arekayone

Terry -

We didn't keep the dailies. I was very undisciplined on this "getaway" and hardly took any pictures either. I did, however, get several shots of the guys staring at the bridge when the ship was pulling away.

We didn't do any classes, but my wife made her way up to the gym every day to get some stretching and cardio in. I sat on our balcony and slept. I've been so stressed out with work the past few months that my body recognized an opportunity to shut down and took full advantage of it.

I'm not sure why there would be so many negative reviews, but I suppose people have more of a tendency to complain than to praise. The cruise is ultimately going to be what you make of it, and the people that you meet. Even the casual asides you mumble to a stranger sitting next to you in a bar opens up avenues of conversation. I won't remember the food a year from now, but I'll remember the faces and the laughs we had with people we hardly knew.

I hope you have a wonderful cruise. We wouldn't hesitate to jump aboard again next year at this time, and probably will.

My wife and I just returned to snow-packed Illinois after a 4-day on the Connie. We sailed on the Eclipse two years ago, and sail RCCL when with our 3 children. I'll preface my comments by stating we had an absolute blast. Here are a few thoughts....

We thought the food in the dining room was outstanding, however, the service was lacking. We did anytime dining, so maybe that made a difference. Four nights in the dining room, not once did the sommelier visit our table. The first night we never even saw our waiter, as his assistant handled the whole meal. Annoying? Yes. Bad enough for me to rail for hours about it? Nope.

I have to retract my sommelier comment, as there was one night he served us. We had the unbelievable great fortune of being asked to dine at the Captain's table. We are still trying to figure out how it happened, as we were merely waiting in line to be seated, and someone came up to us and asked us if we cared to dine at the Captain's table. Heck yes! Although we did have a few moments of panic as we each had just consumed 3 martinis....my wife whispered in my ear that we better not say anything stupid or we will be scorned for life on the Connie. It just so happened to be my wife's 50th birthday and made for a "bucket list" type event for both of us. We met another fantastic couple who felt as privileged as us. They put a small birthday cake together for her, and handed all of us a beautiful photo taken looking down at the table, along with a seating chart of who was with us and everyone's name. What an honor that was! We are still trying to figure out why we were picked out.

Buffet food? Meh. Our expectations were low but we did feel the food was better than when we sailed on the Eclipse. The layout of the buffet is awful though and invites traffic jams. I also have to add an obligatory "***?" moment in there.....my wife was standing behind a man and his two children who were waiting for waffles. The cook pulls a couple off the iron, and an older man butts in right in front of the man and kids and takes them and walks off. Unreal.

Craziest moment of the cruise? The ship left two men behind in Nassau. We left a half hour late, were about fifteen feet off the pier and two men came running down. One of the guys was pleading with the bridge to come back. Dummies. Yeah, we'll let two morons hold up a ship with almost 3000 people on it because they wanted to party a bit longer. I hope they had their passports and credit cards.

The Argentinian cruise director was GREAT. Funny, natural, not-fakey at all. We really enjoyed him. Shows were entertaining but the last night "make believe fairy tale" musical was almost unbearable. We love musical theater, but this was painful to watch.

There was a large group of gay men on the ship, and they were a lot of fun. They were single handedly responsible for the most well-dressed cruise I have ever been on.

They could use a few more bartenders on the ship. Especially at the pool bars. The barrista (sp?) in Cafe El Bacio made a great cappuccino. The service in that area was wonderful. Martini Bar was much fun, but dangerous if you have the premium drink package. Came out ahead in the casino for the first time ever. Embarkation/debarkation a breeze.

I could go on and on but I'm too darn tired. Great cruise. Relaxing, fun, and such great people on the ship. If Jim or Melinda, or our friends "Buffalo" and Jill read this, we are glad we had a little time to spend with you!

If you have questions, please ask.

