January 13 Magic Western Part One of Four

[skylynx]

Sailaway- It is a very good thing the speed limit on the Bee/Beachline headed towards Port Canaveral from Orlando is 70 mph, because it would be cruel to try and slow down when we know we are headed towards the port! The build of excitement surges when we see the signs for cruise terminals, then get the first glimpse of the sea, and then… the glorious red stacks of the Magic! We really, really are about to go on this cruise!

We have a nice Dis meet in the terminal. My DH and pdarrah’s DH managed to lose each other at the gas station refilling our respective rental cars, but the DWs had cleverly secured passes for boarding group 3, so we were able to reunite and get on the ship quickly. After our ceremonial first lunch at Topsider’s, we happily strolled around, reacquainting ourselves with all our favorite spots. Half our luggage came right away, so we unpacked and shoved the bags under the bed. Wow, the room still looks uncluttered! Checked out the bathrooms…we like the new shampoo and body butter…more about that later ;-)

As usual, we appear to be the only people at the lifeboat drill who find the vision of us all crammed together wearing huge orange vests hilarious. We take pictures. Afterwards we bolt up to deck 10 to snag a table and two cocktails. The energy and excitement is electrifying. I am glad the screechy woman who used to MC the sailaway is not there anymore. When the 80’s music comes on I find myself jumping around to Van Halen. Look at that hyper-looking woman on the Dumbotron reliving her college years. Wait, that’s me! The countdown and ship’s horn are beautifully timed, so no one seemed to care too much we hadn’t actually sailed away, but are actually still sitting in the port. When we do slide off twenty minutes later, we hang over the railing giddy that the whole wonderful adventure still lies in front of us.

We meet our wait staff-Sompong from Thailand and Wandersohn from Brazil. Som’s last name has 16 letters in it, none of which seem natural next to each other. They are our best wait staff ever, very competent yet playful. Som calls us all by our names from the first night onward, and Wandersohn smiles all the time. We later find out he is leaving for vacation at the end of the cruise. Maybe that is why he is so happy. There is a family from Portugal sitting at our table. They speak nearly no English. We nod and grin at them a lot. Someone recalls how to say good evening in Portuguese, and we try to say it to them every time we see them at dinner. We hope they give us some points for trying.

We enjoy the first night sitting on our verandah, listening to the shhh shhh shhh of the water rushing against the ship’s hull beneath us.

Key West: The volume on our phone is too loud, so when it wakes us in the morning, we hear Mickey is shouting about something. Room service brings our tray. We lounge on the verandah in our puffy white bathrobes like Doris Day and Cary Grant in a black and white movie. We have ordered a small breakfast as our warm up for brunch at Palo. Brunch is fantastic. We share our table with pdarrah and her DH, Dan. They convinced us to try brunch, and we are so glad they did! After making complete swine of ourselves, it’s time to walk it off on Key West. It was our intent to conduct our own personal Corona and Lime walking tour shore excursion, when we find Coronas are $5.50 a piece at Sloppy Joe’s and other similarly disreputable bars, we decide to go to the new pirate museum and buy some sponges instead. We thought Pirate Soul was a bit overpriced for what was actually in it, but something fun to do, once, when you are on holiday, in lieu of $5.50 bottles of beer. At the natural sponge shop, we watch a video on how the owner “catches” the sponges. This is curious to us, because it isn’t as if the sponges even try to run away. After encounters on our last western cruise with bossy and rude street performers on Mallory Square, we elect to reboard and watch the sunset from deck. Alas, the sunset is a dud.

Ah…a day at sea. We both love at sea days where we don’t have to make the slightest attempt to do anything. I resist the impulse to schedule ourselves for activities that leave us with no unbroken blocks of time to just have nothing to do, no clocks to watch. This is our deck potato day. I find my mp3 player, stretch out on a sun lounger next to my DH who doesn’t mind at all I occasionally forget I’m using headphones and start singing aloud along with the BeeGees. It is so windy on deck 10 we see chairs, clothes, lettuce leaves, and small children blow by. It also helps drown out my singing.

At lunch in Parrot Cay, we see a waiter we shared with pdarrah on our first cruise together two years ago and talk with him. He tells us he is saving money to buy a bed and breakfast in Romania shaped like a lighthouse. In fact, he says he actually had a deal on the table to buy an existing one by the seashore, but someone else offered more money so the deal fell through. Instead, he tells us, he has bought some land at a bargain price in the mountains and is going to build his lighthouse there. Because we are on vacation, this makes perfect sense.

