frazzledrazzle16

I’m on this cruise as well, we were in the dining room for breakfast when Christine Duffy came on the loudspeaker. At least the passengers around us seems to be taking it in stride, I didn’t hear any negativity/rudeness but I don’t doubt there has been some. Hopefully no one is taking it out on the crew, who have been working their @$$es off trying to compensate for the others in quarantine and have been nothing short of wonderful.

we just got off on sunday morning after an 8 day...ship was late getting into port by about an hour and half. Going down to Aruba and Curacoa we had 50-60knt winds. Choppy going down as the waves would batter the aft(9107). On sports deck the wind would take your breath away. This was the first 3 days....The came the fun on the night home from Grand Turk. while lying in bed i would throw my hands up with the kids cause it felt like a roller coaster. Rumor has the back of the ship was getting lifted up and slammed downed.. "levitation" was the term used. They were inspecting for damage when we arrived at port and no doubt concerned about heading out again into that.

I was also on this sailing and the last night was really rough. We stayed on deck 2 and some of the rooms on our floor had broken windows in their cabins. Casino and shops had damage as well (slot machines and store displays knocked over). CD Chris said it was the worst he had seen in years.

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I believe this is what they replaced "late night bites" with... When we were on the Sunshine this past December, it was near the pizzeria with the same items every night (hot dogs, fries, grilled ham & cheese sandwiches, cookies and brownies, etc).

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We were on the Sunshine over christmas. Both are open during lunch at no charge... The Cucina side serves as the pasta bar and the Jiji's side offers Carnival's normal mongolian wok.

Definitely check out Jiji's for dinner- Best dining experience I've ever had on a cruise ship, hands down!

Correct me if I'm wrong but if its under the same booking, I believe you can set up your onboard account for the entire party and then specify who you would like to have charging privileges.

I may be weird but I would much rather be out on deck late at night...at least after the party crowd has faded into an ethanol-fueled oblivion for a few hours. The sea is just much prettier at night.

Couldn't agree more! We just sailed this itinerary in May and my FAVORITE memory is on the last night traveling back up to Puerto Rico we spent some time at the front of the ship on the Serenity deck. It was compeletly quiet and empty... I have never seen so many stars in my life! The best part was passing by all the tiny lit-up islands and trying to guess which was which. :D

Others have said the same thing, but its good advice- Use the one sea day to rest and re-charge because it is such a port-intensive itinerary and you'll have no other real breaks for the remainder of the cruise.

We're platinum with 13 cruises on Carnival. Most recent sailing was this past October. We've always sailed in balconies, first few cruises were in suites.

Never really spent very much in the Casino, we're talking $10-20 at most LOL. Pretty modest S&S... Around $300 on drinks/on-board restaurants, excursions we always prebook through Carnival. We didnt have any future bookings but we were ready to put a deposit down on the Oasis when this offer came in. :D

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Wahoo!!! Was randomly pricing out cruises yesterday and saw I had a VIFP offer for a free cabin for 2. We're now booked in a balcony on the Valor over Memorial Day, since there's 3 of us the total was around $800. In all of our past cruises we've never been offered an upgrade or anything, so I'm shocked to say the least!!!

The coffee HAS improved... I never used to be able to drink the swill up on the Lido but whatever they switched to was noticeably better on our Breeze cruise last week.

We were on the 10/26 Breeze sailing and I believe Pete Leibenberg is going by Pete De Vil. He was a nice guy but nothing special.

Love the luggage tag holders! Where did you find them?

I'll answer this one!!! I ordered them from Amazon after hearing about them somewhere here on CC. I'm usually the one taping/laminating our luggage tags and I'm always worried they're going to fall off! These worked wonderfully and we can reuse for our next RCCL cruise. :)

http://www.amazon.com/Cruisetags-NARROW-Cruise-Ship-Luggage/dp/B009PGOCUE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373253181&sr=8-1&keywords=royal+caribbean+luggage+tags

We got off the Miracle a week and a half ago and had room 4203, which is a HC accessible cabin and I believe the same layout as the one that your friends are booked in. My sister has pictures of it... Maybe I can steal them from her or get her to post them on this thread.

We regularly book HC cabins for my grandmother and this one was by far the largest she has had... Lots of floor space. It was much easier to manuver a wheelchair in this room than others we've been in. There's a window and the beds are set up against this wall. Any other questions let me know, in the meantime I'm going to see what I can do about those pictures.

