East Bound Transatlantic, I WILL make this happen!

[WVURunner]

So here is a little bit of a back story on me and how I got to writing a pre-trip report: I do not like change, I don’t do well with change. I slept on my same twin mattress I had as a little kid all the way through college because I would not let my parents buy me a new queen one. And please keep in mind, this is the same twin mattress I caught on fire when I was younger, but that is a whole other story. Along with not liking change, I am not an emotional person, some people have told me I am emotionally dead inside so my not liking change doesn’t have anything to do with emotional attachment. It more has to do with the fear of the unknown. I knew I liked my old mattress and could sleep on it so why take a chance with a new one and have me not like it? I am pretty sure if I was born in the 1990’s or 2000’s some fancy doctor would have slapped a label on me.
I do like Walt Disney World, but I am not your typical Disney Fan. I was born in Tampa and grew up going to WDW. WDW is what a vacation means to me and I like vacations there because I am comfortable there. So I do NOT like when they make changes to the parks, it makes me uncomfortable. I am not your typical Disney fan because I hate theater and might as well add the arts in there also. I do not enjoy the shows; I cannot you random facts from the movies or know who wrote the music to different movies. I do enjoy the attention to detail and the engineering behind the parks. I am a very detailed oriented person. Growing up, my family and I stayed at either the Polynesian or Contemporary Resort. So naturally, these were the only two resorts I would stay at during my adult visits. Staying at a new hotel was way too much change for me to handle, what if I didn’t like it! My vacations were pretty much the same every year and I have issues trying anything new or different, rides. I should add that I go to Disney at least twice a year in September and January with my sister, my niece and nephew and my friend and her husband who live in Orlando. So when my friends asked how we felt about going on a Disney Cruise(they had already done a few, I was very against it, while my sister was all for it. Now I had gone on cruises before, all on HAL with my family growing up so I did know about cruising but did not know about trying a new cruise line and doing something other than our normal January trip. The last time I tried something new involving our Disney vacation, it was a disaster! I had invited my then boyfriend with us on our September 2009 trip. I ended up breaking up with him on day three of the trip and it was a mess but anyway, that is a whole other story.
So they talked me into it, I was out numbered and owed it to them for ruining the September 2009 trip. I was nervous. So in our Disney group, we each have a role. My sister’s role, is to be the spontaneous, social and crazy one who never makes plans but get flustered easily. I am the practical planner, the realistic one, the one who can never relax and the one who bashes the arts while forcing math and science down everyone throats. My friends are the Disney Fanatics. They know every single Disney Trivia question and everything you could every what to know about the parks. In the parks and while planning our Disney vacations, they are in complete control and in their glory! My niece and nephew play the role of really cute, well behaved kids and they do a good job at it!
So fast forward to January 2010; we agreed on a 4 day cruise on the Wonder with a few days in the park after, in case the cruise is a disaster. I have decide to bring along my boyfriend (at the time we were starting to date seriously and it was awkward planning a vacation and not inviting him) so of course my friends were nervous and cracking jokes. The BF ends up hearing the story and confirms I am heartless. My friends show up at the port with matching t-shirts for everyone, wait why do we have to match for our photo?? And why do you have a bag fun of magnets for our doors? Why do you have time to do this? You need a life? So while I do not like change, once I get over my fear and adjust, I will admit to liking things and I LOVED the cruise. At the end of the cruise, there is talk of our next one.
Fast Forward to May 2010, we are going on the Med cruise, minus boyfriend who I am still dating (he was in a wedding). Friend is talking about all the activities planned for our cruise and all the different people coming along? I am thinking, wait what? How are you talking to people on our cruise and why do we need activities that Disney isn’t planning. This was the first moment I heard about the disboards….. Then I see their luggage and asked what the huge bag was for. This is the moment I hear about fish extender gifts. So my thought was, wait, you are paying extra for a bag full of gifts to give people you don’t know and you are flying to Europe with it, what a waste! So while on the ship, my friend goes to the meet and greet while the rest of us drinks and greets ourselves. Why would you want to meet and talk to a bunch of strangers? Have I mentioned my social awkwardness yet? Along with my fear of talking to strangers? So my friend does all the FE work by himself for all of our cabins, yes he is such a good friend, he signed up all the cabins and got gifts for each cabin to deliver and did all the leg work himself. He went to all planned activities alone, why would I want to see other staterooms? I am happy with my inside room! Cruise was amazing the end!
Well then I get engaged at the end of 2010 and plan for a wedding in September 2011 so there won’t be a Disney cruise/WDW trip so we plan to run the Marathon in January 2012! The four of us run, my sister is not a runner and the kids run the Mickey mile. We end up being in Disney for two weeks. There is talk of going on the Fantasy for our friends 30th birthday so we book it minus my sister and kids as she didn’t want to take them out of school again.
So enter my journey into the world of the DISboards. My friend decides to try to dabble in my role and starts researching my job and starts using engineering terms, reading engineering magazines, etc. So for pay back, I come up with a screen name and join our meet thread for our Fantasy cruise. I post and inform him of different events and he is uneasy with me being involved with the Disney planning. Mission Accomplished. I am really not digging the group of people on our cruise, there are some “bullies” on the meet thread and it really killed the mood. We barley had any pages. This cruise is where I notice the interesting hobby of grown men and woman bringing stuffed bears onboard and carrying them around and brining clothes for them…I like shoes way too much to waste valuable space in my suitcase for a bear’s clothes…I can rant about this for hours but has nothing to do with the EBTA cruise so moving on..My friend did the FE for both rooms again and I avoided all planned activities. Those bears scared me!
So fast forward to June 2012, I see a deal for the EBPC cruise and wanna go. My friends had a little too much fun on the Fantasy and will be expecting a souvenir a month after the cruise so they are out. So this is big change if they don’t come. I have never cruised Disney without them! But my sister and her kids are in! And we are booked! But oh no, who is going to keep us in the loop about all things Disney? The kids want to do the FE. So I join the cruise meet and start chatting. This is a great group of people and I feel so comfortable. I loved the details of planning and seeing everyone else’s details of plans. I was in heaven. I was in planner’s heaven. I start to plan activities and end up being in charge of two! So away we go, traveling with my bag full of FE gifts and other such extras that I had said I would make for other people on the boards and my bag full of magnets I made for the cruise. I will admit, I had matching shirts made for our embarkation photo. We all attend the meet and greet and my sister is shocked that everyone knows me and that I am talking to people. Her thought was wait, I’m the social one!! So we attend the activities and have a great cruise. I loved running into people I “knew” and had a great time delivering the FE gifts, though I will never make 200+ passport covers ever again! We did miss my friends horribly, there was no one to take the kids pin and vinylmation trading, two thing they really enjoy and so do the kids (and I had to get up early in line to wait for a wrist band for a pin, what?), we lost Disney trivia and Disney tune trivia for the first time ever, as the kids said, wow, Jon really carried the team! And we just missed their company. But there were pluses as well, we were not dragged to every show so I didn’t have to see Toy Story The Musical again, sitting through it the first time was bad enough!
So as the cruise came to an end, one thing was clear: there had to be talk of another cruise and of course, nothing less than 14 days would do, we had become longer cruise spoiled.

