DixieDreamer
<font color=blue>Instant Human - <font color=brown
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2001
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Let me introduce ourselves. There is my DH Greg (age 44), my DD Lindsay (aka as Bullseye_Girl age 10), and myself (I really am 39!). This is our third year of doing a Disney vacation. This spring, my family and I spent two days at WDW prior to our 7 day cruise on the Disney Magic. We stayed at the Swan for our two days prior to the cruise. I have posted trip reports on our WDW days on the Trip Reports Board previously. At the end of this report are links that will take you to those posts if you would like to read them too.
On Saturday March 30th we began our "magical" journey by boarding the Disney Cruiseline bus at the Swan around 11:30 am. The bus ride was very comfortable and they really made sure we had good directions and assistance. It was very well staffed and went smoothly. We arrived at the beautiful Disney Cruiseline terminal around 12:30 pm and went through the registration process fairly quickly. It was about 2:00 pm before we were really onboard the ship. At that point we did the scramble that one reads about so much on this cruise board. After checking out our room, we made our Palo reservations for Thursday evening, made spa reservations, then took a break and headed to topsiders for the buffet lunch (we were starving at that point!). After eating, we went to deck 10 to watch us depart from the terminal. There was a great party going on up there!
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<CENTER>WHO LET THE DOGS OUT??! </CENTER>
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I took a quick picture of the Disney Terminal building from our vantage point.
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We spent the next two days at sea. It was nice to have time to just relax and to figure out the ship's routine and services. It really does take some time to slow down and get in the cruise groove. Having a few days at sea right away really helps with that. On Monday morning, we had a character breakfast at Parrot Cay restaurant. I think this is a wonderfully themed restaurant. Taking a clue from Dan Murphy (who says you should always look UP at Disney!) - I noticed the great chandeliers in the restaurant -
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Kind of reminds me of the TIKI birds!
We had two wonderful families in our seating assignment. Like us, they were two sets of parents with ten year old daughters! The girls hit it off almost immediately, and we found the adults wonderful company too! We had been nervous about sharing seating at the dinner table with others... but our fears were unfounded. It was a wonderful experience and made dining a real pleasure. Our server Lorant and assistant server Rodger took great care of us.
Here is our DD (dark shirt) with her new friends Taylor and Alyssa and an old friend - Mickey!
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Prior to our breakfast, I made a quick trip to the coffee service area on deck 9 to get my early morning caffeine fix - and found the Mickey pool empty (almost never happens!) so I grabbed a picture of it while I could.
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And here is a closer view of the Mickey Slide. The attention to detail is what makes everything at Disney so cool!
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Most people (I know I was) are interested in what the rooms are like and what to expect. We had a category 6 room - stateroom 6646 which is located towards the aft of the ship. The following are some pics of the room and the verandah.
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This is a view from our verandah (taken much later in the cruise - as this is looking out at Castaway Cay!).
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A great tip we got from the Cruise boards was to use the over the door shoe organizer to hold all the odds and ends your family needs to have readily available... like the pager for the kids clubs, sunscreen, pin lanyards, spare photo cartridges, two way radios etc... This is to show you that they were in full use in our stateroom! It really made a huge difference in keeping the room organized.
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That about wraps up the "onboard" things I wanted to share with you. In the next segments - I will be recapping the highlights of our days at St. Martin, St. Thomas, and Castaway Cay. Before I close this report though... I thought I would share some of the wonderful towel animals that our stateroom attendant made for us each day.
We had a swan.
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A crab.
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An elephant.
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And a lobster (among others!)
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We had great service the entire time we were on board.
When I post the next segments... I will come back and edit this report to include a link to those as well. For now... here is the links to my previous trip reports on our WDW portion of the vacation.
A Day at Epcot
A Day at Animal Kingdom
I hope you enjoyed this portion of my report.
