Pre-Trip 18 years of marital bliss means it’s time for some Surf n Turf action…..again.

So….it’s about that time again. For those unfamiliar with our shenanigans you may enjoy the following:
Surf n Turf vol 1: 16th anniversary trip
Surf n Turf vol 2: 17th anniversary trip
Surf n Turf vol 3: Cruising is not for the kid.

I hope you all have been having an excellent summer so far, ours has been BUSY! As the title suggests, this will mark our 18th anniversary and what is awesome is we will actually be in the bubble on our anniversary date! But first, some introductions:
DW: Laura and me: Sean
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Lots of back story of here and I won’t throw it all at you again but long story short; my wife sat in front of me in the 5th grade and I still think that is pretty awesome!

So, those familiar with us should not be surprised, Disney Vacation Creep set in rather early this time and what was to be a Thursday arrival soon turned into a Wednesday arrival and the dates are:
October 19-21 AKL Kidani
October 21-24 Disney Dream
October 24-25 AKL Kidani

Love me a Dream sammy on Kidani! We actually did our Dream check-in just yesterday and booked a few things to do, one of those is a dinner at Palo again on Pirate night. We snagged a 6pm reservation this year so if we decide to take part in the costume festivities we can and we will be done in plenty of time for the fireworks. We also booked two excursions as placeholders and need to decide which one we want to do. We are holding a jet ski excursion for two and a snorkeling/rum tasting excursion. The DW is on the fence on which one to do. I’m fine either way as long as we have plenty of time to relax at Serenity Bay. Some other Dream stuff is TBD.

We’ve lined up a few ADRs and will probably add one other before we leave. What we have so far is:
Sanaa for dinner
Kona, our breakfast tradition the day we make for port.
Yachtsman for our anniversary dinner.

That’s it for now, more details to follow.
 
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cfry06

Well-Known Member
Hooray! Another trip, another report! While we were on the same Anniversary cruise last year, this year we'll miss you by a month (we are traveling in early Nov.).

We had so much fun dressing up last year (League of Their Own)! Strongly encourage it! Felt a little silly at first, but got over that quick and had a blast! I'm so bummed - we got Top Gun outfits for this year (Maverick & Goose) but we found out after we bought them that we are the one "bubble" cruise - right between the Halloween and Xmas sailings! Oh well - we will use them for Halloween here at home...and it gives us reason to book a Halloween cruise next year ;).

Sounds like a wonderful trip with more great relax time to be had at Kidani too! Look forward to reading all about your trip!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We had so much fun dressing up last year (League of Their Own)! Strongly encourage it! Felt a little silly at first, but got over that quick and had a blast! I'm so bummed - we got Top Gun outfits for this year (Maverick & Goose) but we found out after we bought them that we are the one "bubble" cruise - right between the Halloween and Xmas sailings!
You two SMASHED League of Their Own on that trip, really awesome! It stinks you can't bust out Top Gun in November. I'll be honest, I'd like to participate but I can't think of a good costume that would allow me to keep my beard while making sense. I don't want to be a pirate because, let's be honest, everyone will be a pirate. Soooo, that's still on the table.


Also, it's high time I graduate to a camera that is not my phone. We are in the market for a waterproof camera and were thinking a GoPro might be a good idea. Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations?
 

cfry06

Well-Known Member
Also, it's high time I graduate to a camera that is not my phone. We are in the market for a waterproof camera and were thinking a GoPro might be a good idea. Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations?

We got a GoPro Hero+ LCD last year and love it! It's been to WDW 2x, on a cruise, through the Poly kids water playground & Dino Dig on our little guy's head and a Tough Mudder event. This model is great bc it has the screen on the back so you can see what you are filming, the screen is touchscreen, and it can take a 64 gb micro SD card for additional recording time. We looked at the silver, (higher model) but for we need and use it for, the one we got is perfect. We had a waterproof camera for a little bit before the GoPro, and looking back now I wish we would have just gotten the GP right away. We got a great deal on Amazon when purchasing too. It's small, convenient, fun - love it.

Phil recommends the SanDisc extreme plus SD cards.
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We got a GoPro Hero+ LCD last year and love it! It's been to WDW 2x, on a cruise, through the Poly kids water playground & Dino Dig on our little guy's head and a Tough Mudder event. This model is great bc it has the screen on the back so you can see what you are filming, the screen is touchscreen, and it can take a 64 gb micro SD card for additional recording time. We looked at the silver, (higher model) but for we need and use it for, the one we got is perfect. We had a waterproof camera for a little bit before the GoPro, and looking back now I wish we would have just gotten the GP right away. We got a great deal on Amazon when purchasing too. It's small, convenient, fun - love it.

Phil recommends the SanDisc extreme plus SD cards.

Thanks so much for the feedback! Laura and I were looking at that exact model yesterday because I really wanted a display in case I take a bad pic and want to do a retake. We will probably opt for the 64gb card, I still cant believe how cheap memory is now! How do the low light pictures come out?

