All posts by deladane

Amateur photographer. Avid traveler. Verbose writer. Compulsive Planner. Cross stitching hobbyist.

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 3

April 5, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

Tuesday, March 15 ~ Sea Day

Last night, we had to set our clocks back one hour to align with the local time in Mexico. The good news was that we got an extra hour to sleep in on our first sea day… the bad news was that we woke up at 7am when our bodies thought it was an hour later. At least this view made waking up early a bit easier…

The MDR doesn’t start serving breakfast until 8am on sea days, so we went to the Oceanview Buffet instead. I knew I wanted one of those yummy Belgian waffles, and the sticky bun was really good too. My favorite treat was the smoked salmon- I really liked that they served smoked salmon every day at the buffet, as I am used to only seeing it from room service or the MDR on Carnival cruises.

J loves his morning cup of coffee, so we went up to Cafe al Bacio so he could get something a little nicer than what is served at the buffet. This became a frequent morning stop for us on both port days and sea days, and it was rarely crowded.

I don’t care for coffee (hence the reason I brought those cans of energy drinks in my carry-on bag yesterday!), but I did treat myself to the pastries or cakes in the display case. These are better quality than what is offered at the buffet, and they are complimentary even if you don’t order a drink.

Bistro on 5 is located right across the hall, so we walked over to look at the menu. It looked yummy, but we never made it here to eat. Guess I’ll add that to my to-do list for my next Celebrity cruise!

We continued our tour of deck 5 up to the photo gallery to see our boarding photo from yesterday. It was still so early that they weren’t open yet, but they had a machine where you can insert your sea pass card and it will pull up all of your photos. It uses facial recognition software so it automatically finds all the photos taken of you, and you can view them, order prints, or even make a photobook on the machine! This was way more convenient than searching through multiple walls of thousands of other photos to find ours (although I did like that they organized the printed photos by the deck of your cabin so it made it slightly easier to find ours once the photos were put on display later in the day).

The next stop on our tour of deck 5 brought us outside to check out the view. Looks like the Constellation was sailing along with us towards Cozumel.

The Cruise Critic meet and greet was scheduled for 10:15am today at the Sky Lounge. Luckily a few people mentioned it at the informal gathering yesterday as we never got an invitation sent to our cabin. We mentioned that to someone at guest services this morning, and she insisted that it must have been in our cabin but we didn’t see it. Not only did we know for sure that we did not get our invitation, we also never got yesterday’s daily schedule or our Captain’s Club coupons. Well by the time we got back to our cabin a few minutes later, all our embarkation day documents magically appeared on our bed. We were fairly sure that Rhonda forgot to give us the papers yesterday and just placed them on our bed when she made up the cabin this morning.

Well over 100 people attended the Cruise Critic meet and greet. The cruise director John briefly introduced himself, and then handed the floor over to the hotel director Jamie for a Q&A. He answered lots of questions about the upcoming Edge class ships, TV stations available on board, and a few other topics. Unfortunately, we had to duck out a few minutes early as we had a scheduling conflict today. We felt badly about not staying until the end to chat more with our roll call members, but the Galley tour started at 10:45am and we did not want to be late.

I really appreciated that Celebrity offered this free Galley tour as it was a rare glimpse at the behind-the-scenes action. We arrived at the MDR promptly at 10:45am and it was PACKED! I wonder what time people arrived to be seated up front?? The hostess gave us each a mimosa and a sticker for group number 18, and escorted us to a table at the back of the room.

A few minutes later, the Executive Chef Josh Becker came out to introduce himself and all the other head chefs from around the ship (one for the buffet, one for the specialty restaurants, one for the pastries, etc).

They called 2 groups at a time to start their tours of the galley, while Josh answered our questions about food services onboard. At first, I was annoyed about having to wait a long time for our galley tour to start, but I actually found this Q&A session to be extremely interesting and a valuable use of our time.

Our group was called in for the tour at around 11:15am, and our guide was another chef named Sam. The tour was very brief, maybe 10-15 minutes max, but it was interesting to see the lay out and flow of the galley, and to watch as they prepared for today’s lunch and dinners.

We finished our tour by 11:30 and went up to deck 4 to check out the specialty restaurants on display. Sam told us that if we booked a specialty restaurant for dinner tonight, we should mention his name for a 20% discount. We knew we wanted to go to the Tuscan Grill for my birthday dinner next Monday, and luckily they were willing to honor that 20% discount for a future date. We requested a 7pm reservation, but they said they only had 6:30pm available so we agreed to that and finalized our booking.

All this talk about food was making us hungry, so we went back up to deck 14 for the day’s second round at the buffet. I loved the antipasto salad with fresh artichokes, mushrooms, and sundried tomatoes. Only in the buffet on a cruise ship is it acceptable to pair that with macaroni salad and battered fish! haha Probably not the most logical combination of foods, but it hit the spot!

After lunch, we went outside to the pool area to check out the action (how did we manage to spend nearly all of our first 5 hours today indoors??). The pool was quite crowded, and nearly all the loungers were occupied. We noticed the Slush bar was open so we each asked for a virgin version of a drink to stay within our classic beverage package.

I loved that the Slush drinks were served in these plastic cups so we could take them in the pool or walk with them around the ship.

Insider tip: While it would have been above the price maximum price allowance of our package to order the Slush drinks with alcohol, there was nothing to stop us from ordering a virgin drink, then walking around the corner and ordering a shot of rum at the pool bar, and dumping that in our slushie!

With such beautiful clear skies, we wanted to spend some time outdoors, but didn’t want to bother with the crowds near the pool. We wandered upstairs to deck 15 and found that the lawn was nearly deserted! Having a live grass lawn on a cruise ship was so unique, and it was so beautiful to see the bright green grass contrast against the cobalt blue ocean and light turquoise skies. We felt like we were having a picnic in a park, while drifting out to sea.

While we did want to be outdoors, we did not want to burn in the bright Caribbean sun, so we sat under the shade of the overhead canvas. We spent a few hours laying out on a towel and enjoying some more drinks from the Sunset Bar.

At 3pm, we shifted over to the seating for the Hot Glass Show. This is another unique feature of the Equinox. They have a contract with the Corning Museum of Glass where they have 3 gaffers on board who perform 2-hour shows and make 3-4 pieces each show. It seems kind of random as an activity on a cruise ship, but I really enjoyed watching the process of making each project. We only stayed for an hour because it was getting hot sitting so close to the ovens, but in that time they made one vase and one cup. Unfortunately, we never made it back to observe any other shows during the cruise, but I wish we would have because it must be a different experience each time. They even had shows at night and I imagine the glass glowing brightly against the dark night sky would make for an unforgettable evening.

At 4pm, we left the show so we could spend about an hour on our balcony before getting ready for dinner. Tonight was the first “Elegant Chic” night, and we treated it like a “formal” night on any other cruise. I noticed many men wearing tuxedos and women in long formal dresses, but there were also many men in suits or just slacks, and women in cocktail dresses and sundresses. Maybe it will just take a while for people to adjust to the revised dress codes, but at least for this sailing, it seemed as if people still get very dressed up.

We arrived at the Silhouette Dining Room at 7pm, and Gorica was able to seat us at a table next to a window again, but this time with a different wait staff. We really liked our waiters this night- they took our orders and served our food at a good pace, and they were chatty and had a great personality. We actually requested to sit in Arsapha and Fredys’s section for the remainder of the cruise, and Gorica was able to accommodate us.

Chicken Liver Parfait

Salmon Tartare

Seared Duck

Celebrity Signature Beef Tournedo

Dessert Menu

Phyllo Dough Tulip

Warm Apple Crumble a la Mode

The Equinox is such a beautiful ship- there were interesting wall hangings and decorations everywhere we went to make a nice background for a photo.

We posed for the ship’s formal photos at a few different backgrounds but we were ultimately unimpressed and did not purchase any of the photos. I guess the other guests on the ship were more talented than the professional photographers on board!

Looked like there was some fun dancing in the Grand Foyer as we made our way forward to the theater.

Tonight’s show was Life, the first of 3 large production numbers featuring the singers, dancers, and aerialists. The singers and dancers were good, but the truly phenomenal talent came from the aerialists. I was extremely impressed every time they were on the stage, or should I say hovering above the stage! All of the songs in this show were contemporary songs from the last 5 years or so (Just Give A Reason by Pink, I Lived by One Republic, Story Of My Life by One Direction, and Heartbeat Song by Kelly Clarkson, to name a few). I personally really enjoyed the music selection, but that is because I like that style of music. It seemed like Celebrity was gearing this show towards a younger, trendier demographic as compared to the traditional cruise line production shows, but that was fine by me! Another evidence of this was that they announced before the show that they encourage us to take non-flash photography and video of the shows to share on social media. I guess they wanted to use us for free advertising of their fancy new production shows haha

The show ended at around 9:45pm, just in time for karaoke! J loves karaoke and always wants to participate when we are on cruises. Unfortunately, we felt this was a bit of a miss from Celebrity. They host it at the Quasar night club, but the set up is terrible for karaoke. The words are projected onto the far wall of the room, and the singer stands on the dance floor, but most of the people watching are on the other side of the room. The singer is forced to either have their back to the audience, or to stand sideways and keep looking left to see the lyrics and then right to perform for those in the room. It was just extremely awkward, and I think that was part of the reason the karaoke was poorly attended.

J sang one song, then we left to get one last drink at the Gastrobar before going to sleep around 10:30pm to rest up for Cozumel.

Cruise

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 2

April 5, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

Monday, March 14 ~ Embarkation Day

After 10 months of planning and anticipation, it was finally embarkation day! We woke up around 8:30am, finished packing our suitcases, and went out to the lobby for breakfast. The hotel puts out a nice spread, including cereal, pastries, bagels, eggs, meats, and a make your own Belgian waffles machine. They also had a similar machine for pancakes! I have never seen that before, but we both agreed the normal waffles tasted better than these pancakes as they were too dense.

By 9:45am, we checked out of the hotel and ordered an Uber to pick us up to go to the port. This was way more convenient and less expensive than using the hotel shuttle. The Uber driver arrived in 10 minutes, we loaded in our suitcases and we were on our way. The ride was short and we were at the port within about 10 minutes. We were surprised to have to go through a security check point and show our photo ID to enter the port. It looked like the people in front of us had to pay a toll but we did not.

There were 5 ships in port today and the Equinox was docked at pier 18.

There was a bit of confusion about where exactly to park to drop us off, and our driver had only been to the port a few times before, so we had to ask a few security guards to direct us. Overall, they could use a few more signs for directions around Port Everglades! The ride cost $10, and we handed our big suitcase to a porter by 10:30am.

There were still tons of people getting off the prior sailing, but only a handful of people had arrived for our sailing. There were 4 or 5 lines for the x-ray machines, but none of them had a wait. I packed 4 cans of Monster energy drink (the ship only stocks Redbull, but I think that tastes like cough syrup!), and a bottle of champagne in my bag. The security lady said they needed to check my bags because it is spring break week and they needed to make sure I wasn’t smuggling anything! I guess I should be flattered that she thought I was a college student?!

