June 21, 2011 - The Wonder breaks the Alaskan icebergs!

[ilovepumba]

We leave for Vancouver at 6 am tomorrow. I can't wait till we are all together on deck 10 on Tuesday! See ya real soon! Joanne

 

[mousemom11]

We're here in Vancouver! We had a leisurely drive up from Seattle and arrived around 2:30. It took us less than 5 minutes to cross the border. Love it! We're just hanging out at the hotel. DH is napping and the girls are watching Iron Chef.

We're planning on visiting the Aquarium at Stanley Park and Granville Island tomorrow.

My DH did the same pack-in-a-flash trick. I started packing last night at 7, quit at 10, and finished this morning. I love the packing cubes Val! It's so easy to move the cubes from the suitcase to the drawer. We throw all our electronics/cords/chargers into the small cubes. Great way to keep them all organized.

Can't wait to see you all on Tuesday!

 

[TinknCyn]

We just switched our 2010 11 night southern Christmas cruise to the 7 night Alaskan. We have always wanted to cruise to Alaska and now we are!!!!

It will be myself (Denise), DH (Dennis), DS (Scott 20), DD (Shelby 19), twin DS (Daniel & Darrin 13), and Grandma (my mother Anita) in cabin's 7016 & 7018.

I look forward to getting to know each of you (electronically), between now and then.

We've got a large group in the same age brackets: an extended family trip:
Me (mom-Cynthia) and veteran DCL planner! Platinum finally!
Jesse (DH)
Our 3 boys: Cameron - 21, Richard - 17, Jackson - 12
Oma (my mom)
Grandma Helen (Jesse's mom)
Damian 12- our nephew
Jesse and I are in a Nav. Balcony, Oma and the kids in an outside, Grandma and Damian in an inside. This is Grandma and Damian's first cruise ever! I'm going to get them a fish extender to surprise them! They are near the back of deck 7, inside cabin.

Oma, Jackson and I did the Pacific cruise in April. I got away with it by calling it "research" Actually, it did help me plan what to pack, and even more important, what not to pack!

We are renting Tuxes for formal nights so I won't have to pack formal clothes or shoes for the boys! That's going to save us 1-2 bags, plus no ironing! I'm shocked I haven't done this sooner! No stress on do the boy's suits still fit, them forgetting dress socks or stealing each other's dress shoes, etc. So much easier for me!

Also, Disney didn't have binoculars or umbrellas or robes in the cabins on our Pacific cruise, so make sure you pack those!
TIP on robes, you can nab one from the spa if you have a treatment and they'll let you keep it all week, if you ask nicely

 

[kveens]

We've got a large group in the same age brackets: an extended family trip:
Me (mom-Cynthia) and veteran DCL planner! Platinum finally!
Jesse (DH)
Our 3 boys: Cameron - 21, Richard - 17, Jackson - 12
Oma (my mom)
Grandma Helen (Jesse's mom)
Damian 12- our nephew
Jesse and I are in a Nav. Balcony, Oma and the kids in an outside, Grandma and Damian in an inside. This is Grandma and Damian's first cruise ever! I'm going to get them a fish extender to surprise them! They are near the back of deck 7, inside cabin.

Oma, Jackson and I did the Pacific cruise in April. I got away with it by calling it "research" Actually, it did help me plan what to pack, and even more important, what not to pack!

We are renting Tuxes for formal nights so I won't have to pack formal clothes or shoes for the boys! That's going to save us 1-2 bags, plus no ironing! I'm shocked I haven't done this sooner! No stress on do the boy's suits still fit, them forgetting dress socks or stealing each other's dress shoes, etc. So much easier for me!

Also, Disney didn't have binoculars or umbrellas or robes in the cabins on our Pacific cruise, so make sure you pack those!
TIP on robes, you can nab one from the spa if you have a treatment and they'll let you keep it all week, if you ask nicely

Make sure you stop by on Deck 10 on Tuesday between 3 and 3:30 to get your green ribbon keyring to identify you as part of the DIS boards. See you soon!

Kerri

 

[PPFQP]

We're off to the airport in about an hour and a half! I'm so excited, I couldn't sleep. I hope I am not forgetting anything!

Hope to meet you all on Tuesday! We'll be the wacky family with the matching brown shirts - I always make t-shirts for us to wear when we board a cruise. Of course, I was still ironing on the designs at 10pm last night. What was I thinking? At least it will make for cute pictures.

