Sabalon

Just to follow up in case down the road someone is looking for similar information. The ship gets into Grand Cayman at 7:30a (and leaves at 3). The "Amazing Turtle & Wildlife Adventure - with Lunch!" excursion is from 9am to 1pm.

Depending, we may take the bus back or find lunch elsewhere - it seems any lunch provided anywhere in the Caribbean is BBQ chicken and rice.

Thanks...what I needed to know!

Cruise itineraries won't be affected.

 

Use a good insect repellent on exposed skin and spray repellent on your clothes and hat.

 

Stand next to someone with an O blood type :eek: Mosquitoes will go after an O blood type before other blood types. (my husband is O, I am A. I joke I won't leave his side on excursions).

I'm O- but the bugs leave me alone in favor of my wife and daughter, who I think are both A. Guess we have stupid bugs around here - didn't do so well with their letters!

I've also seen dryer sheets attached to clothes work - though I don't know how well that would confuse jungle bugs.

We booked a cruise in July on Saturday. When I log in and look at everything, there is a Shore Excursion Bundle Offer - bundle three together and save 20%. Looking at things to do, on is Mayan ruins which is time-intensive so for safety that makes sense to go via Carnival. One is only available via the cruise line, and the other would be about $10 different if we did it ourselves. With the 20% discount, it brings the price close enough to "retail" that the simplicity is worth it.

The rub is that the sale ends in about 5 hours. So, is this something that they constantly have going on (like the furniture stores who are "Going out of Business" for 3 years) and there will be something similar come the next week? Or is this something that is a legit thing to jump on to save about $200.

Seems they always have a deal of some sort going on - however, since I've booked, I'm more of a captive audience.

Thanks for any insight!

Correct. I was hoping someone who has booked this through carnival may know what time they have the excursion set for. Since it says it includes lunch, I'm assuming it starts earlier.

It is a 4 hour excursion but my thought is if we finish up and feel we are done we could hop on a bus and do something else. Hopefully someone who has booked this before will know how they handle it. Not like the Mayan one in Belize where they have to get you out first due to the length of it.

Thanks.

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For those that may have done the turtle farm tour with Carnival.

How early do they get you there? I see the farm opens at 8am so that wouldn't be a hold up. I don't remember when the ship gets in port but I believe it's pretty good early.

We're trying to plan the day and what we could do after the farm. I figure if they got us there early enough then we would be turtled out by lunch.

I know we could catch the bus ourselves, but to do the full blown turtle excursion the wife wants to do, the cost difference is $5 once you add bus fare in. And we're doing an excursion package with Carnival for Belize and Roatan (and Cayman) which had a discount which makes it a little more realistic pricing to the best I can find.

Thanks!

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I'm thinking part of the issue is the ship seems to be pretty much booked up already so there isn't much room to upgrade to! Which means I better get my cabin before I have to explain to the wife and kids that we're not going!

So even though I'm picking my room, they'll put me in a better one - so if I booked steerage class (hello interior riviera), I may end up on main deck instead if riviera deck - for an extra $100 (4 in the room). Or I could just upgrade while booking for $0.80/day/person.

Yeah...rooms are for sleeping, don't need fancy! I say that now, but will be cursing it after hitting the uppers a few times with my head!

We're looking at a cruise, and there is the generic pick your room for one price, and then for $25 more, they have a "Room Upgrades Sale"

It says "Free room location upgrade" , sale ends may 15th.

But you still choose your own rooms and they are the same rooms from the MORE=MERRIER

Same thing with the "FUN SELECT" option - it says 2 category upgrade, but again, you pick the same rooms.

Could someone offer some enlightenment?

Thanks!

Our first cruise, our oldest was 14. She was dismissive of the Circle C, until she got in there. After she started, her sister became an only child for the next few days!

She made some good friends there, including one that goes to the rival high school here - go figure. They do a lot with them. They take over the nightclub for an hour or so, all sorts of games and movies. She ended up hanging out with 4 of them a lot outside of the Circle C as well. And this is a girl who doesn't make friends easy.

