captaincrash
<font color=darkorchid>!!!Surrender over yer LOOT!
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2005
- Messages
- 10,508

Wow! ~ four days and NO activity here? I guess everyone is getting busy with the holidays as we have. Well - in spite of the tepid activity levels - I will offer some comments and casual updates:
a) ON the wrist bands - may I echo the setiments that we're OK with any decision made - and that we are indeed grateful for your efforts!
b) On those pix of that other ship - it looks really neat with the aqua theater and open air atrium. It's like having twin tower wings at sea! I find the images truly encouraging to the point of looking into sailings and how we might hop one!
I bought a cruise for my Mom to Alaska last year. Couldn't wait to hear how it went when she returned. During the whole story, I kept thinking... "That's not how it is with Disney." I almost felt like apologizing!
c) As for the little things DCL does to set themselves apart. Without going into too much detail - I'll just say that DCL is currently our families' FAVORITE cruise line. We've taken some 35 or 36 cruises - and DCL is the only cruise line where we sailed the same ship and port rotation consecutively. It used to be that we'd NEVER repeat the same ship - or port rotation! So for us to break the pattern and begin repeating identical voyages means we feel we've found something special here! Having said THAT.... I will add that even so we have since setteled into alternating between Disney and other cruise lines now. It gives us perspective and cuts our cruising expenditures by about 25% annually while preserving most of the cruising activity.
d) Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone!!!

e) This past Black friday we had an entertaining 'bout of shopping. As expected my dear sweet spouse essentially had her moments of shop-a-holic insanity! At about 9:40PM wednesday she was headed out the door to hit the 10PM early opening of Toys R Us... only to find my visiting sister had parked her car blocking our driveway. She stopped by after our Thanksgiving dinner at my near by brothers house - so she could visit further with us and spend some time with our dog whom she is very fond of. She had parked and taken our dog for an evening stroll... and our cars were trapped! MY spouse went running ... RUNNING off to look for my sister with the dog so she could rush back to move her car - so SHE could get to Toys R Us! She was in such a panic over potentially missing the opening at 10PM?! I was impressed with her level of anxiety!
So - at Toys R Us my spouse found at 9:55 sharp they had what looked like 1000+ people in a line a block and a half long waiting to simply get in! (!!!!!!) She hung around for a few minutes in amazement chatting with a few who had been waiting some time near the front of the line. Then she simply came home without going in.

Later at 1AM she pushed me out the door to check on the conditions at Toys R Us - and if apporpriate - to buy the things she originally wanted. Being the good spouse - I obediently went while grumbling silently under my breath that I should instead go to Dennys' for a burger and fries. Well... I didn't end up at Dennys - but I did walk right into Toys R us - and I found that folks checking out complained they had been waiting 2 hours to check out! I asked several people how long they had been waiting to check out and confirmed this was true. I then took a glance at the line to pay and indeed it was winding it's way like a Disneyland snake line throughb the store! What made the line so slow was every buyer pushing a heavily laden shopping cart! I found the things my spouse wanted and just put them, down and left. On my way home I passed by Best Buy and saw the line only wrapped 90 degress in an arc around one side of the building. That was not nearly as long as in past years where I saw a line wrap HALF way around the whole building.
Later at 3:30 AM my spouse left early - ahead of the opening times for the regular stores she was to hit - so she could try Toys R Us again... and there were NO LINES to pay then - and she found most of the things she wanted! She had remarked she would only shop from 4 to 6AM... and I mused silently how she says the same thing every year... and every year she shops until 11 AM or 1PM... So yeah - my spouse is indeed a LONG ENDURANCE POWER SHOPPER!

My spouse came waltzing in the door at 12 noon - with a guilty expression like "the Cat who ate the Canary"