 

[WVURunner]

I am a horrible writer, a statement I hear all the time at work from my boss and from my boss’s boss. So as a true engineer, I avoid writing at all costs. Therefore, I have never kept a journal or ever thought to keep one. I regret not keeping one on the EBPC cruise. So since I tried some changes on that cruise and ended up liking it, who knew I would like the disboards after making fun of my friends for so many years about it? I decided that I would try a pre-trip report and trip report for this cruise. Well at least a pre-trip report because we aren’t even booked yet!
So I started to plant the seed in everyone’s ear. I knew my sister would go for it, after all her kids were still crying from having to get off the Wonder, I also pointed out that they would only miss the last three days of school and no one does anything in those last few days anyway. She was game as long as some other things in her life worked out. I decided to invite my Mom, it will be her first Disney cruise. My Mom and I don’t always have the best relationship, we are very different and we tend to butt heads and just don’t see eye to eye on everything. Growing up though, she always let me fly my freak flag and I do giver her credit for that. During this cruise, it will be five years since my Dad passed away and I thought it would be nice to spend time together as a family making new memories and remembering my Dad. I informed her of this idea. My Mom does cruise a lot but it is with her friends on HAL. So my Dad passing away was a HUGE change in my life, one I am still adjusting to, did I mention I hate change? Using the family logic, I invited my little sister, her husband and my 3 year old niece to come along. My little sister and my Mom are inseparateable and of course this has had an impact on my relationship with my younger sister. We aren’t very close and we don’t talk often. I am not sure if this will every change. (Not because I don’t like change, you just can’t change the past and I also have a problem with forgiveness) We also live further apart so I haven’t spend much time with my niece, just love enough to make her into a WVU football fan. Well it turns out my brother-in-law cannot get the time off from work and my sister does not want to go without him, plus she is expecting my niece any day now and doesn’t want to bring the new baby along but informed us we could bring my niece. So time to plant the seed for my friends, after some serious discussion, they also decide they can’t come. The baby will be around 4 months old and they just don’t want to travel with it and spend the money. So to summarize:
Mom-yes
Little sister, brother in law niece #1 and Niece #2: No, No, Yes, No
Older sister, nephew, niece: Yes, Yes, Yes
Friends and baby: No, No, No
Me, DH: Yes, What the heck?
So I haven’t discussed DH’s role in our group, he is the cheap one. Before we meet, he never spent money, never ate out (wasted money), never bought new clothes (why they still fit) and never traveled (saved the money). It drives me nuts! While I like to save, I also work very hard and like to use my hard earned money traveling. My motto is Work Hard, Play Hard. Worst part of getting married (besides MAJOR change) is no longer having complete control of your life. After college, I lived alone for 5 years, that’s 5 years of freedom to do whatever I wanted to do with my money and my time. This is no longer the case. When I got married, I feel a little bit of me died. So I started dropping hints with DH, the cheap rate, the ports of call, excursions we can do, flight options, etc. All the while, he kept saying, why are you looking into this, we aren’t going. Then I started really planning and got the same answer. At one point, he asked where the Med cruise was going after and I thought I saw a glimmer of hope, but he didn’t like the itinerary, the price and the fact that it was a seven day. So then I started saying stuff like, we could travel to visit your brother in Switzerland after. A few times he did sit down with me a look at things but the answer is always no. See, DH was never a Disney fan but my friends have turned him into one and he loves cruising just as much as I do, it has to do with the food, DH is a bean pole(6’5” and 170 lbs, I hate him) but eats non-stop! So the fact he can have 3 entrees at dinner is his heaven. I know deep down he wants to come but he is just too cheap….So at this point, I can go with my family without him or keep begging him to come along. Stay posted.

 

[rsauer]

We took the Westbound Magic cruise in 2010 and loved it. You can read a complete report on my blog:
http://www.travelscribbles2010.blogspot.com/2011/01/european-trip-and-transatlantic-cruise_5030.html

We are considering the 2014 Eastbound due to relatively low cost and the good probability of being upgraded to a balcony room as we did last trip.
The Eastbound trip is 12 days as there is only one Bahamas stop on the way. Madeira is very interesting and Barcelona is great. We plan on using the trip to start a tour of Italy and Germany.