May 28, 2011 - 11 Night Mediterranean Sailing from Barcelona

[RaglanRoad]

Welcome to all our new Med cruisers !!!!

It's getting so close and I'm already making out my packing list. Trying to pack light for a change ! I refuse to do laundry myself, but will use Disney's laundry service,like I have in the past. Money well spent IMHO.

Iflower3:

I know we will be doing the same with our laundry! I cant believe its coming up so quickly. It will be here before we know it

 

[Canadian_Koda]

If any one else is planning on going to Paris after the cruise you can buy tickets in advance for the Eiffel Tower. I can't post a link yet but take out the spaces and add the dot to get it.

tour-eiffel [dot] com /preparing-your-visit/buying-your-tickets

 

[kcashner]

Hi All,

Other than the formal night, how fancy does one dress for dinner? Your excursion clothes ok? gotta get dressed up? I'm sure there are a lot of answers to this, but trying to plan for "the big pack" and starting to stress if we all need to bring fancy clothes for all 11 nights.

Thanks in advance I hope to meet many of you on the ship!

Tinkfan4

We usually try to clean up a bit if we've been out on an excursion all day, but casual is the order of most days. No, you do not need fancy clothes for 11 nights....and remember that you're only a dinner for a couple hours--you can repeat clothes if you manage to not spill on them!

 

[LaEsmralda]

I booked on Aoril 3 and I booked a guarranted room (1GT) I believe. I looked yesterday just to see if i had a room assignment and low and behold there it was room 2605 deck 2. .

We booked back around the 1st of March and our room assignment still hasn't posted yet? Wonder how much longer we have to wait.

 

[disneymom13176]

I have pulled all of the US Embassey contact information and instructions for obtaining a replacement passport in all of the ports. If you would like a copy of this document send me a PM and I will pass along the information. I thought that this might not be bad information to have with me just in case.

Amy

 

[wildonethirtyseven]

Hi Amy
I will be contacting you in the next hour reguarding the private tours

 

[Boomerang4]

We booked back around the 1st of March and our room assignment still hasn't posted yet? Wonder how much longer we have to wait.

We booked in March too and haven't received our stateroom either. But we are a different category. I was guessing that they do the categories separately, but is yours the same as theirs? In any case, I'm sure the time is getting near for us all. (my husband thinks I'm crazy that I'm so excited about finding out)

 

[LaEsmralda]

Our category is 05C. I am sooo excited to find out!

 

[Boomerang4]

We are a 07A guarantee. Didn't qualify for the service discount, although my husband will deploy to the war zone in August. This is our big splashout before his trip. We're happy with whatever we get, but it's so much more fun when you know...I'm guessing sometime around Friday (they assigned the TA staterooms two weeks ago Friday), though I hope it's sooner. Checking twice a day now...

 

[DopeyFan1966]

My guess is they will publish it tomorrow, 45 days out. Last year I got my room assignment 49 days prior to disembarkment. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[kaceyisme]

Good luck to all who have guarantees!!

 

[DopeyFan1966]

added a couple more pictures to the website and added Embassy information to the "cruise info" tab also. That was really good information that Amy located for us. Didn't even think about it last year, hopefully won't need it this year.

 

[Boomerang4]

I was curious as to what part of the ship the crew got space in and found the following. very interesting. I can't post URLs yet, but the address is dcljobs dot com / small-spaces.aspx. go to the bottom of the narrative and "click here" and a crew member gives a video tour of his quarters. It's small, for sure, but he is funny and positive about it.

Also, from ALL EARS is the following. I think they're having a great time (I would have killed to work a cruise ship at 22) but it's fascinating and nice to know:

The number one question that I'm always asked about working on the ship is, "What were the rooms like?" Let me tell you, the first time I opened the door to my crew room, it took my breath away (not in a good way, either!). I don’t think it's possible to imagine how tiny a crew room is without actually seeing it! Seriously, your mind can't even fathom such things.

When I opened the door to my home-away-from-home for the first time, the door swung into the room and immediately took up half of the interior space. To my left was a wall that had two narrow desks, each with one shelf above with metal railings so your items wouldn't fly off during rough waters. We had a television on one of the shelves, which broadcast the guest television channels as well as an additional movie channel for the crew.

