halloween cruise/ Magic: October 28th-nov..4th 2006

[kritter]

seems like the buzz on the boards is that prices for 2007 will be much higher than 2006....wonder why???

 

[kritter]

bump!!

 

[buckifan]

seems like the buzz on the boards is that prices for 2007 will be much higher than 2006....wonder why???

Wonder if rising fuel prices has anything to do with it?

 

[kritter]

I wonder as well...Seems like prices have been going up on everything.Milk here is outragous you would think it is gas...

 

[kritter]

Guess what I jsut got in the mail tickets for my mom and me to go and see The live with Regis and Kelly show...I know it is dinsey unrelated but I had to tell ...well techinaclly they work for ABC which is owned by disney...but any way we will be on the show Nov. 1st soooooo please watch....should be fun..can not wait.to go...wrote them a letter a while back telling them how my mom took care of me, DH and the twins while I was sick with my lung this winter and tehy sent us tickets how cool is that......

 

[AmyJ of Ca]

May we join you??? We had booked this cruise on our July West Coast cruise and we were planning on switching it to 2007....Needless to say, we are keeping this date as it would cost about 40% more to switch it to a week that wasn't even during Spring break!! I even looked into switching it to the next week (1st week of Nov) because my kids have 2 days off school that week and it was still $1200 to do that. Anyway, now that we have settled on this week, let me introduce my family. There are 7 of us in 2 connecting cabins ..Myself (Amy), My DH (Brice), MIL (Pat), and our 4 kids which will be (9,7,2,3 at the time of sailing). My SIL will have another cabin nearby with her 2 kids and her BF. We are from Southern California and have been DL passholders for many years. We met Fran and Dave on our last cruise although we only saw them as we were running past chasing our kids. Maybe this cruise our kids will enjoy the kids clubs more and the babies will be a bit older. By the end of our last cruise, if we even walked down the hallway by Flounders, my youngest one dug her nails into me and started screaming!! I guess they are a little attached!! Hope to get to know you all!! Talk to you all later. Amy

 

[kritter]

WELCOME WELCOME AMY!!!


So very excited that you are joining us..We are soo excited that you have kids around the ages of some of us...Hopefully we can have all the kids meet....Sounds like you guys know all about disney living in Cali and all...Great to meet you..I have twins who will be four when we cruise...

Wonder why the price was sooo very high,....I have heard that prices are going way up for cruises in 2007 maybe gas???

Great to meet you and look forward to getting to know you over the next year...

Do you have any pictures from yor last cruise that you could share with us...What tips do you have about the cruise that you could share also??
Kristin

 

[kritter]

Bump!!

 

[XLT800]

Need to bump us back to page 1.

Amy......how are you doing? Glad you are with us again. Maybe kids will cooporate more this time.

Dave

 

[captaincrash]

Arr.. Arrrdy....Arrr ta ya Amy! an welcome aboard again!!!

That was the pirate in me (being a captain an' all!).... .... an' I imagine your kids will be completely different by next October compared to your last time aboard. If there's one thing I've learned is that you CANNOT predict what to expect a year out (let alone a day - sometimes). On our last DCL sailing this past September our 4 year old daughter wanted to stay OUT of the kids club (which was fine with us but unexpected). Last year in 2004 (Sept) she couldn't have been pulled OUT of the kids club! And I recall that one of the families fromm the DIS group on our 2005 sailing had the REVERSE experience with their 4 year old - as we had sort of hoped our kids might have hung out a bit together.

So... it just goes to show that it might very well be that the unexpected happens. Ya kno... sometimes a diaper will just... leak!... and I can only assume that this would be an unexpected occasion. Ok... Maybe you've never had a leaky diaper... so how about this... sometimes .... a child will simply "miss the potty" while potty training... oh yeah! Like these things never happen. LOL!

Aside from that - on pricing - I am mildly (not) surprised to hear of the stiff pricing. Especially for 2007 sailings (are they out already?). You know, I recall looking into the west coast sailings as soon as I heard about them and the pricing was pretty sharp and stiff. I followed the pricing regularly and it never dipped. Hence we returned to sail from Florida even though we're Southern Californians like you (Amy). We would have liked driving to the port for a change. But - Hey, we figured the jet ride was tolerable since the kids travel well and we'd get a change of scenery for our trouble. Only down side was we were flying INTO a hurricane region during hurricane season no less. Which we felt was reason enough to move our usual September sailing into October since that seemed sligtly LESS active for hurricanes in the news (to us who are less familiar with hurricanes - being from California). Frankly, our biggest threat almost never occurs - earthquakes - and otherwise we get the big fires (we're in Westlake Village - adjacent to Thousand Oaks - the HQ of the big fire fighting defense in the recent round of wildfires out here). And by comparison these hurricanes seem more troublesome (for now - until the "big one" rears its' ugly head on the west coast!).

