June 6, 2009--Anybody going?

[degrapevine]

Hi, all!

We have late dining - Our kids are older (at least not toddler/preschool age) and usually at home, we don't eat until around 7:00-7:30 PM or so, so it works well for us. Also, we tend to be night owls and stay up until the clubs close, even though the DCL crowd tends to head to bed early! It's neat sometimes walking the deck late at night by ourselves. We also tend to send the younger two to the kids' clubs and DS14 takes off when they are all done eating and then DH and I linger over dessert. But on Pirate Night, we've always been able to have our server get us out in enough time for the party fun!

We know that with the late dining, we have to be careful not to eat too much on Pirate Night and (on this 7 night cruise) the Dessert Buffet nights (boy am I looking forward to that). Otherwise, we are too stuffed to eat anything after dinner and that's the only time I get to have those turkey legs! I just can't bring myself to pay for them in the parks, but on the cruise, well ...

If we eat lunch around 12 and get hungry in the afternoon, we'll just stop by Deck 9 for a quick bite. We also like getting fruit, cheese, and a couple of pizzas from room service to nibble on while we are getting ready for the shows. Never a shortage of food, that's for sure!

Less than 2 weeks to go ... How are we (or should I say "am I" since I'm doing all the planning!) going to be ready in time? YIKES!!!

Rose

 

[lrensin]

Stopped at Hershey's Chocolate World to get the last kids gift exchange items we needed. Now the challenge will be finding room in the suitcases for everything we need to bring!

YUMMM!!!! We went to Hershey for the first time last Fall and had a blast (despite the rain all weekend). I'm a total chocoholic and I love roller coasters, so Hershey is pretty much my ideal location.

Thankfully, my parents are coming with us on the cruise and they live in S. FL, so they're driving up. I'm shipping a bunch of stuff to them to drive up so I don't have to worry about bringing it on the plane. Five people need a WHOLE bunch of stuff for one week!

 

[lrensin]

Welcome Kurt and family! Glad to have you as part of the thread. We'll probably be seeing quite a bit of eachother, since my younger two are also 5 and 3 (although boy and girl, not girl and boy). I'm really looking forward to having all the kids spend some time in the kids club!

 

[AbsyBabsy]

Welcome Kurt and family!

I see you are looking to change your seating - I think (but not sure) that Body wants to change his early seating until late - but he is only a party or 2 - may be worth waiting in line together when they set up for dining changes.

Well, we will see ya'll in 2 weeks!

Amanda, Ed, Abigial and NannyJac
AbsyBabsy

 

[AbsyBabsy]

Hey everyone, I went shopping yesterday and bought some really great clothes at amazing prices - for my kid! Still nothing I could not live without for me!

I still have not made my fish extender but did buy the fabric!


I checked on rates for our cruise and every cat from 4-12 is open and rates went down from where they have been for the last month or so - It may be a good idea to see if your rate went down and re-price your cruise! Also if you were not upgraded before - you may be now since they opened up more cat 12 rooms! Go online and check out your room - Let us know if you have been upgraded!!!


Less than two weeks to go and I cannot wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why must this time go so sloooooowwwww?

I am probably going to downtown Disney today - anybody need anything?

 

[disneydka]

Hey all, the DCL special is on the travel channel today at 12:00pm. Cruising do's and don'ts is on right now. This is probably the last time to watch before we cruise! gonna watch it again for about the 10th time....I booked 15 months ago

 

[CRUIZEN MAMMA]

Just checked DCL website- nothing changed for us still in sph 5520- hoping to upgrade at port-going shopping this pm, thanks for the DCL travel channel tip srtting the dvr now.


13 days people 13 days

 

[degrapevine]

Did everyone read the thread about the fire at Mountain Top on St. Thomas? Many of the excursions included a trip there, including the one we had booked, Butterfly Secrets and Mountain Views. If you had reserved an excursion that included a trip to Mountain Top (and its banana daiquiris), you'll probably want to cancel it and find something else. I imagine DCL will be cancelling those, anyway, so get a jump on reserving something else soon. Too bad, since it looked like a great spot to view the island from.

 

[Suz D]

I checked on rates for our cruise and every cat from 4-12 is open and rates went down from where they have been for the last month or so - It may be a good idea to see if your rate went down and re-price your cruise! Also if you were not upgraded before - you may be now since they opened up more cat 12 rooms! Go online and check out your room - Let us know if you have been upgraded!!!

Thanks for posting this! I checked a couple of days ago and only 4-7 were open so I thought we would probably not get another upgrade (we went from a 12 to an 11 but I was really hoping to go to at least a 10 for the split bath, or even a 9 since we my dear friend Julie is a first time cruiser and I thought it would be so fun for her to have a porthole-not fun enough to pay full price for it 'though ). We are still in an 11 but now I have more hope that we might be upgraded again to at least a 10! It also opens up more options to upgrade at the port as I have been considering that!

