My condensed review w/pics: The Fascination (Grand Suite) to HMC (Cabana) & Nassau

[teknoge3k]

None of the newer images are showing up. I'm excited for them!

[smurfm69]

I've been hooked on your review(s) and have been "patiently" waiting to hear about the HMC cabana (and possibly photos?). I didn't want to beg, but I'm passed that now. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can you finish telling us about that Cabana??? (Sorry...I'll be okay.) ;)

 

Thank you. :D

 

We went to HMC last June and had cabana 10. It is worth the money! If you want one, get it booked ASAP as they almost always sell out. The first few cabanas are close to where the tender drops everyone off and gets really crowded. We chose #10 because it's a little ways down and less crowded. Also, there is a bathroom located between cabanas 9 and 10.

[esdoorn]

We went to HMC last June and had cabana 10. It is worth the money! If you want one, get it booked ASAP as they almost always sell out. The first few cabanas are close to where the tender drops everyone off and gets really crowded. We chose #10 because it's a little ways down and less crowded. Also, there is a bathroom located between cabanas 9 and 10.

 

 

 

Does the Hammock in the photo belong to the Cabana or can anyone use it?

 

Also, any issues with people trying to access the cabana or chairs or floats etc that come as part of the package? If so, does will Carnival staff deal with them if they get mouthy or rowdy?

 

.

[smurfm69]

I think there was a hammock in between all of the cabanas and I'm guessing they are available for anyone to use. I have read reviews on here that having people enter the cabanas and try to use the floats is a problem. That is another reason we chose to be further down the beach.

[esdoorn]

I think there was a hammock in between all of the cabanas and I'm guessing they are available for anyone to use. I have read reviews on here that having people enter the cabanas and try to use the floats is a problem. That is another reason we chose to be further down the beach.

 

 

Great.......thanks!

 

.

[Boozebabe]

So the sea day was a bit of a blur past the bingo and excursion and sales talks. We had went back to the room and found that we had our first cabin service. This is the first time I had seen anything like this - but our steward took the time to organize all of my makeup. I always lay all of my stuff out on the counter, and I am not messy about it at all - so it was already fairly organized, but she laid it all out so neatly on a towel that I wondered if I had just done it in my sleep. It was funny because hotel surfaces skeeze me out. I usually do put everything on top of a towel, or on top of other things like cups, etc so that they don't mingle with the heebie jeebies on the counter.

 

Don't judge my cheap makeup - and if you are a Naked palette lover, I am telling you that you need to try these new palettes by Cover Girl. Only like $10 and I think they are even better than Naked.

 

 

I am also a little OCD. I organize my own make-up in the top drawer of the desk area or in the dressing room if we have a suite. I also put a hand towel in the drawer and lay everything including all my jewelry on it. It also keeps it from rolling all around. The cabin steward doesn't have enough time to organize all my stuff. My drawer is full side to side/ front to back.

[sammygoose]

I just realized that I forgot about the coughing kid incident. I have to back up to dinner on our first night. I mistakenly thought this happened later in the cruise but now that I think about it, it was the first night.

 

So I don't know that I could tell this story without some sort of visual...so obviously I have created one.

 

Here we have a family sitting at the table for 4, with a beautiful view of the Jacksonville port out the window. We have mom and dad, little Sally who is all of 3 or 4 and then little Billy who is probably 8-10.

 

Next to them we have a nice couple, eager to enjoy their dinner.

 

And finally at the end of the row, which - this is the typical setup in the Sensation MDR on the Fascination if you sit near the windows...you have myself (for the sake of this story, I've chosen Jennifer Lawrence to represent me) and my husband. Again, this is my story and if I want him to be Ryan Gosling, he will be.

 

 

Notice I didn't include any photos for the little Billy's family.

That is for 2 reasons.

 

1. If I were them, I would be embarrassed

2. Because they pretty much were invisible the entire time, and did nothing to stop or apologize for the situation

 

I would also like to make one call out here in regards to the authenticity of this photo. No, I am not apologizing for likening myself or my husband to stupidly good looking actors...but I do feel the need to say that the photo of little Billy isn't as accurate as it could be. You see, this is because if you google "boy coughing" you get 99.9% results of a picture of a boy coughing AND covering his mouth. This is completely opposite of what little Billy must have been taught.

 

Little Billy started coughing as soon as we were seated. But it wasn't just a cough into his arm, sleeve, napkin, anything...he would lean back in his chair, kind of roll out of it towards the poor woman sitting to his right, and then cough...open mouth...into the open air. Repeatedly. I couldn't even bring myself to look at the woman next to me, but I imagined she was like...

