Our WDW adventures & Magical Happy Halloween Cruise: Day 14 completed - 01/2010 pg 19

[TotallyAngelic]

Our WDW adventures and "Magical" Happy Halloween Double Dip Cruise. October 2008: Pre-trip Report - 84 Days to go!

I have debated long and hard about whether to write a pre-trip report, or any trip report for that matter, as I constantly wonder who in their right minds would want to wile away their precious hours reading my endless waffle, but then I realised that having spent so many happy hours (days, and probably even weeks) reading all the wonderful trip reports posted on the DIS, I should really make the effort to reciprocate. It is possible that the endless waffle I write may ultimately be of interest and amusement to some, and may even be useful to other first time cruisers, travellers from the UK, bored individuals with too much time on their hands and insomniacs. I have myself learned so many invaluable tips and gained so much advice from reading the trip reports of others. If nothing else I can use it to create a record of my planning and preparations, not to mention my headaches, stresses and strains, trials and tribulations and total downright panics (and believe me there will be many) during the countdown to our departure date.

Before I start this endless waffle, which as I mentioned earlier some readers may find is a marvellous cure for insomnia (along the lines of “start reading this and find yourself falling asleep in seconds”), I suppose it makes sense to introduce the crazy crew who you will be sailing with and give you some details of the trip.

We are a family of 6 from Wales in the UK:

Firstly there is myself, Sarah, aged 43 (yikes), midwife, mother and total Disney nut. I love everything Disney, but have a particular obsession with Pirates of the Caribbean (both the rides and the movies). I collect Disney Pins, mainly POTC related, and I only ride indoor coasters!


The other crew members are:

DH Tony, aged 45 – extreme coaster freak, Disney addict, can eat for the UK and loves everything about Florida - especially the food.

Sarah and Tony

and our 4 wonderful kids:

DD 1 Taryn, aged 17 – Disney and Tim Burton addict. Loves movies, musical theatre, drama, writing and art. Loves any excuse to dress up, especially Halloween. Doesn’t do extreme rides.

DD 2 Louise, aged 17 – another Disney addict, favourite character Princess Jasmine!

DS 1 Daniel, aged 14. Self confessed computer geek and YouTube movie maker. Nintendo player and Tim Burton fan! Doesn’t like heights. Loves Disney but won’t admit it to his school mates (“MUM, please don’t play that Disney CD in the car if my mates get in!)

DS 2 Stephen, aged 18 (will be 19 ATOC) Loves extreme coasters and theme parks, and Arsenal Football Club.

Left to right as you look at this photo we have Tony (DH), Daniel (DS, now 14), Taryn (DD, now 17), Louise (DSD now 17) and Stephen (DSS, now 18)

This will be my 6th Florida trip, 4th Orlando trip and 11th Disney trip, if you include our many trips to Disneyland Paris.

So now down to the very important details re. when and where:

The Trip:

October 18th – October 25th : A wonderful 6 days in Orlando, visiting WDW.

October 25th – November 1st : "Halloween on the High Seas" Double Dip Cruise on the Disney Magic - our first Disney Cruise.

November 1st – November 3rd : Back to Orlando - shopping and relaxing before flying home.

As I write this first intallment we are exactly 84 days from our date of departure, and the excitement (and the panic) is really starting to build ......

 

[crmscotland]

Ahoy there Sarah,

I'm pleased you are doing a pre-trippie - your trippies are always fun & interesting to read. Looking forward to reading more about your plans.

Only 84 days until your trip!!!

 

[Disneygrl36]

As I was on the Halloween cruise last year, I MUST follow along with you as you I will be wishing I was there again. I seem to remember you reading along with my trippie last year.
Great start & what a great looking family you have.
Love the pic of you & your DH in Disneyland Paris....I so want to see that castle some day.

 

[diberry]

Oh I LURVE all your trippies - they're so dry and funny - so I'm really happy that you're writing a pre-trippie - thanks very much Sarah!!
I also LURVE that photo of you and Tony in front of the DLP castle - it's great - great pins Tony!! (the metallic ones, not the legs - though those too!! )
Really looking forward to reading lots more installments!

