The Big 3-0: A Birthday Cruise (Feb 2nd-9th) and a trip to the World!

[Perdie]

Love your TR - waiting patiently for your next installment.

Thanks! I've been away all week-so I haven't been able to work on it-but I plan on finishing it this week! Hang tight!

 

[Perdie]

Thursday Morning we woke up with food hangovers from Palo’s….but somehow we were ready for our 11 AM Palo brunch reservations!! There was so much going on in the Ship on our last day that we weren’t sure how to proceed with the day. One thing was certain-we weren’t going to end up lazying around the pool, sadly. We had so many activities we wanted to participate in that day, so we jam packed our day!

We started by sleeping in and for the first time we decided to check our email and actually use the laptop we lugged halfway around the globe with us! But at 75cents a minute, the system was so slow that we ended up spending 15 dollars and I didn’t check a single email! I looked at a few of them (unopened) and noted all the friends and family that had sent birthday wishes but I couldn’t open up any of them or respond-that’s how slow the system was. So we both gave up and turned the computer off and decided we should be utilizing our veranda. So we hung out on the veranda and enjoyed the blue skies and calm waters. We read and relaxed until it was time for our reservations and back to Palo’s we went!

Breakfast was ridiculous. I think I like Palo’s brunch better than dinner (except there is no chocolate soufflé!) but there are so many options and so much food, you could sit there for three hours and just keep eating!! We started off with a greeting from Corina, joining us again as our Waitress. She brought us ice teas and waters and gave us a tour of all the food and off we went to start on the buffet!

What's wrong with this Chef??

Of course, we had to decide on hot food as well, and last time I remember not loving my hot food choice, so I wanted to make sure I got the right meal (s) this time! We ordered a half sausage half sweet pizza (sausage part fantastic, sweet part a little bizarre), a pasta dish with pesto-pretty tasty, but the best dish was the chicken with risotto. The risotto was quite possibly the best risotto I have ever tasted in my life. I don’t know how to describe it other than creamy and perfect. Now don’t think we are total pigs, we did share each one of our three entrees!! Hahaha…..

At the buffet, we each got our favorites, I love the smoked salmon, crab, scallops, and the sweet bread topped with whipped cream and berries, and of course all the pastries! Neither Dan nor I are actually fans of the dessert table. Don’t get me wrong, dessert is my favorite meal of the day-which is why I prefer the sweet bread and pastries. (This is not the dessert table at Palo’s-just the bread table!) The dessert table has various puddings and fancy little desserts whose names I don’t know. But most of that stuff is too sweet for me-isn’t that weird? I love the pastries, but don’t like the little tiramisu pudding cups.

My dessert table:

After probably 2 hours of ridiculously stuffing ourselves, we were finally done. We sang Happy Birthday to Dan and he got a birthday plate too! (Although I think Corina may have had a little crush on Dan-he got a birthday plate with his name on it-mine just said Happy Birthday!)

Look familiar?

dan after too much food-thinks this may be a spitoon and not a champagne/wine cooler:

Like I said, our day was jam packed. In fact because of our 11 AM reservations at Palo’s, we missed Ducky Williams second show and a chance to win a drawing. We were really sad, but we couldn’t miss Dan’s birthday meal (food first!)….So after brunch we decided to see the afternoon showing of Disney Dreams, our favorite show of the week! I love Disney Dreams because there are so many clips of various movies-all my favorites-Lion King, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and more! We watched the show from a nice close seat and noted that the girl playing the main role was not as good as the girl we saw over the summer. But we still thoroughly enjoyed the show.

