4/24/2010 Med cruise: Friends, Romans, Countrymen lend me your Ears

[friend of tinkerbell]

One year from tomorrow!!!!!
yippee

 

[friend of tinkerbell]

One year from today!!!!!

 

[skoi]

Wow, only a year. I better start seriously planning.

Oldest son broke his foot almost two weeks, just in time for our Easter (we're Orthodox so our Easter is usually later than Western-standard Easter). So he got to clump around in a boot cast for Easter procession. I told him no broken bones on the cruise.

If we ever get enough people together, I'd be willing to head up a group to reserve the private room at Palo for brunch on a sea day. We'd need 11 people or so. I've done it before so you'd think I'd remember.

Oldest dd showed me a site she uses to make avatars, banners, etc, so I'll get to work on something soon. It's near the end of our school year-since we home school we start in early August and work through to about mid-May, and I have to get the tons of paperwork together for the school district.

I'm going to put something on page one re: activities we'd like to plan for on board. That way it'll be all on one place.

Have a great weekend.
Julie

 

[skoi]

So we've started researching for the trip. In a way, it might have been a bad thing because now some of my original plans are completely scrapped. I did look at private tours, but they're very expensive.

Ds is still stuck on Tunis. He's working on his Arabic little by little, and hopefully he'll be able to use it a little bit.

I even started gathering images for a banner, but haven't done anything with them.

Julie

 

[guynwdm]

I am booked on this cruise as well. I am going with my 76 yo Father. I was just on the podcast cruise and rebooked this while on the ship. I got a much better deal and got to get one of the cat 10 porthole rooms. Way excited to be going. Hopefully there will be more disboarders joining us on the ship. I did the panama canal cruise and there were almost 200 of us on the westbound cruise last year.

Rob

 

[skoi]

Glad to have more people on board. Your room deal sounds great. I might look into rebooking onboard in Sept.

I did gather some images for the banner, but haven't done anything with them. I started an Arabic class a couple weeks ago and it's making me crazy. The script is so hard, it makes me dizzy.

Anyone have any plans for shore excursions? I'm still looking at doing most ports on our own. We have a good company lined up for a private guide in Tunisia, so if anyone's interested maybe we can do a little larger group. Also, I'd like to do Pompeii and go down the Amalfi coast, so I'm not sure what to do. We've been in Italy, and I'm definitely NOT driving there, over those twisty roads.

Also- any ideas for Villefranche? It's the one port I'm drawing a complete zero on...

Julie

 

[skoi]

Anybody still out there?

I've been taking an Arabic course, and plan to ask the instructor if he's been to Tunis, and if so, what to see. He's Moroccan, but I have no idea how much travel he's done in his own region.

Anyone else have plans yet?
I did download a bunch of images but haven't done anything with them yet.

Also- I was thinking if we get enough people of organizing a private group brunch at Palo. If people are interested, let me know.

Julie

 

[friend of tinkerbell]

Hey everybody, good news!!!!!

Just went to the Disney Cruise site, and noticed our cruise rates were reduced. When I called the Disney Cruise Line at 1-800-951-3532, they credited my account the diference! The price for the three of us, My husband, 9 year old son, and I had dropped $1030.40. We had originally booked a catagory 10 for the three of us for $7758.40. Our new price is $6728.00!
They credited us $1030.40!!!!!

So....If you have not done so, Call them! They will do the same for you.

 

[NC_Tink]

Hi Everyone! We're jumping on board! We were originally going to go on the May 5th cruise, but decided that we really want that extra day at sea . My family (DH, me, and 2 DSs (12 & 10 at time of cruise)) are completely excited!! We can't wait to see Rome and Pompeii. We're not certain of our plans in other ports right now -- but I'm going to have a great time planning over the next several months!

Lubi

 

[skoi]

NCTink. Glad to have you with us. Hopefully we'll be able to get this thread going!

Off to bed now, have to get up early tomorrow.

Julie

 

[guynwdm]

Hey everybody, good news!!!!!

Just went to the Disney Cruise site, and noticed our cruise rates were reduced. When I called the Disney Cruise Line at 1-800-951-3532, they credited my account the diference! The price for the three of us, My husband, 9 year old son, and I had dropped $1030.40. We had originally booked a catagory 10 for the three of us for $7758.40. Our new price is $6728.00!
They credited us $1030.40!!!!!

So....If you have not done so, Call them! They will do the same for you.

