New York City, Characters in the Wild, and Canadians - Eh!

It’s time for another cruise trip report! I just finished my Disneyland trip report, and finally had time to work on this report! It was a great trip where we met some new friends, saw characters galore and some beautiful sights! Here’s a sneak peak of our view on the last morning:

And here’s my plug of the trip report! I’m going to plug the Unofficial Wdwmagic Girls Cruise! If you haven’t heard, we are planning a 4 night Bahamian Disney cruise on September 8, 2013. There are already almost 30 us signed up! We are going to have so much fun! If you've wanted to try cruising, or wanted to meet some of your Wdwmagic friends - here's your chance! It's not too late!

What:

A five night Canadian cruise on the Disney Magic.

A military rate for the New York to Canada cruises came out, it was too good to pass up! Not to mention we didn’t have to fly anywhere!

We live in DC right now and New York is a quick bus/train ride/drive away.

Who:

Adults only this time!

We decided against taking the kids for this one since school just started and DS is a senior (sniff), so we asked several friends. It was pretty last minute, but one other couple from church could get away so there were four of us.

Here we are - Dh (Stephen), Myself, Steve “Buddha” and Misty –

We had a Steve and a Stephen. Luckily the other Steve has gone by his old call sign from his military days for years. Yes, we call him Buddha.

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 – Travel and Embarkation

Steve and Misty were picking us up at 6 am so we were up and ready! They got there about 6:20 which caused Misty some stress, but really we were fine on time. I knew if we missed our bus out of Union Station we could always catch another one, or if worse came to worst – drive.

Wow! This is so much more relaxing than flying!

We had originally planned on taking the train, but before we booked our tickets, prices jumped up and we ended up on a bus. Tickets were only $30 roundtrip!

We traveled on the Bolt bus which was direct to NYC. It was a bit of a cattle call loading and the only rows with two seats left when we got on were the back two. Unfortunately the seats were falling apart. Literally.

I didn’t even look at my seat when I sat down because I was so excited. When Stephen showed me his, I realized mine was the same way. Check this beauty out:

But hey, there was wifi, plugs, and we were on our way to a cruise. So we were good really!

Kevin was our bus driver and the first words out of his mouth were, “Hi, I’m Kevin and we are going to Philadelphia today.” After a bit of confusion and murmurs throughout the bus of “What?” he corrected himself to say we were going to New York City. Phew!

Kevin was a bit of a comedian for the first few minutes.

I dozed, photoshopped pictures for my Disneyland trip report, and surfed the web for about 4 hours until I looked at my clock and realized exactly 45 minutes had passed!!

Seriously?

I was absolutely starving and nauseated from being so starving, so I wanted to dance with joy when Kevin told us we were stopping for a 10 minute break. Woo hoo!

Sustenance!

A couple of hours later we were finally in the city!! Hmmm. Anybody know where we can get a cab?

Sadly we were stuck in construction for about 3 more hours. Okay, it was really only 20 minutes but my word it felt like 3 hours!! We were dying to get there!

The bus dropped us off on a sidewalk near Penn Station and we drug our bags to a corner to look for one of those cabs.

 

[Disneyfalcon]

There was an airport shuttle van sitting there and the driver gave us the hard sell.

He could get us there quicker, we didn’t have to wait for a cab, etc. etc. We were a little (!) anxious so we paid too much money and were off!

Our driver was Jamaican and pretty entertaining actually.

Wait! I can see it!

There are those beautiful smoke stacks, right next to the Intrepid:

He dropped us off across the street from pier 88 and we lugged all our bags over.

We gave the porters our bags, security was quick and we were in!

 

[Disneyfalcon]

We were pretty late to the terminal and I thought upgrades were probably long gone. When I saw the supervisor’s desk, the full sign wasn’t up yet, though! Did we have a chance?

Our first Navigator:

I saw Uncle Sam Mickey taking pictures. He was adorable! I couldn't get an angle on him to get a picture from where we were though.

Our cast member was a little slow, and she ran out of cards and had to reset the machine at some point. As we were finishing up, Stephen looked down at the supervisor’s desk and what was he doing?

Putting up the full sign.

Sadness. We missed it by 20 seconds.

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Ah well. We were there and boarding and I was not complaining! I put it behind me and we walked through those glorious ears! Oops, wrong port. Okay, we walked through the door!

Then we got our boarding picture made, and headed for the gangway.

A warm Disney welcome to the Whiting family!!

After being announced, our first stop was Rockin Bar D for Palo reservations. We were so late booking that nothing was available at the time. We got a dinner no problem, but brunch was out of the question. The Palo guy said there was a waiting list and miracles happen, but we would need about 60 miracles apparently.

