Jan 27, 2008 - 4 night Wonder...shall I start?

[Cruisin]

We are off early tomorrow morning.

It's so frickin cold here that I really can't wait.

Enjoy your cruise everyone.

 

[Cruisin]

Welcome home everyone.

I hope you all enjoyed your cruise.

We have arrived home to a lovely snow storm

 

[momtobradley]

Welcome home everyone.

I hope you all enjoyed your cruise.

We have arrived home to a lovely snow storm

We've arrived home to the same darn storm I am staying inside today with the kids and getting things back to normal in the house and that includes a ton of laundry

Cruisin, didn't see you on the cruise. I guess if I had a picture I could have looked for you or at least recognized you, but heck that doesn't help us now I'd be curious to see a picture of you though to see if I recognize you from the cruise. I did meet another lady from the boards, on the next to last night and that was really great

I'll be posting my cruise review/report in the coming week. But now I have to get back to life and get ready to go scrapbooking tonight

 

[Cruisin]

I forgot and left my DIS button in my checked luggage so I did not have it for early in the cruise.

I will post a picture later.

I haven't even had the time to look at them yet.

 

[melissaknits]

Turns out Melissa gets seasick. We did have fun in spite of that, but it made everything from 5pm onward difficult for me. Had Palo brunch and LOVED it! Had Palo dinner and loved it until...well...use your imagination. I saw a guy making a glass-tipping motion and jerking his thumb at me one evening. I wanted to go yell "I AM NOT DRUNK BUT I SURE CAN THROW UP! WANNA SEE??" I kept tripping over my own feet. Embarassing!! This has never happened to be before on any boat ever. I love being on the water. Whale watch? ferry? kayak? local river cruise? Count me in. All I can think of is that I had/have fluid in an ear that we did not know about until we got down there - I even got tippy on Pirates at the MK!!

DH is currently oposed to any further cruises. I am not so unwiling. The spa? Awesome. CC?? Awesome. So I barfed for days on end, didn't sleep, and wanted to jump ship by the time we hit Nassau. Don't they make a patch for that?

Was kinda funny, every evening I mentally begged the captain to just stay put. Stay at anchor. Stay tied up. Let me sleep! Make me not ill! Lying down makes it worse (oh the things I learned!)

I am so in love with CC that I swear I could move onto the island. Spend the rest of my life in 3 days of solitude with 4 days of guest invasion. Ahhhh!!

 

[Cruisin]

Melissa, you got seasick on that cruise

It was one of the smoothest cruises I've ever been on and it hardly moved anywhere at all

Maybe there was something else wrong with you to make you so sick.

 

[AFitz]

We had the most amazing experience on the cruise. It was the trip of a lifetime! We were first-time cruisers and now we're "hooked."

I can't wait to do it again!

 

[o0lissa0o]

I thought it was amazingly smooth too...My DS and I felt nothing, though 2 of the people we ate dinner with started getting sea sick within about an hour of pulling out of the port. The rest of our table had some crazy virus going around, and one of them was sick each day. Needless to say, I was scared to eat dinner! It was all good though, we both got colds when we got home...but nothing on the cruise!

As for the trip-we had an amazing time! My son loved the kids activities, I loved the shows, and we're both ready to MOVE to Castaway Cay! Were we not the luckiest bunch of people ever? A surprise day there? I'm spoiled now though, I think we'll have to do a double dip cruise next time!

It's been cold and rainy since we got home...I'm still wishing we were there!

Glad to hear (almost) everyone had a great time! And sorry to hear you were sick Melissa!

 

[momtobradley]

We had a good time. This being my 3rd cruise I had something to compare to but DH and DS and DD did not....

Food was good but not as good as I thought it was made out to be.... But then again it "is" mass produced on a ship. I guess I've eaten at different places that are way better. I guess I was just expecting MORE (not in quanity, lol, but quality).

Didn't see any of the shows, kids to small, they are asleep and we had late dinner. I guess one of the things we don't like about cruising is the time scheduale. You always seem to be running everywhere to get to somewhere, so we just chose not to. We may have missed a lot, but if I ran to make it to every show and event and character pic opportunity and so on, we would need a vacation from this vacation.

We got seated with a mother and daugher who were traveling alone. They were ok, but it would have been nice for my kids to have been seated with a family of the like. That I was HUGELY dissapointed in. I will be telling Disney about that on my survey they sent me. We all had nothing in common, her daughter was 9 or 10 and my son is 4 and my daughter is 19 months. Plus they were ALWAYS LATE! One night the mother said to me, I hope you didn't wait to order, I was like, NO, I have to small children

Other than that, Nassau did not impress me at all. I absolutley LOVED Castaway Cay!!!!!! We were so lucky to be there for 2 days!!! I would like to just cruise there, drop anchor for a WEEK and be done with it

I know your thinking from what I've said that we had a bad time. We didn't it was a great family vacation, I just thought the food was over rated and our table mates were not the friendliest people which really disappointed us since we met many other families with kids our kids age that we wished we could have sat with.

