Our Disney Reviews

Character Breakfast

2011-04-01T16:36:00.000-07:00

Character breakfasts are one of those special perks you get with a Disney cruise. There is something special about waking up and knowing you get to go to breakfast with some of your favorite Disney characters. Since they need to have enough time to schedule one for each person on the ship, character breakfasts are only on cruises 7 days or longer. It is included in the cost of your cruise, so there is no need to worry about an additional cost.

You will be assigned to a particular morning for your character breakfast. This will be printed on your Key to the World card that you receive on embarkation day when you are about to get on the ship. The night before your breakfast, your server will explain a little about what time to be there and at which restaurant it will be held. On the Magic and Wonder, it takes place in Parrot Cay.

One of the best things about this is...no lines! If you have been to see the characters at the parks, you will know that most of the time there are lines to see them, especially the really popular ones like the main mouse himself. This is a lovely chance to sit back, relax, and have a meet and greet with the main Disney characters, all dressed up in the cruise ship attire. Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, and Chip all showed up for the fun.

Our assistant server, Solange, really added to the fun by making hats out of our napkins. Our little Princess was wanting too much to see what was on her head, and so she kept taking it off.

Everybody gets a hat, even Mom and Dad, which Princess thought was really funny.

The servers are wonderful! This particular morning I had been up early with a migraine. I thought I didn't need any nausea medication, but I had been so very wrong. I really did not want to miss out though, so I pulled myself together as much as possible and headed to breakfast with the rest of my family. Our server, Gabriela, was so sweet. I was kind of picking at my food, and when she asked if it was alright, I told her about how I was feeling. She offered me a variety of teas, which turned out to be just what I needed. Our kids were all really fond of the server team as well, and looked forward to every meal when we saw them.

Cosco Travel for Disney Land and Sea Vacation

2010-04-25T16:23:00.000-07:00

The world of travel can be confusing. We thought a lot about whether to use a travel agent or book through Disney directly. I am the type of person that has a strong desire to make sure I get a good deal, so when I went to book our Disney Land and Sea vacation I looked around and called quite a few places. One thing that I learned is that travel agents cannot discount the cost of the cruise. This is Disney’s rule. To get you to use their services, travel agencies offer incentives such as on-board credit or gift cards. I got price information from the Disney website, Costco travel, and a few other smaller travel agents. All of the prices were pretty similar, ranging by a couple hundred dollars, which could be a result of timing since the price can vary from day to day based on ship occupancy and other factors of which I have no idea. When all was said and done we decided to go through Costco travel. Why? Well, they offered approximately $500 dollars in gift cards to their stores if you booked through them, and we buy a fair amount of our groceries there. Sadly to say, I was not really all that pleased with going through Costco. Everything turned out all right in the end, but there were a couple bumps along the road.

The first bump was when I tried to add the Disney Dining Plan to our vacation. I had added a stay for the night before our cruise package so we did not waste one of the days on our park tickets while we were traveling. This threw the whole thing off since you cannot add the Dining Package if you have an additional day added to the package which Disney has created. I wanted to know why it would not work and what could be done to fix it. I talked to a couple travel agents at Costco and no one was any help, so I called Disney and was informed I would have to remove that additional night stay and book it as a separate reservation. So, I called Costco, removed that night, added the Dining Plan, and then called Disney and booked the additional night directly through them. It was not Costco’s fault, since this is Disney’s policy and something I think could be improved in the future, but they definitely could have been more knowledgeable and more helpful with how to solve it, rather than just basically telling me that is how it is. Also, the invoices they e-mailed me continued to have a note saying that there was an additional night added, even after I had taken that night’s stay off. I called them about it, they assured I was not charged and they would send new invoices, but the note was still there. I found it very worrisome that they could not fix their own invoices, which were less than clear to begin with.

