caitmac1

Hi guys! 

we're back and it was wonderful!

only things I wish we'd been able to change/known ahead- 

#1 I wish we'd had a chance to go over our ceremony with the officiant. 🙂

#2 - I wish we'd known how far we'd be walking in- we would have cut our processional track differently. 🙂

We had a wonderful time with our friends on the cruise, the miami-base planner (A Love For Detail, email me for her contact info at trainsdogs at gmail) was SO AMAZING 🙂. NCL was fun and enjoyable overall and it was a really wonderful trip of a lifetime.

we are two weeks out from departure (for Miami; ship sails on Sunday but we need to get wedding license and crap dealt with there before we go :D) and I am LOSING MY MIND a little bit. :D But it's gonna be great :) 

Congrats! It's definitely feeling down to the wire for us May brides! :) (We are May 12th on NCL :D) 

 We're having like 11-13 people sailing with us (so not oto many) and something like 25 people coming to just the ceremony. For my family, it's a tiny wedding, LOL but it still feels pretty big and there are so many things to figure out! 

We ended up hiring a planner to coordinate a welcome dinner (instead of a rehersal dinner; the night before the wedding, inviting everyone - mostly as a chance to spend more time with our non-sailing guests and family) and she's been amazing- found the venue based on a pretty vague description of what we wanted, and is organizing hair/makeup for us before we board, too. 

I will say that although I knew going in they weren't super responsive, I've found Royal Ocean Events to be a real pain to communicate with. 

I've done late on all but one of my cruises. Early is just too darn early for us, and since we're not really into shows or comedy, that doesn't effect our scheduling much. YTD/ATD was okay the once but I really liked having the same waitstaff with the scheduled dining.

We decided to do Embarkation day specifically for that reason. DF's family and mine are not local to each other, so no matter where we held things, a significant number of people were going to have to travel. At least with embarkation day, EVERYONE travels and no one has to go on a cruise who doesn't want to (ie, the dads. Retired coast guard and retired navy and I don't think you could get either one on a cruise ship for longer than a few hours for love or money.... :P)

I mean, even if your daughter told you 9 months out, that baby will be OLD enough to cruise.

SHOULD they cruise with the baby? Up to them, the baby's parents- not so much the grandparents. They're the ones who should be making the decision about what is best for the baby.

Has anyone who has done a Miami embarkation day ceremony got any reccs for hair/makeup people? :)

TIA!

We got our contract back and are all official as of last week :D Going to try and sneak in one more cruise this year to check out Miami and what the port is like and all :)

SO EXCITE. :) Our Save The Dates go out this week and invites in July. :)

Our save the dates are ready to go out as soon as we confirm the day with royal ocean events :) Hopefully next week before we leave for THIS YERA's cruise :D

The Liberty is my favorite Carnival ship that I've been on so far; the staff was great and it was a nice balance between new, big but not ginormous, and good amenities. But the extra cruise day would be really tempting for me - I have only been on one cruise shorter than a week and really didn't care for it, I think 4 days would just be WAY too short for me.

2019 for us as well- we're booked ont he Breakaway from Miami for next May :)

The Liberty is my favorite ship! We haven't been on her since 2016, but would sail her again without any hesitation at all. :) Just a great size, and all the amenities we wanted.

We did a balcony gty for our room on the first cruise and ended up with a fantastic cabin on deck 8 just a couple rooms down from the elevators. It was super convenient for getting to everything and the only bad part is that it spoiled me for guarantees- I'd be unhappy if I ended upw ith something all the way forward away from everything.

I think this is an issue in all the Conquest-class ships. On our March cruise, we were in 6379 on the Liberty (IIRC) and had the same problem. It was marked as being over the casino, and since we're night owls, I thought that'd be fine. (On our previous cruise on the Miracle, the casino didn't have a band playing in it, justin the atrium outside it, I think.) The place where the band sets up isn't marked in any way, it's just a wide spot in the room on the plans.

That article's helpful!

I would be dubious that pokestops or gyms will become a thing, because they're tied to GPS coordinates. But absolutely catching pokemon in ports will be doable as it rolls out in other countries.

It doesn't appear that 'in the water' will get pokemon to spawn as a location (I've not tested this at sea, obviously, but it seems to hold true on the lake I live at) but fixed on-the-water locations are a thing- there's an oil rig off the california coast that has a gym translated from an Ingress portal, apparently.

Hi guys!

