Thursday, January 1, 2026 ~ Barbados ~ 8am to 6pm

I have been to Barbados on 3 prior cruises, and each time I went to The Boatyard on the beach at Carlisle Bay.  In my early 30’s, that was the perfect place for an easy beach day.  The beach there is absolutely stunning, with soft white powder sand and calm turquoise water.  There are plenty of lounge chairs and umbrellas, and they offer a convenient boat to take visitors snorkeling with sea turtles and over a shipwreck.  The vibe is festive, with loud music and a full restaurant and bar, and playing on the toys anchored in the bay is included in the price of admission.  It made for a reliably fun and convenient beach day on all 3 of my prior visits to this island.

When I saw that we would be returning to Barbados on this cruise, I knew I needed to do something different.  Ian is too young for snorkeling and swimming out to the water toys, so we couldn’t take advantage of those activities, and the vibe is not really family-friendly.  Since we had just off-loaded Ian into my parents’ care for the last 2 days, it was time to find an excursion that we could do together as a family, so I did some research about other things to do on the island.  There are lots of tour operators who will take you on an island tour, but I didn’t really care about seeing Rihanna’s house or the Governor’s mansion, and I knew Ian wouldn’t care about that either.  The giant rocks resting on the beach at Bathsheba looked interesting, but that alone wasn’t much of an excursion.  That’s when I discovered Harrison’s Cave- a system of caves located in the center of the island, filled with stalactite and stalagmite formations which formed naturally from water erosion through the limestone rock.  There is a tram that takes visitors on a tour through the caves, making this a very safe and family-friendly excursion.  The one problem was that not many tour operators offer excursions to Harrison’s Cave because it is located up in the hills in the center of the island, and most other tours stick to the beaches and the perimeter of the island.  It doesn’t really matter which vendor you pick because you are just using the vendor as transportation to the caves.  Once you arrive, the caves have their own tour and everyone has the same experience with riding on the trams.  Princess offered this as an excursion, but it was $180 per adult/$120 for Ian, and that seemed very expensive for just driving us out to the caves, taking the tram tour, and driving us back to the ship.  In theory, if we had our own car, we could drive there ourselves and just pay the admission fee to the caves directly for $57 per adult and $40 for Ian, so I just couldn’t justify paying such a large mark-up for Princess’s excursion.  

Instead, I found an excursion with Sun Tours Barbados, which charged $120 per adult/$80 for Ian, and not only would they pick us up at the port and take us to Harrison’s Cave, but they would also take us to the Barbados Wildlife Reserve to see monkeys and some other animals and plants.  That just felt like a better value for our money, so once we knew that’s how we wanted to spend our day, I invited my parents and brother’s family to join us.  My parents immediately said yes, which was good because this would be the only excursion that we took with them for the whole cruise.  Unfortunately, my brother said he’s taken his kids to something similar on a different vacation and he didn’t want to do it again.  My nephew’s name is Harrison, so I really thought my brother would want to join us, but I guess we would go to Harrison’s Cave without Harrison! 

Last night, I set my alarm to wake me up at 7:30am this morning.  Unlike the first half of the cruise when we could sleep in a little later because we weren’t scheduled to dock until mid-morning, the last 3 ports required us to wake up a bit earlier.  I quickly got dressed, then went up to the Lido buffet by 8am to get my breakfast.  At exactly 8:01am, the Captain made an announcement that the ship was cleared and we were allowed to proceed ashore.  We were scheduled to arrive in Barbados at 8am, so that confirmed my memory that you can usually get off the ship at the scheduled arrival time, and yesterday was not normal when we couldn’t get off until 35 minutes later (and of course, that happened on the one day that the timing really mattered for us!).

Before I got my food, I stepped outside to take a few photos of the port area.  There were 3 other ships in port with us today, including the Viking Sea, Marella Discovery, and Royal Caribbean’s Jewel of the Seas.  Every time I have been to Barbados, there have been several other ships docked here, but it has never been an issue because Barbados has a huge tourism infrastructure and it can handle multiple cruise ships on top of the visitors on land vacations.

Using the wide angle lens on my iPhone, I could barely capture parts of all 4 ships in one photo:

I didn’t take a photo of my breakfast because it was the same thing I ate every other morning on this cruise: a hard boiled egg, a pre-made cheese omelet, and a croissant with cream cheese and lox.  When I finished eating, I picked up a freshly-made waffle that I watched the crew member remove from the waffle iron, and brought it back to the cabin for Ian to eat for breakfast while Jason went up to the buffet to get his own food.  By this point on the cruise, we really had a good morning routine that worked well for maximizing our time, which felt like another perk of the 10-day cruise versus a 7-day cruise.  On 7-day cruises, it always feels like by the time we get a rhythm going and work out a good routine, the cruise is over!  

Bellies full and bodies clothed and sunscreened, we met my parents in the hall and all got off the ship together around 9:30am.  We needed to meet our tour operator by 10am, and didn’t know how long it would take us to reach the meeting point, especially considering we were docked at the furthest berth from the visitors center.  Luckily, Princess provided a free shuttle between the ship and the visitors center, and there was a constant flow of shuttles such that as it filled up, it drove away and there was already another shuttle waiting behind it.  That meant there was no line to board the shuttle and we pulled away a moment later.

The shuttle dropped us off at the entrance to the visitor center, so we walked through the long hallway, bypassing all the souvenir stores, and followed the signs in search of desk number 8.

We walked up to the desk at 9:50am, with 10 minutes to spare before our assigned meeting time, and were happy to see a representative from Sun Tours was waiting for us.  He told us to wait on the side for the other people on our tour to arrive.  Everyone else arrived a few minutes later, and we were loaded onto a nice, new 15-passenger bus and pulled away from the port at 10am on the dot!  This was a huge relief because when I booked the tour, the information said we could have a maximum of 32 people on the tour, but it turned out that there were only 11 of us!  

Our guide’s name was Paul, but honestly, he wasn’t much of a guide.  He didn’t talk or narrate or give us any history about Barbados.  Today was New Year’s Day, and it seemed like he was just filling in for the person who is typically the guide for this tour.  Paul didn’t even have bottles of water for us on the bus, even though that was listed on the tour description as being included.  I usually take bottles of water off the ship for each of us, but I didn’t do that today, expecting water to be provided (we are usually offered bottles of water even when it is NOT included in the tour description!), so we had to make due with the half-full bottles that were left over in my backpack from yesterday’s tour.

We pulled up to the Barbados Wildlife Reserve at 10:40am, but Paul was surprised to see a chain lock across the width of the driveway so we couldn’t pull in.  We knew it was New Year’s Day so we double checked with Sun Tours before booking this tour that everything would be open for business, and they said yes.  Paul spent a few minutes on the phone outside the bus, and came back to say there was a gas leak and they had to close down the reserve until it could be inspected for safety.  Not one person on our bus believed that story, and we all thought it was more of a staffing issue after they partied too hard on New Year’s Eve.  Paul said he would take us out to the east side of the island to see the views, and we would come back to the reserve at the end of the day.  I immediately knew that would never happen.  A few weeks ago, we received an email from Harrison’s Caves with our scheduled tram tickets and those were for 1:20pm.  The tour there would take a little over an hour, and we still needed time to drive back to the cruise ship before the tour was scheduled to end at 3pm.  There wouldn’t be time to return to the wildlife reserve at the end of the day, so Paul was just saying that to appease us and soften the blow.  

Paul drove for another 20 minutes to the Animal Flower Cave.  I had read about this place when researching things we could do in Barbados, but I immediately eliminated it as an option because in order to see the cave, you have to climb down a steep, slippery staircase which neither my parents nor my 4-year old son could do safely.  When he parked the bus in the parking lot, Paul said that we were just here to see the views of the coast and we would be here for about 15 minutes so there wasn’t time for people to go down into the cave, even if they wanted to.

Making the best of it, we walked around the grounds to see what there was to see.  Ian liked this statue of a woman in a traditional dress.

We walked down a paved path towards the right side of the property and were met with this view of the rugged east coast.  

It reminded me a lot of Shete Boka National Park in Curacao, with the waves crashing up against the tall cliffs along the coast.

We saw there was a restroom here, so we took advantage of that, then we noticed on the left side of the property, there was a large playground.  At this point, we were out of time and needed to meet back at the bus, so it would have been nice if Paul mentioned it to us when we arrived.  He knew we had a child with us and I know Ian would have loved to play for a few minutes.  Fortunately for all of us, Ian didn’t see the playground because as soon as I saw it, I turned around and walked the other way before he got that far down the path!  Otherwise, I’m sure you would have heard him crying from miles away!

Back on the bus, we drove 25 more minutes to Cherry Tree Hill Reserve, not to see the trees, but to see the views.  You could see pretty far down the shore from up here, so we spent 5 minutes admiring the view.

We got back on the bus and drove down the hill back to the shore.  On our way, we passed a farm with dairy cows. 

Paul pulled over so we could see the only windmill left in Barbados.  He said that they used to have the 2nd most windmills in the world (2nd to Holland, obviously!), but they were all destroyed in a hurricane.  

When we pulled away from the windmill, we saw a herd of animals that we thought were goats, but Paul said there were actually Black Belly Sheep.

This is a better photo to see their black bellies…

Can you tell that Paul is really struggling to fill the time?  Remember, our tour started at 10am, we arrived at the closed wildlife reserve at 10:40am, and the Harrison’s Cave tour tickets weren’t until 1:20pm.  We had a lot of time to kill!

Continuing our drive, we saw some beautiful views of the ocean crashing up against the shore.  I didn’t see any surfers, but I imagine this would be a fun place to go surfing with all of those waves.

Paul pulled over to the side of the road to show us this mountain that looks like the profile of a man’s face, and if you look very closely, there is a small rock on what would be his forehead.  You can’t really tell in this photo, but that small rock looks like a man playing the piano.  

Back on the main road, we continued our drive along the Atlantic coast.  

Back when we were at the wildlife reserve and knew we would be taking an extended island tour, I asked Paul if we could visit Bathsheba.  This was somewhere I always wanted to see, and I don’t think our tour was originally supposed to stop here, so I guess this was one benefit of the reserve being closed today.  Paul parked the van on the side of the road and told us we could have 10 minutes to take some photos here.  I thought there was a sandy beach here, so I was surprised to see this huge grassy hill leading down to the shore.

When we reached the shore, we had incredible views of all the giant rock formations dotting the coastline.  

https://flic.kr/p/2rRRtM5

Ian wasn’t as impressed by the giant rocks as he was by the giant hill.  He loved running up and down the hill, and after spending so much time cooped up in the bus, it was nice that he had a chance to run around for a few minutes.

At 12:15pm, Paul said we needed to get going so we could get to Harrion’s Cave in time for our tour there.  We arrived at Harrison’s Cave at 12:40pm, so we spent over 2 and a half hours driving around the island since leaving the port at 10am, with only 2 opportunities to get out and stretch our legs for 10 minutes each time.  I just pulled up a map of Barbados and plotted the places we visited.  I didn’t realize it at the time because Paul did a horrible job of narrating and telling us where we were driving, but we drove all the way up to the north end of the island for the Animal Flower Cave, and then down half the length of the east coast of the island to get to Bathsheba.  It would have been nice if Paul explained a bit more about Barbados along the way.  Even if he wasn’t prepared to give us a fully guided island tour, even just sharing his knowledge about life living on the island would have been better than nothing.