My wife and I just returned to snow-packed Illinois after a 4-day on the Connie. We sailed on the Eclipse two years ago, and sail RCCL when with our 3 children. I'll preface my comments by stating we had an absolute blast. Here are a few thoughts....

We thought the food in the dining room was outstanding, however, the service was lacking. We did anytime dining, so maybe that made a difference. Four nights in the dining room, not once did the sommelier visit our table. The first night we never even saw our waiter, as his assistant handled the whole meal. Annoying? Yes. Bad enough for me to rail for hours about it? Nope.

I have to retract my sommelier comment, as there was one night he served us. We had the unbelievable great fortune of being asked to dine at the Captain's table. We are still trying to figure out how it happened, as we were merely waiting in line to be seated, and someone came up to us and asked us if we cared to dine at the Captain's table. Heck yes! Although we did have a few moments of panic as we each had just consumed 3 martinis....my wife whispered in my ear that we better not say anything stupid or we will be scorned for life on the Connie. It just so happened to be my wife's 50th birthday and made for a "bucket list" type event for both of us. We met another fantastic couple who felt as privileged as us. They put a small birthday cake together for her, and handed all of us a beautiful photo taken looking down at the table, along with a seating chart of who was with us and everyone's name. What an honor that was! We are still trying to figure out why we were picked out.

Buffet food? Meh. Our expectations were low but we did feel the food was better than when we sailed on the Eclipse. The layout of the buffet is awful though and invites traffic jams. I also have to add an obligatory "***?" moment in there.....my wife was standing behind a man and his two children who were waiting for waffles. The cook pulls a couple off the iron, and an older man butts in right in front of the man and kids and takes them and walks off. Unreal.

Craziest moment of the cruise? The ship left two men behind in Nassau. We left a half hour late, were about fifteen feet off the pier and two men came running down. One of the guys was pleading with the bridge to come back. Dummies. Yeah, we'll let two morons hold up a ship with almost 3000 people on it because they wanted to party a bit longer. I hope they had their passports and credit cards.

The Argentinian cruise director was GREAT. Funny, natural, not-fakey at all. We really enjoyed him. Shows were entertaining but the last night "make believe fairy tale" musical was almost unbearable. We love musical theater, but this was painful to watch.

There was a large group of gay men on the ship, and they were a lot of fun. They were single handedly responsible for the most well-dressed cruise I have ever been on.

They could use a few more bartenders on the ship. Especially at the pool bars. The barrista (sp?) in Cafe El Bacio made a great cappuccino. The service in that area was wonderful. Martini Bar was much fun, but dangerous if you have the premium drink package. Came out ahead in the casino for the first time ever. Embarkation/debarkation a breeze.

I could go on and on but I'm too darn tired. Great cruise. Relaxing, fun, and such great people on the ship. If Jim or Melinda, or our friends "Buffalo" and Jill read this, we are glad we had a little time to spend with you!

If you have questions, please ask.

Boleros....

I have great memories of sitting at that bar with my oldest son, working on hitting our "break even" point on the drink package, while waiting for my wife and daughter to get ready for dinner.

Thanks for the report (although I'm not sure how you found the time to do it). We'll be taking our second new years cruise on her in December and can hardly wait.

Wishing you a safe trip home.

Hi all -

I'll post some semblance of a review of the cruise when I can finally get home and settle in. Quick summary - We had an absolute blast, took the kids and now feel like we will have to do a New Years Eve cruise every year.

Big problem is trying to get home. Air fare from Illinois was going to run close to $4000 for the five of us, so we decided to take a family adventure and drive the 1150 miles. No problem going down, getting home has been a nightmare of epic proportions.

We were going to go straight through, but a big winter storm hit Illinois, and my hometown, Champaign, is right in the middle of it. We ended up having to spend last night in Smyrna, TN. The last two hours between Chattanooga and Smyrna were terrifying. When the storm front hit in the mountains, our visibility went to zero and we were driving blind through sloping curvy roads for close to a minute.

