Mitsugirlys STAR end of the world/pre-Christmas cruise detailed review & pictorial

[mitsugirly]

Great pictures!

 

Thank you.

 

Thanks so much for sharing your vacation with us! I can't wait for February... after seeing your pictures I need to go see all the animals. I finally decided on my first excursion. :)

 

Woo Hoo for deciding your first excursion. Isn't it a great feeling? I search for months when we decide where we are cruising to and the excitement of all the different places to choose from can get hard. Then I'll sometimes come across that one review with pictures that I just say "wow...I have to visit there". That is the reason I am doing this. I hope that people will be able to see the pictures and decide for themselves if this is the place for them (on any of the places I have visited). Pictures tell a lot. Experiences vary and I take them with a grain of salt. We create our own experiences so even if someone has a bad experience somewhere that I want to go...it doesn't necessarily affect my decision. It just prepares me. :D

[mitsugirly]

what were other excursions that your kids loved, if you don;t mind sharing? we are doing this itinerary in feb, 1'st time, with kids around yours, so wondering what would be appropriate & fun.

 

Our daughter was 3 on her first 2 cruises and 4 yrs old on this one. Every child is different with their comfort level on what they like to do...but our daughter is an extremist! She is game for just about everything and doesn't scare easily (well, unless there's a monster in her room at night). :p

 

Another option that she loved...

 

Roatan last year we did the zip and dip and monkey adventure.

 

The ziplining, she was suppose to ride tandem with us. She decided she was doing this on her own like a big girl...and she did. Zip lined through the rain forest by herself.

 

 

 

Tell me she wasn't having fun???

 

 

Then you get to see all the animals they have there too and get to go in with the monkeys and hold them. She had a bad experience and was bitten by one of them. But I have never heard of it happening before there.

 

They take you to West Bay for the rest of the day and snorkeling there is WONDERFUL!! I posted the link that tells about it above in this thread if you are interested. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll post again.

 

Here's my review I did that day if you are interested: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=30662590&postcount=23

 

This is the review of West Bay: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=30663211&postcount=24

 

What we did in Belize was cavetubing. It was a complete BLAST! I know they now have a height restriction on it, I think 48" so we will go back and do that again when she gets that tall. It was an experience of a life time I tell you...if you read my review you'll see...(eating termites, holding tarantulas...wow).

Here's my review if you are interested: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=30667696&postcount=44

 

Then last but definitely not least...Cozumel and Chankanaab. I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this place...so much we went twice in 6 months type of love.

 

Here's my review the first time around: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=30683350&postcount=59

 

We did the dolphin and manatee swim there and it was a blast: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=30692077&postcount=65

 

 

This is the second time we went there: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=33274360&postcount=48

 

Enjoy more reading time if you decide. :p

 

Thank you so much for such detailed review, loving it. we are doing this itinerary in feb. what are your experiences regarding Dolphin encounters, or Mayan ruins, have you done any of those with your little girl? We've 2 little ones, and were wondering if we can do anything different than going to the beach.

 

I posted above our experiences. The dolphin encounter was terrific at Chankanaab and there's so much to do there. Dolphins, swims, sea lion shows, snorkeling, beach, lagoon, tons of iguanas walking around, replica mayan ruins tour. It's just wonderful there!

[mitsugirly]

Here's my review from Maya Chan in Costa Maya if you are interested to Bluestar:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=30654861&postcount=12

[mitsugirly]

Ok, not a good start to getting this review of Maya Key done today...remember the car issues I had before the cruise (tire blown), well my battery decided to take a dump when we returned. We had charged it several times and thought it was good to go. Not...my son got stranded in it at the grocery store and I had to rescue him. Not a very good way to start the day out.

 

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME SNORKELING??? I thought so. Here we go.

 

We weren’t at the beach for long before I was twiddling my thumbs, trying to hold back the excitement of wanting to hit this reef I had read about at the end of the pier. There were a lot of reports about how good the snorkeling was there, but I have yet to see any snorkeling pictures to be able to determine for myself what “their” definition of “good snorkeling” was. I know we each have our own thoughts of what is good and it varies. But I just wanted to see some pics! No one has ever provided pictures and when I ask for pictures, I never really got much of a response other than it was GOOD.