Once we were in the clear, we proceeded to the check in counters, where again, there was no wait at all. Unfortunately, we encountered a bit of a mess up here. They had pre-printed everyone’s sea pass cards, but for some reason, they printed 2 copies with J’s name and none with my name. They said it would take about 20 minutes to reprint my card so I sent J upstairs to get in line for boarding, and I waited in a seating area in the back corner of the downstairs check in room. It was quite deserted back there!

Once my card was finally ready, I went upstairs to look for J. The seating area is huge as this terminal is used for the Oasis and Allure on the weekends and those ships hold twice as many passengers as the Equinox. They split us up into sections based on both Captain’s Club status and category of our stateroom. We were booked in a category 2A veranda and are both Classic Captain’s Club members, so we are very low down in the hierarchy and were seated in the back corner of the waiting area.

They started boarding the ship at around 11:20am, but our section was called closer to 11:45am. Once we were called to board, we “dinged” our sea pass cards, walked up the ramp, and voila! Our cruise officially began as we stepped foot onto deck 5! Even though we had a beverage package, we still appreciated the complimentary champagne and mimosas as we boarded the ship.

After a quick trip to guest services to ask a few questions, we spent some time wandering around the ship. We picked up a few cocktails from the Mast Bar and initiated the first swipe for our classic beverage package. Prior to the cruise, J had the idea that we should try to drink every drink sold on the ship. We figured it would be possible considering we had 11 days and J and I like different drinks- I drink white wines and sweet/fruity cocktails while J prefers red wines and bolder cocktails where you can taste the liquor. I did a bunch of research and located all of the different drink
menus from all over the ship: the buffet, main dining room, martini bar,
gastrobar, world class bar, etc. I compiled them all onto one page so we
could bring a check list with us around the ship. The beverage package is
a great opportunity to try out new drinks and see what we do and don’t like, and with little risk knowing we didn’t directly pay for the drink and could abandon it if we really didn’t like it (Note that we did not want to be wasteful so we did finish most of the drinks we ordered, and agreed that if one of us ordered a drink, then both of us had to truly hate it before we would abandon it.).

Here is a copy of the complete list we used on board.

With our drinks in hand, we spent a little more time walking around the ship. We took advantage of seeing the hammock unused, knowing it was likely to be continuously occupied once everyone boarded the ship! Looking back, we were only partially right… These lovely hammocks were indeed occupied, but not by people. We never once saw a human being in the hammocks all week. We did, however, see towels, books, hats, flip flops, etc. strewn across the hammocks every time we passed by! It was always so tempting to remove those items and enjoy a few minutes of relaxation, but I never did for fear of confrontation if/when the hammock hogs eventually returned. What a waste!

Moving on, we found some loungers outside on deck 14 in the shade and called our parents before we lost phone contact for nearly 2 weeks. I loved how many shaded spots they had around the pool deck so you only had to roast in the direct sunlight if you really wanted to!

Eventually, we made our way up to the Oceanview Cafe around 1pm for lunch. I don’t know if it was all the planning and anticipation, or too much hype, or what, but I found the buffet on the Equinox to be a little small. I liked how it was broken up into stations as opposed to one long line, but I felt that it felt very closed in and crowded. All of the stations were in the same general square of space, so people were walking in circles and crossing paths a lot and there was no clear order to walk in. Even when I cruised on the Summit, I appreciated that they had some food served in another section at the very back, and other food on the sides near the buffet entrances, etc. Carnival buffets offer a similar set up which helps spread out the flow of traffic.

Aside from the condensed layout, I loved the quality and variety of the food at the buffet. They served unique dishes with fresh ingredients and I was always able to find something to eat. Granted, by the end of the 11-day cruise, we were both sick of it and noticed a lot of repetition day to day, but that has been the same on every cruise I have taken. Another nice feature was that everything was clearly labeled with what the food was, and they used symbols to indicate if the food was gluten free, lactose free, vegetarian, or no sugar added.

Today, I had a small piece of pizza (I intended just to try it but I actually
really enjoyed it- especially the thin crust! This would be my first of MANY pieces of pizza over the next 11 days haha). I also tried the pasta bar with whole wheat penne, sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, garlic, and pomodoro sauce. I am picky about vegetables, but they had tons of options and you could have as much or as little as you wanted. There is a man working behind the counter who scoops all your ingredients into a bowl, along with your choice of pasta, and he cooks it with your choice of meat.

My food was ready by about 1:15pm, but it took several more minutes to find somewhere to eat it! Every table was occupied by people waiting for their cabins to be ready, and most were long-finished with their meals. The tables all have little signs asking people to please get up when they finish eating so others can sit down, but I guess everyone thought that
was optional?

Eventually we gave up and sat down at 2 empty seats in a large long table for 10. About 5 minutes later, the cruise director John announced that the cabins were ready and people left to finally free up some tables. Go figure!

After we finished our lunch, we went down to explore our cabin. We were in 7222- a 2A veranda cabin on deck 7. We found this location to be extremely convenient, approximately midway between the 2 elevator banks, and sandwiched between 2 passenger cabin decks above and below us to minimize noise. We were able to come and go from our cabin fairly quickly from anywhere on the ship.

The cabin itself was lovely, with nice furniture and decor and a comfortable
mattress. The one problem we did have was that storage was a bit tight for an 11-night cruise. I prefer for each of us to have separate closets, so one large closet to share wasn’t as convenient, but we made it work. There were more than enough hangers, both with and without clips, and there was enough space on the bar for all of our clothes, but the floor space (where I usually store my shoes) was limited. Also, we could have used more drawer space as the 5 dresser drawers are very small. We did make use of the overhead storage space. I bought us each a collapsible bin from Dollar Tree to place in the overhead bin, and that was helpful to get stuff up and down easier.

I loved the bathroom set up! It was probably the largest bathroom I’ve had on a cruise, with lots of storage shelves behind both a glass door on top and a wood door below- 7 shelves in total, plus 2 tiny drawers under the sink. The sliding glass doors on the shower were fabulous- no more being attacked by the shower curtain, and it allowed more light to come in to the shower through the clear glass. It also meant the water didn’t flood the bathroom floor! I also loved that they added a little bar at the bottom of the shower to rest my foot while shaving my legs.

These little bottles were restocked as soon as we used them!

We started to unpack our carry-on bags, and our cabin stewards Rhonda and Kevin stopped by to say hi and see if there was anything they could do for us. I had read on Cruise Critic that sometimes you can get foot stools for the balcony if you ask your cabin steward, so we figured it was worth a shot and we asked. Rhonda said she would see what she could do. We received our big suitcase outside our door by 3pm, and tried to unpack as much as possible until they called the muster drill at 3:15.

Muster was held in the Equinox Theater, which was a nice change from all the cruises when I had to stand on outdoor decks in the humidity, packed in like sardines, and unable to hear or see what was happening. We really liked how the drill was displayed on a large video screen so we could clearly hear all the instructions. The drill is always fairly boring, but at least it was over in about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, our group was seated very close to the stage, so we were the last to be dismissed from the drill.

Our roll call planned an informal meet and greet and sail away party at the Sunset Bar all the way aft on deck 15 for immediately after the muster drill. We had a huge turn out and it was so great to finally put faces to the names we chatted with while planning for the cruise. As is typical for late afternoons in Florida, it was raining (or rather pouring!) during the first 20 minutes of sail away, so it was quite crowded under the overhang as we all avoided getting soaked. Luckily the bartenders kept the drinks flowing and we made good use of our beverage packages.

We stayed and chatted with our new friends until 6pm, when we left to get ready for dinner. When we got back to our cabin, Rhonda left us a little surprise… foot stools on our balcony!! We were thrilled and definitely took advantage of having the extra comfort all week!

When we booked the cruise, we opted for Select Dining because we thought 6pm would be too early for dinner, but 8:30pm was definitely too late. We wanted to have some time to get cleaned up after long days in port and to have a pre-dinner drink, but also wanted to eat early enough that we could digest and enjoy some evening entertainment on the ship before going to sleep. Select Dining seemed perfect for us, but we had a somewhat bad experience with it on our Carnival cruise last year. To avoid any long wait times, we pre-booked 7pm dinner reservations online for the whole length of our cruise. We loved that Celebrity gave us this option to make reservations, and it felt like we created our own fixed dining time. Each night at 7pm, we were greeted by Gorica at the deck 4 hostess stand for the Silhouette dining room, and she promptly seated us at a table for 2. Tonight, we were seated at table 518- a table next to the window with a beautiful view of the sunset over the southern Florida skyline.

Each night, the bread basket was accompanied by 3 different spreads. We rarely opted for the plain butter as the hummus, cream cheese spread, and other varieties were delicious.

Crispy Thai Beef Spring Rolls

Belgian Endive Arugula Salad

Aged Prime Rib of Beef

Beef and Veal Spaghetti Bolognese

Incredible sunset on our first night at sea

Dessert Menu

Chocolate Cake

Our wait staff was thorough and served our meals correctly and promptly, but they were not very talkative. We finished dinner by 8:30pm, then headed over to the theater for the 9pm show. Tonight’s show was a comedian named Dean Austin. He had some great jokes for the first 15 minutes, but then spent the next half hour making fun of people in the audience. We nearly walked out several times, but did stay for the whole show. It just seemed like he didn’t have enough material prepared for a 40 minute show, and everyone we spoke to about him throughout the week said he was the worst show of the entire cruise! Needless to say, I would not see him again if he performs on another one of my cruises.

When we were finally released from that torture, we made our first visit to the Martini bar. We knew that the $12 martinis sold at this bar would not qualify for our classic beverage package, but we asked if they could make us a smaller version of any of the drinks for a lower cost. Unfortunately, they said this was not possible (we also asked the following night to a different bartender and were again denied the smaller martinis). Perhaps they don’t stock smaller martini glasses? We instead opted for 2 glasses of wine, and took them up to the Sky Lounge to see if anything exciting was happening up there. The DJ was playing fun dance music for about 50 guests, so we stayed for a few songs before retiring to our cabin for the night.

Up Next: the first of four sea days!

Cruise

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 1

April 3, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

After months of planning and anticipation, it was finally Saturday, March 12 and time for our flight to FLL.

It was a rainy Saturday night… Actually, it was a rainy last 2 weeks before we left for our cruise, but that just made us more excited to escape to the Caribbean sunshine! We went out to dinner then headed up to the airport. We made incredible timing and ended up arriving at the airport at 7:45pm for our 11:40pm flight- 2 hours before we planned to arrive. We checked our big suitcase and got through security fairly quickly, only to find out that our flight was delayed. At first it was only a 15 minute delay, and then it was increased to 30 minutes. With noting else to do but wait, we found a seat at our gate and made ourselves comfortable. As our updated departure time of 12:10am neared, we found out that we would have another 30 minute delay. Apparently our flight crew was delayed on their arrive in a different plane, and we couldn’t go anywhere without them! Finally, at 12:50am, over an hour late, we were cleared for departure.

