Rockin' the Magic for New Years 12-29-2010

[been2marceline]

Hi, sorry for crashing. I'm not on this cruise, but I'll be on the 11-night Holiday cruise just berfore this one. I was looking for information about longer cruises and wondering if any of you might have been looking as well, and maybe found something you were willing to share.


I'm looking for things like:

• What are dining rotations like?
• When might Pirate Night be?
• Should we expect 2 formal nights plus semi-formal (or 1 formal, 2 semi)?
• How many Palo reservations can you make?
• What extra evening shows might we expect?
• Any other information or ideas you might have?

Thanks,
Aaron

I was on the first Eastbound Repo in 2005 (14 days). From what I recall, the rotations were no different than a normal cruise, different restaurant each night, no duplicates, we were in concierge so we planned / requested our rotation so we were not in PC or AP the night of the Formal. There was, from what I remember 2 formals, but I could be wrong - the Mrs. always make me dress up.... sigh...

I've not been onboard since 11/2007 so I am unsure as to the rotations nowadays - as far as I'm concerned, I can skip Parrot Cay completely - nothing lost there.

Pirate night from what I can deduce is always held after leaving the southern most port, heading northbound back to PC. On our repo that was Curacao, the last 7 day we took Pirate Night was after leaving St. Maarten. so my guess is that on our 10 night, Pirate Night will be after leaving Antigua, but we'll have to see - for your cruise, I'm not sure.

On the special cruises, Disney always puts on some special shows, as the normal 7 day rotations won't fill the bill. We had Susan Egan, The Muppets, Mark Curry ( Hangin' with Mr. Cooper) , Joey Fatone hosting "Who Wants to be a Mousekateer", etc. at night, Ducky Williams & Michael Jordan ( Somellier not NBA - wine education) as well as Canal historians and other Disney VIPs giving presentations during the day. Count on extra deck parties.

Again, because I was in concierge, Palo was handled for us, we went to dinner twice, did the brunch and the tea - but this was a 14 day event so there were more opportunities available. We never saw Palo completely full at any time, so with the longer cruise, availability looks to be less of an issue.

Enjoy your cruise!

 

[bigAWL]

Thanks so much for the replies. Great info. If you all don't mind, I'll check in from time to time to see if anyone has gathered more info. I'll also be happy to share anything that my group turns up.

So far, someone said their previous 10-night cruise had 1 formal night and 2 semi-formals. I've heard both ways, but it's consistent that there are 3 "dress-up" nights on the longer cruises. She also said that she thinks we're only allowed to book Palo for 1 dinner, 1 brunch and 1 tea. I'm guessing additional onboard bookings might be possible.

Thanks again,
Aaron

 

[lucky1]

Anyone looking at going out early before the cruise? I have been watching flights (luckily they are dropping in price), but seems like we can get a better deal going out Monday before the cruise instead of the day before.

Thinking about going out Monday now and then spending the day at PC and going to KSC (reading the posts about possibly getting free tickets from your congressman).

Anyone else?

 

[been2marceline]

We're coming in on the 21st and spending Xmas at AKV.

I bought return tickets at $81.00 per person coming home ( Back to SF ) through Orbitz on Delta - I thought it had to be a mistake, but I have the confirmations....


Going out - we're using miles for 2 of us and will either buy more miles or do a JetBlue for one of us.... whatever is cheaper.

The fares are about 30% of what they were when they fist came out, not sure how much lower they can get?

 

[lucky1]

I bought return tickets at $81.00 per person coming home ( Back to SF ) through Orbitz on Delta - I thought it had to be a mistake, but I have the confirmations....


The fares are about 30% of what they were when they fist came out, not sure how much lower they can get?

OMG.. you have a deal on your way back. If I could just find something like that to PHX or TUS. Right now nothing is below 150. (I haven't checked SW yet thought).

 

[been2marceline]

Thinking about going out Monday now and then spending the day at PC and going to KSC (reading the posts about possibly getting free tickets from your congressman).

Anyone else?

The free pass thing has been there forever - but you have to beg for them - I believe both our reps and senators have access to them.

It used to be, and possibly still is, the main way the public got access to the preferred viewing areas for launches was this.

My father and uncle worked on Apollo, this was during the Gemini program back in the sixties. I've seen at least a dozen manned launches of various types - never did see the Saturn V launch though - one my greatest regrets.

We lived there for a couple of years during Gemini when I was younger, Dad had access to all of the non-military areas there.

At that time, there was a "static" display of a bunch of unused or mockups of miscellaneous rocket engines, boosters and military ordnance ( missles ) all bolted to what looked like a small parking lot on the space center. No signs, theaters, gift shops, etc.

This is what grew into the public KSC thing we see today.

Pretty cool stuff - even if you have to pay for it. Highly recommended.

 

[lucky1]

My father and uncle worked on Apollo, this was during the Gemini program back in the sixties. I've seen at least a dozen manned launches of various types - never did see the Saturn V launch though - one my greatest regrets.


Pretty cool stuff - even if you have to pay for it. Highly recommended.

Hey... My father worked on the Apollo as well (booster rockets) I remember seeing one of the capsule when it came back through a tour of the US state capitals. But we never made it to KSC even when my brother was in Melbourne at school.

Looks like we will probably be going at least 2 days early, so more opportunity to visit KSC. Our last cruise we did 2 days of Disney and that was so expensive (probably more than the cruise).

 

[been2marceline]

Hey... My father worked on the Apollo as well (booster rockets) I remember seeing one of the capsule when it came back through a tour of the US state capitals. But we never made it to KSC even when my brother was in Melbourne at school.

