Disney Magic 12-Night Iceland & Norway June 2016 - 20 Years Cancer Free Anniversary PTR!

AAshleySEG

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jan 16, 2012
Welcome!! I wanted to start by saying, I know this is over a year away, but this will be the longest I have ever had to prepare for a vacation! Normally we do really last minute trips, but I am excited to have lots of time to research and prepare for this one!

Let's start with some introductions! My name is Andrea! I am a pretty big Disney fanatic, as most of you that will be reading my PTR are as well! I am married, and this vacation will be to celebrate our 9th Wedding Anniversary. Here is a photo of us from the Disney Magic in the port of Key West on April 13th, 2015!

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Some of you may have read one of my other trip reports, you may even be reading my current one from our Back to Back Disney Magic Western Caribbean Cruises! So again welcome to everyone! If you do not know anything about us or me, I am going to give you a little rundown!

My very first Disney Trip was when I was 6 years old. I grew up outside of Charlotte, NC and so going to Disney World was a BIG deal for us. We usually on took little beach trips once a year on the holidays. We went on this Disney Trip with my grandparents and a few of my cousins, aunts, and uncles. I remember not staying on property and having to get up really early in the morning to drive to Disney World. The only thing I vividly remember from that trip was standing in line to ride 20,000 Leagues...but then as soon as it was our turn to get on, deciding that I was not going to ride it! It looked scary to me at that young age. I think that memory sticks with me because now I will never have the opportunity to ride it again. It has long since been removed, but I can still see it in my memories.

Fast forward to when I was 11 years old...In May of 1996 I found out that I had Leukemia (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia). I was immediately put into the hospital and started chemo, within 2 weeks I was in remission, however the journey had just begun, I had 2 years of chemotherapy, spinal taps, bone marrow aspirations and many other procedures. In 1997, I was lucky enough to be chosen to go on a Make-A-Wish Trip to Disney World! THIS is where my love of Disney started!

With all of the medical bills, and being a middle class family, Disney World was just too expensive of a vacation for us to take. So the next time I was able to go, it was of my own doing. I didn't go again until I was 20 years old. I had saved up it seemed like forever to be able to stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge! That trip rekindled that spark I had and that flame has not gone out since.

When I started dating Jeremy he found a love for Disney that he didn't know existed inside himself and now we are both fanatics. Here is a photo of us at Ohana on our first Disney trip together!

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We had gone on a few Disney trips together and then in 2006 in front of Cinderella Castle during Wishes he proposed! (You guys know that part when the Blue Fairy says "Now, let's all put our hearts together and make a wish come true"? Yep, that was the moment!

Fast forward one year later, we got married 1 year exactly from the proposal date on June 16, 2007. We spent our honeymoon at Disneyland in California! It was both of our first trips to California and we had an amazing time!

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We spent our first anniversary back at the Polynesian at Disney World and a few more Disney trips and then in 2009 we became DVC members! Our home resort is at Disney's Grand Californian! Our first big trip with our points was to Disneyland Paris in February of 2010!

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More Disney trips in between and then in June of 2012 for our 5th Anniversary we took our first Disney Cruise! We headed out on the Disney Wonder to experience Alaska! We met some great friends and had an amazing time!

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We had such a great time on that cruise that we booked another one for August of 2012! We headed out on the Disney Dream for a double dip and our first experience at Castaway Cay! Disregard my short hair...worst decision I ever made! On this particular cruise we met some more friends that have turned into our BEST friends! I am so thankful that we took this cruise and got to meet our dear friends Dan and Mindy!

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Our 7th Anniversary Trip came in June of 2014, this is the trip that we discovered Disneybound outfits!! We had so much fun dressing and coordinating our attire to some of our favorite Disney characters! We managed somehow to take 6 trips to Disney World in 2014! No idea how that happened. We are addicted, what can I say!

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Our next trip had us meeting the MOST characters we have ever tried to meet in a single trip, it was like a Character-Palooza! We got some great shots and had so much fun!

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I'm not sure which trip it started now, but we also fell in love with Victoria & Albert's restaurant at the Grand Floridian, and now try to visit it as often as we can afford. In September of 2014 we were finally lucky enough to be able to sit at the Chef's Table! We had such a great time!

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Fast forward a few months and we are all caught up! We just got back from 2 Cruises, Back to Back on the Disney Magic to the Western Caribbean! We had such an amazing time, that we wanted to book a cruise while we were on board!

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So to coincide with our 9th Wedding Anniversary and my 20th Anniversary of being Cancer Free, we are taking this trip to Europe to get on the Disney Magic yet again! We are so excited to start planning this one, we are already a buzz with all the things we want to do!