We went inside of the visitor center and waited while Paul stood in line to collect our tickets and wrist bands for the tram tour.  He pointed us towards an elevator at the back of the visitor center, and said he would be waiting for us in the parking lot when we finished our tour.  It seemed a little weird that he didn’t escort us any further because when we got off the elevator, we didn’t know where we were supposed to go.  We eventually figured out that we were supposed to go inside another building.  There was a 3D model of Barbados, and a TV screen playing a video about the island.

One of the cave employees came into the room and explained that something happened earlier in the day which delayed the tram tours, so they were now running 40 minutes late.  This meant that our 1:20pm tickets were now being changed to a 2:00pm tour.  Seriously?!  We were just so frustrated at this point with all of the issues we encountered today.  We thought it was very strange that we were first hearing about this now, and that Paul either didn’t know or opted not to tell us (since we never spoke to anyone at the front desk upstairs and he handled the check-in process for us).  We decided to just hang around in that waiting room in hopes that they would find space for us on an earlier tour.

A few minutes later, he came back to collect the people for the next tour.  Sure enough, after he took a headcount, there were empty seats available and we were able to join with that group.  Whew!  It’s a good thing we didn’t leave!  He gave us each a hairnet and told us to take a seat on a bench in the next room.  Once everyone was seated, we watched a 9-minute movie about the geology of Barbados and how the island and these caves were formed.  It was really interesting to learn that background information prior to seeing the caves so we understood what we were seeing.  After the movie, the staff handed out helmets for everyone, and they even had a child-sized helmet for Ian.  Then we all left the theater room and boarded the tram that was ready and waiting for us.  We were concerned about Ian being able to see, so we went right for the front row of the first tram car.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t quite fit all 5 of us on one bench so Jason sat behind me in the 2nd row with a few other people from our Sun Tours group.

The tram ride was 40 minutes long and was fully narrated by a guide.  Prior to the cruise, I had read tons of reviews about this cave tour and so many people mentioned that it is very cold down there, so I made sure to pack jackets for us in our day bags so we would be comfortable.  It turns out that that was completely unnecessary as it was very humid and warm, at least on the day we were there, and I was sweating within minutes of starting the tour.  What I found really strange was that there were drops of water falling from the ceiling of the cave and dripping on us the entire time such that all of our clothes and bags were wet, and I tried to use my body to shield the spare batteries and electronics in my backpack because I was unprepared for them to get wet.  If there’s one thing I would tell people planning to visit these caves, it is to pack all of your valuables inside plastic ziploc bags and be prepared to get very wet!  

The tram drove slowly through the caves, and the guide pointed out different stalactite and stalagmite formations along the way.  They had a system of lights where the guide turned on the lights for each section as we drove by so we could see it better.  I took over 200 photos during the tour, but it was hard to fully capture the beauty of these caves in my photos and many of the photos didn’t come out great because of the wet and dark conditions.  I will just share the best photos here…

We weren’t allowed to touch any part of the caves, but I was curious if this wall was cold because it looked like icicles…

Everywhere we looked, there was something unique and beautiful to see.

This was our guide… I wish I could remember her name!  She was great, offering funny commentary about everything we were seeing.  We could tell she really loves her job.

These formations looked like jelly fish…

At one point, we passed another tram driving in the opposite direction…

Our guide explained that this row boat was here in case there was ever a need to make an emergency escape from the caves.  There was a river behind that opening in the cave, and you could use that boat to row to safety if needed.  That was reassuring, I guess!

There were two opportunities when the tram stopped and we could get off and take photos.  The guides had bright flashlights, and that really helped us get amazing photos.  I appreciated that they took these photos on our personal cameras/phones and didn’t force us to take the photos on their cameras and then pressure us to purchase the pictures in the gift shop.  

The second stop was at a small lake with a waterfall.  Notice how curly my hair is in these photos?  You can’t tell because we are both wearing black, but we were soaking wet by this point.

At the end of the tour, we returned our helmets and exited the caves out into the adventure park section of the grounds.  There was an elevated ropes course, a zipline, and a few other activities.  Access to this adventure park cost an additional fee beyond the tram tour, although I am not sure about the pricing because it wasn’t really an option for our group when visiting with my parents in their 70’s and my 4 year old son.  It did look like a lot of fun though, and we would consider coming back if we return to Barbados when Ian is older.

We took the elevators back up to the level with the visitor center.  I noticed there was a giant statue of monkeys… unfortunately, this was the closest Ian would get to a monkey today!

As we exited out to the parking lot in search of Paul and our bus, I saw these purple flowers outside the visitor center entrance and thought they were so pretty!

We got back on the bus around 2:30pm and Paul said it was time to drive back towards the port.  While we were driving, someone asked what had happened with the “gas leak.”  Paul admitted that he did not really believe that there was a gas leak, and he said that he spoke with his manager at Sun Tours so they were aware that we never got to visit the wildlife reserve.  Part of the fee we paid to take this tour included our entrance to the reserve, but Paul indicated that we were all on our own to reach out to Sun Tours and request some kind of refund.  I thought that was kind of annoying- we were clearly due a refund for those tickets at a minimum, and it should have been issued automatically without us having to fight for it.  Luckily for my family and my parents, we booked through Viator as a middle man, so we did not need to communicate directly with Sun Tours.  When we got home, I sent a message to Viator’s customer service explaining what happened.  Since the original tour description said that we would visit two places, and we only got to see one of those places, Viator issued us a 50% refund.  I was very happy with how Viator handled the situation, and I appreciated that they made it easy for me and didn’t require me to go back and forth with them to plead my case. 

Anyway, back to the bus ride back to the port… Paul pointed out as we drove past the mansion where Rihanna lives, but I wasn’t able to snap a photo because it was on the opposite side of the bus.  He then showed us the house where Rihanna grew up.  He said that she still owns the house today even though no one lives there.  He actually said something about it being used as an AirBNB rental, so I just looked it up… It is a bungalow with 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, and rents for around $150 per night.  That seems very reasonable considering they could easily charge more for it being the house where Rihanna grew up.  Then again, it is located on a street where the locals live, so it is not very close to the touristy sections of Barbados or to the beach or anything like that, so I’m not sure how much demand there is to stay here.

Notice the yellow square painted on the sidewalk which says “Rihanna” (making this house easy to spot for tourists who want to take a photo of it)…

It had been a long day and poor Ian was exhausted.  He nodded off when we were just 5 minutes away from the cruise port…

We were dropped off back at the port at 3:30pm.  None of us had any interest in shopping at the souvenir stores at the port, so we just walked through the building to find the shuttle buses back to the ship.  Luckily, there were plenty of shuttles and we were on our way back to the ship a few minutes later.

Back on board, we went up to the cabin to drop off our bags and get freshened up for dinner.  We decided to use another one of our casual dining meals tonight, but that wasn’t going to include Ian (sorry, buddy!), so we took him up to the Lido buffet to find him something for dinner.  We got there at 5pm expecting to find something at the dinner buffet, but they didn’t open until 5:30pm.  We ended up getting him a slice of pizza from Alfredo’s Slice by the pool.

Ian was still hungry after he finished his slice of pizza.  By then, the kids section of the buffet was open so we got him a few chicken nuggets.  It was nice to see him eat something besides plain pasta for dinner!

For those who are curious, here is the dining room menu from tonight:

When Ian was done eating, we went over to the Piazza to listen to the music and do some people watching while we waited for camp to open at 7pm.

Since we happened to be standing outside of Gigi’s, I asked Jason to get us a table for dinner while I took Ian upstairs to camp.  Luckily, there was no wait and he was seated right away.  We remembered from when we ate here last year that the pizza is so big that there was no way for us to finish our own pizzas, so this place works great to share one of the casual dining meals from the Plus Package.  

We decided to share the Mozzarella Fresca e Verdure Grigliate appetizer, with fresh mozzarella, roma tomatoes, marinated grilled zucchini, roasted red and yellow peppers, basil pesto, with fresh basil garnish.

For our entree, we shared the vegetarian pizza, with tomatoes, mozzarella, grilled zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted bell peppers, mushrooms, red onion, avocado, and basil.

It is hard to see the scale from this photo, but the pizza was so big that we didn’t finish it even with us sharing the one pizza!  By the time dessert came, I was too full to even take a bite so Jason got the whole tiramisu to himself.

After dinner, we walked around the ship to work off the meal.  We ran into my brother’s family as they were leaving the early showing of the production show and they said it was amazing and they loved it.  Jason and I had planned to go to the 9pm showing, so that got us excited to see it.  

My sister in law offered to take a photo for us because we were sort of matching tonight:

Next, we stopped by Crooners for a drink.  Jason ordered a glass of port, and I ordered the Dunes martini, but asked them to pour it in a glass I could walk with.  The Dunes had Malibu coconut rum, melon liqueur, banana, pineapple, and lemon, but I don’t like bananas so I asked if it could be made without that and the bartender said it was no problem.

Drinks in hand, we walked over to the theater to get seats for the 9pm show.  Tonight’s show was called 5 Skies, and this was the only production on this cruise that was new to us.  In the Patter, the show was described as “Mind blowing theatrics of a virtual reality world comes to life through technology and acrobatics.”  That sounded really unique and like something we would enjoy, but it turned out that we thought the show was really weird.  It was about a video game where the main character had to complete 5 levels to win the game and save a princess.  That caught us off guard as it was so different from the other production shows we’ve seen on Princess, and we doubted most of the passengers on the ship would enjoy it considering they were mostly an older demographic.  Did Princess forget who their typical demographic was?!   Don’t get me wrong… There were parts of the show that we loved!  The costumes, sets, and technology used throughout the show were a huge step up from typical cruise ship production shows and you could tell that Princess invested a lot of money into this show.  It just seemed strange to have a show like this on a ship that caters more to an older crowd who wouldn’t appreciate this show.  I doubt any of them are gamers or appreciated much of the music featured in the show.  

The set design was really impressive, especially considering we were on a cruise ship.

This part was kind of weird… the main character gained the ability to fly?  They spent a long time with him “flying” around the stage on this contraption that looked like a chair a masseuse might use.

The next song was Wings by Little Mix, so naturally the dancers came out dressed like colorful butterflies, complete with antennae headpieces and flowing wings.

The next song was Believer by Imagine Dragons  The dancers were suspended from bungee cords and kept jumping up and doing flips and kicks in sync with the music.  It was very creative and definitely nothing I have seen before on a cruise ship!

The next part of the show was when the plot got weird(er).  The princess came out to sing…

And then the dancers were rolling around the stage on hoverboards and kick scooters.  They couldn’t really perform choreography on the wheels so they just kind of rolled around back and forth across the stage.

Then something happened and a planet exploded??  And the main character died??  Or maybe he didn’t die because suddenly he was face to face with the princess?  They totally lost me with the plot, but I will give them credit for the special effects during this part!

And then the whole cast came out at the end and everyone was alive and happy again.

Overall, I didn’t know what to think walking away from this show.  Like I said at the beginning, the costumes, set design, and special effects were incredible, especially considering we were on a cruise ship!  But the plot was bizarre and definitely not on-brand for Princess.  

