heather307

Day 7—We slept in a little this day. This resulted in less-than-ideal chairs but hey, I know the game and I chose to sleep. We found three chairs in the shade above the aft pool. We spent the day there reading and enjoying refreshing beverages. It was a little cool and we actually spent a good chunk of the day under our towels. However, our sun burned skin probably appreciated the break. For lunch we tried Fat Jimmy’s C-Side Bar-B-Que. It was all right. I preferred Guy’s or the tacos from Blue Iguana.

Day 8—Woke up a little earlier and found some chairs on deck 5, outside the Red Frog Pub. This is a nice area. However, it’s a little far from the action. I had second encounter with the woman from “Chairgate” on Day 1. Fortunately, it wasn’t me this time. Seriously, you would have thought she would have learned her lesson from Day 1. It was lunchtime and she came down complaining that there were no chairs anywhere. She proceeded to dump some other people’s stuff of their chairs and make herself at home. DH, DD, and I moved to the other side of the ship shortly after so I’m not sure of the outcome. But seriously… DD and I decided to have lunch that day at the Red Frog Pub. DH tried Bonzai. It was a little late and Red Frog only serves food until a certain time. We were about 10 minutes from that time. I did ask the bartender if they were still serving as I did not want to make any assumptions. He said “yes” so we ordered some conch fritters, wings, and grouper fingers. Here is my one “complaint” about service. DH ordered a mojito. DH had the Cheers package so I set the timer after the guy swiped his card for 5 minutes so that DH could order another drink and take out with us. It took the bartender the whole 5 minutes to make the first drink. At that rate, that bartender would never make it on the lido deck. This was also the least personable staffer we had met all week. The grouper fingers, sushi, and wings were good. The conch fritters, while not bad, where a little tough.

We chilled the rest of Day 8 before heading back to clean up for dinner and pack. We were self-disembarking so we just had to get most of our stuff together.

We had dinner in La Cucina del Capitano this night. Upon arrival, we were also told that guest services would be buying our first round of drinks. Dinner was wonderful. DD and I split the chicken parmigiana and linguini and meatballs. Both boys cleaned their plates and the servings were plentiful. We found out that DS was also joining a friend for dinner in the dining room with her family. He ate two full meals that night. I believe the word is gluttony.

Because DH was driving back to NC the next day, we decided he would sleep in our room and I would take his bed in the boys’ room. He had been dealing with curfew and being woke up all week so we switched. Boys had 2AM curfew, which I felt generous. However, I woke up at 3:30 and DS friend was not back in the room. I unhappily took off to find him. After walking around about 30 minutes I went back to the room and he was there. We had a 6:00 planned wake up time so I told them they had better enjoy their two hours of sleep.

Debarkation Day--On previous Carnival cruises, self-debarkation started on the lower decks and worked their way up. So, we had moved all the luggage to the deck 6 room. At around 6:45 the announcement was made that we had received clearance and decks 10 and higher could disembark. Well, that backfired. However, we proceeded to disembark since one of our rooms was technically on 11. We carried our luggage down to deck 3 via the stairs rather than deal with the elevators. We were off the ship on the road back to NC by 7:15. That is the earliest we have ever been off a ship. We were home in NC at 9:15. It took us 14 hours to get home. Not horrible but I hate driving straight through.

Overall, it was great trip. My DS stated it was the “coolest trip ever”. He met a young girl on the ship who lives in the same area as we do and I guess now they are going to prom together. It took traveling all those miles for him to find a girl in our backyard. However, he made lots of other great friends too. Service was great. Our biggest complaint was the room noise but Carnival truly could not do much about that and they made multiple attempts to help us—again they sought us out for resolution. I will do better research on room location next time, prior to booking. I just let my excitement get ahead of me when booking this one. We did have the HUB app which could be hit or miss. I left my daughter in the room one morning sleeping and apparently she had been trying to text us to find out where we were and I didn’t get a message from her until around 11am. This happened a couple of times so they do need to tweak the system. We also had a small issue with my son’s friend. We did not give him charging access so he went down to put $20 cash on his account. He still was not able to buy drinks or anything—including the HUB app. He didn’t tell me about this until the end of the week but he didn’t let it bother him. When he went to cash out, they told him there wasn’t any money on his account. Again, I didn’t find this out until we were off the ship. I’m assuming the $20 probably go credited to our folio but I need to follow up on that.

