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Semi-live... maybe fully live from Harmony... A tale of two cruises.

Tree_skier

By Tree_skier,
in Royal Caribbean International

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Tree_skier "Live from...." Rare

Tree_skier

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I'm a huge Dickens fan from Pickwick Papers through Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol and Little Dorrit to A Tale of Two Cities and and everything in between.  I've titled this live thread "A tale of two cruises" in honor of my favorite classic author.  This will be the story of two cruises. This is our first B2B and we are now embarking on our second half of our journey.  I'm truly hoping that this cruise will be very different than our first week aboard Harmony of the Seas.  

 

As a way of introduction to those who are unfamiliar with us, we are a couple near 60, Diamond status and cruise almost exclusively with Royal Caribbean.  I say that not as some kind of weird flex but just so you know the perspective we bring to story.  We usually cruise alone but on the first half of the B2B things are a little different as we are cruising with DD, her husband, and their three kids. This week it is just DW and I.  I had no interest in a live when I had the family on board since I was sure my time was going to well and truly consumed.  I was right...  I'm exhausted and need at least two more weeks to recover.  Sadly, I've only got one.  I'll try to bring you all up to speed as quick as possible.  

 

Our journey began at the house with me confirming everyone had their appropriate documents and then onwards to a flight from Fresno to Denver and then Denver onwards to Houston Hobby.  Absolutely nothing exciting happened. Flights were on time, I scored an exit row seat and aside for some turbulence in and out of Denver life was good.  In Houston we were picked up by Highrollers by Shugg.  I highly recommend them.  They were very accommodating with my many changes in the run up as American Airlines made two different inconvenient time changes before I canceled with them and booked with Southwest.

 

They dropped us off at the Home2 suites in Galveston.  It was very clean and a convenient location on the seawall.  We went to Rain Forest Cafe for a late dinner.  RF Cafe was not my choice but the kids wanted and what they want Papa provides 😀  While eating dinner my daughter goes into her purse and suddenly realizes a horrible mistake has been made.  She has forgotten her boarding document. She is Canadian living as a permanent resident in the US.  She travels without a passport.  Her permanent resident card (green card) works just like a passport for land and sea based travel in and out of the US.  As she has only cruised 3 times, once every four years, she never felt the need to get a passport.  I say all this since it is an important detail later in the week.  

 

Panic grips us. Our daughter is sick to her stomach.  She is the organized one.  She had everyone's document but her own. Text's to our brilliant TA who many of you know yielded an almost instant response in spite of it being almost midnight.  He gave some ideas about what we might be able to do.  Sadly it was just too late to get to a notary get notarized copy sent or a Fedex location that would get the original document to us in time. Heartbreak abounded.  I had been planning this trip for almost two years... pretty much from when itineraries were released.  

 

One last ditch idea... Maybe Cam, granddaughter #1's fiancé, could hop on a plane first thing in the morning and fly it out.  Would he do it? Was it even possible at this late hour to work it out?  Cam agreed to do it.  A quick look on the Southwest app showed a direct flight from Oakland to Houston Hobby at 520 am. Booked!  At 1:30 am, this wonderful future family member drove 2 1/2 hours to Oakland, got on a plane flew all the way to Houston. DD and GD#1 Uber'd back up to Houston, met him at the airport where he handed off the precious document. They hugged and kissed for 5 minutes and DD and GD1 got back in an Uber and Cam hopped on the next flight back to Oakland  so that he could make the  2 1/2 hour drive back to his town so he could be at work Monday morning.  DD and GD1 made it back to Galveston and boarded the ship at about 12:30.  Disaster averted.  My Daughter's future son in law earned some significant credit with his future mother-in-law.  Stress finally started melt away just a little.  

 

Solarium lunch was triumphant when DD and GD1 joined an hour and half after we had board the ship.  Our family cruise was spared and everyone was expecting to have the time of our life.  

