OUR OHANA's Back-to-back cruises w/ pics, navs, menus ** UPDATED Food pics **10/19

[OurOhana]

We loved seeing all of the T-shirts we've seen on the Disboards of people heading out on the Magic and Wonder. We decided to give it a try. We made two shirts for each of us. The blue shirt was for our first cruise, and the red was for our second cruise. We wore them on the first day of each cruise. The crew especially seemed to like seeing our names on the front of the shirts so they could call us by name.

To make the shirts, we explored the disboards for great graphics and then added words in google's Pacassa, which is free. We bought the shirts for just a few dollars each at an arts and crafts store, and then bought iron on transfers for dark colors. It was pretty easy to do, though a little time-consuming.

Here's what we had on the blue shirts:

You saw the front of the shirts in a previous post, but it's hard to see the name tags. We used the same tags with each of our names for both shirts:

Here's the red shirt graphic:

 

[OurOhana]

And we love door magnets - They certainly make it easy to find your room! We let our daughter decorate our door, though we added some to the top of the door.

Below are some of the magnets we made. (We got the pictures from the disboards from the really creative people here and then added words or made changes in Picassa or our photo editor, Adobe PhotoShop Elements.) Also included in the photo above are some of the magnets our fish-extender exchange group made for us. We got great gifts and that was so much fun to do - it'll be a separate post later with pics of other gifts.


Here are just a few of our magnets:

 

[OurOhana]

Thanks for your mouthwatering reply. Can't wait for more of your report.

You're welcome!

Really enjoying your report! We haven't cruised yet, but look forward to our 1st one next summer. Our DD will be in the Club so it was nice to see some pics that I hadn't seen yet. The Parrot Cay pics were great too. Yum!

Your DD will love the club, I'm sure. I'll post navigators later (once I scan them in) to show you some of the great activities they had on our trip. Our DD had a blast.

Can't wait to hear more!

Thank you for visiting our trip report!!

 

[camarks1234]

great report! We were with you on the 9/17 cruise and I even remember seeing you in your shirts at the port!

looking forward to reading more. I really should get on and do mine!

 

[pmama]

subbing, can't wait to read more!

 

[OurOhana]

great report! We were with you on the 9/17 cruise and I even remember seeing you in your shirts at the port!

looking forward to reading more. I really should get on and do mine!

Thank you! You should do a report. While it's nice reading them of other cruises, I'd love to see TRs for the cruises we were on. It's just nice to see things from different perspectives - and see some of the things we never even knew were happening.

 

[OurOhana]

subbing, can't wait to read more!

Thank you! I promise to start scanning in navs and menus tomorrow so I can add even more before I have to go back to work Monday. Or at least I'll already have the scanning done so it'll be simpler to update during the work week.

 

[DMMarla07860]

great so far, can't wait to read more. Will get me more excited for my next 3 day cruise in December

 

[OurOhana]

So while my mom and I stayed in the room to unpack (I think it's close to impossible not to completely unpack at the beginning of the cruise. It would be hard living out of suitcases in such a small room.) DH took DD to the pool. She couldn't use the Mickey slide the last time, because she was too short. Actually, they told her that after she'd already gone down it a couple times. But this time, not a problem. A growth spurt did the trick, thankfully.

She went into the toddler area briefly. We're not really big on letting her hang out there. I tell her it's for little ones who can't go in her big-girl pool. Plus, while she would never purposely hurt another child, I would worry she'd run around and topple someone over. But here are pics of what the toddler area looks like:

While I'm doing this somewhat by topic, I'm also trying to do it in some order. Later in our trip, we did some nighttime swimming, and I'll post pics of that as well. I highly recommend it. We all had fun, and we didn't to worry about the heat or sun.

 

[OurOhana]

great so far, can't wait to read more. Will get me more excited for my next 3 day cruise in December

OK, Now I'm jealous. Not just of the December cruise, but from your signature, I can see you have many more planned. It's just a reminder to me to play the lottery

 

[laura_happy]

this is great! the pictures are wonderful and so helpful for me, a soon to be first-time cruiser in February. Thanks!

 

[OurOhana]

Obviously everyone got the disboards memo that staying on the ship on Nassau day was a good idea, because we had quite a few people on board with us.

In the morning, we started with room service, as we did all but one day, I believe. Usually, we just got coffee, juice and milk. Plus, I always got a croisant, while everyone else in the family usually had an English muffin. It was just enough to keep us content for breakfast.

DD went to the club and the rest of us went to Triton's for breakfast. It was a better experience for us than it was when we went to Lumineer's for breakfast one day on the Magic. I'll include the few breakfast pics I remembered to take later on with the food posts.

Here are the navigator's for the 3-night. I'll post the 4-night navigator in a separate post.

