cruiseletters
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2005
- Messages
- 291
Hello all, Just got back from our second cruise with dcl and loved it. We took my DM and DF our three DD and one DS along with family friends and their three DS.
Last year we went to the eastern carribean with dcl and so we weren't sure what to expect travelling out of San Pedro, we were pleasantly surprised by the size of the port facilities and how well dcl had everything organized since this facility wasn't built specifically for dcl. Everyone in our group drove up to San Pedro the day before, spent the night in a hotel and arrived at the port around 10:00 am Sat. morning. We were given our boarding number which was number 2 and then directed to check in where we got our kttw cards. We were then directed to the boarding area that had plenty of chairs to relax in and listen to a live mexican band that they had playing, while in this area there were also opportunities for charactor pictures. By 12:30 they were calling numbers for boarding and we were soon on our way stopping only for an embarkation photo right before stepping on to the gang plank that connected to deck four. We chose to go to parrot cay for lunch where we spent the next hour and a half enjoying a leisurely lunch while we looked over our welcome aboard navigators. Our rooms were ready by 2:00 and we all seperated to check those out and unpack any luggage that might have come in. We did our life jacket drill and then went exploring around the ship for those in our group that were first timers. It was soon sail away time and so we went up to deck 10 to look at the view and enjoy the music [ the port of angeles is huge and quite a sight to see from the vantage point of a cruise ship.] we had late dining and our rotation was pla which we liked very much. Our assistant server was Cristina from Brazil, our server was Melanie from England and our head server was Aleksandra from the Netherlands, they were wonderful. I do have to make this observation about late seating, our first cruise we had early dining this cruise we had late, other than feeling a bit rushed sometimes on port days to get cleaned up for dinner we never felt like we missed any of the evening activities when we had early dining, with late dining we got out of dinner so late that many of the adult activities were already in progress or else we were rushing through our meal to try to make them.
Sunday- sea day
This morning was the perfect temperature, not to hot not to humid[ that would come later]. We had a leisurely breakfast at topsiders took pictures of ourselves with the beautiful water in the background. The thing I love about cruising is that there are activities for everyone. We broke up into smaller groups with the only time frame being that we would meet at the Walt Disney Theater for the show at 6:30 pm. other than that everyone did what they wanted to do.[ all the young people we were travelling with were 15 or older] Those of our group that were first timers explored the ship, some went to the movies, others layed out by the adult pool with their books, others went to the different cooking demonstrations, and still others went to the navigational series that dcl provided, it gave us much to talk about over dinner when we were all back together. Sunday is formal night and so we had decided to dress up before we went to the show so that we could get some pictures of our large group before we went into dinner, that worked out really well for us, we would never have gotten all the beautiful pictures that we got if we had dressed between those two events there just wouldn't have been enough time.
Last year we went to the eastern carribean with dcl and so we weren't sure what to expect travelling out of San Pedro, we were pleasantly surprised by the size of the port facilities and how well dcl had everything organized since this facility wasn't built specifically for dcl. Everyone in our group drove up to San Pedro the day before, spent the night in a hotel and arrived at the port around 10:00 am Sat. morning. We were given our boarding number which was number 2 and then directed to check in where we got our kttw cards. We were then directed to the boarding area that had plenty of chairs to relax in and listen to a live mexican band that they had playing, while in this area there were also opportunities for charactor pictures. By 12:30 they were calling numbers for boarding and we were soon on our way stopping only for an embarkation photo right before stepping on to the gang plank that connected to deck four. We chose to go to parrot cay for lunch where we spent the next hour and a half enjoying a leisurely lunch while we looked over our welcome aboard navigators. Our rooms were ready by 2:00 and we all seperated to check those out and unpack any luggage that might have come in. We did our life jacket drill and then went exploring around the ship for those in our group that were first timers. It was soon sail away time and so we went up to deck 10 to look at the view and enjoy the music [ the port of angeles is huge and quite a sight to see from the vantage point of a cruise ship.] we had late dining and our rotation was pla which we liked very much. Our assistant server was Cristina from Brazil, our server was Melanie from England and our head server was Aleksandra from the Netherlands, they were wonderful. I do have to make this observation about late seating, our first cruise we had early dining this cruise we had late, other than feeling a bit rushed sometimes on port days to get cleaned up for dinner we never felt like we missed any of the evening activities when we had early dining, with late dining we got out of dinner so late that many of the adult activities were already in progress or else we were rushing through our meal to try to make them.
Sunday- sea day
This morning was the perfect temperature, not to hot not to humid[ that would come later]. We had a leisurely breakfast at topsiders took pictures of ourselves with the beautiful water in the background. The thing I love about cruising is that there are activities for everyone. We broke up into smaller groups with the only time frame being that we would meet at the Walt Disney Theater for the show at 6:30 pm. other than that everyone did what they wanted to do.[ all the young people we were travelling with were 15 or older] Those of our group that were first timers explored the ship, some went to the movies, others layed out by the adult pool with their books, others went to the different cooking demonstrations, and still others went to the navigational series that dcl provided, it gave us much to talk about over dinner when we were all back together. Sunday is formal night and so we had decided to dress up before we went to the show so that we could get some pictures of our large group before we went into dinner, that worked out really well for us, we would never have gotten all the beautiful pictures that we got if we had dressed between those two events there just wouldn't have been enough time.