 

[TotallyAngelic]

As I was on the Halloween cruise last year, I MUST follow along with you as you I will be wishing I was there again. I seem to remember you reading along with my trippie last year.
Great start & what a great looking family you have.
Love the pic of you & your DH in Disneyland Paris....I so want to see that castle some day.

HI Melanie (aka Mary Poppins). I remember your wonderful trip report and your amazing costume! I should really be getting cracking with my costumes for Halloween and Pirate night as we are only 83 days out and time seems to be passing really fast now! Do you have another cruise booked? (and great to see you popping into our meet thread!)

 

[TotallyAngelic]

.....or the evolution of our Disney / Florida obsession

Grab some this might be a long one!

Our story begins way back in the distant mists of time, when a trip to Disneyland Paris back in 1996 with my two then very young children and my parents, initiated my love affair with Disney theme parks. I have never been anywhere with so much magical atmosphere, amazing entertainment, and something just totally wonderful which I could not put my finger on

Our story jumps forward a few years to 1999, when Tony and I were planning to get married and had reserved a couple of weeks in June for our honeymoon. Then I made the decision to go back to University and train to be a nurse, and we decided to put our wedding plans on hold for 3 years. However, in the meantime, my parents had booked to take my two children, Taryn and Daniel (then aged 8 and 5), to Disney World at the same time as we would have been going to be away on honeymoon. We still had the 2 weeks booked, so decided surreptitiously to book 2 weeks in Florida and meet them there as a surprise for the kids. I soon as I got off the plane in Florida I fell in love…with the landscape, the atmosphere, the people, everything …. That first trip we concentrated on Disney parks, and as far as I was concerned, the magic wand waved once more and I was well and truly hooked.

Unfortunately financial restraint restricted our holidays during my nurse training, and we had only managed a 2 night trip to Disneyland Paris with our 4 children in 2000 (my family had now doubled in size since meeting Tony in 1997).

This is what they looked like back then - outside Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland Paris:

Before long it was 2002, I was a qualified nurse and we began planning our wedding and honeymoon! When we started thinking about honeymoon destinations at the beginning of 2002, the only acceptable choice for this special holiday for me was Florida, but I felt guilty planning a trip to Florida without the kids, so we decided to go twice…..Orlando in April with all the kids, just as I finished my course in way of celebration, and then again, but this time to the Florida Keys, for our honeymoon in the October.

The April trip was unfortunately only for 10 days, and because we had recently been to Disneyland Paris and with limited time we thought we might just concentrate on Universal Parks with Busch Gardens, SeaWorld and Wet and Wild. This we did, and although we had a great time, I missed the Disney magic.

In 2003 I returned to University to train to be a midwife, and holidays were once again put on hold for a while. Fast forward now to 2004, and I started to think about a celebratory trip for when I finished my midwifery training in spring 2005. What better place for a celebratory trip than Florida - the lure of Disney was too much for my feeble mind to overcome, and despite considering a number of options, Orlando won through and we spent a wonderful two weeks in a villa and had an amazing time in the Disney parks, and a perfect day in Discovery Cove.

All 6 of us in Discovery Cove:

It was during the planning for this trip that I experienced a life-changing event: during my villa investigations I posted on a villa forum asking about busy days in the parks, and a very kind person, who will never know the impact they have had on my sad little life, recommended that I visit a website known as the DIS, and the next thing I remember it was a few weeks later. I was coming round from the anaesthetic after major surgery to separate me from the computer! Tony, thought I had gone stark raving bonkers… constantly talking about the DIS and DISers and becoming obsessed with countdowns and priority seatings, spending every waking hour superglued to the internet!


