Majesty 11/28-12/1 Review with Lots of Pics!!

[ebandive]

I love breakfasts in Windjammer. The view is stunning and the bacon is crispy deliciousness. My favorite breakfast consisted of hot tea, pancakes or waffles with strawberries, and lots of bacon. I don't really cook it at home so on cruises I indulge! Yum!

 

And here is Coco Cay!

The Norwegian Pearl was anchoring fairly close to us. Their private island, Great Stirrup Cay, is right next door to Coco Cay.

 

A very sleepy pic of Charlie and I:

 

 

 

 

We enjoyed the view for awhile before going back downstairs to our room to change and get ready for the day. We watched as the first tender headed out (at 8:30) then went downstairs. I'm pretty sure we made the 2nd tender shortly after. The weather was perfect. It was going to be a great day at the beach!

[ebandive]

And now for the tender! We only have one floor to walk down to, deck 1. We get right on the tender and wait a few minutes for it to fill up a bit more before pulling off toward the island.

 

Here is Charlie and I with our friends. I have a better picture of the tender but Charlie is flipping me off because he is tired of me taking so many pictures. :p

 

Here is the little tender moving away from the big cruise ship:

And more pics of Majesty of the Seas as we sail around her!

 

Now I NEED to study. More to come first thing tomorrow morning!

[HB Cruiser]

Erin

 

THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH for this delightful thread about the Majesty!!!

 

We leave on her Monday December 8th! Your posts are the perfect thing to get me through the days until we cruise.

 

Please stop studying and start posting!!! LOL ;) Just kidding, HIT THE BOOKS so you can post more tomorrow.

 

Good luck with your schooling and tests.

 

Tim

[MarinerBride]

Great review and pictures - can't wait to see the rest and get some of my own when we sail in less two weeks! :)

[Rogi51]

Thank you so much for your terrific pictures and comments. We (me, my wife and our two daughters, age 57, 49, 15 & 10 respectively) will be on the MOS in 3 weeks during the Christmas week, and we can't wait! It is our second cruise; we got hooked after our first one on the Freedom of the Seas in August of 2007. Your pictorial review wipes out any and all doubts I had about choosing this ship and this cruise. Everyting looks, and sounds, fantastic! I look forward to your next installment! I have heard many nice things about CoCoCay, so I can't wait to see your pictures of your day there. Thanks again!!!

[wolfcathorse]

Beautiful sunrise pics and the one of the sun almost gone behind the skyscrapers was absolutely breath taking!

[Gator0178]

Beautiful sunrise pics and the one of the sun almost gone behind the skyscrapers was absolutely breath taking!

 

 

Ditto!!

[polythenepam]

Thanks for posting all the pics! Outstanding job!!!

[Cavatelli430]

Great details in your review so far! Always love seeing pictures too! We've got a roll call for the Jan 12th cruise and your review added some extra excited & anticipation for our upcoming cruise! We are going to try to plan our own Meet & Mingle as well, since the don't do them for the shorter cruises. The Pool Bar is a good idea as a place to meet. Thanks and I look forward to seeing the rest of your review!

[ebandive]

Thanks everyone for all the great feedback! It means a lot to me that you are enjoying my review!

 

I have a little bit of time between our test and the beginning of lecture, so I will post a bit more.

 

This was my first private island experience, so I didn't quite know what to expect. Charlie and I are not lay-at-the-beach type people, as I am so fair and burn easily, and Charlie definately doesn't need sun and doesn't like laying around not doing anything! The jetski excursion sounded like a blast, but this was a budget trip for us and we really didn't want to spend the money. It was something like $95 per person. I could have doubled up for a lower rate for the 2nd person, but Charlie is a big guy and we would have been too heavy together. But I heard the snorkeling was good. I bought two cheap snorkel sets from a local sports store and packed those. To rent the snorkel gear is $29 per person for the whole set. However, a vest is required and I didn't have it, so I paid $6 per person to rent just a vest.

 

I took advise from the snorkeling forum, and rubbed toothpaste on the inside of the goggles while still at home. This is supposed to get a film off the goggles that will make them foggy when under water. Then once I got to the beach, I put a couple drops of Johnson & Johnson no more tears shampoo in the lens, rubbed it around and then rinsed it out. It worked great! No fog the whole time I was under water!

