[00:00:00] Speaker A: But there was just something very fascinating about being at sea. Spain is on your right.
The lights of Morocco are on your left. The wind is whipping. It just felt like we were in this amazing part of the world and the moon was out. And it was a really, really fun.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Welcome back everybody to this week's live episode of the DCL Duo Podcast brought to you by. We do travel, right. Remember, life is short. Take the trip. Let the folks over at Wedoto travel right handle the planning so you can focus on the relaxing. Of course, our live and bonus episodes are also brought to you by the good folks over at DCL Magazine. If you have not already, please head over and subscribe today. Head over to dcl-magazine.com that's dcl-magazine.com and use code DCLDUO all caps DCL Duo take 10% off everything in the DCL magazine and WWDW Magazine store for everyone out there listening at home. Before I hand it over to Sam to talk about a special listener promotion and this week's news, just a reminder if you're listening after the fact, we have moved our live show times to 5pm on Tuesday evenings because of our son's school schedule. So if you want to come over
[00:01:29] Speaker C: 5pm Pacific, 8pm Pacific, 8:00pm Eastern.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: I live on the West Coast. I only deal on the Pacific time.
5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern. If you want to come over and join us live, you can always ask your questions in the chat and get them answered in real time. It's usually a fun little discussion. We'll see how many people tune in on Tuesday night at 5pm but that is the only time available to us this week. So Sam, we got a special promotion with our sponsor. We Do Travel right? You want to tell folks about that promotion?
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Yes. So from now until the end of the year for DCL Duo listeners only, if you book a future Disney cruise through our friends that We Do Travel right, you'll get a $50 onboard credit to be applied to your stateroom. Now this is a one time use promotion that's for new client bookings. So it it does include if you transfer a booking or you transfer a placeholder and book something with We Do Travel right but it's for new clients only. Now redeeming the promo is super easy. Just mention the DCL dual listener promotion or fill out the quick
[email protected] DCLDUO and then your credit will get applied immediately to your stateroom account after your sailings check in date and you'll get a confirmation by email once it's been applied. But here's the bonus. If you book something from DCL's new itinerary release between now and September 8th. So including September 8th, which is when new bookings open for new cruisers, that credit will double to $100 per stateroom. And so that's a lot of money towards a specialty dinner or spa day or mer in the. In the Mickey's main sale. So the promo overall runs until the end of the year for things new bookings made with. We do travel. Right. But the doubling promotion only goes through September 8th, so don't wait too long to book and get that onboard credit, you guys.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: All right, Sam, are we ready for DCL news? If so, I want to bring our guests into the discussion.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: Yes. I just want to give one caveat to people. If I see him lower energy tonight, it's because I'm sick. So. So I'm rallying for you, our listeners and our live show audience, who I love so much. But I am a little bit under the weather. So if I am low energy, Sam, today, I apologize.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: And I. I'm trying to make up. I'm trying to make up for it with Mountain Dew.
[00:03:42] Speaker C: So with Mountain Dew.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: All right, here we go.
[00:03:46] Speaker C: Let's bring in our lovely, wonderful guest. Beth, who has. Is a repeat guest, is joining us to talk about an amazing med cruise. This is her second time sailing Europe on dcl, not her second time cruising. She has cruised on Disney several other times as well. But welcome back to the show, Beth. It's lovely to have you.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
[00:04:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, let's talk a little.
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Well, let's talk a little bit of DCL news. For those who have been living under a rock and maybe not watching our prior shows, bookings are now open for the new itineraries that dropped just last week. And so yesterday was Pearl booking day. Today was platinum booking day. Tomorrow is gold booking day, and the next day is silver booking day. And then it's not until next Monday, the 8th, that first time cruisers who have never sailed with DCL can book. What we are hearing so far is that within, like the first hour of bookings, opening to Pearl, that transatlantic cruise on the Wish, all of concierge got booked out. And now we're hearing for. Actually, Beth had told us this right before we started recording or before we went live that it looks like almost everything on that sailing is sold out completely. So that westbound transatlantic from Southampton to New York is it looks like there might be one inside room available.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Now we should caveat. That's people putting holds on those rooms. If they don't pay for them, they go back. So if you're interested in the sailing, you should still go for it. But it does look like it's getting full.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Correct. And I think concierge sailors can only put a one day hold and other sailors can put essentially a three day hold before you pay that deposit. And if you are sailing concierge you can't get that deposit back at all but you can move it to a future cruise. And same with, with non concierge bookings you can actually refund before you hit your pay in full. There's of course certain deadlines that Disney applies but so just because it's look sold out doesn't necessarily mean you can't book it. But it's going to make choosing that room that you want very, very difficult. You may be able to a GTY category or something like that. So yeah, so the bookings are definitely, I'm hearing lots of chatter through the Facebook groups that those New York sailings are also getting booked up just on the wish like the ones to Canada, the ones to Bermuda. Beth, you got anything you've been eyeing from that itinerary? Itinerary release?
[00:06:26] Speaker A: No, we are just trying to project ahead now that we have a child in college who hopefully will be, you know, engrossed in internships and things like that in the summer. And I'm a teacher so the New York sailings are a no go for me. I can't go on a vacation in October so just you know, I browse and I, I, I wish that I had availability for some of those things but, and I do really enjoy booking when, when things first drop. I have like that's that, that brings me great pleasure to plan that far in advance but this time around I'm just watching from the outside.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: Yeah, you know we understand. We, we, the only thing that we booked yesterday was a spring break cruise on the Disney fantasy. We decided to go for the, the prices are a lot better for the older ships than for the Wish class ships and we know that we are likely to want to sail on the Believe and we hear that that you know those dates are going to be dropping soon, although we don't know exactly when. And so we're kind of holding our fall winter spot out for the eve. And so we figured if we're going to book for spring break 2028, we should book on One of the older ships. And so there was a really nice sight scenario in the fantasy that looked good. Now, in other news, I will say we heard about the Wonder, which the Wonder was just in dry dock and then started sailing yesterday out of Vancouver.
And from friends who are sailing on that. On that first sailing back, we had heard that the.
The company emailed all the guests telling them that they delayed boarding by about four hours, so not to come to the port until four hours. So if your port arrival time was 11, your port arrival time became three in the afternoon. So they were going to leave a lot later.
Now, what I have heard from that friend who's sailing on the Wonder is that not all of the work that was being done actually got finished. So it sounds like that's probably what the delay was about. But that means there's actually still about 100 contractors still on board finishing up whatever work they. They didn't complete. I also hearing that my friend overheard somebody very upset talking to the Con, one of the concierge hosts, about how they were supposed to be in a concierge one bedroom and they ended up in a regular veranda room and were very displeased by that fact and were having a lot of pushback from Disney in what that. What that refund as far as the price difference was going to look like. So really interesting stuff. I don't know. We haven't heard anything other than, like, lighting. In the dining room, I saw a picture of the lighting that's been updated in. What is that? Tritons, I think. Is it Tritons or is it. Yeah, tritons, Not Lumieres, I have to remember which is which. On the Magic versus the Wonder, the lighting was updated. It looks very pretty from the picture I saw, but it sounds like a lot of the updating had to do with rooms and concierge rooms, which makes sense because those were kind of older decor and they had recently updated the ones on the Magic. So that's all I'm hearing in terms of news. Of course we are. As I mentioned, bookings are open for the new itineraries. We're expecting to hear more info about when the Believe is coming out. Probably very soon. I would say in the next couple of weeks, maybe even next week.
