KarmaCruisers

Food was Pesto and Seafood Pasta’s Fried Shrimp Jerk Chicken Stir Fry (which the veggies were great! But there was ZERO spice to the chicken)

Yup, will get it. it was Prime Rib night. We just finished eating and grabbed a spot at Princess Live; in waiting for Yes/No Gameshow…15 minutes early and it’s already packed in here! also; apparently the Glory also had to make a pit stop in Cozumel for a medical emergency..

Welllll so the buffet was called as audible; because the Yes/No Gameshow starts at 8:30; and with a 7:30 dinner reservation, no WAY would we get there in time to get a seat. So, another buffet..Tonight is Caribbean and Mexican night; so we’ll see what they have. I wouldn’t mind having more ceviche 🙂

Just woke up from our nap; to watch us push away from the dock..only for about 10 minutes later for the Captain to come over all-call and say we have a medical emergency and have to go back to the dock to evacuate them. Good luck to them! I also had an idea about the internet speeds..me being a network engineer (technically not my official job title as that’s Software Site Reliability Engineer); I THINK what’s happening is their using QoS to give better speeds to some sites over others (perhaps the specific sites advertised as being able to access; ie: Skype, etc) because when I type something in the search box (google search engine) it pops up almost immediately. IMHO this is a super ignorant use of QoS; dunno why you wouldn’t just have everything wide open all the time. Then again, it just may be my earlier speculation about FOMO since the pandemic. Time to get cleaned up and ready for dinner in the MDR at 7:30!

Annnd we’re back on board. I have to say; props to Paradise Beach Club! The staff was awesome and kept us hydrated and fed! The WiFi was great (5Mbps out on the beach and 15Mbps up by the pool) And at $60 each for all-inclusive; that’s a good deal in my book! The entire facility was nice (bathrooms were nice and clean too) also, I have to say, the cab drivers here actually stick to the posted prices! ($15 each way from port to Paradise); so I gave them an extra $5 each way…I wished other places that had POSTED prices would do this too (I’m looking at you Nassau!) lol, we went into the first store when we came back because it said “smallest and cheapest!”..it sure was small! (Literally like a walk-in closet size) but it was by FAR not the cheapest! My wife collects shot glasses, so she has to get one from each trip we go on..freakin $10 for a shot glass! Just before we got back on board, in the duty-free area (that they force you to walk through lol) the SAME shot glass was $3! I told Kris, next time; just get the shot glass at the duty free shop! Haha I think we’re going to take a nap for a few hours (the sun really wipes you out); then head down to dinner.

Speaking of food..eating everything shrimp here haha

LOL! Abso-fuxing-lutely! no other cruise line has as good a selection for FREE. (I mean “complimentary”)

Pictures

Posting from Paradise…Beach club that is 🙂 the free WiFi here is a good solid 5Mbps, so we’re browsing the webs and relaxing. The water is pretty clear and not too cold.

It’s not even that..the buffet is also only open “certain” hours…it doesn’t stay open from morning till midnight. Alfredo’s isn’t BAD at 11-11..but after 11pm it’s either IC or room service.

Good morning Valor; Kris said before it pulled up, the Pride was on its other side; and we’re currently watching a Fantasy class motor along to here. The ONE thing that I think is a damn joke..is people say “all you do is eat on a cruise”…these HAVE to be people who actually either don’t cruise or don’t eat.. Were big eaters AND cruisers; there’s honestly no WAY to eat that much..because restaurants aren’t open! We tried to go to the MDR for breakfast..only to be told only ONE is open in the mornings (Estrella) AND it’s open till 9am only! so quite literally at 9:30; the only place to eat a meal is the lido buffet! same thing with night times; it’s extremely challenging to find (included) food at any given hour. this is why we resort to room service, and international cafe. also; sorry I totally forgot to take a picture of my food this morning (was too damn hungry); but I had an omelette and hash browns/sausage. I also got the picture of the ship staff that someone was asking about

Also, lol at 6:30am; someone “butt dialed” the ship “all-call”..luckily nothing incriminating was said haha. I’ve never seen that happen before @Jkco2020what did you think about that?

That’s odd you say that..so; BEFORE the pandemic, the movie selection was GREAT! Literally had movies that were basically just out of theatres as well as good classics.. SINCE the pandemic, the selection TOTALLY is different! I mean, they still have a couple decent choices, but nothing like before.

