MrMorgan

Divv, I love your sense of humor. There were several LOL moments in the last update. Thanks for brightening my day!

Hurray for an Adventureland PTR! I grew up in Minnesota and had been to this park a few times in the late 80's, (before Outlaw and Underground). I seem to remember the rapids ride being really rough. Is it still like that? Was the Dragon really head-bangy? I just remember it being really intense. Thanks for the update!

Excuse me. Can you please stop updating this thread? Seriously. How am I supposed to get any work done when there are multiple pages of awesome WDW updates to browse? Please do all of us working folk a favor and stop taking so many great pics and posting them here. We have other things we should be doing. One question: how does the merging of the interactive side of the Haunted Mansion line back into the regular line work? Is there a CM there controlling who goes when, or does it just happen naturally? For some reason, I am picturing people arguing over who cut in front of who.

Uh ohhhhh. Bad news for the best of the Big Thunders. This sounds really awful! http://connexionfrance.com/Disneyland-Paris-five-hurt-Thunder-Mountain-12689-view-article.html

I just had a dry, herby, Jever. Not my favorite, but that was all that was offered. I prefer pils that aren't so bitter, like Warsteiner or Beck's Gold. Or Löwenbrau at OKTOBERFEST!

Wow. It just keeps going and going. There is like a whole layer of that coaster that I wasn't expecting! I'm sure after the weather warms up and the trains get broken in, it will be flying through that course. And all those head choppers! Looks great.

I love coasters but I am really sensitive to sea-sickness and any kind of rythmic moving, like swing sets and stuff. Therefore, I was totally panicky before my first cruise last year, but I just took one Bonine pill every day and had absolutely no problem. It was like a miracle! Is that the kind of medication you are talking about? As far as being on a boat, you truly forget about it after a while, and seeing as the Oasis is so gigantic, that will make it even easier. I bet you will love it!

I come from the school of "plan as early as you can", which is something I didn't follow this time and now I am totally stressing because we leave the day after tomorrow and I am only informed about like 3 of our 9 ports of call! If you want to do the "official" excursions, there is a deadline before you embark, which I assume is different for every cruise line. A lot of people here use the Cruise Critic website to set up private excursions, which is a great way to save money and see the same things in smaller groups. I was planning on joining people's private groups through Cruise Critic this time and am too late for even that! So, it's best to plan before hand!

For our upcoming cruise on the Mariner of the Seas, (4 days to go!), we ended up booking the flights and transfers through RCCL. I checked out what it would cost to book it all separately and couldn't find a way to make it work for much less. The only flight that morning that gets into Rome in time to get to the port is kind of late, so, I figured it would be better to pay a few €s more and book it through RCCL so they would feel a little more responsible to wait for us should there be any delays Unfortunately, I've been so busy that I haven't had a lot of time to plan excursions. I was trying to connect with people on Cruise Critic to join up with private tours in Israel, but everyone's groups are already full so it looks like the only option is to do it on our own, (scary), or do it with RCCL, (expensive).

Thanks for the My Time info, everyone. I think I will stick with it... that is if our cruise even HAPPENS now! With all those war ships and missiles flying around the Mediterranean, I'm trying to stay positive, but I am assuming we will have some drastic itinerary changes, (at the least), in order to avoid interfering with the military action.

Hey cruisers, I was just looking through our documents and I noticed that we automatically got "My Time" dining. I understand how it works but I have a question: Is there any reason NOT to do My Time dining?

I just watched that movie and thought it was really cute! Is that the cast of some sit-com in the States? Of course, there was a lot of "subliminal" and "blatant" advertising for the ship and RCCL, but I found it overall very entertaining.

Thanks my flume-riding buddy!

Thanks for the advice. I am signed up at MeetOnCruise.com, (a relatively new site that I think has a great idea), and I will have to check out the boards at Cruise Critic. Has anyone ever been to the waterpark in Kusadasi?

