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

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

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

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

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

The night before last, we had some SERIOUSLY rough seas. As I mentioned, the Rock Circus performances had to be cancelled. The rough seas lasted pretty much the whole night and there was a random loud banging that could be heard in our room that kept my husband up most of the night. I managed to get used to it and sleep through it. We woke up to the room service breakfast knock again. This time, no hot breakfast, but there were some unexpected issues with our continental breakfast. They did not bring us any cream for our coffee and my husband had ordered white bread with the expectation it would be toasted. He was wrong. It was literally just a slice of plain white bread. No butter. And he had ordered blackberry jam, but received orange marmalade. Luckily, he had also ordered a chocolate croissant, so he did not starve. But why would they even offer plain white bread with breakfast? I ran all the way up to the buffet to fetch us some cream. As you know, I had typed up my entire account of the previous day when the ship lost internet due to the thick clouds and pouring rain we were passing through. I lost the whole blog, which was a real bummer. I decided that I would retype it later, so after showering and dressing, we headed down to Waves for our first MDR breakfast. We were seated at a sharing table with six other people who had already gotten coffee, but hadn't ordered yet. I ordered the omelette, which came with hash browns and white toast. My husband ordered the eggs Benedict, but asked to substitute scrambled eggs for poached eggs. This is where things went off the rails. I received my omelette, which was perfectly fine, but there was no butter on the table for my dry white toast. Much worse, when they brought my husband his eggs Benedict, it was literally 4 dry halves of English muffins with scrambled eggs on top. No ham, no hollandaise, and of course, no butter for those English muffins. I honestly don't know if I have ever been in an MDR on any cruise that didn't just have butter sitting out on the tables at all times. It was so weird. The guy next to me had ordered the fast breakfast or whatever it was called and asked for his eggs over medium. He only got his eggs and nothing else. I will say, though, our poor waiter did correct the eggs Benedict issue in record time. He brought a plate of ham and a taurine of hollandaise for my husband. I ended up eating my toast with just jam on it. After breakfast, we headed to Edge for some mimosa blossoms. We both drank more of them than we should while playing cards. We decided to do the buffet for lunch after looking at the MDR lunch menu (LOVE that the menus are in the app!) and not really wanting to deal with another Waves visit just yet. I am pretty sure everyone on the entire ship was on the main pool deck as we passed through on our way to the buffet. The sun had come out and it was a sea day, so the pool was the place to be. Lunch in the buffet was great. Still don't know what people are talking about when they say there is not enough selection. I kept finding more I wanted to try as I walked around, but has run out of room on my plate. The star of the show for me this particular meal was my lamb curry over mac & cheese. It was delicious! Also, the chocolate chip cookies from the kids buffet were awesome. Unfortunately, when my husband tried to go back for more on our way out of the buffet, they were out of them. We enjoyed our meal in the outdoor aft area. More people had discovered it since embarkation day, but we still had no trouble getting a table there. After lunch, our grand plan was to pick up drinks on our way back to our room and then get in the hot tub with them. That is exactly what we did! As I said in my post above, the Bamboo bar was pretty popular when we stopped there, as the roof for the pool was retracted and the pool was packed. We still didn't have to wait more than a couple of minutes for my daiquiri and my husband's mudslide. We enjoyed the hot tub, but realized we couldn't really manage drinks with the jets on, because of all the foam they produce. So we finished our drinks and then turned on the jets. We have also honed in on the exact right temperature now for the water. 37.5 degrees Celsius. After the hot tub, we dried off in the loungers and bit and then headed inside for our nap. We both wanted a nap because of our poor sleep the night before. The seas were much calmer by this point. We napped pretty hard, but dragged ourselves out of bed and into our formal wear around 4:00. It was Gala Night and we both wanted to be fancy. We headed down to Edge for our afternoon coffee with Bailey's, with the intention of heading to the Champagne bar right at 5:00 when they opened. It didn't quite work out that way, because we finished our coffee and decided to order another round of drinks. I decided it was time to fulfill my promise and see what happens if you order a drink that costs more than what is covered by your package. The language in the current menu PDF says that Easy Plus gets a $10 "discount" on drinks over $10. So, basically, you pay the difference. I honestly didn't find anything over $10 on the menu that I was in the mood to try, so my husband took one for the team and ordered an Aviation G&T, while I ordered an Absolut Cosmo. We were charged $5, not the $5 we were expecting. Turns out that, while they are covering $10 drinks in the Easy Packing now, they are only giving a $9 discount on drinks over $10. Oh well. I have been more than happy with the drinks covered under the package so far. The Aviation G&T was initially NOT good, btw. Turns out the ratios were off. I ended up trading with my husband, since I was the one that made him order it in the first place. But once I added more tonic to it, it was decent. Probably won't order it again. After that round of drinks, we did make it over to the champagne bar. I was trying to describe a French 77 to the server when my husband realized they actually already have them on the menu, but for $16. Turns out it's so pricey because the version on the menu is made with champagne. I asked if they could make it with prosecco instead and that brought the price down to where it was covered under our drink package. We each drank on French 77 while hanging out there. It was still completely dead. Then we got one for the road to take with us to dinner. Remember, no bar service in the MDRs, just wine. Since it was Gala Night, the menu was pretty fancy. We both had the lobster bisque for our appetizer. My husband had the surf & turf and I had the mushroom pasta. I knew my husband would give me most of his "sea bug," as he calls lobster. The lobster and the pasta were good. My husband said his streak was overcooked and the sauce didn't have much flavor. We had the baked Alaska for dessert and it was good. After dinner we went to the Meraviglia Lounge for some live music. Oh! I forgot to mention that at the Edge bar before dinner, they were coming around with small bowels it potato chips for each table. They did the same thing at the Meraviglia Lounge after dinner, but also brought peanuts. The live music was very good. It was a group called Ocean Five and they played perfectly cruise-y music. Many guests were enjoying themselves and dancing. Also, we did a lot of people watching and I would say people were more dressed up than not for gala night. We saw some tuxes and gowns, a lot of dresses and slacks and sports coats. I did see some in shorts in the MDR, but not many. There was definitely a broad spectrum, but more towards the formal side overall. Once the band went on a break, we headed back to the champagne lounge for a few more French 77s. My husband needed to use the restroom so I sat down and ordered for us. The server who had been there the previous night served me this time and I told her my husband really was here and really did exist. I had promised her I would come back with him, but I think she thought I was just making him up at this point. He did eventually show up and prove his existence. We had two French 77's each and then we were going to head over to the Brass Anchor for trivia. We ran into an appearance by the captain and senior officers in a plaza. Definitely a case of right place at the right time, because we were practically standing right next to him and I got to take a photo with him as soon as his little speech was over. I told him we had been having a fantastic cruise so far. We went to the pub for trivia. None of the beers on tap or in bottles there are up to my high beer snob standards, but they do have a full bar as well, so I was able to get a Bailey's Alexander. We sat with a young couple and their older solo friend they had met onboard. We all did terribly at the trivia, but had fun anyway. After trivia, we went up for late night snack. My husband simply did not believe me that there are no desserts available at late night snack, so he has to see for himself. I had my pizza and baked in my rightness. Then it was off to the casino for a bit for me and off to the room for my husband. I didn't do too badly and called it a night. When I got back to the room, I realized the toenail polish had come completely off of one of my toenails and it was naked. So I had to stay up and put three coats of polish on that one stupid toe! Day's Drinks: Mimosa Blossom x3, Strawberry Daiquiri, Americano w/ Bailey's, Aviation G&T, French 77 x4, Bailey's Alexander

