Denversail

Let me lay it out for you all. 4/4 Depart - we will be arriving at the Denver airport at 4 am for our 6 am flight. We will park at the airport for convenience since we will only be gone thru the 8th. Arrival - noon in Orlando. We decided to rent a car for the duration of the trip. This is in the theme of convenience. We will pick up our rental at the airport from enterprise. I know that we will be starving at this point. Our plan is to stop at rocksandbrews.com for lunch.

Mr. IT and I have been discussing how to proceed with our live. Mr. IT is super into photography. He loves taking pictures. We have decided that he will provide the photo content for the trip. Prepare to be photo dumped! We are getting really excited about our trip! We leave in 11 days.

Mr. IT has what we like to call a vacation setting. We have both purchased the drink package. We will not be spending a huge amount of time in the casino. We don’t have any sea days this trip. I would guess Mr. IT will spend maybe two hours gambling this trip. I’m sure I’ll spend a few more than that. We have enjoyed some comedy shows in the past, trivia’s, and a few dance clubs. We have also enjoyed some of the performers in the pub on past cruises. We don’t ever seem to make it to any shows. This trip will be very beach heavy. I’ll be posting details soon.

The Pups are both doing well. Wolf’s dog is back on her normal kibble feeding plan. She has put a few pounds back on. Thank you for asking. I keep reminding Dupable that she is not coming on this trip. I’ve gone over our plans in more detail with her than Mr. IT. She was just here actually telling me word for word the update I should post about her on this live. She was so ecstatic that you asked about her. She thinks she is a star with fans now. She of course also requested I talk more about ducks. Always the damn ducks. She is trying to convince me to take her ducks and hide them on the ship. I think she has joined a bunch of duck groups on FB. 🐥🐣🦆🐤

We abruptly booked all the travel plans. Checking in on the same day I booked the cruise was a first for me. Mr. IT went into a short frenzy trying to locate his travel documents. I’m happy to report he located them and will still be traveling with us. 🥳🥳 We are obviously booking everything very last minute. As with all things our flights were outrageous. Just to fly the Walmart of the sky’s (Southwest) was $1460 for the times we needed. We decided that the $260 extra per person and the 3 hour later home arrival at the end of our trip was worth first class. I know it is just a 3 1/2 hour flight but you’ll notice we are steering towards comfort and convenience this trip. It is a pattern.

Dupable has recently taken to noting my neighbors addresses so she can do further research when she gets home. She has also started joining my cruise trip FB pages. She now updates me on peoples updates. She was very excited to let me know that folks on my Greek Isles cruise are talking about ducks.

Our cruise is out of Orlando for 3 nights stopping @ Nassau and Coco Cay. We will have no sea days this trip. Mr. IT hasn’t been on a vacation since our Hawaii trip in 2022. We did a weekend of Glamping last summer but I’m not sure that I would really count that as a vacation. He has been stuck at home with the dogs lately while I travel the world. At least that is how he describes it. 😂

I’ve started the other live. It won’t let me link. I’m not sure why. 🤷‍♀️

LIVE 🚢🎉🥳🍾⛵️Allure of the Seas - April 5, 2024

This trip was a super last minute decision. Mr. IT and I decided 15 nights from the cruise that we would book it. I called 14 days out and was luckily still able to get an ocean balcony. He said they only had two more available. My free casino offer was for a junior suite but those were sold out. 😞 Just to explain some of the alias’s… I posted a news alert on my last live which was this Feb. I used these aliases in that review. Dupable (my mother) called me first thing the morning after my announcement that I’d be doing another live. She was so excited. It was like she will be on the trip with me. We will discuss more of her stalking tendencies later. Let’s just say she is following us all very closely. 😳

Thank you for the recommendation! While I love seafood my traveling companion does not. I would like to find a place with a more steak seafood balanced menu.

Thank you! We are considering Gregory’s for dinner.

We will be landing at noon in Orlando on a Thursday. We will be picking up a rental car at the airport. We are driving to Cocoa Beach but I know we will be starving. Any suggestions on where to stop for lunch on the way? Preferably within a 10 mile radius of the airport. We will make dinner reservations in Cocoa Beach so don’t want to eat lunch late.

Love Margaritaville in Hollywood. We have stayed there multiple times.

We did Chukka in Jamaica in Feb and I loved it. I never felt unsafe. We booked it through Royal. I wouldn’t go walking around Jamaica alone but no reason not to book an excursion.

So (haha) Mr. IT and I decided to book a cruise last night. This morning we booked Allure of the Seas out of Orlando in two weeks! I asked Mr. IT if we was down for a little fun and he is in agreement. Be sure to look for a live post starting shortly. I will link here. You won’t be waiting long. Not 12 hours after booking and Mr. IT doesn’t know where any of his travel documentation is. He is currently tearing our home apart looking.

Thank you! My searches didn't bring anything back. I'll check this out. Appreciate it.

This creep was even hiding under people's beds to record them after they get out of the shower. Anyone have this room steward between Dec23 and Feb24? Creeps are everywhere.