Nassau you can take a taxi to Cabbage beach for a lot cheaper than the excursion. Of course, you're "on your own" then. And it can be crowded.

Freeport - we did our own thing there as well - Paradise Cove - though we were there for snorkeling, and it's not really a beach (more rocky). Love the people there though.

And as others have said, Half Moon Cay is basically a beach, so you don't even need to go on a side trip (though we did the snorkeling there)

I believe that we were off the boat by 11:30 - noon. Customs line was a bit slow, but non-invasive. I really do think we were in our (hot) car by 12:30.

What kind of shoes are appropriate for men on a casual night?

Basically "not flip-flops". I wore sneakers one night and sandals another.

I have been bringing a 16 oz mug with lid with me so I can get a big cup of coffee and take it with me where ever I'm headed off to around the ship

 

Every cruise someone sees me with it and says "what a good idea"

 

I saw someone doing that. My wife bought a Carnival one for water. Next cruise I will definitely be packing heat...in the form of heat storing coffee storage or heat-repulsing cold drink storage. May look odd with my 64oz BubbaKeg :)

Cruise Director (Cory) was a hoot/QUOTE]

 

When we were on last week, it was Acting Cruise Director Jase (Jason). Mostly just heard him on the PA, but I liked his personality and the entertainment staff as a whole were real good.

Sabalon, What kind of live music do they have onboard? Do they have a cover band? My daughter and SIL are sailing Fasination on the 5th of July.Pink

The band is named Remembering Melanie. Main singer is https://www.facebook.com/KCJOHNSMUSIC

I liked them, others I read didn't - go figure. They did themed sets on our cruise. I didn't get to watch them as much as I liked, but Fun Times said they did some woodstock stuff, and I caught a good bit of their 80's set.

They also had a guy on acoustic guitar that played in the main lounge a lot - I liked him. Didn't get to hang out at the piano bar, but it sounded good when I walked by.

Have fun!

As I said in another thread - when you add a water park to the ship, have pictures with a pirate in the MDR and the staff dancing, I think you lose the right to pretend this is some upper class cruise across the Atlantic from the early 1910's.

I wore the same outfit to each of the elegant nights I've been to - short sleeve black button up shirt with black dress pants. First time I wore a tie, but it's not comfortable to eat with one one.

Other nights, I wore jeans or my "good" shorts (it was warm in the MDR) and a golf/polo shirt.

It is annoying. I understand on formal night, but otherwise it gets old. Especially when we're at a two person table and they want one of us to get up for the shot. Last trip they bugged us for three nights and then stopped. Maybe when they switched photographers, the new one realized I'm non-photogenic :)

The pirate ones are stupid.

Also, on the dress code - when you put a water park on your ship and have a "pirate" go around taking pictures, I think you lose the right to pretend this is some formal cruise line of days gone by. Not that I didn't adhere to the dress code, just seemed kinda funny to me.

Just came back from her this week. Liked it better than the Fantasy. Mostly the same, but the theater and coffee club seemed to be laid out better, as do the kids club areas.

While on there, I left about $10-15 in the slot machines - see if you can get it out for me :)

At home I drink Eight O'Clock coffee, and my favorite coffee to get out comes from QuickTrip (gas stations). Don't care much for McDonalds and can't stand Dunkin Donuts stuff.

So I guess I'm not too picky, and I found the coffee onboard in Lido to be just fine. I couldn't tell a difference between it and the MDR coffee.

It's been over a year since I've done a review, but it's been over a year since I was on a cruise!

My wife and I went on this cruise for our 20th anniversary. Last time was in Feb 13 on the Fantasy (same class ship) out of Charleston. This time we left the kids at home. Overall, very enjoyable.

Sorry this is so long - it kinda grew in the telling.

