My amazing vacation review! 11/7-11/18

[SoCalKJ]

This will probably take forever to complete...and the vacation is in 3 parts. I'll definitely review Part 1 (Disney World) and Part 2 (Carnival Ecstasy), but Part 3 probably won't be too interesting to many, so I may decline to continue writing after debarking the ship out of sheer artistic exhaustion. (LOL! Kidding) Actually, it'll probably be boring and unnecessary. We'll see.

 

This vacation couldn’t have happened sooner. Well actually, it could have. I had to work the night before we left, and (unbeknownst to me) the City of Reseda changed their metered parking from 6pm to 8pm and I pulled up to work at 7:50pm thinking I was safe from having to pay to park to unload my gear. Nope: $63 (plus $2 online payment charge) parking ticket when I wasn’t looking. This added insult to injury since the Reseda PD couldn’t be bothered to assist me at 1:30am 2 months ago when someone

randomly broke out my back window. Grrr! But I digress. :cool:

 

Random Personal Facts: I'm 41, DH is 40. We have no children, own a Karaoke/DJ business and have been waiting for about 8 months for this adventure. It's my 7th cruise (6th on Carnival), DH's 5th (4 on Carnival). We have a 9-year old Basset Hound that we got a sitter for and trained someone to cover our gigs....after that, we were off.

 

 

Day 1:

 

We headed to LAX about 4:30 Wednesday morning (11/7) to catch our 8:00am nonstop flight to Orlando on Virgin America. Initially, I got a really great deal with them. I paid the fare about 5-6 months prior to vacation…then watched the price drop by $170. I called Virgin and because it was a non-refundable ticket, they instead awarded me a travel bank credit which could be used for a future fare or towards checked baggage. I was cool with that. Then a month or so later, I checked the fares again and noticed it had jumped up higher than what I had originally paid! Phew! Then…another month or so later, it dropped another $160 from the adjusted rate! Score…another credit to my travel bank! Moral of the story: check fares and check them often…and ask for credits even on non-refundable tickets. By the time we flew, I had $330 travel bank credit and that fare had skyrocketed to almost twice the original cost!

Me (Robin) and DH, Scotty...not excited ONE BIT!

 

After an uneventful 5-hour non-stop flight, we arrived at MCO about 3:30pm. We proceeded to the Disney Magical Express area of the airport to board the shuttle to the Disney All-Star Movie Resort. Eventually, we were off to our hotel for the next 3 days. We checked in and were pretty excited to see what the hype was all about. Well…truthfully, it was pretty disappointing. We were housed in the "Herbie, The Love Bug" building which was the furthest away from the lobby, food court and shuttle lines. We loved the retro deco, but the room was just so-so. To make matters worse, the hot water that runs in the bath did NOT translate through the showerhead. I insist on really hot showers and the shower temperature didn’t get much above lukewarm. I am not one to complain about trivial stuff…we knew we basically booked the Motel 6 of Disney World, but even the Motel 6 has HOT water. Oh well…whatever.

 

Anyway, we were pretty hungry so we got an early dinner in the food court. Lesson for the future #1: Investigate the food plans a little more thoroughly. We didn’t realize how expensive even the food court options were going to be….but man…did they add up! Later on, DH got a second wind and wanted to shuttle down to Downtown Disney to check out the sights, so we did. That ride took about 15-20 minutes….and we finally got downtown.

 

We pretty much walked around to check everything out and realized we were hungry again! LOL! So were decided to venture into Planet Hollywood and eat there. Well, the waiter immediately asks us if we have a Disney Dining Plan and we were again kicking ourselves for not knowing that the "cool restaurants" are included in the options. Oh well…what’s another $50 or so on top of the $40-ish we spent at the food court on DAY ONE?!?! (That’s sarcasm…kinda. We paid a TON for food and couldn’t wait to get on the cruise so we’d have a little relief!)

 

Oh well…Planet Hollywood was cool…the sights were amazing and being movie fans, we really enjoyed the detail. It was a first visit (to any PH) for both of us so we sucked up the expense. Hell! We’re on vacation!!

