At LONG Last- PTR Magic 9/3/2016

laevson4712

Mouseketeer
Joined
Oct 7, 2014
Welcome everyone to my PTR!! :welcome:We will be going on our FIRST EVER cruise on the Magic’s September 3rd Mediterranean route. :worship::cool1:

Lets start with a little background and introductions.

First there is, of course, Me (28) :stitch:. I am a proud Disney freak and a pretty intense planner. Definitely my favorite place to be is Disney World and I am counting down the years till I retire and can work my dream job at WDW.

Next is my DH (36) :charac4:. He is a sweetheart that puts up with my Disney obsession. He is a huge Star Wars and Marvel fan though so it isn’t that hard for him.

Finally, the main Princess herself our DD (3) princess:. She was probably conditioned a little too well to love everything Disney and is definitely a force to be reckoned with.

So a little background about this cruise.

We currently are living in Germany. DH is in the Army and I am in the Air Force and we were lucky enough to get an amazing assignment over here. We have been here now for two years and just extended for another four. I knew since we first got word that we would be moving over here that I wanted to do a cruise through Disney. However, I was first looking at booking the Norway cruise directly through the Disney website. I loved the look of the Norway cruise and I have always wanted to see the Northern Lights. We had been looking at prices for a while and were going back and forth about if we even wanted to do it.

While we were debating this, I had a chat with one of my AF leaders that enjoyed planning trips on the side and she pointed out the benefits of the Mediterranean cruises and also suggested we go through a travel agent to take advantage of the on board credit some offer. With this advice, I talked to DH who loved the idea. So I emailed a couple of agents and we decided to go with Dreams Unlimited who offered us a $200 credit (drinks!!!!).

All of this happened back in April of 2015 so we have been waited a year and a half to take this cruise. Needless to say, the wait has been agonizing!!

Up next- Plane, Train, or Automobile??
 
We are on the cruise after yours :) we are flying up from southern Spain. Its going to be so nice not to be so jet lagged!
 
Plane, Train, or Automobile??


After booking the cruise we took a little break and I spent the next year or so stalking the DISboards and coming up with some ideas about what we would like to do with our time. During this we became DVC owners at the AKV YAY!!!:simba:

Finally, May 2016 rolled around and I knew it was time to start planning transportation and hotel. I had kinda been looking a little before that but I really felt that the price was still too high to take the plunge. We live about 10 hours from Barcelona so we had a variety of transportation options opened to us.

I was really interested in doing the train, hoping we could get a high speed one and just make our way there carefree and with amazing views. Looking into it the fastest we could get there was around 8 hours. There was no way that we were going to take a rambunctious 3 year old on an 8 hour train ride!! Not only would that just kill us but I could never be that mean to those poor souls that would be riding with us.

Our next option was driving. We were looking at driving down from our house to Montpellier, France and staying the night on September 2nd. Then getting up and going the rest of the way on the 3rd straight to the Barcelona Port. We nixed this idea for two reasons. One, we wouldn’t get to spend any time in Barcelona on the 2nd and we would have to get a hotel in Montpellier and Barcelona. The second reason, it was just too expensive with gas. Buying gas on the economy in Europe for an American spec car is just crazy expensive.

With both of those options out we decided it was best just to take a flight to Barcelona. I looked at RyanAir first. We took them for a flight to London which was fine. It was super cheap and got us there so there really wasn’t anything to complain about. Looking at Barcelona though they only had flights on certain days which would make us fly in early and have to have a hotel room and extra night. Plus the airport was about an hour out of the city so we would have to pay for transportation and when you start adding bags as well the price just flew up. So we decided to go through Lufthansa from Frankfurt into Barcelona. It wasn’t as cheap as I was hoping for but it didn’t add up as much as it would have with Ryanair.

Once we decided the flight we were able to find a hotel for relatively cheap. We went with the Barcelona Airport Hotel which is pretty centrally based. They offer a free shuttle to and from the airport with is an added bonus and had a metro line near it.

Next up- Activity Booking AKA How many princesses can one day hold?
 
We are on the cruise after yours :) we are flying up from southern Spain. Its going to be so nice not to be so jet lagged!

We are on the same cruise as you!!!


OP, Cant wait to follow your pre cruise planning!!! Never been to Europe so any info I get will be helpful
 



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