May 14, 2011 - Eastbound TransAtlantic

[heatherb819]

David and Adele, sorry to hear about your not so pleasant recent vacation, we'll have to make this EBTA even better to make up for it!

Is anyone interested in planning a pajama breakfast while at sea? I noticed a few of the other TA cruises have done this and it sounds like it could be fun. I've been lurking the others' boards to get a few ideas to get a few activities going. The WBTA group had alot going on (also had someone who is a much better organizer than I)

Any suggestions? We can add it to our handy spreadsheet Jim and Amanda prepared for us.

 

[TheCheshireCat]

My fiance and I are really excited about the cruise, we are having a hard time picking excursions since we don't know how our funds will look after our wedding. I was hoping to book something not too expensive at each port and do something on our own too. Does anyone know if you are able to cancel excursions once booked and if there is a cost or cut off date?

In Barcelona we are staying only one extra day. (We too have limited time off). I was looking at a private tour that we could book that would pick us up from the ship with luggage bring us on a tour then drop us off at our hotel. This is through Hola Barcelona tours, does anyone have any experience with them?

My fiance and I do something called geocaching, are there any other geocachers on the cruise? (If you are curious what it is: http://www.geocaching.com/)

We're open to any fun activities that our group would like to plan like the pajama breakfast.

We are going to be booking Palo's at least once on the cruise, does anyone recommend a good day to go, or have any idea what a typical dinner rotation will be like?

 

[DH2DW&DS]

My fiance and I do something called geocaching, are there any other geocachers on the cruise? (If you are curious what it is: http://www.geocaching.com/)

Me, the DW and DS do geocaching as well. Make sure you find the one on Castaway Cay. It is our goal to find one in each country we visit. We were successful last year on the Magic while in the Baltic.

Our name on Geocaching is SBJA - what's yours?

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding.

See you on the cruise.

 

[MandyGirl]

I've been lurking the others' boards to get a few ideas to get a few activities going.

Back atcha! Seems both cruises are researching the same unique ports of call!

Check with Noel on our thread for Madeira. Apparently last year she had an awesome tour put together that went really well, and many are doing the same exact tour again. Details would be on our first page of WBTA 2011 roll call thread.

 

[heatherb819]

I will check that out, thanks for the info!

 

[TammyAlphabet]

Can anyone tell me the final payment date for an inside cabin on the cruise?

 

[TheCheshireCat]

Me, the DW and DS do geocaching as well. Make sure you find the one on Castaway Cay. It is our goal to find one in each country we visit. We were successful last year on the Magic while in the Baltic.

Our name on Geocaching is SBJA - what's yours?

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding.

See you on the cruise.

Hello, our name on the geocaching site is emptybook. I was really looking forward to finding some geocaches on our last cruise but lost our gps just before we sailed. Would you want to me up and search for a couple together at port?

 

[Can't wait to cruise]

We did the EBTA in May 2007 and had a fantastic time. Flew to Italy for a week afterwards but don't have that third week off work this time. Going to overnight in London on the way home Saturday after getting off the ship and hopefully be able to go visit Big Ben, etc that evening.

Haven't been to Madeira but see the cable car ride and basket ride back down as something that look interesting. In Cadez, we bought the all day double decker bus passes and did the tour of town. The tour bus provides earbuds and their audio system allows you to select a variety of languages to listen to the narration of what you're driving by. I took one of the earbuds and held it up to the mike on my vidio camera so we could get the narration on the video. Was much nicer for our friends watching our videos later to know what they were seeing too.

In Gibralter, we didn't book the "rock" tour on the ship at the advise of a friend that has been there before. Once you get off the ship, the tour vans at the dock will take you on the same tour for about half the price. Just need to make sure they don't limit your time once you get in the tunnels. Spent the afternoon walking thru the downtown areas and did some shopping. Easy walk from downtown back to the ship and felt very safe (without letting our guard down) in the city. Gibralter was my farorite port call on the 07 trip and I'm really looking forward to spending a day there again. Great view to the south across the straits of seeing Africa.

In Barcelona, we'll do the usual stroll up Las Rambles and then to the cathedrals. We didn't do our homework last time and did more wandering. Bought a pocket size tour book at AAA on Barcelona this time and will have a plan for the day. Be sure to stop in the market going inland about 3/8 mile up Las Rambles on the left side. I'd love to have a produce and seafood/meat market like that here in Charlotte.

Other threads trash the idea of carrying walkie-talkies. We've always had success with ours for the four of us. If you don't want to depend on the new Wave radios the ship provides if you have more than two wanting to communicate, walkie talkies are still a good idea. Just make sure you have the sub-codes so you don't have to listen to your ship mates. We also bought one of the small waterproof card cases in the gift shop and stash our reserve supply of cash while in port. Just secure the string on a belt loop and tuck the case inside the waist band. Keep out just what you need for any small purchases.

Looking forward to start booking Palo's at month end. Enjoy the planning and we'll see you all on board.

