Aloha! Welcome to part 1 of my Hawaii O'ahu Aulani trip report! In this post, I will share the details of the planning process of our trip as well as our booking and wait listing experience for the first time as a Disney Vacation Club (DVC) member. The main purpose of our trip was to attend our friend's wedding at Turtle Bay resort, which is located at North Shore; therefore, we have a little more restriction in our vacation plan in terms of date and location.
FLIGHT
I always like to start planning vacation by looking into our flight options. I usually start looking for suitable flight options at Kayak.com, which give you option to receive fare alert thru e-mail, or Google Flights, which give you fare calendar and filter options of airline alliances, # of stops, price, time and more. When searching for flights, remember to include nearby airport for a cheaper option. There are no direct flight from Philadelphia to Honolulu, so we have the option of different connections or drive to New York for direct flight. Generally, when I pick connecting flight, I tried to avoid LAX since a lot of the terminals are not connected, so you might have to go thru security check again when changing flights. We ended up booking US Airways/American Airline from PHL - DFW - HNL with $880 per person round trip with less than 2 hours layover both way.
CAR RENTAL
Unless you have really good corporate or personal discount with one of the car rental company, I highly recommend Priceline.com, and take advantage of the "Name Your Own Price" tool. If you only plan to stay around Waikiki and Honolulu area, you might not need to rent a car. There are plenty of tour bus and taxi to go around. But if you like to control your own schedule or travel around the island (like to the North Shore, Kualoa Ranch or the Pali Lookout, which are all highly recommended by me), then renting a car is the way to go. Since there are only 2 of us, we were able to get a compact car for 4 days with only $20/day from Priceline.com.
HOTEL
As noted on the previous post, we have recently became a Disney Vacation Club member, so our goal was to get a studio or 1-bedroom at Aulani, which is one of the thirteen Disney Vacation Club Resorts. However, since we got our contract closed late, we were not able to get any room with full-availability. I signed up for 2 wait list (maximum allowed) with 2 different room types and hoping one will go thru. In the mean time, I booked a back up hotel near Waikiki beach via Expedia.com with Free Cancellation policy. Luckily, one of our wait list came thru 3 weeks before our trip. You can also check for partial availability of different room types at Aulani and combine your trip that way. We ended up getting a Deluxe Studio - Island Gardens View for all 4 nights at Aulani.
OTHERS
1. Kualoa Ranch - Beautiful ranch, Movie site for a lot of famous movie, with plenty of activities available including ATV, horseback riding, and zip line. This is a very popular sightseeing site, so it is better to book in advance. There is also a 10% off discount for making reservation online.
2. PEARL HARBOR HISTORIC SITES (USS Arizona) - You can reserve free tickets on the website instead of joining tour group.
3. Go Oahu Card - Like for many city, there is a Go Oahu Card that you can get for discount pass online, or thru other wholesaler (like Costco). It is definitely worth it if you plan to attend many of the activities included with the card.
4. Dining @ Aulani - You can make free reservation online for 2 of the restaurants at Aulani, Ama Ama and Makahiki - Character Breakfast. The character breakfast is quite popular, so if it is something you are interested to try, you should definitely make a reservation in advance.
Hopefully you find this post useful in planning your own dream vacation!
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Journey to becoming a Disney Vacation Club Member
During our last trip to Disney World, we stopped by the Disney Vacation Club booth. It was our first time hearing about Disney Vacation Club. Although we got some information at the booth, we didn't fully understand the concept of Disney Vacation Club at that time. About 3 months after our trip, I finally got a chance to sit down and read all about Disney Vacation Club and decided to buy into it. To simplify it, it is a timeshare with a lot of flexibility and benefits.
Here is a quick summary of the Disney Vacation Club membership:
Total - 95 days
1/3/15 - Offer made and accepted
1/6/15 - Documents and deposit received, ROFR sent to Disney
2/5/15 - Passed ROFR (exactly 30 days)
2/19/15 - Closing documents received by us
2/25/15 - Documents and fund received by title company
3/23/15 - Deed recorded on OCC website
4/8/15 - Called DVC and got membership ID, logged into the website to make first reservation!
