HalloWonder PTR: Oct. 26, 2013! GTY Assignments!

[JustMickey]

I have never done a pre-trip report, but I love the idea of a planning journal for our trip. So here goes!

We are cruising on the Disney Wonder 7 night Bahamanian on Oct. 26, 2013!!

Who are we?

Me, Karyn, age 24 and a big Disney fan.

My boyfriend Kevin, also age 24. He's a Disney fan, but not as much as he is a Star Wars fan!

We've been together for almost 7 years. We met in Jr. High and starting dating in our senior year of high school. Our first date was at Homecoming in 2006.

Growing up, I had only ever been to Disneyland a few times with my family, but I always dreamed of going to WDW. Kevin's family took yearly vacations to WDW, so he was an old pro. In 2007, we planned our first vacation together, and I finally got to see WDW!

Since then, we've been to back to WDW in 2008, and visited Disneyland in 2010 and 2012.

Here's the two of us at Disneyland a few years ago...

and a more recent pic...both of us at Disneyland last October.

We don't have any kids, but we do have 2 babies:

They are our pride and joy lol.


I've been on a cruise once before, in junior year of High School with my Girl Scout troop. I loved it and have always wanted to do another cruise. However, Kevin has never been fond of the idea. Something about being bored spending a week being confined to one place.

We've been itching to plan another trip, and out of nowhere, he suggested a Disney cruise!

It turns out, Galveston was running some excellent deals, and it all came together from there! Now we're down to 79 days until we sail! Woohooo!!

 

[CatDenver]

I'm on your cruise and am looking forward to reading your report!

By the way, I love your Mary Poppins costume. Where did you find the carpet bag?

 

[JustMickey]

I'm on your cruise and am looking forward to reading your report!

By the way, I love your Mary Poppins costume. Where did you find the carpet bag?

Hey Catherine, I've seen you on Facebook! I got the carpet bag at Goodwill for $5...and I made the umbrella head out of Model Magic clay!

 

[wiigirl]

Following along.

 

[JustMickey]

So, some more background about how this trip came to be.

We've been looking into traveling internationally soon (possibly Europe or Japan), but we're nervous about being overwhelmed in places we're not used to and that don't primarily speak English. Awhile ago I mentioned that a cruise would be a good way to dip our toes into international travel, but Kevin was still not fond of the idea of cruises.

Well, while we were trying to plan our next trip, Kevin started reconsidering what I had said about cruising, and we started looking at various cruises--Princess, RCCL, etc. Once we saw that Disney was in Galveston for a limited time, we knew that it was meant to be! The cherry on top was the great sale Disney was running for Galveston sailings this fall. Discounted rooms, half deposit, and OBC! We ended up booking an 11C GTY room. We don't mind staying in an inside room, we hopefully won't be spending much time there anyway. We'd rather save the money!

Speaking of saving money, I also did the trick I've read so much about here: using a Target red card to buy Disney GCs. I bought almost $1500 worth of Disney GCs over a period of about a week, which saved us $75. Some of my friends thought I was crazy but I love finding deals so I don't mind! I also have a $25 GC from Sunshine Rewards and over $100 in DDRDs from my Disney Visa! Love free money!

Here's our itinerary:

Sat, 10/26/13, Galveston, TX, 3:30pm
Sun, 10/27/13, At Sea
Mon, 10/28/13, Key West, FL, 11:30am-4:45pm
Tue, 10/29/13, Castaway Cay, Bahamas, 9:15am-5:45pm
Wed, 10/30/13, Nassau, Bahamas, 7:15am-5:45pm
Thu, 10/31/13 (Halloween!), At Sea
Fri, 11/1/13, At Sea
Sat, 11/2/13, Galveston, TX, 9:30am

We live in Dallas, so we'll be driving down on Friday night and staying somewhere nearby. We are SO glad we don't have to worry about airfare on this vacation.

We are first time DCL cruisers, so we have to wait until 75 days out to book excursions and Palo, and to check in. Luckily that happens tonight! At 11:00 CST I'll be logging in to do online check in.

Here's what we have planned for our Port days:

Key West: we're not booking anything through Disney. We plan to rent bikes and do a self-guided tour. I got a kick out of reading about all the cats at the Hemingway house, so we'll probably stop there. And of course, Key Lime pie on a stick. I'm not a huge fan of Key Lime Pie, but if it's chocolate dipped I'm sure I'll like it just fine! I also wanted to do parasailing at some point, but it's so expensive on CC and Nassau. We may end up doing parasailing at Key West. I still haven't decided.

Castaway Cay: We'll be renting bikes on CC. I'd like to try snorkeling too. I haven't decided whether we should buy our own snorkel gear or rent it. We're not like super big water people, so I'm not sure we should spend the money buying our own if we're never going to use it again. But, we might want to snorkel at Nassau too, so we don't want to have to rent two overpriced sets of snorkel gear if we don't have to.