But, yeah, with that, I think we can move on to talking about Beth's amazing Mediterranean cruise from Barcelona to Southampton. So, Brian, why don't you pull up this beautiful slide deck that Beth put together? All right. Well, Beth, let's start with the itinerary. Now, you have sailed to Norway before in on Disney Cruise Line. You have sailed in Bahamas Caribbean itineraries as well. What made you choose this itinerary and tell us who was sailing? It's a large group of people in that picture in the middle.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Yes.
So this was our ninth Disney cruise, and we started when our son Cal was very young, about six years old, and we would sail just the three of us. And then a few years later, we started sailing with friends.
And so our. You know, typically what we do now when we sail on Disney Cruise Line is go with big groups. And so this was a great group. There were 15 of four families, 15 of us all together.
And I have sailed with all three of the families that we were with and. But they hadn't all sailed with each other. So they made new friends on this sailing. And it was really, really fun to bring a family who we're friends with locally together with a dear, dear friend from college and his family and their friends that we met when we went on the Norway cruise. And so when these itineraries dropped a lot, many, many moons ago at this point in time.
And as I mentioned before, I'm a real planner. Anyone who knows me knows that I love planning far in advance. I really enjoy all of the, you know, just the mechanics of putting together trips and, you know, the anticipation that leads up to it.
And so we booked this knowing that it would be really fun to do something with our son who was graduating high school. And we love the idea of Spain because food is really important to us when we travel. That's one of the reasons why we've stayed with Disney Cruise Line, because we really, really enjoy the food and the service, and Spain seemed like a perfect opportunity. One of the reasons that we picked this in particular is because we actually liked that it was Barcelona to Southampton last time. We talked a couple of years ago about Norway.
You know, I'm a JetBlue loyalist. That's where my status is. That's where my points are. And at the time, the idea was, hey, we can go Southampton to New York City. So we live in Connecticut, but very, very close to New York City. And the idea of being able to take some of the cash piece of it for the flights out of the equation, meanwhile, that went completely haywire. We can talk more about that later if you like. Nothing really went as planned with the cost of things other than the itinerary, as tends to happen in Europe in the summer, I guess. Right.
[00:13:10] Speaker C: Those flights are just kind of expensive. Yeah.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: That things became, like, insanely expensive. But that was one of the reasons too. And when we looked at it, the other thing that was really appealing to us is that we had been talking about perhaps an itinerary that included ports in Italy. But a lot of those ports, as you. As I have heard your guests talk about quite a bit, sometimes you're on a bus for two hours just to get to the port just one way. Right. And we just decided to hold. The dates weren't right for sailings that included places like Italy. And when we saw these four ports, none of which were familiar to us at the time, it just seemed like a great itinerary because as we started to browse through the potential port adventures, a lot of them focused on tapas tours and so the idea of food and a little bit of history and to continue the adventure. Because Norway was the first time we had really gone outside of, you know, tropical trips.
And so this is what we landed on.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: So I want to rewind for one second. Beth, this group that you went with, had everyone done a Disney cruise before? Was it anyone's first time? And are you the one responsible for wrangling all of these people into the crossover?
[00:14:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm curious about that.
Who did all the wrangling?
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I am in general the friend wrangler for all social and vacation related things. And I love that role.
So basically the way it works is of our 15, there was only one person who had never been on a Disney cruise or a cruise at all, and that was my friend Kirsten's husband, Ashley. Now, Kirsten and her kids had sailed with us on a Caribbean cruise earlier on, so she and her boys had experienced that.
Now Mark and Laura. So Mark is my dear college friend and his wife Laura. They're like family.
Mark and Laura and their girls are platinum. So we had platinum. We're gold.
Then we had two silver families. And then part of the silver family was one new cruiser. And so it was a great mix of people.
And I always tell people I love Disney Cruise Line friends. I love meeting people on Disney Cruise Line and.
And to be able to bring friends together to just have fun. And the kids all got along great. So the oldest, Caitlin, was 18. My son Cal was just shy of 18. And then a few other teens, youngest 11.
So great bunch of kids.
And so some of them were meeting for the very first time on the ship.
[00:16:04] Speaker C: Cool. I love it. I love it. I think you're.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Yeah. To answer your question, though, Brian. So my husband Brian and Cal and I booked this first and we Said, hey everybody. Just so you know, we booked this cruise out of Barcelona. If anyone wants to join us, go for it. We'd love to have you and that. And it just sort of rolled that way.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:16:28] Speaker C: I love that. Now, did you link everybody's reservations so that you would all be seated together for dining and so that you would be able to book excursions together if you wanted to? Of course, you don't have to book excursions with the other families.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Yes. So anytime we travel with friends, we link all of the reservations.
And what that does for us is it allows us to do.
One of the things we like doing most when we're traveling with friends is having dinner together, having that dedicated rotational dining where we all, you know, have maybe been doing different things during the day. And especially the kids are all old enough to be out doing stuff. You know, it's not like the.
It's not like the days of past where, you know, we had to, you know, you sort of have to like keep a thumb on the kid's shoulder to make sure and you're, you know, making decisions about what to do and who's taking which kid to which activity. You know, they go roam and they have been for a long time since they were tweens.
But the dinner piece of things, the rotational dining is a really important piece of it for us. And when we get to the slide that talks about sort of dining and entertainment, I'll tell you a little bit more about our serving team. They were great. And I just feel like the last few years I've been more cognizant of just how much work it is for our serving team to have such big tables. So more on that in a little bit.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: Awesome.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: What I am most. So I've moved us along on the slides. We're gonna talk a bit about your. Your pre stay in. In Barcelona. But I. I am most curious about the World cup finals watching in Spain.
What a time with Spain in the finals. I see, I see the picture down there on the right. I'm assuming you guys, I mean, I'm assuming there were piece people watching in the streets all over the place, but. But it looks like you guys found a spot in the beach with somebody projecting the game.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: So it was, it was wild. You know, I am. My husband and son are sports fans. Cal had been watching a lot of husband Brian loves all sports, especially these big scale things like the World Cup. And he had said to me at one point, you know, it looks like there might be a chance that Spain is in the World cup finals. And I said oh, okay, great. You know, like I'm like I'm sort of watching from afar and talking to people about it and catching parts of the game as I'm passing through. And I said oh wow, like when? And he said well, while we're there. And I said, well, okay, what do you mean? And so I had actually we had decided as a group, we were arriving in Barcelona at different times that we were going to the night before we sailed, all get together for one big dinner. Just because we had arrived several days earlier and had time on our own. All three families came in on Saturday, did their own thing to get acclimated to the time change. And you know, there were a lot of challenges that they had on the Barcelona side of customs and things like that. So everyone just needed to, to do their own thing. But I had been, it was, it was not easy to plan a dinner for 15 people because you can go to New York City, call and someone will accommodate you. But in Barcelona I had to go through a process of signing a special event contract anywhere, anywhere. There's no like wow. And people, local people told me you're not going to find someone who does this. So. And this story is relevant because it's going to lead into why we were at the beach with the screen. So we got a recommendation from one of Brian's co workers who really loved this place at the beach, put all of the different plans in place for that. And in the midst of that and there was a point where I said wait a second, is the World cup finals on Sunday night? The night that we have paid a 50% deposit for a special event dinner?
And he said yes.
So when we discovered that it was going to be about 9pm start local time in Barcelona and our dinner was at 7:30, we realized that we could make it work.
Although dinner on Barcelona time doesn't exactly go quickly, but it was great because we were, there were not many people in the restaurant because everyone was in their places watching the world, right?
