*Sept 10th 2011 WB Transatlantic* From Spain to Space Mountain - Part 4

[Goofy Adpi]

FE NOTICE

We're approaching 40 cabins (89 people) signed up for the FE, so it's probably time that we discuss whether or not we want to split the list.

If you are participating in the FE, please post your opinions/preferences on the following:

First, do you think we should split the list or not?

Next, how many staterooms do you think would be reasonable for each list?

Finally, would you be interested in participating in more than one list?

If there is anything else we need to talk about, please make suggestions. I'll definitely work the lists so that there are approximately the same number of cabins/people and adult to child ratios on each.

If anyone would prefer to PM your ideas (or concerns), please feel free. I think we can all agree that few of us have unlimited resources - or luggage space - so please be frank about this. I wouldn't want anyone to feel that they can't participate because of the numbers involved.

Hi Pat

With the strict luggage weight allowance that we have I would prefer to split the list and have a maximum of 20 staterooms per list. I would only want to be in one group for the same reason. Thanks

I agree with splitting into two, or more, lists as needed. I would say somewhere between 20 and 30 rooms would be a good number. I'm doing homemade gifts as well, and I'm not sure I could get them all done in time if the list gets too big.

 

[Goofy Adpi]

My only concern is if we got another 50 cabins signed up in the last few weeks before our cruise. As we are doing handmade gifts I would really like to be finished with it before the last month, will we have a cut off date for sign up?

Oh! I think a cut off date would be a really good thing.

 

[liesbeth1012]

I had asked this on the previous thread but think it got buried:

If we book excursions through DCL when can we still cancel without penalty? The charges are not made for excursions until embarkation, I assume?

Also, how does the OBC process work? We have $200 coming from DU and another $50 for using Disney Visa. Is this automatically applied to your account and a note sent to your stateroom when you get on the ship? I'm just wondering what happens if the correct amount(s) aren't applied and we don't know it until we set sail.

I mailed DCL and this is what they said:
All pre-reserved services can be booked or cancelled up to 3 days prior
to saildate via our website. After that time, all reservations are final
and the cost of the pre-reserved port adventures will be charged to your
shipboard account onboard.
So cancel your booked excursions/port adventures before sept 7 if you want that.

 

[emmah16]

FE NOTICE

We're approaching 40 cabins (89 people) signed up for the FE, so it's probably time that we discuss whether or not we want to split the list.

If you are participating in the FE, please post your opinions/preferences on the following:

First, do you think we should split the list or not?

Next, how many staterooms do you think would be reasonable for each list?

Finally, would you be interested in participating in more than one list?

If there is anything else we need to talk about, please make suggestions. I'll definitely work the lists so that there are approximately the same number of cabins/people and adult to child ratios on each.

If anyone would prefer to PM your ideas (or concerns), please feel free. I think we can all agree that few of us have unlimited resources - or luggage space - so please be frank about this. I wouldn't want anyone to feel that they can't participate because of the numbers involved.

Hi Pat

We have the same problem with luggage weight too . Around 20 cabins would be good and for the same reason we would be only be able to be in one group.

 

[Chris&Jeremy]

I mailed DCL and this is what they said:
All pre-reserved services can be booked or cancelled up to 3 days prior
to saildate via our website. After that time, all reservations are final
and the cost of the pre-reserved port adventures will be charged to your
shipboard account onboard.
So cancel your booked excursions/port adventures before sept 7 if you want that.

Thanks for the info!

 

[squitty]

Hi there fellow cruisers! My dad and I just returned from the WBTA and had so much fun we decided to book the EBTA too! Have to get all those hours back right?

Welcome onboard Monique & Dad

 

[middleofamerica]

I mailed DCL and this is what they said:
All pre-reserved services can be booked or cancelled up to 3 days prior
to saildate via our website. After that time, all reservations are final
and the cost of the pre-reserved port adventures will be charged to your
shipboard account onboard.
So cancel your booked excursions/port adventures before sept 7 if you want that.

Even if you don't cancel them, you still get the use of the $200 OBC from DU and $50 from Visa...so if your excursion balance was $170, you'd still have $80 more to work with. You run an account of credits and debits on board and you have to reconcile it at the end of the cruise. You rack up the debits and the OBC is your only credits usually until you pay up at the end.

