Just back from 7 day eastern/4 days park

[jfeasel]

Just got back from our June 14 7 day Eastern and then spent 4 days in the park. Kids liked the cruise better! Here's a packing tip if you are going to do both the cruise and the parks: If there are 4 people in your group, pack 2 suitcases with clothes for the ship and 2 suitcases for clothes for the parks. That way, you don't have to rummage through your dress clothes while you're at the parks.

We had one overcast day when we were at sea, but there was plenty to keep us busy. The other days were beautiful. We did Orient Beach on St. Marteen and it was nice. We did the Disney excursion there and the food was actually really good. Plenty of hair braiders on the beach so we did that. The waves were great.

On St. Thomas we took the tram up the mountain to the overlook and that was beautiful. Unfortunately we had to tender to St. Thomas so that took up a lot of time. We highly recommend doing the submarine excursion at St. Thomas. It was well worth it.

On Castaway we did the glass bottom boat but after doing the sub on St. Thomas, the glass bottom boat was a let down. I don't really recommend it unless you aren't into the beach activities.

Our servers were Orlan and Mladan and my kids wanted to bring them home.

My brother in-law was a panelist on Who Wants to Be a Mousketeer and got a special pin. The last contestant made it to the free cruise round but made the wrong guess. Highly recommend going to that show. Also recommend the juggler, Chuck Gunther. The was a great juggler and hilarious. My mom and I really enjoyed the Wine Tasting Seminar too. I did the spa taster and really liked it.

After cruise we stayed at WI. MK and AK were packed, MGM crowds were managable and Epcot was practically empty.

Let me know if you have any ?s.

 

[luvindisneyworld]

Welcome Back.Glad you had a Great time.

 

[ohiominnie]

Originally posted by jfeasel
Just got back from our June 14 7 day Eastern and then spent 4 days in the park. Kids liked the cruise better!

Amazing, isn't it? That was our kids reactions too!! Then again, it was ours! Guess we've been to WDW so much that the cruise had a lot of novelty to it and yet was still up to the Disney standards!

GREAT tip about packing! We'll be sure to use that one!!

Glad you had a great time!

 

[Surfergirl]

Jfeasel, We are also planning to do 3 days a t the parks after our 7 day Western. What ground transportation did you use. We are thinking of renting a car but are still in the logistical planning stage.

 

[callahanjulie10]

What was the dining rotation? Did you have formal on Sunday, Tropical on Tuesday, and Semi on Thursday?

 

[shoes99]

We are doing 3 nights at the AKL after our 7 night Magic Eastern cruise in September. We are flying down the night before the cruise so we are renting a car from Avis. We will stay at the Radisson Friday night, go shopping Sat AM, then turn the car into Avis. We will do a 5 day car rental from Avis on the way back. Keeping the car for 12 days would run $320 plus pier parking. Having 2 separate rentals will run around $200 + gas.

 

[MagicMouseketeers]

We were thinking about the glass bottom boat as part of the days activities. What was it thank you did not like? Sounds like you guys had a blast the rest of the time. Welcome back although there is probally some sadness that it is over.

 

[thegales]

Sorry we never caught up with you; we followed the same agenda. Rain on Saturday and Sunday put a damper at WDW after nice weather on the cruise. However, the rain keeps a lot of the crowd away. DW and DD5 went to MK Sunday night, while DD7 and myself stayed at Illuminations. They were able to walk on most of the rides in Fantasyland (they did Goofy's Roller coaster four times in a row).

We had Mark and Fernando as Servers (APL rotation early seating).

Formal was on Sunday night. The daily navigator said Semi-formal, but we checked with Guest Services, and they indicated the Navigator was wrong. However, I saw another post where a crewmember told a guest that Sunday was indeed Semi-formal.

DD7 enjoyed cruise better. I think she liked the relaxed format of meeting all the characters. DD5 liked both (after all, she got to ride Goofy roller coaster four times in a row!)

Cruising and WDW are two distinct vacations. The reason we did WDW right after was we didn't think we would want to drive home (about 10 hours) after leaving the ship first thing in the morning.

We also attempted to separate Cruise Packing from WDW packing (although in some cases, I failed miserably). We definitely needed a better plan.

 

[callahanjulie10]

Do you know what movies were playing- we leave on Saturday.
Thanks

 

[Jobro2]

We were also on the 6/14 cruise (Hey Gales!! I e-mailed ya!) These were the movies playing for us:

Bringing Down the House
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Jungle Book 2
Chicago
Treasure Planet
The Lizzie McGuire Movie
Piglet's Big Movie
The Recruit
Finding Nemo
Holes
Shanghai Knights

Great Cruise, great food, met great people!!

 

[jfeasel]

For our 7 day cruise/4 day parks we used Disney transportation and it was great. There were 10 of us who did the cruise and then 2 came home after the cruise while 8 of us continued on to the parks. Using Disney transportation made it a lot easier for everyone. We met the cruise host as soon as we got to the main terminal at the airport, went to a bus and it loaded quickly and off we went. Getting off the ship, we were put on a Mears van and taken to WL. Going from the resort to the airport we were in a Mears bus and stopped at the Poly and GF to pick up other people.

The only problem with the whole cruise was check in at the port. Because Delta eliminated our flight, we were put on a later flight so that got us in to port right at 1:00 p.m. in the heat of all of the arrivals. We had to wait 45 minutes to check all 10 of us in because the people in front of us didn't have all of their paperwork filled out!

 

[jlawall]

Thx for the great tips!

 

[rae519]

Originally posted by jfeasel

The only problem with the whole cruise was check in at the port. Because Delta eliminated our flight, we were put on a later flight so that got us in to port right at 1:00 p.m. in the heat of all of the arrivals. We had to wait 45 minutes to check all 10 of us in because the people in front of us didn't have all of their paperwork filled out!

Last cruise I thought my Mom (age 74) was going to "bop" the people in front of us who had a large group with them that had "spread out all over the terminal" and had NOT touched their documents. Now this was in the Castaway Club line and CC members should know better.

Please get those documents filled out at home!

Rae