It's almost time - Captain Mickey I hope you're ready to welcome us aboard

Well I've done all the packing, printing and pampering. I've just got today to work and then it's Disney Cruise Vacation time and I can't wait.

I don't think I have ever counted down to a holiday so much before so it must be needed.

I received a lovely Bon Voyage card yesterday from my good friend and fellow Disney fan, Linda.

This will look perfect alongside our decorations for our stateroom so thank you Linda :-)

I'm going to sign off now as after my day in work today and last minute panics tonight I probably won't get chance to say goodbye - I'll come back with oodles of pics, info and stories :-)

My Fish Extender is complete :-)

Here it is:

My Mum added the embroidery touches which say 'I see no ships only friendships' with a image of Minnie.

The pockets are quite small and I'm worried that all of our goodies might not fit in them lol :-)

My Fish Extender gifts are ready...

.... after a rather long afternoon of laminating, wrapping and labeling my fish extender gifts are now ready to go even if i'm not!

Believe it or not but this pile is only half of the kids!

I went for the pirate style loot bag with personalised Disney Magic labels - quite pleased with them actually :-)

OMG only 2 weeks to go and so much to do :-S

I have sooooo much to do and only 2 weeks to go - how did that happen?

I still have planning to do for our port days

I've got the fish extender gifts to wrap - Done :-)

A fish extender to make

My Formal wear outfit to find/buy

Money to exchange to Euros

and

Paperwork to print off - Done :-)

Well no time to blog, I better get busy with it :-)

Mmmmmm Cocktails :-)

Anyone that knows me will know why I suggested the following activity lol :-)

Cocktails, I love them and when I heard they do a Martini Tasting session onboard I just had to sign up for it. I then heard that this could be booked as a private session if you had a group of 8 or more, so I asked on the Dibb if anyone would be interested in joining me!

31 fellow Dibb cruisers also thought this was a great idea and signed up!

A lovely cast member at DCL, Deborah, made the booking for us so for $12 each we have our very own Martini Tasting session booked for the last day at sea.

What a perfect way to end the cruise.

Our little bit of Pixie Dust

Disney have that knack of surprising you when you least expect it so when I received our travel document and saw our room allocation I knew they had sprinkled some Pixie Dust magic on us.

They have upgraded us from our Cat 12 booking to a Cat 11, Deck 5 stateroom 5635.

I know it's only a mini upgrade but the deck our stateroom is on is perfect and seems to be a much better location for us. Plus, we are located around quite a few Dibb cruisers!

Our deck has since been called the naughty corridor and Prisoner Cell Block H which is hilarious. I'm sure we're not going to struggle for things to do and people to talk to hee hee :-)

Let the planning commence: Day Two - Cherbourg, France :-)

There doesn't appear to be a lot to see and do local to Cherbourg but I do fancy the Cite de la Mer which is a Aquarium and home of 'Redoutable' the first submarine of the French Navy. Tickets are adults €18 children €13 and from I can see it is located pretty close to the port.


Link: La Cite de la Mer


and, unless anything else takes our fancy, we will spend the rest of the day exploring the ship :-)

4pm - Vista Spa for a Elemis hand ritual massage and manicure booked - mmmmm bliss

Let the planning commence - Onboard activites list :-)

I thought I better start making some kind of a 'wish' list for everything we would like to do on our very first Disney cruise :-)

I have a feeling it's going to be a long one so here goes!

• Art of Entertaining 
• Stern to Stern wine tasting 
• Tequila tasting 
• Martini tasting - Dibb meet
• Cocktail Mixology (I know what your thinking, yes there's a pattern)
• Family scrap booking party
• Family crafts
• Towel animal making
• Tour of the galley
• DVC presentation - just because I'm very nosey lol :-)

The Martini tasting session I am in the middle of organising for the Dibb cruisers and so far there are 26 of us :-S I think it's going to be a fun cruise :-)

The magnets!

Right, now there is one thing I have found out since booking the Disney Cruise and that booking was the easy bit, the difficult part is all the various activities you have to plan/prepare post cruise and magnets are just one of those activities!

The doors of the Disney ships are metal and over the years guests have adorned the doors with magnets, personalising them and it looks like such fun :-)

Well not to be out done, Lydia and I have spent many a happy hour on photoshop creating and printing, with the help of some fabulous DIS board fans, and here are just some of our efforts:

Next task - The Fish Extender, but that's another story :-)

I've been tweaking! :-)

Well after a quick search online to see if there was any new room availability at the Premier Inn, Dover I was soon booking a family room for me and Lydia to stay the night before the cruise £88.50 inc breakfast :-)


This is great news as the thought of a 5am start the day of the cruise did not appeal to me and I was worried about the whole journey solely relying on the efficiency of public transport :-S


This however meant I had to change our train tickets which was a nightmare as they are an advanced booking I cannot change/refund them. Oh well after a quick search on Virgin Trains I have tickets for the two of us from Stockport to Dover Priory for £22.50 - Bargain :-) The journey is now at 12.23pm arriving at Dover Priory at 4:30pm which is much more civilised.


Repeat after me: I am not doing any more tweaking, I am not doing any more tweaking, I am not doing any more tweaking, I am not doing any more tweaking.....

So much to do, so little time!

I have a lot to organise, but this will not be a problem as I love planning. In fact, planning should be my middle name and this holiday will be planned with military precision :-)

I am a member of a couple of Disney Forums and I have joined various threads dedicated to this cruise. This is great as they have all kinds of stuff planned! A ladies lunch for one of the sea days, lanyards for us to wear, Fish Extender gift goups etc etc etc. I don't think we are going to run out of things to do!

I have ordered the fabric for my fish extender and have started to collect gifts for the members of my group. This is great fun and Lydia is really enjoying the whole excitement that is building. We just need to wait for a damp cold day and I will get the sewing machine out and start making it! Oh my what have I let myself in for :-S

The Itinerary

Day	Port	Guest Ashore	Guest Onboard
Friday	Dover, England	—	4:00 p.m.
Saturday	Cherbourg, France	7:15 a.m.	5:30 p.m.
Sunday	At Sea	—	—
Monday	Vigo, Spain	8:15 a.m.	5:00 p.m.
Tuesday	Lisbon, Portugal	7:45 a.m.	5:30 p.m.
Wednesday	Cádiz, Spain	9:15 a.m.	7:30 p.m.
Thursday	Gibraltar, U.K.	8:15 a.m.	6:00 p.m.
Friday	At Sea	—	—
Saturday	Barcelona, Spain	7:00 a.m.	—

I have booked the following so far:

• Night stay at the Premier Inn, Dover - 29/7/2010
• Train tickets from Stockport to Dover - changed to 29/7/2010
• A manicure in the Spa on Day 2 :-)
• One night Hotel stay at the new Novotel Barcelona City for the Saturday night
• Flights home from Barcelona Airport
• Cruise all paid for :-)

Well that's it we're booked!

It all started with a message from a fellow Disneyholic Joa who gave me the heads up that the Disney Cruise Line site had just released some cheap cat 12 GTY availability on the 8 night Dover to Barcelona Disney Cruise.

I didn't have to think twice and after a quick search on the DCL site I had it booked for me and my daughter, Lydia. 

We haven't been to any of the cities on the cruise and we have never been on a cruise before so this is going to be a real girly adventure - can't wait :-)

Here we are on our last visit to WDW in August 2009



Can't wait to get some Disney Cruise pics :-)