DCL Party Planning Thread (combined threads)

[DVCLaurie05]

Sounds like all the parties were a hit!! Loved the pics from allears' party! Looks like quiet the blast!!!

We had a great time!! Kids were super busy down in the 'lab' - Disney karaoke going on (did I spell that right) and pictionary! I had the CD going on upstairs (the one I made) - playing all kinds of deck party music - that was a lot of fun - all the guests that had been cruising before were talking about their deck parties, dreaming about being back - so that got everyone in the mood.. DCL pictures all over - I also had all the navigators from our first cruise (couldn't find them from the last one, hmmm... ) anyway, those who were interested and never cruised before really got a taste of what DCL is all about!

The food was great - lots of picky stuff - and TONS of leftover stuff!! So much for WW this week! LOL The sangria was flowing - of course, that inhibited me from taking PICS! LOL I took pics of the stuff before everyone came, but, never took any w/the guests - what I should've done was taken a pic of the MESS afterward!!

The goodie bags were a hit - everyone was totally impressed that I created the CD just for the party. The photo albums and magnetic pads were also appreciated - so, all in all - other than the mess - we had a good night!

OH, and no one used the DCL napkins here either! LOL

So, I am totally excited about our cruise in August, I think my cousin is going to book with us, so, that'll be fun! I have 2 boys and she has 3 - all around the same ages, so, that'll be really fun for them!

I look forward to reading everyone's party updates!! I still can't believe I am up this early today! LOL

Laurie

 

[BCVOwner2002]

Wow! We had a great party. I'm still not sure how many people we had over. Between all of the adults and kids I lost count. The food was a big success and of course I forgot to put out one of the dishes. Happens at every party. The kids had a blast upstairs in the Lab and made treasure boxes and watched the DVD. We had the travel special on downstairs. Lots of our friends were interested in the cruise and I think we have a few converts! The luggage tag favors were a big hit. It's been a long fun day. Hope everyone's party was as much fun! Time to now unwind and go to bed!

Hahaha! I forgot to put out the pasta salad. I seem to do something like this at every party we have too. Thank goodness I realized this before the party was over and people were still picking at the food.

 

[barney4liz]

I remembered to put everything out, except for a chunk of manchego cheese. Anyone got a good recipe that uses manchego?? And I have some leftover shrimp -- that will probably be turned into jambalaya today. I have most of a beautiful fruit platter that my co-hostess brought. I was using it to garnish the daquiris and put it out with the rum cake, but most people just wanted the cake. Go figure.

The few pics that I took are on my party page. My co-hostess took pics, too, and I will be looking forward to seeing those.

Thanks to whoever suggested generating pirate names for the guests. That was fun. Although my pirate name is "Butt-Ugly Jessie Bonny".

I discovered that I make a lousy bingo emceee. I wanted to play "Bermuda triangle" for a quick game -- it was taking forever and I didn't know why as it goes fast on the ship. Then one of my smarty-pants guests pointed out that you have to take out the "B" and the "O" numbers because those will never show up in the relevant spaces. D'oh!

I used the iron-on transfer on a white apron and it turned out pretty cute! If my co-hostess did not get a pic, I will post one.

Anyway, congrats to everyone on partying success -- Hope one of our guests wins a cruise.

 

[wltdsnyfan]

Looks like you had a great party Allears.!

Andy, Of couse the pictures were great to.

 

[Hanover]

Our party was a lot of fun. We also had way too much food but I was glad to have more than not enough! Our kid's CD we got in our houseparty box did not work at all, but we played lots of past cruise video tapes and the guests loved seeing them. I think we have definitely persuaded several families to take future Disney Cruises.

The games were a hit. I decided since we didn't have many "big" prizes (the album and a couple large Mickey's I bought at the Disney Store), we'd let the adults play the games after the kids, and the adult winner got them for their family. Not a tear occurred! All the kids got goody bags and loved the pirate stuff. Adults got goody bags with the recipe cards, promotional material, H20 products and either a DCL bag or Disney hand towel I bought at the Disney store. I'll post some pictures later.