The first day, I was told that the Meraviglia Lounge was put of St. Germain and they would have some the next day. I haven't gone back there and asked for a drink made with it since, but I have had drinks at other bars with it, so I assume it was restocked ship-wide. No lines at bars. The longest we ever had to wait at a bar so far was when we stopped at the Bamboo bar yesterday at the height of the afternoon when it was completely packed. We had to wait for two people ahead of us to get their drinks before ours. So maybe a couple of minutes? At the lounges, we have had several experiences where we hadn't even sat down yet or just barely got our butts in seats before a server came over to take our drink order. This has been by far the best drink service I've had on any cruise that was near capacity. I was on a few cruises immediately after the restart where the crew literally outnumbered the passengers that had similar service to this, but it's really not fair to count those.

I have tried that with Google Docs in the past, but the formatting never comes over correctly with the copy/paste. I lose all of my line breaks.

I have tried the pizza several times and had the fresh mozzarella at lunch today. Will post more about it in my full blog tomorrow!

Aw, I still miss that shower curtain. We formed an intimate and personal bond that will last a lifetime.

I entered my credit card information in the online check-in ahead of time. I did go to one of the machines on embarkation day, but it just told me my card was already linked and I was good to go.

They are blindingly dazzling and I try not to look directly at them while traversing them!

Before I forget, I really need to mention the amazing level of cleanliness on this ship. Literally everywhere I go, there are people cleaning every single surface. Constantly vacuuming throughout the hallways, polishing the chrome that is EVERYWHERE, wiping down mirrors and handrails, dusting the artwork and sculptures.... I mean, every cruise line I have been on has had hard working cleaning crew, but this is a whole other level of clean.