We find an invitation in our room to attend a private cocktail party. We do not know why. A voicemail reminds us to attend, so we go. Turns out our stateroom number was erroneously added to a very short list of premier agents from a travel agency. Oops. The DCL guest services person in charge is mortified we have been “inconvenienced” by this mistake, and begs us to take some colorful cocktails along when we go. Minutes later, we lounge on the wooden chairs on deck 4 with lovely rum punches. A handwritten note of apology appears in our stateroom later. At night, we sit on the verandah with a bottle of wine and butter each other with the H20 stuff from the bathroom. Life is good.

 

[skylynx]

Grand Cayman: This is our first time tendering. We find the system DCL uses to have folks get a number and then wait in comfort in the theater is brilliant. The tender ride is good fun, though I can’t say the same for the overstuffed van we rode to the car rental place. The Jeep we reserved is waiting for us, and off we go! I have been to Cayman several times pre-hurricane, but much looks different to me as we drive to the north side. DH is delirious to be driving on the left side of the road again (Brit). He also loves roundabouts. I just shut my eyes when we approach them. We go to Rum Point, which I visited often in the past as my friend’s beach house was less than a mile away. The hurricane has proved a good thing for it…the dilapidated buildings I remembered are gone, and lovely new buildings (cute airy bar, gift shop, showers, etc.) have replaced them. There is even a parrot. It is also free to park, swim, and shower here. The menus are attached to coconuts on picnic tables so they don’t blow away. It is a family place. We snorkel a little bit here, and almost immediately see and follow a stingray. Since StingRay city is not far offshore, we are not surprised! We marvel at the clarity and warmth of the water, and the close proximity of the reef on the north side upon leaving Rum Point. We take some photos of the Jeep parked in front of palm tree framed ocean--worthy of any car rental commercial! It takes longer to drive the mile through Georgetown than the 17 miles from Rum Point. We decide to get rid of the car and wander around the shops. As Jimmy Buffett fans, we are obligated to patronize the new Margaritaville, and do. A couple from another cruise ship, well into their seventies, are sitting at the table next to us, enjoying the raucous PG-13 environment. DH and I smile, because we hope to be that couple twenty odd years from now, still cruising, and still choosing to not default to more dignified pastimes.

One of my favorite cruise moments comes later, when I see my DH in his tuxedo waiting to escort me to Palo. (He always takes my breath away, but especially in a tuxedo.) The dinner is fabulous, as it always is, and despite that, as we linger over our chocolate soufflés, we are shocked that we’ve been there nearly three hours. We leave a big gratuity.

At Cozumel, we join a herd of other cruise ships, and gloat that we pull right up to the dock when most others have to tender. We wandered around the commercial part of Cozumel extensively two years ago looking for exactly the right sombrero that I had to do the most enthusiastic haggling over, so I decided my quest this year would be for a Mexican blanket to use as a tablecloth on fajita nights. There’s a big shop on the Melgar that has pretty much the best prices on t-shirts, tequila, vanilla, and rude onyx figurines. We matched the price there with the price for the identical blanket at one of the shops down a cute little passage. I told the seller I wouldn’t pay more for his blanket than the one at the big store. He wanted $5 more, and said the other store’s blankets probably got wet in the hurricane. I sniffed his blankets, and they smelled just as awful as the one we admired at the big shop, so I wasn’t about to buy that story. By this time, it was way more the sport of the chase than the blanket itself. I was tempted to give the sale to the smaller shop keeper, but his prices were so out of proportion with everyone else’s---so, ahhh…no. To our delight, nearly every outdoor bar is offering $1 Coronas. We resume our Corona and Lime shore excursion cut short by obscene prices in Key West.

Small world story: We are walking up the waterfront and I am taking obsessive amounts of pictures of the horses pulling the carts even though we have our own horses at home and I see them all the time. One in particular seems in such good shape and is decked out in Fruit Loop colored bows. We don’t want to take a ride, but would like to offer the driver a few dollars to have our picture taken with this very attractive horse and rig. The driver speaks excellent English, so we start a conversation with him. Turns out he went to farrier school in Oklahoma, and studied with the same Natural Horsemanship clinicians we have. Also turns out he has racehorses (he shows us pictures of them on his cell phone). I run a non-profit racehorse rescue back home in Illinois. We are pleased to learn most of the drivers of the horse carts take exceedingly good care of their horses.