So, now that you know about us...too much maybe! We can get this Pre-Trip Report rolling! If this wasn't enough about us and you want to know more, you can check out some of my trip reports in my signature! Next up, we will get this started and I will tell you about my doggie family!



 
So, since we just got home from our last cruise, you would think we would be detoxing from vacation...but we are already planning an preparing for this one. I am sort of an excessive planner. I really like to know details and how to do things before I get to a destination. So as soon as we got home we sat down and tried to figure out exactly how many potential days we wanted to spend before and after the trip. Then I looked at some flight schedule to see what times they generally depart and such. The flights for our dates won't be out for a few months, so I looked at the schedules for this June. So with all of that in mind, here is our very first draft preliminary plan of our days and where we we will...definitely too early to know what we are doing, but this is basically just a little list to get us started, a jumping off point if you will!

  • Southport & Charlotte
We are planning to fly out of Charlotte, NC. The airport that we live near is in Wilmington, however, the flights are really expensive out of there. Charlotte and/or Raleigh, NC are much more affordable with Charlotte coming in as the least expensive. So we will probably leave our home and drive late afternoon/early evening about 4 hours, then stay the night up there so we don't have to get up too early the next morning. I always like to spend as much possible time with my dogs as I can. Luckily my mom lives right outside of Charlotte, so hopefully we will be able to park our car there instead of the airport, that would be expensive. Then my mom may drive us and pick us up from the airport!

  • Charlotte & Boston
I cannot stand LONG flights. Around 5 hours is the longest flight length I generally like, so having a nonstop from somewhere on the east coast to London, is more than likely something I am not wanting to do. So in a best case scenario I want something like this, Charlotte to Boston, Boston to Iceland, Iceland to London. I know it is way to early for flight prices but at the moment from Charlotte to London with connections costs about $1500 per person...that is just crazy...I mean who wants the flights to be more expensive than the cruise?? So with me doing a little airplane magic, I was thinking we could book a domestic flight from like Charlotte to Boston in the morning. Then book a second set of flights through Icelandair, then that would get me the 1 stop over in Reykjavik like I would prefer! Doing it this way for both people it would only cost right around $1000...so when I compare $3000 to $1000, plus I can get the flight path I want, it seems like it is going to be the best way to go! So basically on this day we would take a flight from Charlotte to Boston in the early part of the day, then take Boston to London with a stop in Iceland, which would put us arriving in London the following day.

  • London, England
This would be our arrival day in London, we would probably be able to do some things late afternoon but we would probably want to sleep...who knows! This day and all the other days after this one will be better planned out as we progress through this Pre-Trip Report!

  • Our 9th Wedding Anniversary!
We will have a full day in London today! I think it will be fun spending our anniversary here, maybe go out to a nice dinner, go see some theater, just walk around, who knows, maybe even do a food tour or something! I am really excited to find out all that we could do in London in One Day! It is going to be like a challenge to figure out the best course of action!

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  • Dover, England & Disney Magic!
I have read a little so far about how to get to the cruise terminal, it seems the best way may be to take a train to Dover, then a cab to the terminal. I will get more details on this as we progress through planning! There are also a few things to do and see around the Dover area, so who knows we may decide to come here the night before and spend the morning and early afternoon exploring this area! After arriving or exploring, we will board the Disney Magic this afternoon and set sail!

  • At Sea Day
  • Newcastle, England
  • Kirkwall, Scotland
  • At Sea Day
  • Reykjavik, Iceland
  • Reykjavik, Iceland
  • Akureyri, Iceland
  • At Sea Day
  • Bergen, Norway
  • Stavanger, Norway
  • At Sea Day
  • Copenhagen, Denmark
When we realized that the cruise ends in Copenhagen, there is one thing I immediately knew that I wanted to do, and that is visit Tivoli! I have wanted to go to Tivoli since I watched Samantha Brown's Passport to Europe years ago! Hopefully this time, we will finally have a chance to visit it! Also, I think we are going to spend the night in Copenhagen before heading back across the Atlantic

  • Copenhagen & Boston
At the moment there are two options to consider when flying from Copenhagen to Boston, one is an early morning type flight that would put us in Boston around Noon, but even with that we would probably stay the night and get an early flight out the next day. The other option is to take an afternoon flight and get there around 7:00. I am leaning more toward this option.

  • Boston, Charlotte, Home!
This would be the morning that we fly back to Charlotte, and then drive the 4 hours back home!

This is going to be another one of those really long trips! I think 18 nights away from home total! This is going to be a huge planning feat, and we can't wait to get started! I am trying to decide how best to organize all of my information on this PTR, I don't know whether it would be better to organize the info by destination, or by date of post...I am thinking plans will change a lot over these 415 days so destination may be the best way to do it! So I may put links to the chapters in this section based on what information it falls under! We shall see! If you guys have any ideas or have been to any of these destinations please feel free to make any suggestions or comments, anything will be helpful at this point!!

