Quite possibly the longest Sensation review ever!

[jleiwig]

First a little about us. Besides myself, this trip included my wife, and her parents. We were driving to Port Canaveral from Southern Ohio. This was my first cruise and my wife’s 3rd or 4th cruise. Her parents have been on 7 cruises previously, but no one had been on a cruise in the past 10 years or so.

Our trip started out by leaving Ohio around 6 am, Saturday Oct 16th, with me behind the wheel. A thirteen hour trip was a head of us, as we were stopping in Lake City, Florida for the night. This would allow us a leisurely 3 hour drive the following morning to the port. A quick stop for breakfast at Mickey D’s and we were on our way down I-75 with my wife in the passenger seat, and the in-laws snoring in the back seats (this would be a recurring theme the whole trip)!

Due to the 70 mph speed limits, and a general lack of traffic that early in the morning we quickly made it through Kentucky and almost all of Tennessee by lunchtime. We stopped at O’Charley’s for lunch in Chattanooga, TN. It was here that I finally realized that I was on vacation! What made me realize this? I got my first Y’all of the day! There is something to be said for that southern hospitality, and having to remember when you ask for tea that it be unsweetened.

After a delicious lunch, and a quick check on the college football scores of the day, we were again on the road headed south. Georgia passed by with some interesting sights, including lots of cotton harvesting going on. None of us had ever seen anything like this, so it was neat to see. Georgia was also where we ran into our first traffic snag of the day. Georgia Tech was playing at home, so there was some minor congestion there. Add to that the normal crazy driving in Atlanta, and I thought my wife was going to hyperventilate. Naturally, the in-laws were snoring away in the back seat completely oblivious to the dangerous dance of man and machine going on around them (Again!).

We then ran into additional congestion in southern Georgia due to the Georgia National Fair going on this same weekend. This was also the first State Highway Patrol sighting in three states as well. A blessing or a curse of budget restrictions? Depends on your driving speed I guess.

[jleiwig]

A quick stop for gas outside of Valdosta where the father-in-law had a senior moment with the gas pump, causing a quick shower in gasoline for the car, and a car wash with the window squeegee thing, and we were on the road again. Shortly we started seeing signs for oranges and Disney World, and we knew we were nearing the border.

Since our bottoms were thoroughly numb from the long drive so far, we decided to get out at the Florida welcome center and stretch our legs. This was also the first sighting of palm trees! For a Midwesterner, the sight of palm trees really means your on vacation. It was also our first sighting of lizards, which is always good for a laugh due to my wife’s reaction to them running near her. Back on the road, and a quick zip down the highway and we were in Lake City. We ate dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, and headed to the hotel to check in.

My mother-in-law had booked us into the Comfort Suites right by the highway. Since my father-in-law travels for business, Choice Hotels has a promotion for it’s Choice Privileges members that if you stay two nights, you get one night free now through November I believe. Since he had a few nights for free, we did not have to pay for the hotel stay. This is a brand new hotel, and as such the rooms and amenities were in excellent condition. I would recommend this hotel for anyone looking for a decent stop off point on the way down. The décor is atrocious in my opinion with pea soup green being the main color, but I was there to sleep, not decorate.

This is also where we ran in to our first major problem. When checking in we realized that my father-in-law had forgotten his driver’s license. My mother-in-law started flipping out and crying, thinking they weren’t going to be allowed to get on the ship the next day. I assured her that all he needed was his passport, which he had with him, but she was totally inconsolable. Finally after getting through to a Carnival representative, who also assured her that he would be allowed on the ship with just his passport, she finally calmed down. We set the alarm for around 8 am, and dozed off into a fitfully excited, but exhausted sleep.

[jleiwig]

The alarm went off way too early as it seemed as if I had just fallen asleep. We ate breakfast at the hotel, which had a hot breakfast nook. The breakfast area of the hotel was way too small for all the hotel guests to use efficiently, especially a traveling little league baseball team! The food was decent, but compared to a recent stay at a Hampton Inn in southern Indiana, it paled in comparison.

