This weekend, I am having the two friends over that are going on the cruise with us, and the younger friend's mom, too (since she is a minor still). We are going to discuss cruise plans, who is responsible for paying what (I am not buying 10 smoothies a day for all the girls!), and what our accomodations will be for the two days we are at Disney before the cruise. I figure this way, everyone knows how much money to bring, what to save for over the next year, and the expectations (such as no walking the ship at 2:00 am for the future 16 year olds, no leaving the ship while in Nassau without an adult, etc.!).
So to prepare for this meeting, I am planning to cook some ship-type food. I have a recipe from Palo for asparagus risotto, and I have some boxes of
DCL cookies (stale, maybe, but hey, they are DCL cookies, and tradition dictates that we eat one box when we enter true planning mode of our next DCL cruise!). I thought I might buy some Dove bars, since they are about the closest to Mickey bars as I can get. Is there any food on the ship that just reminds you of a DCL cruise that I could make? I would love some more suggestions.
I will also be finding some of my old Navigators, and price lists for spa stuff, so the girls can have an idea of what is available to do on the ship. I know I have some excursion price lists from Nassau around here, too, otherwise I will try to print out something from online.
I have some Disney pins I will give to the friends, and some extra lanyards, to start them on pin trading. Both my girls enjoy pin trading, and I know their friends will be taking part; they won't have much choice, but hey, I know these girls will have fun with it! I also have DCL erasable boards that I bought off of Ebay, and I will write the number of days until our cruise on the boards and give them to the girls.
Any other ideas of something I might want to do to prep the friends and the mom about the trip? Anything I might be forgetting that you would do if you were bringing friends along?
I am so excited for this weekend! Less than a year away from our cruise, and I am ready to burst already. Since I need to release some of my excitement, I figure this get-together will help me calm down a little bit. Actually, a vacation to plan for
this summer would help, too, but I think it is more fiscally responsible to not go spending money on vacation and instead have more cushion for the DCL cruise. Gosh, I dislike being fiscally responsible!
But hey, less than a year to go! Here's to hoping I don't bust with excitement before then!
Family includes DH(43), and 3 sons ages 17, 15 and 7(July 4th bday) at the time of the cruise. I'll try to get older sons to check out teen thread, they are excited about teen areas.
Glad to see there are more teens. My DD will turn 17 on board.
