May 13.2006 Eastern

[Verandah Man]

Congrats on the upgrade, I bet it was because your a DCL celebrity

We can knock on your door everytime we walk by you now...

We will be in 6550, just down the hall......

Hey Steve,

You are only six doors down from us, just remember, we are going to have a 70 year old woman in our cabin, don't knock too hard, LOL!!!

Now that my DW and DD are coming with me on Thursday May 11th, I had to make a slight change in our plans. We are now staying Thursday night and Friday night at the Motel 6 in Cocoa Beach. I was talking with my mom this evening and she said she was game to meet up at Grills at 5:30 on Friday night. As of right now, my sister still doesn't know we are booked for this cruise, we are hoping to pull off that surprise this Sunday afternoon. I did find out that our other family members are in cabins 6036 and 6038.

 

[bxirishrn]

Another winter is "officially" over and I am so happy about that!!!

When I arrived home from work today I found an e-mail from my travel agent, she wrote to let me know that my family has been upgraded to a cat. 6 cabin on deck 6, we will now be in cabin 6562!!!

Spring arrives and a cabin upgrade on the same day, it can't get much better than this!!!

That must be why they call you VERANDAH MAN !!!!

Who's your travel agent? I called mine with a question over a week ago, and am still waiting for a call back.


Kathleen

 

[jodifla]

Another winter is "officially" over and I am so happy about that!!!

When I arrived home from work today I found an e-mail from my travel agent, she wrote to let me know that my family has been upgraded to a cat. 6 cabin on deck 6, we will now be in cabin 6562!!!

Spring arrives and a cabin upgrade on the same day, it can't get much better than this!!!



Edited to add:

Oh yea, I forgot to mention, I also got my Disney Rewards card in the mail today as well, I already called DCL and had those reward dollars added to my stateroom credit!!! It sure has been a MAGICal day!!!

Do you have to do it in advance? Can you just bring the Rewards card with you and do it onboard? I just got Rewards card in the mail last week....

 

[Hanover]

Congrats on your room uprgrade Verandah Man! I've been checking every other day but no luck so far. I just tried to check on DCL.com and the system is down for maintenance. Hopefully they are busy upgrading all thre rest of us!

It will be interesting to hear the release of DCL's official itinerary for summer 2007 cruises tomorrow.

I'm really hoping that we do not get the inch of snow they are predicting tomorrow. It was so cold at my ds8's baseball practice tonight. We are so ready for the warm weather.

For those of you with elementary school age children, will they get their homework assignments early for the days they will be missing during the cruise and will you be bringing it along? I'm a bit worried with the amount our 3rd grader will need to make up. He missed 2 days of school in January and he was given a good 20+ pages to complete. I know it's one of the reasons many people do not go while school is in session but we wanted to go over his birthday and avoid the holiday/summer vacation price hike. His school allows family vacations and will give him as many days to make up the work as he misses.

 

[Verandah Man]

Do you have to do it in advance? Can you just bring the Rewards card with you and do it onboard? I just got Rewards card in the mail last week....

You can bring the card with you on the ship, that's what I did last time. I just figured since I got my card this far in advance I would call and see if I could have the credit added on now, one less thing I have to remember to do on the ship!!!

 

[Verandah Man]

Our DD is in 10th grade and she will be bringing her school work with her. It's just getting her to do all the work she brings is going to be the fun part. At least we will have one full day before the cruise and one full day after the cruise in Florida where she can get "most" of her work done. She will also have 2 hours (each way) on the plane to work on it as well.

 

[nutz4dzny]

Verandah Man - Congratulations on the upgrade. What is the Disney Rewards Card and how do I sign up for it? Thanks!

 

[Verandah Man]

Verandah Man - Congratulations on the upgrade. What is the Disney Rewards Card and how do I sign up for it? Thanks!

It's the reward dollars that I built up using my Disney Chase Visa credit card.

 

[hooksenemy]

Hanover, in most cases our school does not give work out before you leave! It is punishment for pulling the kids out and honestly I don't mind and the kids don't usually mind. The kids have 1 week to complete work.

I once was speaking to a teacher who stated the kids need to be present when the work is taught and reviewed and the work sent home is a review of what is taught in class that is why they don't send it home beforehand because it hasn't been taught yet! My response to that was c'mon! It is 2nd & 3rd grade - they have college educated parents who are capable of teaching 3rd grade math and english to their child (I would never say I am a capable teacher - it is a gift I do not have however for one week we can keep our kids current)

I can't believe V-Man got an upgrade! I am beyond jealous you don't have any idea!

I am hoping to upgrade at the port. I am still trying for early seating, i am waiting to hear back from TA. I emailed Friday and haven't heard yet.

Can't believe it is getting so close to us! I logged into mousememories and ordered a couple of things for door sign hopefully working on it this weekend.

Talk to you all soon.

Carolyn

 

[littlebunny]

Since a majority of the DCL tours require kids to be a minimum of 5 yrs old to participate, I'm curious to know what some of you with a 4 yr. old in the family are doing. Any suggestions?

