Detailed Photo Review of Carnival Dream 7 Night Western Caribbean Cruise 3/10/19

[deladane]

Miguel started to loop his arm around my right arm so DH and I would switch sides from the first dive.  Nice try Miguel… that means I won’t be able to take photos because I need my right hand free for that!  I let go, grabbed his other arm and looped my left arm through, then held up my camera in my right hand to show him why I needed to be on this side.  I think he understood, or if not, then he just thought I was crazy!

 

 

As we dropped deeper and deeper into the water, I was a little skeptical about this reef because it seemed very sparse.

 

Where’s all the coral?? 

 

We drifted a little further and started to see some colorful coral.

 

And then… bam!  A huge yellow spotted snake eel slipped right through the coral!  So cool!  Do you see him there in the middle at the bottom third of this photo?

 

 

That’s some funky looking red coral

 

[deladane]

This reef wasn’t as dense as the other one, so we’d see a whole lot of cool things, and then we’d see lots of sandy floor for a while.

 

Lots of little fish swimming around

 

 

We kept drifting a few minutes with nothing all that exciting happening, and then Chantal waved us over because she saw something hiding in the shadows… a HUGE lobster!  This photo is horrible, but as I mentioned earlier, we didn’t really stop to look closely at anything so I couldn’t focus on the lobster, but I did my best.  You can kind of make out one of his arms reaching up, and some of his smaller legs right in the middle of the photo…

 

A few seconds later, we came up on a huge crab hiding in one of the other cracks.  Again, this photo is horrible, but you can kind of see him hiding back behind the coral in the middle of the photo…

 

I wished I could stay still for just one second to take a photo… this was definitely the downside to Miguel towing us through the water.  Sure, he wanted to keep us safe, but it was hampering my chances for amazing photos!  Doesn’t he know that’s the most important thing to me???  Here is a very blurry photo of the crab…

 

At least the photos came out better when I had the camera zoomed out all the way!

[deladane]

This was something I’ve never seen before… a yellow spotted stingray!  So cool!!

 

 

Another first for me… a sea anemone!

 

A trumpetfish

 

I like how this one came out, with the trumpet fish swimming through the coral

 

a conch shell

[deladane]

After that, we entered an area with a whole lot of nothing.  All we saw were thousands of these little things poking up from the sand that looked like poppy flowers.

 

 

We drifting along for at least 10 minutes (based on the time stamps of my photos), and it started to get a little boring because there was seriously nothing around us.  I was kind of confused why we didn’t just loop around to spend more time back at that other section of the reef… surely this isn’t the first time Miguel dove this reef and he knew that there was nothing to see down here?

 

At some point, I looked at the screen of my camera and it showed a big warning sign that said “warning: depth”.  Oh no!  I forgot to mention it but my “waterproof” watch died during our first dive.  I wore it snorkeling in Roatan and Belize without incident, but I guess the pressure from being so deep underwater was too much for it and when we emerged from our first dive, the screen was blank and there was a big black spot in the corner.  Oops!  Good thing today was our last port day and the watch cost less than $8 from Walmart so it’s easily replaceable.  Anyway, I know my Olympus TG-5 camera has a waterproof rating for up to 50 feet, but I didn’t know exactly how deep we were right now.  I would be so upset if my camera died because it cost quite a lot more than $8, but there really wasn’t anything I could do about it now.  Spoiler alert:  my camera survived the dive just fine!  At the end, Miguel said we went down to 40 feet on this dive, so I wonder if the camera just gave me a warning that I was within 10 feet of my limit so I wouldn’t go any deeper?  I really have no idea how that little camera knows my depth underwater, but that’s another story lol

 

Finally, we came along this small section of the reef.  There were other scuba divers down here, so that was kind of fun to see them, but there really wasn’t a whole lot coral or fish in this area.

 

 

This coral looked kind of cool…

 

Funky pink spongey coral

 

A few sparse fish

[deladane]

Around this time, we had been in the water for 40 minutes so Miguel started leading us up towards the surface.  On the way up, we saw this really cool spotted wing comb jellyfish.  As it drifted in the water, it kept morphing into different shapes.  It was so elegant and graceful!

