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Escaping Without The Kid - A Trip Review of our 9/16/2017 Escape Western Cruise


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For the last 4.5 years, my wife and I have not taken a vacation of any kind without our daughter since her birth. The longest that my DW and I have been away from our daughter is 46 hours which was for a wedding. In January, after celebrating our DD's fourth birthday, my DW and I decided that we would take a week vacation without her and reconnect as DH and DW. The following thread will serve as the storyline of the pre-planning of our cruise with our good friend who happens to be our TA, the days before our cruise watching and praying for the family, friends, and strangers who were affected by Irma and our vacation itself.

 

Some background information about myself and DW:

We are both 40 years old who work hard to provide our family with a great life, but also play just as hard when it comes to our lives as well. We live life to the fullest, but also enjoy downtime, which with a 4.5-year-old DD, you don't get much of. We travel quite a bit outside of cruising (this is our fourth cruise together in the 9 years we've been with each other) and we find cruising to be one of the most relaxing and fun vacations we take. I have cruised quite a bit during my childhood due to my father working in the cruise industry for many years and for my wife, this was her 5th cruise so we knew what to expect and always go into our cruises with an open mind.

 

Our cruise:

My DW was a little skeptical about booking a cruise during hurricane season, but I decided on the NCL Escape after we had a great time on the NCL Breakway two years before to Bermuda with my extended family. My DD had enjoyed her first cruise as well, but we both agreed that we needed a vacation for ourselves. She decided to let me handle the planning and coordination of the cruise, which was surprising as she is the supreme planner in our family for the rest of our vacations. I decided on the Western Carribean itinerary, picked the 9/16 sailing which had decent pricing and called our TA to talk through it. She got us a great rate, along with the going perks (UBP, UDP3) as well as her TA perks (OBC, PPG) and we were all set. I also got insurance as well to be on the safe side to cover us in the event of medical issues or a hurricane would ruin our vacation. While I know that some of you will say you should get it all of the time, this is the first time I've gotten insurance for the cruise and going forward, while I never had to use it, will be getting it.

 

With our cruise booked, I began the long and arduaous task of parsing through CC for information on the ship, the itinerary and ports and some pre-cruise needs. I let DW know that we were booked so she could book her PTO and I did the same as well as notified the in-laws that they would be hosting our DD for a week while we sailed off for seven days of cruising bliss (no pun intended here).

 

Coming up next: Pre-cruise preparations, lessons learned and a Hurricane called Irma...

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Can't wait to hear more. Had to laugh though at the 4.5 years as thought it were a long time. DH and I have not vacationed without kids for 22 years! Going on our first sans kids vacation next summer Alaska Bliss cruise.

 

I was sure that was going to get some people a good chuckle. On the flip side, my brother-in-law and his wife tend to vacation at least once every few months without their kids and they are younger than our DD.

 

Congrats on your first cruise without kids. I have to say I missed my DD all week, but had a great time with DW doing adult things, like sleeping and eating fancy food. Enjoy your cruise on Bliss and I can't wait for some of those reports to come in. We are looking forward to her in 2019.

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[quote name=SliderNc;54140854

 

Congrats on your first cruise without kids. I have to say I missed my DD all week' date=' but had a great time with DW doing adult things, like sleeping and eating fancy food. Enjoy your cruise on Bliss and I can't wait for some of those reports to come in. We are looking forward to her in 2019.[/quote]

 

Well we definitely did not have to wait 22 years to do things on vacation like sleeping in and eating fancy foods, even with the kids. By age 8 we had great sleepers who would eat just about anything. And somewhere in the teen years they were often still asleep while we got moving. So you get lots of one on one time with your spouse !

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Can't wait to hear more. Had to laugh though at the 4.5 years as thought it were a long time. DH and I have not vacationed without kids for 22 years! Going on our first sans kids vacation next summer Alaska Bliss cruise.

 

 

 

We just cruised kid free to Alaska and loved it! Of course we missed her but we had a nice relaxing time doing our own thing, no kid stuff [emoji5]

 

 

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Pre-cruise Planning

 

As we were moving forward with our cruise planning, which was now in my hands, I left it to my wife to break it to our then four-year-old about how mommy and daddy would be going away for a week without her and that she would be staying with her grandparents. At first, I don't think she really understood that we would be going away without her but in a few minutes, when we explained that she would be spending a week with her Gigi and Papa, I think she didn't really care how long we were going away for.