We quickly checked out, loaded the car and again were on our way with my wife riding shotgun and the in-laws again snoring in the back seat. Instead of continuing down I-75 towards Orlando, we cut across on the I-10. While not the most scenic route through the Osceola National Forest, the drive was uneventful all the way to Jacksonville. In Jacksonville we saw our first glimpse of water, which brightened everyone’s moods considerably.

In Jacksonville, we picked up the I-95 which we would take all the way down to the port. Apparently the whole Florida State Patrol decided that I-95 would be a great place to be, because it seemed that every other mile there was a trooper in the middle of the highway with his radar gun out. This caused for some slow going for a while, but once we got past Daytona Beach it was smooth sailing all the way to the 528 A1A exit for Port Canaveral. A short while later I caught my first glimpse of a ship! It was the RC Freedom of the Seas. Next to her was docked the Disney Wonder, and last but certainly not least was our home away from home for the next four days, the Carnival Sensation!

We arrived at the terminal at approximately 11 am, where we offloaded our bags. The extremely nice porter who helped us told us that if and only if we were extremely satisfied with his service donations were always gladly accepted. I laughed and tipped him 5 bucks even though we only offloaded three bags. The girls got in line while the father-in-law and I took the car to the parking lot, paid our $60, and found a spot to park. There weren’t many people there yet since it was early. A quick walk back to the terminal from our parking spot and we found the girls waiting in line.

[jleiwig]

A couple quick cell phone pictures. I haven't had time to process my camera pictures yet, but hopefully will have that done by the end of the week.

 

We've got tail!

 

 

 

 

 

I risked life and limb for this picture for you all and then got yelled at as it was a "secure" area and no photography was allowed.

 

[jleiwig]

The terminal people were handing out sheets doing a time study to see how long the wait was, and our sheet was marked 11:18 am when we got in line. It seemed to take a really long time to even get through the door of the terminal. Once inside the door we were tasked to a line to have our carry on baggage go through the x-ray scanners. This is where we met our first evil person of the day. The lady who was at the front of the x-ray machine must have woke up on the wrong side of a bed of nails this day because she was about as mean as could be.

Apparently it is more of a mortal sin to have ice in your cooler than to have a bottle of wine in your carry on, because I seriously thought she was going to detain me and beat me for having the nerve to ice down our cooler, but she never mentioned our bottle of wine or even gave it a second glance. I had to take everything out of the cooler, dry it all out with paper towels and dump the ice in a trash can near the scanner.

Only once she was satisfied was I allowed to put everything back in the cooler and pass it through the x-ray machine (which wasn’t a fancy shmancy liquid super detecto colorized detecting machine, just a plain old every day x-ray machine.) I passed through the metal detector with my clothes and shoes still on, but once out the other side the nice grandfatherly gentleman must have suspected me of smuggling some sort of paraphernalia under my baseball cap because he made me take it off and show him the underside of the cap before I could proceed.

Finally through with that we proceeded to the cattle pens where we weaved back and forth and back and forth until we came to the front of the line where I swear Estelle Getty (Sophia from the Golden Girls) was directing traffic to the check in area. We were directed to a nice older gentleman who was the first really really nice person we met in this whole boarding process. He gave us our sail and sign cards, collected the health questionnaires, swiped our passports through the reader and sent us on our way.

We then got in another cattle pen for the cash deposit line. We placed $400 on our joint account, and then we were directed to the area to board the ship. By this time is was almost 1:30 pm, and after a short delay caused by the photographers we were at the boarding ramp! We had our pictures taken and heard the boing from the machine and we were on the gangway to the ship!

[jleiwig]

We entered the ship on deck 7, Empress deck, right smack dab into the atrium. The first thing I noticed about the ship was that it was in pretty good condition considering her age. There weren’t any glaring problems when we first boarded.

Since it was so close to 1:30, we decided to drop our bags off at our staterooms first. The in-laws stateroom, E64, was on the port side, two doors down from the atrium. Unbeknownst to my mother-in-law, I had ordered happy birthday room decorations from Bon Voyage. My wife and I waited in the hallway while they opened their stateroom door for the first time. My mother-in-law was so surprised and happy, mentioning that no one had ever done anything so nice for her before.