 

We gathered our snorkeling equipment (we have our own) and headed down the long pier, that was right beside the beach where our stuff was at, and I could hardly contain my excitement. The water was clear along the way and I spotted a few fish that looked like trumpet fish or something with a long nose swimming on the top of the water. I tried several times to get a picture of them, but they were quick. This is the best one that turned out.

 

 

 

When we made it to the end of the pier, there were several guys there (that I assume are the “guides” if you need it) and they hang out there all day watching the snorkelers, telling them “where” to go, and helping you with getting your gear on. They also come armed with dish soap to rinse out your goggles before going in. What a nice touch. I know that people have mentioned that they are out in the canoes during the day watching out over everyone, but I did not see them in the canoes at all that day. The canoes were tied up along the side of the dock.

 

As I started to enter the water down the ladder, one of the guides was coming up out of the water with this:

 

 

 

 

Everyone around took this opportunity to takes pictures of it. Do you notice that he is laughing? Well, it's because it was dead. I was wondering how he was just holding it like that and it wasn't trying to get away or pinch him. Ok, you got us. Nice trick.

 

As you go in to the water, the guides tell you to follow the bottles in the water. That will take you where you need to go along the “path”. I didn’t know where it was that I needed to “go”, but we listen to him and followed the path slowly as we took everything in. The bottles were just plastic soda bottles that were tied down in the water and some of them had a big red plastic ball up at the top (so you could see the path from the top of the water as well and tell where people were at). I'll point out the bottles in some of the pictures when I get to them. There are just so many I don't feel like digging through all of them to locate them on my host site.

 

Alrighty then...here is what you will see when snorkeling. If anyone knows the name of any of these fish, please let me know. There were some that I had never seen before and I am unable to name them.

 

No clue what this fish is:

 

 

A Blue Tang:

 

 

 

Plenty of Rainbow Wrasse there:

 

 

 

 

I believe this is a schoolmaster snapper:

 

 

[mitsugirly]

The coral here was absolutely beautiful!!!! It was everywhere and so many different types of coral. I'm not up-to-date on my coral species so forgive me I don't know the names:

 

 

 

 

Rainbow Wrasse

 

 

Blue Tang swimming by the coral...she turned on me right as I snapped the picture darnit.

 

There's a stoplight parrotfish here...he looked a little banged up and had a boo-boo on his head that was swollen. Too bad I didn't have my first aid kit with me. hehe

 

Gorgeous coral I have never seen snorkeling anywhere else before:

 

[mitsugirly]

Stoplight Parrotfish:

 

 

 

Brain coral

 

 

 

Unknown fish??

 

 

 

Foureyed Butterfly Fish:

 

 

Blue Tang and a redtail Parrot fish (in the juvenille stage):

 

 

Some type of black surgeon fish:

 

[mitsugirly]

Blue stripped Grunt fish trying to hide from me under the coral:

 

 

There were a bunch of little white, black, and yellow fish beside this coral. I'm not sure if you'll be able to see them in this picture. I have no idea what type of fish:

 

 

The hubby and Sakari when they first got in the water and he was showing her the path to follow.

 

 

 

More coral:

 

 

Yellow and black stripped fish I have yet to figure out what they are on all of my snorkeling adventures. Anyone know their names?

 

 

 

Absolutely beautiful!!! It went on forever.

 

[mitsugirly]

More really pretty coral:

 

 

 

 

Then we get to "where" we are going...I had no clue...if I could have gasp in my snorkel, I would have. It was the FINDING NEMO DROPOFF! (I find this funny because right at this moment, my daughter is watching Finding Nemo on t.v. and I'm typing about it). Well, we have now experienced it. It just...drops off! Off to no where but the beautiful deep blue sea. Wow. Very beautiful but yet kind of freaky in a neat way.

 

 

 

In this picture you will see one of the "bottle" markers that I was talking about:

 

 

Not sure what type of fish this is either. I had never seen one:

 

 

Yellowtail Parrotfish (initial phase (young)) with a Yellowtail Damselfish and more beautiful coral.

 

 

This sea fan looked a little beat up, I'm not sure why. It was a little too deep for someone to have hit it with their fin.

 

[mitsugirly]

Possibly a Bermuda Chub?

 

 

 

Sakari had the hang of things and kept pointing out all the fish:

 

 

More Coral and a purple sea fan that wasn't so beat up:

 

 

There was a Bluestripped Grunt hiding there in this sea fan.