So... we were hoping for less hurricane activity next October compared to these past few Septembers here we saw a little too much hurricane activity. AND - the pricing was attractive so we went with the Holloween thing - with it's potential for festive haunting "promise". AND... it pushed us out away from our daughters' 1st week in k school. We wanted to give our tike a chance to start school WITH her class so she would feel more "in step" with her crowd - sort of give her an equal start at meeting and making frineds and classmates.

So - last words on the pricing - they say it is capacity controlled for the given lead time - IE - 12 months out they expect to have perhaps 50% of the ship sold. If sales exceed this then they ratchet the price up - if it trails then they noth the prices lower. And so on - for each month up to departure. Now... shuuu! ... we actually saw a few sailings on DCL go on a last minute "fire sale" recently - and we would have jumped on it even though we already had a DCL sailing booked and approaching - except that we already had other travel scheduled (drat! and double DRAT!!). So we just stuck with our regular sailing and had just DCL trip this year. I tell you the pricing was last minute and bargain basement! Pretty much unexpected. HOWEVER, I don't recall even pricing the air component - so I can't say it would have been a bargain from a total vacation cost perspective.

So - keep your eyes peeled if shifting the sailng is truly desired. Not to say we don't want another fellow Californian family or two sailing with "our sailing" - let alone the notion of shifting for a price improvement AND obtaining connecting cabins again.

OK - I gotta run now. I've got a hankerin' for long winded chatter (sometimes)... so pardon my hoggin' up so much screen acerage. An' welcome aboard!!!! Our ship wil have tons of pixie dust to go around!

 

[kritter]

captain,
gald to have you posting again...We need you to keep up us on page one...We have a long way to go to keep us there....

Seems like the thread have been really really slow these last few day,,,,...

I wonder if the ship is never really all that full and then we would see a huge price decrease..Doubt that will ever happen....

Oh well I feel like we got an ok price for our sailing and am happy with the cat. that we got and hopefully we will love it enough to rebook again in the near furture...one can never tell..Our annual trips have been in sept. and we have been somewhat lucky thus far with the hurricane thing...this year it did rain a lot but that was great since it cleared out the parks....Hopefully oct.will be a little less uneventfull..looks like florida is getting ready to brace for another hurricane and this one could be a dooozzzzy....hopefully every one will be safe and sound through yet another one......

Well amy I hope your kids will do great with the clubs this time around and my twins will enjoy playing with them as welll,,,

that is all for now...need to run out and do some shopping and finish picking up the house....

tonight is my favorite night for tv and i put the kids to bed early early and then settle in for survivor and the apprentice....yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[buckifan]

Kritter,
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only reality TV show junkie out there! I'll be watchin' tonight as well.

Speaking of geographical weather conditions.....although we don't get the earthquakes (but we have felt pretty good tremors before, which was kind of cool, except for the time it cracked our inground pool when I was a kid!), and we don't get hurricanes, our big weather nemesis is the dreaded tornado! We had a mini-tornado rip thru my neighborhood a few years ago and my best friend's chimney was torn off of their house! So I guess just about every region has something to deal with. I pray that Wilma looses strength SOON!
.

 

[Princess Olivia]

Welcome Amy ! I have a soon to be 9 year old and a 7 year old (he won't be 8 until April). We cruised at the end of September and they liked the club and lab but didn't ask to go there. We kept them with us for dinner each night and I wanted them to enjoy the shows. This coming cruise with the 3 days at sea they will probably spend more time there.

Captain, where did you see the fire sales for DCL?

Kritter, I am so jealous! I LOVE Regis and Kelly. I watch them every day. I met Regis once in Aruba. He was waiting for Joy in the cruise terminal. He looks a lot older in person but he's very nice. Joy looks awesome. So much fun for you! We are going to New York to the American Girl place. Olivia has 2 bitties,Kit, Samantha and Marisol and wants Felicity for Christmas. We're going to do the lunch and show, then go to the hair palor and get some clothes. I think we have enough dolls for now!! I can't wait. I am starting to stress big time over Christmas. Olivia is getting older and the toys that worked in years past just don't do it any more. I usually have a good list by now and I have nothing except Felicity I have a ton of recipes for you it will just take me some energy to write them out. I had a biopsy yesterday and am sore. I'll get them to you when I feel better.

