Short Cruise - Long Review - Ecstasy 4-14-2012

[ElvisAndretti]

My wife (Hope) and I (Ray) have just returned from our first ever cruise aboard the Carnival Ecstasy. We traveled from Bucks County, PA to Port Canaveral via Orlando and sailed to Key West, Nassau and Freeport. We also visited Kennedy Space Center, Daytona Beach, Universal Islands of Adventure and Gatorland before returning home.

 

We took over 3000 photographs, ate and drank more than we probably should have and had as much fun as we could have hoped for.

 

Hope left work at 2:00 on Friday to make the final preparations, I got out at three and we were on the road by 3:30 and hit our first snag almost immediately.

 

 

There was a massive traffic jam on I-476, all the way to the airport. Did we care? No, not really. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the airport, we arrived with time to spare.

 

We had dinner at Chickie and Pete's and I had a beer and Hope had something green...

 

 

Our flight was on time, we got to our hotel (Springhill Suites MCO, cheap, roomy and clean, free breakfast)

 

 

We got a good night's sleep and woke early with some help from many happy families heading out for some theme park adventures. We set out to find a liquor store, got our champagne, bottled water and Red Bull and we were ready to set sail.

 

We dropped our rental car at Hertz and they dropped us in the parking lot adjacent to the cruise terminal. The rental was a new Chevy Impala, very nice and equipped with Satellite radio.

 

 

We listened to one station most of the way...

 

 

It seemed fitting.

 

Checking in through security and getting our Sail and Sign cards was pretty effortless. They were a bit rough with our bottled water, but no harm done. If we had wanted to I suppose we could have smuggled liquor in the boxes the champagne came in, they didn't check those. But we like champagne, so we kept it legal.

 

We were ushered into the departure lounge and had to wait all of five minutes before they started boarding the VIP area. We were photographed and they turned us loose inside.

 

 

We boarded the ship at 11:15 and we were told we could drop our carry on bags in our cabin even though it was not ready for just yet. We dropped off our beverage bag and headed up to the Lido Deck.

 

to be continued....

[ElvisAndretti]

Our cabin (U98)

 

 

We liked what we saw, we were only in there for a minute but it was great. It was very spacious, lots of storage space, the bathroom and walk in closet were both larger than expected. The balcony was very large, bigger than the deck at our old house in fact.

 

 

Having gotten rid of our luggage we decided to check out the Lido Deck for some lunch. It was pretty empty when we arrived and we were offered the daily drink special right away. I forget what it was, but we each got one and they were very tasty indeed.

 

We found a table on the aft deck behind the deli/pizza stand and were almost blown off our feet by the wind. So we headed around the corner and had a seat on the starboard side of the boat with a great view of the channel. We took turns checking out the buffet and had a very nice lunch. The corn on the cob was previously frozen, but it's April, corn don't grow in April so what the heck. Other than that the food was very good. The dulce de lece cheesecake was especially tasty.

 

 

We took a little walk around the ship to get our bearings. I had read on cruise critic and a few other places that this was an older ship. That may be true, but she is well cared for and you really had to look for signs of age. The decor is, uh, vibrant. A bit overwhelming at first but it grows on you. The promenade had a Harley Davidson Sportster (XL1200 IIRC) at one end and a Rolls Royce across from the coffee shop. The Harley had a motor and transmission, the Rolls did not. They were mainly used for people to pose with for photographs.

 

There was nothing happening in any of the bars, the shops and casino were closed, so we went down to our cabin and found our bags had been delivered. Hope set about to unpack and I helped by keeping out of the way. The amount of space we had for our 'stuff' was huge! We had the over the door shoe holder but really didn't need it.

 

[cruisenanny]

Great start! I found that dulce de lece cheesecake on that first day too!

[reerun25]

Enjoying the review so far, can't wait to read more!!

[new2boating]

Looking forward to following your review as well. -- Wesley

[LBumb]

great start

[nolababe504]

Great review so far!! I really enjoyed the Ecstasy!!

[missygirl]

Can't wait for more...we are going soon and your review so far sounds like you had a great time.

[nickiefriend]

Can't wait to see more! We were on this one in November and I miss it!

[foxesden1]

Great review can't wait to see more!

[rferr]

I was at my parents Condo in Cocoa Beach and we watched you go by sitting in the living room on your way out to sea on your departure day.

[TaraLynne]

 

We boarded the ship at 11:15 and we were told we could drop our carry on bags in our cabin even though it was not ready for just yet. We dropped off our beverage bag and headed up to the Lido Deck.

 

 

really?!?!? that's awesome. our main reason for not showing up super early to board our next cruise is that we don't want to have to lug our carry-ons around the ship for nearly two hours like we did last time

[cruzegurl104]

Great review!! Don't leave us hangin'!;)

[ElvisAndretti]

really?!?!? that's awesome. our main reason for not showing up super early to board our next cruise is that we don't want to have to lug our carry-ons around the ship for nearly two hours like we did last time

 

I do not know if that was a result of the VIP boarding or having a suite, but it certainly did make our boarding easier.

