maggie blossom
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2010
- Messages
- 237
Just a few days off our first ever cruise. The wonderful Disney Magic was our home for 7 days.
I never planned to write a trip report but I enjoyed reading others before I went. I think my perspective may be a little different than others due to some, ahem mobility issues I wound up with. I tend to be wordy so I apologize if it is too long. I want to include details.
Who we are: myself, SO and DD (11), Bella. SO booked this cruise back in August as a 50th birthday gift to me. I don't know how I happened upon the DIS boards but once I did I have never been off
. I learned so much here that was useful and wound up making new friends.
I will give a little pre-cruise history as it all pertains.
I joined our meet thread. I ended up signing DD up to be penpals with a couple of girls so they could email prior to our trip. This ended up being the best thing and I highly recommend it to other older kids. We monitor DD's email closely so we knew it was safe.
One of the girls DD was corresponding with lives just 3 hours from us so over school vacation week in Feb we decided to meet for lunch. We met halfway. It was a funny feeling waiting in the restaurant as we were meeting total strangers. In walk Taylor and her mom, Julie. They would be cruising with Julie's parents. It would be the second cruise for all of them. Well we ended up being there for hours and the waitress was blown away when we eventually told her we had never met before. We loved meeting them, Bella and Taylor hit it off right away and we enjoyed Julie as well.
Two weeks later in snowy Boston I fall down our front steps and shatter the bones in my lower leg. I have surgery that night and have 2 plates and 15 screws put in my leg. SO tells the orthopedic surgeon we are going on a cruise in 7 weeks and he gets a weird look on his face (like "I'm not so sure about that"). Honestly one of the first thoughts I have is that I wish we hadn't met Julie and Taylor because now it would be worse to postpone the trip as we were looking forward to getting to know them.
SO decides right away that we are going on the cruise anyway because now more than ever we need a vacation and we will make it work. We DID have trip insurance so postponing was a viable option.
A few weeks after surgery I email Julie and tell her of my accident. She emailed back and tells me that she and her parents had reservations at Palo on the thursday night of our trip and that they would like to invite us to join them.
(Yes, they are the nicest people, but we got that vibe when we had lunch). We accepted but when Julie calls Disney they could not add us to the reservation. We can try to do it when we board. Somehow with this phone call our reservations wound up linked.
Cruise time arrives and I am on crutches, partial weight bearing, and we have purchased a lightweight travel wheelchair. Travel w/c means it only has small wheels which means I can't push it myself. I wasn't thrilled with this because it took my independence away. But we really wanted light and portable. Last visit before the trip I see the doctor, we remind him of the trip and he says "have fun". Phew!
We flew in Thursday night, rented a car at airport and stayed in Orlando near Universal. DD was dying to go to WWoHP so we did that on friday. I was really nervous about crowds there as it was school vacation time and that is always crowded from what I read. Well it was crowded but not nearly as bad as I had feared. We waited no more than 45 mins for the rides, and way less when we went to the other areas away from WWoHP.
DD enjoyed it, they did a good job making it look and feel like Harry Potter. Butterbear was good, DD got the Pygmie Puff she had been talking about.
NEXT UP: Arrival at Port
I never planned to write a trip report but I enjoyed reading others before I went. I think my perspective may be a little different than others due to some, ahem mobility issues I wound up with. I tend to be wordy so I apologize if it is too long. I want to include details.
Who we are: myself, SO and DD (11), Bella. SO booked this cruise back in August as a 50th birthday gift to me. I don't know how I happened upon the DIS boards but once I did I have never been off

I will give a little pre-cruise history as it all pertains.
I joined our meet thread. I ended up signing DD up to be penpals with a couple of girls so they could email prior to our trip. This ended up being the best thing and I highly recommend it to other older kids. We monitor DD's email closely so we knew it was safe.
One of the girls DD was corresponding with lives just 3 hours from us so over school vacation week in Feb we decided to meet for lunch. We met halfway. It was a funny feeling waiting in the restaurant as we were meeting total strangers. In walk Taylor and her mom, Julie. They would be cruising with Julie's parents. It would be the second cruise for all of them. Well we ended up being there for hours and the waitress was blown away when we eventually told her we had never met before. We loved meeting them, Bella and Taylor hit it off right away and we enjoyed Julie as well.
Two weeks later in snowy Boston I fall down our front steps and shatter the bones in my lower leg. I have surgery that night and have 2 plates and 15 screws put in my leg. SO tells the orthopedic surgeon we are going on a cruise in 7 weeks and he gets a weird look on his face (like "I'm not so sure about that"). Honestly one of the first thoughts I have is that I wish we hadn't met Julie and Taylor because now it would be worse to postpone the trip as we were looking forward to getting to know them.
SO decides right away that we are going on the cruise anyway because now more than ever we need a vacation and we will make it work. We DID have trip insurance so postponing was a viable option.
A few weeks after surgery I email Julie and tell her of my accident. She emailed back and tells me that she and her parents had reservations at Palo on the thursday night of our trip and that they would like to invite us to join them.
(Yes, they are the nicest people, but we got that vibe when we had lunch). We accepted but when Julie calls Disney they could not add us to the reservation. We can try to do it when we board. Somehow with this phone call our reservations wound up linked.
Cruise time arrives and I am on crutches, partial weight bearing, and we have purchased a lightweight travel wheelchair. Travel w/c means it only has small wheels which means I can't push it myself. I wasn't thrilled with this because it took my independence away. But we really wanted light and portable. Last visit before the trip I see the doctor, we remind him of the trip and he says "have fun". Phew!
We flew in Thursday night, rented a car at airport and stayed in Orlando near Universal. DD was dying to go to WWoHP so we did that on friday. I was really nervous about crowds there as it was school vacation time and that is always crowded from what I read. Well it was crowded but not nearly as bad as I had feared. We waited no more than 45 mins for the rides, and way less when we went to the other areas away from WWoHP.
DD enjoyed it, they did a good job making it look and feel like Harry Potter. Butterbear was good, DD got the Pygmie Puff she had been talking about.
NEXT UP: Arrival at Port