Hudson5&Lennon3
Go Huskers!
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2007
- Messages
- 874
Wow! What a group we're getting! 
Again, I'm SOOO sorry I haven't been updating or even posting for so long! For some reason, I'm still not getting my email notifications that someone has posted. 
to all the new members of our cruise! I think I have everyone added to the 1st post. Let me know if I missed you. Thanks for those that PM'ed me your info.
Looks like it's getting close to booking time for excursions, Palo, etc. (which also means payoff date!). I'm sure as it gets closer, we'll all be checking in here more often with lots of questions, tips, get-to-know-you, and such. I'm glad the holidays are over so I can now focus on this trip! YAY!!!!
Disgirl--congrats on becoming a CPA!!!
tigger2002--for us in 2007, Pirate Night was on Wednesday. We did Palo on Thursday, which was Captain's Gala menu (lobster, which you can also get in Palo that night--Justin did). Looks like this is the most recent set of Navigators, which helped me tremendously last time to plan. http://www.wdwinfo.com/Photos/DCL-Navigators/11-01-08-dm/index.htm I printed them off and studied them constantly so I knew exactly what was going on each day!
Cinda--your "not-to-miss" list looks great! Those were all things we did last time, too (except the dune buggies). And I'm glad to hear you're definitely coming with us!
To all those interested in the FE, I'm not going to take the reins on organizing that because we didn't do it on our last cruise, so it's all new to me!
Anyone else that has experience with it can certainly take control of it! 
(Sheesh, I have trouble just keeping up with all the new cruise members!) 
Maybe if someone provided some general info about what the FE exchange is that would be helpful to all those that don't know yet.
As far as DIS meets, we haven't really set anything up for sure...except the FKLP tour in KW!! If any experienced cruisers want to toss out some ideas of what you've done in the past, we can maybe decide some of the ones that everyone has the most interest in participating in. And just because it's set up as a "DIS meet," don't feel like you have to be at every single one of them either. We kinda hit & missed the ones last time. Here's some that were set up for our group last time:
***In the terminal. Most of us arrived right at 10:00, so we had quite a bit of time to meet & greet with everyone. The photos we all posted beforehand really helped us recognize each other from across the room!!
***The Mickey Pool (for those of us with younger kids) right after embarkation. I'm sure there may have been something going on at the Goofy Pool, too, but we weren't part of that.
***3:00 in the Promenade Lounge. I forgot about this one, so we didn't attend. Oops!
***Deck 10 for the Sailaway Party. We did have trouble finding everyone, though, so there may have been several small groups of us spread out. We had just a few others DIS'ers right around us.
***All the tastings had groups in it. Justin & I didn't do the wine or martini, but we did the tequila & beer with a few different people (note to self: don't do these back to back again! Yowza!!)
***Palo? I think there was a group of people that arranged for Palo reservations at the same time/table/area, but we had our anniversary plans by ourselves, so we didn't participate in that one either.
***GC--Cap'n Marvin's stingray excursion. Our group had 3.5 families on the excursion boat.
***CC--far end of family beach.
***'Til We Meet Again (character show) in the lobby Friday night. As an impromptu meeting that was set up just hours earlier, we did end up with quite a group and probably ended up being the largest meet that I attended.
There may be other meets that we had, too, but I'll have to go back to the old cruise thread to find out for sure. Another way to meet up with other DIS'ers was to link dinner reservations for all that are early or late. We requested a specific dinner rotation (and got it) and asked to be sat with/near each other. Even though we were all linked, somehow our family still ended up at a table for 4. We did have all DIS'ers around us, so that was pretty cool, too.
I think we'll be cutting back on our "after the cruise" plans. We were going to stay at WDW for a couple days, but I think we'll probably rent a car and go to KSC after disembarking and then fly home the next day. With it being Memorial Day weekend, the flights don't start going down in price until Tuesday, so if we save $500 in airfare by leaving on Tuesday, we'll still have two more days of hotel/tix/food/souveneirs/etc., which I know would be much more than that! After watching the WDW DVD again, we know we want to wait a little longer to do MK when the boys are a little older and we can all enjoy some of the bigger rides. I just hope that Cirque du Soleil will still be there then! AK & Cirque were the two big things I wanted to stick around for after the cruise.
Since January is always Disney month at AAA, I think we'll transfer our ressies sometime in the next couple weeks to get some more OBC (depending on what they charge this time--I think they overcharged us last time). We had gotten some sort of welcome packet, but it wasn't until shortly before the cruise (we booked only 3 months out, but we still didn't get it right away). If we don't do AAA, we'll probably do DU since it sounds like lots of people are satisfied with them, but I think AAA's OBC is a little better, especially if you book on a specific day of the month. BRING ON THE OBC!!!
Again, I'm SOOO sorry I haven't been updating or even posting for so long! For some reason, I'm still not getting my email notifications that someone has posted. to all the new members of our cruise! I think I have everyone added to the 1st post. Let me know if I missed you. Thanks for those that PM'ed me your info. Looks like it's getting close to booking time for excursions, Palo, etc. (which also means payoff date!). I'm sure as it gets closer, we'll all be checking in here more often with lots of questions, tips, get-to-know-you, and such. I'm glad the holidays are over so I can now focus on this trip! YAY!!!!