United States PTR Links!
Boston Layover Plans

 
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Last night for a while we did some research on getting around in London! The very first thing we are going to have to do once we arrive at Heathrow is to get into London to whichever hotel we decide to stay in! I found really great websites that explain some of the options!

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Heathrow Official Airport Website (Travel to London Page)


With all of that information there are three options that we are going to choose from! Either the Heathrow Express, which takes about 15 minutes to get to Paddington Station in London, but at a price of 21.50 GBP ($33.03) per person, it is pretty pricey!

The second option for us will be the Heathrow Connect! These trains run every 30 minutes instead of every 15, and they take approximately 25 minutes to get to Paddington Station from the airport. Another bonus is that they are about half the price! They come in at 10.10 GBP ($15.52) per person!

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The third and final option for us to choose from is the London Underground. The Piccadilly Line is the most cost effective option of the three. Trains come about every 10 minutes or so, and the travel time is around 50 minutes. With an oyster card, which we will have, the fare is 5.00 GBP ($7.68) per person!

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Seeing London in such a short time period, every second is going to be important! So we really have to think about our options. However, we do want to be budget friendly, so at the moment I am really liking the Heathrow Connect option. I change my mind more than I make it up, so I am going to have to process all of the arguments for and against the options. Another thing that may weigh on it is where our hotel is! I mean, on the underground we may be able to walk to the hotel from the station, if we end up at Paddington, we might have to catch a London Cab or take the Underground anyway! Luckily, we have a while to figure all of these things out!

So, if you are planning on going on a cruise out of Dover, and need to get into London which would you choose and why?


 
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The London List
Alright, we are only going to have about a day and a half in the great city of London...not much at all really. Eventually we hope we get to go back. But, for the moment, that is about all the time we are going to be able to work into our trip. So with that in mind, we are going to make a list. The list is going to encompass everything we would "like" to do in London. This is by no means what we are planning to try and accomplish, that type of thing will come later when we weed out things based on time. So for now, I am just going to start this list. If you guys have any suggestions PLEASE let me know! What we are really going to try and do is plan out a walking map and try to hit as many of the spots we can within reason. It may also give us an idea of what to plan in the future for another trip, basically things that we would definitely want to see in more depth in the future! I am going to update this list periodically with new items that we find or hear about. We are more than likely not going to have time to spend hours in certain places, just more of a walk by photo opportunity or things of that nature. So with all of that in mind...let "The London List" begin!

As of: May 3rd, 2015
(Day One Sights will be in Red)

  • Parliament and Elizabeth Tower
  • Tower Bridge
  • London Eye
  • Buckingham Palace
  • Borough Market (Cheese Sandwich, Lincolnshire Sausage, Really We Just Love Food)
  • Westminster Abbey
  • Hyde Park, Green Park, St James Park, etc. - Just parks in general!
  • Leicester Square
  • Piccadilly Circus
  • Globe Theater
  • Tower of London
  • Victoria & Albert Museum (Because we love the restaurant at Grand Floridian so much ;), we wanted to real history)
  • St Paul's Cathedral
  • Millennium Bridge
  • King's Cross Station
  • Kensington Palace & Gardens
  • Peter Pan Statue
  • Princess Diana Memorial Fountain
  • The Albert Memorial & Royal Albert Hall
  • The Wellington Arch
  • The Burlington Arcade
  • Trafalgar Square
  • St James Palace
  • Clarence House
  • Harrod's
  • The Lion King at the Lyceum Theater
  • Thames River Cruise
  • London Cab Ride
  • London Bus Ride
  • James Smith & Sons - Umbrella Shop
  • A. Gold Shop - Specializes in British Foods
  • Fortnum & Mason Tea Shop
  • Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at the Mandarin Oriental (#5# Restaurant in the World 2014)
  • Afternoon Tea at Claridge's
  • The Ledbury ( #10 Restaurant in the World 2014)
To Be Continued...
 
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So over the last few days we have been trying to plan out what to do on our first afternoon/night in London. Based on the flight data I have researched, our flight should arrive in London at 11:45am. With that in mind, and knowing that we will need to grab our luggage and then go through passport control/customs I am planning to allow anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to make it to the Heathrow Express Train. Trying to hit some sights on our first day, I made our own little Walking Tour! Here is a hypothetical schedule of plans, which may go exactly the way I want, more than likely will not go according to plan. This is my Glass Half Full Version! Which would check lots of places we want to see off of the list!