 

More to follow...

 

 

 

 

 

 

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firefly333

firefly333

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Ha. Hi tree skier. And hats off to your fabulous TA who was also up until midnight trying to come up with ideas how to fed ex, expedite it, whatever and was there to lend support. Booking with a big box TA you wouldnt be able to call them late saturday night and get a response.

 

What weather last week. It was a interesting week and glad I got to see you at least once to say hello.

 

The 3 of us went by way of Buckeyes to Hobby. Cuteness everywhere you turned. Ha we ran into that cant sell beer before 10 am, it was 945 am and we were ready to go when someone wanted some beer that starts with the letter I cant be bought on the west coast. 

 

I'm looking forward to your live or semi live review. 

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c-leg5

c-leg5

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2 hours ago, Tree_skier said:

She travels without a passport.  Her permanent resident card (green card) works just like a passport for land and sea based travel in and out of the US.


Do you mean she forgot her passport, alien card, or both? It would never occur to me to only travel with one or the other. They serve different purposes.
 

For the future, whilst Royal are only interested in alien card for closed loop Caribbean cruises they definitely want a passport for Colombia and a couple of other Caribbean islands, or if she had to fly home.

 

Glad she was able to retrieve what was necessary a stressful start for sure.

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Tree_skier "Live from...." Rare

Tree_skier

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Ok so first we'll update today then we'll do the previous weeks retrospective.  For turn around day we didn't have to leave the ship.  Once they got a zero count. The CBP guy walked around the room checking all of our passports and we were free to go.  I took a while to get to zero since there were a few that decided they wanted to stay on as long as possible. Eventually they were found and we loosed for our waiting.  I decided that I was running low on my usual cruise meds/vitamins/supplements so I hopped an Uber to the Galveston Walmart while DW found a deck chair and enjoyed the empty ship.  I didn't know you could do multi stops with Uber.  What a great convenience.  I hopped out and went into the store, got my stuff and hopped back into the same uber and went back to the ship in plenty of time for the B2B lunch.

 

We both had the chicken. I don't know why I didn't order the short ribs.  That was what I was planning on ordering but somehow I had a brain malfunction and order the chicken.  Anyways, it was good.

 

IMG_1550.thumb.jpeg.499c40c2947e0b6ae9c85610eb16c37e.jpeg

 

All the meals in the MDR have been good so far.  We ate 6 of 7 in the MDR last cruise and service was fabulous, the pace of the meals was always fine and the food was good.  It was served hot and exactly as order no matter what we order.

 

Mostly just hung around the solarium this afternoon while DW got a massage.  After that we unpacked and relaxed in the room.

 

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting up with @firefly333 Jane, @FromSea2ShiningSea Helen and @bmblob Marty before dinner in the Solarium.  It was great to catch up.  We love these folks.

 

Tonight for dinner it was MDR I had the Strip steak and DW had the fish. Hers was excellent and mine was good.  I had the Boston cream pie for dessert.  It wasn't what I thought it would be but it was really really good.  It was more like a small cake.

 

Last week on embarkation night. We had the Izumi Hibachi.  All seven of us.  I can quite honestly say that this was the best meal I can remember on a cruise ship in a long time.  I got the tenderloin and the chicken combination and the Tenderloin was exceptional.  I don't know if they have changed suppliers or just got a lucky supply of upgraded beef but it was amazing.  We all talked about for several days.  

 

Later that night we roamed the Promenade and the boardwalk with the family.  DD was feeling a little unwell so her and our SIL turned in early but DW and I were up for a while with the kids.  We played ping pong until I was ready to collapse.  We listened to the band some in the promenade some, watch the tree lighting and just had a general good time with the kids.

 

Our tale takes a sad turn here...