Immediately in front of me were two bunk beds. I don’t think they were even full-size twin beds, they were so small. Thankfully, though, they each had a curtain that could be pulled the entire length of the bed so that you could sleep while your roommate had the lights on. Though we each had two closets, which would hold about eight hangers each, most of the storage was in and under the bed. The headboard and footboard could be lifted up for some small storage and we each had a drawer under the lower bunk. That's it.

If all of this wasn't depressing enough, I hadn’t even stepped inside the "bathroom" yet, which was being hidden by the opened room door. Crew bathrooms are very reminiscent of airline bathrooms, only with a really tiny shower in the corner. The shower is in the shape of a triangle, and you can’t lift both arms up at once without hitting the shower curtain and having it cling to you. The toilet and sink were crammed in there, too, with very little storage space.

The room was entirely too small for one person (although more senior members of staff did get single rooms), but imagine putting two people in it at the same time -– there was no room to even move around, since we had about nine square feet of open floor space. When my boyfriend sent me a bouquet of flowers on my birthday, the flowers ended up taking up so much room that we had pollen on our clothes for about a week, since the flower arrangement consumed about half of our usable walking area by the door. At Christmas, my family wanted to send me a small tabletop tree to decorate. They just couldn't comprehend that there was literally no surface space to set a tree on.

 

[Boomerang4]

And this from ALL EARS too. Nice to know they get to relax occasionally.

Some guests are aware of the Disney Cruise Line crew member pool which is located at the bow of the ship. You might have seen it from the guest decks and wondered, "How do I get to that pool? There's hardly anyone there!" or you might have heard about it during DCL trivia contests. The crew pool is literally one of the few places where crew members can just hang out and be themselves, without fear of acting improperly in front of guests.

During the day, crew members can work on their tan, take a swim, or just socialize in the open air and sunshine. At night, the crew pool transforms itself into party central. This is where the crew members gather to have drinks, talk about their day and socialize. It's essentially just like any bar you'd go to after a long day of work or during a night out on the town. Crew parties last until the wee hours of the night, and sometimes they actually have a theme, like a costume night.

When it was raining or the winds were just too rough, crew parties were held inside. There was one common crew area, beside the crew mess, where many crew activities took place. It was generally just a meeting room, filled with seats and booths. This is where we had crew training during our orientation onboard the ship. However, at night, crew members gather here to watch movies, have impromptu parties and generally just gather with friends. Since crew rooms are so small and there are few places available anywhere on the ship where crew members can congregate outside of guest contact, these were essentially the places to be seen.

Occasionally, crew members were allowed to "take over" guest areas. The Cruise Staff and Children's Programming Department routinely had parties in the area that used to be the ESPN Club the night before members of our staff left the ship at the end of their contract. Since this occurred quite frequently, we could easily have gatherings in the Club late in the evening on the nights before disembarkation when guests were busy packing their suitcases and weren't staying in the clubs too late.

We were also fortunate to be able to take over the Spa late one night. We weren't able to enjoy spa services, but we could utilize the steam showers and saunas. At that point, a full size shower was definitely a luxury experience.

 

[DopeyFan1966]

Got our room assignment, we were upgraded from category 5C to a category 4. We are in room 8026, just a couple rooms down from the upgraded room that we got last year.



I'm getting really excited now.

Cindy

 

[kaceyisme]

Got our room assignment, we were upgraded from category 5C to a category 4. We are in room 8026, just a couple rooms down from the upgraded room that we got last year.



I'm getting really excited now.

Cindy

Congrats on the upgrade

 

[Boomerang4]

That's great Cindy! Congrats! Deck 8 is pretty sweet. Yeah, you must be thrilled and really ready to pack now!

Nothing for us yet...

Anything showing for you LaEsmralda?

 

[disney_bob]

We're also still waiting to hear on our GTY status. Was sure hoping it would be today

 

[scrapycruiser]

Got our room assignment, we were upgraded from category 5C to a category 4. We are in room 8026, just a couple rooms down from the upgraded room that we got last year.



I'm getting really excited now.

Cindy

Hey, that's terrific about your upgrade !!

We have a new stateroom # 7632

Cindy, as these FE staterooms come in will you be adding them to the FE List ?

Is anyone doing the Turkish Schooner in Malta ??
What about the Village of Cefalu out of Palermo ??

 

[Marymom]

Our GTY staterooms were assigned today also! We had 9D gty and got moved up to 9b! Our new stateroom numbers are 2590 and 2592. I will start compiling a notebook to keep all my info together this week. It won't be long now...

Mary