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

[Princess Olivia]

Wow...you guys have been busy. Just wanted to stop and say a belated welcome to Olivia. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Dave

Thanks! You have a good one too.

 

[Princess Olivia]

I just checked my mail and the cruise confirmation was there. However, it confirmed the 11 day Wonder cruise Sept 17-Sept 28th. Weird. I called and they said they canceled that reservation and would send out the confirmation of this cruise that I am booked on. I never even inquired about the 11 day cruise .

 

[kritter]

Wow...you guys have been busy. Just wanted to stop and say a belated welcome to Olivia. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Dave

we have ben need to keep the thread alive and kicking dave..

 

[kritter]

I LOVED staying home when my kids were babies. I loved the park and preschool and walks. I do miss that. I stay home a lot now too. The kids still need me and I think it's important all the way through high school for me to stay on top of who they are with, where they are going, and when they get home. Working has been a sensitive subject around here. We still haven't found the balance that meets all our needs.
I ordered the DVC video yesterday. I am interested. It sounds great. Can you go to the Caribbean? Hawaii? Those are the places I love. I also love Disney. A woman on the cruise said they will get 4 free cruises with the 160 pts they bought. Not sure how it all works but it sounds good to me!
I am waiting for another cruise quote from micdan.com. I read that they're the cheapest yet found. I'll let you know.

I love staying home and even when the going gets rough I still have no boss, etc..my days are mine and like today stayed in my pjs till 11..I do hope tha tI never have to go back..I do not see how it can work with the hours that Dh keeps and who will be doing all of the running around after work with the kids me not him he will not be home in time..We live in ct and he drives out of state a few times a weeek,but I have a few years before we need to really decide or discuss it..I do not want to bring it up..
You can go to tons of places on the DVC point system.I do nto know what that women was talking about they do offer great promotions time to time..But that is a great one if that is what they are offering..We jsut returned from WDW a month ago and that was not the deal..It is based on points you purchase a set amount of points..I think the smallest amount you can get is 150 and then depending upon the time of year you want to go and where you want to go it costs so many points...If you do not use your points or all of them one year you can bank them and use them next year..If you want ot take a larger trip one year you can borrow points form the next year..You choose the accomdations that you need one bedroom, two or studios or a villa big enough for twelve..You choose and depending on that and time of year determines how many points you use...It is very cost effective and you get other discounts in WDW too for being a memeber..we love it and the only regret is that we did not do it sooner.. If you want to more about it call me send me a pm and I will give you my number and I can answer your questions if you want..
hey could you let me know what the other place midcon tells you my aunt is single and thinking of coming and I am looking into prices for her..what cabin/cat. should I try and get for a single person???
Thanks sorry for this being sooo long..All by myself tonight well the kids are asleep and Dh is at the Yankee game..

 

[mamalle]

we are going too! I hoping if the fla rates come out we can upgrade to a cat 4 like our last cruise. for now we are in 6614. we cant wait
Our kiddos will be 6 and 4 at the time of travel

 

[Princess Olivia]

Hi mamalle. Your kids are adorable. I wonder what the difference in price will be for a cat 4 vs cat 5? I think I'll check.

Kritter- DVC sounds perfect. I'll wait until I get the video and then I'll call you with all my questions .
I am a liitle annoyed with micdan. I still haven't heard anything. They're probably not around for the holiday weekend. I too am inquiring for my mother who is a single. I would think that for her a good choice would be cat. 8 or 9. I would want her to have a view. It depends on the room I guess. Do you have a copy of the PassPorter guide to DCL? It has all the information on what rooms are too noisy etc. I read it about 10 times! I will let you know as soon as a quote comes in. Cold in MA today!!

 

[captaincrash]

Hello everyone ....

and a harty welcome to Princess Olivia & Mamalle! (Hope I didn't miss welcoming anyone).... we have also been absent from our lurking duties here - we had family visiting from Hawaii and a host of other sundry diversions these past few days.

So - it's nice to see so much conversation activity while we were absent. I was musing earlier whether we would exceed the volume of activity found on the 2005 Holloween cruise thread. Last I looked they were up there in hits, posts and DIS entities posting. However, they started their thread later then our thread - so we sort of have a jump.

