Alliwanttodoiscruise

So we had an 1155 flight out of Miami Airport. I was a little stressed about this. Had anything gone wrong we could have missed that flight.

So we chose to do self disembark. At guest services the day before, I was told to go to the Amber Theatre by 715 and wait to be called. We headed down in the elevator at 7am. When the elevator door opened, we were met by Gentry who told us to turn around and go back up unless we had an early flight or a tour in Miami. I told her we did have an early flight at 1155. She replied that it was not an early flight and to go back up.

We went back up to the 4th floor elevator lobby and waited with a lot of other people. They came over the PA at 715 and said they would soon start calling self disembark by deck. Just a note...they never called for Gold Platinum, faster to the fun ever that morning. I guess they snuck them off so that others wouldn't try to mingle in.

Well at about 740 they had not called any self disembark. I noticed people starting to go back down in the elevators and not coming back so we headed down and they were directing self disembark off the ship! But they never announced it!

Anyways, we breezed through customs, got a cab no problem and were eating breakfast at Miami Airport at 825. The Westjet check-in counter wasn't even open yet! Job well done! I worried and stressed about that flight for nothing! Oh and they were playing Let It Snow in Spanish in the food court at the airport!

Our final dinner was a little sad. Nobody wants to go home. And we had to say goodbye to Jovito.

I had some spicy pork loin which was really good. My husband had ravioli.

There was carrot cake and cherry pie in addition to the usual selection.

My meat and potatoes man had ordered 2 Flat Iron steaks every night. On this last night, he decided to order 3! And he ate them!

The chocolate extravaganza was good. There was finally a nice selection of tasty desserts. My question is: "If Carnival has the ingredients and the bakers to produce yummy desserts why do we have wait until the last day to have them?"

After the Towel Theatre Mom and I went to do online check-in for our flights. It took us forever to find the Internet Cafe as it is in a back corner of the Ivory Cafe. The internet if very slow and kept timing out half way through the check-in. It was very frustrating and I ended up having to go back after dinner and finish when it seemed to be working better.

After lunch, we hung out at the pool and watched the Hairy Chest Contest.

It was not that nice of an afternoon for our last day. It was cloudy and cool and rained a bit. But I'm not going to complain because we had awesome weather every day of this trip up until this point.

We went to Hasbro Game Show Part II before dinner. It was entertaining.

We did the Towel Animal Folding Demonstration on our first cruise but decided to do it again. My kids had a hard time. It is not an easy thing to do.

My husband managed to make the elephant.

After the folding demonstration they had Towel Animal Theater, which is apparently only on some ships. Unless you are a small child, DO NOT STAY. It was a puppet show on a tv screen. My husband sat through it because he likes to torment our kids but my Mom and I snuck out.

On our last sea day, Friday Morning, they held the Dr. Seuss Breakfast.

A tip- sign up for this as soon as you get on the ship. They will have a table set up in the lobby. It is $5 per person. Well worth it. While my moody 13 year old was not excited to be there, my 11 year old and 44 year old enjoyed themselves very much. As did I.

I had the steak and eggs and it was the best breakfast that I had on the entire cruise.

All the waiters were dressed in Thing shirts. All the characters came and made the rounds to all the kids and got pictures taken (the annoying photographers were lurking but mostly stood back and let people take their own pictures).

Here are some pictures:

We went to 3 Comedy shows on Thursday night.

The first was Tom Foss's pg show. It was very good and the kids and adults laughed a lot.

The second was Dwight Slade pg show. Also very funny.

The kids went back to the cabin and we stayed for Tom Foss's adult show. It was not good at all. It wasn't even funny. I couldn't wait for it to be over.

Forgot to mention they had Creme Brulee on formal night.

So there was no lobster on the 2nd formal night.

I had a crab cake and some stuffed mushrooms for an appetizer. Both very good.

For my entree I had some shrimp and a Filet Mignon on stop of boneless spareribs. Both were also very good and I have no complaints.

