mahdnc

We completed our single night stay at the Miami Marriott Biscayne Bay Hotel last month. We booked a bay view room and were assigned one on the 28th floor (out of 31 floors of rooms). I was very pleased with the room. Here are a few documentary photos for the record. Here is the bay view room on the 29th floor The view from the room window when we checked in on Fri Apr 19 2024: This photo was taken with a "normal" lens (i.e. not telephoto or wide angle) and it approximates the scaled view of what we saw from our room. This photo was taken on the day we checked in (Fri Apr 19) and the cruise ships were starting to leave the Port of Miami Another "normal" lens view when we woke up on Sat Apr 20: Here are the ships that were at port that correspond to the picture immediately above. Here is the floor plan with the red dot indicating the precise location of our room, 2810. Highest guest room is on the 31st floor. Here is an annotated photo indicating the hotels that I was aware of that are in the photo. When you look at this photo on a large screen, it appears that the Doubletree rooms have balconies which include the rooms that directly face the bay. Here is the category of the room and the price that we payed. I believe this reflects the AAA price.

We did a diving/snorkeling excursion through Celebrity when Solstice anchored at Arlie Beach although that was back in 2018. I did publish a photo review of that 12 night GBR sailing including our time at Arlie Beach which you may find of interest. Of the four port days at the GBR (Arlie Beach, Cairns x2, and Port Douglas), Arlie Beach was our least favorite from a snorkeling/diving perspective because of the diving conditions at the time. I know the link to the "Important Information" bulletin in the review is corrupted/no good. Here is a good link.

Have a very nice cruise! I will gladly read along.

I hope that both of your cruises go real well!

$250. Nice.

There are a few more subjects that I will be posting on later this week.

My wife is a Lifetime Platinum Elite member with Marriott. For that we got free breakfast at the hotel's buffet. And for that we got, once again, mediocre food and mediocre service. Or maybe we have just been spoiled being on Summit for 15 days. Our cost for a standard room with king size bed was $176 including taxes and fees. Our window had a view of the planes taking off from LAX and I geeked out for a while as I watched some planes go by (including the massive A380 double decker plane). We checked out and were lucky enough to catch the 9am shuttle. There is no formal queueing system for getting on the bus which can take about 20 passengers and their luggage. The Avianca uniformed people knew exactly where to stand for the bus and they were the first ones on. After that it was a free for all because instead of an orderly line to get on the bus, we had a funnel shaped crowd. Luckily my wife and I were the last two people on the bus. We were dropped off at the main American Airlines terminal. We went to the self serve kiosk to get our luggage tags printed up. And then we lined up to check in with an agent. We had a couple that tired to cut in line in front of us. An American Airlines attendant told them to go back to the end of the line and then turned around to help a different customer. The couple wouldn't move and told us something unintelligible on why they should be in front of us. We told them they needed to go back to the end of the line and after some bickering they move to the back but they called us "mean" people. After we finished with our check in, I noticed that the same couple was at the self serve kiosk getting their luggage tags printed out which is what you had to do before you could get in line. Our flight to Chicago was very uneventful. I had downloaded some movies and watched The Bricklayer (2023) starring Aaron Eckhart and The Beekeeper (2024) starring Jason Statham. From their characters' performance in both movies, you could replace your entire army with just these two guys. As soon as we got home, we unloaded our luggage and quickly drove off to retrieve our dog from the sitter. Daisy was very happy to see us as we were to see her.

We stayed at the Sheraton Gateway Los Angeles Hotel last night. It is located very close to LAX and they offer a free shuttle to the airport that runs 24/7. We were told it make a stop at the hotel every 30 minutes. After arriving at the hotel last night, we dropped off our bags with the bell hop who took our luggage up to our room while Marcia and I drove our mini-van rental to the nearby airport location for Enterprise Car Rental (partly to avoid the hefty parking charge at the hotel). After the navigation disaster that I had returning our car to the downtown Miami location (also Enterprise), my wife went with me this time. The rental agent that was checking us out was nice enough to remove the one way drop off fee ($35) and our total cost was about $65 for renting the Pacifica mini-van for the day. We were so tired from the whole disembarkation day and museums touring, that we opted for an Uber ($10) for the short ride back to the hotel. The funny thing was when I pressed the confirm button on the Uber app, our car was already in front of us by some miraculous coincidence. It was $10 well spent. My wife asked me to cancel our dinner reservation at the Strand House located in Manhattan Beach because she was so tired. Our wedding anniversary was on May 3 which occurred on our last sea day. I wanted to take her to a nice land based restaurant with a view of the sun setting over the ocean during our last night of our vacation. But when you are tired, it's hard to enjoy something like that. We had been to that restaurant a few years ago during a land vacation to the the national parks. We had time to walk out to the pier to watch the sunset. Here was the view back in 2022. It may seem rather boring after being out at sea for two weeks. We decided to simply eat at the hotel restaurant which was pretty mediocre food-wise and service-wise.

My wife corrected me here. The museum has long term plans to put in some kind of luggage storage facility to make it easier for cruise ship passengers to visit the battleship. In the mean time, they will take your luggage and will store it for you near on the deck of the ship under the watchful eye of the admissions people.

You are welcome. Your live thread last year during your Panama Canal cruise was very helpful. I will be following along your Japan live thread!

I’m sorry about missing Catalina Island. I would have been looking forward to that port.

I hope you have a very nice cruise! We got off Summit yesterday and it was easy, too. Summit docked at Puerto Vallarta.

8166. I will post some information about this nice cabin when I get a chance.

Thanks for the warning. I hope you feel better and fast, Charles.

We are booked on next April’s Solstice TP from Sydney to Honolulu. We’re looking forward to it!