Cruising Christine turns 40 on the Fascination: a Belated Review

Greetings!

This review will be of our cruise on the Fascination this past November. A tad late, but we went on some amazing non-Carnival excursions, and since I use Cruise Critic for all of my excursion research, I'm hoping someone will find this useful.

A little background: my name is Christine, and it's been 90 days since my last cruise. If that sounds like an introduction meant for an addiction meeting, it's because I am a total addict! I turned forty on this cruise (on Nov 9th), and I work in Finance at a non-profit. My cruising partner is my husband, Mark, age 48, a lab systems engineer at a very large pharmaceutical company in Boston. We reside in NH, although as soon as my son finishes college (he's a freshman), I'm hoping to convince my hubby to move someplace warmer. I hate the snow and cold weather.

Unfortunately this review is so late because our lives have been a little bit of a mess since getting back from this wonderful cruise. We came home to find out my father-in-law was hospitalized with a blood clot in his leg while we were gone. His health has been declining in recent years, so we continued to try to convince him to place my mother-in-law in a home, since she has dementia and can't take care of herself, and since it was becoming more apparent every day that he was become less able to take care of her himself.

Unfortunately he ended up passing away two days before Christmas. And my husband's uncle passed away three days before my father-in-law. To make a long story short, we've had to deal with funeral arrangements, nursing home searches and starting the process of obtaining guardianship of my mother-in-law so that we can place her.

On top of all of this, I have had two surgeries since getting back from this cruise. One planned (sinus surgery) and one unplanned (appendectomy on New Year's Day). We both kind of have been spending the last few months wondering what will happen next. Hopefully only good things!

Anyway, on to more exciting things to talk about! This cruise was the awesome Southern itinerary on the Fascination out of San Juan on Nov 6th. We always fly into port the day before. Even though this cruise wasn't set to leave port until 10 pm, I still firmly believe flying in one day ahead is a smart thing. You never know when an airline might be closed down for a whole day.

Our flight there was a nonstop flight from Boston on JetBlue. I believe the total travel time was roughly four hours long. I am not the best flyer in the world. I may have mentioned this in previous reviews, but my fear is not of flying: I quite like flying. My fear is of crashing. If someone could guarantee that the plane isn't going to go down, I would be fine. But the unknown scares the **** of me. In the past, I have always relied on Xanax, but a couple years ago I was diagnosed with an arrhythmia and I'm not supposed to take this particular wonder drug. But, I also keep some with me on planes just in case I feel a panic attack coming on.

Which was good in this case, because we hit some turbulence, and while in normal circumstances I would probably have been able to talk myself out of a panic attack, we apparently were seated in front of some little darlings that thought it would be fun to call out "Ah, we're going down" and "Omg, what was that" every time we hit turbulence. These kids weren't scared, mind you, they were doing it for fun because they were laughing at the same time. Now, a reasonable person would not have let this get to them, but at 10,000 ft in the air, my brain doesn't think like a reasonable person. So I popped a Xanax or two, and was soon flying high, pun intended.

Most people are excited about their vacations starting when they leave for the airport, but because of my anxiety, mine doesn't start until the pilot announces that we are starting our decent. For some reason, knowing that we are starting to land is such a relief for me. If I ever post a picture of my husband and I on the plane, and I'm smiling in it, you know that the pilot has already made that announcement. This time would be no different. So here's a picture of happy, relieved-because-we-are-almost-ready-to-land me:

One of these days, I'll get my husband to act serious in a photo. I swear I will!

Flying to San Juan was my first time flying over a body of water. I'm not very well traveled aside from various trips within the US, a drive to Niagara Falls, and the islands I have visited via ship. So seeing land for the first time in hours was really nice.

The San Juan airport wasn't very large from what I remember. Not compared to Logan airport.

Now, for a quick, funny story about my husband. I met my husband when I was hired for my current job nine years ago. He was working there at the time. The place is called FIRST. It's a non-profit that encourages kids to pursue careers in STEM fields by holding robotics events. My husband worked there for 13 years, and still volunteers as an Emcee for events. For some reason, he's the type of guy people never forget after meeting him. When we went on our first cruise, there was a guy at our dinner table that used to coach one of the robotics events, and recognized my husband. What a small world. So it's kind of a joke that we have, that it's too funny we can travel so far from home and people recognize him.

