Fantastic Fun on Fascination 2/19-2/24 including Discovery Launch....TONS of Pictures

I am going to attempt my first ever review so please bare with me. Traveling with me are my Mom and Daughter who is 9. This makes my 5th cruise over all. 2 with Princess and my 3rd with Carnival. My DM has 1 more cruise than I and it was when she graduated high school on Costa. I tease her that it doesn't count cuz it was way long ago.;):rolleyes: My DD was on her 3rd all with Carnival. We live in North Georgia about 65 miles N. of Atlanta so we have many ports to depart from that are a days drive. We were looking at a land vacation in Orlando or the beach. Hotel prices weren't the greatest and we started looking at cruises. We were looking at a short cruise out of Port Canaveral on the Sensation. My Mom wanted to try a different ship so I started looking at Tampa and Jacksonville. Well the itinerary for the 5 day Fascination was to hard to pass up. I have always wanted to go to Half Moon Cay. My Birthday gift to myself was a day at HMC paradise.

Well the big day arrived my birthday and the day we travel to Jacksonville. My plan was to leave about lunch time. My DD ended up with 3 tests on her agenda that day and changed our plans. She needed to be there for those tests. I was bummed but what can I do right? So I got DD off to school. She was bummed to go to school knowing that we would be leaving that afternoon. I'm sure it made for a long day but she was a trooper. I finished packing some last minuite things and took care of some errands. Soon it was 2:00pm and I needed to load the car and pick her up before 2:30pm. The school has a cut off time for early pick up.

I picked her up and off we went. Stopped by McD's and got a snack for the road. We headed towards Atlanta. Was making good time until we hit the Ga 400 toll plaza. Paid the toll and made it a few miles until it was a parking lot. Those of you that have driven through Atl know what I'm talking about. It took us well over 2 hours to make it out of the Atl metro area. Traffic the whole time. We made it out and DD was hungry. So the good Mommy I am I stopped to feed her before she turned into a bear. Plus she would sleep when her belly was full. We decided to eat at our favorite traveling resturant....Cracker Barrel!! It seems that whenever we are on a road trip we always stop at Cracker Barrel. The food is filling, good and you know what you are getting. I always get the same thing there no matter what time of day or night it is. French Toast, hashbrown casserole and sweet tea. YUMMY!! My DD got chicken tenders and hashbrown casserole. I forgot what DM had to eat.

Ok with our bellies full we were back on the road. It is amazing how long the drive is when you are anxious to get there. We finally made it to Jacksonville. I made a reservation for the park and cruise package at the Fairfield Inn and Suites JAX Airport. It's located on Airport Rd. alot of hotels and resturants are close by. The park and cruise package came with the room, breakfast, parking for the duration of the cruise and the shuttle to and from the port. We paid 120.00 plus taxes. It was a nice and clean hotel. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures. Sorry I was to tired. We checked in, signed up for our shuttle the next morning, unloaded our bags and went straight to sleep.

Woke up early the next morning thanks to DD. She took a long nap on the way down.Her schedule is early to rise early to bed. This will be a recurring theme on this cruise. We went down for breakfast. The breakfast bar had the normal hotel offerings. There was a very nice lady working the area. She would cook you a waffle, a biscuit, or get you a cup of coffee. I don't recall her name but she was great. She didn't have to do this but she made each guest feel special. She made me feel like I was already on the ship. After breakfast we headed up to our room to repack our bags with the water and soda we were carrying on with us.

There was 3 shuttle times. 10:45am 11:30am and 12:30pm. We signed up for the 11:30am one. We were hoping to sleep in a bit but DD wouldn't have it. After the bags were repacked it was time for our shuttle. We headed down and meet Bill. He loaded our bags into the van and off we went. A father and Daughter were in the van with us. They were newbies and it is always exciting to see there reaction to seeing the ship for the first time. This is what we saw......

Good going so far...doing the same ship in September. Driving down from East Point.

For those of you that haven't sailed from Jacksonville. Upon entering the port you need to have your ID and your fun pass out. Even if you are in a shuttle bus you still need to show them. We haven't ever had to do this before. I always keep our cruise papers in a folder in my purse. I comes in handy and you have everything all together.

We handed our bags to the porter. Tipped him and the driver. Headed to the check in line. The line was outside already. It moved fast though. We showed our fun pass and passports/BC and got our health questionaire. We moved on to the next line to go through the bag scanners. The line snaked slowly. As there were only 2 of them. Made it through that and onto the next line. This was a short line but it would've moved faster if the lady working the line would have paid attention. Alot of time the check in agents would be waving there number paddles like crazy and she was in la la land.:) It didn't bother me though. I was about to be on a ship. We showed our fun pass and passports/BC, she asked DD a question. Never asked to see a paper giving me permission to travel without her SD( LOL). He is only in the picture when he wants to be and I have no clue where he is at the moment. I tried to contact him to no avail. I did contact my lawyer and she contacted the judge. It pays to live in a small town. I carried my court papers as well. For some reason our S+S cards weren't there. I was secretly hoping for an upgrade. Ha Ha. No it was something with the machine. Numerous people had trouble. We got our S+S cards and had our welcome aboard picture taken. We hit a huge snag at the ding/photo machine. The cameras weren't working properly. Some S+S cards weren't working either. My party had to wait about 10 mins to get the machine working again. We hit another HUGE snag. We waited about 30 mins to get on the ship. I'm not sure what the hold up was but only one ding machine at the ship. They had 2 lines going one with the ding machine and another security officer standing there looking at ID's and S+S cards. We got at the port at 12:05pm and was on board at 1:45pm. This was the worst check in we have had yet. My DM and I both said we should've taken the earlier shuttle. We were up anyways and it would have saved us alot of time waiting in line.

