Trip Report: 11/2 Sky 5-night Bahamas

[Deeliteful]

Thank you for your review. Loving seeing your beautiful children do their homework! 😀

[cloudsail]

38 minutes ago, Deeliteful said:

Thank you for your review. Loving seeing your beautiful children do their homework! 😀

 

Thanks! We just started homeschooling last year and are planning more travel now that the kids are mostly self-sufficient, so we are working on the habit of doing schoolwork in all kinds of environments. Cruises are great because there's always some downtime every day.

[cloudsail]

Day 5 Great Stirrup Cay again

 

The Dailies:

 

 

 

 

[cloudsail]

We reserved a small cabana, which was only $149 after the $50 shore excursion credit. I thought it was a great deal, even though we ended up spending barely any time in it because the kids wanted to play in the water the entire day, and the cabanas are not close enough to the water to supervise them from.

[cloudsail]

We had breakfast at the buffet again. We got to deck 3 at 9:25, and there was a really big line for the tender. Then once we got on the boat we waited for what felt like forever. It seemed like they were just waiting there for more people to show up so they could fill the tender to capacity. This seemed very inefficient since there was another empty tender just waiting beside us. We didn't end up casting off until 10 am.

 

Custom eggs over medium with mushrooms and salsa

 

I really miss these waffles

 

Line for the tender

 

[cloudsail]

When we got on the island, we checked in at the villa and spa desk, then were asked to wait for a bit. Soon someone came to lead us to the tram that drove us to where the cabanas were located.

 

After a short ride, we got to the tram stop for the cabanas. As you walk up the path, the restrooms are to the left and the food truck is to the right. We ended up not even going to the buffet this day and just ate from the food truck.

 

Check-in

 

Tram 

 

Our awesome driver

 

Food truck

 

We had cabana #17, which was to the left

[brookie848]

23 hours ago, cloudsail said:

We had breakfast at the buffet again. We got to deck 3 at 9:25, and there was a really big line for the tender. Then once we got on the boat we waited for what felt like forever. It seemed like they were just waiting there for more people to show up so they could fill the tender to capacity. This seemed very inefficient since there was another empty tender just waiting beside us. We didn't end up casting off until 10 am.

 This is one of the main reasons we will avoid cruises with GSC in the future. When we went, people were waiting over an hour in the hot sun for the return tender. We got "lucky" and only had to wait about 45 minutes. 

 

I can see why people love the island, but overall the whole experience was a disappointment to us. 

 

I'm really enjoying your review!

[cloudsail]

The beach in front of the cabanas is small and private. I've read other people say that it is very rocky. There's definitely more rocks than the bigger beach, but we didn't feel like it detracted from the beach at. Most of the beach was still fine white sand, and the rocks in the water served to create a small shallow bay that was great for our children to play in.

 

Walking to the cabana

 

Cabana #17

 

Beach in front of small cabanas

 

Beach with our ship in the distance

 

Rocks in the bay

[cloudsail]

31 minutes ago, brookie848 said:

This is one of the main reasons we will avoid cruises with GSC in the future. When we went, people were waiting over an hour in the hot sun for the return tender. We got "lucky" and only had to wait about 45 minutes. 

 

I can see why people love the island, but overall the whole experience was a disappointment to us. 

 

I'm really enjoying your review!

Thanks!

 

I agree. Considering the fact that our small ship wasn't nearly full, and we were the only ship at the island, I really don't want to see what the tendering process would be like with a bigger full ship or two ships.

 

Coming back to the ship we were also lucky because we just caught a tender that was about to leave and we were the last ones on board. It was almost entirely full, so I don't know how long it had been waiting there to fill up.

Edited November 15, 2019 by cloudsail

[cloudsail]

Before I forget, here is the food truck menu and pictures of all the items.

 

Menu

 

Caribbean Ceviche. There was only shrimp, but it was very good.

 

Pulled pork sandwich

 

Fish sandwich

 

Jerk chicken sandwich. I forgot to get a picture before my son started eating it.

 

Rum cake and fudge bars

[floot]

Thank you so much for sharing all of these great pictures.  I love your review.  (Love that your children are getting schoolwork done, too -- fellow homeschool here, as well. 😀)

[cloudsail]

Went on a road trip over the weekend, back now. Continuing with GSC....

 

The best part about the beach near the cabanas was the snorkelling. All you have to do is walk past the rocks and you immediately see schools of fish, big ones and little ones. Someone even said they saw a ray, though it was gone before we got out there. This was way better than the other side where we swam way out and just saw one or two fish far away. We only brought the waterproof cell phone covers so I didn't get very good underwater shots (planning to get a gopro next year), but I was super happy to get in some good snorkelling that made bringing our own masks worthwhile.

 

Our kids really loved playing with the yellow floaties that came with the cabana. We let them climb on the rocks a little bit when we were in the water with them, but otherwise we told them to stay off the rocks and they didn't have trouble obeying this. There was more than enough beach and shallow water area to occupy them.

