A Magical voyage across the pond LIVE UPDATE 9/30 - Page 7 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
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There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
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Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
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To a new day, we go on.
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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So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
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So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Very interesting comparing the routes of the different transatlantic voyages! I hope to do a transatlantic in the next few years, although in the opposite direction, so I find it very fascinating.
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Your plans sound wonderful. Can't wait to hear what you finally decided to do in New England. I continually say this when I read your PTR's that it all seems so complicated planning such a multi-faceted trip!
It is a challenge, shall we say, but that adds to the fun of the planning!
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I'm so impressed with your attention to detail that is involved in cruise/land excursions! The refurbishment pictures of the ship look beautiful!
Decisions, decisions..... So many choices for excursions! The fjord area is somewhere we were looking to explore when we were in Quebec City a few years ago. We soooo wanted to but we simply didn't have enough time to drive out there.
I know that feeling and let's face it, there's more than enough to see just in Quebec City!
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Cove Cafe and adult beverages sounds wonderful. Sign me up! A lot of the changes to the ship look and sound good too. Especially the TV's!
That is such an overdue change!
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That is really interesting comparing your TA to the previous sailings. Wow, so many differences! Kinda cool.
This FB group sounds interesting! Sounds like you have the option to be more involved or not involved, but either way, you're able to get some good information. But if they like to indluge in both spirits and food, they can't be all that bad. Right?!
Very interesting comparing the routes of the different transatlantic voyages! I hope to do a transatlantic in the next few years, although in the opposite direction, so I find it very fascinating.
If you do and it brings you to the UK, let us know!
I did hear there’s been some drama with the FB group. That’s a shame. I was sad when I got a notice of a reunion group for those on this year’s sailing who were on the 2017 WBTA - I can’t believe people are able to do this cruise multiple years in a row. I guess if I was content to only do that as my annual vacation, but of course, I’m not!
I did hear there’s been some drama with the FB group. That’s a shame.
I think we lucked out and, like I said, we missed the drama. If we'd have joined earlier, we might have got embroiled. The group we have now all seem very pleasant.
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I was sad when I got a notice of a reunion group for those on this year’s sailing who were on the 2017 WBTA - I can’t believe people are able to do this cruise multiple years in a row. I guess if I was content to only do that as my annual vacation, but of course, I’m not!
Tell me about it - there is someone (and I think I come to this later in the pre-trip report) who's doing something like five back-to-back cruises with Disney, of which this is just one. I couldn't get over that and part of me does wonder whether that's true or not, but if it is, my goodness, that's a heck of a vacation!
The routes from the past are certainly interested as most are quite similar but not yours in any way! Hope you book a week pass to the spa as may be a good thing to keep you occupied with so many days at sea. Those Facebook groups with the private group cocktail events are quite interesting to say the least and also quite deadly after an hour or so there! One will be in need of a long nap after this!
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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!
I know what you mean about drama on the FB groups. By the time I joined for our WBPC cruise there were already 2 FB groups. I joined both, but was mostly a silent observer. There seemed to be a bit of animosity between the two groups. There also were a number of people who had cruised that cruise multiple times, not to mention the other cruises they had taken.
On that cruise, the first night at the show, they were asking people to stand in recognition of how many Disney cruises they had taken. The couple was not in attendance at the show, but the CD said there was a couple on board who had sailed on over 80 Disney cruises! I happened to mention it at dinner the next night, and, guess what---they were sitting at the table with us! They were a delightful couple who just loved to sail. They also had done many, many Celebrity cruises as well.
The routes from the past are certainly interested as most are quite similar but not yours in any way!
Isn't it fascinating how Disney changes things up from year to year? There was me assuming they'd be roughly the same each year. I couldn't have been more wrong!
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Hope you book a week pass to the spa as may be a good thing to keep you occupied with so many days at sea.
Well, you'll see about our choices over that in due course...
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Those Facebook groups with the private group cocktail events are quite interesting to say the least and also quite deadly after an hour or so there! One will be in need of a long nap after this!