The show ended at 9:45pm.  In what was becoming a nightly ritual, we made the mad dash across the entire length of the ship to the aft elevators, then went up to deck 17 to retrieve Ian from camp.  Each session of camp had a theme, and tonight was Pirate Night.  Ian left camp wearing this hat and he also had an eye patch, but he didn’t want to wear it.  I was so glad to see how much fun Ian was having at camp on this cruise (a HUGE improvement over our Discovery cruise last winter!)

We took Ian back to the cabin so we could get a good night’s rest before an early port day tomorrow.

Today’s drinks total: 12

Up next: Martinique

When I was looking at possible itineraries for this cruise and I saw we would be visiting Dominica, I was immediately sold on this itinerary.  Way back in 2010, I took a cruise on the Celebrity Summit and Dominica was by far my favorite port.  Back then, hardly any ships visited this tiny island in the Southern Caribbean, and it felt so special to experience such lush natural beauty.  I took a full day excursion with Levi Baron of Bumpiing Tours (yes, it was spelled with two i’s, and no, I don’t know why!), and to this day, it was one of my all time favorite cruise port days.  I was very disappointed to learn that Bumpiing Tours is no longer in business, seemingly due to the lack of tourists visiting the island during the pandemic.  Regardless, I was still thrilled to return to Dominica and I hoped to find a similar tour to show Jason the beauty of this island.  

Unfortunately, once again we didn’t dock until 10am today.  Much like yesterday, it was very challenging finding a tour that started so late in the morning, as most tours started between 8-9am.  Since relatively few cruise ships visit Dominica, they don’t have as big of a tourism infrastructure as a more commercial island like St. Thomas.  There are only a handful of tour companies to pick from, so once again, I considered just booking our tour through the cruise line.  I really wanted to relive the tour I took in 2010, so that meant snorkeling at the champagne reef, swimming through Titou Gorge, and hiking to the hot springs at Trafalgar Falls.  Princess did offer one tour that visited all those places, but it was very expensive at over $200 per person, and it was an 8 hour tour.  That meant that if everything went according to plan and if we stayed on schedule, we wouldn’t return to the ship until 6pm (and honestly, I didn’t think it was possible to stay on schedule with a cruise ship excursion as the one Princess excursion I booked last year was an hour and a half late returning to the port and we nearly missed the last tender from Cabo!  Yes, I know they would have held the ship for us, but still, you know what I mean…).  Tonight was New Year’s Eve, and I really didn’t want to first get back to the ship that late, still needing to shower and get ready for dinner.  I assumed this would be a formal night, and I knew my parents really wanted to take a big family photo tonight so we needed time to get ready for that, and if we didn’t get back to the ship until 6pm, we probably wouldn’t be ready for dinner until closer to 7 or 8pm.  That just didn’t work for us, especially on New Year’s Eve.

Continuing my search, I looked through every option on Viator until I finally found the Shoreside Fun-Day with Titou Gorge, Hot Springs & Champagne Reef through Waitukubuli Adventure Tour Company.  This tour had over 150 five star reviews, visited all of the places I wanted to see, and managed to do it in just 5 and a half hours.  Perfect!  I emailed the company because their website only offered a 9am start time, but when I explained that our ship wasn’t arriving in port until 10am, they said that was no problem and they cater to cruise ships so they would meet us at the port at 10:30.  That meant we would be back at the ship by 4pm, giving us plenty of time to get showered and ready for dinner with my family.  

Oh, and in case you were wondering about Ian’s plans for the day… My parents graciously agreed once again to take Ian (and his cousins) for the day so my brother and I could enjoy the activities in Dominica.  My parents booked a Princess excursion to take the kids on a tourist train ride around Roseau.  It seemed like an easy activity that worked well for all ages, and they hung out on the ship with the kids for the rest of the day until we were back onboard.

I woke up at 7:30am, quietly got dressed in the bathroom, and snuck out of the cabin leaving the boys to sleep a little later.  I decided to try a new strategy today and go up to the buffet for breakfast on my own.  I knew I could grab my food and eat fairly quickly without having Ian in tow.  I doubled up on protein to ensure I stayed full through the morning, but our excursion included lunch so I didn’t have to overdo it. 

That chocolate chip pancake was actually meant for Ian, and I brought it back to the cabin when I finished my food.  By then, Jason was awake, so I sent him upstairs to eat breakfast while I got Ian dressed.  We took his pancake out to the balcony to check out the views.  We could see that we were off the coast of Dominica, and it was shaping up to be another beautiful day in the Caribbean.

Around 9:30am, I took Ian upstairs to drop him off at camp.  We planned the same schedule with my parents as yesterday where they would pick Ian up at camp, feed him lunch, and then head off for their excursion.  I went back to their cabin to drop off the camp beeper and Ian’s day bag with my parents.  By then, it was just before 10am so Jason and I took our bags and went down the mid-ship elevators to deck 5 to wait for the announcement that the ship was cleared.

And then we waited.  And waited some more.  The crew who were stationed in that area for crowd control told us to line up near the stairs, so we went where we were told.  A few minutes later, there was an announcement that they were having trouble securing the gangways and it would take a little longer before we could go ashore.  By the time they finally gave the all clear that we were safe to disembark, it was 10:35am.  We were starting to get stressed out because we were supposed to meet for our tour just after 10am, and on every other day of the cruise, we were cleared to get off the ship exactly at our scheduled arrival time.  This was the one and only day when our timing really mattered because it was our longest excursion and we knew we were already going to be tight on time to get ready for New Year’s Eve dinner, so it was less than ideal that this was the only day when we had a 35 minute delay before we were allowed off the ship.  Even the crew members were getting a bit stressed with people coming off the elevators and cutting ahead of people who had been standing in line from the start.  Once the captain gave the all-clear, it was chaos as everyone scrambled down the stairs towards the gangway.

Once we were off the ship, we exited the port area through the security gates and we immediately spotted a woman holding a sign for Waitukubuli Adventure Tours.  We were very appreciative that she made things so easy for us, because it can sometimes be hard to find your tour operator in a sea of people.  We were the first people from our tour to arrive, so she asked our guide to walk us to the van so we could sit and wait comfortably in the air conditioning.  We were assigned to a 12-passenger van, but there were only 6 people on our tour so we had plenty of space to spread out.  The others arrived a few minutes later, and we were driving away from the port by 11am.  

Our guide/driver introduced himself as Adin, and his assistant was Leo.  He said that because we got a late start to the day, we would be back at the ship around 4:30pm.  I had no way to communicate with my parents at this point because I didn’t have cell service in Dominica, so we just crossed our fingers that the tour ran on time and we would be back onboard with enough time to get ready for our 6pm dinner reservations.

We drove for about 30 minutes through the streets of Roseau and out along the coast to our first stop of the day: Champagne Reef.  Adin explained that Dominica is home to 9 active volcanoes, making it the island with the highest concentration of active volcanoes in the world.  These volcanoes regulate their pressure by emitting gas, which creates bubbles under the water.  These bubbles can be seen when snorkeling off the shore of Dominica, hence the name Champagne Reef.  Adin said that if you ever cannot see the bubbles, then you’d better get off the island because it means a volcano is about to blow!  Funny enough, when I visited Dominica in 2010, I did not see any bubbles when we snorkeled at Champagne Reef.  I spent the last 15 years thinking it was just a gimmick and that there aren’t actually any visible bubbles there, so I was really looking forward to a second opportunity to see the bubbles.

Adin pulled over to the side of the road and parked the van.  We were all the way up at the top of a cliff, but I could already see that the water looked beautiful and I couldn’t wait to get in!

Adin and Leo helped everyone get fitted with fins, snorkels, masks, and life jackets.  They said the life jackets were mandatory.  When we were ready to go, we followed them down a flight of stone stairs to the beach.  I remembered from the last time I was here that the beach is very rocky, so we wore our water shoes for the walk.

One by one, the guides helped us into the water, and we all waited for them to join us so we could swim together out to the reef.

That was one huge difference from the last time I was here.  As I remember it, the guides just told us to go in the water and we would see bubbles.  They didn’t escort us to a specific place, and I don’t even remember them being in the water with us.  It was just a murky sandy-bottomed ocean, and it was very disappointing to not see any bubbles.  The guides justified it by saying it was usually a very calm area to snorkel, but we were unlucky because the seas were rough that day and that’s why we couldn’t see the bubbles.  Now coming back here 15 years later, the seas were still rough, so somehow I doubt there is ever calm water near this beach.  Either way, it was a much better experience this time around as we had two guides in the water with us, escorting us the entire way.

Even though we were always close to the shore, the water was very deep for most of the swim.  As we swam, we could see tons of yellow tube coral.

We swam along the coast for 10 minutes, and the water was really rough the entire time.  I was very thankful for the mandatory life vest because without it, I would have been afraid I might drown.  I noticed Adin had stopped swimming and he was gathering everyone around him.  He said we reached our destination and told us to all look below the surface…

OMG!!! BUBBLES!!!  I couldn’t believe it!  After 15 years of skepticism, I finally got to see the bubbles of Champagne Reef, and they were amazing!  There were so many bubbles coming out of the ground, and they glittered beautifully in the sunlight.  It was hard to capture a good photo, so these are the best I got.  Honestly, I think it was even prettier in person.

A selfie just for fun!

I spotted a sea urchin below the bubbles…

Not the best photo (and what’s up with all the fogging on our goggles?!), but here’s proof that Jason was there too!

We stayed out with the bubbles for about 10 minutes, then started our swim back to the beach.  Along the way, I spotted a big fish, but I’m not really sure what kind it is.  There weren’t many fish out there, but that’s okay because that’s not why we were there anyway.

There were a ton of these yellow columns, and I loved how easy they were to spot with the bright color contrasting with the dull ocean floor.

There was also one big yellow brain coral:

The guides helped everyone climb out of the water when we got back to the beach because the current was rushing towards the shore and there was a steep drop off so we had to be very secure on our feet to safely reach the beach.  We spent a total of 30 minutes in the water.  While it was definitely more advanced swimming conditions than the typical calm Caribbean water, it was well worth the effort to see those incredible bubbles.

Because Dominica is a volcanic island, most of the beaches have black sand.  It’s always interesting to see something unique like that.  We didn’t spend any time on the beach though because we had lots more to see and do on the island, so we followed Adin back across the beach and up the stairs to get back to the van.

Once we were all back at the van, we returned our life vests and snorkel gear (for those who borrowed it from the guides) and were given a cold bottle of water from their cooler in exchange.  That was much appreciated after a challenging 30-minute swim in the salty ocean.  Adin asked us what we wanted to eat for lunch so he could place our order with the restaurant.  There were 4 choices, including rotisserie chicken and fries, spicy chicken and fries, jamaican patty, and chicken curry in roti.  I ordered the rotisserie chicken and Jason ordered the chicken roti.  Everyone climbed back in the van, and Adin called in our order as he started driving back towards town so it would be ready when we arrived at the restaurant.