 

 

So this continues to go on, and we've ordered our dinner and are enjoying our appetizers. Which now, this sparks my memory that they were the stuffed mushrooms, and I wish I had ordered 2. Anyways, back to the story.

 

My husband made eye contact with the dad, who was sitting to the left of little Billy. You know that eye contact like...are you going to do something? Something is amiss and you can fix it. You have a booger on your face, how do you not know? Dude, your mom is standing RIGHT behind you.

 

 

You know - THAT eye contact, and still...nothing. I on the other hand, couldn't bring myself to make eye contact with anyone.

 

It was almost like little Billy was a limp noodle who couldn't stay upright in his chair, and he just kept getting closer and closer to the poor woman sitting between us. Coughing over and over and over again. Never covering his mouth. His parents never saying anything to him or to any of us.

 

Even the waiters at this point are like

 

So our main entrees are just being delivered, and I am already picturing plastic tenting and hazmat suits because this kids germs are just EVERYWHERE at this point. All of a sudden, the poor woman in between us and her husband just get up, mid bite...and leave. They could not take it for another SECOND.

 

Now the one barrier I had between little Billy and I...is gone. I look over and see him in all his glory, just limp noodling all over his chair, coughing every 30 seconds or so straight into our shared aerosphere. Little Sally doesn't know any better, she's just trying to figure out what happened today that landed her on a boat with 2,000 strangers and chicken tenders for dinner. His parents still oblivious to the carnage their son has caused.

 

We finished our dinner as quickly as possible and got the heck out of dodge. I am usually such an easy going person, I don't care if your kids act up, because they are kids. But at 8, 9, 10 years old, you should know how to cover your mouth. And if you aren't covering your mouth, then as parents, you should really remind your kid - and apologize to those around you who it is affecting. At least. Personally, if my kid had been that sick to where he could not stop coughing throughout an entire dinner service - I would not have brought him on a cruise, or at the very least got room service and kept him holed up there until he was feeling better.

 

So that's the coughing kid incident. It is one that will likely be retold and acted out many a times in our household because, well...we are a-holes like that and laughing about it afterwards keeps us from opening our mouths in public. I can't believe I forgot that was on day 1 - but now I will get back on track...

 

 

 

This is gold...pure gold.....frame it.

[Careyd6]

Such a great review! I'm 10 days away and this is helping me get excited!

[ohitssunshine]

Just FYI.. The selfie pic on the balcony is not showing up... for me anyway..

 

Oh shoot - I realized what I did wrong. Let's try again!

 

 

 

[ohitssunshine]

None of the newer images are showing up. I'm excited for them!

 

 

Were there other's besides the selfie one? I thought I only messed that one up looking back, but I am totally capable of messing up much more!

[ohitssunshine]

I think there was a hammock in between all of the cabanas and I'm guessing they are available for anyone to use. I have read reviews on here that having people enter the cabanas and try to use the floats is a problem. That is another reason we chose to be further down the beach.

 

Thank you for sharing this! Our cabana #14 did not have a hammock between it :( But if it had, it would have been my luck that someone else would have been using it anyways - because that is how I roll...

[ohitssunshine]

I am also a little OCD. I organize my own make-up in the top drawer of the desk area or in the dressing room if we have a suite. I also put a hand towel in the drawer and lay everything including all my jewelry on it. It also keeps it from rolling all around. The cabin steward doesn't have enough time to organize all my stuff. My drawer is full side to side/ front to back.

 

So glad I am not alone! The room steward thanked us for keeping our room so clean haha!

 

I think my worst OCD habit when traveling is all of the toiletries. I cannot bring my own toothbrush, but I also cannot bring a toothbrush from one hotel to another. So for this trip - I bought 2 travel toothbrushes, one for the Hilton the night before, and one for the cruise. Once the toothbrush is opened and subject to the heebie jeebies in the air of the hotel room/cabin - it's essentially sacrificed itself and will go in the trash when I leave.

 

The same thing for the little bottles of shampoo and body wash, toothpaste, shaving cream...I know it is so wasteful but there is something about it being on the surface of a shared bath or shower all week...not knowing who was in there before you and all that - that I leave all of those as well. I hope I am not alone, because if you were to ask my husband he would have to assume that it was just I.

[ohitssunshine]

This is gold...pure gold.....frame it.