My father worked in the "Manned Spacecraft" section, mostly running the altitude chamber at the MSOB - Manned Spacecraft Operations Building.

NASA had built this huge vacuum chamber in which they could place the entire excursion section of the Saturn V into it and run simulated missions to test the hardware in realistic conditions. My uncle worked in launch support - gantries, fueling, etc.

We lived in Rockledge, just south of the Levitt development. Melbourne was a shopping destination on weekends, most of that are of the state was still gators & palmettos then.

Completely different world now - nothing there is the same....

The needs of the Apollo program gave us the world we live in today.

There was a need to develop computers that were smart enough, yet light enough to boost to the moon, for guidance and control purposes.

To satisfy this requirement, a bunch of guys near San Jose, California figured that they could take the solid state electronics (transistors) of the era and combine bunches of them into single pieces of silicon - called Large Scale Integration ( nothing nowadays - the stuff that Intel makes today is a hundred orders of magnitude more complex ).

These integrated circuits allowed the computing power needed for Apollo to be small enough and light enough to make the mission successful.

The side effect?? The entire modern computing and communications industry that we have today.

Pretty good return on investment!

 

[lucky1]

Completely different world now - nothing there is the same....

The needs of the Apollo program gave us the world we live in today.

There was a need to develop computers that were smart enough, yet light enough to boost to the moon, for guidance and control purposes.

pretty amazing where we are today. The amount of data we can store now is even more impressive to me.

Back to the cruise. Still seems like this is a very light DIS group. No activity on Cruise critics or Passporter, so makes me think they might end up offering deals closer to the cruise.

Still don't have our airline tickets yet (frequent flier miles were too strange times and price is just too high right now. )

 

[lucky1]

been2marcline - Did you see dateline last night, it was on apollo 13? They made a lot of references on the advancements of technology. I rarely tune into network TV, but for some reason I saw that on the guide and thought I would watch.


Also question out to those who are watching, since seems a lot of folks have dropped from this cruise and the OP of this thread has moved on, should we restart this meet thread so that we can edit the first posting with those that are on the cruise with a pointer back to this thread, which would be locked?

 

[been2marceline]

Not that particular show - I've seen a lot of it, my uncle was part of the launch crew for 13.

He was convinced it was staged....

About your post concerning restarting the thread, I think we might as well, cuz it looks like its just you and me.

 

[lucky1]

About your post concerning restarting the thread, I think we might as well, cuz it looks like its just you and me.

Ok.. I will start a new one and ask the moderators to lock this one later today.

If it is just our 2 families might make FE easier and cheaper.

 

[3riverscruiser]

I am still on this voyage but had been off the boards for quite awhile. I received a surprising call from DCL just a few minutes ago. It seems that our wonderful 10 day cruise has been bisected into 2 5 day cruises going to CC 2X and Nassau 1X. Needless to say, we were quite disappointed and declined the rebooking and jumped onto the 12/30 Wonder 7 day. I guess DCL was having trouble selling a 10 day in these times.

 

[lucky1]

I am still on this voyage but had been off the boards for quite awhile. I received a surprising call from DCL just a few minutes ago. It seems that our wonderful 10 day cruise has been bisected into 2 5 day cruises going to CC 2X and Nassau 1X. Needless to say, we were quite disappointed and declined the rebooking and jumped onto the 12/30 Wonder 7 day. I guess DCL was having trouble selling a 10 day in these times.

Yikes... my TA sent me an email asking me to call her. Not sure what we are going to do. This was going to be our big celebration cruise. Thanks for the heads up at least it gives us some time to think about this... Did they tell you if the price would be the same?

 

[3riverscruiser]

We were Cat 3 and there were no more Cat 3's on the 12/30 so we dropped down to Cat 5 and are waitlisted for a Cat 3. Even so, the price seems to be less. It had better be, since we are losing 3 days and 3 really good ports. I was able to negotiate an additional OBC for "compensation.". You should try the same.

 

[lucky1]

We were Cat 3 and there were no more Cat 3's on the 12/30 so we dropped down to Cat 5 and are waitlisted for a Cat 3. Even so, the price seems to be less. It had better be, since we are losing 3 days and 3 really good ports. I was able to negotiate an additional OBC for "compensation.". You should try the same.

See what my travel agent can do... but we are not sure what to do now, as the Dec 18 11 day doesn't work for us and the Dec 30, might work, but sucks having to get off on my birthday.

Enjoy your new cruise.

 

[3princessMommy]

Sorry to hear about your cruise guys! But if it works for you, come join us on the Dec. 18 holiday cruise. You'd all be most welcome!!!

 

[lucky1]

We were Cat 3 and there were no more Cat 3's on the 12/30 so we dropped down to Cat 5 and are waitlisted for a Cat 3. Even so, the price seems to be less. It had better be, since we are losing 3 days and 3 really good ports. I was able to negotiate an additional OBC for "compensation.". You should try the same.

Care to share how much you got in OBC, so that my TA can try that as well? So far DCL is not offering anything to make up for the moving of cruise and lost preferred Room.

 

[Rose Quartz]

Well, I should have been paying attention on this site. We just got the bad news from our TA today. We changed over to the 12-30. Somehow I feel like we are getting the short end of the stick. so DCL can make more $$$... Well, I guess I'll see eveyone on the 12-30 trip...

TTFN!

 

[been2marceline]

We've gotten nothing but grief from DCL over this - they deny that anyone got anything for them canceling - this just plain sucks.

I found out that they are trying to sell the cabin I had for the 10 day for 8K more than I paid - no wonder they want us off.....

I will spend the rest of my life telling people to not trust DCL - I think that over the next 30 years - I believe I can make a dent in their revenues - they deserve it!