Mountainbreeze's HUGE Victory vacation review!

Great review and pics. Isn't it awesome doing a B2B? And in all my travels, I have never seen sand like HMC. Its like walking on powdered sugar. heaven. :)

I'm loving it. I have another question, you had mentioned you had Anytime dining. What time were you there in the previous nights in order to catch the singing in the dining Room? Do you remember approximately what time they sang? Thanks

We sat around on the balcony talking. We had a lot to catch up on, we hadn't talked in 5 days!

 

 

After a while we decided we were hungry and we wanted to go to dinner. I wanted to introduce Christina to Donovan and Joyce, my new favorite dinner service team.

 

 

By then Christina's luggage had arrived. We both changed our clothes and we went down to dinner.

 

 

 

 

When we got to the dining room, we asked for Donovan and Joyce. The hostess told us their station wasn't opened yet.

Aww!

I was a little disappointed.

I asked for Nungah again, remembering his good service from a few days ago.

 

 

Nungah was an awesome waiter. As far as we could tell, he didn't have an assistant, he did everything himself. We both enjoyed our dinner.

 

 

We missed the singing in the Dining Room that night. We were ok with missing "That's Amore".

I was looking forward to the Macarena and Hey Baby later in the week.

 

 

After dinner Christina and I walked around the ship. We walked through the casino, the gift shops, and I showed her the secret deck in the front of the ship.

 

 

 

 

When we came back to our cabin, we saw Carlos had been there!

Christina was very happy to see a swordfish on her bed, with her bed turned down and looking so comfortable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were both pretty tired. Neither of us had much sleep the night before.

 

 

We went out for the night anyway. We could sleep later

 

 

First we stopped at the casino bar and had a drink. I had a Miami Vice. It was my first time trying one and it was very good.

Next we went to the Caribbean Theater to get seats for the Welcome Aboard show.

 

 

 

 

We were there pretty early, so we watched from the balcony as Donkey hosted an evening game of BINGO.

Christina thought it looked like fun too, with everyone yelling at Donkey, so we made a plan to play BINGO the next day.

 

 

We watched the Welcome Aboard Show, it was exactly the same as last week's show, but Marcelo was still funny. Even the 2nd time around.

There were 2 new comedians on the ship this week, and one of them did a few minutes of comedy for us. He was funny, and Christina and I wanted to see his show in the comedy club later that week.

 

 

After the Welcome Aboard show, Christina and I went to the Lido deck for ice cream, and then back to our cabin for some late night balcony time.

 

 

We went to bed that night around midnight, we meant to stay up for a while and watch TV but we both fell asleep pretty quickly.

 

 

We had a Sea Day the next day so there was no pressure to get up early.

OOOPS!!! I called it a Swordfish.............but it's really a stingray! I knew that.

Thanks LUPY48, for setting me straight!

I am LOVING your review. We are going on Liberty next with some of these ports. We went to GT this past February and HMC a couple of years ago and we 're looking forward to those ports again. This time in GT we want to go into Cockburn town and hang out as there will be two ships in port that day. Don't understand those that want to stand in a pool when that beautiful beach and water are right there!

Anyway, my question is: if we taxi to town is there a beach there I could swim at? Thinking I could wear my suit under a coverup dress.

I am thinking of getting bags do sand at each stop too, but my idea was to put them in little glass ornaments to hang on my Christmas tree for good memories.

I'm only on page 1 and I just want to say I'm going to love this review!!!! It's detailed and jammed full of pictures. You're bringing back some fond memories of Miami & the Intercontinental :) We stayed there post-cruise and I LOVED it! Especially with having Bayside so close... Okay, back to reading now :)

I bought some little jars to take with us for sand so we don't have to worry about baggies and will make tags for them. Ill have to go unpack one of each bottle to show pic of the kind I got. Bought them on sale at Hobby Lobby. Want a collection of bottles of sand for each Island I ever visit in the Caribbean.