[00:21:01] Speaker C: Everyone was at like clubs or at their houses with the TV and 7:30pm
[00:21:05] Speaker B: dinner start time in Barcelona is like having a mid afternoon snack there. I feel it is.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: So we had a great dinner at this place on the beach. And then what we didn't expect but was like a really happy coincidence is that.
So the restaurant was like just a little bit set up. You walk down the stairs and there was the beach right there and there were a bunch of beach bars all full of people you Know, they, they had their TVs on and people had put up these makeshift screens. And so when the kids were. When like the, so like the kids, we always have like the kids side of it. There's the adult side of the table and the kids side of the table, the big long dining.
The kids were like, hey, people are watching down there, let's go. Because there was a little bit of overlap of time. So once we finished up, we all went down to the beach, we caught cabs back to the hotels and there were watch parties.
So our hotel was a place called the Majestic. And they had, we didn't realize this at the time, but you could have sort of bought a ticket for their special room.
The other hotel that our, that two of the families stayed at had a rooftop thing. The rooftop was packed. So they watched in their room.
Our other two families, we watched in the lobby of our hotel. But the most fun part of it all was after the wind going out into the street, streets because it was electric. It was mayhem. There were cars and every, every motor scooter and motorcycle in Barcelona was out on the streets just with flags and beeping and yelling and hordes of people everywhere. And it was really something else that I don't really have captured in photos enough to put in the slideshow.
But our friends would stay right across the street, had a balcony that led right out to the street. And so they just sat out there and it went on for. I mean, I think we came inside at around 1am local time. And at one point I woke up around 3:30am and it was still as wild as it was when we had gone to bed at 1 or 1:30.
And I'm sure you saw the pictures of all the people, you know, in sort of like central town squares everywhere. We didn't venture out to do that because there was enough action where we were. But it was, was really, it was really, really a memorable, memorable night.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Another friend at work who showed up the next day wearing the Spanish flag. So I can only imagine what it was like. We're all the way in Seattle, so I can only imagine pandemonium. Yeah, probably, probably smart not to put yourself in the middle of town square in a, in a, in a mob situation for sure.
[00:23:40] Speaker C: Well, I gotta give, I gotta give a quick shout out to Ed who is watching us from the North North Sea on the DVC cruise. Ed, keep sharing those pictures of those gifts. I've got some from Cindy as well, but I'm going to start sharing more on social media. But I Love seeing what you guys are experiencing. I love it when people are watching us all over the world, by the way.
Pretty amazing.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: So. Blows my mind.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: Beth, I gotta. I gotta ask, what were the highlights from. We can't talk about everything pre cruise, but what were the highlights you would say from Barcelona? What's the, like, don't miss.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: So I think all three of us in my family would say that the absolute highlight was traveling to Montserrat.
And that's what you see. If you see me in the red T shirt in the middle picture on the bottom, that's. We traveled about 50 minutes outside Barcelona up to the monastery.
Our tour guide. We booked a private tour guide because we didn't book a lot of port adventures through Disney because we had walkable horses.
And I really wanted to make sure that we were making the most of our time in Barcelona without overdoing it because I didn't want to get onto the ship completely exhausted and knowing that we were going to be dealing with a tremendous amount of just heat, which is exhausting. And so we booked a few things in Barcelona, like one thing per day when we were there. And Montserrat was.
It was fantastic.
Made even better by Eduardo, our Livewire tour guide, who was so engaging and so much fun and who has a son who works for dcl.
[00:25:31] Speaker C: Oh, how cool.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah, his son. His son is in kids programming.
He didn't say what ship, but it's.
It's like one of the ships that are. That it's out in the Caribbean now.
And they, and he. They said they loved him so much that they hired him on the spot in his first interview and having met Eduardo and, you know, felt a little bit of his just like, enthusiasm and magnetic personality, I can only imagine. But he said his son loves working for dcl and so that was kind of a fun connection to make. He took us all the way up to the monastery. He took us inside.
He had so much to share about history and what was really cool. And this is.
This is like to. To the left of the picture of us in front of the monastery, there's a funicular that goes up the side of the mountain to an even higher point. And you can wander around there. It's a beautiful place. The history is fascinating.
And I would say that's worth the hour drive outside of Barcelona for sure.
But beyond that, the food is fantastic. We had just so many amazing food experiences and that was really what we hoped for and it far exceeded all of our expectations. So it was a great trip. Capped off only by who knew the World cup finals.
[00:27:04] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I love it. By the way. I gotta give, I want to give a shout out to Karen Shelton, your travel advisor who is watching us and is in chat. Hey, Karen.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Yeah, Karen was such a huge, she was such a huge help with this trip because I really needed to figure out how to navigate like transportation and all of that.
And I, you know, don't like to leave things to chance, especially when I'm going so far away and dealing with my own personal challenges of not being great with time changes and stuff like that.
So. Thank you, Karen.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: Same, same girl. We.
The time change kills me nowadays.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: It's brutal.
[00:27:45] Speaker C: All right, let's talk embarkation day. Tell us how did you get to the port of Barcelona and how did it all go?
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Okay, so it was. I've got a lot to tell about this because it was a bizarre, bizarre day. It was both, both the smoothest embarkation I have ever experienced and also the worst for some people.
And I don't know that it's often that that happens in one sitting.
So we actually took, we took private transfer from the hotel that was super comfortable, super predictable. I will say that the cab situation in Barcelona was way more manageable than I thought it was going to be. But I like to have all my ducks in a row with things like that. And so that was great. Very quick drive. And unsurprisingly, it was very quiet in Barcelona the morning after the World cup finals because everyone was up the entire night so no traffic, very smooth. And when we pulled up, they brought us to. So you can see the tents down at the bottom. The only, the only thing I was surprised by, but maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. You tell me. They wouldn't take. So I had packed our bags, but I had also packed extra things like rearranged from being, you know, from traveling for a few days into backpacks. They wouldn't take my backpacks with tags. They said no, nothing soft sided.
So that was a, that was like a little bit of a bummer because now I had to take this back, but I had to take two backpacks with me. Believe me, it was not that big of a deal. But so we were, we had gotten an 11:30-45 port arrival time.
You know, I'm very diligent when it comes to that about staying up until the middle of the night here Eastern time to try to grab that every single time though when I know other people, they get 15 minutes later if they actually sleep through the night and get It. So I think I'm just a little excessive with that. But. But there's a lot of excitement around grabbing the court arrival time, if you ask me. I don't know if you feel the same way. Oh, but you guys don't need one now, so those are. That's not right.
[00:30:00] Speaker C: Correct. And once you're pearl, you can, you can show up like concierge pearl can show up at any time as soon as they start. So the earliest port arrival time to the latest port arrival time and then you're automatically group two if you're pearl as well. Tracy's asking what if you have soft sided luggage? I think suitcases that are soft sided, they'll take.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: It's just as long as we're fine.
[00:30:22] Speaker C: Yeah, they won't take something that has no sort of structure. Well, they'll probably take a duffel bag, but they won't take like smaller bags that don't have structure.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: The issue is the way they get it on the ship. And a lot of these ports is they fill bins and then they kind of crane them over and like unload them. And so like if you're backpack is in the middle and they're just throwing suitcases on top of it, whatever is in there is probably getting crushed. Getting crushed. There's a good question here in the chat too, from Amy, who's asking. I've heard there's been growing anti cruise sentiment in Barcelona. Did. Did you, Beth, find that to be true or impact anything?
[00:30:53] Speaker A: No, we found people to be very, very friendly, very welcoming.
I'm not sure that we necessarily directly spoke to anyone local about cruising per se, but the whole entire city felt very exc. Accessible, very safe and very friendly in the several days that we were there.
