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Just back from Legend - longest review ever!


Virga

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This review is going to be LONG! I'm about halfway done already, but it'll probably be a few days before it's all done, mostly because I have to sort and upload the photos as I go. Hope you guys enjoy!

 

 

 

This trip was my boyfriend’s third cruise, all on Carnival. I’ve been on 11, on Royal, Princess, and NCL, but I honestly prefer Carnival. This was our first ‘long’ cruise – we have always taken the quick getaway three and four night cruises – and our first balcony. We were to visit three new ports this trip, Grand Cayman, Honduras, and Belize.

 

We started our trip a day early – even though we only live three hours away in Daytona, we decided to get a hotel room so we could be some of the first people on the ship. Plus, the total cost including taxes was less than $80, which is cheaper than parking the car at the pier. We stayed at the Tahitian Inn, which was incredibly easy to get to. We got a late start, and didn’t check in until almost midnight. We got to our room too late to order from the very nice looking on-site restaurant menu, but just in time to order a pizza from one of the local delivery joints, and settled in to download a bunch of Kindle books on the very fast free wireless internet. The room was clean and comfortable, and I’d highly recommend the hotel to cruise passengers. By the way, the outdoor pool was heated to a nice warm temperature, and looked *very* inviting with steam billowing out into the cool night.

 

We had no trouble waking up the next morning – the alarm clock was ridiculously loud and obnoxious, something like an air raid siren. Hitting the snooze button wasn’t needed, we wanted to get going! We had signed up the night before to take their (free!) shuttle to the port at 10:30, so we got everything together and headed down. We triple-checked our documents, loaded our luggage, and sat down with the other six people who had reserved the same shuttle trip. It was a short trip, less than ten minutes, during which our driver explained where we’d want to meet the shuttle after we returned. He unloaded our luggage, and a porter collected them to bring onboard for us. We took our carry-on bags and our documents and after a cursory check of our documents, they let us inside.

 

 

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My boyfriend on the shuttle ride

 

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Our first glimpse of the funnel

 

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The ship awaits!

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The line for security was non-existent – they funneled us through, up a set of escalators, and there we were, perhaps five people in front of us waiting to go through. They were making people throw away their open bottles of water and soda, which was expected but kind of rude given that most of those people had *just* bought those drinks from machines at the base of the escalator, with no sign telling them to keep them sealed for another thirty seconds. We took out the laptop and put it in a bucket with my BF’s keys and my purse, and put the other two bags right on the rollers. The gentleman looked at my bag before it ever went through, but I assured him it was only two bottles of wine and that all the sodas were sealed. That appeared to be good enough for him, because our bags and laptop went through without stopping. I might have snuck in a couple water bottles of alcoholic goodness if I’d known how easy it would be =P

 

They pointed us towards the desks, where we saw our second ‘line’ of about ten people. With several clerks checking people in, our wait was only a minute or two. I had a passport, my boyfriend had a Florida license and a New York birth certificate, and neither of us had any trouble. I did have to change the card I had originally signed up with – I had cancelled my debit card two nights before after losing it while out. It turned up, but I had already called the bank, so I had to make alternate arrangements. This didn’t seem to be a problem, and we were issued our Sail-and-Sign cards and a zone five boarding pass. This was about 11:00 – only about twenty minutes after we’d arrived at the port – and the clerk told us the ship hadn’t cleared yet but that we would be called shortly. We set down to wait. It was only about twenty minutes before they called for special assistance passengers to board, and only another ten or so before they called our zone. We waited patiently in the photo lines, though when it was our turn, we declined and walked right on. We were onboard by 11:40.

 

The ship itself looks very nice – we didn’t even notice the urns when we first got onboard. The steakhouse reservations agent was in the main room when we arrived, and offered a free bottle of wine for signing up the first night. We booked the last reservation they had available – 9:30 – and gawked at the beautiful cuts of meat they displayed. There was a gentleman directing us to the Lido deck for food, who told us the dining room would open at 12:30, but that the buffet was already open. I questioned this, asking if the dining room was really open on embarkation day. He assured me that it would open at 12:30. I was surprised, but we proceeded to Lido for a cigarette and some lemonade. We picked up a copy of the Capers (sorry, Fun Times) and plotted our day.

 

At about 12:20, my boyfriend had the good sense to ask a staff member if the dining room was really opening up at 12:30. She told him that yes, it would be open, but not for eating – it would open for people who needed to make dining changes and special arrangements. That made a lot more sense, although I was a little disappointed. We settled for a drink of the day and some people watching, before having some shoestring fries, cheese sauce, and chicken fingers. It had started raining a good bit by then, and there were constantly employees walking past with squeegees, moving the water from one part of the walkway to the other. Sort of strange, actually. By then it was nearly 1:30, so we stopped by the dining room to check the dinner menu. We didn’t see anything on it we were too worried about missing, thankfully. We got to the room right on time, and were happy to take off our bags.