Finally, around 11-ish, we shuttled back to our AMAZING Love Bug chateau and called it a night. Epcot in the morning.

 

By the way, it was REALLY cold in Orlando at night. It had to have dropped to the 40’s…seriously, freezing!

 

That's it for Day 1. More to come...be patient...lots of activity before the holiday. BTW: Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

[BC Gal Ann]

Really enjoying your review.... :)

[vivavegas]

Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to reading more of your review!!:)

[phabric]

Will be looking forward to more of your reviews.

[TakeMeAway1001]

Nice start, can't wait to read more :)

[reerun25]

Great start!!

[tracyvansmith]

Can't wait to read more.

 

I love Disney and Cruising so looking forward to read more.

 

I like to stay at Disney's Port Orleans Riverside the best.

[SoCalKJ]

We woke up ready to tackle Epcot. While DH had never been there before, I was there back in 1989…so since it had been so long, it may as well have been my first time all over again. We made our way to the Epcot shuttle line…and wouldn’t you know it: it seemed like every other shuttle and multiples of the same shuttles were readily available, but an Epcot shuttle…well that took a little longer….kinda like when we wanted to go to Downtown Disney in the freezing cold, every other shuttle was right there…but no DD bus. Murphy’s Law, right?

 

Anyway, without going into tons of detail, we enjoyed Epcot…the Spaceship Earth (the ride in the big round Epcot dome), all the fun, interactive, futuristic activities and, of course, the Countries of the World. Lots of walking, lots of eating and lots of sightseeing.

 

 

More to come...

[SoCalKJ]

I'm supposing the thumbnails on the prior post (while not made larger) can be seen without me trying to repost them....that's becoming quite a chore! Evidently, I'm only allowed 6 per post. Grrrr!

 

Anyhoo...

 

 

We decided about 4-ish that we were Epcot’d out and ready to go. We wanted to do dinner again at Downtown Disney; there was a seafood place we had been eyeballing the night before and we were ready to head straight over. Problem is: you can’t shuttle from a theme park directly to DD, so we basically had to shuttle back to our hotel and hop into a DD line. We decided to remain positive since we DID have souvenirs and stuff to take back to the room and we wanted to clean up a bit…so it wasn’t too big of a deal.

 

Once we FINALLY got back to DD, we soon discovered that the wait to eat ANYWHERE was running from 45 minutes to 2 hours since about 2,000+ people had arrived from everywhere for this marathon that was going on that weekend. So much for our seafood restaurant…we thought we could find a wait for less than 45 minutes, so we wandered over to Rain Forest Café – wait time there was about an hour and some change (wrong wait time direction!). We shopped the store, bought some souvenirs and thought maybe buying some stuff might bump us up on the list (a genius marketing strategy we decided – they have the retail store in FRONT of the restaurant). Then after about 40 minutes, we exasperatedly agreed that had we had waited, we’d be in the middle of an appetizer at the seafood spot, but who knew, right? So finally we got sick of waiting at RFC and decided to wander to the next possibility: nope – 2 hour wait. JEEZ! We walked around to a few more different restaurants with various wait times, but finally just settled on some generic chicken/salad/pizza fast food place where we could just get some overpriced sustenance into our systems before we took the entire city hostage! We were getting THAT hungry and THAT irritable…LOL! After eating, we walked around a little more, purchased a few more souvenirs and decided to call it a night and head back to our room.

 

I should add that before we headed to Downtown Disney for dinner, I went to the concierge/guest relations desk and mentioned our problem with the shower and kindly requested a room change if they had anything available…preferably closer than the one we were in. I believe in making requests humbly and without any sense of entitlement. (We do the hard-core, character-assassination complaining amongst ourselves…LOL!) So the shower sucks, I understand. We know we’re not staying at the Ritz, so if it works out, it works out. And, it worked out. We changed to a better room. Now, the hot water wasn’t as hot as I’d have loved it, but we were transferred to the "Toy Story building which is next to the main building, so the only "inconvenience" was re-packing our stuff and hauling it across campus to our new room.