Of course, I was not thinking of competiting - just comparing casually. OUR thread is currently at 1055 hits and 147 postings .... versus 44,429 hits and 4,437 postings.

SO... on the stay at home or not thing- for now I am a stay at home Dad with my spouse running out to continue her occupation. However, as a stay at home Dad I sort of continue a business I've run for 14 years now - only I have slowed considerably with the two kids around - bottom line it still drags in a paycheck but less than if I were traveling half the year as usual. But that's OK for now. We figured in our families' case that I had the occupation that would survive a slowing if we were to try and have a parent stay close to the kids while they were young. As such - I travel a bit with my spouse on her mandatory travel while looking after the kids and managing my business interests from the road. This seems to enable the best mix in our usually crazy chaotic weeks.

So - that might be more than called for in a public forum - but what the heck. We're over a year out from the cruise - and this seems as tolerable a subject as any, eh?

ON the best travel agent and value thing. I would encourage folks to try the somewhat impartial "cruise compete" web site. It's a reverse auction wher you specify ship, sailing, cabin and passenger compositon - and several travel agents bid secretly for your business. We usually get some pretty good deals this way. Plus there's no harm in calling around too (try Costco, AAA, expedia, the site sponsor here, etc.,). In fact, the agent we usually end up going with for the past 2 and for this current cruise - has been an agent we found on cruise compete. She knocks off all the other cruise compete TAs bidding for our business (usually) and she is quite knowledgable. If anyone is interested than just PM me for her contact info - otherwise just put a request for quotes entry on cruise compete and see what you get -

However, to be fair - folks benefiting from this thread should always allow the site sponsor a chance to win your business as they contribute funds which enable us to have this place to meet and chat.

So - on another note - Mamalle .... we have 2 daughters who will be 5.5 and 2.8 years of age when we sail. Maybe our older kids can swap emails ocassionally... as from the last DCL sailing we did this and our kids had a fair time getting to know one another before the cruise. It made for a little constructive anticipation for most of our kids.

So, eventually we'll need volunteers to organize contact lists, composition of kids and ages, and possibly other info if our community agrees we need anything else. On the last cruise we had a spreadsheet managed by one of the DIS participants. We had first names, city and or state or residance, kids genders and ages, and ages of the adults. At times we could have almost used cabin numbers OR last names to facilitate contacting folks - but we did not have this. Potentially we could specify that cabin numbers and last names (or any info) was strictly voluntary. But this info helped in keeping track of things for the activities we set up. We had name tags for the DIS meet with screen names + real first names + city/state, and we had custom t-shirts made up for the kids, plus a few other things I'll leave for a later posting. But I will say - while embarked - a roster with useful reference to cabin numbers - or last names so we could ask for the ship to connect folks by phone to leave messages would have been hgelpful. I think in practice - the active DIS posting folks would have been the ones to provide full contact info if we had anticiapted the need - but it sort of broke down a little.

Anyways - I better leave a little vertical scroll space for other folks otherwise I'll be branded permanently as a "tread hog" - that is - if my reputation has not already preceeded this posting!

Warmest regards from the "Captain"

And... BTW.... who responded to our poll as booking a catagory 1? As, I assume you might be thinking about hosting the DIS meet in YOUR cabin! (yah... ahh, right!)I saw a posting with photos from another DISer who did just that and they had 80 folks in their cabin + some decent appetizers set up!

 

[kritter]

we are going too! I hoping if the fla rates come out we can upgrade to a cat 4 like our last cruise. for now we are in 6614. we cant wait
Our kiddos will be 6 and 4 at the time of travel

WElcome welcome mamalle and glad that you joined us..My twins will be four at the time of sailing and hopefully our kids could meet and have some fun with all of the other Dis cruisers as well./.Glad that you have joined us and can not wait to get to know you...your kdis are adorable and what a wonderful picture...

 

[kritter]

Hi mamalle. Your kids are adorable. I wonder what the difference in price will be for a cat 4 vs cat 5? I think I'll check.

