May 28, 2011 - 11 Night Mediterranean Sailing from Barcelona

[DaisyKate]

My fiance and I just switched to this cruise from the Caribbean one for our honeymoon. It will be our first cruise and also our first time out of the US. We're getting really excited!

 

[annichan]

Welcome! What a wonderful thing to do on your honeymoon - a Disney cruise as well as see Europe for the first time! I'm sure you will love it! Are you getting married on the ship too?

 

[DopeyFan1966]

Welcome to all the newcomers. I've been slacking on the website. I promise that right after the new year I will get back on track and update the website with everyone's information.

Let me know names, stateroom number, if you are celebrating anything, if you are late/early seating, etc and I will get it added to the role call. I will also add anyone to the FE if you are interested. It is best if you send me a PM with your information otherwise I might miss it. You can also send me a picture to add to the roll call (cindy_perrier@yahoo.com).

I really am looking forward to doing this cruise again. We go to WDW every year and this year we did the cruise and now I am hooked. There will be many more Disney Cruises in our future. I had no idea how much fun cruise could be, and to add Disney to it was incredible.

See you all in May.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year.

Cindy

 

[DaisyKate]

Welcome! What a wonderful thing to do on your honeymoon - a Disney cruise as well as see Europe for the first time! I'm sure you will love it! Are you getting married on the ship too?

Thanks! I think it will be a lot of fun! No, we're getting married at home and then flying out a few days later.

 

[kcashner]

I am sure I will come up with lots of Barcelona-specific questions (embarkation and such) as soon as the cruise draws nearer, so it is great to hear that you won't mind if I ask them all

DCL has done it's best to make the terminal in Barcelona as close as possible to the system at Port Canaveral (that statement helps only if you have cruised out of Port Canaveral...)

You will arrive at the cruise terminal either by taxi or by bus. In either event, you will walk into a large "hall" area with areas to complete any necessary documents before you get into the lines to check in. There will be separate lines for Castaway Club members (silver and gold), lines for platinum Castaway/Concierge, and lines for first time cruisers. In one of our cases there was a bit of a line inside the terminal so there were CMs outside making sure that everyone had their documentation ready before we even entered the terminal.

If you arrived by DCL arranged bus, you will not have your luggage (you'll see it in your cabin). If you arrived by private transportation you will find people to take your luggage as soon as you are out of your vehicle.

After you check in, you'll stand around waiting until they start boarding; again, boarding is by group number. You get your group number when you check in. There is really nothing to see or do at the terminal. In September, I arrived at the Barcelona airport about 9. DCL didn't want us at the terminal that early, so they loaded us on buses to the terminal but then took us on a guided tour of the city until the terminal was ready for us!

 

[annichan]

DCL has done it's best to make the terminal in Barcelona as close as possible to the system at Port Canaveral (that statement helps only if you have cruised out of Port Canaveral...)

You will arrive at the cruise terminal either by taxi or by bus. In either event, you will walk into a large "hall" area with areas to complete any necessary documents before you get into the lines to check in. There will be separate lines for Castaway Club members (silver and gold), lines for platinum Castaway/Concierge, and lines for first time cruisers. In one of our cases there was a bit of a line inside the terminal so there were CMs outside making sure that everyone had their documentation ready before we even entered the terminal.

If you arrived by DCL arranged bus, you will not have your luggage (you'll see it in your cabin). If you arrived by private transportation you will find people to take your luggage as soon as you are out of your vehicle.

After you check in, you'll stand around waiting until they start boarding; again, boarding is by group number. You get your group number when you check in. There is really nothing to see or do at the terminal. In September, I arrived at the Barcelona airport about 9. DCL didn't want us at the terminal that early, so they loaded us on buses to the terminal but then took us on a guided tour of the city until the terminal was ready for us!

Thank you, that is really very useful information! What do you reckon, what would be the earliest sensible time to arrive at the terminal? This October in Port Canaveral, we arrived at 9.30 and had to stand around for a while since that was too early, but we got boarding no. 2 for it and would like to try getting something similarly low in Barcelona.

 

[annichan]

Welcome to all the newcomers. I've been slacking on the website. I promise that right after the new year I will get back on track and update the website with everyone's information.

