Sailing the Es-cap-ay (Escape)- Western Caribbean Review June 24, 2017

[usckatieh]

Wow, you are extremely methodical. I am too, but in an old fashioned sort of way.....I hand write out lists. Then I highlight each task as I accomplish it. Raised in the '70's....what can I say. I still have a use (and joy) of hand-writing! Really enjoying your review. I suspect I'll pick up a few pointers from you.

 

Haha, I like my paper lists too but I tend to misplace them when my phone is usually with me all the time. There is definitely something satisfying about a crossed off list though!

 

Hmmm. I'm looking at the photos of your shower on Escape and it doesn't seem to have the "footbar" that is mounted about 12 inches up from the floor to assist us ladies in shaving our legs like what we had on the Getaway. Not happy about this if that is indeed the case. I'm sure you stated it earlier, but was this a balcony cabin?

 

I don't recall that there was a footbar, but I wasn't specifically looking. Yes, this is a balcony cabin.

[usckatieh]

Here’s a map of the island itself

 

My first goal was to find a locker to put my camera in so it didn’t end up at the bottom of the lagoon if my paddleboarding attempt goes awry. We found a circle of lockers at the pool area and it was really easy to rent one. They just scanned your seapass (lockers are a $5 charge) and they gave you a key on a plastic band that went around your wrist. You could come and get things out of the locker as you needed them or even take your items to a different set of lockers (I didn’t realize there was another set of lockers right next to the lagoon). That being taken care of, we were on our way to the lagoon rentals, until a passing rainstorm threatened to slow down that progress. Here’s a video of the rain as we took cover near one of the shops.

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Once the short-lived storm passed through, we finally made it to the lagoon. We arrived about 8:50. Maybe it was the early time or the rainstorm but they had plenty of rental equipment to go around. They also had kayaks for $25 and electric float boats for $45 (looked like paddle boats but with a motor). They also had two kinds of paddleboards. He said the white were for the advanced paddlers (they looked more like surfboards) and the green were for beginners (looked a little wider and harder to tip over.) After putting on life jackets that they provided, DD and I took a green one and DH and DS took a white one. They quickly paddled back for a green one too.

Here’s a photo of the lagoon and some of what it had to offer

 

Paddleboarding itself was a fun experience, but to me it was just like kayaking except you didn’t get to sit down. It was a bonus though that DH and I both found a way to switch places with the kids (without falling into the lagoon) to let them paddle while we sat down. Here’s a video of the grownups being chaffoured around by the kids.

 

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There was more lagoon around a little inlet by the lighthouse but DD and I were pretty worn out after a half hour so we took our board in and walked over to check out the beach. DH and DS were only about 10-15 minutes behind us on turning in their board, so we all decided to take a dip in the surf at the beach.

 

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We all enjoyed the beach. It has decent waves for bobbing around and the grade wasn’t too steep. Since Patrick isn’t a strong swimmer yet, I brought along his puddle jumper so he could go further into the water with the rest of us. I felt a weird sting on my chest while we were swimming but it didn’t bother me so I thought maybe it was sand in my swimsuit irritating that spot. The zipliners buzzed right overhead so we waved at them as they went by. After about 20 minutes in the water, I noticed that the lifeguard’s flag had changed from green to blue. I wonder what that means. We spent about 15 more minutes in the water and then hopped out to dry off. Come to find out that the blue flag means “dangerous ocean life” so that probably was a little jelly that got me in the water. But with 4 of us out there for 30-40 minutes, I was the only one to come out with any irritation and it was very mild. Must have been a little one. It reminded me of the part on Finding Nemo where Dory finds a jelly, “And I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine, and he shall be my squishy- ouch!”

 

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FYI- They had clamshells on the back row at the beach and I think they were about $30-35 to rent. Those would have been nice if we were spending the whole day on the beach.

