DragonOfTheSeas

The music got a little louder as the day went on. But it was still fine with me. The only one of the songs that I recognized was by Beyoncé. And I didn’t know what the name of it was. Ha ha ha ha. The pool was never crowded. There was always one or two of those in water loungers empty. I thought they would be full by 10 o’clock but they weren’t. I think there’s so many children on this ship that the parents and grandparents went to the waterpark or other parts of the island with the children. look at these two women dressed in bright Caribbean costumes. There were a few of them around the pool, dancing, and generally trying to encourage the party atmosphere. A couple of them were carrying around champagne bottles fixed with triggers, and shooting a mouthful of champagne into everyone they passed. I passed on the opportunity, but DD enjoyed it. They had pretty good aim from a foot away. You can tell they do this a lot. sorry, I was in the pool at the time and didn’t have my phone with me and didn’t get a picture.

oh, most of the flights are not dressed, but there are some that are from certain places. but I will tell you that a lot of the people that I know that cruise out of Baltimore are not going to drive to the New Jersey New York area. we have tried to get them to go on a cruise that we thought was good out of Bayonne and they wouldn’t do it. I will drive there either.DH and I take the train. And they could do that, but for some reason they don’t do that either. not saying that this is Royal Caribbean’s fault. This is a disaster not of their making. But there will be a number of people who would not drive to New Jersey.

So I think I’ve made a mistake with my smart watch. I am new to an iPhone . My son bought it for me because I had a bad fall last summer and no one was nearby. So this way I always have a way to contact someone. I put my iPhone on airplane mode, my Apple Watch, is connected to my phone, but does not have a separate Verizon account. I never thought to put it in airplane mode until today. Oops —on day four of my cruise. I guess I should be expecting a big bill when I get back. Will it stop collecting data and phone or test since my s iPhone was in airplane mode? I know all the young people ot there are rolling their eyes. This is one of those old lady questions. Thanks for your help.

My first Coco Loco of the day. I’m not usually a day drinker. But Coco Cay is an exception.☺️

I don’t know what Reno they were doing at Norfolk. But we have sailed out of the Norfolk terminal many years ago and our son lives in Virginia Beach. The Norfolk cruise ship terminal is absolutely beautiful. It has an entire wall of windows that overlook the Hampton roads. They rented out for wedding receptions. It’s so nice my only issue with Norfolk is the traffic because it’s in a highly congested area of the city and there is no immediate parking. The city has several garages, but there are a couple blocks away. You either have to park and push your luggage for a couple blocks or take their shuttle

Here are some pictures of the bar and the cabana area. I want to take a picture real fast before people got into those cabanas. The pool area looks especially also, I am someone who does not like loud music. And that was something that kind of concerned me about coming here really the only thing. But I decided to come anyway because of the adults only and heated pool features I don’t know whether they’ve turned the music down today or not but it’s fine. I’m not bothered by it at all. It gives it a nice vibe.

Here, a few pictures of the beach and pool

It’s a beautiful day here on Coco Cay. I’ve been missing getting my sunrise picture, so here was today’s sunrise Coco Cay is in the Berty Island group. Norwegian cruise line uses one of those islands as a private island also. And they were pulling in this morning. We are sharing the island today with freedom of the seas

Merino Mom thank you for answering. They do not put the sheets introducing the important people in your state room anymore. I did not go to the top-tier event. So I wasn’t there to meet them and I asked one of the waiters in the dining room, and they could say his name, but they could not spell it for me. (and there was no way from the way they were pronouncing it, that I could spell it.) I still have this on my mental list to find out so you save me the trouble😃

We are headed to Hideaway Beach today in Coco Cay. I will post some pics in a little while.

We are leaving Port Canaveral right on time at 8 PM. It was fine while it lasted.

We did a small amount of shopping at Ron Jon. It’s a huge store and the lines were long.

Cocoa Beach is hopping since it is spring break. We were late arriving in port compared to other ships. some of them seem to be packing up and leaving. The last bus for us is at 5:30 tonight. it’s a red flag day so everyone’s limited to the breakers.

