StonePayload

Grand Cayman was very much a non-day for us. We got up, had breakfast up at the buffet on deck 20. Here is the view of Georgetown from the ship. This is a tender port, and the port has their own tenders. We decided not to get off the ship though. We spent the whole day on the pool deck reading. Up until we had to go down and get ready to head to dinner. Lunch was cheeseburgers from the grill, that I didn’t get a picture of…. They were very good though. Here are dinner pictures at least. We started with crab cakes: I was impressed at the amount of crab in these. They definitely weren’t just filler. And then fried spring rolls with a peanut sauce I really enjoyed these. The crispness of the spring rolls was good, and I love peanut sauce in any form, so this really hit the spot. Also notice the cheese plate in the background here. Arthur has taken to bringing us one as soon as we sit down. It’s amazing… Main courses were prime rib: And Pork Medallions: The prime rib was excellent. It was very tender, and I loved the herb crust that they put on it. Kelly decided she wasn’t a fan of hers because it was too “beefy.” I don’t really know what she was expecting…. It’s a big hunk of beef… The pork was actually cooked to a medium well, and was therefore very juicy and good. The vegetables here were seasoned well. Unfortunately, I think the potatoes might have been powdered, which was disappointing. Dessert: Warm apple strudel. It was good.. but the vanilla sauce wasn’t all that much to write home about, and it was very much relying on the sauce to provide moisture to the dish. Unfortunately, the sauce let it down. Arthur and I were discussing our love of pistachio ice cream, so he decided to bring some. (another extreme dutch angle photo) Holy cow, this was amazing. They definitely use real pistachios in the creation of this. No food coloring to make it turn into a weird medicine green, and so incredibly smooth. Amazing. I am going to ask for more of this for sure. I think you can probably predict what we did after dinner. Down to the lounge, where drinks were enjoyed, we read some books, and then went to bed. Next up, Cozumel!

And we’re back! I believe we are going to talk about our day in Ocho Rios, Jamaica today. Unfortunately for you, there really won’t be much talk about Jamaica. It will mostly be about the ship, because we didn’t get off the ship. This will be a theme over the coming days. Somehow, I think we managed to sleep in later than the day before. I think it had to do with Kelly not resetting her phone to ship time. Her phone automatically reset when the WiFi detected that we were in a new time zone. So she was unnecessarily subtracting an hour, and was very surprised when she lost an hour unexpectedly. Moral of the story here, is to change your clock when they tell you to on the ship. This will prevent time related anxiety down the road. We had breakfast up at the buffet on deck 20. It was nice. I managed to get a picture with the omelet this time. Here are the views of Ocho Rios from the top deck. Our cabin doesn’t really see too much, as we are on the port side of the ship. After breakfast, Kelly and I took a walk to the back to see the Bridge of Sighs. This is a pretty cool area of the ship. I am not afraid of heights, and enjoyed the views looking down. We walked forward from here, all the way to the Spa. It was at this point we decided to go and visit the thermal area of the spa. We went back up to Top Sail for a little while, and then decided that we wanted to try Hola! For lunch. At noon we went down right after opening, and braved the crowds. There was just us, and a couple of officers in the restaurant. After perusing the menu, we decided to the all you can eat, and try a bunch of different things on the menu. Kelly will provide her pictures separately (hopefully. but only if asked nicely I think) We started with a salsa sampler: I enjoyed the bean salsa (not pictured, look for the pic from Kelly), and the pico. The guacamole needed a big hit of lime, and salt. Here are tacos that I ordered: 2 Al Pastor, 2 Carne Asada, and 2 Chipotle Carnitas. I was expecting street style tacos, which are usually small, but these were way smaller than even i was expecting. Again, though, these needed salt! I don’t usually add salt to my food. I can be very sensitive to it. Even I was adding salt from the shaker. Then a beef quesadilla showed up: Ok, these vertical but should be horizontal pictures are getting out of hand. Maybe I will just start calling it “exaggerated dutch angle.” This was very good. Good cheese was used, and it had really good stretch. Then a beef burrito! Again, here I thought it was very good. I don’t know how they managed to do it, but this thing was VERY hot (temperature). This means the cheese was very melty and great. Overall, tacos were just ok, but the quesadilla and burrito were very good. After lunch we walked by the spa, and decided to come down and visit the thermal areas. On port days, no reservation is required, which is nice. We went up to the room and changed quickly, then headed back down. No pictures were taken here. I didn’t want to be “that guy.” We enjoyed our time here. I especially enjoyed the snow room, as I am eternally hot and sweaty. We spent 90 minutes or so in here, before heading back up to Top Sail and reading for a while. Then, dinner! I started with dumplings: Again, the sauce here is the winner. I got the Duck ragu: Definite winner in my book. I love fresh pasta, and duck. This was a match made in heaven for me. We were also told that we needed to order the lamb. So, here it is as well. Again, very good. The lamb was cooked very well, and not fatty at all. I especially enjoyed the cherry sauce. For dessert I got the cheesecake: Arthur might have had some fun with this one… After dinner, we went down to the lounge for an espresso martini. We spent a couple hours here chatting with some friends that we made while at ocean cay, and then off to bed!

