Gold card

As we sit and wait for the scheduled 11:30 departure time, John and Joy – the cruise line reps we met on our arrival here on Sunday (just four days ago? Wow, it seems a lot longer than that) – are roaming through the crowds checking people off of their list. John approaches us and hands us a manila envelope.

We open up the envelope and find six new Key to the World cards for us, just as Bob said we’d have! And they are indeed Disney Cruise Line KTTW cards, not Walt Disney World ones. Instead of the Year of a Million Dreams castle, they have Captain Mickey on them!

In fact, unlike all of our previous (WDW) cards, these show several cruise-specific bits of information. For example, they prominently say “Castaway Club Member” beneath our names (which just means we’ve cruised with DCL before). They also, for once, list our onboard restaurant rotation and that we are to be seated at “Table 55.”

I mentioned on Sunday that I’d read that cruiser’s KTTW cards have their dining rotation spelled out in a three letter code, but I was never able to glean that information from our previous cards. We did have a three-letter code, but it always said “RPA,” which I could never fit with where we were assigned to eat. But now that I have a DCL-specific card, the dining rotation is pretty obvious, being right next to our table number. It says “PTA,” meaning Parrot Key tonight, Triton’s tomorrow night, and Animator’s Palette on the third night.

But the other 3-letter code, “RPA,” is still there. What does it stand for, if it has nothing to do with the dining rotation? I mull this over while we wait to board the bus from our resort to Port Canaveral. Hang on… “resort,” R… “port,” P… so “A” is… airport!!! Aha! “RPA” indicates our ground transfers, from the airport to our WDW resort, then to Port Canaveral, and finally back to the airport. That’s why the same code has been on all of our cards on this and previous trips!!

Solving that little mystery is satisfying – I can’t stand not knowing something – but what really puts a smile on my face is the color of the cards.

Oh yes, our new Key to the World cards are gold. Okay, not metallic gold, but a light, goldish yellow-brown. The point being, they’re not the usual blue. Not that I think that the special cards will get us any better treatment – Disney Cruise Line tends to treat everybody like royalty – but the concierge-level cards are just one more thing that make our coming upgrade to the Walt Disney Suite seem real.

See you soon, Walt!