Pre-Departure

Jacksonville is a 5 hour drive from Atlanta, so we headed down on Friday, stopped by and saw my sister, nieces and nephews. We made it to Jacksonville around 3pm. Swung by the port entrance real quick to make sure I knew where it was and headed to the Sheraton off Butler Blvd, about 15 minutes from the port. $49 on Priceline, and was a lot nicer than some of the other cheap "hotels" in the area. Did some last minute shopping of needed items - it isn't vacation til you visit Wal-Mart. Next morning, got up, had breakfast and drove to the port, arriving at around 10:10. Lady at the gate said if we were departing we were too early and to come back around 11. Went back to Butler Blvd to get some eye-shadow my wife wanted and got back right at 11.

Embarkation

When we got there at 11, there was a line of cars waiting to get into the port as they checked boarding passes and let you in. Based on when we got back, it seems 10:30a may be the magical time to get there. No worries though. Went to drop the luggage off. At Charleston, as you entered the port, the porters would take the luggage. At JAX, you pulled right up to the port - same line to drop passengers off, etc. They have two rows of cars, about 12 in a row pull up in line, shut the engines off and get your luggage out. This turned into a bit of a mess, cause the front of the line of cars I was in packed the whole house and then took forever to find a tip for the porter, holding up the whole line. On the nice side, the security guard barking out what to do would call the porters over and reminded people to tip the porters, and did so by the porters name. "Don't forget to take care of James". Pretty much everyone at this port was super-friendly. My wife stayed there and I went and parked the car at the lot - $75 for the duration. We looked at off site parking, but financially almost every option ended up being around $130 total for hotel and parking/shuttle. We went with the priceline option and port parking for quicker getting out of there. Short walk from the lot and into the queues.

They did a quick initial look at boarding pass and ID and you got in line. FTTF had their own line, which never really formed as a proper line because they got handled so fast. We probably spent about 45 minutes in the queue to get to the x-ray and security checkpoint. It wasn't cool inside but it wasn't hot either. Again - everyone working security at this port was very friendly.

We had to wait in a smaller queue for the Carnival rep to check us in. The usual looking at papers and id's, asking questions, taking pictures and issuing cards, then it was off to the ship. This was at 12:27 we finished because she said our room would be ready at 12:30 and then said, oh...so 3 minutes. We had our first encounter with the photo crew - which I love...stand in warm lines for an hour+ and then we'll take you picture to show how happy you are. As we headed for the gangway, one more (friendly) security guard who made a point to comment on my wife needing sunscreen (think of white linen - then think whiter!).

Since the room was just about done we waited in the elevator bay for a few minutes and went to our room to drop off carry-ons.

Stateroom R2

We booked late because I am switching jobs and there was some uncertainty. We let them assign us a room, and it was "interior" room R2. Interior because it was the interior rate but has two portholes.

I was a little worried about this room because I get sea-sick easy and this was on the front of the ship. Last time we had midship and it still bothered me. But with the lateness of booking it was what it was. It could have been the room or the ocean those days, or more likely the ginger pills, but I did not feel sick at all the whole cruise. I did not want to take Bonine because it knocked me out last time. So I actually got up early most mornings to watch us make port. However the last day returning to JAX (and when we were tendering) we found the downside to the room. It sounds very much like the bow thrusters are right below this room. They started at 5:45am arriving back at JAX for the St. James River traversal and didn't stop til we were docked. I'm sure it was loud as we docked in Nassau but I was up topside at that point. Other than that noise, it was a nice little room, with somewhat of a view.

Nassau

Meh...been there before. Didn't care for it last time either. Shops on Bay St, and Atlantis. Wife wanted jewelry so we were up and down Bay as she tried to remember where she saw something she liked. I bought some curry powder and hot sauce. We had lunch at Sharkeez down by the ships. This was a GREAT choice. The Jerk Chicken Pizza was one of the best things I've ever had. We then went back on board to enjoy the water slides and pools without tons of people.

