My LONG Celebration Story - 11/26/23 to 12/03/23

[AKR2011]

What a great review!  Thank you so much for sharing. I feel awful that you didn't get your excursions.  More reason for Santa to gift you a spring cruise.  I hope it all works out!

[mlshum]

7 hours ago, AKR2011 said:

What a great review!  Thank you so much for sharing. I feel awful that you didn't get your excursions.  More reason for Santa to gift you a spring cruise.  I hope it all works out!

Thanks so much for your kind words and for reading along!  It’s ok, I still had a great time and I plan to try again in Sept.  Merry Christmas!

[ray98]

Good review...thanks for the information!

[mlshum]

2 hours ago, ray98 said:

Good review...thanks for the information!

Thank you and thanks so much for reading along!

[purpleally]

Thank you for your review and my new addition to my cruise medical bag. 

[mlshum]

6 hours ago, purpleally said:

Thank you for your review and my new addition to my cruise medical bag. 

Thanks for reading along and I hope neither of us need it again!  lol. Truly, it never occurred to me to add it to our first aid kit…until now.

[mcgore83]

Great job!  Enjoyed your review!  Thank you for sharing!

 

[mlshum]

5 hours ago, mcgore83 said:

Great job!  Enjoyed your review!  Thank you for sharing!

 

Thank you so much and thank you for reading!

[missholly24]

On 12/20/2023 at 12:24 PM, mlshum said:

Saturday, December 2nd – Final Sea Day

 

Our last sea day.  How is this possible?  Didn’t we board yesterday?  It’s always surprising to me how quickly time goes when you’re on board as opposed to how slow it goes when you’re WAITING to board.  The days had flown by, and we were down to our last day. 

 

We went to Lido and opted for Big Chicken this morning.  I like the chicken at Big Chicken but I’ll confess, I’m not a fan of the biscuits.  I’m pretty spoiled, being from West Virginia and having Tudor’s biscuits.  Big Chicken biscuits just aren’t the right consistency for me, and they are too sweet.  I’m glad I tried it…again….but it still is a “no” for me.

 

After breakfast we went to Limelight to do our last trivia of this cruise.  We always enjoy the trivia.  Ron is usually much better than me but I’d had a very respectable showing on this trip.  We each won a round this time.  One thing we noticed on this cruise is that there was no shortage of solid gold plastic ships on a stick.  For the last few cruises, they were either sparse or non-existent.  Not this time!  It was kind of like Oprah, “You get a ship on a stick, and YOU get a ship on a stick…”   This would be the most we had ever won on any cruise; a grand total of 6.  We gave some away, we kept a  couple, we brought one to Liz….there seemed to be plenty to go around.

 

The "get off our ship heart" had already shown up

 

Both of our trivia games were won by tie-breaker this time.  Ron came up with a numerical answer that was closer that the other person in his round.  I wound up doing rock/paper/scissors.  We tied about six times before I finally won and Jareel just gave both of us a ship on a stick at that point.  I gave mine to a little girl and a little green duck that we had found to her sister.  They had been in the trivia game with us all morning and were SO good!  I doubt my boys would have ever been that good for that long!

 

A little green duck that we gave away during trivia

 

After trivia we stopped by Pixels to order some pictures and then headed straight to the Havana bar to play a Carnival history digital scavenger hunt.  I'd never done one of the scavenger hunts before and wanted to try it out.

 

Celebration is absolutely covered up in Carnival history.  I’ve already mentioned several things including the car from Ecstasy and the pictures from Victory, but there were other mentions, even if there weren’t specific items, from all of the ships.  Right outside Golden Jubilee bar there are a series of coins in the floor telling which year each ship began sailing.  I think it’s kind of like the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  There are the portholes dedicated to the various decades and other things that are harder to find that I won’t mention in case someone else wants to play the game and I accidentally spoil it for them.  This was our first scavenger hunt.  There were a total of 14 items to find in 25 minutes.  We found 11 of them and finally had to head back.  We were two minutes late getting back so we were docked two points for that.  That put us in a tie with the next highest team at 9 points each.  The host seemed to think those were pretty good scores so I felt good about it.   It helped that I had already been all over the ship the first day when I was getting my ship pictures.  This was a lot of fun and I’m glad we did it.  I may have to do that again in the future. 

 

An upside down picture of one of the coins in the floor

 

After all of that was finished, we went to Guy’s Pig and Anchor for lunch.  We had planned to go to our super secret reading spot after lunch so that’s exactly what we did.  They are very close together and the temperature was perfect.

 

Relaxing in our spot after lunch

 

 

One of the things we really enjoyed on Mardi Gras was Carnival Kitchen.  We did the pasta class on Mardi Gras.  These classes seem to be really popular!  I’m kind of surprised they don’t offer more of them but as far as I can tell, they offer each class only once per cruise.  I may be mistaken about that. Some of them were offered on port days and some on sea days.  Since I always want to go into port, that left three options and we chose the Bake Shop and Pie Town class.

 

We were in the Carnival Kitchen at 2:30.  The class was sold out and we shared stations, which was fine for us.  We would be making an apple pie this day.  Usually when you finish the Carnival Kitchen class you can sit down and eat whatever you have made.  The pie class is a little different.  Due to the relatively long bake time, the chef takes all of the pies at the end of class, bakes them and they are delivered to the rooms by 7pm that night.  I’m not a huge apple pie fan.  I prefer some other flavors more. I enjoyed the crust more than the filling.  We had SUCH a good time doing this class!  I’ll certainly make the crust again at home.  I will just use a different filling next time.  Everyone in the class and also the chef seemed to be having a good time.  It was a fun afternoon.