And I was really surprised that so many people not only spoke English, but were, you know, very willing to. I mean, they, they kind of took one look at us and would say English. And.
And I also learned a lot about. Because, you know, they speak Catalonian there too. It's not just Spanish. And we learned a lot about Catalonian heritage from one of our other tour guides. And so. So, yeah, I didn't feel any, I didn't feel any of that at all there.
But.
But one of the things that had, you know, when we got there, actually, I don't know that they would take a duffel bag.
[00:31:55] Speaker C: Interesting.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: I think they might say to you, you have to carry your own duffel bag on.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:31:59] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: But it was all very surprising because I don't. I read all the Things that have to do with, you know, the letters and all that. And they never mentioned anything about that. But maybe that's old news and I just wasn't aware of that or maybe one particular thing.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it may also be port specific.
[00:32:17] Speaker C: Yeah, it's probably port specific. Yeah. Well, you. You mentioned this was both the best and the. And the worst. We didn't hear the worst, though. What was the worst? I'll tell you the worst.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: So what happened was. And on that previous slide, it's not a typo that we were. They were announcing welcome Gillen family late at 11:49.
And I did check that on the picture because I. On the video that I took.
So what happened was it was. It couldn't have been smoother sailing. We.
By the time we made it around, we were a little bit earlier than 11:30, but they had moved our line in. Our friends who were platinum had given us the heads up. They had arrived 15 minutes earlier that things were moving smoothly. Great. We went and checked in. They waved with the Mickey hand. They brought us, yada, yada, yada. We got into the customs line. I don't remember exactly, but I think that there were eight customs agents in the secondary line, but. And that the line moved. But we were halfway through the line at 11:40.
They called all remaining boarding groups at 11:40. And the only thing I thought of was maybe this is because everyone's asleep because of all of the big night that everyone had. And maybe people aren't rushing to the port because this was a very special night. That's the only thing I thought of. And so I had texted our friends who had port arrival time shortly after ours and said, hey, great news. Everything's going well.
And then it started to not go well because they started to take customs agents out of those little kiosks and they were down to. If I remember correctly, at one point, they were down to two people were waiting hours in line to get through customs to board the ship. And we left like, Like, I don't know, after dinner started. We didn't. Wow. There was no sail away because the sail away got delayed because people were stuck in the port trying to get through.
And it was like a disaster. And people were really mad. They were raging. And I'm sure that. Yeah. And many of these people, like our friends, who were stuck in that line had also had a three plus hour wait in customs when they got off their planes from New York and New Jersey two days earlier.
So it's not going great there in terms of that we waited an hour and a half to get through customs in Barcelona and our friends were double that. So this coupled with that, I think, like, people were super stressed about it. I said, how in the world? What are they doing about these people with dinner? Because, you know, we didn't start sailing away until we had already sat down and we were in first seating, which was around 5.
So it was, it was a challenge
[00:35:07] Speaker B: at the air, at the airports. What your problem is right now is the new system that they're rolling out. I've heard that they're now like. Like for a long time they were being very militant, like, everyone has to register, we don't care how long it takes. And now I've heard that in times of peak demand, they're kind of being like, oh, we'll skip the biometric registration just to get you through at the port. At the port. I wonder if it was actually customs agents calling out sick because they had been up partying the night before, watching, and so they were just understaffed.
[00:35:36] Speaker C: Well, Beth said, though, there were more that when they were there and then they were like removing as they were.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: But I bet they work in shifts, I bet they give them breaks and, like, maybe only eight showed up and they didn't have six more to replace, you know, so.
[00:35:46] Speaker C: Yeah, true. Fair, fair. Well, yeah, the other thing I'll mention.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:35:51] Speaker C: Oh, no, go ahead.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: So the other thing I'll mention is the letter to the side. I know you can't read the text on that. That was just a reminder. So because we were sailing to Southampton, we had to do the UK visa. That did cause people just. So pro tip, if you are doing a sailing, this DCL does not give you very specific information about what you're actually uploading during your online check in. And several people I know and in the Facebook group had. I mean, first of all, when you get rejected from online check in, it's always going to work itself out, right?
But it didn't say, like, you get this email and it just said to upload your UK visa, but if you didn't have enough of the email, it got rejected. So just a pro tip, for anyone who's doing a sailing like this that might be in one place and end in Southampton is, you know, make sure you get a full, full shot of that UK visa. And that letter we got midway through the cruise, we had to go in person, every single person, including, you know, babies, and go through a customs sort of check. Before we got closer to Southampton, it was, was they Made it sound like it was going to be a big deal. It was super easy. They were on the stage in the theater. We walked through in five minutes. But they make a big deal of these time slots, and the time slots were, like, not. Not really true that you needed to go in your time.
[00:37:16] Speaker B: Ed's pointing out in the chat there is an app available to do your UK Visa, and he's saying it takes about two to five minutes to get your approval. So if you. If you're traveling to the UK and you need the visa, there apparently is an app to help you with that. So there's an app for that.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: There's an app for that.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: So let's. Let's get on board here. So you got some nice photos of your stateroom here.
Did you guys get staterooms all close by to each other, or were you spread out all over the ship?
[00:37:44] Speaker A: We were relatively close by.
Our friends the Morgans were just a couple of doors down.
The Fitzpatricks were down the hall. The Sherbins were on the other side. So we were all on deck nine. I'm like, a deck nine girl.
So that's our sweet spot on, you know, like, the dream class ships.
[00:38:03] Speaker C: And.
[00:38:03] Speaker A: But you know what I don't have that I really, really need is a DCL Duo magnet for my door.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: I just was looking at that picture, Beth, and I was thinking the same thing. I was looking to see if there was one on there, and I was like, there isn't one on there. I'm gonna have to send you a bunch, please.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: I thought I could get one on Etsy, but I did not see it on your Etsy shop, so I should have asked you.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: We give the magnets away for free when people ask. So PSA for all of our listeners out there, if you really want a magnet, reach out. If we've got. Got. If we've got some around, we'll send them out to you for free to. For your sailing. Just give us plenty of time.
[00:38:39] Speaker C: Plenty of time. Because I send them. I send them snail mail. I send them with stamps on an envelope, like, because it's way too expensive to send, like, priority and all of that.
So. But, yeah, but I will send them. And, yeah, just as long as I have, like, a month's notice, I can send them in, send them out in an envelope.
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[00:40:01] Speaker D: We do travel, right? The crew that handles the planning so you can focus on relaxing.
[00:40:08] Speaker C: All right, well. Yeah. How did you. How did you like. Is this the category that you usually get? This is the family ocean view with extended veranda.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: No, so not with extended. Typically, what we do is we always do deluxe family with veranda. It's nice to have a little bit extra space, even though it's just the three of us just to kind of wiggle around each other. Like, we just.
We tend to, like, when we're on land trips, like, we really like hotel rooms where we have a decent amount of space when you're in a place where you could have that, because obviously not all European hotels provide you with that kind of space.
But, yeah, it was great. So we. You know, it's funny, in all of the planning, I had forgotten about the extended veranda. So I opened the door, and it was kind of like a surprise at the moment. Then I went back in my head and said, oh, right. I had asked Brian, hey, are you okay with being fully aft? This is like, literally back there and not. Not the first time we've done an extended.
And we really just like the extra space. It feels very luxurious to have two lounger and two chairs out there. And because we were in very walkable ports and you can see a lot from. From the ship, it was just. It was. It was a nice perk to have.