not hijacked, we promise! We were quite lazy today reading by the pool. We will be back tomorrow with more updates and answered questions!!

I forgot to mention- yesterday I asked for a glass of chocolate milk. My family understands that I am a big kid that loves the stuff, and I had a craving. I had run back to the room, so my wife tried to order it for me. For the first attempt, I got a glass of hot chocolate with some ice cubes in it. This was a bit odd, but ok. For the second attempt, I went up to the bar to explain how to make it. Turned out pretty good actually! It’s nice having access to the full bar, because I got to add Bailey’s to it. That was pretty awesome.

Another day, another update after sleeping in. Day 3 was a sea day, where we frankly didn’t do much of anything at all. We made it to the buffet to eat breakfast in the morning, and then hung out on deck 20 for quite some time. Enough time for lunch to start in fact. I was typing up the review from Ocean Cay, and Kelly was doing the games from the newspaper (we chose USA Today). At some point lunch started. It was pretty good. Kelly had a hot dog (which on MSC is actually 2 hot dogs in one bun). I had some suckling pig and other sides. I did decide I was going to take a walk around the ship to see how busy the top deck got on a sea day. Starting with the Yacht Club pool: Then we move to the Top 19 Solarium. I realize these aren’t the best pictures, but I think we all realize at this point that I have no idea what I am doing. Now, the Jungle pool: Those hot tubs be crowded. Pirates cove. This place looks amazing. I know my daughter would absolutely love it. And now, the main pool: There is no chance of finding a lounger at that main pool. Hey look - Cuba! When I got back, it had started to rain. So we cleared out our sensitive electronics, and moved down to Top Sail. The officer of the deck came on shortly after - “Over the next few hours we will be passing through an area of frequent showers. Please mind the decks as they can be slippery.” You can see the rain coming here: A few of the servers in Top Sail went outside, and gathered all the cushions off of the chairs, and brought them in. Shortly after we started getting a bunch of rain. Some (my mother-in-law specifically) might call it a gullywasher. We enjoyed watching the rain from our dry seat in Top Sail for a while longer. We spent quite a bit of time reading and doing the puzzles in the newspaper. Eventually our minds turned to dinner. We had noticed that the sushi was all you can eat that day, and so decided to make reservations. We were told they only had reservations at 6:30 pm or 9pm, so picked up the 6:30, and headed back to the room to change about 5:45. Uneventful getting ready this time. No power losses, or room floods. We made it down to the sushi restaurant and were shown to our seats. The main problem with this format is that it is impossible for non-regular sushi eaters to figure out what everything is. There is no menu or guide. I pulled up the menu that is normally used on my phone, but on all you can eat days, the plates are not color coded. They just put whatever they want on the plates. Also, given the unavailability of reservations, i was expecting it to be absolutely packed. At some point - we were the only ones in the restaurant. This causes a bit of a problem for a sushi train, because you have to pull stuff off of the belt to eat in order to have new stuff put on. Since it was just the two of us on one giant belt, we saw the same roasted/glazed eel nigiri go by about 5 times. Eventually the waiters took pity on us, and asked what we wanted. They ran to the chefs and grabbed a few plates of everything. When we left, there was nobody on our side of the restaurant. I was very confused why 7pm reservations weren’t available in a very empty restaurant at 7:15. This was a fun experience, but not one I need to repeat. It would have been better if there were more people in there with us, because I feel like we would have gotten more variety. The sushi was good quality, though. We decided against dessert here, and headed toward Venchi to see about some dessert. After perusing their options, we instead decided to head up to the Yacht Club restaurant. They were happy to accommodate a table for us just for dessert. It was Gala night, which was a ton of fun to see everyone dressed up. Kelly had a royal chocolate cake (she will provide a pic of that), and I had Crepes Suzette, which was excellent. After a stop in Top Sail for some espresso martinis, and other drinks, we headed off for bed. Next stop, Jamaica!

