JamieLogical's Live from the MSC Meraviglia 4/9 (semi-B2B)

[Woody14]

53 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

The picture of the eggs benny with scrambled issue is amazing!!!  glad it worked out in the end.

PS love the drink summary at the end of your daily posts on all your blogs.   

 

[Ottawa_Cruiser]

Great review so far! Love the French 77 tip (I saw it on the menu and was willing to pay the upcharge), but subbing with sparkling wine will be just fine for me.

 

Also, a cruise ship with chips??! I always bring my own. 

[JamieLogical]

13 minutes ago, Two Wheels Only said:

 

😉 I'm going to let that slide since you're on vacation. 

 

Definitely cut me some slack. I am typing all this on my phone! 😋

[JamieLogical]

13 minutes ago, Woody14 said:

PS love the drink summary at the end of your daily posts on all your blogs.   

 

 

I figure if/when I start losing track, it's time to stop!

[catgirl411]

1 hour ago, Woody14 said:

The picture of the eggs benny with scrambled issue is amazing!!!  glad it worked out in the end.

PS love the drink summary at the end of your daily posts on all your blogs.   

 

Just curious, is the daily drink count for the two of you or just you?

[JamieLogical]

13 minutes ago, catgirl411 said:

Just curious, is the daily drink count for the two of you or just you?

 

The daily drinks are only mine. I don't keep track of my husband's. He's on his own for that!

[JGmf]

 

 

Amazing how a simple bowl of potato chips, gratis on a cruise, are WAY more magical than from your own cupboard at home.  I love when these little snacks appear!

 

 

 

[cruisebeachgirl703]

Great pic of you and the captain. Can you please post a picture of the champagne bar menu/price list. Thanks.

[JamieLogical]

11 minutes ago, cruisebeachgirl703 said:

Great pic of you and the captain. Can you please post a picture of the champagne bar menu/price list. Thanks.

 

It was in my post about the first visit I made there, but here you go:

 

[emmas gran]

Jamie, I remember when you tried Celebrity last year. Love your reviews and thanks for taking the time to answer questions 

[JamieLogical]

Yesterday's attempt at room service breakfast was slightly more successful. This time my husband decided to write in some note with our selections. He wrote in "with cream" for the coffee and "toasted" for the white bread. We did get creamer for the coffee, but the bread remained untoasted. This time we got peach jam when requesting blackberry.

 

We really took our time and had a lazy morning getting ready, because we decided to do buffet breakfast instead of the MDR. I think it was nearly 10:00am by the time we made it upstairs. This time, all the tables in the outdoor aft area were taken, so we sat just inside of there with a nice view of Jamaica.

 

I was very busy over breakfast trying to field a bunch of job lead stuff. Two recruiters had contacted me over LinkedIn. Initially, i thought for the same position, but they were actually two separate jobs. So I was trying to get them copies of my resume and email them details about my experience and availability for calls through next week. Doing all that on my phone was a challenge.

 

The breakfast itself was quite good. I had every type of cheese I could find, some salami, and then I got a fried egg that's yolk was still good and runny and put some corned beef hash and sausage gravy on top of it. It was a delicious combination.

 

After breakfast and tending to the job search stuff, we headed down to Edge for some morning juice. I learned that 3 mimosa blossoms is my limit for between breakfast and lunch. I had 4 and it was too many.

 

My husband had a nice chat with one of the servers about his Steam Deck. The crew have all been very friendly and outgoing so far.

 

Waves wasn't open for lunch. I guess because it was a port day? So the buffet was our only option. We headed back up there and had a delicious lunch of all the cheese, a slice of pizza, some pasta with some kind of calamari cream sauce with some beef stir fry AND some beef stew on top of it. Another excellent combo, despite my initial disappointment that there was no mac & cheese on the kids buffet. Oh fun fact. This time there was a sign saying the kids buffet was reserved for the Kids Club. I thought that was funny, because the day before, I literally ONLY saw adults getting food from it.

 

After lunch, I needed a nap desperately. The 4 mimosa blossoms had put me into a coma. So I went straight back to the room and to sleep. I had a very hard time dragging myself back out of bed in time for our 4:00 bowling reservation.

 

They had told us to be there 15 minutes early, but when we got there, they were still closed. We found some seating to hang out in and talked about how the Sports Bar in the SportsPlex is permanently closed. We had heard some people talk about that on ship tour videos, so we knew it to be the case, but it was still a little sad. It looked like a really nice bar.

 

Bowling was a lot of fun. If you wear your own closed toe shoes as instructed, you don't have to borrow bowling shoes. It's a real, full-sized bowling alley with electronic scoring. There are several different weights and sizes of balls to choose from. It costs $30 for 30 minutes.

 

I should have taken them up on their offer to put the bumpers up, because it turns out I am TERRIBLE at bowling. I did get a bit better at is as I went along and I managed to beat my husband in the first round. But he started off with a strike followed by a spare in the first two frames of the second round. He got a couple more strikes in spares in there as well, but lucky for me, we ran out of time with a couple of frames to go, so my win from the first round stands!

 

After bowling, we headed back to the room for some hot tubbing. It was pouring down rain, but we were going to get wet anyway. Plus, the hot tub is pretty well sheltered. The real challenge was finding a place for our towels and robes that wouldn't get wet. Ultimately, it was that challenge that forced us inside, because it got to the point it was raining so hard that even being all the way up agaist the wall of the stateroom, water was splashing onto the towels.

