Comments/Review on the Getaway 5/29

[songerling]

We went on the Getaway on the May 29 sailing. I meant to post a review when I got back but between catching up at work and all the other summer activities it hasn't happened. So this is a bit late but I wanted to post some information from our cruise and answer any questions if people have them. These forums were amazing in helping me prepare so I wanted to give a little back.

 

We are a family of 7 (5 kids, ages 9-18). My wife and I have been on 2 other cruises but it's been 12 and 6 years ago, so not very frequent cruisers. The kids have never been on a cruise, and we live in Utah so they've only been to the ocean a couple times.

 

We took a red-eye flight to get there before the cruise and I certainly wouldn't recommend that for anybody. Sure it saved some money and we didn't have to get a hotel but nobody really slept much and everyone was grumpy the next morning trying to get to the port. It was a really long night. We took an uber from the Miami airport to the port and then went through the embarkation process pretty quickly. My youngest daughter (9 years old) was exhausted and fell asleep in the airport waiting for the uber and in the port waiting for our number to be called. Then she fell asleep again on a couch in the lobby outside the restaurant waiting for our rooms to be ready. Then she slept most of the first afternoon.

 

The embarkation process was pretty smooth. We got right through the security and check-in and had to wait for our number to be called for about 45 minutes. We went right to one of the dining rooms (Taste or Savor, can't remember which) and ate lunch there. Then we did a quick tour of the ship waiting for our rooms to be ready.

 

We really liked the food. My youngest loved the buffet and was sad anytime we ate anywhere else. She mostly ate hamburgers, fries, and soft-serve ice cream. Most of the rest of us loved all the food. We ate in every restaurant that didn't cost extra, as well as the Illusionarium.

 

Taste/Savor - Basically identical. We found the service a little slow but food was great. Had lunch the first day and dinner once.

Tropicana - Had similar (same?) menu as Taste/Savor. We liked the food here but were right by the live band and they were pretty loud. Was interesting to watch people dance but we're not dancers so didn't participate.

O'Sheehan's - This might be my favorite with the wings and the sandwiches we had here. We shared a bunch of food and loved almost all of it. Not as fancy as the others but quicker and still tasty.

Garden Cafe - Ate here for breakfast almost every day and lunch and dinner a few times. Lots of variety in the buffet and most of it pretty good. I must say that the desserts here weren't worth eating.

Flamingo - A cuban style buffet, we had lunch here and breakfast. Very small buffet but some interesting dishes, some of which were very good. The seating here was outside so it tended to be pretty hot sometimes.

Shanghai - Very small restaurant so the wait was sometimes hours. We wanted to eat here so we showed up right when they opened on the last day and still had to wait 20 minutes. Was pretty good but not my favorite.

Illusionarium - The food here was pretty good but not many options. They had a couple options for a kids menu. We were there mostly for the show and that was awesome. The food was good but I ate too much while concentrating on the show :)

 

We booked our rooms as Guaranteed cabins and they ended up being on the same floor but pretty far apart. We saved money there but it was annoying to walk back and forth every time we needed to get together. The halls are long and narrow. For our 2 rooms, one was a balcony with 3 people and one was an inside room with 4 people. The balcony room (12864) definitely seemed much roomier and was great for my wife and I and our youngest daughter. It was pretty close to the stairs and we could head up or down and get anywhere pretty quickly. Didn't have any problems with noise or anything. The bathroom seemed even more roomy and had a great use of space. We didn't actually use the balcony that much but it was great to be able to go out there as we were sailing away and checking out the ports.

 

They had raised the price on the iConcierge app right before we left so we downloaded it but didn't pay for the texting part. That was probably fine since then the kids didn't have to try to have their phones with them all the time. The app showed activities but it didn't have a way to filter past activities so you had to scroll down through stuff that already happened. You could book things on the app but couldn't see what you had booked which was pretty lame. It has some features needed before it's truly useful. We fell back on using the dailies and a handy highlighter to decide what we want to do.

