Sailing with the Gang..DCL Magic, 2016 updated 6/21/2016 About This Page:

[jenseib]

Hi all!

For those that don’t know me, I am Jennifer, or as many of my friends call me, Jen! For those that do....well I have been a deadbeat around here lately. I hope to remedy it and get back to reading more!
I like to travel, I like to take pictures and then I usually like to write about my adventures. I do that for 2 reasons. Number one is that I hope it helps others in their planning. I tell the good and the bad and even though my experience isn’t what others may find or even like, I hope to at least give people a little taste of things. I secondly write these for my own personal reasons. I tend to post this on a couple of message boards as well as my blog. If I want to go back and remember my trip, I can just go and read it. Or if there is something I can’t remember in a few years, like why I didn’t like this, or what made that so special, I can go and reread about it.

Of course even when I write it down now, I still can’t remember everything, but the pictures tend to jog my memory and I usually have it pretty close to how it happened.
I am going to do my trip report a little different this time. I usually write my reports in chronological order. I go day by day and post what I did each day. This time I am going to break it up into sections. This section is actually the 3rd part of my trip. I started at Universal Studios, then on to Disney World and then I cruised on the Disney Magic….and then back to Disney World for another day, which I will include at the end of this one.
I wanted to write about the cruise portion first so I decided I would do each section as its own little trip…sort of.

A little quick intro…
I am a Mom to 3, but many of you who have read my past reports probably only know my youngest, Claire. Claire is 11 now…boy time flies. My other 2 are just as special but they are adults and rarely travel with me now so they just are not in my traveling reports.

skag35 by Jenseib, on Flickr

I am also a grandmother now. Yes…I know…I am WAY too young to be a grandmother. I know, I know….you make me blush with all your compliments! But yes I am! And little Gracie is now 1 ½ years old and just as cute as can be. And I get by being that young and hip grandma by having her call me Bop Bop. (Long story but my nieces have called me Aunt Bop Bop, so it has stuck and works as a Grandma replacement word as well)
baby4 by Jenseib, on Flickr
I am also married and if you have read my past reports you have probably seen Skip make appearances. He isn’t always a fan of traveling, and he is even less of a fan of me traveling without him, but sometimes I just have to go and he gripes a bit at first and then makes peace with it.

This trip was actually a work related trip. Back in Oct. of 2014, 2 of my co-workers and I were chatting like we do daily on facebook, and my co-worker Brook mentioned great cruise rates for Feb 2016. Wow! Of course, Deb and I go and take a look and there were several short sailings that were reasonable. We had been talking about doing a work related cruise for some time now, but no one was ever pulling the trigger. They elected me to post about it on our private business page to see if anyone would bite….and bite they did. Soon we were all talking about cruising and then it came down to picking a date and a ship. It was between the Dream and the Magic. I have been on both ships, twice each. I was game for either really. Some wanted one over the other, some it was more about price and in the end we priced out a few sailings and basically went with the cheapest option, which was on the Magic on Feb. 7, 2016.

Since cruise pricing can change at any moment we wanted to book right away. So we had to decide who was going to room with who. Brook said she would like to room with me, which was perfectly fine with me. We had traveled together a couple of times in the past and we had even roomed together before. Brook is a good roommate as she doesn’t mind if I do my own thing, nor do I mind if she does her, and yet we have fun together and can laugh about anything. Honestly, we have such a great bunch of co-workers that I wasn’t opposed to rooming with any of them, but it was nice to be with someone I knew I would get along with.

People started pairing up and some were even putting 3 in a room. I booked our cruise, in an ocean view room, which would be a first for me on DCL. Later that day Cass, another co-worker and friend messaged me that she would really like to room with me. Cass and I went on a work trip together in Feb. of 2014 and roomed together. We also got along fabulously. She is another person who is fine with doing stuff with or without me. The down side for Cass was that she could not commit to the cruise just yet. She has some health issues and it would really depend on how she was doing at that time. I told Cass that if Brook didn’t mind, she was more than welcome to be added to our room later when she could commit, and I even volunteered to take the top bunk bed…..I guess I was having a crazy moment!!! LOL.

We ended up changing our room number as some point to be sure we had a room that had a pull down bunk and also to a better location. Several of the girls (I work with almost all girls and the 1 guy who works with us could not make the trip) booked rooms. Some canceled in the end; some left our business, so of course they weren’t going to want to join us now. We also hired in some new people and they ended up booking later on, and one joined almost last minute.
For the most part after the initial booking, things were quiet. After a few months we started talking about pre or post cruise. Some of us wanted to do other things as well. Some wanted before and some wanted after. In the end not everyone could agree or commit fully to everything so we narrowed it down to the official arrival date of Feb. 5. We decided we would do a few dinners together and of course getting a group that large, which ended up being 14 of us, was not the easiest, but we found a couple of places, one for the evening of the 5th and one for the evening of the 6th.

If memory serves me right, it was fall of 2015 when Cass committed and we added her to our room. I kind of always thought Cass would be coming. Even though she does have health issues, she doesn’t let it get her down too much and I knew how much she wanted to come. In fact over the year we had discussed what we wanted to do and had a game plan made. I had bought my flights in the summer (free with air points) for an arrival date of Feb. 2, assuming Cass would arrive that early as well and we would spend a few days at Universal Studios before heading over to Disney World to meet up with the rest of the gang.

Luckily Cass was well and she actually planned her trip to arrive a few days earlier than me and she did a few days at Disney and then moved over to Universal on Feb. 1 and I joined her on Feb. 2. To make a long story short…yes it’s even longer than this….hahaha….we did Universal for a few days and then headed over to the Polynesian on Feb 4. Brook joined us on Feb. 5. In the meantime we did meet up with others and spent some time together and then all got together for our dinners and some park fun and a few other business related things.

Our Gang. I am not going to introduce all of them as you would never remember who is who. But if you can pick me out, Brook is on the right looking at the picture and Cass is 3 in from the left side in the back row.

animal45 by Jenseib, on Flickr

We actually had a few extras that came along with some of the girls....a husband, child, and friend. So a few extra than 14, but they did not join us on the work related ventures.
This report is now starting officially on Feb. 7.
Brook, Cass and I had spent a few nights at the Polynesian....which I will go into in my Disney portion later…and had a wonderful time. The room was big and we really enjoyed the experience there. The price was affordable because there were 3 of us.

On to the report!