

 

[hjensen]

Hi Micki!!! Well I have only been on one Disney cruise but I will try to answer some of your questions!! For dinner they have diffrent rotations. I think ours was APL. (Animators Palette, Parrot Cay, and Lumieres) I'm pretty sure your Character Breakfast is the morning you are in Parrot Cay for dinner. So our Character Breakfast was the first morning. I also HATE dressing up and I am trying really hard to remember when it was "dress up day" but I cant. We all just wore slacks but I am warning you that there were tuxes and long dresses...not by everyone...I really felt somewhat under dressed. We are really considering skipping that night and opting for Pinocchios Pizza or room service! There were tables where the kids had their own table and the adults had another. I guess you would have to talk to Disney about that. Topsiders is the buffet. We mainly went there for breakfast. One night we decided we would just go to the buffet for dinner and it wasnt set up as a buffet! Actually had a menu and a waiter. We didnt ask why just went with the flow! Well I hope I could answer some of your questions!! Talk to you soon!!

 

[Audiologynet]

Hi Holli,
That's a bummer about the buffet. I like having the huge variety of the buffet coupled with it being to casual. You can make your own cheese tray if you want and bring it to your room. So I guess. saran wrap it is..how big are the fridges in the room? Well, thanks!! Talk to you soon.

 

[cdndizzylizzy]

Hi guys,
I just emailed my Dad and my sister to get them to get in on the thread. I am not much on the whole dressing up for dinner. Coming back from port and dressing up kills me. So, if anyone has sometime, can you give me the low down on the dining options for us? Some people have talked about the kids dining by themselves, or did I misunderstand? I understand about how there are 3 main restaurants and you rotate. I have heard about Palo's. I LOVE room service!! What I don't know about is the buffet, and other casual dining places, and the character breakfast. When so they have a buffet? It sounds like they don't have a buffet at night. Do they do the character breakfast when you are at a cool port? I sure hope not. Sorry if my questions are all jumbled. Thanks for your time!! Take Care

Hi Micki,

Welcome to our humble thread! I am currently writing my trip report for the cruise that we just came back from (same week, same cruise - Feb 24 Magic). Here is the link, as I listed all of the awesome tips and ideas that I found through lurking on the DIS for 6 weeks before we set sail for our 1st ever cruise on ANY cruise line! I am currently at Wednesday, and hope to one day finish my trip report! I found trip reports to be the best way to get a wealth of tips and ideas - especially if you read a trip report for the same cruise - i.e. 7-day Westerns...

Here is the link to my half-finished TR:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1383940

We had breakfast every day at Topsiders Buffet on Deck 9. There is an excellent selection, along with an omelet station where you can custom-order your own omelet and have it delivered to your table. We found Topsiders to be very good for breakfast, and really enjoyed eating outside on the deck. We did go to Parrot Cay for our character breakfast - for us it was not until Thursday of our cruise week. I enjoyed the fun of interacting with the characters, but to be honest I prefer the choice at the buffet when it comes to breakfast. So we did the buffet each morning except for character breakfast and Saturday disembarkation breakfast.

There is a set date and time for the character breakfast. Our breakfast was at 8:15 am on Thursday, and we were PLAPLAP 5:45 early seating. I would imagine there is a chance that you may end up with a conflict re ports, but only if your CB is on Tues or Wed, as you can't disembark at Castaway Cay on Friday until after 9, and you don't even get to Key West until about noon, so it's really only GC and Cozumel that are the wild cards. I imagine somewhere on the DIS, someone has outlined what day of the week is associated with your rotation. If you ended up with your CB on a GC or Cozumel day, you could go to Rockin Bar Ds when you first board and change your dinner rotation, as your CB day would then also change.

For lunch, sometimes we ate around the pool - Pizza, Hamburgers, Wraps and Fresh Fruit - these are open until well into the evening, sometimes we ate at Topsiders, sometimes you are in port, and once we ate lunch at Lumiere's which was a very nice change of pace. Generally there is always at least one sit-down restaurant open for both breakfast lunch.

On the "cruise casual" nights, I wore capris with a dressier t-shirt or short-sleeved blouse, and DH wore khakis and golf shirts. We were appropriately dressed in relation to the other guests. On formal night, I wore a dress, but it was not a cocktail, floor-lengthed dress like one might wear to a prom or very fancy cocktail party - it was more like something you might wear as a "regular" guest to a summer wedding. On semi-formal night, I wore dress pants and a summer-weight dressy blouse. DH wore a suit and tie on formal night, and dress pants and a short-sleeved dress shirt (no tie) on semi-formal night. Our two DDs wore skirts or summer dresses both nights. In all cases, we brought clothes that we already owned in our wardrobes, and I have to say we were comfortable and enjoyed getting a little bit more dressed up those evenings. We took the opportunity to get formal pictures taken (they have multiple options of backdrops set up). We found that we wanted to shower and clean up after a day either at sea or at port, so getting dressed up was no big deal. We had casual-enough clothes that we generally did not change after dinner - we just kept them on for the shows, etc.

