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

[kritter]

Well...

.... for starters DCL uses a dining rotation through 3 venues: Lumeries', Parrot Cay and Animator's Palete. Plus there is a 1st and 2nd seating. Your dining staff moves through the rotation with you so you will have the same staff at each venue. However, is not as obvious is that there is a special character breakfast once per 7 day cruise - and yours' will come on the morning after your 1st dinner in Parrot Cay. This represents a change from how DCL scheduled it in past years. I won't say too much more about the dining venues so it remains a bit more of a pleasant surprise for you when you experience it.

Plus - on dining.... there is an optional dinner venue called Palo's. This is an italian restuarant on deck 10 aft by reservation only - no kids alowed - and there is a fee of $10 pp. This is fairly popular with most folks and the reservation schedule fills up rather quickly. And - if you want to try this then you should make your reservations as early as possible for Palo's. These can be made on-line 75 days prior to sailing. If you were a Castaway Club repeat patron then those folks can make reservations up to 90 days early.

So... a couple of weeks ago our older daughter did not have much interest in the kids' clubs. She had determined that there was much more to do around the ship OUTSIDE of the club - plus she likes the novelty of the bunk bed since we don't have one of those things at home. AND - our hangin' a tent-like veiled canopy did not help matters in that regard - but it did add a bit of fantasy to her bunk. So - with consideration for what your daughters will tolerate or prefer... I would add that another DIS family on the same sailing had 4 year olds who would NOT leave the kids' club. So - yeah.... you could encounter either angle of reaction from your girls.

As such, our older daughter attends preschool for 2/3rds the day 3-5 days a week. I work from home so I bring her in and pick her up with cosiderable lattitude. No set agenda or schedule . But she has great friends at school and enjoys it.... so we were mildly surprised at her lack of interest on the kids club. Last year she did not want to leave the club!

So we are planning on binging costumes for the cruise. How about you?

Gotta go...

Thanks so much for the info...I love learning anything and everything about the cruise///
I would love to see some pictures...
My Kids will go either way they really do not like to leave my side so it should be interesting to seee if they go but if they meet your girls then they might..Our friends might go as well and ther son will be seven when they go...
What cat. cabin do you get and which do you like best and why...????
We are planning on dressing up my girls already have selected their costumes out....and you????I think my husband and I will dress up as well....
go to run and get them to bed my dh works long hours so it is all me....

 

[captaincrash]

I have a few minutes before picking up one daughter form school.... the other is napping on my lap...

... so I have NOT had a chance to fully "edit" our personal photos from the 2005 cruise. We have a DIS album uploaded but I am waiting for the other folks to review the album before I post any public links. AND... my usual photo site changed their storage guidelines last year from unlimited to capacity for unlimited time to having both factors limited. This had the effect of erasing 10s of 1,000s of photos I had stored ... including the past 2 DCL cruises. Fortunately, I had hard copy back up of all my photos BEfore I uploaded anything... so I just lost the convenience of sharing old photos at a whim.

So... befoer I send you links to any DCL cruises - are you sure you want to see them? These are pretty extensive with shots of just about everything from the menus, to the dishes, parties, passages, empty decks late nite, folks at the pool and beaches, cabins, ... you see what I mean? You can alost spend hours just looking at the photos (that's how many I have)... and I don't have anything set up yet that I would consider edited much. Just from this past cruise I noted today that I have just over 6GB of images which roughly translates into maybe 2000-2500 images. Over 8 days that's like having about 400 shots a day or 50 an hour... or about 1 shot every 1 minute and 16 seconds for 8 hours a day. OK... maybe lots of the sots are mutli-frame action sequences ... and at least 15% are MPEG movie clips (VGA at 30 FPS!). But even so... I have a LOT of pictures.

So... at some point in the next few days (or more likely weeks) I'll put together an album for sharing. I routinely do so - so that I have something to circulate to widely scatterred family and friends. When that is ready we'll send you a link. And the DIS album will get a couple of links posted publicly in a few more days pending and editing requests received.



So we settled on booking a catagory 9 - located in what we consdier the "sweet spot" on the ship 2/3rds back and low to minimize any ships motion. My spouse is vulnerable to motion and sound. So I sort of messed up on the last cruise... and you would figure that shouldn't appen since we've sailed a number of times - but I got lazy and did not research it fully. So - this time we are under a supposedly quiet area that has the least possible ships motion (rocking, pitching or yawing). Actually have had a catagory 6, 9 and 12 in our last 3 cruises. That is a quad veranda, quad window and triple inside at the lowest cost. Frankly, we can get by with ANY of them.

Generally, on cabins we follow the mantra that you should book exactly what you will be minimally happy with... OR book what your budget and tolerance sez is OK. We are OK with a cat 9 window on deck 2 because deck 2 has the larger 36" diameter windows aas opposed to the deck 1 windows which are 2 smaller windows. Plus the space differneces are zero through the next several better catagories- excepting the additional acerage of the verandas. So... the final consideration is we will accept any upgrades that are offerred by DCL - and we will look into buying an upgrade at the port if the value is good and location tolerable. We consider any cabin so long as it is aft of the forward elevator clusters. Although the ships motion is calm 90% of the time - the 10% of the time it is challenging - then we have to contend with motion and a good cabin location makes it survivable for my spouse.