For Dan’s birthday I had decided a good massage was necessary, and so I decided to book the two of us into the Exotic Rasul for an hour. The exotic Rasul is different than a regular massage, because there is no masseuse. They give you a room with a shower and steam room and they give you two different types of treatments. The first lotion you put all over you and sit in the steam for 15 minutes. Then you take a cold shower to get it all off and then you put the green mud all over yourself and sit for another 15 minutes in the steam room. I have a really hard time sitting in a steam room for 15 minutes, so for me this wasn’t the greatest or most relaxing treatment. But I didn’t really know what to expect. They tell you you can do whatever you want with your hour, but they also tell you exactly how to do the treatment, so Dan and I followed their instructions and ended up for 30 minutes in the steamer. Afterwards, as we started to go through all the fun little lotions and facial masks they leave for you, they were knocking on the door and the hour was up! I quickly threw on some facial stuff for the last five minutes and then took a quick shower. I have to say, after the treatment; my first thought was that I wanted more time. Even though I get antsy in the steam room, time still went by too quickly! I wanted to try out all the facial stuff! I also have to admit that my skin was like a baby’s butt after that treatment-for days! I had the softest skin of my life for the rest of the trip-it was like a miracle mud!! So overall, I enjoyed the Rasul, but I think next time I would do a couple’s massage instead with a masseuse-since they tend to know what they are doing better than Dan and I!

After we showered up in the spa-and had some really yummy cucumber water we got dressed and headed to a DVC meeting. They were giving a DVC meet where they tell you about it (Disney vacation Club) and sell you on it and people who already have it are in there, and they get on the microphone and tell you how amazing it is. For those who don’t know, DVC is Disney’s version of a timeshare-but much better. It doesn’t work like a timeshare, but it’s the closest thing I can relate it to. Basically, you buy into one of the Disney hotels for the next 50 years, so you are really investing in your vacations. It works on a point system, you buy so many points and a certain price and when you stay at a Disney hotel, you use a certain number of points per night, depending on the hotel. The hotel rooms are dedicated to DVC, so they aren’t just regular rooms, there are studios, one bedroom, two bedroom and grand villas-fit for 10 people! Obviously the bigger the room, the more points it will cost you per night. For example, if you buy into the minimum 160 points, you can stay at the new Animal Kingdom Villas in the cheap season in the smallest room, it ends up being about 72 points. So you can have more than two weeks each year already paid for (once you pay off the initial investment). Of course there are also annual fees, but they are far less than what you would pay for two holidays a year at Disneyworld. You can use your points anytime during the year (unlike a timeshare) and you can use them just about anywhere. You can also use them overseas and at all the Disney theme parks and they are building new DVC properties in Hawaii (I sound like a commercial for them, don’t I??)

Dan and I had already been discussing it for awhile but since we live in London we thought we would wait until we moved home in 2009 before we invested. At the meet they told us the incentives for signing up on board would be a $500 on board credit, 10 dollars off every point you buy and 160 free points for the first year! But we still weren’t convinced we needed to buy just yet. We thought they probably always give these types of incentives. So we listened and we didn’t even sign up for a time to meet one on one with the Sales Guy, Roland.

We took the free book and walked out. We were in the hallway of Beat Street and I looked at Dan and said, we are planning on going to Disneyworld in November for 11 days and then the following year we’ll be home, so we’ll definitely start going to Disneyworld more often-what exactly are we waiting for? And with that, we turned around and when we got to the bar there was one time slot left-6.30PM. Also, if we hadn’t seen the daytime showing of Disney Dreams, that would have been during the time we wanted to see the show! So we grabbed it. It must have been fate-because people were grabbing those time slots left and right and there weren’t too many of them left-so we were certain there wouldn’t be any when we got back to the bar. We said, if there are no time slots left, we won’t bother. What were we to do? There was a time slot left-we had to buy!! ; )

We had a galley tour to get to,(I told you we filled our day!) so we took our timeslot and headed off to Lumiere’s for our tour of the kitchen. I have worked in many kitchens in my day. I know how difficult they are to keep 100% clean. In fact, I’ve never worked in a kitchen that was 100% clean, not to say they were filthy and unsanitary-the food was always kept cold and clean, but I have never seen such a spotless kitchen-ever. This was immaculate. They get surprise checks on board from inspectors when they dock, and just the day before in St Thomas, they had a surprise inspection and got 99%! (They didn’t tell us what the one point off was for-but I was dying to know). The Chef gave us all kinds of trivia-none of which I can recall right now sadly! Our Chef who gave us the tour was exceptionally good looking-I thought he looked like a model-so maybe that’s why I can’t remember what he said-I was too busy drooling!!