The only real complaint I have about the main dining room overall was the dessert selection. It was really lacking and I ate Chocolate melting cake a lot of nights. They would have some kind of cake (sometimes), a diabetic dessert which always sounded great but tasted gross, a cheese plate and some kind of pie. That was pretty much it. Oh and ice cream.

On this night, the waiters did the singing and dancing. Our waiter, Jovito, took my 11 year old with him up to the middle of the dining room where all the action was and they danced. It was very nice of him to do that.

Here are some of the food pictures:

So since we missed the first formal night, we dressed up for this one.

After a nice afternoon at the pool, we got all dressed up and headed down to let the annoying photographers take our pictures.

This seems like a good place in my review to give my opinion on the photographers. I found them extremely annoying, rude and intrusive on my vacation. I do not remember feeling that way on my first cruise.

They are lined up down the Promenade deck at all hours of the day and night. Every time you try to walk through there they try to get you to come and get pictures taken. It kind of reminds me of the fair when you walk down the midway and the carnies try to get you to stop and play their game. It reeks of desperation on Carnival's part to get your money. I was not impressed.

I also found the photographers to be rude and annoying on the gangway. As soon as you were off, they were grabbing you and pushing you into photos with people in outfits such as a towel animal, pirates, Mr. Potato Head, etc. or posing in front of signs for the port. I like to do this on the off chance that they get a really nice photo. However, I would like my whole family to be in the picture and sometimes they wouldn't even wait until everyone got down the gangway as they were in such a hurry to snap a picture and move you along. Some of the photos my poor mother isn't even in or is off to the side because she didn't get a chance.

On a side note since I am on a roll with my complaining tonight...they did take a really nice picture of all of us in Grand Turk or Half Moon Cay, can't remember and it doesn't matter. And some a...hole thought it would be funny to jump in behind us. Ruined the picture.

After we got our pictures taken, we went up on deck and took our own before dinner.

So on this cruise the two sea days were at the end of the cruise. I'm not sure if I would like to do that again or not.

On one hand, you had two whole days on the ship to do all the things that you had not done yet. On the other hand, I think maybe I liked it better on our first cruise when we had one in the middle and one at the end. It seemed to make the cruise last longer and it was only a 6 night as opposed to a 7 night. With ports 4 days in a row I found the time went really fast.

Anyways, our first sea day was Thursday. We went to the Live Morning Show with Adam and Hugo. It was quite entertaining. They had the live cameras from the Lido deck on the screen and basically made fun of people (in a nice way). Then they took calls from passengers, also entertaining as people are quite funny without even meaning to be sometimes.

After some Good Morning Trivia, we went and played mini golf.

Here is a picture of the first hole. It has a snake on it!

Hate when people say "wrong side of the road". No, they drive on the opposite side of the road.

 

Just because it's not the same as yours doesn't mean it's wrong.

I hate it when people have nothing better to do than look for petty things to criticize.

Curious as to what movies they showed at night on the big screen on the Lido deck.

Here are the movies that played on the big screen while we were on board:

Unbroken

Interstellar

Big Hero 6

Into The Woods

Night At The Museum Secret of the tomb

Ride Along

The Hunger Games Mocking Jay Part 1

The Other Women

The Fault In Our Stars

Dawn of The Planet of the Apes

Captain America Winter Soldier

Guardians of The Galaxy

How much did the tour cost?

I believe it was $30

We went to see Divas on Wednesday night. It was not very good. Most of the singers did not sound like who they were supposed to at all.

So in the funtimes, they advertised photo opportunities with Dr. Seuss at 515 and Thing 1 and Thing 2 at 715.

We dragged our kids kicking and screaming (not literally but thats what it feels like when you make teenage boys do things like this).

They did both photo shoots. You weren't allowed to take pictures. Only the photographers which is really dumb because later on in the week at the seuss breakfast the characters all came and posed for pictures and you were allowed to take them with your own camera.

