A Magical voyage across the pond LIVE UPDATE 9/30 About This Page:

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Colexis Mom

Your gardens turned out beautiful! Glad you were able to get some great information on the Facebook groups, and that Sara was able to move you both to main dining! Congrats on booking the hotels for RI and CT! Yes, that is prime season in New England, unfortunately for you!

But if it means we get to see some fall foliage, then it will be worth it.

[SuperDave]

Seems like this is all coming together quite nicely! Glad Mari was able to get the ressies all linked together! Some nice planning for Newport. I have a good friend who lives on the other side of the bay from Newport in South Barrington. Quite a nice area with great views of the bay and love all the small seafood shacks in the beach area as the food is so good but reasonable!

[Cam22]

Your plans look great for Newport! Congrats to you all in getting main dining!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by SuperDave

Seems like this is all coming together quite nicely!

I think it is!

Glad Mari was able to get the ressies all linked together!

She did really well.

Some nice planning for Newport. I have a good friend who lives on the other side of the bay from Newport in South Barrington. Quite a nice area with great views of the bay and love all the small seafood shacks in the beach area as the food is so good but reasonable!

Ooh... I can't wait!

[chezp]

Pre-trip report – part nineteen: “what is that?”

Now I had given Mari a bit of a task a couple of weeks earlier, to see if she could link up our dining reservations for the Transatlantic. I had asked Sara, but as this booking had been made on our Disney Vacation Club points, she couldn’t help out. I figured that, given Mari was in the States and was retired, it would a) be cheaper for her to call Disney Cruise Line and b) she had more time than me. It turned out she didn’t need much time…

She messaged me to say we were now on main seating for both cruises, which really shocked me. The reason I say this is that usually main seating is the first to fill up, so moving from late to main dining on our Quebec cruise was really big. Wow. She said that the person she spoke to said there was no issue with changing and she’d managed to do it in about 30 seconds. Double wow. I was very pleased with that!

We were chatting away and she told me that they’d renewed their Royal Oak Foundation membership. This is essentially National Trust membership for Americans and they used it during our Scotland road trip to the point where it literally saved them a fortune. Despite having no plans last year to return to the UK, Mari renewed their membership then, as she found she still got a lot out of it – including recipes she makes from their magazine.

When Mari said they were still National Trust members, that got my brain whirring. We’d originally talked about going to Leeds Castle, as heck, all Americans love a castle, right? Well, there are a lot of National Trust properties around us, some on the way back from Gatwick, where they’d be flying into. Perhaps we could do one of those. I suggested Chartwell to her, which is Winston Churchill’s former home, then there’s also Knole, which is a manor house dating back to the 15th century with surrounding park that’s home to deer. Ightham (pronounced Item) Mote is another option, a 14th century moated manor house. So much choices, so little time!

A couple of days later, I said to Mark that we really should sort out what we’re going to do for the second time we’re in Halifax on the Quebec cruise. I didn’t think I’d booked anything and I read on the Facebook group that the excursion to Lunenberg was now sold out. I was really disappointed, as I wanted to do that one. Oh well. My fault for not sorting it out then…

I eventually went on to the Disney Cruise Line website to see what options were still available. I couldn’t remember which day we’d be in Halifax, so I went via our reservation and when I clicked on Halifax, I discovered the Lunenberg excursion was in there. I love it when things like that happen and you’ve actually done something you don’t even remember doing!

However, my delight was short lived. I happened to be checking that I’d got all our plans down in our itinerary, as I didn’t want anything to be missed. I started to look through the reservations and was like “what is that?” I didn’t remember booking these things. Then it slowly dawned on me.. they weren’t our activities, they were Mari and Raleigh’s! Ok, so I guess I hadn’t booked that Lunenberg excursion after all then..

Thankfully, we were stopping at Halifax on both cruises. Now was that excursion sold out on the Transatlantic cruise? It wasn’t, so I quickly grabbed that and transferred our existing excursion, Peggy’s Cove and Titanic (adult only) to the Quebec City cruise. Phew – that all worked out for the best. Thank goodness we have two stops there!

It turns out that there are a few excursions we’re doing together. I already knew we were doing the Lord’s Private Manor and English Cream Tea together, as we’d discussed that. Bless Mari, she’d asked about a dress code for it, but I told her not to worry, given we’d be doing a fair bit of walking. Had it been an afternoon tea, as opposed to a cream tea, that might have been a different thing…


We’ll also be doing the Fortress Louisbourg and Rum Experience om Sydney and the Sainte Anne Canyon and Sugar Shack tour in Quebec City, but that’s about it. I like the fact we’ll be doing different things to be honest – more to talk about over dinner.

There was an interesting post in the Facebook group around this time. I hadn’t thought about it, but the Transatlantic won’t have the Halloween decorations. Instead, they start for our second cruise to Quebec City. Some people were disappointed about that and I did wonder whether they’d start to put things up a bit early, as they do in Disney World, but from the responses I saw, apparently not. I feel bad for those people who’ll miss out.

I also saw someone else had designed T-shirts for this cruise. Now, while I love the idea of doing this, the couple of times that we’ve got T-shirts designed online, frankly it’s been a disaster. The sizes have been terrible. For Bagman Days, the first set we got were so far out, it wasn’t funny and we ended up getting replacement ones, which were fine, but were nowhere near the sizes we normally wear. It was just depressing to end up in such big sizes to get them to fit. I know the problem doesn’t lie with us, but even so, you take it personally….