Half-Moon Cay

We did the Snorkel Half-Moon Cay by boat excursion (approx $65/pp). We choose the early time trying to beat the noon sun. Because of that, the the excursion people were on the first tender off. (ha...take that FTTF people :) The tender sucked. It was an old repurposed glass bottom tour boat. The lower deck was cramped and hot, and it was enclosed so that didn't help. The AC unit looked like it quit about 10 years ago. When we finally got to the pier, they opened the windows to allow a tiny bit of flow. The tender we took back was open air seating on both levels. I rented a locker as there looked to be limited numbers of them - $7 for the day, re-enterable. We went to the snorkel boat, signed in and sat topside. Again - Ginger pills for the win. The 15 minute ride to the reef did not phase me one bit. The snorkeling site was three reefs - nothing too special, not like the tropics, but lots of fish. You had an aqualung you had to wear, but inflating it was up to you. You had 45 minutes in the water. This doesn't sound like much, but you do tend to tire out easy, and it is plenty of time. When we got back on board, they had free waters and sodas if you wanted for the ride back. All-in-all a very nice outfit and great excursion. They had three lifeguards in the water if needed, and a 150' tow rope off the end of the boat if you wanted to pull yourself along (ie. not a strong swimmer). We then spent some time on the beach, had some lunch, more beach time and headed back to the ship an hour before the last tender rush. The beach did not seem that crowded.

Lunch on the island is a mess. The food was good, especially the jerk chicken. It just seems they could use some logistic planning. The line leaves the food area for the drink station - and the station is setup as drink, cup, ice instead of a logical get your cup, get your ice, get your drink. So quite some confusion. But if that was the worst part of my day, not bad! There also were some wild chickens that lived on the island...don't know if that's why the BBQ was so good - fresh food!

Onboard Food

Buffet is the usual. Great breakfast, lunches hit and miss depending on your tastes. Burgers and hotdogs at lunch and Mongolian wok if you didn't like the hot-line.

Dinner. Last time we had any-time dining. But due to the lateness of our booking we were at the 8:15 seating. This actually worked out great because you never felt rushed getting to dinner, and I liked having the same wait staff. They were Joel (Joe-el), AnaMaria, and something with an H that was very hard to get a glimpse of. They were awesome. Very friendly. The night before our anniversary they brought out a piece of cake with candles in it and said "So, how many years is this anniversary." I said "Tomorrow will be 20 years". He said "Oh...then you didn't see this" and "hid" the cake. He left the cake but told us "tomorrow, only candles, no cake". The next night they announced it to the immediate area, sang to us, etc.

I can't remember everything I had, but roughly:

Appetizers: Onion soup (so-so), alligator fritters (awesome), chicken tenders in thai spices (very nice), chilled mango cream soup (very good), Roasted Duck (very good)

Dinners: Lasagna Bolognese (if they had this every night I would have ordered it every night), Chateaubriand with sauce bearnaise (okay), meatloaf (awesome - though the side of "creamy potatoes with cheddar cheese" were the size of a small scoop of ice-cream), and some other things which weren't bad, but just not that memorable I guess. My wife loved the seafood items.

Desserts: Chocolate Melting Cake - several times. Coconut cake was very good, Ameretto Chocolate cake was kinda weak, Wife liked the baked Alaska.

Menu from one night - meant to take more:

Entertainment and Activities

First off - do that many people really buy artwork when they go on a cruise? I've never seen so much fuss made over so much crap. Then again, what do I know about art.

The onboard band was named "Remembering Melanie". I didn't get to listen to them as much as I would have liked but I thought they were very good. They did "themed" nights, one being Woodstock, one being 80s, which is where I heard them the most. Would like to have heard more of them.

One comedian was Kelly Terranova and I enjoyed his show. The other was CeeJay Jones, but we didn't get around to seeing him.

Trivia - didn't do this on the Fantasy, but we did quite a few of them here. I won the General Knowledge (a fluke!), 80s Music, and Doctor Who trivia. The triviamaster was British and I'm sure if I wanted to argue some of his incorrect answers, we could have gone toe-to-toe on it. But I'm proud of my plastic trophies!