My wife and I then headed to our cabin. We were on the starboard side in stateroom E43. We dropped our bags and headed back across to the other side of the ship to get the in-laws and head up to the lido deck for lunch. We took the regular elevators up to the lido deck (The glass elevators were not working the entire cruise). When we got off the elevator and entered the atrium area of the lido deck I noticed a very strong smell. Not quite a poo smell, but not too far off either. It was a little disconcerting since we were on our way to eat but we weren’t going to let it bother us! We were on the ship! The smell however would be there for the entire cruise.

We passed through the automatic doors onto the lido deck and the music was on. I was surprised that it was not blaring, given what I had heard in other Carnival reviews. We made our way past the pool to the Sea View restaurant at the rear of the ship. The taste of nations buffet theme this day was Italian. I wanted to eat outside, but was vetoed so we ate our dinner inside at one of the tables. (Just an FYI, I’m a big guy at 6’2” and 350+ lbs and had no problem with the arms on the chairs at the lido buffet).

After eating, we went out the rear sliding doors to the small alcove area above the serenity deck. We then walked around checking out the veranda deck as well as the sports deck. It was around 2:30 pm by this time, and the safety briefing wasn’t until 3:30, so we went back to our stateroom and unpacked.

[jleiwig]

After unpacking we went up to the Atlantic deck to check out where our muster station (A) was. It turns out that it was the Fantasia lounge where they held all the shows. Since no one was there yet, we proceeded up to the Promenade deck and walked along Sensation Blvd. I wanted to stop in the Formalities shop and order a sugar free birthday cake for the mother-in-law, but never saw the chance where she wasn’t around right then.

Once we had the lay of the land, we walked back along the Promenade deck to the upper entrance of the Fantasia Lounge and got a seat in one of the big circular seats to await the safety briefing. The safety briefing which was supposed to start at 3:30, actually started closer to 4 pm. I’m not sure what the hold up was, but it seemed like they had a group where they didn’t know what to do with them for muster stations. Once the cruise director Skip finished his spiel we were then herded out of the lounge, up a flight of stairs to stand in a single file shoulder to shoulder line so that we all could stare at the bottom of a life boat at life boat station three starboard side.

After staring at the bottom of that boat for a good twenty minutes, we were summarily dismissed without much fanfare. I instructed everyone in my group to stay right there, as we were going to head forward, up the small flight of stairs to the area just above the bridge that looks out over the forecastle. This would be where we would watch sail away from.

The ship started to move away from the dock very very slowly at first, unless you were paying attention you wouldn’t have noticed we had started our sail away. I seriously thought we were going to back right into the Disney Wonder. From my estimation we had maybe 30 feet before we hit her. At that point the ship stopped backing up and started turning 90 degrees to head up the channel and out into the sea.

As we left, our ship and the Freedom of the Seas got into a horn battle back and forth. The Sensation in my opinion won the battle as the horn was much more “ship” sounding than Freedom of the Seas, plus the Freedom of the Seas last blast was aborted and sounded more like a wet fart than a real horn blast. I was really hoping to hear the Wonder belt out “It’s a Small World”, but alas she didn’t join in the fun…what party poopers!

[jleiwig]

That's all for now. More to come later, but my boss actually wants me to work. Doesn't she realize I've been in heaven the past week and it will take time to adjust to having to do things for myself? ;)

[arpie05]

Glad to know you left on time. It had some troubles the sailing before and was over 2 hours late leaving the sailing before.

[KroozLov'r]

Thank you for your wonderful review so far, one of the best I have ever read! :) Your first-time cruiser exhuberance shines through! :)

[Lasombra52]

Awesome review so far. Can't wait to hear more.

[arucruzn]

More, more, more....

Love the review, I am on this ship in a couple of weeks. A bit concerned about the age of the ship. Please continue your wonderful review so that I know what to expect. I am loving the beginning of it...:)

[framerman]

Great start .........keep it up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BoooBooKitEFk]

Great start! I was on her just over a month ago... I feel like I'm walking right along with you! ;) Can't wait for more. Thanks!

