A Magical voyage across the pond LIVE UPDATE 9/30 - Page 2 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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There are other changes as well.
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It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
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You are just going to love the TA! It’s our favorite cruise thus far. And you’ve got some different stops to what we did last year (making me wish we were going again this year). Looking forward to hearing all about it!
Aw thank you - that is so good to hear. I really am still not sure about it, given all the days at sea and the uncertainty about the weather, so to hear that makes me feel a lot better.
I can't wait to read all about your back to back cruise. Doing that and the TA are definitely on my bucket list. Oh well, they will have to wait, but at least I have Alaska to look forward to in 16 days.
Oh my goodness, you will LOVE that. Alaska is our favourite. I hope you're going to do a trip report when you get back.... hint, hint!
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Pre-trip report – part two: “we’d really like to do that”…
Having just taken a southern Caribbean cruise in January 2018, it was never our plan to take another Disney cruise this year, never mind two. However, Disney Cruise Line have a habit of throwing out curve balls, where we look at itineraries, and say “we’d really like to do that”… that’s what happened in this case.
The announcements for cruises tend to come out over a year in advance, and in May 2017, Disney announced their plans for the fall of 2018. They were promoting their “first-time Bermuda cruises”, but my interest was more in some first-time ports of call in Canada. It was buried a little way down the article on the Disney Cruise Line website, but I spotted a seven-night cruise from New York City to Quebec City in September 2018. Oh wow, now that appealed.
We visited Quebec City in September 2016, as part of our Bagman Days trip, remembering our beloved Bagman Bill Myers, a police officer who was killed in the line of duty a year earlier. Before heading to Walt Disney World to spend a few nights with a lot of friends to remember him, we did a road trip around Canada, visiting all the places I’d always dreamed of visiting – Toronto, Niagara Falls, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City.
I remember Mark asking why we were going to Quebec City, and I seem to recall words along the line of “it’s French”, which in fairness it is! You have to understand us Brits don’t have that great a relationship with the French. In fact, our relationship with them is basically that we’ve been fighting them throughout history, for probably about the last 1,000 years or so…
I told him I’d heard nothing but good things about Quebec City, and that’s why we were going there, but that’s all I could tell him, never having been there myself. However, the reviews were spot on. We fell in love with the place. It helped that the weather was beautiful, but it is a stunning city, and one of those that is just fun to walk around. As we arrived in the city, the Celebrity Summit was in port, and we both said that we’d love to be on a cruise, and be berthed up here. And now Disney were giving us the opportunity… talk about a great offer!
I was sold immediately, and figured Mark would be as well… and he was!
Now the way it works with Disney is that they announce the itineraries, and then a couple of days later, the cruises go on sale, so you don’t have much time to make a decision about whether you want to go for it or not. On the first day of sales, only Platinum Castaway Club members can book, the next day it’s Gold Castaway Club members, then the next day it’s silver, and finally the day after that, cruises go on sale to the general public. Generally, cruises start at a particular price, and then keep going up and up from there, so that’s why it’s a good benefit to be a Platinum Castaway Club member, as you should get the lowest prices.
I got in touch with my lovely, but evil travel agent Sara, who is evil because she’s so good at selling you things – that’s how we ended up on our Baltic cruise with Celebrity, but heck, that was good, as it was an amazing cruise. I told her we’d discussed it and we wanted to book the New York City to Quebec City cruise. I asked her about prices, and thankfully I mentioned that we were now platinum, as I realised she may not know that, given one of our recent cruises had been booked on our Disney Vacation Club points. Sure enough, she still had us down as gold, so I was glad I told her about our new upgraded status…
We then went to and fro about prices, as every category stateroom is a different price, as are different sub-categories in those overarching categories. The prices for a 5B category stateroom, one of the higher categories of staterooms with verandas came out at a price I could live with, but oh my, we had the biggest shock when she told me the deposit. I’m used to paying just 10%, because we usually re-book while we’re on board. I was kicking myself for not having done that, as with no on-board booking, the deposit was 20%. That was a lot steeper than I’d imagined it would be. I think it might be a good idea to make a re-booking the next time we’re on board, even if there isn’t immediately a cruise that we plan to take, given it would be good for the next two years…
So that was it, we were sorted. We’d be on a cruise from New York City to Quebec City… everything was great… well except for one thing…
Our itinerary meant that we’d be boarding in New York City, rather obviously, and that was the one side of this cruise that didn’t appeal to us at all. For the reasons why, let me take you back to September 2016 and our Bagman Days trip. We ended up flying up to New York City after our cruise on the Dream, to fly home from there. Here’s what I said at the time about our arrival in the city into LaGuardia airport…
We taxied to the gate, and we were soon off, and into what I can only say reminded me of something out of the 1960s. It was horrible in here, and I guess that’s the reason we’d see so much construction, as frankly this just needs tearing down, and starting again with something modern. It’s not really a great way to welcome people to one of the world’s great cities, and does not give a great impression.
We headed down to baggage claim, and quickly had all four cases, and were off into the never ending line for taxis. At least that’s what it felt like anyway…
I can’t show you photos, as I was pulling two cases at the time, but we had to go out into the rain at one point to get to the actual taxi rank, which was not very well planned, and didn’t improve the impression I was getting of this place. I really got the feeling LaGuardia has needed investment for many years, and it just hasn’t happened. There is no way you’d see something like this at London. In fact, Heathrow has been shutting one terminal at a time to re-do every terminal, but this place felt like it could keep going while still serving passengers – a big mistake. I think they did need to close off bits completely to get the work done.