Disgirl--congrats on becoming a CPA!!!
tigger2002--for us in 2007, Pirate Night was on Wednesday. We did Palo on Thursday, which was Captain's Gala menu (lobster, which you can also get in Palo that night--Justin did). Looks like this is the most recent set of Navigators, which helped me tremendously last time to plan. http://www.wdwinfo.com/Photos/DCL-Navigators/11-01-08-dm/index.htm I printed them off and studied them constantly so I knew exactly what was going on each day!
Cinda--your "not-to-miss" list looks great!
Those were all things we did last time, too (except the dune buggies). And I'm glad to hear you're definitely coming with us! To all those interested in the FE, I'm not going to take the reins on organizing that because we didn't do it on our last cruise, so it's all new to me!
Anyone else that has experience with it can certainly take control of it! (Sheesh, I have trouble just keeping up with all the new cruise members!) Maybe if someone provided some general info about what the FE exchange is that would be helpful to all those that don't know yet. As far as DIS meets, we haven't really set anything up for sure...except the FKLP tour in KW!! If any experienced cruisers want to toss out some ideas of what you've done in the past, we can maybe decide some of the ones that everyone has the most interest in participating in. And just because it's set up as a "DIS meet," don't feel like you have to be at every single one of them either. We kinda hit & missed the ones last time. Here's some that were set up for our group last time:
***In the terminal. Most of us arrived right at 10:00, so we had quite a bit of time to meet & greet with everyone. The photos we all posted beforehand really helped us recognize each other from across the room!!
***The Mickey Pool (for those of us with younger kids) right after embarkation. I'm sure there may have been something going on at the Goofy Pool, too, but we weren't part of that.
***3:00 in the Promenade Lounge. I forgot about this one, so we didn't attend. Oops!
***Deck 10 for the Sailaway Party. We did have trouble finding everyone, though, so there may have been several small groups of us spread out. We had just a few others DIS'ers right around us.
***All the tastings had groups in it. Justin & I didn't do the wine or martini, but we did the tequila & beer with a few different people (note to self: don't do these back to back again! Yowza!!)
***Palo? I think there was a group of people that arranged for Palo reservations at the same time/table/area, but we had our anniversary plans by ourselves, so we didn't participate in that one either.
***GC--Cap'n Marvin's stingray excursion. Our group had 3.5 families on the excursion boat.
***CC--far end of family beach.
***'Til We Meet Again (character show) in the lobby Friday night. As an impromptu meeting that was set up just hours earlier, we did end up with quite a group and probably ended up being the largest meet that I attended.
There may be other meets that we had, too, but I'll have to go back to the old cruise thread to find out for sure. Another way to meet up with other DIS'ers was to link dinner reservations for all that are early or late. We requested a specific dinner rotation (and got it) and asked to be sat with/near each other. Even though we were all linked, somehow our family still ended up at a table for 4. We did have all DIS'ers around us, so that was pretty cool, too.
I think we'll be cutting back on our "after the cruise" plans. We were going to stay at WDW for a couple days, but I think we'll probably rent a car and go to KSC after disembarking and then fly home the next day. With it being Memorial Day weekend, the flights don't start going down in price until Tuesday, so if we save $500 in airfare by leaving on Tuesday, we'll still have two more days of hotel/tix/food/souveneirs/etc., which I know would be much more than that! After watching the WDW DVD again, we know we want to wait a little longer to do MK when the boys are a little older and we can all enjoy some of the bigger rides. I just hope that Cirque du Soleil will still be there then! AK & Cirque were the two big things I wanted to stick around for after the cruise.
Since January is always Disney month at AAA, I think we'll transfer our ressies sometime in the next couple weeks to get some more OBC (depending on what they charge this time--I think they overcharged us last time). We had gotten some sort of welcome packet, but it wasn't until shortly before the cruise (we booked only 3 months out, but we still didn't get it right away). If we don't do AAA, we'll probably do DU since it sounds like lots of people are satisfied with them, but I think AAA's OBC is a little better, especially if you book on a specific day of the month. BRING ON THE OBC!!!
(Although a walking FKLP tour would take longer, it might be better for working off all those pies!)
Well, my bubble hasn't completely burst (yet), but it definitely has a leak. I don't think the Grand Island flights are going to work out without some sort of huge layover in KC. Today's paper lists the flight times, and it's not what I was hoping for. This will probably get real boring, but I just need to think things through. Weekdays have 2 flights out of GI at 10:51 AM and 6:25 PM and arriving at 11:56 AM and 7:30 PM respectively, but the nonstop flights from KC to MCO on SW are 7 AM, 12:40 PM, and 6:05 PM. The only way it could work would be to have a 6-hour layover! The 12:40 won't work because my TA told me this morning that these airlines don't contract baggage with other airlines, so we'd need to allow at least 3 hrs to get baggage, check it back in with the other airline, go through security again, etc. (More on the TA below... 
Sorry for all the boring details, but I just needed to work the numbers in my head to make sure it's not going to be possible. Thanks for listening...
, doesn't it?) because I don't think she personally does much with booking DCL (believe me, the only reason we decided to use a TA again was to get more OBC!). Otherwise, we may be switching to DU instead (hopefully she doesn't "take over" my reservation until she finds out for sure and calls me!).