 

Good 2nd Day. Thanks for reading…more to come. Happy Thanksgiving!

Edited November 22, 2012 by SoCalKJ

[beach410]

Enjoying your review, thanks for posting!

[MrFunInTheSun]

Wahoo! Thanks for sharing your adventures with us!

[KirkNC]

Thanks for the review!

[SoCalKJ]

We originally planned on going to Sea World, but since we’ve been to the one in San Diego, we decided to hit a park neither of us had been to: Animal Kingdom! Turned out to be an excellent choice. Seeing a fantastic bird show (including a parrot singing "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window"), going on the in-park safari, enjoying the Dinosaur area and the water ride, seeing a bit of the Holiday Parade and, of course, the Everest rollercoaster (three times – one too many), this park turned out to be more enjoyable to us than Epcot…and we’re really glad we chose it.

 

 

To Be Continued (only because of the photo limit!)....

[SoCalKJ]

Since you saw him from behind...

 

One of the dinosaur displays.

 

Real live bat...and I've got video to prove it! Yucky!

 

One from the safari - most of the safari photos were on DH's camera.

 

 

What can I say? I make friends easily!

[SoCalKJ]

A couple more random Animal Kingdom photos:

 

 

 

By about 4-ish, we decided it was time to head back to our hotel. We thought about trying Downtown Disney one more time for dinner, but we were so pooped already from 2 days of (seemingly endless) walking already. Since we were planning to get up early, get our rental car and head to Canaveral for our cruise in the morning (and a trek downtown meant waiting in a couple long lines and long rides on the shuttles), we decided to just grab dinner at the food court again…besides, we figured we’d spend about the same no matter where we went.

 

We enjoyed a pizza and salad (the making of the salad was kind of comical and spiritual at the same time…so much, in fact, I had to take a picture of it and those involved in the making of it!)

 

I have to say this particular food court staff were so friendly and accomodating...and if they thought I should be psychologically evaluated because of this ordeal, they didn't let on one bit about it!

 

 

We then had a little fun in the arcade – playing silly games, winning tickets and cashing ‘em in for little generic prizes. After that, I bought a few more souvenirs in the Disney store around the corner from the lobby (I bet every single hotel on the Disney property has one) and then called it a night.

 

 

DAY 4 - EMBARKATION coming soon! Thanks so much for reading. :)

Edited November 25, 2012 by SoCalKJ

[SoCalKJ]

Who goes on this water ride twice before noon on a mild November morning...only to get completely soaked?

 

 

These two goobers right here:

 

 

A boy + ice cream waffle cone = happy camper!

 

 

 

Hubby wanted to buy this hat, but since it was almost 50 bucks and I knew he would NEVER wear it again, I insisted on only a photo.

 

 

By the time we're ready to head towards the exit, we get stuck behind the parade....

 

 

DH is tired and hungry (and sans his safari hat and no more ice cream) so clearly he's not amused to be stuck behind all that pomp and circumstance! I, of course, think it's hilarious!

 

[kjunea]

Great review! I know the feeling about the cost of food at WDW. I was a cast member for a long time, so I got a discount when I went. When I got pregnant, I quit and every other time, I've used the dining plan, so it didn't hurt as bad. This fall, I stayed at All Star Movies with my son for a couple of nights after a cruise, so that we could go to Mickey's not so Scary Halloween Party. Since I weren't going to the parks other than the party (Legoland was much more interesting to a 9 year old!), I didn't get the package with the tickets and dining plan. After spending $36 for dinner the first night for the 2 of us, I started regretting it too!

[SoCalKJ]

I didn't get the package with the tickets and dining plan. After spending $36 for dinner the first night for the 2 of us, I started regretting it too!

 

Man! It just didn't seem worth it online...after spending EVERYTHING else! Then when I actually saw the restaurants that also participated (that I somehow didn't see listed online), it was really disappointing. And, OF COURSE, it's too late to add it after checking in! Grrrr!