Timeline will vary for everyone depend on the closing and title company you are using and how fast both buyer and seller respond. Hopefully, all these information are helpful in your journey to becoming a Disney Vacation Club Member! Welcome home!
Here is a quick summary of the Disney Vacation Club membership:
- Instead of buying a fixed week at a certain location, you are buying points to use every year at any time and at any of the 13 Disney Vacation Club (DVC) Resorts, and if you buy direct from Disney, you can use the points for Disney Cruises, Disney Hotels that are not one of the DVC Resorts, Adventures by Disney, and the Concierge Collections.
- You can buy as low as 25 points contract.
- You have the flexibility to borrow points from next use year or bank points from this year to use next year if you don't have the time to travel.
- You can buy either directly from Disney Vacation Club or resale thru various agents on the market.
- A lot of perks and discount at Disney World and Disneyland. (Here is the 2015 DVC member perks)
- After the initial cost on the contract, you will have to pay annual due which is calculated based on number of points on the contract and the home resort. (Here is the 2015 annual dues for the 12 DVC Resorts)
- Each DVC Resorts have different deed expiration dates.
- 2042 - Beach Club Villa, Boardwalk Villa, Hilton Head, Old Key West, Vero Beach, Wilderness Lodge
- 2054 - Saratoga Springs
- 2057 - Animal Kingdom and Old Key West (with Extension)
- 2060 - Bay Lake Tower, Grand Californian
- 2062 - Aulani
- 2064 - Grand Floridian
- 2066 - Polynesian villas and Bungalows
- Make sure you understand the ins and outs of the DVC membership. Read up on all the basic information before you start looking for a listings or call Disney Vacation Club. There are many good websites to check. My first step was to request a free Disney Vacation Club DVD and read up on Disney's own website for as much information as possible. Also remember to check their current special offer on the Disney Vacation Club membership. If you need more details, you can read DVCnews' guide on DVC for beginners and any DVC related news. If you have additional questions, you can check up on the Disney Vacation Club forums and you can always ask questions on the forum, which will be answers by all the nice and experience members promptly.
- Set a budget. I think this is an important step no matter what you are buying. There are few financing options for timeshares. With that being said, for me, it doesn't make sense to finance to buy Disney Vacation Club membership. One being that the interest rate is usually high (10-12%). The interest that you pay for the DVC membership might just offset the benefits and discounts that you get from it. Another reason for me is that Disney vacation should be an enjoyment, not a financial burden. Therefore, I set a budget where I am comfortable paying without having to finance.
- Calculate your need. Depend on the size of your family, length of vacation you usually take, and how often you vacation, you will need different number of points. For us (family of 2 adults only), we got a contract for 120 points. We are planning to travel to Disney World every other year for a length of 4-5 days. Depending on the season and the resort, we might be able to get one bedroom villa, but we also don't mind studio. Typically, 1 night at the studio can range from 10 points to 37 points. You can check for the both 2015 and 2016 point chart here. If you are not sure, my advice is to buy a small contract first (100 points or less) to try out DVC, and you can always add more points later on. If you buy a big contract, you won't be able to break it or sell part of it.
- Locations vs. Value. After you determine approximately how many points your family need, you will have to pick out your home resort. Home resort is important if you have a specific preference of resort and if you tend to book your trip early. Your home resort will give you the booking advantage of 11 month, and you can book your non-home resort at 7 month booking window. Generally, you would want to buy where you want to stay, but if you not an early planner that would take advantage of the 11-month booking window (like us), you would want to pick the home resort with the best value. Here is a suggested ranking provided by DVC Resale market. After doing many research, we decided that we don't really mind where we stay and we generally don't book/plan our trip more than 3 month ahead, so we decided on Saratoga Springs as our home resort. With that being said, there are also a few post suggesting that the price are going up for Grand Floridian, Grand Californian, and Beach Club Villa with Disney not accepting any more wait list. The resale price for majority of the DVC have been going up as well. It would be all down to your personal preference in locations vs. number of points that you get within your budget.