[uneamie]

Hmmm. I'm looking at the photos of your shower on Escape and it doesn't seem to have the "footbar" that is mounted about 12 inches up from the floor to assist us ladies in shaving our legs like what we had on the Getaway. Not happy about this if that is indeed the case. I'm sure you stated it earlier, but was this a balcony cabin?

My suggestion....use that tiny balcony table. If there is enough room, that table will make a nice resting place for your foot.

[kaitysmommy2001]

Hey there fellow Getaway cruiser!!! We will miss you on the Escape sailing by a month- we are embarking on Sept 30. Have a great time and Happy Birthday to your sis!

 

 

 

We are on your sailing too!

 

 

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[usckatieh]

Next stop was the pool.

 

It was about 10:00 and the kids wanted to get in a little freshwater swim. Unfortunately, there was not an unclaimed chair in sight, so we ended up dropping our stuff right next to the edge of the pool by some greenery and swimming right there. I also got my big camera out of the locker and took some photos of the pool area. The landscaping work around the pool area is really amazing.

 

 

 

 

Our little corner of the pool.

 

The pool has a shallow “beach” side.

 

[usckatieh]

The cabanas look pretty amazing but they should be for the price.

 

I took a lot of photos with my infrared camera as well because I had a feeling that the foliage would look pretty neat in infrared. You’ll notice some similarities to the regular photos because I took a lot of them from the same spots.

 

 

 

 

I’m happy with how they turned out, especially the color infrared version of the whole pool.

 

 

[usckatieh]

Since the pool was so crowded, we walked back over to the kids splash area. The bucket on top of their climbing structure did a major soaking job every time it tipped over. There was even a small waterslide.

 

 

A few infrared photos of the boardwalk that leads to the lighthouse.

 

 

Lighthouse

 

There is a dining area right by the pool and food can be paid for the your key card, but we wanted to head back up to the ship to get a shower and a free lunch. Here’s a picture of our happy, soggy family.

 

We the wildlife area on the way back. There mostly just colorful birds and a lot of pretty plants.

 

[usckatieh]

 

There’s an old phone booth along the way back to the pier.

 

Here’s a photo so the ship from the pier. There were still tons of people getting off the ship around 11-11:30 when we were heading back. I’m not sure how you could engineer the pool area to have more chairs but that place had to be packed by about noon.

 

 

 

 

This shows how far the Aqua Racer hangs off the ship. Cool, huh?

 

[Dragonkeper]

I am enjoying your review!

[MacCruising2018]

Love your pictures!! May I use one as a screen saver on my work computer? Helps keep my sanity to see that gorgeous ship everyday.

 

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[clskinsfan]

Great review! Thanks for sharing!

[Justjrn]

 

Now to pick a room! I love having a balcony for a few romantic reasons- you can step out of bed and feel the ocean breeze, you can sit and soak up the rays of a glowing orange sunset- and for a few practical reasons- swimsuits never seem to dry in the bathroom, sometimes there’s odors in a cabin where it would really be nice to crack a window. Come on, you know that’s true.

 

To go a little extra OCD, I also looked at the ship's travel path and picked the side of the ship that would be showing the coast as we sailed from port to port (which happened to be left or port), so that, and limited 4-person room availability at the almost 90 day mark, set us with room 9284 if you’re curious.

 

 

We booked through AAA because we have a membership and they offer good travel insurance. It was the exact same price as booking ourselves online. Our office didn’t have discounts on NCL, but they did take care of all the reminders and they printed our luggage tags and documents for us. It also made me feel better that if we had any issues, our local agent would be there to help and they sent me travel books on Florida so that we could plan a post-cruise fun stop on the way back home.

 

 

Now comes the part that I love and the part that may bore other people to tears- planning! If you’re already starting to zone out, just skip this section- I promise I’ll get to the Es-cap-ay part soon! For those who share my deep appreciation for tripadvisor, spreadsheets, and checklists, jump on in!

 

Kids- to passport or not to passport. That is the question.