I guess it doesn't matter to me and, (until you said that), I had never even thought about the possibility of doing excursions with a promoter outside of the cruise line. Tell me more! Since we live in and travel all over "Europe", I guess I am more interested in seeing the important cultural stuff in Turkey and Israel than a "Tastes of Italy" tour, or something like that. If the weather is nice enough, I think a beach day is in order on Rhodos and Souda. I'll post the pic of our itinerary again for anyone to look at and share their experiences in any of the ports of call we will be visiting. Another question: If we don't stop in the ports in Israel, is it more likely that we will stop someplace else, or just have more days at sea?

Have they announced an official opening date yet?

So now that we are booked, I have been checking out some of the tours offered. Can you recommend anything specific? There are so many to choose from and it all sounds so interesting.

Well put!

Robb's advice is really good. If you can make it work, a few more days will be very welcomed when it's all over! That said, our first cruise was a 4 night Bahamas route on the RCCL Monarch of the Seas out of Port Canaveral. It was very affordable and because the ship is small to mid-sized, we didn't feel like we "missed something" when it was time to leave. There was enough time to take advantage of everything we were interested in didn't have to spend a lot of time considering "Well, if we do this, then we aren't going to have the time to see that." Know what I mean? We had a great time and it made us really excited to get on a cruise again, (which we are doing in April). I did a quick search for the same cruise and came up with these prices: This is from Southwest Vacations website. As you can see, very affordable! If you want to see more of the ship, this is a video-tour I made: I'm sure you can find other comparable cruises with more interesting ports of call, but for the price, (and I mean seriously, that is rediculously cheap when you consider what you get), I can recommend the Monarch. I think general consensus here in the thread would be try to avoid Carnival Cruise Lines if you can. They are generally the most affordable of the "famous" cruise lines, but it seems they are lacking in quality and costumer service. I have heard and read positive things about them, but over all it's not so good. So, 4 days on RCCL is probably still a better bet than a week on Carnival. I can't speak from experience, though, just from popular opinion

It is a done deal! We are booked on the Mariner, leaving Rome on April 5th, which means I will be celebrating my bday at sea somewhere in the Mediterranean. Yipeeeee! Things reminds me of two questions: Does RCCL do anything "special" for birthdays? And when I say "special", what I mean is "free". Just out of curiosity, if you miss your ship on the first port, is it technically possible to still board the next day in the next port? Our flight is kind of close, (although we booked it thru RCCL so it technically should be fine), and I was just wondering what happens if you miss the boat. Anyone have any experience?

Invisible! Would you rather have to say "Wow, it smells like sh-t in here!" every time you entered a room, or say "OK, and now I'm going to take a sh-t." every time you LEFT a room? Think about church / job interviews / etc.

Personally, I think T.G.2 has a nice ring to it.

Oooh, it does basically look awesome, doesn't it. OK, I need to put the hard sell on Markus and see if I can persuade him to go for it. It's just such a great deal at the moment! $749 for a two week cruise in the Mediterranean (not including flight) on the Mariner of the Seas just seems like such a steal! That includes $100 onboard credit.

GOOD NEWS! I am really close to convincing my man to go on a 14 day cruise through the Mediterranean on the Mariner of the Seas as my birthday present!!! It would be the first half of April, so I'm not sure if it will be really summery warm down there, but it will still be warmer than up here in Hamburg, that's for sure. Anyone ever been on the Mariner or one of it's sister ships and care to share any details? I've only ever been on the Monarch of the Seas, the Aida Blu, and (technically) the Disney Dream. Anyone been to any of the ports in the "Holy Land" itinerary and want to share any tips or anything I can tell Markus in order to get him more motivated? I'm psyched and just need a little more convincing power... The itinerary.

OK, seriously. Just to give you an idea of how huge this ship is: if you look in the right direction from the pool at the back of the ship, you can see the front of the ship coming around the world again already. It is obvious in this photo. Big ship!