Let me know names, stateroom number, if you are celebrating anything, if you are late/early seating, etc and I will get it added to the role call. I will also add anyone to the FE if you are interested. It is best if you send me a PM with your information otherwise I might miss it. You can also send me a picture to add to the roll call (cindy_perrier@yahoo.com).

I really am looking forward to doing this cruise again. We go to WDW every year and this year we did the cruise and now I am hooked. There will be many more Disney Cruises in our future. I had no idea how much fun cruise could be, and to add Disney to it was incredible.

See you all in May.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year.

Cindy

Thank you for taking care of the website and this thread, Cindy, I think that's great! Have a wonderful Christmas and looking forward to meeting you in May.

And to all other fellow cruisers as well:

Have a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

 

[kcashner]

Thank you, that is really very useful information! What do you reckon, what would be the earliest sensible time to arrive at the terminal? This October in Port Canaveral, we arrived at 9.30 and had to stand around for a while since that was too early, but we got boarding no. 2 for it and would like to try getting something similarly low in Barcelona.

When I did the TA last year, I arrived in Barcelona a day early and took the hotel shuttle back to the airport about 9 am to catch the DCL bus. OK...they loaded us on the bus, but they weren't letting people into the terminal area yet. They drove us around the city for about an hour, then took us to the terminal about 10:45 or 11. That was good timing.

I can tell you the disembarkation was slower in Barcelona than in Port Canaveral. There were LONG lines of people waiting for cabs, which didn't seem to be coming quickly enough. That was surprising since it was a Saturday so the cabs were charging the weekend surcharge. We didn't get into a cab till about 10:30 after getting off the ship about 9. If you were on Delta, there was luggage check in at the port (not the automatic thing like in Port Canaveral--you had to claim your luggage and take it to the Delta people). The line for Delta was actually longer than the regular Customs line. If you were hopping on a DCL bus, it was relatively easy once you were out of the terminal but they would hit little snags--like telling us to go one place, then having us take our luggage to the other side of the bus.

I've been in Barcelona 3 times with DCL. It's really pretty good, but not Port Canaveral good!

Sorry so long....I don't know what time they will let you into the terminal, but I can assure you that it won't be before 10--it takes them at least that long to clear the disembarkation passengers.

 

[micknstang]

Scott and Jason
Desk 5 secret porthole room
Late Seating
Celebrating Scott's 40th and Jason's 45th
Pre cruise stay in Barcelona
After Cruise heading to DLP for 3 Nights
Would be interested in sharing tours

 

[livelovelaugh06]

Hello. We are getting very excited about this cruise. It will be our second DC and our first trip to Europe. We thought it would be a great way to get a taste of Europe before taking extended vacations there in 2012. We would love to be added to the roll call and the FE list, although I am still trying to figure out how the FE works!

Rachelle (momma age 39)
Lee, aka "Grandma Peabody" (grandma age 65)
Jessica (daughter age 21)
Joseph, aka "cub" (son age 6)

Our cabin is on the 6th deck, with late dinner seating.

 

[micknstang]

ya we have been on 7 Disney cruises and never heard of this FE thing.

 

[livelovelaugh06]

ya we have been on 7 Disney cruises and never heard of this FE thing.

I googled it and found out that you make or buy a FE (fish extender) holder, which is a hanging pocket thingy that hangs from the metal fish on the side of your stateroom door. Then you make or brings little gifts for all the people who signed up for the FE exchange. I am assuming that someone will send us the list of people and stateroom numbers. Then you put your gifts in the FE of others and receive gifts in yours. When I tried to find what kinds of gifts people gave, it ranged from candy to CDs made about where the giver lives, keychains, magnets, ect.. I wish I knew more about it. We noticed the FE's on the last cruise we took, but had no idea about what they were. Hope this helps.

 

[micknstang]

I googled it and found out that you make or buy a FE (fish extender) holder, which is a hanging pocket thingy that hangs from the metal fish on the side of your stateroom door. Then you make or brings little gifts for all the people who signed up for the FE exchange. I am assuming that someone will send us the list of people and stateroom numbers. Then you put your gifts in the FE of others and receive gifts in yours. When I tried to find what kinds of gifts people gave, it ranged from candy to CDs made about where the giver lives, keychains, magnets, ect.. I wish I knew more about it. We noticed the FE's on the last cruise we took, but had no idea about what they were. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info. We will decide if we want to participate.

