italianfemmy

Subscribed. :) Enjoying your review and can't wait for the Glory Western Fun Times :D

I do! Just off the ship yesterday and will be posting them in my review [emoji4]

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Oh amazing! Have you scanned them? I would love love love to see them. :D

Room service costs extra after 10pm now? It didn't when I sailed in 2012. How much extra?

Spa Services

Specialty restaurants

Shore Excursions

Gambling

Shopping onboard

Behind the scenes ship tours

Bingo

Souveniers

Lunch/taxis when you are in ports of call

Bumpity. Anyone? :)

Hello. Do you have the recent Carnival Glory Fun Times for the Western Caribbean itinerary? I would absolutely love to have copies. I am accustomed to finding fun times easily when I cruised in the past and have had difficulty locating anything remotely recent for the Glory and the one I did find was for the Eastern itinerary. Thank you in advance!

I cannot help with if you can get to the bottom without jumping, because we will not be here until Nov, but I wonder if you could get a "dry bag" for your camera that would keep it safe on travel down to the bottom and while you are swimming. I am not sure if they could keep your camera dry if you jump, but they would work for any splashes.

I definitely have weather gear for it already as long as it's not submersed in water so I can't take it into the water but splashes on the weather gear would be fine.

Hi. We are tentatively booked for Irie Blue Hole with Ricardo from Liberty Tours.

I am a professional photographer and really want to take my professional *not water proof* camera with me to take photos while I am on this trip.

I have read conflicting things so I am hoping for some clarity.

Ricardo said it's possible to get to the bottom without ever having entered the water (perfect for me to keep my camera dry and take photos when I reach the bottom - then leave my camera on dry land to hop in and enjoy the water).

I just read on here it's not possible to get to the bottom where the water is without jumping 10 ft. into the water. - Obviously a problem for my camera if I have to leave it up top plus I want the money shot from the bottom...

Opinions?

Welcome back. Glad you are feeling better. Come on over to New Orleans for a cruise & we might just join you. We now have the Dream here & are sailing on her again for Halloween. I'd really like to see your photos of New Orleans.

Hey you! Thank you so much!! I might be doing a land trip to New Orleans in 2015 actually because of a work conference .... should have more info soon!

The Dream has been moved to New Orleans??

I'm glad you are back and that your health has improved ! We would all like to see your picture when you have time to post them. We are also trying RCCL for the first time after getting a great deal on the Allure during the BOGoHO sale. Happy sailing and looking forward to another great review .

They had a BOGO on a cruise?? What?? That is AWESOME and I am :( I missed that. Haha.

Thank you so much for your kind words!!

Hey Alicia! So glad to hear you're doing better! Hopefully you're all caught up with work and your business is still doing well. Funny you bumped this up. I actually went back and started re-reading this a few weeks ago since I picked out the Dream for a family cruise next year. I'd love to see your Breeze pictures if you ever have the chance to post them. If not I'll just be on the lookout for your FOS review! :)

Hi!!!! Oh how I miss reading your posts!!! One day, I want to read this review myself from start to finish - I've never went back and read anything I wrote.

I definitely will post here if I post reviews or any more photos so that people who have subscribed to this thread will be able to be on the lookout. Hehe.

When is your Dream cruise? Are you booking the Cloud 9 spa??

Welcome back, I am so glad to hear that you are doing well! :) I loved Breeze and would happily look at your pictures.

Will you be doing a review of your RCCL cruise? If so, please let us know when you start. One day I would like to sail RCCL.

Heather

Hi!! And thanks! I am honestly not sure if I will do a review. I don't want to commit to it and then disappoint people like I did with the Breeze. I put so much time into this review (Dream) that I felt like anything less wouldn't do it justice --- that's the perfectionist in me. So maybe if I can figure out a way to let go and compromise a bit then I will be able to find the time to do a review.

Latanya and I have decided to become foster parents and we're in the middle of getting licensed now so I have no idea how busy that is going to make us and how much time I will have between running the business and being an insta-parent. :-)

You know I would love to see your pictures if you get a chance.

I hope you have a fabulous time on the RCCL cruise!

We are branching out this fall too...we usually do Disney...and trying Princess in Sept.

Yeah maybe when I come back from the Freedom, I will look and pull out Breeze photos and at least post photos. :-)

Latanya has been dying to do a Disney cruise but I just don't see the value in a Disney cruise personally.... I am sure it's fun though....

Biggest pet peeve so far of my booking with RCCL is they do not allow you to bring any soda on board like Carnival does and I drink Dr. Pepper which of course they do not have. I can't stand the taste of Coke products so I really do not think it's right to not allow people their favorite drink if you don't even have all the options available for purchase..

Which Princess cruise are you going on? And what do you love about Disney cruises?

Thrilled to hear you are doing better!

 

I knew you were too good of a talent to be down for good!

 

Best wishes and continued success in life.......please stay in touch via the boards.

 

Don't think we will ever sail RCCL, too pricey for my tastes but to each his/her own.

Haha... thanks!!

As for RCCL - this cruise is costing me much less than I spent on the Dream or the Breeze.

Freedom of the seas used to be $800-$900 for a week per person in an ocean view room. I got this one for $1,100 total for 2 people including taxes and port charges. We have 4 ports of call, $100 OBC as part of our special and it's 7 nights. Plus, I have a bottle of red wine and chocolate covered strawberries as free bonus gifts.

So happy to hear the news about your health. Nice for you to come back with an update.

 

Best wishes to you for continued good health and all the best to you for your future.

Thank you so much. I felt so bad that I disappeared without ever finishing my Breeze review. I actually got very sick while I was on the Breeze and spent more than 1/2 of my trip confined to my stateroom. I thought I'd caught a bug on the ship but it was actually a much bigger health problem that was giving phantom symptoms that were flu-like. And from that point onward things just got a lot worse.

