Jan 14-21st/2017- Star Wars Eastern cruise for the non Star Wars crowd! COMPLETED!!!

bcwife76

DisneyMomma
Joined
Dec 10, 2014
Well I think the title says it all!

When: January 14-21st 2017 (with a quick stay at WDW beforehand, also a first for us!)
Who: myself, my dh and our two daughters, 6 & 8 at the time. We live just outside of Vancouver BC.
Where: Orlando, St Thomas, Tortola, Castaway Cay.
Why this cruise: Well, it was originally booked as an onboard booking on our first cruise (September 2015 Wonder repo from Vancouver to San Diego) as an Alaskan cruise for August 2016. Then we changed the dates and moved it to the January 13th-20th 2017 sailing on the Wonder to the Bahama's. Sometime around mid-May/early June 2016 we changed our minds AGAIN and moved it to the Fantasy a day later.

Also, I changed our cabin about 11 billion times. I'm just never satisfied :scared:

Since we were flying ALLLLL the way to Orlando from Vancouver and we had never been to WDW before (but have been to the Land several times) we thought we'd stay onsite, fly in two days early and go to Epcot. This turned out to be.....well.......meh.

But I digress.

So as the title suggests, we are not huge Star Wars fans. My husband of course has seen every movie (multiple times), I've had to sit through all 6 original movies at least once (we argue that Empire Strikes Back is the best, whereas I find that the MOST boring of all, and love the one with the Ewoks....which ever one that is :confused3) Told you...serious fans here :rotfl:DH also took our eldest DD to see Force Awakens as soon as it came out (DD#2 and I have yet to see it). We ALL waited to see Rogue One until this cruise.

So if you're hoping to get a million and one juicy details about Star Wars day then you might be out of luck with this trip report....yes we participated but not hard core.

If you're hoping to see millions of photos of food....move along. We eat too fast and rarely take photos of our food.

If you're hoping to hear how fabulous we thought Castaway Cay was.....well.....yeah.....:cool:

I know, I'm totally selling this trip report, aren't I?! :rotfl:

Don't worry, we took photos....I might even post some :cool1:
 
So, a few extra details before we get started.

Originally we had an oceanview room booked but upgraded to a verandah. Then I started reading about extended verandahs....oh boy....did I ever want one of those! And weeks of stalking the website paid off - 5650 came up and I grabbed it!! Finally, all the room switching was done :love:

I had volunteered to set up the private mixology groups for our cruise group. This turned out to be a huge undertaking because over 120 people signed up. And because it was a Star Wars cruise NO one wanted their mixology on Star Wars day. Well in the end some people had no choice. When I first submitted the lists to DCL 30 days out I was told all 4 would be on the first two sea days. Then the next day Alma got back to me and said they had been 'rejected by management' - only one on the first sea day, one on the second sea day, one on St Thomas day (at 4pm as all ashore was 4pm) and then the last on Star Wars day. People were not happy :headache: but honestly everyone was super supportive and on one had a bad word to say to my face :sail: hehheh, after some shuffling we still had 4 groups, the last one consisting of only 18 people - DCL says the minimum is 20 but I think because of all the back and forth they let that slide. Phew!

Signed up for the fish extender gift exchange again but this time, instead of getting 'creative' which, let's face, I am NOT - I bought the gifts on Etsy ;-) Door magnets, mickey shaped with the cruise date and ship and deck locator cards.

Flights were booked by the end of June. No direct flights from Vancouver to Orlando. No direct flights from Seattle to Orlando. So we flew Vancouver-San Francisco - Orlando and on the way home we flew Orlando-Houston-Vancouver. All with United.

When online check in came around (90 days, woohoo, our first silver cruise!) princess and Frozen meet and greet tickets were secured, excursions booked, Palo brunch and dinner booked.....phew!

We booked our rental car through Costco. We booked two nights at Port Orleans Riverside. We purchased one day tickets to Epcot (thinking it was the most 'iconic' and least like Disneyland of all the parks, excluding Animal Kingdom which I had no desire to go to) Made dining reservations starting 180 days out. In true fashion, I changed our dining reservations a million times over. Fast passes secured at 60 days out for Test Track (Tier 1) and Spaceship Earth and Seas with Nemo (Tier 2). Somewhere around the 30 day mark I booked the Dessert Party for Illuminations.

And then......after months and months.... it was time to go!
 
Yay! I'm so excited you're writing this. Both of your trips are right before mine, so expect me to stalk your threads. :D
 


Awww yay, people actually want to read my TR lol :welcome:

@TestingH20 I will try really hard to have this finished before you leave on your cruise (but I can't promise 100% :rotfl:) I think you are off to Alaska before us though? We are on the August 28th sailing.
 
