All Ears® Guest Blog

Chris and Beci Mahnken, owners of MEI Travel and MouseFanTravel.com are traveling with Deb Wills and Linda Eckwerth on Disney's First Mediterranean Cruise. Beci and Chris will be blogging along with Deb and Linda sharing their adventures.

Here is Chris's pre-trip entry:

Pity me. I'm going on an 11 day Disney Mediterranean Cruise.

The cruise will be fantastic with great food, great friends, and great sights to see of course. A once in a lifetime sort of trip. But…

It seems like just about every time I go overseas I end up just barely missing some really cool event. My first trip to Dublin came the week after U2 stopped playing as the house band at the bar in their hotel in Dublin. My first Trip to Paris came during le Tour de France, a yearly event that I follow religiously. The race was in the west, near Saint-Malo on the day I had free, but I couldn't get out there and back in time to see any of it.

This year we're going on the inaugural 11 day cruise of the Disney Magic in the Mediterranean. Barcelona, Palermo, Naples, Olbia, Rome, Florence, Marseilles, Monte Carlo, and back to Barcelona. So of course there will be an even nearby that I can almost get to, but not quite.

Beyond le Tour de France, one of my favorite sporting events is Formula one. Last Saturday the F1 circus was in, yes, Barcelona for the Spanish Grand Prix. I missed it by 11 days. Even worse, on the 27th of May, while we're at sea between Barcelona and Palermo, the Grand Prix of Monaco will take place without me. A week later on the 4th I'll be in Monte Carlo. Just in time to see the removal of the last of the grandstands and Armco barriers.

I'm going on an 11 day Disney Mediterranean Cruise. Life is hard.