Grandeur of the Seas Photo Review 6/9-18

[RRFPresident]

Shirt removing guy and his wife earn their spot on stage:

 

Katrina and Makiva helped keep score:

 

Huzzah, we matched an answer!

 

[RRFPresident]

The longest married couple matched their answers of the most unique place for whoopie by describing a private island they'd gotten to via his boat. John joked that he was sure they were looking forward to tomorrow's arrival in Coco Cay then. The winning Tarzan couple matched for their answer of the most unique place being home plate at a baseball stadium but got the biggest response when the husband answered that if he was buying his wife some lingerie, the bra size he'd pick out was 2B. All couples got to win a nice piece of jewelry from the shops and some champagne.

 

The ladies turn to answer questions:

 

The men returned to the stage and jokingly all went to stand behind someone else's wife. John joked that the two "new" couples on each end lucked out:

 

We finished out the night sticking around in the theater for the late night adult comedy show of Max Dolcelli. Not anymore adult than basic cable these days though.

[sellwingri]

I know you're not a gambler but do you recall if the casino opened at 9pm while in Bermuda?

[RRFPresident]

I know you're not a gambler but do you recall if the casino opened at 9pm while in Bermuda?

 

Yes, on Saturday the casino slots were open from 8:30AM until the pilot boards and then again at 9PM till "late" the slots and tables were opened. On Sunday, both slots and tables opened at 2:30PM - late.

[RRFPresident]

Day 7 – Cococay

 

Alrighty, transporting back to Day 7 of our cruise, the infamous private island Coco Cay port stop. First of all, despite some lightning and rain after the sun went down the night before in Nassau, we were able to make it and anchor off of Coco Cay. We'd never been to Coco Cay but have visited Carnival's Half Moon Cay several times and love it, always getting a cabana. After doing some research on Coco Cay, while we liked the suite preference for the cabanas, the more private area to relax, and the “upgraded lunch” that we would have been entitled to as suite guests, the negatives of a smaller cabana with less offerings than Carnival and being a small trek away from the beach in order to go swimming led to us deciding to save the cabana expense and just enjoy a quiet empty ship swimming in the pool on board.

 

This morning, I woke up super early as my usual and ventured out onto the balcony to get some pictures of our arrival. While the sky looked grey off in the distance, it was bright and sunny as we got closer to where we would anchor.

 

Umm, is this cloud flipping me off?

 

Pretty blue water outside our balcony today:

 

Oh there you are sun:

[RRFPresident]

Having such a forward cabin on the port side, I had a great view of the cabanas and the loungers as we moved in.

 

I also got a nice view of the little bridge extension that sticks out the side and watched Captain Ante and another officer step out and use peer over the sides.

 

Hey man, let me know if I get too close:

 

Wow, can't believe I actually parked this thing:

[RRFPresident]

Dropping anchor:

 

Hmm, where'd it go?

 

Soon the first tenders made their way up to the ship.

 

And brought the sun with them:

 

Soon CD John could be heard over the intercom calling for tender ticket numbers. We had already made a plan to get in breakfast at Giovanni's before attending the 10AM General Knowledge Trivia. We passed by Makiva with perhaps one of the most thankless jobs, sitting in the middle of the Schooner Bar while people lined up in front of her to receive a tender ticket and then turned right back around to leave the area.

 

On Carnival, they had you report to the theater, receive your number (cabanas always got first tender tickets as long as your whole party was there at the appointed time), and then you sat in the theater and waited to be called by someone who led you to the gangway.

[RRFPresident]

At Giovanni's, a miracle happened in that I actually got the strawberry compote and whipped cream with my waffle order.

 

In exchange though, the heavens began to grow dark as we ate.

 

We headed back to the cabin to switch camera lenses with the intent of going out on the open deck to take some nice shots of the port. However, when we reached decks 9/10, we discovered that the skies had opened up and it was pouring!

 

Umm, thanks for the sign Captain Obvious!