- Find the perfect listings. If you decided to buy direct from Disney, you can call them to purchase over the phone. If you have Disney Visa Card, make sure you take advantage of the 0% APR Disney Vacation Financing for 6 month. If you want to buy resale, you can check out DVC finder which is a search engine for majority of the DVC resale listing on the market, and update pretty frequently. Other major DVC resale company are Resale DVC, DVC Magic, The Timeshare Store, and DVC Resale Market. New listings are on the market everyday. You can sign up for the mailing lists for these company to get e-mail alerts. You are welcome to make any offer that you feel fit for the listing. The per point price can vary for the same home resort based on size of the contract and loaded or stripped. The bigger the contract, the per point price is usually lower. The per point price is also lower if the contract is stripped, meaning there are probably no points left for the current use year or the seller can have also already borrowed points from next use year.
Total - 95 days
1/3/15 - Offer made and accepted
1/6/15 - Documents and deposit received, ROFR sent to Disney
2/5/15 - Passed ROFR (exactly 30 days)
2/19/15 - Closing documents received by us
2/25/15 - Documents and fund received by title company
3/23/15 - Deed recorded on OCC website
4/8/15 - Called DVC and got membership ID, logged into the website to make first reservation!
Timeline will vary for everyone depend on the closing and title company you are using and how fast both buyer and seller respond. Hopefully, all these information are helpful in your journey to becoming a Disney Vacation Club Member! Welcome home!
 |
| Received my DVC membership card and letter on 4/21/15 |
Thursday, August 6, 2015
2014 Disney World Star Wars Weekend 4-day Trip (Part 3)
Welcome to part 3 of our Disney World Star Wars weekend trip report. In this post, I will briefly talked about day 3 of our trip at Magic Kingdom and our half day trip at Epcot on our last day.
For Magic Kingdom, our first goal was to watch both the Fantasy Parade and the Electrical Parade and the second goal was the character dining. We reserved our FastPass+ month before our vacation on the rides that we are most interested. You can reserve the FastPass+ 30 days before you arrive or up to 60 days if you booked the Disney World Resort Vacation package thru Disney. You can select up to 3 rides initially. As soon as the park open, we took the train to Frontierland. We didn't have any FastPass+ reserved there, so we wanted to start taking rides there before the line get too long. As expected, there were less than 10minute wait on most of the rides, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Pirates of the Caribbean at Adventureland. We made our way down to Adventureland and then Liberty Square by 10:30am and the lines started to get longer. We started to check on our Disney App for estimated wait time for all the rides in the park and just find one that we are interested at with a shorter wait time. Around 11am, we head over to Cinderella's Royal Table. We were not able to get a reservation at Cinderella's Royal Table for 2 online even 2 months before our vacation, but we wanted to give it a try. We head over before the restaurant was open and talked to one of the cast member at the check-in counter. In less than 10min, she found a table for us and told us to return in half an hour to check in. After in line for 15-20min for check-in and taking photo with Cinderella, we were finally seated upstairs in the dining room.
Overall, it was a great character dining experience. It was definitely on the pricey side. If you want to use your dining plan, you would have to 2 of your table service dining. We didn't think it was a good way to use our dining plan, we actually paid for our lunch. We received 1 large copy and 4 small copies of our photo with Cinderella at the end of our lunch. If your kids love the princesses, Cinderella's Royal Table is a great choice.
After another ride or two, we walked to the Main Street to wait for the Fantasy Parade.
As always, we really enjoyed the parade and was happy to see that they incorporated Frozen into the parade. We spent the afternoon taking photos, shopping, and took 2-3 more rides when we found the wait time was short. We had our last character dining reservation at Crystal Palace, which is not as fancy as Cinderella's Royal Table, but it only cost 1 table service dining from our dining plan. It was an American style buffet dinner, and we got to take photos with Winnie the Pooh and Friends.
As always, we ended our night at the Disney park with parade and firework!
