Just back off the Empress, 5 Night Sorry for the length

[PurdueBen]

Left from Chicago last Saturday morning, arrived in Ft. Lauderdale at 10:30am, and were on the ship before noon.

Embarkation: Had a junior suite, so we were in the preferred line that was empty when we arrived.

 

Day 1: Had lunch in the Windjammer, eh, was decent as I expected. Room was ready at 1:00. The room is plenty large for 2 people, I can't speak about the other rooms, but if you thin this rrom is small for 2 people then you should probably be spending more money than Royal Caribbean. Bags arrived soon after and we had plenty of space. I took some people's advice and bought an over the door shoe hanger, which was a great decision, there was so much space in that thing that there was hardly anything in the bathroom. Now the bathroom was small, and the shower was terribly small. Dinner was fine, and our table mates were extremely friendly. We skipped the show and got to bed early, we were up at 4:30 am.

 

Day 2 (Key West): HOT!!!! We took a snorkeling catamaran and it was extremely hot, there weren't many fish to see, but I expected that in Key West. Then we wandered around, had lunch at Margaritaville, and had to head back to the ship because it was just too hot. This was formal night, probably less than 10 tuxes, but tons of suits. the weird thing was the people that weren't at dinner were in shorts, t-shirts, and in some cases t-shirts weren't even worn. This was mostly teenegers, and there were only a handful that were drunk and out of control. The show was really good that night.

 

Day 3 (sea): Slept in, got room service, laid out, relaxed. Dinner at Portofino's was OUTSTANDING. If you have the chance do it, well worth the $20.

 

Day 4 (Grand Cayman): The day got off to a poor start because all the excursion times were charged the night before at about 11:05 pm, at least that is when we found out, wouldn't you know it the excursion desk closed at 11:00. Anyway, we were able to change our first excursion because we wanted to do 2 and they overlapped after the change. (Aside: everyone say to book with Captain Marvin or someone else, but the fastest way off the ship is with an RCI excursion. We bypassed a line 3 decks long to get on the tender.) Anyway we took the Cockatoo Catamaran to Stingray City, these people were so wonderful. There were only 28 people on this 60 foot ship. The crew: Les, Michelle, and Chris truly cared about the rays, and it showed, other "leaders" were flocking to our ship just to collect a single ray to take back to their throngs of people. What an outstanding excursion. Our second trip was SNUBA we arrived back to the pier just as they were leaving so we got very lucky.

Dinner was ok, I didn't have lobster but those that did were not impressed. The sow was great again.

 

Day 5 (sea): much like the other sea day, and the commedian that used to open for Seinfeld was good.

 

I'm tired of typing, so I'll stop and answer any questions you have.

We had a great time, and will hopefully do it again soon,

Ben

[Skychief]

We are going on the same itenerary next week and are thinking about snuba in G.C. Did you like snuba? What was your impression?

 

 

Thanks,

Skychief

[PurdueBen]

We loved the SNUBA, 45 minutes straight under water. I would love to get certified for SCUBA and until we can get that done, we'll SNUBA where ever we can. If you have any specific questions about SNUBA I can answer them.