cambio

I suspect that an entire cage of suitcases that gets forklifted onto the ship went into the water and probably did not float.

I read that the same thing happened in Long Beach on the Splendor cruise that had the fire. I notice that Long Beach has nets under the loading doors now. Hopefully San Pedro will do the same thing.

I think that you also have to factor in your preferences for a bigger ship vs a smaller one. The Miracle has about 2,000 guests where the Crown is over 3,000. We like the bigger ships with more facilities and activities.

We were on the Miracle last year for New year's and have booked the Crown Princess this year. Bigger is better, to us.

I just priced out a very nice all inclusive (including alcoholic beverages) for $140/ night per person in Cancun.

I would say that the Cruise industry needs to look over their shoulders and look at the value that some of the alternative vacations can offer.

The 24-105L is also a big heavy lens.

I am still amazed by the good old 18-55 kit lens. I got rid of my t3i body, but kept the kit lens that I use from time to time on my eos m with an adapter.

I am one of those people you see running around the ship with the big camera and flash.

Any camera will take nice pictures if the lens is clean and there is a lot of light. A big fancy camera left on full auto mode won't do much better than your iPhone.

I manually set up my camera's shutter speed and aperture and process the pictures on my laptop. My wife carries a little point and shoot camera which is setup to always fire the flash. That way you don't have the bright backgrounds with the shadowy faces.

A lot of people think that I go overboard with my photo gear, but the pictures are our memories of these special Times.

There is a discussion thread about camera's that is very good.

I was on the Oasis last week and had a couple of issues. One with gifts ordered, one with Get the picture and another with my sea pass account.

I have three automated responses so far, but nothing from a human.

I take my laptop, but I recall somebody saying that they had a memory card for each day. That way they were only at risk for that day's photos if anything happened.

We are thinking about this for next year. Is the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco usually calm this time of year?

The problem with not reboarding in Cabo is there have been times the wind and waves prevented tendering the second day-----the ship would "skip" the second Cabo day and sail away! Carnival strongly discourages staying in Cabo overnight for this reason.

My wife and I did the overnight in Cabo and it was pretty nice. The guest services people asked for a copy of our passports. We took the water taxi to our hotel on Medano Beach. Cabo on that particular Tuesday night was pretty dead though. Our contingency plan in case the ship could not make it back into the bay was to fly to Puerto Vallarta.

Sailing Away

Can I get a Flow Rider in My Yard?

 

We walked around a bit and headed to the Spa right before Muster Drill. We got a quick tour and a chance to sit in the heated stone lounge chairs. These chairs are amazing! However, with all we had planned for the next 6 days we just had no idea how or when we would have time to take advantage of the spa. But it was very cool. And the fitness area is very nice as well. We did use that area.

 

My DW is a workout fanatic and since she is a ZUMBA instructor and does strength training sessions as well she really needs to keep up her exercise routine to some extent even while on vacation. She really was wishing she could teach a ZUMBA class on the cruise since she already had 4 people for sure that would come and do her class if she could find a place on board to teach it. I understand why RCCL just can’t let everybody or anybody start teaching classes on the cruise. However, even the spa staff was hoping she could do ZUMBA because they wanted to do it with her. In the end she put on her headphones and went up to the public Aqua deck and did her routine all by herself early one morning. She said it was amazing and the only person who saw her was the guy mopping the deck!

 

 

Thank you for the information about Zumba on the Allure.

 

My wife and I are Zumba instructors sailing next week (5/12) with some of our regulars.

 

On the Adventure of the Seas we used the disco or the viking crown to do our classes. We were hoping to do the same on Allure. We didn't see anything scheduled on the Compasses we have seen that would conflict.

Does anyone know anything about Mellow Touch?

Just off the Inspiration yesterday and we really enjoyed the band Mellow Touch. Great variety from classic rock to ballroom chacha and hustle.

The show band plays in El Morocco on the first formal night and usually once or twice after that. You can also dance there during Superstar live if you can stomach some of the singers.

They used to have a latin band in the Robusto Cigar Lounge. That has been converted to Karaoke, but I think the Latin Band is now in the Cool Lounge next to El Morocco.

Sometimes the Calpyso band plays the promenade by the Casino.

Thanks for trying an all "Magic" thread! My question has to do with dancing-is there any venue or music on the Magic that lends itself to ballroom dancing styles? Have a group that is interested, but am not sure what the options are. Any info you have would be great. Thanks.

My Wife and I are ballroom dancers. We would rate the Magic as being okay. There was a European Couple in the lobby who played Ballroom rhythms, but were kind of out of date for our tastes. We didn't like the placement of the band (above the dancefloor) but the floor itself is very nice and quite large. Ocean Plaza is also a nice sized floor. There was another European couple playing there, with a music selection that was more to our taste. There were a couple of times that the show band and singers played in the back lounge with a good music selection. The European bands did not recognize any of the songs we requested, but they were able to accomodate the Russian guests (often.)

I will be on the Destiny a little over a month from now... do you know what lounge they play in?

I believe at the moment, Blood Power is on the Magic.