It was an otherwise uneventful flight. As usual, I didn’t sleep a wink. I even got to watch my iPad clock skip 2:00am to adjust for daylight savings time! I watched a few movies as I watched the sunrise out my window.

Sunrise over the wing of the plane

Before we knew it, it was 10am and we were landing in Fort Lauderdale. We had a reservation at the Sleep Inn in Dania Beach for the one night before the cruise. Our rate included breakfast, free wifi, and the free shuttle between the hotel and the airport. They also offer a shuttle from the hotel to the cruise port for an additional fee of $10 per person.

After collecting our checked suitcase, we called our hotel for the free shuttle
to pick us up. The driver directed us to walk to the hotel pick up point and he pulled up right as we got there. This was one of our few negative experiences at the hotel. The driver picked up our luggage and literally threw it into the van. As in he swung it back and forth a few times, then said “Just like a meat packing plant!” and tossed our large suitcase into the van. J and I immediately asked him to please be more careful with our bags and not to throw them. Well then the driver proceeds to do the same thing to my carry-on rolling bag! Presumably, the airport employees are rough with the checked luggage, and we have a hard-sided bag, so it wasn’t a huge deal the first time (although it was definitely disrespectful!), but my rolling carry-on is always in my possession and contains breakable items so I was really annoyed that he threw it! Especially after we asked him to be more careful!! We asked him another time to please not throw our bags when he reached for J’s carry-on, and I guess he finally took the hint because he just picked it up and placed it in the van normally.

Once our bags were loaded and we got in the van, we noticed the driver was talking to another couple standing in the hotel shuttle area. It looked like they got off the rental car shuttle at the wrong terminal, so our driver offered to take them around the airport to the correct terminal. After that 10-minute detour, we were finally enroute to the hotel.

We pulled up to the hotel at exactly 11am, and WOW was it a madhouse! I guess 11am is check out time, so there were tons of people and even more suitcases all over the lobby. We soon realized that they were all waiting for the $10 per person shuttle to their various cruise ships. J and I had already decided to take Uber to the ship on Monday, but this fiasco sealed the deal. A word of advice if you stay at this hotel, especially with a cruise starting on a Sunday (and probably a Saturday too): do NOT bother with the hotel shuttle! Those people looked like they had been waiting a while, and we overheard that one of the ships wasn’t getting picked up until noon!

Anyway, once we finally made our way to the front desk, we were told there are 6 people ahead of us online to check in and our room probably wouldn’t be ready until 2pm. No worries, we had some shopping to do anyway. I had called the hotel a few weeks prior and they confirmed that they could hold our suitcases until our room was ready. When I asked where to put our suitcase, the front desk employee said he did not have room to store our bags. What?!? But the other day you said that wouldn’t be a problem! After some convincing, he agreed to store our bags behind the front desk. Minor problem #2 with this hotel: there is no dedicated luggage storage room and they seem to expect people who arrive early to keep their suitcases with them while they wait in the lobby breakfast area. That would not work for our plan so I am glad he agreed to h or our bags in the small front desk area. It is something to keep in mind if your flight lands early in the morning like ours did, or if you plan to stay here post-cruise and have an early debarkation zone.

We quickly used the lobby restroom to change into shorts and placed our luggage in the makeshift storage area, then headed out for some shopping. One of the reasons I picked this hotel was because it was within walking distance of several things we needed. There is a Walgreens right next door, although we found it to be overpriced. Across the street there is a shopping center with several abandoned stores, but the one store we wanted was open: Dollar Tree! As we approached the store, we weren’t sure if it was still in business, but luckily it was open and we bought a few last minute items. They are also building a new Walmart Neighborhood Market in the same shopping center, so that will be very convenient whenever it opens (there was no indication of when that will be).

Next, we walked about a half mile up Sheridan Street to Publix. We went straight to the deli counter to buy some lunch since we hadn’t eaten a full meal since dinner the night before and we were starving! After we ate our sandwiches, we bought a few more things for the cruise, including Cliff Bars to bring as snacks on our excursions, energy drinks, and champagne to keep in the cabin so we could enjoy mimosas on our balcony without schlepping to a bar first. We also bought some of the delicious key lime pie to enjoy as a special dessert!

It has been several years since I had some and it was just as good as I remembered. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was around 1:30pm and our room was ready. We checked in quickly and retrieved our bags from behind the front desk.

Our room was lovely! It looked newly renovated and very clean, with a comfortable king-sized bed, mini fridge, coffee maker, and hair dryer in the bathroom, and a small desk area. The best part was that the air conditioning was already o so the room felt so very cool after walking around in the heat and humidity!

We spent about 2 hours relaxing in the room, then headed out to the beach. Another great part of this hotel’s location is that it is just over a mile to walk to the beach. The walk is easy- just go left onto Sheridan Street and walk all the way down until you see the ocean!

We walked around along the beach for a while. At first, we turned left (North), but our view of the beach and ocean was blocked by the tall bushes. Luckily, the paved path ended fairly quickly and we turned back from the way we came. It turns out that we should have turned right (South) from Sheridan Street. Once we reached that part of the sidewalk, the tall bushes were gone and replaced with beautiful tall palm trees. There were fancy high rise condos on the right and perfect peach and ocean views on the left. Now THIS is what we had in mind!

Unfortunately, just as we got to the beach, dark grey clouds rolled in and the wind picked up. It even started raining a bit, but nothing could rain on our parade (sorry! I couldn’t resist!). We were on vacation and ready to get the party started! We found an outdoor bar with a thatched roof and lots of teak furniture under beach umbrellas. They had frozen margaritas on special, so we ordered a few and camped out for some great people watching along the beach.

By now, it was about 4:15pm and we were in for a treat as the cruise ships embarking today at Port Everglades drifted out to sea in a parade of ships! We were too far away to identify most by anything other than their cruise line, but it was still fun to anticipate our ship making the same journey this time tomorrow!

Once we finished our margaritas and the cruise ships faded into the horizon, we went in search of dinner. It was only around 5:30pm, but we were exhausted and just wanted to eat early and head back to the hotel. I had looked on Google Maps before arriving in Florida and there were limited dinner restaurant options on the ocean. Had we wanted fast food, there were lots of options back near Publix this afternoon, but we wanted something with a fun view and atmosphere. The only restaurant I found was called Oceans 13 Sports Bar and Grill. It was a few blocks south of Sheridan Street on the ocean and offered a varied menu of salads, burgers, and sandwiches. When we arrived, there was a fun cover band playing outside on their patio, so we were off to a good start. J ordered a chicken philly sandwich and I ordered a grilled mahi reuben. The waitress said that had just the mahi fish and a mango pineapple slaw on top. It sounded light and tropical- a perfect dinner for tonight. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when my dinner arrived with fried fish (I was given the choice of fried, blackened, or grilled and I choice grilled), covered in thousand island dressing, melted cheese and regular mayonnaisey coleslaw! The waitress took it back to give me the grilled fish I had ordered, but the sandwich still was not as the menu and waitress described, and had I known what it was, I would have ordered differently. I was just too tired to complain about it, but that was definitely regular mayonnaise-based coleslaw and not the fruit slaw I envisioned. J said his sandwich was just okay, nothing great.

Overall, I would recommend Oceans 13 for drinks, especially if the weather is nice and there is a fun band playing on the patio, but we were not impressed with their dinner and would not return. Unfortunately, I don’t even know where else we could have eaten because we didn’t see any other dinner restaurants. Maybe we would have needed to look further south along the strip, but that was already a mile and a half walk each way from the hotel so we didn’t want to venture too much more.

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel, reorganized our suitcases, and went to bed early, excited to board the Equinox when we awoke the next morning!

Up Next: Embarkation Day!

Cruise

Celebrity Equinox ~ Pre-cruise Planning

March 31, 2016 deladane Leave a comment

Hi Everyone! My name is Dana and I recently returned from an 11-night cruise on the Celebrity Equinox (March 14-25 sailing). I am still sorting through the over 1,200 photos I took, but I wanted to get my review started! As you can see from my cruise history listed below, I have taken several Carnival cruises in the last few years, as well as one Celebrity cruise on the Summit in 2010 (pre-dry dock renovations for the Solstice upgrades). I tend to prefer port-intensive itineraries with fewer sea days, and I pick cruises based on the itinerary more than the ship itself. I am a total Cruise Critic-aholic, and I love reading as many threads as possible to help me research my upcoming cruises. As you can also see in my signature below, I always write a detailed photo review when I return home from my cruises, with a journal-style day-by-day format. This cruise will be no different! If you are looking for a short and sweet review, you might want to look elsewhere… I tend to write like I talk, and I can be a bit long-winded, so my reviews closely resemble novels. On the other hand, if you like reading about lots of details, and if you want to see TONS of photos, this is the review for you! With all of my pre-cruise research, I didn’t find very many detailed photo reviews of the Equinox (specifically for this itinerary), so hopefully my review will help some of you to plan for your upcoming cruises! Please feel free to ask questions and post comments along the way… I welcome your feedback 🙂

I took a Southern Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Valor last March with my boyfriend (he doesn’t want his name listed on this site, so I’ll just call him J), and within a few weeks of returning home, I felt that urge to book another cruise. Life just isn’t as fun without an upcoming cruise to plan for! I had my eye on a Carnival Breeze 8-night sailing when I checked my email and found an interesting email from Celebrity. I have been getting emails from Celebrity since 2010, and I always intended to sail with them again. The email said they were introducing new itineraries with overnight stays in one of the ports. Strangely enough, when I opened the link, none of the itineraries that interested me had an overnight stay! I found an 11-night cruise on the dates we wanted to sail, and the oceanview and balcony cabins had the same price! This deal seemed too good to be true and we didn’t want to miss out on it, so that night, J and I called Celebrity and booked the cruise! We decided that we were better off booking then while the balcony price was affordable, and taking the time to think it through (and get vacation days approved from work!) afterwards since we could always cancel if we changed our minds. Also, we booked during a Pick You Perk sale so we opted for the Classic Beverage Package (more on that later!).

Here was the itinerary we booked: Fort Lauderdale –> sea day –> Grand Cayman –> sea day –> Cartagena, Colombia –> Colon, Panama –> Puerto Limon, Costa Rica –> sea day –> Costa Maya, Mexico –> Cozumel, Mexico –> sea day –> Fort Lauderdale. The cruise started on a Monday so we could fly down over the weekend a day or two early, and ended nearly 2 weeks later on Friday of Easter weekend. Yay! We are booked on a cruise!

So remember how I originally found out about this cruise because it was listed in an email featuring cruises with overnight stays in port? Well, despite there being no mention of that either on the Celebrity website or in our booking confirmation letter, we were about to hear some big news. The day after we booked the cruise, I hopped on Cruise Critic to find the roll call for our sailing. This was quite an active day in the roll call because apparently, that was the day the people already booked on the cruise found out about a big change in our itinerary. The order of all of our ports was being reversed, we were no longer stopping in Costa Maya, and we would now have an overnight stay in Cartagena, Colombia! This didn’t surprise me too much considering our sailing was mentioned in that overnight stay email, but I found it a bit annoying that Celebrity sent out the promotional email before updating the itineraries on their website. Basically we had just booked a cruise that had a very different itinerary from the cruise we were actually going to take, and Celebrity knew about it at the time we booked, but didn’t tell us! In fact, it ended up taking Celebrity several months to update the itinerary on their website, so I imagine many other people who booked around the time we booked had the same problem. Thank goodness for Cruise Critic or I might not have known until I got on the ship! Now THAT would have been a HUGE surprise!!!

