July 17, 2004 Magic (Western)

[KeenHo]

I gained 3 pounds on this cruise. In 2002, the no-kid cruise for us I gained 10. I am already working off the 3, I was at the gym tonight....

Howard

 

[NeedsNEscape]

Hi,

How sad that it is over. The cruise was so much better than we had expected. It was truly wonderful. I am pretty tired though! I was surprised that I was up so very many late nights and then back up at 7. Wow! I loved that trip to stingray city. I wish we had more time to talk but with all of our 'extended families,' we were all pretty busy.

It will be interesting to chat about our various excursions when we all get back. I think that Cathy from Lafayette and her family are still there (I'm jealous) and Cathie and Sue P. from NH are probably heading home now.

On Saturday, my party headed over to Kennedy Space Center (which was an amazing place to tour -- after 5 hours we still hadn't seen half of it). Cam and Howard, what a coincidence that you were on the flight with our friends! My family drove home stopping in St. Simons Island (more beach time) and Savannah. It was very leisurely.

Cam, I guess you and Jenn must be getting ready for that next big party. Have fun! Thank you all for making this a very memorable vacation.

Jeanne

PS: We also booked another cruise, but I am not sure which one we'll do either. My boys are getting so big, they won't fit in the pull down too much longer!

 

[cathie]

Hi Cruising Buddies!!! We returned home to rainy NH late Tuesday night. It rained from Virginia to NH..sure do miss the sunny Caribbean! We had a nice stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We did a marathon WDW day on Sunday, MGM, MK & Epcot. Travis says we should all book the next cruise together. It was great meeting all of you & we miss everybody. The teens are staying in touch. It's great they've made some good friends. Can't wait to get the pics all together. Well, time to go to work, talk to you all later!! Cathie & The Gang

 

[mousemom218]

Welcome home everyone!
It's so hard going back into the old rut after a fantastic vacation. We were home before noon on that Saturday, and boy were we all bummed! It was a real pleasure to meet you all and your families, and we hope we meet again on other vacations. Alan has forbidden me from another cruise next year (he says 3 years in a row is it!), but we've agreed to use our DVC points to go to Cancun, as we all loved Mexico. Anyone up for this? Intervals International has a number of resorts there. It's never too early to start planning, right? Meanwhile, I have finally finished the laundry AND the ironing from our trip, and I am hard at work working off the 3 pounds I gained Alan gained 6, but he really does need them!

Regards to all and thanks again for being part of one of the best vacations our family has ever had!

 

[soccercruiser87]

i hope everyone had an awesome cruise because i sure did. i had a fun time hanging out with anna, ian, chris, lisa, and jenn. it was sad to see the cruise end but i hope we are all able to get together again sometime and have a type of reunion.

 

[NeedsNEscape]

I was missing the chat here, so I logged in. I'm still trying to work my pictures into some kind of order. We were having a debate here in Maryland about what the best part of the cruise was. So much of it was really great. I think our favorite was Ian's impromptu birthday party in Animator's the last night. We liked the waiters who smeared whip cream on his nose and we all sang the Spiderman theme song (which the waiters all seemed to know).

What a "Magic"-al moment, do you have any favorites?

Jeanne

 

[cathie]

I miss seeing this post at the top!!! Just got all of our pics back, they're awesome, I'll have Travis help me post them soon... I want to go back on the Magic!!! Travis is away at soccer camp this week ...it's unusually quiet around here! We're going to Keene State tomorrow night to see one of his games. Enjoy the rest of the summer everybody!! Cathie & The Gang

 

[dznyacct]

