The Rothera's at Sea - Sep 15 - Pre-Trip Report

[TheRothera's]

The Rothera's at Sea - Sep 15
Pre-Trip Report

Time to write another pre-trip report.

First of all let me say I apologise for the last two trip reports, they are still yet to be written.
I have all the photos and I have all my notes of what we did.
I will do them when I get round to it.
Its been a busy year this last year but anyway!

I thought I better write a pre-trip for our latest one anyway.

So lets see if I can remember seen as I’m actually writing this later than I ever thought, only 7 days till we go!

The latest reports can be found in my signature so go take a look if you want something to kill the time!

This trip is another extra for us as we have stuck to one holiday a year in the past.

For this one our parents have paid for me and my brother to go as a present to us.

This could well be my last one as a family for a while as ill be leaving home at the end of the year before moving in with who is now my Fiancée.

Anyway onto the cruise!

We are going for a 11 night transatlantic cruise from Barcelona through to Miami.

Now ill introduce you to everyone



(From Left to Right)

Andy/Dad
The best Dad there is!
Although he can sometimes show his inner Disney character named Grumpy
Although he doesn’t show it much, he's still a Disney nut too!
This is Dad’s 3rd Disney Cruise.

Jackie/Mum
Also the best Mum there is!
Known as Mum throughout the report!
Always known as the one more mad on Disney than anyone else.
The house is completely covered in it!
Mum does the organising of the holiday for us all.
This is Mum's 3rd Disney Cruise.

Me! (Steven)
22 Years Old
I will be doing the trip reporting for this trip again
Always a big fan of Disney and I don’t think that will stop anytime soon.
Looking forward to another Atlantic crossing!
Definitely will be taking my SLR camera to do some photography aboard the ship!
Will be hard to be away from my fiancée for the trip through!
Its my 2nd Disney Cruise.

David
26 Years Old
Don’t think I need to say much other than he liked Disney that much he went to work for them in Florida in 2008!
He now works for Facebook over in Dublin so might be a bit proud of him!
This is David’s 2nd Disney Cruise

Same as our last cruise, we have some family friend additions with us too!

Jackie and Steven!



They have been long-time fans of Disney Cruises and they are the ones who introduced it to my parents in 2013.

So lets get into the details.

As stated we are on a 11 night Transatlantic Cruise.
We are sailing on-board they Disney Magic the same ship as last year.



It’s a slightly shorter trip this time but only by one night.
It starts in Barcelona on the 19th September before heading onto Funchal, Castaway Cay and then ending in Miami.

One difference is that our flight out to Barcelona is early morning so we are actually staying at Premier inn the night before so that we don’t have to drive in the middle of the night.
On that night we are all going to go for a meal out at the pub at the end of the runway.

So we are flying as normal from Manchester Airport on the 19th.
The only difference being that we are going from Terminal 3 rather than the usual Terminal 2.
We have our car parking booked at the normal Jet Parks Plus.

We are flying with Ryanair over to Barcelona.
Nothing special, just cheap and cheerful!

When we are in Barcelona Jackie has arranged for a taxi to take us to the Cruise Terminal.



Aboard the ship we have again 3 state rooms between the 6 of us.
The rooms are Steven and Jackie, Mum & Dad and then me and David.
The only difference this year is that instead of being on Deck 1 with two small port holes we are on Deck 2 with one large port hole.
It will be a shame not to be so close to the water but hopefully we get a better view out to sea.#

Our first stop will be Madeira, Funchal which we visited on our cruise last year.
We are only there for the morning and seen as last year we did a tour, we will just go grab some free WiFi from McDonalds and have a walk around the shops.



On our way to Madeira we go through the Straights of Gibraltar, last year we did but it was the middle of the night so we couldn’t see anything but hopefully this year we will go through in daylight.

Once we are back on the ship we are at sea for 6 days across the Atlantic to Castaway Cay.
We loved going there last year for our first time, so we are looking forward to visiting again.



The difference is this time that we plan on doing something other than laying on the beach, we plan on doing the Castaway Cay Fun Run.
Well when I say we, 5 out of 6 of us are doing it anyway so Steven can sit on the side lines and look after all of our stuff.

As much as we don’t plan on running it, we thought it would be something fun to do that’s a bit different to what we normally do.

After Castaway Cay we are on to our final stop and the end of our cruise at Miami.
When we arrive in Miami we will be going to Dollar to get our rental car.
We have booked our normal Grand Caravan.

However all we are using it for is driving from Miami up to Orlando Airport.
When we get up to Orlando though, we can’t go just straight to the Airport.

We have made a decision to stop off at a Steak and Shake as its our new favourite.

For dessert we will be going to Coldstone Creamery of course, its been too long since our last one!
Might have to get a larger size than normal to cover us until October.

One other stop off is Premium Outlets, we just want a few things from the shops so it won’t be a long stop.
Then we are off to the airport, drop off the car and fly back home to Manchester.

I think that’s it for the details, I have probably missed something out but we shall see!

One thing i will mention on the cruise is that we will once again be using the internet on board so we hope it is as reliable as it was last year, a bit quicker wouldn’t be bad though!

Whilst on the cruise we will also miss two F1 races.
We will try and find a stream when it comes to it but it depends on the internet.
We might be able to watch part of the coverage whilst we are in Barcelona before set sail but apart from that we don’t have any options.

After we are back in the UK its only actually another 4 weeks roughly before we go to Florida for 16 days.
Its a hard life with all these holidays
I have only just returned a week ago from Turkey too so i have a head start on my tan.

So that’s it for me.

See you when we get back!

Thanks for reading,
The Rothera's

Links
Index

[JACKIEC]

Ooh didn't know we were going to cold stone creamery as well as steak n shake! @ lol

[Guest]

Great pretrippy x
Looking forward to your adventure xx
Enjoy yourselves xx