Wednesday 26th January 2011 = My dream, Our Dream THE Dream!!!!!!
Finally the day we had waited for for so long was here!
I was wide awake most of the night, I think I finally fell asleep about 5am
and woke up at 8am as I heard Lee wandering around. I immediately sprang out of the bed and opened the curtains and squealed with delight, Lee came running out of the bathroom wondering what on earth was wrong at which point I was jumping up and down pointing out of the window chanting red funnels over and over again. I was like an over excited three year old on Christmas morning!
If you squint and look over the ship in the front of the photo you can indeed see the red funnels.
I was so excited and we quickly showered and got ready, packed our toiletries etc back in the case and headed over to the lobby, they had kindly agreed to store one of our cases for the duration of the cruise. I was told I needed to move the car into the cruise parking area at the back of the hotel, once I had done that we got a taxi to the port, $12 + tip. We dropped our luggage off and joined the end of the queue, despite it only being 9.30am it was pretty long. Within five minutes or so some dark clouds rolled over and it began to rain
not great as we were queuing just outside the covered area and were only wearing t shirts!
What really annoyed us and everyone around us is that people were arriving in taxis, buses etc and unloading right near the front of the queue and then just merging into the front of the queue!
Several people went and complained to the guys taking the cases but they just said it had nothing to do with them, it was very frustrating as we were all standing in the rain and they were just queue jumping. On one occasion a large group unloaded near us and began to stand just in front under the shelter, Lee was at boiling point by now and told them all to move which they did very reluctantly, everyone we were talking to in the queue near us gave him a cheer.
Eventually around 10.30am they began to let us in, we were soon through security and up to the check in area. We went over to the
Castaway Club line and were directed to the Non US desk, which was great as there wasnt a queue. We were called forward to the next available agent, who was a very sweet but very old man. It took him quite a while to check us in and then at the end asked us what number boarding card we had, well we hadnt been given one and should have been by the girl who sent us over to the non US queue so he told us to go back to her and get her to issue a lower number than they were currently on. Which is what I did, but she really gave me some attitude saying that she had given me one but I must have lost it!
Well after standing in the pissing rain for an hour I was beginning to lose my patience and told her in a very firm manner that she had NOT given me the card and that as we had been in the terminal about 20 minutes already I wanted an earlier boarding number than what she was currently giving out. She rather rudely pushed a card across the desk to me which was originally number 9 but she had crossed it out and changed it to a 7. Lets just say it was a very frustrating start to the day but Lee & I decided that we would forget all about it and start from scratch as we were both fuming, so we took several deep breaths and started again.
I then heard someone shouting my name I turned around to see one of my friends Monica running towards me, we chatted for a while and I introduced her to Lee as they hadnt met before. After a while Monica rejoined her friends and Lee and I took some photos in the terminal, whilst we were walking around Captain Mickey appeared and we quickly jumped in the short line, which grew rather rapidly.
Whilst we were outside taking pics of the Dream we bumped into Monica again so we took some photos together:
I also tracked down two other DIS members from our cruise meet thread, they had organised all the Lanyards, Mini Navigators, Dream badges and an AquaDuck Fastpass (which was a bit of an ongoing joke we had on our thread) and were handing them out to all 450 DISers that were on the cruise.
Here is a photo of the lanyard:
We then stood around waiting to board, I noticed some familiar faces that were close by but I was too shy to say hello
at first I had my back to them but could not fail recognise the voices of none other than Pete Warner, Walter Echols and Corey Martin (also Coreys sister Anna but Id never heard her voice before). I regretted not saying hello to them but was just too shy after listening to them on the Podcast for so long! (I actually found the podcast before the DISboards).
Eventually boarding began and it was soon our turn, we walked through the big Mickey ears and joined a queue to have our boarding photo taken. It is not an option to bypass this photo now as they use this photo in some kind of face recognition software that links to your Key to the World card and groups all your photos together in Shutters.
We were welcomed on to the Disney Dream ship in the usual manner
and were immediately blown away by the atrium, it is INCREDIBLE, words and photos just can not describe how beautiful it is.
We quickly went to D Lounge to be added to the waitlist for Palo and Remy, we knew it was a long shot but worth being added just incase they had extra availability.
D Lounge:
Continued below
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Aww, you're a good'un
:
at that woman giving out the boarding numbers - am glad you did not let it ruin your day and 
How amazing does that all look, I was sat here completely compelled by just the photos 