Stephanie: Your cruise director was Fillpe too?

Yup! I was there the week his girlfriend was so we probably saw him even less than you did. What really irked me is during the helicopter rescue he brought her up to where the helicopter was with the passenger who was being airlifted so she could get a closer view when she had no business being there. Talk about unprofessional!

It's really a shame, too, because the staff (waiters, bartenders, servers, etc) were really on their game. They were the most fantastic crew we have ever had on a ship before.

Did you say there are no more "Capers" left in your cabin each evening ????

They still have them... they are just reformatted and called the "Fun Times"

Muster Drill was a scarey kind of joke. You no longer wear your life jacket to the drill. The cruise line people standing in the front of everyone are supposed to show you what to do. There is a lot of new people working onboard during our week and the two young girls working our station looked scared to death. Remember this was the first week of Sping Break and there was an awful lot of young, rowdy young adults here. (first I always thought that when you go to muster drill you are to leave your food nd drinks behind. No one enforced this rule and beer was flying as we were listening to the directions in English, Spanish and French (I think it was French)

 

It seemed to last forever---lol

 

Remember I said there is a lot of new people onboard- The Cruise Director staff--- I saw two people most of the week and saw the girl Liz two times only. Lee is being touted as the oldest AND the youngest crew staff onboard--he is over 25 and this was only his second week making him the youngest member. Before he became a cruise host he was the trombone player but carnival cut a lot of their musicians and Lee wanted to stay on a ship--so he became a host. Levy is from Austraila and very hard to understand--but by the end of the week he was getting better.

 

The Cruise Director we had is one that is filling in for the regular guy. We hardly ever saw him and his Asst. Cruise Director Little John filled that position most of the week. (we also had Little John filling in on our last Liberty cruise- he will make a good cruise director one day but still gotta tone down some. I found his cursing offensive (IMHO -he was trying to keep up wih the spring breakers. I feel he should have kept to his professionalism and things woulda been better.)

 

I guess the cruise director can make or break a cruise. For this cruise I felt there were huge amounts of time with nothing to do.

For example: Friday is a sea day: the line up looked like this

6am - gym opens

7:00 - stretch and relax

8:00-Yoga (fees applied)

9:30- good morning freedom

(which if you saw this on Friday you wold know it was a rerun

10:00 towel folding demonstration

library opens

11:00 Debarkation talks

texas hold em tournament

heal em with chinese therapy (fees applied)

12:00 skin care solutions

golf clinic

12:15 Bridge players meet

12:30 ice carving demo

comedy trivia

slot tournament

golf lessons

 

(maybe this weekend I will upload my Fun Times.

 

Gone are the Capers.

We were on the ship last month and I have to agree with all of this!!! Muster drill was a DISASTER! My grandma is in a wheelchair, and we had called numerous times to see if there was a place for special assistance to go to (like all of our other cruises). They told us just to go to the muster station and from there they would direct us where to go. We got there and they just told us to stand off to the side while the muster drill was going on outside. There were two other people in wheelchairs and their families with us, and none of the staff came by to demonstrate anything.

The entertainment staff too.... we hardly saw any of them. Liz was more invested in socializing with other staff members than doing her job. We did think that Little John did a great job and will definately be a future cruise director.

We were also disappointed with the lack of activities. The capers (we didn't have the funtimes yet) were fairly bare compared to our previous cruises.

TVS in the cabin are flat screen Zeniths. Some people ask about taking DVD players or their video games. There are no hook ups in the front and we tried to see behind the tv but couldnt move it far enough to see any hook ups. I can imagine a person fitting a hand back there to hook it up.

Haha I did this too... I attempted to hook up my portible DVD player, but the space to get behind the TV was so small and I ended up accidently unplugging the power cord. It was definately a challenge to try and get that plugged back in!

So the only place you could find bacon/ham was at the omlette station??? Pretty sure they have it at all the open breakfast lines, "bacon police" included. :rolleyes:

Cruzing71, you bring up a good point. Something smells funny. (and it wasn't me LOL)

She did! See quote from her blog:

LOL yeah I guess I just read it too fast! But still, I don't think enough emphasis was put on how nice this guy was... I started loading up the trunk with luggage and he took it out of my hands and forbid me to do it!Those New Yorkers can be pushy!! ;):)

LOL you posted such a nice picture of my bedhead. I couldn't help it that I woke up so early but at least we got some clear shots of the statue of liberty without all the gross rain in the background like sail away! Also, you forgot to put about the very nice purser guy that when we went to put the luggage in the car, he stopped me and said that I was still on vacation and he would take care of it!!! That left me with such warm and fuzzies of New York :)

Nicole,

 

I have enjoyed your blog so very much. You are a very talented writer. I look forward to each installment and I can hardly wait until you go on a trip again just to read your blog.