2005 also saw the first of our trips to Disneyland Paris at Halloween, with a very enjoyable evening spent at the Halloween Soiree in full pirate costume! On this trip I made the wise decision to purchase annual passes , and not only did this make financial sense, it also raised the temptation bar a few notches – with conversations along the lines of “ well why don’t we pop over to Disneyland Paris, after all, we have those annual passes and we really should make good use of them ” cropping up every time we had some time off from work. Needless to say there followed a series of trips to Disneyland Paris that year, Christmas 2005 (well, it would be lovely to see Disney at Christmas before the kids are too old….. silly not to really, what with those annual passes and all), July 2006 (well, it would be great to see the fireworks and stay in the parks until midnight…..silly not to really, what with those annual passes and all), Halloween 2007 (well, we had such a good time last year, and Mickey in his wisdom had decided to extend our annual passes at no extra charge for another year….silly not to really) and July 2007 (for the same reasons as 2006, before it gets boring!).

It's amazing how you can even visit a Disney Park 5 times in 18 months and it just never gets old - there is always something new which catches your attention and the Disney magic is always there

 

[kvaday]

Ok, I'm hooked! Your doing a good job! Cant wait to hear more.

 

[HelenSB]

Sarah, you are a complete & utter NUTTER.....but we loves you anyway!!!! This is brilliant, we eagerly await the next installment

 

[TotallyAngelic]

Sarah, you are a complete & utter NUTTER.....but we loves you anyway!!!! This is brilliant, we eagerly await the next installment

Me - nuts - what on earth gave you that impression!

By the way, as my supporting cast, you are likely to be featuring in this epic before too long, so watch this space!

 

[HelenSB]

By the way, as my supporting cast, you are likely to be featuring in this epic before too long, so watch this space!

OMG..hastily trying to remember if any possibly embarrassing photo's were taken during last weekends' pre-cruise meet & 'drinkies' session!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Disneygrl36]

HI Melanie (aka Mary Poppins). I remember your wonderful trip report and your amazing costume! I should really be getting cracking with my costumes for Halloween and Pirate night as we are only 83 days out and time seems to be passing really fast now! Do you have another cruise booked? (and great to see you popping into our meet thread!)

Hi Sarah. I can't wait to see how your trip plays out & what kind of costumes you come up with for Halloween. We had such fun being Mary P & Bert & I still cannot believe we won for Most Disney that night & on my birthday no less. It was a great night & a great cruise.
We had your cruise booked....booked on board, but as we got thinking about our trips for this year, I found Adventures By Disney Backstage Magic tour & just couldn't seem to pass up the Magic of Disneyland & all the extras on that trip so we booked that and cancelled our cruise ressie. I wish I was rich & we could do both though because as I see pre-trippies starting & saw your cruise meet thread, I find myself & wishing we were cruising with you.

Thanks for the great back story about your Disney obsession & rest assured you have me hooked.

 

[MICKEY'S DREAMERS]

.....or the evolution of our Disney / Florida obsession



All of us in Discovery Cove:

AWWW Sarah !!! I so LOVE the way you put things down in your writing !!!
Your "adventures" are so enjoyable !!! I could not stop reading ... though I already knew some bits of the long story !!!
I SO LOVE loooong stories !!!!

and how nice it is to see your kids "growing up " with Disney addiction !!!!

As you know , I'll soon visit with ...

but I'll catch up with your pretrippie as soon as I get back !!!

Keep the looong stories coming !!!!!

laura

 

[TotallyAngelic]

Now those of you who are keeping up with my saga will remember that in the last installment we were home from Disneyland Paris in July 2007, and I was faced with the daunting prospect that my annual passes were about to come to a end - so to avoid that vile and insufferable affliction, known to many as "DWS" or "Disney Withdrawal Syndrome" there was one and only one course of action - to start planning another trip .

So it was around about July 2007 that the seeds for the forthcoming trip were being sown – we had often thought about cruising as a holiday option but one which we had really consigned to the back burner for when the kids had flown the nest. Tony being ex-Royal Navy, and myself being ex-Princess Cruises employee had long been instilled with a love of all things nautical and it had been a long term ambition of mine to experience cruising from the guest side rather than the staff side. My parents were regular cruisers, and on returning from a Carnival cruise out of Port Canaveral in 2007 they happened to mention that they had been in port with a Disney cruise ship, not only this but they had photographs to prove it….. immediately my ears pricked up and those tiny pixie-dust fuelled cogs and wheels in my brain began working, and I began the process of serious investigation by once again super-gluing my ample backside to the computer chair and relapsing into my DIS addiction – only this time I had a new addiction, the DIS cruise forum, and this was a really strong and powerful addiction for which there turned out to be only one cure – TO BOOK THE DISNEY CRUISE.