 

 

There is a small damselfish here and some more of the little black and yellow fish in the coral:

 

 

Hiding in the coral:

 

 

[mitsugirly]

More funky looking coral:

 

 

 

More coral. I have seen some of the gray coral before and it always tricks me and at first I will think it's a stingray laying on the bottom. LOL

 

 

Blue striped grunt:

 

 

The reason they have bottles for you to follow the path is because if you get off the path (which we did by mistake after we hit the open water) is that the coral comes really close to the surface and you can get yourself in to situations that could bang you up and harm the coral. You can see in this picture that it's pretty close to the surface. Some gets closer but it can be a sticky situation to get out of if you are not careful of your surroundings.

 

 

 

Parrotfish, blue headed wrasse, yellow backed goatfish?

 

 

A beautiful HUGE blue tang appeared while surrounded by many different types of coral.

 

[boopsahoy]

What beautiful pictures! Did you use a special waterproof camera? Ive only used those cheap ones where all the pictures look the same color lol

[mitsugirly]

Juvenile Beaugregory

 

 

Stoplight Parrotfish in the terminal stage (it must be a female since she wasn't as vibrant in color as some of the others that I found that day:

 

 

 

 

 

More coral...

 

 

 

Some type of black fish along the coral:

 

 

Huge coral:

 

 

 

 

This is the first time I had seen one of these white sea urchins...needless to say I was SUPER excited:

 

[mitsugirly]

Enough of snorkeling FOR NOW (meaning I have a lot more wink wink). The hubby and munchkin had headed back while I SLOWLY continued to explore on my way back (truth be known, I didn’t want to get out or leave this underwater paradise), but figured I would go back too. By the time I made it back and climbed up the ladder to get out…they were nowhere in sight. Nowhere! I mean they had removed their equipment, walked down the long dock and were back at the “campsite” gone. How’d they do that so quickly? Maybe I went slower than I thought.

 

 

When we had first arrived, they told us that our cruise ship time for lunch was going to be between 10:30 and 1pm. So, we were getting pretty hungry and decided it was time to head for lunch.

 

 

They had a “lunch line”, which there wasn’t many people there when we went and it was under a small roof structure:

 

 

 

This is where you go to get your drinks (at the regular bar which is right there):

 

 

They had the jugs filled with unsweetened tea or water to drink.

 

Their lunch consisted of the following:

 

House Salad (which consisted of lettuce, green pepper and carrots only. I guess their "house" didn't grow much there on the island)

 

Baked BBQ Chiken, which was really good.

 

Fried Sea Bass <----you talk about good! YUM!

 

Coconut Rice and Beans, also very tasty.

 

Fried banana chips, I didn't find these too terribly good. Not bad, but just not as tasty as I thought they would be.

 

 

There is a nice dining area with nice chairs under the umbrealls right where the food and bar are located.

 

Also, I just wanted to mention...the arm bands they have on you when you head here were marked off with a marker as you go through the lane for food. Maybe it's not an "all you can eat" place. I'm not sure. I do know that we had more than enough to get full either way.

 

 

Sakari eating with her friend from the ship:

 

 

I know this place use to be called Fins and Flippers, but their cups said "Anthony Key Resort". I'm just wondering if they use to be called this too? Or these cups were donated by someone? Or this is their aka name? Anyone know?

 

Edited January 3, 2013 by mitsugirly

[mitsugirly]

After going back to the “camp site” someone found a caterpillar and gave to Sakari to hold. She loved it.

 

 

 

Time for some more swimming and beach time because we all know you can't get enough of that!

 

 

 

 

Mommy knew that she wanted to head back out and snorkel some more. This is not the place you go to and snorkel and call it a day. You have to do it more than once...it's just that good. I knew there were definitely more pictures to be taken!

 

Daddy decided to stay back at the beach with Sakari and I headed off down the pier once again for more adventures.

 

[mitsugirly]

As I was walking along the pier toward the end, they had put the dead lobster on display for everyone. I had to take another picture.

 

 

 

Back in the water I went. There weren't very many people in the water at that time (not that it was crowded or a lot in the water the first time around, but when I mean there wasn't hardly anyone, I mean there was two other people).