Thanks again!

 

[Euchre_U]

Irensin / Lia - yes, we will probably be seeing you at the Oceaneers Club. Kyan loved it, and we're hoping Kristopher does too. Marlea grew up in the NOVA (NOrthern VirginiA) area, so you can hook up with her. We were just back there a couple of weeks ago for a wedding of one of her college friends.

AbsyBabsy - we'll try to swap dining once we get on-ship. The only thing about earlly late dining is that you get to see the shows before hand. Maybe we will actually get to see one or two this time.

Suz D - Is Morgantown near White Sulphur Springs? Part of my family migrated from the White Sulphur Springs area of WV to IN. Bloomington must mean an IU connection in some way. It's okay, I'll be the one half-awake in the hallways in my Purdue shorts and Purdue ball cap. I know, I know - I routinely break the "no wearing of more than one piece of college sportswear" rule.

degrapevine - I recommend not only the cheese and cracker plate from room service, but also recommend the early morning room service of coffee/tea plus light fruit / rolls. This way I can have my coffee in the room prior to having to make a public appearance for breakfast! The kids liked the fruit / rolls to snack on also.

One other suggestion for soda drinkers out there in the group - we took the super-big-gulp cups from QT/Racetrack (with lids+straws) so we could fill up on the sodas from Deck 9 aft. We just rinsed/reused them throughout the trip - probably cut in half the number of refill trips that we had to make. DCL's soda cups are pretty small.

 

[Grandma Debby]

Someone asked where Grandma Debby was and here I am - busy at work, busy getting our pool ready for a 2 week absence, taking care of my 88 year old neighbors and a 101 other things

I still need cabin numbers from Lia (Irensin)and Amanda (twinsindisney) for the fish extender game - If someone gets to upgrade at the port we will just cross out your old cabin number and write in your new one - NO PROBLEM. My family will deliver cruise survival kits on Saturday night and the list will be included there with cabin numbers and names. You can deliver your FE gifts whenever it works for you

Everyone is welcome to meet at the Mickey pool at 3:00 Saturday for a meet & greet - the kids will exchange their gifts then and get to meet their email buddies in person - but everyone is welcome. I have gift bags with the kids' names on them so they can put their gifts in a bag and not have to carry hand fulls around. Our kid gifts say "from Sierra in Colorado" or "from Sydney in Colorado" so the kids know who gave the key chains or gold nuggets to them but do what you want to do - JUST KEEP IT SIMPLE!!

We leave for WDW on May 30th so this might be my last check in before we take off.

Suz just set a time and place for the Sunday get together and those who can and want to be there will be

See you all on June 6th

I Just Can't Wait I Just Can't Wait I Just Can't Wait to meet you all.

Grandma Debby

 

[Suz D]

Grandma D,

Thanks for all of your work on this! You have done a wonderful job keeping us all organized.

We'll be eating at Topsiders at 11:30 on Sunday and we'll probably stay until 12:45 so if you have Palo scheduled but would like to stop by either before or after your brunch to meet that would be great. Look for a table with 3 women, 2-13 yo girls, 1 little girl and a lone man (who will probably look shellshocked by that point ).

We also leave on the 30th for the World but might access e-mail a couple of times while we're there. Jeff is teaching an online class this summer so he'll have internet service at least a few days while we're on land.

Suz

 

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

WOW!!! Things have been SOOOO crazy around here! There are so many things that need to be done, that I don't know which one to do first! So here I sit on the computer.....
I can't believe we are leaving in a little over a week, now. I finally got our pool open for the season - just in time to throw the solar cover on it for 3 weeks! haha! Ah, the joys of living in the midwest! The boys and their friends actually contemplated jumping in, but then decided it was just a wee bit too cold. But at least I got one goal accomplished! Then my dryer broke down - things like this always happen on a holiday weekend! Good thing I have a brother right down the street! But there goes some of my money I saved up for "me" things on the cruise!!!
Thank you so much to all of you on the boards who have offered great advice; provided pen-pals for me kids (hi Johnny and Chelsea!); and even made sweet offers to let me ship some items to their FL home so we have less items to pack (you are sooo sweet, Amanda!! - I bought more luggage...). I hope I get to meet some of you on our trip - it sounds like you all will have so much fun with your exchanges! Next cruise - I'm in!!
Again - thanks to all who have made this a fun place to "lurk"!!
Seeya in less than 2!

 

[lrensin]

I still need cabin numbers from Lia (Irensin)and Amanda (twinsindisney) for the fish extender game - If someone gets to upgrade at the port we will just cross out your old cabin number and write in your new one - NO PROBLEM.

Debby - I just sent you a PM with our cabin numbers. Please let me know if you didn't get it. I've been having problems with the PM thing today.