[00:41:23] Speaker C: Nice. Awesome. All right, let's go to the next slide. Brian.
Yeah. Let's talk rotational dining and entertainment.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: There's a question in the chat. Someone doing a transatlantic. Want to see what the entertainment is like on board. So, yeah, there is.
[00:41:38] Speaker C: We can't. So just to. To. To Arnold in the chat, we can't tell you who your additional performers will the transatlantic, but we can tell you in addition to the main stage shows, you will have additional entertainment on board. And probably similar to some of the stuff we're going to be talking about with Beth, but not exactly the same because they do vary it from sailing
[00:42:00] Speaker B: to sailing and probably extended because that transatlantic sailing is longer. So usually bring on special guests, some extra stuff. Yeah, yeah. All right. But what about the entertainment on your cruise, Beth?
[00:42:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, I decided to put screen shops from our Facebook group also because our. The Facebook group for the sailing was exceptionally well run.
It could not have been more thorough, professional, informative, and even just being able to sort of navigate when we were on the ship. I am a Wi fi girl. I get the WI fi package. I don't spend a lot of money on merch and I'm not a huge drinker, you know, so it's like. Like that's sort of my thing that I like on there. And it was great to be able to navigate, but I thought it would give you just the lowdown of what was happening on there.
We are, you know, now that we have our mini cruises in and now that cal is, well, just 18, not too long ago, we're not. When he was little, we would go to every single show, no matter what. Now we kind of pick and choose. We mix and mingle because some people in our group like to go to shows. Some people prefer to do other things. The kids kind of, you know, wind in and out of it. But I have to say that. So Jamie Raven was really great. He was awesome.
That was a magic act and completely engaging. He was fun and funny and really sort of fascinating. So we really enjoyed that. And then. So Chris Cox, the mind reader, we all were kind of like, I don't know, do you want to go to the mind reader? And we didn't know if it was going to be hokey. He was great. Great.
We liked him enough that we also went to when he did, like, the adult version of his show. And the adult version of his show was fascinating too. So.
So those were really, really fun. And then a bunch of us went to Beauty and the Beast. And I have to say that I feel like I see the shows through a different lens every time. Right.
Because it's just time has gone by, I'm looking at different things. And Beauty and the Beast just. It was Really a fantastic cast.
It was a really, really great performance. And this is coming from someone who. I do enjoy the shows, especially when Cal was little. They were very magical for all of us when you go with a child.
But I just was really wowed over again by Beauty and the Beast this time. I thought it was beautifully, beautifully done. And when we were on the Norway cruise, they had some technical difficulties during Be Our Guest and they had to stop the whole thing and reset it and start over. And that was kind of cool just to see the inner workings of it. Even though it's, like completely disruptive to the storytelling. These things happen, whatever. But I just really felt immersed in a different way in Beauty and the Beast this time. So that was super, super memorable.
And then we did not make it. Oh, by the way, Night five obviously is not Moana, the stage show. That was Moana, the live action movie in the Walt Disney Theater.
We did not make it to Flyboys or the other things.
Even on a seven night cruise, there's too many things we want to do. And I have to tell you, being on a European cruise, I have to prioritize.
We prioritize sort of like downtime in a different way than we do on a tropical trip.
Because. Because you're just on the go in these ports and walking a lot of miles and seeing a lot of things. And so it was nice to be more leisurely in our pacing and not feel like we had to do everything.
But I have to give a shout out to our dining team.
Our main server, Oscar, was.
He was great. He was so much fun. And every time I travel with a large group group, I just have a greater and greater and greater appreciation for what it takes for the serving team to deal with our large table.
Because we love rotational dining. We love to take advantage of it. We order multiple dishes, we try things, we share things. We have, you know, and the kids now are, you know, like, especially the teenage boys are like, all right, I'm gonna have three entrees, right?
[00:46:17] Speaker C: Yeah, they eat a lot.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: And Oscar especially just.
I mean, the trays that they had to carry of the stuff. I will tell you this. And for those of you listening who might travel with large groups, so again, we were 15, but I've traveled with a table of 23 before, too.
And they, Rico, are heads of. Wait, I think I'm getting the names wrong.
[00:46:43] Speaker C: The manager. The area manager.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I have to say that he was this. This is the first time I've been impressed by someone in that role.
A. Because. Because he engaged with us and said, I made sure that you all sat together, which I really appreciated.
But also we saw Rico, he called himself Rico Chico. We saw Rico Chico pitching in, clearing tables, serving tables, not ours, but around us. And I really appreciated that. He seemed like such a team player.
But we, when you, when you travel with a large table like, like this, you're. You're going to be the last ones out of the dining room. It's not, it's not an efficient dinner. You have to be willing if you want to sit together. It's going to be leisurely. And almost every single night we were amongst the last like five to ten tables in the whole entire place. Not because we were lingering and we had the menus where you order dessert ahead of time. If it hadn't been for that, we would have taken even longer. But they're, they're fully turning around the restaurant from our early dining seating with us still finishing up.
Because it's a tremendous amount of work to service a table like this. So thank you, dco, thank you. Thank you Oscar and team for working really hard and being so pleasant and fun.
[00:48:02] Speaker C: Yeah, that's awesome. Now you can of course request to have two tables near each other, but obviously you may not be that close to each other depending upon which dining room you're in. And so when they can accommodate this, it's pretty amazing. I'm guessing, saying that they just had you guys and no other tables besides the group of 15.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it was just us. There was one other large group. I'm not sure which cruise it was, but in some dining rooms we were one table and in others we were two. And by the way, it's perfectly fine because like, as I mentioned before, the kids sit on one end and so they can even be down the road a little bit. That's fine because they're all self sufficient, but it is nice when everybody's there together. And this time around, every single one of those rotational dining restaurants, we were, boom, one big table. So that was nice.
[00:48:52] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:48:53] Speaker B: Nice.
Any hiccups with the food?
[00:48:58] Speaker A: No, it was pretty, it was pretty business as usual.
And for like that's, that's a compliment to dcl.
I thought that like so many things were well done. I really enjoyed all of it. You know, there's always a few things that like, we may reflect on at the dining table. Like, oh, I like this better than the other one. But also when we, you know, we're, we're ordering multiple dishes of things. Things, and so there become the, the Comparative nature comes into play no matter what.
But to the best of my recollection, there was nothing that really like, went awry with that. So we were really pleased with how everything went in terms of.
[00:49:36] Speaker C: I mean, if you order three mains and you don't like one of them, who cares? You're eating the other two.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: So.
[00:49:42] Speaker C: All right, well, you got a great slide up of a rescue mission. Tell us about the rescue mission that happened during your sailing. Sailing.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: So this was, this was our, you know, our first full day and we were sailing to a Port Cartagena that was going to be a very short stint there. We were supposed to be in port at like 2 o' clock that day. And I, you know, this is the first time. I thought this before, but this is the first time I've ever been like, you know, I really wish they would do this. You know how when they make announcements, announcements on embarkation day, they say, this is our last announcement. We're not going to disturb you in your staterooms. I wish you could opt in to listening to them in your stateroom. I don't care being disturbed. I want to hear it. Then I'm like throwing myself out into the hallway to try to catch the end of it. And we were aft. You couldn't really hear things back there. But apparently at some point in the morning, the captain got on and said, we have a responsibility according to maritime law to hold and place because there is a situation going on with people in a lifeboat. And so we were there for hours. But so now the group text is going, right? The adult group text is going. Because some of our friends had gotten up earlier and heard it. I kind of was like, something's going on. What is going on? Anyway, long story short, as you can see, little bit grainy because they were a bit far away, but there were all these people with like, life vests in a lifeboat and we were holding in place until the rescue mission could be executed. We were not going to be the rescuers, to the best of my recollection. The captain, I think, made that clear that we were not bringing them on board. But it was part of the standard protocol.