I said on her last October, and even then they were having problems with the "ding" machines, and only one was working, which caused a long delay in boarding.

Finally we were on board. Since it was after 1:30 we headed to our room to drop our bags. We were originally in an inside room on Main a 4C. The price dropped and was upgraded to a 6E oceanview. The upgrade fairy called us a a week before and offered us a balcony for 274.00 total for all 3 of us. So we ended up on upper in a 8C. It was a nice upgrade. We usually book the cheapest and we decided to splurge a bit. We were so glad we did too. We headed to Guest Services. We each needed to put a CC down for our S+S card. I marked cash when I was filling out our information on line. I meant to go back and correct it but forgot.:rolleyes: It was painless anyways. Next stop was to the Shore Excursion Desk. We booked a cabana for Half Moon Cay. We needed to pick our location, sodas, and fin size.

Once that was all taken care of it was time for lunch. DD wanted the Mongolian Grill. This was the perfect day for it. NO LINES!! We had only 1 person in front of us. I suggest if you want to try it out try it the first day. DD didn't care for it but it was only because all she had was corn,peas, noodles, and beef. No sauce. :rolleyes: She wouldn't try any of the other veggies or sauce. I never got a chance to try it which I was disapointed in. I wasn't hungry for it the first day and never thought about it any other day after. I really wanted a cheeseburger from the grill but the line was a little long and I didn't want to wait. I opted for the turkey on a country roll. It was the first of many. DM got the samething too. We also got drinks. DD a mocktail, DM a beer, and me a DOD funship special.

Here are the drinks. Mine

DDS Strawberry Mocktail

Dessert I had the diet coconut cake and a caramel type cheesecake. The cheescake was to die for. The coconut cake not so much it was dry. I went to get more cheesecake and it was taken away already. They were getting ready for dinner.

Good going so far...doing the same ship in September. Driving down from East Point.

Thanks! You are going to love the ship. At least you don't live on the north side of town. It is crazy on a Friday night. Hope you have a great cruise too.

I said on her last October, and even then they were having problems with the "ding" machines, and only one was working, which caused a long delay in boarding.

Kinda strange. Our cards weren't ready the check in lady had to go see what the problem was. Then we couldn't take a S+S picture. The camera locked up. We had to take another picture when we were reboarding in HMC. I'm sure We weren't the only ones either. You would think that with tight security now a days they would fix the problem.

After lunch we walked back to the cabin to unpack and sit on the balcony until the muster drill. This is our balcony and the view. We were in Cabin U206 port side aft. It wasn't a bad location either.

Pictures of our balcony

Great review so far. Cant wait to read more..

This is a quad cabin. If the lower beds were pushed together I'm not sure how much floor space you'd have. I'm assuming you'd be hitting your heads alot. This set up worked for us and gave us more room. I felt like we had more room than our OV room on Sensation.

Great review! I love the Fascination!

This is the bathroom.

We didn't have an over the door hanger but we do travel with our hanging bathroom toiletries bag. If folds up in sections and has a hook to hang it up. I kept mine on the hook in the bathroom. We used the drawers to store things and the closet also. We had plenty of storage space. Here are some pictures of the closet space.

I stored my shoes in the bottom of photo 2. I don't have a picture of the other cabinet. It had 5 shelves and the safe was on the second shelf. We each had a shelf and then shared the the small middle 2. The desk/vanity had 3 or 4 drawers. It held alot. We each had one. I stored my cameras,make up, hair dryer, straightner and hair things. I also had my ipod, 2 chargers, and a jewelry roll. That was all in my drawer. My DD had her camera, hair things, ipod,dsi, chargers, and school work in hers. I am not sure why people say there is not enough storage. We had plenty. Maybe it's different on different ships.

Great review so far. Cant wait to read more..

Thank You! Where in OR are you? I have a friend who moved to Eugene a few months ago.

Great review! I love the Fascination!

Thank You! I think if I lived in Jacksonville I would have to go to HMC at least once a month. They wouldn't be able to keep me off the ship.:D It is a great ship and I love all the upgrades they have done.

Great Review! I would love to hear a little bit about any excursions you took also!

Thanks ;)

KimmyD

Brilliant review! We are going on her next March.

Anymore photos coming along? :)

Loving this review & pics. We sail on her in May in an oceanview but considering upgrading to a balcony.

Besides the downtown ATL traffic, how was the drive? About how long did it take you, after you got out of the ATL? We live off of GA 400 & completely understand the traffic around here!

Great Review! I would love to hear a little bit about any excursions you took also!

 

Thanks ;)

 

KimmyD

More is on the way. This cruise went to Half Moon Cay and Nassau, Bahamas. My excursions didn't go as planned but I will get more into that a little later.