Jamman54

Patti continues on with her picture tour of Disney Springs…… To be continued…..

Patti continues on with her picture tour of Disney Springs…… To be continued…..

Patti continues on with her picture tour of Disney Springs…… To be continued…..

We continue our walk through Disney Springs…… When we get to this end of Disney Springs, I head to Dockside Margarita’s and park myself while Patti continues her picture tour. They are closed now, but they will be opening soon….. To be continued…….

We continue our walk through Disney Springs….. This is Gideon’s Bakery. People line up before it opens to be the first to buy their baked goods….. To be continued…..

We continue our walk through Disney Springs….. There was a boat on the lake fishing close to shore, and we watched them as they caught a nice size bass….. Here are some more Disney Spring views….. To be continued…..

Post Cruise (May 9th) - Disney Springs We were up early to another beautiful day. We went for breakfast at the Plaza Garden Restaurant in the hotel, where they have buffet breakfasts and dinners. We never ate dinner there, but the breakfast buffet was $12.95 plus tax, per person. They have a great variety of breakfast options….. Around 9:45am, we hopped in the car and headed west on I-4. In ten minutes we had reached our exit….. Once off I-4, we just followed the signs to the Disney Springs parking garage….. Parking is free. You still have to que for a security scan, but once that’s done you can enter Disney Springs. Masks were recommended but not required. Once we exited the parking garage, Patti pulled out the camera and went to work….. To be continued…….

Post Cruise (May 8th) - Happy Mother’s Day!!! Happy Mother’s Day!!! This is going to be short and sweet since the camera was put away for most of the day. The morning was spent relaxing, and working on the pictures for the review. It’s a beautiful day, and around noon we hopped in the car and headed to Crystal River, Florida which is about an hour and a half away. It’s located on the west coast, north of Tampa……. Just about every time we are down in Florida, we visit with our friends Howard and Elle…… Howard has been my PVP with Carnival for going on fourteen years. After walking around Heritage Village and checking out some of the shops, we went and had dinner at Stumpknocker’s. After a great dinner and visit, we made our way back to the Rosen Inn Pointe Orlando, getting back at 9pm. To be continued……

Ahoy, Cruise Critic family! My beautiful wife Patti and I have just returned from another month long adventure. We spent three days in Port Canaveral / Cocoa Beach, then boarded the beautiful Mardi Gras for two weeks, then finished off our trip with six days in Orlando. Our first week on the Mardi Gras was a 7 day cruise to the Eastern Caribbean, stopping at San Juan, Amber Cove, and Grand Turk. The second week was a 7 day cruise to the Western Caribbean, stopping at Cozumel, Costa Maya, and Isla Roatan (Mahogany Bay). For us, this was the perfect rotation as the first two days of the first cruise were sea days, and the last two days of the second cruise were also sea days. These cruises on the Mardi Gras were a long time coming. To tell this story let me take you back to January 2019. Bookings for cruises on the Mardi Gras were to begin at 10am on January 30th. At this point no itineraries had been released, and only unofficial copies of the deck plans were in existence. At 7pm on the 29th my PVP called me and said that we could book. Startled at getting the call, and not knowing what the itineraries were, we told him to book us on the first cruise out of Port Canaveral. Having seen the unofficial deck plans, we booked an extended balcony on the “hump”, as we loved our “hump” balcony when we sailed on the Explorer of the Seas. The next day when the itineraries had been released, we saw that there was a 15 day repositioning cruise from New York to Port Canaveral. It had an awesome itinerary and was just what we were looking for. We changed our booking to that cruise, and we were able to keep the same “hump” balcony that we had originally booked. To say we were pleased would be an understatement. Now all we had to do was sit and wait for the ship to be built. Fast forward to December of 2019, when Carnival announced that because of construction delays, the first eight sailings would have to be cancelled. We were devastated to say the least. The 25% Future Cruise Credit that was given helped soften the blow a little bit. Having our 2020 and 2021 cruises already booked, we chose our April, 2022 dates and booked her again. Three months later the nightmare that is the pandemic came, and is still here today, but I don’t want to dwell on it anymore, so let’s fast forward back to the present day. We will be driving down to Florida once again. Being away from home for so long it just makes sense to have your own car down there. You can pack as much of your stuff as you want to, since you don’t have to worry about luggage weights and car rentals. Back in the day when our vacation time was limited, we used to drive straight through in one shot which used to take about 16 hours. Since we have the time now, we break it up into two days. This is going to be a very long review so be patient with us. Patti took well over four thousand pictures during this adventure, so I have a lot of sorting, cropping, and re-sizing to catch up on. Even though I took my laptop with me and worked on the photos from time to time, there’s no way I could keep up with Patti’s itchy shutter finger! We also have to catch up with life, work, and such, so we may not post anything for a day or two from time to time, but just remember we have always finished our reviews. As usual, our reviews start and end at home and cover everything in between. I know that some people like to get right into the cruise stuff and I understand that, but when doing these reviews we want to re-live the whole vacation, not just part of it. So, the cruise stuff may take a few days to get to, but once we’re on it, we’re on it! Our format will remain the same as our past reviews with a day by day account. As always, there will be many, many pictures with plenty of explanations and details. For those that are wondering, our go to camera is the Canon PowerShot XS720 HS, and our water camera is the Fuji FinePix XP60. So, let’s get this party started! We strive to make you feel that you are cruising right along with us, so grab yourself a DOD, and hop on board with us and join the fun! To be continued…..