 

It was a somewhat windy day and there was light rain on and off. Some guy injured himself when he took a floatie beyond the rocks and near the rocky part of shore, and the waves dashed him against the rocks. Needless to say, be aware of the hazards around the water. When I was snorkeling I also looked up periodically to check my position relative to the rocks, as it's easy to get lost in the underwater world and get pushed around by the waves.

 

 

 

[cloudsail]

We took the tender at 4 pm back to the boat. By that time staff was cleaning up and most people seemed to be heading back.

 

In our stateroom the disembark instructions were waiting for us.

 

Reception for the villas.

 

Tender

 

 

 

 

[cloudsail]

We showered and went to the buffet to feed the kids.

 

It was Mexican night at the buffet.

 

 

 

Chicken fajitas

 

[cloudsail]

At 6 pm we headed to the Bliss lounge for balloon animals, a family activity run by the wonderful kids club staff. We learned to make a sword, a dog, and a hat. It was a lot of fun and the kids each left with an armful of balloons.

 

 

 

[Firepath]

Thank you for your report - it makes me want to go to the Bahama!. It's funny to me that your MDR menus are exactly what we had on POA in Hawaii two weeks prior. Makes me wonder if they have a standard menu fleet wide at a particular time.

[softl]

4 hours ago, Firepath said:

Thank you for your report - it makes me want to go to the Bahama!. It's funny to me that your MDR menus are exactly what we had on POA in Hawaii two weeks prior. Makes me wonder if they have a standard menu fleet wide at a particular time.

And think about the logistics involved in that! The pallets of food being loaded onto the ships must be coordinated and stored in such a way as they are being consumed.

 

Me being a "how they do it" guy, I'd like to hear from someone that has firsthand knowledge of these things. Could make some interesting reading.

[cloudsail]

Last night on the ship! After the balloon animals we came back to our cabin for a bit and the kids did their homework. Then we dropped them off at Splash Academy for the pajama party and pillow fight. We headed to the Palace MDR for dinner.

 

Homework

 

Splash Academy hallway

 

We found that while the portholes seemed like a good idea, most of the time it was actually very hard to see our children. The high shelves block the view of about half of the room.

 

Appetizers

 

Featured entrees

[cloudsail]

Thai spring rolls

 

French onion soup, surprisingly good

 

Smoked salmon tartare

 

New York steak

 

Pad Thai, the noodles were a little hard, flavor was fine

 

Dessert menu

 

White chocolate amaretto cake, not good at all

 

Mint chocolate mousse, delicious

 

Warm apple strudel, really good

[cloudsail]

On 11/20/2019 at 3:13 PM, Firepath said:

Thank you for your report - it makes me want to go to the Bahama!. It's funny to me that your MDR menus are exactly what we had on POA in Hawaii two weeks prior. Makes me wonder if they have a standard menu fleet wide at a particular time.

I noticed this too from other people's trip reports and thought it was funny. But I guess it's way easier to have a set menu across the fleet and source the same ingredients than to try to change things up for different itineraries.

[cloudsail]

Our kids had wanted pizza at dinner but there wasn't any in the buffet, so we got some from the kids menu in the MDR to go. It came really quickly, much faster than when you are eating it in the restaurant.

 

I managed to get a couple pictures of our rooms after turndown.

 

Pizza to go

 

Turndown

 

Turndown

 

Pajama party

[cloudsail]

We picked up the kids then let them watch Pokemon in their room while we packed. I realized I still has unused OBC left, so got a cute charm bracelet from the gift shop. I'm still wearing it right now, as it reminds me of everything we loved about the cruise. Before bed, husband went for a last round of wings from the Local.

 

All packed up

 

Love to cruise charms!

 

Last chicken wings

[Smile4Cruise]

I quite enjoyed your review. Thank you for sharing your trip and providing so much great information.  It looks like you had a wonderful time....you have a lovely family!

[Piper77]

Great review!  I'm headed for the Sky tomorrow for the same itinerary.  What was the dress code for the main dining room?  I've heard it's completely casual (ie smart jeans and nice tops are fine).  I have not cruised NCL before and usually do European cruises where it is more formal.  Haven't done a laid back Caribbean cruise in many years.  

[GA Dave]

On 11/23/2019 at 2:31 AM, cloudsail said:

I noticed this too from other people's trip reports and thought it was funny. But I guess it's way easier to have a set menu across the fleet and source the same ingredients than to try to change things up for different itineraries.

Your review and pictures has been outstanding.  Thanks so much for taking the time to share with everyone.

 

Based on what I have read in several other reviews, it seems that NCL has 14 different MDR menus for the Head Chef of each ship to choose from.  I would assume that these get repetitive for those that cruise very often, but casual cruisers probably would never notice.