Royal Caribbean cruise employee arrested after hidden camera found in guest bathroom on Symphony of the Seas (nbcnews.com)

At this point I’m actually feeling confident. I decide to call Dupable and let know her know I think we are going to make the flight. The lady in line in front of me hears my conversation. Her eyes went wide and she shook her head like no way you are making it. We got through security at about noon. Our plane has been boarding for about 20 minutes at this point. I was starving and knew I wouldn’t be able to get food once on the plane. We stopped at a self checkout place so I could get a sandwich and Wolf could grab a snack. We walked up to the gate just as they started boarding our group. I even had time to run to the restroom. Wolf declared my planning terrible and swore he was never traveling with me again. This is a statement usually saved for just Dupable and is the first time I’ve been honored. We made our flight and it took off on time. Things got worse for Wolf though. Remember we had the bag tag issue. That tag was the one that went on Wolf’s bag. We get to baggage claim and my bags immediately come out. Wolf’s bag never makes an appearance. I finally get my phone out and open the app to find out where his bag is. Turns out the bag didn’t want to travel with me either. It was on a different flight. This is all happening while Dupable is calling my phone every 30 seconds. We got the delivery set up and finally got out of there. We are now home and the trip is officially over. Wolf is already back at work this morning. I’m spending my day with the dogs. Wolf had similar feedback regarding the second ship. He declared the food was horrible on Harmony. I honestly didn’t notice a difference. I doubt that him being sick the second half of that cruise helped his taste buds. Wolf also complained about the volume of people in the ports. It was a bit much in my opinion. It was just wall to wall people. You couldn’t even walk without being bumped into. I thought the trivia events weren’t good on this ship. They had them in strange places like Boleros and the promenade. Boleros didn’t have the speaker system for it. The Promenade is just an uncomfortable location for this. We gave up going to them by day 3. The pool deck was just pure loungers. I think that was 99% of the seating was shoved together pool loungers. The rest of the seating was hard and uncomfortable. We also had trouble with our room ac on Harmony. I think it only worked one day. This was a real problem when we were in Costa Maya and Cozumel. I also didn’t think Harmony was as clean as Odyssey. Odyssey won the award this trip by a landslide! I did enjoy all the weather on this trip except Galveston.

Well I managed to do it again and this time Dupable was no where in sight. I guess I’ve never really taken a shuttle. We have done them from airport parking lots but that is about it. I had booked a 9 am shuttle from the cruise port. I assumed at the worst we would be at the airport by 10:30. I didn’t expect them to show up at 9 am and make us walk to the other side of a mobbed cruiseport to get on a 55 passenger bus. I also didn’t realize that we would be stopping at Hobby. I only realized this when they were pulling into Hobby at 10:30. It was at this point that I made the call to Dupable that I didn’t expect us to make our flight. We ended up getting off the bus at Bush @ 11:20. This was 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to start boarding and our flight was on time. We did get lucky that they dropped us right in terminal c which is where united is. We ran inside with our bags. Wolf grabbed the two big ones probably about 45 lbs each and ran up two flights of stairs. Did I mention that boy can move? We got to the area to print our tags and luckily they had available kiosk. We hit a snag here when one of our luggage tags came out blank. We then had to wait for assistance in printing the last tag. While we were working on that a party of ten ended up in front of us. Again lucky, another agent opened a window. We were able to quickly hand over our bags and head to security. It is now 11:35 when we get in the security line. I would say it was about 150 people deep. I get a text at 11:40 that boarding has begun.

We are back in Galveston. I’m having my final breakfast on the ship. Obviously the last few days have been uneventful. Wolf has been sick the last few days. He has only left his room for feedings. I’ve rotated between reading my book, laying in the solarium, and the casino. They started letting self assist off about 7:35. The dining room is packed this morning. Not looking forward to fighting the crowds trying to find our shuttle. Then the long ride to the airport. Our flight is a little early at 12:30 so fingers crossed. I don’t have much to add that I haven’t already mentioned. I obviously enjoyed Odyssey more than Harmony. I liked the crew more, the food, and the ship.

Mr. High maintenance paid me another visit this evening. It didn’t go well. I tried to take the high road but some people think things should be how they want them to be. Well I’m not a crew member and I can do as I wish. I just pulled my money back when he sat down. No problem I’ll just let him do his thing. I’m in no hurry. He didn’t like that. He declared he didn’t want to play the table if I wasn’t playing with him. I’m not one to mince words. I informed him I wouldn’t ever be playing with him. I felt bad for the dealer. I realize they’d prefer everyone get along. He then proceeded to tell me I needed to let him know why. Well I don’t need to explain myself to anybody. I’m on vacation. He unfortunately didn’t stop there. He tried to ask me after that about strategy. Well I wasn’t having it. If you can’t be nice to the crew I ain’t gonna be nice to you. I informed him I have zero interest in speaking to him. He didn’t like that. He gambled most of his remaining funds then stormed off saying he’d keep playing if I wasn’t sitting there. Again, I wasn’t playing at the table while he was there. I simply sat and let him do his thing.

Sometime prior to boarding Odyssey Wolf broke his sunglasses. Last week I saw some that he would like and suggested he go buy them. He couldn’t be bothered at that time. He now wants to exit his blacked out room so guess who gets sent into port to secure him some glasses? I step off the ship into some mist and someone comments it’s raining. I take two more steps and get dumped on. That wasn’t no rain. It was filthy water from them cleaning the balconies above. Lovely.