 

Anyway, DW and I just looked at each other and talked about what we really wanted to do this cruise. One thing that we both agreed upon was really relaxing and catching up on our time. We didn't realize it, but with just our DD, we were already engaged 3 nights a week in activities plus a Saturday mornings. We go nonstop with this girl everywhere, whether it's dance class, swim lessons or gymnastics, we are always on the move with her. So we agreed that we did not want to be doing a ton of athletics on our vacation or be constantly on the go. Additionally, we both travel for our jobs quite a bit so anything we were doing was not going to require us to ride a bus for more than 30 minutes or wait in long lines for things.

 

First thing I started researching was Roatan, as it was the one port I had not been to before and neither had my wife. I had narrowed it down between a day at Little French Key and Daniel Johnson's Animal Sanctuary. They are a bit different from each other, but both fit the do less mantra we were looking for on vacation. I made reservations for both for the time being while I decided what we were going to do in Harvest Caye, Costa Maya, and Cozumel.

 

DW, while trusting me with planning, was not trusting me with planning and was putting together her spreadsheets and getting our documentation together. Looking at the itinerary, DW sent me a text about going to Nacho CocaCola in Cozumel. Puzzled, I looked at my phone screen while sitting in my office and asked myself what the heck she meant. On our first cruise on Mariner of the Seas in 2008, we went to a private beach resort that was adults only called Nachi Coccum, which I think is what she meant but her autocorrect on her phone decided to change for her. Cozumel had been decided and Nachi Coccum reservation was made

 

With Harvest Caye and Costa Maya left, I took to CC to figure out what to do in Costa Maya, as I figured we'd either be sitting by the pool in Harvest Caye or on the beach. I had been to Costa Maya years ago on a cruise with my family and we ended up going to some ruins, but that didn't seem relaxing to me. I think I was like 15 when we went and while my mother the history professor was all into it, the rest of the family did not enjoy it. Oh, the things we did for mom on these trips so she could get her history fill. Anyway, a bunch of people on the roll call had booked Maya Chan Beach. After reading through the website and hearing how many people have liked it in the past, we thought it fit the bill for our last excursion and made our reservation.

 

At this point, we are about 2 weeks out from our final payment date and our daughter has seen me reading CC, looking at pictures of the Escape and the places we were going to be visiting, as well as checking in on the roll call and our Facebook group. It then hit her that we were going on a cruise without her (we had done Breakaway when she was 2.5 in 2015) and she has her first of many meltdowns. 6 months prior, she was excited about going to spend a week with Gigi and Papa and now you would think that we were abandoning her for the rest of her life (yes, we are cool parents according to her, but I guess that will change when as she gets older). One night, I came home and she just ran up to me at the door and said "Please don't leave me for a week daddy. I want to come with you!" My heart melted and my DW was starting to well up with tears. But then, Gigi chimes in and goes, "But don't you want to spend a week with Gigi and Papa and have fun with us?" Instantly, tears stop, nose stops running and they are talking about all of the things they are going to do (and did do) while we are away.

 

Final payment day came and we looked at each other, called the TA and paid off our balance. Immediately, we were in cruise mode and DW started her countdown. I decided to splurge a bit and made a reservation at the Intercontinental Hotel downtown in Miami which is outside of our normal Hilton/Marriott bookings that we normally have for work. The problem is that the Marriotts downtown were pricey and the Hilton properties just didn't really do it for us. The price was good and we booked a bay view room. We also booked dinner at the Yardbird Southern Table for Friday night dinner. In our minds, we were all set as we had also already booked our airfare via miles and had the flight times that we needed.

 

Fast forward to two weeks before our cruise and this hurricane called Irma starts wreaking havoc across the Caribbean. The early paths show it hitting the east coast of Florida, where we have multiple family and friends and then really long outlook had it coming up the coast like Hugo and hitting NC. DW and I contacted our family and friends in the path and asked them if they wanted a place to stay as we have prepared for most any type of emergency we could have in NC including hurricanes. For the next week, we would watch this massive hurricane wreak havoc over mankind and cause so much destruction that many of us have never seen. While none of our family took our offer for safety, when all was said and done, they all made it through it and will rebuild/fix what was damaged. Our friends on Marathon Key lost their house completely but they were able to find safety in Orlando with some other friends of ours and ride out the storm. We were sad to see some of our favorite islands devastated from Irma and we prayed for everyone's safety.

 

It was Monday before the cruise and our DD asked us if we were still going on our vacation and I looked at her and said, "I don't know sweetie. There is so much going on from the hurricane and so many people have been affected that I don't know what is going to happen." She just hugged me and said, "I can still go to Gigi and Papa's for a week right?" I just laughed and realized that she's too young to really understand what had happened and that we just prayed for our family, friends, and everyone who was affected by Irma and previously Harvey.

