Living the dream and remembering the Bagman LIVE UPDATE 10/2 - Page 40 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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I was feeling the opposite about dressing up on the cruise--I'm thinking that it will be mostly kids dressing up and we will feel odd as adults dressed up. Hope we won't be the only ones. I did tell my son that once we get a few photos he can change.
Oh my goodness, I doubt it! Everyone always seems to love dressing up at Halloween parties and I'm sure it will be the same on the cruise. Had it been over here, then yes I'd say you might be out of place, as Halloween's still not a big deal and not that many adults dress up.
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It sounds like everything is coming together! Glad to hear that you've been in touch with Laurie and she is doing well!
We chatted a lot about the Olympics, as we both watched a lot of it. Obviously she wasn't having to get up in the middle of the night to see it live...
Yes, English spoken everywhere in Quebec - but they always greet you in French first. (very much like France too!) We always used the courtesies though, and it was appreciated by them. Road signs all in French though, very little English on road signs. So your French will come in quite handy for navigating!
Oh boy, that will be fun then! Thanks for the heads up...
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Do you guys have a Disney Halloween T-shirt, purchased from years past? That would be sufficient enough to wear on the cruise too without wearing a costume. I don't think you'll be the only ones without one though. I'm sure others don't want to take up luggage space with a costume!
Absolutely nothing here. I've never really seen any that I've liked enough to buy.
For the number of points it takes to get a bungalow, I personally feel they should return some points in addition to the housekeeping. Daily housekeeping - particularly when you're only staying 2 nights - just doesn't seem enough to me. You wouldn't go through all the towels that are there in 2 nights anyways.
Hope the weather isn't too hut & humid to prevent you from enjoying the full bungalow. If you only get to use the master bedroom, you would've been better off in a studio.
That is true - and trust me, if that happens to be the case, I will be having a lot of words with Member Services, as you're right, that would be unacceptable.
For just a moment until I read further I worried you all were not going to be staying in a Poly bungalow. We'd be fine with an A/C unit in the bedroom, too. Can't wait for you photos of this villa and its views.
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Pre-trip report – part thirty seven: finally a time for the Star Wars fireworks!
Saturday 13 August
Someone posted a link on the boards today to the merchandise they’ll have on sale at the 2016 Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party: http://diskingdom.com/2016/08/12/mickeys-not-scary-halloween-party-merchandise-revealed/ I have to say my first thought was “this early? For goodness sake, it’s only August”, but then again, I guess the first parties will be starting in just a few weeks’ time.
I don’t know about you, but the image isn’t exactly clear. I can see the MagicBands, and while they look very nice, there is no way I’m standing in line to buy one of those. I was intrigued by the T-shirts, as I thought they looked good, but I wanted to zoom in and see them in a bit more detail, and couldn’t. Oh well, you never know, I may buy one of those…
We also had what I’ll call the “standard” pre-cruise email from Disney, reminding you about all the things you can book beforehand. It talks about pirate night, how you can celebrate anything special by having something delivered to your room – that sort of thing.
I have been amazed by how little planning I’ve done for this cruise, but really if you’ve done a few cruises, and you’re on a standard itinerary (and by that, I mean the three or four night cruise or maybe the seven night cruises) that you’ve done before, there isn’t that much to do. You’re familiar with the ports of call. You know whether you want to get off or not, and if you do, the chances are you know what shore excursions you want to do. You know what you want to do on board, and what you can book beforehand. What else is there to do? A surprisingly little amount actually…
It’s probably the easiest part of this vacation. I mean, let’s face it, Disney Cruise Line doesn’t change the hours you’ll be in port unless something terrible happens with the weather, whereas you know Disney World could change the park hours at any point. They’re taking you from destination to destination, you don’t need to worry about how to get there. No wonder so many people take cruises, they are pretty stress free!
Later on in the day, I saw that Danielle (I don’t remember her name on the boards ) won’t be able to join us, as she’s moved to a new office, and a lot of her colleagues are already away, so she can’t have the time off. She said her boss was visibly upset he couldn’t let her go when she told him the reason. I am so sorry she won’t be there.
Elsewhere Stephanie (NanaTink) posted in the Facebook group that it’s just 40 days to Bagman Days. Of course, it’s a lot closer for us. Four weeks today we’ll be on board a Virgin Atlantic plane, enjoying Upper Class, and hopefully about an hour and a half into our flight, so probably enjoying lunch. Wow, I can’t believe it’s all coming around so quickly! I went to book our final Tesco (grocery shopping) order online, and I can do that tomorrow, as you can book three weeks minus a day, if that makes sense. Wow again!
