June 16, 2007 MedHead Cruisers

[auntsue1]

We will not be able to board the ship till Palermo, Sicily! Due to the "practicing" of the aircraft for the Pittsburgh Airshow we sat on the tarmac too long & missed our connection in Philadelphia! There were 16 of us with travel troubles & no one to help! Finally after 5 hours we got some help by US Air! We even had several calls into Disney Cruise Line! The end result is we fly to Rome tonite then to Palermo arriving Sunday morning. We will be boarding the ship Monday! Linda & I are very upset that we will miss all the Sunday events! We will have to give you all our gifts @ a later time. Maybe we can do our exchange on the 2nd sea day or whenever! I'm so sorry we will miss the meet & greet & brunch! There has been no internet @ the Marriott Philadelphia Airport so I'm in their business center. You all have a GREAT time! We will see you Monday!

Sue & Disney Lover Linda!

 

[auntsue1]

Well - the day from hell continues. I'm not sure who upset the travel gods - but enough is enough. We were late getting out of Pittsburgh - we were actually on the runway to take off when a computer went down - went back to the gate - ran to another flight - and then sat on a 20 minute ground delay - and missed the connection in Philadelphia - by five minutes. The first option to fly to London and connect failed as there were only 2 seats on the flight to London. USAirways was initially NO help - so I was using AMEX to make me new reservations. Finally found a supervisor who cared - and here's the plan:
1. We stay the night in Philly.
2. USAirways provides us tranportation to Newark.
3. We fly Lufthansa out of Newark to Frankfut and arrive in Barcelona on Saturday morning.

Needless to say we're tired, with no luggage - but it looks like we might actually make the cruise.

More later!

Virgil

I hope you were able to get there in time!

Sue

 

[WVMD]

Sue and Linda - I'm so sorry that you missed the first sea day - but so glad that you are able to join us in Palermo.

We made it - and had all our bags - but we were exhausted...

Virgil

 

[taysmom]

SUE...that blows

I was looking for you yesterday!

We're on board and have met many people...and still have more to meet. Since this is my first cruise, I just have to say that I am overwhelmed by this ship. I've been on bigger, but I love disney and so far so good. I even won a prize, actually 2 last night! In fact, I went to Rockin with Wendy and Carol (jsmom and carolmb) last night and we won together! Talented dissers we are!
I won't be posting here much but I have updated my blog. Follow along!
and feel free to ask questions....I know you future cruisers are out there lurking...just like I did to the previous cruisers!

SUE....we'll be looking for you in palermo!

Marla...we miss you too!

Steph

 

[auntsue1]

We're tired but we are finally on the MAGIC! I'm currently trying to find out where you all are so I can deliver your gifts.

Virgil, boy we also had a REALLY bad Philadelphia experience. Our connections resembled Amazing Races contestants. However, our egress was always from the back of the plane we were never lucky to be in the front. I think we see you on the Rome excursion we will tell you more.

Steph, I missed seeing you & everybody else. I am wearing my bracelet & have your "trolley car" keychain with me. I keep hoping I see something on somone that tells me it's one of you guys.

I think we were trying the airport excursion. We gave it a 1. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone. We spent the last 2 days with 2 lovely couples sharing the same pain, they were wonderful.

Thanks for the LOVELY gifts everyone! It almost made me cry when we we arrived, tired after a very bad time & all your gifts were given too us! It made us feel loved & welcomed! Thanks!

Exhausted
Sue

 

[taysmom]

glad you're here! I'm in 6003 and looking forward to meeting you. I'm wearing the bracelet that lisatex gave out, a blue rubberband type. Look around and ask we're all over the ship!
Hope to see you!
Steph

 

[kdepolo]

For any of you that are checking we are headed for the next Med cruise and I'm looking for input from you all on the Florence and Pisa and Cinque Terre Scenic Boat Tours. I know there are some of you traveling on each. If you have any input, I would really appreciate it.

Have a great trip!!!

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Kouris_Family]

For any of you that are checking we are headed for the next Med cruise and I'm looking for input from you all on the Florence and Pisa and Cinque Terre Scenic Boat Tours. I know there are some of you traveling on each. If you have any input, I would really appreciate it.

Have a great trip!!!

Thanks in advance for your help.

I only have info. on Cinque Terre, I am on the 7-7-07 and was going to do the Cinque Terre DCL tour. I got a great map of that area from a friend who just finished the Med Cruise and the map shows how you can easily take a train right from the port of La Spezia to the first town of Riomaggiore. From there you can either start on the waking tour or you can hop back on the train to the next town and so on. I say if you want to go to Cinque take the train. I know nothing about the other places, I have read some other threads on disappointing excursions to the Florence/Pisa area, I don't remember exactly though what was said because I wasn't going there. Hope this helps.
Kay

 

[Marla Hellwig]

Hi all

Hope you are all having a great time.

Thought I would let you know that Kara's passport just arrived here about an hour ago.