I didn’t look on my phone this morning until I got into Port Canaveral. I will shocked to see the key bridge collapse. We have good friends who are sailing on the vision right now. And Baltimore Cruise friends who are scheduled on the next two cruises. at least one of our friends on this cruise on vision was with us on the last cruise on grandeur of the sea when sailing stopped for the pandemic. They closed the port of Baltimore. But the governor made an exception, and allowed us to return. I feel for her, and all those that are aboard

Yes, it’s working out very well for us. Our waiter and assistant waiter are excellent. If they offer this in the future, we will certainly sign up.

I purchased three tickets for the Ron Jon beach shuttle. It will take us to Cocoa Beach. Our time is 1:45 PM to meet the bus. We have a later port day so that’s not a problem and DH and I will probably only stay about three or so hours at the beach. Since we don’t have any suntan yet, we don’t want to scorch on the first day. The later excursion time lets us have lunch on the ship, which is much easier to do for us, instead of finding a restaurant on the shore. I know many people enjoy doing that but we have to think about what works best in our situation.

We spent a good part of the morning in our happy place again.. . Otherwise known as the solarium. I was taking a selfie on the swing when someone else came up and said they would take a picture. Our.DD always makes her 20 something send a picture when they’ve gone on a trip each day. She calls it the proof of life 🙄 Here is my proof of life for today

We are pulling into Port Canaveral now woo hoo! there is a campground right at the entrance to Port Canaveral, and a beach nearby.

We actually have been fairly pleased. People have not been rude and we have been able to get on and off the elevator. Our tactic is to push the button in the direction we want to go, but if the first elevator comes and I can’t get on because many times, the elevators are so full that one person cannot even get on let alone walker. Then we take the very next elevator that comes with space going up or down and we ride it until we can get to our floor. Before we started doing that. We sometimes have three or four elevators pass a spot before we can get on. That was a little frustrating. DD and I find that the elevators are very slow anywa, even if we’re just trying to ride it as a single rider. Fo the last three days—at least one and sometimes two elevators have been out of service of the group near us.

I am standing in our junior suite cabin, looking into the hallway, and the door to the deck eight is directly in front of me. You can see the lock door to the right, and our daughter’s door to the left. This is working perfectly for us plenty of privacy, but also plenty of space for both of us. We keep the door propped open like this whenever we’re all in the cabin and closed when we are gone or sleeping. It is a narrow hallway, DH walker just fits through.

Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear. I did say here are the lunch items that were on the brunch menu. There were ample breakfast items, French toast, eggs, Benedict, pancakes, eggs, etc. I didn’t post those because we were going to use it as our lunch

We will give it a try one day. Thanks

Yes, the time is fine--it was just a surprise.

In the summer of 2022 the airline flights to Europe were in a turmoil. There were strikes for SAS [months long] and Lufthansa [just our flight day]. Many passengers had flights cancelled. Ours United flight was, too about a month before our Baltic cruise leaving Stockholm. We booked it through Air2Sea. They told us be patient and we would get a flight. . . . and we did. They gave us the United business class with the lay flat seats. Like you, I can't sleep on planes and I didn't then either. The seats were OK. But DH and I agreed it would not have been worth the money to purchase the upgrade.

We always select My Time Dining for our cruises. I made reservations for dinner each night at 7pm when it opened. We can always change individual days if we need to. My reservations appear in my calendar on the app. However, when we got to the dining room at 7pm last night they told us we actually had a fixed dining seating at 6:30pm. Sure enough, that was listed at the bottom of the sea pass. I had checked the sea pass when I got it to see the muster station # and to make sure the name and cabin were correct--but I ignored the rest. Oops! I have no problem with the time or having a fixed seating, It is a little less flexible, but it will not make or break our cruise. I double checked my cruise invoice, and it says My Time Dining. [a first world problem] HaHaHa However, they make such a big deal about their app. Everything is accessed from the app and we are told to check the app every time I turn around. Well, I did! But it was not correct. I felt badly for our wait staff that we were 30 minutes late for dinner. The waiter seemed very nice. We had very quick service. He told us that today [1st sea day] would be a brunch in the American Icon restaurant beginning at 8:30am. He said the lines will be long and the service will be slow due to the large numbers. He recommended we go to the Solarium Bistro for breakfast. We took his suggestion. The solarium bistro was a small version of the windjammer. It had all of the typical American items--even an omelet station. Around noon we decided to catch the end of the brunch hours [8:30am-12:30pm] for lunch. We prefer to be seated and served for our meals. It just makes it easier. Here are the lunch items on the brunch menu: