harryfat1

Along the way, there’s a long row of Haitian vendors for anyone interested in shopping for local goods. We have never stopped here as we always took the tram but if you plan on walking to Columbus Grove, you will likely walk past these vendors

This is the Artisan Market – one of the stops of the tram route. More shops

We made it on the tram My son's new T-shirt from the cruise

To take the tram, you have to line up at the tram stop and wait for the next available tram. I think they are supposed to run once every 10 minutes or so, but since we were there during “rush hour” with many families wanting to go to the beach, they were running one tram after another so even though the line seemed long, it moved quickly as soon as one departed, there’s another one coming within a minute. You see from this picture that the tram on the right has already picked up the passengers and is on the way to drop them off at the various stops. As they are leaving, the next tram is pulling up to get more passengers. Similar to Disneyland/Disneyworld tram rides if you have experienced those.

Here’s the map of the Labadee area. We always go to the Columbus Cove area as that’s supposed to be the best family beach area. See my red arrow on the map on the lower right To get there from the dock (left-hand side) you can either walk it in the heat or take the free tram. Being lazy, guess which option we typically choose?

You are much better than me. I didn't even try the iFly as just watching people having to lift their bodies seems to be a lot of stress on the muscles. It's like if I just lay down on the floor on my stomach and reach back my arms and legs in the air for 45 seconds would be a tiring event on its own without all the wind blowing in my face on top of not seeing much without my glasses.

Oh, sorry. I'm clueless on the wordplay as I only know numbers and YouTube videos on baby got back...

This is not a picture of a fish. It's grilled Eggplant. I didn't take a picture of the menu that night but here's a copy of the menu from online

Yeah, assuming I could find her as we seldom see her in her hallway. With other sailings, I typically see our cabin attendants every morning going to breakfast or dinner but on this sailing, she was seldom seen. I wasn't impressed with her anyway and she forgot to deliver the day 8 daily compass to us. The announcement means that you do not go out BEFORE they call your number as they clear luggage section by section. So if you are assigned group 40 and you disembark when they called 25, you can't access your luggage once you get to the terminal until groups 26 to 39 have been called and just standing there in the way of people. So that's why they don't want people to go down before their numbers are called. I searched my photo of our luggage tag and we were assigned #26. I wanted #60/61/62 as those are the last tags. I want to go later, not earlier.

OK. Let's try to frame this puppy. Nope. Too far... Too close... As Goldilocks would say - just right. Yeah, I could zoom in more to have the Holiday frame only but I wanted a bit of the side background to show the viewer the background - guess that's a personal preference thing...

As we were walking to Labadee at 10:45, there were already people walking BACK to the ship at the time – see my picture above. Maybe those were the same people who got off at 7:30 and now are done for the morning and heading back to the ship as the beach is starting to get crowded. If you are a morning person, get off the ship ASAP before 7:30 and head for the beach before most of the people to enjoy a secluded beach for a couple of hours and then leave after it starts to get crowded later in the morning

Maybe I’m not up to the latest beach attire trend but this looks interesting I like this perspective

Time to visit the uncle in prison For the mooring line fan club:

OK. After a quick breakfast, it was time to go back to the cabin to change for the beach day. It’s TGIF out there in the real world but you don’t care as all you know is today is day 7 of the cruise and this is your last port before going home Off the ship at 10:40

OK, done with iFly. Now is the time for a late breakfast at 9:30 at Windjammer. The Seaplex this morning was hosting the now very popular Pickle Ball event. I wasn’t hungry after the 2 pastries this morning for breakfast so this was all I had for the second breakfast as I knew I would be eating an early BBQ lunch at Labdee soon.

The basic session for iFly lasts up to 1 minute inside the tube. If you pay an extra $50/pp, RCI gives you one extra minute. Seems to be a very steep price for one extra minute. I checked with my son afterward and he said your body will start to feel the strain of being bent in the shape to keep yourself afloat. He said his tolerance is right around the one-minute mark. Any longer than that, it’s more of a torture on the body being bent than having a fun experience. So depending on your body shape and experience with iFly, maybe for the first time, just try out the basic experience to be sure you like it before plucking down $50/pp for something you may not enjoy.

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After everyone was done, the instructor put on the show at the end and you get to see how the “pro” does it as he makes it effortless in his motions. 20231229_092617.mp4

Then my younger one. He's much lighter so he was abe to fly higher 20231229_092511.mp4

First up is my older one:

Back to the iFly - the instructor goes in first and gives a brief demo on how it’s supposed to be done in real person, then each person has up to 1 minute inside the tube. 20231229_091736.mp4

Contacts would be fine, but they won’t allow glasses. You will take those off after watching the training video and the safety briefing as you are putting on the helmet. Getting close to wrapping this up. After the iFly, the last 2 big items are beach day at Labadee and the 70’s party. I don’t recall we did anything special on the last day so days 8 and 9 should be “fast” – well, my version of fast. That’s like telling the snail to shift to the 5th gear… Have a great cruise if we don’t speak before you depart

I believe they also make you take off all jewelry so you won't have someone's wedding fall off during the fly and in the strong wind, that could be a dangerous projectile. On the waterside on the Navigator in August, I had to remove my glasses/sunglasses before the ride so I wasn't seeing that well myself walking around the pool deck area

That's because he couldn't see. You must remove your glasses to participate in the event. My younger one has contacts so it has no impact on him. The older one is blind without his glasses

After waiting for a few minutes, it’s time for their group to go up. I think their group had 6 people in total. Not sure if that’s the maximum size per time slot or not. The group enters from the tube area from one end and the non-participating family enters it from the outside on the other end as the instructor will come over and open the gate for family members to come out and take pictures/videos There’s one guy outside that controls the wind speed based on your weight and there’s always an instructor inside the tube with you to guide you and bend/twist your body as necessary to make sure you don’t fall flat on your face from 4 feet high (yeah, that would hurt)