Kritter- DVC sounds perfect. I'll wait until I get the video and then I'll call you with all my questions .
I am a liitle annoyed with micdan. I still haven't heard anything. They're probably not around for the holiday weekend. I too am inquiring for my mother who is a single. I would think that for her a good choice would be cat. 8 or 9. I would want her to have a view. It depends on the room I guess. Do you have a copy of the PassPorter guide to DCL? It has all the information on what rooms are too noisy etc. I read it about 10 times! I will let you know as soon as a quote comes in. Cold in MA today!!

We are in a cat. 4 now and I am hoping that I will be able to upgrade I keep checking the prices....
Midcon I tried to look up on the computer could not find them let me know what you find out so I could check it out for my aunt..I would love it if I could find her the right price for her..I tried dreams and their price was outragous which I was suprised at .. They told me all of their cabins were already sold out at the lower price and that is who we booked with...What is the passporter guide and how do I get one tell do tell...cold here tooo and rainy..

 

[kritter]

Captain,
Glad to hear that you are back we have been missing you..Hope you had a nice visit with your company...WE will def. "beat" out the thread started for this years cruise since we seems to be pretty active and hopefully can stay this way..It will be fun...

I am soo impressed that you are a stay at hoem dad kind of..No you have a new appreciation for ow hard it is..Nice that you get to travel with your wife...We do that with my husband and it is nice to see other new places on someone elses dime..We went to WDW last year for his company trip and my kdis loved it they closed down Animal Kingdom for us and it was wonderful no wait for rides free food, alcohol, etc..wonderful and all of the characters were everywhere...this year when we went back they wanted popcorn, ice cream and we said wait we have to pay for it all this year..It was cute..And we got to see Mickey in my Dh hospitality suite and maybe ten other kids were there it was great.
Seems like many of us will have kids around the same ages..So we will be able to plan some age appropriate activities...
I would love to set up some kind of way to keep track of everyone let us know captain when you think we should get a jump on all of this..When the time is right and we are getting closer we can most certainly plan out things for us to do and where to meet, name tags etc..Maybe you could come up with a list of things that will need to get done since you have been on the cruise with other Dis members before..then we can figure out who should do what..It would be neat if we could set up some kind of trick and treating for us and a little costume contest, etc.. all around halloween or leave the kids with little halloween treats in their rooms....
we love that you are soo informative and I look forward to your emails all of you..this is great and I am glad that we are all meeting..
Wonder who did put cat. 1 lets see if we can get them to come"clean".. come on who is it??
Talk to you all later need to feed the troops...
The weather here is bad and rainy going tob e like this for the next few days we will be stir crazy by the end of the week...UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!what to do what to do.....

 

[kritter]

captain,
sent you a pm about the travle agency you were talking about...not sure if it went said system problemm. so could you let us know thanks.. we have had a ton of views to our page/thread..

 

[captaincrash]

Well Kitter....

... it's not entirely as if we can travel on someone else's dime... officially we are always to maintain a very low profile and travel is mostly covering my spouse. However, it is a good deal as the room and gas are free = and the per diem for meals is usually enough to sprinkle a little onto our plates from my spouses' fare. AND... at offficial company gatherings family is strictly forbidden. It wasn't like that in the recent past - and I must say it was good since she was nursing I was able to go along "officially" (maintaining a descrete profile) and that amounted to real travel. Now - as for myself - I still have to travel a little and since I work for myself ... my "rules" say I will bring my family to tag along. Easy to say since our kids are not in school yet!

Aside from that ~ let me say that when we achieve a larger following somewhere from 9-6 months out then we'll circulate the proposal for the DIS meet. At that time we can call for a roll call to who ever volunteers to handle name tags and - and we'll probably get a list managing volunteer. As for myself ... I do not quite know how to manage excell or any list managing programs... so I may not be the best candidate for this duty. But I can serve as a sort of "co-rebel rouser" to help any fellow DIS rebel rousers among us in raising a mild ruckus aboard.

And... as for trick or treat .... I do believe there will be a trick or treat evening hosted by the ship. I do not know if we should host a private treat exchange or not as I (for one) may not want to compete against the ships' scheduled function. Follow my drift? Of course, if we were somehow to out-shine the ships' treat activities then I think we might have over done it.