[jleiwig]

Thank you all for the compliments. I've read many reviews and I want to make a good review because I feel the Sensation is an underreviewed ship.

 

I'll now continue a little bit more that I wrote on my lunch break.

[jleiwig]

As we started picking up steam and heading down the channel, the sun was shining brightly, the wind was blowing in our faces, and I had a grin a mile wide. We passed a manatee, and a couple small fishing boats that had people waving at us to make us all feel special. The highlight though was when we saw a small dolphin jump out of the bow wave right in front of the ship.

 

We stayed on this deck area for a while as we started out into the ocean, but eventually the wind up there got to be too much, so we retreated once again to our stateroom. By this time it was nearing 5:30 or 6 pm, and the girls wanted to return to the room to freshen up a bit before dinner. When we returned to the room, I found a surprise waiting for me. My wife had ordered the chocolate plate with strawberries from Bon Voyage for me for sweetest day. We didn’t eat it then because we were on our way to dinner shortly.

 

We had chosen anytime dining for this cruise, and it was an excellent choice. Being able to eat when you wanted to was very convenient for us as we like a later dinner, but not as late as the late seating offered. Anytime dining on the Sensation is located in the Fantasy dining room on the Atlantic deck. We were seated at a four top table, and our waitress this first night was Gianina from Peru. Our assistant waiter was Renan, and the team waiter was I Made. They were all quite wonderful and always quick on the ball with any questions or issues.

 

I had the cream of fresh garden broccoli soup as my appetizer. The father-in-law had the beef and barley soup, while the girls both had the black tiger shrimp cocktail for an appetizer. I chose both the flat iron steak and St. Louis style ribs as my main course, father-in-law had the lasagna Bolognese, mother-in-law had the chicken a la grecque, and the wife had the marinated center cut pork chop.

 

Everyone else liked what they had, but I was a little disappointed in the ribs given how much I’ve heard about them. The steak was pretty good though even though I wasn’t a huge fan of the peppercorn sauce. For dessert, father-in-law and I chose the key lime pie. Mother-in-law had the spa orange cake since she’s a diabetic. The wife went straight for the warm chocolate melting cake. Dessert is where I experienced my first major disappointment. The key lime pie came out almost warm. It was past lukewarm, which kind of made it off-putting. I’ve had quite a few key lime pies in my day and the best are always ice cold.

[Poomah]

Sounds good so far - looking to hear the rest

[jleiwig]

I suppose I should mention that around this time the seas started to get quite a bit choppy. It did not bother me all that much, but it really bothered my wife. The in-laws weren’t bothered at all. I never got physically ill, but when I stood up I would feel a little bit dizzy. It quickly passed thankfully though so I was able to keep moving about.

After dinner we had a little bit of time to kill before trivia, bingo and the welcome aboard show, so naturally we headed to the casino. My wife had been talking about gambling in the casino on the ship pretty much since the day we booked the cruise. I’m not a huge gambler, because I feel I work too hard for my money to piss it away. We each transferred $10 from our sail and sign account to our casino bank. She played penny slots and I played quarter slots.

Naturally I went through my $10 much quicker than she did hers, so I decided to go to the formalities shop while no one was looking to see if I could order the cake for mother-in-laws birthday. The formalities shop keeps fairly strange hours in my opinion, and I had hit upon it at a time when I guess the girl was at dinner for the evening. I headed back to the casino and sat at bench in the back corner looking out a window.

I guess at this point I should say that I’m allergic to cigarette smoke, so the smell from the casino was strong on that first evening, and got much worse as the cruise went along. Anyway…I digress.

We headed to the Fantasia lounge to play the first trivia game of the evening. This trivia was ran by one of the “fun team” guys who thought he was Rico Suave(his name was Keith I think), and too cool to be running lame trivia. I think it was called famous faces or something along the line. Basically a bunch of famous people were projected on the screen and we had to guess their name. I came in second, so close to winning a coveted solid gold plastic ship on a stick! Darn it! Maybe next time.