 

We came back inside and got ready for our 6:00 reservation at Butchers Cut. We checked out the menu ahead of time and saw there were no cocktails under $14, so we decided to stop by the champagne bar for some French 77s to take with us. That way we could both order just one drink with dinner and not spend to much on $5 upcharges.

 

The drinks we order there were both quite good. I had the My Darling and my husband had the Bee's Knees. Our waited seemed quite harried. I think that, if there are still staffing shortages anywhere on the ship, it may be in the specialty restaurants. He did tell us there are only about 3800 passengers onboard, so maybe our great service has been a result of that. Will be interesting to see if the service remains as good on my next sailing if we're at higher capacity.

 

For my appetizer, I had the baked goat cheese tart and it is as DELICIOUS. I decided to go ahead and eat the whole thing, even though I knew that meant I wouldn't be able to eat much of the rest of my dinner. My husband ordered the deviled eggs and they were really good as well. For our mains, we both ordered the filet. Mine was good and I was really happy they brought all four sauces for you to try. I would have had a hard time choosing between the peppercorn and the mushroom. For dessert, I ordered the peanut butter cookie. It was ridiculously huge and I laughed when he brought it out out, because I knew I would only be able to eat two bites of it. My husband had the banana date thing, which he said reminded him of sticky toffee pudding.

 

After dinner we sat outside the Brass Anchor pub and had a couple more drinks and watched the "Jurassic" show on the giant LED ceiling. It was quite depressing, actually. Poor dinosaurs.

 

We then went inside and listened to the live music there, which was quite good, thought just a little too loud. My husband wanted to go over and turn the amp down 2-3 notches. Not sure why they have the music so loud inside and enclosed venue like that.

 

Trivia was due to start at 9:00 and we weren't interested in feeling dumb again, so we decided to wander. My husband wanted to find out if it was raining outside still, so we went up to deck 18 aft with the intent of going out to the Horizon bar, but instead we got drawn into the Sky Lounge where there was live lounge music that hadn't been listed in the daily. It was really really good and we plan to keep an eye out for more throughout the cruise.

 

Unfortunately, the amazing lounge singer was replaced with an amazing sax player. If you like saxophone, you would definitely like this guy. But if sax sounds like nails on a chalkboard to you, like it does to me, then you would quickly flee, like I did.

 

We did eventually make it out to the Horizon pool where it was no longer raining and we could actually see some stars.

 

We the. Headed down to late night snack. There were still some desserts out from dinner this time and my husband got his precious chocolate chip cookies to bring back to the room.

 

I headed to the casino very briefly and then up for bed. Unfortunately, we discovered we had no room service card to fill out. My husband called down and asked for one, but I was about to pass out while waiting for it to arrive. I had the brilliant idea to call room service and ask if we could just put in our order over the phone and we could. Good to know for future reference! I put on the do not disturb light, but still heard a knock on the door right as I finally got into bed. It was a stack of room service cards.

 

Day's Drinks: Mimosa Blossom x4, Iced Americano w/ Bailey's, French 77 X2, My Darling, Absolut Cosmo, Bailey's Alexander, Pink Lady, Hugo Spritz

[JamieLogical]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by JamieLogical

[KennyFla]

7 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

 

After dinner we sat outside the Brass Anchor pub and had a couple more drinks and watched the "Jurassic" show on the giant LED ceiling. It was quite depressing, actually. Poor dinosaurs.

 

[pirate4me2]

I am absolutly loving this review, thank you! That goat cheese from BC looks freaking amazing. 

[JamieLogical]

46 minutes ago, pirate4me2 said:

I am absolutly loving this review, thank you! That goat cheese from BC looks freaking amazing. 

 

It was soooo good. The blueberry compote blended perfectly and the puff pastry was so flakey and delicious.

 

I told my husband that for $14 a la carte, I would happily go back just for that.

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by JamieLogical

[JamieLogical]

You guys, it may be the three mimosa blossoms speaking, but I am really loving this cruise! It's a gorgeous sea day, I am hanging out at the Edge bar watching the the ocean pass by, and genuinely just loving life.

 

[ksmcdonald]

If you happen to eat at Ocean Cay Seafood restaurant, could you post the limited menu for the dining experience?  I can’t seem to find that anywhere. Loving your review, we will board that ship in 9 days!

[AtSeaWithChris]

22 minutes ago, ksmcdonald said:

If you happen to eat at Ocean Cay Seafood restaurant, could you post the limited menu for the dining experience?  I can’t seem to find that anywhere. Loving your review, we will board that ship in 9 days!

Here is the dining experience menu. 

[ksmcdonald]

8 minutes ago, AtSeaWithChris said:

Here is the dining experience menu. 

 

thank you so much!

[PTC DAWG]

Bowling and the bumpers.  LOL....enjoying the read.  

 

Keep up the good work Jamie.  

[AtSeaWithChris]

@JamieLogical sorry if I’ve missed it or forgotten it but have you tried any of the food from the pub? I’m looking forward to trying the wings and fish and chips. The scotch eggs are also intriguing. 

[CruiseScrooge]

On 4/11/2023 at 12:10 PM, JamieLogical said:

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by CruiseScrooge
wrong thread for post

[CruiseScrooge]

I must be unlucky. The bowling alleys have always been messed up with at least one lane pretty much in disrepair.

[cruisebeachgirl703]

10 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

 

It was in my post about the first visit I made there, but here you go:

 

Thanks Jamie. Glad you are enjoying the cruise. Always happy to follow along.

[GA Dave]

Hi Jamie! Sorry I have not bumped into you and your husband yet! I have been enjoying this longer cruise on my favorite ship and getting so spoiled “up front”. Here are a few photos of food for me so far.