Who's in for GREECE and TURKEY, June 15 2003????

[MJGirl]

I've only had one excursion cancelled and that was during the cruise, due to inclement weather... To be honest, I was kind of happy, as it was our second excursion that day, and I was kind of tired.

 

[mindelmouse]

Hey Sue ...They have Mykonos excursions up!!! Start planning

If they were up, then they must have taken them down..when I look at Mykonos,I don't see any port adventures

 

[CJCPixieDust]

We are doing the Monaco, Monte Carlo and Eze tour through DCL.

Hi nzdisneymom- Is your family platinum? Seems like a lot of folks are and it might be hard for those of us who aren't to get some of these excursions. Have you ever had trouble getting excursions?

In Villefranche, our plan is to walk along the harbor/beach to the train station, take the train to Monaco. Then our plan is to take the tourist train (http://www.monacotours.mc/?lg=en) for a easy tour of all of the highlights. Then head back to Villefranche and spend the afternoon on the beach or strolling around town. I also read somewhere that there is a small market in town on Sundays. I think our plan is to take our first port kind of easy with La Spezia and Rome following. The only thing I have left to figure out is how to get to and from the train station in Monaco to the tourist train (which is down by the waterfront). For us, the Rick Steve's med port book was really useful for this port.

We thought about doing this port on our own as well, but haven't decided yet. I agree that Rick Steves' book is great for planning.

We spent some time on our 2007 cruise looking for the track in Monaco. It was a couple weeks after the race and some the stands along the waterfront were still up. Beware the pool down there as the kids will definitely get an eyeful! You can see some of the curbing and can easily find the starting grid. But a lot of the roads look like they COULD be what you see on TV, but without a map, it’s tough to tell. Not sure if Disney excursions are going to cross the track much or not.

They had a great excursion in 2007 that was an evening of gambling in the Grand Casino. Minimum bets were outrageously high (100 euro for blackjack and 10 for slots – and the craps guys didn’t want to be there), but it was a great experience.

Be careful because Disney excursions are not always a sure thing. Having a plan B is never a bad idea. A couple of my family members were just on a cruise a couple weeks ago and their scuba trip was cancelled the night before because of lack of interest. They really had to scramble to find a dive shop willing to take them. Again on our 2007 cruise we were excited to pay the extra money for the “VIP Exclusive Vatican Tour”. Turns out there were 3 buses full of VIP’s herding their way around Rome on the same tour. In 2011, the ship couldn’t even make the Monaco stop because of high winds.

Thanks for the info about Monaco. We would like to see/travel on some part of the track, so that's good to know. I'm surprised that Disney cancelled the dive trip. The only experience we have had with canceling was due to weather in Alaska and it was unsafe for helicopters to fly. Always good to have a back-up plan and be knowledgeable about the ports just in case! Can't control the weather- although that would be nice!

I guess we have been lucky in our 10 cruises booking all shore excursions through DCL we have never had one cancelled.
In VilleFrance we are going on the Eze, Nice and Wine tour. We like tasting local wines.

The wine tour sounds nice, but traveling with teenagers and Formula 1 fans makes me want to try for Monaco for our family. Wondering how hard it will be to get these DCL excursions...

 

[CJCPixieDust]

Hey Sue ...They have Mykonos excursions up!!! Start planning

Yippee!! Thanks for sharing! I have checked a couple times today and was going to give up. So excited to see what they are offering.

 

[MJGirl]

If they were up, then they must have taken them down..when I look at Mykonos,I don't see any port adventures

Hover over Cruises & Destinations, then click on Port Descriptions ... Go to the pull down menu on the right and you can select them there. They may not have updated the port adventure tab yet ???

 

[mindelmouse]

Hover over Cruises & Destinations, then click on Port Descriptions ... Go to the pull down menu on the right and you can select them there. They may not have updated the port adventure tab yet ???

I looked at port adventures tab. Ill try your way

 

[mindelmouse]

Hover over Cruises & Destinations, then click on Port Descriptions ... Go to the pull down menu on the right and you can select them there. They may not have updated the port adventure tab yet ???

That did work. Thx

 

[mindelmouse]

I see turkey and athens as well

 

[nzdisneymom]

I just finished looking through the newly posted excursions. I have a couple of ideas for Athens and there are a couple for Ephesus but no clue about Mykonos... We might just do something on our own there.

 

[burma]

Mykonos in style looks fantastic

 

[nzdisneymom]

Well, now. Have not posted in a while but am happy to report that we have PIF, flights purchased for Calgary, London, Barcelona. And I cannot wait! Have a friend in Nottingham and plan a few days there then London for a couple. Will be in Barcelona 13th of June and now looking for accomodation. So excited!

NanNan - that's awesome - it's time to really get to planning We will also bein BCN on the 13th - we're doing DCL hotel so we're at the Renaissance Barcelona. I'm thinking we need to start a list of who's where and when pre-cruise in case we want to try to do a pre-cruise Meet one evening. We've done that before and it's been great fun.

There are serveral of us who are arriving in Barcelona on the 13th! It is a great feeling to have most of the plans before/after the cruise taken care of. Ours are complete now we just sit and wait until the Greece/Turkey excursions appear! Happy Wednesday fellow cruisers. Sue

Sue - get to planning! I printed out the excursions we might be interested in - Ephesus will be the toughest because they are so similar that we need to figure out which one has the most things we want to do without being too much. Athens we've pretty much got down to two, and Mykonos, well, none of them wow'ed us, so we may spend some time over on Cruise Critic to figure out what we could do on our own - I'll be sure to share what we find out if others are like us in that regard.

Hi nzdisneymom- Is your family platinum? Seems like a lot of folks are and it might be hard for those of us who aren't to get some of these excursions. Have you ever had trouble getting excursions?

