WDW and DCL Dream Double Dip cruise Aug/Sept 2011

[realfam]

Realfam here, reporting in that we are gearing up for another exciting Disney summer vacation. ; Our famiy is not big on just booking a week vacation somewhere. ; We always have to spice it up with a little variety. ; This years summer vacation will consist of us flying to MCO from Buffalo, spending 4 days at Fort Wilderness's cabin. ; Then heading to Cape Canaveral where will board the new Disney Dream for a four night cruise, and if that wasn't enough we are gonna double dip it and follow it up with a 3 night cruise. ; Upon returning to Port Canaveral we have decided not to return home,not to go back to Disney World, but to spend a few extra days in Cocoa Beach. ;
All of the planning has been done most of our documents have arrived. ; We are starting the final count down to departure on Aug 24th. ; I will follow up with a trip report and any interesting details I come across. ; (Plus lots of pics). ; ;

 

[weemcp]

have fun - sounds like an amazing trip!

 

[realfam]

This past weekend we had a BBQ at our cottage for the 4 families that will joining us on this adventure. ; All but one family has cruised with Disney in the past and it was fun to relive old stories.
Our first piece of luggage was removed from the storage room today and cruise stuff is being piled up inside it. ; We now need to work on our Fish Extender gifts!

 

[realfam]

All of our bags are out. ; Our stuff is in piles all over the house ans the excitement is building since we leave for Buffalo tomorrow.
We presently have one big concern, and her name is Irene. ; Presently Irene is a cat 2 hurricane and modules have changed to show it move more east off the coast of Florida. ; Last year when we cruised the Wonder we got the remaims of Earl which made for a bumpy ride for the first day. ; Looks like we may repeat that ride this sunday.
I don't believe Irene will affect our WDW visit though, but who knows things can change. ; So for now we'll keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best. ;D

 

[weemcp]

are you back yet? how was the trip?

 

[realfam]

We just got home last night at midnight.....there is luggage and stuff scattered all over the house since the kids had school and we had to work today. ; Just getting our life back on track and then I'll spend some time on a trip report with pics.
I will say we had an amazing vacation, 4 days in WDW, a back to back on the Dream followed by 3 relaxing days on Cocoa Beach. ; Trip report to follow......
gotta run before my wife catched me on the computer ;D

 

[realfam]

Our August 2011 adventure started in Buffalo as usual. except this time we booked the Best Western instead of the Sleep Inn. ; A big thumbs up! ; We really like it for our new park and fly package hotel. ; The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn to catch our first half of our flight to Orlando with Southwest. ; Got to the airport, through check in and security quickly and then found out our plane was delayed by over an hour. Our connection was in Baltimore which was another bad thing since Hurricane Irene was just starting to affect the eastern seaboard and closing airports. ; Lucky for us we made our connections and got to MCO (Orlando), picked up our car rental from Dollar. ; After aquick stop at Walmart for groceries we were in WDW checking into Fort Wilderness cabins. ; We stayed 3 nights there and loved every minute of it. ; I must admit the cabins are fabulous. ; Because of the heat at that time of year we decided to do only one day at the Magic Kingdom (which was awesome as usual), and then relax the rest of our time there by the pool. ; I would recommend these cabins to anyone. ; Great value and location!

My favourite new thing at the Magic Kingdom has to be the interactive headstones at the Huanted Mansion

 

[obo101]

Looks like you had a great time. ; Looking forward to more photos and reports from this trip.

 

[deblen4]

Just curious as to why you tried Best Western? ; We have stayed at Sleep Inn our last few trips after using Comfort Inn for several trips, but the price at Comfort Inn increased by $40 per night, although we were very happy with their service, the rooms etc... ; So we switched to Sleep Inn and have been satisfied with the cost and service. ; We did try Marriott once, very nice but their park and fly package wasn't cost effective and we paid for the room and parked at the airport. ; We're going to Disney Oct. 17th and have been debating whether to try another airport hotel in Buffalo. ; We always grab the first direct Southwest flight of the morning.

 

[weemcp]

can't wait to hear about the rest of your trip!

 

[realfam]

Just curious as to why you tried Best Western? ; We have stayed at Sleep Inn our last few trips after using Comfort Inn for several trips, but the price at Comfort Inn increased by $40 per night, although we were very happy with their service, the rooms etc... ; So we switched to Sleep Inn and have been satisfied with the cost and service. ; We did try Marriott once, very nice but their park and fly package wasn't cost effective and we paid for the room and parked at the airport. ; We're going to Disney Oct. 17th and have been debating whether to try another airport hotel in Buffalo. ; We always grab the first direct Southwest flight of the morning.

Hey, were gonna be at WDW at the same time. ; I haven't mentioned it yet but we will be at AKV from Oct 15-23. ; We love the Food and Wine festival at Epcot. ; But back to the topic of Buffalo sleep/fly packages. ; Our last stay at the Sleep Inn my wife was not impressed with the how clean the breakfast area was. ; The garbage can had looked like it had not be wiped in weeks. ; I was there at the begin of jan and the hot tub was broken, I was back at the end of jan and it was still broken. ; And to top it off they have slowly been raising their rates. ; So I decide to shop around and found the Best Western on Geneese St (right behind the Sleep INN) for $99 for park/sleep/fly package. ; So we gave a try and liked it. ; Were there again October. ; The secret to this rate is booking the room on www.stay123.com ; If you call the hotel direct they will charge you more.

