TestingH2O

We always do the sit down lunch. As someone upthread mentioned, the restaurants no longer have a buffet. You order off the menu. It is a very nice experience.

Oops double post.

I just arrived at port and we are all double shows again. Grrrr. Junnk is still on board so I guess we’ll be spending time waiting for their shows to start in lounges.

i just looked at the navigator Scott posted and there is a welcome aboard show on the 1st night in the Walt Disney Theater - it's called "Be Our Guest - Welcome Aboard Show".

 

And there's a magician in the walt disney theater on the 5th night.

 

Tangled is shown twice (3rd and 4th nights) and Dreams is on twice (6th and 7th nights).

Twice Charmed is once (on the second night).

 

And Scott comments that there will be other shows in the lounge.

 

so in the walt disney theater, on Scott's cruise:

 

1st night - Be Our Guest - Welcome Aboard Show

2nd night - Twice Charmed

3rd night - Tangled

4th night - Tangled

5th night - magician

6th night - Dreams

7th night - Dreams

 

.

No. Here is the link to the cruise happening right now that he is on.

http://disneycruiselineblog.com/2018/06/trip-log-day-1-7-night-mediterranean-cruise-on-disney-magic-barcelona/

Day 1&2 - Twice Charmed

Day 3&4 - Tangled

Day 5- magician

Day 6&7- Dreams

Yes, variety acts are in the lounge but the capacity in those spaces is much much less.

i just checked the Magic Navigators for the past several cruises and couldn't find any cruises with repeated shows.

 

Can whoever originally mentioned this say exactly which Disney Magic cruises this occurred on?

 

.

The DCL blog posted day 1 navigators of this week's Med cruise and it included no welcome show, and repeats of the 3 stage productions. Variety acts have all been moved to the lounges.

I board on Saturday and I'll be very unhappy if this continues.

Saw some dry dock photos. The Magic is looking good!

 

 

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Links?

On our cruise in June, we would like to have one beach day. Livorno is the best day for your schedule. It looks like Elba or Viareggio might be a good choice. Has anyone gone to either from Livorno? Or do you have other suggestions?

I wish the US had generous leave policies. Here it varies by company. In most places, it is really rare for a manager to allow someone to take a vacation for more than 2 weeks. You’d be hard pressed to find a company that gives you that much time off and allows you to take it in one big chunk. This excludes teachers, btw since they have 3 months in the summer.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a student or teacher who gets 3 months any more. Most teachers work for at least 1 week after classes end and at least 1 week before they begin. Many have to do professional development in the summer as well. Average is probably 6-7 weeks of summer break. That is certainly still more than most corporate jobs, but not the idyllic picture folks not in education think exists.

As an educator at the high school level, I worry when kids miss long blocks of school for vacation. I teach lab classes and AP's. Missing that much time in the lab just cannot be made up with worksheets. Our school is also moving to minimize homework like many others nationwide. This means that all graded work is being done in class. Hard to make up those in person experiences.

A couple clarifications from above.

Concierge level room have pull out sofa. As Moki stated, standard rooms have the flip beds.

Also, 3 and under can go to the nursery for a fee. So even if you travel with a you get child, there are still options for child care.

We took DD when she was 3 and she LOVED the trip. She didn't do the Clubs or nursery at all and we just had fun exploring the ship and playing in the splash zones. As she got older, we did different things. She will be 6 when we go to Europe this summer. Traveling has been great for her and we love talking about all of our adventures.

Thanks! Fun to see from the other side.

The last time we stayed at the Pan Pacific there was a letter in our room advising that any gunshots heard were from a TV series being filmed nearby.

At least they warned you!:')

Thanks for the tip about the food court. No need to spend $$$$ on huge fancy meals right before a cruise. Especially breakfast.

As late as possible (but 90mins before your scheduled departure time). While being early means short queues at CBP/Security/Check-in desks it's inherently inefficient as you will be forced to wait around before any of these until boarding actually begins; total end-to-end wait time is only minimised by arriving as late as possible.