There are quite a few umbrellas on the yacht club beach. There are also quite a few loungers. This is the best I have for a picture of the yacht club beach. All umbrellas are free on this beach. There is a white tent that has coolers filled with water and bottled beer. That tent also has a very large stack of towels. Butlers are roaming the beach to bring you drinks as well as towels. There were quite a few loungers. I would definitely say enough for everyone. I think it’s safe enough to leave things behind. We left our phones in our beach bag on the loungers through snorkeling. I thought my wallet was in there, but turned out it wanted to go swimming too. I did leave my phone during lunch as well

Oh my word! This would definitely qualify as eventful. I am glad that we avoided the same fate.

And now presenting… Butcher’s Cut! Ram said that he would escort us down the night before, so I was all for waiting in the cabin for him to arrive and take us down. My wife is not that patient, and she REALLY doesn’t like being late to things. I figured, since we were yacht club they would wait for us. She didn’t think that would be the case. This means she won, and we left about 10 minutes before our reservation. As we were rounding the corner to exit yacht club, Ram stepped off the elevator ready to escort us down to dinner. It ended up being pretty good timing! Ram took us down to the restaurant using the express elevator function. I tried using this function on the way back up, but my card doesn’t seem to be able to do it. Might have something to do with being immersed in seawater for an hour earlier in the day. While we were waiting for our elevator, another couple approached Ram and asked if he could direct them to the Sports Bar on Deck 19. Ram looked at them in a little bewilderment, and offered to escort them to the Sports Bar on deck 8. They might have been a little lost. Down to our reservation we went, dropping the very lost people off on the way. I hope they were able to make it back to their room later. We were very quickly seated. They offered us inside or outside, and since it was a pleasant evening, we opted for outside seating. I will say - it is odd being in your seats at a restaurant and having strangers walk right through. By no means is this a dealbreaker for us, as we can still enjoy our evening. Plus, we both love watching people. It can be very entertaining, especially after a long day at the beach while drinking quite a bit. Our dinner started with bread service Before I could take the photo, Kelly stole the only bacon cheddar muffin out of the basket. You will just have to use your imagination. It was also this moment that made me panic a little. I like to take photos while not being distracting to the other diners that are just trying to enjoy their evening. Leaving a flash on to take pictures does the opposite of that. Here is a similar photo without flash. I am actually quite impressed with the low light quality pictures from my iPhone. We will see if that continues as it gets darker. Our starters arrived shortly after. We shared a Caesar salad. I got the Foie Deviled eggs, and we split a Caesar salad. Kelly will have to share the pic of her goat cheese tart. The Caesar salad was nothing to write home about. The dressing was a little thin, but the lettuce was fresh, and i enjoyed the croutons. The deviled eggs however, holy cow. SO creamy and rich. The sauce underneath was heavy with lemon, so it cut through the creaminess really well. I loved them. Steaks and sides arrived shortly after. We both got ribeyes, medium rare. Kelly got onion rings. She will have to share that picture. Other sides that we got to share are: Roasted Cauliflower Jalapeño creamed corn: And Mac and cheese: The low light performance appears to be dwindling. Personally, i enjoyed all of these things. The steak was cooked to the correct temperature, and it was seasoned well. It was a good steak. I also enjoyed the sides. The cauliflower was also seasoned well, and had some good color from the roast. It was very tender. The Jalapeño creamed corn had good spice that wasn’t overwhelming, and was creamy and sweet from the corn. The Mac and cheese had great flavor. They had definitely used some more robust cheeses. I do think the sauce was a little thin on it, so it lacked that real creaminess you would hope for out of a Mac and cheese. The bread crumbs provided a good crunch. For dessert, I had the peanut butter chocolate chip cookie with ice cream. Again with the vertical picture…. Definitely because of the phone. For sure it’s not user error in some way. Really good cookie here too. The outside edges were crispy, and the middle was gooey. The vanilla ice cream was also excellent, and seemed to be the same as the night before. Overall, I thought this was a very good meal, and was very happy to have dined here. A word of caution - I think the prices must have gone up. it was definitely in line with a high end steakhouse on land. We both also enjoyed wine by the glass that was covered by our beverage package. After dinner, Kelly and I walked through a bit more of the ship, exploring the different areas. The Teppanyaki place sounded like quite the party! We headed back to Top Sail for a drink or two before retiring to our room at about 11pm. I think Monday Night Football was just finishing up. Next up - a day at sea!