 

Our kids have been on 2 Caribbean cruises prior to this one with just birth certificates including one out of San Juan, so I didn’t plan on getting them passports until my travel agent pointed out in a lot of foreign countries, if you get sick while you’re there, you cannot fly back home until arrangements for a passport are made, which could potentially delay you getting appropriate medical care. Eek, that’s a scary thought. Considering a few years back when my son was very close to requiring emergency hernia surgery, I figured that I’d rather be safe than sorry. It’s pricey but we went to the post office right after the reservation was booked and filed the paperwork to get the kid’s passports. The passports arrive in 3 weeks.

 

Excursions- use ship or not use ship. That is the other question.

 

I’m having too much fun with my new info-graphic app (Adobe Spark) so here’s another one!

 

So, our promotional shore excursion credit gave us a whopping $50 per port to use on shore excursions so you’d think we’d book all our trips through the ship, right? Let’s do some research! My main starting point for research was the Ports of Call forums and google. I found a list of place we might want to go for each port and then researched the reviews for the places/excursion companies on trip advisor as well as the potential timelines (did they give us plenty of time to get back to the ship on time), stress levels (would I be jumping on buses in a country that I didn’t speak the language, etc.), and cost. I’ll talk about it more as I review each port but I looked at the pros and cons and costs of independent vs ship excursions at every port, except Harvest Caye where it’s go ship or go home.

 

So that I can ease you slowing into my neurotical cruise planning world, I’ll just start with the daily chart that I make for each vacation that includes the ports we’ll visit, times in port and what excursion we plan to take (organize level beginning). If you want to totally geek out, also add in the times of all the dinners that you pre-booked (organized level medium) because even though it has freestyle dining, it’s good to plan ahead, and finally the possible activity times based on all the past freestyle dailies that you’ve dug through cruise critic to find like Gollum looking for “my precious” (organized level expert)- double geek points for that one!

 

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Let me know if you want a copy of this Word document template and I’ll send it your way!

. I would love a copyof your spread sheet, we have atleast 2 of the same excursions booked. I'm dying to here your Costa maya review. What excursions did you book for Cozumel?

[sgmamabear]

Your photos and description of Daniel Johnson's Hangout were incredible! I just booked that same tour for our upcoming trip! Thank you so much!!

 

 

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[usckatieh]

Love your pictures!! May I use one as a screen saver on my work computer? Helps keep my sanity to see that gorgeous ship everyday.

 

Sure, I use cruise photos as the cover on my phone too! Thank you for asking!

 

. I would love a copy of your spread sheet, we have atleast 2 of the same excursions booked. I'm dying to here your Costa maya review. What excursions did you book for Cozumel?

 

Sure, I'll see if I can figure out how to message it to you or if you message me your email, I can send it there. We did Chacchoben Ruins with Native's Choice and the ruins were amazing, but we weren't totally satisfied with the tour. I'll try to get into that soon!

[usckatieh]

Your photos and description of Daniel Johnson's Hangout were incredible! I just booked that same tour for our upcoming trip! Thank you so much!!

That's wonderful! It really was my favorite part of our whole trip! I hope you have a blast!

[usckatieh]

For lunch, we tried out O’Shehans. This is one of the free restaurants. DH and I found the food to be a little bland, which was not the case at all the other restaurants, so I wonder if this is where they keep their play-it-safe recipes. The thai wings were good, but not spicy at all and the spinach dip was disappointingly tasteless. The kids did enjoy their hot dog and burger though and my fish and chips were pretty good as well, although I had to ask for the malt vinegar (to make it real fish and chips).

 

 

We had considered going back to the beach, but we could see using Nathan’s binoculars that the flag was still blue so the kids had the brilliant idea to go do water slides! This was so much faster than the sea day. Patrick and I were able to do the same 3 slides in 20 minutes rather than an hour. The slides got a little busier as the day went on but then there was no one there around the 6-8 pm hours. I wish they kept the slides open that late every day.

