Sailing with the Gang..DCL Magic, 2016 updated 6/21/2016 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Sailing with the Gang..DCL Magic, 2016 updated 6/21/2016
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.
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.
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.
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I always wake early on vacation and today was no different….and even better yet, we were boarding a ship today. I am pretty sure I was the first up, and I got ready. Even though I am up early, I am always the last one ready in the end in most cases. I only get half way ready and then head out and when I come back I need to finish up and today was no different. The plus side was that since I had been moving from hotel to hotel over this trip, I really hadn’t unpacked anything for the most part so it wasn’t too hard to get packed back up for the next move.
I made a call home to let them know I would be heading the ship soon and that I would call again this afternoon. I am one of those people who needs to eat in the morning. I get hangry if I don’t. Cass doesn’t need to eat till later. Brook, well she loves breakfast. I made a dash over to Ceremonial House to get Brook and I something quick. Let me tell you about the weather. It was cold, drizzly at times and miserable. My trip started off beautifully in the 80s and plummeted to the 50s and 60s after that. The temps weren’t that bad but there was a north wind that would chill you to the bone. Many days the temp differences between Orlando and Ohio was only 6 degrees. Yeah, my husband laughed about that one a lot!
I made my way to get us each something to drink, milk for me and coffee for Brook and a pastry of some sort for each of us. Since I didn’t take a picture, I no longer remember. It was cold, rainy and there was construction at the Poly. The most direct route to and from was blocked. I found that by weaving in and out of buildings, while not direct, it kept me a little more comfortable. I also was loaded down so it made it a bit awkward but I managed not to spill or drop anything. My only Poly shot this morning…our hallway.
After gobbling our food we made sure we had everything and headed out with our bags. Brook’s mom lives in FL and was letting us use her car for the week. We headed out to the car and started packing it up. I am an over packer, well honestly I am not, I wore almost everything I brought, I just don’t know how to condense it down to be practical, so I had to go back to the room for a second trip as I couldn’t carry it all easily in one trip. The room wasn’t too far away so that was no big deal. Everyone had different ways of getting to the port. Some were using a car service, some had rented a car and some had a car with them. We had no set time to arrive or meet up, but being the cruising crazy girls we are, we wanted to get there early.
Off we go. As you can see we are loaded to the max. But we all had long stays. Mine was the shortest of the 3 and I was down in Florida for 11 days.
Brook made the loop and we unloaded our bags and Cass and I made our way towards the entrance. We were told that they were not letting people in quite yet and we could go up to the cross walk above to wait. We really didn’t want to do that, but it was darn cold outside and even Cass who runs warm was a little chilly. We headed to the elevator in the parking garage and an older guy was staring Cass up and down for wearing shorts and a tee. It was funny. He made some comments to her about basically being crazy. Hahaha.
We didn’t have to wait too long and we were let across the walk and into the building.
And had the WORST CM ever. She basically had no clue what she was doing. She couldn’t grasp that Brook wasn’t standing there with us to check in. She kept telling us how she had to do things differently and if she didn’t follow the rules she would get in trouble. I am pretty sure she was making her own rules up. She kept trying to take Brook off the reservation basically. Honestly I have no clue what she was doing and we were getting annoyed because we had wanted to check and see if an upgrade was available, which needed to be done after check in. Finally, after fiddling around a bit I said could Cass please have her card as she wants to check for upgrades and she handed it over. She then realized we were to get lanyards, so she handed me my silver lanyard. (This cruise was turning me gold). Cass and Brook are gold and she never handed those out but said something about Brook coming to get hers when she got there. Cass never got one, but Cass didn’t care because she doesn’t use them too often.
I don’t remember all that happened at the desk but I left frustrated and she told us to have Brook come up when she arrived. Brook, on the other hand was having good luck and caught a shuttle immediately and was already heading over to the port. We also saw Michelle checking in. (Michelle is our boss). So we gathered off to the side and chatted.
Brook had arrived and headed over to check in. There were issues and Cass ran over to help out with the explanation of the crappy CM. She did something totally wrong and they basically had to recheck us all in, but since I had already given my info I didn’t have to walk back over there. I think in the end Brook’s CM had to go talk with ours to get things straightened out. Brook did get a lanyard though.
To pass the time we headed outside to take a look at our home for the next few days. I look tired and rough here. LOL.
Soon we heard the boarding start. I don’t remember our exact number and the card is put away, but I want to say it was 3 or 4. We made our way up close but not too close as to block others. Sadly many people don’t seem to get this. They stand right at the entry way and WILL NOT MOVE! Please don’t do this. It’s so annoying and if you get pushed, it’s on your own head. Sure enough, when our number was called, the people blocking the entrance were still not in that group and did not move…and we said excuse me as we pushed through them. We were all excited. I will say I was walking a bit fast and kept losing some of the group behind me. We scanned our cards and also decided to forgo the boarding picture. Not everyone was there yet so we didn’t want to get a group picture with only a partial group.
We had them announce our companies name as we boarded. We walked on and looked back and saw we had become separated from half the group who now were coming in the other doors. And once again we heard our companies name being announced.
The super bowl was this day. I don’t follow sports and never really even had a thought about it, but Disney was prepared.
Ok, that’s nice and all…but I am ready to EAT! Cass and I went ahead while the rest finished up pictures to save tables in Cabanas. We found an open area and started putting something at each table to show they were occupied.
After we did that, we realized, the Michelle’s (our boss) husband was sitting at a table next to us and had a couple saved as well. So we condensed down to the right amount and got settled in and took turns getting food.
One thing we were all doing while eating was setting up our DCL aps. You can get a small free wifi package if you sign in on the first day, so we all were checking it out. We thought it was so much per room, but we found out that as long as we all had our own emails then we could each sign in and get this package. SWEET! Of course that sounds wonderful, but the wifi is pretty whacked, especially from your phone. If you don’t have basically everything that could possibly run in the background turned off when you connect, it can eat all of your time in seconds. Those who used it on their computers had little to no problems at all. I never ran out of mine, but I only turned it on a few times. Cass and Brook both bought packages as well as some of the other gals and many had to go to the wifi desk and have it adjusted or reset because the whole package would be used in 5 minutes time.
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So happy to see you're writing another TR Jenn I've never cruised with Disney but I always enjoy hearing of your experiences on their ships. It sounds like the check-in process was not a smooth one at all. Hopefully it was better than the NCL experience you had going to Alaska last year!
It's so exciting. A client of mine boarded the Wonder yesterday and called me to ask a question. I was a little jealous hearing him on the ship!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lindawdw
So happy to see your writing another TR Jenn I've never cruised with Disney but I always enjoy hearing of your experiences on their ships. It sounds like the check-in process was not a smooth one at all. Hopefully it was better than the NCL experience you had going to Alaska last year!
Thanks
I don't think anything could be as bad as that first day on NCL. It was a great ship, but they need to work on customer service for sure. Maybe this lady used to work for NCL. hahahaha
Quote:
Originally Posted by purplegal
Signing on, sounds like it's off to a good start except for the check in.
A little rocky but not the worst and once on the ship all was fine.
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