Ahh; that’s a possibility; as we don’t really ever go up on Lido to hang out (we’re from Sunny california and have a pool at home) also; I guess they were just waiting..after the 7:30 showing of Rock Opera let out, the casino packed up! We lost another $1000 at Heads-Up Holdem table, meh. As usual, we’ve ordered our late night ritual of room service; tonight’s menu is: Chips & Guac PB&J Grilled Cheese Sammich Chicken Noodle Soup Chicken Tacos Hot dog (with all the fixins) two Pop’s The internet it so damn bad, we can’t even load yahoo mail (my wife’s email account thst has all the booking details for our excursions) LUCKILY, it finally loaded text list of emails enough to see for tomorrow. Which I guess I forgot to mention our plan.. Cozumel: we’re going to Paradise Beach Club Roatan: Daniel Johnson’s Monkey Hangout Belize: Alta Mayan Ruins (Princess brand excursion) Costa Maya: Maya Chan we watched Godzilla: King of the Monsters last night during room service tonight is X-Files: I want to believe gotta get up eaaarly for the next few port days..ohh joy; lol heres a picture of tonight’s MDR..sorry it got cut off; there were people standing by it who when I asked to move, really didn’t, so I got the best I could.

So buffet it was (because of BBQ and steamed dumplings)

Also; we got absolutely DESTROYED in the casino today..this cruise is a very weird one for us..I think this is the “usual” princess cruise vibe that people want (SUPER quiet and sedate) the casino has been absolutely DEAD, literally like a morgue. kris lost another $1900 and I finally am down $1500 myself; which brings our grand total to down $4800 (ouch!) funny enough; on any other cruise I’ve been on, after earning a ton of points (literally I am LEAPS AND BOUNDS above everyone else, at ~8000) I have had a casino rep at least INTRODUCE themselves…on this cruise, nothing, lol. I don’t think we’ll be doing much more casino’ing, until the last sea day times; as we have excursions in each port and they’re all first off the ship time! (Which is like 7am!) We’re deciding if we want MDR or Buffet; as it’s formal night…and we don’t dress up on vacation (lol who am I kidding, I won’t even dress up for $250k! {as an aside, I always joked that I would dress in a fuxking SUIT for $100k…turns out I won’t, lol}) I’ll post some photos I took today as well as this evenings dinner menu and food pics of wherever we go one from our balcony and one from the casino, lol.

The problem is..since the pandemic happened; NO ONE wants to be stuck on a ship and have no internet..so now *everyone* purchases it…and it wasn’t great in the first place..but definitely in 2019 on this same cruise we were getting like 10Mbps. (So literally like 10x better)

Picture from our balcony

Haha after the late night room service we went comatose from 2:30am until 1:30pm hahaha got cleaned up and went down to Alfredo’s (only thing open)..WRONG! Full Up and line at least 40 deep. So we’re up here at Salty Dog Grille grabbing something; it’s damn humid outside! also the internet is utter garbage, at year 2000 ISDN speeds.

Forgot to post this; but we actually took picture of first night dinner menu in the MDR.

Here’s the food lol the tacos were gone immediately as was the McMuffin

Well; here we are 3 hours later..penniless..but I put on a solid 6000 points onto my slot card. I lost my $1000 back; and Kris lost $300 more and called it quits (she lost the $300 QUICK after ramen; my $1000 lasted me until just now) now back in the cabin..we’re ordering the best part of princess..free 24/7 room service (with actual food!) ordered: Cesar’s salad PBJ Grilled chicken tacos Chips & Guac Egg McMuffin Two sodas (which oddly show up as costing money; but maybe it just doesn’t link to the plus package smoothly willl post pics when it gets here Caution going forward..we’re gamblers so there will be copious gambling details and hopefully a few jackpot pictures (I seen four hit just tonight; and it’s only the damn first night!)

So..we missed MDR at 7:30..because we weren’t all THAT hungry yet..and because of casino, lol. I was absolutely killing it while my wife was getting killed just as bad. Started with $300 freeplay and cashed out $1000; while wife had the same freeplay but rebought for $300 in slots and $1000 on HeadsUp Hold Em, with nothing to show for it. We just got to buffet for ramen

Ate at Alfredo’s to start Hawaiian pizza and minestrone for Kris Alfredo’s salad and agnolotti for me

So, last we left you, we were out of our mind tired; having been up all night on a red-eye flight (left SFO at 11:30pm). We passed out and just woke up…only because the captain came over the in-room speaker and said due to traffic and 7 ships in port today, our sail-away is pushed back an hour. (I think originally was 4pm) Our suitcase was outside our door; so i grabbed that. Our Cabin stewardess is Daisy and she seems nice. We’re in a BB-Balcony on Baja deck (haha all the B’s) The wifi started out ok before we passed out, at ~2Mbps…however when I just looked it was more like 128Kbps 😞 need to get up and around and get some food as our “dinner”’each night is set for 7:30pm, except for one night we have a comped crown grille for 8:30pm (all we could get) If I didn’t mention it before; cruising on Thanksgiving is a tradition for wife and I; going back to 2019; just us two in our party. Won’t bore everyone with regular pictures of the ship (as you can find those anywhere); only cool things that happen