Hello everyone. So as the title states I called this the cruise to nowhere. To be fair we did go to Bimini the first full day then a day "At Sea" and that's where it gets funny.
So we arrived to the Terminal Via lyft from Fort Lauderdale. Got there just abour 10 a.m. per our "check in time". Boarding passes and id's in hand we got right through and sat in the waiting area for maybe 20 minutes and soon enough our group was called - we did have fttf, though i'm not sure what we really needed it for.
We boarded shortly after, typical gangway and "we're on the boat" dance. Went through the lobby and up to deck 4 to our muster station. Ours was "G", so alllll the way back. After that we headed to the coffee statin on Promenade (5) and got an iced coffee and wandered the ship a little but too much since we've been on similar ships and my better half sailed conquest last year.
Got some food, a guy's burger and a burrito. And yes, the fries weren't that good. just regular seasoned fries but the rest was as normal. Not phenomenal, but fine pretty much like the food for the duration. we attended the Welcome aboard show and won some candy from cherry on top with a raffle ticket.
first night we did assigned dining (8:15) and were seated with another nice couple. We planned to go to the evening show at 9:30 but service was about slow and we got done about 10:15. We both got the roasted beef with potatoe. It was pretty good but not wow.
So next day we got to Bimini right around 7 or so "right on time"...through some creative navigating by the captain. Bimini is only 2 hours out of Miami so you can see in the first picture this was the route, out, south, hairpin and a loop then right into Bimini. My wife didn't want to go to Bimini since there's not a whole lot there and the ship was super crowded she opted to stay on. I went to Bimini prepared to find a good beach for shore snorkeling but niceafter i walked down the pier and over to fisherman's village I lost ambition...it was wayyy too hot for me. I went to the beach by the pier and did some swimming/snorkeling. The water was very clear and quite warm, not refreshing but nice. I did that for a bit then walked back to the ship. By the time I walked back to the ship i was soaking in my t-shirt from sweat.
went to the 80's pop to the max show that night which was actually pretty fun. Then went and got a few drinks at Alchemy. Eventually she went to bed and i had a couple more drinks at the Casino bar.
Day at sea was what you'd expect. I want to point out that the regular buffet breakfast, the hot part is Garbage. Worse scrambled eggs I've had, over cooked brown and serve sausages instead of good links. second and third morning they did have a different sausage that was a bit better though. And while there was plenty of bacon , it was very thin and a little burnt. 3rd morning I opted for the omelette and that was pretty good. But how hard is it to good "american" style breakfast??
so third day "at sea" was very hot on deck, and virtually no breeze due to the slow circling the ship did all , like a vulture waiting for roadkill. see second picture. Basically the whole cruise we only travelled 319 n.m. That's fewer miles than it took us to get to the airport...lol.
and of course overnight we finally sailed north and got into port just about 6:30 or 7. Overnight it was nice to feel the vessel "moving" and hearing the hum of the engines.
Overall this was a fun cruise, huge party crowd , which is expected for a 3 night from Miami. But the food was only so/so. The staff was very nice and friendly . The ship was clean and in good maintenance. Pools were wayyy crowded, and our bed wasn't the usual very nice carnival quality i'm used to. Not trying to be negative, these are just my thoughts. Probably in a year or two I'll be ready to go again, this time to some more exciting ports.