But what I. So what I sort of like, quickly got up, threw on clothes out and about.
Every, every single, every single cast and crew was taking pictures. So I was like, clearly this doesn't happen very often because, you know, they had like the, you know, the captain's, like, staff had the big telescopic lens out and there was just a lot of hustle and bustle we saw the helicopters come in and circle and try to strategize how to get them there. You know, I don't. Nobody really said exactly what happened. We don't know if they were escaping something. We don't know if they were just in distress.
But it was a lot of people on that lifeboat and that put us quite late into port.
Now I love sea days, so I wasn't really super upset about to having like a lip, especially on the first day. Right. We had more time to run around, it was more leisurely and I wasn't worried. I don't like to when things don't go the way I've planned. I'm super type A. But we were just going to be walking around in Cartagena, so I wasn't worried about that. Now our friends had a port adventure booked through Disney that had to do with like the Andalusian horses. P.S. they loved that port adventure, if anyone's ever looking at that. They had a great experience doing that. But it stayed on track. It stayed on. Like they said, it's on, you know, just go. So although if I remember correctly, I don't know if Kirsten's listening tonight, if I remember correctly, they bust them out to the horse farm and everyone had gone on siesta and so they had to pull people back and be like, the guests are here, the guests are here. Like we have to, we have to have our guests.
[00:53:20] Speaker C: So Spain knows how to do it. I gotta say, I, I bet, I bet that you all were holding in place in case they needed assistance because they probably, they want to have obviously like Spanish coast guard, if they're close enough, deal with the rescue mission rather than a cruise ship. It's just a lot safer to have people who are experts in that sort of situation.
But like they probably need to, you know, have the cruise ship stay there in case any assistance is needed. All right, let's talk about the. Your port time. We're going to have to go through the port slides a little bit quicker.
But let's talk about port time in Cartagena. You guys decided to just kind of walk around on your own going.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: Yeah, so this will be quick. We were only there for a short amount of time. We really wanted to get back for rotational dining. It was also so hot. It was so, so hot. And so by the time we got into port, it was probably around 4, 4:30 as opposed to the 2 o' clock time.
And so Brian Call and I, we walked around Calle Mayor and I have to say I was super fascinated by this enough to have it make my slides presentation on. On this street, the streets are polished marble.
The middle slide, it's just beautiful. The middle slide is sort of the drainage in the middle of the polished marble street.
So the good news about Cartagena is that it was super, super easy to navigate. You just walked right off. I did include the Teatro Romano.
The thing I think to see, we didn't go see the that, but you can just actually walk right in there, I guess. There was some excavation that happened in Cartagena at some point in time and they discovered this Roman theater was like underneath what they excavated. And our friends took this picture. They said it was fascinating. We had hoped in Cartagena to just have a food experience that was a bust because it was siesta and there were a lot of ice cream places open.
We actually stumbled upon this really great modern looking empanada place.
And that was like a nice little snack at the time. But Cartagena, it was too hot to walk around. There were no restaurants open.
I still enjoyed seeing what we saw, but it was just a little bit of a blip on the radar in terms of an hour of just checking things out.
[00:55:47] Speaker C: All right, let's talk about Malaga, Spain. Is it Malaga or Malaga?
[00:55:51] Speaker A: Malaga. Malaga. So we were told it's Malaga. And I had actually, we had seen some local friends just before we left and they said, oh, you won't believe this. We did a weekend trip there when we brought, when we went to go see our daughter who was studying abroad in Spain. You have to check out the beachside restaurants and there's cool things to see. So we walked around their main shopping area. Not necessarily with the end game of like buying things because we're not big on souvenirs and merchant stuff, but just like really, really cool streets to walk around.
You know, the architecture when you go to anywhere in Spain is just really amazing to see. You feel like you're walking into history. And then we took a, we took a cab over to, to, to the beach. Now you can't see it from the picture where Brian and Cal are at the table, but basically when we were sitting here, we could see the, the ship from there off in like, and it was too hot to walk, but you could walk it if it wasn't like, if it, if it wasn't like you were combusting from the inside out. Which is what I felt like most days, by the way. Wait, there's more coming on that. Because the weather got better, but we, they Just do, like, really classic grilled.
Grilled fish. And it was so cool. We had amazing food there.
The. You know, there's not a lot of people swimming at the beach, but our. Some of our travel companions did go closer to where the ship was docked and swam around there. So Malika is a great port. I really enjoyed it a lot.
[00:57:24] Speaker C: Love that. All right, let's go to the next slide. Pirate night and sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar. That's got to be super cool. Tell us about that.
[00:57:34] Speaker A: It was so cool. I have to say that our favorite experience on land, or certainly mine, was going up to the monastery, but this definitely, definitely was one of my most memorable cruise experiences. Pirate night's always super fun. You know, I love a good group photo, and we're not big on standing in line for the DCL photographers, and I just grabbed someone wrangled the people that every. And it just. It's just. I like. I love. I. I especially love a pirate night group photo. So this made me so happy.
[00:58:09] Speaker C: I also love that your backdrop is like the elevator ironwork, which is beautiful, by the way. It's like such an. It's like, to me, it's. It's like an iconic, like, location on a Disney Cruise Line ship. Right. And it's right in the atrium. But I like, I. I actually love that that's your backdrop. It's awesome.
[00:58:28] Speaker A: We have another one from a. From a. Like a fantasy sailing. We have a big group photo exactly in this spot of spot where it's like, similar kind of vibe there. But anyway, so they had, you know, they had.
[00:58:41] Speaker C: The.
[00:58:41] Speaker A: The captain had told us, like, hey, here's what's happening tonight. And it was still light out when we sa by the Rock of Gibraltar.
But I have to tell you, it was just.
It just felt like a magical night, to tell you the truth.
First of all, the weather started changing dramatically as we start to enter the Strait. It dropped into, like, the low 70s. Now, granted, of course, it's at night, and the picture that I have in the middle, actually both pictures are from really, like, sort of the tail end of it. But there was just something very fascinating about being at sea.
Spain is on your right. You know, the lights of Morocco are on your left. The wind is whipping. It was actually way more comfortable to sit behind those glass walls in that adult area there. But it just was. It just. And it just felt like we were in this amazing part of the world, and, you know, the moon was out, and it was a really, really fun night. So that's awesome.
[00:59:44] Speaker C: All right, Brian, let's go to the next one. Vigo, Spain.
Tell us about Vigo.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: So check out the temperature in Vigo, up in the right hand corner.
[00:59:55] Speaker C: I love a nice 67 degrees. That's nice.
[01:00:00] Speaker A: So when we were in Malaga, I had thought to myself, gosh, maybe we should have gone to Norway. Because there is something about. About as much as I love spade. It just was so many days in a row of, you know, of working around that. And I know I'm being dramatic, but in general, I'm a dramatic about extreme temperatures either way. So if I went somewhere where it's cold, I would be saying it that many times too. So thank you for indulging me on that. But I did think it was really, really interesting that when we got through that geographic area, the weather just changed, changed dramatically. And so we had actually had a sea day in between with similar temperatures where it was highs in the low 70s. It was lovely to be out on deck.
And so when we got to VGO there, we had heard. We also didn't have anything planned. We were just, you know, kind of navigating ourselves. And people had said in a lot of things we'd read online that if you go up to, you know, up to Monte O Castro, where there's a fortress up there, it's a little bit. It's a little bit of a, you know, a journey to get up that, that hill.