Finally we were at the taxi rank, and explained we had four cases, so would need a big cab. The guy said he thought they’d all fit in one that pulled up, and then we met the rudest cab driver ever. The guy told one look at our cases, did not even attempt to pick them up, and said he’d need help getting them into the trunk of the cab. I turned round to him and asked if he expected me to do it with chronic fatigue and problems with my fingers, and told him he was capable. He just stared at me, and we ended up doing two together, and Mark did the other two. Even then, he couldn’t work out how to get all four in, and Mark had to tell him to rotate two.
It got better on the way into Manhattan. While I can’t fault his driving, he was on the phone (hands free, but still not sure that’s allowed) and had his radio on, blaring out, which I find downright rude. I just thought he was an appalling introduction to a wonderful city. When we pulled up at our hotel, I said to a tip, and he asked if I was adding one, I told him I wasn’t. He looked surprised, but he hadn’t even got out of the cab to offer help with the luggage here. What a rude and nasty man. He missed out on a good tip, as 20% would’ve been $10. Maybe he’ll learn his lesson, but I doubt it…
So now you see why we were both a bit concerned about the fact that we’d be flying into New York City again. I appreciate LaGuardia is not a great airport, and there are alternatives, but even so, the immigration is probably going to be atrocious, and we’d still probably have to content with rude cab drivers… ugh. This really wasn’t an appealing prospect.
From that description, I can certainly understand you not wanting to fly into LaGuardia. I’ve never been through that airport, and I hope to never need to.
So happy you get to go back to Quebec City. It’s one of my favorites too!
I remember that NY greeting from that TR. It’s just terrible! Time to make a better memory.
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From that description, I can certainly understand you not wanting to fly into LaGuardia. I’ve never been through that airport, and I hope to never need to.
I hope you don't either... at least until they finish whatever work they're doing. However, having seen it in 2016, I don't even know if it's finished yet...
So happy you get to go back to Quebec City. It’s one of my favorites too!
It's so beautiful, isn't it?
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I remember that NY greeting from that TR. It’s just terrible! Time to make a better memory.
Definitely and I can't think of a better way to do that than on the Disney Magic.
Having said that, I'm not sure that those getting off at New York City will have that much of a magical experience. I've read various horror stories about disembarkation, which make me so glad we're only getting off to get straight back on.
Aw thank you - that is so good to hear. I really am still not sure about it, given all the days at sea and the uncertainty about the weather, so to hear that makes me feel a lot better.
We had picture perfect weather for just about our entire cruise, as you may recall from my TR. other than being rerouted out of our Newfoundland stop because of the hurricane, weather just wasn’t an issue. The couple times we had rain it was brief.
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Originally Posted by chezp
Having said that, I'm not sure that those getting off at New York City will have that much of a magical experience. I've read various horror stories about disembarkation, which make me so glad we're only getting off to get straight back on.
We didn’t feel disembarkation in NYC was bad, aside for a long wait for a cab - but we’d been prepared for that. Now, we may have had a different experience because we cleared Immigration the day we got to port, and only had to do customs the day we disembarked. Both couples we were with with non-US citizens, and they didn’t have any trouble either.
Glad you have the first cruise booked and should be a good one! Interested in hearing what other ports you will be stopping at besides Quebec City. I remember your experience in NYC on that trip. I hate LaGuardia and avoid it at all costs. It's horrendous now with all the construction and even before this it was really bad. Fly into JFK if you can.
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
We had picture perfect weather for just about our entire cruise, as you may recall from my TR. other than being rerouted out of our Newfoundland stop because of the hurricane, weather just wasn’t an issue. The couple times we had rain it was brief.
I do remember that. It gave me hope that we might have similar luck...
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We didn’t feel disembarkation in NYC was bad, aside for a long wait for a cab - but we’d been prepared for that. Now, we may have had a different experience because we cleared Immigration the day we got to port, and only had to do customs the day we disembarked. Both couples we were with with non-US citizens, and they didn’t have any trouble either.
Ah, you had an overnight stay when you arrived in NYC then... yes, I suspect that was very different to what may happen on our cruise. Fortunately we have an overnight in Quebec City, so hopefully when we finally disembark, it will be a nice, easy process...
Glad you have the first cruise booked and should be a good one! Interested in hearing what other ports you will be stopping at besides Quebec City. I remember your experience in NYC on that trip. I hate LaGuardia and avoid it at all costs.
I can see why you say that.
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It's horrendous now with all the construction and even before this it was really bad. Fly into JFK if you can.
Oh well, we won't be flying into JFK this trip... hopefully the plans we've ended up with will be Ok....
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I really am still not sure about it, given all the days at sea and the uncertainty about the weather, so to hear that makes me feel a lot better. 
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I told her we’d discussed it and we wanted to book the New York City to Quebec City cruise. I asked her about prices, and thankfully I mentioned that we were now platinum, as I realised she may not know that, given one of our recent cruises had been booked on our Disney Vacation Club points. Sure enough, she still had us down as gold, so I was glad I told her about our new upgraded status… 
That was a lot steeper than I’d imagined it would be. I think it might be a good idea to make a re-booking the next time we’re on board, even if there isn’t immediately a cruise that we plan to take, given it would be good for the next two years… 
It was horrible in here, and I guess that’s the reason we’d see so much construction, as frankly this just needs tearing down, and starting again with something modern. It’s not really a great way to welcome people to one of the world’s great cities, and does not give a great impression. 
I just thought he was an appalling introduction to a wonderful city. When we pulled up at our hotel, I said 
He missed out on a good tip, as 20% would’ve been $10. Maybe he’ll learn his lesson, but I doubt it… 
Interested in hearing what other ports you will be stopping at besides Quebec City. I remember your experience in NYC on that trip. I hate LaGuardia and avoid it at all costs. 
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