This trip would be no different. We were at SJU, waiting for our bags, and some kid came up to my husband and was like, "Hey, by any chance, do you Emcee the event at WPI?" This kid actually remembered my husband from when he attended the event as part of his school's robotics teams. What a small world indeed.

We retrieved our bags, and grabbed a taxi, which was very easy and affordable. For this cruise, we would stay at the Sheraton Old San Juan, which is literally right across from the cruise port. A little tip: if you book the AAA rate, it's like $50 or so cheaper. I had to prepay in order to get this rate, but it was worth it.

The hotel was very nice and I would recommend staying here. Our room was very comfortable.

The lobby to the hotel is also very pretty.

One tip about the hotel: DO NOT BUY BREAKFAST THERE. Unless you book under a rate that includes it. Ours didn't (hence the cheap, $150 AAA rate). Out of pure convenience, I decided we were going to eat there on cruise morning, but I should have done my research. We ended up paying $50 for continental, serve yourself, breakfast that was only decent. Whoops! With every cruise I seem to make one pricey mistake due to lake of planning properly, and this would be it for this cruise. I should have research a place for breakfast ahead of time.

Well, I was hoping to get more of this done tonight, but I'm off for a girls night of dinner and Fifty Shades Darker.

Next up...a delicious dinner review of Barrachina's, home of the first pina colada (according to Barrachina's anyway).

Thanks for the review.

Well, I was hoping to get more of this done tonight, but I'm off for a girls night of dinner and Fifty Shades Darker.

 

Next up...a delicious dinner review of Barrachina's, home of the first pina colada (according to Barrachina's anyway).

Thank you for the review. We sail on The Fascination next week and are staying an extra day in San Juan. We were trying to find a good place to eat dinner so I am looking forward to your review of Barrachina. It is one of the restaurants we are considering.

Sorry about the loss in your family after arriving from the cruise.

Will be following along.

Looking forward to your review. We are thinking of booking this cruise in the next year.... just trying to decide what time of year is best.

Sorry for your troubles and losses, you've certainly had your share. I've been looking forward to your review and can't wait to read it.

Yes...another review of the southern itinerary out of San Juan!!! :D This is, hands down, my favorite itinerary and this is one we will do again someday but just don't know "when" yet. Life is getting in the way for us too, so we're not making any plans this year. :( I'm very sorry to hear of your family's losses and other issues. You'll be needing another cruise to unwind and enjoy. Thank you for taking the time to do a review and no worries about it being late. My first one of our Valor cruise (yep, southern itinerary out of San Juan) was four months late, but it was sure a great way to relive a great cruise. I'm following along and looking forward to the rest.

Thanks for the kind words everyone! While 2016 did end on a rough note for us, I'm sure 2017 will be much better. We have a cruise to Alaska to look forward to in a couple months, so that definitely helps.

Well, since we are completely snowed in today here in NH, I suppose that will give me plenty of time to finish this review today!

So our breakfast on embarkation day was a bust due to my lack of planning, but fortunately I did thoroughly research places for dinner upon arriving to San Juan, so our dinner the night before was fabulous.

If you've researched local delicacies at all for San Juan, you'll know the must-have dish for the area is something call mofongo. According to good 'ole Wikipedia, it can be described as "...a Puerto Rican dish with fried plantains as its main ingredient. Plantains are picked green and fried then mashed with salt, garlic and oil in a wooden pilón, a kitchen device also known as mortar and pestle."

I did a lot of research to find where the best mofongo is served in the San Juan area. Barrachina's was consistently recommended, and since they were also known for their pina colada's , I decided this was the winner. I don't drink much or often, but pina colada's are my favorite alcoholic drinks. Supposedly Barrachina's is the birth place of the pina colada. They claim that a bartender working there invented it in 1963. I say claim, because there is a hotel nearby called Caribe Hilton that also claims that their bartender invented the drink in 1954. So, who really knows, but one thing is certain: the drink was invented in San Juan, and if you like pina colada's, you can certainly find some good ones in this city!