 

As I mentioned before, this was our first balcony room – a 7A obstructed view cabin. We ended up with a larger-than-usual balcony and a handicapped bathroom, and were very pleased with the whole setup. We missed the small couch, but the balcony more than made up for it. We did not consider it to be a major obstruction – there was even one portion where we could look nearly straight down to the water. The cabin seemed roomy, with plenty of storage space. I was a little surprised to find that there was food left by the prior occupant in the mini-fridge, but figured I’d mention it to the steward later. We also had no ice bucket yet, though everything else in the cabin was clean, fresh, and inviting.

 

 

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Wet Lido deck - see where they squeegeed the water off one bit of the path?

 

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Balcony door and closet

 

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Balcony to the right

 

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Balcony to the left

 

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Cabin and bed

 

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Cabin desk and such

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We passed a little time with the privacy sign on the door, and we had no sooner taken it down than our luggage began arriving, piece by piece. I meant to unpack as soon as it arrived, but instead we relaxed on the bed until they began warning us about the muster drill. The drill went quickly – I took the opportunity to exchange a few texts with friends and family and the cat sitter. After muster, we should have gone to the Unicorn bar to meet up with the CC folks, but instead we went back to the room and took some pictures from our balcony as we began to pull away. We continued watching, and I unpacked one of our bags. We decided to go up for a quick bite to eat, and split one of those awesome corned beef and pastrami on rye combos. We ate on the balcony, before venturing out for some exploring. It was exceptionally windy out – they closed the front of the boat, and it was rather cold and wet and uncomfortable outside, so we headed downstairs instead of waiting an hour to pass under the bridge.

 

We took a walk up and down floors two and three, making sure to find the sports bar. See, we were supposed to find it the second we got on, to watch the Giants game. Unfortunately, a blizzard first postponed it and then moved it to Monday night in Detroit. We caught up on some other games, though, and continued our crawl. We had met a wonderful young gentleman – Vedran from Boznia – upon boarding, and had found out that he worked at the Odyssey Lounge, so we headed there for the martini tasting. I know some people have said the tasting isn’t worth it, but I disagree – it was five small martinis for $15. They gave you seven to choose from, including the Tiramisu, which was wonderful. We split that while waiting for the announcement to let us know we were approaching the bridge. It never came. I realize it was dark and rainy, but two different staff members assured us they’d make an announcement when we got close, and we were disappointed to have missed the bridge. As soon as we made it out into open waters, the ship started rolling like crazy – I’ve never been on a ship with this kind of motion.

 

We puttered around for another hour or so, and headed back to the room once again. They had already affixed sets of barf bags outside every set of elevators, and you could even see some of the entertainment staff members looking green around the gills. Fortunately, we weren’t having a bit of trouble, aside from walking around looking like we were drunk without much alcohol in us at all. We came back to a nicely turned down bed and a towel animal! We also promptly got a phone call asking us to move up our dinner to 9:00, which wasn’t a problem at all.

 

 

 

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Soooo very windy!

 

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Martini tasting

 

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Martini tasting options - I'll post this in some of the other recent threads about it too

 

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Our first towel animal of the cruise

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Thanks for the great review and the pictures! I'm wondering what was your cabin number? We have a 7A on January 30.

 

Thanks from a fellow Pastafarian! :D

 

This was 5245, and it was an AMAZING cabin. I wouldn't count on getting this cabin, because it was clearly a handicap cabin that I'm certain we would have been bumped out of if anyone else needed it. I watched for weeks wondering if they were going to bump us at the last minute - it wasn't until we checked in that I properly celebrated.

 

BUT, I will say that the 7A cabins that have the smaller lifeboats (there's a huge list somewhere of which have the larger and which have the smaller) have very little obstruction - you can only look down in between lifeboats, but you have full visibility when looking out.

 

RAmen!

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We got ready and headed up, already trying to decide what to eat. The steakhouse is all the way at the top of the ship, to the aft end, so it was especially bad when it came to the rocking and rolling. The waitress even mentioned to us she hadn’t felt the ship sway quite like this in her four months on the Legend. She was wonderful, by the way, though I can’t remember her name for the life of me.