So I started to get to thinking that perhaps we should do something a bit unique, but what? You may all think I’m very creative with writing these trip reports (and if you do ) and the digital photobooks I do, but really that’s about the extent of it. I’m being with writing than design, although I am getting better at design. I design some posters at work and that’s fun. They’re not great, but then again, what do you expect when you use Word? Anyway, what could I do…

Next: what sort of creative thing can I do?

[lindawdw]

So glad you were able to book the Lunenberg excursion! Since Mari and Raleigh are National Trust members, do they get into the castles and homes that you mentioned for free? I would love to see Winston Churchill's home. It sounds like all your plans are really coming together for this trip!

[purplegal]

I think your really going to like Lunenberg, its nice that you are doing some excursions together and some separate.

[disney_duke]

This literally had me laughing out loud: "I love it when things like that happen and you’ve actually done something you don’t even remember doing!" A little mixed up, but glad you still got what you wanted!!

Well, it's Halloween in WDW already so... the ships should catch up.

I'm curious to see what creative juices you've got! I didn't think I could do much, but managed to do an iron-on to a T shirt once. And helped the kids make tie-dye shirts. That's about the extent I can do though.

[chezp]

Originally Posted by lindawdw

So glad you were able to book the Lunenberg excursion! Since Mari and Raleigh are National Trust members, do they get into the castles and homes that you mentioned for free?

Yes they do! There are something like 600 properties that you can visit and that's without including the coastline/countryside, where members usually get free parking.

I would love to see Winston Churchill's home.

It is a stunning place!

It sounds like all your plans are really coming together for this trip!

It's going well, I think...

[chezp]

Originally Posted by purplegal

I think your really going to like Lunenberg,

Good to hear!

its nice that you are doing some excursions together and some separate.

I like that mix.

[chezp]

Originally Posted by disney_duke

This literally had me laughing out loud: "I love it when things like that happen and you’ve actually done something you don’t even remember doing!" A little mixed up, but glad you still got what you wanted!!

I was literally looking at it going "hmmm... I have no recollection of doing that, but maybe I did?"

Well, it's Halloween in WDW already so... the ships should catch up.

Oh don't get me started on that. It is still too early. Anything before the start of September is too early for me!

I'm curious to see what creative juices you've got! I didn't think I could do much, but managed to do an iron-on to a T shirt once. And helped the kids make tie-dye shirts. That's about the extent I can do though.

Hey, that all sounds good to me! I don't think I did too badly...

[Cam22]

Glad you've gotten all the excursions settle at last!

[SuperDave]

That's funny that you don't remember some of the plans you made. Quite easy to forget certain things when there is so much planning and much of it happened several months ago. All is looking good and hope you get to visit some of the trust properties with Mari and Raleigh as I know all of you enjoy these so much!

[cubfancolleen]

Looking forward to seeing what you created!

[chezp]

Pre-trip report – part twenty: what sort of creative thing can I do?

So you left me wondering what sort of creative thing I could come up with… then it struck me. In fact, it may already have struck you guys. It was kind of obvious, but sometimes you miss the obvious.

We’ll be on a cruise and a lot of people decorate their stateroom doors with magnets. Why don’t we do the same? We already had some designs for the Transatlantic, courtesy of the Facebook group, which are truly amazing. The people who did these are so talented.





Now I could never compete with those and certainly not trying to design something in Word. I went for something a lot less ambitious. First I came up with something for our second cruise, as obviously all of the designs above would only apply to our first cruise and I wanted something to replace them. I had a look around for some ideas and settled on a pumpkin, given this would be a Halloween cruise. I was quite pleased with this:



I showed it to Mari and asked if we wanted one and she did, so I’ve done a version for her and Raleigh as well. That’s where I discovered that Word wasn’t the greatest program to use. I’m sure in other programs I could have just copied and pasted, but I had to copy all the elements separately, which was a bit of a pain, but I got there in the end.

Then I did a second one that was easier to share with them – just print another version out:



There’s one version that is only for us – as far as I know Mari and Raleigh haven’t been before to Quebec City.



Now Mari knows about the two previous ones she’s getting, but an idea occurred to me…. Maybe I could surprise her with one. I came up with the following idea, which reflected all of the various vacations we’ve done in the past: What do you think of this?



I’m really pleased with it! I think it’s perfect and will be a lovely surprise for them.

Apart from designing stateroom door magnets, there were a few final finishing touches I needed to put to our vacation. One thing was booking a taxi back home from Heathrow. This would be a new experience for us, as usually we park at the airport, but of course this time we can’t, as we’re boarding the Magic in Dover. We have had a couple of offers from friends and family to get us to Dover, so we’re set with the outward journey, it’s just the return.

A couple of weeks ago, I put through a booking enquiry through the website of the taxi company I use all the time, but never heard anything back. I kept thinking I must phone them to see if I could sort something out and didn’t want to forget, so one day while watching Wimbledon, I called them. Within a couple of minutes, it was all booked and, even better, you pay the driver when they meet you. Works for me!

About this time, we could also book dinner for our last couple of nights when we’re off the ship. Disney has spoilt me and frankly I always prefer to have dinner booked now, even if we don’t think it’s going to be that busy. I just don’t want the stress of trying to find somewhere to eat and then discovering that places are full. It’s happened before a couple of times in London and, trust me, it always happens when you’re hungry.

I’ve booked Restaurant Bouchard in Newport, which just happens to be at our hotel in Newport. It also happens to be the top rated restaurant in Newport. As a result, it’s not cheap, but I figured it would be a nice treat and why on earth go somewhere else when you can just go downstairs?

It’s the same story for the next night, as I’ve also booked the restaurant at our hotel in Mystic. It doesn’t come with the same rave reviews, but it’s still well rated and, after a long day sightseeing, what’s the point in driving anywhere?

Next: movie time!