CamaCama's Family Vacation on the Escape 11/21/2015 (Detailed PICTURE Review!!!!!!)

[CamaCama]

I Love Love Love your review and pictures! And your girls are so Adorable. I'm so envious of you right now.....can't wait till I board the little boat in March. Keep it coming. Thank You!

 

Thank you!! Only 2 days left to review! :(

 

Thanks for a great review

 

You're welcome, thanks for following along.

Edited December 10, 2015 by CamaCama

[skivoodoo]

How COOL is that?!! So glad I had that picture and that you were following along with my review to see it! He was SO nice and I distinctly remember telling my husband that he didn't have any accent, he spoke so eloquently and that he was definitely from the US. Enjoy your day with him in January!!! How did he end up there? I love those stories....

 

Charles' family is originally from St Croix but he grew up state side in Texas, California and Conneticut. His father was an executive with Pepsi and they moved around a bit. My husband, Wayne, moved with his fathers career too. They happened to end up in the same cities, even though their fathers worked for different corporations. Their paths just keep crossing unexpectedly, like now! He eventually moved with his family to St Thomas and helps with branding Cruzan. He's a fantastic guy and has landed in paradise!

 

Love your review! You have a beautiful family and your girls are precious! Thank you for taking the time to share!!!

[CamaCama]

Charles' family is originally from St Croix but he grew up state side in Texas, California and Conneticut. His father was an executive with Pepsi and they moved around a bit. My husband, Wayne, moved with his fathers career too. They happened to end up in the same cities, even though their fathers worked for different corporations. Their paths just keep crossing unexpectedly, like now! He eventually moved with his family to St Thomas and helps with branding Cruzan. He's a fantastic guy and has landed in paradise!

 

Love your review! You have a beautiful family and your girls are precious! Thank you for taking the time to share!!!

 

Very cool, thanks for sharing! It's like you're meant to be friends!

[tommyboyCAN]

I love reading this review because we are in a very similar boat for our cruise in January. My parents, my father in law, my wife, and our 3 kids (2,3,4) will all be sailing on the escape on the same itinerary.

 

Thanks for all the great kids club, aqua park, and excursion info. I think we are very much leaning to do simple beach excursions like you have done. The only thing we are on the fence about is going to see the baths in Tortola. I know it would be an adventure with our kids, but I think they could handle it. Did you give any thought to doing that with your kids?

[grossnmoe]

Love the review. Thank you so much for sharing all the activities. We will be on the Escape soon with our kids 13 & 7 plus both sets of parents. I love all the details you have included and you have a beautiful family.

[JC5240]

Amazing review! I did the same itinerary this past April on the Getaway with my SO, and I am reliving it all through your review! Thanks so much for sharing. You have a great writing style. Your kids are adorable!!

 

Looking forward to the rest.

Edited December 11, 2015 by JC5240

[CamaCama]

I love reading this review because we are in a very similar boat for our cruise in January. My parents, my father in law, my wife, and our 3 kids (2,3,4) will all be sailing on the escape on the same itinerary.

 

Thanks for all the great kids club, aqua park, and excursion info. I think we are very much leaning to do simple beach excursions like you have done. The only thing we are on the fence about is going to see the baths in Tortola. I know it would be an adventure with our kids, but I think they could handle it. Did you give any thought to doing that with your kids?

 

Thanks, you will all have a blast! We did think about the Baths but definitely would not do it with our 2.5 year old, my inlaws actually offered to watch her if we wanted to do it, but we decided against it. My 6 year old isn't the greatest swimmer yet either and we didn't want to spend the entire day away from the girls if they both stayed back, plus we'd never been to Tortola so spending a relaxing day at the beach was the perfect thing for us... next time!!!

[CamaCama]

Love the review. Thank you so much for sharing all the activities. We will be on the Escape soon with our kids 13 & 7 plus both sets of parents. I love all the details you have included and you have a beautiful family.

 

Have a great time, thank you!

 

Amazing review! I did the same itinerary this past April on the Getaway with my SO, and I am reliving it all through your review! Thanks so much for sharing. You have a great writing style. Your kids are adorable!!

 

Looking forward to the rest.

 

Thanks so much!!

[CamaCama]

Day 6 coming up today!!!

[CamaCama]

Before I start on Day 6 a quick video of Sienna coming down the yellow slide, she loved this slide, she did it over and over on several of the days. She loved that she could go herself!

 

SIENNA - YELLOW OPEN SLIDE

[CamaCama]

...

Edited December 14, 2015 by CamaCama

[CamaCama]

And one more video of the ship that I meant to share when we were docked in St. Thomas...

 

DOCKED AT ST. THOMAS - SHIP VIDEO

[CamaCama]

DAY 6 - Sea Day/Thanksgiving

 

We were all up around 7:30 this morning (clocks turned back an hour) and noticed the seas seemed a bit choppy. It was a little windy and the ship was rocking more than normal but it wasn't too bad... yet. None of us took any seasick meds the entire trip so far and we were all OK.

 

 

 

The ship was decorated for Thanksgiving, we first noticed it when we went up to the Garden Café for breakfast at about 9am.

 

 

[CamaCama]

We had breakfast and the girls spent some quality time together before Sienna went to camp at 10. She was so excited for camp today since they would be practicing their talent for the circus performance show later today.