Anyways, we did end up buying the professional photo of our kids with Dr. Seuss where they had on the hats. My husband felt that it was priceless. I felt that it wasn't worth $21.99 (oh yes only available in 8.5 x 11) for a "professional photo" where the top of Dr. Seuss's hat is cut off.

On this night, I had a seafood pasta that was quite good. It had penne noodles with scallops, calamari, shrimp, mussels and a piece of salmon on top.

The others had lasagna. My husband had some kind of breaded chicken which he said was pretty good.

They had a meatball appetizer which the boys enjoyed. I had some little breaded shrimp which were quite tasty with the dipping sauce.

The boys stayed in St. Thomas after the tour to go enjoy a frosty at Wendy's (I guess maybe they were homesick!)

Mom and I got back on the ship and headed up to lido to hang out by the pool.

We spent the rest of the afternoon there and the boys spent some some on the water slide when they got back. It was the first time on the whole cruise that they had used it since we had been in port everyday.

St. Thomas is a very pretty island. From some of the boats that I saw, I would guess that there are some wealthy people residing here. Here are some random pictures that I took:

Our tour guide, Gomez was very nice. While we were waiting patiently for the stragglers at Magen's Bay, he showed us a cashew plant and a cocoa bean that he had.

Here is the cashew plant and cocoa bean:

On the way back from Magen's Bay, we stopped at an outlook called Drake's Seat after some explorer.

Here are the pictures:

Our last port was St. Thomas. I really liked it there. It is a beautiful island, nice people. I felt very safe there.

We had a tour to Magen's Bay booked for 1030. We docked at 7 am. I think we got off around 9 am and looked in some souvenir shops. Picked up a few nice things for reasonable prices. The people here were friendly, not pushy.

Our tour guide was Gomez. He seemed to be a very old man but he was very kind. They drive like crazy in St. Thomas and on the wrong side of the road. The ride to Magen's Bay was a little scary. You were in an open air type bus with no seatbelts. You had to hang on for dear life going up those hills!

Magen's Bay was really nice. It was clean and the water was warm and calm. A nice lady walked along the beach and took drink orders. There were lifeguards at this beach. There were some people that don't like to follow the rules that kept going beyond the buoys. The lifeguards were getting very upset with them.

I only have one picture that I can post. Most of my pictures have people in them that are recognizable. I would never post a picture with somebody in it on a board like this, especially strangers. I would be very upset if I found myself in someones picture on the internet - especially at the beach :eek:.

Here is one I have where the people are really far away.

Wow - Nine years ago we stopped to see the parrot guy and our oldest son (then 15) had his picture taken with the parrots with Carnival Legend in the background. He has a goofy grin on his face, he's holding a ship's wheel (labeled Titanic:p) and has three parrots perched on his arms. It's a Polaroid shot and we paid $10 for it. Today we have it as one of our wallpaper shots. Son is now a US Navy officer. Ten dollars is a lot to pay for a Polaroid shot, but today I think it's the best $10 we've spent.:)

We didn't have to buy any pictures. You were allowed to take your own pictures. The parrot guy charged $5 for you to do the pics but he let you do a few different shots holding a Puerto Rico sign. I'm sure it's money well spent as we will have those pictures and memories forever.

On our first cruise, we never ate breakfast in the dining room. So it was on our list for this cruise.

On Wednesday, Day 5 St. Thomas Day we decided to try it.

It was ok. Pretty much the same stuff you would have got on the Lido except someone brought it to you instead of you getting it yourself.

I had a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon which was very good. My husband ordered a baked apple which he didn't like because it was cold and he thought a baked apple would be warm.

I can't remember if I mentioned this already, but the bacon was terrible on this cruise. I think they microwaved it and it was really bad. And at the lido buffet a lady served it to you. You weren't allowed to get it yourself. Anyways, they were serving the same microwaved bits of bacon crap in the main dining room. Meat and Potatoes man loves bacon and he wouldn't eat it, if that tells you how bad it was.