June 27, 2013 - Magic in the Med (Venice)

[Cptjackandcrew]

WHO IS GOING TO THE HYPOGEUM?

Do you have tickets from the right place?

I just found this.
http://www.heritagemalta.org/hypogeum2012/hypogeum_update.html


Jan

My heart skipped a beat when I clicked on your link because I thought I had ordered the wrong tickets.....but thankfully I didn't. We finally committed to our Malta plans and will be going to the Hypogeum at 10:00 and then we're doing a Segway tour in Dingli at 11:30. The Segway operator is arranging for us to be picked up at 11:00 and then another driver will be driving us back to Valletta at 2:30. We are using maltasegwaytours.com and doing the 2 1/2 hour Adventure.

 

[Cptjackandcrew]

Hi all!!!

Lots to catch up on:

Through some crazy back and forth, we booked on this cruise. Long story short, we had the mid July Greece cruise booked on opening day, bought a new house, lost my job, owned 2 homes while having no job, got great new job, in the meantime, canceled July cruise, rebooked 4 night Dream with family. On said 4 night Dream, kids convinced me to book Med cruise. House sold, June Greece Med cruise booked, son was convinced by GF to run marathon, so moved from June Greece to June Venice Cruise. Had to convince my DH, he said yes, we PIF'd and here we are!

Whew! So what do I need to know???

I recognize some names and will try very hard to catch up!

PS, I am Platinum, I have some general idea of what I want to book, so lots of studying in the next few hours...lol!

Welcome back on board! I believe we cruised together before. We are mostly doing things on our own, except for a private driver in Rome which we are doing with Mrs. Scooby and Thumpery.

 

[Cptjackandcrew]

I found a website today that I wanted to share with everyone. It is called www.tomsportguides.com He has been to most of the ports on our cruise and has some very helpful maps and information. We were in Gibraltar several years ago so I looked at what he provided for this. His information was spot on. I hope you find it to be helpful.

 

[MrsScooby]

And thanks to these boards I now have a new kind of anxiety dream. Used to be I had exam dreams, or more recently, race dreams, but now I have cruise anxiety dreams! I dreamed that we had to get up early for an excursion and I didn't know where we were supposed to eat breakfast and when I looked outside there was a big water spout! Thank goodness they will only last a few more months.

My anxiety dreams usually involve not being able to find my family
or missing the ship...
or finding out our reservation was canceled ...
oh, don't get me started

WHO IS GOING TO THE HYPOGEUM?

Do you have tickets from the right place?

I just found this.
http://www.heritagemalta.org/hypogeum2012/hypogeum_update.html


Jan

My heart skipped a beat when I clicked on your link because I thought I had ordered the wrong tickets.....but thankfully I didn't. We finally committed to our Malta plans and will be going to the Hypogeum at 10:00 and then we're doing a Segway tour in Dingli at 11:30. The Segway operator is arranging for us to be picked up at 11:00 and then another driver will be driving us back to Valletta at 2:30. We are using maltasegwaytours.com and doing the 2 1/2 hour Adventure.

Scared the heck out of me too
But we bought ours from Heritage Malta. Our tickets are for 2 pm.
They limit entrance to 10 people per hour so we bought ours as soon as we knew we wanted to go

Thanks for the warning Jan
Did this affect you ? Do you have tickets from Maltaticket ?
Hope they manage to fix this

 

[MrsScooby]

Tom also !
He says the money can earn interest in our account instead of Disney's

.

Since I pay on a credit card and got 0% with my Disney Visa I have until August to pay the bulk of it off!!! Way to hold on to my money longer!!!!

Yes it does make sense
But we had rebooked this cruise when on the Fantasy last summer and didn't recall what our password was to access the Dreams account...so some tense moments until we found the email with our password
Glad we had the 2 day buffer and FTR Dreams got back to us fast and reminded us often so the drama was no fault of theirs.

 

[MrsScooby]

Hi all!!!

Lots to catch up on:

Through some crazy back and forth, we booked on this cruise. Long story short, we had the mid July Greece cruise booked on opening day, bought a new house, lost my job, owned 2 homes while having no job, got great new job, in the meantime, canceled July cruise, rebooked 4 night Dream with family. On said 4 night Dream, kids convinced me to book Med cruise. House sold, June Greece Med cruise booked, son was convinced by GF to run marathon, so moved from June Greece to June Venice Cruise. Had to convince my DH, he said yes, we PIF'd and here we are!

Whew! So what do I need to know???

I recognize some names and will try very hard to catch up!

PS, I am Platinum, I have some general idea of what I want to book, so lots of studying in the next few hours...lol!