On our last day, we checked out from our hotel in the morning and left our luggage with the bell desk. We took advantage of the magic hour to get into Epcot early. Using that extra hour, we were able to ride Spaceship Earth, Test Track, and The Seas with Nemo & Friends, which were the main rides that we were interested. And fortunately, the EPCOT international flower & garden festival decorations and displays were still up even though the event ended a few days ago. On the side note, I was actually very excited to use our dining plan to get Starbucks coffee and breakfast at Epcot to start our day. Coffee was way better than the ones at our resort. We used our last quick service dining plan at Katsura Grill, a Japanese restaurant at the World Showcase. We enjoyed Epcot as more of a relaxing end to our trip after 2 long days at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studio. We left the Epcot around 2:30pm to retrieve our luggage at the bell desk and ride the Disney's Magical Express to airport. We will definitely be back for Animal Kingdom!
Thank you for visiting my blog!
For Magic Kingdom, our first goal was to watch both the Fantasy Parade and the Electrical Parade and the second goal was the character dining. We reserved our FastPass+ month before our vacation on the rides that we are most interested. You can reserve the FastPass+ 30 days before you arrive or up to 60 days if you booked the Disney World Resort Vacation package thru Disney. You can select up to 3 rides initially. As soon as the park open, we took the train to Frontierland. We didn't have any FastPass+ reserved there, so we wanted to start taking rides there before the line get too long. As expected, there were less than 10minute wait on most of the rides, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Pirates of the Caribbean at Adventureland. We made our way down to Adventureland and then Liberty Square by 10:30am and the lines started to get longer. We started to check on our Disney App for estimated wait time for all the rides in the park and just find one that we are interested at with a shorter wait time. Around 11am, we head over to Cinderella's Royal Table. We were not able to get a reservation at Cinderella's Royal Table for 2 online even 2 months before our vacation, but we wanted to give it a try. We head over before the restaurant was open and talked to one of the cast member at the check-in counter. In less than 10min, she found a table for us and told us to return in half an hour to check in. After in line for 15-20min for check-in and taking photo with Cinderella, we were finally seated upstairs in the dining room.
After another ride or two, we walked to the Main Street to wait for the Fantasy Parade.
As always, we really enjoyed the parade and was happy to see that they incorporated Frozen into the parade. We spent the afternoon taking photos, shopping, and took 2-3 more rides when we found the wait time was short. We had our last character dining reservation at Crystal Palace, which is not as fancy as Cinderella's Royal Table, but it only cost 1 table service dining from our dining plan. It was an American style buffet dinner, and we got to take photos with Winnie the Pooh and Friends.
On our last day, we checked out from our hotel in the morning and left our luggage with the bell desk. We took advantage of the magic hour to get into Epcot early. Using that extra hour, we were able to ride Spaceship Earth, Test Track, and The Seas with Nemo & Friends, which were the main rides that we were interested. And fortunately, the EPCOT international flower & garden festival decorations and displays were still up even though the event ended a few days ago. On the side note, I was actually very excited to use our dining plan to get Starbucks coffee and breakfast at Epcot to start our day. Coffee was way better than the ones at our resort. We used our last quick service dining plan at Katsura Grill, a Japanese restaurant at the World Showcase. We enjoyed Epcot as more of a relaxing end to our trip after 2 long days at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studio. We left the Epcot around 2:30pm to retrieve our luggage at the bell desk and ride the Disney's Magical Express to airport. We will definitely be back for Animal Kingdom!
Thank you for visiting my blog!
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
2014 Disney World Star Wars Weekend 4-day Trip (Part 2)
Welcome to part 2 of my Disney World Star Wars Weekend trip report. In this post, I will mainly talk about things that we did or saw at Hollywood Studios for Star Wars Weekends. A quick note, we are two adults that love Star Wars, so we skipped some of the regular rides and shows to spend as much time as we can on Star Wars related events.
The first main Star Wars event of the day was the "Legends of the Force" motorcade and celebrity welcome. In the motorcade, you will see most of the characters from the movie series and from the Star Wars: The Clone Wars. We didn't know that the motorcade was so popular, so we didn't get there in time for a good spot for photos and videos. Nevertheless, it was a very nice 15-20 minutes parade.