 

 

 

 

Before we started this second dive, I asked Miguel if he could take my camera at some point to take photos of DH and I scuba diving.  I had thoughts of beautiful photos of us with the reef in the background, showing us swimming along from head to the end of our fins, and really capturing the moment.  Miguel said he would do it towards the end of the dive, but when the time came, he was so reluctant to let go of us that this is the best of the 4 photos he took.  Not exactly what I had in mind, but at least it’s better than nothing lol

 

 

Right after he handed me back the camera, he looped his arms under ours and we continued our journey to the surface.  Then he stopped!  Why are we stopping?  There’s nothing around us… or is there?  If you look very closely in the middle of this photo, you can see a faint white line.  It was another type of comb jellyfish, called a Venus Girdle.

 

A few seconds later, we reached the surface of the water, where once again, Lupe was waiting for us with the boat.  This second dive lasted 45 minutes, and as I mentioned, we reached a maximum depth of 40 feet.  I don’t know which dive I liked better because they were so different.  Our first dive featured very dense and varied coral, nonstop for the entire dive, but hardly any fish or other creatures.  Our second dive was much more sparse and had limited coral, but we saw the most amazing animals… lobster, crab, spotted stingray, sea anemone, spotted eel, and 2 kinds of jelly fish!  I honestly think the combination of these two reefs made for the most perfect first scuba diving experience.  We got to see a little bit of everything and it left me wanting more.  I greatly regret not trying a discover scuba diving course sooner because I can only imagine what we would have seen had we done this in French Polynesia or Bonaire!  Of course scuba diving is very expensive and costs a lot more money than the typical snorkeling tour, but I know for sure that we will want to repeat this experience if/when we take another cruise!

 

Oh, one last comment about my ears… On the second dive, I took Miguel’s advice and tried the swallowing technique to equalize my ears.  It worked like a charm and I was able to clear my ears without getting any water in my goggles.  When the tour ended, I felt great, and I continued to feel normal until about 36 hours later.  We were on the ship on Saturday night and my ear started hurting whenever I sneezed or blew my nose.  Uh oh!  That’s not good!  I woke up on Sunday morning and the pain was worse.  I was worried that maybe I burst my ear drum or something, and we were flying home that night so I was really afraid that I would have problems during take off and landing.  Luckily, the flight was uneventful (I just chewed gum during the take off and landing like I usually do), but my ear continued to hurt and I also felt dizzy.  I showed up to work on Monday morning and felt so dizzy that I couldn’t stand in the hallway to talk to my manager and I needed to go find a chair to sit down.  She sent me home because neither of us thought I was safe to treat patients when I felt like this.  My hearing was fine, so I ruled out the idea of a burst ear drum, but the ear pain and dizziness were worrying me enough that I went to see my doctor.  She said I had some congestion built up in my nasal passages and that was preventing the congestion in my ear from draining.  She prescribed a nose spray to clear the congestion, and luckily, after 5 days of using it, the spray worked and my ears finally stopped hurting.  I was fighting this problem for about a week after the dive, so that wasn’t exactly the souvenir I wanted to come home with, but I still think it was worth it for such an incredible experience.  Next time, I will buy some Flonase and make sure all of my passages are cleared out before scuba diving!

 

[deladane]

Since the second dive site was so close to Fonatur Marina, we had a very short ride back at the end of the tour.  We thanked Miguel and Lupe profusely for a wonderful experience, then went in search of the bathrooms at the marina.  This map was posted on the wall of the waiting area at the marina.  It was cool to find the reefs where we had been diving on the map.  I marked them with arrows in the photo…

 

By now, it was around 1:30pm.  DH found a convenience store at the marina and they were selling bottles of local beer for $1 each.  Back in December, we had a few pesos left over from our trip to Puerto Vallarta.  Rather than trying to exchange them back for USD and losing money in the process, I stashed them away with plans to spend them on this cruise, knowing we had 2 ports in Mexico.  We hadn’t had a chance to spend them yet, and we knew that beer would cost more money if we bought it at the cruise port, so this seemed like a good way to spend our pesos.  We bought a few bottles, and found a taxi to take us back to the port.  DH wanted to walk back to save some money, but I was starving and wanted to get back ASAP to eat lunch (and we had to drink those beers before we could board the ship so if DH wants his beers, then I get my taxi!)

 

Back at the port area, we found a bench in the shade to drink our beers while people watching and using the free wifi.  While I did have access to my social media sites on the ship, I couldn’t read my emails so I did still need to use this free wifi at the port, at least for a few minutes!

