Welcome back, everybody, the DCL Duo podcast. And tonight we are really excited to have Michelle

McKnight be joining us on the podcast. Michelle is the rope drop queen of rope drop

radio and she is also in full disclosure, our personal travel agent and just a wealth of knowledge

and very helpful. So we're really excited to have Michelle on. Welcome, Michelle. Thank you so much

for having me. Thanks for coming. Michelle, we like to start with folks's Disney background.

So can you tell people a little bit about your, you know, background with Disney, things you've done, that sort of thing? Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up going to Disney every summer. My parents had a timeshare off property. And we'd go every summer for about two weeks.

We'd be in Orlando.

So we'd never really missed a summer until I got to college.

And then I met my husband, and he was also a Disney fanatic. He just continued my love for Disney. And then we had kids. I was planning all of my friends trips for free already. So I thought, hey, it's time to get paid for that. So I applied to be a travel agent. And I am now,

I am affiliated with MEI travel and mouthpan travel. So I'm a fee-free agent. I book all things

Disney, but I also book travel all over the world. So other cruise lines, other tours, like in Europe,

Australia, things like that. But Disney will always have my heart. Do you also do bookings for like Alani or Adventures by Disney? Yep, absolutely. Yeah, all things Disney. Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Alani, Disney Land, and Adventures by Disney as well, yes. We wanted to have you on to talk about Disney Cruise Line. What's your experience been with Disney Cruise Line? How many sailings have you been on? We've been on 10. So we just finished up our 10th in January on the dream. I mean, I love Disney Cruise Line. We had one booked for July and that is now canceled, unfortunately, by Disney. But we booked again for next summer. I'm excited to go on our 11th at that time. Nice. You'll be platinum. Yes. That's what I, we were hurry into platinum, hurry into platinum and now we have to wait a year. Yeah. We know exactly how you feel because we have had now a bunch of different vacations canceled and as you know, we've had a bunch of rescheduled since you've helped us reschedule a bunch of the our cruises. Yes, Michelle is acutely aware of our of our vacation planning problems. So the 11th Disney cruise when you're platinum, do you go for the Caribbean cruise so you get the stop and Castaway key in can get the cabana or are you guys going someplace else? Oh, we are sailing to Castaway. Yes, that's the goal. However, we did check in for this last cruise back in March. We were not able to get a cabana because all the concierge people had had stolen them up already. So unfortunately, it usually takes a smaller ship to get a cabana, but we will always keep looking because we were able to do it once as we were gold. And that was amazing. Yeah, we were pretty spoiled. Our first cruise on Disney, a friend of ours was

platinum and managed to get a cabana. And ever since then, it's been like, can't get one of

these things. And we also got a Serenity Bay Cabana because we were traveling without our

sun. So that was, I feel like we were like the ultimate spoiled in that, in that scenario.

Yeah, absolutely. So Michelle, in which ships have you been on on Disney Cruise Line?

So I've been on all four. We've done two on fantasy, four on the dream, three on the magic,

and one on the wonder. What kinds of attenaries have you done? We've done a lot. So we did Europe last

summer. We did Alaska a couple summers ago. We did Bermuda a couple years ago. And then we've got lots of Caribbean and Bahamian cruises as well. I think my favorite is still Bermuda. I loved the island. It was just clean. I'm kind of a clean freak. So Bermuda, just the whole island and the feel. And I loved the beach there. Beautiful, beautiful beach. So that's probably my favorite.

Have you done any adults only cruising or are you taking the kids with you most of the time? We've done one adult only for Disney Cruise Line. We've done, I've done six others. Adult only but non-Disney ones. But our very first cruise, Doug and I went on was we just did adults because we didn't know he has motion sickness and so we weren't sure

how he'd do with the kids so we decided we'd try it we celebrated our 10th anniversary on board

and that kind of started our love for cruising what are the other cruise lines that you that you guys

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