 

[DopeyFan1966]

Hello. We are getting very excited about this cruise. It will be our second DC and our first trip to Europe. We thought it would be a great way to get a taste of Europe before taking extended vacations there in 2012. We would love to be added to the roll call and the FE list, although I am still trying to figure out how the FE works!

Rachelle (momma age 39)
Lee, aka "Grandma Peabody" (grandma age 65)
Jessica (daughter age 21)
Joseph, aka "cub" (son age 6)

Our cabin is on the 6th deck, with late dinner seating.

ya we have been on 7 Disney cruises and never heard of this FE thing.

This past May was our first cruise ever. We participated in the FE, along with 35 others , but the guy in charge broke that down into 2 groups of 18 : which wasn't so bad.

I'm compiling the list for the FEs. The only rule we are applying that is not always applied, the rule is one gift per party/stateroom. From my understanding others on other cruises would sometimes give separate gifts for children and adults, or if a party had 3 staterooms they would give 3 gifts. We aren't doing that due to the space issue in everyone's luggage.

Hope this wasn't confusing. It was really fun coming back to our room and finding little items in our FE and even more fun trying to get them in the FE without being caught.

Cindy

 

[Cousin Orville]

Happy New Year everyone.

I haven't posted here in a while. Been focused on our Christmas WDW trip. Just as an update, DW Kate and I will be taking our two sons (1 yr Liam and 6 yr Gavin). We're somewhere on Deck 8 (think our cabin is on the 1st pg). We just got our plane tickets from Houston. We have to fly through Montreal?! to get to BCN. Anyone ever transfer in Montreal?

Looking forward to May!

 

[kcashner]

Today was the deadline to send my final payment to my TA for the trans-atlantic portion of this vacation (really just a phone call authorizing her to bill my card). It's getting closer!

Fish Extenders--as above, crafty pocket things that hang from the FISH shaped letter holder outside each cabin. Generally one person on a cruise volunteers to coordinate the FE activities for anyone who wants to participate. You sign up with her, typically indicating the ages in your cabin. Each cabin then brings a small gift for each person in the exchange--something Disney themed, pirate themed, whatever. Nothing big, just fun. We've participated in exchanges with as few as 12 cabins and as many as 50 (WAY too big). My favorite is about 20-25 cabins. That way you are getting many surprises, but it doesn't take forever to deliver your FE gifts.

Each group sets its' own rules--typically it is one "delivery" during the cruise, but I've seen more. Some set a price max, most leave that to the individual. Items we've gotten have included some amazing craft projects, Christmas tree ornaments (hand made, DCL themed), CDs of cruise music, glow in the dark bracelets, glow sticks, all sorts of pirate stuff, candy, note pads and pens/pencils, door magnets, etc.

It's fun, but honestly I need to see what our luggage restrictions are on this cruise. With a 25 day trip (yes, I'll do laundry!), and airline luggage limits, I might pass on it.

 

[livelovelaugh06]

Regarding the FEs...I already told my family that whatever we do, they have to be flat and light! Thanks for the info

 

[kelvinwyng]

I am planning to book a dinner at Palo but I'm not certain which day will be better. I don't want to miss those special dinner night, such as formal dinner, priate night, etc. Any suggestion?
Also, is there any "show" or "perofrmance" during the dinner at different resturants?

 

[kelvinwyng]

Hi! Cindy,

I can not PM you our information. So, I re-post the information again for your updating.

We (Iris & Kelvin) will be on this cruise, our first cruise, and we will be in the 2nd seating. We are so excited!

Actually, I have post my information in post #177 already. Thank you!

 

[kelvinwyng]

We are doing the Blue Grotto, but I think we might do it on our own (haven't decided yet)

Tunis ... we are going to take a taxi to the American Cemetary and to Carthage

Naples.... on our own to Herculanium

Rome.... haven't decided yet

LaSpezia....Cinque Terre on our own

Ajaccio.... walking down to the beach on our own

Villefranche....I think we are staying on the boat.

We did this cruise earlier this year, saw a lot, now we want to enjoy the ship. All could change if my mother-in-law decides to join us.

Hi! Cindy,

If I join the DCL port adventure "Blue Grotto Boat Trip & Fishing Village"(it takes 4-4.5 hrs), do you think I could still have time to visit the city centre by ourself?