I can confirm that currently on the Meraviglia, they are honoring the Easy Plus package for ordering any drinks $10 or less. I have been able to order many $10 drinks and have them fully covered. I have not attempted to order anything over $10 yet to see if I am only charged the difference. Also, they do currently have an Easter Special drink available that is priced at $10 and is NOT covered by the Easy Plus package. I was told my package would get me a 20% discount on that drink, so I would have to pay $8.

Okay. Here goes attempt number two to type out my full recounting of yesterday. The day began with a knock on the door of our room service breakfast being delivered. This was a surprise, because we ordered delivery between 7:00 and 7:30 and my husband NEVER sleeps that late. Despite all experience indicating it would be foolish, my husband decided to try to order a hot breakfast from room service. He does this at least once on pretty much every single cruise and it is always a mistake. Everyone knows that eggs get cold in precisely 12.5 seconds, yet he still somehow thinks he is miraculously going to receive hot eggs from several decks and many yards away with multiple stops at other rooms before they reach us. It is a physical impossibility, yet he continues to try. No surprise, the eggs were cold. I was content with my coffee and chocolate croissant. I was very happy to see chocolate croissant as an option since they were not available on Princess. We weren't able to eat on the balcony, because everything was still wet from all the rain and rough seas the night before. We took our sweet time getting showered and dressed and I updated my blog while my husband played on his Steam Deck. The. We made our way out in search of our morning juice (mimosas). We tried the Infinity bar in the atrium first. They were open and we ordered our first round. Unfortunately, the stools around the bar are much more form over function. You felt like they were rejecting you and trying to just dump you back out of them. So, we headed up the the Edge bar and found some more comfortable seating and played some rummy. I had two mimosas and and then remembered the mimosa blossom I had the day before, so ordered one of those. It wasn't until I was contemplating a 4th round before I realized I had a job interview at 1:30, so I should probably cut myself off. We dropped out stuff back at the room and headed to Waves, which was the only MDR serving lunch. They were only open from 12:00 to 1:00, so we got there promptly at noon. It was here I realized what everyone was complaining about regarding tables being ridiculously close together in the MDRs on MSC. Our first night in the Panorama Dining Room, there was a good 3 feet between our table and the nice German family of four seated next to us. At Waves, there was barely 3 inches between us and the tables to either side of us. It didn't bother me, though, as I am a pretty social person. But I could definitely see where anyone wanting a private, intimate experience would be upset. We ended up spending the entire lunch chatting with the solo gentlemen seated next to us and had a great time. I am sorry to say that I forgot to take a photo of the menu. I had the Signature Burger with fries and my husband had the fish fry. Both were perfectly good. Have we had better versions of both? For sure. But we have certainly had far worse as well. We shared a piece of the Boston cream pie for dessert. After lunch, we headed back to the room so I could take the phone call for my interview. It went well. This was just a pre-screening interview conducted by the guy from HR. We are now working to schedule an actual, full interview with the hiring manager for one of the days that I am in port and have strong cell signal. After the interview, we got straight into the hot tub, which was now truly HOT. A little too hot, honestly, so we turned down the temperature a bit for next time. We tried to dry out on our loungers, now that it is was warm enough to do so, but it started raining almost immediately after we laid down. We ended up going back inside and getting dry and dressed. We then headed back to Edge for coffee and cards. One thing I really like about this ship is that most bars have an espresso machine and you can get high quality coffee and lattes without having to go to a designated "cafe." I got some coffee with Bailey's and it was perfect. The coffee onboard is definitely the best cruise ship coffee I have had. Also, when we went to Edge this time, before our butts were even in our chairs a server came over and took our drink orders. I had seen a lot of complaints about slow bar service on MSC, but that had not been our experience AT ALL so far. A few rounds of cards and a mojito later and we were ready to explore the ship some. It was still raining outside, so we had to keep the the interior, but we explored all the upper deck indoor spaces and the rest of deck 7. I am sorry to say I didn't take any photos at all on our tour, but I promise to go back through and take more later. While we were in the sports zone, we booked a reservation for bowling on Wednesday. We also learned that the flight simulator is out of order, so that's a little disappointing, since emew pre-purchased the fun pass. I am sure we will still get our value out of it with some more bowling later in the cruise, some time in the arcade, and the F1 racing simulators. We also took a tour of the thermal suite area of the Spa. We get free access as Aurea guests and I am trying to decide whether to buy a pass for myself for the next sailing. I just don't see us making it there much this sailing, when we have our own private hot tub on our balcony. After our exploration, it was time to stop back by the room and get ready for our early seating (5:30) at Teppenyaki. We were seated next to a lovely couple from Canada, who we had a great time chatting with between noisy performances. The experience was a little different from what we are used to on NCL. If you have the dining package, you need to pay an extra $10 per person and you can order one of the cheaper meal options or the vegetarian option. For the more expensive meal option that included lobster and filet, you had to pay an extra $30 per peron. We both ordered the Samurai, which was the more expensive option that was still only a $10 upcharge. It was WAY WAY too much food.y favorite parts were the miso soup and the salmon. I don't even like fish, but that salmon was delicious and cooked perfectly! Also worth noting, sake would have been covered under the easy plus package, but they didn't have any available. Apparently there is currently some provisioning issues with sake. We ended up drinking plum wine, which was also covered under easy plus and was quite good. After dinner, we decided to go to the comedy juggling show in the main theater. We got seats and watched the cruise director, who is American, do the introduction, but then my husband realized we would miss sail away if we stayed. So we decided to leave. Sorry I can't report on the quality of the show. Also, side note: not only do they not serv drinks in the main theater, but they won't even let you bring them in. I saw a girl being turned away until she finished her glass of wine. We headed back to our room to watch sail away from our balcony. It was very pretty, but we could see right away that we were in for some rough seas as soon as we go out of port. We were right, because we soon heard an announcement that the Rock Circus shows were cancelled for the night. They said the passengers who had the reserved would get their reservations moved to the next performance. My husband decided to stay in the room and relax, while I headed to the champagne bar. It was completely dead in there. Just one couple playing cards and then a few people passing through only to find out the bar didn't serve beer or liquor and leaving. I found that there were several cocktails covered under the easy plus package. I tried the Amaro Amare and the Elderflower Spritz. I chatted with one of the servers for a bit. She said it's always dead in this particular lounge because not many people want champagne. I promised her I would come back with my husband, as we are both fans of prosecco-based drinks. I then headed off to the casino to pay my tithes to the Sun God. Then it was off to bed. Hopefully I didn't forget to include anything in my second typing of this post. If I remember anything I left out, I will post back. Day's Drinks: Mimosa X2, Mimosa Blossom, Americano w/ Bailey's, Mojito, Plum Wine x2, Amaro Amare, Elderflower Spritz QR_F_TEPPANYAKI_OTHER_DAYX_EN_1681166404.pdf