West Carribean July 03
East Carribean Nov 03, Nov 04, Nov 05
EBTA May 07
EBTA May 11

 

[Winstanik]

Can anyone tell me the final payment date for an inside cabin on the cruise?

We have an inside cabin and our final payment is due next Friday, January 14th. I imagine that it's the same date for you.

But that means that we are getting closer to the cruise !

 

[owensamo]

I started trying to pull together the stuff I need to for the FEs and wanted to double-check everyone who's signed up. Here's the current list from the Roll Call spreadsheet:

Yes
kwork11 - 4 (2 adult, 2 child) - 1 stateroom
leftcoastlady & surf2di4 - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
owensjro, owensamo - 3 (2 aadult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom
twokings - 2 (1adult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom
Platinumcruzer - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
MegaMouseHouse - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
heatherb819 - 3 (2 adult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom
slcmom - 17 (11 adult, 6 child) - 5 staterooms?
TheCheshireCat - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
Sharkbait - 5 (5 adult) - 2 staterooms?

Maybe:
kcashner - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
DW2DH&DS - 3 (2 adult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom

Including the Maybes, that's a total of:

17(?) Staterooms
47 people - 35 Adults, 12 children

Is this info correct? I know some people do individual gifts and some do cabin gifts, so I wanted to start getting the information out there for people to start putting things together!

Amanda

 

[twokings]

I started trying to pull together the stuff I need to for the FEs and wanted to double-check everyone who's signed up. Here's the current list from the Roll Call spreadsheet:

Yes
kwork11 - 4 (2 adult, 2 child) - 1 stateroom
leftcoastlady & surf2di4 - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
owensjro, owensamo - 3 (2 aadult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom
twokings - 2 (1adult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom
Platinumcruzer - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
MegaMouseHouse - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
heatherb819 - 3 (2 adult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom
slcmom - 17 (11 adult, 6 child) - 5 staterooms?
TheCheshireCat - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
Sharkbait - 5 (5 adult) - 2 staterooms?

Maybe:
kcashner - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
DW2DH&DS - 3 (2 adult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom

Including the Maybes, that's a total of:

17(?) Staterooms
47 people - 35 Adults, 12 children

Is this info correct? I know some people do individual gifts and some do cabin gifts, so I wanted to start getting the information out there for people to start putting things together!

Amanda

TwoKings - FYI my child is 19. Make that two adults.

Just curious since I have never participated in FE before what kind of gifts to people usually give?

 

[twokings]

How many of you out there have done an Eastbound TA cruise before? What was it like? Can somebody point me to a good trip report to read?

 

[owensamo]

TwoKings - FYI my child is 19. Make that two adults.

Just curious since I have never participated in FE before what kind of gifts to people usually give?

Thanks!

For the FE gifts, we've gotten everything from stickers to CDs of music and recipes to christmas ornaments to small bottles of alcohol - pretty much anything goes! My favorites are hadmade items (recipe books, ornaments, bookmarks, etc.), things that originate from where people are from, or relate to the ports. Candy is popular, as well as anything related to Disney.

In the past we've done one gift per stateroom, with a little bit in it for everyone (some kid-related things, stuff for the adults, etc). This time since there are so few children so far, I'll probably do individual gifts for them.

 

[Happy Wanderers]

David and Adele, sorry to hear about your not so pleasant recent vacation, we'll have to make this EBTA even better to make up for it!

Hi Heather
thanks for the kind words, we are sure the Disney experience will be great

We are both looking forward to the beginning of May and the start of our holiday, with the EBTA a new and novel way for us to return home

we are looking forward to more discussion on this thread and meeting all of you when we get on board

David and Adele

 

[heatherb819]

we have also done a FE before and gotten just a variety of items. Ranging from cups, coolie cups to book marks, disney related items or items related to the area you are from. Some people get really creative and some give out handy items you may have forgotten to bring.

 

[slcmom]

Yes, it's still a good time to wish folks a happy new year. I know this because I haven't quite finished getting all my Christmas cards out yet, therefore it must still be the Christmas season.

Amanda (I love Charlotte, by the way!) we (slcmom and crew) will have 6 staterooms.

DH, DS and I did the 2010 EBTA. I haven't read any trip reports, so I can't recommend one. If you find a good one, let me know. That would be great to read. It was sure a great trip, though - obviously since we're going again!

We did the FE exchange on that cruise and loved it. We had 54 cabins (I think) which was overwhelming, but great fun. There was always something waiting for us in our FE. Like others have said, I enjoyed the homemade things most of all, especially an incredible photo album that one woman made. We got several cd's of Disney music that ds still listens to every day. I hope we get more action on this thread and more fe folks - I've started organizing things since I'll be the prime mover behind all 6 rooms' fe's. But I've been basing my plans on a much bigger number, because that's what we had last year. If not, I'll be set for fe gifts for the rest of my cruising life!