 

No need to find the pool, we'll just make our own on deck:

 

This trash bin was left here to collect used child pool life jackets on Deck 9 but it's right underneath the crack that formed a while back on Deck 10:

 

This is how hard it was raining - that same trash can was nearly full of water and it'd only been raining 30 minutes or so:

[RRFPresident]

We made our way back to deck 6 after snapping a couple pictures and dodging rain puddles as the water was really accumulating. The Compass listed today's trivia as being in the South Pacific Lounge instead of the Schooner Bar so we trekked on over there thinking they were still using the Bar for the tender tickets. We sat and sat waiting for anyone to show up to run the trivia until it would have been time to start. Dad went back to the Schooner Bar to see about using their phone to call and inquire only to find Makiva running the trivia game in the bar and they were already a couple questions in. He explained that a group of us were sitting in the lounge as listed and she came back with him to fetch us. Thankfully, she repeated the first couple trivia questions so we could get caught up.

 

Our original plan was to get in that pool time right after this general trivia since there wasn't much else listed in the Compass that interested us. Dad negated that idea given the rainy weather and we ended up staying in the bar to play what was listed as “Sports Basketball, Golf, and Tennis” themed trivia. This of course, was also listed as supposedly taking place in the lounge so Makiva this time double checked the lounge before starting to be sure no one had gone to the wrong place. Sports is our worst trivia subject (hence why we had planned to skip this session) and a lot of the questions were so off the wall like “What is the name of the runner who wore trademark pink shoes that said pegga something or other on the side?” Oh sure, I read that on my Wheaties box this morning. We were all too busy debating how high a goal post is in soccer – as it turns out 8 feet, you're welcome future trivia players.

 

We stopped along the way of heading to the Windjammer for lunch (the only place open for lunch today) and finally found empty ping pong tables. Dad and I enjoy playing ping pong at home but have been turned off by on board tournaments because of the let's call them die hard players who show up in ping ping uniforms, bring their own paddles, and then cop an attitude when made to play with us lowly amateurs. I've even seen cruise staff berated because they tried to insist that these die hard players use the ship's equipment to be fair. You may have thought cruise trivia players were hard core... We didn't stick around long though because the tables are set in the corner just before the solarium and thus on an area of the deck that curves up as it reaches the wall leaving the tables on an angle.

 

We made it to the Windjammer and it was busier than I expected. We were still able to find a table though. After lunch, we checked out the Solarium pool but it was still pretty full of people. I tried to make do again with just dunking my feet but Dad gave up to go back to the cabin and read. I soon gave up as well and made a run back to deck 6 for a soda refill. This machine finally had some root beer but I noticed as I went back to top off my cup, the screen read “sorry all out, pick another flavor.” I noticed a lot of kids wandering away from ship's bars with Shirley Temple drinks during this cruise. I guess there was a run on root beer as well.

 

Now frequenting the midship elevators, it left us with a long walk down the hallway to our cabin. Oddly, this walk back today brought on an odor of someone having recently soldered or used varnish. Many times we'd make this walk and discover that the latter half (heading away from our cabin) of the hallway carpet felt like it had just been shampooed or was damp and squishy from flooding. Once or twice these last couple days I noticed it had switched and now the half closer to our cabin felt that way. Crew was out in the hallways and stairwells repeatedly during the cruise wiping down handrails and public spaces with disinfectant. At one point, I went to leave our cabin, pulled our door handle shut and drew back a hand covered in the sticky cleanser. At one point, the more visible steward down the hall saw us passing by and yelled “don't touch the railings!” We looked back to see her wiping them down with a rag and a spray bottle.

 

There were some moments of sun during the day but the rains would soon came back. We heard from several people who had gone off to the island that they either had to keep getting up to move under cover or had their tours delayed and finally canceled because of the rain. I don't ever get the chance to swim anywhere at home so I was really disappointed to miss the chance completely on this cruise.

[RRFPresident]

We stopped at the Concierge Lounge with some time to kill and Dad took the opportunity to ask Francis about the onboard tours that we'd read were sometimes offered to suite guests like of the galley or the bridge. Poor Francis was completely taken aback and says that we should have asked sooner as most everything was full. How were we supposed to know that we had to outright ask first thing? We expected to get some notification or mention of the offering. Francis seemed very concerned that he was going to have to tell us no and said he'd try and squeeze us in the not so full backstage or galley tours. During a happy hour session later in the cruise, Francis explained that the tour invites were really only for diamond passengers, hence why we didn't get any notification, and gave Dad the dates and times for the backstage and galley tours with the advice of just showing up and telling them you forgot your invitation. Given that we'd done Carnival's “Behind the Fun” tour in the past that covered everything but crew's personal cabins, I elected not to bother even trying to attend the tours.