While I can say I will probably never set foot on the Fascination again—or any 3-5 cruise for that matter—I would definitely sail on the Breeze again. It is unfortunate she is moving to Galveston. I wish they would move a ship like her to Port Canaveral. We would love to sail the Vista but it seems pretty pricey for now. We are sailing on NCL Escape in December and I can’t wait to see how it compares to the Breeze. I will say hats off to Carnival. They went out of their way to try to correct issues that for the most part were really out of their control.

This is my first time posting a review of such so please excuse errors and duplicate posts, as long as grammatical errors and typos. We have all had cabin crud since returning (along NC pollen/allergies). My goal was just to share our experience on the Breeze. I never posted a negative review in October--probably should have. However, I do feel it is more important to let people know when they have done something right. Carnival did this right, along with Javin and Random Wind.

We never went thirsty on this tour. April and Anna did a great job keeping out glasses field. I enjoyed the coconut rum bunch and Malibu Barbi. The first stop anchored us close to one the beaches on the French side, a nice resort with a public beach. Here we were allowed to jump off the boat and swim up to the beach. This is also where some chose to partake in the mud bath and paddle boarding. There were people (not from our excursion) climbing up the cliffs and jumping in. Captain Trevor informed us that the water was only 6-8ft. deep and those places. We were at this stop for approximately an hour before Captain Trevor blew the dinner conch. Lunch was served—saffron chicken skewers, coconut rice, salad, and French bread. We all cleaned our plates. The next stop is where we anchored and were allowed to use the trapeze swing. Anna had informed us that Captain Trevor had worked for the circus in his younger days and hence the idea for the trapeze swing. Most people tried it and loved it. My sense of adventure stopped here and I did not partake in this activity. I took pictures and did partake in refreshing beverages.

April is my DS dream girl. He wants to live the island life more than anything and loved hearing her talk about her adventures as First Mate. She gave him advice on how to do what she was doing, working on a boat. It was her last day before temporarily returning to the States. April is great. Anna was super friendly and was still learning the ropes. We had to return to the dock a little earlier than we hoped as the Allure had an earlier on-ship time than we did. This was frustrating because a large group from the Allure was late getting there and then the reason we had to leave early. According two other passengers from the Allure, they were allowed to disembark before we did. I guess the large group did not plan their wake-up calls accordingly. However, it was not a major deal but it did cost us a little time on the Random Wind. Had the shoe been on the other foot, I’m sure I would have wanted them to wait for me. Everyone on the boat that day was friendly and there were no issues. I was a little concerned over some comments I had read about Captain Trevor. However, we found him to be courteous and professional. Again, my DS wants to live on a boat and has some experience with Captains. He said “they have to be serious and safety has to be first”. However, I think everyone in our group followed the rules and there was no unruly or rowdy behavior. I’m sure had this happened, we could have seen a different side of Captain Trevor and rightly so. April was DS dream girl and Captain Trevor is DS career idol. This was another fantastic excursion and I would highly recommend. We loved the small scale of the tour and the experience of spending the day on the water.

After re-boarding, we cleaned up and had dinner in the buffet as we were too tired to fully cleanup for the dining room. DD is never a big fan of the buffet but she survived. We saw a comedy show and explored the ship, looked at photos, and she and I headed off to bed. I think DH called it an early night as well.

This was our favorite!

We had planned excursion on Random Wind and this is the excursion everyone was excited about. We disembarked on time, no major lines. They had not made the announcement yet but while having breakfast we noticed people getting off so we walked on down and got right off the ship without any issues. We had to take a taxi to a restaurant on the Dutch side—we never had to drive on the French side. We were a little surprised at $8/pp taxi ride but it is what it is and had I researched a little more carefully, I would have known. With tip, we had $100 in taxi rides for trip there and back.