 

[Verandah Man]

Looks like you had a great party Allears.!

Andy, Of couse the pictures were great to.

Thanks Flo..........

 

[allears]

For the awesome party pics! I NEVER remember to take pictures at important events and always regret it later. And I'm not sure if John got any pictures in either. So again, THANKS!

The party went terrifically well. SUrprisingly they all showed up at 7:30! I guess they didn't want to get left at the dock! Everyone had a great time being together and talking Disney. I did leave out one dessert, because I couldn't figure out the timing. I had planned choclate souffles and chocolate lave cake. But as both have to be served warm, but cook at different temperatures, the timing just didn't work out in the oven. So Andy & Hazel, we'll have them next time we have you over! The food was a big hit. Believe it or not, I was getting raves over the salad! But I loved it when I had it on the ship too. And the pomagranate glazed chicken wings were the next favorite. One glitch, SOOO many people wanted to play BINGO (MAGIC) that we had to go print up more cards in a hurry. I thought 20 would have been plenty, but apparently not! We used the stuff they sent us for the kids to color, they loved the masks (The little ones) and we used the bigger stuff for BINGO and door prizes. We had everyone put their name on the 'points' they gave us and did the door prize that way. If you see Andy's pics you'll see we had quite a funny set of Pirates afterwards!

Now to finish clean up and resend that link to all my guests so they can enter for that cruise!

 

[BCVOwner2002]

I posted our pictures on DCHP but DH and I have decided at our next party, we need to request someone be our photographer. DH and I were so busy making sure everything went smoothly that we didn't take a lof of pictures and since DH usually takes the pictures, he is never in any of them. We'll work on this for our 2nd annual pirate party but that won't be until the summer so we have plenty of time to debrief and plan. Annmarie

 

[wdwscout]

We had a great time last night at John and Gayle's DCL House Party (allears)!

Thanks so much for allowing us to be a part of your gathering. The food was fabulous- loved the chicken wings, the chocolate souffles, and the Mickey rice crispy treats! The island music added to the atmosphere. You were both very gracious hosts.
And we had the pleasure of meeting Verandah Man (Andy) and his wife Hazel. Such good conversation with all of the guests- it only helped make our exicitement for our upcoming very first DCL Cruise (12/31/08) grow even more!

Andy- your pics are terrific! Thanks for posting them.
I hope everyone's parties went as smoothly and were as much fun as the one we were fortunate enough to attend!

 

[misseulalie]

Hi everyone, I haven't posted much, but we did have a party/playgroup. We were going to have a "real" party, but the only people who were able to attend were my playdate moms so we ended up having a DCL playgroup.

Of course since we didn't have enough goodies for the kids (5 pirate hats for 8 kids????) I didn't make it a true "party".

So I ended up buying dollar store pirate stuff for the kids, and then filled the goodie bags with stuff for the mom's. I put the brochures, recipe cards, travel sized toothbrushes, sun tan lotion, body lotion, and tropical jelly beans.

I served a deli tray, mexican dip, pasta salad, cookies, and fruit.
The kids played outside until it rained, then they trashed the playroom. (which is going to take me ALL DAY to clean up.)

I appreciate the gifts and the "free stuff", but my big complaint is why have 10 goodie bags and have nothing to fill them with? Also, the wierd Peter Pan stuff. Why such random items?

There was one thing that was interesting... Each one of my friends asked me how much Disney was giving me as a kickback if I get my friends to book a cruise. They seemed quite confused when I said nothing. They assumed I would get a discount or or something for having them book. I did explain the on-board credit, but they still thought I would get something in return for them booking.

I think $25-$50 OBC would be nice if I was able to get a friend to book a cruise.

Didn't somebody's travel agent do that?

 

[Verandah Man]

We had a great time last night at John and Gayle's DCL House Party (allears)!

