Hi Everybody!
Happy New Year! Thank you to those who posted "Hang in there" messages for me. I truly appreciate it. It has been quite a roller coaster since my last post. We had a death in the family before our trip. The memorial service was scheduled for after the new year so we were still able to go on vacation. Then on New Year's Eve we lost another family member to a sudden heart attack. And on Jan 5th my grandfather had a brief stay in the hospital so going to either memorial service was out of the question. We are just coming out from all of it, and my grandfather is much better now and back home with us. I'm praying for everyone I know to stay well.
to all the new people to this thread I haven't "met" yet.
I am working on updating the FE info. I just need a bit more time to go through and see who is no longer traveling with us. Sorry to see you go.
hang in there, and I'm so glad you were able to salvage your Aulani trip, it's a beautiful resort, and I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time!
I enjoyed Aulani very much. It was a very welcome escape. Aulani was amazing! The island of Oahu was amazing! The things we experienced were amazing! We were so sad to leave.
Oh no, I hope all is ok! Glad Aulani is still a go. Have you been before? I'm wanting to plan a Disney something for next October (well Fall I believe) and I can't decide between a cruise, Aulani, DL Paris....I don't think it makes a ton of sense right now for WDW solely only because I don't want to renew our APs this month (nothing planned in the next year so why renew right?) ARGH decisions!!!
Aulani has been one of my 2 DVC home resorts, but I had never been there or to Hawaii before this trip. It was a blind DVC purchase I do not regret.
I can certainly share in the agony of deciding what to do next. Disney has so many great destinations to experience. I am planning to go to DL Paris in 2016 when my daughter graduates from HS. She wants to go on her French Club trip and then I am going to add a few days of DL Paris and a few days in London to the back end. But I have no idea what will fill the 2 years between Alaska and DL Paris.
We plan on visiting some filming sights in Vancouver. DD loves Supernatural and DH says he will take me to a little place called Steveton (sp) or otherwise known as "Storybrook"! Does that mean anything to anyone else out there?
Oh Yeah! Love Mr. Gold and who knew Capt Hook could look so good!! I must have a thing for bad boys!!
We're hoping for Psych sites also.
My daughter is a major Supernatural Fangirl and we both LOVE OUAT and Psych. We are hoping to see some location sights too. Not just for those shows but for others as well. I have been wanting to see Vancouver production areas for years. I'm waiting until after the cruise when we have more time to spend in Vancouver.
Sorry we've been a little quiet. I had appendicitis And an appendectomy on Friday. Thankfully it didn't rupture and I was out of the hospital Saturday. As we checked in to the hospital Friday afternoon, the first words out of my mouth we "at least we weren't on a cruise when this happened!" After I was out of surgery and recovering the first thing we looked up was how long I'd have to wait before traveling as we're heading to Aulani on Christmas--luckily we were told I'd only have to wait 5-10 days before I can travel!
Glad you're doing better. And yes very fortunate it didn't happen to you on a ship.
Wow! We were at Aulani at the same time. Even though it was quite full there, I bet we crossed paths and didn't even realize it. We'll know in May whether recognize each other. I wish I had been able to check in to DIS before the trip. It would have been cool to do a quick wave in person.
Hi All,
I am a newbie to this board but not to the
DCL. We have done Alaska before but honestly, can you ever get too much Alaska? I think not.
I will be traveling with my husband of 20 years and our 3 boys (16, 14, 11) and one girl (7)
We always wondered about those things hanging from the fish... I can't wait to get started designing mine.
I can't wait to get to make some cruising friends!
Kathy Penrod
Colorado, USA
Welcome! I hope you enjoy your first FE experience!
I am so relieved to have that part over. Now is the really hard part and watching what I say. Cause they still do not know family is meeting us
So, I gotta be careful not to blow it. I came very close a couple of times.
Kat is really excited to figured out excursions and what they can do. DH is trying to talk her into snorkeling. She is not buying into that one. She keeps saying it is too cold
I am so happy for you that your surprise went so well.
Can't wait to find out about part 2. When will they find out about the family? The day of the cruise in the boarding area?
In regards to the FE--I saw on the first page that we're up to 29 cabins with 89 folks so far. How many are B2B cruisers?
Are you planning on creating a separate list for those who join after the deadline? In the past we've had lots a of folks want to join the FE within the last month prior to sailing (usually those who purchased the cruise last minute or just found disboards). What we've done in the past is either create a separate list (if there's a lot) or we've just added them to the list, with the disclaimer that they joined after the deadline so not everyone would have gifts for them as gifts were purchased/made based on deadline numbers.
Yes I do plan to accommodate those who join after the deadline. I will do my best not to leave anyone out.
But even if there is someone who does not find this thread until a week before we board this message is for you: Even if you didn't get to sign up for our FE, hang yours up anyway. Trust me you will still get surprises. We did this on our Med cruise knowing we would not be able to participate in an exchange and still had to figure out how to successfully pack all the gifts we received in out FE. Our state room host even left us gifts. It was awesome!