Next up was the $500 jackpot bingo. This was run by the assistant cruise director. I can’t remember his name off the top of my head, Eric I think, from Tennessee. I’ll have to check the fun times and report back on that one. One card was $10 and three cards were $20, plus you got a ticket for the win a cruise drawing held on the last day at sea. I must have gotten the worst bingo card in the world because I only had two holes poked when someone called bingo.

[jleiwig]

Someone else also called bingo, and both cards were validated. Turns out that the second person to call bingo actually had bingo two calls back, and had she called it when she got it, she would have won the jackpot outright. So instead she had to settle for splitting it with the other bingo guy and only getting half the $500 jackpot.

After bingo, the Asst. Cruise Director told us that if we wanted to participate in the game show coming up next to put our names in the bucket. Everyone prodded me into putting my name in the bucket, but when the game show started, I fortunately wasn’t one of the one’s picked as it turns out. I should also mention that I thought that these shows were poorly attended due to the rough seas, and probably a lot of people in their staterooms.

The game show was pretty funny. It was similar to “Name That Tune”, but the contestants were either asleep, drunk or something else because they missed some of the easiest songs in the world. At one point it go so bad that the Asst. Cruise Director called one of the contestants over, showed her the answer on her card and then told her to go back and hit her buzzer so she would get a right answer. At other times he made the other contestants face the wall when they didn’t get a super easy song like the Spice Girls or something like that.

By this point, my wife and father-in-law were absolutely freezing, and we had a few minutes before the welcome aboard show started, so the wife ran to the galleria shops and bought a hoodie since she had left her sweater in the car, and the father-in-law went back to the room to change.

I will say that there are no air conditioning problems on the Sensation. Everywhere was always freezing cold, including the rooms. As I said before, I’m a big guy and I’m rarely anything but hot and sweaty, but I was quite chilly more than a few times on the ship. Bring some slacks and a jacket or sweater, you’ll thank me later!

The welcome aboard show was really good in my opinion (having never seen it before). I’m sure it gets old the 10th or 20th time you’ve seen it if it never changes. The band was excellent, the dancers were good, and the singers were ok. I’m not usually one to judge anyone, but the male singer sweated like a pig during his performance and should have worked out a bit more if he wanted to continue to stuff himself into the extra tight outfits he was wearing.

[jleiwig]

I had heard stories on Cruise Critic and other forums that Skip wasn’t the best cruise director around, but not having anything to compare him to I found him funny and he ran the show well. I should also mention that he really didn’t have much of a presence over the PA system for the whole cruise which I thought was nice. Having watched the cruise documentary on the travel channel and reading other reviews about cruise directors always on the PA hawking something or other, I was pleasantly surprised that I was on a floating infomercial.

The comedians came on last; One was an African American gentleman who decided he wasn’t going to tell jokes, but to give us excursion advice based on our race. Nothing he said was even remotely funny. His repeated punch line was something about putting on the Funship Freddy costume and punching you in the gut. I think he said that about 20 times in his 5 minutes. The other guy was an older Caucasian gentleman who said that he told old jokes that others had told him. He then proceeded to tell a “Little Johnny” joke and a priest joke. He didn’t say anything funny either. Based on what they did in their 5 minute presentation each I knew I wouldn’t be going to any of their shows, which was really a disappointment since I go to comedy shows regularly.

After the show ended, we were all bushed. We returned to our stateroom after deciding as a group that we weren’t in a rush to get off the ship at Freeport. We were greeted by a towel animal elephant, the fun times for Freeport, and two chocolates on our turned down bed. The wife and I both quickly fell asleep into a deep slumber (So much for that hot night we had planned).

My wife woke up first on Monday morning as she usually does due to her programming from her normal job starting at 6:30 every morning. It was about 8 am when she woke up, and I heard her flush the magical toilet. I asked her if she saw land yet, and she looked out the window towards the aft and said no. I told her that I had heard that the ship usually docks early, and I was surprised we weren’t nearing the port yet. Not a second after I got the statement out of my mouth, she looked forward and said, “Oh….there is the port!”