Thanks so much for allowing us to be a part of your gathering. The food was fabulous- loved the chicken wings, the chocolate souffles, and the Mickey rice crispy treats! The island music added to the atmosphere. You were both very gracious hosts.
And we had the pleasure of meeting Verandah Man (Andy) and his wife Hazel. Such good conversation with all of the guests- it only helped make our exicitement for our upcoming very first DCL Cruise (12/31/08) grow even more!

Andy- your pics are terrific! Thanks for posting them.
I hope everyone's parties went as smoothly and were as much fun as the one we were fortunate enough to attend!

We did have a good time, didn't we Linda? It was nice getting to meet and chat with you and John!! We know you are going to enjoy your DCL cruise!!!

 

[Sandra08]

The pictures were great. It looks like everyone had a good time. Maybe DCL will have another house party and I can have one.

 

[Hanover]

Hi everyone, I haven't posted much, but we did have a party/playgroup. We were going to have a "real" party, but the only people who were able to attend were my playdate moms so we ended up having a DCL playgroup.

Of course since we didn't have enough goodies for the kids (5 pirate hats for 8 kids????) I didn't make it a true "party".

So I ended up buying dollar store pirate stuff for the kids, and then filled the goodie bags with stuff for the mom's. I put the brochures, recipe cards, travel sized toothbrushes, sun tan lotion, body lotion, and tropical jelly beans.

I served a deli tray, mexican dip, pasta salad, cookies, and fruit.
The kids played outside until it rained, then they trashed the playroom. (which is going to take me ALL DAY to clean up.)

I appreciate the gifts and the "free stuff", but my big complaint is why have 10 goodie bags and have nothing to fill them with? Also, the wierd Peter Pan stuff. Why such random items?

There was one thing that was interesting... Each one of my friends asked me how much Disney was giving me as a kickback if I get my friends to book a cruise. They seemed quite confused when I said nothing. They assumed I would get a discount or or something for having them book. I did explain the on-board credit, but they still thought I would get something in return for them booking.

I think $25-$50 OBC would be nice if I was able to get a friend to book a cruise.

Didn't somebody's travel agent do that?

We also got lots of "so what are you getting for having this?" questions. Everyone thought Disney provided all of our decorations, prizes and even food! I did display the litho and told them that was our host gift.

We also did not give out the DCL bandanas because we had 10 kids and only 5. We had tons of pirate bandanas we gave out instead and eyepatches we bought from Oriental trading.

I would definitely host another DCL party, it was lot of fun. I hope they survey us for specifics because I'll definitely request that they at least provide 10 of each materials. I also think that whoever DCL used for their DVD production should give them a partial refund because so many of ours did not work.

 

[allears]

Has anyone who has been complaining about the quanities of things like Pirate hats, thought that they were for prizes and not 10 kids? I think all of us really jumped into this with great gusto and enthusiam and had parties much bigger than probably was the design. The fact that they talked about things like 10 bags means we really only had to target 10 people/families. While it would be great to have tons of stuff, 10 of everything for 1000 parties is a lot of stuff and if it should have been all DCL stuff, their merchandising arm is not as big as the rest of the company.

Ah well, we had a blast, appreciated the opprotunity, appreciated the company putting a $50,000 liability on their books (1000 $50 on board credits) and the chance to talk about our favorite obsession, Disney Cruise.

Hope we do they do it again!

 

[Verandah Man]

Oh Boy, I'm having leftover Orange Mango Soup for lunch today. I feel like I'm back on the Magic...........

 

[Dyerneeds]

Now to finish clean up and resend that link to all my guests so they can enter for that cruise!

you mean andy didnt stay to help clean up??

