The Good, the Bad, and the “Magical” of our Walt Disney World Speciality Cruise

On our trip to Walt Disney World a few weeks ago, my husband celebrated his 40th birthday. Since it was a “milestone” birthday, I wanted to make his birthday extra special. He is a great husband and an awesome dad to our kids, and we really wanted to suprise him with something fabulous.

Yes, I did say surprise. That was the difficult part, planning birthday surpirses from 1100 miles away and keeping it a secret with FIVE children in the loop (okay, I guess baby girl doesn’t REALLY count since she is only 4 months old and cannot talk). It was difficult but not impossible.

Like I said, I wanted to make his birthday fabulous and started brainstorming with DIZKRAZKATE, who would be traveling with us, about possible ideas. Our first idea was of course “Top of the World Lounge” at Bay Lake Towers, since BLT would be our “home” for this trip. This was a great idea and after discussing it, we decided that we would just make it the four of us (myself, DIZKRAZKATE and our DH’s) and leave all 8 of our children with my parents (Nana and Poppy) who were also traveling with us (Thanks again, Nana and Poppy). Now, if you have children, you are well aware that “grown ups only” nights are few and far between, and with five children (one a newborn) it is almost impossible. So planning a grown ups evening would be something DH would truly appreciate…you know, grown up drinks, grown up conversation (or an actual conversation that wouldn’t be interrupted twenty times by bathroom requests and “he hit me” ‘s). After checking with Nana and Poppy, we were all set for our “drinks and Wishes” evening on the night of his birthday.

A couple of days later, I started thinking that this really was a HUGE birthday and I really wanted to make a big deal about it. I mean, seriously, how many people get to celebrate their 40th birthday at WDW with their family and closest friends? So, I started doing some research online to see what else I could find. My first stop was obviously the Moms Panel. I submitted a question to see if they had any ideas as to what to do for a 40th birthday celebration. Unfortunately, the request forms are word limiting,and because of this I was unable to include that we had already made dining reservation (as we were on the dining plan and had made those reservations five months earlier). So, it was a bit disappointing when I did in fact receive a respone that advised me to make dining reservations at his favorite restaurant. Back to square one….

Grand I

While playing around on the Disney website, I came across the Disney Floral and Gifts link. There, the kids and I looked though a few possibilities for a birthday surprise. They really liked the “Mickey’s Big Birthday Wish” package. While it would be an awesome gift, I was not convinced that this was the fabulous birthday surprise DH would love. After doing a little more searching, I found the Disney Recreation link. Holy cow! I discovered a whole new area of WDW resort activites, of which I had no idea exsisted. Golf reservation, bike rentals, fishing, speciality crusies….SPECIALITY CRUISES! That was is!! After reading some reviews on various Disney related forums, I discovered that the crusies could be a bit pricey, were really awesome, but they booked up fast. It was advised on one site to make your reservations six months in advance…uh oh! It was Wednesday afternoon and his birthday was the following Wednesday. After discussing it with the kids, we decided to see if by some miricle we could book a cruise.

The next day I called WDW-PLAY (yes, I know I waited yet another day, but I couldn’t make the reservations while DH was home…). After explaining my situation with the wonderful cast member on the other line, she began looking to see what might be available for that day. If you are unfamiliar with the speciality crusies, here’s the low-down. Basically, Disney has a couple of boats, in various sizes and capacities, that take you around the Seven Seas Lagoon (near Magic Kingdom), Bay Lake (near Magic Kingdom) or Crecent Lake (Epcot). You can rent these boats by the hour, for however long you’d like. Most people rent them for viewing fireworks on special occasions (weddings, birthdays, marriage proposals..etc). There are endless options, from just a basic drive around the lagoon to adding a hot meal, complete with butler service. You can even have them pipe in the sound from the fireworks show, usually for an additional fee, depending on which boat you choose.

So after talking for a few minutes with the CM, I realized it was going to take a miracle for this to work. Because of the size of our party (there were 14 of us), we could only fit on the Grand I Yacht. Plus, it had to be available on a Wishes” night (I got the impression from the CM that they do not run the specialty cruises on the nights of the MNSSHP, but I am not certain) . So after A LOT of clicking and checking….we were in luck!! The boat was open…but on Sunday night, not Wednesday night, the night of his birthday. I decided to book it. Since we had already made plans for drinks on his birthday, planning the cruise on Sunday night would be just fine, plus he wouldn’t expect a birthday celebration days before the actual day! Given several choices, I chose to meet the Grand I at the marina at the Polynesian Resort (I was informed later that the Grand I never launches from there because the water is more shallow).