So we sat on the edge of the bed and watched the ship glide into the harbor at Freeport. Since there wasn’t much else to see out the window we decided to shower and get ready for our day in Freeport. We didn’t have any excursions planned, just roughly planned to take a taxi to Our Lucaya and spend some time leisurely exploring that area.

[jleiwig]

It was around 8:30 am when we were finally up and ready to go. Since we knew her parents wouldn’t be awake yet, we decided to head up to the coffee shop and get some drinks. We first slipped a note under the in-laws door telling them to meet us at the coffee shop, then headed up to the promenade deck. The wife ordered a hot chocolate which she said was good. I got a chai tea latte which was nothing more than steamed milk with a chai tea bag. It was ok, but it was no Starbucks. I asked the barista to add some vanilla syrup which helped the flavor immensely.

After we finished our drinks we still hadn’t seen the in-laws, so we went back to our stateroom to call them. It took a couple minutes to figure out how to dial stateroom to stateroom. Basically if your stateroom number is less than 100, you need to dial with a 0 in front of the number. For example, our stateroom was E 43. Since E is deck 7, you would have dialed 7043 to ring our stateroom. That’s my tip of the day so you don’t feel as stupid as we did trying to figure that out.

It turns out that they were already up and were almost ready to go. We headed over to their stateroom. When we got there, my mother-in-law said she had gotten the note under the door, but couldn’t understand who would have wanted them to meet for drinks. As the southerners would say it was a bless her heart moment, along with a silent thought as to what nursing homes were available upon our return.

We decided to try the main dining room for breakfast that day since we were in no hurry to rush off the ship. We got there about 9 am, one of the last stragglers for breakfast. I must say that there was a marked difference in levels of service between breakfast and dinner. The waiters at breakfast didn’t seem the least bit interested in trying to please us. That was fine though, as I said we were in no rush.

For breakfast I had the eggs benedict with a side of corned beef hash. The eggs were a little chewy like it had been sitting around for a bit, and the hollandaise sauce was more of a hollandaise glaze across the top of the eggs. It still tasted good, but I would have liked more sauce I suppose. The corned beef hash was very good though. The wife had the French toast, and I don’t recall what the in-laws had besides the stewed prunes my father-in-law ate each time we dined in the main dining room for breakfast.

[jleiwig]

After breakfast we returned to our staterooms to get our gear to head out. We boarded the elevator and pressed the button for deck 3, which the sign in the elevator lobby had told us to do. We rode down to deck four, up to deck 10 and back down to deck 4 with no deck three in sight. Finally we got off on deck 4 and walked down the flight of stairs to deck three where debarkation was for Freeport. We got in line to leave the ship when father-in-law realized he had left his passport in the stateroom. The wife and I exited through security, bypassed the picture mob, and walked to the end of the pier to take pictures of the ship.

We then walked back and waited near the debarkation area for the in-laws to come out. They were suckered into the debarkation photos, so we waited another 10 minutes while they had 5 different pictures taken. We then entered Freeport though the little chain link gate manned by a very nice Bahamian woman. We walked through the tour departure area to where the taxi area was. There were a couple guys there from the port authority directing people into lines to form up the number of people needed for each mini bus/taxi. We were paired with Zelda, who wouldn’t give us any information about how much it cost until we were seated inside her van. That should have been my first warning, but I just went with the flow…I was on a tropical island right?

Once inside her van, Zelda informed us that it was $5 per person each way to Our Lucaya. She then explained that the town of Freeport was founded by an American named Wallace Groves in 1955. This fact surprised me because I had assumed that it had been around forever. After a 15-20 minute van ride passing by many homes and business that were either in a state of abandoned semi-built or semi-demolished status you really got a sense of just how hard hit the economy in the area was. There was no improvement or construction going on. Any construction that had started had been stopped and abandoned. The tallest building at 18 stories had been destroyed by fire inside and was vacant.

Zelda dropped us off in the fountain circle between the Lucayan marketplace and Our Lucaya at the Treasure Bay Casino. She informed us that it would be $10, and that she would pick us up on a return trip every hour on the hour. This set off a warning bell in my head, but I went along with it because everyone else was doing it. We walked a short walk down to the straw market vendors they had at the marketplace.