 

Sorry to go off topic but I would love to know your top suggestions on restaurants in Chicago. My sisters and I love visiting Chicago (we go twice a year) for shopping and enjoying all the fine restaurants in Chicago. I would love to know what are your top recommendations on restaurants in Chicago.

 

Again, Thank you for the wonderful blogs. I enjoy them thoroughly. :)

Nicole isn't feeling very well today (I think its because once again we are experiencing some yucky weather.... when is summer going to start?!?), but she wanted me to help her answer your question. I don't know where you are looking to go (downtown, wrigleyville, 'burbs, etc) but here are a few of our favorite places:

-Carson's: they have famous ribs, and their potatoes au gratin are AMAZING!

-RJ Grunts near Lincoln Park Zoo: it looks like kind of a hole in the wall, but it has a 70's hippie vibe and a great salad bar. In the winter get the temperature soup... whatever you pay what the temperature is and no, they will not GIVE you money to eat when its below zero but it is a bargain LOL

-Food Life in Watertower: I guess I would describe it as kind of gourmet cafeteria style food... they have stations for all different types of cuisine so you can mix and match southern bbq, mexican, asian, etc etc... all the food is very fresh and very good

-Superdawg drive-in: in my opinion the best chicago style dogs you can find, very kitchy place, honestly just google it and you will see what I mean!

-Ed Debevic's: 50's style diner, waiters are characters and dance on the countertops, very fun experience

A lot of the really gourmet resturants are under the Lettuce Entertain You group, so I would just look around their website (www.leye.com). All of the places I listed are fairly casual. Tonight we're going to a newer place for my birthday, Texas de Brazil, a brazillian steakhouse in Schaumburg, but the one downtown I heard is spectacular (they have a 2 story wine cellar that is visible from the resturant and they hire a trapeze artist to retreve the bottles of wine and perform for the patrons). I'll have Nicole let you know how it went :)

What no update today??? I'm going to have to be on your case tomorrow ;)

Thought I'd add in my 2 cents...

A few ways you can go about this...

 

In January, we sent Stephanie a "Congratulations" cake. When you look at your reservation on Carnival's Web site, there's a section to order gifts and services. There, you can order a birthday cake and select what night you'd like it delivered (keep in mind, night one is embarkation night...we sometimes forget to count embarkation day as Day 1). We did this for Mom's birthday last year and Stephanie's graduation cake this year.

 

On this past cruise, we were really lacksidasical with our planning. I tried to order drink tickets and some other stuff three days before we left and was informed that all orders must be placed at least four days before embarkation, so we were SOL. You can also order a cake onboard at either the patisserie (where they sell espresso drinks, specialty cakes and pastries for a nominal fee) or the Formalities shop. They will deliver it to either the stateroom (at a time specified by you) or dinner (on a night you specify). We ordered Mom's cake to our room to enjoy on the balcony.

 

Hope that helps!

 

The cakes are really inexpensive, too. I believe they're less than $8 and feed at least 6-8.

I would say wait to order it on the ship. Through the online formalities you can only order a generic cake, but on the boat you can specify if you want a round or heart shape cake and what you want written on it. Plus (as Nicole mentioned), you can have it delivered to the stateroom, which came in handy for us because we unexpectedly made a last minute reservation at the Supper Club.

We probably should have opted for a hot dog at Nathan's, but I think we have that in Chicago. I wanted a Gray's Papaya hot dog, but add that to the things we didn't get to try in NYC along with street vendor food and my trip to the Dakota Building, Strawberry Fields and most of Central Park LOL. More added to the list for the next time we visit.

I'm pretty sure I am the reason we didn't get NY style hot dogs... I can't imagine a hot dog being decent without neon green relish and the rest of the garden :D

Anyways, good job with your epic ginormous blog Nikki.. It's about the only thing that's keeping me from going into full blown post-cruise depression (although it will NOT satisfy my need to be constantly entertained ;))