I do remember one thing I found really weird-they recycle all the food into the water-food for the fishies. I didn’t know that was ok to do. It seems like they just dump it in to the water and say-here you go little fishies-have some chocolate soufflé-that’s part of your normal diet, right? But he said it proudly so there must be something to it! He also said all the leftovers (not eaten) go to the employees. So they don’t only get the slop from their cafeteria-I’ve heard it’s mostly rice and soup in there-they get the goods too-which is good to know!

We saw two wedding cakes while we were in there and they gave us chocolate chip cookies to eat-which I have to say were pretty overcooked and I was a little disappointed!

After the Galley Tour we actually had some time to kill and I think we ran into some friends who had DVC and they told us all the benefits and told us what every single person said to us- “We have never regretted it.” I kid you not when I tell you it’s the very first thing out of everyone’s mouth-no exceptions. It’s like DVC programs its members to say this! (I can just imagine Roland telling you when you are purchasing “Now remember, if anyone ever asks you: YOU NEVER REGRETTED THIS DECISION.”) Eyes rolling into the back of your head as you are being hypnotized and brainwashed into the cult that is DVC! (I say this with love-I mean come on, I bought in!!) hahaha

Anyway, so Dan and I went into our meeting with Roland at 6.30. We hadn’t really 100% decided and hadn’t said to one another-let’s do it. We figured we would go in and ask our questions and see what he said. Well, we spent a good hour with Roland. He answered all our questions and actually didn’t pressure us at all. He wasn’t as “Used car Salesman-Like” as I thought he would be. He seemed pretty honest and nice. Ok, he did give us a few lines that we rolled our eyes at because he was so obviously giving us a line-but we knew it-so we ignored those moments. The fact is, we are huge Disney fans and we spend most of our holidays doing something Disney related. In all honesty, DVC was made for people like me and Dan. We would definitely take advantage of it, not the other way around. So we went for it. This part is important: Roland didn’t want us to close that night. He wanted us to think about it and make sure we were sure. So HE set up a time for us the next morning to meet with him (it was Castaway Cay day and we had never been-so we didn’t want to miss a moment.) But all he had was a 10.30 AM timeslot. Well, you can’t get off the boat until 10 anyway, and he said it would only take 20 minutes. And then we could close after-around 7.30 PM Friday night. So we wouldn’t miss more than an hour on the island. We agreed and left Roland until the next morning. This becomes a critical point the next morning during our 20 minutes with Roland on Friday. (But you’ll have to wait until my next trip report to find out why!!!) I’m so sneaky….

We went to dinner in a daze. It’s hard to make such a huge investment decision like that. I was given some money when one of my relatives died a few years back and the money was just sitting in my savings while I decided how to invest it. Dan and I decided that this was how we should invest. Most people buy into DVC and have to spend the initial first few years paying it off before the trips start to pay off. Well, we could pay it all off at once and just start enjoying the benefits-so it really was a no-brainer.

All of our tablemates were DVC members so they were super excited for us. They were talking it up and telling us “We would surely never regret it.” : ) So we felt pretty good about it that night! We celebrated Dan’s birthday-we were given a chocolate cake (we requested it as we were really sick of the same white cake we had been eating all week!!)

After dinner we decided to do some shopping for some Goofy pins (we collect Goofy pins only). We headed to the shop and found 2 we didn’t own and while I went up to pay, Dan went into the other shop across the way. The woman ringing me up saw I liked Goofy and told me to wait right there. A few minutes later and she pulled out from a closet a special Goofy Pin! It said Goofy the Goof with 1932 on it. She started writing me up a Magical moment Certificate to give me with the pin!! I was so excited!! I was getting a magical moment and a free Goofy pin!!! Dan thought it was taking a really long time for one small purchase, so he came back to see if everything was ok and I told him about my moment! That lady made my day!!! This is why I love Disney. It wasn’t anything big, but she noticed my love for Goofy and just made me feel special and added a little magic to my day!