 

Hahaha, thank you! Glad you enjoyed! My husband had a good laugh when I showed him my final product...it has given us a creative base to work from when we have drinks and reminisce...

[ohitssunshine]

Such a great review! I'm 10 days away and this is helping me get excited!

 

Yay! How exciting - hope you have a great trip!

[teknoge3k]

I think it was only the selfies. I thought it was more than one picture but I think it was just the selfies. Great pictures, great review! ;)

[ohitssunshine]

I should mention that most of the photos we had done were on the promenade, and then we went to the atrium to have some done on the staircase as well. During dinner - another backdrop caught my eye as it was just all gold kind of confetti-ish, but actually the texture of it and not just a photo backdrop. I almost didn't want to even ask my husband to withstand the agony of taking more photos but I just could not stop looking at it, and thinking about how pretty it could be. Much better than some of those backdrops you see :rolleyes: But I took a chance and I think the margaritas helped my cause because he willingly agreed.

 

I am so glad that we did because the next day when we went looking for our pictures I was like :o:confused::rolleyes: when I saw the outcome of most. I am so not photogenic at all, and I know this. That is why I chose to be the photographer and try to never, ever be in photos. But I really wanted to get some new photos of us and had high high hopes.

 

Thankfully, when we got to the gold background photos - I was super pleased. I am jumping ahead a little bit here, because I do want to share a story about comedy that night, but I will get back to it.

 

I ended up with 5 elegant night photos that I really wanted to buy. At $22 a piece. My mistake here was that this morning we went too early to look. I didn't get enough margaritas into my husband at this point and so at $110 for pictures ...I had to really sweet talk him. AKA - ask the photo guy if he could give us a deal. I knew that he would not - but I had to ask for the sake of my husband. The photo guy offered us something like if we bought so many prints he would give us the huge canvas at a discount. My husband immediately was like - I don't even really care to have these 8x10's, why would I want a huge canvas with my face on it? (I on the other hand was like hmmm...that could be cute in our room...) :p

 

A little more negotiating took place before my husband felt defeated, and I victorious as we rang up $110 worth of photos. To me, it was worth it and I would have paid more. Heck, I have charged people much more - because photos are memories and outside of ship photographers, it is an art and art is priceless.

 

Here are a couple of the ones we purchased (cell phone pics of the photo so ignore some of the extra bad lighting)

 

 

 

[ohitssunshine]

CC is being really cool this morning and not liking my 2 pics in one post...joke is on you CC because I paid $22 for each of these photos...so I am going to make one more post to share a second one.

 

[ohitssunshine]

After dinner, I wanted to check out the comedy show. The comedians are my favorite part of cruising and many times we will grab a seat for the first show and stay straight through all 4 shows until the end.

 

Here's a quick look at how shows were scheduled for the week:

 

Day 1 - Embarkation

18+ Sid Davis at 10:45pm

 

Day 2 - Sea Day

PG Sid Davis at 7

PG Derrick Eason at 7:45

18+ Sid Davis at 9:15

18+ Derrick Eason at 11:15

 

Day 3 - Nassau

18+ Derrick Eason at 9:15

18+ Sid Davis at 11:15

 

Day 4 - HMC

No Comedy

 

Day 5 - Sea Day

PG Derrick Eason at 7

PG Sid Davis at 7:45

18+ Derrick Eason at 9:15

 

Why was there no comedy on HMC day? I was super bummed. Here's the thing - we were exhausted night 1 and there was no way we were making an 11pm showing. Day 2 and 3 we didn't want to be up too late because we were hitting Nassau and HMC at 8am each day. So when we got back on the ship on HMC day, its like heck ya ok - no more early wake up calls, lets party. But nope...denied. I am not a fan of the shows - so it was a let down. Not that it ruined my cruise or even the night itself - I'm just saying that it was strange that there was not even one show that night.

 

 

 

[ohitssunshine]

By the time we left dinner, had the other pics taken in front of the gold backdrop, changed my shoes and grabbed drinks - we made it into the Punchliner about 10 minutes before the end of Sid's PG set. I was surprised to see a number of seats still available - but we have never really had a problem finding seats here on the Fascination.

 

Sid was OK - but I cannot judge based on the PG set, because I know it has to be hard for these guys to go between PG and adult comedy.

 

Derrick was good - but his show took a turn at the end which was really uncomfortable. So again...totally open here - really, NOTHING offends me.

 

OK - wait that is a lie.

Cats being scared by cucumbers - funny.

- funny.