One of the members of the group I've put together for my fall/winter cruise would like to try MyTime dining. I wanted to find out what people's experiences with wait time were and how it worked overall with the Freedom.

We will be a party of four (although can we split up and go as two parties of two if people want to eat at different times with MyTime?).

I know from reading on here that they give you a pager and you may have to wait at peak times- what are those peak times, and how long have people experienced the waits being?

Thanks y'all! :)

THanks for posting this!

I'm currently planning my third cruise and contemplating trying Cheers this time since it's a shorter cruise. I'm not a super heavy drinker, but I <3 the Alchemy Bar, and frankly, I would very HAPPILY consume 3-4 Remedies a night if I wasn't going "oh god, this is $12 for boozy fruit juice". At that point, add in a Bellini at breakfast, sodas or shakes while sitting around, and I think I'd be a little on the + side of breakeven....

I liked the Miracle, but I really enjoyed the Liberty, honestly- our next cruise is going to be on another Conquest-class (Freedom). Haven't tried the Dream or Breeze yet, but wouldn't rule it out.

For me, it's not so much about size. I don't care about most of the bells and whistles. I want a nice big adults-only pool. Vista's limited access Havana pool is honestly really appealing, although Vista's out of our budget for now. And more food options is great, but if they're all pay, that's a big barrier to making that choice. I'd really like to see more pools and hot tubs on the decks instead of ever-increasing time-limited activities (ropes courses, rock walls, etc).

I really loved the Miracle and would totally go back on her any day!

My first cruise last year was on the Miracle and we had a GREAT time- and I just got off the Liberty last month. I'd very happily do EITHER of them, same iteneraries even, again.

The Miracle has some of the 2.0 Upgrades (no Guy's burgers, but it has the Alchemy Bar, which is, IMO, the most important upgrade :P). The Serenity area has a pool, which is really nice, and the location is fantastic. No movies-under-the-stars on Miracle, though.

The Liberty has a quieter aft pool (which may or may not be adults only- I honestly couldnt' tell but we never did see any kids in it), and the pools were a little bigger than on Miracle (unsurprising, it's a bigger ship). We enjoyed the Movies Under The Stars but it honestly wouldn't be the deciding factor between the two ships, nor would GUy's Burgers, although we definitely enjoyed that too.

I *did* like our ports on Liberty better than the MIracle ports, but I'm not honestly sure that was as much because of the ports as because I got better at planning what we would do. (I think this was much more of the difference in the enjoyment than the actual quality of the ports.) We did a timeshare pitch freebie at Mazatlan and enjoyed it a lot; the other two ports we went snorkelling/beach trip. At Puerto Vallarta, we were out on a really lousy boat and I wouldn't do that again (not the fault of anyone but me- I did a bad job planning it) and at Cabo, we were at Pelican Island, which I *really* would not recommend to anyone who is not fairly athletic, as getting on/off the water taxis is kind of terrifying if you're not very agile. (Our plan had been to go to Medano Beach, but it was closed because of the hurricane that had just blown through.) We had a great time on the Miracle Trip, but I think port-wise, I enjoyed the Liberty's stops more- we went to Chankanaab in Cozumel. (The Liberty's otehr current port is, IIRC, Progresso, which I have not been to, so can't comment, and the other port I really feel like I have nough info to give a good comment on is Costa Maya, which isn't on most of the current iteneraries for the Liberty, I think?)

The shopping was better on the Mexican Rivera ports- yes, it's 90% tourist junk but we found some fun unique stuff mixed in; everything at Costa Maya and Cozumel seemed to be made in China. This wouldn't be enough to stop me going back, though, for sure- just money I didn't spend! :D

I think you'd have a great time on any of your options, honestly. PERSONALLY, I'd probably go with whichever's cheapest, and see if I could swing a weekend trip or two with the savings.

We just got off the Liberty 8 day (her first cruise out of Galveston) and while I can't comment on the 5 day itenerary, we were really happy with the ship overall! :)

We booked a balcony guarantee on the Miracle last summer, 6 weeks out from the sail date, and had our cabin number by a month out, which was very unexpected- we'd not expected to know till we got to the port!

***** nom nom Remedies are the BEST!

Start a knitting project of something you want to wear on the cruise. :D It will make time move faster.

Thank you guys! THe westbounds are the ones we're interested in, so I guess we have more time to save yet. :) I just wish they'd get them up so I could start trying to decide what the best sale perks were likely to be, LOL