That night was the Midnight Buffet. So we headed there to check it out. I have to admit, we went on a Royal Caribbean Cruise in 2003 and there midnight buffet was not to be missed. It wasn’t the food so much as the amazing presentation. So when we went on the Med Cruise we were highly disappointed when they had almost nothing going on in the room. It wasn’t anything special to look at and the desserts weren’t anything special. The only thing they had going for them was the chocolate fountains!

So we went again, hoping to be happily surprised instead of disappointed. While it still wasn’t as grand as Royal Caribbean, it was a whole lot better than the Med Cruise. (But the only dessert that appealed to me once again was the dueling chocolate fountains.) Disney has no excuse for not making the presentation be spectacular. It should be imagineered by the same people who do all the Christmas decorations at Disneyworld. If they can make a life size Gingerbread House and a carousel made out of food at Disneyworld, they should be able to do something on a smaller scale but still special on the cruise.

Well, we finished off the night with some white chocolate fountain dipped strawberries and marshmallows and off to bed we went!

We were very excited for our day at Castaway Cay!! It was like going to a newly themed Disney park! We couldn’t wait to see what was in store for us……

 

[Perdie]

Friday morning we wake up with very mixed feelings. We’ve been waiting to see Castaway Cay for a very long time…but mixed with the knowledge that this is our last day on the cruise, we knew going in that while we wanted to see this island, we also sort of didn’t want this day to come so quickly.

We had decided after the day we went to Lumiere’s for brunch and didn’t find the Beast’s Tower breakfast we had heard about that we would come back at an earlier time to see if they had on the breakfast menu. Since we couldn’t go to Castaway Cay until our meeting with DVC Roland, we headed to Lumiere’s for breakfast after hanging out on our veranda watching us pull in to CC. We took some Goofy photos of our Pirate Goofy’s in front of the Flying Dutchman (actual ship from Pirates of the Caribbean), and then headed to breakfast!

We were really lucky at Lumiere’s because Sebastien (our normal nighttime server) was to be our server!! We were the only ones at the table and he wasn’t all that busy so we actually were able to chat him up for a bit. And then came our Beastly Tower of Pancakes….this was the best breakfast (besides Palo’s) that we had! It was unbelievable!!! I can’t describe it….it was just that good.

We left Lumiere’s and watched anxiously as others left the ship and started their day-but we had to wait until 10.30 to meet with Roland. But he swore it would only take 15 minutes!!!

So we go to meet with Roland. We are pretty much sold on DVC, especially because of the on board incentives. A reminder of the incentives: $500 on board credit, $10 off every point you purchase and 160 freebie points for the first year. After talking to some people who have DVC who bought off the ship in past years, they also received the 160 freebie points and the $10 off each point, so it seems to us the best reason to buy on board now was for the $500 ship credit. That credit would probably take care of 85% of our bill for the week. We might actually walk off this ship owing nothing! (During the week you use your room key to purchase anything-liquor, souvenirs, etc).

We get into the room to sit down with Roland, after agreeing last night (he recommended this) that we meet Friday morning after thinking it over for the night and we’d close on Friday and have it all wrapped up before we left the ship. We thought that was a brilliant idea.
On our way up to the meeting, we stopped at Guest Services to get our bill, curious as to how much that $500 would help us. We got the bill and walked away and then looked at it and realized they had already charged our credit card about $500, leaving us with about $200 left to pay. (I guess they charge you every time you go above a certain amount). We figured this wouldn’t be an issue; the ship could just reimburse us the money….but we figured we better bring it up with Roland.

In the meeting, we casually brought up the bill and this is when we got the bad news: By closing on Friday after 4 PM (our closing time was at 7.30 PM that night) we would be missing the cut off time that was never previously mentioned, and we would not be getting the $500 on board credit. We were more than bummed to say the least. We were livid.