Awww yay, people actually want to read my TR lol :welcome:

@TestingH20 I will try really hard to have this finished before you leave on your cruise (but I can't promise 100% :rotfl:) I think you are off to Alaska before us though? We are on the August 28th sailing.
Oh. You're right. We are July 3. Ok. I'll try to repay you with a fast TR this summer. :rotfl:
 


Yay!! :banana: So glad that you decided to do a TR after all. ::yes:: We are actually thinking about this same cruise next year as the next in the line of adventures with the family unit, so I'm looking forward to hearing all about it. Not big Star Wars fans here either so I could give or take on that. I saw the first one, when it first came out. That's it! :laughing:
 
I've read a few of your other TR's and I like your style! You write just like I think! Can't wait to read this one!
Not a huge Star Wars fan, but our family loved our cruise on the Fantasy...so this will be like re-living our trip! Can't wait to read more!
 
Yay!! :banana: So glad that you decided to do a TR after all. ::yes:: We are actually thinking about this same cruise next year as the next in the line of adventures with the family unit, so I'm looking forward to hearing all about it. Not big Star Wars fans here either so I could give or take on that. I saw the first one, when it first came out. That's it! :laughing:

I've read a few of your other TR's and I like your style! You write just like I think! Can't wait to read this one!
Not a huge Star Wars fan, but our family loved our cruise on the Fantasy...so this will be like re-living our trip! Can't wait to read more!


:welcome: and thanks for joining in!
 
I'm excited to read your trip report! We're leaving on our Eastern SWDAS next Friday! We're like you - we'll participate a little in SWDAS, but we're not hardcore. Oh, and traveling from Seattle - hi neighbor to the north!
 
I'm excited to read your trip report! We're leaving on our Eastern SWDAS next Friday! We're like you - we'll participate a little in SWDAS, but we're not hardcore. Oh, and traveling from Seattle - hi neighbor to the north!

:wave: :welcome: You will have a blast!! Definitely won't be finished my TR before you leave but hopefully I'll at least have a good portion done. And I know you can sympathize with what a schlep it will be to Florida from Seattle - were you able to get a direct flight or do you have layovers as well?
 
Ok before I really start just a couple more 'mousekeeping' notes :laughing:

I only have photos of 2 days worth of navigators. I was meticulous (or so I thought) about keeping them every day. DH knew this (and although he didn't quite understand why he still promised not to touch them). But when it came time to pack up on our last night I found only TWO days worth of Navigators!! Star Wars day and Castaway Cay day. :eek: Eventhough I kept them all stacked up all I can assume is that our room host threw them away? :confused3 Super disappointed. For future cruises I will put them in one of our suitcases immediately after using them that day! So I will post the two I have when it comes time to writing about those days. The entire set of 7 are now up on Scott's DCL blog - and I will be referring to those as well so that I can actually recall what we did on certain days! :rotfl2:

Also we took no photos of our room, sparce photos of our lovely balcony and no photos of towel animals. Again....what the heck? We took photos of everything on our first cruise. Boooooooo!


Ok and let's begin!

We flew out on Thursday January 12th but actually left our house on the Wednesday. We needed to drop our dog off at the kennel (which is 2/3rds of the way to the airport) and we had an earlyish (8:40am) flight the next morning so we figured we'd get a room at the Fairmont Vancouver airport. It's in the terminal (much like the Hyatt at MCO) and is not cheap (hello Fairmont!) but I managed to score a Black Friday deal in November for $224CAD for one night (which is a fabulous deal, trust me!) After dropping the dog off we continued to the airport and left our car at Park N' Fly (hello another coupon deal, woohoo) and took the shuttle to the international terminal. Checked into our room, dropped our bags and then went in search of dinner, settling on White Spot in the domestic terminal. After dinner it was back up to the room for a quick bath for the girls before bed. Had a shower myself and then went to bed.

Thursday morning we were up and checked out of our room just after 6am and then made the gruelling 30 second walk down stairs to our check in desk :rotfl:It was certainly nicer than having to get up and out of the house for 5am in the -7C/21F weather :earseek:

Now we were booked through United but our first flight (Van to San Fran) was a code share with Air Canada. Grrr. Not a fan of AC. So we were unable to do online check in and AC gave us seats in the second to last row. :cool: Bastards.

Checked two suitcases and then went through security and US customs and walked to our gate. It was located right NEXT to Timmy's so coffee and bagels were consumed and then we waited. And waited. At 7:45 there was still no staff at our gate. :confused: And then around 8am the flight time changed. From 8:40am to 9:20am. And no explanation. BITE ME AIR CANADA!!!

Our 2 hour layover in San Fran was starting to dwindle. Finally sometime around 8:30 staff populated the desk and an announcement came on stating that due to weather in San Fran (so, not even here) they were down to one runway for all incoming flights. Awesome. They were hoping to have us in the air for 9:45am with us landing at 12noon (our flight to Orlando was 1:05pm).