They really did a nice job at decorating this cruise port, with tons of palm trees and wide sidewalks to handle the thousands of cruise ship passengers who visit here every day.

 

 

I wish I had seen this sign when we first arrived this morning because it would have made for a great photo with us in it.  By now, I looked like a drowned rat with my hair falling out of my braids and a slight sunburn on my face, so there was no chance I was posing for a photo! Haha 

 

After we had our fill of beer and email, we made the long trek through the cruise port, through the duty free shops, and down the long pier to reboard the Dream for the final time on this cruise.

 

At some point after we had left for our tour, the Carnival Vista docked next to us, creating a cruise ship canyon.  I wonder how many people accidentally tried to get on the wrong ship!

[Border Granny]

I am really enjoying your review since we’ll be on the Dream this summer. You mentioned the free wi fi at the port in Coz.....was that at a particular place? Last time I was there, and that has been almost 4 yrs ago, the bars all had free wi fi but you had to buy at least one drink for them to give you the password.  

[deladane]

19 hours ago, Border Granny said:

I am really enjoying your review since we’ll be on the Dream this summer. You mentioned the free wi fi at the port in Coz.....was that at a particular place? Last time I was there, and that has been almost 4 yrs ago, the bars all had free wi fi but you had to buy at least one drink for them to give you the password.  

 

It’s been a few weeks so the details are a little fuzzy. It is very possible that I wasn’t using free WiFi in Cozumel bc DH has data in Mexico on his cell phone and he has a hotspot.  In Costa Maya he shared it with me so I could check my email while we were in the van driving to the ruins, so he may have done the same thing in Cozumel and I was just thinking it was the port WiFi by mistake. Sorry about that!!

[Border Granny]

32 minutes ago, deladane said:

 

It’s been a few weeks so the details are a little fuzzy. It is very possible that I wasn’t using free WiFi in Cozumel bc DH has data in Mexico on his cell phone and he has a hotspot.  In Costa Maya he shared it with me so I could check my email while we were in the van driving to the ruins, so he may have done the same thing in Cozumel and I was just thinking it was the port WiFi by mistake. Sorry about that!!

 

 

32 minutes ago, deladane said:

 

It’s been a few weeks so the details are a little fuzzy. It is very possible that I wasn’t using free WiFi in Cozumel bc DH has data in Mexico on his cell phone and he has a hotspot.  In Costa Maya he shared it with me so I could check my email while we were in the van driving to the ruins, so he may have done the same thing in Cozumel and I was just thinking it was the port WiFi by mistake. Sorry about that!!

That’s perfectly ok, and unstandable!  I just thought you knew something I didn’t, but like I said it’s been a while since I was there:)

[deladane]

This whole week, I had been meaning to try out the meatball sandwich from the deli.  Now was my chance, and OMG it was totally worth the wait!  I’m not sure if it was because I was famished (it was now nearly 3pm) or because I still had salty ocean coating my mouth, but this sandwich was seriously delicious.

 

 

In case you were curious about what’s inside… there were 4 meatballs and a generous amount of provolone and ricotta cheese, with just the right amount of marina sauce to give it flavor but not make it all drippy and messy.

 

The buffet was closing soon, so I made sure to get to the desserts section before they cleared away all the yummy cakes.  Today, I tried the chocolate vanilla marble cake.  It was moist and sweet, with a good proportion of cake to frosting.

 

 

After lunch, I took a few minutes to walk around the outer decks and take photos of the port and the other cruise ships.  It was such a beautiful day, with the sun shining on the water to light it up to a beautiful electric turquoise color, and bright white puffy clouds dotting the sky like cotton balls.  We were incredibly lucky with our weather on this cruise, with bright sunny days in all 4 ports.

 

RCCL Harmony of the Seas docked at the other cruise port

 

 Puerta Maya Cruise Terminal

 

[deladane]

Lido deck wasn’t too crowded at this hour

 

Checking out the Carnival Vista

 

The Regal Princess was also docked near us

 

Lots of people walking back towards the ships

 

After that, I met back up with DH because we had one more mission to accomplish today… riding the water slide!  There have not been any water slides on my last 3 cruise ships, so I was very much looking forward to using the slide on the Dream.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity to accomplish that mission, while I was already in a wet bathing suit and the ship was still docked so it wouldn’t be too windy when I climbed up all the stairs to the top of the slide. 