We waited a bit for the first mate April to meet us. However, we were met by her soon-to-be-replacement, Anna. We met April later. After a short ride on a dinghy, we were all aboard the Random Wind. Random Wind can only accommodate 21 guests. An older couple had shown up that day hoping to get on the excursion. However, April said they had booked to capacity all month. I felt bad for them because they were so excited. We were the only ones from the Breeze that day. Four ships were in port. Other guests on the Random Wind that day were from RCCL Allure. Seas were rough but Captain Trevor did manage to raise the sails and we were able to sail out to our first stop.

We loaded back in the truck and headed off to the ocean. From there, we snorkeled out into the ocean. Javin took us to a shipwreck and to an old cannon. He took lots of pictures—which we can access from his website at no charge. We went to the conch nursery, saw lots of urchins, starfish, and even a sea turtle. There was a small coral reef at the sight was well. It was one of the longer snorkeling excursions, with the most variety, that we have been on.

After swimming back to the beach, we loaded up the truck and headed to a different beach location. Here we had another tailgate with more empanadas and bread pudding. This is also where he broke out the rum. I agreed to let the boys “try” it. Apparently, “try” means something different to them.

However, they did provide good entertainment for the rest of the passengers on the way back to the ship. Overall, it was a great day and I would highly recommend Javin to anyone visiting St. Kitt’s.

DH, DD, and myself had dinner in sapphire again. The boys slept off their rum in the room.

Guest services called our room again that night to ask if we had slept any better the night before and inform us that another family had disembarked in Puerto Rico so we could move to that room if we wanted. At this point in the week, I was just hopeful that the seas would finally calm and we could sleep. I thanked them profusely for continuing to check on us and told them how much I appreciated their follow up but again, I just didn’t want to pack up and move at this point in the week. The lady then offered us (all 5 of us) dinner at Cucian del Capitano complements of guest services. I assured her that wasn’t necessary but she insisted. I told her I would talk to my husband and she agreed to call back the following night. I add this because we never once asked Carnival for anything and did not want to be those people who expected everything. DD and I slept like a log that night. Apparently the seas decided to finally calm. Either that or we were too exhausted to care.

Next stop was the rain forest. Because we were slightly off schedule, this part of our tour had to be shortened. We did not see any monkeys in the forest—or any other animals for that matter. However, Javin did point out many of the plants and trees as he guided us through his “backyard”. Upon returning to the bus, we had a tailgate lunch that consisted of chicken and beef empanadas, bread pudding, fruit punch, and several other sweet treats. Neither I nor my son have adventurous taste buds. However, we both really enjoyed the empanadas and the bread pudding was phenomenal.

Following the cotton mill, Javin took us to Black Rock. This looked at little intimidating as he secured a safety rope for us to use as we climbed down. I’m 40, and overweight, wearing Chacco sandals and huge blisters on my feet. However, I did not want to damper my family’s time so I headed off down the rocks. It was not an easy climb but everyone in our group made it down. Climbing on the rocks is a little difficult so again, I wish I would have packed and worn sneakers. However, Javin took some great pictures and I think my family was proud of me for making the hike down and up. Upon reaching the top, DH had a couple of the islands $2 beer.

We were supposed to arrive at 10AM. An announcement was made that we would be arriving in port approximately 30 minutes late. We got a little nervous as we had booked an outside excursion with Javin. However, the announcement was made right around 10 AM that we could disembark. Lines for debarkation were long and backed up the stairwells. However, a Carnival employee came and got a bunch of us and told us we could disembark mid-ship with no wait if we could manage the steps. We were off the ship in no time.

After a short walk from the pier to meet Javin, we had to wait for a few other guests who would be joining us. We were off on our island tour by 11. This was a great tour and I highly recommend Javin. He loves his island and wants you to love it too. We started our tour by going to an old cotton mill where Javin explained the history and how he used to play there when he was a young boy.

No excursion planned. We disembarked around 1:00 pm and our only plan for the day was to walk to and tour the forts. I had rubbed blisters on two of my toes the previous day but I didn’t want my family to know how much pain I was in. If you plan to walk around Puerto Rico, pack the right shoes. My Chacco sandals were not the right shoes for this day. The whole family enjoyed touring and taking pictures at Castillo San Felipe del Morro.

We missed the trolley headed back and were told they come in about 20 minute increments so we just decided to walk back. Again, I didn’t tell them my toes felt like they were about to fall off. We reboarded and had dinner on the ship. After dinner, the boys headed off to meet up with their ship friends. There were a lot of other people from NC on ship, many from our hometown and the immediate surrounding are.

