Hey everyone....another 9/27 Magic cruiser here...
We also thought that Monday was extremely chaotic....here is our very long saga.
We flew into Tampa to visit relatives on Thursday and picked up a Budget rental...we were on the rental line for over an hour due to a lack of cars...thank goodness we had one reserved....on Friday at 1:00 pm we headed to Port Canaveral from Tampa. We had ressies at the Radisson for Friday night. While listening to the radio they said that Jeanne was heading to the East Coast of Florida...I thought I had better check with
DCL to make sure everything was a go...I thought for sure that we would be able to leave PC on Sat, but felt the Wonder folks would be diverted. Much to my surprise I listened to the recording that said ship was delayed and diverted to PE.
Well, now what do we do....where do we stay....oooooo...sorry...we are just pulling into Cozumel and I just looked out the window and see faces looking into our ship from the ship next to us!!! Startled me for a second!! Ok, so I look at my husband and say....what do we do!!! Do we cancel, do we drive to PE on our own now, do we drive ourselves down on Monday???? By this time we were only about 20 miles outside of WDW so we decided to stay there for the night and figure out what we would do. I called CRO (central reservations office) and was told they were completely sold out....quite frankly I did not believe it so we headed there anyway. Went to Pop Century and waiting on a long line to just ask if they any availability. I explained to the CM when got to the counter that we were now displaced cruise passengers and needed a place to stay. He said they had room...but now I am thinking maybe we should just stay at WDW and ride out the storm and then take the DCL transportation down on Monday...that way DCL is responsible for us. I felt lost without interenet access because if I had it I woudl have checked for hotels in Fort L. and drove down that night.
Anyway....we opted to stay at the Polynesian...we figured if we are going to be locked in our room I wanted a bigger room than Pop Century. Luckily CRO offered us a room at the Poly. I thought DCL might do something for the cruise passengers who now had to find accomodations for 2 nights but they didn't. I was not going to let it worry me. We stayed at the Poly for 3 nights and I have to say that riding out a hurricane is a scary thing. All night it sounded like a freight train was coming in our room and our room on the 3rd floor had soaking wet carpeting from the slider door in. We were thankful that was all that was wrong. I truly feel horrible for anyone who had homes and what they must have been going through the last several weeks...... we were in lockdown at WDW for 24 hours. We were told not to leave our rooms. On Sat they had bagged breakfasts and lunches that you could purchase and bring back to your room for the next day. They consisted of a piece of fruit, juice box cookie, chips, etc. We were advised to purchase bottled water.
We still had our rental so we went to a grocery store outside the park and it was chaos...we opted to jsut go to the hotel gift shopand purchase some snacks and water there. DCL contacted us in our room on Saturday and explained what would happen. They strongly advised us not to take our own car to PE. We could take the bus from the Poly...they said it would leave at 9:30 am. I asked her if that was for sure and she said yes. Ok, we will take the DCL bus since it leaves at 9:30...that will give us plenty of time to get to PE. Well, when we talked to the cruise rep in the lobby of the Poly she told us that the bus was leaving at 1:45. I asked when the buses from airport were leaving because we also had a car to return to Budget and not sure what location we should leave it. She said those buses were leaving all morning until 2:00 pm
Well, we checked our bags with DCL at the Poly but decided to take the airport bus since we had to drop the car off. There were many people in line to get buses and were about 150 people back in line. We got to sit up front and thought the bus was nice and cool. We left at 1:00 pm from the airport. A few people were coming to the front of the bus to say it was very hot in the back....there was nothing the bus driver could do as he checked the bus earlier that day and everything was fine. We stopped at the rest area for a 30-40 minute break....and when we were back on the bus we found out t hat we had to wait an additional 40 minutes because there were going to bring another bus for us. People were starting to get very upset about having to change buses. The majority felt that the temp was not hot enough to warrnt a new bus and we only had 1.5 hours left. We were quite cool upfront so I can't comment on the heat in the back. People were starting to get off the bus and wander around the parking lost and others stayed sitting in the back of the bus which did not make since to some of us since they said it so hot back there. If you could sit on a hot bus for 40 minutes parked, why couldn't you sit on a hot bus while it was moving??? Anyway, a new bus finally came and we switched buses but everyone wound up sitting new places....yeah...we were on our way!!!
We got to PE at 5:00 and the Wonder was in port already, but the Magic was not...we saw her out in the harbor. The bus let the Magic passengers off and then took the Wonder pax to another terminal.
Once inside it was chaos.....people were sitting, milling around...DCL staff was very compassionate but they had no real answers as to when we would board. What upset me the most is that there was no organization in lining people up...it was a free for all. A line was formed by pax, not by DCL and people were cutting the line, forming new lines, etc....it was nuts. I could not understand why DCL did not have stantions set up for lines....they did have the experience of PE from the last hurricane. There were people who came on later buses who needlessly waited on the line that stretched outside in the heat when they could have been seated inside in chairs. They just got on the line like cattle. We stood in line for over 40 minutes and then they started the carryon baggage screening. That took another 30 minutes from where we were on line. Then it was another long line of about 20 minutes until we checked in and got our KTTW cards. We kept a good attitude but many people were very upset in how things were handled. Other than the line formation I don't know what else DCL could have done better. They did try to accomodate everyones needs.
They did board from Deck 2 and announced your name. We were on late seating so we had a snack up at topsiders and then went to the dining room at 9:00 for our dinner seating. As the others have said that first night dining was less than organized because of the late boarding, early seating diners were still in the dining rooms when it was time for the late diners to go....we were seated at a table that had space and did not have our reg servers...it felt so good to eat a great meal....we had very little all day. They did indeed have a welcome variety show onboard with Rich Purpura and the characters......I belive it was even put on twice that night. It was very empty but still very good. They even had 80's night that night...but we popped in and it was empty...everyone was so tired after the long day.
We set sail at 12:15 am....the Wonder left much earlier. One piece of our luggage was missing until 2:00 am....I had called GS and said it was not delivered and they said they had a few pieces with no tags there. After walking most of the decks looking for our luggage I went to GS and described my bag....they had it at GS but it still had our tags on it with our stateroom number clearly marked!!! Even the CM could not explain why it was there. We finally could get to sleep knowing we had all our bags. Well, almost, when we opened our missing bag we found that our shampoo had exploded within the zip lock bag and all our toiletries were cover in shampoo....thank goodness for ziplock bags!!!
And that finally brings us to the end....yesterday was great...we lounged around the adult pool all day and caught a movie....met our regular servers and dined with two-foxes and her husband from the DIS...great people!!!! We didn't have any DIS meet but I hope to meet a few onboard somewhere!!!
Sorry this is so long...but it felt good to explain it all!!!!!
CM's onboard are keeping the Magic alive and everyone seems happy. GS had a sign that said ship was full....but it seems much less crowed than normal to me!!! I personally know of two families that cancelled so I really do not believe that the ship full!!!
Oh well, on to breakfast!!!!
MJ
) The food was divine, although the desserts were only okay. Since leaving New York City 10 years ago, I haven't had a good brunch until today. I do fear that jumbo shrimp might be placed on the endangered species list following my brunch, though.
We are going on the Fury Catamaran at 12:30 and it is 9 now.