 

Added perk: you get some great views from the top of the slide!

 

You can actually see parts of all 6 waterslides from this view (2 kiddie slides side by side, the giant twister slide, 2 medium racing slides side by side, and the drain pipe slide)

 

[deladane]

When we got up to the top, there were three or four kids on line ahead of us and a life guard watching to make sure the previous person exited the slide before the next person started.  I can only imagine what would happen if someone got stuck in the slide for some reason and then a second person came shooting down the tube and slammed into them!

 

Here goes nothing!

 

DH had gone down the slide yesterday while I was in the shower so he warned me to hold my nose when it got lighter inside the tube because that meant I was almost at the end and there’s a lot of water down there that can go up your nose.  He also gave me a pointer on technique that he figured out when he was a kid… if you minimize the amount of skin you have touching the tube then you will go faster.  He told me to press my heels and shoulders down onto the tube and to lift my butt up, and that would make me go faster.  Sure enough, that totally worked and I was flying when I went down the slide! 

 

I sent him down the slide first with my camera so he could take a photo for me.

 

What a rush!  I know these slides are more geared for children, but it was a lot of fun for me as an adult too!  With that mission accomplished, I went back to the cabin to get ready for the evening while DH went to the casino bar for happy hour.  I had read a few posts before the cruise with people asking about this elusive happy hour and wanting to know when it is held.  Some people said it was only on embarkation day, but at least on our sailing, they had it on a few of the port days too!  It always included the same list of drinks, and was always limited to the Casino Bar.  If you read your Fun Times carefully, they mention it there so you can plan accordingly.

 

When I got back to the cabin, this little guy was hanging out off the foot of the bed…

 

Hmm, something looks a little funny here…

 

Oh, look! There is a notice on the bed…

 

Ooooh, okay, that’s what looked funny!  I guess it’s a good thing they wash the dust ruffles, but we never saw it again so I guess they don’t put it back on the beds until turn around day in New Orleans.  It seems a little weird that we only get our dust ruffle for 5 of the 7 days on our cruise.  Does this happen on every cruise?  Or do they just usually not clean them and we happened to be here for the random week that our cabin was due for a dust ruffle washing?  Not a big deal, just something I never considered before. 

[deladane]

Time for dinner!

 

 

 

Vegetable Spring Rolls

 

Seared Tuna (honestly, this was more like well-done tuna, but close enough!)

 

Veal Parmesan

[deladane]

Dessert Menu

 

Apple Pie

 

Funny side story… Remember the girl on our tender yesterday in Belize?  The one who accidentally boarded the FTTF tender instead of meeting her Carnival excursion group in the theater as directed on her ticket?  DH and I had been wondering what happened to her and if she was able to meet up with her group or not.  Just as we were finishing dinner, I noticed that she was sitting two tables over from us!  She was at one of the big tables in Prudence’s section who only showed up for dinner on the first formal night, but never again, so we didn’t realize who she was yesterday on the tender.  After we finished eating, we went over to her and her friend (they were the only two people sitting at the large 10 or 12 person table, but I think they were traveling with a large group and everyone else skipped dinner tonight).  They thought it was funny when we told her we were seated two tables over from her (what are the chances?!), and she said she did meet up with her group yesterday and enjoyed her ATV excursion.  On a ship of nearly 4,000 passengers, sometimes it’s funny how small the ship can feel when you run into new friends randomly.

 

Prudence and her team did a wonderful job of getting us out of dinner in under an hour, so we were able to make the 7:30pm show in the Encore! Theater.  We went into tonight’s final production show with trepidation considering how we felt about the prior 3 shows on this cruise.  The show was called America Rocks, and featured rock and roll songs through the decades.  Sometimes it is best to come in with low expectations because this was by far the best show of the whole cruise!  In addition to the core cast of 8 singers and dancers that performed in the other shows, they brought in Machine Company, the band who performs around the ship at night.  This meant we saw extremely talented musicians playing live on stage, and the lead singer sang for some of the songs alongside the Playlist Productions cast.  I wish they could have incorporated these guys into all of the other shows because it made a huge difference!

 

Apologies again for the blurry photos, but blurry photos are better than no photos, right?  We were happy to get our favorite seats with unobstructed views in the front row of the balcony.