Even worse when we hit Illinois. It took us 5 hours to go 75 miles between Mt Vernon and Effingham. Completely covered with ice, had to go 15 mph tops. Cars and trucks off the roads everywhere. Moronic truckers trying to push 40 mph and ending up jack-knifing. I'm a good driver, but my family had to pry my hands off the steering wheel when we got to our hotel. We literally all prayed the last half hour of the drive and it was almost impossible to stay on the road. We have already extended our reservation through tomorrow night in case we can't make the 70 mile drive from here to Champaign. I have never in my life experienced such sheer terror driving, with very few options to pull off and find a place to stay. Here at the hotel, they are sending folks to the shelters cause there is no room at the inn. There is a Wal Mart parking lot near the hotel that is completely full of trucks. I've never seen anything like this.

Anyway, If we ever make it home I'll post a review. In the meantime, I'll continue my tour of Hampton Inns from Port Canaveral to Champaign, IL.

Yeah, we all flew last time but this year air fare was going to be $3800 for the five of us. I thought it would be nice to have my kids captive in a car with us so we could make them communicate with us. :p

It's funny though, we all talk about wanting to fly in a day early in case a flight is delayed, but if anyone was planning on driving down on the day of the cruise, and something like this happened, they would be up a creek without a paddle. We have found more tweets from people saying they spent five hours sitting in this.

Horrible accident on 75 in Valdosta, Georgia. Someone stole a semi and crashed it into an overpass abutment, it exploded and created havoc on the interstate.

We were driving down from Illinois (jumping on the FOS tomorrow morning) and were happy to finally be nearing the Florida state line. Suddenly saw a huge plume of black smoke, and traffic slowed to a standstill. Fortunately, immediately next to where we stopped in the left lane, was one of those emergency vehicle turn arounds. We did the "U-ey", got off and found a way to get back on eventually. My son got on Twitter and immediately found info on it, including pictures. It looked like an inferno. The interstate was closed down for over 6 hours. He found tweets from people that said the were past Atlanta at 1:00 pm, 6 hours later they still weren't in Valdosta. That drive shouldn't take more than 3 hours.

Anyway, I imagine there were a bunch of cruisers headed down this way that got stuck. We were fortunate and had stopped for gas about 10 minutes before this or we might have been right in the middle of it. The drive was bad enough, I can't imagine what time we would have hit Cocoa Beach if we were stuck.

After this long day, I just want to be on the ship and settled down.

You can set up a package with your cell phone provider for a specific amount of time that gives you minutes on international trips. We did that last year and would call home every evening to check in - and it is lucky we did, because......

(story) Before we left I told my very fidgety 12 year old son that he needed to stop jumping around and flopping while we were gone because he was going to crack his head open. We had our 23 year old son and 19 year old daughter at home running the show, but had backups from a bunch of different people if anything went wrong.

Sure enough, we called my daughter's cell one night and she was in the car with my 12 year old heading to one of our friends house. He was at basketball practice, ran out of the gym to open the door for someone, jumped down a small flight of stairs and hit his head on the landing above, cracking his head open.

Guess what the ONE thing I asked my wife to take care of was before we left? Yup, medical release letters - she forgot to do it. Luckily for us, my wife works for a plastic surgeon and we were able to take care of everything over the phone.

Moral of the story - buy a cell package for the duration of the trip that gives you international minutes. Only turn your phone on when you make a call to check in, and ALWAYS leave medical releases for your kids.

Quick question for some of you seasoned cruisers out there....how do you get on the ship without a valid passport or ID?

Thanks for your review; we'll be sailing on the FOTS in a couple weeks. I saw your previous blog post about packing and immediately shared it with my wife and 19 year old daughter. New packages keep showing up at our house every day, and I'm being asked for opinions on new dresses/shoes/bathing suits for both of them (my answer to both of them is "you look beautiful in that, its a keeper" when I really want to ask them why they need new sequin dresses for NYE).