The itinerary change made a few impacts on our cruise. Firstly, we would now be in Grand Cayman with over 20,000 other cruise ship passengers! When I research itineraries, one of the first things I check for is how many other ships will be in port with us. This would not have been my first choice, especially since it is a tender port and I had a specific private excursion in mind that I wanted to book. Secondly, as I already mentioned, we were no longer going to Costa Maya. This bummed me out because I prefer visiting as many ports as possible on my cruise. We used to have 6 ports and now we would only have 5 ports on an 11 night cruise. Thirdly, on the original itinerary, my birthday fell on a sea day. I was looking forward to this, knowing it was a formal night (based on reviews I had read from that itinerary). With the changes, my birthday now fell on our second day in Colombia. I know we could have planned to just stay on the ship and make it into a relaxing sea day while docked, but I can’t give up the chance to explore a port (even if it is a port that I just explored the day before!). So now I needed to find something exciting to do in Colombia that would be worthy of a birthday excursion! And finally, of all the ports on the itinerary, Cartagena was probably the least interesting to me, and that was the port we were staying at overnight! Go figure! I had lots of things I wanted to do and explore in all the other ports, but I found Cartagena to be very limited in things to do, and I read several reviews saying people who had been there before didn’t think there was enough sightseeing to fill one port day, let alone two! It’s a good thing I love researching my cruises because planning this was going to take a lot of work!!

So why didn’t we cancel the cruise and find a different itinerary? Well, I really did want to go to the other ports on this itinerary. I had never been to any of these ports before (including Ft. Lauderdale!!), most of the ports were new to J as well (he had only been to Cozumel and Grand Cayman on prior cruises). We were both looking forward to experiencing this part of the world for the first time together, including setting foot on a new continent in South America. I was also thrilled to be going back on a Celebrity cruise, especially one on an S-class ship (I had been waiting years to check out that hot glass show!!) And all the other itineraries that week were charging more money per night for the balcony cabin, so this cruise was just too good a deal to pass up. I was determined to find amazing things for us to do each day in port, and I was looking forward to exploring the beautiful ship on our 4 sea days. After a bit of thought and discussing our options, we committed to staying on the Equinox for the March 14th sailing.

Here is our revised itinerary map:

Six weeks after we booked the cruise, JetBlue finally released their March 2016 flight schedule. We live in San Jose, CA, and we usually prefer to fly out of the San Jose airport. It is small, rarely crowded, has short lines at TSA, and is just an easy, enjoyable airport to use. Unfortunately, the only way to get to Ft. Lauderdale from San Jose would involve several plane changes. No thank you! I prefer direct flights whenever possible. Luckily, JetBlue flies direct to FLL from San Francisco’s airport. We could take a redeye on Saturday night, land in Florida early on Sunday morning, and have all day on Sunday to recover from jet lag, shop for last minute necessities at the supermarket, and soak up some beach time, before boarding the Equinox on Monday. Sounds like a good plan to me! With our flights booked, it was time to book our excursions.

As a rule, I never book excursions through the cruise line. I would much prefer to do the research on my own and find a smaller, private company to show us the sites. In my experience, private companies cost less money, take fewer people on their tours, and bring you to more sites with better attention to detail and customer service than the tours offered through the cruise line. Based on the reviews I have read over the last 5 years, I KNEW I wanted to swim with the sting rays in Grand Cayman. After being rejected by 3 or 4 companies because they were already booked that day or because their tour times didn’t match up to our port times, I finally found a company that worked for our schedule and booked the tour. I also had an easy time researching Cozumel because there are so many cruises that dock there and they are a very touristy port, so there was a lot of information available to me.

On the other hand, Puerto Limon is not a very popular cruise port, and Cartagena and Colon also don’t see the same volume of cruise ships as compared to the more touristy islands in the Caribbean. As a result, there aren’t as many private companies offering tours, nor are there very many reviews online to help me decide what to do each day. In the end, I found that I only had two or three companies with decent reviews from each port, and these companies took waaaay longer than normal to reply to my emails. I will go into more detail about what we did each day when I get to the day-by-day part of the review, but in summary, here is a list of the tours we planned:

Cozumel: Chankanaab National Park

Puerto Limon, Costa Rica: Oscar Brown Tours- Jaguar Rescue Center and Tortuguero Canal Combo Tour

Colon, Panama: Almiza Tours with My Friend Mario- Gatun Locks, Canoe Ride, Waterfall, and Embera Village

Cartagena, Colombia: ‘Free Tour Cartagena’ Walking Tour, Chiva Bus Night
Rumba Tour, and El Totumo Mud Volcano

Grand Cayman: Captain Marvin Three-Stop Stingray/Snorkel Tours

By the end of July, we had all the port days planned out, and hotels and flights booked. All that was left to do was count the days until we flew to Florida! Or so I thought…

In September, J and I took a trip to visit his parents, and my parents went too so our parents could meet. Little did I know, J used this trip as an opportunity to propose! So now J is no longer my boyfriend but instead my fiancé 😀 It’s a good thing I was mostly finished planning for this cruise because now I had A LOT of planning to do for our wedding!! J actually commented on that because he knows how much researching and planning I do for everything, and he knew I would be happy to focus all my efforts on planning the wedding without having to worry about the cruise too. Unfortunately, having this cruise planned meant that our honeymoon would have to be delayed until long after our wedding as this cruise used up all of our vacation days. Despite that, I refused to call this our honeymoon as it was 6 months before the wedding!

But anyway, back to stuff pertaining to this cruise hehe In mid-February, I emailed all our private excursion companies to reconfirm that our tours were all set. With all our tours confirmed and our cruise documents printed and organized, we were ready for vacation!

Up next: our pre-cruise stay in Florida, but here’s a little sunset photo to hold you over until then…

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Conclusion

April 21, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Ok, let’s wrap this thing up! I wanted to end the review with a few general points about other aspects of the trip…

-Weather- We were extremely lucky with the weather during our cruise. We had brief periods of rain on Saturday while we were exploring San Juan and the forts, and it was chilly, cloudy, and drizzling for part of the day in St. Thomas, but other than that, we had beautiful sunny skies the whole week. The temperature was in the 70’s and low 80’s with fairly low humidity every day, so there were some times when we were just getting out of the ocean and I felt a bit cold! I remember commenting on how strange it was to feel chilly in the Caribbean haha That was definitely better than the super hot and humid weather which I was anticipating!! I would definitely cruise in March again if this was typical weather!

-Cabins- The cabins on the Valor are the same layouts as the same category of cabin on the other Carnival ships I have been on. I really liked that every cabin had a mini-fridge. We emptied the drinks when we were unpacking and put them on the top shelf of the closet for safe keeping. We then restocked the fridge with all of the beverages we brought onboard and that kept everything cold enough for us. I also really liked having a couch in both of the cabins, since I am used to only being able to sit down on the bed in an inside cabin. There was a storage drawer under the couch, but we had more than enough storage space in the closets and dresser so we didn’t need to use the under the couch drawers. The mattresses were both comfortable, and the sheets and towels were clean and soft. The decor and color scheme was a bit dated with that ugly orange hue, and you could tell the furniture wasn’t brand new (some of the drawers didn’t close all the way, and there were nicks in the wood), but none of that was really a big deal to me. In both cabins, the showers didn’t have any place to put down your shampoo. On previous cruises, we always had a small metal triangle-shaped shelf in one of the corners of the shower where I could put my shampoo and conditioner bottles, but for some reason, they don’t have this on the Valor. I had to balance my bottles on top of the shampoo/soap dispensers very carefully, so that was a bit annoying. It’s not a huge deal, but if you have space to throw one of those dollar store shower caddies into your suitcase, you might want to do it!

I will say that there were some maintenance issues which need to be addressed. I already talked about the constant clanging noise from our original cabin 1301. Another issue in that cabin was that every time we showered, there was a big flood in the bathroom. We were careful to keep the shower curtain inside the rim of the shower, but there was always a ton of water on the ground after we showered. I finally realized that the drain wasn’t draining, so the water filled up in the shower like a bathtub, and once it reached the top of that 2 inch rim, the water overflowed into the rest of the bathroom. I mentioned it to the maintenance guy who came to listen to the clanging noise, and he sent a plumber up right away. This was on Monday night when we were heading out for dinner, so we left the plumber to fix the shower. We ended up moving cabins right after that, so we never showered in 1301 again to find out if the drain was fixed, but I assume it was.

-Stewards- Both of our stewards, Uzama and Ali, were pleasant and competent. They cleaned our cabin each morning, and provided turn down service with a towel animal each night. They kept our ice bucket stocked and replaced our wine glasses and champagne flutes without asking. They were always friendly and addressed us by first name every time they saw us. If we needed anything, they were usually around the halls in the morning and evening, and other than that, we left them messages on a dry erase board and they brought whatever we needed. In a way, maybe they were too thorough because they both took away our towel animals the next day! We wanted to save them through the week, and took them off our bed and put it on the windowsill for safe keeping, but when we got back to the cabin the next day, the towel animals were always gone. I guess we were supposed to specifically tell them that we wanted to collect the towel animals? Not a huge deal, but something to think about if you are planning to make a towel animal collection through the week!

-Anytime Dining- I have mixed reviews about our experience with anytime dining. This was the first time I have tried it, and I am not sure if I would do it again. Maybe on a cruise with weird port times that extend into the evening on some days but not on others, but probably not on an itinerary where we are back on the ship by 5pm every day. Most days we only had to wait 5-15 minutes to be seated, but our experience on the 1st formal night was horrible with a 1 hour wait, followed by extremely slow service. We were seated with a different wait staff every night (except Monday and Tuesday when we had the same staff), and we were always seated in a different area of the dining room, so we never had a chance to bond with our wait staff like I usually do. I know we could have requested to be with the same staff on subsequent nights, but we never found a staff that was so amazing that it would have been worth a longer wait time to be seated in their section. Another issue I had with anytime dining was that the times of the evening activities like the shows in the main theater and the comedy shows lined up better for the fixed dining times. If we wanted to catch the 8pm show, we had to go to dinner at 6pm, so why not just have the early fixed dining time then? When we went to dinner at 7pm, we didn’t finish on time for the 8pm show- we usually finished around 9pm and then had to kill an hour before the 10pm show. Maybe anytime dining would work better if the ship allotted more tables for it and more wait staff to serve them so the meal didn’t take so long?