We book a dummy cruise date on board for an Eastern cruise in January of 08 we’ll probably move to November. It feels so wonderful to have at least one (or two!) on the horizon, even if a long time away.

It’s pirate night, and we’re excited to get back to the ship and start putting on the pirate gear. This is a myriad of leftover Renaissance Fair costume pieces, Walmart capris, and some of the ugliest, clunkiest jewelry in the world from JCPenney’s clearance racks. DH trusses up my corset, then we get right in the queue for Jack Sparrow photos. The guy playing Jack is fantastic, and is obviously having a whopping good time playing the part. We also waited to have our photos taken with Pirate Minnie, Pirate Chip and Dale, Captain Hook and Smee, noticing, as we often do, that we’re one of the very few adults on line for photos that have no children in tow. (We left our kids behind for this cruise…they get to go in May). The deck party is good, and the fireworks are splendid. Afterwards, we sprawled on loungers and watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie on the Tron screen and managed to somehow stay awake until the end.

 

[skylynx]

At sea again. DH and I join pdarrah for an exploratory day at the Spa. None of us has done it before, so we got our feet wet, so to speak, with a day pass to the Rainforest Room. We loafed on the heated tile chairs and listened to the fountain. DH said it made him have to go to the bathroom, but I thought it was relaxing. The serious sauna I found suffocating, and we couldn’t really figure out how to get the showers that spray sideways to work, but it was nice and I’d do it again. We’re not really big on being massaged by strangers or having them smear stuff on us, so this was just the right amount of spa for our first visit. We met some other nice Dis boarders, Dennis and April, who reserved one of the spa villas, and those looked pretty marvelous.

Castaway Cay! We are up with the sun, watching the magical island come into view. We marvel how we have had such perfect weather every day of the cruise (compared to our last Eastern cruise, where the weather was pretty dismal). We get the first shuttle to the adult beach and set up pirate camp. On our last cruise I lashed a big pirate flag to our hammock so our kids could find their way back from the beach and decided it was a good tradition even without kids. It helps me find MY way back to our chairs! We warn pdarrah DH and I are hammock hogs, and proceed to prove that true. We dangle for an hour or so, then we see a large dark shape moving in the water. It was low tide and the water was pretty shallow. We grab the snorkels and fins and swim with a pretty good sized ray. I follow him for a while until he stops and starts to cover himself with sand. I figure he’s getting intimidated and leave him alone. Pdarrah wisely uses this time to try out the hammock before the hogs come sloshing out of the water.

To our delight, the hurricane has left some positive legacy…some kind of wrecked boat bits or aircraft pieces have started a nice little coral reef with a fairly large variety of fish, coral, sea urchins, and sea plants. There’s a buoy above it so you don’t slam into it while wading or swimming. We thought it might have been planted there, but there was actually an engine battery and can’t imagine someone would intentionally put that down there. There are also oversized reddish color starfish. The first time I saw them on a cruise years ago they were so enormous and so evenly spaced in the water I thought they were left over props from 20,000 Leagues under the Sea that cast members scattered in the water before the ships arrived. How neat to find they were real. After several snorkeling sessions, we were treated to a beer by fellow Dis boarders Dennis and April and had the distinct honor of riding back to the ship on the very last tram (with the bartender).

DH had brought a short wave radio along which was very entertaining because we could listen to the crew talking to each other and the captain. Two technicians were late getting back to the ship when we were ready to leave CC and El Capitan was none too pleased. Suffice it to say he did not mince words (no profanity, just well chosen poison darts of words)!

There’s always that sadness that comes the last night, knowing you have to pack and that the next time you see daylight, it will be back at the port. We actually lessened the blow this time by packing the night before, so we could just enjoy the last evening wandering around a pretty empty ship while most of our fellow passengers were trying to cram things in their suitcases. We were going to the parks for two days after the cruise, so packed one suitcase with our stuff for those two days, figuring all the rest of the luggage could just be left in the car until it was time to go to the airport.