 

Some folks of course feel their vaycay doesn't start until they board, so are more concerned about being onboard as soon as possible than what the actual wait time is - if you're one of them, arrive no later than 10:30am (this is the latest start time for bag drop - it officially begins any time from 10am, and on quieter days may be even earlier, but with three ships to disembark it's more likely to be closer to 10:30am). Be aware that you will have to queue until some time between 11am and noon before boarding starts though, so even if you are the first person in line it's less efficient than rolling in at say 3pm for your total time spend.

 

Missing out on embarkation lunch is IMO a very worthy tradeoff even for us locals who don't need to go sightseeing. Unless you're a frequent visitor to Vancouver, I question the sanity of anyone who wastes 5 hours of quality sightseeing time in one of the world's finest cities...;-)

These are all good things to consider. We will have time the day before, so that's good.

My 5 year old daughter will be with us and, honestly, I think she'd be better about waiting in the waiting room than she would be waiting in a line. When we cruise out of Florida, we like getting to port around 11:45 and there's no line but we have time for a nice lunch right before roooms are ready. Sounds like that schedule won't work as well this time.

By the time July rolls around three ship days are smoother. The ones you want to avoid are the first few three ship days. I would go early.

That makes me feel better. Thank you.

Every time that we have stayed at the Pan Pacific we were told to leave our luggage in the room and the hotel would take care of checking it into the proper cruise line. Since we like to be on the ship early, we go downstairs from the hotel around 10:00 AM. Processing passengers did not start until all of the ships in port are "zeroed out" (all passengers off the ship). Always having stragglers meant processing didn't start until around 10:30 AM.

 

Most cruise lines give recommended arrival times of 1:00 PM so being near the head of the lines at 10:30 AM has avoided the longer lines later. Last year there were five working booths in operation when we went through Customs.

 

I will be staying at the Pan Pacific this June and will post my experience on this thread.

Thanks!

We are cruising out of Canada Place in July. There will be 3 ships departing that day. I've read quite a few trip reports that indicate customs can get very backed up. Is there a sweet spot for arrival time to minimize the lines? We are staying at the Pan Pacific so there is really no commute time and we can head out whenever.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Thanks for all the specific suggestions! It helps narrow down options to hear individual experiences. Sometimes, there's just too much infirmary out there.

Because we have free tickets and a companion pass on southwest, we will fly in and out of Seattle. However our cruise leaves out of Vancouver.

1. What's the best way to get from Seattle to Vancouver? Train? Bus? Rent a car?

2. Hotel suggestions for overnight in Vancouver? I've seen mention of the Pan Pacific. Ideally we'd get something that makes it easy to go out for dinner the night before and maybe near a coffe shop or quick activity to do in the morning. With the time change, I fully expect we will be up early.

Thanks for sharing your expertise.

I think you'll like the dress code for DCL too. Most nights are cruise casual, and you can certainly wear shorts. Palo would be more formal.

Great review. Thanks!

I hope you'll do more in the future!

I've been following your Bermuda review!

To be honest, I've only traveled with my young daughter, so I'm not a late night girl on DCL. That being said, I've done a couple late night tastings that were quite fun and the lounges were definitely busy at those times.

The Fantasy has a nice area called Satellite Falls that is adults only. I preferred it to the adult pool.

In my experience, there was more adults only stuff to do than I had time to do it. However, the nightlife is definitely more cocktail lounge than raging dance party. That's much more my scene, so I'm happy with that.

I've only seen people mention characters in the terminal at Port Canaveral. If you're on a summer Wonder cruise, you'll be in Vancouver. I don't know if they do preboarding photos at that port.

Can anyone clarify the kids programming comments? Do all NCL sailings limit kids to 20 per age group in the clubs? I've seen positive reviews of the NCL clubs, but if they are unusable, that is obviously a big drawback.

Thanks for the fast reply.

Would we be allowed to bring a travel bed?

What are the beds in a CLS?

The Royal website indicates here are sofa bedS, but I only see one sofa. Is there more than one pull down/out bed? Or does Royal offer roll away beds?

Trying to figure out what sleeping arrangements might look like for an adult couple, a single adult, and one child.

Great! I'm interested in hearing about any noise from above as I've read concerns about the deck plan.