First, we drove back into Roseau and stopped at a building where Leo hopped out and exchanged our life jackets.  At first, I assumed they were just getting a dry set so when we got to the next stop, we could put on a fresh jacket, and I thought that was excellent customer service.  That wasn’t really the intention though as the first life jackets were the thin, inflatable ones, and the replacements were more sturdy foam jackets which we would need for Titou Gorge.  I’m not really sure why they didn’t just have both kinds of jackets in the van from the start of the day, but the stop only took 5 minutes so I guess it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Next, we drove to the restaurant so Leo could go inside and pick up our lunch orders.  They were all individually packaged in styrofoam containers, but he didn’t distribute them right there because we were double parked in a busy part of town.  We continued driving until we reached the botanical gardens.  This wasn’t a formal part of our tour, but we had to drive through it to get from Champagne Reef to Titou Gorge, so we just looked at the sites through the windows as we drove along.  

One of the main attractions in the botanical gardens is this school bus, which was crushed by an African Baobab Tree during Hurricane David in 1979.  Thankfully, no one was inside at the time, and the locals decided to leave the wreckage in place as a reminder of that horrible storm.  Over time, the tree continued to grow around the bus, making an interesting landmark.

This was a natural bamboo house that you can actually walk inside of, but obviously we didn’t do that as we just looked at it from the van.

When there was space to pull over, Adin stopped the van so Leo could get out and distribute our lunches.  I looked out the front windshield and saw that we were parked in front of a big red tourist train!  I had seen pictures of the train that my parents and the kids would be riding on their excursion and it looked just like this.  By now, it was 1pm, and I knew their excursion started at noon, so it was very likely that they were on this train!  

Just then, the train started moving and it drove right past our van.  Sure enough, I saw my parents and the kids in one of the rows in the middle of the train!  Jason was sitting on that side of our van, so he opened the door and stuck out his head and yelled my mom’s name.  At first, she looked so shocked and confused about who was calling her name!  She started laughing when she saw it was us, and the kids got a kick out of it!  I didn’t get any photos of this because it happened so fast, but it was really funny that we saw them on their tour.  Timing is everything in life!

After all of that excitement, I opened my lunch box to dig in.  Adin told us to eat while he continued driving to Titou Gorge.  The chicken was delicious, and there were so many fries that I shared some with Jason.  I didn’t take a picture of his lunch but he said it was really good too.

As we drove up into the mountains, Adin pointed out these towers and said they are building a cable car and zipline across the valley.  He said it is possible to hike up to the top of the mountains, but it would take 6-8 hours for an experienced hiker, and this cable car is meant to show you the same views but it will only take a few minutes to reach the top, and then you zipline back down.  If you look closely, you can see two lines connecting the towers.  I don’t remember which is which, but one is for the cable car and the other is for the zip line.  He said the construction is almost done and it should be completed for tourists to enjoy within a few months.

We finally pulled into the parking lot of Titou Gorge at 1:30pm, so we had been in the van for an hour and 15 minutes!  It didn’t feel that long, and we appreciated that as he drove, Adin spent a lot of time explaining things about life in Dominica, like their government, agriculture, school system, economy, tourism, and a few other topics.

I don’t think I’ve posted a photo of it yet, but this was our van for the day:

Leo handed out the foam life vests to each of us, and helped us adjust them to fit snuggly.  Titou Gorge was very busy when we arrived, so we had to park our van at the bottom of a hill and walk back up to the top.  

The scenery was beautiful, with lush green trees and a river flowing between large rocks.

At the top of the hill, we saw the other parking lot, which was filled with tour vans, but it looked like people were returning to those vans after finishing their visit to the gorge so hopefully it wouldn’t be too crowded when we got inside.  There were a few vendors selling souvenirs, and a small restaurant with a bathroom which Adin said we were free to use.

Once everyone was ready, we climbed down a slippery set of stairs into the water.  The guides warned us the water would feel “refreshing”, but that was really just code for FREEZING!  Having done this before, I knew what to expect and that it was worth it to suffer in the cold water for a few minutes until my body adjusted, but other people ahead of us needed a little more convincing.  The line was slow-moving, and it took a few minutes until it was our turn to jump in.

We stood in the shallow section of water, waiting for everyone else in our group to join us.  The bottom of the river is very rocky, much like the section of river we saw on our walk from the van, so I was happy I wore my water shoes.  The guides didn’t mention anything about footwear, so half our group was wearing flip flops and I think they wished they had something to protect their feet.

As you swam into the gorge, there was a rope swing that you could climb up, but none of us tried it.  The easiest way to acclimate to the cold water was to just stay submerged, so I wasn’t really tempted to climb up the rope and need to get used to the water again.

I apologize in advance for the quality of these photos.  It was very dark inside the gorge, and while we could see well enough with the light that peeked in between the canopy of trees above us, my camera isn’t great in low-light conditions.  

Looking up, you can see the dense canopy of leaves above the gorge.  It’s really amazing that anyone discovered this was hidden down here!

After about 3 minutes of swimming, we came to an opening, and Adin told us to gather around as he explained that this was one of the filming locations used in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  He showed us where they drilled into the rock walls to attach their cameras, and you can still barely see evidence of it today if you know where to look.  

Despite how busy it was in the parking lots and in the initial entrance area into the gorge, our group of 6 plus our 2 guides were the only ones in this area, so we floated here, enjoying the peace and tranquility for a few minutes.

We started seeing people swimming past us towards the exit, so we took that as our cue to continue on, swimming deeper into the gorge as it would now be less crowded in there.  When we got to the end, there was a small waterfall with a ledge.  Adin and Leo climbed up first so they could help each of us climb up against the rush of water.  There was only a narrow opening to stand and wait, and there were still a few people ahead of us from a different group, so we waited for them to finish and have our own turn with the huge waterfall up ahead.

When it was our turn, the guides helped us down into a pool of water under the waterfall.  

The force of water was so strong that it felt intimidating, and I was afraid to get too close to the waterfall for fear of being knocked over.  The floor was very slippery, with loose rocks that moved as you stepped on them, and it was hard to maintain your balance with the current.  I told Jason that I just wanted to take a quick photo with him to prove we were there, but then I needed to get out before I twisted my ankle.  One of the people on our tour was right next to me and offered to take our photo.  This is probably the least flattering photo I have ever taken, but it will have to do!

The photo was blurry from water on the lens, but I didn’t care.  I wasn’t staying down there any longer because I was really nervous about the conditions.  The guides helped me climb out, and then I waited for Jason and everyone else to finish playing under the waterfall.  Some people were even crazy enough to stand directly under the waterfall!  After everyone was out, the guides took each pair’s photo without anyone else in the background.  I look like a drowned rat, but this definitely proves how hard we worked to reach this spot!

After that, we retraced our path to swim back out of the gorge.

The whole gorge isn’t that long, so it only took us 5 minutes to swim out based on the time stamps in my photos.  It also helped that we were swimming with the current in this direction, so that pushed us along a little faster than when swimming in.  

We all climbed out of the water, up the slippery stairs, and regrouped on terra firma.  Titou Gorge was just as amazing as I remembered from 2010, and it was definitely one of the highlights of our entire cruise.  It is such a unique place, and Jason and I were so grateful we got to experience it together.

On our walk back down the hill to our van, we noticed this van parked on the side of the road.  It had a flat tire, so I assume it was parked there when we walked up the hill earlier, but I didn’t notice it then.  Among other things, it included a picture of Johnny Depp from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, so you could tell the people of Dominica were very proud of being part of that movie.

Back at our van, Adin opened the cooler again to offer us a bottle of local beer.  After such a physically challenging day, we thought we deserved a little treat and gladly accepted his offer.

We dried off, returned our life vests, and got back in the van to drive to our next stop: Trafalgar Falls.  This is a pair of huge side-by-side waterfalls, nestled within a lush forest.  When I did my tour in 2010, we climbed down between large rocks and into the natural pools created by these waterfalls, some of which were natural hot springs.  I assumed we would do the same on today’s tour because it did say “hot springs” in the description, but apparently the hot springs we were visiting were at a different location, and our stop here was just to quickly look at the waterfalls from the viewing platform.

To reach the platform, we first had to walk for about 10 minutes along a clear path with a ton of steps up and down.  We really got a workout today!

At the end of the trail, there was a large two-story platform with the perfect view of both waterfalls.  They were just far enough apart that it was really hard to capture both in the same photo, so I regretted only carrying my underwater camera because I’m sure the 0.5 wide angle lens on my iPhone would have worked better.

I loved how the one on the left cascaded down between the rocks, zig zagging back and forth to carve its path.

Even though Adin said we were not supposed to swim here, Jason wanted to climb down to the rocks just to take a quick look.  There were other people from different tours who did get to swim in these natural pools, so I’m really not sure why we didn’t get to do it too.

After about 10 minutes of looking at the falls, Adin said it was time to walk back to the van.  It was now time to drive to our last stop on the tour, the hot springs.  He didn’t really explain anything about this place, but I think it was some kind of spa?  

This was the front entrance, and we went inside by climbing the stairs in the middle of the photo…

One of the guides said that there were several different pools here that had different temperatures.  He recommended we start with the warm pool, then go to the hot pool, and end with a quick cold plunge in the cold pool.  The cold pool did not contain sulfur, so that would also serve as a way to rinse off the sulfur from our skin and bathing suits.  Knowing we would visit a sulfur-based hot spring today, I purposely wore a black bathing suit to avoid it getting stained.

There were 3 or 4 sets of 3 pools, and at first, they pointed us towards these pools that were already crowded with people from other groups.

We started to get in, but then one of the ladies in our group noticed another set of pools that were completely empty!  That was more our speed, so we followed her down to those pools and the 6 of us from our van had it all to ourselves.  Adin also poured us a cup of a very strong homemade rum punch to enjoy while we sat in the pools.

As compared to the natural rock formations that created Titou Gorge and the pools at the base of Trafalgar Falls, these hot springs seemed manmade from concrete and I’m not really sure where the hot water came from.  The concrete walls didn’t create the serene, natural environment that made the other stops so unique, and honestly, I wished we had just spent the time swimming at Trafalgar Falls and skipped this stop completely.

By the time we were ready to leave, the place had mostly cleared out and the other tour groups were gone.

It was now after 4pm, so we walked back down to the van, dried off, and boarded the van one last time to drive back to the cruise ship.  Overall, we had an amazing day in Dominica.  With the exception of the hot springs stop at the end, all of the other stops featured lush, natural beauty that is unique to this island, and the activities left us memories we will reminisce about for years to come.  If you are ever in Dominica, I would highly recommend this tour with Waitukubuli.

Adin dropped us off at the entrance to the port at 4:45pm.  That was a little later than we hoped to return, but luckily there was no line to reboard the ship and we were back in our cabin a few minutes later.  This was my first opportunity to communicate with my family all day, and as soon as I reconnected to the ship’s wifi, I was bombarded with texts from my mom.  Her app said that our dinner reservation was for 5:20pm tonight, and she was confused because she thought I said I had made it for 6pm.  I ran over to her cabin and said that yes, I definitely saw our reservation was for 6pm tonight when we boarded the ship.  Remember when I mentioned on embarkation day that my biggest mistake was in not taking a screenshot of all of our reservations?  Well this was when it came back to bite me because she said she had already called the dining room and they wanted to see proof that we had a 6pm reservation.  I was livid.  I knew for a fact that we had a 6pm reservation on just this one night, and I had a strong feeling I knew when the change happened.  The hostess we spoke to on embarkation night insisted that she needed to fix all of our reservations to link our cabins so we would always be seated at the same table, and must have not looked closely at our reservations and assumed we wanted 5:20pm every night.  I would wager money that she is the one who messed this up for us.  

