Magic Repositioning (Barcelona - Dover)?

[straight shooter]

Our family (me, wife, and two young boys) are going on the June 5, 2010, repositioning and I was wondering if anyone had any comments on the shore excursions in any of the ports (Barcelona, Cadiz, Gibralter, Lisbon). Particularly, which to book and which to avoid, and whether tours can be found "in town" rather than booked through Disney. Thanks in advance!

[Haimia]

We did the transatlantic in April. In Barcelona, we done the Gaudi tour through DCL. It was very, very good. Went to La Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell. The guide was quite informative throughout the tour, even discussing things like normal meal times and schooling information during the drive.

Cadiz, we just walked ourselves. It is fairly easy, even though I misread the map and we walked a lot further than we needed to. We went to the new cathedral and just wandering through the town. You are docked right next to town, just across the street. Also, a hop-on; hop-off bus is available right at the street

In Gibralter, we done the "Rock on your Own" through DCL. DON'T unless all you want is a cable car ride to the top, look around, see the rock, see the monkeys and ride back down the cable car. We ended up walking down the rock and back to the ship, so we could see St. Michael's Cave and the Great Siege Tunnels (at additional cost to us to enter!). By the way, the walk was not bad (yeah, right), but the cave is at one end of the rock and the tunnels are at opposite end of the rock. And, the Rock that you see is only about 1/3 of the entire area that we covered!

We would have been better off doing the rock tour through DCL that included the cave and tunnel tours with full cab ride. Also, heard through other passengers that you can get a cab tour on your own that sees the top of the rock, St. Michael's Cave and the Great Siege Tunnels; this was quite reasonable compared to what we paid and got!

We did not stop at Lisbon, cannot help you there.

If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask.

[straight shooter]

Great information! Thank you. If you think of any other "do's" and "don'ts," please let me know!

[Portslug]

Straight Shooter,

Please let us know how your cruise went. We were on the Med cruise just before yours and they were offering an extension to do the same cruise as yours for $350.00 pp. We were very tempted to stay but the cost to change airfare was too much. Our 10 day Med cruise was just phenominal and we figured the repositioning would have been icing on the cake.

[straight shooter]

The cruise was excellent, to say the least. If you sould have stayed on, I'm sure you would have had a fantastic time. My family has been on many cruises before (top of the line like Crystal - all the way down to ... well, others) and this one was certainly one of the best if not the best. There were only about 1700 guests, which was a great amount, and the weather for the first half of the cruise was perfect. The second half was overcast and chilly, but not so unpleasant as to take away from the great time we were having.

Now we just have to plan the next one...

[Portslug]

Glad to hear you had a good time.