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Great review and pics. Isn't it awesome doing a B2B? And in all my travels, I have never seen sand like HMC. Its like walking on powdered sugar. heaven. :)

 

Yes, a B2B is great! With all that planning and money I paid, I want plenty of time on the ship before I have to get off. I'm hooked on B2B's

And yes again, the sand on HMC is so soft and white. I've never seen any sand as perfect as that either

Thanks for reading my review!:)

I'm loving it. I have another question, you had mentioned you had Anytime dining. What time were you there in the previous nights in order to catch the singing in the dining Room? Do you remember approximately what time they sang? Thanks

I asked Christina and she remembers the singing was at 7:15 and 9:15

they didn't sing every night. I'm pretty sure they sang 4 nights of the 5.

Glad you are enjoying my review!:)

I am LOVING your review. We are going on Liberty next with some of these ports. We went to GT this past February and HMC a couple of years ago and we 're looking forward to those ports again. This time in GT we want to go into Cockburn town and hang out as there will be two ships in port that day. Don't understand those that want to stand in a pool when that beautiful beach and water are right there!

 

Anyway, my question is: if we taxi to town is there a beach there I could swim at? Thinking I could wear my suit under a coverup dress.

 

I am thinking of getting bags do sand at each stop too, but my idea was to put them in little glass ornaments to hang on my Christmas tree for good memories.

Hi, I'm glad you are enjoying my review! It's been fun to re-live it as I write.

Great idea of putting sand in the Christmas ornaments! :)

As for getting to a beach from Cockburn town, I'm really not sure. I went to Google Earth and zoomed in on Grand Turk to see what the beach looks like in the area of Cockburn Town

Here is a map of the areas I visited on my cruise (except the lighthouse!).

The red dot is over Cockburn Town.

It looks to me like you could get to a beach fairly easily from the town

And I zoomed in a bit more, and it looks like houses or buildings almost all along the beach there. It looks do-able. Maybe you could ask a cab driver to take you to a good beach. I'm sure anyone that lives there knows the good places to go. If you tip him well enough, he might stay and wait for you or come back to get you and take you through the town on the way back? Maybe even ask how much he would charge to drive you around for the day? Personal tour guide?

I'm only on page 1 and I just want to say I'm going to love this review!!!! It's detailed and jammed full of pictures. You're bringing back some fond memories of Miami & the Intercontinental :) We stayed there post-cruise and I LOVED it! Especially with having Bayside so close... Okay, back to reading now :)

Hi! Glad you are enjoying my story! I remember reading your review before I left for my cruise. I love yours! Your pics are awesome :)

I bought some little jars to take with us for sand so we don't have to worry about baggies and will make tags for them. Ill have to go unpack one of each bottle to show pic of the kind I got. Bought them on sale at Hobby Lobby. Want a collection of bottles of sand for each Island I ever visit in the Caribbean.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Forums mobile app

I love collecting my sand too! I think my sand (and my shells and seaglass) are my favorite things I have brought back from my vacations. Well, other than my Carnival Victory Ship on a Stick! :D

I'd love to see what your bottles look like. I'll try to find a pic of my bottles too

DAY 9 - SEA DAY II - Sunday Sept 8, 2013

Of course, we couldn't sleep in. Not even on a sea day.

It was Christina's first full day of being on the ship. We had a lot to do, although we really had nothing planned.

We went out on the balcony first thing. We stayed out there for quite a while enjoying the morning and the sound of the ocean.

The sunrise was very pretty! Much better than the rain in Miami yesterday morning.

 

 

 

 

 

When we got hungry for breakfast, we got motivated to get our day started.

We took showers and got dressed.

I took Christina to get an omelet from Hector.

He seemed surprised to see me, but then I think he understood what I was trying to tell him yesterday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We carried our plates back to the cabin and ate on our balcony.

What a nice view to go with breakfast!



 

 

 

 

 

 

Around 9:45 we left Carlos a tip and a note (we thought it would be nice to continue to do it Lisa's way)

We put our "Crusin" sign on the door, and we headed off to play BINGO

 

 

In the hallway, we saw Ari!

 

 

Good Morning Ari!



 

 

We hadn't seen Ari at all yesterday so I introduced him to Christina.

He asked what my name was, and I told him. From then on, he called us by our names every time we passed him in the hallway, which was actually several times a day.

 

 

We played BINGO at 10:00 with Donkey in the Caribbean Theater.

We didn't win.

We walked around the ship. We went up on the Lido deck and people watched and listened to music. We went in the gift shops again, and we stopped in at the casino bar and had a smoke.