We took advantage of the FastPass+ and use it to save our wait time on the rides. We also used the My Disney Experience app to check wait time on the other rides and change our FastPass+ selection thru out the day if necessary. The main rides and shows that we did at Hollywood Studios were The Great Movie Ride, Star Tours, Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, Studio Backlot Tour, Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show, Toy Story Midway Mania!, and Fantasmic!, These were all great ride and shows. In between the shows and ride, we went to several character greetings including Chewbacca, Darth Vader, and Anakin Skywalker. Each line was about 30 minute wait except for Darth Vader, which of course was the most popular one and we waited for about an hour in line for photos. We also visited the Darth's Mall, which had a lot of cool and limited edition merchandise. They also served Star Wars themed food and drink inside the Darth's Mall, such as popcorn, cupcake and soft drinks.
Around 5pm, we head over to our Star Wars Dine dinner reservation at Hollywood & Vine. We made our reservation 2 months in advance, and it was already over 75% booked at that time. If you are interested in doing Star Wars Dine at Hollywood & Vine, make your reservation EARLY! We used 2 of our table service meals for each person from our dining plan on this theme character dinning. It was definitely worth it! When we were called to be seated, we got to take a photo with Chip and Dale dressed as ewoks, and was given a photo card to download that photo for free on-line. Hollywood & Vine provides an American buffet style dinner. The food was decent and there were a varieties of Star Wars themed desserts (Please see photos in the next video). There were 4 characters going around to your table for photos, Jedi Mickey, Princess Leia Minnie, Storm Trooper Donald, and Darth Vader Goofy. Overall, it was a great dining experience, and I would definitely recommend to any Star Wars fan.
We ended the night with the Fantasmic! show and firework. I personally think Fantasmic! is one of the must watch show at Hollywood Studios with great visual and sound effects. Overall, we had a blast at the Star Wars Weekends event at Disney's Hollywood Studios. We will probably consider doing it again after Star Wars: Episode VII come out, and hopefully, there will be more Star Wars rides or shows added.
Thank you for visiting and reading my post! Part 3 of this trip report will include our trip to Magic Kingdom and Epcot!
The first main Star Wars event of the day was the "Legends of the Force" motorcade and celebrity welcome. In the motorcade, you will see most of the characters from the movie series and from the Star Wars: The Clone Wars. We didn't know that the motorcade was so popular, so we didn't get there in time for a good spot for photos and videos. Nevertheless, it was a very nice 15-20 minutes parade.
Around 5pm, we head over to our Star Wars Dine dinner reservation at Hollywood & Vine. We made our reservation 2 months in advance, and it was already over 75% booked at that time. If you are interested in doing Star Wars Dine at Hollywood & Vine, make your reservation EARLY! We used 2 of our table service meals for each person from our dining plan on this theme character dinning. It was definitely worth it! When we were called to be seated, we got to take a photo with Chip and Dale dressed as ewoks, and was given a photo card to download that photo for free on-line. Hollywood & Vine provides an American buffet style dinner. The food was decent and there were a varieties of Star Wars themed desserts (Please see photos in the next video). There were 4 characters going around to your table for photos, Jedi Mickey, Princess Leia Minnie, Storm Trooper Donald, and Darth Vader Goofy. Overall, it was a great dining experience, and I would definitely recommend to any Star Wars fan.
Thank you for visiting and reading my post! Part 3 of this trip report will include our trip to Magic Kingdom and Epcot!
Thursday, June 25, 2015
2014 Disney World Star Wars Weekend 4-day Trip (Part 1)
Welcome to part 1 of my Disney World Star Wars Weekend trip report. This is my first trip to Walt Disney World, so I was super excited. Due to limited amount of vacation days we had, we were only able to stay for 4 days and 3 nights, which mean, we really had to pick and choose what we do or see. We decided to stay at one of the Disney resort to save time from traveling back and forth between hotel and the parks, and take advantage of the extra magic hours to do as much as possible in our short trip. All of the Disney resorts looks great, we decided to pick Disney's Port Orleans Resort - Riverside because the deluxe resorts were out of our price range and the moderate resorts like Port Orleans Resort offer more dining options and recreations options than value resorts.
