MagicMe
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 3, 2006
- Messages
- 4,267
About one year ago, I returned from my best Disney Cruise trip to date. 
I was all excited to write 
my trip report but soon one week went by and then another and another. My life slowing got back to reality 
, and I reflected on our magical trip by reading 
fellow DISer's TR's of our cruise. As I sat enjoying their fantastic accounts of their various escapades 
, I thought "I should get busy on my trip report"!! But soon one week went by and then another and another!! 
Ok - you get the picture!!!!
So here I am almost one year later again reflecting on our cruise in 2008, anticipating our big cruise in 2010 and trying to think of how to fill in the time - when I got the brilliant idea
of FINALLY writing my TR!!!FIRST some background:
I promise not to go back to the beginning of my life
, but just provide a little information as to how this trip came about. I am a single mom of two grown (can't believe how quick that happened 
) sons. We've done many WDW trips as a family when the boys were younger and into their teens. These trips always consisted of at least me, my Mom (NANA) and the 2 boys. As they got older, they decided it wasn't as cool 
to vacation with Mom, so I took several trips where it was just me and my Mom. In 2000, with 18 extended family members, my Mom and I took our first DCL cruise (her first ever) on a 4-day Wonder trip. We had such a great time and all insisted we would do a 7-day next. Time goes by and in 2005 I decided it was time to have a vacation with my two sons again. 
I booked an early September WDW trip for me, Mom, my 2 DS's, DS2's girlfriend and a friend of DS1. We had such a great time that when we came back both boys (separately) went on the WDW website to investigate another trip. Literally the first Monday back at work I received separate emails from them with a quote for a week trip in late October. The only difference was they were one day apart! It took a while but I finally re-awakened their Disney spirit!!!! 
So I booked the trip for late October 2006 (including MNSSHP) for me, Mom, DS1, DS2 and DS2's GF. At the same time, my extended family was looking at another DCL cruise. Unfortunately, we had to settle for a 4 day again
to meet everyone's schedule and budget. So I had my second DCL cruise in August and then hit WDW in October .After coming back from my second DCL cruise, I was determined to get my 2 DS's to try out the cruise. So, I started investigating future cruises. I definitely wanted a 7-day and I needed to keep the expenses down (3 cabins
). September looked good price wise. As I looked at those, I came upon a Double Dip scheduled for the end of September - I mean what good be better then 2 stops at CC!! 
Finally in April 2007, I took the plunge and booked 3 cabins: 1 for me and my Mom, 1 for DS1 and his GF and 1 for DS2 and his GF. Shortly after booking, DS2 and his GF broke up (after 7 years). Now what to do??? I held on to the 3rd cabin in the hopes that DS2 might find someone before we sailed (we had well over a year 
). Unfortunately, as time got closer, DS2 knew he didn't want to travel solo so we canceled his cabin. Now DS2 and his GF were also DISer's so we wiled away the time joining our cruise thread (the Double Dip Delight) and making scores of new friends!!!
We were so excited planning our first 7-day DCL cruise (DS1's first ever). We discussed excursions, created door magnets, purchased our DDD T-shirts, obtained fish extenders (I bought mine from a fellow DDD DISer and DS1's GF made theirs) and gathered fish extender gifts.I wanted to provide one more piece of background information before I wrap this up. When we returned from our first WDW trip in 2005, DS1 found the DISboards. During his search around the DISboards, he found mention of a DISmates site. He entered his profile which you could do at no expense. A bit later, he was contacted by a young lady who had seen his profile. Since he used the same name on both sites, she was able to find him and sent him a PM. They PM'd, then exchanged emails, and then phone numbers. Weeks later they had their first date.
She lives about an hour away so they met for dinner and a movie halfway in between. Well, suffice it to say - they hit it off 
SO - if you're still with me
.... up next - pre-cruise last minute happenings!!!
Dave and Amy had decided that they couldnt be that close without a WDW fix (they actually were already there in August with her family), 
Of course I immediately had to call just about EVERYONE I knew to tell them the good news!! I even got to post it on the cruise thread (I cleared it with Amy first)! So now we had something to celebrate on our cruise!!!!
I called my mom and we decided that we would act calmly (REALLY???) and just go to the airport at the scheduled time. My DSis dropped us at the airport and we checked in with no problem. The flight was still showing on time so we grabbed some lunch and then went to our gate and waited. And waited. And waited. We watched as our scheduled departure time slowly moved first 20 minutes, then 40 minutes, then 1 hour and counting. There were numerous announcements that our flight was full but they were still trying to seat passengers from the earlier canceled flight. They were offering a ticket for flights anywhere in the US to give up your seat. About 45 minutes later they increased that to two tickets!! I seriously considered it (since they promised to put us on a 4PM flight) but we had tickets for MNSSHP that night and I didnt want to miss it!!! (not to mention that there was no guarantee that the 4PM flight would leave on time and who knew what time we could finally end up in Mickeyland??) 1-1/2 hours into our wait they informed us that our plane had left and would be arriving in about ½ hour. Thankfully, they turned that plane around quickly and we were finally on our way!
Amy had worked the college program and she really knew her way around so we didnt get lost. 
We had so much fun! This was my second time and it never gets old. We rode all the rides we wanted to ride and we had so much fun hitting all the candy spots (and yes we found every single one several times??). We skipped the first parade in favor of gathering even more candy seriously what were we going to do with all of it anyway???? We watched Hallowishes sitting behind the castle and then headed towards the entrance to grab seats at the train station area for the next Boo-to-You parade. Dave and Amy stopped along the way to pick up a slew of snacks (they were using up the last of their snack credits from the dining plan) and we munched away waiting for the parade to start. The parade was awesome (I just love the gravediggers!!) as usual. We relaxed a bit while the remaining crowds filtered out making sure to grab even more candy (love those Ghiradelli carmel squares!!!!) and then hopped on the monorail back to our room to sleep. Between not having much sleep Thursday night and the fun of walking around MK several times, we were actually able to sleep a little. 