 

 

We went to guest services for something, and while we were there I asked for a comment card so I could leave a comment about a staff member. He told me they don't have comment cards, but he offered me a piece of paper and an envelope. He said to bring it back to him and he would get it to the right person.

 

 

We ate lunch at the buffet. It was American themed again, my favorite!

After lunch we had ice cream and then went back to our cabin.

 

 

 

 

We could barely see Cuba in the distance.

I had to zoom in to get these pictures



 

 

 

 

We were sleepy and we had several things we wanted to do that evening around the ship.

We decided to take a nap, and we both slept until 4:00

We woke up and got ourselves ready for formal night. We both wanted to take pics with the Captain. Of course, I met him last week, but I still wanted to do it again.

When we were ready, we took a couple of pictures of each other before we left the cabin

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, Christina and I shopped for our dresses together before the cruise..........

We saw them on the sale rack for $24.99 and we thought we would go for it

(The one I wore last week with Lisa and the kids is also the same dress in blue/green)

Just in case you were wondering why our dresses matched, there was no particular reason, other than we liked them and they were on sale, and we're BFF's

After we took pictures, we headed down to Deck 5 to see what was going on.

The place was in full swing

The band was playing, people milling around,

We took pictures of the Captain and Marcelo.

I have no idea who the 2 in the middle are. The guy on the right is my new friend Shane, who was so nice to us on the tender at Half Moon Cay.

We took pictures with Marcelo and the Captain.

Then we went to all of the backgrounds and had a blast posing for pictures together.

I think we posed at every background, and we laughed a lot at some of the poses they asked us to do.

We wouldn't see our pics until the next night, but I'll post them here anyway

We both really liked this one

When we had our fill of picture taking, we went down to Deck 3 to go to the Dining Room.

We asked the hostess if we could be seated in Donovan and Joyce's section.

She told us they hadn't opened that section yet.

We asked when it would be open, and told her we would come back.

She wouldn't let us leave, and she insisted that they would open the section now.

We went along with it, and we were seated in the back of the dining room

In the picture below, we sat in the booth on the left

We liked this booth!

We never saw anyone named Didiet

We had a really good dinner that night. The food was very good; Christina had Surf and Turf and I had Prime Rib.

Donovan and Joyce took excellent care of us. For most of our dinner, we were the only ones back there in that section so they both spent a lot of time with us.

I asked Donovan if he was excited to go home to Jamaica tomorrow to see his wife and little daughter? He sure was! His eyes lit up when he told us about his 6 yr old little girl, and how she just started the school year and she loves her new uniform. He told us his wife went back to school and is now a school teacher.

We talked about Jamaica and he asked what we had planned for the next day, and we told him what we were doing.

I told him how I had always wanted to go to Jamaica but when Tim and I went in 2011, we felt unsure of the locals that stopped us every 5 seconds when we were walking around. I told him I was apprehensive about Christina and I walking around near the shops and pier area.

He told me that we were in no danger at all. He agreed the locals were aggressive, but he assured us they meant no harm and that we were safe to walk around the shops and pier area.

I felt much better after talking to him.

We also talked to Joyce.We learned she is from the Philippines, and she has a husband and a 1 year old daughter back home.

We thanked Donovan and Joyce for an excellent dinner service, and we went up to deck 5 again.

We sat at the casino bar for a while and listened to music. Just before 8 we went to the Black & Red lounge for Karaoke.

It was really a cool place

 

 



 

 

The karaoke was a little boring. Christina and I brought life to the place by cheering loudly for everyone that got up to sing. We got others to cheer too.

After about 40 minutes, we were still bored so we left.

Back at the casino bar, we listened to "Guess That Motown Song" with Donkey.

Just before 10 we went toward the night club. We wanted to sit in there and listen to the 70's music for an hour.

There was a line forming to get into the club, but the doors were still closed. We stood in line for 5-10 minutes and this blonde woman came up and started yelling at a man in line. We don't even think she knew him, but she made a fool of herself all over the Promenade Deck in front of everyone. Her friend was so embarrassed and kept trying to get the woman to leave with her.

The woman had obviously had too much to drink.

Pretty soon a lot of security guards came and talked her into quietly going inside the club.

They must have whisked her out the back door because when they opened the club doors a minute later, they were gone.