 

Azure Damselfish:

 

 

Blue Tang:

 

 

 

Another blue tang:

 

 

The bottle markers to stay on the path:

 

 

 

Beautiful coral:

 

[mitsugirly]

 

 

Brain coral:

 

 

This rock was really neat, it had little shells all over it.

 

 

 

This is what happens when you try to change the settings on the camera to see if you can improve the quality of the pictures (since you really don't know if they are turning out or not until you get back to the ship and download them on to the computer and see them on a bigger screen). It was a COMPLETE FLOP! After taking a bunch of pictures, I noticed the green tone and decided to put the white balance settings back to auto I think it was. I just thought I would share with you one of the horrid pictures that I took to show you what a struggle I had learning this camera. (I know by the looks of most of the pictures, it looks like I knew what I was doing with the settings, but I'm admitting it, I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures and I'm only picking out the best of course. There were a lot that didn't turn out because I had no idea what I was doing LOL). Ok, there! I said it. I sucked at learning the new camera. hehe

 

 

I look back at all my old snorkeling pictures from the 80's and 90's when you use to have to buy those horrid disposable cameras and all of the pictures would turn out green like this. I'm so glad they have affordable cameras out there that does a much better job now.

 

Foureyed Butterfly Fish:

 

 

 

This is the red balloon marker that you can see from the top of the water that I was talking about:

 

[mitsugirly]

Stoplight Parrotfish and a ocean surgeonfish playing around:

 

 

Schoolmaster Snapper:

 

 

Redfin Parrotfish

 

 

 

Another white sea urchin:

 

 

Inside the rock (look closely) there is the normal black with red prickly sea urchins you find everywhere:

 

 

Stoplight Parrotfish and a blue fish playing (I don't think this is a tang. It was shaped a little different and had blackish stripes)

 

[mitsugirly]

A really beautiful and colorful Stoplight Parrot fish-final stages. LOOK CLOSELY. I watched this fish for awhile. It was gnawing at the coral and then the little fish around it was taking it out of his mouth. You could see him open his mouth while they removed the food. I thought it was cute and I had never seen one of these fish do this before. It was like a mother feeding her (what seem to be adopted) children.

 

 

 

 

Another Stoplight Parrotfish (although these fish are so common and you see them everywhere when snorkeling, I just love the colors so much I always take tons of pictures of them.) For those of you that don't know it...if you are really quiet, you can hear the fish biting the coral. They have teeth and you will hear the chomping sound of them eating the coral.

 

 

 

There is a black and yellow fish in this picture. She was kind of big and I'm not sure what kind of fish it was. The way the body was shaped, it looked to be some type of trigger fish.

 

 

Unknown black fish:

 

 

A small school of fish, unknown type:

 

 

Unknown species:

 

[Ron_L]

I know this place use to be called Fins and Flippers, but their cups said "Anthony Key Resort". I'm just wondering if they use to be called this too? Or these cups were donated by someone? Or this is their aka name? Anyone know?

 

When we were there in 2009 the cups said Anthony's Key Resort, too. Back then Anthony's had either complete or partial ownership of Fins and Flippers. Since the cups are the same I suspect that they still own at least part of Maya Cay.

[mitsugirly]

This was the first time I have seen one of these fishes too. I have no clue what the name is (there is another picture at the bottom of this post):

 

 

Coral and surgeon fish:

 

 

 

First time I have ever seen this type of fish as well:

 

 

When I was almost done snorkeling and headed back to the dock, I came across this sticking out from under a huge piece of rock/coral. It was kind of freaky looking and I stared at it forever taking pictures. It never came out and it was just plain weird looking. Anyone have any idea at all what this could have been????

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know what type of fish this either but Sakari calls it the "kissing fish"....so that's it's new name.

 

 

[mitsugirly]

I was trying to take a picture of this blue and yellow fish darting back and forth and then noticed there was another red and black sea urchin hiding in the rocks. I thought the colors of the rocks and coral around here were kind of unique and had to take a picture even though it didn't turn out too clear.

 

 

 

 

Close up of the sea urchin:

 

 

As much as I hated it, I knew I had to get out and say goodbye to this awesome snorkeling area. The family was waiting for me back at the beach and we hadn’t even visited the pool yet for pictures or taken our “Santa hat” pictures. I s-l-o-w-l-y walked back down the pier knowing that I would never get to return to this awesome place (well, at least this visit anyhow) and noticed that the beach area had almost cleared out. Where did everyone go?