Interesting as it says it was issued 05/1307 and it took them this long to get it to us

 

[auntsue1]

That stinks! It shouldn't take that long to get a passport!

We are curretnly on our way to Civitavecchia. Everyone is resting up for a long but enjoyable excursion. We are doing the exclusive VIP visit of the Vatican & Highlights of Rome.

I'm sure you saw our terrible ordeal for the long trip over! I guess we weren't the only ones to be cursed by the travel gods.

The internet is very slow on ship!

Sue

 

[taysmom]

Blog is updated. Rome is in....
Steph

 

[WVMD]

I'm keeping my blog updated as the internet on the ship is horrid. I've uploaded some pictures from the Blackberry - but that has been it.

It's been a wonderful cruise and we've met some wonderful people.

Virgil

 

[taysmom]

Hello all...the cruise is over. You were all wonderful. We had a great time. Taylor and I have arrived in paris and have checked off the eiffel tower. taylor loved going up to the top!
We'll talk to you all later. Looking forward to Jeff's trip report thread..hahaha...

Thanks for the memories. Hope we see each other again on a cruise in the future!

Steph and Tay

 

[JsMom2]

I'm sorry I didn't get to meet everyone. But I really enjoyed meeting as many of you as I did. I hope to see you on another cruise one day. We decided we need a cruise to recover from that 11 night whirlwind, so we are booked on the Magic on Dec 8 to the Eastern Caribbean! The money I saved by moving to a cat 12 gty on the Med cruise will pretty much pay for a Cat 7 on the December cruise.

I hope everyone's travels home went smoothly. Especially after all the drama on the front end. I had an interesting experience at the Barcelona airport....

As we put our carryons thru the x-ray machine, I suddenly remembered that I'd forgotten to take my laptop out. So I wasn't surprised that the agent looking into the x-ray screen motioned me over. But it wasn't about the laptop. He needed me to open the other carry on, because there were 2 metal objects he couldn't ID. Well they turned out to be the large Med Cruise pin that came in a presentation case, and my Disney cruise line coffee mug. He took some time to admire both of them. Then he looked at the screen to see my laptop come thru the x-ray machine. I apologized, and offered to take it out, but he said not to worry. Then my backpack comes through with the 2 bottles of water that I'd intended for us to drink BEFORE we went thru security. I'd forgotten about them, until the agent said, "tienes agua?" He asked if it was for me or "la nina". I said it was hers, and he let me thru with it. I guess by that time he figured we were too stupid to be terrorists!! Yikes!

 

[smillingjack]

Hello to all!
It sure was fun, we had a opportunity to meet a lot of disboarders aboard ship. It was neat to put faces with the names, etc. It was neat to hear the stories of the good and not so good experiences folks were having.
Worktoplay did a very nice dance on stage! Congrats Marie!

It is too bad that so many had travel problems, and like Virgil said, the travel gods were in a bad mood for some.

We had no problems returning to Orlando via London.

It would have been nice to learn about the good excursions prior to leaving but that is the chance you take.

Rome for us was really a tough day, long and too many steps. We only have two steps in our house. Not good training for some of these excursions.

It was wonderful to meet so many nice families.


Good luck and will keep in touch.

Smillingjack

 

[smillingjack]

Stephanie, Thanks for all of your assistance during the cruise! We really learned a lot and had one very good time. How can I post some group photos? I need to learn about the blogspot that you have used!
Help when you get back to Calif.

Jack

 

[Jeff Spencer]

Hey all, I started a thread for the 6/16 MedHead Cruisers on the Trip Reports section. Here's a link:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1499933

 

[PrincessJasmine08]

Hello friends. Hope everyone made it home okay. I'm so sad that it's over!!! I practically had to be dragged off the ship! Our flight from Barcelona was delayed but we still easily made our connection from Atlanta to Cincy. It was so, so nice to meet everyone and I hope we can all keep in touch!

 

[Skallywag]

Hi Everyone,

Bet for once we were the first to make it home. We got back indoors about 4 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon and that was inspite of the dreadful delay with getting luggage at Gatwick, never known it so bad.

Thank you to everyone for a wonderful trip and it was so nice to be part of the group and sinceely hope we can meet up again sometime.

We had two couples on our dining table also that we had a good time with and plan to keep in touch also.

Safe travels to everyone and really hope we can put some pictures up, also need to put names to faces still so hard.
Bren

 

[PURTYPAT1]

Hi Everyone,

I had such a great time with all of you. Brenda we got back at 2:30 am this morning. We were in London. We took your advice, & did well. We were on the tour bus all day yesterday. We got to see everything. We used the subway, & had no problem at all.

We are very tired today, but will stay up, & try to be on New York time & crash late tonight.

Lauren, are you going to do a blog trip? I love your family. They were awsome.

Steph, I am enjoying your blogs your so funny. I enjoyed your company very much. No mention of the toielets in France. LOL

Jack, glad you made it home safe, I didn't see you on the plane to Heathrow.

Thanks for making lot's of memories, everyone

Patricia