July 6, 2010 - 7/6/2010 ~ Pounds to Rubles ~ Mickey invades the Baltic Sea

[LisaTex]

Alice I will put you down for 2.

Denise, 3/23 will be here before you know it. Do you have spring break between now and then too? or maybe Texas is the only one to have it in early March. Ashton and I will be on the Wonder for his b-day during SB - will get a little fix

 

[Fivepin]

SOOOOOO......since I am gold.......................
105 days out will be March 23rd! Gotta get my act together soon!!!!

I know what you mean. Mine is March 8th. I hope there are no problems with the website like there was yesterday for most part of the day. I really need to get it together after I get the kids thru valentines day and their school carnival on the 12th.

 

[goingsouth]

Sigh--lowly sad silver..leave some stuff for us..

joanne

 

[denise]

Denise, 3/23 will be here before you know it. Do you have spring break between now and then too? or maybe Texas is the only one to have it in early March. Ashton and I will be on the Wonder for his b-day during SB - will get a little fix

My DD is in college now so don't think about Spring breaks anymore! But we are going to Disneyland April 10th. I think her break is before our trip. Will be in Southern California for a week. The rest will be nice. But I have to have my act together before that....I just have the little things left. Like transportation between Disneyland Paris and Dover. Then the ship to our hotel outside of London. Oh of course all the excursions to plan.....

 

[LisaTex]

I'm down to excursions We are March 8 too. Pretty well decided on the 2 biggies, but cant decide on the others. Are any of you guys doing the non Berlin/St P ports on your own?

Denise - that DLP > Dover transfer sounds like a fun one to figure out

 

[wintergreen]

Are any of you guys doing the non Berlin/St P ports on your own?

We are doing all of the ports other than St. Petersburg on our own.

 

[Fivepin]

We are doing all of the ports other than St. Petersburg on our own.

same here

 

[slg]

I've really thought about doing the ports on our own. We are experienced travellers who've been to Europe many times (7 trips!), but only twice with our 3 kids.

This trip is pretty big for us as we are also going to be in Dover 3 days precruise and London 12 days post. There is so much planning and organizing and doing on our own in London, that just for sheer convenience and lack of stress we are going to go with all DCL. I want a variety of different types of activities on all the ports so the kids don't get too museum and bus weary. I feel really good about all our choices and since I had budgeted $6000 for the 5 of us for excursions, what we want to do works out to $5710 so its within our budget!

I'm still fussing a bit about the whole bathroom bit. I have euros, but I didn't really want to get any currency for the countries that don't take euros as we really never buy many souvenirs and I had to exchange an unknown amount of money for no reason. If we see something we like, then we'll probably just use a credit card, or if there is an ATM handy, go there. But I don't want to exchange money in advance.

The problem is...what about bathroom breaks? Some of our excursions are all day (most of them are anyway). Surely we need to use the loo! Will we need to pay for that ourselves? We were in Portugal and Ireland for 6 weeks last year and I didn't pay for a bathroom anywhere and we went to many, many, many museums. I'm going to go with the assumption that the museum loos are free. If not, well,

Anyone else have thoughts on the loo situation?

Our DCL excursions are:

Copenhagen: City Highlights and Open Air History (7 hours)
Helsinki: Porvoo and Helsinki highlights (7 hrs)
Olso: Norwegian Adventure (3hrs)
Berlin: Sights and Sounds (12.5 hrs)
Stockholm: Best of Drottingham (both my dh and I are in theatre. This looks amazing!)
St. P: 1. Catherine's palace in Pushkin (4hrs)
2. Hermitage and Peterof (9 hrs)

Also interested in the Leeds Castle in Dover! Relaxing way to get back to London!

 

[wintergreen]

I've really thought about doing the ports on our own. We are experienced travellers who've been to Europe many times (7 trips!), but only twice with our 3 kids.

This trip is pretty big for us as we are also going to be in Dover 3 days precruise and London 12 days post. There is so much planning and organizing and doing on our own in London, that just for sheer convenience and lack of stress we are going to go with all DCL. I want a variety of different types of activities on all the ports so the kids don't get too museum and bus weary. I feel really good about all our choices and since I had budgeted $6000 for the 5 of us for excursions, what we want to do works out to $5710 so its within our budget!

I'm still fussing a bit about the whole bathroom bit. I have euros, but I didn't really want to get any currency for the countries that don't take euros as we really never buy many souvenirs and I had to exchange an unknown amount of money for no reason. If we see something we like, then we'll probably just use a credit card, or if there is an ATM handy, go there. But I don't want to exchange money in advance.

The problem is...what about bathroom breaks? Some of our excursions are all day (most of them are anyway). Surely we need to use the loo! Will we need to pay for that ourselves? We were in Portugal and Ireland for 6 weeks last year and I didn't pay for a bathroom anywhere and we went to many, many, many museums. I'm going to go with the assumption that the museum loos are free. If not, well,

Anyone else have thoughts on the loo situation?