 

Next stop was another round of Tribond trivia which did have about 2/3rds new questions. We came in 2nd place. At 4PM, we returned to play “Find Buried Treasure Word Challenge.” I guess a lot of people had elected to return early because by now, the bar was packed with people wanting to play this game. The game offered 6 starter words and each word got changed by one letter to form a word that fit the clue given. Then you had to change the new words by one letter to match the new clue and so on until you'd filled in 4 blanks for each word and the 5th word becomes something you'd find in a treasure chest after changing a letter from the 4th word. For example, I forgot the original word but it changed thanks to the clue to “rude,” then became “rube” and finally Ruby for the item in a treasure chest. Makiva announced a time limit, had everyone turn over their papers to reveal the puzzle, and then left us to go find prizes. I really had to argue with my group as I recognized right away what to do to solve this puzzle but others in my group were confused by the way Makiva explained things thinking that every new entry had to be changing the letter in that first word and not a consecutive thing. I was tempted to wash my hands of it and let them go with what they were so convinced was right but instead elected to show them by doing the first couple so they could see how it worked out. Once they saw that, the arguing stopped and I was able to get a few helpful answers to get me past words that I didn't know in order to move on to the final word. I think I will now forever remember that a Rube is another word for a hick, thank you Bob!

 

We finished well before Makiva returned and were left to sit and wait. When she did finally return, she said there was still 5 minutes left on the allotted time. Finally, she had us all exchange papers and 3 teams got all of them correct including us. To do a tiebreaker, Makiva had each team send up one person (me and 2 young guys), and we were each handed a normal trivia answer sheet and pencil. She asked all of us what the biggest gland of the body was and had us write down our answers. I heard someone yell out liver but thought that can't be, the liver is an organ! We all got it wrong. Makiva revealed it was the liver and when we all questioned it, she retorted, “it is so, look it up!” Next question was to ask what George Washington's teeth were made out of and we all put wood as our answer. No, apparently it's ivory, some metal, and other people's teeth? Next question asked as “as in recent events, what food is the biggest source of salmonella?” We all got that wrong too because Makiva said it was “greens like what happened at Chipolte.” Didn't realize e.coli and salmonella were the same bacteria. (remember my warning of sarcasm) Finally, we were asked how many rooms were in the Forbidden City palace and one of the guys won because he put 1,000 versus my 100 and the other guy's 1 billion.

 

I will admit that Dad and I are such nerds that we tried to find the ship's library at 11PM to be able to research whether the liver was really a gland or an organ. Not being successful looking at the ship map model (as we later learned the “library” is a few bookcases next to the Internet area), we went to guest services to ask where it was. The guy manning the desk said there was no actual library on the ship and when we explained why we wanted to know, he became super interested too and turned his computer monitor around so we could all google it. It turns out that the general consensus was that a gland is always an organ but an organ is not always a gland. Wax on, wax off kind of mind boggling philosophy I know.

 

The sun really started to come out to stay as we were leaving Coco Cay. Captain Ante came on the intercom to jokingly claim that we had such beautiful weather because it was sunny when we anchored and afterwards he went back to bed until now.

[RRFPresident]

Tonight we checked out our second specialty restaurant as part of the package, Izumi. Izumi is split up so that a handful of tables are on the area where you first walk up from the Viking Crown Lounge and the bulk of the tables are at another slightly higher level that you can see if you are standing in the lounge and look up above the bar. We wanted to try each restaurant so that when it came time to choosing a final place to round out our dining package, we could make an informed decision. Dad hates and avoids seafood whenever possible, I love shrimp and lobster and calamari. The only sushi we've ever tried was on the old Silk Harvest restaurant on Celebrity Solstice so we were wary of finding anything to eat on this menu. Immediately upon walking up to the podium, my eyes went right to the view outside that first window that looks out onto the solarium roof and the funnel. It was such a beautiful view to dine as the light starts to set and cast a reflective glow on the glass.

 

Izumi is based on the ala carte principle in that each dish has its own price. Our dining package gave us each $30 to spend and it was explained that anything over that, we'd be charged to our card. We started with the complimentary edamame which Dad wouldn't even try. I've had it before so I ate one piece out of politeness.

 

Look ma! I remembered how to use chopsticks:

 

Earlier in the cruise when we were eating in the main dining room, I had just started sharing a story with Dad when our entrees arrived. I held off on taking a first bite until I finished my story and our faithful wait staff rushed over to ask if everything was alright at least three times because I hadn't started eating yet! Next we sampled the Chicken Kara-age which was pretty tasty.

