Cruise report 5/15 RCI Vision of Seas

[1Caligirl]

:) Special thanks to BOB for his awesome advice before our first cruise! Because of him our port days were phenomenal. I felt so prepared with his downloadable maps printed out and all the info he provided.

 

Travel pics at http://community.webshots.com/user/h2okc5

 

RCI 7 night Cruise Mexican Riveria $476/pp Skyauction.com Port Charges included. Additionally taxes $43/pp & surcharge $80/pp for date we wanted. Inside Room gurantee. This was our first cruise ever and my husband and I decided on this for our 3 year wedding anniversary. We are in our late 20's and weren't sure about the "cruising atmosphere" but we really had a great time. With our inside gurantee we were assigned cabin 4553 which was very nice and on same floor as dining area-our room was just past the Champagne bar.

 

Room attendant Richard was fabulous and really aimed to please. We decided not to purchase soda cards and it seemed like those who did didn't really get as much soda as they expected either. I really enjoyed the free lemonade in the Windjammer Cafe and the water with dinner was refreshing after being in sun all day. Our head waiter was Amith, our waiter was Jordan and our assistant waiter was Phillip. Each were amazingly friendly and polite, day after day. I enjoyed discussing with employees about their native homelands, what a great group of people. My favorite thing onboard was the free self-serve ice cream machine by the main pool-wow!!! Vanilla, chocolate or half & half cones-yummy!!

 

Port days:

1)Cabo-took a water taxi over to the Melia Hotel from Marina for $12 for two of us. We walked up to the Melia and headed to the Dive shack/towel hut and asked for towels-at first the lady wanted $10 US deposit for each towel, but when we mentioned the cruise ship she said just one seapass for the towels was a better deposit. The Melia was very upscale and peaceful, the cushy mattresses for suntanning were great. Beers were a little more expensive here than our liking so after enough suntime we returned our towels and got our seapass card and went looking for The Office or Mango Deck. For some reason we did not see The Office, but the Mango Deck stood out so we walked down and got a table. The Mango Deck has a webcam at www.allaboutcabo.com

Mango Deck had clean restrooms, and all day 2 for 1 beers-Tecate, XX, Bohemia, Corona, etc. We had buffalo wings, chips/salsa, quesadilla, 4 beers, sprite & virgin strawberry daquiri for about $30 US dollars. They printed the receipt in dollars and pesos with 10.5 exchange rate which was nice. I purchased a souvenir tee for $14 US from Mango Deck's shop. We did not visit Cabo Wabo since it was in town and not in the vicinity of the hotel zone where we went.

 

2)Mazatlan-After Cabo Mazatlan was very different; poor & dirty. We only went into "Old Mazatlan" so that is probably why we wanted sunning & swimming so we passed on "The Golden Zone." Taxi to El Cid from dock was $10 US to El Cid El Moro. We were hounded by timeshare people from minute we got off the boat. They were very persistent and we pleaded that we had lost our friends and needed to catch up-seemed like only way to get rid of them. At the hotel lobby we turned in our seapass card for a towel card and took the towel card down to the pool. At the pool desk we got 2 towels for our towel card. The El Cid El Moro was our favorite pool because no one really swam in it while we were there. The rock formation, waterfall and waterslide were beautiful. We had lunch here-grilled chicken, quesadilla, chips/salsa, 2 sodas & drink in pineapple for around $25 US. Our waiters on the ship had told us that Mazatlan was best for cheap shopping and they were right. Souvenirs were cheaper in Mazatlan than Cabo, so we picked up lots of T-shirts. Thankfully we had no hard time retrieving our Sea Pass card from the main desk and we took a Pulmonia back to ship for $12 US for the 2 of us.

 

3) Puerto Vallarta-We had booked massages with millenium massage over the internet to get the 15% discount at www.go2vallarta.com/milleniummassage

This was convenient because we were planning on hanging around Hotel Krystal's pool all day and they do massages there with Millenium. We opted for a 75 min deep tissue and 90 hot stone massage. When we showed up for our appt they said that they could not do the hot stone massage at Hotel Krystal so this woman from the spa drove us to their location in the marina for free and waited while we had our massages and then drove us back to Hotel Krystal, which was very nice. We really enjoyed our massages and surprisingly it was just what my sunburned back needed. We hung around hotel Krystal for a few hours. Luckily we had read Bob's warning to bring our own towels from ship and it was neat to see all the different towels at the pool everyone was using. When we had walked up to hotel Krystal we saw a large sign that said "Welcome Cruisers" which was nice because we didn't feel bad about just crashing the place. Overall, my husband and I agreed that Puerto Vallarta was the nicest of 3 destinations for what we would look for and agreed that if we were to return it would be to Hotel Krystal possibly. My husband was hungry for bbq so we took a cab for $6 US (split cab with another couple) to downtown and ate lunch at Carlos'n'Charlies. Once again my husband found out that ribs & buffalo wings in Mexico are not the same as they are in the US. He still ate them, but longed for his FRANKS RED HOT SAUCE! We used a 10% off coupon someone had handed us when we got off ship and had no problems with it, so that was nice. One of the waiters took our picture on a digital camera there and offered it to us for $8 US in a folder, and we purchased it as a souvenir. We walked around the shops a bit and took a taxi back to ship for dinner.

 

Ship food

We were very happy with dinners & desserts. Breakfast had runny eggs so we ate other items or had omelets at the Dining room. Lobster night was great and my husband had 3 lobster tails until he nearly burst.

 

Every employee on ship was super helpful and we felt the level of service had exceeded our previous land vacations in the carribean and Cancun, so we tipped accordingly and will remember those sweethearts forever. The staff really made our vacation memorable. The ship was beautiful, entertainment was awesome and we had no complaints.

 

Sat-last day at sea and we hit rough waters. Outside temp was in 60's, foggy and no sun. For 12 hours the boat rolled and I threw up even my dramimine. Got to point where once I stopped eating, I felt better and no longer vomited-duh. So I attended dinner and talked while everyone ate. Kind of a waste of a day, but it did not spoil our trip. Captain George said the weather was pretty extreme for this cruise and we were just unlucky I guess.

 

Overall we had an amazing time and thanks to Bob's recommendations we did not get ripped off like some shipmates we talked with. We weren't big on haggling so maybe we paid a little more than we could have bargained for with souvenirs and taxi fare, but we loved it. Usually we are beach people but the beaches were full of peddlers and the pools were so serene. Since we live in CA we can visit the Pacific Ocean anytime.

 

Hope everyone that reads this has as great a time as we did!!