I lost Internet after typing up my entire post about yesterday. Guess that's 45 minutes of my life I won't get back! Will try again after breakfast.

Our current balcony is 9009. From what I understand, there are two similar balconies on each deck, but they do have a slightly different floor plan depending on which deck. We just chose this one because it was the last balcony with the hot tub available by the time we booked.

We definitely plan to test this at some point. Just haven't had occasion to yet, as we have found a really good selection within the $10 price limit. I will definitely splurge on a few fancier cocktails and let you know how the billing turns out.

We boarded the Meraviglia yesterday. My husband and I had both taken and uploaded our photos ahead of time, but they re-took them at check-in. The port worker who checked us in told us they had been instructed to retake everyone's photos, so you definitely don't NEED to do it beforehand.

I am aboard the Meraviglia right now and have not experienced anything that you mentioned in your post about your experience in January. Maybe they have improved things since then? Bar service has been fantastic. Literally just now, my husband and I were about to sit at a table at the Edge bar and after we pulled out our chairs, before we even put our butts in them, there was a server asking what we wanted to drink. No bad luck with other passengers either. We have had several great conversations with fellow cruisers already and this is only our first full day onboard.

It went easily and smoothly. The morning of the cruise, I received a text from them saying to be in the hotel lobby at 9:30. Shortly before 9:30, two Go Port employees showed up in a car, ahead of the bus, and put color coded tags on our luggage to designate which ship we were on (Wonder of the Seas was also in port yesterday). They checked our names off the list and then the bus showed up. We were the bus' first stop. The two people who had tagged our bags and taken our names, then drove ahead of the bus to the next hotel. We stopped at 4 more hotels iirc, all near our own. Then we got on the freeway and had about a 45 minute ride to the terminal. The bus dropped off the RCL passengers first, then took us to our terminal and dropped us off. It was all easy and we got off the bus at about 10:45. Our ship isn't returning to Port Canaveral, but I did listen to the driver's instructions for the RCL passengers. They can get on any Go Port bus between 7-10 when they disembark. The shuttles run continuously to MCO.

Here you go. QR_K_BAR-LIST-GENERIC_OTHER_DAYX_EN_1681060149.pdf

It was just a pre-screening interview with the HR guy before I interview with the actual hiring manager. But, it did go well and we are working on scheduling the actual interview now. Have to work around my port schedule, as I am not confident the wifi onboard will support an actual video call. Need to do it on a day I know I will have good cell service in port.