But the views are worth it and it's a fascinating place. So this was a good weather day for us to do this. The picture of Cal with like, sort of the red awnings there, there are, there are points because everything's on this huge hill in general before you even get to the base of, of Lake Ocast.
Um, but there were some escalators and that just helps people get around and about there. It's a very cool town. We had walked around it a little bit both before and after, but we did. We did the walk all the way up to the fortress. And it was not easy for me at least, but I do.
[01:01:54] Speaker C: There's no way you would have done it in like 85, 90 degree weather. I mean, this is like, it was doable at 67.
Yeah.
[01:02:01] Speaker A: It was such a gift to have mild weather to be able to do that and just see that. And I wish I had, you know, 20 slides. There were so many cool pictures from this place. It really was. And you can just see, you know, if you look like over Cal's shoulder, you can see the ship right there at the edge of the ship. So what we did after that, this was super cool. Cal and Brian are very, very, very big into all things seafood. And there's Oyster street and so we went down to Oyster street and we just. They have these, these, these stands where they shuck oysters in front of the restaurants. The stands aren't related to the restaurant. So you can order from the restaurants and sit outside, but you gotta order from the oyster guys. And it just was a fun experience. And we had this like giant, giant, you know, sort of tray of the most delicious seafood. And I think it was €65 for that whole tray. That was enough for the three of us and then some. And I spend that on like mediocre food on Uber. Uber eats on the regular. So it was just same girl.
Yeah, it was just like, it was, it was very cool. Vigo, Vigo was a great port.
[01:03:09] Speaker C: I love that. Now Arnold is mentioning in the comments that, you know, so much history in Spain. How do you choose between shipboard fun and activities on shore? And I think that the answer is like, choose your own adventure, right? Like, I think, you know, when you're dealing with the heat, you probably spend less time at port. When you're dealing with a nicer day, you're probably going to spend more time at port. But it's really hard, I think it balancing, you know, that is. Is really hard on those European itineraries because there is so much to do and see on board the ship and then so much to do in port.
[01:03:41] Speaker B: If I think about, if I think about our own Norway sailing that we did, like, we would stay off the ship in port because the weather was nice, it was not too hot. Let's go get something to eat locally. Let's wander around the city like, you know, and we were on a smaller ship, so, you know, there wasn't as much to do. But still, like, we came back for
[01:04:00] Speaker C: dinner pretty much every day, pretty much
[01:04:02] Speaker B: we were off in the morning doing an excursion. We might come back to change clothes and we got off again to do some more stuff. Then we would come back for dinner, maybe the show.
[01:04:09] Speaker C: The other part though is picking the right itinerary for your family though, too. If you're doing a European itinerary that's got a couple sea days mixed in, that can be helpful for kind of cutting because when you have a really port intensive go, go, go, go, go. It makes it harder. And you know, Beth was mentioning at the earlier, with Cartagena being delayed already, a short port stop was okay because it meant a little bit more relaxing time on board before the start of the go, Go, go port schedule. All right, well, let's. Let's talk about Coruna, Spain.
Nacional de Galicia.
[01:04:44] Speaker A: Galicia, yes.
[01:04:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:04:50] Speaker A: So this was the one port that we decided to actually book a port adventure ahead of time. It was a tapas in history tour. And, you know, our. So again, in our sailing party, we all sort of did our own thing, although Mark and Laura and.
And one of their girls joined us on this one because we were able to book it together.
But it was really interesting just speaking to what you were saying before. It was really interesting because when you travel with friends and you all do your own thing, you get to hear about what everyone else did, like the Andalusian horses, like swimming in the Mediterranean, all that business. But all.
I have moments where I'm like, oh, oh, shoot, that would have. That would have been great. But you can. You can't do everything. And so it's about choosing the thing that feels right for you. So we decided to do something a little more formal. And at the, you know, having just gone our. On our merry way on the other ones, I was like, shoot, should we have booked this? Was this the right trip? It was a great. We had a great guide. It's really nice hearing the history from people who are there to share it with you. There's a great pride in both the, you know, our land tours in Barcelona and this one. And it was really cool. Like, we kind of didn't really know what we were getting into. Just, hey, we're going to eat some great tapas on our last port day. And then we had heard from the captain the night before. Listen, this is the national holiday of Galicia, and so things might be closed.
[01:06:17] Speaker C: So it's so good you booked that port adventure. Yeah, it is.
[01:06:21] Speaker A: But here's the thing. It turns out there was this medieval Renaissance festival going on, so. See the bagpipers down at the bottom? First of all, akarun, the way they called it la Carunia in some of the dcl stuff and a carunia and others.
But.
So I think it's a. I think maybe when you Americanize it, it. It's a little bit interchangeable, but it was fascinating. I actually only wish we had a little more time to do our own exploring there. I do not regret the.
The. The. The tour. The tour was great, but it was really cool. So it's all of these stalls. At first I was like, renaissance fair. Like, you know, like what? Like, is it Renaissance fairs Like, they have an upstate New York where there's like everybody sort of in costume and stuff. And it was kind of like that, but kind of not because there were all these stalls of food and crafts and stuff, but a lot of them were angled so that they were from like the old days of ocarina. And so it wasn't like all modern or all. But they also had street perfect performers.
And so they had these like huge stilt walker puppets. They had a guy who was like, play acting, like the herding, like sheep. Like guys who are dressed like sheep. And they have like all of this, you know, sort of like hullabaloo going on in the streets and everyone watches it. But what I loved the most was the bagpipers, because in Akaruna, they have a very strong Celtic influence. And with that comes the background bagpipes. These guys were great. DCL should hire them to do a show on the ship. They were so, so great and so fun. And the tour guide really did a great job of kind of going with that, like, stopping so we could see the street performers, partially because we couldn't hear her over them, but partially because they were really, really fun to watch. And so she was great. She just went with the flow. And we saw different things. We saw different churches and cathedrals. She told us about the history. But what was nice about the tapas tour is that. So we started walking first. I was starving because I thought we were eating first and then kind of learning along the way. But we did a lot of history stuff early.
And this started at 12. So early is not the right word, but at least like, by American standards. Like, I was ready for lunch, right?
But they were taking. She was taking us to two stops and I had no. We had no idea what it was going to be like when we got there. Well, for stop number one, and that's the picture that we're in, three of us right there. We had the whole restaurant to ourselves. So we came into an empty restaurant. The tables were set, the tapas were already on there because she had called ahead and we had and was like, nice and air, you know what I mean? It wasn't hot out, but it was just like a nice controlled space because we had come out of fun chaos, but and a lot of walking and hills and all that. And then she took us to the second spot, which was the, like, Hamon area, right? So that's where you see that the.
That's where you see like the hams, like, hanging from the ceiling there. This was funny, though. This was in a very bustling street with, like, an ornery old man running the show. It was full of people. He kicked them all out so we could have the whole restaurant. He was like, now you have to leave. He did allow people to come and order things at the counter because it's kind of like the equivalent of a deli. Right.
And again, delicious. They had everything out on the tables for us right away. We had comfortable seating. And it was kind of funny that he was aggressively removing people from the restaurant in.
In anticipation of us being a few steps away.
[01:09:55] Speaker B: Is the picture in the bottom right here? Is that Iberico ham? Is that Iberico ham? Yeah, yeah.
[01:10:00] Speaker A: So that's hanging from. It's not a great. I had to make it smaller than I wanted to. It's hanging from the ceilings aging right above your head in. So cool. In the restaurant. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:10:12] Speaker C: All right, Brian, take us to. I think this is the last slide, the Apollo dinner slide.
