Why are you flying to Rochester for labor day? We will miss you as we are flying down to Orlando the Thursday night before Labor Day to stay at WDW for 4 days before heading to Barcelona to start our Med cruise and then the WBTA.
I don't have an iPhone or an iPad. Oddly...for computer stuff I'm typically an apple guy----Longtime Macbook user and had an iMac (a pretty orange one to go with all my tigger stuff
) before that.....but alas...I'm a Verizon customer and I absolutely LOVE being with Verizon (I almost never am without signal....I was recently at a retreat weekend at a lodge/resort on a mountain near San Francisco with a bunch of my westcoast friends and colleagues who ALL had their fancy iphones and I was the ONLY person with any signal so I was the only person who could make or receive phone calls and texts
------plus all my cheerleaders and their families are verizon customers so the free in-network calling feature is a big bonus), so an iPhone is out of the question for me. I did just recently get the new droid/htc incredible smart phone though...which is, for all intents and purposes, verizon's version of the iphone....and I love it. I actually just downloaded the Kindle app for it and bought several books to read onboard, as well...so you will see me with my phone onboard the ship a lot....but I'll be using it to read books & maybe use the internet occasionally. (I have 5 books in it...so I'd rather pack the phone and charger than the 5 hard cover books
)
Yes, that's exactly right.....by booking "dummy dates" you just pick an itinerary you MIGHT want (but aren't 100% committed to) or you just pick any random itinerary (perhaps based on what has the cheapest booking deposit at that moment if there's a deal) for a ways out in the future. Then once you know more solidly what your plans are, you just cancel switch the reservation----effectively cancelling the one you made and booking the one you want. The benefit is that you typically get to keep your OBC and can often times carry over the onboard booking discount.
For example, when Jason and I were on the Double Dip cruise in the fall of 2008 (where we met many of our fabulous fellow cruisers on this thread----like BuckeyeGal, MagicMe, Disneygirl02, etc.), we all knew through the rumor mill that the Magic was going back to the Med in 2010 even though the dates and itineraries hadn't been announced...and we knew that meant TransAtlantic cruises, too....so Jason and I just booked two back to back cruises for December 2009 that we never had any intention of taking (they were literally like the last available dates at that point I think) and then once they announced the Med dates and the TA trips, we had our
travel agent call the morning bookings opened and move our reservations from those Dec. trips to our current B2B trips. It worked out well for us-----the only issue was/is that if the cruise you are switching TO has a higher deposit (the Med and TA cruises had higher deposits than the Caribbean cruises we'd originally booked) then you have to pay the difference....but we were able to keep all our other onboard credits, etc.
Plus....we love having dummy dates not only for the $$$ reason but because that way when you get off the ship, you're doing so with the assurance that another
DCL trip is in your future....which is kind of a small light at the end of the tunnel!!
Because disembarkation is always a depressing day (I usually quite literally cry the last night of the trip and am usually in the saddest, foulest, *****iest mood the morning we have to get off the ship----because it's always so early
and we cuz we're leaving-----that I need that little pick-me-up of "well, at least we're coming back" to make it through the long drive back to the airport, etc.