Now I guess to be fair, Roland said he would honor the $500 by taking that money off the total that we owed on DVC. But somehow this was just not the same. Having one less payment to make on a huge investment is not that same as walking off the ship and owing almost nothing because that’s actual money in your hand. They are actually giving you $500 you didn’t have before. So we’re talking about two different pots of money, two very different incentives to buy on board. He never mentioned this to us last night as he was convincing us to wait until Friday to close. He had to have known on the Thursday before the cruise ended that when you have a huge meeting with 50 people and tell them about the incentive that there was a cut off time to this incentive. He said there was nothing he could do about it because the Ship handles the on board credit. To make matters worse, if we hadn’t asked about our bill he might have never even brought it up! He said he didn’t remember not telling us because he had “done dozens of closings since we last met.” Well we last saw him at 7.30 PM the night before, how many people could he have met with between 7.30PM and 10.30 AM the next day? Not that it mattered, he should have told us as he was convincing us to wait until Friday to close!!!

So now we’re making this big investment and we have this sinking feeling we just got swindled. It felt icky. We signed all the paperwork and walked away with what felt like buyer’s remorse. Except it wasn’t buyer’s remorse because we really wanted DVC, but we felt like we got cheated. We weren’t going to buy in on the ship, we were going to wait, but the incentive that we were no longer receiving is actually what pushed us over to buy in now. So many people told us what an amazing incentive that was and that when they bought they didn’t get anything like that…..

But we really didn’t want to let it ruin our day, after all we were still getting $500 off the total, and we really wanted to get to CC. So off we went to deal with this later that evening when we actually did the closing.

Onto more exciting things…we were headed out to Castaway Cay!!!!!! It’s like going to a new part of a Disney park-all new theming-all new props to find and discover-we were very excited. And we were not disappointed!

We first ran into Captain Jack Sparrow and he tried to steal my purse!!!

Then we headed off to the beaches to check everything out…We wandered around and found Pluto and Minnie taking photos and then Goofy and Max came out! (We were very excited). So we took a bunch of photos and then went into the shop. We had heard a rumor that there was a CC themed Goofy we had to buy! And there he was in flip flops and a Hawaiian shirt! We had a new friend!

We wanted to see everything so we walked all the way to Serenity Bay, the adults’ only beach, stopping along the way to see Cookie’s BBQ and the family beach. The walk felt like it took a long time and was down this huge runway-which we decided they must use for real planes.

Once we got to the beach we found two chairs not to far down, so we were pretty close to the food and toilets (important things in life!!) We set up shop and after ordering our Konch Coolers a really nice guy gave us his water chairs (the chairs instead of loungers that people actually move into the water to sit in). So we brought our books and ipods and sat in the water chairs for awhile. After about 30 minutes or so, the same nice guy than gave us his hammocks!! So we immediately moved over to the hammocks. I made the mistake of taking a break from the shade (hammocks are in the shade) and going back into the water chair for a few minutes and someone did ask to take the hammock, so I felt a little guilty and got back in it. I didn’t want to give it up, so I figured I better use it!

We all relaxed and had some drinks-even the Goofy’s were chillin out on the beach!!

We went to the BBQ and had the greatest hot dogs I’ve ever had and not to mention soft serve cookie dough ice cream! It was delicious!! Castaway Cay was quickly becoming my very favorite location on the planet.

The day of course, went by way too quickly and before we knew it, it was over. We hadn’t had time for snorkeling or anything because we just didn’t want to leave our precious spots on the beach in our hammocks at all! It was too relaxing! We promised each other we would come back and next time hit the other beaches and maybe parasail or do jet skiing or something. We were definitely thirsty for more of this beach.

We sadly made our way back to the ship, and realized this cruise really was coming to an end! We were so sad-even though we had 3 more days at Disneyworld, we were too sad to be excited about it at that moment! We went back to our room and sat out on our veranda and reminisced as we watched the island get smaller and smaller…..