 

[birkner]

Hi there fellow cruisers! My dad and I just returned from the WBTA and had so much fun we decided to book the EBTA too! Have to get all those hours back right?

Welcome aboard!! We are Noel and John and this will be our 5th cruise on DCL. Our last cruise was the 2010 WBTA so if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask or PM me.

Please tell us about your and your Dad and your EBTA trip.

My DH John and I have created a website for you view other cruisers and sign in with your information. If you want to add your picture, you can send it to us at nbirkner@yahoo.com

WBTA Website

Please check this first page link of the thread to orient yourself about the cruise, DIS members on the cruise and all the activities planned.

To help you with all the activities that are planned, here is some information to help you decide if you want to participate:

01. If you are interested in participating in the Fish Extender Exchange (FE), please PM Pat (PFlamingo) with the following details:
Send her your stateroom number, Disboard name, first name of each person in the stateroom, realtionship to you (DH, DW, DD, DS, etc) ages and gender of children. You can cut and paste the format below.
Stateroom #:
Disname:
First name:
Age:
Disname:
First name:
Age:

02. If people are interested in being in the same area as other DIS'ers to send Dan (Cliffy97) a PM with Lead Passenger name, your booking number and if you are Early or Late seating. Dan was told by Disney today that this is all they need to put folks together. .

03. If you are interested in the Candy Swap, please PM Jacqueline (goofieslonglostsis).

04. If you are interested in Secret Mickey Exchange, please PM Karen (karentan).

05. If you are interest in getting a WBTA lanyard, please PM Noel (birkner). See this lanyard link for example of the previous 2010 WBTA lanyard.

Hopefully, a group of DISers will volunteer to underwrite the lanyards as they did last year so they will be free to the rest of the DISers. We already have several people offering to be part of the lanyard underwriting group. If you wish to join, please send Noel (Birkner) a PM. If we get enough members, the cost should be $10 or less per member.

06. If you are interested in a WBTA lanyard pin, please PM Noel (birkner). See this pin link for example of the previous 2010 WBTA pin.Cost will be approximately 4,5 or 5 Euros per pin.

07. If you are interested in purchasing a WBTA t-shirt printed with a variation of the cruise meet logo, Karen (Pixie_Dust_For_Me) has kindly offered to organise this for our cruise. Price will be approximately $7 per t-shirt, and sizes range from Youth XS (size 2) to Youth XL; Adult S to Adult 4XL.

08. If you are interested in participating in a Mickey Mouse Club night, please check out this Mickey Mouse club post. Plans are to do this event on Monday September 19 at both early and late seating dinners. We will all wear our Mickey Mouse shirts and ears!!

09. I am thinking of organizing the same tour I did last year in Madeira. Here is the Madeira link to a PDF file that gives more information about the 2010 tour. If you are interested, please send Noel (birkner) a PM.

10. We are also going to do a Champagne Girls meet. The Champagne Girls event originated on the WBPC cruise in 2008. Women get together dressed in pink to drink champagne or non alcoholic bubbly and chat. Pictures of the first meet are in this post and pictures from the last WBTA are in this post. Please PM (Clare)Pinky166 to add you name to the list.

11. If you would like to join in the Scrapbooking Exchange, please PM Clare (Pinky166) with your name and room number. The idea is to give your fellow exchangers some scrapbooking embellishments for use in your scrapbooks after you return home! For more info check this post.

12 Join us for a Pajama breakfast on September 18 at 10:00 AM at Lumiere's. We will meet outside Lumiere's at 9:50 AM to take group pictures. If you are interested, please PM Mandy (MandyGirl) with the number in your party.
Here is the picture from the PJ breakfast on last years WBTA.

13. Sarah (TotallyAngelic) is organizing a Gibraltar Dolphin Watching Expedition if you are interested in joining. Please PM Sarah with the number in your party if you are interested.

14. Mandy (MandyGirl) is organizing a Tortola Excursion of a private day sail on a power catamaran to Jost VanDyke with Tortola Charters. Please PM Mandy with the number in your party if you are interested.

15. Claire (Pinky166) is organizing a Ladies High tea at Palo's. If you are interested, send her a PM for details. Ladies High Tea is planned for September 13 at 3:00 PM.

