So...It's now January 10th. We leave in 5 days. 5 days. Seriously...5 days. I still can't believe it. I've been looking forward to this, and practically living on the DIS since last May and now that it's almost here it doesn't feel real. My wife is almost done with the blanket she's making, we're putting the FE together, and all I've got left to do is make the airport shuttle arrangements.
Like I've said before we've never been on a cruise, much less a Disney cruise. We're going without the DS1 so I think that means that we can pack a lot less than if we were bringing him. We're mainly going to be bringing clothes and toiletries.
So I'm going to jump back in time just a bit to Christmas. It's massive drama ever...single...year. My wife's parents are divorced and we always go to her maternal grandparents' house for the holidays. Well her dad and step-mother (they're the ones who gifted our flight to LA) live 10 minutes from the grandparents and have more comfortable accommodations for us and the DS. So we stay there and drive in to the grandparents house each day. Traditionally due to the divorce my wife and her siblings spend Christmas Eve and the first part of Christmas day with her grandparents, and then the evening of Christmas day they go do Christmas with dad and step-mother. Well there's a whole new wrinkle that was introduced when we got married 4 years ago. My parents live an hour from her grandparents. I'll leave it at that and just say that I dread Christmas every year - and that we are REALLY needing this cruise now...it's the post-vacation vacation.
We got home from Christmas a week ago Sunday and my mom came out right behind us to watch DS1 (basically act as his nanny) for 8 days so that we can get the house clean, and finish our cruise preparation. The fun part since we've been home is that DS decided to grow a few more teeth. I've been up at least once (several times twice) every night since January 2nd with a very unhappy child who (once he's had Orajel applied) will not let me put him back in his crib. I've learned to sleep in the recliner while holding him. My nights have been spent dreaming of getting 8 nights of uninterrupted sleep on a cruise ship. I need this now more than ever.
But now we're seriously in the home stretch here. We leave Friday to drive to my mother-in-law's house to drop off DS1, and then on Saturday we're flying from Las Vegas to Los Angeles (I hate hate hate hate hate driving in LA or anywhere nearby), catching SuperShuttle to the Crowne Plaza in San Pedro, finally getting a good night's sleep, and then Sunday morning we'll be off to the port for our 11:00 a.m. check-in.
On a side note - I have no idea how we lucked into that check-in time. This is our first cruise, and we couldn't check in until 75 days out. I did the "minute of" check-in and got 11:00, Palo brunch ressies, Palo dinner ressies (which have since been cancelled) and reserved a few excursions so that we could pick and choose what we wanted later.
Speaking of excursions and extras - what we've basically ended up doing now is that we're not doing any DCL excursions, and we only stuck with the Palo brunch. We figured since this is our first cruise that we wanted to do main dining for dinner every night. We did late seating so that there would be fewer small children and a higher likelihood that we'd be seated with other people traveling sans children (or at least with older kids). Now we have nothing against kids, we know it's a Disney cruise, but we are still trying to optimize our time away from kiddos as this is our time to reconnect as a couple. So don't worry - we're not going to be the crabby people complaining about all the kids (especially in the movie theater since we're not paying $25 to watch the movie). We'll just stick to the Quiet Cove area and Route 66.
So I guess I should get back to work now. I have to go find out how much Dell is going to charge my department chair to replace the case on has laptop since he dropped it and damaged the latch.
Like I've said before we've never been on a cruise, much less a Disney cruise. We're going without the DS1 so I think that means that we can pack a lot less than if we were bringing him. We're mainly going to be bringing clothes and toiletries.
So I'm going to jump back in time just a bit to Christmas. It's massive drama ever...single...year. My wife's parents are divorced and we always go to her maternal grandparents' house for the holidays. Well her dad and step-mother (they're the ones who gifted our flight to LA) live 10 minutes from the grandparents and have more comfortable accommodations for us and the DS. So we stay there and drive in to the grandparents house each day. Traditionally due to the divorce my wife and her siblings spend Christmas Eve and the first part of Christmas day with her grandparents, and then the evening of Christmas day they go do Christmas with dad and step-mother. Well there's a whole new wrinkle that was introduced when we got married 4 years ago. My parents live an hour from her grandparents. I'll leave it at that and just say that I dread Christmas every year - and that we are REALLY needing this cruise now...it's the post-vacation vacation.
We got home from Christmas a week ago Sunday and my mom came out right behind us to watch DS1 (basically act as his nanny) for 8 days so that we can get the house clean, and finish our cruise preparation. The fun part since we've been home is that DS decided to grow a few more teeth. I've been up at least once (several times twice) every night since January 2nd with a very unhappy child who (once he's had Orajel applied) will not let me put him back in his crib. I've learned to sleep in the recliner while holding him. My nights have been spent dreaming of getting 8 nights of uninterrupted sleep on a cruise ship. I need this now more than ever.
But now we're seriously in the home stretch here. We leave Friday to drive to my mother-in-law's house to drop off DS1, and then on Saturday we're flying from Las Vegas to Los Angeles (I hate hate hate hate hate driving in LA or anywhere nearby), catching SuperShuttle to the Crowne Plaza in San Pedro, finally getting a good night's sleep, and then Sunday morning we'll be off to the port for our 11:00 a.m. check-in.
On a side note - I have no idea how we lucked into that check-in time. This is our first cruise, and we couldn't check in until 75 days out. I did the "minute of" check-in and got 11:00, Palo brunch ressies, Palo dinner ressies (which have since been cancelled) and reserved a few excursions so that we could pick and choose what we wanted later.
Speaking of excursions and extras - what we've basically ended up doing now is that we're not doing any DCL excursions, and we only stuck with the Palo brunch. We figured since this is our first cruise that we wanted to do main dining for dinner every night. We did late seating so that there would be fewer small children and a higher likelihood that we'd be seated with other people traveling sans children (or at least with older kids). Now we have nothing against kids, we know it's a Disney cruise, but we are still trying to optimize our time away from kiddos as this is our time to reconnect as a couple. So don't worry - we're not going to be the crabby people complaining about all the kids (especially in the movie theater since we're not paying $25 to watch the movie). We'll just stick to the Quiet Cove area and Route 66.
So I guess I should get back to work now. I have to go find out how much Dell is going to charge my department chair to replace the case on has laptop since he dropped it and damaged the latch.