Hi Nicole

Welcome fellow irate:

Glad you're with us
You have your work cut out for you as the excursion lists are long !!
Many of us are using Rome in Limo for private excursions and you can get a secret itineraries tour of the Doges Palace in Venice for less than 20 euro pp if you go direct to the Venice site (someone posted the link a couple pages back).
DCL will include transport to the Doges Palace in their tour but I think the whole thing is about $300 pp with them.

 

[MrsScooby]

I found a website today that I wanted to share with everyone. It is called www.tomsportguides.com He has been to most of the ports on our cruise and has some very helpful maps and information. We were in Gibraltar several years ago so I looked at what he provided for this. His information was spot on. I hope you find it to be helpful.

Great site
thanks

 

[gydell]

Countdown has started! Now to stay awake!!!

 

[poohmomof5]

Hi Nicole

Welcome fellow irate:

Glad you're with us
You have your work cut out for you as the excursion lists are long !!
Many of us are using Rome in Limo for private excursions and you can get a secret itineraries tour of the Doges Palace in Venice for less than 20 euro pp if you go direct to the Venice site (someone posted the link a couple pages back).
DCL will include transport to the Doges Palace in their tour but I think the whole thing is about $300 pp with them.

Hi Laurie!!!! So excited! Great to see you name on another cruise we are on! I notice you have the pickle still! LOL!

 

[DenverVal]

Since I pay on a credit card and got 0% with my Disney Visa I have until August to pay the bulk of it off!!! Way to hold on to my money longer!!!!

Me too. I paid it off tonight so my Platinum friends can include us when they book brunch tonight. I am officially paid in full. That is one price tag.

 

[MrsScooby]

Countdown has started! Now to stay awake!!!

I am always so wired on swimming mickey night that I have more of a problem with going to sleep afterwards

Hi Laurie!!!! So excited! Great to see you name on another cruise we are on! I notice you have the pickle still! LOL!

And you still have your pirate too
Can't bring myself to delete my pickle
A bunch of pirates are booking Alaska for July 2014, but most of the planning is on facebook. Gonna try to rebook that on board this summer to get the 10% discount and onboard credit.

Me too. I paid it off tonight so my Platinum friends can include us when they book brunch tonight. I am officially paid in full. That is one price tag.

refuse to tell my extended family, they would think I'm crazy

BUT, I am enjoying the planning now the discomfort of seeing that pricetag is wearing off

 

[JLSE50]

Since I pay on a credit card and got 0% with my Disney Visa I have until August to pay the bulk of it off!!! Way to hold on to my money longer!!!!

DITTO

My heart skipped a beat when I clicked on your link because I thought I had ordered the wrong tickets.....but thankfully I didn't. We finally committed to our Malta plans and will be going to the Hypogeum at 10:00 and then we're doing a Segway tour in Dingli at 11:30. The Segway operator is arranging for us to be picked up at 11:00 and then another driver will be driving us back to Valletta at 2:30. We are using maltasegwaytours.com and doing the 2 1/2 hour Adventure.

My anxiety dreams usually involve not being able to find my family
or missing the ship...
or finding out our reservation was canceled ...
oh, don't get me started

Scared the heck out of me too
But we bought ours from Heritage Malta. Our tickets are for 2 pm.
They limit entrance to 10 people per hour so we bought ours as soon as we knew we wanted to go

Thanks for the warning Jan
Did this affect you ? Do you have tickets from Maltaticket ?
Hope they manage to fix this

NO, we are not doing that, but when I read that website in my surfing today, remembered that it had been a site of interest to some and did not want MY DIS BUDDIES to be taken advantage of.

Hi all!!!

Lots to catch up on:

Through some crazy back and forth, we booked on this cruise. Long story short, we had the mid July Greece cruise booked on opening day, bought a new house, lost my job, owned 2 homes while having no job, got great new job, in the meantime, canceled July cruise, rebooked 4 night Dream with family. On said 4 night Dream, kids convinced me to book Med cruise. House sold, June Greece Med cruise booked, son was convinced by GF to run marathon, so moved from June Greece to June Venice Cruise. Had to convince my DH, he said yes, we PIF'd and here we are!

Whew! So what do I need to know???

I recognize some names and will try very hard to catch up!

PS, I am Platinum, I have some general idea of what I want to book, so lots of studying in the next few hours...lol!

Great story!


I have been surfing sites about Naples and found this:
http://www.napoli.com/english/default.php
The guy is a hoot!

And I tried to put a new avatar on that is a close up so you can see who I am like on Facebook but all I get is a red X box.

This is the picture I want for my new avatar. I cannot figure out why it will not work. So I will stick it in my signature instead.
Jan

 

[poohmomof5]

2 more minutes until booking and I have fallen asleep twice in my chair in front of the fireplace! If only there wasn't an awful blizzard raging outside, I would have gone for a walk to stay away! UGH!