Our ship was almost all adults so Palo was very popular. There were apparently about 1700 adults and only about 400 kids! Works for me!

I also walked over to the dining team to ask if our request to sit alone went through and they assured me it had.

Now it was time for food!!

I greatly prefer Parrot Cay over Topsiders for that first lunch, so we went there. I knew since we were boarding later they would probably be trying to steer people to Topsiders, but I also knew they wouldn’t really be as full as they made you think.

True to form, the server outside Parrot Cay said they were full and we could wait 20 minutes or so for a seat, or go upstairs to Topsiders with no waiting.

We decide to wait and waited almost 2 whole minutes before we sat down.

I had an interesting assortment:

Lunch was yummy as usual.

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Our rooms were done when we finished, so we went to drop off our carry-ons.

As we were walking to the room, Stephen declared he was so excited to have a verandah, because he had “never had one before”. When I reminded him he had one about 5 months ago on the Fantasy, he said “I have had a verandah!” Still excited though.

We finally got the new backpack!

Love these goldfish. Who doesn’t want a goldfish shaped like Mickey?

Here’s the view from our verandah:

Buddha stayed in his room to finish watching Snow White and the Huntsman on his Kindle Fire, but Misty met us for the walking tour of the ship.

Palo!

People were still boarding:

 

[LindsayLoves]

Hooray another cruise report on the boards! I am dead sick and at work so this day keeps on getting better and better with all these wonderful trip reports.

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Deck 4:

The cast member who led us was very sweet, and she had a lovely Australian accent which is always a crowd pleaser.

Actually, her accent was so thick, that when she showed us where to get “snacks” outside the Walt Disney Theater, several people thought she said “sex” instead. Well you can imagine the jokes that followed after that. Thankfully there were no children on our tour.

She did tell us one thing I hadn’t heard before, and that was how to remember what was forward and what was aft. She said if you wanted “fun” – i.e. the Walt Disney Theater, the clubs, you should go “forward”, and if you had an “appetite” you went “aft”. Clever!

After the tour was over and we said goodbye to Misty we ran into our first character in the wild - Goofy! Stephen calls them characters in the wild whenever we would just happen upon a random one that wasn't on the schedule. Sometimes they had handlers with them, and sometimes they just seemed to be roaming the ship. I think I squealed like a little girl whenever we happened upon one. Hopefully that was only in my head.

Next up - the sailaway!

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Hooray another cruise report on the boards! I am dead sick and at work so this day keeps on getting better and better with all these wonderful trip reports.

I'm sorry! But I'm glad we can help pass the time!

 

[stillgoofy]

Tammy, I'm so excited to start reading the trip report from your cruise. I spent half the day at work yesterday reading through you last TR from Disneyland. Great TR by the way, I so want to go to DL now. I'm only post DCL/WDW for a little over a week now but the TR's really help those blues. Keep it coming....and don't forget the toe pictures

 

[plaz10]

I LOVE the girls cruise shout out. I actually did a little happy dance in my office! So excited for it!

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Tammy, I'm so excited to start reading the trip report from your cruise. I spent half the day at work yesterday reading through you last TR from Disneyland. Great TR by the way, I so want to go to DL now. I'm only post DCL/WDW for a little over a week now but the TR's really help those blues. Keep it coming....and don't forget the toe pictures

Thank you, Kris! Oh you know I'll have toe pictures!
And you'll definitely have to work in a trip to Disneyland between all the cruises!

 

[Disneyfalcon]

I LOVE the girls cruise shout out. I actually did a little happy dance in my office! So excited for it!

Me toooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!

 

[Ariel484]

Woohoo, girls cruise!

And another Tammy cruise! Fabulous so far...your pictures always look so colorful and sunny. Love it!

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Woohoo, girls cruise!

And another Tammy cruise! Fabulous so far...your pictures always look so colorful and sunny. Love it!

Girls cruise shout out!!

You know after the girls cruise, we'll have the most epic trip report ever. One giant one, 20 different ones from different points of view, who knows! But it will be epic.

 

[wiigirl]

Love your pics!

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Love your pics!

Thanks, wiigirl!

 

[Californian Elitist]

Beautiful cruise! One of these days I'm going to take one on the Disney Wonder.

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Beautiful cruise! One of these days I'm going to take one on the Disney Wonder.

You definitely should, Raven!

 

[tiaragirl]

Oh girl, what a tease! Where is the rest, wah.

So excited to read more - hoping you liked my east coast as much as I like your TRs!
I saw then Magic in Halifax and thought of you and your trip - I've been keeping an eye out!

=)