March 12, 2011 Eastern Caribbean, Let's rock the Magic!

[candizfan]

I have heard about doing them but I am not sure I would do them well. They seem to mean a lot of planning and I work a lot so that can be hard to pull those little things together.

Do you want to give an explanation and how to make it work well for everyone? I think it might help me understand how it is suppose to work.

I know it has to do with hanging something on the fish (mailbox) decoration outside your door.

 

[Stinasmom]

Hey everyone! So glad to see more and more people signing in onto this cruise!
We did fish extenders on our last cruise and it was fun getting things as well as sneaking around the ship to deposit our gifts into everyone's extender.
I have an extender I would love to use again. So, I vote yes on doing this.
What was kind of expensive was the magnet exchange... I wouldn't be interested in that part.

Hey - candizfan - my DD14 will be thrilled to pre - meet your DD15! She also had a great time having someone to initially to pal around with and make friends in the teen club from there! PM me and they can exchange emails.

OH, I just saw that you were looking for an explanation on how the FE's work... I could do that but I just noticed the time and have to go get DD from dance class!

Marcy

 

[Cheryllynn74]

I'm sure Marcy can give a much better explanation of Fish Extenders since she's actually cruised before and I haven't. But from what I read, you can participate as little or as much as you want. Some people seem to just give one little gift per cabin, and others get more elaborate and do one for kids, one for parents, and sometimes also a cabin gift for whole family. Some people get very fancy and creative but simple gifts are great too. It's all about having a little extra fun.

 

[vkashyap1971]

Hi,
Sorry to have been away for so long...I'd love for the girls' to exchange e-mails before the trip.

I've tried creative ways to get my e-mail but the disboard is too smart! I'll just have to keep posting.

On another note, I've only ever met 1 other Veena my entire life and between yesterday and reading your note today, I've met 2 other Veenas.

Anyway, hope to hear from you soon and I look forward to meeting you and the family and all the other disboard families as well!

 

[candizfan]

Okay, who else is already looking at shore excursions for the ports?

I am thinking about a nice sail boat or catamaran trip in St. Maarten.

What is everyone else planning for St. Maarten?

 

[Stinasmom]

It's my goal today to catch up on the boards!
We'll see if it happens... I am getting excited about this trip and having a group of you out there posting up about your excitement only helps!

So, let's see, a little . a committee report , wait, where's the vacuuming smily?, a meeting , of course getting the kids to school and back , teaching a Jazzercise class , and the other crazy stuff that just doesn't warrant cute smilies....

I hope to catch up with you all!
Marcy

 

[jennyh2829]

Hi,

I haven't booked yet but we are planning on going on this cruise. We've only done the Wonder 4-day cruises, and we've done them twice.

It will be Me, DH, and DD10 (who will turn 11 while we are on the ship). We are really excited about taking a longer cruise and like a previous poster did the parks this last March break and thought it was a little crowded...

Jen

 

[Cheryllynn74]

Okay, who else is already looking at shore excursions for the ports?

I am thinking about a nice sail boat or catamaran trip in St. Maarten.

What is everyone else planning for St. Maarten?

I haven't looked at excursions for St. Maarten yet, but for St. Thomas we are thinking of going to Coral World and doing the sea lion swim and then spend some time on Coki beach.

 

[candizfan]

I am not sure what to do in St Thomas. I am not really into the swim with the wildlife excursions.

I am looking forward to hear what others are planning.

 

[boundfordisney]

Well after going back and forth with different cruise dates we have finally made our mind up to this date! We will be taking our grandaughter who is 14 at time of cruise and grandson who is 15 at the time. More family members may be onboard as well, we will be booking in the next week and will then know for sure as to how many of us will be going. So hello to all other dissers going!

 

[Stinasmom]

Whoo Hooo
More DIS Cruisers! More 14 year old girls (for my DD to meet) and more Canadians! That has to be good, right?
No really, boundfordisney!

How is everyone?? I am going to take the time, finally, to post up! Other stuff can wait!

I managed to get our flights booked yesterday. Anyone else noticed how much more it costs to fly now than in years past? It use to be cheap to get to Orlando...there were so many flights. But not so much now.

My parents were able to get round trip with Alaska Airlines miles from Portland, OR for 40,000 each. Use to be 20,000!

We used most of our miles for tickets to Hawaii (we're going in a few weeks...yeah, don't cry for us Argentina) which were WAY more expensive than before, both in mileage and cash.

So, DH had some miles expiring on United, so he flies out to MCO (from Seattle) by himself, Kids and I fly Alaska on the Red-Eye the night before. It was a bunch cheaper to take the red-eye direct than any other flight I could find.
Then, we all fly back on the United flight that DH was booked on. That worked out pretty well. Found a fair price through Kayak.com. I recommend this web site!

We usually fly Alaska Airlines... Round trip on them would have cost over $2800 for the 4 of us!!! So now that we are flying separately and on different airlines, we paid about $1200 plus 25,000 expiring United miles. Craziness!

We actually live a 2 hour drive (east of the mountains) from Seattle, so that has to be factored in too. It's a wonder we travel as much as we do... the coordination is always a chore. But that's what I do. Coordinate. or try anyway. Of course then you're responsible for anything that goes wrong!