 

For the next few days, DW and I were watching for updates for the port, airports, and monitoring where Escape was and if she would be back in time for us to cruise. Additionally, we were in contact with our family and friends making sure that they had what they needed. By Wednesday night, all of our plans had solidified and we were going to be on our way on Friday morning. We had packed up what our daughter needed for a week with Gigi and Papa, but knowing they were only a few minutes away, we didn't worry about getting everything she absolutely needed. It was time to start packing and get ready to go on our seven days on Escape.

 

I will have more pictures as we get into this as I am still uploading them and sorry if I get a little long-winded as this has been quite an exciting time for us in many ways.

 

Up next: Travel day shenanigans and Oops, I Forgot to Tell You

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Following along, I know we were on the cruise too. Want to see you take on what we thought was a great cruise!!!!!!!

 

It was great meeting you guys at MCB and Jenn and I had a great time talking with you. I agree that this cruise was probably one of the best we have been on and we only had one or two negative things the whole week, one of which is totally subjective because it was about food.

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Well we definitely did not have to wait 22 years to do things on vacation like sleeping in and eating fancy foods, even with the kids. By age 8 we had great sleepers who would eat just about anything. And somewhere in the teen years they were often still asleep while we got moving. So you get lots of one on one time with your spouse !

 

Our DD sleeps until about 7:30-8AM most days. Sleeping late once in awhile is welcomed, but DW would litterally sleep all day if I let her and has done so on her girl beach week vacation a few times. Many mornings on our cruise, DW would sleep and I would be sipping coffee on the balcony and reading or watching the captain maneuver Escape into port. I'm normally up by 5:45AM every morning so anything after 7AM is considered late for me. DD and I spend a lot of quality time while DW sleeps late most weekends. I do look forward to the day that she can sleep until 9 or so more often though. My parents were never nice about us sleeping late on cruises; if they were up, we were too, even if it were 7AM.

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Following along. My DH and I will be kid-free on the Escape a year from now. I can't wait to hear what you thought about the ship.

 

Great review so far. I like all the details.

 

 

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Subbing to read the rest. My husband and I are also about to go on our first weeklong vacation without our daughter - only ours has been almost 15 years (since our honeymoon) and our daughter is 12 :) She begged to not come with us this time (Thanksgiving week, she wants to be with "family" ... other family, not us LOL )

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Whilst we all love our kids loads it does you good as a couple to re connect. You can easily get lost in the day to day momentum of family life. i have often thought as NCL have quite a large fleet they could have some sailings that we adult only i would certainly book one of those.

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"TA perks (OBC, PPG)"

 

Assuming the OBC is on board credit what is PPG and why are they referred to as TA (travel agent) perks?

Prepaid gratuities. Sorry for the shorthand. It was one of the perks that my TA offered for booking with her.

 

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Travel Day Shenanigans and Oops I Forgot to Tell You

 

DW and I are both road warriors for our jobs at times and have both acquired status and various statuses which comes in handy for family trips while sometimes, we are single parenting our way for a week or more at times. Luckily, neither of us had to travel the week before our cruise except for my quick day trip to help out one our local facilities with an IT issue and we got to spend time with DD all week. We all watched in horror as Irma made landfall in the Florida Keys and then continued up the coast. Knowing that our family and friends were safe was good, but it didn’t make the news coverage any easier to watch. We prayed for everyone’s safety and selfishly prayed that our vacation would not be cancelled as we had been looking forward to it the past few months. DD and I had already made a donation for one of the Hurricane Harvey Relief funds and we both knew that we would be making another one for Irma’s victims as well.

 

As both DD and I tend to take last minute business trips, last minute packing has become a game in our household and we tend to be good at it most of the time. As our flights, hotel and cruise were all confirmed to be good to go on early Wednesday AM, we started to get everything together and ready to go. We packed up DD’s stuff that she would need for the week as well and before we new it, it was Friday AM and we were getting our stuff loaded in the car. DD had been dropped off at school earlier in the morning and we had dropped the rest of her stuff off at Gigi and Papa’s house so they had everything they needed for her when they picked her up from school that afternoon. Both dogs had been dropped off at their home away from home and DW was packing up the last suitcase with our toiletries and makeup. With our lists checked off and the house all setup for vacation, we got into the car and started our 35 minute right to the airport. Three minutes later, we were back at the house getting the items that we had forgotten on the stairs and then were back on the road to their airport with a quick stop at the bank. First forgotten items were the passports and the folder with all of our documents. Figures it would be the most important set of things that we needed.