For us, missing dinner at any of the 3 restaurants is not an option. We loved the food all week, and really enjoyed the service we received from our servers - Ivan and Andrea. This is a unique, and wonderful aspect of DCL - that your servers travel through the rotation with you throughout the week. Our two DDs are accustomed to eating in restaurants and settling down for an hour and a half for a nice meal as a family, so that was not a problem. In fact, our 7 dinners are up there are some of the best moments spent together as a family during the week - treated like royalty, great ambiance, chit-chat about all of the fun stuff done all day, etc. The wait staff stay with you at dinner for the week, learn your drink preferences, and treat your kids like super stars. DD10 enjoyed ordering from the adult menu. Even though you return to the same restaurant after the first rotation, each night is a different menu - after the first rotation, it turns to Captain's Gala, Pirate Night, etc. etc. So each night provides a new opportunity for a unique appetizer, soup/salad, main course AND dessert!

There were at least 2 night buffets that I tripped across - the Pirate Night buffet (a real smorgasbord) after the fireworks ended, and a truly awesome dessert buffet at 11:15 pm one night in Lumieres - chocolate fountain, the whole nine yards. I think there may be others, but to be honest we were never up late enough to know about them!

The kids can dine with the clubs - sometimes that means that they accompany their age group to one of the restaurants at about 5 pm before the restaurants serve the rotation meals or they go up to Topsiders, and other times they just eat pizza or whatever the plan is right at the club itself. Each night in the restaurant on the kids' menu there are the 3 standards - pizza, mac & cheese and chicken fingers, and then 3 additional options that vary night to night - i.e. turkey and vegetables, lasagna, etc. etc. I think that when the kids eat in the clubs, they don't have quite the same options, so it depends on what they like - I have read some posts about kids who are happy to eat chicken fingers all week, so there would be no problem, but my kids wouldn't go for that. They did eat in the club once for lunch when we were at Palo (we chose to do brunch only at Palo for our first cruise, on the Thursday while at sea, as we had chosen in advance to have dinner together as a family each night). That worked fine for us - I loved Palo for lunch, and have no regrets, and I am not even sure I would worry about trying to get there for dinner on our 2nd cruise either. But, that is just us. It really does depend on the cruise experience that YOU want to plan. There is no one "right" answer.

Our daughters are going to be 6 and 11 next February. How many kids do you have, and how old are they? This past February, we ended up creating a DIS thread for the kids to use - we might want to do that for our 2008 cruise too, once more parents join in on the fun!

Hope that helps! Talk more later!

 

[hjensen]

Well the fridges reminded me of hotel refrigerators. About that same size. They really didnt seem to get real cold though. (at least ours didnt) Kept things cool but not cold!

Great post Elizabeth!! You talked about alot of things that I had forgotten about!

Here are some tips that I found useful when we went! An extension cord is a must!! Not alot of outlets! Bring highlighters so you can highlight the things you would like to do that are listed in the Navigator for that day! Some people swear by the over the door shoe holders to keep some of the toiletries and other stuff in.Collapsable hamper for dirty clothes and some dryer sheets to help keep that hamper smelling fresh!! Lots of singles if you plan on using room service so you have that to tip with! A collapsable cooler so you can bring your own soda, water and alcohol on board. We like to drink, but are not big drinkers but it was nice for the hubby to have a cold beer and not have to pay so much for it. The room steward will keep it full of ice for you. (plus there was no Diet Dew onboard and I could not survive without it!!)

Well thats just a few off the top of my head!! I'm sure there will be more! Have a great night!

 

[cdndizzylizzy]

Hi all,

10 months today! Woo hoo!!!!

 

[hjensen]

WOOO HOOO!! When you say 10 months it kind of seems like along time....but I know its going to fly by!! The last time we went my daughter was like "Gosh Mom its like 8 months away...you need to chill out!" But before I knew it...it was here. Cant wait!!

 

[yensidfan99]

Good morning all!! My DW, DD (2 at the time of cruise) and I will be on board. We are so excited. I think this will be our 8th cruise on Disney.

We are very excited that this cruise we were able to get a midship Cat 3

This is our 2nd Western cruise but last time was with my family and we didn't have DD. I am looking forward to spending some time with my DD at the Mickey pool or just chilling with her alone in our cabin.

We are not sure what we are going to do about excursions as never having cruised with a toddler. Propably just walk the beaches and such.

We are doing a week at WDW after the cruise so plenty of family time on this trip.

 

[hjensen]

Hey!! You found us!! We are also in a midship Cat. 3!!! What are the odds!? We are in 8534. Maybe we're neighbors!! Which Cat. 3 are you in!!?

When we went in 06 our son was almost 4. We did the semi submarine with him In Grand Cayman. It really was an excellent excursion. Thats the only one we went on as a family seeing as he was so young! So you might want to check that one out! Dont know how old your toddler is!

WOW!!! Your 8th cruise!! I'm jealous!!