One trivia with the Assistant Cruise Director was called invisible movie trivia - they take a still from a movie and photoshop the actors faces/hands out, so you just see the clothes. Sounds simple... but is actually quite tricky. You see Peter Venkmans' ghostbuster outfit and that's simple. You see an empty suit and a fishtank - not so much.

Did about $10 of casino play. At this rate I'll qualify for free drinks around the death of the sun. Didn't visit any of the clubs. Piano bar sounded good and the guy with a guitar in the lounge did a great job as well. No kids, so can't speak to the arcade, Circle C, O2, etc.

Disembarkation

We did the relaxed one where our luggage was put out the night before. We sat up on the promenade deck for about an hour waiting for our zone. Got off the ship pretty quickly, found our bags, and the customs line went pretty quick as well, then to the car and drive home. Much MUCH MUCH better than Charleston, where they took pleasure in being a pain.

The Bad

Am not a raving "love everything", so here is what I didn't like.

The photo-ops. I understand getting on the ship, random fun shots, etc. I don't mind that. But every night at dinner got old. Get up, go squat by my wife for a photo. (Though ironically the one photo we did buy was one of those)

Drink please. That got old after a while too. Constantly being asked if you want a drink. I know they are doing their job, but still. Though I will say the ones that I did get a drink from were very nice. Though one girl, I asked what was in the Hurricane Wave - the menu just said "hurricane and banana daquari swirled." I had no idea what was in a Hurricane so was hoping she could tell me. She just pulled out the same drink menu and pointed to it.

Crew. I read Cruise Confidential and have heard some stories between this cruise and the last one, and had a hard time trying to shake a feeling of Carnival raiding less developed countries for a cheap work-force. One of the people I talked to said it was nice, but sounded apprehensive - don't know if it was a language thing or she just didn't know how to answer. But that was in the back of my mind the whole time. Then again, so is most of the stuff from China, etc. We just don't see that on a regular basis.

Smells. Not too bad, but it seemed whenever we were in port, you'd catch whiffs of what smelled like raw sewage, both below and on deck.

Shower. Something about the shower in our room was wrong. You couldn't get it to cool down too much. You could get it scalding hot, but never could get it to a cool temperature. Though once in a while it would do it. Probably something wrong in the control. At least it was usable.

Sick. So, hot Florida weather, AC, hot on deck, AC, hot in Nassau, AC in shops. Do this back and forth many times a day and by the third day I had a nice little sinus cold going on. Not Carnivals fault. Though the $15 for Dristan that would be $5 at a CVS was insult to injury. At least it wasn't norovirus.

Overall

Really had a great time. I think the lack of bonine (and kids) made me enjoy this more than the Fantasy. Being the same distance to both ports, I would choose the Fascination again, mainly because of the port. On board, other than the names, everything was pretty much the same.

Part of me would like to try a larger vessel, but 2000 is a lot of people...I couldn't imagine something like 3-4000 passengers some of the larger ships handle.

And gotta love views like this...

Talked to someone one board and what the others said - any other discounts go out the window. I think she said it would have been double for her family to get the kid free. Not sure of the details - but it sounds like you need to have a larger family for this to work in your favor.

Didn't go to it, but just got off the Fascination and they announced it several times.

Question for those who have done this...

I see that Stuart's Cove takes you out on a boat to do the SNUBA.

How long is that boat ride? I don't do boats well, and last time we took a boat to scuba, I spent the whole time hanging off a line off the boat "feeding the fish"

Thanks

Suite. hah....yeah, I wish. Stateroom is what I meant. At least they were both S words.

Last time we were midship, but because of a potential new job, we held off booking and by then the midship was gone. I guess I can by lots of Bonine for the amount we saved letting them choose.

I understand how it bounces, and I do get motion sickness, so am just gonna hope for good seas, because at this point that is my only option. The room is just for sleeping anyway! I will hope to avoid hurricanes for so many reasons.

Thanks!