Somebody Pinch Me!!

[MeliMel702]

I almost forgot today was my Online Check-in day. Here I am about to fall asleep at 5:00A PST (I work a night shift) and it hits me, I needed to check in or else I wouldn't get a decent PAT, find any good time slots for Port Adventures, Meet and Greet Tickets, much less a Palo Brunch ressie. (Or so I thought!) I was supposed to try and log in at 2am, it totally escaped my mind.

After spending months and months reading and watchin videos on the process of checking in, I totally expected not being able to log in or having limited choices on Activities. Apparently today is my lucky day! Not only was it a breeze to log in, but I noticed the check-in process is totally different from what I had seen in my research.

I was able to book all my activities for the entire week before even checking in. Almost everything was available for each day. The best part of all was that I actually was able to find an early Palo Brunch Ressie and there were many slots available too! I couldn't believe my luck. I even made sure I hit confirm activities and printed out 3 copies just in case. (Me, a first time cruiser, Whaaaaaaaaat?)

After booking the Palo Brunch I went on to reserve a Princess M&G, Frozen M&G, Pirates League, and an Extreme Getaway Package. Then, after all that I was able to complete the online check in with a 10:45 PAT (not too early, not too late, earliest available anyway). I probably took about 45 min, mostly because I kept on going back to check if all my ressies were still there.

Now I'm just waiting for my kids to get up so I can drop them off at school, not sure how I'm going to be able to sleep after all this excitement. I do want to Thank all of those who gave me great advice the last couple of months, I hope you all have a very blessed day.


By the way if you are on the 4-night Dream on August 7, Pirate Night is on Nassau Day instead of Castaway Cay Day!

 

[darnheather]

That is fantastic. I'm so glad they've changed the way meet-n-greets are booked. The second worst part of my cruise was standing in the dang line to book those things. Have a wonderful vacation!

 

[MeliMel702]

The only tip I would give is to book princess gathering first and then frozen. There were only a few of the princess available early and several for the frozen. I did it backwards and ended up with a 9:30 princess m&g and 12:00 frozen m&g

 

[MeliMel702]

@darnheather Thank You! I might do a Trip Report too.

 

[Anchors Away 2016]

Makes sense to do excursion booking before online check-in. Glad you got just about everything you wanted. Remember, some people book activities on the first day "just in case" and then drop them later, or if something else they wanted more opens up, so keep checking back if there was an excursion that was full. Same for the M&G, keep checking back, you might be able to move one closer to the other. We filled the space between our scheduled M&G's with visits to some other characters, but ours weren't 3 hours apart.

Have a great time! Sweet Dreams!

 

[darnheather]

Please do at least a brief one. I love reading trip reports. Seems like we have similar traveling families as I travel just with two girls. We are going on our second cruise in October (Halloween and Marvel woohoo!) and they don't know but I booked a Merrytime cruise for 2018.

 

[jrabbit]

supposed to try and log in at 2am, it totally escaped my mind.

FWIW - when you are on Pacific time (I assume that your PST) was typed correctly ... you can actually book your activities and do the online check in at 9:00PM (21:00) Pacific time the "day before" (3 hours "early") because when midnight of "The Day" hits on the east coast - those of us out west can book as well.

 

[MeliMel702]

@darnheather we usually have grandma with us but she refuses to get on a ship. Hope you have an amazing time! I will look forward to reading your reports. I'll be moving shortly after the cruise. It may take a while but I'll definitely write one!

@jrabbit Yes it was typed correctly. Sadly, I get off at 1am from work so I wasn't able to log on at 9p. Funny thing is at the time I booked the cruise I had Tuesday/ Wednesday off, but my days were changed to Sunday/Monday recently. ( I would have been off at that time) Thanks for the tip though!

@Anchors Away 2016 I think there were still earlier times available. I'll check back later! Thank You

Ok now I really have to go to sleep. Lol

 

[jrabbit]

Ok now I really have to go to sleep. Lol

Sweet Disney Dreams!!!

 

[Dug720]

@jrabbit Yes it was typed correctly. Sadly, I get off at 1am from work so I wasn't able to log on at 9p. Funny thing is at the time I booked the cruise I had Tuesday/ Wednesday off, but my days were changed to Sunday/Monday recently. ( I would have been off at that time) Thanks for the tip though!

Ok now I really have to go to sleep. Lol

I have to admit, knowing that my check-in window for Feb opens at 12:00am on a SUNDAY rather than a MONDAY (which is what it was if I'd stuck with the Wonder) made making that change just that much sweeter.

Sleep well!

 

[Rabb it]

Very cool! Congrats, so exciting!

 

[MeliMel702]

Thank You everybody! I was able to get enoug sleep for work.

@Dug720 I know what you mean. I was a little bummed out when my days off changed. I really thought I was going to be left out of the activities I wanted.

@Anchors Away 2016 Right after logging out of the Dis, I went and changed the reservation to Princess 9:15 and Frozen 9:45. I think this time I left the reservations a little too close, lol. I'm not worried though, we won't be getting off the ship at Nassau. My Girls and I want to do some exploring, MidShip Dectective, and AquaDuck till our Pirates League reservations later that day.

@darnheather i was reading one of your posts and we really do have similar styles in traveling. Hopefully we get to cruise together eventually!

 

[Anchors Away 2016]

@Anchors Away 2016 Right after logging out of the Dis, I went and changed the reservation to Princess 9:15 and Frozen 9:45. I think this time I left the reservations a little too close, lol. I'm not worried though, we won't be getting off the ship at Nassau. My Girls and I want to do some exploring, MidShip Dectective, and AquaDuck till our Pirates League reservations later that day.

Thirty minutes should be fine, especially since they are both early in the window. We found that at 9:15 the lines were extremely short. Theoretically, with assigned times the line should be the same at all times, and they were never long, but there definitely a bit shorter at the beginning, perhaps because some people didn't show up right on time.