Sunday 14 August
I checked the park hours, as I have done many times before over the last few weeks, but today was different – they had changed! Finally, the Studios is showing as closing at 8:00pm, which I’ve been waiting for weeks, given Fantasmic! is at 8:00pm. What I wasn’t expecting was for the Star Wars Symphony in the Sky fireworks to show up at 7:45pm. Ok, that’s going to make things easier, as anyone in the Studios that night will have to make a decision between the two. I was expecting it to be at either 8:15pm or 8:45pm, which had been the usual time for the few days before.
As a result, I figured we now didn’t have to hang on to our Flying Fish Café reservation at 9:15pm any longer. We could see if we could make it any earlier. I wasn’t holding out much hope, but I had a look, and I was able to snag 8:45pm, so I did! That will work better, as I wasn’t looking forward to such a late meal.
I also had a look for the Animal Kingdom hours for the day before, 24 September, and sure enough, those have changed too. They are now showing as open until 9:00pm, rather than the 7:30pm they’d been showing up until now. Surely that means we now have a confirmed night-time show for that day too? that would be far too easy. Nothing showing at all. Oh well, I guess the wait for that continues then…
I finally got around to accessing our Mobal account for our cell phone, and I was very impressed with what I found. The account was already live, they’d added in our credit card details, so it’s ready to make calls (I hope – obviously we can only 100% check that when we get to the States). However, it does work over here, which is a promising start…
Of course, the only problem I encountered was we had no contacts when I turned the phone off. D’oh! I’ll have saved all our contacts on to the SIM card then. I then spent some time checking numbers in the phone with the spreadsheet I have, and thankfully most tallied up, and the one that didn’t, I was able to get sorted out quite quickly.
I spent about half an hour adding some numbers in, and letting people know about our new number, but we are not done by a long stretch. However, it got a bit much to sit there, staring at the phone screen, so I stopped after a while. Heck, I do have a little while to get this all sorted out…
I do need to say here that I had a bit of a weepy moment when I looked at the spreadsheet of people’s numbers. It was from our last Disney World trip, which was in February/March 2015 and I’m sure you can see what’s coming here… Bill’s number was included in there, and I immediately thought of him. I still can’t believe so much has changed since that trip.
I also got in touch with Sheri (skateycat on the boards), who was due to be staying with Danielle at Shades of Green, and said that I guessed I’d need to change our ADR at the Skipper Canteen to just the three of us, as Danielle wouldn’t be joining us any longer. I did ask what Sheri was planning to do, given she didn’t have accommodation any longer, and she said she was looking for something on property, as she didn’t want to stay off property, which I can completely understand. Mark and I had discussed this when we heard Danielle couldn’t make it, and he’d suggested offering our two bedroom waterfront bungalow at the Polynesian, so I made that offer. Sheri thanked us for it, but said she was scoping out Pop Century. I did warn her by the way that the temperature control didn’t seem to be great, judging by the phone call we’d had, which may have put her off a bit…
In the evening, I discovered a series of scans I’d obviously done of our New York City guidebook, but I had no recollection of doing it. It’s obviously part of my plan not to take the guidebook with us, which makes sense, as it’s less weight to carry, and I’ve already done the same for the New England guidebook with the bits about Maine, so now I’ve printed out the pages. However, I just need to scan in the maps, as I think we’ll need those too. I know I can use Google Maps, but I always like a back-up plan… just in case.
Monday 15 August
I was up at 1:00am to watch the Olympics, just as I did last night. I’ve been trying to get a couple of hours sleep before the important stuff in the early hours of the morning our time. I was lucky enough to see the last couple of points in the tennis, as Andy Murray retained the Olympic title.
I had a Facebook message from Marta, one of our friends, who asked when we were in Disney. She’d seen something I’d posted about our trip being next month. I must admit I hadn’t been in touch with her (her husband is Bruce, a former Cast Member and we met through the boards originally when we were on the inaugural Med cruise with them all the way back in 2007) about our trip, as they always seem to be off somewhere, and I had no idea if they’d be around. Ironically, they get back from a cruise on 25 September, so that literally just left dinner that night or breakfast the next morning, before we set off on our cruise!
She’d messaged me and suggested we could do the Flying Fish Café, so I logged on to the Disney website, and lo and behold, I was able to get a reservation for four people at 9:00pm. Well, that should give us plenty of time after the Star Wars Spectacular at the Studios an hour and a quarter earlier.
When I got up properly at a much more civilized time I inputted the remaining cell phone numbers into our phone, so I think now we’re set with everyone’s numbers. I am still in the process of letting people know our new number. I’d forgotten how much work it is when you change phone numbers!
I have done some refining of our plans for while we’re in Orlando. I’m working on PassPorter’s Orlando and Everything But the Mouse, which will concentrate, as the name suggests, on the non-Disney parks in the Orlando area. I’ve made a note of some of the things I’ll need to photograph, and added those into our plans for our day at Universal. I’ve also added in a possible stop at the Orlando Premium Outlets by Universal, as I realised Mark may want to go to a Levi’s store to get some more jeans, and there’s a Disney Outlet there, so it may be worth a visit. We always go to the other one, so it would be something new for us to go there.