 

[skylynx]

All too soon, it’s morning and time to get off the ship. We dragged this out as long as we could. This ended up not being the best idea, as when we went to claim our luggage, our huge green duffel bag was missing, and left behind was a much smaller, lighter, and different green shade bag. DCL took down our information and said hopefully it was just a mistake and the people with the wrong bag would shortly realize it and come back to trade. Well, the bag went all the way to North Carolina before the people figured out they had the wrong one sometime Sunday night. Disney had the bag picked up at their home by Fed Ex. It arrived on our door step the day after we did. So after the worry over potentially losing all our snorkel gear, our Ritz Carlton fuzzy white bathrobes, one of my formal gowns, and some other stuff was alleviated, it ended up being great that we didn’t have to lug that heavy bag around the rest of the trip or to the airport. DCL also sheared the wheel off of our big Mickey Mouse roller bag-we are still trying to get a response from them about that.

Nothing takes the sting out of getting off after a great cruise (besides having rebooked another onboard) then checking in to a nice Disney resort and heading back out to play. We stayed at Wilderness Lodge and spent the bulk of Saturday at Epcot. Sunday we went to Animal Kingdom, and then, during park hop transition, decided to finally take advantage of a DVC presentation—largely because they were offering us a $100 gift certificate. We’ve never been able to figure out how DVC would make sense financially for anyone who does not insist on staying at $300 a night properties, but for a hundred bucks we thought we could listen….when we actually saw the deal, ran the numbers, and did some sloppy math projections into the future, it started tasting delicious. We’d heard some folks on Disboard mention they’d gotten a good DVC anniversary deal, and even though it technically ended on the 20th, because we brought it up to our guide and said we’d just gotten off the ship, it was extended to us as well. Now it was even more tantalizing We took the three days to think about it, did some math with a real calculator, and still found it was a great way for us to basically establish rent control on our Disney non-cruise vacations for the next 20 years before we pass them onto our kids. We love to stay at Wilderness Lodge and Animal Kindgom but the room prices are so high and the Annual Passholder discounts have been pretty poor. There are DVC properties at WL and brand new ones opening soon at Animal Kingdom that, with DVC, will cost us significantly less per night than we paid for our night pre-cruise at Caribbean Beach with our AP discount. So we did it!
We’re planning on booking Old Key West for the nights after our cruise in May as our first DVC trip.

Another wonderful cruise!

 

[pdarrah]

Howdy! Great report - how on earth did you find time to write it??? I still haven't totally finished unpacking and since the washer broke on the 2nd load after we got home, the laundry isn't done either!

pdarrah

 

[ldeninge]

nice report, skylynx! thanks for sharing!
Lauri

 

[skylynx]

The only way I was able to get this written was that since the day we returned from the cruise I have worked 11 days straight launching a big pilot course for 400 senior executives at work...when the participants were working on a business simulation I had some downtime to type...it was a welcome break!

 

[Ginny]

Denise -

Your trip report was awesome................you are a wonderful writer!! Have you ever considered writing for travel magazines??? Loved the vision of you up on deck with your MP3 player on and the children....and lettuce flying by! I'm so sorry that we didn't get to meet personally but am thrilled that you were able to join DVC at the ship rate.

Take care -

Ginny

 

[Impala]

Skylynx has covered the main aspects of our 7th cruise wonderfully so this little addendum is just to add information where I was the key conspirator and where I have some additional musings to add.

First Day of the vacation – Flying to Orlando. We are lucky in Chicago as it is a Southwest Airlines hub with cheap flights anywhere, including the choice of Orlando or Tampa. Strangely the flights we booked for Orlando got cheaper and cheaper as the departure date approached. After a late arrival at Orlando, we had to hustle in order to complete our plans for the night as the park was closing at 9:00. We managed to get to the Contemporary in 22 minutes from the airport, followed by a quick trot to the Magic Kingdom. We were inside by 7:30 pm. The wonder of an annual pass is that you do not begrudge spending just one and half hours on park entry.

Upon entry, it was straight to the POTC to see the new additions. The Davy Jones effect was clever, and the three appearances of Johnny Depp were brilliant, especially the scene at the end in the treasure room. The imagineers seem to have spiffed up the cannon fire in the scene with the Wicked Wench and Barbosa, but overall it seems a more somber ride, quieter, more solemn music before the “yo-ho” section, etc… A question: is the Chinese pirate at the “we wants the redhead” scene also an addition?

We then get off the ride and meet Pdarrah and her family and ride it again. It is interesting how the movie and Johnny Depp has brought new life to the ride; every time we walked past the ride in the visits after the cruise, there was always a line out of the door.
It is clear to me that Jack Sparrow and the POTC movie have made pirates cool again – and that it appeals to the pirate in all of us as we live in this over-regulated society, Each place we stopped on the cruise there were pirate t-shirts, pirate sombreros, new pirate museums. Pirate books now abound along with, flags, black pearl bars etc. and long may it continue. Keira Knightly as star of Bend Like Beckham and Love Actually was advised by her colleagues not to make the POTC movie, as it was likely to be a flop.