Littlebunny - I saw your thread a few pages back, but I did not see any responses...have you made any decisions? We MIGHT do the butterfly tour, but we haven't made any solid plans yet.

Yeah what's the deal, no one responds to me! I had to do some research of my own. It looks like we're going to do Great Bay Beach on our own, and do shopping too since it's right there next to the beach. Then we'll probably do the Butterfly farm (on our own again), and go to Magan's Bay if there's enough time. Both times we'll order room service the night before and take sandwiches with us so we don't have to spend a lot of money on lunch. It just didn't seem worth it to spend that much money with Disney when we can do the excursions on our own for a lot cheaper. My mom and I are doing the parasailing at Castaway Cay, and we reserved floats for all 3 of our kids, but since the youngest is only 4, we had to reserve one under DH's name for her. HTH.

Verandah Man you are TOOO lucky! Did just your room get an upgrade or did your whole party get upgraded? Since you said the other two rooms were on the same deck I was wondering.

My kids get their homework a week in advance, and have to have it completed before we leave.

 

[bxirishrn]

The policy at DD's school is that they do not give out the work prior to vacation. I'll still speak with her teacher. She is in 1st grade, so I have no problem if she misses some work. She is up in the top of her class anyway. I might tell her to keep a journal of what she does on the cruise and what she learns. I'll be learning how to get the attention of whoever is walking around with the liquid sociables !!!!

A question for you dor magnet pros: I ordered some paper from Mouse Memories. Can I just drag and click some characters onto it, as well as some catchy phrases, or should I order the stickers too?

52 days

Kathleen

 

[Hanover]

Southwest put out some great ding rates earlier today. I hope someone got to take advantage of the low rates.

I checked DCL and no stateroom upgrades for us. I'll keep my fingers crossed and keep on checking. The Mediterranean cruises they released earlier today look nice. I guess I better start playing the lottery because it's not going to happen for us unless we win it.

Luckily our son's school encourages family vacations. I double checked at the office on what the maximum number of days he could miss in a year (he's only missed 2 so far) and was told that since he gets really good grades and isn't truant there wasn't a limit. We didn't get his assignments until the day before our WDW trip in January, and I'm assuming it will be the same this time. I must say that being able to go to MK after a couple hours of homework in the hotel was a great motivator! I'd like him to be able to complete some on the way to WDW. He still doesn't know he's going on a cruise and is expecting only 2 days worth of homework, and not 7! I am hoping that he would do work an hour a day, but I don't think it's going to happen once we get there. I guess I'd be dreaming to think she'd just ask him to keep a journal and do a report like he had to in 1st grade. He's doing the PSSA testing this week, so I'm hoping they won't be pushing the same amount of work in May.

Hooksenemy- I got my mousememories shipment in and am trying to sneak in some time to do a couple of door signs. I love the yellow background paper with the little life rings and Disney characters inside them. I think I'm going to do my door sign with that. I also got some pirate ship paper to do a pirate's night sign. I'm still trying to talk my DH into wearing some pirate attire, but he just won't do more than a dcl " Pirates In the Caribbean" bandana at this point. Maybe he'll go for a skull/crossbones t-shirt from St. Maartin and an eyepatch. Then again, I plan on only a white shirt and black capris to go with my bandana. I hope I remember to pack the boys pirate costumes. I keep hiding stuff here and there and just know I'm going to forget something.
I was at Recollections over the weekend (not sure if you have one nearby you...I think Michael's owns them) and they had a lot of Disney's 2005 stock clearanced out at 50% off original prices. I've been trying to scrap our August 2005 WDW trip and ran out of some Mickey colored alphabet letters and couldn't remember where I bought them . I checked a few local scrapbook stores but none of them had them. The only place I can think of now is that I bought them in Florida at a store near the Florida Mall in January. When I was at AC Moore, I noticed that they were just putting out a ton of new Disney stickers (several of the ones I just paid more for on Mousememories.com!) I picked them each up 2 little tablets of that "magic paper" that you run a pen over and it turns the pictures different colors. They had several different Disney ones. The ones I chose for them had Mickey, Goofy, Minnie and Donald on a boat and was titled "adventures on the high seas." I think they were $2.99 each. I'll add them to the buckets Shriley is making them. I also found a 40 page small white cardstock scrapbook to leave at guest services to have characters sign. I use them as part of my lay out for the character pictures pages I scrap. I have a Creative Memories 7X7 album I could use for autographs as well, but don't want to lug it all over and have to watch that it doesn't get wet, sandy, etc. We'll bring the small ones the boys get at the parks for them to use in those instances.

 

[Verandah Man]

My other family members were already in cat. 6 connecting cabins, they had booked their cabins well over a year ago. They will be on the port side of the ship, and we will be on the starboard, but we aren't that far from them!!!

 

[nutz4dzny]

Verandah Man - Thanks, I thought that was what it was. We threw away our invite. My DH said we have enough credit cards and ours have better rates than Disney was offering. Rigjt now I use one that earns me free sky miles and I am very close to two 1st Class roundtrip tickets!