Nassau: I've heard so many bad reviews about Nassau! However, there are a couple different things we've narrowed it down to:

• The semi-submarine excursion
• Sandy Toes Beach
• Blue Lagoon Sea Lion Encounter

I'm definitely gravitating towards the Sea Lion Encounter. I saw pictures and I just fell in love, they are SO cute! I think I'll be booking this excursion tonight, and hope I can cancel later if I change my mind.

We would like to reserve at least one meal at Palo. Hopefully something will be available tonight. I would prefer dinner but I've heard such good things about the brunch that either one is fine with me! I also really don't want to miss anything special in the MDRs (Pirate Night, Halloween, AP show, etc.) BUT I guess that would give us a great reason to book another cruise!

I'll leave you with a cool story about the last time I was in Galveston:
It was the summer after my Junior year of High School, our Girl Scout troop took a 5-night Carnival cruise as our last hurrah as a troop. But, the morning our cruise left was an SAT testing date. I had already taken the SAT once, but I knew I could get a better score if I took it again. A few of the girls, including me, wanted to take the SAT on that date, so our leaders arranged for us to take it at a local high school in Galveston on the morning of the cruise. We tried studying on the drive down, and in the hotel the night before, but we were all so wound up with the excitement of our vacation starting! We didn't get much studying done

I was worried that I wasn't going to be prepared, and might end up bombing it. It went OK, I felt alright about it at the time, but didn't dwell too much on it! Imagine my surprise when several weeks later, I got my score back and it was MUCH higher than my original score. My GPA wasn't that great in High School so that SAT score helped me get into colleges I had no chance of getting into!

 

[CatDenver]

Hey Catherine, I've seen you on Facebook! I got the carpet bag at Goodwill for $5...and I made the umbrella head out of Model Magic clay!

Oh my gosh, I've got to start keeping an eye on the purse/bag section of GW! I love it and can't believe you found such a great treasure. I just love Mary Poppins!

 

[JustMickey]

Oh my gosh, I've got to start keeping an eye on the purse/bag section of GW! I love it and can't believe you found such a great treasure. I just love Mary Poppins!

Oh yes I do too! Kevin doesn't like the movie but he is being the dutiful boyfriend and dressing up as Bert with me for the cruise

 

[JustMickey]

I was able to check in a few nights ago at our 75 day mark. I got us reserved for the 11:30 AM port arrival time. The earlier the better!

I was also so excited to see that all of the things I wanted were still available. I was able to book both brunch and dinner at Palo, the Sea Lion encounter at Nassau, and parasailing at CC.

We're doing the Palo brunch at our first day at sea at 12:30. I was only going to do the dinner, but since the brunch was available, I figured WHY NOT? No better time than now to experience it!

Palo dinner was a harder choice. I didn't want to miss any of the first three nights in the MDRs, and I also didn't want to miss any themed nights (Formal--2nd night, Pirate--4th night, Halloween--6th night) or the last night in the MDRs. So we booked Palo for our day at Nassau (5th night) at 6:30 pm. My only worry is possibly missing the AP show. If that's the case, we might cancel Palo so we don't have to miss it. I guess we won't find out our rotation until we check in at the port? So we'll see!

For our Nassau day, we're going to just stay the rest of the day at Blue Lagoon after the sea lion encounter. I still may change my mind and switch to the semi-sub or Sandy Toes, but probably not.

I booked parasailing on CC but will most likely cancel that excursion. It's a little too expensive and we might end up doing it at Key West instead.

Now the excitement about checking in is over, it's time to obsess about when our GTY room will be assigned!

It's shaping up to be a great trip! We're getting so excited

 

[mrp4352]

I haven't parasailed anywhere else - but I can tell you the Castaway Cay experience was GREAT! We cruised back and forth in front of the Dream and had incredible views of the island. I'm hoping to do it again, and maybe this time I'll be brave enough to let go of the ropes and take some pictures from up high!

 

[mrp4352]

Has your GTY been assigned? I know they started assigning them for our cruise yesterday.

 

[JustMickey]

Has your GTY been assigned? I know they started assigning them for our cruise yesterday.

Yep we got our assignment!

 

[JustMickey]

GTY assignments for our cruise came out yesterday!

We had an 11C GTY room booked. The room assigned to us is an 11A, #7627! It's Deck 7 aft, almost at the very end.

While searching room reviews last night, I saw the "secret deck 7 verandah" mentioned a few times. Apparently there's a little-used deck at the end of deck 7. It sounds great and hopefully it won't be too crowded when we're there! There are some pics in this thread:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=34136040#post34136040

In other news, I just got my passport this past week. I was starting to get nervous because I had to order another birth cert. from the state of California and they took awhile to get it back to me...add that to Passport processing time and it could have been cut pretty close. But the Passport got to me within about 3 weeks of sending my Birth Cert.

Only 59 more days to go! Someone on our cruise FB group mentioned that now that we all have our room numbers, the next thing is to obsess about is cruise documents! Can't wait to get those!