I booked our vacation thru Disney World's website and took advantage of one of the special offers at that time (I think it was 25 or 30% off for stay of 3 nights or more). It was a simple and easy process to book everything on their website, including hotel room, tickets, dining plan, and magical express (airport shuttle). For the dining plan, we got the regular dining plan with 1 table service, 1 quick-service, and 1 snack per day for 3 days. We decided to do the dining plan since majority of our time would be spend in the park and resort. With the purchase of the dining plan, we also received resort refillable mug for unlimited refills during our stay at the resort, including soda, tea, water, and coffee. We used all of our table service meal for character dining, 2 for Star Wars Character Dining for dinner and 1 for The Crystal Palace for lunch. The dining plan is very flexible to use that you can spend all your meals in 1 day if you want. With the whole vacation package, you will also get some additional perks (arcade card at the resort, admission to DisneyQuest, discount on select Disney World tours, etc.).
About 3 weeks before our trip, we received our welcome booklet and personalized magic bands. The booklet gave an overview of each park and the use of FastPass+. The magic band served as our ticket to the parks, key to our resort room, dining plan meals, and credit card for purchase at Disney World. I also made our FastPass+ selections ahead of time which could be change at anytime during the trip. You can pick up to 3 FastPass+ each day. I also downloaded the My Disney Experience app on my iPhone ahead of time, which actually turned out to be quite useful. On the app, it provides you the park hours, real-time wait time for each ride, show times, and park map. Due to the length of our trip, we decided to skip Animal Kingdom and do Hollywood Studio (which was where all the Star Wars events and attractions are at), Magic Kingdom, and Epcot. We are planning to go to Animal Kingdom in our next trip when we are in Orlando again for conference.
On day 1, we arrived at our resort around 5pm. We spend rest of the evening at Downtown Disney. Here is a short slide show on our resort - Disney World Port Orleans Resort - Riverside.
In general, it is a very beautiful resort to stay at. The only little complain that we had was the wait time for the boat to Downtown Disney. The line for the boat were usually long during dinner time. We wished they have more boats for peak hours.
Thank you for visiting and reading my post! My Disney World Star Wars Weekend trip report will continue in part 2 and 3!
I booked our vacation thru Disney World's website and took advantage of one of the special offers at that time (I think it was 25 or 30% off for stay of 3 nights or more). It was a simple and easy process to book everything on their website, including hotel room, tickets, dining plan, and magical express (airport shuttle). For the dining plan, we got the regular dining plan with 1 table service, 1 quick-service, and 1 snack per day for 3 days. We decided to do the dining plan since majority of our time would be spend in the park and resort. With the purchase of the dining plan, we also received resort refillable mug for unlimited refills during our stay at the resort, including soda, tea, water, and coffee. We used all of our table service meal for character dining, 2 for Star Wars Character Dining for dinner and 1 for The Crystal Palace for lunch. The dining plan is very flexible to use that you can spend all your meals in 1 day if you want. With the whole vacation package, you will also get some additional perks (arcade card at the resort, admission to DisneyQuest, discount on select Disney World tours, etc.).
About 3 weeks before our trip, we received our welcome booklet and personalized magic bands. The booklet gave an overview of each park and the use of FastPass+. The magic band served as our ticket to the parks, key to our resort room, dining plan meals, and credit card for purchase at Disney World. I also made our FastPass+ selections ahead of time which could be change at anytime during the trip. You can pick up to 3 FastPass+ each day. I also downloaded the My Disney Experience app on my iPhone ahead of time, which actually turned out to be quite useful. On the app, it provides you the park hours, real-time wait time for each ride, show times, and park map. Due to the length of our trip, we decided to skip Animal Kingdom and do Hollywood Studio (which was where all the Star Wars events and attractions are at), Magic Kingdom, and Epcot. We are planning to go to Animal Kingdom in our next trip when we are in Orlando again for conference.
Thank you for visiting and reading my post! My Disney World Star Wars Weekend trip report will continue in part 2 and 3!