 

[Gilland18]

Ours are yellow! We leave early tomorrow. See everybody there!

 

[D23mom]

Sitting at San Diego airport. Flight leaves for Vancouver in about an hour. See everyone tomorrow.

 

[bonrea]

We leave for Vancouver at 6 am tomorrow. I can't wait till we are all together on deck 10 on Tuesday! See ya real soon! Joanne

We= Andrew DH - Kim DW - & Callie DD 8
We will be in Stateroom 5639 Starboard side Aft.
We have the late seating for dinner.
Would love to meet up with someone on this cruise with DDs Callie's age for a playmate for her and some new friends for us all.

See you Tuesday morning!!! WOW we can't wait.
Flying out tomorrow morning at 6am to Vancouver for two nights. We are staying in the hotel RIGHT AT THE DOCKS!

 

[cjborne2]

What a great trip! We got home about one this morning. My equilibrium is off as I feel like I'm swaying and I can't believe I'm hungry! I'm sorry I never got to meet up with you but I did notice some of the green ribbons here and there.

I loved seeing the eagles. We did the train ride in Skagway, the whale watching trip in Juneau, and the salmon cannery / totem pole park in Ketchikan. I wish we would have had more time in the shops. Our tours were so long and got back close to the time we had to reboard so there was not a lot of shopping for us.

I hope you all had as much fun as we did.

 

[RosenFam]

what a trip!!

thank you all for such a wonderful FE experience... this was our first time participating and we had so much fun, both discovering our little surprises, and even more, sneakily delivering them!

there was such an abundance of generosity and creativity in this group... we are honored to have been a part of this tradition!

best wishes and happy future travels to you all!

RosenFam

Corey, Jenny, Henry and Noli
San Francisco, CA

 

[DenverVal]

This was a great cruise! It was nice to be able to put faces to screen names - saw you all around the ship all the time, some more than others. My family attended three of the trivia sessions, won one and came in second on the other two. I had the entire deck 4 starboard to myself on Tracy Arm day after we turned around at the glacier. So many people missed the awesome waterfalls about an hour later! Chip and Dale and their handlers made an appearance, and we clowned around for a bit and I got a picture. I think they were enjoying the scenery and the quiet as much as me. We took a flightseeing trip in Ketchikan, and it was definitely one of the major highlights of the trip. Loved our tablemates - I think Disney found our doppelgangers. We were eerily similar. Now back home and have everything out of the suitcases and put away, laundry started. It's looking like I'll have to remember how to cook. I miss being pampered by the dining staff already....

 

[justhat]

This was a great cruise! It was nice to be able to put faces to screen names - saw you all around the ship all the time, some more than others. My family attended three of the trivia sessions, won one and came in second on the other two. I had the entire deck 4 starboard to myself on Tracy Arm day after we turned around at the glacier. So many people missed the awesome waterfalls about an hour later! Chip and Dale and their handlers made an appearance, and we clowned around for a bit and I got a picture. I think they were enjoying the scenery and the quiet as much as me. We took a flightseeing trip in Ketchikan, and it was definitely one of the major highlights of the trip. Loved our tablemates - I think Disney found our doppelgangers. We were eerily similar. Now back home and have everything out of the suitcases and put away, laundry started. It's looking like I'll have to remember how to cook. I miss being pampered by the dining staff already....

Which trivia did you win? We did the pirate trivia and graded the paper for the winners--was that you?

 

[DenverVal]

How funny is that?! You were the one with the cutie little Tinker Bell and Peter Pan? We did pirate trivia and two movie trivias. The movie trivia was actually a little tough.

 

[ilovepumba]

It was so nice to meet a lot of you! Thank you for the awesome fe gifts! Wasn't going through Tracy Arm just magnificent? We did the zip lining in Skagway which we loved. Did the Liarsville gold panning which was kind of hokey. The salmon was good though. We did the rainforest walk and loved it in Ketchikan. We got to feed reindeer and saw salmon swimming up the river.
We loved the cruise! Everyone on board was so nice and go out of their way to to be friendly. I'm having a hard time getting my land legs back. I had no trouble on the ship but boy am I rocking today! Hope everyone has a WONDERful rest of the summer! I'm off to do the mountains of laundry we brought back! Joanne

 

[justhat]

How funny is that?! You were the one with the cutie little Tinker Bell and Peter Pan? We did pirate trivia and two movie trivias. The movie trivia was actually a little tough.