Just as an FYI for everyone, it's Lrensin, not Irensin (I'm so original - I use my first initial and last name. I logged in with lowercase letters, not knowing it was going to do show up that way for public use. The lowercase L always gets mistaken for an uppercase I).

Sadly, I just checked with my travel agent and rates for my cat have gone UP! But, she did say something about if they had gone down the only way to get money back is to cancel and rebook, which might cost more money. Is she missing something that everyone else knows about?

One other quick question - how dressed up do people get for formal night? I wasn't going to stress about it, but my mom seems to be agonizing about what to wear and if my stepfather should wear a tux. There is no way my DH is wearing one (getting him in a suit while on vacation is going to be hard enough!), but my mom gets into this.

Thanks!

 

[disneydka]

Lia,

I cannot speak on behalf of what everyone typically does since this is my first cruise, but from lurking around the boards for the last 15 months since I booked our cruise, it seems that there is varying degree of formal dress for formal night. As I stated previously when talking about pirate night...we are going all out to some degree. My DD(16) will be getting a second use of her prom dress, my DH will be wearing his dad's tux, I got him a tuxedo shirt on ebay for $5.01 and a tie and vest that coordinates with DD's dress for under $20. I got my DS (7) a suit and I got a long black dress that is very comfortable but can be dressed up a bit. WE are driving down so we are not so limited by luggage restrictions which can come into play with those who are flying. BUt the way I see it is this is a chance to do things we don't do in ordinary life, live dress up formally to go to dinner. My DH has been great about agreeing with everything, from pirate wear to formal wear to even hawaain shirts for parot cay. He did however draw the line at those preppy plaid bermuda shorts that I would love to see him in.

 

[Euchre_U]

bump!

 

[Principessa]

Formal wear...what's that? To my DH that means wearing a shirt with no printing on it...and certainly not printing from a race in 1997. Honestly,
getting the DH to dress business casual is tough enough. Yesterday I told him he'd have to wear a tie one night. The only response was the-look-of-pain.At least he didn't say he wouldn't! And I'm only exagerating a little tiny bit! I'll just have one long dress to wear, the rest are just nice-ish, no ball gowns. I do think I need a suitcase just for shoes though. That's the tough part about dressing up, you can't use your day shoes!

Thanks Grandma D for being our leader. Have a great pre-cruise world visit!!! and everyone else who is leaving early too.

Thanks Suz for organizing the Sunday meet at Topsider's. I hope that won't be our character day.

Today's worry: wondering if I picked the right shore excursions or if we are overplanned. Should we have just done a walk around for free in one of the ports? Will I get enough - or any - beach time? At least these are fun worries to have!

I need to go by a co2 detector because I have a headache. My only thought was, oh nuts, please do not let the family be poisoned before the cruise.

Not sure how I managed to not pack all last week, must stop planning and start packing! Eleven days! Eleven days! Eleven days!

See you soon!

 

[Suz D]

Thanks Suz for organizing the Sunday meet at Topsider's. I hope that won't be our character day.

Glad to do it. Don't worry about the character day. Even if it is your character breakfast day you will be finished by 11:30. People with early dining have their breakfast around 8:00 and people with late dining have it around 9:45.

Suz

 

[CRUIZEN MAMMA]

Hi All,
Started Packing for DS and ironing clothes for the garment bag- We are dressing up but by no means are formal. DS has a blazer that Grandma bought him for Easter, DH wears a suit everyday so he has one that comes with a vest, I'm wearing a very simple black dress.
DH started second guessing our excursions as well, and the cost for the three of us at three ports but I calmed him a bit-


See you all soon
Dottie

 

[lrensin]

Formal wear...what's that? To my DH that means wearing a shirt with no printing on it...and certainly not printing from a race in 1997. Honestly, getting the DH to dress business casual is tough enough. Yesterday I told him he'd have to wear a tie one night. The only response was the-look-of-pain.At least he didn't say he wouldn't! And I'm only exagerating a little tiny bit!

My DH told my stepfather that if he wears a tux he's going to throw him and the tux overboard. So I am right there with you. Anything requiring dress pants and shoes is a HUGE stretch for my DH. The fact that he has to wear a suit even just one night does not make him happy. After a lot of prodding I got, "I'll wear whatever you want me to wear." Success!!!

I do think I need a suitcase just for shoes though. That's the tough part about dressing up, you can't use your day shoes!

Day shoes, shoes to go with brown, shoes to go with black, shoes to go with navy, night shoes, pool shoes, .... And there are three girls in my family so we might pack two suitcases with shoes!

I need to go by a co2 detector because I have a headache. My only thought was, oh nuts, please do not let the family be poisoned before the cruise.

LOL - CO2 poisoning would be bad.... At least it's not swine flu.