MAGICal Christmas 2008 - December 20, 2008

[Az Pirates]

Hello Christmas Cruisers,

I skimmed the thread, but I haven't read the whole thing, so I hope you don't mind me jumping right in. You may have to catch me up to date a bit as we go along.

I actually booked this cruise a year ago today, but I purposely stayed away from the meet thread until I knew we were going to be able to sail with you all.
It looks like we're good to go now and I'm so excited!

This will be our 3rd Disney cruise.
Our first was the Panama Canal cruise in May 2005
(the cruise where the ever popular fish extenders made their debut)
Then we cruised again in October 2006

Our crew:
DH & ME (Kerry & Sheila)
DD21, DD18, DS13, DD10

We will also be sailing with extended family, but I'll let them decide if they want to join in and post their info or not.

 

[nzdisneymom]

Welcome Sheila and Family - glad you finally said Hi and joined the Meet Thread! We have an awesome group of DISers who are on board.

I'm Cindy D., married to Gary, not to be confused with the other Cindy married to the other Gary. Our sons Nathan and Zachary will be 12 and 11 when we sail and as of right now STILL DON'T KNOW WE'RE GOING. I need to look back and see when we booked - I don't remember - and see when we joined the thread. I can't believe I still haven't blabbed, but we do have a 3-night on the Wonder as part of spring break so that helps me not be a big blabbermouth about this one (at least yet).

 

[alikat99]

Check out this thread:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1219607&highlight=fish+extender

Page 2 has directions if you'd like to make one.

It's a strip of pockets that hangs from the metal fish outside your stateroom door. It's a way for others to leave you messages or little surprises.

Hey Everyone & Welcome Susan and family!!!

And, that first picture in that thread is my door from our DVC cruise back in 2005!!!

 

[alikat99]

A Great big welcome to Sheila and her crew too!!!

I've updated the first post with our new cruising families!!!

 

[nzdisneymom]

I just went back to check and WOW - today marks a year since the thread started, and tomorrow is a year since we joined the thread (and booked our cruise). Gosh - a whole year of keeping my mouth shut! Thank goodness it's not another year til we sail!

 

[minnie1]

Welcome Susan and Sheila and your families, I just joined this board a few weeks ago and it is great getting to know lots of great people that are on the Christmas Cruise.
Traveling with me is my dh and my 2 dd's: Ashley(10 @ cruise time) and Madison (7)

I am sitting here watching the weather and they are talking about ice overnight. I hope my girls don't have a delay. Of course they would love to have a school delay. This is the type of weather that makes me want to move back to Florida.

Angie

 

[minnie1]

Well now it is the morning and no school. The girls are very happy. I guess we will be making valentines cards today.

Have a good weekend everyone!

 

[Az Pirates]

Last cruise there were 6 of us and we ended up coming in on 3 different flights.
(darn teenagers are waaay overscheduled)
I was careful to book only direct flights. Two coming from Phoenix, one from Las Vegas. Shouldn't be weather issues, even in October... right?
Wrong!
Both the red-eyes ended up being delayed.

I was able to snag a Hotwire deal for the Hyatt so the 3 of us who were sensible and got in Friday evening crashed there and then I just went down and met the others as they called to tell me they finally made it.
Loved the Hyatt. It was very convenient!

We ended up getting to the port a bit later than we had planned, but thankfully we were never really in danger of missing the cruise. I am definitely going to try to avoid last minute re-eye flights this time though.


Cindy,
I can't believe you've been able to keep the cruise a secret for a whole year! So are you planning something BIG for when you tell the boys? Or is it going to be one of those surprises where you drive up to the Disney boat and say hey, let's hop on and cruise?
I don't know how folks pull that off.


Amy,
We have matching fish extenders then, except ours is yellow.
I'm thinking I might want something more Christmas-y for this cruise though.


Angie,
My DD will be 10 when we cruise too. Would Ashley be interested in exchanging addresses?
On our 1st cruise I swear it took less than 10 minutes from the time we walked into the terminal for Cammi and one of her penpals from the meet thread to find each other. It was great!
In fact when she found out we had this cruise booked one of the first things she asked was if I was going to find Dis friends again.

 

[minnie1]

Sheila,
I know Ashley would love to write to your daughter. This is our girls first cruise ever so they are very excited. She was hoping to find a friend before the cruise.

I was going to keep this cruise a surprise but I talk about it to much that there is no way they would not have figured it out. I figure they will be surprised enough by the cruise because no matter how many videos and books I show them nothing beats the real thing.

I think there is a way to send a private message and we can exchange addresses. However, I am new to this whole message board thing and I don't know how. Let me know if you can.

Angie

 

[ShannonR]

Good afternoon everybody!!

We booked our flights today! We booked our flights out of Houston (which is a 6 hour drive for us) but we saved $2200.00 by doing that! We will drive to Houston Thursday night after the kids get out of school, spend the night, fly to Orlando on Friday, spend the night, and THEN onto the cruise Saturday morning! Today was the first day the flights became available for purchase and when you look at the seats to actually pick your seating arrangement (which DH LOVES to do ) many of the seats were already sold, and we were on the computer this AM at 8:00.