 

Carnival Kitchen

 

All ingredients are ready

 

Getting ready to start

 

Ron's pie is ready to be baked

 

I tried for a Christmas wreath

 

 

The finished products were delivered to our room later

 

 

After class I was tired, so we went up to Serenity to one last time to doze and relax in their nice puffy loungers.  We still had our Kindles with us, so I read a bit, too.  It was a very nice, relaxing day.  The sea was beautiful and glassy.

 

It was time to get ready for dinner one last time.  We opted to go back to Festivale.  We both had the jerk pork and baked Alaska.  It was good, as always.  The waiters sang the “Leaving on a Fun Ship” song.  We had purposefully went to dinner as soon as the dining room opened so we could finish quickly and get to Celebration Central in time to get good seats (hopefully!) for the last showing of the circus show.  This time, it worked, and we got very good seats on the floor level.

 

We enjoyed this show very much.  It seemed a little slow getting started but they made up for it with the aerial acts as the show progressed.  I can see the logic of having this show in Celebration Central simply because of the aerial acts.  I was glad we were finally able to watch Most Magnificent Circus.

 

 

Afterwards we got our free drinks…Ron opted for milkshake, and I got a lemon slushy (basically a lemon daiquiri with no alcohol LOL) and we went to sing with Misso one last time.  This time we sat on the other side of the room, which was close to the bar.  Now I don’t mind when people congregate and talk.  I do it, too, but I DO mind when they do it very loudly while a performance is happening in close proximity.  I always try to be respectful of whoever is performing.  If you want to have a conversation, it’s perfectly acceptable to step outside and carry on the conversation there OR, conversely, to talk quietly so as not to distract the performer or the spectators.  In this case, there were multiple people, probably 8 – 10, and they continued this loud conversation for the entire time we were there in the piano bar.  Finally, about 10pm, we gave up and went back to our room to pack.  It was time to go home. 

 

Sunday, December 3rd - Debarkation and Final Thoughts

 

We were up pretty early and, due to a relatively early flight from FLL, we opted for self debarkation.  The whole process went pretty easily.  Ron found a couple of ducks on the way down which we gave to a little boy.  Debarkation is always much less exciting than embarkation.  At that point we're tired, broke and facing the return to work.

 

We walked through customs pretty much without stopping.  Love that facial recognition technology!  We walked out of the terminal and immediately boarded a shuttle to the airport.  Vacation was over.

 

Our traditional "now the cruise is over and we're pouting" picture

 

At this point, our next cruise is on Mardi Gras in September with a bunch of our friends....basically the same group that traveled together on Sunshine in February.  I'm really looking forward to that!  We have exactly the same itinerary as this cruise, so I hope to make up for some of the things I missed this time around.  September seems like a long time to wait......

 

I DID overhear an elf whisper to a reindeer that I might be receiving a quick cruise on Elation out of Jacksonville this spring as a Christmas gift.  I've been an angel all year after all (I see you cracking up, Ron and Liz!), but you know how unreliable elf intel can be so...who knows?

 

Until I DO see you again, I'll be reading all of your awesome posts here on Cruise Critic.  Merry Christmas, my friends, and have a Blessed New Year!

 

 

 

Thank you so much for your review! I wish it was longer! 🙂 I'm sorry you had to go through feeling so crummy. Always thankful for the Medical Center! 

 

Your Costa Maya info is priceless! I was looking for a fishing charter for my next trip for this itinerary and was worried. Your PM's are turned off I think (it says deactivated). However, can you verify (if we are allowed!) that the site is (elgrannohochkaybigfish***)? It matches your description, but the site has an odd name. Thank you again! Your relationship with your husband is the cutest!

[mlshum]

5 minutes ago, missholly24 said:

Thank you so much for your review! I wish it was longer! 🙂 I'm sorry you had to go through feeling so crummy. Always thankful for the Medical Center! 

 

Your Costa Maya info is priceless! I was looking for a fishing charter for my next trip for this itinerary and was worried. Your PM's are turned off I think (it says deactivated). However, can you verify (if we are allowed!) that the site is (elgrannohochkaybigfish***)? It matches your description, but the site has an odd name. Thank you again! Your relationship with your husband is the cutest!

Gosh, thank you so much for reading and for your kind words!  Yes, that is the correct website.  It's a weird name but they were the nicest people!  Thank you for letting me know that the message feature is turned off.  Technology is not my strong suit!  LOL  I'll have to check into that.  Ron laughed over your last comment.  🙂   Thanks again!  I appreciate you and hope you have a great time on your next cruise!

[missholly24]

1 minute ago, mlshum said:

Gosh, thank you so much for reading and for your kind words!  Yes, that is the correct website.  It's a weird name but they were the nicest people!  Thank you for letting me know that the message feature is turned off.  Technology is not my strong suit!  LOL  I'll have to check into that.  Ron laughed over your last comment.  🙂   Thanks again!  I appreciate you and hope you have a great time on your next cruise!

Yes, I could be wrong of course because I have never messaged anyone on here. Thank you so much!! 🙂 

[mlshum]

1 minute ago, missholly24 said:

Yes, I could be wrong of course because I have never messaged anyone on here. Thank you so much!! 🙂 

No, I think you're absolutely right.  I just went into the profile and added an email address.  Hopefully that will do it.  We'll see!  Thanks again!