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

I don’t remember what most of the songs were, but I do know that this was for Hotel California (we got a kick out of that song choice since we live there!)

 

 

They had everyone out on stage for the finale song, so you can tell there were a lot more people in this song compared to the other 3 shows.

 

The best part about seeing the earlier of the two production shows was that when it ended, it was only around 8:15pm so we had plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the nightlife on the ship.  They were doing karaoke in The Song lounge so we headed back that way hoping that DH could participate.  He loves karaoke and hadn’t gotten to try it out yet on this cruise, but when we got to the lounge, the host said it was over an hour wait.  That wouldn’t work because we wanted to catch the 9:30pm comedy show, so we decided to just hang out and watch the other people perform.  The Song lounge is kind of small for a popular event like karaoke, so it was standing room only by the time we arrived and we had to stand in the back.  To be fair, the event did start at 8pm so I imagine people who weren’t watching America Rocks at 7:30 could come back here, get their names on the list to perform, and have their choice of seats. 

 

At a little after 9pm, we went next door to the Burgundy Lounge to get seats for the 9:30pm adults-only comedy show.  It was already quite crowded by then, but we were able to find seats together.  The comedy club host came on the microphone around 9:15 to ask people not to save seats because it was already standing room only, but I don’t know how well she could enforce that if someone is saving a seat while their spouse/friend/etc. was in the restroom or at the bar or whatever.  I can see not wanting people to save an entire row of seats but no one was really doing that, and you can’t expect people not to save one seat for the person they are watching the show with. 

 

Tonight’s comedian was Jersey.  I did not really care for his act because he was just shouting out profanities for shock value and hoping to get a reaction, but he didn’t really have much content and the content he did have was not very funny.  Oh well, you can’t win them all!

 

After that, we finished out the night at the piano bar.  We spent at least a few minutes in the piano bar every night, and we were almost always able to get a seat right at the bar.  I need to make one complaint about Zack… he only played song requests when they included tip money!  I understand that in a piano bar on land, the performers work for tips, but we are on a cruise ship and we are already paying a lot of money per night to be here, so it shouldn’t be required to tip him on every single song request just to get him to play our song.  We submitted requests nearly every night and he did not even acknowledge them (except for one time when we requested a song and he just said he doesn’t know it and tossed our request paper aside.  The song was We Didn’t Start The Fire by Billy Joel which is a fairly easy song since it just keeps repeating the same melody over and over again, and we even told him not to worry about the lyrics because we know them by heart and would help him out!)  At the beginning of the week, we figured he gets tips from enough people that he doesn’t need to play requests that don’t include tips and we might have more luck at the end of the week.  Nope!  He didn’t play our requests then either.  You might be thinking, “well why not tip him if you want to hear your song that badly?” and we did consider that, but it got to a point where we were doing an experiment to see if he would ever play our song without money attached.  Sure enough, that never happened.  On our other cruises with a piano bar, our requests were always played with or without a tip attached, and on Paul Gauguin, the performer (Alex) went so far as to learn a song overnight when DH requested something he didn’t know (City of Stars from La La Land).  Now THAT was good service!

 

Ok, I’ll step down off my soap box now.  I just wanted to share that with you.

 

Step Tracker Daily Total:  11,862 steps; 4.79 miles; 11 flights of stairs (I definitely climbed way more flights than that because I couldn’t wear my fitbit on the water slide and you need to climb A LOT of stairs to reach the top of the slide… oh well!) 

[deladane]

There haven't been many comments in the last week or two... hopefully people are still reading this!  I still have to post about our last sea day and disembarkation day, so I'll try to finish as soon as I can.

 

 

Saturday, March 16, 2019 ~ Fun Day at Sea

 

 

 

 

What is it about cruises that seem to make time move faster than regular days at home?  Somehow it was already the last full day of our cruise and we were sailing back towards New Orleans.  This is usually the time in my vacation when all of the action-packed port days and physically exerting excursions catch up with me, and all I want to do is plant my butt on a lounge chair, write in my trip journal, and eat (after all, I won’t have the excuse that “vacation calories don’t count” after the vacation is over!).  Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’ll suddenly adjust to sleeping late, so I was wake around 7am.  I quietly got dressed and tip-toed out of the cabin so I wouldn’t wake DH, and I found these fliers in our mailbox.  The first was about the debarkation information, but it was a general form for all passengers on board.  We were supposed to get a different form specific to FTTF but it wasn’t delivered until later this afternoon.