As a side note, we noticed something a bit strange with how they serve the food. We usually ordered more than one appetizer and entree per person (there was never an issue doing that and the waiters never questioned it… I love cruising! haha), but the waiters would only serve one item at a time per person. Sometimes we wanted to eat things side by side instead of filling up on one entree and not having enough room for the second entree. Or we wanted to share one appetizer like the veggie spring rolls (yummy!!!) but then also have another appetizer on our own. Well even when we requested it, the waiter would not bring out more than one dish at a time per person. I understand that they are not allowed to do it normally because people would complain that the second dish was getting cold, but why can’t they do it when we are requesting it?? We are assuming responsibility for any potentially cold food (since we usually planned to eat the dishes at the same time, this would not have been an issue anyway), and we are initiating this request so it’s not like we would then follow up by complaining that too much food came at once. It just seemed really
strange to us that the waiters had to speak with a manger before serving us
more than one dish at a time (and that was after them outright refusing to do it and us basically having to beg for it!). In the end, it would save the waiters time because they wouldn’t have to check on us to see when we were ready for the second dish, so if a passenger requests it, you would think they would be happy to oblige! Guess not!!

-Serenity Deck- Despite having a lovely balcony which we loved using, we also spent a lot of time on Serenity deck. In fact, this was the only public outdoor space I used aside from the secret decks. I loved the firm cushions on all the lounge chairs and sun beds, I loved that there weren’t any children running around, and I enjoyed being able to hear the music from Lido in the distance but not super loud right near me. We used the hammocks a few times and they were fun, but there were only 4 of them so they weren’t always available when we wanted to use it, and there was no shade covering them, so once I got my sunburn in Barbados, I didn’t want to use them anymore. There was also no clamshells on the sunbeds. This was disappointing because I had seen so many other reviews that showed the sunbeds having some shade (I guess that was just on other ships though). There were always sunbeds and lounge chairs available every time we went to Serenity, but I think that is because none of them are in the shade so most people only use them for a short time and then try to get out of the sun. There were lots of couches in the shade from the deck above, but they were usually occupied.

-Cruise Director- Our cruise director was Calvyn because he was covering while Felipe was on vacation. I thought he was fine, but J was really irritated every time he came on the loudspeaker. Every time Calvyn referenced the name of the ship, he said “the BEAUTIFUL Carnival Valor”… it seemed a bit unnecessary. Isn’t that for us to decide if the ship is beautiful or not? haha On my Victory cruise, I noticed there were a lot of announcements made in Spanish (sometimes they were ONLY made in Spanish so we didn’t even know what they were saying because they never did it in English haha), but I didn’t notice nearly as many Spanish announcements on this cruise. Perhaps it’s because Calvyn doesn’t speak Spanish and there wasn’t anyone else available to make the announcement? Anyway, it made for fewer announcements over the course of the week and that was fine by me!

-Lido Buffet – We ate breakfast here every day except the sea day brunch and debarkation day, and we ate a late lunch here on most port days. We never ate dinner at the buffet, so I can’t comment on that. They have several long cafeteria-style lines that offer the same foods at each station (2 across from the Mongolian Wok, just forward of the deli/burrito bar, and 2 in the main section that opens up where they have the stairs leading up to the deck 10 seating area, plus 2 smaller areas near the mid-ship pool). There were almost always long lines to get food when we were there. The Mongolian Wok and Burrito Bar turn into omelet stations in the mornings, as does the grill near the mid-ship pool (although every time we walked past this area, it was closed and they were still setting it up… perhaps it is opened a little later in the morning? I never saw it opened the entire week haha) The food options at breakfast were basically the same every day: eggs, potatoes (sometimes home fries, sometimes those yummy fried round crispy potato thingies), breakfast meats, some variety of eggs benedict (with salmon, ham, etc), pancakes or french toast, waffles, bagels, melon, and cereal. The food had more variety at lunch, with a different theme each day (Caribbean, American, Italian, etc.), plus they had the Burrito Bar, Mongolian Wok, Deli, Fish and Chips, Grill, and Pizza Pirate. I was boring and ate Mongolian Wok nearly every day (because I LOVED it, not because I couldn’t find something else to eat lol), but J was more adventurous and tried different things each day. Most of the desserts were dry, but the cake pops were AMAZING! I have no idea how they keep them so moist, but we had them several times throughout the week and they were awesome every time! The flavors changed too- Strawberry on day 1, chocolate and other flavors later in the week.

One thing I want to address here was the hours when the buffet was opened. We thought that the buffet and the other Lido food options were open at weird times, since almost everything was closed when we wanted a snack at 4-6pm before dinner or after 11pm as a late night snack. Yes, the pizza is opened 24 hours a day, but since they don’t have pizza already prepared, we didn’t want to wait 15 minutes for them to make a fresh pizza for us. Plus, there was always a huge line there because it was the only thing opened and everyone else was also waiting for pizzas to be made for them. There were several nights that we got up to Lido at 11:10pm only to realize the deli closes at 11pm… that was a bummer! We could have ordered room service, but we usually just wanted a quick bite to eat and didn’t want to wait up until room service was delivered. I never felt like I was forced to go hungry, but it would have been nice if some of the food options on Lido were opened either through the afternoon until dinner time, or reopened again later in the evening. Maybe even have a different one opened on those off hours each day on a rotating basis? Fish and Chips on Monday, Wok on Tuesday, Burritos on Wednesday? I don’t know if Carnival would consider doing that, it’s just an idea!

-Customer Service- Like most other customer service situations, it’s just a matter of finding the right person who can help you. The first time we went to customer service, the girl who helped us must have been new or something because she really didn’t know the answers to any of our questions. We wanted to know about the breakdown of our two accounts and she couldn’t explain it to us, and she was basically useless in dealing with the clanging noise (we spoke to her 2 or 3 times about that issue). Once we met Sylvia, everything changed! She was fantastic and was able to easily resolve our cabin issues. I wish we had met her on the first day- that might have saved us a lot of time and hassle!

-Decor- In general, I was not a fan of the decor on the Valor. It was too flashy and gaudy for my taste. Clearly this is not something that will ruin my cruise, but I just tend to prefer the calmer and more serene decor on newer ships. I forget where I heard this, but the Conquest class ships were all named and themed about patriotic pro-US things after 9-11, so that kind of made me like it better, but overall I just thought the decor was too loud. Here is a photo from the lobby… The lighting around the faces of the presidents on each deck kind of scared me- it reminded me of when you hold a flashlight under your chin while telling ghost stories at a campfire haha

-Drinking water on the ship- On some previous cruises, I noticed a funny taste to the water on the ship. We didn’t notice any issues with that on the Valor. We filled up our water bottles after breakfast in the Lido buffet area every day (yes we were careful not to touch our water bottle to the spout where the water comes out!), and the water always tasted fine. I will say that it comes out of the pump slightly warm in temperature. We both prefer room temperature water and always ask for no ice in our waters at restaurants, and even we needed to put ice in the water from the buffet haha

-Food Quality- Service issues aside, I enjoyed all of the food I ate in the dining room and at the buffet. Everything was served warm (the Mongolian Wok was always so hot I had to let it sit for a few minutes to avoid burning my tongue when I ate it!), and the presentation was lovely as usual. The food all tasted very good, and it makes me sad that the MDR menus will be changing soon because I really enjoyed everything I ate there.

-Spring Break- There were more school-aged children than on my previous September, November and December cruises, but I expected that considering many schools were on spring break this week. I was pleased to see that there were very few college-aged kids on spring break on the ship. I did notice a few groups, but nothing like I was imagining! We didn’t spend much time near the main pool mid-ship on Lido Deck, so it is possible that there was more of a spring break crowd there, but I never noticed any super drunk teenagers around the ship or when I passed through on the way to the buffet.

-Things I never got to do but meant to: Prior to taking the cruise, I had a mental list of tons of things I wanted to do around the ship. As you can see from my photos, I never got around to taking pictures of each public space on the ship like I usually do. I also never tried the Taste Bar, martini tasting, waterslide, trivia, or mini golf. I guess that falls under the category of you can’t do EVERYTHING on EVERY cruise! haha I guess that means we need to take another cruise!! J… are you reading this???? 😉

Well folks, I guess that concludes my review. I hope you all enjoyed reading along and found some useful information to help plan your cruises!

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 12

April 21, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Monday, March 23 ~ A loooong day of travel

After 8 months of planning, and 11 days in the Caribbean, our vacation was over. We got up an hour before the alarm went off, so we packed up the rest of our belongings and went downstairs to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. They had a buffet set up with make-your-own belgian waffles, eggs, breakfast meats, cheeses, pastries, bagels, and cereal. It wasn’t as extensive as the breakfast buffet on the Valor, but it was more than enough for us. After breakfast, we went back to the room to grab our bags, then checked out of the hotel.

One last selfie on the balcony before checking out of the hotel:

We waited a few minutes while they called us a taxi, then drive to the airport in under 10 minutes. The airport in Puerto Rico makes you put your luggage through a special USDA scanner to make sure you aren’t bringing any produce off the island, and you need them to put a sticker on all of your bags before going through security. It’s a good thing I knew to do this because we didn’t see any signs or instructions indicating that you needed to go through the extra check point. The people in front of us said that they got up to the front of the baggage check line only to find out they had to go back and get their stickers before checking their bags. We got through security quickly, and before we knew it, we were on the plane.

Sad faces at the end of a fabulous vacation….

The flight was smooth and uneventful, and JetBlue let us watch movies for free since the satellite TV doesn’t work over the ocean, so we watched The Imitation Game (great movie!). Just like our outbound flights, we had a layover at JFK airport in NY, but this was only a 2 hour layover so it wasn’t long enough to leave and hang out with my parents. Our first flight landed on time, so we went to the food court and got something to eat for dinner. When we got to the gate for the second leg of our flight, we saw this:

I have flown on a lot of JetBlue planes, but this looked more like JetGreen haha I didn’t notice any Jets players on our flight, although that wasn’t too surprising haha

This flight was also very easy and we landed back in San Jose, CA at 10pm, 13 minutes early, but 16 hours after we left the hotel that morning. By the time we got home, it was 11pm, but our bodies thought it was 2am, and we both had to work on Tuesday, so we went straight to sleep.

Up next: a little more info about the Valor and a few other aspects of the trip, but until then, here’s another fun photo:

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 11

April 21, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Sunday, March 22 ~ They kicked us off the ship!

We woke up to Calvin on the intercom at 7am, packed our bags and brought them with us to breakfast at 8am in the dining room. This was our first time eating breakfast in the dining room (unless you count brunch on the sea day). The menu offers most of the same items offered at the Lido buffet, but it was great to have the waiters serve us while we were sitting relaxed at our table and without dealing with the crowds at the buffet. Plus this is the only place you can order the baked apple and turkey bacon (two of my favorites!) I also had the fried eggs and the hash browns.

We were seated at a shared table with 2 other groups- a 3-some of ladies, and a couple who have been sailing on a Carnival ship since September! Once they mentioned that, we had a million questions that they were happy to answer. They said that they spent a few weeks on each ship and then changed ships to try out different itineraries. They planned to stay on the Valor the following week when it sailed up to Orlando, and then they would head home for the first time in 6 months (but with plans to cruise again in May). I told them I aspire to live their life when I retire haha It would be amazing to basically live on a cruise ship! Although I suppose eventually the novelty would wear off and it wouldn’t feel like a vacation anymore…. it would just morph into everyday life. Either way, it’s certainly something to dream about!