 

The snorkeling was indescribable. I bought a kodak underwater disposable camera. Sorry folks, the film is developing. I will post it as soon as it comes back, hopefully by the end of this week. We went snorkeling in Grand Cayman and shore snorkeling in Cozumel, and this by far was the most beautiful thing. There were so many fish, some really big ones, huge schools of all kinds of fish. What was so amazing to me is that they weren't afraid of you. I'd swim right up to them, and they'd swim around me, so close that I would brush them swimming. I read to bring cheerios or a banana and they will swarm you, but this is completely not necessary. I stayed out there an hour and a half, but could have stayed all day. However, let me warn you it is quite the swim out! I see why you need a vest. They have a couple different docks out there where you can rest, and there are some shallow grassy spots as well in between the deep areas. They had a couple sunken planes that added to the experience. I told Charlie that the experience was nothing short of miraculous. He agreed. I REALLY want to go back and do this again! I can't wait to get the photos back! In the meantime, I will post pictures of the island!

 

Hmmm. Sorry folks. I'm on the school computer and the copy/paste function I usually use does not seem to be working. That makes sense I suppose. Copy/Paste when it comes to school usually means cheating! I will post them first thing tomorrow morning, I promse! ;)

 

So what else can I tell you about Coco Cay? You get off the tender and there is a small straw market to the right. These are from the locals and they only take cash. I wasn't interested in shopping, so I didn't look inside. There are plenty of signs pointing you in the direction you would like to go. The first beach area there are tons of loungers where most of the passengers end up staying. We kept walking and walking until we got to a different part of the island where there were few people. There were lots of hammocks and way too many loungers than could ever be used. The buildings were all very colorful and tropical feeling.

 

We spent the first part of the morning relaxing on our little private piece of paradise, then the second part of the morning snorkeling. They started the lunch buffet (ribs, burgers, hot dogs, etc) a few minutes before noon. There are lots of picnic tables to sit at.

 

There are paddle boats and kayaks to be rented. Our friends rented a paddleboat for $15 for 30 minutes.

 

Royal Caribbean provides you with beach towels in your room. We took these ashore with us. All that is required for you to tender on/off at CocoCay is your Sail & Sign card.

 

One thing that was nice about this beach is there were plenty of shaded spots. If you wanted the sun, there was no shortage, but if you are like me and burn easily, it was easy to find shade. You will see both types in the pictures I post tomorrow.

 

The water was crystal clear, but quite chilly, probably because of the recent cold front. I took awhile to get used to, and truthfully I never got fully used to it, but it still felt good because the sun was hot.

 

I heard the CocoLoco drink is fantastic. I wanted to get one but after lunch Charlie but I were very tired and decided to go back to the room to take a nap. We wanted to stay up to see the Love and Marriage show that was at 10:15, and then Charlie wanted to hit the midnight buffet, so a nap sounded like a good idea (more on the nap later)...

 

That's all I can think of to write about. Tomorrow the pictures will follow. :D

[ebandive]

Erin

 

THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH for this delightful thread about the Majesty!!!

 

We leave on her Monday December 8th! Your posts are the perfect thing to get me through the days until we cruise.

 

Please stop studying and start posting!!! LOL ;) Just kidding, HIT THE BOOKS so you can post more tomorrow.

 

Good luck with your schooling and tests.

 

Tim

 

This cracked me up! Thanks!

[ebandive]

Great review and pictures - can't wait to see the rest and get some of my own when we sail in less two weeks! :)

 

I love your bride/groom kiss in the life jackets. I saw it on a different thread you posted on (the favorite picture thread maybe) before we left and thought it was so adorable! In fact we tried to mimic it, but turns out kissing in life jackets is no easy task! We didn't get a good picture, but like I said, yours is super cute! :)

[abhb]

Your pictures are so crisp and clear. The sunrise was simply beautiful. Thanks for getting me excited for my cruise in 2 1/2 weeks:D

 

Good luck with your studies.

[Tropixx]

Thank you so much erin for doing this... it reminds me and DH of our trip on Majesty in September. As you can see we have another coming up in 13 days whoo hoo.

 

Your pictures were so great. Do you mind me asking what camera you used? We have a sony digital but they didnt come out half as good as yours.