 

About midnight my son in law knocks on our door and says he's taking DD down to the infirmary.  She is is excruciating pain.  They are there until 3:30 am.  I won't go into all the details but it was bad. They hooked her up to an IV gave her meds and eventually released her.  The next morning she seemed a little better but not really good at all.  Still lots of pain but it was at least manageable.  It was obviously a very slow day for all of us...

 

More to the story later... I'm heading down to the promenade now...

 

 

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I was a little off my game last week.

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Tree_skier "Live from...." Rare

Tree_skier

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2 hours ago, firefly333 said:

Ha. Hi tree skier. And hats off to your fabulous TA who was also up until midnight trying to come up with ideas how to fed ex, expedite it, whatever and was there to lend support. Booking with a big box TA you wouldnt be able to call them late saturday night and get a response.

 

What weather last week. It was a interesting week and glad I got to see you at least once to say hello.

 

The 3 of us went by way of Buckeyes to Hobby. Cuteness everywhere you turned. Ha we ran into that cant sell beer before 10 am, it was 945 am and we were ready to go when someone wanted some beer that starts with the letter I cant be bought on the west coast. 

 

I'm looking forward to your live or semi live review. 

It was great seeing you last week.  I was disappointed I only saw you that one time.  I don't think we crossed paths again throughout the course of the entire week.  

 

We'll see each other again soon enough.  Take care.

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Tree_skier "Live from...." Rare

Tree_skier

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31 minutes ago, c-leg5 said:


Do you mean she forgot her passport, alien card, or both? It would never occur to me to only travel with one or the other. They serve different purposes.
 

For the future, whilst Royal are only interested in alien card for closed loop Caribbean cruises they definitely want a passport for Colombia and a couple of other Caribbean islands, or if she had to fly home.

 

Glad she was able to retrieve what was necessary a stressful start for sure.

She forgot the permanent resident card.  She doesn't have a passport. This is only her third cruise and she didn't bother getting one since she had been able to cruise without issue with just the permanent resident cared.  I know, I know that is not a good idea.  However, I told her and she intended to get it but just never got around to it.  I can tell you with great assuredness that she will be applying for her passport immediately upon getting home.  

 

There is more to this story...  

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Luckynana

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Holy mackerel, Dave!  What a stressful week you've had last week. What a wonderful young man your granddaughter is engaged to.  Heroic, I would say!  I do hope that your DD is okay.  How frightening for you all. 

Here's to a wonderful and relaxing cruise with your DW this week!🛳️

 

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firefly333

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1 hour ago, Ozark_Kid said:

Oh wow, what a crazy 1st week!  I hope you are able to relax and enjoy the 2nd week.  I will be following!

And he hasnt even mentioned the weather. Last week was definitely cooler and rainy and windy. For me np but I wanted all these Californians to have such a great week weather wise, but noooo. Only cozumel cleared up. Various announcements. Night 7 sitting in the Mdr cory the cd comes on saying sorry folks columbus the musical is cancelled tonight, which was my favorite, lucky I'd seen it previous weeks. Too much scenery to be moved about and the ship is still rocking too much. The night before we drove straight through a storm which was kinda fun but I'm guessing Columbus also got cancelled and it's only shown the last 2 nights. And missed some dive shows. The storm we went through night 6 the winds were above the speed of our ship. 

 

And top tier party last week was a aerialist not any diving which idk if it was because of the weather or just changed. During top tier we had a emergency stop in cozumel to drop off a medical emergency so in the background behind the screens you could see us docking in cozumel and then leaving. First week with the new way of inviting just a generic little thing up on the corner of a sheet, so not particularly well attended, due to people not knowing they were invited. It just was a unusual week.

 

If you missed columbus last week I hope you get to see it this week. It's really cute.

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firefly333

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20 minutes ago, Steeler Nation At Sea said:

 

Sounds like the weather wasn't really his point of focus what with his sick daughter. 😕 

Didnt say it was his focus, more it was hard to miss. His tale of two cruises, I'm hoping he has better weather this week, though probably can only be better not worse. 

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