Our DCL excursions are:

Copenhagen: City Highlights and Open Air History (7 hours)
Helsinki: Porvoo and Helsinki highlights (7 hrs)
Olso: Norwegian Adventure (3hrs)
Berlin: Sights and Sounds (12.5 hrs)
Stockholm: Best of Drottingham (both my dh and I are in theatre. This looks amazing!)
St. P: 1. Catherine's palace in Pushkin (4hrs)
2. Hermitage and Peterof (9 hrs)

Also interested in the Leeds Castle in Dover! Relaxing way to get back to London!

Sounds like you have got a great plan!!! I would like to know more about the bathroom issue as well, but my guess is that the only place we may run into any issue will be in St. Petersburg.

 

[OurDogCisco]

OK - I have a few answers - the game is making me too nervous anyway

Charge for Palo Brunch is $15 - plus tip

Dates for booking - Platinum - 120, Gold and concierge - 105, Silver -90

evanevanstours.co.uk - for the stonehenge tour

and yes, as you have probably heard, Wicked is great!

Don't forget 75 days if you have never cruised before.

One thing on the Dreams Unlimited site it has the booking window different. Did you find your info on the Disney site (I just have a hard time navigating their site--- if you did could you provide a link):

120 Days in Advance - Concierge Guests in Stateroom Categories 1 - 3 and Platinum Castaway Club Members
105 Days in Advance – Gold Castaway Club Members In any Stateroom Category
90 Days in Advance – Silver Castaway Cay Club Members In any Stateroom Category
75 Days in Advance – New Disney Cruisers in Stateroom Categories 4 - 12

 

[OurDogCisco]

Also - for anyone interested - I found a very cool tour of stonehenge at sunset with Bath and windsor included before - let's you go to the inner ring with a guide. I have info I received through our hotel if anyone wants it.

2nd - anyone going to the 7/4 matinee for Lion King?

Been on a planning marathon since we finally decided to do this yesterday

That tour sounds cool. I'd love to hear more about it.

We've seen Lion King here in Sacramento so, I don' t think we'll see there.

 

[LisaTex]

You are right - concierge is now 120 (used to be 105). My info was from the castaway page on the the DCL website.

the tour company we are using for stonehenge is evanevanstours.co.uk

the concierge at the hotel where we will be staying highly rec. them - for whatever that's worth...they also have a tour of Leeds, Dover for another option instead of through DCL or on your own.

 

[aurorafan65]

I have a weird question - I think I've been reading too much & confused myself! On the private tours in StP if I book with DenRus, Anastasia whoever, am I booking only my family, as in it would only be the 4 of us or do we automatically get put in with whoever else is on our ship - I am talking about if we do one of their standard tours not something specialized.

 

[NAG]

We booked with Red October for a day and a half tour. It's just the 5 of us, and we customized a couple of places we wanted to see. We also needed to get back early the first day so that we could make the St. Catherine's ball.

They'll ask whether you want early entry to the hermitage? Do you want to see the gold room (fee applies)? Do you want to squirrel away food from the ship or stop for fast food? There are a few more that we weren't interested in.

We also checked with the two companies you mentioned and the options were similar.

From RO's proposal:

"ONLY your Group will tour in the same vehicle with Private RO Guide and RO Driver"

 

[DisneyRedHeadPirate]

We're also on the July 6th cruise. We don't have a Stateroom number, but we are a Cat 4. I'm traveling with DH, DS age 13, DD age 13 and DD's friend age 13. Prior to the cruise and after the cruise we are traveling with Thistle. We're also dining with Thistle. I met Thistle on another forum prior to the Transatlantic, August 2007.

 

[nzdisneymom]

We're also on the July 6th cruise. We don't have a Stateroom number, but we are a Cat 4. I'm traveling with DH, DS age 13, DD age 13 and DD's friend age 13. Prior to the cruise and after the cruise we are traveling with Thistle. We're also dining with Thistle. I met Thistle on another forum prior to the Transatlantic, August 2007.

Hi. Welcome to the board. I added you to the first post where you can see the list of DISers and get other information about stuff going on!

 

[nzdisneymom]

Lisa - if you still have room, I would like to do the Palo brunch... if you're all filled up, no worries. It would be just me - DH isn't interested.

We're also doing all DCL excursions. We did DCL in the Med and had a wonderful experience on all of our excursions - no disappointments at all. And yeah, we could probably see / do better on our own, this takes the planning and worry away for me which lets me enjoy things better.

We are going to do one thing on our own, and that's in Helsinki after our tour, we're going to meet my 3rd cousin who lives there! I'm most excited about that. As you may remember, we picked the itinerary with Finland rather than the other one because my grandmother on my dad's side was Finnish so I am 1/4 Finn.