 

The kids loved the open activities - rock climbing, ropes course, mini golf, trampoline, water slides, etc and did them all multiple times. The lines usually weren't that bad, except for the ropes course and there were times when it wasn't bad either. The longest line was on the waterslide when the drop slide wasn't working (one was broken and the other was only working sometimes because the ship was tilting?) so we got sunburned waiting in line. One thing to note about the ropes course is that you need closed toes shoes. My youngest daughter had only brought sandals and flip-flops so she was really disappointed. There were no places you could buy them on board so we ended up buying some pretty nice $9 tennis shoes in Roatan so she could do the ropes course and she loved it. Also, you need socks to jump on the trampline/bungee thing. My youngest daughter showed up with no socks and had to go back to the room to get some on (she was having bad luck the first day).

 

The younger kids didn't really do anything with the kid's club, they weren't really interested. The older kids did a couple activities with the Entourage club (dodgeball, video game tournaments) but only a couple hours total. None of us really participated in the dancing or night activities, since we were all exhausted and usually asleep by 10:30 or 11.

 

We liked most of the entertainment but were a little put off by the fact that it was mostly PG-13 and nothing really for the younger kids. None of us went to Burn the Floor because of that and the youngest stayed away from Million Dollar Quartet. The rest of us loved the music in MDQ but could do without the swearing. Illusionarium was awesome and we all liked it. Our youngest got chosen to go up and help with a levitation trick so she thought that was really cool. The comedians we listened to (the early show, not the late one) were mostly clean but every one had some stuff that we weren't comfortable having our kids hear. I realize that most people don't care about that kind of stuff but it would be nice to have some entertainment that the whole family can enjoy together.

 

The service was pretty good. The wait staff at the main dining rooms seemed a little slow and for some reason everyone seemed to get their food before we did. Not sure if it just seemed that way or if it was because we had a bunch of kids or what. But the food was great. Our room steward wasn't super friendly but he kept the room clean and we didn't have any problems with that.

 

We did all our own shore excursions and those were the funnest part of our cruise. Quick overview of what we did in each port:

 

In Roatan we went on a tour with Bodden tours. Our driver's name was Kenny and he took us around to the Monkey tour (which we loved) and then took us to the beach. He told us that there was no free way to get to the beach and took us to a hotel. It wasn't really that close to the beach so I told him we wanted to go to Paradise hotel since I knew that one was closer. Not sure I believed him about not being able to get to the beach except through a hotel but it ended up being okay since that gave us a place to put our stuff, chairs, shade, and an awesome pool to swim in. We *loved* the snorkeling at the beach there. It's great for the kids because the fish and the coral was right off the beach and we could go as long as we wanted. The kids basically swam until we were all exhausted. We saw reef squid (cuttlefish), a sea snake, urchins, tons of parrot fish and similar coral fish. Then we relaxed by the pool until it was time to go. Kenny brought us to a local store so we could buy the closed-toed shoes for our youngest daughter.

 

In Belize we went with cavetubing.bz for a cave tubing and zipline. When we got there on one of the first tenders off the ship it was already a madhouse. We ended up waiting in the terminal for a while and the marching out and waiting in the sun for a while. They gave us a free water for each of us while we waited. Our bus had about 60 people on it that were doing zipline and cave tubing. Our tour guide's name was Sitka and she did a good job making the 1 hour ride fairly entertaining. It took a while getting everyone (all 60 people) geared up and then hiked up to the zipline start. The zipline itself was a blast but since there were 60 people in line it took a while to get everyone through. Overall it probably only took 30 minutes to do all the ziplines but we spent another 30-60 minutes getting gear on and getting it off. At the cave tubing area they split us up into groups of around 8. Our family had 7 people so they had one guide for us and then had us follow a group of 9 people. I guess they just have to "average" 8 people? Our guide for the cave tubing was Barry and he was great. Very good with our kids and very knowledgeable about the jungle and things we saw on the walk. We didn't have to carry any tubes but just grabbed them right before we went in the river. Barry alternately swam and walked us down the river. Lots of cool things to see. He pulled us over to a waterfall in one of the caves and let us each stick our hands/heads in there. He let the kids get out and float by the tubes for the last bit and they really appreciated that since it was hot once we got out of the caves. We got back on the bus and they told us that we were running late and weren't sure we would be able to stop for lunch. I think we had some time but the people on the bus from the Carnival ship had to be back earlier. They made the decision to just give us a "sack lunch" and eat it on the bus on the way back. So they took 15 minutes or so to bring out a bunch of styrofoam containers of food and water bottles. The food was good (rice, chicken, coleslaw) but it wasn't as relaxing to eat on the bus and we were looking forward to some soda instead of water but that wasn't a big deal. We got back with enough time to do some quick shipping and hopefully everyone on the Carnival ship made it back on time.