We rejoin our intrepid Caribbean explorers as they awake bright and early, ready to take on the adventures that await at Ocean Cay. Not. We rolled out of bed around 9 am or so, after having slept in later than we thought we would. Not having a 5 year old kid as an alarm clock does wonders for your sleep. I also blame the time difference. This was the view off our balcony this morning: We got up and got dressed for some breakfast at the buffet on the top deck. Here is yet another example of us not being able to miss an omelet bar. (Omelet not pictured. It was gone too fast) We were treated to an excellent view of Ocean Cay from our seats on deck 20. We went back to our room, and changed into swimsuits for the day, and headed out of the ship. We did not get the butler escort off the ship, as we were late enough departing that there wasn’t a crowd at all. I love standing on the pier next to these giant ships. The scale is always so amazing to me. We found the white tent that would have allowed us to catch a cart to the yacht club section of the islands and also found a line of others waiting for the cart to arrive. It was early in the day, and not too hot yet, so we decided just to walk to the beach instead. It was a nice and easy walk for us over relatively flat terrain. Couple pictures that we took along the way: We got very lucky and say a family leaving just as we were arriving, and managed to snag a couple of loungers that were under a group of umbrellas. Good shade for me! While hanging on the beach, a couple of people kayaking by decided they were going to attempt to beach themselves. The lifeguard quickly shoed them away. I guess people are trying all kinds of different ways to get into the yacht club areas! After sitting for a while, Kelly decided she wanted to give the full face snorkels that we purchased a try, and off she went! i joined her shortly after. Word of warning here - beach shoes or swim shoes are an absolute must for this beach. Sand has been pulled away from the beach, and left a large number of rocks. I think only 1 or 2 people that attempted to walk across these rocks without swim shoes made it. Snorkeling was nice. We saw a couple fish. After a little bit we took the snorkels off, and just hung out in the water for a while. It was very pleasant. After a little while I remembered that I left my wallet in my pocket. Now everything was very soaked through. Especially the AirTag that i keep in my wallet. Electronics and sea water are a great mix. I am sure that can only go well! About 12:45 or so we headed up to lunch. Being the elite blogger/reviewer that I am, I was absolutely sure to leave my phone (and therefore, camera) in the bag on the lounger. Oops. Hopefully Kelly will be willing to share the pictures of the food with you. I have none. We didn’t order any of the appetizers, and instead decided to split three entrees between the two of us. We ordered the lobster roll, burger, and carne asada. I thought the flavor of the lobster roll was good, but would have loved to have the roll stuffed just a little bit more. Neither of us are huge fans of roast meet being served cold, so the carne asada was just ok. The burger however, was amazing. I really enjoyed the sauce they put on there. Next time, I might try what others have suggested, and order the burger with the lobster roll topping on it. That sounds excellent. After lunch, we went back to our chairs for a bit, and then decided to head back to the ship. It was about 1:45 when we walked up to the area where the cart picks up for the ride back to the ship, and this was also the lone sore spot for our day at Ocean Cay. They had one, very small, cart running people back to the ship. Round trip took about 20 minutes. There was no line organization at the pickup point, just a lot of very grumpy yacht club people waiting for a ride. Every time a cart arrived, a lot of the people would just rush the cart and leap into the seats. After about 45 minutes, I broke down and we did the same. As I was sliding over to get allow Kelly into the cart as well, another lady misjudged her landing zone and ended up sitting in my lap. She jumped out, and was able to sit next to the driver. MSC - you need to figure this one out. More carts on the island, with designated routes. And a better organized waiting area. I was fully expecting this chaos to happen, and it was still very disappointing. We made it back pretty uneventfully, and headed up to our room to change into regular clothes. It was now that we discovered that Ram had decorated our room for my birthday! This was an amazing touch, and definitely made the day more special. We went to Top Sail to hang out for a while (it was deserted…), and watch the happenings on the island from the starboard side. After we departed around 5:00, we headed back to the room to get ready for dinner. Along the way, i stopped and snapped a quick picture of the menu in the yacht club restaurant for the night: This time, getting ready was eventful. I must have jinxed myself yesterday when I mentioned it. While I was in the shower, suddenly the lights go out. Pressure in the shower is still going, so I didn’t think the whole ship lost power. Kelly had her hair dryer stop working, and she scrambled to look through the door peephole to see if there was power out there. Turns out there was. I finished up my shower in the dark. After finishing, I discovered that Kelly’s key card was not seated properly in the room key card detector thing, and the room assumed that nobody was in the room, so turned all the lights off. We replaced her card with mine, and everything came back on. We finished getting ready, and then headed for dinner.