I suspect that may be the case! But heck, let's be honest, we'll probably have more than got our money's worth in that hour...
I know what you mean about drama on the FB groups. By the time I joined for our WBPC cruise there were already 2 FB groups. I joined both, but was mostly a silent observer. There seemed to be a bit of animosity between the two groups.
My goodness, it sounds like this is a regular occurrence!
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There also were a number of people who had cruised that cruise multiple times, not to mention the other cruises they had taken.
I know we've cruised multiple times with Disney and done a couple of other cruises, but compared to some, we really pale into complete insignificance!
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On that cruise, the first night at the show, they were asking people to stand in recognition of how many Disney cruises they had taken. The couple was not in attendance at the show, but the CD said there was a couple on board who had sailed on over 80 Disney cruises! I happened to mention it at dinner the next night, and, guess what---they were sitting at the table with us! They were a delightful couple who just loved to sail. They also had done many, many Celebrity cruises as well.
Oh my! Wow. Just wow. I bet they had some amazing stories to tell.
Pre-trip report – part eight: this is what I’d signed up for
Things started to get a bit more interesting in the Facebook group when there was a post about private tastings and open bars. Now this is what I’d signed up for.
There are a few conditions to these, which are fair enough. With the open bars, they have to be pre-paid to Disney at least a month prior to cruising. There are warnings that if you sign up, you will have to pre-pay ahead of time, which is fair enough. They’re not extortionately priced. There’s the premium bar for $13.25 and the signature bar for $18.50. We’ve signed up for the latter, as it has Stella Artois and Mark wasn’t keen on the beers in the premium option, which is fair enough. There’s no guarantee it will go ahead, as it depends on how many people sign up for each. They did warn us that if you sign up for numerous tastings, there may be more than one in a day. Oh well… then we’d have a very good day!
Equally, with the private tastings, these will be charged to your room once you’re on board, whether you show up or not, which again is fair enough. I appreciate that, depending on the weather, we may or may not make it to these, but let’s be optimistic.
For the private tastings, we’ve gone for the mixology, which we’ve always wanted to do, but we’ve never been able to. It’s got quite a lot of people signed up for it, so I suspect it may go ahead and hopefully we might make it this time… We’ve also signed up for the martini and the cognac events and I put Mark down for the whiskey, as I’m not a fan. I figured we may as well sign up for as many as we can, as I doubt they’ll all go ahead.
Fast forward to the end of April. The pound had gone up against the dollar to heights not seen for a good few months, so we figured we’d take the opportunity to pay off some of the cruise. Trust me, when you’re paying as much as you do for a Disney cruise, any rise in the exchange rate can make a big difference.
That was fine, but then I got a message back from Sara, telling us our paid in full date was 9 May. What??? This wasn’t what I had in my mind. I had it down as we could pay it all off on 20 May, as that’s the day the credit card month finishes for us. I emailed her back to enquire about it and thankfully it turned out she was looking at the wrong cruise date. Phew! Crisis averted…
I don’t normally leave paying things off this late, but having had our big vacation in January, I wanted to give our savings the chance to replenish themselves and we also have another big purchase to make for another vacation at around the same time, so the more time we can buy ourselves the better. By the way, I’m not saying anything about the other vacation at this point in the pre-trip report, as I’m a bit superstitious. I believe we’re not going until something is booked, just in case something happens, and nothing’s booked yet, so I’ll keep quiet for the moment…
The next thing I realised was that the date for booking shore excursions and, perhaps more importantly, any drink tastings (yes, we might go for some of the Disney operated ones too ) and Palo brunch were fast approaching. I worked out the dates and discovered the date for our Transatlantic crossing would be on a Saturday. Ugh. Disney opens up their booking at midnight, which is a real pain for us, as we’re five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, which means 5:00am. That’s fine on a weekday, as we’re up fairly early, but not so great on a weekend. At least the bookings for New York City to Quebec City is on a weekday, so that’s something. I guess at some point we need to think about which shore excursions we actually want to do and need to try and narrow it down further than the shortlist we currently have, as let’s just say it’s not much of a shortlist. So many choices…
It was about this time that we went out for dinner and I decided to price up the cruise to see how much we’d end up paying if we were only booking now, knowing that prices just tend to go up and up with Disney. For New York City to Quebec City, the price for our cabin would now be an additional £2,500 ($3,500) – oh my goodness!