 

Any animal subjected to something cruel, sad, hurtful, etc - totally not funny. But I will laugh at you, your mom, your grandma and whatever political/religious affiliation you have - because I will totally mock myself in any of those circumstances too. I don't think I have ever seen a comedy show where I was like

[ohitssunshine]

Derrick's show is going along fine - its funny.

Somewhere during the show, this couple enters the room and I think many of us had seen them previously on the ship because, I'm going to assume they are married, the husband is in a motorized wheelchair/cart and the wife is in a regular wheelchair, and she is holding on to him so that essentially he is pulling her along with his cart. I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it must be to travel or do everyday things when you are in a situation like this, and regardless of what happened to get them to this point, I would have some empathy for that person/couple.

 

So they kind of situate themselves almost directly in front of Derrick, but in the open aisle between the floor seats. So not right at the stage, but in a direct path. Derrick comments on the situation - joking a bit about 2 chairs, I cannot really remember what he said, but it got a laugh, but wasn't mean spirited, I didn't think. So the husband comments that they had already been posted on youtube. Apparently someone had video'd them as they were wheeling around the lido deck, and posted it online. (I searched for this and could not find it)

 

So Derrick asks the husbands name and he replies "Radar". Derrick jokes and says something about him being from the south with a name like that - in fact I think he had just finished a bit about the north vs the south...but I could be wrong. So he asks his wife's name and I cannot for the life of me remember it - but it was very very different, and I swear it had something like "twinkle" in it. I wish I could recall. So naturally, this gets a laugh. Here is where it goes astray...

 

The husband yells "if y'all can have weird names, so can we!" Did I mention Derrick is african american, and Radar and Twinkles are caucasian?

 

So Derrick is all like ok, ok...and there were a couple more slightly uncomfortable moments that followed. I can't remember the jokes but I do remember looking around the room and wondering if anyone else was a little like

 

 

because for the first time, that is how I felt. Well, that is until it got worse.

 

After a little bit of back and forth - these 2 older gentleman stand up and start walking out. Now, it is about time for the show to wrap and I imagine folks are getting ready for the second dinner seating - so the 2 gentleman leaving isn't really out of character at this point. But Derrick makes a joke about them leaving as any comedian would do (and why I would NEVER get up during a performance because it would happen to me and I would pee my pants)

 

This is when one of the 2 men yells "I heard they have fried chicken, and I want to get to it before you do"

 

And suddenly, it was my turn to feel like....

 

 

It might have been funny if the comedian said this. Or if the guy who yelled it meant it in a funny way - but let's be real...he wasn't laughing when he said it. He wasn't smiling when he said it. He kind of was looking at the audience like "har har, I told him".

 

For me - it was just totally uncomfortable. That is the only way I can describe it. I don't think it was any fault of Derrick's other than feeding into the original comments from Radar and Twinkle.

 

Derrick did promise that he would continue on in his adult show later - because as a reminder, this all happened during the PG showing.

 

Unfortunately, we decided to call it an evening so we could be well rested for Nassau. Having the balcony room meant we could get a close up view of coming into the port and we were excited to see it.

 

Did anyone go to his later show? I wonder how it turned out?:eek:

Edited March 18, 2016 by ohitssunshine

[Terab85]

Hahaha! Yes, we do need to keep traditions alive!

 

For the pics - since I took almost all of mine on my cell phone, they are on my google photos account. I just created one album that is public and added the ones I wanted to share in there. For the others - I use photobucket. I would LOVE to read your review if you can get it to work!!

 

 

I'm going to try the photobucket and see if I can get it to work but I don't think my review would be anywhere close to as entertaining as yours ;)

[TrqoisWtrs]

Love the review and the included "pictures". :D

 

but she laid it all out so neatly on a towel

 

I've had a room steward do this to the things I leave on the glass shelf in the bathroom - my toothbrush in a glass, floss, toothpaste, etc. I always have to ask him not to do it. He is touching things I put in my mouth and I have no idea where his hands have been. :eek: And make up would be the same - things I handle and then touch my face. Completely grosses me out.

[Terab85]

Oh shoot - I realized what I did wrong. Let's try again!

 

 

 

 

 

 

You guys look so cute :D

[teknoge3k]

I LOVE your reviews/comments, especially the eye candy. haha!1

[ohitssunshine]

I'm going to try the photobucket and see if I can get it to work but I don't think my review would be anywhere close to as entertaining as yours ;)

 

Oh please! I would love to read your review, and while I think I am pretty entertaining, I don't know that too many would agree hahah!