Valor 12/26 sailing part III

[LWBe]

Grand Cayman started out sunny and then the skies opened up...again! Tenders here were awful and it took forever to get off the ship and to the dock. There were 7 ships in port and the lineup to discharge the tenders was longer than the wait to get on the tender..almost. It didn't help that due to strong headwinds and crosswinds we were late arriving. My sister and her 6,12 and 14 year olds went to the beach (Seagrape), waited out the storms and were rewarded by an hour and 1/2 of sun! They met us in the tender line at about 3:45 to reboard. The tender line was over 45 minutes long at that point...not fun. I don't know if I'll do a cruise with multiple tender ports again. Due to the weather we just walked around town and had lunch..wasn't worth doing much else. My sister with the young kids took them to the turtle farm. SHe picked up a taxi in town, not planned earlier, and the lady was great. SHe took them, waited for them and took them on a short tour of the island.

Finally, in Cozumel we got to the beach! For a short while anyway. The day started off sunny and then the rains came..again. We got a cab at the dock and went to Paradise Beach. I highly recommend this place. No entrance fee, just $5 each for anyone who wants to use the water activites. My daughter and niece went kayaking, my husband got a massage and they all climbed the iceberg...until it started to rain.,.again. See a pattern here???!!! The chairs were free and there was waiter service on the beach. I'd love to go back on a nice sunny day!

We did finally get a nice day on Saturday, our last sea day. We mostly hung out by the aft pool where it was quieter, so we didn't participate or watch any of the poolside games or anything.

So our activites consisted mostly of dodging raindrops and making the bst of it, which we did. I'll finish up with NY Eve and debarkation later. Ask away if you have questions.

[jenny368]

LWBe: So sorry you had such miserable weather. We were on the Valor cruise right before yours. We had cool weather Sun.-Tues. We lucked out Wed.-Sun. we had sunny hot weather for the most part. It sure makes a difference when the weather turns against you. Sounds like you made the best of it. I bet it was really nice cruising with so much of your family during the holidays. Thanks for taking the time to share your review with us.

[Marcys]

Can you tell us which were the formal nights? Do you know if these are the usual formal nights or did they make changes because of New Year's?

 

Great reviews! We've been dying for any reviews on Valor, especially the western route which we'll be doing on a CC group cruise June 12!

[LWBe]

Formal nights were Monday and Thursday. They did not make a change for New Years Eve, though before we left I wsa sure they would! Many people dressed very festively for New years though and they had a specila dinner and put hats and noisemakers in our rooms. The champagne was flowing on the Lido deck that night and it was a lot of fun.

[charlie0869]

Lwbe,

 

My wife,2 boys and me are goig on the valor on 04/03/05. My questions are:

Does the cabin TV have aux jacks for a portable DVD player I will be bringing or game cube? How is the game arcade, what kind of games? Was there a big line at the water slide? Is there a refrigerator in the cabin, we are in Cat. 8 ?

:) :)

 

Thanks for the review,

 

Charlie

[LWBe]

Charlie,

 

i don't know about the auxiliary jacks, because we didn't have anything to plug in. The game room looked nice, but my kids are older and didn't hang in there much. My 6 year old nephew however did give it a big thumbs up! I don't know how much his parents spent in there...especially with the bad weather we had. The slide line didn't look too bad even on the 1 really sunny sea day we had. I watched the 6 year old go up and down multiple times and it didn't seem to take long at all..And remember, this ship was packed with kids..I think they said of the 3500 passengers, 1800 were kids!

Hope this helps.

 

leslie