Hi everyone! We got back late Sunday (8/1) from our 9 day stay at WDW following the cruise. Thanks to Howard and Cam for starting this thread and organizing our meet at the port. It was so nice to see familiar faces all week on the ship. I know that Jake and Matt had a great time at The Stack and met a lot of terrific kids (Cam ~ they bought thought Jenn was really nice). Unfortunately our time at WDW was not as magical as the cruise. Last Tuesday (7/27) we were at Typhoon Lagoon for the day. We had a locker with our wallets and new digital camera (with over 300 cruise photos on our memory card) in it. Somehow during a 45 minute period our key fell out of my DCL waterproof wallet and some total SCUMBALL stole everything out of our locker!!!! We had a lot of cash with us (I know, I know shame on me) and a few credit cards. It was the most awful thing that has ever happened to me. I broke down when I realized the camera was gone. So many memories gone forever. Disney security got involved and called the Orange Co. police so I could file a police report. I talked to a lot of CMs about the theft and they were VERY surprised that not much was done by WDW, so I just sent off a letter to Al Weiss (President of WDW) and cc'd 3 other top dogs at Disney hoping to get someone's attention. I'll let you know if I hear anything. I was VERY upset Tuesday and Wednesday and believe me our spending habits changed DRASTICALLY. No more sit down meals and the ring I planned on buying at The World of Disney will have to wait until another time. I cheered up after seeing my favorite band (Off Kilter) at Epcot. We told them our sob story because we had taken some great pictures with them on Monday and they were now gone and I wanted to get some more on our cheap disposable camera. They were so sweet and asked how I was doing every day and let me make song requests (plus Jamie looks dang GOOD in a kilt!! That helped take my mind off my troubles.). I'll take the pity vote! Anyway, we met two incredible families on the cruise (Smith's from NJ and the Zamora's from CA). They both made us feel like we now have lifelong friends. I e-mailed the Zamora's (I had the Smith's contact info in my wallet, but they are supposed to call us next week) telling them our woes and Sal (my hero!) is going to burn me CD of all of their pictures. What a great guy. The missing pictures are killing me. I'll be doing OK, and then I'll be talking to someone about something we did on the cruise and remember the pictures that we took and my eyes will tear up (like they're doing right now). I know there are bad people in the world, but I can't believe someone would do this. I told Brian we would just have to do the cruise again so I could get our pictures back. The Thanksgiving week one with two days at Castaway Cay sounds really good to me!! Hope everyone is adjusting to the real world again. I e-mailed my sister a few hours ago and told her that last week at this time we were at e-night at MK going on Space Mountain 6 times in a row....... Hope everyone has a good weekend. I'm doing school shopping for Jake, oh boy!!

 

[cathie]

So sorry to hear about your sad experience Dznyacct. ! I never had my camera stolen, but mine malfunctioned on our February cruise & I lost a lot of special pictures, so I can understand how you're feeling. We never met up with you guys but we did meet the Keeners, Mary PSU & NeedsNEscape & a few others from the DIS. The teens met some great friends & they still keep in contact. I'm glad you guys made it home safely & hopefully those jerks that stole your things will get caught. We're looking into booking another cruise too. I'm sure the people that you met on the cruise will get you a copy of some pics. Enjoy the rest of your summer & remember the special memories. God bless!! Cathie & The Gang

 

[mousemom218]

Kathy, I am so sorry to hear about this! We had always thought people who took the time to pay for admission into these places would actually be there for wholesome purposes, like the rest of us, rather than looking for an easy mark! Sadly, people can really suck no matter where you are. Very sobering. I hope the people you hung out with on the cruise will send you some pictures! Remember memories live in your heart and not in your camera. We enjoyed meeting with you and your crew, and getting a chance to meet everyone was one of the highlights of our trip. We are all totally bummed to be home and not on the Magic. I am working on Alan for another cruise, but it's not likely to be til 2006. Next year we are going to use our DVC points for a trip to Cancun, which ought to be fantastic, if not Magic-al. Believe it or not, our kids start school on Wednesday. Back to real life!

Jeanne, our magic-al moment was on the last night, during the Baked Alaska/ Small World thing, when BOTH my kids started to cry because they didn't want to leave. All in all, a wonderful experience!

 

[NeedsNEscape]

Kathy,

That is a sad story and a lesson to us all. Someone probably scoped out Typhoon Lagoon just to take advantage of guests. I'm glad you wrote to the brass! I think about it all the time as I dump my stuff next to my lounge chair at the beach and hope all of it is still there when I come out of the water. You would think that WDW has surveillance cameras up that they could use to check who took the things out of your TL locker!

I'm glad that you had a good time anyway. I hope to get my photos in order at some point so I can post them to the web. When I do, I will send you the URL and you can download the ones that remind you of your holiday.

Jeanne

PS: Right before we left, there was a posting on the disboards by a family who took the Western cruise right before ours! She was in Charlotte, NC and planning to drive to DCL. She had all of her family's luggage stolen from the car the day she was leaving! That was an awful story. What was worse is that her car was parked at her office while she was at work, when the thieves broke into it. Fortunately, they had planned to leave early, because instead they had to buy all new things, file a report, etc... She said that instead she made it to the port in time for departure instead of the leisurely early departure. So the whole drive down from MD, I worried about all of our stuff in the car and especially those tickets! The family made a lot of fun of me.
(I'll stop here...)