 

[deblen4]

Thank you for the Buffalo hotel info. ; It seems like a lot of the Buffalo hotels are going up in price, too many Canadians going down for less expensive flights! ; We're going to be in Buffalo Oct. 16, flying out the 17th direct on Southwest at 6 am. ; We're staying at Boardwalk 2 nights and then 3 nights at Saratoga Springs, mostly for Food and Wine and to see 'The Orchestra' at Epcot (probably only familiar if you are old enough to remember Electric Light Orchestra). ; I booked too late to get 5 nights in a row. ; We were going to add on a cruise but decided to spend 3 nights at Vero Beach to relax before flying home. ; We usually arrive in Buffalo late on our return and book another night before driving home, getting too old to arrive home at 3 am! ; My daughter just returned from a week at Disney and she tried Microtel Inn, 99 per night for park and fly, and she said it was okay, although they didn't bother with the breakfast so I can't recommend or not. ;
Maybe we'll shop around a bit more, but we are booked at Sleep Inn for 114 for now for the park and fly and 99 for our return night.

 

[realfam]

So after enjoying several days at Fort Wilderness, it was sunday and time to head to Port Canaveral and board the new Dream. The first half of our cruise was the 4 nighter in an inside stateroom with new virtual portholes (soon as we heard about them we had to see it for our self). ;DCL, as usually makes things very easy and before we knew it were aboard the ship by 1pm eating lunch at the Cabannas buffet. ;Anything to do with food on a Disney ship is wonderful. ;We had an 5:45pm dinner seating with a dinning rotation of Animators Palette/ Enchanted Garnden/ Royal Palace. ;I must admit Animators Palette is my fav. and the interactive animation on the walls during dinner is way to cool.
We spent most of the first day exploring the new ship and seeing everything. ;The Dream is unbelievable and a must see!

 

[realfam]

A few more pics of us checking out the Dream

And then our first visiters to our porthole

 

[realfam]

We also attended the DVC member welcome party which was alot of fun and plenty of free drinks. ; oh by the way thats not just orange juice in those flutes

 

[obo101]

Looks like you had a fantastic time. ; The Dream looks incredible. ; Loved your photo of Momma's Mickey (I think) shorts!

 

[realfam]

Well the first day on the ship was very over whelming. ; The Dream huge and there is so much to see and do. ; Makes it even hard to show pics, so from here on in I'll just keep throwing pics at everyone. ; Day 2 we were suppose to we were suppose to go to Castaway Cay, but because of the hurricane and the damage it did (they couldn't get the ship into dock because of all the sand washed in. They needed to dredge it) ; The captain swapped our sea day and beach day. ; That worked out well for us since we had another full day to check everything out. ;

One of my favourite things we did on our sea day was watch the new Pirates of the Carribean4 in 3D in the middle of the carribean. ; Way tooooo cool!

 

[realfam]

Day 3 was our Nassua day. ; Were not big fans of Nassua so we treated it as another sea day. ; Time to do thing around the boat while everyone else is ashore. ; It was kind of cool pulling into port and having all the people on the other ships staring at the Dream taking pics. ; Day 4 was our Castaway day and thanks to the hardwork of all the cast members the Dream was able to pull in. ; The island had been hit fairly hard hit by Hurricane Irene. ; The beaches were rough, the roots of the palms were exposed and alot of the plant life was brown from the salt water. ; None the less we were grateful to be there and had a great day regardless. ; Always love snorkeling at the family beach and several rides on Pelican Plunge.
That evening was the last dinner for most cruisers, but for us it was just the half way mark. ; Our wait staff ask us if we wanted them on the second half and we replied yes (they were awesome). ; We received documents in our stateroom how to handle the back to back turnaround. ; It was fairly straight forward. ; Because we were changing staterooms they room stewarts in the am made sure our luggage got transferred. ; We were told by the captain to stay on the ship to the bitter end which was about 10am. ; We got off, went through customs (with no luggage), and then right back up the escalator to the terminal. ; The terminal was completely empty (maybe 20 people), we check in again and received a special boarding card since we were back to back. ; We became gold castaway club members on this next cruise, so we received our gold lanyards (kids loved that). ; With in 45mins we were allowed to get back on the ship. ; The embarkment was very cool because when we got on it was very different experience than past boardings. ; All the staff were busy getting the ship ready for the next cruise and we were allowed to go anywhere. ; So of coarse we headed up to the pool and Aquaduck. ; With no one one the ship we the Aquaduck to ourselves. ; Very very cool. ; After about 2 hours of the Dream to ourselves people started boarding and the adventure was about to start all over again!

 

[realfam]

Back to finish this trip report. ; I have been so busy I have had a chance to finish, so I will be brief and add some pics (since pics are worth a 1000 words).
Well the B2B transition went well and we had several hours of having the Dream to ourselves, it was time to start the adventure all over again. ; Another life boat drill, another sail away party and another start to our dinning rotation. ; The cool thing was that we were able to keep our wait staff who were awesome! ; On the 3 day portion of this B2B we became Gold castaway club members, which brought more perks and some cool gifts. ; One of the coolest perks was the $25 discount you receive for every $100 you spend in the store (which was not a problem for my family).
The hurricane was long gone, and the weather was beautiful for the entire ship. ; This time round I got of with my DD15 in Nassau for a little shopping. ; In Castaway, we got off the ship first thing, I ran the 5km run again, and stayed on the beach to the bitter end. ; The ocean was sooooo warm, definately paradise!
All in all the trip was success. ; 3 or 4 days on the Dream is not enough, but combined it makes a great vacation.