Mycykfamilytime

“ I wanna wake up in a city that never sleeps!”

Unfortunately not walkable from the Portland cruise port, but European bakery in Falmouth, ME is seriously amazing. If you’re ever in the area for a land vacation check it out. They were just lovely to work with as well.

Ooh I never would have thought about that but it actually makes perfect sense. Thank you! Arrive in a little over an hour so that will be our first stop!!!

We’re on the bus from Portland, Maine to NYC! Concord gives you a snack box and bottles of water as you board and they have a Keurig in the back. I brought melatonin and plan on snoozing away after yesterdays excitement! See you in NYC!

Portland waking up. Heading to the bus.

Oh wonderful! Good luck traveling today!

First birthday celebration is finished. Mission accomplished! We take the Concord bus line to NYC early tomorrow morning!

A little administrative detail, I’m not as much of an expert as a lot of you so please feel free to chime in to the review as much as you want! I would love correction if I’ve said the wrong thing, or spelled something wrong. 😉 As long as they aren’t divisive or cause drama I’m here for the tangents as well!

Home sweet home.

The birthday girl!!!

Maine showing off. There’s the Portland Headlight. My hometown! We’ve landed!

@Host Caroline hello! Any chance you can change my title to the correct spelling? Also I’m not sure if I should add live to the title as well. I can’t seem to edit it. Thanks!

All checked in and having a snack at the club. A nice perk of having a husband that travels all the time. Also super impressed with Breeze airlines they were really patient helping us fix a TSA pre-check snafoo.

Ooh good idea!!

Ceremonial double check of the passport. It’s a requirement in our house even if you’re 100 percent sure it’s in there!

Rolling in my Mini Van to drop off the guy I’ll miss most. He is my delight and near constant source of joy! Look, a pic you can see his eyes!

Victory!!! I zipped my suitcase!!! Kid free blow dried hair here I come! Huzzah!

A little bit of my cruise history for context. My very first cruise was my honeymoon, a 5 day Carnival cruise. I was delighted by it. We got married very young and neither of us has ever done anything like it. I loved waking up in a new place. We had an ocean view which felt luxurious. My extended family later went on another carnival cruise and as my parents were generously paying, we had an interior. I really missed waking up first thing and seeing where we were, so going forward we got at least ocean views. But.. beggars can’t be choosers! I did a 10 night port intensive Israel/med cruise on Royal but missed the festive atmosphere of Carnival, that being said it was a totally different kind of cruise. Later m, once we had three kids, we tried MSC Seaside because they had a nursery that would take my youngest child for a few hours. My biggest takeaway was that ship was stunning and the coffee divine, but things were just difficult. This was pretty early on in the MSC move to the US but customer service was just wonky. We had a couple of issues and this lovely South African gentlemen who spoke 6 languages (and can I just say… how fortunate we are in the US. Can you imagine what someone could do here with 6 languages!!?) basically looked at me and told me that even though I was completely correct and MSC was wrong there was literally nothing he could do about it. He apologized. I think it was about WiFi It wasn’t make or break but it just felt silly. That being said, I heard about the Yacht Club on this cruise and was curious. Next, we took our kids on a Carnival cruise and they were delighted by it. We called it the Doctor Seuss cruise. My son’s only wish for the cruise was that he have orange cake 🤷‍♀️ and the first thing we saw when we entered the buffet was a bright orange glazed cake. We felt like it was God’s little blessing after a rough start as the cruise was delayed 1.5 days because of a storm. My kids LOVED the kids club. Next a Disney cruise in late Feb 2020 (I think we were the second to last cruise to leave) … it was SUCH a splurge and yes really cool but it had almost too many options, I felt like I had fomo the whole time no matter what I chose to do. Also, they lumped all the kids into the same kids club and my three year old son hid behind a rock after storm troopers came into the club and stayed there the whole time! He was terrified. I think Disney would be great for older kids as the teens have their own hot tub in their club which I thought was genius. I much preferred Carnival for little kids and so did my kids and Disney was literally a full three times the price as Carnival so we put a pause on that. Maybe once my kids are older, but I think once they move beyond kids clubs we might try some more independent travel. The demographic was definitely upper middle class complete families or multigenerational families, but we find lovely people and annoying people on all our cruises. We took our whole family on an Oasis Royal cruise and had a good time but it was small capacity for Covid and it still felt way too crowded. I felt the whole time the demographic, which looked and acted exactly like Carnival’s, just talked about how much better Royal was than Carnival. Like, why are we even talking about this? So weird. I thought it seemed exactly the same except the better than thou attitude. You honestly didn’t hear that on Disney. I didn’t like that the ship wasn’t as Ocean facing and I didn’t like that the adults only area is in a green house and not outside. That’s just me. I know people are very loyal to Royal but it wasn’t my favorite. Finally, our last cruise was for my husband and I’s 15th anniversary. I had researched and wanted to splurge and found an awesome awesome deal on Crystal cruise line. Well folks, it was too good to be true because as soon as we payed our full payment they went bankrupt! This was still during the later COVID era. I had just bought our plane tickets but was able to cancel within 24 hours and thankfully our credit card honored our charge and we got our money back. That being said, we had already lined up childcare so we had to find something else for the same dates and booked an MSC Yacht club and it was amazing. The whole time I kept saying how much my Mom would love it and so here we are! I’m so excited for her to be spoiled. Long story short, I think we like Carnival for family cruising and MSC Yacht club for adults only splurges. We have a family Carnival Vista cruise in October and I will revisit then! Sorry for the novel! Thanks for following along if there are any of you left! 😂

I bought this last night from the tailgate as fundraiser for breast cancer but honestly in the light of day, I’m thinking it might have been a scam. Still think it’s funny for the cruise so I’ll probably wear it for bit. 😂

Ahh Wildra, you are honestly a delight. I feel so honored to be in your nightly prayers! I’m going to channel that unicorn essence for this cruise. I think maybe you automatically get unicorn essence when you leave your children behind… I wonder what you get when you leave them behind with your husband. 🥰

Ahh no thank you! I’m a part time sub and I also chuckle at your teaching stories! I don’t know how you do it every day!!!

Ahh thank you! I even forwarded your European travels to my friend who just moved to Germany so she could get travel advice from you!

Pittsburgh has something called MaC Discount where you can bid online for what are essentially Amazon returns. I have been stalking these fancy Shark hairdryers and I finally won one for half price. Honestly, still crazy expensive, but I am absurdly excited about it. Now mind you, I barely wash my hair… I’m a Mom of three kids…but I’m kid free this weekend so I’m packing this baby. I even bought it a special travel case and realized it literally takes 1/4 of my suit case. I don’t even care it’s happening!

Trying to check in. Glitchy as usual. Oh MSC IT 🙄