So enough said. I'm goign to wait a week before doing my official review. I have so much to get caught up on at home plus I'm doing a 12 hour scrapbook crop this Saturday : )

 

[melissaknits]

This was it!! I'd feel us moving and within a short time felt nausous. I could sort of fake it for the first couple of hours, but as the evening went in it just it worse and worse.

It wasn't viral, because I was fine during the day, and there was never a progression of symptoms, just the same thing every evening. My guess is that there's fluid in my ears. It would explain why my body was reacting aggressively to motion my husband said he could not even feel.

edited to add - he did feel it the first night. He said if that kept up we'd have issues. Once we got past the 8-15 foot seas bit, he was fine and felt nothing.

 

[Cruisin]

edited to add - he did feel it the first night. He said if that kept up we'd have issues. Once we got past the 8-15 foot seas bit, he was fine and felt nothing.

Generally the first and last nights are always a bit more bumpy than the rest.

Once you get across the Gulf Stream it tends to smooth out a bit.

Are you okay now that you are back home again?

AFitz, I'm so glad that your family enjoyed their first cruise. I enjoyed mine, even though it was my 14th cruise

We were glad to find out when we got to the terminal that all of us had been seated at the same table for dinner. We had a group of 9. Before we left, half of us were scheduled for early dining and half for late. We were on waiting lists to be put together. It was done for us before we even arrived. We figured we'd have to go to Wavebands and ask to have it changed when we first got there.

We had some other highlights too. On Castaway Cay, we were offered a ride on a golf cart out to the observation tower by Mark from Australia. It turned out that he is one of the crew members who live on the island What a nice guy, drove us all the way to the observation tower, said he would wait for us to be done and if we had any questions to yell them down to him

then he drove 3 of us to the adult beach and my husband all the way back to the ship We certainly did not expect to be given that special treatment.

Mark was very friendly, willing to answer any questions we had and seemed to have all the time in the world to spend with us. He said that his job was relief manager for the island

Also I had another neat experience. Did anybody go to Till We Meet Again? The character meeting at 10 on the final night? I've seen it quite a few times so I went up to the cast member on Dec 5 and asked him if I could help with the "pixie dust" He let me have a few handfuls, so that I could be part of the "magic"

 

[melissaknits]

I am fine now. Thursday was tough, as we got off the ship early and immediately started driving north. I felt sloshy for a day, and then was fine.

My two SIL's were on a cruise the week before ours (we think they were on the Celebrity ship next to us in port - they debarked Sunday morning), and they're regular cruisers (every January!). Both said they had a long night the last night due to rough seas. One of them says Western cruises are generally smoother.

We also had a tapping, clicking noise in our cabin that was really difficult to sleep through. It only started when we were at sea. Why we did not complain to someone about this is beyond me.

The sick part is I would, having been home and settled for a few, probably do it again. While the noise and nausea were awful, the Exotic Rasul (recommend this for couples, seriously! get naked, exfoliate and play in mud. way too fun - when we were done we just dropped into deck chairs and laid there, relaxed to a point I did not think possible!), Palo, Castaway Cay...they are all calling me back.

 

[jennifaerie]

On Castaway Cay, we were offered a ride on a golf cart out to the observation tower by Mark from Australia. It turned out that he is one of the crew members who live on the island What a nice guy, drove us all the way to the observation tower, said he would wait for us to be done and if we had any questions to yell them down to him

Cruisin, I do believe I was sitting near you at Serenity Bay. I heard your story verbatim while I was there. We were sitting on the hammock when you returned from your adventure.

What are the odds?

 

[Cruisin]

Cruisin, I do believe I was sitting near you at Serenity Bay. I heard your story verbatim while I was there. We were sitting on the hammock when you returned from your adventure.

What are the odds?

Really

Too bad I hadn't known it was you I would have said hello

Maybe I need to lower my voice a bit when I talk

I did notice though that the sounds really carried long distances on the beach there.

 

[jennifaerie]

Really

Too bad I hadn't known it was you I would have said hello

Maybe I need to lower my voice a bit when I talk

Ha ha! No, you were maybe ten feet away from the hammock, so I don't think you were loud!

 

[Cruisin]

Ha ha! No, you were maybe ten feet away from the hammock, so I don't think you were loud!

Were you in the hammocks that were just past the chairs we were sitting in??

I remember a seeing a couple laying each in a hammock there.

Later after you left I went and sat in one of those hammocks for a few minutes.

 

[jennifaerie]

Were you in the hammocks that were just past the chairs we were sitting in??

I remember a seeing a couple laying each in a hammock there.

Later after you left I went and sat in one of those hammocks for a few minutes.

I believe I was! My fiance was wandering somewhere at the time. When he came back, we left shortly after to go pick up our bike rentals. I told him your story while we were biking to the overlook. He had been curious as to how many people lived on the island, and thanks to you, I was able to tell him all about it!

 

[Cruisin]

and thanks to you, I was able to tell him all about it!

Nice to know that I was useful for something

 

[jennifaerie]

Nice to know that I was useful for something

Aww! You're not supposed to be useful on vacation!

 

[melissaknits]

Can't have been that bad, or I've forgotten it all, 'cause we're about to book November 2009, 7 night Western on the Magic. I think I've got The Bug, DCL style.