Diana: You must be getting SO EXCITED for your upcoming cruise! I hope you have a WONDERful time!

Phil: Believe me, if I could find a way to live on the equator, I would do it! I am only truly comfortable when it is somewhere between 90-100 degrees outside. This has been an unusually cold winter which I HATE!!! It is back up into the 70's this afternoon, but when I left work this morning, it was 40 degrees and WINDY!

Morgan and I are going to try to start on our fish extender this weekend. She is SO excited about this cruise, and loves to do everything NOW (I don't blame her, though because I am the same way ) It will probably take us a while and least a few tries before we get it right, because neither one of us are able to sew and we are not what you would call crafty.

Well, it's time for baseball practice and then off to basketball practice after that!

Welcome to all the new families! I can't believe how our DIS family is growing! It's great to have such a big group. On our last cruise, the group was small and not very outgoing at all, so it was a little disappointing, especially when ready other meet threads. But this time around, I couldn't be more PLEASED!!!!

Shannon

 

[tinkerbell_29]

Ok I'm moving to Florida! I've had enough of this weather. Was woken up at 4:45 when the electricty went off thanks to a ice storm. The school I teach at is about 45 minutes away and was not really affected by the ice and were only under a two hour delay. I had fun getting to work this morning. I need some where warm and sunny. Hope everyone had a wonderful Friday and has a great weekend.

Lissa

 

[Diana Lyn]

Ok I'm moving to Florida! I've had enough of this weather. Was woken up at 4:45 when the electricty went off thanks to a ice storm. The school I teach at is about 45 minutes away and was not really affected by the ice and were only under a two hour delay. I had fun getting to work this morning. I need some where warm and sunny. Hope everyone had a wonderful Friday and has a great weekend.

Lissa

I said that for about 10 winters. I dealt with the snow, the subzero cold, the ice storms, the 4 months of grey skies-----now that I'm here in FL in January, my only question has been why in the world did it take me so long to move here!!!

Welcome to all the newcomers! I love that our little thread has grown so much in the last year!

 

[MorganR]

Happy ground hog day

 

[tinkerbell_29]

Just booked airline tickets. Boy has the price gone up. We had a hard time finding tickets. Either the date was to far out or the flight was full. Also booked our villa for after the cruise. We got a one bedroom savannah view at AKV for the 27th- 1st. I've planned all I can plan for now I guess I'll have to focus on our August trip for a little bit. Hope everyone had a great Saturday!

Lissa

 

[nzdisneymom]

Lissa - did I miss where you guys added on at AKV? How very cool! I want to stay there some day. Maybe we'll get lucky and be able to get a room.

It's nice to not have to worry about airfare. We did get our room at country inn and suites so we're set there. I think that's all I need to take care of except making payments along the way.

Our April cruise is all set, too. Just waiting til March to start packing (ha ha). I don't have any travel plans between now and spring break - DH and DS#1 are in Colorado for a few days with a school trip.

 

[minnie1]

Just booked airline tickets. Boy has the price gone up. We had a hard time finding tickets. Either the date was to far out or the flight was full. Also booked our villa for after the cruise. We got a one bedroom savannah view at AKV for the 27th- 1st. I've planned all I can plan for now I guess I'll have to focus on our August trip for a little bit. Hope everyone had a great Saturday!

Lissa

I just spent every morning calling member services. We are staying at OKW after the cruise. 1 bedroom for the 27th through the 3rd. We are using the time to relax after the cruise. Our August vacation is to do all the parks while in December we are just going to hang out and use the pool and have a New Years Eve Party!
Now I am focusing on making dining reservations for our August trip.

We are not flying in for the cruise because dh will not fly. We were originally going to leave on the 19th for the long drive to the port, but I convinced dh to leave on the 18th just incase we hit weather and I would just die if we missed the ship.

 

[tinkerbell_29]

Lissa - did I miss where you guys added on at AKV? How very cool! I want to stay there some day. Maybe we'll get lucky and be able to get a room.

Yeah we added on at akv during the med cruise. I love it there it's far enough away from everything to actually give you a break from the parks.

Right now I'm on hold with member services making dining plans for August.

Lissa

 

[minnie1]

Right now I'm on hold with member services making dining plans for August.

Lissa

Do you call member services for dining reservations? I always call WDW-DINE.
When are you going in August?

Angie

 

[tinkerbell_29]

Do you call member services for dining reservations? I always call WDW-DINE.
When are you going in August?

Angie

I always call member services that way I can make more than dining reservations and it just seems easier to me. We are going to be there August 1st - 14th. Now all I've got to do is reserve rental cars for Aug and Dec and book a hotel for the night before the cruise.

Lissa

 

[minnie1]

I guess I learn something new everyday. I never knew you could call DVC member services for dining reservations. Do they still go by the 180 day rule? Also, is it 180 days from the day you want to dine at that restaurant or 180 days from your check in day? We have never been able to go to the Cinderella Castle Breakfast so I am going to call exactly 180 days before for our August vacation.


In other news, I took my girls to see the Hannah Montana 3D movie today. They seemed to really like it. Some of the 3D effects were really neat.

Well I guess I will go back to watching the Super Bowl with dh.

Angie