Barrachina's is definitely within walking distance from the Sheratan Old San Juan, however, since it was already dark out, and we didn't know our way around the city, we decided to take a cab there from the hotel. I did make sure to pay attention, on the way there, to what streets we took so that we could walk back to the hotel when we were done. Which would prove to be a good thing, because a nice walk after a big meal always feels good.

When we arrived, we only had a brief wait for a table. We hadn't bothered to make a reservation, so that we were fortunate.

The place is really pretty inside. Kind of reminds me of the typical courtyard in the middle of a Spanish-style residence.

First things first, a nice, cold pina colada on a hot evening.

They have a few different types of pina coladas to choose from, and I decided to try their Fire in the Sky option. I neglected to take a picture of the drink menu, but luckily you can find almost anything on the web. ;-)

Their food menu can be found here: http://www.barrachina.com/pdf/menu.pdf

We were both starving so we decided to try the Puerto Rican Delights appetizer, which included some sort of meat turnovers, corn fritters and ham croquettes. Honestly, I probably wouldn't get this again. It was just ok.

They are know for both their mofongo and their pork chops can can, which is a HUGE piece of pork. We both decided to go with the mofongo. I got the chicken version, and it was literally one of the best dishes I have ever had. The chicken was both tender and expertly seasoned, and I enjoyed the mash plantains more than I expected to. There was so much chicken, I think I only ate about half. If we had a fridge and microwave at the hotel, I would have brought it back with me, but unfortunately we didn't. It was a shame to have to waste such delicious food. Probably another reason to skip an appetizer if we ever go back.

Barrachina's has quite a few resident macaws in cages around the restaurant. Since it was late in the evening, they were either sleeping, or seemed ready to fall asleep.

After dinner, we had a nice, leisurely walk back to the hotel. Old San Juan didn't seem like an unsafe place to walk through at night, and I enjoyed taking pictures of the beautiful buildings and parts of an old fort.

If I ever decided to do this cruise again, one thing that I would change it to arrive in San Juan earlier. Our flight arrived at dusk the day before, so we never had a chance to walk around town that first day in the daylight. I would definitely recommend arriving either earlier in the day, or two days in advance. It's a beautiful city with lots to see.

The night that we arrived there was some sort of festival going on near the water. We asked the cab driver about it on the way to Barrachina's, and he said it was due to the elections. Now, remember, this cruise was sailing on 11/6, so this was the weekend before the US presidential election. Puerto Rico doesn't vote for the US president, however, but I believe they had their own elections going on that week, and clearly they view these elections differently than we do in the States. I can't imagine having an outdoor festival like this during the elections here!

We were stuffed from dinner, but I'll bet it we were in the mood for desert, we could have found something yummy at one of the vendors set up for the festival.

This was actually a statue of a person's head, but lit up this way at night, made it look kind of creepy!

Embarkation Day and Pre-cruise Rainforest Excursion

I can't comment on how early you can board the Fascination in San Juan, because we had a pre-cruise excursion booked that would have us leaving the hotel early in the morning, and not arriving back to port until around 4 pm.

For this cruise, we were traveling as part of a group, so I did not book this particular tour and cannot tell you who the tour operator was. But, I can tell you that our excursion took us to the Rio Abajo rainforest, and if you are looking for a pre-cruise excursion, I highly recommend doing a rainforest tour.

One thing I didn't realize beforehand is that San Juan is not actually a part of mainland Puerto Rico. It's actually an island off the coast, and you have to travel over a short bridge to get to mainland Puerto Rico.

The total travel time to the rainforest was roughly an hour. Remember how I mentioned that Puerto Ricans seem to treat elections as a celebration? Well, I can remember if it was on the way to the rainforest or on the way back (or both), but as we were traveling down the highway, I saw a bunch of school buses that were decorated and had flashing lights that would pass us periodically along the way. Some had police motorcycles flanking them, and some had tractor trailer trucks, also with flashing lights. I can only assume that these were related to the elections as well. I really don't know, but I wish I got pictures.

In any case, after a long drive, we approached the rainforest.

The drive through the rainforest had us passing by, and sometimes through, bamboo trees. I never realized how incredibly large these trees were! They were quite beautiful.