It was now 4:55pm and Jason and I both desperately needed showers to wash off all the types of water we had submerged our bodies in today.  I left my mom to try to fix our reservation and got in the shower.  By the time I got out, my mom called the phone line dedicated to helping passengers in suites, pled her case, and somehow she managed to fix things so that we could have the 6pm reservation.   That was a whole lot of stress that we really didn’t need!  I frantically finished drying my hair and getting dressed while Jason showered, and we all met out on my parents’ balcony to take a family photo with everyone dressed up nicely for New Year’s Eve.  

It’s too bad none of us packed a tripod so we could get a better angle for this photo!  I guess my nephew didn’t like taking a photo from this angle either!

The last sunset of 2025 featured cloudless skies and a perfect reflection of the sun on the water.

This was one of my favorite photos from the whole cruise:

We arrived at the Amalfi dining room promptly at 6pm, and our waiters greeted us with a smile as if nothing was amiss.  I’m not sure if they knew about the reservations fiasco, but they treated us like it was any other night.

Last year, when we entered the dining room on New Year’s Eve, there was a table of festive hats, tiaras, and noise makers.  I expected the same tonight, but we didn’t see anything when we walked in.  Jason even went back to the front of the dining room to double check that we hadn’t missed it, and he came back empty handed.  The waiters didn’t know anything about it either.  Hmm, that’s weird!  Maybe they aren’t giving out hats this year?

Tonight was listed as a “smart casual” dress code, but pretty much everyone we saw in the dining room was dressed formally for New Year’s Eve.  Even though it wasn’t officially a formal night, there was a special menu offered for dinner, featuring a few more premium options than the regular menu.

I ordered the lump crab cake and beef carpaccio appetizers, and the surf and turf entree.  Everything was delicious!

Another night, another bowl of pasta for this little boy:

I loved how they plated my dark chocolate mousse cake for dessert.

As we were finishing eating dinner, we noticed the people at a nearby table were wearing the same Princess hats and tiaras we were given last year.  We asked where they got them, and they said they were handing them out in Princess Live, so up we went!  On our way, we saw there were giant number balloons for 2026, so we stopped for another group photo.  

When we got to Princess Live, we couldn’t find any party hats, so we asked one of the crew who was working in that area, but she had no idea what we were talking about.  This was getting frustrating!  Jason was determined to find hats for us, so he went on a scavenger hunt.  He started at the Capri dining room, but they sent him to the Santorini dining room, and they suggested he look up on the Lido deck near the pool, and they sent him down to guest services.  It turned into a wild goose chase, but no one would tell him where to get the party hats!  Meanwhile, we kept seeing people wearing them, so we knew they had to be SOMEWHERE!  Just when he was about to give up, he saw one lonely hat sitting on the bar in Good Spirits.  He asked the people standing next to it and they said it was theirs but they didn’t want it and Jason could take it.  He asked where they got it from, and they said Princess Live, so maybe we just had bad timing and the hats were all given away before we got there?!

While Jason was running all over the ship, the rest of us hung out on deck 7 overlooking the people dancing below in the Piazza.

While we were nearby, I stopped by the Bellini Bar to pick up a Fellini, with St. Germain, Chambord, Prosecco, herbal butterfly tea, and orange bitters.

We were still in the dining room during the 7pm show, so we decided we would all attend the late show together.  We still had some time before the show started, but we decided to just go get seats early to make sure we could find 9 seats together.  Strangely enough, all week the shows were at 7pm and 9pm, but tonight’s late show was scheduled to start a half hour early at 8:30pm.  I have a feeling a lot of people didn’t realize there was a different schedule tonight because the theater was nearly empty!  These photos were taken at exactly 8:30pm (in fact, the lights dimmed before I could take a photo of the starboard side of the theater, but it was equally as empty)…

Tonight’s show featured the rock singer, Stephanie Hodgdon, who had performed a few nights earlier, but she sang a different set list tonight.

Stephanie explained that she had a boyfriend for around one year who she met while performing on the ships.  He is one of the singers in the production cast on the Emerald Princess, and he was here on the ship with us tonight.  He came out on stage and they sang a duet of Shallow, so that was really fun to watch.

The guitarist was featured for a solo during one of the songs:

For the big finale, Stephanie donned these iridescent wings with LED lights and danced across the stage.  Everyone loved this part, especially our kids!

When the show ended, we went back to the Vista Lounge for the Family New Year’s Eve Party, but when we arrived, there was no one there!  I guess this was meant to be a place for families to celebrate together, away from the crowds of adults, but the room was empty so our kids didn’t want to stay there.  The one good thing about it was that we finally found the mother load of party hats!!!

Now we were ready to celebrate New Year’s Eve!

We went up to the Lido pool, but it was still too early and the party hadn’t gotten started yet.

They were definitely set up and ready for a party, though!  The hot tub was filled with ice and bottles of champagne!

We hung out and let the kids dance for a few minutes, but we could tell Ian was exhausted so we left at 9:30pm to bring him back to the cabin to get ready for bed.  These unwelcome pieces of paper were waiting for us on our bed:

I knew we weren’t going to be in a rush to get off the ship at the end of the cruise, so I marked off the box requesting luggage tags for between 8 and 8:30am, and left it on our desk for the steward to collect in the morning.

We all changed into pajamas fairly quickly, but as usual, Ian was so riled up that he didn’t actually get in bed until 11:45pm.  At that point, I decided to stay awake long enough to see midnight, even though I was in bed and could barely keep my eyes open.  Even with our sound machine on, I could hear the ship’s horn blow at midnight!  I imagine everyone was having a great time at all the parties around the ship, but I was just as happy to be asleep minutes later after an exciting and adventurous day.

Proof I stayed up until midnight:

Today’s drinks total: 12

Up next: Barbados

I have been to St. Thomas on two prior cruises, in 2012 and 2015, and both times I spent the day at Sapphire Beach.  Ever since, I have known that if/when I return, I want to go to Coki Beach to try something new.  I have read countless reviews of people doing a Discover Scuba Diving course from a shop on Coki Beach, and it seemed like such a fun way to spend the day: take an open-air taxi from the port area to Coki Beach, take the course, and spend the rest of the day relaxing on the beach and snorkeling at our leisure.  We loved the Discover Scuba course we took in Cozumel on our 2019 cruise, where we did 2 dives off the boat, so I was curious to experience scuba from the beach.  As soon as we booked this cruise and I knew we were returning to St. Thomas, I contacted the Coki Dive Center to book our tour.  Imagine my surprise and disappointment when they informed me that they are going out of business and will not be operating tours anymore.  I was so upset!  This was back in January 2025, and they said they were closing up their shop on February 1.  I asked if any other company offered a Discover Scuba course from Coki Beach, but they said no.

Okay, well this is a huge island in the Caribbean with tons of infrastructure for tourism.  Surely there must be a different company who can offer us a Discover Scuba Diving course, right?!  I spent the next few weeks combing the internet for every dive shop I could find, but I kept running into the same conundrum.  The tours all started at 8am (2 hours before we were due to dock) or 1pm.  I was worried that a 1pm tour would cut it too close to get back to the ship on time since it wouldn’t end until 5pm (the tours were all 4 hours long), and all aboard would probably be at 5:30pm.  It seemed like these tours were more meant for people taking land vacations and staying overnight on the island so their timing was more flexible, but obviously that was not our situation.  

Once I had exhausted all of my options, I looked at the excursions offered by Princess to see if we should just book through the ship.  While Princess did offer one Discover Scuba tour, it cost over $200 per person, and the reviews were terrible, saying you only had 30 minutes for scuba in the 4 hour tour.  That seemed very expensive and not worth the money so I continued with my research.  I still wanted to go to Coki Beach so I decided to look into the options at Coral World Ocean Park.  This is an outdoor aquarium located right next to Coki Beach, with shark, sting ray, and sea turtle exhibits.  They also have lots of water-based activities, including swimming with dolphins and sea lions, a sea trek, and SNUBA.  We did a sea trek excursion in Moorea on our honeymoon cruise through French Polynesia.  It was fun, but I didn’t want to do it again quite yet.  I actually made a mental note about it because it is the kind of thing we can do with Ian when he gets just a little older.  

I have never done SNUBA before, so it sounded like something fun to do as it combined the ease of snorkeling with the depth obtained with scuba.  They don’t have a Discover Scuba course, so I thought SNUBA might be a good compromise.  The experience lasts 75 minutes, with 4 start times each day, so it was definitely possible for us with our time constraints.  I liked that they only allowed 4 people per group, so it was possible it would just be us booked, or at most there would be one other couple and the instructor.  I also liked that there wasn’t as much learning involved as compared to Discover Scuba, so more time would be spent in the water.  Another benefit was that I was able to book online using Viator for $102 per person, with free cancellation until 2 days before the tour, and the tickets included general admission to Coral World so we could check out their exhibits before or after our tour.  I opted for the 1pm tour, figuring we would take an open air taxi to Coki Beach and arrive around 11am, spend some time exploring the exhibits at Coral World, take our SNUBA excursion from 1-2:15pm, and then have some time to go snorkeling on Coki Beach before needing to head back to the ship.  

Oh, and in case you were wondering what Ian was doing today… my parents were kind enough to offer to watch Ian today so we could take this tour (since there would be no way for us to do something like this if we had Ian with us).  They planned to take Ian on the Sky Ride cable cars up to the top of Paradise Point, and my brother’s family ended up joining too.  That was the perfect excursion for my parents to do with Ian, and he had a great time.

Since we weren’t scheduled to dock until 10am, we were able to sleep in a little bit and my alarm was set for 7:30am.  I got up and got ready for the day, then I went out onto the balcony to check out the current view.  It was shaping up to be a beautiful day in St. Thomas!

When I went back inside the cabin, Jason was awake and getting dressed, but surprisingly, Ian was still asleep.  He hadn’t woken up yet by 8:30am, but we really needed to get going, so I had to do the unthinkable and wake him up.  That is never a pleasant experience, but at least we could snap him out of his typical morning funk with the promise of a fun day in the Caribbean!  

We got him dressed and packed up a day bag for Jason and myself, and a separate bag with Ian’s necessities to hand off to my parents, then we all went up to the buffet for breakfast at 9am.  Not surprisingly, it was insanely crowded with everyone trying to grab breakfast before the ship docked at 10am, but at least we were able to snag a table by the window with a beautiful view.

I loaded up my plate with lots of goodies, hoping to keep my belly full until we returned to the ship later this afternoon.  

When we finished eating, we dropped off Ian at camp at 9:45am.  My parents are late risers and weren’t planning to go to the Sky Ride until the afternoon, so our plan was to leave Ian at camp for the morning, and my parents would pick him up at 11:30am for a quick lunch before they got off the ship.  I told that to the staff at camp, and also that Jason and I were going ashore so if there were any problems, they should contact my parents, and she said it was no problem.  She gave me a beeper (as we always got when Ian was at camp), so I went back down to the cabin to hand over the beeper and Ian’s bag of necessities to my parents.  

