caitmac1

the Remedy from the Alchemy bar. YUM.

Some of you guys must eat REALLY good hospital food! I thought the food on our Miracle cruise was just fine.

Was it SUPER GREAT AWESOME? No. It was sort of like going to Olive Garden. The food will be tasty, but you know perfectly well it's massproduced and a lot of it was frozen. It still tastes pretty good and you're perfectly happy to eat it for a nice but not fancy or super special dinner out.

Dark Harbor is supposed to be super fun- when we went on the Miracle last month, they were prepping the area where the maze goes and my friends (who are local-ish) raved about it, LOL.

I'm going to disagree, somewhat. I think it depends on what you want your cruising experience to be like.

Sea days are very laid back- there's activities on the ship, but mostly they are spent relaxing. If you want your cruise to be about seeing new places and you like a go-go-go adventurey vacation, pick the cruise with more ports. :P If you want a slower paced vacation, pick fewer ports. (or fewer that you are interested in- that said, I can't imagine NOT checking out every port at least once and skipping them entirely for a sea day if you've never been there.)

Shipwise, I can't give any advice- I haven't been on an RCCL to compare, but as far as the ports go....

THe NCL Breakaway has 0% single supplement on the October 11th sailing to bermuda. I am SUPER SAD I can't find a decently priced last minute flight or I would be SO THERE.

I don't know- we got a midship, unobstructed balcony on deck 8 on a guarantee on our first cruise last month, LOL. Not sure I'm willing to try the gamble again though!

AFAIK, the sea day brunch replaces breakfast on all the sea days on the miracle- I think it did for our cruise, but we overslept one of the sea days and went to the buffet instead, so I could be wrong. It runs from 8AM like... 1:30PM? We never dealt with a line on any of the days on our Miracle cruise, although we DID have a little bit of a crowd all trying to get seated at once when we forgot to set our clocks back and hence arrived at 7:50 ship time and not 8:50 like our phones insisted it was... :P it wasn't a line, but did take a minute or two to get seated.

The sea day brunch has, I think, all the breakfast menu items and then some, though.

Thanks for posting this - was great to read! I'm hoping to do a Breeze cruise in the future, and it will be really interesting to see how you compare her to the Miracle- the only ship I've been on so far, LOL. (But really liked!)

We booked a balcony guarantee for our first cruise (Miracle last month :D) and loved the cabin we ended up with. I ended up going with ES this time because I was a little worried about getting a cabin way forward away from all the stuff we actually liked- I was less fussed about which deck it was on or the specific cabin.

And just for the sake of completeness, a virgin premium drink (aka REALLY EXPENSIVE FRUIT JUICE) at say, Alchemy bar, ends up being $6.84 with the 15% grat.

(the ship was moving enough without me adding booze to the picture, and I don't *care* if it's just fruit juice, virgin remedies are DELICIOUS.)

I think it's fun and I'd miss it. Besides, we were generally finishing up dessert by the time they sang most nights, so it didn't slow anything down at all. I suppose it might with anytime dining? We had the late seating traditional dining.

From what I understand, the biodegradable sunscreen is MUCH less of a dolphin issue and much MORE of a reef issue- which makes it MORE critical, not less, if you're not swimming with the dolphins to use it.

Yup, there are carriage rides down along the Strand in Galveston. I can't recommend a specific company (as I have no idea who we did this with- it's just see them on the corner thing and talk to them there.) I'm also not 100% sure of cost- last two times have been for the Christmas stuff down there and I'm pretty sure it was NOT the typical rate. the official Galveston tourism site (Galveston.com) has some info on it.

Starting the count up again with 176 days! :)

WOOT! Just booked our next cruise for March! :D We'd been waffling about booking and waiting for next pay period for the deposit but the number of balconies was looking kinda skimpy so this sale let us go ahead and book. :)

The Cucumber Sunrise was okay, but the REMEDY from the Alchemy bar is THE BEST.

Coconut rum, dark rum, oj, pineapple juice, lime, bit of sprite- YUM!

You may or may not be able to VPN in from those locations either- a lot of public wifi locks down the ports (er, computer ports) other than the most commonly used ones as a security measure. I'd actually suggest thinking about a backup plan that didn't require VPN- maybe you can phone in?

extra blanket was easy, we were told for safety reasons that the balcony was only allowed to have two chairs- we had an extended balcony too, and there was ROOM for a third but oh well. :(

It was pretty bad, according to my friend I was travelling with- but apparently it si being replaced in the spring :)

WOO!

I am doing the '24 hours till my flight leaves' dance. IS IT TIME TO GO YET?

I'm sailing on the Miracle in a week and yes, the balcony gty category includes the obstructed balconies- asked because that was what we booked. :D (We didn't get one though, we ended up with an extended balcony.)

I applied for mine on August 10th, had it expedited, and got it today- it was apparently issued on the 17th. :)

On the photographers - a friend of mine worked for one of those companies briefly and yes, they get paid by the photo (a very minimal amount- in her case, it was $0.25/photo) plus a chunk if you buy them (I think hers was like $8/photo)and then minimum wage. So it pretty well sucked and there was definitely a 'get as many photos as possible quick' pressure)- it's why she quit, she would rather take fewer good photos and it just didn't pay off.

Any particular groups/guides that are best for this? I'm finding a TON, some seem to be resellers, and it's hard to tell who is who from reviews on Trip Advisor.

*rereads* Yeah, sorry, I meant that it was NOT a tender port, so was an hour a good estimate? :D