I also had a horrible thought as well – would our GPS we bought for the USA also cover Canada? I was guessing so, but thought maybe I’d check. I had a look on Best Buy’s website, which is where we bought it originally, and all of theirs seem to cover both the USA and Canada, so hopefully ours will as well.
I heard back from Sharon (our very own PrincessSharon) on the boards, as I’d asked her whether or not she was still joining us in Montreal, and she is planning on it. I also mentioned that, in case she couldn’t make that, we’d be spending a day in New York City, and she told me that if we wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History, she could get us in free – apparently it’s a company perk. Very nice! I went back to her with our plans, and asked her some questions around timings, particularly what time we’d need to take a cab from our hotel to JFK, as I’d figured she’d be the best person to ask and it looks like my timings are good so the plan is to spend the afternoon with her at the museum.
So many people have asked whether we’ll be wearing Halloween costumes on the pre-trip report and Colleen (cubfancolleen) even offered to bring costumes over with her, as we’re meeting here on Saturday (cannot wait ). I decided to have a look at Disney Halloween costumes for adults online, and there are plenty of options for us in the UK online, which surprised me, but really I’d rather buy something in a shop, so that I can try it on. I’m sure I’m like many other people in that it depends on the shop as to what size I can fit into, which doesn’t help when it comes to buying online. I do buy stuff online, but whenever I do, I always arrange for it to be delivered to the store of the place I’m getting it from, so I can easily send it back, if needed.
The other problem is that it’s likely to be still be stinking hot in Disney when we do the Halloween party, and a lot of the costumes would be way too heavy and hot for the weather. There are some costumes that would work in the heat, but let’s just say I’m not sure I want to show that much flesh off, if you know what I mean…
Next: the original Winnie-the-Pooh toys are still there?
Can I just ask - what travel card do you use? I was thinking of getting one that would cover us in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, as taking 3 lots of currency is going to be a bit of a pain, but I've never used one before. Any advice?
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Silvercat
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You're really coming down to last days before travel now!!
It may have been a good thing we didn't bring you costumes, as our bags were so full! On the other hand, it might have caused us to scale back a bit on what clothes we brought, and that might have saved us from having BOTH bags weigh in too heavy for the trip home. (We were lucky as the United employee winked and let us through - after he let me put things back in the bag that I'd removed to vainly try hitting 50 lbs)
Cruise planning is so much easier than WDW planning!
All these little details.... makes me wonder - does Mark know of all the little things you do for your trips? I'm thinking he does. My husband doesn't have a clue, but I'm very much like you in the planning department with notes, guidebooks, maps, etc... I think he knows I'm researching all this stuff because just like magic, it's all there and figured out when we're on the actual trip! But I don't think he realizes all the work that goes into it for months and months. Just wondering if Mark knows.
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Tanya
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I understand totally about ordering clothes on line. I always hesitate to do that. As to costumes--I just don't do them. I usually wear a Halloween t-shirt. I now have a couple from Disney, but in the past I've just picked something up in a local Wal Mart or Target.
So many details to think of when you're planning a trip such as yours!!! We're heading to DL and Aulani next week and my plans seem like nothing compared to yours!!! How wonderful that you're going to spend the afternoon at the museum with Sharon in NYC. I used to volunteer to be a class mother whenever my daughter's school planned a trip there because I enjoyed it so much. Glad that you got your new phone all set up!
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Had it been over here, then yes I'd say you might be out of place, as Halloween's still not a big deal and not that many adults dress up.
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Glad to hear that you've been in touch with Laurie and she is doing well! 
Road signs all in French though, very little English on road signs. So your French will come in quite handy for navigating!
) won’t be able to join us, as she’s moved to a new office, and a lot of her colleagues are already away, so she can’t have the time off. She said her boss was visibly upset he couldn’t let her go when she told him the reason. I am so sorry she won’t be there. 
Of course, it’s a lot closer for us. Four weeks today we’ll be on board a Virgin Atlantic plane, enjoying Upper Class, and hopefully about an hour and a half into our flight, so probably enjoying lunch. Wow, I can’t believe it’s all coming around so quickly! 
Ok, that’s going to make things easier, as anyone in the Studios that night will have to make a decision between the two. I was expecting it to be at either 8:15pm or 8:45pm, which had been the usual time for the few days before. 
that would be far too easy. Nothing showing at all. 
I’ll have saved all our contacts on to the SIM card then. I then spent some time checking numbers in the phone with the spreadsheet I have, and thankfully most tallied up, and the one that didn’t, I was able to get sorted out quite quickly. 
I was guessing so, but thought maybe I’d check. I had a look on Best Buy’s website, which is where we bought it originally, and all of theirs seem to cover both the USA and Canada, so hopefully ours will as well. 
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