It was probably around 9:45am when we did take off and they had to de-ice our plane as well. Fun times.

We landed at 12:05 and by the time we taxi'd to our gate it was 12:20 and we had 45 minutes to catch our connecting flight. AND we were at the back of the plane. I was NOT a happy camper.

Luckily we landed at the international terminal and our flight to FL was next door in terminal 3 but we still booted it to our gate. They were at final boarding at that point and maybe 4 more people got on after us??

Oh and thank you United for changing our seats!!! When I booked this flight in June I had us in row 14 but when we did online check in they had moved us to rows 26 and 27!!! FFS. And of course when I tried to change there were only single seats available.

I hate airline travel.

So anyway DH had the row behind me with the girls and I had a row to myself (so luxurious lol) He watched out the window to see luggage still be loaded and we just crossed our fingers that our luggage had made it.

Flight was fairly uneventful save for the family of 5 in front of me that annoyed the flight crew to no end :hyper:

We landed 20 minutes ahead of schedule at 8:50 pm. But again being put at the back of the plane meant we were pretty much last off. Then one of my kids had to use the bathroom. Then we had to take a shuttle (train??) to another terminal. By the time we got to baggage claim almost all the bags had been picked up and thankfully, there were our two checked suitcases :dancer: *phew* I could breath.

We found the Budget desk and since we had more luggage than we anticipated the clerk managed to talk us into getting a bigger vehicle for only $20 more. Totally worth it. We ended up getting a Chevy Malibu (I know, how smaller did we originally book?!) Using GPS on Dh's phone we were on our way and soon enough we were arriving at Port Orleans Riverside!

Went up to the check in desk and got all set up. Got our first set of magic bands (they don't ship them to Canadian addresses) which I loved. Man those things are handy! Managed to grab a couple quick photos in the lobby as well.

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We were staying in a royal room river view so we got back in the car and drove around the property til we got to the Magnolia building. Man it was HUGE. Yikes. We took out some luggage and made the trek up to our room. Since we weren't sure where we were going of course we ended parking far away from where our room actually was. Oh well.

It was after 11pm at this point and we were all starving. The food court in the main building was open til midnight so back to the car and off to find food! Shared some pizza and chicken nuggets I think? Anyway we were all pretty tired at this point and some of us (read: my eldest DD) were getting quite grumpy. Can't blame her really. Talk about a long travel day. Plus it was nearly midnight there but only 9pm our time. We bolted down the food and then went back to our room to crash. Too tired to even figure out the fireworks in the headboards or take photos lol Don't worry, we grabbed some photos the next day.

We all fell into a deep sleep but had to be up 8 hours later as we had a 9:15am breakfast reservation at Epcot :scared1:
 
Bastards.

This literally made me laugh out loud. :rotfl2: OK, that's just a horrible travel day. Even with everything going smoothly that's a lot of travel and then with all the delays - yuck! Not a fabulous start but at least you are leaving the sub-zero temps behind. To be honest, the fact that you all made it to Port Orleans without anybody killing anybody is an achievement in itself. :thumbsup2 The early morning start in Epcot will be interesting to read about. Hopefully it's uneventful. ;)
 
This literally made me laugh out loud. :rotfl2: OK, that's just a horrible travel day. Even with everything going smoothly that's a lot of travel and then with all the delays - yuck! Not a fabulous start but at least you are leaving the sub-zero temps behind. To be honest, the fact that you all made it to Port Orleans without anybody killing anybody is an achievement in itself. :thumbsup2 The early morning start in Epcot will be interesting to read about. Hopefully it's uneventful. ;)
It really is a miracle we all got there unscathed. I can be a pretty big monster when I'm tired and stressed. I think I was just thankful to leave the COLD. :crazy2: Going to write about Epcot now so......you'll see :rolleyes:
 
Friday January 13th (dun dun dun).

Alarm set for 8am (5am Pacific, yay!!) Think DH and I pried ourselves out of bed 15 minutes later. Had to use a giant shoe horn to get the girls up at 8:30. 8 hours sleep is sufficient for us but not really for kids aged 6 & 8, esp when they've been travelling all day. But with a little coaxing in and reminders that we were going to DISNEY they got up and changed without much of a grump.

Now I won't drag this day on for you - after all this is a Disney CRUISE trip report, not a Disney WORLD trip report. So I'll try to be as succinct as possible :D

Got our butts in gear, told GPS to head to Epcot and maybe 10 minutes later we saw this:

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Saved the $20 parking fee since we were staying onsite and were directed by an already-harried-looking parking attendant to open parking.

Made the short walk to the gates, got inside and headed straight to take this photo:
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Not the best picture since it's crowded already and none of US are in the photo :headache: Here's one with the kids and I, though not the best photo:

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We had a 9:15am reservation at Garden Grill so we somehow figured out our way there and got there right on time.