Hi everyone! I'm baaaaaack!! I just wanted to give everyone an update that my health has improved significantly and I am doing much better. I don't know that I will ever finish my review of the Breeze but maybe one day I'll at least post the photos since the majority of that cruise is now a blur to me.

We haven't cruised since then but today we booked a cruise --- on the other side... an RCCL cruise.. our first RCCL cruise since 2006 - on the Freedom of the Seas for Oct. 12th of this year. My bday is Oct 14th and I thought it would be nice to go on an entirely different kind of ship and must admit I am looking forward to the flow rider. :-D

I hope you're all doing well!!

Thanks so much! We couldn't close down our doors during my health problems because we had clients that had signed contracts with us 12-18 months in advance for their weddings. So, while I fell behind on editing for clients, I still had to shoot which only piled on to the workload. I've finally gotten to a point where I can pause the new contracts for a while so that I have time to work on the backlog.

Hi everyone and thank you for still reading this review! I got an email today from the people at Photobucket telling me that my bandwidth was exceeded again - it's hard to believe that there's still that many people looking at the photos in this review!

As to how I am doing and why I didn't finish my Breeze review - I've had a very rough year and a half since the cruise we took on the Breeze. My health saw several declines and it put me so far behind on work that I am still playing catch up to this day. I simply haven't had time to write anything else or post any more photos. I am a perfectionist and want to edit any photos I post.

Truthfully, I didn't take notes hardly at all on the Breeze cruise because my intent was to write it all out in a week when I returned home. Now, I've forgotten nearly every detail but I do still hope that one day, I'll at least be able to share the photos - I know that is what everyone most looked forward to seeing from me anyway. :-)

Thanks for still supporting this thread!! I just paid to upgrade to unlimited bandwidth again so people can continue to enjoy it.

Thank you so much everyone for keeping this thread alive. The next time I cruise, I will be sure to try Chef's Table again so I can provide an updated review with new feedback and imagery on the new menus!

Hi everyone. Thank you for your concern. I haven't been on cruise critic in months .. luckily I am signed up to receive emails when someone posts in this thread.

I've had it rough with some major health stuff since the cruise.. some of which actually started during the cruise. As a small business owner where I do all the marketing, sales, shooting and editing not to mention phone calls, contracts, budgeting, accounting - any illness immediately puts me behind because I do this on my own.

I currently have clients that have been waiting for their images past the amount of time stated in their contracts. My health has been improving and I am getting a lot more done now that I am properly being treated and am on good medicines. But I think it will be another 2-3 months based on the current status before I am caught back up on my workload.

At the end of the day, it would be incredibly irresponsible for me to devote hours upon hours to writing a stellar review and editing vacation pictures when I have clients that have been waiting for their images well beyond the amount of time they should have been waiting.

If I am being completely honest - I don't know how much I will even remember of this cruise since I didn't take detailed notes. I have a great memory and would have been ok to recap it all if I'd done it pretty quickly but now .. what we did on what day and at what time is blurry. So if I can resume this review at some point in time, it might just have highlights and lowlights and photos.... I know the photos are what you guys most want anyway!! :-)

Again - thank you so much for thinking about me. It means the world!

xoxoxo!

I don't dispute you are busy, it's your livelyhood. Those reviews are time consuming (even without pictures). I can't imagine putting one together, transferring pictures, getting all the commentary in etc. I think that's why the reviews with pictures usually are in segments.

 

I feel when it's time, the review will show up, but people need to keep in mind you have a life, you have a personal life too. You tried to fit it all in by starting the review, and it wasn't feasable, as you found out.

Yeah I was really busy when I did the Dream review too and I was able to complete that one and add new chapters frequently. I thought I would be able to do it the same way this time but didn't realize how much MORE work I have now than I did back then. Sigh.

I know, but I like hers :) Her photos are AMAZING!

Thank you :-)

To be perfectly honest, I am quite behind on my paid client work and I just don't have time right now to edit photos from the cruise. I fell ill for a little while and it really set me back. I don't have any idea when I will be able to resume my review unfortunately. I must put my clients first and my health. It means a lot to me that people keep reviving this thread and still want it to continue. I will eventually get to it but it most likely won't be soon.

So I just want to apologize to everyone because I simply haven't had time to write anything new much less edit photos for this review. I've been swamped with work and going through a fair amount of personal stuff. When I started this review, I thought I would have time to add some here and there every week but that hasn't been the case. I don't know when I will be able to add more but rest assured there are other reviews on here! I will eventually get back here to write more. I just don't know 'when'.

 

Must be busy at work (just heard about her on another thread, so came over to catch up on this review to get to 'know' her).

What thread? lol. I hope it's not bad! :)

I am still here (as in getting notifications.) It is 11:46pm and I still have another 2-3 hours of work to do. Been working since 7am this morning! :-) Fun times! At least business is good though which is more than some people have!

Italianfemmy,

 

I am only on page 8 but I am already greatly impressed with your photography and just as much with your descriptive, flowing writing skills. If you ever decide to complete you novel I would want to be first in line to purchase a copy for my personal library.

 

What has come through in your writing and the fact that you have taken so much of your time to write what is the best ship review I have ever read is what a good and kind heart you have. I hope my wife and I meet folks like you on our upcoming cruise on the Dream in just a few more days. For that matter I hope we meet folks like you at any time.

 

Thank you just doesn't seem sufficient to express my appreciation for your review. I'm so glad I found it. Now back to the continuing saga...

 

Cheers!

Sorry I am just now seeing these posts! I do think about finishing the novel occasionally but am so fulfilled right now in this career with photography that I don't put as much thought into it as I would if I were doing something less fulfilling with my life.

How was your trip?