Fast forward to Sunday evening…..The plan for the evening was to eat our quick service dinner at Captain Cook’s at the Polynesan Resort and then take a lesurily stroll down by the marina. This is where, unbeknownst to DH, that we would pick up the Grand I. Dinner went as expected and we were right on time. As we started down towards the Marina, the kids started getting squirrley. The kids were AWESOME in keeping this whole plan a secret. At this point, they all knew about it and that is no easy task for all 7 kids, ages 11, 8, 7, 6, 6, 4, & 3 to keep that big of a secret. But as we got closer, they got excited. When we approached the water, there was a pontoon boat waiting at the dock decorated with a big “Happy Birthday” sign and balloons. Of course, when the kids saw this, they were jumping out of their skin. DH saw it and joked “Hey is that boat for me?”. I brushed him off with a “why would that be for you?” comment and we continued on our walk to “find the beach”

You may be wondering why we did not just get on the boat at that time. Well, here is the deal. Like I mentioned before, you book by the hour and on the Grand I, the hour is quite expensive. Your time starts when you get on that boat. Since we were somewhat early (we were to meet the boat at 8:15 so we could be out on the water for wishes), I did not want to get charged extra. So as the rest of my party went along to “find the beach”, I ran back to the boat, just to double check that we were in the right place. At the boat, I asked the VERY VERY helpful captain if he was waiting for us…he checked and double checked and said
“no”. After talking a bit….I was at the wrong boat (duh, okay, I DO know the difference between a yacht and a pontoon, but with all the excitement and sleep deprivation…….well, I guess the birthday balloons confused me). He made a few calls and told me the yacht would be waiting for us at the far end of the pier. Since it was getting close to the time. I quickly found the rest of our party and we made our way to the other, and very VACANT side of the pier. Panic!! I rushed back to the other boat to find the VERY VERY helpful pontoon captain and told him the boat was not there. He quickly called David, one of the CM in charge of the Marina who met us on our empty side of the dock. While David made several calls to find locate Grand I, time was ticking down to the start of “Wishes” and DH was becoming more and more annoyed because we were waiting at an empty dock. Thankfully, baby girl was a bit fussy and so he was walking with her, trying to get her to sleep. After a few calls, the captain of the Grand I said he had already picked up his party at the Polynesan and they were out on the water. Um ..No! We were sitting right there……

DH and a sleepy Baby Girl aboard the Grand I

Here’s what happened. Remember the pontoon with the birthday decor? Well that party got on our boat (see, I’m not the only one who didn’t think of the difference between a yacht and a pontoon boat) and apparently at the same moment the marina was calling to find the Grand I, the people on our yacht were having an argument with the captain about the price they were to pay for their cruise, since it was VERY VERY different from what they were quoted when making their reservation. Needless to say the Grand I was on it’s way to pick up the “right” party-US!. At this point, I was upset, not mad but disappointed. My plan to just walk on the boat while the kids yelled “Happy Birthday” was ruined. Since we waited so long, I had to tell DH what had happened. He, of course, thought it was still awesome, especially that all of us could keep a secret! Finally, the Grand I returned with 10 disgruntled people and pick up 14 more disgruntled people…..I’m kidding…I was fine once I knew that they would in fact get us out in time for the fireworks, which is all I really wanted anyway. As the boat moved quickly (very, very quickly) to get us in viewing position, we explored the yacht. It was spectacular!! With 3 bedrooms, 2 bathroom, and kitchen, it was incredible. The kids were beyond excited and DH was quite estatic himself. We were able to get to the viewing spot just in time for “Wishes” to begin.

The sound from the show was piped into the yacht and is was the BEST fireworks experience of my life!! Afterwards, we cruised around the lagoon for the rest of our hour. We were even able to catch the Electrical Water Pagent. The captain did offer to take us around for however long we wanted at no extra charge, but we polietly declined as it was getting late and we did not want to spoil the evening with crabby children.

In typical WDW excellence, David took half off my bill, which I really appreciated. And while, perhaps things didnt go EXACTLY how I had invisioned , our specialty cruise proved to be a great time a DH had a “magical” birthday surprise!!

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