Oh, 1 more minute and we shall let booking begin!

 

[sandiedvc]

I am amazed (and very happy) that they have added Rome excursions for us that will let us get into the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel!

We have gone from doing it on our own to booking one of the DCL excursions!

I have gotten my excursions booked, but it is giving me an error everytime I tried to complete my online checkin

 

[poohmomof5]

Morning! I got all our excursions booked, but I barely had time to review them, so I feel that there will be alot of changing happening in the next few days.

But I got everything I wanted at the times I wanted EXCEPT...the very first thing I went to book as it was my only MUST do. It was the Malta by Segway. So...I am going to have to try to find a Segway tour somewhere else. My kids are 21, 19, 18, 15 and 8. So the 8 year old will have to skip that, but the older kids will love it! We have never done a Segway trip before...

Oh well! Have a great day all! I am supposed to fly to Denver (canceled flight yesterday due to the storm), so we will see how that goes.

 

[nzdisneymom]

I was coming to check on the Excursion bookers from last night - how did it go?

 

[gydell]

I was coming to check on the Excursion bookers from last night - how did it go?

Wouldn't be complete without Disney web problems! I just got up from a 2 hour nap so don't know if it has been corrected. But it wasn't fixed at noon.

 

[gydell]

Nope, still don't have all the Venice excursions up. If there is 1 you want you can call Disney and they will book it for you.

 

[sandiedvc]

The booking itself was pretty painless for me... done picking all (3 excursions and brunch) by 11:06 HOWEVER it wouldn't let me complete my online check-in...


Kept getting an error.... Even this am. I was just able to complete the check in so I guess that they fixed it.

They are doing something different than the last time I booked excursions. They send a confirmation email for each excursion booked. That confirmation is the only place that I could see the end time of the excursions.

I booked:

Rome: Exclusive Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel with St Peters Basilica and Colosseum- Adults. Leave at 7:45a, return at 6:45p. (Note to self: pack snacks!)

Venice: Evening Grand Canal Cruise and After Hours Visit to St Marks Leave at 6:15P, return at 9:15P. We talked about this a lot. I really don't like having to break up the day by going back to the ship to catch the excursion, but this is something DH wanted to do and he doesn't ask for much. I think we will wander around the Frari Church area a little in the afternoon.

Florence: Originally I booked Florence on your Own- Adult Dep but then I got the email confirmation. The times for the excursion are from 7:45 a to 5:15p --- only 9.5 hours long. All the times in the description are 10 to 10.5 hours which sounds like a long time but 5 hours of that is bus time. So the advertised 5 to 5.5 hr on the ground in Florence went to an ACTUAL 4.5 hours.

I had been really counting on all the time I thought I would get when I was planning our must sees. After sleeping on it, we decided to go ahead and book "Florence and Michelango". That way we will see what we wanted to see without worrying the whole day about times. We really like to wander on our own, but I think this might be better for us AND BTW this excursion leaves at 7:15 am and still returns at 5:15pm giving us an extra 1/2 hour in Florence.

Any questions?

 

[gydell]

The booking itself was pretty painless for me... done picking all (3 excursions and brunch) by 11:06 HOWEVER it wouldn't let me complete my online check-in...


Kept getting an error.... Even this am. I was just able to complete the check in so I guess that they fixed it.

They are doing something different than the last time I booked excursions. They send a confirmation email for each excursion booked. That confirmation is the only place that I could see the end time of the excursions.

I booked:

Rome: Exclusive Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel with St Peters Basilica and Colosseum- Adults. Leave at 7:45a, return at 6:45p. (Note to self: pack snacks!)

Venice: Evening Grand Canal Cruise and After Hours Visit to St Marks Leave at 6:15P, return at 9:15P. We talked about this a lot. I really don't like having to break up the day by going back to the ship to catch the excursion, but this is something DH wanted to do and he doesn't ask for much. I think we will wander around the Frari Church area a little in the afternoon.

Florence: Originally I booked Florence on your Own- Adult Dep but then I got the email confirmation. The times for the excursion are from 7:45 a to 5:15p --- only 9.5 hours long. All the times in the description are 10 to 10.5 hours which sounds like a long time but 5 hours of that is bus time. So the advertised 5 to 5.5 hr on the ground in Florence went to an ACTUAL 4.5 hours.

I had been really counting on all the time I thought I would get when I was planning our must sees. After sleeping on it, we decided to go ahead and book "Florence and Michelango". That way we will see what we wanted to see without worrying the whole day about times. We really like to wander on our own, but I think this might be better for us AND BTW this excursion leaves at 7:15 am and still returns at 5:15pm giving us an extra 1/2 hour in Florence.

Any questions?

Check in is working now.