This little excursion began innocently enough: We'd never been to see the Norwegian fjords. Always wanted to go, but never got around to going. So when Disney scheduled a Norwegian Fjord cruise we signed up for it in May 2015. First Day pricing, yeah!
Then the question arose: How do we get to Denmark (the starting place for the Norwegian cruise). Why spend a bunch of money on plane tickets (flying places is quite handy, but usually annoying: seats are too close together, there a small (noisy) child nearby, they are out of the meal you really wanted, etc). So why not sign up for the East Bound Trans Atlantic cruise? [EBTA] We had a swell time on the West Bound Trans Atlantic [WBTA] a few years ago; why not reverse the direction? And, besides, we'd never been to New York City (except for an ill-fated military flight to Germany when my plane engine caught fire), Newfoundland, Canada, and we sure hadn't been to Iceland before! So it cost a little bit more - it would be worth it and it was 15 days long, many of them our favorite: sea days.
Then we looked at the calendar and wondered what we would do for the week between the EBTA and the Fjords.... Well, Disney had that figured out for us, too: why not sign up for the Northern European Capitals cruise during the intervening week? Why not, indeed!?! Copenhagen was reputed to be a lovely - though expensive - city; why not cruise to Tallin, Estonia; St. Petersburg, Russia; Helsinki, Finland; and Stockholm, Sweden plus a couple of sea days while waiting for the Norway cruise? We'd never been to these places and hadn't even heard of Tallin!
So that's how our extravaganza happened: EBTA/Northern Capitals/Norwegian Fjords. Twenty-nine days aboard the same ship! And our travel agent, Kim, managed to get us in the same cabin on all three cruises! Disney is pretty good about moving your stuff to different cabins for you, but you'd need to pack it up. This way we don't even need to do that! Our first B2B2B cruise was settled. [Back-to-back-to-back]
However, could we fly to Florida for embarkation without a stop at Walt Disney World? No!!! We always spend some time at WDW whenever we cruise from Port Canaveral. And we weren't returning to Orlando, so we booked a room at the Boardwalk Resort for five nights (arrival/four parks/departure). We even know which park we will visit each day and where we're eating lunch and dinner each day (ressies made). And EPCOT - our favorite park - is a short walk from the resort so we can always end the day watching IllumiNations!
Our friends, Sarah and Mum, heard of our planned travels and invited us to join them at Victoria's and Albert's at the Grand Floridian. How could we say 'No'? So we didn't! We've always wanted to dine there but getting a ressie is a chore. Luckily Sarah took care of that item. And there will be other friends (our travel agent Kim & her husband) at EPCOT the day we arrive, so we've made plans to 'run into each other' that day. It seems to be all planned out.
Then we easily booked flights from Mexico City to Orlando. Going in the other direction (east to west) was a bit more difficult. We finally settled on Iceland Air (it's supposed to be wonderful if you're on an actual Iceland Air plane; not so much if your flight is palmed off on a contract airline...we'll pray for an Iceland Air flight - it's a 7-1/2 hour flight across the Atlantic). We had friends from NYC (hi, Ben & Rick) who recently flew to Iceland and I think they must have been on the contract airline...it sounded dreadful.
But we finally settled on Iceland Air from Copenhagen to Chicago (O'Hare airport) via Iceland and Toronto. Then a stay over near O'Hare and continuing on the next day on Volaris Airlines (from Midway Airport, across town) to Mexico. This flight would deposit us at the Leon Airport, much closer to San Miguel de Allende. It's still an hour's ride from BJX to SMA, but better than three-and-a-half hours from MEX to SMA.
So everything is set! We studied the port excursions that Disney was offering, and signed up for a few additional independent tours [Segways forever!] - keeping in mind to avoid really steep climbing and using alternate forms of transportation (buses, boats, Segways, walking tours, et cetera). When the appropriate date arrived [we are Platinum on DCL, so everything was open] we booked our Disney port excursions and Palo dining reservations aboard ship. We had also booked our wine packages aboard the ship. What to do next?
We then turned our attention to packing. How do we pack for a total of 39 days in a variety of weathers? And what about formal nights, semi-formal nights, dining at Palo brunches and evenings? Plus warm Florida weather, North Atlantic weather, Baltic weather. Especially since we had jettisoned our cold weather duds when we moved to Mexico five years ago?
Solution: two big suitcases (yes, we had to pay for the extra one on some of the airlines; other lines expected us to bring two suitcases) and a spate of shopping at Orvis - bless them! I love their clothes, but they are a wee bit expensive, so we had to be careful on what we spent our money. We even got some new tux shirts! Now we're set, eh?
Then the phone rang - it was Iceland Air calling. It seems that the 3-leg flight from Copenhagen to Chicago via Reykjavik and Toronto had a little problem. Two legs [CPH/KEF (Reykjavik) and KEF/YYZ (Toronto)] were fine, but the third flight on Air Canada's schedule had been advanced and there was no way we would make the connection.
But the friendly Iceland Air agent had a plan: they would book us on the first Air Canada flight out of Toronto the next morning. Well, it was better than nothing, so we agreed. We then hurriedly booked a hotel in Toronto and cancelled our hotel in Chicago. The only hitch is that the first Air Canada flight the next morning is sub-contracted to United Airlines and there's a hitch in the get-a-long when changing flights like this - the receiving airline has 48 hours in which to accept us or decline to accept us. And the 48 hours is now well past and we haven't been advised of their decision. I did check the UA site and there are a lot of seats available, so there shouldn't be a problem (unless they decide to cancel the flight), but it would be nice to have our seats reserved. Guess I contact Iceland Air tomorrow....
Michael and I both like our space, so our usual approach is to book seats C/D in the same row, so we each have an aisle seat but can chat with each other easily across the aisle. I'm hoping that the seats assigned (!) follow this pattern, but if they don't, we still have time to change them -- assuming we can find out what they are and sign into the United reservation. Air Canada's website only shows that the flights in our itinerary needed to be changed to accommodate the new schedule, but I can't sign-in to the United website to verify the seats (and change them if needed). Now, it's a short flight (about 1-1/2 hours) so if they stick us next to each other that would be doable, but it's at the end of the trip and we'll probably be cranky by then!
Once this is settled, we have only to finalize our packing list (your should see the guest bedroom's bed), actually pack, and reserve the airport shuttle transportation between SMA/MEX and BJX/SMA Michael found a great hotel within the Mexico City airport terminal from which we are flying and reserved our room before the first flight, so we're set there. Since we don't leave home until May 9th, we still have time to work this out. The last time we went to Mexico City to fly out, we booked a combination (shuttle to the Queretero bus station and then a bus directly to the airport terminal) and since there was another couple on the shuttle who had paid for door-to-door service, we got to ride along! We'll probably try this again for this trip. If worse comes to worse, we'll get what we paid for. Otherwise, yippee!!!
We have suffered set-backs in other trips we've taken: I remember our flight to Barcelona for the WBTA. Although our flight arrived on time at Heathrow, we had to change terminals - and they weren't connected - and by the time we got through the new security, we'd missed our flight into BCN. Luckily there was one more flight that night which they put us on ('us' is a collective noun, as there were several of us in this predicament). And although we made it on the flight, it was also the last flight into the BCN airport. If we hadn't caught the last shuttle into town, we would have been stuck at the closed airport. As it was, there we were in downtown Barcelona, stumbling around dragging our luggage behind us, looking for our hotel. We finally found a tourist info kiosk which told us we were only three blocks from the hotel and pointed us in the right direction.
We really don't want to do that again!!!
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