  • 11:45 BST - Arrive at Heathrow
  • 13:45 BST - Get on the Heathrow Express
This is an awesome video for Arrivals in Terminal 2 (which is supposed to be the terminal we arrive in)

  • 14:00 BST - Arrive at Paddington and Take a London Cab to Our Hotel
  • 14:30 BST - Check-In, Drop Luggage In Room - Head Out
  • 14:45 BST - St. James Palace (Photo Op)
  • 14:50 BST - Clarence House (Photo Op)
  • 15:00 BST - Buckingham Palace (Photo Op)
  • 15:15 BST - Wellington Arch (Photo Op)
  • 15:20 BST - Apsley House (Photo Op)
  • 15:35 BST - Harrod's (Spend around 30 minutes inside)
  • 16:15 BST - Victoria & Albert Museum (Spend an hour or until closing at 17:45)
This is a pretty cool video! 20 Great Reasons to Visit the V&A
  • 18:00 BST - The Albert Memorial & Royal Albert Hall (Photo Op)
  • 18:10 BST - Princess Diana Memorial Fountain (Photo Op)
  • 18:25 BST - Kensington Palace (Photo Op)
  • 18:40 BST - Peter Pan Statue (Photo Op)
  • 18:45 BST - Italian Gardens (Photo Op)
  • 18:50 BST - Lancaster Gate Underground Station to Hotel
  • 19:10 BST - Arrive Back at Hotel, get ready for Dinner!
  • 20:00 BST - Leave Hotel, Tube to Knightsbridge for Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal was ranked the #5 restaurant in the World in 2014! I wonder where it will be ranked on the 2015 List which comes out soon??
  • 20:30 BST - Dinner Reservation (Can Reserve 90 Days Out, so Keeping Fingers Crossed)
  • 22:30 BST - Tube Back to Hotel!
Yeah, so after flying all night long, we are going to be really tired, so I am being pretty optimistic that we are going to be functioning properly when we arrive and throughout the day until evening. We may get there are decide to scrap the entire plan, nap during the day and then go out for dinner that night...LOL I am going ahead and planning it out though because I would rather have a plan in place and decide not to do it as opposed to not have one and then waste all our time not knowing what to do!
 
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Boston, Massachusetts
On our way to Europe our first flight we encounter will lead us from Charlotte, NC to Boston, MA! Of all the flights I have been checking, the flight could land in Boston anywhere from 1:40 to 2:30 in the afternoon. The flight from Boston to Iceland does not leave until after 9:00pm! That gives us quite a bit of time in this great city, so I thought we would plan a little detour out of the airport for some exploration!

We have been to Boston two times before, once for Jeremy's birthday which is in January, and wouldn't you know it, it was like 70 degrees when we were there, it was like the warmest weekend in January in a really long time. That was almost 10 years ago though. I had all these cool ice skating and fun activities planned...yeah those didn't happen. The next time we went to Boston was on one of our baseball trips! We went to see a Red Sox/Yankees game at Fenway Park! That was in April 2008 maybe?? So it has been a while since we have been there. A sad thing to me was that all of the photos that I had taken on that first trip in Boston were on a computer that crashed and we were unable to rescue the photos from that trip. With that in my mind, we need some new ones! What better way to get some new ones than explore the city a little on our really long layover!

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  • 13:55 - Arrive at Boston Logan International Airport
  • 14:30 - Grab Our Bags and Take the Massport #66 Bus to the Water Transportation Dock
  • 15:00 - Take the Rowes Wharf Water Taxi to Rowes Wharf (12 On The Map)
We are going to have luggage with us so the best option is to use this water taxi service, they will store your luggage free of charge with a round-trip ticket back to the airport, so it is a win-win situation for us! We can get into the city and have somewhere to stow our luggage until we head back to the airport! The other two times we took the trains/subway, but this time we thought we would try something new! The ride is less than 10 minutes and we should be on our way around the city!

  • 15:30 - Walk to Boston Common to Walk The Freedom Trail!
  • 16:00 - Boston Common Visitor's Center
  • 16:15 - Massachusetts State House (Photo Op)
  • 16:20 - Park Street Church (Photo Op)
  • 16:25 - Granary Burying Ground
  • 16:40 - Stop in a Morsel's at the Omni Parker House to get a Boston Cream Pie!
  • 16:50 - Old Corner Bookstore Site & Old South Meeting House (Photo Op)
  • 16:55 - Boston Massacre Site & Old State House (Photo Op)
  • 17:00 - Faneuil Hall (Photo Op)
  • 17:15 - Paul Revere House (Photo Op)
  • 17:20 - Old North Church (Photo Op)
  • 17:50 - Arrive Back at Rowes Wharf for Water Taxi to Logan
  • 18:15 - Take the Massport #66 Bus to Our Terminal and Check Our Bags
Once we have gone through security and everything we will probably eat dinner at Earl of Sandwich in Terminal E. After dinner we should only have a little while to wait before we board our flight to Reykjavik, Iceland!
 
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