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

My first stop today was up to the Serenity Deck to stake out my claim on a lounge chair.  It was around 7:40am by the time I got up there, but it was almost completely deserted and I had my pick of wherever I wanted to sit. 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a little cloudy this morning, and also a little chilly, but the water was pretty smooth.

 

 

No need to worry about being a chair hog at this early hour, so I dropped off my tote bag on one of the clamshells, then headed down towards the Lido buffet to get a quick breakfast.  On my way down, I caught the end of a beautiful sunrise!

 

 

[deladane]

Blue Iguana had just opened so I could have gotten a breakfast burrito, but I decided to change it up and see what other options were available.

 

 

 

In the end, I sampled a little bit of everything in the carbs department…

 

 

Unfortunately, most of these items were a let down.  They were either stale, soggy, or a combination of both!  The round cinnamon pastry was the best of the bunch (but I already knew it was something I liked because I tried it earlier in the cruise too).  I will also say that the hard boiled egg was surprisingly good… it was still so hot that I was burning my fingertips as I tried to peel it (that is NOT a complaint, by the way!), but the shell peeled off easily in one big piece, and the yolk came out as one solid ball.  I hate when the yolk crumbles and it’s hard to remove it, but the crew member in charge of boiling eggs has mastered the skill and I was pleasantly surprised.

 

I still had a few minutes before I needed to get back to my clamshell to be within the 40 minute limit, so I walked around taking some more photos of the ship.  It was now a little after 8am, and there were still plenty of lounge chairs available at the aft pool.

 

 

The clouds broke up and it was turning into a beautiful morning at sea

 

hmm, or maybe not… lots of clouds out in the other direction!

 

The lounge chairs around the main Lido pool were filling in, but there were still plenty available at 8:10am. 

[deladane]

Back up on Serenity Deck, I set up camp on one of the half-clam shells and spent about an hour jotting down notes in my trip journal.  In that time, maybe 2 or 3 other couples came by and sat for a bit, but it was almost completely empty for most of the time. 

 

 

At around 9am, I remembered that we could pick up luggage tags in the Ocean Plaza.  Yesterday, I had stopped by at Guest Services to ask how the luggage tags were distributed for FTTF and they told me that we would get zone 2 tags.  Based on the information on the debarkation flyer, that meant we would be called to leave the ship around 8:30am.  DH and I had a few things planned for tomorrow, but we didn’t really need to be the first ones off the ship, and 8:30am was a bit too early for us.  I was originally planning to just let our luggage sit in the collection room with the zone 2 tags, and we’d get it when we got there, but then it occurred to me that I could also go get a higher zone number.  When I got downstairs, there were about 20 people on line ahead of me to pick up luggage tags, but the line moved fast and I had my pick of nearly any zone I wanted when I reached the front of the line (I think the zone 5 tags were already gone, but there were still tons of tags for all the other zones.)

 

 

I was getting a little hungry again since I didn’t eat much for breakfast, so after I took my luggage tags, I went back to the pizza place for a Quattro Formaggi pizza.  Yes, it was 9:20am, but people eat cold pizza for breakfast all the time, so why can’t I eat hot pizza?!  As I expected, there wasn’t anyone else on line when I arrived, and they didn’t have any pizzas pre-made and sitting there waiting to be taken, so they needed to make one fresh for me.  The guy said it would take about 5 minutes.  This was the photo I showed on the first sea day, but I’ll show it here again too since this was actually when I took it…

 

 

I took my pizza to-go and went back upstairs to Serenity Deck.  When I got there, DH was sitting on one of the bigger clamshells and he had moved my bags so we wouldn’t hog 2 spots.  By now, it was getting very windy and quite a bit colder, so the clamshell was helpful to block some of the wind, but we also needed to get towels to use as blankets.  While DH was sitting there, he noticed the crew member walked around and put stickers on the chairs around him that had belongings on them. 

 

 

Sure enough, at 9:55am, that same crew member came back and gathered up the belongings from our neighboring clamshell.  We thanked him for taking care of that because even though it was not crowded due to the cold and the wind, the rules still remain that you can only reserve a chair for 40 minutes and people need to be more respectful of that.  On other cruise lines, the staff is reluctant to enforce policies like that, so it was great to see that Carnival actually enforced their policies. 

