Short little blog today just to show you how I spent my day. These are mostly just for playing around, but may end up printed on magnet paper and displayed on our stateroom door. Let me know if you have a favorite. I am still working on my stateroom door decorations and even considering whether I am doing personalized shirts for the family. Also on my list of things to decide is what to do at our Ports of Call. For our trip, we visit Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, and Castaway Cay, Disney-owned and operated island destination.
Disney offers Caribbean Port Adventures. And there are SO many to chose from and many different price ranges. There seems to be the general consensus that these excursions are generally more expensive than those you can book on your own, however one really clear bonus is that if you go on a Disney sponsored tour, and are late getting back, the boat waits. If you are on your own, you best figure out how to get to the next port because the ship will sail off with or without you. (unless you've left a child on the ship, then that's a whole 'nother can of worms that you can google.) Now, even before I can confidently decide on an excursion, I am researching each port for hours and hours. The unintended consequence of that is that I'm already wanting to plan our next vacation staying in the Virgin Islands for a week, in the future, because I'm realizing there is no way we can do everything I want to do, or see everything I want to see, or eat everything I'm wanting to eat, in the short amount of time at each destination. In an effort to keep all my research straight, I am using Pinterest. For the Eastern Caribbean Cruise I pinned tour locations and reviews of particular destinations. I will continue to pin items I find to look back at later. I also like to run these by my husband so we can yay or nay them together. I created a board to stash all my misc. planning called Get Ready for a Disney Cruise. Here, I have stashed a hodgepodge from packing ideas to t-shirt designs to door decor to pirate costumes and everything in between. At this EARLY point in time, we are considering just doing an on our own day in Tortolla. The Baths is a destination I am truly torn about. It looks AH-mazing, but I also love the idea of just exploring the island and relaxing on our first day off the boat after 2 days at sea. Anegada is another location that I simply have to get to now that I know about it. I'm finding that the one draw back to a cruise is the time you get to spend at each location really makes it hard to take in all these beautiful places have to offer. Again, this is why I have a sneaky suspicion that we will decide to make our next vacation be a Virgin Island week long visit. This trip will be used as an exploratory adventure, so when we return, we'll know what and where we need to go and see. I just started to research St. Thomas. I think that will be a good place to do an EcoTour or some sort of Disney Port Adventure. Right now the Kayak, Hike & Snorkel 5hr w/lunch has the most appeal to me. There is also a Kayak, Hike & Snorkel 3hr and a Kayak, Hike & Snorkel 2 1/2 hr. I think this would be just about Heaven. Our third port is Castaway-Cay. Castawy-Cay also has a lot to offer. I'd love to stay in a Cabana, however, you pretty much have to be a VERY frequent cruiser to have to opportunity to rent those. See Disney Cruise Line Levels for more information about that. I'm all for Disney offering rewards for frequent cruisers, just sucks to not be one. LOL! Well, that's all I have for now. In a future blog I will discuss other decisions we had/have to make and all the other fun that goes into planning and making the most out of a Disney Cruise. My husband finally, after YEARS of pestering, has stopped say H no to a Disney Cruise. I took that as a it's time to book that thing, so one day while he was at work, and I was doing quotes, I held a cruise for our family. Sometimes you just gotta push them out of the nest, or in this case, onto a cruise ship. This is the guy that said H no to a Walt Disney World vacation with our little girl for YEARS, as well. Once I finally broke him, he agreed to a measly 3 days in the park. I knew it wasn't enough, but beggars can't be choosers. I also knew once he went and saw for himself how wonderful Disney is, he'd be back. I love to say I told you so, and I did, often. We now go for no less than 7 nights and spend 7 days in the parks. VICTORY!! So when he came home from work I said, "Guess what I did today?" Then proceeded to tell him about our cruise on hold. To my SHOCK, instead of him dying laughing on the spot, he said, "Where is it going?" Say what?? Then a Christmas miracle happened right in front of my eyes. I literally had to sit down. He grabbed my tablet, and, get this, started looking up the itinerary destinations for THINGS TO DO WHEN WE GET THERE!!!! We still had a few days to roll the idea around, so I wasn't packing my bags just yet. I kept waiting for the shoe to drop. But it never did. When the day came to put the deposit down, or lose our hold, he had no objections. I could have married him all over again right that minute. Anyway, back to the cruise. I decided to go big or stay home. We, well, I booked a 7-night Eastern Caribbean Cruise out of Port Canaveral for Spring 2017. We are still over 200 days away from our trip, so a whole lot of waiting will have to take place before I bask in the sun of the glorious Caribbean. First and foremost, I have to survive this election cycle, ugh, then a Pennsylvania winter. In the meantime, I will be going through the cruise planning process on here in several blogs, including the daunting task of choosing a stateroom, choosing a destination, and all the other details that go into planning a Disney Cruise vacation. Although technically I had to choose a destination, length of cruise, and stateroom first, I will write about that in a later blog. Today I want to share some of the fun things I have done in my 'spare' time to prepare for our cruise, you know, that is over 6 months away. . . Decorating your stateroom door . . . It's a thing. My husband thinks it's not, but I will prove him wrong. Again. Seriously, google Disney Cruise Door Magnets and just take it in. See, I'm not kidding. People, like in all things Disney, go freaking nuts. Unlike me, I only go half nuts. (I stand by my half nuts statement) Because I have so much time on my hands, and because cleaning the house can wait, I've been playing around with some door magnet ideas. Kind of like the shirt thing I do for our WDW trips, this is something that gets me excited and occupies my time, but allows me to be thinking of our cruise, which makes me happy. Here's what I've come up with so far. I used google images, my personal designs, and photoshop to create these images. They are for my personal use only. Mostly this is just for fun right now. Not sure if I'll even use any of these. (Though I can hardly resist a skull with a bow!!) |
AuthorAndrea Greene Archives
April 2024
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