Carnival dream - august 2014 - trip report

[Dicenator]

This trip was totally distorted for me personally when I had an accident at home on Wed. 8/13. I took a misstep on the stairs and totally bruised my heel bone, stretched my Achilles tendon and tore a muscle in my lower leg. I could walk very slowly with extreme difficulty and pain with every step. Fortunately, my condition improved slightly every day. We departed Philadelphia Saturday morning going to New Orleans via Charlotte. My wife took care of me incredibly well. She arraigned a wheel chair for me in both airports and also on the cruise ship right from the terminal to our stateroom.

 

We stayed the night in New Orleans on Saturday and the cruise was leaving on Sunday at 4 PM. Our friends from Canada, Mike and Sandi and their two daughters, Carlee and Cassie were cruising with us for the third year in a row. Saturday night while I stayed in bed in our room they all visited the French quarter and the River walk and Harrah's casino. My wife was impressed with the size of this casino and she and Mike told me about the very narrow craps tables there. They said that they were no more than 24 inches wide.

 

This cruise had 3 stops; the first was Montego Bay, Jamaica, followed by Grand Cayman and lastly Cozumel. Our stateroom was #8403 and it was a balcony located on the starboard aft side of the ship. This really minimized the distance I had to walk during the daytime. The buffet was directly on the back of the ship and the pool I went to was also back there. In the evening for dinner I had to walk to the front of the ship and the casino was also located just slightly back from the front on deck 5. When the ship departed New Orleans on Sunday 8/17 it then spent 2 at sea days going to Montego Bay.

 

At Montego Bay we went to a resort called Sunset beach where there was a good long beach, 3 swimming pools, water slides, a lazy river, buffet lunch and free drinks. I think the cost was $60 per person for the day and this included transportation from the cruise dock and the return. It did cloud up around 2 in the afternoon but we didn't get rained on. I found it very difficult to walk into the ocean and get out with my leg. The softness of the sand made my foot move in ways that were very painful and walking in some areas where the sand was firm also caused me pain in the heel. Well at least everyone else had a good time.

 

The following day was Grand Cayman and I needed a day off my leg so I stayed on the ship and spent time in the hot tub and the pool. All the others had a great beach day at a place called Sea Grape beach on 7 mile beach.

 

Next day was Cozumel where we all went to Passion Island. This was a 40 minute ride on a powered catamaran from the port. This place has a great beach, super clean and clear water, activities and games all day long, buffet lunch with free drinks. The only negative was the time allotted for this excursion. The ship docked at 10 AM and was departing at 5 PM. We only had 3 hours 15 minutes on the island along with the 40 minute each way catamaran trip. After leaving Cozumel the next day was an at sea day followed by our return to New Orleans at 6 AM Sunday morning 8/24.

 

For dinner every night we ate at the Crimson restaurant which was the anytime dining venue. We all got there every night at 6 PM and we had the same table #225 with the same wait staff. There were 3 members on the team and the service was absolutely great the whole week. Our meals were served promptly and there were no instances with it taking over and hour and a half to complete out dinner.

 

Our cabin steward was a woman named Soldana from Serbia and she was absolutely excellent. We saw her every day and would talk to her and she had our room made up every day by 11 AM. We tipped her $40 on the last night. She is probably the best cabin steward we've ever had.

 

On to the casino action. My friend Mike had absolutely no luck all week in anything he tried. I made him a hundred or more a few times with some good hands. He had a few good hands during the week but without enough consistency to help. Eva's throwing was only fair with a long hand of 20 throws. The highlight at craps for her was one session where she was up $200 based on my hitting some 2's and 12's for her and this one other player hitting 5 2's and 12's during his hand. Every other session she lost money. However she more than made up for it with a straight flush and a few 3 of a kinds at 3 card poker and a 4 of a kind at Caribbean stud poker. Her net for the week was up $800.