I think there should be other activities that we can dream up that will be unique enough to set our experience (as a group) aside. And of course, IMHO we should be careful to preserve this cruise as a mostly non-working type of vacation. IE, too many ambitious side adventures can snowball into a burdon more than a pleasure for some of us crazy party-going zealots.

On that note - I think the DIS meet is great as we can meet and match faces and smiles to screen names. Folks can stay or wander off as their feelings dictate. Of course, all the active DIS folks from the last cruise were quite gregarious and somewhat encouraging when it came to doing things - like wandering off the ship in twos and threes - or doing a shore excursions in penny clusters of families. And when it came to activites for the kids it more or less took on a life of it's own. There certainly was no lack of enthusiasm - but I think our general capacity for activites is limited to a handful or less as we only have 7 days on the ship together. Any more than a handful is not really necessary since the ship provides so much to do for kids and adults alike.

Off hand - I enjoy doing the ice cream challenge since it's breezy and easy to set up (I order sufficient mickey bars from guest services and print up award certificates for the captain and possibly characters to sign) - and it piggy backs on another activity (IE - on the last cruise we did the treasure hunt AND right after that we did the ice cream thing. Aside from that we just had a DIS meet. On the basis of these two activities we more or less had a loosely knit group that kept byumping into one another on the ship. I found it quite pleasant without being intrusive to the point of any of us feeling we were being stalked by paparazzi. Obviously, on the strength of these limited "whole DIS activities" we spun off penny clusters of folks doing this and that - which generally included shore excursions and dinner table sharing clusters.

Some folks may feel they should dine alone if the kids are difficult. Heck - I hardly ever see kids that are perfect little adults at the table - excepting of course the slightly older kids. So - I can understand folks having concerns. Plus - we have some families who might have nursing infants - and that's a good reason to choose private dining arrangements. My youngster nurses and on the last sailing we elected to have a private table as opposed to our usual big table deal. Many occasions - our dining table is among the last to clear since we're always chatting more than eating. We are not exactly quick eating types - and there's always plenty to chat about and enjoy.

So - may I close this note with a suggestion - one of the things we did on the last cruise (again, one of my wacky proposals) was to share an unlimited use internet account. Normally, it costs $89.99 for unlimited use per person. But nearly every family will share one account with everyone in their cabin or among their family sailing. This makes it reasonable. But for those of us seeking limited access to emails, news and ebay (or the DIS for "live from the Magic" threads).... it seems mildly steep. So - we split one account among 3 or 4 cabins so the cost worked out to $30 oe $22.50 per family. Each account could only be used by one family at a time - and that is why we limited the splits among 3s and 4s. Some heavy users split 3 way - and the lighter users went 4 way.

This may seem like a small thing - but for 4 families sharing an account the savings amounts to $270. That's almost enough to pay for a 14' zodiac rental + ferry expenses for 2 small families on St Thomas/St John. Put another way - it saves enough to cut the core expenses to St John with ferry and zodiac by about 40%. Put another way - each family almost saves enough to cover normal gratuitites for one member of your party. Or - the saving's enough to buy about 180 postage stamps to sand oversized postcards to 180 friends and family from castaway caye!

Of course, the best deal would be for us to have all 90 DIS families at our DIS meet chip in $1 and split it 90 ways. The collective savings would have been $8,000+ among the group! That's probably enough to cover air, curise and general expenses for one family of 4. The one rub... lets not talk about usage conflicts since only ONE family could access the account at a time. LOL!

Needless to say - we're not likely to try a 90 way split - or anything more than a 5 way split.

Anyone interested - should PM me and I'll keep track of interested parties privately.

TTFN!

 

[kritter]