A few things I'd suggest - I would definitely do the shows. We did all of the shows the first trip, and skipped them the second cruise. Of course, doing dinner and a show on the cruise means a good 2 1/2 hours or more are taken up. More if you count the little bit of down time between them. Essentially, we were tied up from 5:45 p.m. for first seating through about 9:15 or 9:30. After that, it was pretty much bed time for us some night because our daughter is still used to an early bed time.

The last cruise we were on was during a cold chill. So we missed the sailing away party. I didn't want to miss it again. So after the safety drill, we headed up stairs.
TIP - Even if it looks busy, look around to see if there is room in the pool area. We found that many people had seats on the outside, but there were areas we could sit down at the edge of the pool (which they cover for the party) It made it easy to jump up and dance, and sit down when we were tired. It was a really neat sailaway part. I'd recommend going if you can.

On the last day of the cruise, after Castaway Cay, we were just hot and tired. We came back from the beach, used the showers outside and near the hottubs and then jumped in the goofy pool. It felt so good after walking around the beach for a while. We were with another couple and their child that we met on the January cruise. We all decided to skip dinner that night and let the girls eat outside on Deck 9. We all ate there. That allowed us to go to the 6:15 or 6:30 show, which we again loved. We were all able to go to bed a little earlier that night.

Next up: Back-to-back process

 

[thatgrrl]

Hey! Our daughters (and us) were doing computers together the first day -- 9/17 -- in the kids club.

We were in our own matching shirts.

 

[OurOhana]

Argh. It was the first day back at work, and instead I wanted to be sitting on deck 4 feeling the breeze all day. But that won't happen again for a while. So instead, I'll just enjoy the memories while I wright this report.

this is great! the pictures are wonderful and so helpful for me, a soon to be first-time cruiser in February. Thanks!

Thank you. I'm glad you're enjoying it. I really loved reading TRs before our first cruise to give me an idea of what to expect, so I'm glad mine is being helpful. Don't hesitate to ask if you have questions.

Hey! Our daughters (and us) were doing computers together the first day -- 9/17 -- in the kids club.

We were in our own matching shirts.

I remember! How did you enjoy your cruise? Did your daughter have a blast, I hope?

 

[OurOhana]

I've posted part of this on another thread comparing 3, 4 and 7 night cruises and pros and cons of Back-to-back cruises. Plus, I've added some stuff.

So the last night of the cruise, we got a note in our room and a call to let us know to meet at Guest Services at 9:15 a.m. the next day to get off the ship.

There was only one couple aside from us doing back-to-backs. We had to wait a little while to get off because for some reason they were a little slower clearing the boat. A lot of people seemed to be sitting around waiting for something. Not sure what. The DCL folks seemed surprised by the delay. Not a big deal. We got off sometime after 9:30 a.m., I’d say.
A DCL crew member walked with us through customs and back up to the port area. They told us we’d be checked on in a little bit. But then I think they forgot us until the other couple asked about getting checked on (they already begun checking others on at this point.) As soon as they asked, DCL checked us in, took our pics and walked us back on board.
Some of the doors were locked down, I guess for testing, so we couldn’t get back into our room right away. We went to Cove Café, as we were told to do on our note. They said kids could go there as well until others started to board the boat. But some crew members were enjoying the area, and the guy working there didn’t seem to get the memo that we were supposed to come there. He said our daughter wasn’t supposed to be there, and he didn’t want to give us a couple glasses of water (instead, wanted to sell us drinks.) We explained we were doing back-to-backs, so he gave us the glasses of water. And then we decided to head out so our daughter wouldn’t disturb anyone. Plus, we had heard by then that the test they were doing with the doors was over, so we figured we could get in our room.
A CM had to open the main door to our walkway, so then we were good to go. At about 11:45 we headed down to Parrot Cay for lunch. We were the first ones in there, and it was really nice.
And because we were Back-to-Back cruisers (at least that’s what they told us) we had special gifts every day in our room.

We came back to a nice fruit bowl the first day:

ookies another day (though I forgot to take a pic before we ate them. We took them into a movie with us.)

A cheese platter:

And finally a chocolate, dessert platter:

It was just very thoughtful, and helped make our trip even more special.

Also, the last night of the 3-night cruise, we took our tips to the dining staff. We had only gone in one day. (we did Palo another day, and the CC day we went to an early show instead of early dining so we could get to bed earlier. We just had dinner out on deck 9 while our daughter swam and played with one of her friends.) So anyway, the head server seemed very worried that we hadn’t returned since the first night. He said he could come eat breakfast at anytime the next morning, so we wouldn’t have to get up so early. And when I asked if we could select our rotation and asked what our options were, he said, “What would you like.” And then he gave us that rotation (Tritons, Animator’s Palate, Animator’s Palate and Parrot Cay.) He was great the rest of the trip as well, and I’ll mention him quite a bit in the dining part of this report.
If we had wanted to add or change a Palo reservation, we could have done that the last night of the cruise too. We wanted to cancel ours, since we had already gone on the first one. It was easy to change.