Thanks again for the advice.
 

imahistorygeek

Well-Known Member
I just stumbled upon this today! I'm obviously going to follow along. :D

Something happened with this cruise that didn't happen with the other two: I miscalculated the check-in date. I put it on my calendar for last Saturday thinking we'd be up at 12:01 (for early Sunday) ready to check in. Woke up Saturday morning and Sean tells me other passengers on our same cruise checked in. Mini panic because WHAT IF we didn't get our 10:30 am PAT??? I know, what a wonderful problem to have, right?

I guess we were up around 6:30 or 7:00. Check-in was pretty smooth (read: DCL website was actually working). Even "sleeping in" we snagged our 10:30 PAT. After checking in, I reserved Palo. We discussed brunch, but I don't like have all of that food laid out before me. I will try to eat all of that food. Plus, I really like to dress up for dinner. It's fun AND you'll get to see me again in my fabulous green dress...or dress jeans (lol).

On to excursions! Instead of soaking in the Castaway Cay awesomeness (aka sleeping on the beach and swimming) we've worked really hard these past few months (6 jobs between us ain't easy) and decided to treat ourselves.

Jet Ski - 9 am time - looks fun. Wish it was a bit longer than an hour. Pro - doesn't really cut into our beach time or BBQ. Con - 1 hour.
Snorkel - 1 pm time - this really looks fun. Pro - almost everything and rum. Con - 1 pm time. That REALLY cuts into our beach time. This is the adult-only excursion. The one with everyone is at 9 am. I don't want to do one with kids. I like kids and all, but not this time.

Long story short - I canceled the snorkeling. Plus, we may see wildlife at Serenity as before. There's the perfect GIF (forever with a hard G) from Pirates of Jack Sparrow running in the water away from the natives. That's me when we see wildlife in the water.

I've ordered (and it should be here today) the stateroom door magnet. The only things that are left are the super fancy camera and purchasing Rainforest passes.

So now, we are waiting on our room assignment. We took a chance and booked a GTY 5E category. That's the extended verandah category. 86 days out and nothing yet. I'm not sure we will do this again, but we shall see.
 
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
6 jobs!? Holy man. :eek:
It is probably worth qualifying that statement. By 6 jobs between us she means:
Me:
Regular 9-5 doing what I do
Teaching a college course or two each semester
Coaching wrestling
Her:
Regular 9-5 doing what she does
Teaching a college course or two each semester
Teaching...wait for it...
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So while we technically get paid to do 6 different things it is not as if we are trying to hold down that many full time jobs. Buts still, it can really kick your a......well, you know. Its been especially hard this summer as we also thought it would be awesome to enroll in a graduate course during the summer....:banghead::banghead::banghead:. Anyway, got some mail today and I'll be posting pictures of that soon enough!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Looking forward to the mail.. I hope the cats are involved. :cat:
You know it!

So our stateroom magnets came in yesterday and I am not disappointed. The DW did a fine job of picking out our pieces of flair!
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We also received our AP bands. They now come in a new, much smaller, box. They have also migrated to a standard "Passholder" slider as opposed to the dated sliders we've received in the past:
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In addition to the dated slider, another casualty is the size of the packaging to send the bands. While our cats will "i fits i sits" in most any container they seemed less than pleased with mickey's new shipping boxes but still gave it a go:
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As mentioned above, we booked a guaranteed room rate for the Dream and have yet to get our room assignment so yesterday we decided to contact our agent to see if we can just move our placeholder to an actual room. My fingers are crossed for a decent starboard side room if we cannot have a room in the back.

We still need one more ADR for this trip, nothing has been planned on the Wednesday we arrive so we are still thinking on that.
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
HUGE NEWS!!!

So a while back I had set up a waitlist for us to get into the Poly on our first night. Many days passed with no luck, including today. Regardless of being on the waitlist I still found myself searching the resort availability tool to see if there was any availability. Well today I run my query and see the Poly has availability! I quickly consult my waitlist request to make sure it had not been fulfilled, it had not! So, in a craze of excitement and panic I quickly start the process of booking the room WHILE at the same time opening another window to cancel our existing reservation so I could use those points. I had just canceled the AKL room and moved back to the Poly screen to confirm that I would be borrowing 2 additional points for the booking when the page refreshes and sends me back to the search page………I immediately request the same room at the same time only to be greeted by a notice of NO AVAILABILITY!!! The feeling of panic set in. I refreshed the page a few times for a few minutes and still no availability. Fortunately, the AKL room I just dropped was available so I began the process of booking that again when I noticed something. The 2 points I had borrowed for the Poly room had gone back to the next use year. This made me think that maybe the system had just released the reservation for the Poly I was trying to get. SO, I immediately close this window and open another and start the search process again and to my surprise, AVAILABLE!!! 1 minute later and BOOM, all linked up:
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This really works well for us since MK has EMH until midnight on this night! Plus the DW has fallen for the Poly so I was super excited to share this with her too. Looks like I’ll be spending the next 80ish days stalking the availability for the Poly on Thursday too….:D
 

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