[obx_fintoo]

 

For breakfast I had the eggs benedict with a side of corned beef hash. The eggs were a little chewy like it had been sitting around for a bit, and the hollandaise sauce was more of a hollandaise glaze across the top of the eggs. It still tasted good, but I would have liked more sauce I suppose. The corned beef hash was very good though.

 

Enjoying your review! One tip that I learned from these boards.... ask for your eggs benedict with the sauce on the side. I did this on last cruise. Eggs came out fresh and warm and just runny enough and the sauce was smooth and creamy! :D

 

Looking forward to the rest of your review!

[jleiwig]

The straw market was where my mother-in-law got her first taste of the pushiness of the vendors. The very first lady in the very first stall grabbed my mother-in-law’s hand and pulled her into her shop and would not let her out until I went in after her and told her we were just looking. I was a little surprised by this at first because I had heard about this behavior at the Nassau straw market, but not here at Freeport. We continued around the little straw market, not seeing anything that really stuck out as worth buying, and moved on to the actually shops at the marketplace.

I was looking to get a t-shirt from the Harley shop, but they were out of my size. The nice girl in the store told me they would have what I wanted at the Nassau Harley store. We bought a couple postcards, and wandered around a bit more. No one really saw much that they wanted to buy, so we decided to head over to Our Lucaya. We walked along the walkway and marveled at the beach and white sand. None of us felt like spending the afternoon at the beach, so we headed into the casino.

When we had gotten off the ship, someone had handed us each a coupon for $10 in free slot play, so we signed up for the their players club and each got our $10 in free slot play. While waiting in line, I wondered if that Treasure Bay was the same casino my wife and I had won a pretty good jackpot at in Biloxi the week before hurricane Katrina where we got engaged. Once I got my players club card it was confirmed because on the back of the card it said “Treasure Bay Casino Biloxi, MS” My wife and I shared a little laugh about it and hoped that the same luck we had there would follow us to this new casino.

Having been to Vegas every year since I was 16 years old, I have to say that I was shocked at how small the actual casino was. While it was very well kept and very pretty inside, it was very small. The machines also were a little off. On the penny machines that my wife likes to play, instead of being able to play multiple lines and multiple bets per line, you could usually only choose a couple different pay lines at a certain amount per line. This really ate up our money fast, and no one won anything at this casino. It was now easy to see why it wasn’t more crowded. That being done, we headed back to the fountain circle to wait on Zelda.

[jleiwig]

The hour on the hour time passed and at about 15-20 after another gentleman in another van took pity on us. He told us he would take us back to the cruise ship and settle it with Zelda when he saw her. He took our return vouchers and we boarded his mini bus/taxi van. Well this turned out to be a blessing in disguise because this gentleman was a much better guide than Zelda was. He took us out a different route, showed us some of the more impressive homes on the island. If I remember correctly one of the larger homes, which looked like a castle was owned by the person who brought the first fast food franchise to Freeport. He owned quite a few fast food restaurants now and I believe he had something like 30 acres with 4 or five houses on it for him and his children.

He also showed us the house of a gentleman who sculpted statues out of concrete. His house must have had over 1000 different lions and tigers and other statues. We asked him various questions about life on the island. The average home price is $175,000; taxes on vehicles ranges from 50-90% of the purchase price. The amount depends on the selling price. His van was taxed at 82% he told us. He then took us to the downtown area of Freeport where we got to see how the locals lived. It actually wasn’t much different than any small town you’d find in Florida honestly. I was surprised at that after seeing the route that Zelda took to bring us in. It really was two contrasts on how each views their island. One appeared to try to garner sympathy for her island, and the other was more interested in showing off the island and very proud of his island.

He then took us past the school area. Almost all of the schools are run by religious organizations. Baptist is the largest religious denomination on the island followed by Catholicism. After that he took us past the “projects” area, which again, looked just like any other low income area you would find in the states. He then took us to the local version of the straw market, which he said used to be filled with food and vegetable vendors, but was slowly turning into another made in China area. He also pointed out the grocery store which was called Central Market. It used to be Winn-Dixie, but was bought out by Central Market.