So after the second ride we take up position at the center to Main Street for Wishes, which we feel is the optimum viewing point. I challenge anyone not to be totally floored by this show, especially the ending. Another Disney Kiss - as we left the park, cast members were on top of the train station waving good bye with Mickey gloves. On our other visits to MK. Mickey has been at the exit waving and saying goodbye and thanks for coming, This is the key reason why people like us will keep coming back tot his land of overpriced food and souvenirs, this “bumping of the lamp” or the little personal extras they add to the theme park experience.


After a wonderful breakfast sitting outside at Caribbean Beach – I love to always sit outside if at all possible as its such a treat compared with the awful Chicago weather…we leave in convoy to drive to Port Canaveral. “Stick to the speed limit” suggests my DW – well, I try, but the excitement is too much and soon we are racing along the Beachline (aka Beeline) to PC at 80 miles an hour with Dan doing well to keep up.

The girls are dropped off and do a great job getting us an early boarding number. One advantage of being an illegal alien (just kidding) is that we can check in at the “bring us your masses and unwashed” immigrant line which is always shorter and usually quicker unless you are behind the Malosvich family from some new European country who speak only some ancient tribal language and who refuse to handover their bright green passports to the check-in staff. This time we were number one in the check in pattern and made it without hindrance.

Skylynx has covered the key points of the trip admirably in her report so the rest of this report is idle musing…

Day 1 Key West. – I think they should skip KW from now on and always slip in an extra CC day. As Skylynx reported, there is a new pirate museum to visit. Pirate Soul – it is small but I must mention that one cool exhibit is a real pirate chest owned by Captain Thomas Tew where he stored his loot while he went to sea and never came back. It is even complete with false keyhole – so now I need to find out what they found inside it.

Day 2 – At Sea. Always my favorite day – it is the first chance to really unwind and just do nothing adventurous – the only worry being when can I next eat and what.. (The solution we have is to graze like horses, little and often.). The other worry is will I run out of books to read before the trip ends.

Two things we love to do during a day at sea:

1. Stand at the front of the ship when Capt. Tom has her opened up to 22 knots and above and have a Titanic moment. The sense of power, speed and the buffeting you get is incredible; it is an effective way to clear out the cobwebs and get a sense of ocean liner travel. It also gives you a great hairstyle for the rest of the trip. I look like I have just been electrocuted (If you have ever seen Bridget Jones Diary movie and the weekend break scene, that’s what Skylynx’s hair looks like afterwards)

2. Lie on the teak deck and relax with a good book and/or conversation. These chairs seem identical to those on the Titanic from the pictures I have seen. We love being remote from the “real world,” yet making progress towards somewhere exciting.

Sat in these chairs, we were discussing why cruising has suddenly become such a feature of our vacations now. Although we do other outdoor type trips such as visits to Jackson Hole, riding horses at Big Sur, hiking in the Colorado mountains, going to rodeos in Cheyenne and Las Vegas – but a cruise is so very different. We only started 4 years ago and have done 7 (with 8 and 9 already booked). We agreed it was a combination of these things:
· The excitement of the journey – especially on days at sea, as the ship is going somewhere, at speed, with a purpose.
· Wonderful interesting places come to you – I will always remember waking up for the first time as we docked on St. Maarten surrounded by the breathtaking mountainous scenery.
· You don’t have to keep unpacking / packing, getting into a car, etc. If you go onshore all you have to take with you is shorts, T-shirt, camera, sunscreen and a credit card and you can spend the day snorkeling at places like Rum Point for free.
· The glamour of the whole experience. One reason we love the Disney Cruise is the beauty of the ship itself. As we compare our beautiful vessel with those floating white apartment blocks belonging to the other cruise lines docked off Cozumel, the Magic and Wonder ooze elegance and class. That is also why we love the formal nights; these are a perfect excuse to dress up in tuxedos and gowns. Normal life gives few opportunities to play James Bond, and his blond nemesis. Work pressures, kids’ schedules, plumbing nightmares, and horse stall cleaning normally take precedent. During a cruise I can sit at the bar on deck in a tropical white tuxedo jacket sipping my martini, (shaken not stirred) with my blond American Mata Hari by my side trying to find out Her Majesty’s Government secrets. (OK perhaps a bit to much fantasy – but I am on vacation With a little imagination you can make the night ooze glamour. This Love Boat moments however can be shattered when Donald Duck walks past. Why does he not wear trousers?
· The amazing fact that even with 2700 guests on board, it can still be so quiet and peaceful. We have pictures taken with us laying on deck 4 with nobody else in the background – the deck was empty.
· Customer service with a Disney touch - We both hate staying places where staff genuflect to us, chase after us to open doors, etc – that’s not customer service, that’s servitude. Disney has it just right, the staff nearly always seem friendly, and genuine. Our serving staff, Samsung and Wanderlust (or something like that) we perfect. They shared jokes with us, cut our food for us and hand fed us. Yet knew our names from day one and were helpful and attentive. They helped us communicate with our Portuguese tablemates. We remembered the scenes from the movie “Love Actually” where Jamie (Colin Firth) gets a Portuguese house keeper and he learns a few choice words. So thanks to the movies, we could always say good night to them, (Bon Noite) even when we met them by the pool at midday. Our other conversations used the universal language of football (soccer) and we would recite famous English and Portuguese football clubs and players to each other over the table and have a surprisingly good conversation. Cristiano Ronaldo v Manchester United - Muito ben