16. Squitty (Michelle) is oganizing private Mixology and Mojito tastings. If you are interested, send her a PM for details.

17. Karen (Pixie Dust For Me!)is organizing a stateroom tour, but we can't do it without you! PM me with your stateroom assignment and room number and we will tour as many staterooms as possible. It would be great to get one in every category!

When: Definitely on a sea day....stay tuned for which day!
Time: TBD
Where: You will be given a list of participating stateroom numbers and categories the day after we embark (to account for all those upgrades, don't you know )
Refreshments: Optional per discretion of stateroom participant.

18. If you want a designed DIS tee shirt for this cruise, follow the instruction in this post. DIS Tee shirt

19. Cliffy 97 (Dan and Bruce) are organizing a typical English pub crawl with a date TBD. Info so far is as follows:
On a sea day those who were interested would meet in one of the bars for ( Traditionally a half pint pounded, I would suggest a drink of your choice) and then visit (Crawl) every other bar on the ship at least once.

As we do not have to worry about anything closing or how we are getting home, I would I would imagine we can spend 20-30 min at each location versus the 5-10 min you have on the monopoly pub crawl in London.

Perhaps we can make tshirts up too.

Stay tuned for more details.
20. If anyone wants to organize a postcard exchange, please feel free to start one. What we did las year is bring a postcard from where we lived and left in each other's FE. It is best to limit the number of participants no more than 25 as cost and weight to bring become an issue.

 

[DISNEYFAN_SD]

FE NOTICE

We're approaching 40 cabins (89 people) signed up for the FE, so it's probably time that we discuss whether or not we want to split the list.

If you are participating in the FE, please post your opinions/preferences on the following:

First, do you think we should split the list or not?

Next, how many staterooms do you think would be reasonable for each list?

Finally, would you be interested in participating in more than one list?

Ok... I'm going to ask some stupid questions, but we have never participated in fe before this cruise. Do you give a gift everyday? Is there a dollar amount limit?

You will love it .... I really wanted to go this year but we leave Monday

Thanks ... Did you usually dress up?

O, we are going on friday the 30th. We stay afterwards the cruise till oct-2 in Caribbean Beach Resort and go for the first time to a halloween party. We are looking forward to it.

Have a great time.

 

[karentan]

Hi there fellow cruisers! My dad and I just returned from the WBTA and had so much fun we decided to book the EBTA too! Have to get all those hours back right?

welcome to the cruise monique!
i'm karen and i'm cruising with my husband gary, so glad you had such a great time that you decided to rebook - must mean the TAs are well worth doing!

As we are doing handmade gifts I would really like to be finished with it before the last month, will we have a cut off date for sign up?

i think we did discuss a cut off date a while back - pat what did you decide in the end?

 

[TotallyAngelic]

Thanks ... Did you usually dress up?

We just wore our pirate costumes ... we needed them for the cruise so it was the easy option

 

[karentan]

Ok... I'm going to ask some stupid questions, but we have never participated in fe before this cruise. Do you give a gift everyday? Is there a dollar amount limit?

there's no real rules - you can give a gift every day, or one per cruise. you can do one per person or one per cabin. you choose the gift and the budget. its entirely up to you, its just supposed to be a bit of fun - you'll rush back to your room to see what you've got.
the secret mickey exchange has got a spending limit but the FE doesnt

 

[Pinky166]

I think FE groups of 20 cabins would be good. I'm not sure if I would want to do more than one group or not but probably would. On the MV of the dream we didn't split and it was way too much for us. We had over 100 rooms.

I'm not sure about the cabanas at serenity bay but we got one at the family beach and it was full price. It would be nice if we could stay longer at CC. I keep hoping we'll be surprised like we were on one cruise they let us stay in Key West until 1 AM instead of the 9 PM departure we had scheduled.

Yes the FE on Dream MV was a nightmare. We had already left home 7 were in Florida when people were still signing up!

Just completed our online check in thank goodness. It isn't too hard, just something that has to be done! Chosen our port arrival time too. Hope that works well in Barcelona.

I can relax now for a while.

Well done! I'm looking forward to getting all that stuff done too.