Anyway, I have a couple weeks to gently convince them to cull down their wardrobes. I'm hoping your comment on how "no one remembers what you wear so you can repeat outfits" will work.

had him as an asst CD on the Voyager a couple years ago. Seemed like a very fun guy, very personable. I am quite certain he uses and entire can of hair spray every day to keep his flip hair style from moving out of alignment. :p

Has anyone on here tried Zylast or heard any first hand reports of its effectiveness? I bought a bottle of both the antiseptic and antiseptic lotion for each member of my family to take on our cruise in a couple weeks and hoping it serves as an extra measure of protection from any nasties we may come in contact with.

not trying to be snarky, but why don't you just google the port? I'm sure the address will be there.;)

I had to laugh at your "strong attention to detail" description when it comes to planning your travels. My wife and kids laugh at me when I am putting all the checklists together, making sure everything is in order to ensure a stress free vacation. My wife knew what she was getting into when she married me....my career as an architect is perfect for someone who plans and organizes everything.

We, too, are doing the "last big family vacation thing" in about 22 days. Son is 23 and ready to head off to law school with a wedding in the works, daughter is 19 and other son is 12. Sort of sad, but we decided to go out with a bang and do a new years cruise.

Thanks for your review and assurances that there are other planning lunatics like me out there.

My wife and I did the same bike tour on a Celebrity Cruise last year and had an absolute blast. Best excursion we have ever done. Your picture of the big tour guide brought back great memories.

Only 6 of us on our bike trip....I'm 51, wife is 48 (we ride a lot) and we had a couple in their early 70's on the ride. They were unbelievably fit and a great deal of fun to ride with. Other couple was a woman in her 30's and her 40 yo boyfriend. She was in shape, he wasn't and only lasted about 10 minutes riding. I felt so bad for that guy; I've never seen anyone's color change to such a bright shade of red - I thought he was going to die (I think the guides did too). Safety first! Safety first! I can still hear that in my mind.

One of my favorite memories of that ride was the fresh coconut they gave us at the beach stop. I had never had it before and almost ate every bit of it they had.

Thanks for posting the review and especially the pics of the ride. You stirred great memories of our 25th anniversary cruise!

This website has a fairly comprehensive list of events at sea, including crime:

http://www.cruisejunkie.com/events.html

FYI on the luggage tag holders from Amazon....they DO come with the vinyl loops that you use to attach to your bags. I didn't know that so I am now the proud owner of a big bag of vinyl loops.

Yes, we received the same email. Threw my wife for a loop...she wondered if I sneaked away on a secret cruise.

Human/bendy guy relationships might be a better fit for the alternative lifestyles cruises.

:D

No offense Jim, but you have no idea if the suggestions made would work or not. A bunch of people with similar issues responded how they dealt with fight anxiety. They are all reasonable options.

And, the common thread in all of them was that they started with a health care professional (MD, therapist, psychologist) that probably provided different options. You cannot get xanax, ambien or valium without consulting your doctor; I thought that went without saying.

So at the end of the day you just said that everything that was suggested was hooey, the OP should consult their doc. That is exactly what everyone that posted just said, in one way or another.

Just sayin.......;)

I think it goes without saying that if the OP were to pursue medications such as xanax or ambien, they would HAVE to go through their doctor to get a prescription. I see no harm in suggesting it.

I used to have horrible anxiety about flying, talked to my doc and he prescribed xanax when I needed to fly. After about ten years of having to fly 4-5 times a year on our corporate jet, and then a few commercial flights a year, I no longer have the anxiety issues.

I have an employee that has huge flying issues, his doc prescribed valium for when he has to fly. The more he has flown, the less he has to use it.

i feel the OP's pain, and realize how it can cause you to really miss out on a lot of great life experiences. If it takes a bit of medication to get over the hump, it is well worth it. I can attest to the improved quality of my life as my wife and I take at least 5 "flying trips" a year now!