First up; Karen and Gary my heartfelt condolences. It must be a difficult time and once the dust settles from having to run around and making all kinds of arrangements I can imagine it will only really sink in.

Hopefully the cruise can be a welcome chance of scenario, even if it's just that one moment or second that it's not so much in your faces. Take care!!
Noel, congrats for Sam! Nuts timing but luckily it's now and not until later last week before she found this out. How much organising is there still left to do over the weekend?
Mandy; sigh, who wouldn't melt a bit when hearing such a young one talk like that? Just the Dizinee alone is enough to pull the switch!
I'm sorry to hear of your experiences! I don't know any background, but it sounds like you've been given the royal run-around. Come dec we'd love to meet you for a mini-reunoin even though we've not had the original one yet. We live in Orlando andWDW is our second home. Take care,be well and keep the pixie dust sprinkling Jean
Would love to meet you in december, let's keep in touch. For now it's dec 1st-17th.
Been kinda nuts trying to reschedule it with DVC availability being low (esp. for longer stays) and changing per minute and then finding out I couldn't fly back on certain dates etc. At least I've got a flight booked now and got a place to sleep. Time will tell where some of it is. I know it'll be CBR until the 6th. The 6th-17th will be SSR but time will tell how. I'm waitlisted for the night of the 8th as there is no avail. as of now through DVC. So as a back up I booked that night on cash. Thankfully I got pixiedusted with a PIN that works for both the CBRressie and SSR-night. That brings it down a nice bit but the total bill for just 17 nights is still more than the total for this cruise+2 weeks OKW that were scheduled. Shame, but at least I get to go!
Reading this thread is so weird. It's fun, it's excitement and at the same time it's a constant "yippie, plan such and such came through, how much fun it'll be to do that..... oh dang, right, I'm not going". I guess it says it all that I'm still in unconcious countdown mode for the cruise instead of december. When Cindy posted her roomchange first thing in my mind was "hey, that's my room, how come?" Duhuh, I cancelled it, it's only a good thing she got it if that suits her better. Enjoy it, Cindy!
As far as all the FE-gift talk goes; I've got a question. What is a girl to do with over 100+ unisex watches in all kinds of colours?


And I don't even wear a watch myself.
For those trying to make their mind up which way to go with gifts (per person, cabin etc.); I was originally planning per person. Had disney gifts for the kids that are age appropriate (some one bigger gift like for instace a zippycup for the babies, some multiple smaller gifst like the toy story action figures we could collect at our AH grocery store). Ran into too cute Mickey earrings and after some haggling got the price down enough so I could gift each female a set and the teenage girls. Husbands were more difficult. I started making keychains myself with beads that spelled MAGIC and charms in disney-style (Mickey, Tink, cinderella's carriage) and nautical-style but wasn't sure I'ld get them done in time so looked around for the men. Ended up scoring the biggest bargain ever on formentioned watches, enough so I could gift them to all adults. But 2 gifts versus one? Nah. So I finished the keychains to equal things out. Biggest thing for me was budget, fun and scoring a nice gift. I ended up being able to do a bit more within my budget then expected when looking at number of gifts per person. And trueth be told; never in a million years did I expect to find these gifts for adults within my budget. It's not like I had a huge budget per person in mind

it really was and is a low one. Just have fun with it and make sure you don't do anything that you aren't comfortable with. Budget, style, luggage, whatever the thing is, FE gifts are all about having fun and being comfortable while doing it.