 

[DISNEYFAN_SD]

there's no real rules - you can give a gift every day, or one per cruise. you can do one per person or one per cabin. you choose the gift and the budget. its entirely up to you, its just supposed to be a bit of fun - you'll rush back to your room to see what you've got.
the secret mickey exchange has got a spending limit but the FE doesnt

Thanks it should be a blast...

 

[Purplelv93]

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! Yes, the EBTA was so good that we had to book the WBTA! Tons of people are saying it was their best vacation ever, and I agree. A lot of it had to so with the amazing people we met through DIS Boards. I look forward to getting to know more about you all over the next few months. I hope this cruise will be blessed with wonderful weather and smooth sailing too! However, I don't know what I'll do after this cruise without another TA to look forward to. Hawaii maybe???

 

[Beauty & the Best]

UGH!!! I spent all afternoon making pie crust for a blueberry pie. Its been in the oven for about 10 minutes and now I see that the crust has molded to the blueberries and some of the overhang has fallen to the bottom of the oven!

I am SO frustrated! Pie crust is like my achilles heel when it comes to cooking, I just can't ever seem to get it right. I did have a lot of butter chunks in this one when I rolled it out.....for those of you who "get" pie crust, do you think that was the problem?

Claire, I'm really glad that the vet got all of the tumor taken out. We had a similar experience in October of last year and it was very nervewracking - I think we were worse off than the dog, he seemed to take it all in stride. Hope doggie is feeling better!

We just booked got our tickets for after the cruise for Mickey's not so scary halloween...I'm sooo excited never done it before.

O, we are going on friday the 30th. We stay afterwards the cruise till oct-2 in Caribbean Beach Resort and go for the first time to a halloween party. We are looking forward to it.

You guys are going to love it!! There is usually an FAQ thread on the Theme Parks & Attractions board and it is really helpful. You can find maps from last years & also tips about seeing the characters and shows.

My tips are these - do the later parade & shows, they are MUCH less crowded and its really neat to be in the park that late in the fall.

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! Yes, the EBTA was so good that we had to book the WBTA! Tons of people are saying it was their best vacation ever, and I agree. A lot of it had to so with the amazing people we met through DIS Boards. I look forward to getting to know more about you all over the next few months. I hope this cruise will be blessed with wonderful weather and smooth sailing too! However, I don't know what I'll do after this cruise without another TA to look forward to. Hawaii maybe???

Welcome! We did the EBTA last year and loved it too. Yeah, we were disappointed to see there are no TA's next year. I think if we do a longer cruise it will have to be Hawaii or Panama Canal.

 

[Chris&Jeremy]

Jeremy just asked how much bottled beer (Bud Light) is aboard the ship. Does anyone have some recent experience they can share on drink prices?

 

[PFlamingo]

Hi everyone, we've been out all day, so I just got a chance to catch up here.

Yes, we have a cut-off date. It's August 1 (as posted on Page 1 ).

Noel, would you please add the cut-off date to the FE info on the Welcome Wagon page?

As Karen said, there are no real rules, just have fun with it. We did a little gift each day on our 4-nighter (Oriental Trading loved me!), but this time it'll be a one-time thing. And the spending limit is as little or as much as you like. Sometimes the simplest items are the best. My favorite gift on our last trip was the candies from our UK buddies; Dennis' was the "Cruisin' with Mickey" post-its that someone made.

 

[birkner]

Hi everyone, we've been out all day, so I just got a chance to catch up here.

Yes, we have a cut-off date. It's August 1 (as posted on Page 1 ).

Noel, would you please add the cut-off date to the FE info on the Welcome Wagon page?

As Karen said, there are no real rules, just have fun with it. We did a little gift each day on our 4-nighter (Oriental Trading loved me!), but this time it'll be a one-time thing. And the spending limit is as little or as much as you like. Sometimes the simplest items are the best. My favorite gift on our last trip was the candies from our UK buddies; Dennis' was the "Cruisin' with Mickey" post-its that someone made.

Cutoff date has been added to Welcome Wagon post.

 

[PFlamingo]

Jeremy just asked how much bottled beer (Bud Light) is aboard the ship. Does anyone have some recent experience they can share on drink prices?

Shows you where my mind is - I read this as the quantity of beer on the ship, not the price. My second thought was, "what if they ran out in the middle of the ocean??!!"