We are gold, so we can't book til March 2nd, but even before that we haven't had trouble except once in getting what we wanted - but what we've always done is on booking day, start with the one that is the most important to us - and if we can't get it, then we book our back-up plan. I like that DCL doesn't charge you for excursions at booking like other cruiselines do - that way you can go back and change if a spot opens up in what you want. We didn't get the Pisa tour we wanted in 2007 but kept checking back and discovered that they added an afternoon tour of the same thing we were going to do a morning tour - so we were able to get it. Also as people change their plans, spots open up - and I'm not sure if they try to hold some spots open for the lower tiers or not, but it might be worth checking. We've also found that DISers are great about saying when they are about to cancel a hard-to-get one if their plans change so that the other DISers have a chance to try to grab it once it's released.

I've been sick with a cold since Sunday so I'm glad to have something to cheer me up - excursion planning!

 

[epcotrulz]

Hi -- haven't been too active here, but we just booked our flights into Barcelona. Red eye on the 13th, getting in on the 14th.

Splurged on World Traveller Plus for the extra leg room, hope it was worth it . . .

 

[DL1957]

I just finished looking through the newly posted excursions. I have a couple of ideas for Athens and there are a couple for Ephesus but no clue about Mykonos... We might just do something on our own there.

Thanks everyone. Had not checked Dis until later! Just checked them out agree with you about Mykonos but DH is doing the research. Will share his thoughts. Sue

 

[nzdisneymom]

Our local public library has several Fodor travel books available for e-readers. I just got the ones for Greece, Italy, France, and Barcelona.

 

[poohmomof5]

Okay, I am a complete Disney loser...

Here is the funny story of how we are booked on this cruise as of today:

We were on an Alaska Disney cruise in August 2011 and booked a December 2012 Fantasy New Years Eve sailing for our family of 7. Well, 2012 proved to be an interesting year, we decided to build a house, then half way into the construction, I lost my job (I already had another job lined up, but I needed a mental health break, so I took 3 months off before starting the new job). So we moved our on board booking credit to the July Med with Greece and Turkey as we thought the New Years Eve probably wouldn't work out and it gave us an extra 6 months to save. As the year progressed, we moved into our new house and weren't able to sell our old house. Along came December and my job is finally getting going, but we hadn't sold our house, we owed property taxes on 2 homes, DVC dues etc, so we made a family decision to cancel the July Med cruise all together and instead do a 4 night Dream using a GREAT special they had. We sailed for the amount of our deposit refund and had a blast! But, alas, while on the cruise, the kids (ages 21, 19,18,15, and 8) begged us to book a longer cruise.

We were kind of shocked because well, they are teens and college aged and during this phase of life, they seem to be less about family and more about independence. And had kind of said no more long trips... So, I went to the booking desk and asked for quotes on a few longer cruises and we discussed over dinner. Shockingly, they all picked the Med (lol). So, in our Disney happy place, we booked this Med. The college ones are able to work their jobs around it so I think it will end up working out! We finally have an offer on our house (supposed to close end of Feb) and I am getting a pretty nice sized bonus that I found out about in the last few days. So, we are getting close to Pay in full date, and I think I have DH 75% convinced. Wish me luck!

We are kind of pathetic because we used the Dream as our condolence cruise because we had to cancel and now we might get to do both!

I sincerely hope we will be able to do this as it seems to be a perfect mix of educational once in a lifetime type experiences and good old family fun. For example, Ephesus and Waterpark...lol all in one day!!!

So, long story short: we are booked in Verandah GTY rooms and it is

me, early 40's
DH, early 40's
DS, 21
DD, 19
DS, 18
DD, 15
DD, 8

And, I love doing FE. Do we have one of those? I am only about 20 pages into the thread trying to get caught up.

 

[mindelmouse]

Are you on fb.? We have a cruise doc listed there.

 

[DL1957]

Okay, I am a complete Disney loser...

So, long story short: we are booked in Verandah GTY rooms and it is

me, early 40's
DH, early 40's
DS, 21
DD, 19
DS, 18
DD, 15
DD, 8

And, I love doing FE. Do we have one of those? I am only about 20 pages into the thread trying to get caught up.

Welcome you are going to have a great time. This will be our second Med cruise on DCL our first was the first one in 2007! Sorry our group is all very active 50 plus in age however we do have 2 school teachers in our group one is a high school history teacher so we have a great resource for education!

 

[Lynn G]

Welcome Poohmom0f5!

 

[MoonDaughter23]

Okay, I am a complete Disney loser...

Here is the funny story of how we are booked on this cruise as of today:

Wow! After all that I hope this does work out for you. It's stories like that to make the trip even better because of what it took for you all to get there. My party started doing a special toast on the first day of our vacations to kind of wash away the life altering moments we had before we got there (we seem to have had a lot of them in the past couple of years). Just a way to say "Enjoy every moment of the experience - even the moments that get on your nerves." LOL

 

[nzdisneymom]

Here's the info for the spreadsheet for Roll Call and also if you want to join the facebook group.

Hi ... I was playing around with Google Docs, and created a form for our Roll Call. I had lllpath look at it, and she thought it was okay... Here is the ROLLCALL FORM to the form for Rollcall. The form creates a spreadsheet, so here is a link to the spreadsheet. I believe people can update their information once entered or not... Let me know. Also, if you are on the sheet, and for some reason have to back out, please pm me or lllpath (she graciously agreed to back me up if needed) and we will remove you.

ROLLCALL FORM

SPREADSHEET

If you want to join the Facebook group, go here to request to join the group.

To see a list of who is sailing from DIS, see the June 15th Cruisers link in my sig line.