I took a quick peek outside and it looked like we were docked in St. Thomas, promptly at 10am as scheduled.  I have always thought this was one of the most beautiful harbors in the Caribbean.

Jason and I grabbed our day bags and went down to mid-ship deck 4 to get off the ship.  We exited the gate at the end of the pier and were surprised to see taxis waiting right there for us.  I thought I remembered that the last time we were in St. Thomas, we had to walk down the street of stores to a main road to get the taxis.  There was a man in charge of telling people which taxi to take to which location, so at first we stood at the end of the long line of people waiting for a taxi.  It was nice that they had a sandwich board listing the prices for all the places you could go on the island, so there was no question about what it should cost and you didn’t have to worry about negotiating prices.

I started to second guess that we were at the right spot, so I left Jason in line and went up to the man to ask if this was where we got a taxi to Coki Beach.  It’s a good thing I asked because that whole line of people was actually just for Magen’s Bay.  He called over to the driver of a 12-passenger van and asked if there was space for 2 more.  The driver said yes, so I waved Jason to come join me.  The van was almost full, so we crawled into the last 2 seats at the back of the van.  It was very cramped back there, and the air conditioning barely worked, but at least we didn’t have to wait very long and we were on our way by 10:30am.

I knew from my research that the drive to Coki Beach should take about 20 minutes.  Unfortunately for us, this taxi was also stopping at Secret Harbor, the Red Hook Ferry, and Sapphire Beach, so it took 45 minutes for us to finally be dropped at Coki Beach.  The taxi cost us $14 per person because we had 2 people (it would have been $18 for 1 person).  I asked if it was necessary to schedule a time for the driver to pick us up later in the afternoon, but she said we wouldn’t have any trouble finding a taxi whenever we were ready to leave as there were always taxis waiting in the parking lot to drive people back to the ship.  I was a little confused on exactly where we were supposed to go, so I asked the driver.  She said to go to the left for Coki Beach and the right for Coral World.  Simple enough!

I went up to the ticket window to check in for our 1pm tour at 11:15am.  They had all the prices for all the activities listed on the window, and I noticed that our Snuba tour still cost the same $102 as we had paid a year in advance.

At first, the woman at the counter said that the 1pm tour was overbooked, so she was glad we were early so she could send us out on an earlier tour.  She said to fill out the safety waivers now, and that we should come back to her at 11:40am for an update.  Oooh, maybe we would end up on a private tour if they were sending us out early on a tour that wasn’t pre-scheduled!

We walked around the grounds of Coral World to see what they had to see. There were several pools with different animals where you could watch them swimming around.  First, we saw a sea turtle.  It was really hard to take a good photo from above the water, but I tried my best.

We spotted a rooster walking around the tables outside the cafe.  Maybe he was hoping to pick up some scraps for lunch?

Next, we saw a pool with sharks.  

The restaurant had a large open-air dining room, with a beautiful view over the water.

We could see back down towards the sea turtle pools from up there.

Continuing our walk, we saw the sting ray pool, with a very feisty sting ray who looked like he was trying to splash his way up onto the sidewalk!

There was also a bird enclosure with colorful lorikeets.

By then, it was nearing 11:40 when we were told to return to the check-in desk, so we made our way back to the front of Coral World.  On our way, we noticed this sign showing the schedule of presentations.

When we checked in again with the lady at the desk, she said the 1pm tour was no longer overbooked and we would keep our original timing.  I’m not sure what happened there, but that left us with an hour and 20 minutes to kill.  We decided to use this time to walk over to Coki Beach and go snorkeling from the shore.  We originally planned to do that after our excursion, but we had the time now, and we figured the snorkeling would be more impressive if we did it before the Snuba tour. 

There is a marked path from Coral World to Coki Beach, so we followed that until we found the stairs going down to the sand.  We could immediately see that it was a busy day at the beach, with tons of people relaxing on lounge chairs and swimming in the water.  That wasn’t surprising though considering it was nearly noon, and there were 2 other cruise ships besides us who docked earlier in the morning, so I’m sure these people had been here a while at this point.

We weren’t going to stay at the beach very long, so we didn’t want to rent a lounge chair.  Instead, we found a place to leave our bags and towels on some rocks under the trees at the back of the beach, pulled out our snorkel equipment, and walked down to the water.  I wasn’t really sure where the “good” snorkeling was on this beach, but a good rule of thumb is to stay near the rocks.

This looked like a good place to snorkel…

Unfortunately, as soon as I walked into the water, I could feel that the current was really strong this morning.  It was approaching high tide and the waves were coming in strong, pushing me back towards the shore.  It was very choppy, and all the sand was churned up making the water too murky to see anything.  I put my head under water and immediately regretted it because all it did was leave my hair messy and wet, but there was nothing to see.  I could feel myself getting tired really quickly, and I realized that I had better quit now and conserve my energy or I would be too tired to enjoy our Snuba tour.  Jason wanted to swim out further and try to see if there were any fish near the rocks, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be worth the effort so I just stayed back at the shore and kept an eye on him.  A few minutes later, he came back and confirmed my suspicions that the conditions were not good for snorkeling today.  This got me worried because if the water was this churned up at the beach, what visibility would we have just a few hundred feet away on our Snuba tour??

We probably stayed at the beach for a total of 20 minutes, then grabbed our bags and walked back to Coral World.  At the top of the stairs that led down to the beach, we spotted this convenient tub of water to clean the sand off our feet.  I thought it was funny that they wrote “not for feet” on the tub meant to return rented snorkel equipment.

As we re-entered Coral World, we spotted a few iguanas basking in the sun.

This guy looked like he was smiling at me…

We walked down to check out the other sea turtle pool, and noticed there were two turtles swimming in there.  Coral World has a rehabilitation center for sick and injured turtles, and they also care for turtles who cannot be released back into the wild, so I’m not sure which category these turtles fell under.

I have seen photos of this building hundreds of times in other people’s reviews.  I always thought this was where they had the under-water viewing windows to look at the fish swimming in the bay, so I was really looking forward to checking it out.  At one point in our planning, we suggested that my parents bring the kids here to Coral World to check out the exhibits while we did our Snuba tour, and perhaps they would even see us swimming through the windows.  They decided that was more of a journey than they wanted to embark on with the kids, so they stuck to the Sky Ride as it was close to the ship.

We walked out to the bridge and over to the round building, but we couldn’t figure out how to get inside.  There was a door, but it was locked.  We overheard someone nearby talking about it and they said the building was closed for construction right now.  That was a huge disappointment because this is a unique exhibit (the only one of its kind in the Caribbean!), and is meant to be a highlight of visiting Coral World.  Our tickets to Coral World were included in the price of our Snuba tour, but I would be really upset if I paid the $29 admission fee for just seeing the exhibits and found out afterwards that this place was closed for construction.  I also found it odd and disappointing that they would do construction during the peak tourist season.

Walking back along the bridge, we noticed these rafts out in the water connected to blue tubes, and realized those are used for the Snuba tour!  The prior group must have been out swimming right now, and we were getting excited knowing that it would be our turn next.

We also saw a ton of fish in the water over here, so we hoped they stuck around long enough for us to see them when we got in the water.

We still had some time before our tour, so we walked over to the Caribbean Reef Encounter.  When I first walked inside the building, I was confused because it looked like the photos I had seen of the undersea observatory, but this was not in the middle of the water- it was surrounded by land!  Then I realized there was a wall behind the rocks so this was an enclosed aquarium meant to simulate being in the ocean.  This is the description from the Coral World website:

An 80,000 gallon coral reef aquarium encircles you as you enter the air-conditioned Caribbean Reef Encounter. The aquarium is open to the elements, which means the hundreds of reef animals that are housed here receive natural day and moonlight and experience rain just like a natural reef would. This is an important factor in keeping the many corals and sponges alive.  Water is pumped in at a rate of 15,000 gallons per hour. It is made of concrete with 12, three inch thick acrylic windows for 360 degree viewing. This continuous supply of unfiltered sea water allows the living corals and sponges to grow naturally, while offering visitors a most attractive decor.

It’s hard to tell from this photo, but this fish was huge!  He just stayed in that one spot and didn’t move the whole time we were in there.  I’m not sure if he was sick, sleeping, or just enjoying the warmth from the sun, but either way, it made it easy to capture a photo of him!

When we exited the aquarium, we saw signs pointing towards the dolphin sanctuary.  I assume this is where they do the swimming with dolphins tours, but there weren’t any tours happening while we were back there.  It was a really large enclosure with a ton of space for the dolphins to swim around.  There was a long shaded walkway going out across the water so we could walk alongside the dolphins as they swam and jumped.  There was a staff member out there to answer any questions, and had we not needed to get back to the front desk for our tour, we could have spent a long time out here.

It was nearly 1pm, so we walked back to the front desk to check in (again) for our tour.  Our guide came over to find us and one other man who was also booked on the tour.  I’m not really sure what ended up happening that they thought it was overbooked, but the maximum number of participants for this Snuba tour was 4 people, so if anything, we were underbooked.  No complaints about that!  Our guide’s name was Glenn and he escorted us up a flight of stairs to an open-air “classroom” located above the front desk office.

Glenn told us to take a seat at the table, and he explained a few safety tips.  The other man had never done anything like this, and we could tell he was a little nervous about the experience.  We felt more confident knowing we had gone scuba diving before, even if it was nearly 7 years ago.  It did help to know the concepts and the hand signals to communicate under water, but even if we had no prior experience, Glenn was great at explaining everything we would need to know for Snuba.  He showed us how to use the regulator, how to clear our mask in case water got in, and how to equalize our ears.  One big difference from scuba was that we were tethered to the raft, so Glenn said that if we needed to go back up to the surface for any reason, we should pull ourselves up using our oxygen line.  That way, the raft would be there when we reached the surface and we would have something to hold onto while we made our adjustments.  I will say it was nice not having to stress about all the skills we were tested on for scuba diving, and this felt more relaxed and easier to learn.

When he was done with all the instructions, Glenn got us fitted for fins, a regulator, and weights.  He had eye masks we could borrow, but Jason and I opted to use our own masks from home since we knew they fit our face and did not leak.  Glenn offered to spray our masks with an anti-fog solution, so we let him do that since we usually just use the spit method and assumed his solution must work better. **Foreshadowing…**  

Before we left the classroom area, Glenn told us we could stash our belongings in a large plastic box that would be safe while we were out in the water.  One thing I was really worried about before this tour was if I would be allowed to use my camera to take photos.  The online registration information says that no personal cameras are permitted, and several of the TripAdvisor reviews said they were not allowed to use their own cameras and had to purchase photos taken by the guide.  Glenn did have a GoPro and took tons of photos throughout our time underwater, but I was thrilled that he said it was no problem for me to take my own camera and take my own photos throughout the dive!  For me, half of the fun is being able to document the experience from my own eyes, so I knew I would have more fun now that I was allowed to take my own camera.  

Once we were all suited up, we carried our equipment down the stairs and across the bridge, then down a few more stairs to the staging area.  This was underneath the building that was closed for construction.  We walked down a few metal stairs into the water, then sat down to put on our fins and mask.  While we did that, Glenn went out into the water to set up the rafts for our oxygen supply.