 

 

 

 

 

You can see the chair hogs were already out and claimed their space earlier, this went on all week, prime locations too. Nobody did anything about it.

 

 

We found chairs out on the pool deck and then I walked Sienna to camp. The big screens had Thanksgiving pictures and trivia showing the whole morning...

 

[CamaCama]

 

 

We noticed the Marketplace on the pool deck was having a T-shirt sale so I went over to check it out. It was advertising "2 for $20" but it had to be either 2 adult or 2 kids sizes... you couldn't mix adult and kids (which a few people in front of me found out once they got up to pay and had to scramble to find other sizes or decide what they wanted to keep). They were checking everyone out manually so there were paper receipts and they would write which shirt you got and the size, etc then you show them your card and room # and they write it down. It took forever to check out, there were 4 people in front of me and I waited on line for at least 20 minutes. And only 3 people checking us out so granted long lines formed... I'm surprised they didn't come up with a better way.

 

 

 

 

[CamaCama]

I got 4 shirts, 2 adults and 2 kids...

 

The girls

 

Len

 

Mine (yea, definitely cross out relaxation and tranquility for this cruise :p)

 

Yummy mimosa

 

 

Mila loves selfies

 

[CamaCama]

The 3 of us walked down to get Sienna from camp around 11:30 and then went to guest services to see if there were any other open dining times for Thanksgiving tonight. I made a reservation for 5:30 at Manhattan Room but it always seemed too early for us. Like I thought, there were absolutely NO reservations to be made, not even at specialty dining restaurants. Oh well, we'd stick with 5:30 then...

 

 

Internet café opposite guest services... never saw very many people in here.

 

 

They had hot dogs right in the hallway next to guest services so the girls each had one, then we headed back up to the pool deck.

 

We watched the ice carving demonstration, the guy doing the carving has been with NCL a long time (over 30 years I think).

 

This was when it was just getting started, it got really crowded soon after, you can see here how small the front of the stage area is, really poor design in my opinion, plus they didn't let anyone sit near him because of the ice chipping off.

 

 

 

Starting... what's it going to be??

 

 

There was a girl doing sign language on the stage in the blue skirt, we noticed they had this at many events but I'm not sure if it was just a passenger or an NCL employee. I didn't see a name badge most times... we did notice a lot of passengers signing throughout this cruise so either way it was great for them.

 

[CamaCama]

 

It's a turkey of course!!

 

 

 

We had some lunch at the Garden Café and then watched some football and the pool Olympics contest at the main pool.

 

 

 

belly floppppppppp

 

[CamaCama]

Sorry for my all-over-the-place filming, but you can see how rough the seas were... the pool water was going everywhere!

 

POOL ON ROUGH SEA DAY

 

 

"Smile!" :rolleyes:

 

 

Mila fell asleep but I knew we'd have to wake her soon to go to Sienna's Splash Academy show...

 

 

Sienna had to be back at camp at 2:00 so about 1:45 we headed down, I knew there would be a line since they had to be there at 2 to get ready for their show at 3:00!! Around 2:30 the rest of us went to the main theater and when we got there, another show (looked like mixing drinks?) was finishing up. The theater seemed small and less grand compared to other ships especially being only 1 story, most are 2 stories.

 

 

 

Very spacious though..

 

Edited December 14, 2015 by CamaCama

[CamaCama]

 

 

Waiting for sissy to come on...

 

[CamaCama]

Our little feather balancer (pink shirt, black shorts... the littlest one)!!

 

 

 

 

 

All the age groups perform something, there was plate spinning, clowns, juggling, etc.. it was really cute, NCL does a great job with this.

 

 

She loved her face painting

 

[CamaCama]

We went back to the room to shower and change quickly before our 5:30 Manhattan Room dinner for Thanksgiving... it was a gorgeous sunset but the seas were very rough. We were really rocking now...

 

 

 

 

Around 5:15 we went down the Manhattan Room and there was a pretty long line of people, we were told it was the line for people with reservations so we waited on it. After about 3 minutes of waiting and trying to keep our balance since it was so rocky, my Mom said she was not feeling well and was going to head up to the room to see if laying down would help. If she didn't come back down, she said to bring her a turkey dinner when we were done. :( Sad she was going to miss dinner, but I told her where the bonine and ginger pills were and she headed upstairs. Around 5:35 we were escorted in and seated at a great table.

 

Not the greatest pic but the only one of all of us (minus my mom) on Thanksgiving.

 

[CamaCama]

Thanksgiving 2015 Menu

 

 

 

 

[CamaCama]

Loaded corn on the cob

 

 

Lettuce and arugula salad

 

 

My babies all dressed up for Thanksgiving... thankfully not feeling the effects of the rocky ship! There were a lot of people who didn't turn up for dinner, we heard lots of people talking about how their family members were sick. The dining room wasn't crowded at all.

 

 

 

Turkey Dinner

It was good, but hard not to compare to RCI last year... that turkey dinner was phenomenal. This was good though, just not AS good, we all agreed on that.

 

 

[CamaCama]

We did a little dancing before dessert...

 

 

 

 

I think this was the pumpkin cheesecake

 

 

Lemon sherbet