The next issue actually turned out much better than it could have. I had assumed, by looking at the cruise package on the Disney cruise website, that transportation to the port from your resort, and from port to the airport after your cruise was finished, was included. I was even sent a letter from Disney stating that we would receive information on where to go to be picked up to be taken to the port the night before we would be leaving. So I was happily thinking we were all ready and everything had been set and paid when I called Costco about a month before our trip date with a question about when we would be receiving our information packets. After answering my question, the travel agent asked about if we wanted transportation, because we did not have any. I thought for sure she must be mistaken, so while she started selling me on car rentals, I said I had to go. I called Disney and asked them to check our package information, and sure enough, no transfers. Turns out, Disney has the transportation included on their website unless you chose to take it off, while Costco chooses not to add it unless you ask for it.

I truly feel that this should have been mentioned at some point, such as asking me while booking the vacation if I would like transportation added. I expressed, as nicely as I could, that I feel that they should do something to make this situation better. At the time of the initial booking, I had repeatedly asked the travel agent if the package through Costco travel was the same as what I would be receiving by booking directly through Disney Cruises, and was assured that it was. I was not happy about having close to $300 added to the bill that I thought we had finished paying. I did receive a call from a manager who apologized for the misunderstanding, but told me that many people like to book their own transportation so they do not include it. This would have been fine if it was mentioned upfront at the time I booked the Disney vacation. He understood that this was part of the package with Disney that I had asked for, but basically did nothing to make it right in my eyes. Imagine, we could have been on the vacation, the night before we left on the cruise, before we realized we needed a way to get there.

I don't think we will ever be using the Costco travel agency to book a vacation again. Some of the travel agents I talked to where very nice, but the fact is that I did not receive enough information from the company in general. I believe that a travel agent should be there to give you your options and make sure all your needs will be taken care of, not just someone to type in what you want after you go through the work of figuring it all out. I can say that we did have a wonderful vacation though, but a fair amount of that is from me calling Costco so much. Months after coming home from our Disney vacation, we did finally receive the gift cards that Costco had given us for booking through them, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth and will think twice before using Costco as a travel agency in the future.

Our Disney Reviews

2010-04-23T19:21:00.000-07:00

Hello and thanks for stopping by OurDisneyReviews.blogspot.com! We've got a lot to share with you about some of our Disney vacation adventures and we're really excited that you've come across our blog. I would like to take some time to give you a little back-story, to explain how we got to this point, where we felt that we had something beneficial to offer Disney fans from our experiences.

I wasn't ever a huge Disney fan. Sure, I went to Disneyland once when I was a kid and growing up in the 80's meant that I watched a fair shake of Disney cartoons and movies, but that was about the extent of my engagement with the company. Tara, on the other hand, had been to Walt Disney World a couple of times and had very fond memories of those trips.

We'd been married for nearly ten years without a single real vacation when I decided that as a ten year anniversary present it would be fun to plan a grand adventure. After supporting me through six years in the military, I felt like I should try to show Tara just how much she meant to me. It was then that I started looking into the Disney Land and Sea vacations. We talked it over and decided that it sounded like a lot of fun. Sure, it was expensive, but I had been very careful to save money at every opportunity so we could enjoy something special when the time was right.

The truth was, work was getting to me. It felt like my plate was always overfilling with tasks and there just wasn't enough time in the day to complete it all without doing a poor job at it. It was very stressful to say the least. My health started to suffer, I got bronchitis, and my lungs began filling with fluid but still I continued to try to work through it, to accomplish the impossible. At last I'd had enough. I notified my company that I'd be taking some time off to recuperate and that I needed to spend more time with my family.

After that it was just a matter of arranging the vacation. We had a lot of questions. Should we purchase our travel directly from Disney or should we go through a travel agent? What was the difference? In the end we ended up going through Costco and booked our travel. Before we knew it we were on the way to Orlando, Florida for some fun in the sun and then it was off to the Caribbean on the fabulous Disney Wonder. We loved it so much that we ended up going on another cruise nine months later where we had the unique experience of becoming the Castaways of Castaway Cay.

So, are our Disney adventures over, only to be relived through pictures and home videos? Of course not! In fact, we took advantage of the onboard booking this time around to save even more on our next cruise!

Please, take some time to look around the reviews we've put together and come back often as we will continue to post updates as time goes on. I have added links to follow this blog via RSS or with Google Friend Connect to the top left of the page for your convenience. Thanks again for stopping by!