Glenn told us to sit down on the platform under water and to wait for him to suit up and join us, so I put my regulator in my mouth and sat down where I was told.  I was immediately surrounded by literally hundreds of fish!  Holy cow!  This was crazy!!  These must have been the fish we saw from up on the bridge an hour ago.  After the tour, Glenn told us these were called Horse-Eye Jacks because of their large eyes.  

I wasn’t wearing my watch, but it felt like we were sitting there a long time.  I kept floating up to the surface so I had to hold on to the bar and push myself down on the seat.  In the meantime, I just kept myself entertained by taking photos.  I was already so happy to have my own camera with me because Glenn wasn’t with us to capture all these fish since he was still busy getting set up.

When Glenn finally joined us, he instructed the other man to follow him, but then it seemed like he was getting him set up or put in place so I didn’t follow.  It wasn’t really clear what he wanted me to do but after another minute, I just went for it and swam down.  Glenn had warned us the swells were high the last few days.  He said it calmed down a little now, but the visibility wasn’t great.  We could see about 15 feet out, but beyond that was murky.  

Most of the area where we swam had a sandy bottom with the occasional rocks and algae here and there.  There were relatively few fish, and honestly there really wasn’t much to see.  I had always heard great things about the reef near Coki Beach and Coral World, so I’m not sure what happened but we did expect to see more down there.  Maybe we are just jaded because we had such an amazing experience on our prior scuba dive in Cozumel?

Glenn seemed to spend a lot of time helping the other man.  I don’t know exactly what was happening, but maybe he was having trouble equalizing his ears?  Jason and I just went off and explored on our own, making sure to keep an eye on Glenn so we wouldn’t lose sight of him in the murky water.  

Jason loved hovering close to the bottom of the water.  I, on the other hand, struggled with buoyancy issues.  One minute, I felt like I was sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and the next, I was floating up to the top.  I was afraid to get scratched on the coral and rocks, so I tried to hover somewhere mid-way down.  Glenn later told us we had gone down to a depth of 20 feet (another big difference from discover scuba, which can dive down to 40 feet because you aren’t tethered to the raft at the surface).  

I handed my camera to Jason to take a few photos of me, and he kept going down to the bottom to take the picture so I look like I am just snorkeling at the surface, but I assure you I was definitely deeper than it appears!

Does anyone else think this looks like a recreation of Nirvana’s Nevermind album cover?  Wearing a bathing suit, of course!

I signalled to Jason to adjust his angle, and I think this photo looks much better…

Some more Horse-Eye Jacks came out to find us.

At some point, an air bubble got trapped inside Jason’s rash guard, so it looked like he had a fish caught in there that was trying to escape!

A mid-snuba selfie… notice that my mask is starting to fog.

We met back up with Glenn and he swam backwards to capture a few photos of us, so I took a photo of him!

He spotted a ruby brittle star and swam down to pick it up.  

He handed it to Jason to hold, but Jason dropped it before he could hand it to me.  Bummer!

We saw one giant brain coral with some interesting bright blue coral growing on its side.

I could tell we were nearing the end of the tour, so I swam up to Glenn and signaled to him to see if he could take my camera to take some photos of Jason and I together.  I had asked him about that back in the classroom and he said it was no problem, so I handed him my camera.  Unfortunately, these came out horrible!  I think the sun was behind us, so there was bad lighting, and the water was so murky you can’t see any coral or fish or anything in the water.  At least it shows we were on the excursion together, but really the photos are disappointing.  

You can see in that photo that by the end of the tour, my goggles were so foggy I could barely see anything.  I guess Glenn’s magic spray didn’t work so well after all!  I probably should have just swum back up to the surface to remove the goggles and wipe them clean, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

We followed Glenn back to the starting point and onto the swim platform to remove our gear.  Based on the time stamps from my photos, we were swimming for exactly 30 minutes.  Given the sparse and murky conditions, I thought that was the perfect amount of time and I was ready to finish up (especially since my goggles were too foggy to see anything at the end anyway).  Overall, I loved the idea of Snuba.  It had all of the benefits of scuba diving with going as low to the ocean floor as you want, without the stress of taking the class and learning the skills.  I wouldn’t hesitate to book a Snuba tour again in the future, but hopefully it would be somewhere with better visibility and marine life.

Glenn led us back across the bridge and up the stairs to the classroom where we could retrieve our bags and towels to dry off.  He said we could purchase the photos he took from the gift shop in a few minutes.  It was now 2:15pm, so the tour lasted exactly the hour and 15 minutes that was advertised.  We tipped Glenn and thanked him for a fun and memorable tour, then went back down the stairs in search of a bathroom to change into dry clothes.  We stopped in the gift shop to look at the photos Glenn took, but decided against buying them since they weren’t much different than the ones I took on my camera.

We considered going back to Coki Beach, but we were tired and hungry and thought it sounded more fun to just go back to the ship for a “free” lunch and to make use of our drink package.  We walked out to the front parking lot and found where the taxi drivers were hanging around.  We asked if we could get a taxi back to the cruise port, and they pointed us to an open-air taxi that already had a few people inside.  We climbed in, and then waited for 20 minutes until all the other seats were filled.  The ride back cost the same $14 per person, but it only took us 15 minutes (versus the 45 minutes it took us to get to the beach!).  On the way, we saw a beautiful view overlooking the bay, and we could see all 3 of the ships in St. Thomas today (the third ship is at the other port in the distance on the far right of the photo)…

The taxi dropped us off on the street with all the stores, so we had to walk all the way back to our ship.  

I am sure they do this in hopes that we will go shopping, but we didn’t really want any souvenirs, so we just headed back to the ship.  At least the walk was easy and there was a sidewalk the whole way.

We were back onboard around 3:30pm and went straight up to the Lido pool bar for a drink.  As soon as we entered the pool area, we ran into my sister in law and my niece.  It was really amazing how many times we ran into my family unexpectedly during this cruise, especially considering there were over 4000 passengers on board!  I ordered a Captain’s Bounty, with Bacardi Spiced rum, Bacardi Limon rum, Malibu coconut rum, Kraken Black Spiced rum, lemon, pineapple, and coca cola.  I had avoided this drink earlier in the cruise fearing it would be too strong, but I actually really liked it and ordered it several times throughout the rest of the cruise.  We took our drinks over to where my brother was sitting near the pool, and chatted with them for an hour.  I was starving, so I grabbed a slice of pizza for a late lunch, not wanting to eat so much that I’d spoil my dinner.

I love how they have this glass floor area extending out over the side of the ship.  I assume people with a fear of heights aren’t as fond of it, but I always thought it was fun to check out the view of what was down below.

At some point I texted my mom to let her know we were back on board and find out how the day went with Ian.  She said they had a great day and Ian did a ton of walking to and from the cable cars, so he was napping now.  When planning our day, I didn’t know what time Jason and I would be back on the ship, so we planned that my parents would take Ian to dinner at the buffet and drop him at camp before they went to dinner at the suites dining room.  Now that we were back early, I double checked that she was still okay with that plan, and she was, so Jason and I decided we would use our night of freedom to have dinner at O’Malley’s Pub.  We went back to the cabin at 4:20pm for quick showers and to get changed for the evening, being extra careful not to wake Ian in the process!

Mission accomplished, we got down to O’Malley’s just before 5pm, when the musicians were scheduled to start their set.  We noticed the pub gets very crowded when they are performing, so we purposely got there a little early in hopes we could snag a table, and it worked!  The duo was performing from 5-7pm, so we settled in for the show.  

We weren’t quite ready to eat dinner yet, so we started with a round of drinks.  Continuing to work my way down the special cocktails list, I ordered the Lucky Charm, with Meili vodka, St. Germain Liqueur, melon, lime, and lemon seltzer.

We were seated in one of the booths along the windows.  They had a partition from the top of the booth all the way up to the ceiling, making the table feel very private and cozy.  I really loved the decor of the partition and the decanters used as light fixtures.

We really enjoyed listening to the O’Malley’s Duo.  They played a mix of traditional Irish music and modern music by Irish singers.  The pub filled in soon after they started playing, and most people stayed for their whole 2 hour set, so we were glad we came early enough to get a seat or we wouldn’t have been able to eat dinner here.

Around 5:30pm, we decided we’d better order our dinner so we would have time to finish eating before we needed to reunite with Ian at 7pm.  Neither of us were particularly hungry after our late lunch, so we decided to share one of our casual dining meals.  We already planned to share a meal at Gigi’s later in the week, so this was a good use for that one extra meal.  Jason ordered the Irish Onion soup and I ordered the drunken mussels, and we asked the waiter if he could bring both out at the same time.

Unfortunately, this is where things took a turn for the worse.  Service was incredibly slow and our food took 45 minutes to be served.  When it finally did come out, we were disappointed to see that both dishes were about half the size that they were last year.  

Last year, the soup was served in a large bowl with several pieces of cheese layered across the top, versus this year it was just a small cup with one single piece of cheese. 

My mussels were also literally half the portion size of last year.  This year, there was just a thin layer of mussels at the bottom of the pot.  Everything still tasted good, it was just disappointing to see the obvious cutbacks.

They brought out our food at 6:15pm, and we had to meet up with the rest of my family at the theater by 7pm, so we felt very rushed to eat.  The waiter apologized, and we asked if he could bring out our desert ASAP.  It would be fine if the dessert sat on the table until we were ready to eat it, but at least then we knew it wouldn’t come so late that we had to skip it.  Sure enough, it came out about 3 minutes later.

For dessert, we shared a slice of the six-layer Guinness chocolate cake.  Last year, we had a brownie for dessert that was so dry it was inedible, but this cake was moist and delicious.  Funny enough, we noticed they removed that brownie from the dessert options.  I actually just looked back at my photos from last year’s cruise and that is the only change on the whole menu!  I’m not sure if that change is just an Enchanted thing or if it is fleet-wide, but we weren’t surprised to see it no longer offered.  

We finished our meal just a few minutes before 7pm, so I texted my brother to ask where they were seated in the theater and let him know we were on our way.  We found them with seconds to spare before the lights dimmed to start the show.  Tonight’s show was a magician named Jamie Raven, and we thought Ian would enjoy the performance so we kept him with us instead of sending him to camp after dinner.  

Jamie was really more of a comedian than a magician as he only did a few tricks over the course of his 45-minute long show.  He spent half the act talking about how he got 2nd place on Britain’s Got Talent, but we honestly didn’t understand why considering how little magic he actually did in the show.  At one point, he picked out a child from the audience to help with his act.  The little boy he picked was seated in the front row, so perhaps that’s why he picked him, but it was obvious that the child was very shy and uncomfortable with participating, and he didn’t respond to any of Jamie’s questions so Jamie had to keep prompting him.  This went on and on for about 15 minutes.  What Jamie should have done was to realize the kid was uncomfortable, thank him for his help, then pick a different child for the rest of the bit.  It was just incredibly awkward to watch since that poor boy looked miserable being the center of attention.  On the bright side, Ian and my niece and nephew all loved the show and had a great time clapping and cheering from their seats.