We bought them from Amazon. Here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/ASNUG-Bladeless-Rechargeable-Personal-Adjustable/dp/B0BL79N5RS/ref=cs_sr_dp_2?crid=3P8CI7HFVZRU5&keywords=Neck%2Bfan&qid=1698159117&sprefix=neck%2Bfand%2Caps%2C473&sr=8-7&th=1 (Please let me know if i am not supposed to put links in like this. Happy to take it down.)

We brought separate USB fans that we charge during the day, and sleep with during the night. I forgot to turn it on last night, and slept OK. My personal state is usually incredibly warm, so we have the room set to the coldest setting. I still threw the covers off for quite a bit of the night. If you are like me, and run warm, definitely bring a fan. I think the neck fan would be uncomfortable at night. It is also louder, and would be more of an annoyance that way as well.

Continuing on! Getting ready for dinner was uneventful. I don’t know what would make it eventful, and don’t really want to find out. We headed up for dinner at about 8pm. The dining room was quite crowded, but they were able to seat us right away. It appears that there is a 7pm or so rush, because most of the tables around us were finishing up their mains, or just getting their desserts. The dining room definitely was clearing out as our meal went on. Our waiter, Arthur, was very good. Our relationship with him started off a bit odd, as he approached our table well into the time we had been sitting there, didn’t introduce himself, and just asked if we wanted to place our order for food. The assistant waiter had already brought drinks out. As the meal went on though, he got so much better. Definitely helped us with dessert decisions, and gave me a little side eye when he thought my dessert order wasn’t good enough. He turned out to be one of the best waiters I have ever had. I assume that at the start there was just a lot going on. Here is the menu for the night: I had the fried vegetable dim sum dumplings. These arrived VERY hot and crispy. The sauce was the real star of the show for me. I also had the fire roasted tomato cream soup. Unfortunately, soup just doesn’t photograph well. I did enjoy the little cheese bits that were in the soup. My main was the veal chop. This was tender and juicy, but was let down by a lack of Sage and Rosemary. I also feel like the sides were a let down here. Steamed carrots, and three potato wedges that aren’t seasoned doesn’t seem particularly inspired. This didn’t stop me from eating it all though. For Dessert, I asked for cheesecake with strawberry topping. Arthur decided I should have some ice cream as well. He also added quite a bit of flourish with the strawberry topping. i enjoyed this. The cheesecake was fairly light, and had a good tangy flavor. I particularly enjoyed the ice cream. It was very smooth, and had was very vanilla forward. After dinner, we went down to the bar in Top Sail, and ordered a couple of after dinner drinks. Kelly loves to get an espresso martini after dinner, so we got that for her. I decided I was going to see if they could reproduce a cocktail I had in Nashville, TN. This was the first attempt at a “Summer Breeze” from Maneet Chauhan’s Ale and Masala house. It was good, but not as good. They don’t have all the ingredients, so oh well. I enjoyed it enough to have another. After a few more drinks, we headed back to our room. I watched Sunday Night football for a while, and started to feel a little peckish. This obviously means order 2 pizzas via room service. Sorry for the vertical. Just do what I do and turn your head sideways… I thought the pizza was pretty good. The crust is excellent. Chewy, with excellent flavor. Both of these pizzas, though, were very salty. Like - run to get the blood pressure medicine salty. I am hoping that is just a one off. While eating, Sunday night football finished, and then we went to bed. Day 2 coming up - Ocean Cay!

Thank you for this! I will definitely ask! We also have HGTV, Food Network, Discovery Channel, ESPN Caribbean. These will do fine, especially if we can plug an iPad into the TV. No ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox. The shower is very nice. Excellent water pressure, and it gets quite hot. I love the rainfall head for hair and face washing. I don’t understand the need for so many mirrors. I don’t need to look at myself that much…