While the idea was incubating, we got around to debating when would be the best time to book a Disney cruise: basically anything from February to June was a no go, as the kids had exams in school. Christmas was not an option, so we were left with July or October school holidays. July 2008 would be too soon and July 2009 too far away, and October has always been a great time for us to travel to Florida – pleasant temperatures and fairly quiet in the theme parks, plus the added bonus of celebrating Halloween on the Disney Magic. The only problem was the kids only having 6 days holiday in October, and so if we wanted to extend the cruise we would need to take them out of school!

The next consideration was the cost. I was under the impression that booking a Disney Cruise would not come cheap – bearing in mind that we have 4 teenagers, who are adults so far as the holiday industry is concerned, and we live on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean. Financially this was going to be a biggie - and I needed a house extension. So the mental warfare began: Disney cruise or house extension, Disney cruise or house extension, well let me just work out how much it would cost to do the Disney cruise, after all we might just grab ourselves a bargain …..A WHAT! OK, so the words bargain and Disney cruise do not often crop up in the same sentence, but after costing our cruise with Dreams Unlimited, I can honestly say that the quote we were given was an out and out bargain! It was actually working out at less than £500 per person for the 7 night cruise and I know people who have spent more than that for a miserable 2 weeks in Spain. I was beginning to feel that the house extension was about to concede defeat and before I could say “white flag” I was accepting the quote offered and signing on the virtual dotted line. WE WERE BOOKED ON A DISNEY CRUISE ON 25TH OCTOBER 2008, and the excitement was overwhelming!

It was by now August 2007, and the deed was done, and the house extension was relegated to the “to do” list once again. I signed up to my cruise meet thread, Halloween on the High Seas, where I met a really great bunch of DISers (Hi Guys!), and continued my extensive research. We had a long wait until I could start looking at flights, and I began to consider whether I should be really extravagant and spend a week in WDW before the cruise and as we were going ALL THAT WAY – it was silly not to really! I had a bit of mental anguish over the kids missing school for 5 days, but I am also a great believer in travel as a educational experience and after a few missed days in school caused by teachers strikes and a few more wasted days where they just watched DVDs I decided to go ahead with the WDW plan.

Fast forward now to February 2008, and things were slowly coming together. I managed to book good value flights via Chicago with BMI and got a fantastic accommodation deal, which is so amazing that I will have to reveal it here and now: we are staying in the Cypresse Pointe resort for a incredibly rock bottom price of £299 for 6 people in a 3 bedroom apartement for a whole week. Thank you Hotelopia.com and my fellow cruiser Helen who gave me the heads-up and the extra 15% discount code, and I have reserved a DOTD with Helen's name on it once we get on the Disney Magic!

 

[jns]

What a great start to your pre trip report

can't wait to hear lots more
thanks for sharing

 

[anewmac]

Love it so far. I like how you added pics from then to now. Cant wait to hear more!

 

[MICKEY'S DREAMERS]

I began to consider whether I should be really extravagant and spend a week in WDW before the cruise and as we were going ALL THAT WAY – it was silly not to really!

I love the way you think of things !!!
Like us you make a Disney vacation sound like THE BIG BARGAIN of these last years !!!!!!!!!

laura

 

[crmscotland]

Enjoying reading more. Lovely family photos too.

 

[diberry]

I'm really enjoying this Sarah - even though I've read most of it before I always love your style of writing - and the photos when the kids were little are great!

 

[Disneygrl36]

Lovin' the way you think.

 

[TotallyAngelic]

sorry about the delay with this - my poor old computer has contracted a virus and we are offline for the moment - I am posting this on my Mum's computer - hopefully will be back with the next installment before too long!