 

[Tikihula]

Our party yesterday was a success, too! We only had 12 guests show up out of 19, and we had wayyyyy too much food. We had "borrowed" a friend's house to hold the party because our house is way too small, so we had to take 3 carloads of stuff to her house, including decorations, supplies, prizes and food. That made it more difficult to get and stay organized for the games, but we gave out lots of prizes anyway. We played bingo using Disney words instead of numbers, word scramble with DCL words, an auction with the person having the oldest penny winning the prize, and we watched the DVD. It worked fine when we previewed it at home, but at the party it started skipping and repeating in one spot and we couldn't get it to move forward. Luckily it was near the end of the video, but it sure would be nice to have a good working copy of that DVD to share when friends stop by the house.

We drove by the local food kitchen on the way home to drop off all the leftovers, but it was already closed for the evening. Luckily we spotted a church with its doors open. The janitor was there cleaning the floors and he was able to take the food and put it in the church kitchen. He said the church feeds the disadvantaged people in the neighborhood, so I'm glad we were able to donate the food, including a whole Mickey shaped cake that my husband made. We had so much food that we never made it to the cake.

I had printed handouts of FAQ, CruiseCritic's comments on the DCL, some sample prices and dates for sailing, things for adults to do on a cruise, and several other informational sheets. These were all tucked into the goody bags that also contained the booklet & cruise DVD, a rubber ducky, tropical drink cups, Mardi Gras beads, gold foil covered chocolate coins, and whatever else Disney sent that we had enough of.

We had a good time and everyone enjoyed looking at the photo albums and various Disney books I had scattered around the living room. I would love to do this party again next year when we all (including DCL) know what we are doing!

Here's a link to our photos and videos on Photobucket. We don't have the camera adjusted right for indoor pictures so I apologize for the poor quality.

http://s134.photobucket.com/albums/q112/Tikihula/DCL House Party Jan 08/

Oh yeah - I forgot to put out a dish, too! Did I mention we had too much food?

 

[Verandah Man]

you mean andy didnt stay to help clean up??

Well, I did lick the plates clean before we left................

 

[Dyerneeds]

Well, I did lick the plates clean before we left................

you and i are going to get along real well on kk2

 

[Verandah Man]

Our party yesterday was a success, too! We only had 12 guests show up out of 19, and we had wayyyyy too much food. We had "borrowed" a friend's house to hold the party because our house is way too small, so we had to take 3 carloads of stuff to her house, including decorations, supplies, prizes and food. That made it more difficult to get and stay organized for the games, but we gave out lots of prizes anyway. We played bingo using Disney words instead of numbers, word scramble with DCL words, an auction with the person having the oldest penny winning the prize, and we watched the DVD. It worked fine when we previewed it at home, but at the party it started skipping and repeating in one spot and we couldn't get it to move forward. Luckily it was near the end of the video, but it sure would be nice to have a good working copy of that DVD to share when friends stop by the house.

We drove by the local food kitchen on the way home to drop off all the leftovers, but it was already closed for the evening. Luckily we spotted a church with its doors open. The janitor was there cleaning the floors and he was able to take the food and put it in the church kitchen. He said the church feeds the disadvantaged people in the neighborhood, so I'm glad we were able to donate the food, including a whole Mickey shaped cake that my husband made. We had so much food that we never made it to the cake.

I had printed handouts of FAQ, CruiseCritic's comments on the DCL, some sample prices and dates for sailing, things for adults to do on a cruise, and several other informational sheets. These were all tucked into the goody bags that also contained the booklet & cruise DVD, a rubber ducky, tropical drink cups, Mardi Gras beads, gold foil covered chocolate coins, and whatever else Disney sent that we had enough of.

We had a good time and everyone enjoyed looking at the photo albums and various Disney books I had scattered around the living room. I would love to do this party again next year when we all (including DCL) know what we are doing!

Here's a link to our photos and videos on Photobucket. We don't have the camera adjusted right for indoor pictures so I apologize for the poor quality.

http://s134.photobucket.com/albums/q112/Tikihula/DCL House Party Jan 08/

Oh yeah - I forgot to put out a dish, too! Did I mention we had too much food?

Nice pics and videos Bev!!!

I should have taken some videos with my camera, but the crazy thing was acting up, I was lucky to get the pics I did.