So... other thoughts on cabins... the cat 12 is actually in line for being among the avergae size for modern ships at 180'. The older ships get down to minimum cabin sizes of as little as 100'! So the difference can be somewhat stark. My spouse and I have had cabins as large as 400' on a cruise (a free upgrade from a larger veranda to their largest catagory - Carnival)... so we figure a catagory 9 is just about right at this time (as a minimum).

We actually have slight concerns about our kids since they can open most doors and the older one climbs like a little monkey. Not that we think she does not recognize the hazards of a balcony that overlooks open sea... but that it just is a passing thought that provides an excuse for NOT spending more moola on a veranda. Also, I think when both kids are older - then a nice veranda will be better appreciated and utilized - since we are likely to just get 2 cabins - an insde for them and averanda for us older folks (heh-hee-hee)... OH ... al-right... the kids can stay with us and enjoy the veranda cabin down the road... at least until the end of this decade!

 

[abitjaded]

Bump. Hoping to be on this cruise, but may be going the week prior. Love the tie-die.

Carla

 

[captaincrash]

On another note - the 2005 Magic Holloween cruise has about 55 DIS families posting - and about 2,595 postings and 30,195 visits with a month+ to go! So... I wonder whether we'll have a similar number of DIS folks sailing/posting? If so then we're likely to have a huge DIS meet in the works. My 9-3-2005 sailing had 104 people / 75 at the DIS meet and 1000 postings as of embarkation date!

 

[kritter]

love it I am hoping our cruise next year has this many...


loving all of the info I am finding out and looking forward to seeing photos...

 

[captaincrash]

Here are some photos from....

..... from the DIS meet, the DIS treasure hunt and the DIS Mickey Ice Cream Eating Challenge contest we ran on the Sept 3, 2005 Magic cruise we just returned from.

Try clicking on the EYE ICON labeled "watch show" to activate a pop up window with a slide show. If your POP UP blocking is set too high then this will not work - then you'll have to clink on a small thumbnail sized image to enlarge it - then advance manually one at a time. This can make your index finger get tender since ther are 250 or so images posted. So the slide show is the "convenient" way to go ... if it works for ya!

Here is the link:

http://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=nma4cnc&p=mnh4y8&AID=2812048&Pres=Y

If the link does not work then try this one....

http://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=nma4cnc&p=mnh4y8&AID=2812048

Enjoy!

 

[XLT800]

We have 2 threads going for this week. I suggest we keep this one and let the other one die out.

Dave

 

[captaincrash]

I was sort of posting to both....

... as they each reach a different set of search criteria - but this one does have a lot more postings to it. I'm all for supporting one (this one).

 

[kritter]

I saay great idea lets keep this one going but does anyone know how we can change the word october in our thread it is spelt wrong so if you know how could you do it then lets keep this one going..

Everyone up to the challenge to keep it going for a year?? I am....

 

[captaincrash]

That was one of my concerns...

as well as the potential need for other key words in the title to make searches effective in bringing this thread up for anyone looking for our sailing. I found the thread because I tried several combinations of search. Maybe the administrator could help us? Someone want to send an email to the forum adm?

 

[kritter]

Captaincrash I would be willing but do not know how to do it any ideas??

 

[captaincrash]

I went ahead and sent a private message to a forum moderator for cruise meets to see what they think about editing our thread title to correct the October spelling and add "Magic" to our title. We'll wait and see what CarolAnn says.

 

[captaincrash]

Here is revised photo link....

The others seem to not work all the time....

http://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=nm...E=Y&ILD=1248290

Hope this works.

 

[kritter]

thanks so much captain crash you are the best..

 

[captaincrash]

I actually have not succeeded at anything yet... compliments may be premature.... But... since you started thi thread I needed your agreement posted so I could refer a monitor to this... or I sort of figured you might have wanted to privilage of hunting a monitor down. As yet I do not have a reply. Even without one - we can refer folks if they post to a secondary forum, eh?

 

[kritter]

yes yes inded we will refer folks to this one and since we are up to the challenge of keeping this thread going for such a loooooooooooong time...

hope we hear back soon...

 

[abitjaded]

I sent a private message to Kritter. Chances are she can edit it herself. Please note that your own postings have an additional icon next to the reply. Click the edit icon and you can change mistakes even after the message appears on the boards. But note, you cannot edit the posts of someone else.

I sure hope that Rita is the last of the worst. And that the 2006 season is a lot less fierce than this has been. Missed Grand Cayman in 2004. Would love to have a standard itinerary in 2006!

Carla

 

[captaincrash]

Well....

Sounds like there must be a way for you to edite the thread title Kritter...

check it out.

 

[kritter]

I did do it hopefully it works correctly??

 

[joksten2000]

Decided to book a 4 day stay after the cruise at BCV we've never stayed there been booking in at WLV. We stopped in to look the place over an liked the pool and the boardwalk across the lake. Reading through the thread I'm sure we'll need the rest after the cruise.

I did pack an extra swim suit today and some sun tan lotion
Can't be toooooo prepared