DH headed off to the casino. DD and I decided to try to get a good night’s sleep. Again, we aren’t really night owls. My feet were killing me and at this point we were sleep deprived. Guest services called our room to check on us and I explained that I was really too tired to pack up and move and that hopefully seas would be calmer. I was wrong! Way wrong! While the booms and shuddering were not as loud as the previous night, they came in every 25-30 seconds. DD and I watched a couple of movies and continued to let sleep evade us.

No excursion planned. We disembarked around 1:00 pm and our only plan for the day was to walk to and tour the forts. I had rubbed blisters on two of my toes the previous day but I didn’t want my family to know how much pain I was in. If you plan to walk around Puerto Rico, pack the right shoes. My Chacco sandals were not the right shoes for this day. The whole family enjoyed touring and taking pictures at Castillo San Felipe del Morro. We missed the trolley headed back and were told they come in about 20 minute increments so we just decided to walk back. Again, I didn’t tell them my toes felt like they were about to fall off. We reboarded and had dinner on the ship. After dinner, the boys headed off to meet up with their ship friends. There were a lot of other people from NC on ship, many from our hometown and the immediate surrounding are.

DH headed off to the casino. DD and I decided to try to get a good night’s sleep. Again, we aren’t really night owls. My feet were killing me and at this point we were sleep deprived. Guest services called our room to check on us and I explained that I was really too tired to pack up and move and that hopefully seas would be calmer. I was wrong! Way wrong! While the booms and shuddering were not as loud as the previous night, they came in every 25-30 seconds. DD and I watched a couple of movies and continued to let sleep evade us.

Grand Turks is a nice port in that you can get right of the ship and go to the beach. However, on this day the whole family's mood seemed to be "off". I think the boys had been out a little late and were feeling a little underwhelmed and sleep deprived. The water was cold but my daughter and husband enjoyed the ocean for a bit. The boys went back to the ship to sleep shortly after.

When we returned to our room that afternoon, I had a letter to call guest services. I called and they stated that they could change our rooms. This sounded great. The boys got upgraded to a suite on the spa deck and me and the girl were moved to deck 6, same category room but it was in the front of the ship and had a window. We thought great. We packed our stuff and off we went.

For DH, this was an upgrade. For my daughter and me, we felt like we got moved to the bomb shelter. Again, not necessarily Carnival's fault but apparently the seas were bad and being in the very front like that we heard and felt every wave as we hit it. I timed it, the booms were about 60 seconds apart and the whole cabin would shake and shudder. DD usually sleeps through anything but she was awake and frustrated. I called guest services to ask if there were any other rooms. The only rooms were the two we had moved out of. Not wanting to move in the middle of the night, we watched a movie and finally fell back asleep.

I am having trouble uploading photos. I will upload to Shutterfly tonight and post more tomorrow.

DH goes to guest services and did not complain but simply asked if there was any way to dampen the noise above him. He was told that someone would tell the galley staff to "keep it down". We proceeded with our day and spent the day on Deck 12 above the lido pool. If you want chairs on a sold out cruise, you had better get up early. I was up by 7:30 and claimed four chairs. My husband joined me by 8am and my daughter shortly thereafter. We had an extra chair but the couple beside us also had teenagers so after befriending them, we shared the extra chair between our teenagers and theirs. Now, Carnival has no control over people being rude and truthfully, this next encounter was one of only two such rude encounters. My husband and daughter go up to get lunch, leaving their towels in the chairs. The woman walks over and sets her stuff down in her chairs. I explained that those chairs were taken. She claims "well no one is in them and their stuff isn't there." I pointed to the towels and explained those were their towels. The couple we had befriended also stated that my husband and daughter had just gotten up. The woman told me to "shove it" and stormed off. I'm sorry if you roll out of bed at lunch time, you will have a difficult time finding chairs. Nevertheless, poolside fun was great and we all got burned. It is sad when the people from Minnesota have a darker tan than us North Carolinians.

