While looking forward to Christmas, we decided to look into a cruise for next fall (2008). Don’t you know there was a Western Caribbean that starts on the 18th of October and includes October 22nd (Brenda’s birthday) and 23rd (my birthday)! It would also be just six months before our 10 year anniversary (April 22nd), not to mention the week before Halloween.
We have some very good friends, Dale and Charlotte, who we asked to go with us. They had helped us when I was off with my bypass surgery, so we set everything up and were going to furnish the flights, since I collect a lot of frequent flier miles with my job. Everything was fine till Dale decided he wouldn’t be able to get around well enough and would hold us back. Dale is over 80 and has mobility and other medical issues. We got the “Passporter for Special Needs” and I started a thread on “Planning your Disney cruise” to get actual personal experiences so we could show him how much Disney caters to people like him, and to show him that people much worse have gone and had a great time. We even tried to make him understand that, although younger, we couldn’t get around much better than him and had no intention of doing anything that required any effort or speed… shoot!, I may never leave our veranda! This worked for about 2 weeks. Finally Charlotte had to call Disney and cancel all their reservations.
This really disappointed us, but there was nothing we could do. Instead of 4 coach tickets to Orlando, I booked 2 first class tickets for Brenda and me.
We still had our Cruise reservations and would be in stateroom #6600, a cat 6 with a veranda.
I began to dream of having my morning coffee while relaxing on the veranda (and evening coffee with a bit of Bailey’s Irish Cream!)
. When I lived in an apartment with a balcony, I loved to sit out there and just watch the world go by, so I am really looking forward to the veranda.
That was about October 2007. Hailey’s Great Christmas Adventure has come and gone, I broke my knee in January and lost 10 weeks of work.
Then DW, who is diabetic, got an infection on her foot and had to go to the hospital. After 3 days they sent in a Kidney Specialist who wanted to amputate her foot and put her on dialysis.
Well, we had our own Specialists who disagreed with the amputation and the dialysis for now. They brought in a Podiatrist who saved her foot and all her toes, and while they did warn of dialysis, she is not quite there yet.
I lost two more weeks of work, but not even all of that could discourage us and we still have our reservations
. We will just not be able to do as much extra stuff. After I had my bypass surgery, we were talking to one of my nurses about almost booking a Disney cruise and she said we needed to go ahead and go because I deserved it now.
Well, we just couldn’t swing it financially at that time, but now I think Brenda and I both need to get out and have a little magic in our lives… or a BIG Magic as the case may be…
We ordered the new “2008 Passporter for the Disney Cruise Line” and I began to get into planning mode.
I was checking things out on this board and thought we should stay the night before the cruise at the Port. Maybe the Radisson, it looked like it would save us a little money and we could get a limo or rent a car down from the airport. But in the end, we decided to let Disney put us up the night before and the night after our cruise, so we booked POFQ for the 17th and 25th of October. This was DW’s idea to keep our baggage handling to a minimum. We will check our bags in Cincinnati with Delta Airlines and have them delivered to our room at French Quarter, and then they will pick them up and deliver them to the ship and vice versa on the return. I like this idea a lot because I don’t have to drive at all. Since I drive for a living, that is a
big plus for me. When we went to WDW in 2005, I didn’t drive the whole week and that was just sooooo relaxing to me. I didn’t mind the waiting for the buses at all. Of course it was in September and the attendance was way down.
Well, we kept waiting for the bottom to drop out, but I kept dreaming of sailing with Mickey and Pluto and the gang.
Key Lime pie became my favorite dessert!
Finally sometime this spring, Brenda told me to go on-line and make a payment to Disney… this put our balance to where my vacation check will be able to pay off the cruise!
Then four months out, in June, we got a Disney packet in the mail!! It was all these little booklets telling us all about our cruise! Aahhhh Disney Mail!!!
Also in June DW got her passport and things began to seem more real. Shortly after that, I called DCL to give them her passport number and make sure they knew we would be at POFQ. While on the phone with them I booked the Romantic Escape Package,
thanks to some of the TRs I’ve read here and the input I received from a thread I posted on “Planning Your Disney Cruise” that I entitled “Romancing the Stone… Or just a little Love?” referencing the REAS package or the new Romance gift package.
HEY!! I just looked at the countdown on my phone!
Yikes!!
101 days to: “The Magic-al Pre-Halloween Birthday Cruise of 2008”… or… “MNSSBR (Mickey’s Not So Scary Boat Ride)”… or… “A Magic-al Mouseketeer Get-a-way…. HEY!! It’s getting late! I gotta get organized!
Where did I put that new "Passporter for the Disney Cruise Line"??! I know it’s around here somewhere…
Up Next: We’re going to Mickey’s house… What do we do now?