Here's a picture that I took while we were walking through the forest, so that you can see just how big they are:

The specific excursion that we did this day was to visit a parrot sanctuary within the rainforest. It's not open to the public, and our visit was arranged by our group leader as part of the 8th annual Parrot Lovers Cruise. This sanctuary's mission is to save the Puerto Rican parrot, the only parrot native to the island. They breed, train, and release the parrots back into the wild.

The tour of the breeding facility was highly informative and really an experience of a lifetime for me.

This next picture is of the flight cage where they get the parrots ready for release into the wild. The trainers have to build up the parrots' strength so that they can fly longer distances in the wild than they are used to in captivity. Believe it or not, they do so by going into the cages and "chasing" the parrots with long poles to keep them in flight for increasingly long periods.

At one point I was even able to capture a few pictures of some of the Puerto Rican parrots in the wild. These are either parrots that were hatched in captivity and released, or ones that were born in the wild. Or a mixture of both. The picture isn't the best, but it was actually taken from very far away. Fortunately I have a camera with terrific zoom capabilities, or I wouldn't have gotten it at all.

I'm not sure what typical rainforest tours entail normally, but trust me, the rainforest is beautiful, and I would highly recommend taking the time to check it out.

This is some sort of ginger plant which we saw many of within the forest.

And I believe this was a termites nest.

After the rainforest tour, we headed back to the port, stopping at a local outlet mall along the way. If it were up to me, we would have skipped the outlest shopping, but again, I didn't plan this excursion. The outlet mall was exactly the same as the outdoor outlet malls near where I live. I suppose if they don't have them in your state, it's worth a visit, but since they are readily available in New England, I could have passed and gone straight to the port to board the Fascination and have a late lunch.

Instead, we ended up have a snack of soft pretzels at the outlet mall. We arrived at port at roughly 4 pm, if I remember correctly.

I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked to have taken at this point. Probably because I was so excited to finally be boarding the ship! We had FTTF, and while I had considered cancelling it due to the fact that I knew we would be arriving to port late, I was happy we kept it. It did save us at least a half hour wait in the regular lines, and it would come in handy later on during the cruise by getting to by-pass long lines at the Guest Services desk.

This was the first cruise that we were able to check-in and board right away. With both previous cruises, even with FTTF and arriving at port around 11 am, we had to wait until about 1 pm both times to board, due to delays. It was kind of nice this time around not having to sit around in the waiting room for a couple of hours.

We entered the lobby to the Fascination, and I still felt that same excitement I felt with my first few cruises. I honestly don't think that will ever go away for me!

If you've read mitsugirlys recent Fascination review, you might remember that she pointed out that the lobby of the Fascination seems to have lost its "rainbow" of colors that used to be spread out among the decks (each deck had a different color light that could be seen from the lobby). It's not easy to explain, so I'm going to steal another picture from the internet to show you. This is how the lobby apparently used to look:

As you can see from my photos, no more rainbow of colors. I didn't really notice it while on board, but now that I look at my photos, I can see the difference. Oh well, hopefully someday they will fix this, because I can imagine it's really pretty in person. But, it really made no difference when we were there. Clearly, since I didn't even notice the difference in person.

If you've read my previous reviews, you might recall that I have mentioned that my husband and I are not drinkers. That was previously the case. I actually went more than a decade without a drink. Not because I was ever an alcoholic, but because I don't particularly like the taste of alcohol, and our typical social activities don't involve drinking anyway.

Welllll...chalk it up to a mid-life, turning-40, crisis perhaps, but I starting partaking in an occasional alcoholic beverage prior to this cruise. So one thing I was looking forward to was trying out some of Carnival's frozen beverages that people rave about. And as a martini-lover, I was also very much looking forward to trying their Martini Tasting. :-) The Fascination doesn't have an Alchemy Bar, so the martini tasting on this ship can be found at the Beverly Hills Cigar Bar, and the menu is slightly different.

For my selections, I tried the Florida Squeeze, the Melon Crush, the Sea Blue, and because everyone raves about it, the Spicy Chipotle.

Oddly enough, the Spicy Chipotle was the only one that I didn't like. Not sure why, because I do like spicy things, but I get I just don't care for spicy in a drink. I liked the Florida Squeeze and the Melon Crush, but absolutely loved the Sea Blue. This would be one that I would order again during dinner later in the cruise.