 

In Costa Maya, we had planned to go to Blue Kay for a day at the beach but one of the "salesmen" that met us off the trolley talked us into going to a closer beach (I think it was the Mahahual Restaurant beach?) and getting an umbrella and chairs for $40 for 7 of us, which included wifi and use of kayaks and paddleboards. They came to sell us food a few times but we were too busy out in the water to really eat anything. We founds some great snorkeling north of a pier which was a bit of a swim so we stayed out there most of the day (and ended up all getting sunburned because of that). We saw yellow stingrays, sand dollars, porcupine fish, urchins, barracuda, and tons of other fish. We paddled in the kayaks for a while, bought a few cold sodas and headed back.

 

At Cozumel, we spend the day at Paradise Beach. The kids loved the inflatables and snorkeling around the pier as well as padding out in some kayaks. The little kids spent some time in the pool as well. There wasn't much to see with the snorkeling but we did see a yellow stingray and a puffer-type fish. Lots of little crabs climbing around on the pier that the little kids liked. The kids exhausted themselves playing on the inflatables. It was $18 for the inflatables and $3 for entrance. We were supposed to buy $10 per person of food but we had a hard time getting a waiter to come and take an order. We ended up going to the little restaurant and ordering some food. The food was really tasty but pretty pricey. But even with that, we somehow didn't get the pizza we ordered and so ended up not spending $10 for each of us but at that point it was time to leave. We took a taxi van ($36 there, $35 back, including tip for 7 of us).

 

We had bought an underwater camera for the trip and the kids thought that was the greatest thing ever. Taking tons of pictures of the fish and coral and a bunch of selfies underwater. If anybody is interested I can upload some photos or videos from the underwater camera. I think the investment in our own snorkeling equipment and the camera was definitely worth it, hopefully we can use them again.

 

The last day we got packed in the morning and ate breakfast and then did self-disembark. We didn't mind lugging our own lugging to the curb, it wasn't that far. We ended up taking an uber back to the airport (had to take 2 this time, to fit our family of 7) but it was pretty cheap and really fast. I'd definitely do that again.

 

Hope this is helpful to somebody even though it's been a months since we got back. If anybody has any questions I'm happy to answer if I can.

[songerling]

A few more quick suggestions/hints:

 

- As posted elsewhere, bring some magnets and stick your dailies to the wall. Great way to get them out of the way and easy for everyone to see. I brought 3 and wish I had brought more.

 

- Bring a highlighter to mark what you want to do on the dailies. Works great.

 

- If you're going to be snorkeling a lot, consider investing in an underwater camera. We picked up a really nice one for $200 and our kids took hundreds of pictures with it. In the past we used disposable ones but the picture quality is terrible, they only take 30 or so pictures each and then you have to pay to get them developed (and they don't do video).

 

- Wear closed-toed shoes if you want to do the ropes course and other activities

 

- Show up early to the Illusionarium. We were there 20 minutes early and got decent but not great seats

 

- For some reason our extension cord wouldn't fit in the outlet. I think it was because it had the larger ground side? It looked like it should fit but wouldn't go in. Our phone and camera chargers fit just fine.

 

- The exercise room was packed at 7-8 or so. Seemed to clear around after 8:30. I guess all those that exercise are early risers so either go super early or a little later.

 

- Bring plenty of sunscreen. My wife went crazy on the kids and we went through 3.5 bottles of sunscreen while we were there.

[Annmeat]

Thank you so much for this review . You have touched on aspects of the cruise that are important to families but not often discussed here on CC.

 

I especially enjoyed your very detailed excursion reviews. Valuable information

 

and kudos to you and your wife for taking the red- eye with 5 kids. We have done it several times when our 3 were younger and it can be quite exhausting.

 

Belated Welcome Home and thanks for all the tips!

[songerling]

Glad it was useful to somebody! :)

[workingmom200112]

Thanks for taking the time for your review, I enjoyed reading it :). Can't wait for my turn in November.