 

DW stayed in the car while I went into the bank about 10 minutes from our house to get our tip money for the cruise and cash for excursions, shopping and the casino. We had plenty of time to get to the GSO (Piedmont Triad International) which is the airport closest to our house and one of the best airports to fly into and out off in my opinion. DW and I are accustomed to being able to get there 30 minutes before our flight, park the car, get through security and basically walk on the plane. But for this trip, we were taking our time and had almost two hours before our flight this time. I get through the bank line, have our money in hand and get into the car and DW has this look on her face.

 

“Good news and bad news G. The bad news is that I think my cell phone is at home. The good news is that I’ll be able to change the channels on the TV in the room if they DirecTV.”

 

“Do you want me to turn around and run home to get your phone?”

 

“I have my work phone, which we’ll use to call DD. I’ll be okay.”

 

“Are you sure? I mean, we have time. It’s okay.”

 

“Yes, I’m sure.” I knew she was upset but she said that she had her work phone which had the international plan on it so we could use it to talk to DD the days that we were in port. Surprised that she didn’t want to go back to get it, I started the car as she started texting family and friends so they knew she didn’t have her personal cell phone with her for the week.

 

And so we continue our trip to the airport, drop the bags off and check in, park the car and head to the bar for our first of what would be many Tito's and Soda for our vacation.

 

As it was getting close to boarding time, we decided that we would head to the gate. Delta peeps know that it’s hard to score upgrades when going through ATL for any flight these days so neither of us had checked the board or our phones to see if we had gotten an upgrade. The nice thing is with DW’s status, we get to board with the second group and as we boarded, new tickets printed out with new seat assignments for a our flights and we had been upgraded to first class on the first leg. As we took our seats, we had our second Tito’s and soda and were well on our way to our relaxing vacation. Quick layover in ATL and we were on our way to FLL, once again, in first class. The nice thing is that we both have status with Delta, but DW has higher status than I do and it makes it easier for me as a companion to get upgraded with her as normally, I’d be lucky to get an exit row seat. Anyway, before we new it and few more Tito’s and soda later, we had collected our bags and were waiting for our Uber from FLL to the Intercontinental in Miami.

 

My fear was that traffic was going to be terrible with rush hour arrival at FLL but as it would have it, there was literally no traffic until we got into downtown Miami due to a concert that night (Depeche Mode). I’m a big Uber fan to be honest and will use it all of the time when traveling and even at home when we are going out with friends. $64 for the Uber from FLL to downtown was a fair price for the car that we had and the speed that we got there.

 

Check-in was uneventful as I had pre-booked a bay view room so we could look at the Escape and other ships the next morning. We were on the 21st floor and had a great view of the ships that were already there. We could see Escape coming down to the turn around and she looked great. DW was getting excited as she unpacked some stuff and had knocked over the paperwork from the desk and started looking at it.

 

“Did our cabin change?”

 

“It did sweetie, I forgot to tell you.”

 

“We had a great cabin on a good deck with the bigger bathroom right?”

 

“Yeah, we did.”

 

“Well?”

 

“I guess I forgot to tell you that we got upgraded.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“I guess you’ll just have to trust me and wait and find out tomorrow when we board the ship.”

 

If looks could kill, I’d be dead right there. I had actually made it until the Friday before the cruise to keep the upgrade a secret. She was excited that we were in a mini-suite with a bigger bathroom and in a good location on Deck 10 in the middle of the ship as DW at times suffers from vertigo and has been known to medicate herself through a cruise (2010 on Mariner). As DW started asking more questions, I started pleading the 5th as there was no way she was going to get anything else out of me. The good thing was that at this point, she had enough drinks in her that she just gave up the inquisition after the first three questions where normally I’d be like a KGB agent in CIA custody and answering questions about the Cold War.

 

“What are you going to tell me about this upgrade?”

 

“Oops?”

 

Dinner that night was at Yardbird Southern Kitchen and Bar and it was wonderful. If you are coming into Miami the night before your cruise and want a great meal with a wonderful selection of bourbon, I highly recommend it. As we were coming back to the hotel, we decided to walk along the bay for a bit after getting dropped off by the Uber that we took and watch them move some of the ships around the berths to make room for the ships coming in the next morning. DW had managed to not ask anymore questions and as we were without our DD that night, we decided that instead of being partying adults without a kid that we would be all week on the boat, that we would turn in.

 

It was a great start to our vacation and we both knew that there was more to come.

 

Up next - Embarkation and Day 1

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