 

I stayed up there until around 11am when I just couldn’t tolerate the wind anymore.  By now, I assumed Jennifer would have finished cleaning our cabin, so I left DH reading his book in the clamshell and I went back downstairs to start the grueling task of packing.  On the bright side, this was only a 7-day cruise, so we didn’t have nearly as many things to pack up as we did on our last few cruises, but it still has to get done and it still eats away at time I should be out enjoying the ship.  When I got back to the cabin, this little guy was hanging around, waiting to greet us…

 

 

I took him down and added him to our windowsill collection…

 

[deedle7544]

Loving your review!  Thank you for taking the time to write such a  detailed review. 

[Walt fan]

I am still here and following along and enjoying!  Just really busy at work and other stuff.  I have to say I love to snorkel but I could never ever scuba dive.  Too claustrophobic!  But I know I am missing out on so much stuff way down below.  So glad you got to do it.  

 

Love your reviews!  Will follow this to the bittersweet end!

[BigEasyCC]

On 4/29/2019 at 9:51 AM, deladane said:

 

After that, we finished out the night at the piano bar.  We spent at least a few minutes in the piano bar every night, and we were almost always able to get a seat right at the bar.  I need to make one complaint about Zack… he only played song requests when they included tip money!  I understand that in a piano bar on land, the performers work for tips, but we are on a cruise ship and we are already paying a lot of money per night to be here, so it shouldn’t be required to tip him on every single song request just to get him to play our song.  We submitted requests nearly every night and he did not even acknowledge them (except for one time when we requested a song and he just said he doesn’t know it and tossed our request paper aside.  The song was We Didn’t Start The Fire by Billy Joel which is a fairly easy song since it just keeps repeating the same melody over and over again, and we even told him not to worry about the lyrics because we know them by heart and would help him out!)  At the beginning of the week, we figured he gets tips from enough people that he doesn’t need to play requests that don’t include tips and we might have more luck at the end of the week.  Nope!  He didn’t play our requests then either.  You might be thinking, “well why not tip him if you want to hear your song that badly?” and we did consider that, but it got to a point where we were doing an experiment to see if he would ever play our song without money attached.  Sure enough, that never happened.  On our other cruises with a piano bar, our requests were always played with or without a tip attached, and on Paul Gauguin, the performer (Alex) went so far as to learn a song overnight when DH requested something he didn’t know (City of Stars from La La Land).  Now THAT was good service!

 

 

Ok, I’ll step down off my soap box now.  I just wanted to share that with you.

 

 

Yes, I do know how it feels not to get your request played. Last cruise on another line I was determined to hear that very Billy Joel song. I finally gave in and for $5 I heard "We Didn't Start The Fire" and he knew every word. My son said I was being cruel. No, just getting my money's worth.

[Charm2018]

I'm still here and enjoying your review!  The time really does fly by on a cruise.  I wish the time waiting for my next one would go that fast.  🙂 

[dancingfish]

Such a great review!!! I learned so many great little tips! 

[pghsteelerfan]

I'm still following along and enjoying.  I just haven't commented since I didn't have any specific questions.  I do know the feeling when you're putting a lot of time and effort into a review and the only comments are your own updates.  It was like that with the last review I did from our Carnival Liberty cruise out of San Juan.  I actually almost gave up on it but I did know that a few others who had commented earlier were following along.  Some of those were CC members we really got to "know" when we branched off on a social network site roll call, so I decided to proceed to the end.  I'm glad I did since it is nice to go back and "relive" that cruise (and the 2 others) occasionally.  But I'm definitely still following around and enjoying it. 

 

I feel really bad for you guys regarding the letdown in Belize with "mother nature" (she's a charmer, isn't she?) and the family who brought that child that needed all of the attention.  Not much you can do about wind/choppy seas, but the situation with that child?  Certain tours had age limits and this sounds like a tour that really should.  Nice that they accommodate the family/that child, but it shouldn't be at the expense of others who paid for the tour who might also want a nice experience.  I LOVED the pictures you got scuba diving, it's just a shame the guide held onto you the whole time.  I would not be a fan of that.  Lol!!!