[SoCalKJ]

After doing most of our packing the night before, we woke up about 7-ish and were on the Alamo Rental Car shuttle by 8. We decided our best bet would be to rent a car (even for a couple of hours) to Canaveral over any other shuttle option. Even though our Disney package included a complimentary shuttle back to the airport, Carnival charged $35/person from MCO to PC. The rental car was less than $60 and that option allowed us to stop at a convenience store to pick up sodas and waters and other things we needed. Granted, we knew it’d cost us about the same adding in gas/tolls, but knowing taxis and shuttles don’t make convenience store stops (without extra charges) and we knew we’d blow through water and soda onboard (and have spent tons onboard for them in the past), this was the most sensible option for us.

 

I can’t believe I spent an entire paragraph desperately trying to articulate the merits of various transportation options! :rolleyes:

Driving down the A-1-A was like a Vanilla Ice dream come true. All I could do, when not getting teary-eyed and wide-eyed with excitement about the upcoming embarkation, was scream out "A-1-A – Beachfront Avenue!" in proper gangsta mode multiple times. I tried to get hubby to take a picture of any sign that said it, but that was a bust. I was like, "C’mon Whitie! Get gangsta with me!"

 

I will take a moment to confess that, as the primary driver (I prefer it that way), I’m like the typical man when it comes to directions and DH is the guy with the iPhone maps ready to go. I saw the Carnival ship (actually 2 were in port at the same time) and mistakenly exited that very next exit sure that the rental car return was somewhere right there and all we had to do was look for a "Rental Car Return" sign and we’d be good to go. NOPE! Had I had listened to DH, we would’ve stayed on the A1A a little longer until we would’ve found a very simple, easy Cocoa Beach exit that would lead us right to the Alamo return (which is actually really difficult to see…but it’s housed inside the same rental car return for a couple other companies…those names which can been seen from the road; Alamo, not so much). Anyhoo, in a matter of minutes, the car was dropped off, the tab was closed and we were on our way to the ship!

 

It was about 10:45 or so when we arrived at Port Canaveral. We quickly dropped off our bags with the porters (3 bags/5 bucks) and walked through the assigned areas towards check-in, sign and sail cards and getting our little VIP placard. We were then directed to sit in the waiting area and within about 10 minutes they were boarding Platinum and VIP.

 

Next thing I know, we’re taking our first cheesy embarkation photo, walking the gangway and then finally (cue angelic Heavenly music) entering the Ecstasy! Home! Finally! Well, within about 30 seconds, reality hit me that I needed to cart my rear on over to the Shore Excursion desk so I could get a decent shot at a good Cabana. Scotty, on the other hand, wasted no time heading to the Lido buffet.

 

More to come...

[SoCalKJ]

When I approached the S.E. desk, I noticed a gal there (not a S.E. agent, but more just a nice friendly crew member just welcoming people to that area) assisting. I let her know I was there to line up for a HMC cabana and she told me where to go ahead and wait. There was no sign posted where to stand/line up, so I just kinda waited off to the side of the counter. In no time, another lady was lined up behind me and we got to chatting about cabanas and such and before I knew it, the first S.E. agent was at the desk and the assignments began. Cabana 10 was immediately unavailable, so I picked 11.

 

As I was completing my necessary details (specific sodas/snorkel flipper sizes/etc.), I noticed another S.E. agent come to the counter and some random woman went staight to the counter and started to proceed with her assignment. She had her number picked and in a matter of moments, it donned on me and the lady behind me that this woman had cut in line (to her credit and ours, as well, there was no marked sign where to line up…so it really was an honest mistake). This random woman was fairly gracious and surrendered her cabana choice (same pick as the woman behind me: #9) and picked another. It felt tense and I was fascinated at how quickly this situation could’ve turned ugly, had random woman chose to be nit-picky (argue line placement or lack thereof, whatever). Anyway, I got mine. That’s all that mattered!