Pros of Back-to-Back
--You really get to know the crew, and they are some wonderful people. We enjoyed getting to know each of them better.
--DCL was very nice about giving us little treats. Not sure if they do it every time, but we loved it.
--Since you can see each show twice, you can also choose to do other things. So we saw the shows on our first cruise, and then on the second cruise we spent time swimming at night, going to other activities and just overall enjoying relaxing times.
--Two stops at Castaway Cay, which we loved!

Cons
--Two life jacket drills
--You kind of lose a good portion of one day because all of the services are shut down as people are leaving the boat.

 

[OurOhana]

We spent time the first cruise doing the shows, but there wasn't a ton of time for a lot of activities in two short days away.

So this one we saw two movies - Up and G-Force, both in 3-D. We also saw a couple of shows - the Match your Mate show (sort of the Newlyweds game - It was really cute. We also went to a trivia show called Mickey Mania, where families and the audience answer questions. And we did the galley tour (I have pics to post separately.) And the final day, my mom and I went to the spa. Since we didn't feel like we had to see the shows again, we also spent one evening swimming at night. It was really fun.

 

[LC30]

Kelli, Hello! I loved that you posted the navigators on here I'm glad you guys had a good experience with Oceaneers for DD because we had an ok experience with it for DS. He didn't like it as much although the CMs seemed engaged when we first dropped him off, we were disappointed to see that he was on his own and not looking too happy when we picked him up both times. The only saving grace was he got to be a mousesketeer with Mickey and he got to do si do with Snow White. I'm still working on my trip report too. Work has been crazy since I got back. ARGH! I'm with you....sitting on the beach in CC with a drink in hand would be so much better.

 

[OurOhana]

Kelli, Hello! I loved that you posted the navigators on here I'm glad you guys had a good experience with Oceaneers for DD because we had an ok experience with it for DS. He didn't like it as much although the CMs seemed engaged when we first dropped him off, we were disappointed to see that he was on his own and not looking too happy when we picked him up both times. The only saving grace was he got to be a mousesketeer with Mickey and he got to do si do with Snow White. I'm still working on my trip report too. Work has been crazy since I got back. ARGH! I'm with you....sitting on the beach in CC with a drink in hand would be so much better.

Hi Linda. Yes, CC would be much better than work. And we had beautiful weather here today, it made me think of the Bahamas all the more.

I'm sorry to hear you weren't happy with the club. I've heard similar comments before about CMs engaging children. DD is pretty outgoing, so it's not usually much of an issue for us. And in general, she wasn't in there as much this time as last, probably partly because the weather was nicer than time and we could swim more. I wish I had known your DS wasn't having as much fun, I would have made sure to have DD in there the same time so they could have played together.

I'm looking forward to reading your report. Thanks for visiting mine.

 

[caribear]

Sounds like you had a wonderful trip!! Thanks for sharing your trip report with us!

We were on the Wonder when my DD was 3 and had a bad experience with Oceaneers. No interaction with my DD from the CM's...and they even "lost" her at one point. I went to pick her up one evening and they could not find her. They kept saying "Oh, I think I know who you are talking about." We kept looking everywhere.....my heart was beating so fast and I was begining to cry....finally after about 15 minutes they found her asleep behind the TV set in the first room!! We never brought her back after that and she didn't want to go back either. Since then we have been on Princess and RCCL and she loves their clubs. I think it was the fact that there were so many kids and not enough CM's to engage the children.

 

[LC30]

Hi Linda. Yes, CC would be much better than work. And we had beautiful weather here today, it made me think of the Bahamas all the more.

I'm sorry to hear you weren't happy with the club. I've heard similar comments before about CMs engaging children. DD is pretty outgoing, so it's not usually much of an issue for us. And in general, she wasn't in there as much this time as last, probably partly because the weather was nicer than time and we could swim more. I wish I had known your DS wasn't having as much fun, I would have made sure to have DD in there the same time so they could have played together.

I'm looking forward to reading your report. Thanks for visiting mine.

Thanks. I know. It would have been great for them to play in there together. But it was fine overall, we only left him there 2x - for palo dinner and brunch. The rest of the cruise was just one big party for him.

This is my way of keeping up with you. Since you were one of the first trip reports I read to help me with our first Disney cruise back in May. Tell Bryan and Pauline, I said "hello"