 

Ropes Course

 

After slides, we watched a movies from our movie player in the room. I read my book while DH went to the fitness center. Nathan wanted to take Kasiah to try out the ropes course after his workout but the attendants at the course said his shirt was too wet and to go back to the room. I heard the same thing told to other men throughout wait, so guys, if you sweat, but on a fresh shirt before you try to do the ropes course or they might give you a hard time. Also, you have to wear shirts with sleeves (sent me back for this one because I had on a tank top), closed toe AND heel shoes (DH’s Keen’s aren’t closed heel so they sent him back for that one time), dry clothes (don’t throw a t-shirt over a wet swimsuit top and don’t sweat) and no cell phones or items bigger than your keycard in your pockets. Fortunately we figured out our infractions before we waited very long in line but hopefully this will save you the trouble.

 

Patrick was about an inch short of the 48” minimum for the big ropes course, which was disappointing for him, but at least there was a little one for him to try. Little adventurers wait in the same line as the big kids/adults. The rules say that there should be one adult per child on the big course but I saw lots of tween age kids on the course on their own. The course does change depending on staff availability so sometimes there are two zip lines and sometimes there’s not any. The route therefore may also vary each time you go through it. You have some choices of obstacles like where there’s a four corner, you can choose how you get from one corner to the other, but it always has blocks that guide you to the end (nope, you can’t zip line over and over).

 

Here’s Patrick on the little kids ropes course.

 

He found it more challenging once I told him to let go of the rope and pretend he didn’t have any harness on.

 

Here’s Patrick zipline on the small course. There’s no decline at all there so they need some assistance making it across.

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Kasiah on one of the obstacles

 

My baby girl is way up there?!

 

Here’s a video from the bottom of Kasiah’s first zip line ever!

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View of Harvest Caye from deck 17

 

[Justjrn]

Sure, I use cruise photos as the cover on my phone too! Thank you for asking!

 

 

 

Sure, I'll see if I can figure out how to message it to you or if you message me your email, I can send it there. We did Chacchoben Ruins with Native's Choice and the ruins were amazing, but we weren't totally satisfied with the tour. I'll try to get into that soon!

just add @aol <dot> com to my user name. I am not at all imaginative with usernames lol. Thanks!

[usckatieh]

just add @aol <dot> com to my user name. I am not at all imaginative with usernames lol. Thanks!

 

 

I just sent that over to you!

[cruzqueen518]

Your photos and description of Daniel Johnson's Hangout were incredible! I just booked that same tour for our upcoming trip! Thank you so much!!

 

 

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Me too....we are on the escape in Sept and booked this excursion as well. so excited.

[tennisfanusa]

Do you think you could post your spreadsheet to Google Drive that way we can all access it via a link? I am LOVING your review and organization!

[sgmamabear]

Me too....we are on the escape in Sept and booked this excursion as well. so excited.

 

 

 

When in September? Ours is the 9/30 sailing

 

 

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[cruzqueen518]

When in September? Ours is the 9/30 sailing

 

 

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We are 9/30 as well!

[usckatieh]

Do you think you could post your spreadsheet to Google Drive that way we can all access it via a link? I am LOVING your review and organization!

 

I haven't tried that before, but see if this link works!

[usckatieh]

Day 4- Harvest Caye, cont.

 

That night we had a nice dinner at the Manhattan Room and kept up our nightly ritual of checking the kids into kids club, but DD was staying with us for Escape room, so it was just Patrick this time. Here’s Kasiah giving her Daddy a hug before we dropped brother off on deck 5.

 

 

DD joined us for a walk out on the Waterfront. Here she is spying on Cuba.

 

The gelato shop is on this deck too.

 

I love how quiet the Waterfront usually is. It’s a great place to sit and ready or just hang out between activities. I saw one family playing a lively game of dominoes at one of the tables. It’s like your own giant balcony (shared with a few other thousand new friends).

 

 

We popped up to the pool deck for a few more dusk photos. This ship has a pretty wide wake.

 

[cruzqueen518]

I haven't tried that before, but see if this link works!

 

I didn't make this request but....you have the calendar as "view only" so no changes can be made.