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Cast of characters: Sandy (51), Judy (52) When we planned this trip, we had already planned an 8-day cruise in September with friends of ours, to celebrate out youngest children going off to college. We had not had a vacation in two years, due to the deaths of both mine and Judy's fathers, which meant we had a lot of Disney Vacation Club points to use. So, when we heard about the DVC Member Cruise, we decided to plan a second vacation in the fall. The day to call for reservations was Saturday, December 5, 2005, and through the DIS Boards, we knew the phone lines would be busy. I started calling at five minutes to 9:00am on our downstairs phone, while Judy tried on her cell phone. Through the discussion thread for the member cruise, I read a suggestion to call directly to the Disney Cruise Line local phone number and that got me through an hour later. We were able to book a Category 5 veranda, room 7052 and do the waiting began.
We left home Thursday night, right after work and got to the hotel around midnight. I worked from the hotel all morning, while Judy went to the train station to check us in and pick up lunch at Subway. We headed over to the train at around 2:00pm. The train left on time and got to Sanford the next morning on time, arriving at 8:30. The cars starting coming off the train at 9:00 and we didn't get our car until 10:00. We got to the Marriott Orland World Center by 11:00. The hotel is huge and they are building additional convention space. We got a room high up with a great view of WDW. We changed our clothes and drove over to the Beach Club and used valet parking to park the car. We ate lunch at Beaches and Cream, later finding out that we sat at a table next to Annmarie (BCVOwner2002) and family. After lunch, we walked over to the International Gateway and went to Guest Services to get our tickets. We had a twelve leftover passes that we were not sure were used or not, so the CM Checked them all for us and found two that had three days remaining on each. Since we were coming back in May, we decided to get Annual Passes this year. It really worked to our advantage, since we probably would not have gone into the park this day, what with our midday arrival and the DIS meet later on. With the passes we turned in and our DVC discount, the passes only costs us $428 for both. We went to Impressions De France and arrived just as guests were being let in. After the we were finished, we left EPCOT and went to the Beach Club for 3:00 DIS Meet. The meet was in the Solarium, an airy room right off the main lobby, which also served as a connector to the Beach Club Villas. The meet was incredibly organized. Mark (MarkRG) and Mary (WDWLVR) out did them selves in getting things set up. There were envelopes for each family with personal navigators of DIS events and buttons with the 2006 Member Cruise logo and our screen names for identification. Sadly, I lost mine on the last day, after being so careful about not losing it all week. Robin (RRBB) had little gift bags with pens, pins and a small carry bag. Other DISers made up other little goodies, like Happy Birthday DVC magnets and a magnetic message board for our stateroom doors. There were containers of green M&Ms all over the room and a box of Halloween-themed cup cakes. We stayed and shmoozed for an hour and I took loads of pictures. We headed back to EPCOT and headed toward American Adventure. We just missed the show, so we went to Restaurant Marrakesh a few minutes early for dinner. We finished at 6:30 and headed back to American Adventure to catch the 6:45 show. We got out at 7:25 and went to China next. We hadn't seen the new movie since it was updated, so this was something I made a point of visiting. From Chine, we headed to Futureworld and The Living Seas to see if The Seas With Nemo & Friends was open. Not only was it open, but there was absolutely no wait. We walked right on. The queue area is very long, so we walked and walked and walked until we got to the loading area that where we got into our very own clam mobile. It was getting late, so we did our traditional last ride on Spaceship Earth and left the park to go back to the hotel. I was too lazy to walk back through the International Gateway, so we caught the monorail to the Magic Kingdom and took the bus back the the Beach Club. We got our car and headed back to the Marriott.  
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