(Edited to add a link to the next cruise reports)
A day at St. Martin
A Day at St. Thomas
Final Day - Castaway Cay
Let me introduce ourselves. There is my DH Greg (age 44), my DD Lindsay (aka as Bullseye_Girl age 10), and myself (I really am 39!). This is our third year of doing a Disney vacation. This spring, my family and I spent two days at WDW prior to our 7 day cruise on the Disney Magic. We stayed at the Swan for our two days prior to the cruise. I have posted trip reports on our WDW days on the Trip Reports Board previously. At the end of this report are links that will take you to those posts if you would like to read them too.
On Saturday March 30th we began our "magical" journey by boarding the Disney Cruiseline bus at the Swan around 11:30 am. The bus ride was very comfortable and they really made sure we had good directions and assistance. It was very well staffed and went smoothly. We arrived at the beautiful Disney Cruiseline terminal around 12:30 pm and went through the registration process fairly quickly. It was about 2:00 pm before we were really onboard the ship. At that point we did the scramble that one reads about so much on this cruise board. After checking out our room, we made our Palo reservations for Thursday evening, made spa reservations, then took a break and headed to topsiders for the buffet lunch (we were starving at that point!). After eating, we went to deck 10 to watch us depart from the terminal. There was a great party going on up there!
<center>
<CENTER>WHO LET THE DOGS OUT??! </CENTER>
<center>
I took a quick picture of the Disney Terminal building from our vantage point.
<center>
We spent the next two days at sea. It was nice to have time to just relax and to figure out the ship's routine and services. It really does take some time to slow down and get in the cruise groove. Having a few days at sea right away really helps with that. On Monday morning, we had a character breakfast at Parrot Cay restaurant. I think this is a wonderfully themed restaurant. Taking a clue from Dan Murphy (who says you should always look UP at Disney!) - I noticed the great chandeliers in the restaurant -
<center>
Kind of reminds me of the TIKI birds!
We had two wonderful families in our seating assignment. Like us, they were two sets of parents with ten year old daughters! The girls hit it off almost immediately, and we found the adults wonderful company too! We had been nervous about sharing seating at the dinner table with others... but our fears were unfounded. It was a wonderful experience and made dining a real pleasure. Our server Lorant and assistant server Rodger took great care of us.
Here is our DD (dark shirt) with her new friends Taylor and Alyssa and an old friend - Mickey!
<center>
Prior to our breakfast, I made a quick trip to the coffee service area on deck 9 to get my early morning caffeine fix - and found the Mickey pool empty (almost never happens!) so I grabbed a picture of it while I could.
<center>
And here is a closer view of the Mickey Slide. The attention to detail is what makes everything at Disney so cool!
<center>
Most people (I know I was) are interested in what the rooms are like and what to expect. We had a category 6 room - stateroom 6646 which is located towards the aft of the ship. The following are some pics of the room and the verandah.
<center>
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This is a view from our verandah (taken much later in the cruise - as this is looking out at Castaway Cay!).
<center>
A great tip we got from the Cruise boards was to use the over the door shoe organizer to hold all the odds and ends your family needs to have readily available... like the pager for the kids clubs, sunscreen, pin lanyards, spare photo cartridges, two way radios etc... This is to show you that they were in full use in our stateroom! It really made a huge difference in keeping the room organized.
<center>
That about wraps up the "onboard" things I wanted to share with you. In the next segments - I will be recapping the highlights of our days at St. Martin, St. Thomas, and Castaway Cay. Before I close this report though... I thought I would share some of the wonderful towel animals that our stateroom attendant made for us each day.
We had a swan.
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A crab.
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An elephant.
<center>
And a lobster (among others!)
<center>
We had great service the entire time we were on board.
When I post the next segments... I will come back and edit this report to include a link to those as well. For now... here is the links to my previous trip reports on our WDW portion of the vacation.
A Day at Epcot
A Day at Animal Kingdom
I hope you enjoyed this portion of my report.
(Edited to add a link to the next cruise reports)
A day at St. Martin
A Day at St. Thomas
Final Day - Castaway Cay
I didn't see any dogs
Were there really dogs on the ship