 

On the sushi front, we decided a good compromise would be Crispy Philly since they dubbed it one of their “cooked” sushi dishes and Dad was assured the spicy aioli wasn't too spicy. It was surprisingly delicious! It has cream cheese but it doesn't taste like the cream cheese you'd put on a bagel and there was definitely no fishy taste to the salmon. Kind of funny how we couldn't avoid tripping over a salmon on the menu during our Alaska cruise tour last summer and now here we are in the Caribbean eating it.

 

We both chose the hot rock option of beef tenderloin but we each got our own little rock tray. Our first waiter got called away but between him and another waiter, they cooked our little pieces of meat and some vegetables on the hot rocks to our different specifications. I can't stand any pink in my cooked meats so I always order well done versus Dad's medium well.

[RRFPresident]

Our first waiter cooking on our hot rocks:

 

We both chose fried rice to go with the meat so they delivered a bowl for each of us that could have probably served two each:

 

Meat is cooking quickly:

 

2nd waiter finishing the job:

 

We each got a tray of three dipping sauces:

 

The vegetables were cooked already to an al dente consistency so adding them after the meat was removed was more just to heat them through again. The waiters left us alone once the meat was done and we'd been shown how to add the vegetables.

[RRFPresident]

Mmm, yummy!

 

The service was great here and we had water refills faster than I could blink! We were just too full to consider dessert so our bill ended up being only about $5 over the package limit. We also tipped very well.

 

I left Dad to deal with the check as I wanted to make it to the Famous People trivia game in the South Pacific Lounge. Ended up reuniting with Rick and Barbara to play and Dad soon joined us. As it turned out, while most everyone was expecting “famous” to be pictures of celebrities, it turned out to be historical people's pictures. We still fared okay but after a second round of 10 pictures Brandon found on his computer, two other teams were tied for first. All Brandon had left to use as a tiebreaker was a picture of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. While one team stayed in their seats to write down the answer, a member of the other team ran up to the screen and yelled out the answer so Brandon gave them the prizes.

 

Rick and Dad stepped away to do other things for an hour or so but Barbara and I stayed in the lounge to keep seats for Quest. And boy am I glad we did! By the time Dad came back I was literally propping my feet on the one chair left in the place it seemed to hold it for him. This is the first time Dad and I bothered to attend Quest and Dad really wanted to see what it was like. We were seated about 3 rows back from the stage and right center so I had quite the view of most things, especially a couple of the way too prepared and into this game teams that had moved in right by the stage. John started things off by enlisting one lady from each side of the room to be their side's cheerleader.

 

This young lady was our side's cheerleader:

 

Each team was given cards with numbers on them and each time an item was called for, the players had to bring up the item and show their number. John yelled out the numbers he saw as the players rushed back to their teams while Katrina kept score and Brandon and Tony helped with crowd control.

 

 

Every once in a while, someone would run up with an item that wasn't quite right and John would have them stay on stage for a minute to tease them.

 

Every so often, the song “You've Got To Fight For Your Right To Party” would be played and you were to stand, cheer, and make as much noise as possible for your side of the room.

[RRFPresident]

At one point, the guys playing were lined up and made to step out stage front one at a time to do their best sexy dance moves.

 

One young guy essentially gave a lap dance to a lady behind us and then moved over to a lady in the front row who many other guys tried to use as well. John was certainly not expecting the reaction he got when he asked this lady about her special treatment. The crowd erupted in laughter when she replied “My nipples are hard!” Katrina though ran over to give her a high five!

 

When the next guy came up to the front to do his dance, John ran over to the woman and blocked him from coming over to her. Not to be hindered, the lady jumped up and was essentially rubbing all over John's back in an effort to still get to the guy dancing. John joked that now his nipples were hard!

 

The next round John had a bald headed guy come sit on stage and called for all the female players to come give him a kiss on his head.

 

The guy loved it so much that he asked to do it again. John said okay and then called for all of the male players to come give him a kiss on the head. Quest players are cutthroat, don lipstick and run up to kiss another strange guy's head, sure!

 

Then the male players were tasked with getting dressed up as a lady and made to parade around the lounge.