 

 

 

 

 

Time for our Santa hat picture to send back home to the family and friends via facebook:

 

[mitsugirly]

...and one by the palm tree since we didn't have a Christmas tree...this would definitely do:

 

 

We washed off our snorkel gear (they have water spickets to do this by the chairs) and packed everything back in to our bags and headed toward the pool.

 

 

 

 

The pool and pool area was very nice too (at this point, I don’t think I could find anything not nice about this place). There was plenty of room to sit down and relax while we let our daughter swim for a while. She was busy jumping in and swimming to the stairs over and over and over. You would think this kid wears out but she doesn’t. She can go until 2am in the morning just like me.

 

 

 

 

Just look at that smile on her face:

 

 

 

This was one happy kid today:

 

 

 

We stayed for about 45 minutes or so and then decided to head toward the boat to go back.

[mitsugirly]

As we were walking toward the boat dock, we noticed a different area we hadn’t explored yet. It was the area where you do the shark, stingray swims and where they had the sea lions. Now I knew prior to going that they would not let you swim with the sharks or rays unless you were an older age (I think it’s like 12 years old or something). So, I had completely forgotten about this part. So we went over to check things out.

 

 

 

For some reason I didn’t see any of the rays or nurse sharks. I’m not sure how deep the water was there, but nothing was in sight. The area kind of reminded me of the dolphin swim place at Costa Maya. It was really small (probably smaller than Costa Maya’s was). We kept walking and seen the sea lions. They looked like they might have had a busy day and were sleeping. Not once did they notice we were there. There were 3 of them in sight.

 

 

We walked back to the boat dock (sadly) and decided to go ahead and leave at 2:30. There was hardly anyone left on the island, which is normal for us...we stay until the end everywhere we go.

 

 

Walking back to the boat, I’m reflecting on things I forgot to mention earlier.

 

The pool is 4’ deep. There is also a smaller pool that backs up to it (I assume for little muchkins). We did not go in it and neither did my daughter…since she’s a big girl and all and she won’t think twice about telling you that.

 

There was absolutely NO NO-SEE-UM’S there the day we were there. I know this has been a complaint from passengers and I have ran in to them at Costa Maya when others haven’t, but for our day there, nothing! Nothing at all. We didn’t even use spray either. We encountered NO bugs. Just animals…which we were happy with!

 

I did manage to see another iguana that day. When we were headed to the pool, you walk across the lunch patio area. There are tress growing up in the patio and they have holes around them. The huge iguana took off in one of the tree holes and hid. I couldn’t get a picture fast enough. Darn.

We were there with the Carnival Legend and met a nice lady there (Lisa) who was by herself since her husband had taken a scuba tour. She was afraid that she would be stuck on the island alone. She quickly made friends with another lady that we made friends with from our ship (the one my daughter was playing with all day and hung out with at the kids club during the cruise). Whatayaknow…she was a Nurse too!!! So we had our “Nurse” talk.

 

Would I recommend this place to anyone? What do you guys think? HANDS DOWN BEST PLACE EVER!! It ranks right up there for us with Chankanaab and Sapphire Beach in St Thomas. We loved it, we WILL return some day.

[mitsugirly]

On the boat to head to the port we go with smiles on our faces I continued to snap pictures along the LONG 3 minute, blink twice boat ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look, she's smiling at us! Happy to see us return??

 

 

We (well my husband) decided that he wanted to look around the port (for what, I still don’t know because we’ve been to this port before and there really isn’t anything there that we would want. It’s pretty small). I remembered that I wanted to take a picture of the Christmas tree before we boarded the ship.

 

 

 

The tree was so huge I couldn't even fit it all in the picture. Now that's my kind of tree!

 

We wrapped things up and called it a day in Roatan and headed back to the ship to get showered, dressed and to grab a “snack”. I’m pretty sure I walked and snorkeled off a good 5 pounds this day, so I needed to keep up my 7 pound gain status and eat some more!

[mitsugirly]

When we were there in 2009 the cups said Anthony's Key Resort, too. Back then Anthony's had either complete or partial ownership of Fins and Flippers. Since the cups are the same I suspect that they still own at least part of Maya Cay.

 

Oh ok, that explains it then. I was wondering. I had never heard anyone refer to it as Anthony Key before. I had heard of the Fins and Flippers though. Thanks for the clarification. :)