 

[AmyJ of Ca]

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!! I'm an SO TIRED of watching and waiting for DCL prices that I think I will just have to convince my DH that this is the only cruise that we can do in the near future. I think we may look at the Freedom of the Seas in the future. It looks like a great ship but I didn't really like the itinerary so we chose this one instead.
The break down on my kids are 9(boy), 7 (girl), 3 and 2 year old (girls). My DS loved the lab last time with all the freedom he enjoyed. He was able to check himself in and out. My DD (6 at the time) only went to the club once and Daddy blew it because he didn't realize the pager buzzed (not vibrate) and he couldn't figure out what the noise was for about and hour (while mom was in the spa) and she was pretty ticked off by the time he finally got a clue and went to get her!! Let's hope she doesn't remember next year!! Talk to you all later. Amy

 

[buckifan]

 

[captaincrash]

Princess....

.... the site with the last mkinute rates was icruise.com ... and you have to look at their "last minute deals" (dull orange box on the right). Generally it's mostly 60 days or less... and sometimes it's just a few days ahead of a sailing.

The bargain rates we saw were for 3 and 4 day Wonder sailings - and they were well under $300 - in fact I wanna say it was about $250 or so - with about 5-8 dates in september and perhaps one date in October. Thee rates came up and we were wondering if we would go back to back from our Sept 2-9th trip (wuz that when we sailed last month?) and we decided we would just stick to our existing plans since we had already scheduled business committments for our return weeks.

Aside from that - I think you have to tack on port and taxes... and last minute air fare which can sort of off set the reduction in cruise cost - especially if you're jetting in from the west coast or a low volume hub.

We've used icruise for a half dozen cruises - and I think we booked one small group with them once in the past 2 decades - but they do alright. Debbie Donnovan was our usual TA - and a lot of the others seem to come an go. AND - if you're OK to consider other cruise lines - then I've seen last minute AND far in advance specials for 4 nite sailings at $89 + port and tax for Monarch of the Seas - and 5 day Sailings out of Jacksonville for I think $150 - OK wait ... let me go see whats selling last minute tonite....

OK... on 11-18-2005 they have the Carnival Paradise out of LA for $218 including port (add tax).
then on 11-28 out of Jacksonville they have the good ol' Carnival Celebration for 5 nites at $278.98 including port (add tax).
... and on 11-26 they have the Golden Princess (Princess) for $430 for 7 nites out of San Juan - obviously a southern schedule. GOtta add port and tax though. All the other 7 day bargains seem to include port if they are carnival. And.... a really good 7 nite deal looks to be the HAL sailings - with the Zuiderdam as a fine example - they go on 11-27 or 11-13 on Eastern sailings from Fort Lauderdale at $552 including port charges (add tax). This is pretty good since the HAL sailings INCLUDE GRATUITIES ... although we added gratuities even though it was a no tipping policy. NOTE... at the bottom of the first page of last minute deals there is a link to take you to page TWO of deals for the remaining 7 and sometimes 10+ day cruise deals. HOWEVER, tonight - clicking on this brought up a blank 2nd page.

So - try trolling these pages 30-60 before low season periods... that's when you see some real bargains.

We're actually scheduled to sail Carnival Spirit for Valentines day week (San Diego - 8 nites to MExico) - using icuise - except we will probably reschedule this in favor of switching the trip to a Western Med Carnival Liberty thing. We're about to visit family in Boston tomorrow and there we'll try to fainalize the arrangements for this European sailing. The planning for this has been somewhat difficult sorting through 5 families and their respective wishes.

So - check it out. AND - cross seraching with differnt approaches yields different results - IE - try searching individual regions with open dates and you get LOWER advance booking rates then those which are brought up by routine links. In this manner I found unpublished rates for Monarch of the Seas at $89. But those rates are long gone now. We tried to get a gathering of folks to do it but it sort of fizzled as half the folks wanted something nicer and the other half were all over the board on why they demurred. We almost just booked for laughs - but we dragged out feet.

OK - gotta go - our flight is at 7AM tomorrow and we gotta drive to LAX by 4:30 to actually leave before 5AM. We're 38 miles away - but we have to park and so on.