 

The craps table was 12 feet long with a red micro fiber layout. The dice were blue. The bounce characteristic was normal in all ways. All of the usual Carnival limits applied, $5 min. with 2X odds and no proposition bets. My bad leg prevented me from standing at the craps table for more than 10 minutes at a time so my playing time was really restricted. There were a lot of craps players on the ship and 2 of them pissed me off that I wouldn't play when they were on the table and one stickman also pissed me off when he read a note in my notepad on the chip rail where I wrote "keep the throws low". He was laughing about my note. I would be lucky to get in 2 hands before the table pretty much filled up. The last night of the cruise after shooting extremely well in the afternoon, the craps table never opened until 9:20 and was immediately filled with 10 drunk young guys. One funny incident happened unfortunately it happened during one of my better hands. These 2 women rookies playing for the first time and drunk came to the table. Eva was constantly yelling at them "hands up" because their hands were out over the table. They bought in during one of my hands and to make matters worse they were charging their room cards. This delayed my throw by 5 minutes. Well after sevening out the first one of these newbies gets the dice. What does she do but stroke her hand up and down like she was performing a sex act and then drops the dice down on the table directly in front of her. Everyone cracked up. I couldn't stand it any longer and had to leave. Here are my throwing results which I'm going to do differently. I'll list every throw since I only had 20 hands for the whole week.

 

Day #1

 

HAND #1 - 5 10 8 4 2 5P 9 9P 10 4 6 7out

HAND #2 - 4H 11 9 8 6 3 8 7out

 

 

 

Day #2

 

HAND #3 - 9 5 3 6 6 11 7 out

HAND #4 - 9 5 12 3 8 8 4 4 2 9P 5 5P 3 8 3 12 10 7out

HAND #5 - 9 3 3 12 8 11 6 8 4H 3 7out

HAND #6 - 7 7 12 4 6 11 8 8 8 6H 5 4P 10 8H 7out

HAND #7 - 12 5 2 5P 4 10 7out

HAND #8 - 7 9 9P 11 5 8 4 6 5P 9 5 10H 9P 11 6 7out

 

Day #3

 

HAND #9 - 8 8P 6 4 2 5 2 8 7out

HAND #10 - 8 6 9 8P 7 6 6HP 10 3 8 5 4 8 6 3 5 8 9 10P 3 9 8 4 4 7out

 

Day #4

 

HAND #11 - 7 5 8H 9 4H 8 8 12 9 10H 10H 5P 5 7out

HAND #12 - 7 6 8H 5 4 9 4H 6P 8 9 10 2 9 10 9 8P 7 2 11 5 2 10H 4 9 9 3 3 9 9 10 7out

HAND #13 - 7 2 7 5 4H 8 5P 8 7out

 

Day #5

 

HAND #14 - 6H 9 6P 12 8 6 7out

 

Day #6

 

HAND #15 - 9 10H 10 9P 8H 8P 7 5 2 9 8 11 2 8 4H 6 11 12 7out

HAND #16 - 8 5 8P 7 11 10H 3 7out

HAND #17 - 9 9P 8 5 5 3 7out

HAND #18 - 5 8H 3 9 12 5P 8 11 6 5 5 6 7out

 

Day #7

 

HAND #19 - 11 8 5 6H 10H 11 5 8HP 5 5P 9 5 6 5 11 11 9P 8 8P 11 8 9 5 6 7out

HAND #20 - 9 6H 3 2 9P 9 5 11 8 12 8 4H 8 10 12 10 5 9P 5 11 4H 6 7out

 

In 20 hands I made 29 points for an average of 1.45 points per hand. In addition I had 20 come out wins for a ratio of 1.1 per hand. My average roll length with my Underhand throw was 14.2 throws per hand. I used a Parr throw for one hand during the week and one hand was Underhand with my left hand.

 

With the very limited playing that I had mostly due to pain in my foot and leg when standing at the craps table I felt that I never really got warmed up or in the zone so I'm pretty happy with my results. My win for the week was pretty minimal being $260 but considering that particularly for the first 3 or 4 days my pain was my primary focus and it prevented me from really even thinking about betting properly. Using hindsight I should have had my wife handle the betting and just concentrate on my throwing.

 

After leaving the ship we rented a car and spent 2 days in Biloxi. Biloxi is about a 1 hour 45 minute trip from the New Orleans airport. That trip report is coming.

 

Dicenator