My guess is that once final payments are in, Disney may open it up like they did last year with an even more discounted price for GTY. If that happens, then I bet we'll get lots more action on this thread as new people sign up. If the number of people on this thread is representative of the number of people booked on the cruise, then they'll definitely need to get their numbers up with a new discount or something. Did that sound like I think 100% of passengers are affiliated with DIS? I don't, but there's probably a correlation, don't you think?

About excursions - I got the idea that lots of people just looked around on their own. There were groups from the thread that rented a van and driver together to see things.

We had a room tour which I liked a lot. People signed up who didn't mind opening up their stateroom. Someone organized it so that we had at least one room from every level but 1 & 2, and some sideways rooms and 2 handicap rooms. I found it fascinating to see the differences. (My personal opinion was that I didn't think the higher categories were worth the extra money, except for the verandas. Boy, the suite we saw was sweet, though.

We also had Secret Mickeys. Anyone that wanted to sign up was given the name, age, etc of someone else who signed up. The idea was to anonymously give them 3-4 gifts over the course of the cruise, with a total value of (I think) $20.

We had a lunch together the last sea day of the cruise and discovered who the secret Mickeys were, and also awarded prizes for best decorated door.

Krissann B brought a number of board games and they were often going in the Promenade Lounge for anyone interested.

Well, perhaps I'll go address Christmas cards now.....
Ann

 

[runswithscissors]

We also had Secret Mickeys. Anyone that wanted to sign up was given the name, age, etc of someone else who signed up. The idea was to anonymously give them 3-4 gifts over the course of the cruise, with a total value of (I think) $20.

I like this idea. Much easier for me to do than the FEs (although I love the idea). I'm FT student/stay-at-home Mom and I don't want to commit to the FE gifts if I can't give it 100%. Having one person to buy a few gifts for is much less time consuming and I'd be up for this if anyone else is interested...

When is everyone thinking about flying into Orlando prior to the cruise (those of us who have booked/are booking airfare ourselves)? We'll be at Disney in July so no pre-cruise park-hopping for us but we've decided to fly down Friday evening and stay at the airport Hyatt overnight. We'll then take Disney transport to the port Saturday morning.

We've been planning this cruise for so long that I can't believe it's now only 4+ months away! Looking forward to meeting y'all!

Sarah

 

[heatherb819]

My guess is that once final payments are in, Disney may open it up like they did last year with an even more discounted price for GTY. If that happens, then I bet we'll get lots more action on this thread as new people sign up. If the number of people on this thread is representative of the number of people booked on the cruise, then they'll definitely need to get their numbers up with a new discount or something. Did that sound like I think 100% of passengers are affiliated with DIS? I don't, but there's probably a correlation, don't you think?

Oh I hope this is the case, I've been watching the price twice a day and how I'd love to see it drop!

As far as flying to Orlando, we are flying in the day of the cruise. We normally don't like to do this as it is rush rush rush but with this being a 14 dayer, DH can't take more time off. Our last Disney cruise we flew in the day before and stayed at the Hilton at the airport and really enjoyed it. DH and DD swam on the roof top pool, we shopped in the airport shops and had time to relax before the "big day" Their shuttle service was very organized and we were on the first shuttle to the port! (just to go sit at the port and wait anxiously) but heh it was our first Disney cruise. This time we know the routine and don't feel like we have to be the 1st ones on the boat to get every minute of enjoyment out of it, after all we have 14 days right!!!

 

[stsomewhere]

Hi everyone!

I made my reservation today! I just need to double check with my husband that he is really ok with me going by myself. I know he would love to go, but can't get time off of work. Plus, the kids can't miss that much school.

I am nervous and excited about going by myself. But, a fellow disser has assured me that I will have fun and meet lots of new friends.

I have sailed on the Wonder for a 3 night and Magic 7 night.
We met some wonderful people on our cruise meet in the past. Some I still keep in touch with.

We are booked on thw Wonder for August to Alaska.

Christi

 

[sharkbait]

How nice! Yes, we're sharkbait and we will be in two cabins. The girls will be with my mil. We're so excited... Husband thinks we're crazy... looking for tiara's for princess night...

I started trying to pull together the stuff I need to for the FEs and wanted to double-check everyone who's signed up. Here's the current list from the Roll Call spreadsheet:

Yes
kwork11 - 4 (2 adult, 2 child) - 1 stateroom
leftcoastlady & surf2di4 - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
owensjro, owensamo - 3 (2 aadult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom
twokings - 2 (1adult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom
Platinumcruzer - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
MegaMouseHouse - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
heatherb819 - 3 (2 adult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom
slcmom - 17 (11 adult, 6 child) - 5 staterooms?
TheCheshireCat - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
Sharkbait - 5 (5 adult) - 2 staterooms?

Maybe:
kcashner - 2 (2 adult) - 1 stateroom
DW2DH&DS - 3 (2 adult, 1 child) - 1 stateroom

Including the Maybes, that's a total of:

17(?) Staterooms
47 people - 35 Adults, 12 children

Is this info correct? I know some people do individual gifts and some do cabin gifts, so I wanted to start getting the information out there for people to start putting things together!

Amanda