We then headed to the Farewell show, curious to see how it had changed since we only saw it on the Med Cruise. It was slightly different as they didn’t talk about the Med! We enjoyed the show and again, we were sad for everything to be ending!

So now it was time for our closing for DVC, and although we tried not to think about it all day, the more we talked about it, the more annoyed we were with what happened. So we met the girl who was to handle our closing and she took us into a hallway on the 5th deck to sign all the paperwork (I can’t believe they don’t have a private room for you to go into!) Besides that, we were going over the paperwork and signing everything and when it was all said and done I had to speak up, because it truly was bothering me. I told her what happened and how I felt about it and that it was upsetting to me. She seemed genuinely surprised by what took place and her words were “That doesn’t sound very professional to me.” So she said she would see what she could do about it. And I told her I wasn’t trying to get anything out of it, just what we were originally promised.
Off we went to dinner to forget about the whole business and just be happy that we were new members of DVC and we owned property at the Animal Kingdom Lodge!
Dinner was the same as the last cruise, with the baked Alaska and the ceremony of the flags. We had a great time and just enjoyed ourselves.

We headed out to the shops next to see if there were any last minute souvenirs, and I don’t think there were…but on our way back we ran smack into Roland. He looked pale and visibly upset. He asked if he could speak to us.

He said that the girl who handled our closing just told him that we called him completely unprofessional (we never ever said that-she did). He was really upset that we were upset and he sort of ran down his list of why he cares and how he “gets the Disney way.” I felt like he was really trying to prove that he wasn’t just a sales guy, he was a true blue Disney Guy and he didn’t want us to be upset with him. He knew that Dan was a former employee and so he kind of thought they had a bond over that and Dan agreed and we made sure he knew we never called him unprofessional.

He said he was %100 in the wrong about what had happened and he was truly very sorry and he took full responsibility for not telling us the day before that we would lose the credit if we didn’t close earlier. He said he would get us $100 in Disney dollars/credit the next time we were headed to Disneyworld (I told him we were headed there the next day). So he said he would personally drop off the money at our hotel the next day (and he did and we used it for souvenir shopping). So in the end, while I was not looking for Disney dollars of any kind, I was grateful for the effort he made in making up for the lost on board credit. I partly blame the cruise and DVC for not having a better system set up. I have heard how Disney and Disney Cruise Line are like two separate beasts and people have all sorts of issues when doing a land and sea package, and I honestly just don’t get it. It’s all Disney and they should make things more seamless. But because DVC was offering something they had no control over, only the ship had control, these things happen….so I blame the system! But Roland did make a nice Disney recovery, so I do feel good about that.

After the incident with Roland we wandered about the ship and then headed to the Goodbye Characters, where all the characters come out to say goodbye. We had a few more fun moments with Goofy and Donald (we were seriously groupies of this particular Goofy-he loved to react to our plushies-more than any other Goofy I have ever seen). He was throwing them up in the air and trying to pretend to steal them…it was so cute!

Well, we said our goodbyes to our Disney Friends and off to bed we went. We had to quickly finish our packing and put our bags outside our door (we were late doing this but Clifford said it would be ok-he would take care of it for us-we love that guy!)

So we saw our last Towel Animal and off to bed we went….waking up the next day at Port Canaveral. A week ago we said, we’ll hate this view next week. And sure enough we woke up and looked outside and said “I can’t believe we’re already done!”

But we had new things to be excited about…we were headed to Disney World!!! We had never stayed at Pop Century before, so we were excited to see a new resort. We definitely did our resorts backwards,…in 2006,my first time at WDW since I was 10 we started off at the Grand Floridian and then switched to Animal Kingdom Lodge. This trip we started off at Port Orleans French Quarter and ended at Pop Century. It’s much better I think to make your way towards the better the resort than vice versa. You set your expectations at a different level when you start at the Grand Floridian. But we knew it was a value resort going in, so we lowered our expectations and we had some happy surprises (room size) and some disappointments (crowd level!).

More to come next time: Our last 3 days at the World!!