I have been forwarding links from the DCL forums here on the DIS to my stepdad, who with my mom will be joining us on this cruise. Mostly, I've sent pictures. They are excited for this trip too.

We plan to spend the following week at Universal/Islands of Adventure and Discovery Cove as well as the resort we booked... Oh yeah, I booked our resort too. I was able to use some timeshare time to get two 2-bedroom condos at the Holiday Inn Orange Lake - West Village.
Anyone familiar with this resort? It looks HUGE with 4 different adjacent properties, water park, lots of activities. Pretty close to WDW... too bad we're not going there this time!

So, now all we have to do is pay for the cruise!
Oh and book pre cruise lodging, transportation, rental car for the week after... But the big stuff is booked!

Now, I can put my focus back on our upcoming vacation... Hawaii here we come! Two weeks on Kauai!

Marcy

 

[boundfordisney]

Thanks for the welcome Stinasmom! Wow with all of the work you put into just getting to your vacation you really do deserve one! LOL We fly out of Buffalo its so much cheaper then Toronto and its a much easier airport to navigate and its just about the same distance from hamilton to Toronto maybe an extra 20 mins travelling time no big deal.My grandkids are looking forward to this cruise and they are hopping that some of their friends that were on the last cruise will be coming on board as well, if you pm me I will give my granddaughter your email to give your daughter and vice versa, it would be great for them to get to know someone before the cruise, we did this on the cruise we took in November but the kids were younger and it didnt work out as well as it would have been if they were more the same age. Looks as though that won t be a problem with this trip. Happy planning everyone! PS wish I was goin to Hawaii think you can stow me away? LOL

 

[candizfan]

Hi Everyone!

It will be great to have a good group of kids on the ship about the same age.

 

[3Goofy's]

Hi there!

We are a family of 3 that will be joining you next March. We did our first cruise this past March on a 3 day Wonder cruise (land and sea), and knew immediately that we had to try longer. So we booked on board, and are really excited to try a 7 day.

It will be me (not quite 40 - yikes, how did that happen?), my DH (40s), and our DS who will be 2 weeks shy of his 9th birthday. I'm a big trip planner and love every minute of it, but willing to adjust our plans as necessary. DH is very relaxed about the whole thing and goes with the flow as long as it isn't exhausting. And DS is your typical happy-to-be-on vacation kid.

My parents may be joining us, but their minds are not totally committed. We will see...

Oh, and we are more Canadians! From Ontario, actually, and expect to see many of us on the cruise. It's our March Break. DH is a teacher, so that's why we chose this week.

I'm all for trying FE! I'm not crafty, but will try my best.

So, that's us. Looking forward to getting to know you and having a wonderful week in the Caribbean!

 

[jennyh2829]

Well, we are officially booked. Would love to do the fish extender exchange and have no clue about the excursions....but I've got til Dec. to decide about that ...

 

[boundfordisney]

Glad to see more dissers onboard here Welcome! We also choose this time to cruise because of the March break as my grandson will be in high school and didn t think it would be a good idea to pull him out of school at another date in time, and figured it would be way to hot in the summer months! We cruised on the magic this past November and loved it! The eastern caribbean will be new to us so we are very much looking forward to this trip

 

[3Goofy's]

Hi BoundforDisney,

Thanks for the welcome. We are about 3 hrs north of Hamilton, and are considering flying out of Buffalo. It's just a bit further than Toronto for us. Do you often get direct flights?

I should mention that my name is Sherri and my DH is Greg.

 

[boundfordisney]

Hi 3goofys! Yes we get a direct flight from Buffalo using southwest airline, jet blue also has direct flights but I have found that southwest has the better flight times. Buffalo has a great airport it is so easy to navigate and the big plus is that the price for flights are so much cheaper then out of Toronto. We stay at the Quality inn across from the airport as we always take an early flight down , usually around 7 am so staying at the quality inn the night before works out great! My name by the way is Leslie and dh is Terry, we will be cruising with my daughter and grandkids, look forward to getting to know everyone here on this meet!

 

[dfamily]

We will be celebrating my IL's 50th wedding anniversary on this cruise! There's me, DH - 40, DS - 12, DD - 9, DS - 6, DD - 2 and the ILs. Hubby and I have cruised on Carnival before and the ILs have cruised several times as well. This will be the first Disney cruise for all of us. We are all soooo excited!

I'd love to hear any tips on first-time Disney cruising. I love, love, love planning our WDW trips and have been searching the forums for cruise info.

For now, I'm just counting down the days!

 

[Stinasmom]

We will be celebrating my IL's 50th wedding anniversary on this cruise! There's me, DH - 40, DS - 12, DD - 9, DS - 6, DD - 2 and the ILs. Hubby and I have cruised on Carnival before and the ILs have cruised several times as well. This will be the first Disney cruise for all of us. We are all soooo excited!

I'd love to hear any tips on first-time Disney cruising. I love, love, love planning our WDW trips and have been searching the forums for cruise info.

For now, I'm just counting down the days!

Welcome to the thread and to DCL! You will love how perfect this cruise will be for the multi-generational groups. We too are bring one set of in-laws, actually my mom and step dad. First Disney cruise for them but it will be our 4th.

There is lots of good info on the cruise boards. If I find the link to the actual "tips" thread, I'll post it!

Marcy