bradburleson

FUN! I really want to go to Jost Van Dyke. I've got a group of friends who sailed the Leeward Islands and said JVD was by far their favorite. I know you'll have a great time there!

Snorkeling is always a good choice. I'll be snorkeling every chance I get! :)

We've got our excursions nailed down:

St. Thomas - Renting a Jeep and driving to Mountain Top, Coki/Magens/Lindquist Beaches, possible ferry to St. John to Trunk Bay, downtown to walk Main St.

Barbados - The Boatyard to hang out most of the day and then over to downtown Bridgetown to try to find Rhianna.

St. Lucia - St. Lucia Land Tour through James Touring Service

St. Kitts - Carnival Excursion: Top 10 Best of St. Kitts Tour

St. Maarten - Carnival Excursion: See & Sea Island Tour/French St. Martin in the morning. Maho Beach to watch planes in the afternoon.

If you think you may be pressed to make it to the cruise terminal from the airport, I'd do the transfer through Carnival so you're guaranteed to arrive on time. I'd check the price of it vs taxi anyway. It may be cheaper than a taxi since most taxis charge a flat $20 to and from airports?

We're ready! :-)

Can it be? Please?

WOO HOO! More family! :-) I look forward to meeting you guys!

Well hell! Count me in for that!! Who doesn't love tipsy golf?!

Oh. You were serious. My bad. :-)

Lol!

I'm just getting a notification that you two have been posting back and forth. I haven't used a message board since the 90s, so forgive me. LOL! :-) And YAY to more FODs! ha!

HA! I just saw my screen name on this message board. It's, uh, my name. LOL.

The Chef's Table is pretty sweet. On the Dream, they take you on a tour of the kitchen, and you end up a table for 12(ish) in the middle of one of the kitchens. The chef serves you each course (maybe 7?) and does a full presentation. They brought out a glass of wine with almost each course, so it got a little fuzzy towards the end. I just remember the food being awesome and everyone was my best friend. LOL. Send an email to eventplanning@carnival.com if you're interested. Give them your name, booking number, number in your party, departure port and sailing date and they'll schedule you a night. It's $75 p/p. It's weird that they don't advertise it very well. And they make it difficult to find info on how to sign up for it. It's a must do for any person who considers themselves a "foodie!"

We are almost in the center of the boat, just off the atrium near the. I was sure to read reviews on the rooms before booking because I was concerned about foot traffic. The only negative I could find was some people heard piano music from the atrium bar but that stopped at 11pm. Who knew you could google your ship name and room number and read a review on the room you're staying in?! The in-laws even saw a video tour of their room. Crazy. We're on port side.

We're having a family lake day, so we might talk excursions. I'll let you know if anyone has found anything cool! BTW, I'm Brad. Burleson. My mom taught me better, my apologies. lol.

Yeah, I know what you mean. There were a mix of people in the bar the times we went. A few were obviously NOT FOD so I didn't know who was there for the get together or just there randomly. We'll have to be the self-designated FOD hostesses. Ha!

I bet you'll be just fine coming in at 1:30. That's 8 hours of leeway time. I've not had a chance to fly them, but I'm sure you'll be fine. We're using miles, so we're traveling all day the day before and going to BFE and back to get to San Juan. It's tough getting good flights out of Little Rock. Almost everything goes to DFW, ORD or ATL for a connection.

Those excursions sound awesome. I think last time we only booked one before the trip and booked the rest onboard. My other half can be a little (read: very) indecisive so we may be doing most of it last minute. :-) We did book the Chef's Table this week for one night onboard. I got confirmation back yesterday but we won't know what night until we board. Last time, we did that, the steakhouse and the behind the scenes tour. Can you tell we were newbies?

Do you guys usually pick a certain floor/room type? We were on the Dream last time in a balcony room on deck 7. This time we're on the Lido deck (9).

Weehawken is a great area from what I remember. I had a friend who lived there right out of college. Great view of Manhattan, for sure!!

Happy 6 years to you guys! We're working on year 3. This is Joseph's 35th birthday cruise. His parents have the cabin next to us and they're a blast, so a good time will definitely be had. The last cruise Joe and I went on, his dad insisted we go to the FOD get togethers. We just laughed. But we did go to two. They were duds.

And Cancun will be a blast! How long will you be there before jetsetting over to San Juan?

We haven't booked anything yet - just the hotel room the night before the cruise. Ha. We did the ziplining at El Yunque and walked around Old San Juan last time. It was awesome. We rented a car in St. Thomas and drove to all the highlights and awesome beaches. That was our most favorite excursion of the whole trip! I bought cool snorkeling gear last week on Amazon and am hoping to put it to use as often as possible while we're there. That's as far as I've gotten. I've checked in to options through (and outside of) Carnival, but we've not made any decisions. How about you?? Have you been to any of the other ports?

I wondered if there would be any others, too. LOL. We love NYC! What part?

We're from Hot Springs, Arkansas. It's a beautiful lake/resort town about an hour outside of Little Rock. We're both in our 30's. This will be our second cruise and second trip to San Juan and St. Thomas. We're stoked and ready for a vacay. We're staying over a few days after the cruise near Fajardo, PR.

My partner and I are booked, too! :-)

We purchased the Cheers package in 2013 on a 7-day Dream cruise. We had three sea days. We felt compelled to drink alcohol every time we were thirsty. Granted, it IS vacation and all, but it was a little much for us to drink so much to get our money's worth. We're in our mid-30s and when out with friends, we'll have 2-3 glasses of wine or mixed drinks at dinner. That's usually our limit. I like Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio - and that's not included in the Cheers package. Most of the wines I like weren't. Same for the premium martinis.

Do your research and you'll be fine. Look up a price list of the drinks you enjoy. Estimate how many you'll have on a sea day and then on a port day. If that goes over the cost of the Cheers package then it's a deal for you! We are sailing again in Sept and aren't purchasing the package, but then again we've only got one sea day and have a 8am port call each day.