This would be our first cruise in a non-balcony room. Since we had taken a rather pricey B2B on the Conquest in July, in order to afford another cruise in the same year, we had to book an interior. I decided to go with a porthole interior, so that we would at least have some sunlight and a view. This would make the cruise incredibly affordable at just over $1K. We stayed in E8, and I found this room to be really comfortable. If you look at the deck plans, it seems that E8 is one of the larger porthole rooms. Also, we never noticed any sounds of waves crashing against the front of the ship. Not sure if this was because we weren't all the way up front, because we didn't have terribly rough seas, or because we were on a higher-up deck. In any case, absolutely no complaints about this room, and I would stay in it again.

One nice change on this cruise was that our bags did seem to arrive pretty early. We've always has FTTF, but even with priority luggage, we always seem to have at least one bag show up fairly late. This time around, we were able to fully unpack well before dinner time. Leaving us plenty of time to explore this ship and watch the sunset while out on deck.

Dinner that night, due to the late sail away, would be open seating in the dining room of your choice. Since we would have assigned early dining in the Imagination MDR for the remainder of the cruise, we decided to go to the Sensation MDR that night. It was nice having dinner as just the two of us. It was very empty in the dining room that night, so I don't believe we had anyone seated in the two-top right next to us. So it really felt like we were alone. Not that I don't enjoy meeting new people, but my preference will always be for Your Time Dining at a table for two. But, this cruise was a group cruise, and the selected dining time (6 pm) was not my choice.

While I really like the American Table menus, I was looking forward to our cruise on the Fascination so that I could have bitter n blanc again (only on the old menus). But, wouldn't you know, the Fascination ended up switching to the new menus a week or so before our cruise. Darn it! Oh well, at least our cruise on the Legend on 4/30 this year will have the old menus. Unless I jinx myself and they switch before we board. Only time will tell.

That night, I had a salad, the braised beef brisket (one of my favorite Carnival dishes) and the tiramisu. It was yummy as always. I can honestly say that while I've been only cruising since 2015, and perhaps don't have an extensive frame of reference on this subject, I find Carnival's MDR dinners to always be quite enjoyable and more often than not, very delicious.

It felt weird having dinner before the muster drill. By the time we did have our drill, I was quite tired, and very thankful that we had to report to the theater rather than out on an open deck like on the Conquest. Because this cruise is heavily populated with Spanish-speaking passengers from it's embarkation city, they do repeat everything in Spanish. Making it twice as long. But, we were quite comfortable in the theater. After than part, there was a point where I believe that everyone did have to go out on deck, but my husband was still in a leg brace from tearing his quad tendon on our last cruise, so we were granted an exemption from that part of the drill.

Thank you for doing this review. We leave Boston on Saturday for an overnight in San Juan prior to boarding the Fascination on Sunday. We will check out the Barrachina for sure! Keep those posts coming. I have a list of excursions/beaches (thanks to all the snow days last week), but will compare them to your suggestions. We did this cruise several years ago and can't wait to do it again!

Sail away was of course at night, around 10 pm, so it was dark and thus we didn't have much of a view except for the lights of the city. But it was a beautiful night nonetheless, and Mark and I found a nice quite spot on deck to watch sail away. I didn't take pictures at that time because it was dark, but did want to share one that I had taken earlier in the day. This shows just how close to port the Sheraton Old San Juan is. We got dropped off at port directly from our excursion, however, had we not planned this activity, we could have easily walked from the hotel to port.

Review of the Fascination ship

Before I get into my reviews of the ports and the terrific non-Carnival excursions that we did, I wanted to do a brief review of the Fascination in general. I know that a lot of people won't even consider a cruise on such a small ship, but I have to say, I think that's a shame. This is such a port-intensive cruise that you are not on the ship much anyway. Even so, I liked the ship very much, and would have no hesitation with cruising on it, or any other Fantasy-class ship, in the future. I actually kind of liked the old school feel of the ship, which can be seen in the lido deck:

The palm trees, in my opinion, are a nice touch. I did miss the dive-in theater, though, as that's my favorite nighttime activity. But, in a way, maybe it was a good thing because it forced my husband and I to see more shows in the theater.