wow captain you have some great ideas..I whole heartly agree that two activities and a dis meet would be great and I love the ice cream idea that would be great and good as well...
I agree we would not want to make it tooo busy or compete with the ship in any way shape or form..
Wow the internet does cost money a ton...I would be inclinded to say not interested by Dh has a blackbery for work and looking forward to the fact that it will not work on the ship he constantly is checking email and it would be nice to have no acess to the real world..I will psot a report about the cruise when I get home the less contact with the "real" world the better. I thinkif I had internet connection then I would spend to much time talking and chatting than relaxing. Then it would be temptation for my Dh to check his email and then he would be working like he does when we are in line for rides or on the plane to WDW...I do not want him to work or be contacted by them if you know what I mean....
Oh see your wifes trips are a bit different on Dh they enocurage families to go and it is a huge trip every summer and we get breakfast etc...with the other families that go..It is fun to travel with him and we have gotten to see so many nice people and have started to get to know them ovetr the years..
when I was sick this winter and in the hospital soo many agents and people form Dh work sent gifts and called it was really nice many of them are like extended family to us....I would be sad if he ever stopped working there..Great company aside from the fact that a vacation is never really a vacation since they always will need him to check in at some point...
Hope the weather is better at your end we have rain porjected for the entire week.the twins will be stir crazy by then..At least we have dance class to make us get some energy out of our systems..
HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY to all.....

 

[buckifan]

 

[kritter]

Welcome to Mamalle! My dd will be nearly 7 at time of cruise. It sounds like there will be plenty of kids close to her age group. I hope ds (will be 11) has some kids in his age group as well!

I too am a stay at home mom. dd is in kindergarten this year....she is in the am class, home at 11:15am. my ds is in 5th grade..home at 3pm. I always thought I'd go back to work when Kylie started 1st grade, but I'm feeling different about that now. I love being able to help out at school, attend field trips, and greet them as they get off the school bus in the afternoon. Not to mention, I love spending the summer with them.

Kritter....Kylie takes dance also, jazz actually. She also takes figure skating lessons. She loves performing....isn't there a kareoke night in the family club on the ship? I definitely want to sign my ds up for the animation class, as he is an incredible artist. He wants to be an animator for Disney when he grows up!

Kylie must love jazz..Hope and Hanna take ballet and tap this is a combo class for three year olds..They really liek it but they give the teacher a run for her money...I thin their is a karoake night..I will look further into it and let you know...

I love being at home with the kdis and know that teaching would allow me to be hoem with them..But then I miss out on being able to help out in their classrooms etc. Like you said.. I would like to be able to stay hoem till theya re in teh older grades and need me less but then who would be hoem to take them to all of their after school activities..Staying hoem is tough and many times I feel like I am annette on desperate housewives...But I have to think that it must be better to be home than having to go to work everyday...I can stay in my pjs and have movie days on rainy days with the kids..So glad that in this day and age that I was given the opporutinty to stay home with them...So many parents have to work and it makes me glad that I can be home with them..
I think that as the time gets closer we will have more kdis in her age group and more and more people will join us...I think after this ahlloween cruise passes this year we will have many more to welcome..

I think after halloween we should all post pictures of our dear little ones dressed up..

 

[buckifan]

Kritter, how do you post pix?

 

[abitjaded]

Boy you guys have been busy. My problem is I have two sons, 12 and 9, so never get a chance at the computer.

I reposted our trip report for a several years ago Eastern.

Check on the trip report boards.

Edited to add: Well, maybe not, the boards keep telling me I am posting duplicate posts from the last five minutes, so will try again later. Or maybe it is us here, 8 inches of lousy wet snow, large booms heralding THOUSANDS in tree trimming bills looming.....

Carla

 

[kritter]

Kritter, how do you post pix?

You need to first upload it to somewhere like photobucket.com that is the rec..website here on the boards..then go to your user cp and go to edit sig.if you want it to be there always..then take the url at the bottom of your picture on photobucket and insert that into the box on dis boards and it should appear let me know if this does not work for you..it took mea while the first few times...

 

[kritter]

Boy you guys have been busy. My problem is I have two sons, 12 and 9, so never get a chance at the computer.

I reposted our trip report for a several years ago Eastern.

Check on the trip report boards.

Edited to add: Well, maybe not, the boards keep telling me I am posting duplicate posts from the last five minutes, so will try again later. Or maybe it is us here, 8 inches of lousy wet snow, large booms heralding THOUSANDS in tree trimming bills looming.....

Carla

Carla,
gret to hear from you again,,we have been busy..See if you could post your trip report here..I could not find it..thanks so much..

 

[kritter]

FYI this years Dis boards group is hosting its own halloween trick or treating for the kids just pm a person who is on this years cruise..they have it set up for 40 something kids so might be something we could think about...