I have been meaning to send a short summation of our trip to DisneyWorld this February. Being gone for a week means it takes a good week to 10 days to get things back to normal. Sorry for not sending this to you earlier.
On the whole, it was a good vacation and the Disney folks did a good job. They're especially adept at separating people from their money. It's a great skill, and I'm pleased that certain family members bought Disney stock before Disney bought ABC.
Things started on a potentially calamitous note. We put in our reservations early in 1999, Disney dutifully removed the deposit from our credit card account, then we didn't hear anything. Finally, we started calling in December. They had our address and phone number wrong. So we never got our confirmation. It took a bit of time to get everything straightened out. A few weeks before the trip, we got all of the info we needed (e.g., have a valid passport, fill out lots of forms, etc.).
At the MSP airport, there was a huge crowd. Lots of airlines had cancelled flights due to bad weather out east. We stood in lines that were amazingly long for 6:30AM. But we were in the right place at the right time, they opened a new line, and we were directed to go to the front of it.
Disney has a very good system for shipping bags. And people. The bags go ahead to your room (if you're staying on Disney property) so you don't have to worry about them from the time you check them at the airport to the time you see them at the resort. Likewise with the cruise.
We flew down on a DC-10. Everything was overbooked. They were offering people really fine deals to be bumped to later in the day. At one point, they were willing to trade $1500 per ticket, plus they would upgrade your next flight to First Class! That could have paid for most of the trip. But we didn't do it, and it's probably just as well, since we would have had to get from the Orlando airport to the resort on our own.
As it was, we were herded to a nice travel coach and rode for maybe 40 minutes.
Will had made some business cards using Microsoft Publisher. He started handing them out to the guides and helpers, and didn't stop until we got back home.
The worst thing about the trip was the weather. It wasn't especially bad, but we had hoped for better than 70's and partly cloudy.
Even so, we enjoyed the pool at the resort. We stayed at the Disney Yacht & Beach Club, next to Epcot. The "world's largest white sand swimming pool" was there. Actually, the sand isn't sand. It's some polymer they manufactured to be almost perfectly round, so it doesn't clog up the pool filters. Leave it to Disney to give us plastic sand.
The pool was really neat, with lots of twists and curves, and a big fake ... I mean, Disney ... "shipwreck" next to the pool. You could climb up to the crow's nest, then slide down a long tube into the pool.
We hit Epcot for a short visit Friday night, then back to bed. On Saturday, we went to the Magic Kingdom. The parks are open early on Saturdays to people staying at Disney resorts. We took advantage of that, and only stood in line for about half an hour to ride the Space Mountain roller coaster. Good coaster, if you like that sort of thing. Also saw The Timekeeper, hosted by a robot whose voice and mannerisms come from Robin Williams. Good fun.
The rest of the Magic Kingdom left us kinda flat. Will and I went back to the resort after breakfast (complete with Pooh Bear characters that wanted to hug us), and Kathy came shortly after with Inga.
Everybody says Epcot is the best thing there. Well, not everybody. Just everybody we believe. We took in many of the exhibits, some of which were rides, some were displays, and all were more interesting than thrilling. The international walk was fun. We were among the first to be there when they opened it on Sunday, and the Norwegians gave us cake, then made Inga "Viking of the Day." She has a certificate and a helmet to prove it.
We stayed together most of the time. We had packed family band radios, thinking they might be useful on the ship. It was hard to use them even at the resort. Everybody and their dog brought them, so we could never find an open channel. They came in handy once or twice. But with 2000 people packed on a ship -- forget it!
Actually, we weren't packed on the ship (the Disney Magic). It's about 960 feet long and can accommodate up to 2800 guests. We rode another coach across the state to Port Canaveral and left from there at 5:00 (almost exactly 24 hours before the space shuttle landed just a couple of miles from us, darn it!). All of the help on the boat were very very eager to please. No evidence of the overemployment service economy there. Most were in their 20's, from 55 different countries. That part was really cool. We had the same wait staff that followed us night after night to the three different restaurants where we had dinner (on consecutive nights, of course). One night, poor tired Will fell asleep at dinner. The waitress made up a bed for him in the corner, and we have a great picture of Will sleeping on the lap of Natasa from Croatia.
That's an example of the service we got. People really work hard to get and keep Disney jobs. I have heard it said that at Disney, if you don't come to work on Saturday, you may as well not bother showing up on Sunday.
Oh, yeah, and there were mice everywhere on the boat. Big, big mice, with big round ears. Some were as big as me. One was dressed in a captain's outfit.
Our first stop was at Nassau on Tuesday morning. Inga had her hair put in braids ("cornrows"). That involved some price negotiating and a surprise trip down a back alley. It was one time we were glad the family radios were working.