For breakfast, I tried the juevos rancheros from Blue Iguana. This was my breakfast for the rest of the week. Hands down better than the buffet offerings. The first day I did not specify how I wanted my egg cooked. That my mistake as it was way overcooked. However, the rest of the week was overeasy and I was good to go.

Lunch was tacos from the Blue Iguana. I made the mistake of putting the watermelon pico on mine rather than the tomato pico. They were still yummy but I guess I had had a few drinks and kept telling my DH, these are oddly sweet.

We had dinner again in the Sapphire. It was elegant night and unfortunately my son's friend did not pack pants. However, based upon experience with NCL we thought we would be okay in anytime dining. Upon arrival, the hostess did say that pants were required so I told the boys they would need to eat in the buffet. The hostess asked if he had pants and I told her no and she allowed them to stay. I am sure that this upset some. However, my lobster did not taste any different. Same for the tablecloths that people are so upset about. The tablecloth on elegant night did not change the taste of my food. My boys were wearing shorts but demonstrated good manners, which is more than I can say for some of those wearing suits and tuxes.

The boys did go to Club 02 this night and this changed their cruise experience. They each met a different group of friends. They did have a curfew--even though they explained that "we are the only teenagers on this ship with a curfew". I said "oh well".

First of all, embarkation was a "Breeze" for us. However, we knew to show up during our scheduled time. There were tons of people sitting and waiting outside the terminal when we got there but we walked right in and were on the ship within 30 minutes of parking our car. Again, we showed up at our designated time which was between 11:30-12:00. We got there at the tail end of the window. We did have some difficulty finding parking but with lots of patience we drove around until something opened up. We knew it was spring break week and the ship was sold out.

We had booked two cabins, a cove balcony and an interior. We have two children, a boy 17 and a girl 13. My son brought his friend who is also 17. My husband was booked in the cove with the boys and I was booked in interior with my daughter. No, we did not trust the boys to be in the interior alone.

On the first day, we had lunch at Guy's. The line was no longer than 5 minutes. It moved quickly all week. My daughter had pizza (basically for every lunch and dinner). The ship is beautiful and the decor beats the glitzy overdone decor on other Carnival ships. We found a couple of chairs on one of the side decks and hung out overlooking Miami for the day. Let me preface here by saying we are pretty chill. I like to find a chaise and read and my husband likes to drink beer and visit the casino occasionally. I am 40 and he is 42.

We had anytime dining in the Sapphire restaurant. We showed up for dinner around 6 and were seated right away. "Cesar" a.k.a "Cesar Salad" was our head waiter that night and he did a great job. I also am not one of those people who remembers what I ate every night. However, the dinner and service was good. We asked for Cesar the remainder of the week and unless there was a wait for him, his team served us most of the week.

Also, during the first day our cabin stewardess introduced herself. She never asked if we had a preference for service once or twice day. She just serviced our cabin twice daily--during the time we were in those cabins.

The first night the older teenagers did not go to Club O2. They hung with us and explored the ship.

Because we had booked rather last minute for spring break week, our cabin choices were limited, especially two in close proximity. Only after we had just paid in full did we find out our cabins were under the galley. Apparently my husband had a rough night's sleep--and he sleeps like the dead. I had packed earplugs which came in handy for the noise above our interior room.

I admitted defeat today and finally unpacked. I was really hoping that my vacation being over was a dream. I don't do a lot of pictures but I will tell you about my experience on the Breeze. First of all, this my 8th cruise--5th on Carnival. Our most recent Carnival cruise, prior to this one, was on the Fascination in October 2016 and I swore I would never step foot on another Carnival ship. However, spring break was rolling around and I felt the itch to go somewhere. Other lines were financially out of reach on such short notice so I decided to give the Breeze a try. I am really glad I did. Was it perfect? No. Did things go wrong? Yes. Did any of it ruin my vacation? Absolutely not!

We drove from Raleigh, NC. We left on Friday around 2PM, planning to stop in Melbourne and spend the night. We expected to be at the hotel around 11. However, traffic in SC was a nightmare. We arrived in Melbourne around 2:30 AM. We crawled in bed for a couple of hours. Had we known we would not have made reservations and just driven on through. We were back on the road by 8:00AM and headed for Miami. The drive down took approximately 15-15 ½ hours.