TravelBluebird

@Love-to-ride Glad to have you along!

@Canoe62 Ooh practically right after me! 🎉 And thank you!

Yes! She’s back! After my grand adventure to Antarctica on Holland America, I return to Carnival, this time on the brand new Jubilee! I was originally booked on the maiden TransAtlantic voyage of Jubilee that got cancelled; this is the earliest I could re-book after that happened. Along the way, I’ve picked up 8 of my friends and family to cruise along with me. As you might know if you’ve read my prior LIVE! blogs, I don’t generally cruise with such a large group. And we have 5 first time ocean cruisers on this trip! It certainly is a bit like herding cats, but I’m here for it! This is my 9th LIVE! Blog here on Cruise Critic, and I just love taking y’all along with me. Things that make me particularly excited about this cruise: 1. JUBILEE! New ship. YAY! 2. Excel class ship! My favorite (I’ve already sailed on Mardi Gras and Celebration) 3. My Platinum cruise! Yep, I’m just now Platinum, as I sail with many cruise lines. But for Fun in the Sun, Carnival is my favorite. FREE LAUNDRY! 😀 4. Galveston! Last time I sailed out of Galveston, it was the Carnival Breeze in 2016! 5. Big family group! Well, I think this is good. I DO feel a bit responsible for the whole trip. If you plan the entire cruise for your family, do you feel that way? I have a cruising channel on YouTube, Cruising With Dee. You can completely enjoy this LIVE! without visiting my channel, but if you want to visit my channel and/or subscibe, I won’t complain! I write my blog (prose) here with lots of photos, and the videos and live streams go on the Channel. Link to my channel is always in my signature, and I’ll include links for any videos I upload during or right after the trip. This particular cruise is the Western Caribbean Itinerary, so ports are Cozumel, Costa Maya and Roatan. I have done all of these ports multiple times now.; I’m there for the ship, not the ports, but I do have concern that so many huge ships are really over- narrowing the port possibilities. I’m going to just chill at Passion Beach in Cozumel; go see the sloths in Roatan (haven’t done that one yet) and then just explore the port area in Costa Maya. Many on this trip will be diving; I do not dive. Thanks in advance for reading along and joining in! I don’t like my LIVE! blogs to be soliloquies; so please comment, suggest, ask questions! I’ll try my best to answer any questions I can while I’m on the ship. Let’s Cruise!

I agree with the Points Guy—Carnival’s MDR and other included food cannot be beat on the major lines! That said, I was very impressed with the food on Holland America in January (Oosterdam). However, I missed Carnival’s pizza, Guy’s, Big Chicken, etc. and other varied included food options, but to make up for it somewhat, HAL’s buffet food was quite good (except the pizza. Blech). Interesting to see that the Points Guy site is doing more cruising coverage; thanks for highlighting the article!

They are missing quite a lot. Incredible scenery; penguin colonies, and much more. I just did a cruise to Antartica with Holland America last month—only a “sail by” but absolutely amazing:

Remember the cruise I booked on board (from Rotterdam, to Iceland, Norway—14 days actually 2 back-to backs?) for 2015. I was so excited! Got an email notice that this cruise has been cancelled. HAL suggested the cruise after this one but I can’t do it due to a work conference I have to attend. 😭 Now looking at different itineraries.

I felt very lucky that we didn’t have to tender in Ushuaia for our cruise, especially since we had so many other tender ports.

So it was the migratory whale regulation? Wow. Yes, our captain mentioned that but it was not at all a problem for our HAL cruise since it had evidently been planned for.

Not that I am aware of, and besides my recent cruise, I’ve closely followed two other HAL Antarctica LIVE blogs here on Cruise Critic. We did miss a port (Port Montt) but that was due to leaving Santiago very late (weather and delayed passengers).

So sorry to hear about your medical disembarkation; I had to do this once from a Carnival ship, and was also taken very good care of. I am glad that Holland America took good care of you as well. I hope that everything turns out OK and that you get home safely.

Hi everyone! Taking me awhile to complete the series of videos from this cruise, BUT they are very visually rich and I’ve wanted to do the cruise justice! This one is about the penguins excursion to Isla Magdalena as well as 2 scenic cruising days—Chilean Fjords and Glaciers, plus the ship experience including dining and the expedition team.

Absolutely used the balcony—could dash out to take photos and in to warm up whenever needed. Even though I was out on the bow quite a bit, you can’t always be out there, and there is so much that you can see (and photograph) from your balcony. I do agree that port is a bit better from Santiago (Glacier Alley etc.) and Starboard from SA BUT we were starboard from Santiago and it was still wonderful, and you can’t plan on serendipity (the penguins on ice floes that floated by on Starboard on my trip, whales etc).

I hope you can avoid the Drake Shake on the way back!

We saw the Scenic Eclipse on our cruise!

It’s such a unique experience—I’v been on many wonderful cruises, but very few that I’d want to repeat again, like this one!

This is exactly how I felt about the cruise! Someone asked me yesterday if I’d take the same cruise again, and I said ABSOLUTELY!

On top of spending the last week fighting a cold, I broke a tooth AND am swamped at work! I want to be back on the Oosterdam 😭 In any event, here is the next video in my Vlog series from the ship. This one coves Port Chacabuco, the Chilean Fjords and some of the ship life on the Oosterdam. Next installment will include Puerto Madryn and the Magellenic Penguin colony.

No, due to copyright reasons, nothing was recorded for later viewing, however, during the Antarctica portion of our cruise, lectures were broadcast live in the staterooms, which was a huge help.

Oh no; I hope shelter can be found quickly. We were so lucky, overall, with our weather compared to this; we couldn’t get to Lemaire Channel and had to shelter in place for awhile after that, but our waves and wind were not quite as bad as what you are experiencing now.

I hope as you get further into Antarctica that the lectures will be broadcast in the cabins for those days. We had 1,800 people plus on our cruise, and there was simply no way to fit everyone in the Main theater and Rolling Stone Lounge for the lectures. Plus, it enabled my husband who had a terrible cold to watch in the room and not infect anyone else on the ship.

I definitely would not compare an Expedition ship with a non-expedition ship; I had assumed the Viking ship that didn’t make it to the Falklands was a non-expedition ship.

Thank you—that is helpful information, and something I will take into consideration in the future, especially for certain itineraries. Definitely would not choose Viking Ocean for this itinerary, as the Oosterdam’s maneuverability was key to getting us into certain ports and close in for parts of Antarctica.

I did not see or hear any karaoke while on Oosterdam last month.

The captain truly is wonderful; the night before our cruise arrived, the winds were high and the islanders had to scramble the last minute to get our lunches, etc. ready for our excursions! We had a short period of winds over 50 knots and a very short tender suspension when we were at Port Stanley. Viking, in my experience, tends to be very cautious with winds in ports. When I took Viking Ocean, we missed Sicily due to winds, and several other ships made it to port that day.

Deception Island is so interesting and scenic due to its volcanic nature. And the chinstrap penguins are incredible!