Continuing from where we left off yesterday, we went back to the room to take all the pictures seen above for the room tour. (If anyone wants a picture of anything specific, let me know. I am happy to try.). Along the way, we also stopped to make reservations at Butcher’s Cut for dinner on day 2. There is a specialty dining person stationed in the entryway to the yacht club on boarding day that is happy to book your reservations at the specialty restaurants, or sell you a dining package. We decided no package, and got reservations for 7pm on night 2. Upon making it to the room, we met our butler, Ram. He gave us a quick room tour, and let us know that he would be there to help us through the week. We informed him of the reservations we just made, and he made a quick note to himself to ensure that he would be there to escort us down to our reservation. Just after he left, Kelly looks out of our window and yells “WE”RE MOVING!!!” But in fact, we weren’t. It was just the absolutely massive Carnival Celebration rolling by. Kelly wanted to ensure I got a close up of the roller coaster. So, here you are… There were a ton of people on the top deck, and the music made it sound like they were having a great time. Other ships that we were in port with were the Carnival Horizon, Virgin Voyages Scarlet Lady, TUI Mein Schiff 6, and Harmony of the Seas (this was the first Oasis Class I have seen in person. Holy cow…). At this point, we decided to head back to Top Sail for a little while, while we waited for muster. There are some great views up there. I found it particularly entertaining watching them unload the container ship across the way. These two pictures are from the bridge wings. I have been on the top of the bridge on a Princess Grand class, and was amazed at how far out over the water they actually sit. This effect is limited on the Seascape, because of how much of the deck is cantilevered over the water. This gives passengers a lot more outdoor space though, which is very nice. Here are some pictures of Top Sail as well. After watching the container cranes for a while longer, we went back to our room for muster. Two of our bags were waiting when we got back to the room. Yay! Muster was… An experience… The internal alarm sounded (scaring us half to death), and then we watched the safety video. I picked up the phone to dial the number, and somehow got the concierge instead(oops). Upon redialing, I was able to get the message that said our response was recorded. While waiting for the cue to head down to our muster station, we unpacked both of our bags. Then the message to head down came over the loudspeaker. We headed out of the room as quickly as we could. Then walked down 11 decks worth of stairs. At the same time as everyone else on the ship. We got to the casino (our muster station) scanned in, and were set free. This was a lot of people, all crammed into the stairwells, and walking down stairs together. I could see the risk for injury for a lot of people, and I have concerns for those that may not have been able to make it down those stairs. It is time consuming, hot, crowded, etc. But - I also see the point of making people do this for the experience. When doing a safety drill, it is important to do as close to the real thing as possible. Now the crew knows exactly who can’t make it down the stairs in an emergency and can plan for it. Now the rest of the passengers knows what it may feel like during an emergency, and may not be as prone to panic. Anyway, we scanned in, and then went to the shops to see if we could use the discount benefit that status gives us. The shops were understandably closed (focus on the drill people!), and wouldn’t open up until much later. I did snap a quick picture of the crowds in the central gathering area. As well as the other Carnival ship departing. This is on the infinity bridge, port side. Since the shops were closed, back up to Top Sail to watch sail away. While waiting for that, I grabbed this absolutely incredible picture of a Lufthansa 747-800 leaving Miami. Seriously, bow down to my amazing photography skills. Yeah… shortly after arrival, we cast off and were on our way! It was fun to see the different cruise terminals located along the pier. I bet MSC can’t wait to get theirs up and running. Their current terminal leaves a lot to be desired. Especially when compared to NCL and RCI. Still a lot of work to go on MSC: While we were sailing out, a powered glider decided to buzz the ship. I am sure that NO security people were nervous while this was happening. After watching the buoys go by for a while, we headed back downstairs to see if the MSC logo shop was open. It wasn’t at first, so we wandered over to Hola and grabbed a margarita. Kelly got Strawberry, I got Lime. The lime was VERY syrupy. It was pretty fake lime…. Bright green and all. Strawberry was definitely better. Once the shop opened, we purchased our wares (I think Kelly covered this earlier). I tried to purchase the very large ship model that they have in the store. Kelly didn’t think that was a good idea. I guess she just doesn’t understand my artistic vision, and how we could better the decor in our house with a more nautical theme. Oh well. Back up to the room to get ready for dinner. I am going to continue in another post, because I fear the behemoth that this is becoming.