However, we’d used our Disney Vacation Club points to pay for our Transatlantic cruise. Now a lot of people will tell you it’s not a great use of your points and they’re right. It’s not the most economic use of them, but if we booked now, the price for the two of us would be more than £9,000 ($12,600) and that’s not even for the category of stateroom we’ve got booked. It looks as if it’s going to be a very busy cruise, because while there’s good availability on our second cruise, it’s not the same story with the Transatlantic. They only have aft verandas left. Oh my! So maybe not a good use of points, but heck there’s no way we could be on that cruise at that type of money…
It was through the Facebook group that I discovered that our Transatlantic cruise would also have a Broadway star on board, which was really neat, as they were only doing it on select cruises. It wouldn’t be happening on New York to Quebec. I will be honest, I hadn’t heard of the “Stars Set Sail” before, but I guess that’s because it hadn’t applied to us.
From what I could understand from the news on the Disney Cruise Line blog, there’s an evening performance that will be guaranteed featuring that star. I’m willing to bet that seats will go quickly in the Walt Disney Theatre on that night! It did also say that the sailings “may also include meet-and-greets with the stars during exclusive Q&A sessions, plus adults-only shows in the evening.” If it did, that would be good, as presumably the adult-only show would be a third one, maybe late in the evening and that, I assume, would lessen crowds at each show? The Q&A sounds good, but again, I’m sure that would be mobbed and, as I’m sure it would be on an at sea day, it would also depend on the weather on the day. If we’re pitching in the middle of the Transatlantic, I don’t care who the star is – it may just be easier to stay in bed!
So who have we got on our cruise? Michelle Mallardi from Beauty and the Beast. Now you guys are probably going to be like “I know her”, but the name was completely foreign to me. I found her website and discovered she’d studied dance from the age of three and played Belle at both the Palace Theatre and the Lunt Fontanne on Broadway. She also toured nationally in Beauty and the Beast, as well as A Chorus Line and Jekyll and Hyde and the most recent touring company of Les Miserables. You guys may have seen her at the tree lighting ceremony at Radio City Music Hall with Liza Minelli.
I know one thing. Given she’s been on Broadway, she will be an amazing performer and we’ll be blown away by her. I hope we are able to see some of the special activities, as it’s a really neat touch to add to this cruise.
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I continually say this when I read your PTR's that it all seems so complicated planning such a multi-faceted trip!
The refurbishment pictures of the ship look beautiful!
A lot of the changes to the ship look and sound good too. Especially the TV's!
I couldn't get over that and part of me does wonder whether that's true or not, but if it is, my goodness, that's a heck of a vacation! 
Hope you book a week pass to the spa as may be a good thing to keep you occupied with so many days at sea. Those Facebook groups with the private group cocktail events are quite interesting to say the least and also quite deadly after an hour or so there! 
One will be in need of a long nap after this! 
Well we try! 
This wasn’t what I had in my mind. I had it down as we could pay it all off on 20 May, as that’s the day the credit card month finishes for us. I emailed her back to enquire about it and thankfully it turned out she was looking at the wrong cruise date. Phew! Crisis averted… 
Oh my! So maybe not a good use of points, but heck there’s no way we could be on that cruise at that type of money… 
I found her website and discovered she’d studied dance from the age of three and played Belle at both the Palace Theatre and the Lunt Fontanne on Broadway. She also toured nationally in Beauty and the Beast, as well as A Chorus Line and Jekyll and Hyde and the most recent touring company of Les Miserables. You guys may have seen her at the tree lighting ceremony at Radio City Music Hall with Liza Minelli. 
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