Adios all - we'll be back to post next wednesday - and maybe we'll peek in once over the weekend.

 

[Princess Olivia]

Captain-WOW! Thanks for the info. Welcome to my home town there's no place like Boston.

buckifan- American girl is great. I can't wait for the Felicity movie Nov 29th. Only problem is that will lead to the wanting of Elizabeth (Felicity's best friend). I loved last years movie with Samantha. We just watched it again recently. We have an upscale consignment shop near by (the woman who runs it is meticulous and only accepts things in perfect condition). My girlfriend found an American girl outfit size 7 for her daughter (like brand new) and found the matching outfit on e bay for the doll. She's wrapping that up for X-mas. Maybe I'll do something like that, matching outfits.? Olivia is getting to that "I only want Limited Too clothing" thing. That is expensive stuff and she has no concept of money. My fault. I'm now trying to make her understand that things cost money and you can't get everything you want. I actually feel that way about the cruise sometimes too. They have no idea of the cost and work that goes into having thses vacations. They both act like it's no big deal, everybody does it. They aren't naughty kids. Actually they are very good, I just feel bad sometimes wondering if Craig and I over indulge a little too much. Do you ever feel that way or is it just me?

 

[kritter]

Kritter,
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only reality TV show junkie out there! I'll be watchin' tonight as well.

Speaking of geographical weather conditions.....although we don't get the earthquakes (but we have felt pretty good tremors before, which was kind of cool, except for the time it cracked our inground pool when I was a kid!), and we don't get hurricanes, our big weather nemesis is the dreaded tornado! We had a mini-tornado rip thru my neighborhood a few years ago and my best friend's chimney was torn off of their house! So I guess just about every region has something to deal with. I pray that Wilma looses strength SOON!

And welcome to you, Amy! I have 2 kids close in ages to yours. What sexes are your older two? My ds will be 11 & dd will be nearly 7 at time of sailing.

Did you watch the reality tv shows last night...love it they are getting better and better and I love steph from survivor..

 

[kritter]

Welcome Amy ! I have a soon to be 9 year old and a 7 year old (he won't be 8 until April). We cruised at the end of September and they liked the club and lab but didn't ask to go there. We kept them with us for dinner each night and I wanted them to enjoy the shows. This coming cruise with the 3 days at sea they will probably spend more time there.

Captain, where did you see the fire sales for DCL?

Kritter, I am so jealous! I LOVE Regis and Kelly. I watch them every day. I met Regis once in Aruba. He was waiting for Joy in the cruise terminal. He looks a lot older in person but he's very nice. Joy looks awesome. So much fun for you! We are going to New York to the American Girl place. Olivia has 2 bitties,Kit, Samantha and Marisol and wants Felicity for Christmas. We're going to do the lunch and show, then go to the hair palor and get some clothes. I think we have enough dolls for now!! I can't wait. I am starting to stress big time over Christmas. Olivia is getting older and the toys that worked in years past just don't do it any more. I usually have a good list by now and I have nothing except Felicity I have a ton of recipes for you it will just take me some energy to write them out. I had a biopsy yesterday and am sore. I'll get them to you when I feel better.

Princess Olivia,
I will def. let you know how it goes on regis and kelly..I would think that he woulld look older in person since he really is in his 70 I think...Joy I bet is really pretty??

Ok debating do you guys think that my twins three in a half are toooo young to start on the American Girl doll thing??

Hey hope the biopsy was nothing to serious and that you are feeling better today??? I will pray for you...keep well..

 

[kritter]

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!! I'm an SO TIRED of watching and waiting for DCL prices that I think I will just have to convince my DH that this is the only cruise that we can do in the near future. I think we may look at the Freedom of the Seas in the future. It looks like a great ship but I didn't really like the itinerary so we chose this one instead.
The break down on my kids are 9(boy), 7 (girl), 3 and 2 year old (girls). My DS loved the lab last time with all the freedom he enjoyed. He was able to check himself in and out. My DD (6 at the time) only went to the club once and Daddy blew it because he didn't realize the pager buzzed (not vibrate) and he couldn't figure out what the noise was for about and hour (while mom was in the spa) and she was pretty ticked off by the time he finally got a clue and went to get her!! Let's hope she doesn't remember next year!! Talk to you all later. Amy

I bet your kids willlike the clubs this year a few years will make a world of difference