After the show ended, we went down to the Piazza for something called “Princess Pops.”  We weren’t really sure what to expect, but apparently this is a very new activity and the Enchanted was only the 2nd ship in Princess’ fleet to have this.  It was half show/performance as the production show dancers performed for a few songs, and half dance party as we were encouraged to dance to the fun pop songs from the last 4 decades.  We had so much fun watching the dances and singing along, and the kids loved getting to dance with all the adults.

I went over to Good Spirits to pick up one of my favorite drinks on the ship: Vanilla Sky, with vanilla vodka, triple sec, fresh pineapple, orgeat syrup, lime, and agave.  It is part of the special menu themed for different countries that is only offered after 4pm.

When I returned to the group, I found Ian sitting on his cousin, who was sitting on my brother.  It made me so happy to see them getting along so well!

Shortly after that, Ian started getting cranky, so we took that as our cue to head back to the cabin and get ready for bed.

Today’s drinks total:  14

Up next: New Year’s Eve in Dominica

Given that we went to bed at midnight last night, I was surprised to hear Ian declare at 7:25am that he was done sleeping.  So much for sleeping in on the sea day!  Jason’s plan was to do a long run on a treadmill in the gym, so he went off to do that while I got Ian dressed and took him up to the buffet for breakfast.  I guess most other passengers slept in this morning because it was not too crowded when we arrived at 8:30am and we had no problem getting a table by the window.  I forgot to take a photo, but I had lox and cream cheese on a croissant, a hard boiled egg, and some fruit, and Ian had a waffle.  I did manage to take a photo of my breakfast dessert: a cinnamon bun with delicious cream cheese frosting!

After breakfast, I dropped Ian at camp at 9:30am, then I went to the Piazza for the fruit and vegetables carving demo.  Honestly, it was a little boring because the lady hosting the event from the activities team didn’t want to distract the people working with sharp knives (for obvious reasons!), so she couldn’t interview them or ask any questions.  We basically just watched them work and then had an opportunity to come closer to see the finished product at the end.  I will say it was impressive that they created such intricate designs in such a short time!  I think they spent about 15 minutes carving the fruit and vegetables, and each of the 3 people made two creations.

Two men with top hats:

A penguin with palm trees:

A happy face (with an impressive number of teeth!), and some tropical trees:

Two birds on the left, and two fish on the right:

I left the Piazza around 10:30am and went back up to the buffet for a little bite to eat.  I settled on a slice of chocolate and vanilla marbled pound cake and brought it out to the Lido pool area where I ran into my sister in law.  We sat at a table and chatted for a bit, and then my mom and brother found us using the Medallion app.  I really do love that feature on Princess ships, and found it even more helpful on this cruise with 8 other people who I wanted to keep track of.  Instead of always texting each other to ask where someone was, I could just check in the app and find out for myself!  We hung out together around the pool until 11:45am when we left to pick up the kids at camp (my niece and nephew were up there too).  

Jason and I had arranged to meet up at the Amalfi dining room for lunch, so after I got Ian at camp, I took him downstairs and got a table for the 3 of us.  At first, they wanted to seat us in the middle of a banquet at the front of the dining room, but Ian wanted to sit near a window, so they switched us to a table all the way in the back of the dining room with a great view of the wake.  Ian was thrilled, and a happy Ian is always better than the alternative, so it was a win win!

As soon as we sat down, I ordered food for Ian.  He wanted spaghetti and meatballs, so I ordered him the kids pasta with red sauce plus the Mediterranean beef and pork meatballs from the adult menu.  I held off on ordering my food until Jason joined us a few minutes later, but I asked the waiter to just bring out Ian’s food whenever it was ready.  This is the face of a boy who loved his lunch:

At some point, Jason joined us and we ordered our meals.  I ordered the fried calamari appetizer, the adult mac and cheese (with no paprika!), and the double chocolate tart for dessert.  

I wished I had held off on that mid-morning snack because this was a huge lunch and everything was delicious.  I did manage to finish all of the calamari (because I would never let any calamari go to waste!), but I only ate half the mac and cheese and half the dessert, and gave the rest to Jason.

After lunch, Jason took Ian back to the cabin so they both could take a nap.  I saw that arts and crafts was scheduled for 2pm, so I texted the group to see if anyone else wanted to join.  Today’s craft was making paper flowers, and my mom and my niece both wanted to do it too.  I had nothing else going on, so I went down to the Santorini dining room a little early to save us a table, and then my brother, niece, and mom joined me when they were ready.  Two ladies from the activities staff showed up right at 2pm, but then they needed to hand out the supplies and make their sample flowers.  We hadn’t started the project yet by 2:20pm, and my brother and I started getting antsy.  We had planned to do the craft quickly, then go over to O’Malley’s Pub for the Musical Spoons activity at 2:30pm.  We decided it just made more sense for us to skip making the paper flowers, so we left my mom and my niece to make their flowers and we went over to the pub to get seats for Musical Spoons.  

Looking back at the paper copy of the Patter, I don’t see Musical Spoons listed, so this must have been a last-minute addition to the activities on the app.  I’m so glad we noticed it because it was one of the most fun things we did on the ship!  When we got to O’Malley’s, the two musicians who played there each night were talking to one of the activities staff.  No other passengers were there, so we clarified that we were at the right place, and they said we were and that we should pick a table and order a drink!  You don’t have to tell me twice!!  I really liked the specialty cocktails on the O’Malley’s menu, so my plan was to work my way down the list throughout the cruise.  I started with the Raspberry-ing, made with Absolut Raspberry, Orange Liqueur, Cranberry, and Lime.

Once most of the tables were full, they handed out our musical “spoons”.  I thought we would actually be using real spoons like from the dining room, but these were wood instruments.  They explained that originally, the working-class Irish people played real spoons because that’s all that they had access to, but that these instruments were more commonly used nowadays because they are easier to use.

The singer from the duo explained the two kinds of beats common to Irish music (4/4 and 3/6, if I recall correctly), and he taught us how to use our spoons to tap along to the beat.  Once we were all comfortable with that, the banjo player played a melody and we were tasked with guessing which beat it was and playing along with him.  They did this for several songs and the class lasted about 30 minutes.  

My brother and I had so much fun and we asked if it would be offered again later in the cruise so we could bring the kids.  They said the activities director was trying to schedule a second class but they didn’t know for sure if or when it would happen.  We kept checking all week, but never saw it on the schedule again.  

Just as the class was wrapping up, my mom and niece came over to join us after finishing their paper flowers.  My mom said the instructions were hard to follow, and that she only knew what to do because she has made paper flowers before.  My 8-year-old niece found it frustrating and needed a lot of help to complete her flower.  I don’t think the activity was intended to be self-taught, but maybe the girls leading the class just didn’t know how to make the flowers correctly.  My mom ended up helping my niece make her flower, and they both kept them on display in their cabins for the rest of the cruise.

I checked in with Jason at 3pm when we finished Musical Spoons and he said that Ian was still napping.  It took Ian a while to settle down and fall asleep, so we didn’t want to wake him until he slept a little longer.  I snuck back into the cabin to shower and get ready for formal night, and that gave Jason some time to leave the cabin and explore the ship.  

Ian woke up around 5pm, giving us just enough time to change him into his formal night outfit.  Prior to the cruise, my parents, brother, and I all talked about some coordinated outfits we could wear to take group photos during the cruise.  We decided tonight we would all wear blue for the first formal night, which was easy for my family since we wore these exact outfits on our Alaska cruise this summer.  When we took a photo outside the dining room that night, someone walked down the stairs right as we took the photo, so I knew I wanted a re-do tonight.

Then we took a photo with the whole group.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but Ian was totally off center and he should have gone next to my niece to balance it out.  I’m sure there’s some new AI photo editor that could fix the problem… seems like a project for another day!

The lighting outside the dining room was really harsh so it was hard to capture a good photo, but we tried again in a different spot…

Once we were all satisfied with our photo, my parents left to eat dinner in the suites section of the Capri dining room, and my brother’s family and my family entered the Amalfi dining room.  We told the hostess it would only be 7 of us at dinner tonight, and she said it was fine if we still sat at our usual table.  The waiters removed 2 of the chairs and now we had plenty of space to pull in our chairs and avoid bumping elbows with our neighbor.

Escargots is always my favorite appetizer on a cruise, so I was thrilled to see it on tonight’s menu. 

I also ordered the beef carpaccio appetizer.

I tried something a little out of my norm and ordered the halibut entree.  I think Jason and I intended to share the spinach ricotta ravioli, but when the entrees came to the table, we realized neither of us ordered it!  Oops!  That’s okay, we still had plenty of food and left with stuffed bellies.

When we all finished eating our entrees, we decided to skip dessert in the dining room because the adults were already full, and we knew we could grab something for the kids much faster if we just went upstairs to the buffet.  We ended up getting some soft serve ice cream for Ian, and he gobbled it up before I even had a chance to take a photo.

I left Jason to watch Ian finish his ice cream and take him to camp when they opened at 7.  I went down to deck 7 to the Bellini Bar for a Bellini Classico with Absolut Citron, Prosecco, and peach puree. 

I took my drink to-go and I brought it to Princess Live to get seats for the 7pm Broadway showtunes trivia.  We had to divide and conquer because I didn’t want to miss the first question from trivia while dropping Ian at camp, but as it turned out, trivia started a few minutes late and Jason arrived with time to spare.

This was my favorite trivia theme of the cruise as I love Broadway musicals and I had a feeling I would do pretty well.  

This was a musical trivia where they played the song and you had to write down what show it was from.  We started out really strong, but then there were a few obscure songs from musicals I thought I knew well (Mamma Mia, for one), so we only got 13 out of 21 songs correct.  The winning team somehow got all 21 songs correct, which left us questioning if they cheated.  There’s no prizes for winning (at least as far as I could see), so I’m not sure why they would be motivated to cheat, and maybe they really did know all of the songs.  Either way, we had fun playing along.

After trivia ended, we had some time before the next activity so Jason went to the bar to get us a few drinks.  My parents texted that they finished dinner and asked what we were doing.  I told them we were waiting for the next activity at Princess Live, so they came to join us.

The 8pm activity was a game show called Yes/No.  

We didn’t know what to expect, but this game turned out to be very funny.  The concept was that volunteers went on stage and were questioned by the cruise director for 3 minutes.  The only rule was they couldn’t say the words yes or no (including in foreign languages).  It sounded easy, but some people got out in as little as 15 seconds.  Some people did pretty well and lasted over 2 minutes, but either way, it was a lot of fun.  I wish we had known what the game entailed because we totally would have signed up my dad to play without telling him, and then watched him squirm as they called his name to go on stage.  What a missed opportunity!!

We left the Yes/No game a few minutes early to have time to walk up to the theater and get seats for the 9pm show.  Tonight’s show featured rock and roll singer Stephanie Hodgdon.  She was a fantastic performer and all of us enjoyed the show, including my parents!

The show ended at 9:50pm, so we had to run across deck 7 to the aft elevators to get to camp and pick up Ian before 10pm.  It was worth the extra effort though because attending the late show allowed us to make better use of our evening on the ship and maximize the number of activities we did.  After that, we all went back to the cabin to rest up for tomorrow.

Today’s drinks total: 15

Up next: St. Thomas