Sunday, June 14, 2015
2013 Disney Cruise - Disney Dream 3-night Bahamian Cruise (Part 2)
Welcome to Part 2 of my Disney Dream 3-night Bahamian Cruise post. In this post, I will share details on our Disney Cruise trip. Just a FYI, we are 2 adults going on Disney Cruise, so I don't have a lot information or details to share on the activities or details on board for kids. As part of Disney, they do have plenty of activities and events for kids.
We arrived at the Orlando Airport (MCO) around 11am. We went down to level 1, side B to check in for the Disney Cruise Line shuttle, which share the same desk as Magical Express to Disney World. They assigned you to different group to get on separate shuttle. After getting on the shuttle, the driver played a introductory video on the Disney Cruise. The ride was about 45 to 55min. When arriving at the port, you will be guided into the check-in lobby where you will check-in and receive your room card. The room card need to be kept with you at all time. It can also be serve as your credit card while on board on the ship. As you step on board the ship, they will announce and greet each family separately. If you arrive early, the state room might not be ready yet. Therefore, we went to Cabanas to grab our first meal and enjoyed a nice drink. As soon as the stateroom was ready, we went to our room to drop the luggage and freshen up. Before departure, there is safety drill that everyone need to attend. A quick video here to show our trip from Airport to the Cruise and our stateroom.
Everyday that you are on board of the cruise, they will give you a Navigator which include all the shows and activity on board. They will also provide you with Nassau map and Castaway Cay map the day before your arrival. The night before returning to US, a Welcome Home instruction sheet was also given.
Depending on your dining rotation assignment, you will also have different time assigned to watch the nightly Disney show. I highly recommend you to not miss these truly entertaining Disney shows. All 3 of main dining are pretty decent with different theme at each restaurant.
Since it was our first time at Nassau, we decided to take the Nassau and Atlantis tour. It was nice tour around Nassau in their shuttle and a nice trip to Atlantis resort and it's aquarium. I would recommend the tour to all first-timer.
For the 3rd day, we arrived at the beautiful Castaway Cay, Disney's Private island. It was very nice with no pollution. You can rent varieties of equipments to play on the beach. We also signed up for para sailing which was a great experience and definitely worth it. It was a very relaxing day at the beach.
For people who are not interested in beach activities, there are plenty to do on the ship also. There is a nice movie theater that plays Disney movies from early morning to midnight. The movie schedule is included in the daily Navigator and there is a few showing for 3D movies. I would also highly recommend to try out Aqua Duck on Disney Dream both during daytime and nighttime (as the tube light up at night). Bottom line is you will never be board on Disney Cruise! It was an awesome trip and I would definitely do it again!
Thank you for visiting and reading my post! I don't want to bore you with a lot of details, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comment! (Or if there is any other photos you would like me to post)
We arrived at the Orlando Airport (MCO) around 11am. We went down to level 1, side B to check in for the Disney Cruise Line shuttle, which share the same desk as Magical Express to Disney World. They assigned you to different group to get on separate shuttle. After getting on the shuttle, the driver played a introductory video on the Disney Cruise. The ride was about 45 to 55min. When arriving at the port, you will be guided into the check-in lobby where you will check-in and receive your room card. The room card need to be kept with you at all time. It can also be serve as your credit card while on board on the ship. As you step on board the ship, they will announce and greet each family separately. If you arrive early, the state room might not be ready yet. Therefore, we went to Cabanas to grab our first meal and enjoyed a nice drink. As soon as the stateroom was ready, we went to our room to drop the luggage and freshen up. Before departure, there is safety drill that everyone need to attend. A quick video here to show our trip from Airport to the Cruise and our stateroom.
For the 3rd day, we arrived at the beautiful Castaway Cay, Disney's Private island. It was very nice with no pollution. You can rent varieties of equipments to play on the beach. We also signed up for para sailing which was a great experience and definitely worth it. It was a very relaxing day at the beach.