[RRFPresident]

 

Every so often, John would throw in a twist so that the people who came prepared wouldn't have such an advantage. One task called for bringing up 3 pairs of pants and a guy from the group in front of us was ready to slip his pants off to make the right tally when he remembered that he'd never bothered to put on underwear. Not to risk losing out on the points, he grabbed the other pairs from his group, ran up to John and slipped his pants down to his knees to show why he couldn't take them off. John looked over, got an eyeful of the guy's naked backside and put his hand up to cover his eyes as he told the guy to put his pants back on!

 

A hula hooping contest came next and it was dwindled down to just one guy and girl.

[RRFPresident]

The girl not only won but passed the next test of keeping four hula hoops going for at least three rotations earning her the title of Queen Sam with a crown the stipulation that all who see her shall cry out a greeting and pageant style hand wave.

 

The 70s theme party was scheduled for the next night so Queen Sam was asked to appear at the festivities.

 

In the end, every team got some sort of medal based on their point tally with several teams tying for first and was asked to appear at the 70s theme party as members of Queen Sam's court.

 

John took some time at the end to recognize Tony as leaving after our sailing and everyone applauded for him:

[vaborn2cruise]

I love Quest! Looking forward to it on my Anthem cruise in October.

[sellwingri]

I've seen it probably 10 times and still see it on every cruise. If you want to laugh, this is where you do it!

[RRFPresident]

Forgot to include our cool towel animal from the night we were docked in Nassau - this time our steward John took it upon himself to use my sunglasses:

[MGlyder]

Hello,

 

Please let me know if this has already been posted and I just missed it but I'm looking for the Cruise Compasses for a recent 9 Night Grandeur cruise. We'll be leaving in a couple of weeks and would like to do some planning ahead of time if possible.

 

Thanks,

Matt

[RRFPresident]

Hello,

 

Please let me know if this has already been posted and I just missed it but I'm looking for the Cruise Compasses for a recent 9 Night Grandeur cruise. We'll be leaving in a couple of weeks and would like to do some planning ahead of time if possible.

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

I'll work on getting the Compasses scanned in this weekend and add them to the review when I do.

[MGlyder]

I'll work on getting the Compasses scanned in this weekend and add them to the review when I do.

 

 

Awesome! Thanks so much.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[RRFPresident]

Day 8 – Sea Day

At breakfast the day before, the wait staff came around to offer an “Interactive Pasta Cooking Class” and this morning I elected to sign up and attend. The price is listed as $30 per person but the waiter must have been desperate to fill it up because he offered a 20% off discount. I only ended up paying $24. It was listed in the “dining options and hours open” section of today's Compass but we'd never have noticed it buried in that area.

 

Still blue water:

 

This morning, I woke up super early and decided to see if I could catch the elusive pool deck covered in towel animals that I always seem to miss on my Carnival sailings. I don't know if RCL even does that at all but I thought I'd go check while enjoying a quiet empty ship to take pictures. The wind was really blowing this morning to the point that I had to hold my camera in one hand and keep my shirt from flashing the early morning walkers with the other hand. I went right to the pool deck and unfortunately, the pool deck had no towel animals in sight. Probably could have used some though because it was foggy and drizzly. I worked my way from Izumi to deck 4 taking pictures of the various public areas.

 

Apparently the rain and wind don't stop those early morning chair hogs:

 

Windjammer buffet:

 

Don't think this is to signify the contents as rabbit soup:

[RRFPresident]

One of the elevators at the front of the ship opens simply to a hallway with Adventure Ocean on one side and the Video Arcade/Royal Babies and Tots area on deck 10. There is a door that leads to the outside from here and stairs. I didn't bother to go in for pics since I didn't have a kid:

 

Deck 10 jogging/walking track that went all the way around:

 

Extra little sun lounger space at the bow off of deck 10:

 

This was just the way the photo turned out thanks to the fog but I like the spooky twilight look of it:

 

My what big screen you have - only once though did I see something besides the allocated movies being played. Otherwise it was just this rotating nature/sea life scene with the RCL/Grandeur logo:

[RRFPresident]

The steps going up in the back center of this pic is the crew staircase to Izumi. We saw two ladies use the staircase and bang on the door to be let in during our dinner there because they'd gotten so lost:

 

Here's lookin' at you, top of the Solarium pool structure - from the perspective of looking through the windows on deck 10:

 

Always follow the rules:

 

Enter here for the rock wall:

 

But only during these hours:

 

And of course only when the rock wall is open: