WDWLVR
<font color=green>DVC @ The Boardwalk</font><br><f
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2000
- Messages
- 31,459
Day 2 - Castaway Cay Take 1
This is a trip report for the special DVC SS Member Cruise held Feb. 2-6, 2003 on the Disney Wonder.
Cast: Me & DH (MarkRG). We are DINKS who love Disney. We've been DVC members since Jan. of 2000. This is our 4th DCL cruise (did 3-day Magic in Oct. '99, 7-day Eastern Magic in May '01, 4-day Wonder in May'02 and we have a 7-day Western Magic planned for 5/10/03).
I forgot to give you our room location in earlier reports. We were in 7502, which is a porthole room on the starboard side. We've always had verandas before but the points for this room fit what we had. The porthole is huge and we had a great view of the dock the first day and a beautiful view once we started sailing.
Monday morning and we are up and rested after a good nights sleep. One small disappointment - on all our other trips we backed into Castaway Cay and since on those trips we were on the port side we got a view of the dock. I was hoping this time we'd get a view of the island - wrong we pulled in. Oh well!
Now comes the hard part - what to do! On this day there were 4 different special DVC things going on - all while at the island. At 9 am we took a tour of the ship with Tom Acomb. He was part of the design team that worked to create the Atrium, Triton's, Route 66 area, Animator's Palette and Palo's. This was definitely worth staying on the ship for. He gave us lots of little insights (like the fact that the chandelier in the atrium is blown plastic - not glass). The tour took about an hour and 15 minutes.
Next up was seeing Treasure Planet. Mark really wanted to see this and we had put off seeing it at home since we knew it would be on the cruise. Only problem was it was either this morning or Tuesday night during either Andrea McArdle's show or dinner at Animator's Palette. We weren't going to miss either of those so off to the theatre we went. It wasn't crowded and the movie was very good. I can see why it didn't do well in mass release - a little too grown-up for a typical Disney flick.
That was over at noon so we went back to the room, changed into our swimsuits and headed out to the island. First stop was Cookie's BBQ for lunch. Got our trays and headed to a nice table in the shade. We were joined by Robin and David about half way through lunch and enjoyed their company.
Finally headed over to the far end of the family beach. Pretty empty. Saw one group of DIS'ers over there - I think it was Rich, Deb, Sue and I'm not sure who else. Waved at them on our way back from dipping our toe's in the water. COLD! At least a little too cold for my tastes. We'll be back in May so we'll do our swimming then. The weather was perfect for just relaxing with a good book and watching the sun sparkle off the water. You don't have to get wet to enjoy Castaway Cay. Mark even got a Konk Kooler so he was happy.
Headed back on board about 3pm as I wanted to do another of the special DVC panels. This was strolling down memory lane with classic Disney Collectibles. This was hosted by Tim O'Day who is an Executive Creative Consultant with over 25 years at Disney. It was a great show and at the end Wendy from Walt Disney Classics started talking about membership in the club. She pulled out her card so I pulled out mine as well and held it up. She laughed and said she had a prize for the first person to show her their card and already saw one up - me! I got a beautiful Bambi storybook fully illustrated and personally autographed by David Pacheco who is the Creative Director for Walt Disney Art Classics and one of the illustrators for this particular book. Very cool.
5:15 was the Castaway Club reception. We were kind of late since I didn't get back from the panel until after 5. The Castaway Club had taken over all three nightclubs and they were all packed! Since we don't drink and weren't hungry we just kept walking and headed over to the internet café.
One thing I don't like about the new layout of the café is they made it much smaller and very cramped. There is one computer that has space for two but it was rarely free. This time it was so we took it. Since Route 66 was taken over by the Castaway Club Bingo was being played in the Promenade Lounge. While Mark was DISing I spotted Sasha (who was helping out with Bingo) and asked him if he wanted to say hi to Barb and Tony. His eyes lit up! Mark checked and they weren't on line but he did leave a hello from Sasha for them. We also got our picture taken with the Croatian Sensation (and now I know how he got this name) and he told me to stop him later as he would have a cast member pin with him (didn't have any on him at the time). How sweet. Also got a visit from Crissup who stopped to chat for a while before logging on himself, a quick visit with CarolAnn and also a chat with Troy from Walt Disney Art Classics. With Walt Disney Art Classics if you signed up or renewed on board you got a leather passport case. Problem was I was already a member and had just gotten my renewal gift. Crissup brought this up with Troy and he said if I stopped by on the last night and they had any left he'd make sure I had one. Very nice.
We skipped Who Want to be a Mouseketeer. It was the special DVC edition and I don't think I know that much about DVC. We did go into the atrium at 7:30 so I could get some pins (it was way too crazy on Sunday night). Saw Sasha - got another hug and the promised pin. What a guy! Then pictures with Mickey and Minnie in full formal dress. Since we were in Triton's tonight we were also dressed up so they look good.
Dinner in Triton's was excellent. We were already missing one couple as they had won the private dinner at Palo's with the Disney Execs - lucky them.
Back to the room and got another gift from DVC - a little blue mesh bag to take into Nassau with us. Nice. Also had a call from Shontell asking if Mark and I were still going over to Atlantis in the morning and could her and her mom join us. We were meeting up with Gail and John for breakfast and to go over to Atlantis. Called Shontell back and gave her the info on where we were meeting and then hit the sheets.
Tomorrow would come soon enough and we had lots of walking ahead!
This is a trip report for the special DVC SS Member Cruise held Feb. 2-6, 2003 on the Disney Wonder.
Cast: Me & DH (MarkRG). We are DINKS who love Disney. We've been DVC members since Jan. of 2000. This is our 4th DCL cruise (did 3-day Magic in Oct. '99, 7-day Eastern Magic in May '01, 4-day Wonder in May'02 and we have a 7-day Western Magic planned for 5/10/03).
I forgot to give you our room location in earlier reports. We were in 7502, which is a porthole room on the starboard side. We've always had verandas before but the points for this room fit what we had. The porthole is huge and we had a great view of the dock the first day and a beautiful view once we started sailing.
Monday morning and we are up and rested after a good nights sleep. One small disappointment - on all our other trips we backed into Castaway Cay and since on those trips we were on the port side we got a view of the dock. I was hoping this time we'd get a view of the island - wrong we pulled in. Oh well!
Now comes the hard part - what to do! On this day there were 4 different special DVC things going on - all while at the island. At 9 am we took a tour of the ship with Tom Acomb. He was part of the design team that worked to create the Atrium, Triton's, Route 66 area, Animator's Palette and Palo's. This was definitely worth staying on the ship for. He gave us lots of little insights (like the fact that the chandelier in the atrium is blown plastic - not glass). The tour took about an hour and 15 minutes.
Next up was seeing Treasure Planet. Mark really wanted to see this and we had put off seeing it at home since we knew it would be on the cruise. Only problem was it was either this morning or Tuesday night during either Andrea McArdle's show or dinner at Animator's Palette. We weren't going to miss either of those so off to the theatre we went. It wasn't crowded and the movie was very good. I can see why it didn't do well in mass release - a little too grown-up for a typical Disney flick.
That was over at noon so we went back to the room, changed into our swimsuits and headed out to the island. First stop was Cookie's BBQ for lunch. Got our trays and headed to a nice table in the shade. We were joined by Robin and David about half way through lunch and enjoyed their company.
Finally headed over to the far end of the family beach. Pretty empty. Saw one group of DIS'ers over there - I think it was Rich, Deb, Sue and I'm not sure who else. Waved at them on our way back from dipping our toe's in the water. COLD! At least a little too cold for my tastes. We'll be back in May so we'll do our swimming then. The weather was perfect for just relaxing with a good book and watching the sun sparkle off the water. You don't have to get wet to enjoy Castaway Cay. Mark even got a Konk Kooler so he was happy.
Headed back on board about 3pm as I wanted to do another of the special DVC panels. This was strolling down memory lane with classic Disney Collectibles. This was hosted by Tim O'Day who is an Executive Creative Consultant with over 25 years at Disney. It was a great show and at the end Wendy from Walt Disney Classics started talking about membership in the club. She pulled out her card so I pulled out mine as well and held it up. She laughed and said she had a prize for the first person to show her their card and already saw one up - me! I got a beautiful Bambi storybook fully illustrated and personally autographed by David Pacheco who is the Creative Director for Walt Disney Art Classics and one of the illustrators for this particular book. Very cool.
5:15 was the Castaway Club reception. We were kind of late since I didn't get back from the panel until after 5. The Castaway Club had taken over all three nightclubs and they were all packed! Since we don't drink and weren't hungry we just kept walking and headed over to the internet café.
One thing I don't like about the new layout of the café is they made it much smaller and very cramped. There is one computer that has space for two but it was rarely free. This time it was so we took it. Since Route 66 was taken over by the Castaway Club Bingo was being played in the Promenade Lounge. While Mark was DISing I spotted Sasha (who was helping out with Bingo) and asked him if he wanted to say hi to Barb and Tony. His eyes lit up! Mark checked and they weren't on line but he did leave a hello from Sasha for them. We also got our picture taken with the Croatian Sensation (and now I know how he got this name) and he told me to stop him later as he would have a cast member pin with him (didn't have any on him at the time). How sweet. Also got a visit from Crissup who stopped to chat for a while before logging on himself, a quick visit with CarolAnn and also a chat with Troy from Walt Disney Art Classics. With Walt Disney Art Classics if you signed up or renewed on board you got a leather passport case. Problem was I was already a member and had just gotten my renewal gift. Crissup brought this up with Troy and he said if I stopped by on the last night and they had any left he'd make sure I had one. Very nice.
We skipped Who Want to be a Mouseketeer. It was the special DVC edition and I don't think I know that much about DVC. We did go into the atrium at 7:30 so I could get some pins (it was way too crazy on Sunday night). Saw Sasha - got another hug and the promised pin. What a guy! Then pictures with Mickey and Minnie in full formal dress. Since we were in Triton's tonight we were also dressed up so they look good.
Dinner in Triton's was excellent. We were already missing one couple as they had won the private dinner at Palo's with the Disney Execs - lucky them.
Back to the room and got another gift from DVC - a little blue mesh bag to take into Nassau with us. Nice. Also had a call from Shontell asking if Mark and I were still going over to Atlantis in the morning and could her and her mom join us. We were meeting up with Gail and John for breakfast and to go over to Atlantis. Called Shontell back and gave her the info on where we were meeting and then hit the sheets.
Tomorrow would come soon enough and we had lots of walking ahead!