 

Look forward to more and hopefully I'll be able to post pix of our Navigator

 

Shelli :)

[MarinerBride]

I love your bride/groom kiss in the life jackets. I saw it on a different thread you posted on (the favorite picture thread maybe) before we left and thought it was so adorable! In fact we tried to mimic it, but turns out kissing in life jackets is no easy task! We didn't get a good picture, but like I said, yours is super cute! :)

Thanks! If you look closely, you can see that we're not actually touching in the kiss - you're right that it's hard! :) I can't wait to keep checking back on this thread to read more about your trip. It's good to know that you can rent the vest for $6 - we've thought about bringing our own snorkel gear. We're considering renting the kayak in CocoCay though, since we're snorkeling in Nassau.

[TexCruise371]

THANKS! :D

 

We've been on Majesy 4 times.....we love her. Thanks for the memories!

[redcocomo]

That is the most inspiring and fun report I have ever read and I have read a few!! We leave January 19 and I am SUPER EXCITED now. Thanks you guys. If we have half the fun you did, it will be an absolute blast. The ship looks amazing and you are such a fun couple. Wish you were gonna be there when we will.:)

[Head Shot]

Your couple pics

 

Your pictures

 

Your sunrise series

 

Great thread

[MattInFLL]

Hey Erin - it was so nice to meet you and Charlie on board - sorry I did not get to see you again during the weekend. I was holed up for part of the trip studying ... which is not so bad when you get to look out over the ocean while doing it. But it was a very nice weekend - glad you enjoyed Majesty.

[ebandive]

Thank you so much erin for doing this... it reminds me and DH of our trip on Majesty in September. As you can see we have another coming up in 13 days whoo hoo.

 

Your pictures were so great. Do you mind me asking what camera you used? We have a sony digital but they didnt come out half as good as yours.

 

Look forward to more and hopefully I'll be able to post pix of our Navigator

 

Shelli :)

 

Thanks! My camera is not too fancy, it is a Canon Powershot, 8 MP. It's the kind with 2 AA batteries. I used to have a film Rebel 2000, but it was just too big to carry with me everywhere, and I take lots of pictures and film developing was just getting too expensive. I sold it on Ebay a while back and got this one instead. It works great!! The only negative is that the batteries die quickly if you use the screen to take pictures, so usually I just turn the screen off and use the viewfinder.

 

About the sunset behind the Miami skyline, I've learned that whenever I'm taking pictures of something beautiful, to always take a moment, stop, and turn around. That is how I discovered that. If I hadn't turned around, I would have missed it!! I've gotten great pictures many times simply by doing this.

 

Now I must apologize for all my grammatical errors. As I re-read through my posts this morning, I realized I have made lots of mistakes! Sorry!

[ebandive]

That is the most inspiring and fun report I have ever read and I have read a few!! We leave January 19 and I am SUPER EXCITED now. Thanks you guys. If we have half the fun you did, it will be an absolute blast. The ship looks amazing and you are such a fun couple. Wish you were gonna be there when we will.

 

Ah, shucks! Thanks! You will have a great time!

 

Your couple pics

 

Your pictures

 

Your sunrise series

 

Great thread

 

Thanks!

 

Hey Erin - it was so nice to meet you and Charlie on board - sorry I did not get to see you again during the weekend. I was holed up for part of the trip studying ... which is not so bad when you get to look out over the ocean while doing it. But it was a very nice weekend - glad you enjoyed Majesty.

 

Matt, it was great meeting you too! Your posts about the Majesty before our trip really excited me so I hope to do the same for others! Good luck on all your upcoming tests!

[ebandive]

Ok, with all my talking out of the way, here are the pictures!

 

The first two we are still on the tender, getting ready to dock at Coco Cay.

 

 

Now, which way to go? You sure don't have to walk far for hammocks (there are two right behind the sign!) We headed left towards the beach first.

lots of tropical buildings

This is where you rent the snorkel gear:

[ebandive]

It's easy to find what you are looking for with all the signs.

 

This is the norwegian pearl in the background:

[ebandive]

This is where you get in the water to snorkel. My tip is stay closer to the rock wall, there are more fish there. You'll end up swimming a long ways toward the far rock wall in the picture. Up at the very front of the beach, when we were putting our equipment on in the water, we saw 1 large fish and a stingray! You can't see much underwater close to the beach because the sand is all stirred up, but the water is crystal clear as you swim farther out.

Here is some of the shade I mentioned earlier:

And this is the picnic table area where they serve lunch.

[ebandive]

And more:

As you continue to walk, you can see the beach chairs thinning out. In this next picture you can see the water toys you can pay to use.

And then you come to hammock paradise!! There were a bunch of them just waiting to be laid on!