Ok, back at it. Quick room tour first I think. We are in cabin 19031 - a Yacht Club Deluxe Grand Suite. This was the only one available at the time of booking, so only chosen because this was the room category that we wanted. I believe the primary difference between this room and a Yacht Club Deluxe Suite is the walk in closet. Originally, I would have not thought that worth the price difference. Ours was only $50 more per person for the week, so we went for it. Holy cow do we love the walk in closet… some room pictures: For a brand new ship, i am quite disappointed in the power situation. There are 6 outlets - 2 US, 2 European, 2 USB type A. All of these are located to the left of the large mirror, opposite the bed. There is one additional USB type A, on only one side of the bed. In this case, it the bedside table closest to the balcony. Does MSC think that only one of us will want to charge their phone at night? Even more concerning - running my CPAP means i need to drape a cord across the room from one of the power outlets. Hopefully I don’t trip in the dark in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom. The bed is fairly firm and good for us. No complaints there. The pillows feel like they are half thickness though, so i am going to ask for a couple more to add additional support when I am asleep. The bathroom is quite large - easily the largest bathroom I have ever had on a cruise ship. There is also lots of good storage in there. The closet is huge and amazing, with some good drawers in there as well. For some reason, our room doesn’t get the second wardrobe that some get closer to the balcony. I suspect it has to do with the ability to add a fold out bed of some sort. The other wardrobe (with the robes and slippers) has no drawers in it. The TV is quite large. I like that, because it makes it easier to see from the bed. However, if you are in the bed position closer to the balcony, then part of it will get blocked. TV channel selection is mediocre at best (Kelly says it’s way better than on Celebrity. I think she is off her rocker). Also, I think they have only about 5-10 movies on demand, with each of them costing $10 to watch. Kelly and I might try to plug in an iPad later and stream something. We will see how successful we are. Overall, I am incredibly happy with the room that we are in. It is spacious and comfortable. There is a lot of really good storage. My only real disappointment is the power situation.