Our B2B Adventure on the Breeze Inaugural!

[rtw68]

More pics of Nassau as we entered the harbor

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rtw68]

Atlantis:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LizaMM]

Great photos!

 

Thanks for sharing :D

[lovestocruise19]

Great photos and review so far! The cove balconies look so close to the water! Did you ever get splashed on? LOL!

[rtw68]

Great photos and review so far! The cove balconies look so close to the water! Did you ever get splashed on? LOL!

 

Nothing major, mostly just water spray and salt left behind :D

[EnTnSA]

Looks just like the Magic :) Man I cannot wait until June!!!

[rtw68]

Watched the NCL Epic come in:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carnival Sensation was also in port that day.

 

Here is a video of the last minute pier runners:

 

 

Here is a video of us leaving Nassau and the horn battle between the Breeze & the Sensation:

 

 

More to come tomorrow!

[phabric]

Looking forward to more of your reviews and pictures. We will on the Breeze Dec 22 in a cove balcony.

[douglinc@msn.com]

Yep, looks just like the Magic, beautiful ship.

 

Doug

[gapearl]

Great review so far! I'm looking forward to reading the rest and getting hyped up for my Breeze cruise next year. :D

 

Along the way we stopped at the Pizza Bar and had lunch. The pizza slices were huge (as you can see from the size of the pies). DW and I shared one slice (I’m normally a pizza hound and can eat a lot).

 

 

We then returned back to the hotel, and had Meet-N-Greet round #2 with the group!

 

I'm looking at the challenge sign. Is this one of those pizza places you see on the Travel Channel where you get a t-shirt or something if you eat the whole thing?

[alikayx3]

Great review so far! Going on this ship Feb.23rd. Can't wait! Also, what kind of camera do you have-you take amazing pictures!

[rtw68]

Great review so far! I'm looking forward to reading the rest and getting hyped up for my Breeze cruise next year. :D

 

 

 

I'm looking at the challenge sign. Is this one of those pizza places you see on the Travel Channel where you get a t-shirt or something if you eat the whole thing?

 

That's a good question. I was so shocked about the size of the pizza that I didn't pay attention to the sign. :-)

 

 

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[KirkNC]

Thanks for the review!

[rtw68]

Great review so far! Going on this ship Feb.23rd. Can't wait! Also, what kind of camera do you have-you take amazing pictures!

 

Thanks I'm such an amateur photographer. :-)

 

I have a Kodak Playsport that shoots 5 mp photos and HD 720p at 60 frames per second.

 

We also bought an Olympus SP 810uz that we used for most of the better photos.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[rtw68]

Looking forward to more of your reviews and pictures. We will on the Breeze Dec 22 in a cove balcony.

 

Cove's are so great, you will love it! I couldn't imagine booking anything else (except a spa suite) for the Dream class!

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[jenale80]

Love the review so far, can't wait to see more pix. This is really getting me excited for our cruise..... just 3 more months!!!

[Phxbyny]

Douglinc. Seems you didn't get your response to your question about the 2nd leg of the trip. I was there as well. We were promised to go through customs and get escorted right back on the ship. As with most promises Carnival makes-they were empty. We has to report to the Ovation theater with the rest of the group of 180 passengers taking the second trip . We waited in the theater for approx 40 minutes and then escorted off by several customer service reps. We went past immigration which was foolish since nobody was going to claim any purchases now since we would repeat this process again in 8 days. Immigration didn't even look at the mandatory forms you fill out at the end of the trip. We were then brought to another holding in front of the main building you enter to get your sail away card where we were given our new cards. We waited there an additional 2 hours before being escorted back on the ship prior to regular boarding. What a cluster fxck. They told us the whole process would take 20 minutes-right! Waste of 3 hrs that day that we paid for. On top of that, departure time was at 4pm-hell no! We didn't leave until 630pm due to failure of food supplies to arrive on time. Hmm-we were there since 6am, the other Carnival ship next to us got their deliveries and departed on time. More apologies given from Carnival. So many " Were are sorry" gets old. It got worse from there if you can believe it. Already booked my next cruise Oct. 2013-Celebrity here I come, bye bye Carnival

[rtw68]

Douglinc. Seems you didn't get your response to your question about the 2nd leg of the trip. I was there as well. We were promised to go through customs and get escorted right back on the ship. As with most promises Carnival makes-they were empty. We has to report to the Ovation theater with the rest of the group of 180 passengers taking the second trip . We waited in the theater for approx 40 minutes and then escorted off by several customer service reps. We went past immigration which was foolish since nobody was going to claim any purchases now since we would repeat this process again in 8 days. Immigration didn't even look at the mandatory forms you fill out at the end of the trip. We were then brought to another holding in front of the main building you enter to get your sail away card where we were given our new cards. We waited there an additional 2 hours before being escorted back on the ship prior to regular boarding. What a cluster fxck. They told us the whole process would take 20 minutes-right! Waste of 3 hrs that day that we paid for. On top of that, departure time was at 4pm-hell no! We didn't leave until 630pm due to failure of food supplies to arrive on time. Hmm-we were there since 6am, the other Carnival ship next to us got their deliveries and departed on time. More apologies given from Carnival. So many " Were are sorry" gets old. It got worse from there if you can believe it. Already booked my next cruise Oct. 2013-Celebrity here I come, bye bye Carnival

 

If you would have read my response to Doug, I was going to be mentioning the B2B issue as part of my review. :mad:

 

The B2B process wasn't as smooth as promised, but didn't ruin my cruise. Also, leaving late (which I was also going to discuss) wasn't a big deal to us.

 

If you have issues with this cruise, you should post a new thread about it and not hijack my review as a way to complain about Carnival! :rolleyes:

[rtw68]

I did fail to mention a couple things about Embarkation day on Thursday…

 

John Heald as well as the other cruise directors were on board for a series of meetings. John was going to be disembarking the ship once we returned to Miami on Friday morning.

 

Our Breezer Bees group had purchased several items for John and his daughter Kye in the anticipation of him being our cruise director for the B2B, which unfortunately wasn’t the case. He setup a time to meet with us and we were able to get a picture taken with him.

 

 

Now, we don’t cruise just for the cruise director, but we were looking forward to some of the specific things that he does (welcome aboard show, love & marriage show, etc). Butch Begovich is a great cruise director and was very involved in the entire cruise. He has a lot of energy and is a talented dancer as well (led the various Lido parties).

 

The seas were fairly rough on Thursday and we had after dinner made our way to the Ovation Theater to watch Divas (one of the four Playlist productions).

 

Prior to the show that evening, someone mentioned to us that they were selling liquor and allowing you to take it directly to your cabin. Well thank you very much! I purchased two bottles of Bacardi Gold rum and took them back to the cabin. That $19.99 purchase kept the bar bill on the eight day very low! :)

 

Unfortunately, they weren’t able to perform that show and once we were able to see it, I could understand why. They do some things during the performance that could have resulted in injuries with the way the ship was moving.

 

In that shows place, they did the Hasbro Game Show. Butch does a great job with the show. We didn’t make it a point to see any of the other Hasbro shows for the eight-day cruise.

 

Ok, back to Friday…

 

I was in major vacation mode on this cruise and turned very lazy. I had full intentions of documenting each day with what/where/when we ate and also taking food porn pics, but I was enjoying this cruise so much that I never made it a priority. I do apologize for that!

[rtw68]

After we watched sail-away in Nassau, our cabin was almost directly above where the pilot boat picked up the harbor officials. Here is a video:

 

 

We spent the rest of the evening exploring more of the ship and went to bed pretty early as we were both wiped out! Here are some random photos:

 

 

 

 

[douglinc@msn.com]

If you would have read my response to Doug, I was going to be mentioning the B2B issue as part of my review. :mad:

 

The B2B process wasn't as smooth as promised, but didn't ruin my cruise. Also, leaving late (which I was also going to discuss) wasn't a big deal to us.

 

If you have issues with this cruise, you should post a new thread about it and not hijack my review as a way to complain about Carnival! :rolleyes:

 

I did see your response and was waiting for that part of your review to come up.

 

Doug

[rtw68]

11/24/2012 – END OF TWO DAY/EMBARK FOR EIGHT DAY

 

I am normally up very early for work every day, and unfortunately, my built-in alarm clock had me awake very early. The good thing about that is we were just heading back into Miami, and I was able to watch the Breeze spin around in the turn basin.

 

In watching the other ships do this from the Port of Miami Web Cam it sure looks tight. Seeing it in person, however, there is more than enough room for ships to make the turn.

 

On most mornings, we ordered room service coffee and fruit to enjoy on the balcony, then we went for some breakfast a little later. The breakfast buffet on the lido was pretty good. The scrambled eggs had a strange texture to them, but still tasted fine. I enjoyed having French toast and yes the bacon police were active!

 

I do think that Carnival was unprepared for the number of B2B’ers that were on the ship. I was expecting there would be more but there were only 180 of us.

 

I was shocked when our room steward Wilfred had placed the luggage tags and customs form on the bed Friday night! After a trip to customer service, they said that was normal procedure and they did have us on the B2B list.

 

The left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing and it wasn’t until late on Friday night that they had the info for us. We were to meet in the Ovation Theater at 9:30AM to get the process moving.

 

In addition to the 180 of us that were on the B2B, there were staff members that would also be disembarking that morning. They had to keep us separate. Most of the delays were caused by Customs & Immigration, and unfortunately, until they say things can proceed, we just had to wait.

 

I believe it was close to 10:00AM before we finally made our way off the ship. They walked us through the terminal, and down the escalator to the customs/luggage area.

 

We “Breezed” right through customs only having to hand them our filled out form. Nobody was declaring anything on the forms since we were staying on board, I think it was a major waste of time dealing with the form, but that’s the government in action!

 

We were then taking to a large waiting room and that’s where we stayed for quite a while. At this point, they were supposed to hand us our new S&S cards and then we could proceed back on the ship. We were supposed to be back on before anyone else embarked, but that wasn’t the case as we later found out.

 

To be honest, I had never done a B2B before and none of this really bothered us. There were some other people getting upset, but I knew we had another eight days to look forward to. I was on vacation and wasn’t going to get worked up about it.

 

They finally started handing out the new S&S cards, and this was very disorganized. They had them listed by cabin number and it took quite a while for them to be given to everyone. Again, I think it was because of the large number of B2B’ers and the Customs and Immigration delays that caused the problems for Carnival. In the future, they should have a better way to handle that many people returning to the ship.

 

After what seemed like a 30-40 minute delay, we were finally brought back on the ship for another “ding” and security photo.

 

Pierre Camilleri, the hotel director, was personally greeting everyone once we boarded and apologized for the delay. I was back on the ship again, it didn’t ruin my cruise! Later that day, we found a fruit basket that he had given to the B2B'ers.

[rtw68]

It was very nice being able to board the ship, not having to unpack, and getting back to the relaxation, which is exactly what we did!

 

In addition to another Guy’s burger, we spent some time relaxing on the serenity deck and actually swam in the aft pool. I was surprised to find out that they had heated the pools on the Breeze. I do recall the pools on the Dream were always cold, so I don’t know for sure if they were able to be heated and just didn’t have it turned on?

 

We were near the Red Frog Pub for the sail away party, and the group of us enjoyed several 101 oz Thirsty Frog Red tubes! That beer is very good!

 

I took some more pictures of Miami:

 

 

 

 

We attended the muster drill again (our group was in the Breeze’s conference room in deck 4 aft) and afterward we returned back to the Lido deck for the sail away party.

 

Here DW was cutting up with the bartender from the Red Frog bar.

 

 

Butch was around and DW had her picture taken with him

 

 

The sail away party started around 4:00PM, and during the party we watched Carnival Liberty sail away. Once the party was over we still hadn’t left. We continued our own sail away party on the Lido and soon we had to go get ready for dinner in the Steak House. We had a 7:00PM reservation and because we booked for the first night, we received a free bottle of wine.

 

The ship finally sailed away shortly after 7:00PM. Dinner was of course fantastic. We really enjoy the steakhouse and plan to eat there at least once on every cruise we go on.

 

I found out later that we were delayed because of the late arrival of some food trucks. Can’t go out on an eight-day cruise without enough food!

[rtw68]

Later that night we went to the Adults Only show of comedian Happy Cole. He was very funny, but we were disappointed at how short the show was. It was only about a 30 minute set. That may be how long they typically go, but it felt very short.

 

Here was tonight’s towel animal:

 

 

After walking around the ship and some balcony-watch-the-ocean-time we went to bed.

 

11/25/2012 – FUN DAY AT SEA

 

The weather was hot and beautiful. We enjoyed the ship in and out throughout the day. DW loves to sit in the sun for hours, but I get stir-crazy sitting around too long, so I played Mr. Kodak and walked around the ship getting more pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

[rtw68]