Thank you for visiting and reading my post! I don't want to bore you with a lot of details, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comment! (Or if there is any other photos you would like me to post)
Friday, June 12, 2015
2013 Disney Cruise - Disney Dream 3-night Bahamian Cruise (Part 1)
Welcome to Part 1 of my Disney Dream 3-night Bahamian Cruise post. In this post, I will share some booking and planning information as well as what to prepare for the cruise. This Disney Cruise was my first cruise ever, so I was very nervous about it and did not know what to pack. Luckily, Disney Cruise is there every step of the way!
Some people might wonder "Why Disney Cruise?" I started by looking online to check out what each cruise line offer and their reviews. Of course, Disney cruise tend to be on the pricier side, but out of all the cruise lines, Disney cruise seems to have one of the best reviews on their food, shows, and rooms. After all the considerations, we picked Disney Cruise for 3 main reasons: 1. More food varieties on board, and different theme restaurant every night (Yes! I am a foodie) 2. We love Disney shows! (Different show every night sounds awesome!) 3. Out of all the Norovirus incidents, we didn't see any Disney Cruise on the list.
After deciding on Disney Cruise, I went on Disney Cruise Website first to check out the itinerary and dates that will best fit us. I also requested a free DVD planning tools on their website that will give you more information. If you have AAA membership, you can also go to one of their office and pick up a Disney Cruise booklet that has the current year itinerary and ship layout.
After selecting the date and itinerary, I checked price with and without flight package on a few website (ie. Expedia, Priceline, Disney Cruise website, and Costco). We ended up booking our Disney Cruise on Costco Travel website and flight separately. Thru Costco Travel, I was able to get free Costco cash card while paying for the same price. Once I finished booking flight and cruise, I called to book our Disney Cruise Line ground transfer, which was $70 per person roundtrip. If you book your Disney Cruise on their own website, you should be able to add ground transfer online. While you might think you are done with the planning, I highly recommend you book your shore excursion as early as possible online. This website also provide a lot of good information on Disney Cruise planning and booking if you need additional information!
About 10-14 days prior to departure date, we received a welcome booklet from Disney Cruise which include a lot of good information that walk you thru each step especially if you are a first-time Cruiser. I made a quick slide show of what's included in the booklet.
Some people might wonder "Why Disney Cruise?" I started by looking online to check out what each cruise line offer and their reviews. Of course, Disney cruise tend to be on the pricier side, but out of all the cruise lines, Disney cruise seems to have one of the best reviews on their food, shows, and rooms. After all the considerations, we picked Disney Cruise for 3 main reasons: 1. More food varieties on board, and different theme restaurant every night (Yes! I am a foodie) 2. We love Disney shows! (Different show every night sounds awesome!) 3. Out of all the Norovirus incidents, we didn't see any Disney Cruise on the list.
After deciding on Disney Cruise, I went on Disney Cruise Website first to check out the itinerary and dates that will best fit us. I also requested a free DVD planning tools on their website that will give you more information. If you have AAA membership, you can also go to one of their office and pick up a Disney Cruise booklet that has the current year itinerary and ship layout.
About 10-14 days prior to departure date, we received a welcome booklet from Disney Cruise which include a lot of good information that walk you thru each step especially if you are a first-time Cruiser. I made a quick slide show of what's included in the booklet.
You can choose to fill out most of the forms in the booklet online prior to departure when you do on-line check in. If not, when you check-in at the port, the staffs will help you.
The last part before the vacation is packing, which varies from person to person. Make sure you know what items are not permitted on board. Here is a good packing list to consider. I would definitely recommend you bring plenty of sunscreens and motion sickness medications (Dramamine, Bonine, or Sea-Band). I did not have any motion sickness issue for the majority of the cruise, but it's good to be prepared.
Thank you for visiting and reading my post! Part 2 will be coming soon!
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Welcome to Click, Book, Travel!
Hello everyone,
Thank you for visiting my blog! In this blog, I am going to share my travel plans and memories with you. As much as I love to travel, I also enjoy the planning process. As an extreme cautious person, I often like to check out other people's blog or travel website to get a better idea of the hotel, attractions, or foods. Therefore, I am hoping by posting my travel plans and memories, including photos and video, will help out many others like me to plan their vacations!
Click thru my posts!
Book your dream vacation!
Enjoy your Travel!
Thank you again for visiting!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)