We finished breakfast at 8:45am and heard an announcement that debarkation was paused due to a long line at customs. After 15 minutes, they announced that non-US passengers can debark. They only let the non-US people off for the next 45 minutes so we just sat in the lobby and checked our email and Facebook while we waited our turn. They finally called for US citizens to debark again at 9:50am. We got off the ship and there was a long line to get into the luggage terminal. Once we entered, we paid for porter to take us to customs and to a taxi. Looking at how the other lines were moving, I think this only ended up saving us 10 minutes because there were a lot of other porters on line in front of us before going through customs, but at least it made it easy to get a taxi. By 10:20am, we were in the taxi, and we got to the hotel by 10:35am.

For our post-cruise stay, we wanted a hotel on the beach so we could relax and reflect on our vacation before heading back to the real world. Last time I was in Puerto Rico, I stayed at the Marriot Stellaris in Condado. I would have stayed there again this time, but the room cost close to $400 for the night…. not a chance!! After a bit of research, I discovered the beach community in Isla Verde out by the airport. There were lots of hotels to choose from, but in the end, we decided to stay at ESJ Towers. We were both very pleased with this hotel. Our room was huge and had a full kitchen (not that we had any use for that, but it was nice to have), and our balcony had a view of the ocean. Our rate also included breakfast for 2 at the hotel restaurant, 2 free cocktails, free wifi in the lobby (we would have had to pay for it if we used it in the room… good thing our 3G worked just like in the States so we didn’t need the wifi!), and use of the pool and beach facilities. One downside is that beach chairs and umbrellas are not included- they charged $2 for chairs, $4 for lounge chairs, and $10 for umbrellas on the beach (it was free by the pool).

We were checked in by 11am but our room wasn’t ready yet so we left our bags with the porter and headed down to the beach.

We got towels from the locker rooms and put them under the shade of a palm tree. We stayed out there for an hour or so, then went back inside to check if our room was ready, and it was! The porter retrieved our bags and helped us bring them up to our room.

The view from our balcony: ocean to the left, airport to the right…

After getting settled in our room, we set out in search of somewhere to eat lunch. There are a bunch of restaurants out on the main road where the hotel is located so we walked around a bit and looked at a few menus to decide where to eat. We settled on a restaurant called Piu Bello because they had a fairly extensive menu and we figured we could both find something good here. It was basically a diner, and was half-full with a mixture of locals and tourists.

We both got cheeseburgers and curly fries. The burger was okay, but those curly fries were delicious!! It might not have been the most authentic Puerto Rican food, but we realized we hadn’t had a burger all week and were both craving it!

After lunch, we went back to the hotel to sit out by the pool. When we arrived, we were disappointed to see that there was very limited shade and almost all of the lounge chairs were occupied.

It must have been at least 10 degrees warmer by the pool vs. down at the beach between the cement floor and lack of a breeze, so we gave up and went back to the beach. On our way, we stopped at the pool bar to get our free drinks. We could choose anything from this list of frozen drinks or the other list of cocktails.

We found a shady spot to lay our towels down on the beach and hung out there for a few hours. At around 4pm, we went back to the room to get showered and changed so we could get to happy hour at the hotel bar. We noticed a sign outside the bar earlier in the day that said they had $3 beer and wine, and $4-$5 frozen drinks so we knew we wanted to check it out. The bar itself was a bit weird… it was on the inside of the hotel so there weren’t any windows. Wouldn’t you think that a hotel located on the beach would want to build their bar somewhere with a pretty view?? I ordered a strawberry daquiri and J got a pina colada.

Both were delicious (but beware of brain freeze!!!) We asked the bartender to make round #2 to go so we could drink it on the balcony outside. We both opted for the pina colada this time, and the bartender offered to make it with Bacardi 151 for no extra charge. Score! Those drinks were soooo good! And there was a little extra after he poured our drinks so he gave it to us in a third cup. For $8 total, we ended up with 2.5 drinks that were double the normal strength… sounds like a great start to the night if you ask me!

After we finished our drinks, we asked the lady at reception to recommend a good restaurant for mofongo. After our fabulous lunch last Saturday, we knew we wanted one last serving of mofongo before leaving Puerto Rico. She suggested we go to Platos, located just a few minutes walk to the left of the hotel on the main road.

We ordered a few things to share for dinner: a salad with spinach, gorganzola, almonds, craisins, and pears; an appetizer of deep fried cheese and a passion fruit dipping sauce; and of course, chicken mofongo with garlic cream sauce. All of the food was fantastic and we were grateful for the reception lady’s recommendation.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel and repacked our bags. This morning, we kind of cheated because we used our beach totes as a third bag, but we needed to consolidate down to 2 bags each to get on the plane tomorrow. We went to sleep knowing that our Caribbean vacation would be over in a few hours.

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 10

April 16, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Saturday, March 21 ~ Birthday celebration on a speed boat in St. Maarten!

Today was my birthday and we had a fun day planned. After we booked the cruise, I checked to see how many ships would be in each port with us each day. Most of the time we only had 0, 1, or 2 other ships with us, but today we would have 6 big ships! I could only imagine how much traffic there would be and how crowded the beaches would get!! So I knew immediately that we needed to find an alternative option. After some research, I found a speed boat tour that left from a marina located 10 minutes walking distance from the port. That meant we wouldn’t need to worry about taking a taxi or sitting in traffic on the way back to the port in the afternoon. There were 2 companies offering similar tours: Mike Robinson and Bob Cass. They both left from the same marina, both cost $109 per person, lasted from 10am to 4pm, made a few snorkeling stops, and included water/soda/beer on board and lunch on a beach. They had slight differences in where they stopped to eat lunch and what order they visited the snorkel stops. The reviews were excellent for both captains, so I emailed both of them to get some more details about booking the tours. Captain Bob never replied to my email, but Captain Mike wrote back within a day, and he replied to several follow up emails to answer all of my questions. I was impressed with his help, so I decided to book with him. I also requested that we be placed on his boat for the tour, as I had read reviews that some people ended up on boats with other guides but I couldn’t find any reviews specifically recommending another great guide. All of the reviews about Mike were excellent so I wanted to be sure we would have the best day possible. Mike said he would put us on his boat as long as he was working that day (he wasn’t sure if our tour would fall during his vacation time). This was back in August, so we agreed to touch base again closer to the tour date. About 2 weeks before the cruise, I emailed Mike to confirm that we were all set and he replied that we were.

On Saturday morning, we woke up early, got ready, and headed up to the Lido buffet for a quick breakfast. You can see another ship coming into port towards the left of this photo:

We left the ship by 9am to walk over to the marina. Mike’s directions were a bit vague, so we weren’t totally sure about where we needed to go, but there were many security guards stationed throughout the port area and they pointed us in the right direction. It was an easy 10 minute walk along a sidewalk to reach the Chesterfield Marina, and we found Mike sitting at the bar. We checked in and paid him in cash for the tour, and he told us to wait in the shade as some people hadn’t arrived yet. At 9:30, Mike came over and said that we would be on Jimmy’s boat. What?!? I thought you told me we would be on your boat?!? Well apparently he didn’t have space for us or something, and we ended up on Jimmy’s boat with a bunch of other couples who booked with Bob’s tour company. I was really disappointed about this. I know the tours are similar, but what was the point of doing my research and booking with Mike if he was going to pass me off to a different company and a different guide?? Not only that, but Mike took the people on his boat and they left the marina by 9:35am. We were left waiting on the dock until 10:15am because one couple was late. They never showed up, so we ended up with only 8 people on our boat, but we didn’t get going until 10:15am so our tour was 40 minutes shorter than the tour we should have been on. We had to be back by 4pm to have time to get back to the ship before the 4:30pm all aboard time, so it’s not like they could extend the tour at the end. This was quite a bummer and not the best way to start our day.

We decided to make the best of it and enjoy the day as much as possible. Jimmy turned out to be very nice and informative. After briefly giving us some safety info, he helped us board the boat. We were not allowed to wear shoes/flip flops on board, but he did have a safe dry place to store our bags for the day. Our boat held up to 12 people, so we had a little extra space with only 8 people on the tour. Jimmy warned us that the ride is bumpier but drier in the front of the boat, versus a smoother ride with more splashing in the back of the boat. J and I ended up sitting in the front on top of the cooler (it was stocked with water, Coke, Diet Coke, Heineken, and Coors Light), and while it was a bit rocky and jumpy at spots, I never felt like I would be thrown from my seat into the water.

Looking back towards the cruise port as we left the marina…

Once we left the marina, we sped through the water for about 20 minutes to Simpson Bay to see all the huge yachts. Jimmy took us under a bridge and into the bay and told us to grab a few drinks as it would be calm cruising for the next few minutes.

At some point, we crossed over from the Dutch to the French side of the island. Jimmy said we would spend the rest of the day on the French side because the waters were calmer here. From there, we sped along the coast for another 30 minutes or so, passing all the places we would return to later in the day, to get to our furthest point: Tintamarre island. This was probably the bumpiest portion of the ride, so I’m happy to report that I did not get bounced off the boat! When we approached Tintamarre, it looked like a secret tropical oasis in the sea.

Looking back towards St. Maarten:

Jimmy handed out snorkel masks, fins, pool noodles, and life vests to anyone who needed it. He also had a little spray bottle filled with Johnson’s Baby Shampoo and water. He told us to spray the goggles and to rinse them off in the ocean, and that would prevent the goggles from fogging up. Wow did this stuff ever work like a charm! I don’t know how I never knew to do that before, but I am definitely packing a spray bottle with that mixture on future cruises because it made such a huge difference! We spent about 40 minutes snorkeling here. The highlight of this location is there are a few sea turtles hidden in the grass. Unlike in Barbados where we had a ton of tourists kicking us in the face as we tried to swim with the turtles, there were only a handful of people with us in the water at Tintamarre and we could take our time and leisurely swim with the turtles without feeling crowded. I spent a solid 5 minutes completely alone swimming with one turtle off to the side of the island… it was so relaxing and intimate.

Ready to jump in the water!

Not many fish in the water here

Hanging out with some sea turtles!

Once we were all tired, we climbed back on the boat and sped over to Pinel Island. Jimmy anchored the boat a few feet off shore and told us we could have 20 minutes to swim ashore, use the restrooms, buy a drink, and explore the beach. There was a small trail that is supposed to have lots of wildlife, but I didn’t get a chance to see it. The water here was very shallow… when I jumped off the side of the boat, I could easily stand with my feet on the sand, so we walked ashore instead of swimming hehe This beach was absolutely beautiful!! Definitely one of the prettiest beaches I have ever seen, with crystal clear water and powder soft white sand (warning: the sand further up on shore is VERY hot on your feet so stay closer to where the tides come in and out to avoid the pain! haha) I have read other reviews where people spent the whole day here and now I know why… I could definitely see spending a whole day on Pinel Island if (when) I return to St. Maarten again. I wished we could have spent more than 20 minutes here, and I know the original tour I booked with Captain Mike was scheduled to eat lunch here, so I was a little upset that we had to miss out on that opportunity because he changed our boat.