Just my 2 cents worth on the homewrok stuff. Every year since my DS was 4, we went to WDW in Oct. for 2 weeks. W pulled him out of school for 10 days straight. He was always in Gifted and Talented classes so they were much more advanced. His school ALWAYS gave us his homework 2 days before and then we he would take one whole day off of school before the vacation and work pretty much 24hrs through ( not kidding) and finished ALL of it before we left. That was his choice, he did not want to have to do school work on vacation, that was fun time not school time!

Anyway, it worked for us and he graduated at the top of his class with honors and he is studying to become a Pediatric Neuronsurgen! (but now he says he might change to Cardiatric pedo surgery!)

I am sure your children won't suffer by them missing school but they will AKWAYS remember the memories that you make on vacations!

My DS says when he gets married and has children, he will start a tradition with them like we did with him at WDW!

Good-luck to all of you who have school children. Everything will work out fine!

 

[Hanover]

A question for you dor magnet pros: I ordered some paper from Mouse Memories. Can I just drag and click some characters onto it, as well as some catchy phrases, or should I order the stickers too?

52 days

Kathleen

I have never made a door magnet, but I plan on doing one that can later be part of our trip's scrapbook. (If it makes it home in decent condition that is).
I plan on using some stickers and cardstock and background paper that I can slip in a clear page protector. Nothing fancy and no other embellishments unless I learn how to use some between now and then. My CM consultant will not use any other items other than CM (no brads, eyelets, ribbon, etc) so I have not ventured into that realm on my own. I did buy extras of the same stuff just in case I need to make another one if the original gets damaged, lost, taken, etc.

If you decide to go the sticker route, try AC Moore first if you have one around your city/town. Several of the stickers I bought from mousememories last week were significantly less at AC Moore(without the shipping costs too )than what I just paid from Mousememories. Their stock isn't as great as Mousememories though.

Are you going to put your kid's or family names on your door sign? I've read on another thread all the reasons not to do so, but I figure I've given out all our personal information on this thread other than our social security numbers so everyone knows their names anyway. They are not going to be checking themselves out of the clubs or going anywhere without an adult so I'm not worried about some stranger calling their name as they walk down a hall alone. There won't be much traffic on our end of the hall either (unless we get an upgrade) since we are 4th or 5th from the very front.

 

[DrCavin]

I think our door sign has our first names on it, would have to find it to verify.

My thought on the school thing is they have had them in class 8 months, if they are not having problems now I dont think the last 4 weeks is going to make/break the year. Last year my DD's class were really not doing anything the last 4 weeks, basically having Spring parties & stuff..

LittleBunny, sorry didnt respond I must have missed it or thought someone else answer ed it. Last cruise our DS was 4, so we did everything on our own. Butterfly Farm, Coral World, and some beaches were our "excursions" last time.

 

[bxirishrn]

Thanks Hanover for the tips you shared on door magnets. There is a Michaels near me. AC Moore would be a trip, but if I don't see anything at Michael's, I might just go there too

DD will not be going the halls alone, so I am not worried about someone calling out her name.

I won't even TRY to get DH into a pirate get up. He is still going on about a suit. I have not told him about just bringing a sport jacket, as Verandah Man told me. I'll keep that in mt back pocket to be used at a later date !!!

Kathleen

 

[Verandah Man]

I just tried on my pirate outfit, what a hoot!!! I think is going to be fun!!! So, how many others will be dressing up for Pirate Night? DW has her costume and DD's costume was ordered this evening.

 

[Hanover]

Thanks Hanover for the tips you shared on door magnets. There is a Michaels near me. AC Moore would be a trip, but if I don't see anything at Michael's, I might just go there too

DD will not be going the halls alone, so I am not worried about someone calling out her name.

I won't even TRY to get DH into a pirate get up. He is still going on about a suit. I have not told him about just bringing a sport jacket, as Verandah Man told me. I'll keep that in mt back pocket to be used at a later date !!!

Kathleen

Let me know if you need anything specific from AC Moore. It's on the way to/from my son's pre- school so I tend to run in there more than I should after I drop him off.


I wouldn't stress over your DH wearing a jacket. Who doesn't want to be comfortable on vacation. Maybe he could compromise and wear one for pictures before dinner and take it off once he's seated at the table. My husband doesn't mind wearing suits and tuxes....compared to wearing a police uniform and 20 plus pounds of gear each day, wearing anything else is easy. With our sons, I let them pick out whatever they want that has a collar for dinner. I am so glad Polo style shirts seem to be the style this summer because our ds8 is actually asking to buy some instead of trying to hide them in his closet. They can either keep their dinner clothes on or change as soon as dinner is over. I prefer to go back to casual clothing myself after dinner and the shows.

I'm relieved to hear that others are putting their kid's names on their door signs. I certainly don't want to put my children at a risk of any sort, but I think that with them being either in our eye sight or their counselors in the clubs, they'll be safe.

I'm going to try and get my little guys to bed and work on some of my scrapbook stuff before dh gets home at midnight.

It is getting SOOO much harder to keep this trip from the kids!

 

[DrCavin]

Our kids are dressing up for Pirate night, but I dont think we will be...

Anyone going on one of the Med cruises? We won't be, those prices hurt just looking at them...