I had another Miami Vice at the club, it was a good frozen drink. I think Christina had one too.

We didn't dance but we sat up along the bar that went around the dance floor and watched everyone else. We had a good time.

It was getting late, but we decided we weren't done with our day yet, so we changed into swimsuits and went up to the aft pool around midnight.

We wanted to sit in the hot tubs, but they were closed and roped off. We settled for the pool.

We saw our Canadian balcony neighbor by the pool and sat and talked with him for awhile.. We didn't see his wife and we assumed she went to bed early. The husband seemed to be bored and was hanging out by the pool bar. He was very nice.

By the time we were leaving the pool, we were starving. We stopped at the grill and got cheeseburgers and fries to take back to our cabin.

We sat on our beds and ate our burgers, but we were still hungry.

We ordered room service - Fajitas and pretzels. The food came very fast,and it was good.

We were stuffed by now and sooooo tired, we were both asleep by 1:30AM and looking forward to going to Jamaica the next day.

Hi, I'm glad you are enjoying my review! It's been fun to re-live it as I write.

Great idea of putting sand in the Christmas ornaments! :)

 

As for getting to a beach from Cockburn town, I'm really not sure. I went to Google Earth and zoomed in on Grand Turk to see what the beach looks like in the area of Cockburn Town

 

Here is a map of the areas I visited on my cruise (except the lighthouse!).

The red dot is over Cockburn Town.

It looks to me like you could get to a beach fairly easily from the town

 

 

 

And I zoomed in a bit more, and it looks like houses or buildings almost all along the beach there. It looks do-able. Maybe you could ask a cab driver to take you to a good beach. I'm sure anyone that lives there knows the good places to go. If you tip him well enough, he might stay and wait for you or come back to get you and take you through the town on the way back? Maybe even ask how much he would charge to drive you around for the day? Personal tour guide?

 

Thank you for taking the time to google earth for me. Thanks too for the suggestions. Really looking forward to seeing more of the island this time.

Very much enjoying your review & pictures. My Mom & I sail on the Victory in February. Our cruise, the itinerary was changed to just Grand Turk & Little Stirrup Cay. Doesn't bother us, just excited to cruise, new ports & both these are pretty ones too. Can't wait!

Very much enjoying your review & pictures. My Mom & I sail on the Victory in February. Our cruise, the itinerary was changed to just Grand Turk & Little Stirrup Cay. Doesn't bother us, just excited to cruise, new ports & both these are pretty ones too. Can't wait!

Thanks for reading! I'm happy you are enjoying it :) I have never been to Little Stirrup Cay. It would be nice to see new places too. I keep revisiting the same ones. Enjoy your day in Grand Turk!

I love collecting my sand too! I think my sand (and my shells and seaglass) are my favorite things I have brought back from my vacations. Well, other than my Carnival Victory Ship on a Stick! :D

I'd love to see what your bottles look like. I'll try to find a pic of my bottles too

They are not very tall and hold a good amount of sand. Liked these more than others as they don't have corks which could shrink over time. I still have tags to make but one for each island on my trip.

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They are not very tall and hold a good amount of sand. Liked these more than others as they don't have corks which could shrink over time. I still have tags to make but one for each island on my trip.

I love your jars! I like the way they close tightly, and they look neat :) I didn't like the cork topped ones either.

Here are mine

I am enjoying your review so much that I went back to reread your account of your wedding and honeymoon cruise. Thanks for posting.

 

We spent the morning in the water and in the cabana

Andrea, if you look REALLY close Chad and I are on a float in the lower right corner of this pic!

Love your review! Thank you so much for taking the time. We have a group of 11 leaving on the 5 day early Nov. Half Moon Cay was a big factor in our choice of itinerary (also rented a cabana). Hopefully the sea & weather cooperate. :) Your review is providing lots of excitement and great tips for our trip.

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Very much enjoying your review & pictures. My Mom & I sail on the Victory in February. Our cruise, the itinerary was changed to just Grand Turk & Little Stirrup Cay. Doesn't bother us, just excited to cruise, new ports & both these are pretty ones too. Can't wait!

Grand Turk and LSC is a perfect 'beach-goers' itinerary, especially if you like to snorkel and see lots of fish (at LSC). I'd love to do that itin!