Day 4 Grand Cayman – Loved the place, (As an island race all Brits love islands – in fact we are hard-wired to go and claim them for ourselves – funny how we went for all the warm sunny islands – if you have experienced one of our British summers you would know why!! Key item of interest was the cricket ground within half a mile of the end of the runway… with a navigation beacon on the edge of the pitch.

Day 5 Cozumel – I am so glad they have managed to rebuild the place so that it looks exactly like it did before the hurricane. I love this place. Unlike the people of Key West, these are welcoming and friendly. We avoided Senor Frog’s this time… and sat and people watched with our dollar Coronas.

Day 6 At sea. Same routine – eat, sleep, read, and eat. Swim, read, sleep. This was our Palo night as well. Our hostess was from England so we spent the night sharing details of obscure English cooking delicacies such as Marmite. (A yeast extract which my poor sweet DW describes as the tar based runoff when the local council resurfaces a road) and the wonders of Skippy the bush kangaroo.

Day 7 Castaway Cay
My favorite, as is everybody else’s, I think. CC is a gorgeous place and I am sure still has many secrets hidden in the bush. I have read a couple of first hand accounts of its earlier incarnations as Gorda Cay and the rum and drug smuggling use made of the island. Its disused airstrip and the various pieces of aircraft / boat wreckage we found at low tide in the water off Serenity Bay just adds to its slightly murky past and the mystique of the island. I am sure there are many interesting things still buried on the undeveloped portion of the island, and even further piratical stories to be told.
Our time at CC is always too short, you just get into the island life style when it is time to climb aboard the last tram and head home. However, I am told that as soon as the sun sets, the flesh-eating mosquitoes come out and drive everybody indoors – but that may just be a ploy and cover story – like the mosquito sanctuary in Lilo and Stitch.

Days 8-10 Back to Florida and the Parks.

Non-highlight – the procedure that makes all immigrants wait for an hour at 6:15 am to report to the WD Theatre to be interviewed by the Homeland Security chaps – a pointless exercise, made just bearable by the Danish pastries and coffee DCL thoughtfully provide. They should give us pins and have the characters turn up.

Why didn’t I invent Crocs?… terrible plastic shoes that make your feet look like those of a cheap toy figure that comes inside a pack of Frosties. We are buying three pairs for DW and the two kids.

Highlights - we got to watch from our Wilderness Lodge room window the practice run of the fireworks for the Pirates and Princess party. Terrific. We toured the DVC property there, in anticipation of a later visit, as well as Old Key West.I love the Spike Room at VWL-it has one of the original train cars from Walt Disney’s back yard.

Apart from the DVC presentation, we also did AK, MK and Epcot. We loved the changes to the Living Seas and the wonderful seagulls outside… Mine. Mine. Mine.

Next cruise – May with the kids and then an Eastern (my other favorite) in November 08.

Take care…

Impala

 

[ldeninge]

Impala,
thanks for adding your side of the story!

 

[iloveokw]

Denise and Impala:

Thanks for the great trip reports and welcome to DVC. You will LOVE OKW and it will spoil you forever - all that room.

Kathy

 

[disneyfan551]

Great report! Thanks for writing!!