I bit the bullet and purchased airfare directly to Vancouver. As my father the economist would say, it is an opportunity cost. It just wasn't worth the extra time to save a couple of hundred dollars (and my sanity) to fly into Seattle and make our way in from there. Now, we have a little over 3 hour direct flight and we are there with time to enjoy Vancouver before the cruise. I am much happier now!
I bit the bullet too. I like the term "opportunity cost".
Great way of looking at it. I made the mistake of waiting for Allegiant to put out their schedule and by the time they finally did it didn't work with my schedule.
And then flying into Seattle would have cost me more stress and headache than it was worth. So I went with a hacker fare out of Tucson into YVR. But no direct flight for me, although I was very close to flying out of Sky Harbor so I could get one. But then I realized I would spend more than the plane fare savings on gas and parking so it wasn't worth it.
Hi MoonDaughter! We changed our stateroom number. Can you please move us to 2008? We had such a good time in the forward part of the ship last week, we decided to move forward on this cruise, too!
Gotch covered.
Thanks for letting me know.
Disneyfaninaz~ so you live in Chandler? I live in Peoria and attend SCC.
Maybe we should meet up sometime for lunch.
If this hasn't happened yet, I would love to join. (Providing I have no more family emergencies) It would be cool to do a pre-pre cruise meet-up. And it only takes me about 1hr15mins to get to your side of the world.
Is there an update that I may have missed about the FE's? Just wondering about numbers. Is there a cutoff date?
Talk to all soon!
Rita
Hi Stephanie,
Do you have any more details on the FE exchange?
Please, please, please dont think I am rushing you. Just very curious to know numbers for gifting reasons.
Thank you!
I apologize for my absence. I am working on the update and will post as soon as I can.
Has there been any discussion of a meet on embarkation day? We could meet in promenade lounge around 3:00...
Yes, those of us staying at the Pan (and even anybody else that wants to join) were thinking of walking out to the pier and watching the Wonder come in. From what I can tell it usually arrives between 6 and 7 AM. However, it will be arriving from the repositioning, so I'm not sure if it would arrive earlier or not.
A DIS meet at the Promenade Lounge at 3:00 PM on embarkation day sounds doable to me. In fact, 2 of my previous cruises did just that.
I'm in for both watching the ship come in and for 3p in Promenade.
3p meet-ups on the ships seem to always work best. On my last cruise the DIS group was so big we were very close to filling up the lounge.
It was great!
I will also throw in that I want to host a Ladies "Tea Party" in my stateroom. Date and time details to come later. But it's basically coming to my stateroom for girl time and mimosas (or just juice for the non drinkers). My mom is very social and she wanted to host one our last cruise. She won't be on this one, but it was so much fun I decided I want to do it every cruise.
Also is anyone interested in meeting on a sea day for a group photo? I remember on one of the FE signups someone offered to be the group photographer, but I have to work my way through the list to remember who. But no point in putting that person on the spot if I'm the only one interested.
We are so excited about taking this cruise. My daughter is especially excited about participating in the FE adventure. This is our first time being apart of a FE group, so I apologize for not knowing the process. We signed up with this group, but we haven't received any confirmation that we were accepted...Do we assume that we are automatically added to this group or will we receive confirmation? I just didn't want to "miss" the opportunity.
Thanks for all responses.
Hi!
I did receive your sign up, but I haven't been able to send any confirmations for the last 6 weeks or so. Sorry. I will send you an email at least so you have mine
FE question, I can't remember, did we decide how big our groups are going to be. And when is the final list coming out. I am sure someone remembers and I didn't want to wade thru all the posts to find it.
I have decided what I am making and it takes an 8-week cure time, so not knowing a lot of this is creating some problems for me.
Found the below comment on the first page of thread, it also had information about 3 different group sizes, hope it helps:
When is the last day of sign up?
I'd like to set the deadline for February 22, 2014. My goal is to get the final list out by March 1, 2014.
I think Feb 22 will work just fine for me-for some reason I was remembering a later date. All is right with the world again.
Sorry again. Thank you MousseauMob for helping me out.
As far as group size, I was planning to accommodate people based on their votes so the ones who voted to be in smaller groups would not be overwhelmed. I'm still working through the math and going over who is still in vs who has jumped ship. If anyone doesn't remember what their group size was PM me and I will look it up for you.
I am going to try my best to check in with the group at least twice a week from this point on. Things were just so overwhelming the last few months for my family and it completely took over. Every time I tried to sit down to my laptop at home I either got interrupted or was so exhausted I fell asleep before I could even sign in to DIS.
It will be me and my daughter Kara - who is celebrating her 23rd birthday we are in 7620 and will not be doing an first extender this cruise If everything works out - we are also doing the 5 night out of San Diego 
This makes the whole Ballantyne port thing a piece of cake haha.[/QUOTE] 
This works for me. I just changed my idea up today and have supplies for 20 cabins *hint hint* hahaha
The 3 pm one should be fine (anyone know when they usually do the DVC thing?)
Moondaughter! Sending lots of good wishes that things stabilize. 