Sorry for the blurry photo (I think there was water on the lens), but I just wanted to show how shallow the water was, even this far from shore. I am 5’2″ and the water only came up to my waist

Swimming back to the boat:

Once everyone was back on board, it was time for lunch. We headed back in the direction we came from until we got to Grand Case Beach. Jimmy told us we would be eating lunch near the orange umbrellas on the right side of this beach:

We had to swim ashore again, but the water here is much deeper than at Pinel Island. While lunch was included in the excursion price, it did not include drinks so Jimmy offered to carry a dry bag ashore for us with our cash or anything else we needed (I brought my suntan lotion!) Jimmy took our lunch orders: we had a choice of chicken, ribs, or fish, and either rice and beans or french fries as a side. Once we got to the beach, we found that most of the lounge chairs in our section were occupied by other people’s towels. How ironic that I hadn’t even thought about chair hogs on the ship all week, but I found them on our excursion. We were able to find 2 chairs that were not directly next to each other, but they were both in the shade so we took them.

Lunch was ready in 20 minutes and it was worth the wait! The fish was very fresh and delicious! I easily could have eaten a second portion haha

After lunch, we had a few more minutes to hang out on the beach, but I really just wanted to continue on with our day. By now, it was 2:30pm and I was getting nervous about getting back to the ship on time. After a little prompting, Jimmy came over and told us it was time to leave. We swam back out to the boat and went 2 minutes out into the water to reach Creole Rock.

Rumor had it that Creole Rock offers some of the best snorkeling in the Caribbean so I was really looking forward to our time here. Jimmy said we could have 25 minutes to snorkel here, and he showed us where the best spots were to find the fish and coral. He also warned us that there is alot of fire coral and sea urchins, and instructed us to avoid touching it (obviously!!). I jumped in the water as soon as we were anchored and swam for a few minutes until I reached the most incredible underwater experience I have ever had! There were so many colorful fish and interesting types of coral, and I felt so lucky to be able to see it all first-hand.

Poor attempt at a selfie with the coral in the background

Our 25 minutes ended far too quickly, but by now it was after 3pm and we still had a long way to travel. I am fairly sure Jimmy was driving much faster on this leg than he had earlier in the day, but at 3:30pm, we arrived on the shores of Maho Beach. I spent some time here in 2012 to watch the jumbo jets landing at the airport. Unfortunately, those planes only arrive in the morning and early afternoon, so we missed all the action. At this time, there were just a few smaller planes landing and it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the last time I was there.

We only stayed for about 10 minutes, and then we had to get on our way back to the marina. I know this photo is a little blurry, but I just wanted to share it because this was another speed boat traveling back to the marina alongside our boat (and you can also see one of the cruise ships behind it leaving port).

We arrived back at the marina promptly at 4pm. We gathered our belongings, tipped Jimmy and thanked him for a (mostly) wonderful day, quickly used the restrooms, and went to the little store at the marina for some free ice cream! They had those little paper cups of ice cream that you get as a kid with the wood “spoons” and we could choose between vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, and rum raisin. I had the pistachio and J had the rum raisin. We enjoyed our refreshing treat on the walk back to the ship. We got back by 4:20pm, so we didn’t have a chance to do any shopping at the port (we knew that we would be back close to all aboard time so we hadn’t planned to shop there anyway).

Looking back, we had a fantastic time on this excursion. It was a bit rocky in the beginning, and I am still disappointed in how Mike switched our boats because I really would have loved to eat lunch on Pinel Island, and I think the day would have been more relaxed if we were on the boat that started at 9:30am instead of 10:15am, but Jimmy was great and the beauty of the island speaks for itself.

Once back onboard at 4:30, we ran up to Lido for a snack since we were still hungry after the ice cream and didn’t want to wait until dinner. When we got there, they were cleaning up from the chocolate buffet. I had assumed this would be long over by the time we got back to the ship, and I hadn’t planned on participating, so I was thrilled to see they were still serving stuff. When we got to the end of the line, there was a crew member holding a sign saying the buffet was closed. What?!? But there is still cake there and I wanted a piece!! I asked if we could quickly get some food, and she said no. I then resorted to begging, and pulled the “it’s my birthday” card! I figured I had nothing to lose and I really wanted that chocolate cake! There were other people next to me who also wanted some of the chocolately yumminess, so the crew member gave in and let us take a plate. There weren’t many options left and they were literally clearing the cakes away as we walked down the buffet, but at least we got a few little things to try. I didn’t take any photos because it was all so hectic and rushed, but they had a few types of chocolate cake, chocolate cookies, and some fruit to dip in the chocolate fountain. Pure chocolate heaven! It’s the little things in life! haha

We took our plates to go and headed up to our balcony to watch one last sail away. At 5pm, they announced 3 names over the pager system… it looked like we would have a few pier runners coming our way! It was exciting but nerve-wracking at the same time, not knowing if these 3 people would get back to the ship or how long the Captain was willing to wait for them. There were golf carts running up and down the pier and soon enough, we saw all 3 people come back to the ship. Everyone was cheering and clapping as they walked up the gangway! In the end, they were only 10 minutes late, but they were lucky that the ship waited for them because I have read stories of people getting left behind in similar situations.

The last few people going up the gangway before all aboard time:

Here are the guys on the bridge trying to see if those pier runners are on their way:

With everyone back on board, we could finally set sail!

After sail away, we got showered and ready for dinner. It was finally time to break out that fancy champagne J bought at the San Juan pier duty free shop!!

The steward brought us champagne flutes earlier in the day, so we poured two glasses and took the bottle with us down to the dining room to enjoy over dinner. There was only about a 5 minute wait to be seated at dinner tonight. I’m not sure if the hostess didn’t see the bottle, or didn’t care because it was already opened, but we did not get charged a corking fee. Once again, we arrived as the waiters were doing their little show. A word of advice: try to avoid getting to the dining room at 7:15pm if you can because that’s when they do their shows and the waiters aren’t available to take your orders or serve your food. It’s not a huge deal since the show only takes 10 minutes or so, but when you are hungry and rushing to make it to the theater for a show, it’s annoying to have to sit through the waiters dancing. I think another issue is that the anytime dining people are seated on the lower level of the MDR and there is a glass partition that blocks our view from the show so we can’t see what’s happening. I have always had a good view of the waiters dancing on other cruises, so I guess it never bothered me before, but this time it just seemed annoying. At least we had a wonderful bottle of champagne to enjoy while we waited!

Dinner was tasty as always. I had the fettuccine with mushroom sauce and chicken as an appetizer, and the sweet potato and cheddar cheese soup, followed by the prime rib for an entree, and one last warm chocolate melting cake for dessert.

While we were eating dessert, the waiter came over and started chatting with us. I had a feeling I knew what was coming. Sure enough, a few minutes later, 2 other waiters joined him with a piece of pie with a candle in it and they sang happy birthday to me! This was my first time celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship, so it was a fun way to end the meal.

After dinner, we tried going to guest services to settle our bill, but the line was realllllly long. Instead, we went to the Carnival Legends show in the theater with plans to go to guest services after the show. The Legends show is like karaoke on steroids. They hold auditions for the show throughout the week at karaoke each night, and assign 10 passengers one of the song to perform. The passengers were dressed in costume and had back up dancers for their performances. They had someone dressed as Britney Spears, Elvis, Gloria Estefan, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and a few others. All of the passengers were terrific and I give them a lot of credit for getting up on stage in front of hundreds of fellow passengers! My only issue with it was that it seemed like Carnival cheaped out by enlisting the passengers as free entertainment instead of hiring a professional to perform like on my prior cruises.

When the show ended, we tried to go to guest services again, but the line was still super long. We found one of the self-service kiosks to check our accounts but it didn’t work. We decided to wait it out until the morning, and just head back to the cabin to pack. One of the many benefits of traveling with only carry-on bags is that we didn’t have to put our suitcases outside the cabin tonight, so we could pack a little now, and finish the rest in the morning.

It’s always a little bittersweet to see this towel “animal” on our bed at the end of the cruise…

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 9

April 11, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Friday, March 20 ~ We found paradise in St. Kitts

Why do I keep waking up before my alarm?!? For the third day in a row, I woke up a bit before the alarm went off. No worries though… I was excited for a beautiful day in St. Kitts!

This would be my third time visiting St. Kitts and I had done something different every time. My first time in 2010, I took a half-day island tour through Liz Pereria. My second time in 2012, I went stand up paddle boarding. If you want to read more info about either of these experiences, please check out my other reviews (links listed below). This time around, we planned to go to the Palm Court Gardens. For $11 per person, we had access to a lounge chair, umbrella, free wifi, restrooms, and a beautiful infinity pool overlooking the harbor where the Valor was docked. With all the high-action things we had to do in the other ports, this would be our mellow day to relax. I emailed them a few months before the cruise to reserve our chairs, and they responded quickly with more details about their facilities.

After a big breakfast on Lido, we left the ship at 9am. They had given me pretty vague walking directions, but I thought we would be okay to figure it out. We left the port area and walked left along the water. I didn’t feel unsafe, especially since I had J by my side, but I don’t think I would feel comfortable to do that walk alone. We walked past some run down homes and lots of locals who looked like they were going to work. After about 10 minutes, we saw a tall monument which was our landmark to turn left up Wilkins Street and the Palm Court Gardens was about 200ft up the road on our left hand side.

This was our reference point on when to turn left… it was a World War II memorial

We both agreed this place was beautiful! The grounds were well kept, and the views of the water, the ship, and St. Kitts’ sister island Nevis were perfect!

We spent the next few hours checking in on social media with the free wifi, and relaxing on our lounge chairs under our umbrellas (we had to keep moving them to hide from the sun as it moved across the sky… #firstworldproblems haha). We also went swimming for a little bit, but not as long as I would have expected. There was a hot tub but unfortunately, we never had a chance to use it because the entire time we were there, there were a bunch of children playing in it like it was a kiddie pool. Didn’t anyone ever tell their parents that hot tubs aren’t meant for children?!? Not ideal, but at least we were sitting fairly far form the “splash zone” haha

Who put the cruise ship in the swimming pool?

Another interesting aspect of Palm Court Gardens is, well, the gardens! The grounds are well maintained and there were lots of beautiful plants and flowers around the property.

We had a lovely time at Palm Court Gardens. We bought a few drinks from their bar… be forewarned that tax is not included in the drink prices and they charged like a 30% tax! Luckily we brought our remaining Gasolinas along to supplement the drinks we purchased (shhh! Don’t tell them!) It never got very crowded… at most, I think half the lounge chairs were occupied. There were a few people who stopped by and took a look around, and then left within 10 minutes. They were not wearing bathing suits, so I think they may have been on a ship tour or something and just came to see the gardens and the views. Other than that, it was fairly empty. We asked the staff and they said it opened in 2010, about a year after the new cruise port opened. I think they need to do a bit more advertising or something because they could easily have more guests if more people knew what they had to offer (although I did love that it wasn’t crowded!) It was our own piece of paradise for a day!