Breakfast is served family style. First they bring out a skillet full of warm cinnamon rolls. All. The. Yum. Then a much bigger skillet filled with eggs, bacon, sausages, potatoes, etc.

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While we gorged ourselves silly, some friends came by to say hello:


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blurry Pluto

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During our time there the restaurant (which also rotates by the way, verrrrry slowly) was not that busy so all the characters stopped by our table at least 3 times. By the time we left the restaurant at 10:15 there were much larger crowds outside.

Our first FP, Spaceship Earth, was starting at 10:30 so we checked out the standby line for Soarin' first since it's in the same building at this restaurant. It was 40 minutes long so we decided to skip it and make our way towards Spaceship Earth. We passed Character Spot which had a posted wait time of 10 minutes so we ducked in there!


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After that we were well within our FP window so we headed to Spaceship Earth (kind of cheesy! :p) then made our way to Test Track for our next FP. Awesome ride, very well done but for us, Radiator Racers still beats it :thumbsup2 We had some time to kill before our last FP (I had tried to schedule them all for ending by noon or 1pm in hopes of being able to score more FP's) so we got a drink at Starbucks. Our last FP was Under the Sea with Nemo. Much like the Ariel ride in DCA but this one also has a bit of an aquarium (nice touch Epcot!) so we spent some time in there after the ride.

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Were not able to score a FP for Frozen (they were all gone for the day!) and FP's for TT and Soarin' were not available until 5:30 or later (by then we would be in France having dinner) so we decided to FP Mission to Mars - the window opened 10 minutes later and there was not much line to speak of :rotfl2: There are two sides to this ride - Orange and Green. One side you experience actual G forces and it can make people feel sick so DH chose that side and the girls and I went on the other side! It was ok but I felt VERY claustrophobic.

Met back up with DH, bought the girls some popcorn (we were still full from breakfast and didn't end up eating again until dinner :thumbsup2) then got another FP this time for Living with the Land. Again we thought this ride was very cheesy, although the tour of the hydroponics was very interesting. Epcot as it happens grows a lot of their own produce to serve in restaurants right there in the park. Very cool.

Somewhere in there we also did Journey into Imagination with Figment. There were some cool interactive displays after this ride.

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At this point we went to Starbucks (sorry I said it was earlier, but it wasn't lol) and I got an Epcot You are Here mug to add to my collection. Went into the biggest store in Epcot, Mouse Gear, to try and souvenir shop but I all I came out with was a small snow globe.


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Once we were done on this side of Epcot we walked over to World Showcase to try and check out some of the country pavillions.
 
At this point it's worth noting that the weather was not perfect that day. It was a decent temperature (probably mid 70's) but it kept threatening to rain and would 'mist' on and off most of the day. I started out the day in 3/4 length yoga pants, changed into shorts after breakfast and then after dinner changed back into my pants lol

Some pics of World showcase:

Outside the Canada Pavillion, where we headed first

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Uber-cheesy film narrated by Martin Short :sad2:

Then onto the UK and France
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We killed some time looking at art for sale. Some really interesting and lovely pieces.

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Then around 5pm the heavens opened and it RAINED. Damn.

We scurried into a shopping 'mall' in France and waited it out. Eventually we made our way to Chef de France for dinner - our reservation was 5:30 but we showed up 10 minutes early to avoid more rain and they seated us promptly at 5:30.

Dh ordered us a bottle of Prosecco

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In order to recall what we had for dinner I'd have to go back and find the menu :rolleyes1 Suffice it to say it was yummy. We skipped dessert because we had reservations for 8pm for the Illuminations Dessert Party so we decided to skip seeing some more pavillions as the kids were kind of bored of them, and instead we tried to head back to TT to go standby. Unfortunately the wait was 70+ minutes :scared: so we tried Soarin' which had a more reasonable 40 minute wait. It was pretty accurate (maybe 35 minutes) but worth it. LOVE that ride. :love:

It was about 7:30 at this point so before heading to Illuminations we got in line for Inside Out photos. I LOVE this movie. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.
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Across the way we saw Baymax and he had no line so we jumped right in.

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It was nearly 8pm at this point and we needed to get to the dessert party so we hightailed it back over to World Showcase.

Coming up next: confusion at the dessert party and the end of our Epcot day (plus hotel room photos!)
 
Yay, you did a trippie :cool1:

Wow, what a loooong travel day :crazy2: I am so glad we now have direct flights from YYC because I remember how long the day was getting to MCO when we didn't have that flight! :sad2:

Air Canada sucks the big one!!! o_O I avoid them as much as possible :headache:

Too bad you didn't go to MK, much more magical and so many differences from DL that you would have enjoyed ::yes::

Looking forward to the cruise part now popcorn::

Cute girls princess:princess:
 

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