 

We ended up ordering the exact same meals – lobster bisque, escargot, and surf and turf. We chose a merlot for our free bottle of wine, which wasn’t bad. They had some excellent breads for us to eat, with some yummy little accompaniments. The chef also sent us a couple of extra little treats – a teeny tiny hamburger and equally small skillet of tomato soup. The lobster bisque was good – not the kind of sweet lobster bisque that I usually prefer, but a strong savory bisque. The soup was rolling from side to side with the ship, which amused us greatly. The escargot was also very good – again, not prepared the way I usually prefer, smothered in garlic and butter and cheese, but well seasoned and tasty. A couple other snails came in a soupish mixture that was perfect as a dipping sauce for the last of my bread. The surf and turf was AMAZING – we order our steak rare, and have come to accept that we will usually get medium rare. Not at the Golden Fleece! It was perfect, the tiniest bit cool inside with nice seared edges… The lobster was similarly delicious, split to make it incredibly easy to eat. The mashed potatoes were good, but we didn’t taste even a hint of wasabi or horseradish. When it came time for dessert, we were so stuffed that we took our chocolate samplers to go, and had to bring half the bottle of wine with us as well. We intended to go out, but after that dinner, it just wasn’t happening. We went to sleep fat and happy...

 

 

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What a beautiful table!

 

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Tiny hamburger

 

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Tiny bowl of tomato soup

 

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Escargot

 

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Sloshy bowl of lobster bisque

 

At this point I stopped taking photos - we were hungry! Actually, there are fewer pictures from here on out, where we stopped worrying about the camera and started relaxing properly =)

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The next morning, we slept in – we discovered overnight that our AC was not terribly effective, and had to sleep under only a sheet. We woke just in time to have breakfast in the dining room, which is always one of our favorite parts of the trip. The corned beef hash was disappointing as usual – I am a freak that actually likes the canned greasy kind served extra crispy. I don’t know why I always try it on the ship… The eggs benedict were as good as always, my boyfriend was happy that I’d found out you can ask for the sauce on the side to get them fresh. Again, I’m strange – I like them with the sauce baked on. The bacon was thinner than I remember it being, but yummy. After breakfast, we wandered the ship for a while, glad that the weather had calmed down. It was still a little rocky, but it wasn't raining and nothing was falling off the shelves. We went back to the room and took a nap – we didn’t wake up until after lunch was over with.

 

We decided to head down to the gym for a short workout and some time in the sauna and steam rooms. The gym was nice – older machines, but perfectly functional. A couple of meatheads (I’m allowed to say that because my boyfriend used to be like that =P) were all over the weights, but there were plenty of spare weight machines and things like elipticals and treadmills. The jacuzzi was being cleaned, unfortunately, but we thoroughly enjoyed some time in the sauna and steam rooms. I was alone in the steam room, but there was a very nice woman in the sauna to make small talk about the ship with.

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We went back to the room to take our showers before dinner. We enjoyed some time on our balcony and a little private time – tonight was the first formal night, and we got all dolled up. I wore a sparkly grey dress and heels (the only dress I own) and he wore a pair of dress pants and a blue collared shirt and tie. We looked rather nice together, in my not-so-humble opinion. We took anytime dining, and I think we arrived at about seven. Remember, we hadn’t had lunch AND we’d gone to the gym, so we were starving. Lobster night is definitely the night to show up hungry, though! Our head waiter was named Khemchai and our assistant waiter was Srdjan. The guy in the middle, Nemesio, we didn't see much of during the cruise, but Khemchai and Srdjan were AMAZING – friendly, attentive, and quick. We both had the stuffed mushrooms, which were just as good as I remembered them being. When we ordered our lobster and shrimp, the waiter mentioned that if we wanted another round to let him know. That we did – twice. Sorry to those who think that’s disgusting to overeat, but we did and we enjoyed every bite. Even the mashed potatoes were wonderful! I asked to have the strawberry bisque for dessert, which they assured me wasn’t an issue, and my boyfriend had some sort of apples and puff pastry combination that was supposed to have ice cream but didn’t. It was alright, but nowhere near as good as my strawberry bisque. Once again, we left very full. We stopped in for one of the comedians, Thomas Brown, who was awesome! We were sad we hadn’t caught him before, as he was hilarious.

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This review is going to be LONG! I'm about halfway done already, but it'll probably be a few days before it's all done, mostly because I have to sort and upload the photos as I go. Hope you guys enjoy!

 

 

 

This trip was my boyfriend’s third cruise, all on Carnival. I’ve been on 11, on Royal, Princess, and NCL, but I honestly prefer Carnival. This was our first ‘long’ cruise – we have always taken the quick getaway three and four night cruises – and our first balcony. We were to visit three new ports this trip, Grand Cayman, Honduras, and Belize.

 

We started our trip a day early – even though we only live three hours away in Daytona, we decided to get a hotel room so we could be some of the first people on the ship. Plus, the total cost including taxes was less than $80, which is cheaper than parking the car at the pier. We stayed at the Tahitian Inn, which was incredibly easy to get to. We got a late start, and didn’t check in until almost midnight. We got to our room too late to order from the very nice looking on-site restaurant menu, but just in time to order a pizza from one of the local delivery joints, and settled in to download a bunch of Kindle books on the very fast free wireless internet. The room was clean and comfortable, and I’d highly recommend the hotel to cruise passengers. By the way, the outdoor pool was heated to a nice warm temperature, and looked *very* inviting with steam billowing out into the cool night.