One last photo on our way out…

At about 2pm, we walked back to the ship and grabbed lunch on Lido. I got the Mongolian Wok again and this time I timed it… It took 15 minutes from the time I got in line to the time the guy handed me my food. I guess the wait wasn’t such a big deal but it felt like a long time since J had no wait on the buffet line (they served Caribbean food today), and he was nearly done eating lunch when I got to the table (I told him to go ahead and eat and not to wait for me).

After lunch, we spent some time relaxing on the balcony and then got showered and ready for the past guest party. This was the first time I was eligible to attend the party since I turned Gold on this cruise, so I was very excited to get in on the fun! We got downstairs to the theater at about 4:45pm and people were starting to line up. At 4:55, they opened the doors to let us in (no one checked for invitations). We were greeted with waiters holding Mardi Gras beads and trays of rum punch (interesting fact: Apparently every time Carnival gives out Mardi Gras beads, they are referencing the original Carnival ship with the same name). We quickly found seats towards the back of the theater on the aisle based on advice I had read on Cruise Critic, but it turned out that we could have sat anywhere and been happy. There were so many waiters walking around with trays of snacks and drinks and it looked like everyone got as much as they wanted. Other reviews had mentioned that only people on the aisles get served because the waiters run out of food by the time they reach the middle of each row, but I didn’t notice that to be true. In fact, many time the waiters approached us from the other end of our row, meaning we were the last people served in our row and they still had plenty of food for us. The waiters also brought around a few hors d’vours- tomato wrapped around mozzarella and pesto, cubes of raw salmon (yummmmy!), and some weird savory cheesecake thing that we didn’t care for.

One slight disappointment was that the drinks were very weak. I know we could have asked for something other than the rum punch, but we didn’t bother. We each ended up with 4 or 5 drinks and we were both still sober when we finished. Weird, but I guess we can’t complain since they were free! Haha The waiters were really great about making sure everyone always had a drink in their hands. Once our cup was half empty, they brought us another drink!

After about 10 minutes, the Captain and all of the officers came out and spoke. No wonder they hold the party before all aboard time! If the Captain is down here entertaining us, who would drive the ship?? hehe

After that, they showed a little video promoting the Carnival brand. It was fun when they asked us to cheer for the ships we have been on. I think I was the only person in the room who cheered for sailing on the Holiday (that cruise was a LOOONG time ago!) I was so jealous of people who cheered when they showed the Vista (meaning they have a cruise booked on the not-yet-built ship). Hopefully someday I will get to be one of those people!

The party ended at 5:40pm (maybe their watches are fast since it started and ended 5 minutes earlier than expected), and we went up to our balcony, and then to the secret deck all the way forward on deck 6 to watch the sunset and sail away. It was beautiful and the perfect place to watch the views.

Sorry for the abundance of sunset photos… it was just so amazing out there that I couldn’t narrow it down any more than this haha

This is one of my favorite photos of the trip…

As we were heading back inside, we noticed that one of the forward facing cabins (maybe considered an obstructed oceanview?) had their blinds open. In case there is any question about if people on the secret decks can look into your cabin if you leave your blinds open, I think this photo will answer that question!

I’m glad no one was getting dressed while we were out there!!! I do think it’s important to note that this was after sunset so it was dark outside, and their cabin lights were on inside, so that is probably why we could see in. When we went out there during the day, I do not remember obviously being able to see in to the cabins (but we didn’t actively try to see in, so it is possible that we could have).

We were full from all the snacks and drinks at the past guest party, but decided we should at least go to dinner for a light meal. We got there around 8pm and were seated immediately. I had the beef brisket for an appetizer, and the short ribs for dinner (I guess I was craving beef that night!). No dessert tonight!

We were stuffed after that so we skipped dessert. Plus, that allowed us to get to the comedy club in time for the 9:30 show.

There were 2 new comedians on board tonight. Up first was Vera something (I can’t remember her last name), and we didn’t care for her so we left after 5 minutes to check out the piano bar. We stayed there for a half hour or so, sang along with a few songs, then went back to the comedy club to check out Tim Young’s show. We thought he was great and fully enjoyed his show! However, by the time he was finished, I was nodding off in my chair (not because I was bored… Just from the exhaustion from another long day in the sun!) so we called it a night and went back to the cabin.

We turned off the lights at 11:55pm, and I fell asleep right away… 5 minutes shy of being the birthday girl!

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Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 8

April 7, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Before we fell asleep last night, we left the breakfast room service door tag outside our room so we could eat breakfast while getting ready this morning. We had to meet our tour on the pier by 8:30am today and wanted to avoid spending an hour on Lido deck dealing with the buffet. It worked out perfectly! The room service lady knocked on our door at 7:20am, right in the middle of the 7:15-7:30am window we requested. We both ordered the bagel with lox and cream cheese, and we decided to eat it on our balcony and watch as the ship finished pulling into port. It made such a scenic place to enjoy our breakfast!

Back when we booked the cruise, we knew we wanted to go zip lining at one of the ports. St. Lucia is the kind of port where you really need to plan a specific excursion because it’s not like you can just get off the ship and go to a beach like on other islands. St. Lucia is a lush tropical rainforest and it offers tourists many options of active things to do. With that in mind, we decided to make this our zip lining day. I did a bit of research on Cruise Critic and found a company called Treetop Adventures which offered a half-day zip lining tour with round trip transportation to/from their facility. They have 12 zip lines of varied lengths and speeds (whereas most zip line places only offer 4-5 lines), and they got tons of positive reviews so we booked the tour online. The company was easy to deal with and answered all of my questions promptly via email.

Our instructions said to meet their guide on the pier at 8:30am. Sure enough, we walked off the gangway and literally 50ft away was a guide holding a Treetop Adventures sign! It could not have been any easier to find him! They had us sign a safety waiver, and then we walked together through the small port shops area to the parking lot where a big van picked us up. I think we had about 15 people on the van so it was a nice small group for the day. Our guide’s name was Eagle, and he told us all about the history of St. Lucia and pointed out important landmarks as another man named Cornelius drove the van. I read a few reviews saying that it is a 25-30 minute drive from the port to the zip line facility… Wrong!! The drive took exactly one hour (plus a brief 5-minute stop to take photos at a scenic overlook). So basically our tour was 4 hours long, but 2 of those hours would be spent in the van getting to and from the facility haha oh well! At least it was air conditioned and Eagle kept us entertained.

When we arrived at the facility, Eagle explained that they had lockers to store our belongings, but that we needed to leave a $5 deposit which would be refunded when we returned our keys. They also had bathrooms and encouraged us to use them since there were no bathrooms on the course. Once we walked down to the entrance area, a man named Shetty (rhymes with machete, as he told us) approached us and explained that he would stay with us all day and take photos and videos for us on my camera. Each couple or family had their own guide to take photos, and I loved this aspect of it. Shetty held my camera the whole time and took fantastic photos of me and J on the zip lines and throughout the course, and that meant I had both hands free to control the zip line and I could focus on what I was doing and not on operating my camera.

There were 12 lines in total and we spent about an hour and a half on the course. When we got to the fastest and longest line, Shetty said he and I would go together in tandem and he would push me super fast.

Once we finished the course, we had some time to get changed out of our harnesses, use the restroom, and purchase a beer. Piton is the local brew and it was a light and refreshing way to finish the excursion ($2 each!).

On the hour-long ride back to the port, Eagle pointed out a bunch of local plants including banana trees, pepper trees, coconut trees, and a few others.

Bananas growing in the blue bags for protection from the sun

Teeny tiny bananas

Pepper trees

Papaya trees

We also stopped at another scenic overlook to see the Atlantic Ocean.

The roads in St Lucia are very windy and narrow, so this is probably not the best island to rent a car, and if you are prone to motion sickness, you might want to take a Dramamine before going on your tour. We got back to the pier at 12:45pm and went straight up to Lido for lunch. I had the Mongolian Wok for the 3rd time… I’m not sure why I was so addicted to it, but it made for a yummy lunch. The downside was that it always took a long time to get my lunch. J opted for a burrito and he finished his food before mine was even made! We also went upstairs to the fish and chips. There was no line for food, and only 2 or 3 tables had people sitting there, so even though the cruise was half over, it looked like people still hadn’t found the fish and chips place. We shared a battered fish and it was pretty good, with a good ratio of dough to fish.

After lunch, we went in search of somewhere to sit in the shade. My souvenir from Barbados was a bad burn on my back, so I didn’t want to be in the sun any more than necessary. Sadly, our options of outdoor places in the sun were very limited. I didn’t want to sit in the section of Lido deck underneath deck 10 because it is behind the windows and I wanted a clear view of the ocean. Why don’t they put any umbrellas out on the decks?? We wound up on serenity under the shade of the deck above and with a beautiful view over St Lucia and the ocean. We relaxed there for an hour or two as J read his book and I took notes for this review, then we got ready for formal night.

We definitely wanted to avoid the disaster from Tuesday’s formal night with the hour long wait. We were both hungry by 4pm so we decided to hold off on snacking and we would go to dinner when the dining room opened at 5:45pm. We had no wait at all and were seated within minutes, so our plan worked but I did notice that it never got full for the whole time we were there. When we left at 7:30pm, there was still no wait to be seated so I guess fewer people go to the second formal night. That was fine though, we were happy to finish our meal by 7:30pm and have tons of time to enjoy the evening activities on the ship.

But let’s not skip too far ahead… Dinner was delicious, as usual! I had the eggplant parm and my favorite appetizer, the escargot. I had the chateaubriand for my entree and the diet cheesecake for dessert.

After dinner, we took a few photos around the ship (not the paid professional ones)

We got to the theater at 8pm and found a seat in the front row.

Showtime Selfie!

Tonight’s show was called Far From Over, and it was an 80s theme. We both LOVED it!! It helps that we are children of the 80s and love 80s music, but we spent the whole show playing name that tune/band and singing along with the songs. At one point, they brought out 2 beat boys to do some break dancing. At first we thought these guys were part of the normal dance group, but we soon realized these must be the guys brought on the ship for more entertainment in the lobby later tonight. They were a great addition to the show and they were extremely talented, but I was wondering if they come to the ship every week to join the show, or if this was a one-time thing. Does anyone know? For people who have done this itinerary before, did the break dancers perform for you too? Anyway, the show ended at 9:15, and everyone filtered out of the theater and into the lobby to watch another brief break dancing show.

After that, we went to Lido so J could get a sandwich from the deli, and then we went to the piano bar. We stayed for about an hour and had fun singing along with Milton, but like Tuesday night, there were only about 20 people in there and it seemed like it was the same people who go there every night.

We then went to karaoke in the Eagles Lounge next door and stayed until midnight when we called it a night to rest up for St Kitts.

Dana's Destination Diary

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Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 2

Celebrity Equinox ~ Day 1

Celebrity Equinox ~ Pre-cruise Planning

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Conclusion

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Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 8

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