[01:10:18] Speaker A: So, Sam, I don't know if you remember, because this surprised you at the time, but in all of these cruises, this is only my second time at Palo or any adult dining at all.
[01:10:27] Speaker C: I remember.
[01:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And you were like, what?
[01:10:31] Speaker C: At the time?
[01:10:31] Speaker A: You've been on eight cruises. You've never been to Palo. What's wrong with you?
So our. So there's Mark, the birthday boy.
And I do have, like, a worthwhile story to tell, I think, for listeners who are trying to negotiate planning Powell, Paolo or Remy or the equivalent in their time. But what happened was, so Mark and Laura love Paulo. They go every single time. They're the platinum cruisers. And so what happens is that they book first. They grab a time near 7 o'. Clock. We booked next. We were able to grab a time that was like, I think maybe also seven o'. Clock. And then when Wendy and Kirsten book Times, they were able to get a half an hour later, a half an hour earlier. Now, this is the second time that Laura, who. Who boards first, Right. Laura was able to go directly to the dining, you know, staff and say, hey, can you put us all together? It worked out just fine. And they were very willing to do that, too. But what happened was, at one point, they were sort of. They have to. Have to take you off and move you one by one. So thank you to Laura for going through all of that with the. With the dining team. But something interesting happened, and I'm so glad Laura caught it. At one point, she said, hey, what is our rotation? And what she realized was, is that our Palo reservation was on the last night. And that was the animator's palette night where they do the animation magic. And she said, oh, wait, can we please? Like, I don't really want to miss that. We have someone new to cruising. Like, we really want him to see it. The kids love it. And so the dining team worked some magic and they moved us to the night before.
And I'm so glad that Laura thought to ask because I think once we had walked away from that, it would have been much harder to pull off.
But as you can see, they gave us the big table in the back. We had like a giant table and just. It was great. The one bad thing about that table is not everybody has a view of outside and it gets dark really, really late where we.
[01:12:38] Speaker B: We were.
[01:12:39] Speaker A: So you actually had a beautiful view if you could see it. But the table back there. But the ship was rocking and you could see, like, the chandelier moving at the time.
[01:12:51] Speaker C: And this is the. For those who have heard us talk about, like, the Apollo private room on the Dream and the Fantasy, this is what it is. There isn't really a private room. It is a large private table, but it's not in a really private space. So it does attach to the rest of the dining room, but it is all the way in the back of the dining room. So it is definitely more. More secluded. It's just that there's no door or wall that separates you, and that's just on the dream class, the magic class, and of course the wish class actually have its own sort of enclosed room. But I love that you experienced this.
[01:13:24] Speaker B: I'm always going to remember this room as the brunch buffet room. When Paolo is still had a buffet
[01:13:32] Speaker C: component, this is where they would set up the buffet.
[01:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah, the Sticky Bun room is what I'm going to call it.
[01:13:37] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Beth, it sounds like it was a fantastic cruise.
I got.
Yeah. I got to ask, like, what's the one. One highlight? What was the, like, the best thing that you did on this cruise, either on the ship or off the ship?
[01:13:56] Speaker A: The most memorable part by far for me was being out there on deck sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar. It really was something that, like, just felt like really unique and just like we were seeing a part of the world that we just didn't expect to really see in that way. So that was really cool.
[01:14:18] Speaker B: Nice. Well, Beth, I will echo Sam's. Thanks for you spending some time with us this evening and all of our listeners and the folks watching us live to talk about this cruise.
It sounds fantastic. I always vacillate between whether I want to go to Europe with DCL or just do a land based vacation, but you make it sound, you make it sound wonderful. So, you know, I'm edging back towards the side of the barometer that wants to do it. Yeah.
For so. So thank you for spending some time with us this evening. For all of you out there watching, we're going to wrap up the show here. I just want to remind folks we will be back next week at our new time, new bat time, but same bat channel Tuesday, Tuesdays, 5pm so next Tuesday, 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern. We will have Rich joining us and he is here to talk about the Disney adventure.
So we're excited to have that we record an episode recently.
[01:15:11] Speaker C: It's his second time on the Disney Adventure. He was on the maiden voyage, just he and his wife, but this time they brought their kids. So we're gonna hear what's changed with regard to the adventure and also what his kids thought about the adventure. So make sure to join us Tuesday.
[01:15:28] Speaker B: We did have someone take us to task and social media, not tickets, that's
[01:15:31] Speaker D: too strong of a word.
[01:15:32] Speaker B: But they were like, you gotta have more people on who did the adventure more recently because things have really, really improved.
[01:15:37] Speaker C: And so we had Sam recently too, remember? So, yeah, so we're definitely hoping to hear more about how that chip is doing and yeah, well, the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. But Beth, tell us, what do you have booked next? Because we gotta have you back on the show, of course.
[01:15:54] Speaker A: So we're sort of holding a bit until we book. What's next? Just trying to navigate as I think I mentioned at the begin, just our son being at college. We really do love to travel with him. And so the next cruise we take with him, he's 18 so he can do things like adult dining with us. We've been wish, we've been wishing to take him to adult dining in general since he was little because he really has always known how to sort of function in nice restaurants and enjoys good food. But so yeah, so we're holding. I have to tell you, I'm really wishing to go on a tropical trip though. I would love to be on a relaxing seven night and I have got to get on the treasure. That's what I need. I have not been on the treasure. You just have to get on the treasure.
[01:16:42] Speaker B: You want tropical, you want seven nights. There's really only one ship in the fleet for now.
[01:16:48] Speaker C: That's what I want.
[01:16:49] Speaker A: To do. It's not on the books, but that's what I would wish to put on the books.
[01:16:53] Speaker B: Nice. All right.
[01:16:55] Speaker C: All right. Well for all of you watching out there live or listening to us later, thank you for watching and listen. Listening. And as Brian said, we'll be back next week, same time and see you real soon.
[01:17:11] Speaker D: All right, that's our show for tonight, but thank you so much for listening. If you're not subscribed yet, please fix that right now. Head over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hit that subscribe button. We're dropping at least two episodes a week plus we're live each and every every week over on our YouTube channel, YouTube.comdclduo come hang out with us for a live. It's a blast. You can ask your questions in the chat and really join the conversation with us and our guests. If you're enjoying our show, one of the easiest ways to support the show, Head over to Apple Podcast. Hit those five stars and while you're at it, leave us a written review with your 5 star review and we will read it on the air at the top of one of our main episodes. If you're listening to us on another platform, Spotify, YouTube, Castos, there's so many third party podcast apps and players out there. Whatever form of reviewer rating they have, give it all to us. Show the show some love. It keeps us going, keeps us putting out great content week to week. Are you ready to set sail? Book your next Disney Cruise Line vacation with our show sponsor. We do travel right the crew that handles the planning so you can focus on relaxing. Head to wedotravelright.com DCLDUO today to get started. Or you can reach out to them directly. Just let them know the DCL Duo sent you. Subscribe today to DCL Magazine. They put out a great product Head over there. It's your go to guide for DCL tips and tricks. Just browse to dcl-magazine.com that's dcl-magazine.com and use code DCL Duo all code caps DCL Duo today for 10 off everything in the WDW Magazine store. And if you want to directly support the show, join us on
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[01:19:34] Speaker B: Listening.
[01:19:34] Speaker D: We'll see you next time for another fabulous adventure with the DCL Duo.
[01:19:37] Speaker B: Good night.