I took a cab over to the Atlantis, the largest hotel in the Caribbean, where I inspected a casino. Purely professional visit, of course. The Atlantis is nothing if not opulent. Several private coves and swimming areas are out back between the hotel and the ocean. I started to walk back there, and a local hotel worker asked if I was a guest. I said no, and started to apologize, but he said, "Oh, go ahead, Mon. Knock yourself out!" Island culture. At one point, we were advised to drink triple, see double, and act single. (We didn't do any of those things, by the way.)
My cab ride back to the boat was about the best thing on Nassau. The driver was very animated, and had a lot to say about Bahamian history, politics, and the local government ("Eet SUCKS!"). Good fun. We also went out on a glass bottom boat, but its scheduled cruise over a (real) shipwreck was called off due to the weather, as was our snorkeling trip.
We left that evening, and pulled into Castaway Cay on Wednesday. This is a small island in the Bahamas that's 100% owned by Disney. There are no large permanent buildings there. Nothing happens unless a Disney ship is docked. We lounged on the white sand, did some snorkeling, and got a bit wet in the rain. A band played on the beach, and when it wasn't playing, little latitude songs were piped through the loudspeakers. (I like Jimmy Buffett, but somebody should tell Disney that he's recorded more than two songs.) The sun came out just as we were leaving.
On Thursday, the captain gave instructions to sail the ship around and avoid squalls. We were able to stay in the sun most of the day. It was the best day of the boat trip for sure.
Getting used to the motion of the boat was a minor problem. (In fact, the walls of our house continued to sway for a few days after we got back, especially while walking down stairs.) The lack of sealegs got in the way of dinner the first night, but we brought plenty of dramamine. The downside of that is, it makes you groggy. Will is an early-to-bed kinda person anyway, even more so with that in his system. (He's also subject to nausea in the car, ergo the dramamine was a necessity not an option.)
Another criticism I would have of the whole Disney boat operation was that kid activities were too regimented. For example, they have a computer lab on the boat. But you can only go to it certain hours, and then only with counselors. It's set up so parents can get away from their kids. Plus they wouldn't let Will and Inga participate in the same things at the same time. Plus in addition to screwing up our address they also screwed up Will's birthday, so we had to jump through some hoops, show his Passport, and register him twice to get him in the right group. The kids both spent all of maybe 10 minutes enjoying what was touted to be one of the special attractions aboard. Nobody in our family likes things to be too organized beyond our control. We're probably just different that way, but other people have told us they had the same problem with Disney cruise kid activities.
There's a big stage theater on the ship, where we saw some Broadwayesque productions that were entertaining (for those of us who stayed awake for them). On the last day at sea, the captain and the rest of his "steering committee" (chief navigator, entertainment director, mechanic, food service director) sat on stage and took questions from the audience. We learned they make about 2/3 to 3/4 of their water at sea with their desalination system. And what the captain did for the 25 years he was at sea. Lots of neat info. Inga asked who plays Minnie Mouse. The cruise director, who was hosting the show, said, "Excuse me? What was that? I don't really understand the question..... Nobody plays Minnie Mouse, Minnie Mouse is real. You will never see two Minnie Mouses at the same time." To which Inga piped up typically with an argument, "Yes you do, I saw her over there and then over there at the same time." The crowd loved it.
The last night was the windiest. And roughest. I slept through it pretty well (I like to use a radio to put white noise in my ear, which usually helps.) The cabin -- a really nice stateroom, with a queensize and fold-down bunkbeds, plus a veranda -- cracked and popped and groaned and cracked and popped some more until we pulled into port around 4AM, a couple of hours early. Then we all slept.
It was a short and pleasant ride back to the Orlando airport. We got there midmorning for a 1:30 flight on another DC-10. Out on the runway, we sat and sat, then learned that there was an indicator light that shouldn't be on. Back to the gate. Nobody could get off. After a while, the pilot told us it was nothing, and they had put a piece of tape over the light so it wouldn't distract them. Back out on the runway. More waiting. Another announcement. There was a valve on the tail that they couldn't get closed. Back to the gate. Can't get off the plane (advised against it, anyway). Maybe take an hour, maybe more, maybe less. They had to bring out a hydraulic stair and physically reach up behind the tail to shut off the valve.
We finally left the ground about 4:30. We hadn't eaten anything since breakfast on the ship (except the peanuts I had to ask for). And the airplane food was -- well, it was airplane food. Not a good, relaxing ending.
But we made it home just fine and got back to find the 1+ ft of snow we left GONE from sight. Very strange to see. Totally unexpected. We later learned that the Twin Cities had been socked in with fog for several days, and it had just lifted the day we got back.
I'm planning to put some photos up on our web site. Right now, there's just one of the cruise, on our main family web page at http://www.strinz.com/family We'll have more in the photo gallery Real Soon Now, I hope. That's at http://www.strinz.com/family/photos.htm if you want to take a look sometime.
Was it worth it? Yeah, probably, to do once. The Disney Magic is going to stop doing 4 day cruises, and go out one week at a time. That might be fun. But I think we'll stick with Sanibel until we decide to go out farther into the world.
Cheers!------>CS