Thanks for the post. I contacted my travel agent and my costs went down as well. I had rebooked on the podcast cruise and got the price reduced and got the disney onboard booking credit and now the price went down again. I was even able to get a hidden porthole room on this one as well.

Is anyone thinking about doing Fish Extenders?

 

[mehaul]

We recently booked this cruise with the kids free incentive. We did the Med Cruise in June 2007 with Disney. I recently created a planning site to help organize for the trip. I saved all our menus, navigators and will try to upload them in the next few days.

www.worldofmouse.com/disney-mediterranean-cruise-2010.html

I hope this link is helpful.

 

[skoi]

mehaul and others who I might have missed.

I'll go check out your site. I've been trying to find menus from the previous Med cruises because I was curious to see if they were different. The kids are hoping to see more Italian and some North African/Middle Eastern type foods, but our kids are a little strange.

I actually worked up a banner, but have to edit it on the desktop because I can't download fonts onto my laptop.

Off to school for now. It's our second day, and oldest ds has an Arabic lesson in the city at three, so it's going to be crazy today.

Julie

 

[KathyFP]

We are also going to be on the cruise. We booked while on our Disney Cruise at Christmas. This will be our second cruise.

We will be in 1030. We loved that room.

 

[skoi]

KathyFP

Glad to see the ship is filling up.

I guess we're getting big enough for a roll call on the front page, so whoever is interested pm me your name, dis name, whose going, and late/early dining, and any other info you want me to include. I'll list it all on the first page.

Also, someone mentioned fish extenders? If anyone's interested in that, let me know as well.

My hope is to get together a brunch group. We'd need twelve adults to get the private room at Palo for brunch.

Julie

Okay- I've been working on a banner, it's not very good, and somehow it's really small, down in my signature. Feel free to come up with something better, please.

 

[mehaul]

I was able to find some old menus, I also posted all the excursions with the prices Disney offered on the Med cruise in 2007.

All the info is available on my web site

http://www.worldofmouse.com/index.html

just click the Med Cruise 2010 link

On that cruise Disney went to Sicily, Sardinia and Marseille instead of Tunis, Malta and Corsica

 

[skoi]

Thanks for posting all that information. I was really interested in seeing some of the excursions. We never do excursions, but might do the Pompeii half day if they offer it again. Dd wants to go to catacombs in Naples since we won't make them in Rome since we have the Vatican, St. Paul Outside the Walls, and the Forum/Coliseum (time permitting) on tap.

We're thinking of doing Tunis with a private guide, but we're not sure yet. Any advice?

Julie

 

[NC_Tink]

Julie - sent you a PM with our info. Thanks for keeping the roll call! Welcome to everyone - glad to see others joining. We just booked a couple of weeks ago when they released the kids sail free offer - it was too good a deal to pass up . Can't wait for Spring!

I think I would be interested in doing a fish extender -- but can someone tell me the logistics of doing this overseas? Can we mail our stuff ahead like we can here? With luggage restrictions the way they are ... I guess I'm wondering how do you get the stuff there? TIA

 

[shushh]

G'day everyone! We are so excited to be on this cruise. This is our very first Disney cruise and we're so glad we found this site. It's phenomenal!!! I am busy gathering info as it will be a BIG trip for us flying all the way from Sydney with 3 children aged 7,5 and 18 months. My parents are coming along as well!

Belinda

 

[mehaul]

Thanks for posting all that information. I was really interested in seeing some of the excursions. We never do excursions, but might do the Pompeii half day if they offer it again. Dd wants to go to catacombs in Naples since we won't make them in Rome since we have the Vatican, St. Paul Outside the Walls, and the Forum/Coliseum (time permitting) on tap.

We're thinking of doing Tunis with a private guide, but we're not sure yet. Any advice?

Julie

The Disney excursions are helpful if you have alot of distance to cover, in particular if the city (i.e. Florence) is far away from the port (La Spezia)

Rome is extremely easy to navigate from the port. It is a single train ride from the train station very near the port. The city was very easy to navigate on your own.

Florence on the other hand is a 2 hour train ride with a transfer from the port. If you don't want to do a Disney excursion I would at least do the "Florence on Your Own" Disney Excursion. In 2007 it was nominally more expensive than the train, but you're guaranteed to make it back to the Disney Magic before it sails away.

In Naples we did the Mt Vesuvius Hike and Pompeii excursion. I mapped it out with a do it yourself plan, wasn't worth the hassle factor to save a few $. The Disney excurison was very nicely planned.

Villefranche was very easy to do on your own. Train station was close to port. Very simple to take the train to Nice.