First ever cruise: 6/26/2014 9-Night Mediterranean

[SillyInventor]

Hi all,
My Wife is getting fed up already about my pre-cruising fun. I need to share it, so I figured to share it with people I presume understand my insanity. This is good for me and my marriage

Introduction:
Me (male, 40 now 41 when we cruise), DW (54, 55 when we cruise). Long time Disney lovers. Living in the Amsterdam area (The Netherlands, Europe). We have been regular visitors of Disneyland Paris for the last 15 years. Several years holding annual passports. We stayed of property (camping, hotels) and on property (all hotels, except for the Disneyland Hotel).
We Honeymooned in WDW in september 2004: 6 nights Grand Floridian and 6 nights Coronado Springs. We lived through hurricane Jane in CS. It really was the best two weeks of our life!

We never, ever thought of cruising. You know: that's for retired people and we haven't reached that age by far! Until we discovered that Disney owns cruise ships. Wow! We're interested. But will we like staying on a boat for several days? Who knows how boring that could be? So this idea was shelved for some time.

In 2007 we set out plans to visit Greece. A long time wish of DW, but after budgeting travel, stay and local things we decided it was cheaper to fly to Orlando and so we did for our second trip to WDW: September 2007, staying at PC and AS-Movies. We celebrated our 3rd anniversary with a breakfast at O'Hana: love the pineapple bread. In May 2009 we took DSS and DSD for DW's 50th Birthday and staying in PC again.

Now the ideas of visiting Greece and cruising Disney remained, together with our desire to visit Rome. Until a few months ago DCL released the itineraries for 2014, including this 9-night cruise out of Venice to Greece. We were sold. This was going to be our first cruise. And so my planning machine took the job, figured out that the first of the two sailings was to be ours.

And so we're booked and the PT fun has begun. However DW has quite a low threshold for this in which she differs very much from me
Please bear with me for the next 382 days. Much appreciated.

 

[SillyInventor]

OK, we are off with the planning.

We are booked on stateroom 7566. Deck 7, midship stateroom with private veranda. We shouldn't cut on the stateroom on our first ever cruise
We are on the early dining as we are no late eaters and we wish to enjoy the sunset when possible. Also we decided to go "All-Inclusive", so we will book port adventures for our convenience.
The most important thing about these two weeks will be to have a nice, relaxed holiday together. Anything that spoils the fun will be eliminated

The itinerary will look like something like this:
(will be changed without notice )

6/20: Traveling
Fly from Amsterdam to Rome in the evening (little over 2h flight)

6/21-6/23: Stay in Rome
Enjoy Rome

6/24: Traveling
Travel by train from Rome to Venice in the morning (3h45m). The Venice train station is next to the cruise terminal, so we will book a hotel in the neighborhood.

6/25: Stay in Venice
Visit Venice and early morning see the Magic arrive from her 12 night Barcelona to Venice cruise (7.30am guests ashore).

6/26: Embarkation day
Rise early and board as soon as possible.
Book tastings (would like to do beer, wine and champagne, maybe more)
Have lunch
1.30: drop luggage in the stateroom
2.00: visit the guided tour of the ship
4.00: Safety drill
Sail away party
DW might want to visit the Spa to have a relaxed start, could also be the next day.
Rotational Dining 1
First night live show

6/27: Day at sea
7.30 have coffee and tea from roomservice
11.00 Brunch at Palo (why wait till later if you can have it on day one )
Let's try to get this reservation done.
Explore the ship and do some serious shopping!
Get pictures with characters.
Enjoy our verandah.
Rotational Dining 2

6/28: Port call Katakolon, Greece (9.45-4.45)
Have coffee and tea from roomservice
Go out for breakfast
Port adventure: tbd
This will be a new port for 2014, no port adventures have been released at this moment.
Rotational Dining 3

6/29: Port call Athens, Greece (8.15-6.45)
Have coffee and tea from roomservice
Go out for breakfast
Port adventure: Athens Sightseeing, Acropolis and New Acropolis Museum with Lunch
This is a long port adventure, but we wish to do Athens. DW has been here before long time ago and really wants to revisit.
Rotational Dining 1

6/30: Port call Kusadasi, Turkey (7.15-4.45)
Have coffee and tea from roomservice
Go out for breakfast
Port adventure: Best of Ephesus
For now this seems to be the best choice of activity
Rotational Dining 2

7/1: Port call Rhodes, Greece (7.15-4.45)
Have coffee and tea from roomservice
Go out for breakfast
Port adventure: tbd
This will be a new port for 2014, no port adventures have been released at this moment.
Rotational Dining 3

7/2: Port call Mykonos, Greece (7.15-2.45)
Have coffee and tea from roomservice
Go out for breakfast
Port adventure: Delos Island
Sounds very cool to be picked up from the Magic by a private boat and be brought there and back. Nice archaeologic site to be explored. I read some bad reviews about the sight seeing by bus on the island, so that's a no-go.
Dining at Palo
We wish to to this and this seems to be the best night to do. We will be back on the ship early as the all aboard time is early. Now let's hope that we can get the reservation.

7/3: At sea
Sleep in
Have some coffee and tea from roomservice (or should we make it the entire breakfast )
Maybe enjoy some Spa treatment
Rotational dining: 2

7/4: At sea, arriving late in Venice (6.30pm ashore)
We don't plan on leaving the ship this night, but enjoy the last night onboard.
Rotational dining: 3

7/5: Disembarkation
We will stay in a hotel for the Sat/Sun night and enjoy some more of Venice

7/6: Travel
In the afternoon we will fly back from Venice to Amsterdam (about a 2h flight)

Now we are totally new to cruising and I'm really hoping on some hints and tips before we actually sail to make the most of it. This plan is subject to change without notice