Yep! And the reason I left early while my husband finished grading was to get my oldest out of the club and changed into her Wendy costume so we could get some pictures. I didn't get any pictures on Halloween last year and since it was the little one's first Halloween I felt guilty. Luckily for me she doesn't grow very much so she still fit in it just fine!

Oh, and Ginamarie's family was at pirate trivia too, her mom, sister, and little brother, basically sitting across from you, slightly further back. Seems we had half the activity!

I'll have to tell my husband you're DISers, now he won't feel so badly that we lost. Of course, I blamed him since he stopped at the Cove Cafe and left me alone with the kids to guess the answers!


Also, since I have more time now, BIG thanks to all the FE participants!! My kids (and I!) loved getting packages and even though I had an entire suitcase empty after handing out my gifts, you guys filled it right back up with all the FE stuff (and maybe some souvenirs ).

Excursions: We did the Yukon White Pass Rail and Klondike Gold Dredge in Skagway and loved that. The kids especially loved it. Other than my youngest, who screamed much of the train and bus rides, the other kids never once got bored on the train and loved the whole experience. The gold panning, well, we live in Tucson where a local, hmm, amusement park of sorts has a gold panning stream. So my husband and I have gold panning down pat so we did like 6 pans for everyone in our family after they all gave up on it after a few minutes.

Ketchikan we did the Saxman Village and Lumberjack show and, again, huge, huge hit. Kids loved the totem pole "hunt" and totally loved the lumberjack show and their signed blocks of wood. My son was a little disappointed that he couldn't take home the huge log he was presented with, but settled for a smaller chunk of wood after awhile.

Juneau's tour was great too. We picked the fairly generic Deluxe Tour, but everyone really enjoyed it. The Glacier Gardens stop was amazing, going into their rainforest and the flowers. Mendenhall Glacier, we hiked with the big kids (including my niece) to the waterfall and they liked that and found some neat rocks. They also loved the jr ranger activity station there. And the salmon hatchery was surprisingly interesting. We had gone to one 8 years ago on another cruise, but this one was much better, especially for the kids. They liked the touch tanks a lot, and the crab dip they had was very tasty.

Pretty great cruise overall and I can't really say I have any complaints (well, actually, I would have liked pirate dinner, but guess I'll live till the next cruise!).

 

[jennypenny]

OMG, I'm so tired but we made it home. Trip was great. My kids found lots of friends and that always makes the trip easier. And we ended up with great table mates so that was a bonus. (on our last cruise our table mates didn't really speak english so it was quiet at dinner)

FEs were great. Some of you are so clever. It was nice to meet everyone and feel like we had people to say hello to during the cruise. It was so fast though.

It's 3pm here and I'm still drinking coffee. And my family is actually looking at me to COOK DINNER . I'm thinking it's "Taste of Local Pizza joint" night

Back to my coffee...

 

[cjborne2]

I'm rocking too. I didn't feel it on the ship but have really felt it the last two days. I've been taking the bonine to help. Feeling the jetlag too as we are on the east coast. Is it time for bed yet?

 

[justhat]

Living in AZ was a huge perk for this cruise as we only had a 1 hour time change on board, nothing different for Vancouver!

 

[Ginamarie]

Glad that everyone seemed to have as much fun on this cruise as we did!

We played a ton of trivia on this cruise. We won at Disney Trivia and Cruising for Trivia early on in the cruise, but the prize was only keyrings and I was determined to get one of those WINNER lanyards! We finally won them at TV Theme Show Trivia on the last sea day. My lanyard is now hanging in my room

We didn't get to go on any excursions for this trip, so I was glad that it was scenic in the port towns. We walked around and took pictures and did some window shopping. Skagway was particularly nice for that since they have the National Park right there with the trains (my 2 year old loved them) and there was a small playground for the kids to run around.

I'm so glad we got to see Alaska, even though I was lukewarm about taking a cold weather cruise. Now I'm recommending the itinerary to all of my friends.

Great job to everyone on the FE gifts! I still have a bag full of candy which may keep me from losing the two pounds I gained on this cruise by eating every meal like I didn't know where the next one was coming from I also have some great mementos and useful items!

Now I have to figure out when/how we can afford our next cruise.

 

[cjborne2]

I'd like to thank you for urging me to bring a shoe holder for the door. Best $5 investment I've made in a long time.