Which brings me to the one design flaw that I saw with the ship: the shops are located at the entrance of the main theater. Which causes a problem when the shops are having "sales" because they put tables outside of the shops, and people crowd around these tables, pretty much blocking the entry way to the theater. I found this annoying, but not the end of the world.

My only other critique of this ship would be that, because it doesn't have as many food venue options, it makes grabbing a quick bite to eat rather difficult. There were at least a couple days where we came back from our excursion, and wanted to have something to eat as a late lunch, but as you can see from this photo, the lines to the buffet were very long.

This only caused a problem in that by the time we got something to eat, sometimes it would be close to 3:00. When you have a 6:00 dining time, this kind of sucks because you either skip lunch and passing out before dinner from hunger, or you have to show up to dinner not really hungry. Another reason why, when it's my choice, I will always choose YTD over early dining.

The shows that we attended at night on the Fascination were fantastic. I particularly liked that this was the first cruise that I can recall which had non-singing type shows. My favorite was the juggling show called the Edge. This guy was absolutely amazing. And extremely funny too. We didn't get a chance to see any of the comedy shows on this cruise, but honestly, he was probably funnier than any comedian in those shows that I have seen in the past. If you are only going to see one show on this ship, see this one if it's still offered.

We attended one of the singing and dancing type shows too, which was the Divas show, since it was one that we hadn't seen before. It was better than I expected. I have to say, though, that at one point one you could see the sweat flying off of one of the guys on stage. I remember thinking that I was glad to not be sitting up close and personal to the center stage. I feel bad for the people that might have gotten a free "shower" that day. ;-)

We also attended a hypnotism act by Richard Barker. I have never seen this type of show, so I made sure to not sit up front as to not get called upon to be part of the show. Look at all of those "suckers" on stage...

Actually, it was all volunteer based, and at the end of the show, it left me thinking that given the chance again, I might just volunteer. I have to admit, I'm kind of curious about it. There were some people that were obviously not hypnotized, and he would remove them from the stage. But I'm now very curious to know what it feels like to be hypnotized. According to him, if you don't believe it's possible, you won't be, so I would have to go into it with an open mind. But, maybe someday I'll have my chance to see if I can actually be hypnotized. And allowed to make a fool of myself on stage!

I could probably spend all night posting food porn pics, but I really want to get to the port reviews. Perhaps I will post some at the end of this review, because I do love seeing people's food porn. But, I will say that the food was excellent overall on this cruise. Obviously some things are better than others, but no real complaints here. The service in the MDR did take longer on this cruise than on previous ones. Not sure why that is, but it didn't bother us too much. I had no problems with receiving my drink orders, but the food service was slower than what we have experienced in the past. In fact, there was one night we chose to eat on the lido because we were exhausted and didn't want to sit through a long meal. The food didn't even compare, though, so we probably won't do this again.

We did have sea day brunch in the MDR on our one see day, and it was enjoyable. Not crowded at all, and ironically enough, we were seated at the exact same table for two as we were on the first night for dinner. For those that have never done sea day brunch, I consider it a must-try. I had the chocolate chip pancakes and an omelet, and Mark had some sort of steak and eggs. Oh, and I will have to make sure to have a side order of the fries next time. They were yummy and I think I ended up eating half of his, hehe.

Thank you for doing this review. We leave Boston on Saturday for an overnight in San Juan prior to boarding the Fascination on Sunday. We will check out the Barrachina for sure! Keep those posts coming. I have a list of excursions/beaches (thanks to all the snow days last week), but will compare them to your suggestions. We did this cruise several years ago and can't wait to do it again!

Oh lucky you! Glad that someone gets to leave this cold, winter weather. I love New England for lots of reasons, but it's weather is not one of them. When spring hits, I always say that the winter just helps to make you appreciate the warmer weather more. But then you have days like today where all I can think about is moving to Florida! Anyway, I hope that the weather improves for your trip next weekend, and that you have no flight delays for your trip to San Juan. Just wish I was joining you for that cruise!