 

We had no trouble waking up the next morning – the alarm clock was ridiculously loud and obnoxious, something like an air raid siren. Hitting the snooze button wasn’t needed, we wanted to get going! We had signed up the night before to take their (free!) shuttle to the port at 10:30, so we got everything together and headed down. We triple-checked our documents, loaded our luggage, and sat down with the other six people who had reserved the same shuttle trip. It was a short trip, less than ten minutes, during which our driver explained where we’d want to meet the shuttle after we returned. He unloaded our luggage, and a porter collected them to bring onboard for us. We took our carry-on bags and our documents and after a cursory check of our documents, they let us inside.

 

 

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My boyfriend on the shuttle ride

 

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Our first glimpse of the funnel

 

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The ship awaits!

 

 

Nice review.......what port did you go out of and what hotel did you stay at??

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So it turns out I'm not nearly halfway done typing, because I'm all kinds of wordy. Hope you don't mind!

 

 

The following morning, I awoke at 6:30 and knew immediately we wouldn’t be going to Grand Cayman. The ship was still rolling heavily, and I couldn’t imagine we’d be able to tender ashore. No announcement was made, though, so we got ready just in case, and I headed down to the bottom deck to check just after 7:00, when we were supposed to leave. There wasn’t a staff member to be found when I got down there, so I assumed I was in the wrong place. There was, however, a rather drunk gentleman lying on the floor going, “Waaaaah!” No, not crying – just yelling, “Waaaaaaah!” Whenever anyone asked him what was wrong, he announced that we wouldn’t be going to Grand Cayman and that he was sad. I watched him do this several times for several different groups of people. As near as I can figure, there had to have been over a hundred people that found out we weren’t going by way of the drunk man pretending to cry on the floor.

 

I headed back to the room and broke the (now expected) news to my boyfriend, and we stewed a bit over the fact that we still hadn’t been informed of the change. Finally, at about 7:45, almost an hour after we should have been leaving the ship, the captain came over the intercom informing us that the weather was preventing us from tendering, and that he was sorry for the ‘sudden change’ in plans. While we fully understood why we couldn’t make the stop, we were rather put off by the fact that the announcement was so long in coming. Plus, we had all our holiday cards waiting to be postmarked from Hell, and wanted to buy all our liquor and plenty of cans of Tastee cheese while we were there. Ah well, we were assured they’d have revised capers for us and a letter of explanation soon.

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We weren’t terribly interested in most of the other activities, so we headed up to play miniature golf for a while. Let me tell you, it’s a totally different game on a swaying ship. As it turns out, I’m better than my boyfriend (who usually beats me soundly) when playing under those conditions. We played through a few times – that last hole is rough! Everyone playing got many a laugh out of the balls never doing anything predictable at all. Afterward, we went back to the room to play the live TV trivia game. My boyfriend *really* wanted one of those ships on a stick! We got through a few times, and FINALLY had the right answer. The question was, “What is the Chinese Zodiac animal of the year 2007?” Being born in 1983, we knew this one, and we got through! My boyfriend says, “Boar!” and Wee Jimmy laughed and said, “You’re a bore!” and hung up on him. Then he goes, “uh….” and gave it to the next guy that called in and answered pig. We were crushed, especially because the next question (to win, you have to answer two correctly) was a Harry Potter question we knew. Arrgh! I even wrote Wee Jimmy a note, but got no response. ::sigh:: =P

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Virga....I am going to (well from everyone's review, I will have to say attempting to go to) Grand Cayman in Feb. I have been reading your review, and you mentioned purchasing Tastee Cheese...what is Tastee Cheese? I looked it up online and it looks to be cheese in a can? Is it something that is not to be missed?

 

Thanks..and I am enjoying your review. Sorry that you did not win the ship on a stick.

 

Molly

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Virga....I am going to (well from everyone's review, I will have to say attempting to go to) Grand Cayman in Feb. I have been reading your review, and you mentioned purchasing Tastee Cheese...what is Tastee Cheese? I looked it up online and it looks to be cheese in a can? Is it something that is not to be missed?

 

Thanks..and I am enjoying your review. Sorry that you did not win the ship on a stick.

 

Molly

 

Well, I'm not sure everyone thinks as highly of it as I do. My dad discovered it when he went to Grand Cayman maybe ten years ago. It's not like the squirty cheese in a can, its a harder product - to be blunt, it's welfare cheese. It's got an incredibly high milkfat content, and its *wonderful* in macaroni and cheese. Actually, I absolutely love it on crackers or any way you want to serve it to me.

 

I have absolutely no idea if anyone else in the US likes the stuff, but BOY was I looking forward to it =P

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