 

With that, I was off to the Lido to find hubby enjoying the buffet…so I joined in. I actually was boring and had some salad and light food…didn’t wanna get too crazy from the get-go. After eating, knowing we still had time before we could get into our room, Scotty decided to chill on a lounger by the pool and I decided to roam all over and get pics. Of course, it’s a new ship for me, but the set-up is about the same. I’ve been on the Spirit, Pride, Inspiration, Paradise…the Ecstasy was gonna be fairly simple to navigate.

[SoCalKJ]

ChinaTown - where most of the Karaoke madness was had.

 

Fun Rolls-Royce Info.

 

In case I forgot where my ports were...

[SoCalKJ]

Every few minutes, I’d wander down to the Upper deck to see if the halls to the rooms were unlocked and open yet, but no…they were serious about the 1:30 available time…well…sorta. I tried again about 1:15. Even though the hall doors were still closed, I tried to turn the handle and lo-and-behold, it opened. So like a little kid trying not to get caught, I snuck down the hall with one of my carry-on bags and happened upon my room: U-111, pushed open the door and there it was: our amazing Grand Suite (the one that the Upgrade Fairy granted me just a couple months prior for a measly 100 bucks)!

 

Well, I sat there, got misty-eyed, took a few pictures and enjoyed a few moments of peace and quiet before I was surprised to see our room steward, Ranil walk in…just as surprised to see me sitting there. We exchanged greetings (more like me saying, "Hi, I hope you aren’t mad that I’m in here early!") and I texted DH to alert him that the room was open!

 

U-111 Grand Suite Pics:

 

 

 

 

 

Somehow I forgot to get pics of the bathroom. Oh well.

 

More to come.

[SoCalKJ]

We unpacked, enjoyed the balcony and relaxed for a while. Before we knew it, it was time for the security muster/drill…which just seemed like an unorganized mess. We got to our first muster station (outside the casino in the trivia area) and waited…and waited…and waited. Finally, the announcements were going on over the loudspeaker and naturally, you’ve got the rude ones who just can’t shut up long enough to get through it.

 

After the safety briefing announcements, we were then put into 2 single file lines and walked up a couple flights of stairs to our designated outside muster stations. Gotta say I love the instructions that are as clear as day that say, "PLEASE NO FOOD OR DRINKS DURING THE MUSTER SAFETY DRILL!" Then you look around and people are carting around their beers, their DODs, one chick was eating some buffet food….it was impressive how well people followed simple rules. Anyway, finally that dismissal horn blew and we were free to enjoy the rest of our cruise.

 

Within an hour, the ship was leaving Canaveral and we were off! Slot machines started making noise, people started shopping, music started playing and, of course, Scotty and I proceeded to make our way into the showroom for some trivia. For a while there, it was looking like he and I would have to split in half to make 2 teams since noone else was there. We got excited at the thought that we had a 100% chance of winning a ship on a stick (shamelessly accumulating them is our passion on each and every cruise). Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I moved over a row, more and more people started to show up for trivia, so I moved back and we got started.

 

Luck was on our side (actually, skill and two heads full of ridiculously random facts) and we walked away victorious!

 

 

We headed back to our room and saw the first of our cruise’s nightly animal treasures. We have dirty minds. We’ll leave it alone since many a thread has discussed the "accuracy" of body part comparisons. My poor sunglasses!

 

 

We farted around the rest of the evening…hitting the casino (actually, the casino would hit us harder…THOUGH, NOT WITHOUT AN EXCITING EXCEPTION LATER), a little Karaoke, some more Lido food, and a trip into the perfume shop for a $97 bottle of J’adore for my Mother-in-Law…her last bottle lasted her 3 years and she paid me for that. After I bought it, I tossed my drawing ticket into the final night’s drawing box, took $100 cash directly to apply to my folio and we eventually called it a night.

 

Thanks so much for reading! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

 

Coming soon: Day 5 (or Day 2...depending on how you wanna look at it): Freeport!

[BettyPC]

Fun review - thanks for sharing with us!!

 

Betty

[Jasonmom]

Enjoying your review. Yes the prices of food at Disney will shock most. They have "dining included" specials a few times each year. It's a good way to go.

 

Looking forward to hearing more.:D