As for currency, I was just looking at it yesterday and trying to figure out how much we'll want to get and whether to get it early or wait til closer to time (exchange rates and all that). Because we like to tip our guides, we know that we'll want some local currency, and we know we'll buy a souvenir at each location, even if it's something just really small, so we are working the details of our budget for that. We exchanged through AAA's link to (I forget now) and had a good experience with that. We did end up getting more Euro from the ATM in Italy because we hadn't gotten enough before we left, but we know we won't necessarily be able to get to an ATM in the various countries of our ports.

As for the loo, we found that all of the DCL excursions included a stop that had a restroom that was easily accessible ... often it was in a shop where the shopkeepers would give a demonstration of some local art/craft and then we were allowed to use their restroom We did find that taking some travel toilet tissue was good on one occasion and definitely hand-sanitizer for others as there might not be soap for washing up afterwards.

We have to renew the boys' passports because they expire in November - ggrrrr. So we'll be taking them this week to get their new pictures and then taking them to the courthouse to submit their renewal applications. Too bad we can't just do it by mail like you can as an adult -- but with kids, not only do we have to take them, we both have to be present. But it was pretty easy several years ago when we got their passports originally, so hopefully that will still be the case this year. The courthouse is easier to get to than the post office for us.

Somehow my list of things to do is growing exponentially as our travel dates are approaching! I haven't put anything together concretely for London yet, either. I guess because we're doing DCL for transportation and accomodations in London, I haven't thought too far ahead.

 

[sshaw10060]

I just found this on the DCL website:

Due to tidal issues, debarkation in Dover on July 6th (for the June 24th voyage) will not begin until 10:30am. It is recommended that your flight departure time should be no earlier than 4:00pm.

It sounds like we'll get to sleep in a bit the morning of the 6th. No point in rushing to the port.

 

[denise]

I just found this on the DCL website:

Due to tidal issues, debarkation in Dover on July 6th (for the June 24th voyage) will not begin until 10:30am. It is recommended that your flight departure time should be no earlier than 4:00pm.

It sounds like we'll get to sleep in a bit the morning of the 6th. No point in rushing to the port.

Wow Scott....
that is sure going to mess up some peoples plans on that cruise...that's why I always stay at least one day before and one after. On our cruise it is 2 days in Dover before and 2 after. (just in case)

 

[Fivepin]

As for currency, I was just looking at it yesterday and trying to figure out how much we'll want to get and whether to get it early or wait til closer to time (exchange rates and all that). Because we like to tip our guides, we know that we'll want some local currency, and we know we'll buy a souvenir at each location, even if it's something just really small, so we are working the details of our budget for that. We exchanged through AAA's link to (I forget now) and had a good experience with that. We did end up getting more Euro from the ATM in Italy because we hadn't gotten enough before we left, but we know we won't necessarily be able to get to an ATM in the various countries of our ports.

As for the loo, we found that all of the DCL excursions included a stop that had a restroom that was easily accessible ... often it was in a shop where the shopkeepers would give a demonstration of some local art/craft and then we were allowed to use their restroom We did find that taking some travel toilet tissue was good on one occasion and definitely hand-sanitizer for others as there might not be soap for washing up afterwards.

We have to renew the boys' passports because they expire in November - ggrrrr. So we'll be taking them this week to get their new pictures and then taking them to the courthouse to submit their renewal applications. Too bad we can't just do it by mail like you can as an adult -- but with kids, not only do we have to take them, we both have to be present. But it was pretty easy several years ago when we got their passports originally, so hopefully that will still be the case this year. The courthouse is easier to get to than the post office for us.

Somehow my list of things to do is growing exponentially as our travel dates are approaching! I haven't put anything together concretely for London yet, either. I guess because we're doing DCL for transportation and accomodations in London, I haven't thought too far ahead.

I have to renew my passport as well. I had to get my younger son's renewed as well. I am going with the 3 boys and my mom to Taiwan 2 days after I get back from this trip to go see my grandmother. Our city hall is right down the street so I got the passport done there. My DH couldn't make it, so we had to get a notarized form as well. I had to dig up the birth certificate for my son. Even though it was a renewal we still had to send it in as well.

I have an account at BOA and I'm going to do the currency exchange there. I can order online and have it delivered to my bank. They have all the countries incl Russia. My other bank did not. I had gotten Euros from AAA for the Med cruise as well, but they don't have all the currency for this trip at our office. I just don't know when I should order. I have been trying to watch the exchange rates. It only takes 3 days for delivery, so no rush yet.

I definitely agree on the travel toilet paper and hand sanitizer. I also bring along the travel toilet seat covers. In Italy one of the bathrooms did not have toilet paper and I wound up sharing my tp with all the ladies on our excursion.