St Thomas

The first port on this cruise is St Thomas, and probably my favorite. For this port, this was the last one on this cruise that had an excursion that I didn't book, so I can't recommend a vendor. But honestly, you don't need one anyway for what we did. We went to Coral World, which is a little aquarium by the sea, and followed that with swim at Coki Beach, right next door. We elected to stay longer at the beach than our group, so we didn't take the tour bus back, and instead opted to take a taxi back. There is a taxi stand right across from the beach, which is why I would recommend simply taking a taxi from port if you are going to go to either one of these places.

I am thoroughly convinced that no matter how many cruises I will go on, I don't think that first view of any island I visit will ever be less special. I just love that first glimpse of land after spending time at sea. St Thomas would prove to be a pretty island, and at first glimpse, I was quite pleased.

When you get off the ship, you walk down a long walkway, as seen on the right side in the photo below. On the left side of the photo, you can see the area where the tour buses pull up. We waiting for a little while for our tour bus to show up, as well as the rest of the people in our group, and then we were off.

Coral World might not seem like it has much if you visit its website, but there actually is a lot to see, and I was quite pleased with how well kept up the place was. Here's a picture of the outdoor area as you enter the facility.

After you enter the facility, if you take a right, and go down a little hill, there's a building that houses a very large aquarium with lots of fish. The tank is set up so that it pretty much encloses the building, so you are in essence standing in the middle of the tank. If you go at the right time, you can see the workers feeding the fish and rays from inside the tank.

There's also a open shark tank right off the left of the entry way that houses baby sharks, and there's also a feeding demonstration at a certain time, although we didn't see it during our visit. You can also pay extra to have an up-close and personal experience with these baby sharks. Meaning, you can get right in there with them. We didn't see anyone do this when we were there.

The highlight of Coral World is a building in which allows you do walk down stairs and see into the ocean from below the water line. In the picture below, it's the building that can be seen to the left.

You can only see out so far into the ocean, but there is a lot of coral right near the windows, and you can see fish in their natural environment as well,

Another optional, not included in the general admission, activity you can do at Coral World is one of those Sea Trek adventures where you go under water wearing a helmet attached to a breathing tube. You can see the ladder where you climb down in the picture below, and part of the railing that you follow along on your walk under water.

I'm not sure that this is something I would ever want to try myself. I love swimming, and I have recently begun snorkeling, but there's something that I like about being able to be close to the surface and able to get fresh air whenever I want. And since I'm prone to panic attacks, I worry that I would have one under water. I don't know, maybe I'll add it to my bucket list for a time when I become braver!

There's also a building that has many tanks of beautiful fish and other ocean life, much like you would see at pretty much any aquarium. But, this kind of thing never gets old to me no matter how many aquariums I visit. There's something so peaceful and intriguing about watching underwater life. I just love it.

Being a parrot lover, I'm probably biased when I say this, but the Lorikeet Garden at Coral World is one of the highlights of the place.

Upon entering the enclosure, you are immediately greeting by hungry lorikeets, waiting to be fed.

Lorikeets are a little different than most parrots in that rather than relying on a seed-based diet, they eat nectar. The staff will provide you little cups of nectar that the birds will drink happily.

From what I remember they had both red lorikeets and rainbow lorikeets, like the one below, which is such a gorgeous bird.

Not sure what these little guys were up to. A private conversation perhaps?

They eventually came out. :-)

As you can probably tell by now, there are many "add-ons" that you can purchase at Coral World to make your visit memorable. Another option is a sea turtle encounter. They have a couple different enclosures with sea turtles. You can see one in this picture:

We did see one couple in one of the enclosures, and they seem to be having a blast during their encounter. It was only the two of them with a worker from the park, and from what I could overhear the worker was giving them a thorough education on sea turtles. Really, the animals at this part seem extremely well cared for.

A couple additional pictures of one of the turtles:

While walking around the park, you'll see quite a few iguanas hanging around.

They also have a fairly large tortoise enclosure of which the local ducks seem to also inhabit, probably due to the convenient source of food. One of the workers told us that the tortoises breed like crazy, and they often have to release some into the wild when there ends up being too many of them. At one point I was near the turtle exhibit and I heard a couple of older women cracking up laughing. When I went to find out what was so funny, I found out that it was because apparently there was a mating pair in the middle of doing the deed. When the keeper put out the food, the female decided to book it to the food and left the poor male high and dry. :-)