[jus4fun]

Great Review! I can not wait to hear more. We sail on the Ecstasy, May 12th.

[ElvisAndretti]

After hanging out in the cabin for a while it was time to report to our muster station. I had already spotted it while we were exploring earlier, but somehow managed to get lost anyway. Muster consisted of sitting around for a while, getting some instructions on how to behave during the drill, listening to more instructions over the PA system, trying to ignore the 'old pros' behind us who would not shut up, or stop drinking or stop eating or do any other damn thing the crew told them to do.

 

Then we marched up to our lifeboat station and stood around for a bit, listened to another announcement and we were done, time to set sail. Which we did, almost instantly.

 

 

OK, here comes the part where some people will stop liking me. We returned to our cabin to sit on the balcony and watch as we sailed off into the Atlantic. I fired up a nice Montecristo #3 (Dominican) and watched as we set out to sea. As I mentioned earlier, it was a windy day, the seas were on the rough side as we set out and there was a fair amount of pitch and roll going on. This was with us for the first two days, initially it was a bit irksome, but it never got to the point of making me feel really seasick.

After we were well underway and it appeared that stuff would be opening up, we set out to explore once again. There was a notice in the Funtimes about a free liquor tasting in the Galleria. My favorite kind of liquor is free, so off we went. But when we arrived we found the first real crowd of our trip. Hope began feeling a bit claustrophobic so we bailed on the free booze and settled for my second favorite kind: not free.

We walked around some more, hit up the Serenity Deck at sat and watched the wake for a while. Later in the trip this area got pretty crowded, but it was quiet on Saturday for the most part.

 

We decided to check out the early Welcome Aboard show in the Blue Sapphire lounge. We were early so we scoped out the front of house sound and lighting boards, nothing fancy but pretty up to date and certainly capable of dealing with anything you might want to do on a boat.

The show was a bit cheesy, sort of what you might find at Six Flags, the performers did not lack enthusiasm, but the material left a bit to be desired. When the first standup comic came out and went right into vintage 80's comedy club stuff (How about them airlines folks?) we decided to bail. We figured on skipping the comedy club after that, but we later learned that you can't always judge a comic by how they work "clean". More on that later.

As it was, we needed to get to the dining room anyway, so off we went, not knowing what to expect really, but we were hungry so we were ready. There was a pretty large crowd waiting to get in, but once they opened up everything went very smoothly.

 

 

 

 

We were assigned a 10 place table, four other couples, a retired couple from Florida, two newlyweds, two friends from Newfoundland and two more from Minnesota. It was quiet for about two minutes before some of the more experienced cruisers kicked off the conversation. We had so much fun with these 'random strangers' as someone explained the dining arrangements to me that I can't help but think they have some tricks to matching people up. If it was luck that was just about how things went for us all week: lucky.

 

We retired to our cabin after dinner to find our first towel animal and the next day's fun times.

 

 

We ended our day on the Balcony watching a Disney ship off in the distance heading south with us.

 

[Frank12]

Great start. That first daily drink special was a "Funship Special". My favorite drink of the day!

[KroozFoolz]

Enjoying your review and looking forward to more.

[mwood0612]

Great review so far!!! We sail on Ecstasy in June!!! I was very excited to see your review!!!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[vivavegas]

Great review! Looking forward to reading more. Love the photos too! Thanks for sharing...:)

[jlk806]

Yes, cant wait to read more, and am loving the pictures, we are going on the ecstacy in July!

[PathfinderEss]

Thanks for posting your review and those great photo's. Can't wait for the rest.

[pomm1972]

Thanks so much for this review. Ill be on her in less thsinan 4 month. So happy to hear that she has aged well since this will be my 2nd time on this class of ship since i went on her sister the fascination some 15 years ago.

 

Great job and loving all the pictures. Cant wait to see more.

[nae418]

Nice review so far

[ElvisAndretti]

Our second day was Key West.

 

 

 

We woke to the sunrise and breakfast being delivered right on time. It was still rough going so we had our breakfast in the sitting area rather than on the balcony.

 

We were both very excited about visiting Key West, it was the reason we chose this cruise. Our objective was to try a short cruise to see if we liked it. We wanted to see Key West and NOT go to Mexico. (Been there done that, a lot. Back when the only guys with automatic weapons were the police.)

 

After breakfast we showered and dressed and headed out to greet the day. As we passed through the casino we saw our first bathrobes on deck. (Not the last.)

 

We went up to the Sports Deck to see what we could see, it was a beautiful day, but we were still fighting the current. You could see the middle keys off to starboard, just barely. Around that time Steve, the CD announced that the heavy seas and strong currents would delay our arrival in Key West by an hour. Bummer. But that we would also stay an hour later! Most Excellent!! That meant we would be able to see one of those famous Key West sunsets from Mallory Dock. As it turned out they docked us in a position where we were able to watch from our balcony, which was great because the dock was super crowded owing partly to a huge tent set up for a fishing tournament.

 

We headed down to the Serenity Deck for a morning cocktail. They make a very good Bloody Mary, extra spicy as requested.