DragonOfTheSeas

Here are some pictures of the bar and the cabana area. I want to take a picture real fast before people got into those cabanas. The pool area looks especially also, I am someone who does not like loud music. And that was something that kind of concerned me about coming here really the only thing. But I decided to come anyway because of the adults only and heated pool features I don’t know whether they’ve turned the music down today or not but it’s fine. I’m not bothered by it at all. It gives it a nice vibe.

Here, a few pictures of the beach and pool

It’s a beautiful day here on Coco Cay. I’ve been missing getting my sunrise picture, so here was today’s sunrise Coco Cay is in the Berty Island group. Norwegian cruise line uses one of those islands as a private island also. And they were pulling in this morning. We are sharing the island today with freedom of the seas

Merino Mom thank you for answering. They do not put the sheets introducing the important people in your state room anymore. I did not go to the top-tier event. So I wasn’t there to meet them and I asked one of the waiters in the dining room, and they could say his name, but they could not spell it for me. (and there was no way from the way they were pronouncing it, that I could spell it.) I still have this on my mental list to find out so you save me the trouble😃

We are headed to Hideaway Beach today in Coco Cay. I will post some pics in a little while.

We are leaving Port Canaveral right on time at 8 PM. It was fine while it lasted.

We did a small amount of shopping at Ron Jon. It’s a huge store and the lines were long.

Cocoa Beach is hopping since it is spring break. We were late arriving in port compared to other ships. some of them seem to be packing up and leaving. The last bus for us is at 5:30 tonight. it’s a red flag day so everyone’s limited to the breakers.

I didn’t look on my phone this morning until I got into Port Canaveral. I will shocked to see the key bridge collapse. We have good friends who are sailing on the vision right now. And Baltimore Cruise friends who are scheduled on the next two cruises. at least one of our friends on this cruise on vision was with us on the last cruise on grandeur of the sea when sailing stopped for the pandemic. They closed the port of Baltimore. But the governor made an exception, and allowed us to return. I feel for her, and all those that are aboard

Yes, it’s working out very well for us. Our waiter and assistant waiter are excellent. If they offer this in the future, we will certainly sign up.

I purchased three tickets for the Ron Jon beach shuttle. It will take us to Cocoa Beach. Our time is 1:45 PM to meet the bus. We have a later port day so that’s not a problem and DH and I will probably only stay about three or so hours at the beach. Since we don’t have any suntan yet, we don’t want to scorch on the first day. The later excursion time lets us have lunch on the ship, which is much easier to do for us, instead of finding a restaurant on the shore. I know many people enjoy doing that but we have to think about what works best in our situation.

We spent a good part of the morning in our happy place again.. . Otherwise known as the solarium. I was taking a selfie on the swing when someone else came up and said they would take a picture. Our.DD always makes her 20 something send a picture when they’ve gone on a trip each day. She calls it the proof of life 🙄 Here is my proof of life for today

We are pulling into Port Canaveral now woo hoo! there is a campground right at the entrance to Port Canaveral, and a beach nearby.

We actually have been fairly pleased. People have not been rude and we have been able to get on and off the elevator. Our tactic is to push the button in the direction we want to go, but if the first elevator comes and I can’t get on because many times, the elevators are so full that one person cannot even get on let alone walker. Then we take the very next elevator that comes with space going up or down and we ride it until we can get to our floor. Before we started doing that. We sometimes have three or four elevators pass a spot before we can get on. That was a little frustrating. DD and I find that the elevators are very slow anywa, even if we’re just trying to ride it as a single rider. Fo the last three days—at least one and sometimes two elevators have been out of service of the group near us.

I am standing in our junior suite cabin, looking into the hallway, and the door to the deck eight is directly in front of me. You can see the lock door to the right, and our daughter’s door to the left. This is working perfectly for us plenty of privacy, but also plenty of space for both of us. We keep the door propped open like this whenever we’re all in the cabin and closed when we are gone or sleeping. It is a narrow hallway, DH walker just fits through.

Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear. I did say here are the lunch items that were on the brunch menu. There were ample breakfast items, French toast, eggs, Benedict, pancakes, eggs, etc. I didn’t post those because we were going to use it as our lunch

We will give it a try one day. Thanks

Yes, the time is fine--it was just a surprise.

In the summer of 2022 the airline flights to Europe were in a turmoil. There were strikes for SAS [months long] and Lufthansa [just our flight day]. Many passengers had flights cancelled. Ours United flight was, too about a month before our Baltic cruise leaving Stockholm. We booked it through Air2Sea. They told us be patient and we would get a flight. . . . and we did. They gave us the United business class with the lay flat seats. Like you, I can't sleep on planes and I didn't then either. The seats were OK. But DH and I agreed it would not have been worth the money to purchase the upgrade.

We always select My Time Dining for our cruises. I made reservations for dinner each night at 7pm when it opened. We can always change individual days if we need to. My reservations appear in my calendar on the app. However, when we got to the dining room at 7pm last night they told us we actually had a fixed dining seating at 6:30pm. Sure enough, that was listed at the bottom of the sea pass. I had checked the sea pass when I got it to see the muster station # and to make sure the name and cabin were correct--but I ignored the rest. Oops! I have no problem with the time or having a fixed seating, It is a little less flexible, but it will not make or break our cruise. I double checked my cruise invoice, and it says My Time Dining. [a first world problem] HaHaHa However, they make such a big deal about their app. Everything is accessed from the app and we are told to check the app every time I turn around. Well, I did! But it was not correct. I felt badly for our wait staff that we were 30 minutes late for dinner. The waiter seemed very nice. We had very quick service. He told us that today [1st sea day] would be a brunch in the American Icon restaurant beginning at 8:30am. He said the lines will be long and the service will be slow due to the large numbers. He recommended we go to the Solarium Bistro for breakfast. We took his suggestion. The solarium bistro was a small version of the windjammer. It had all of the typical American items--even an omelet station. Around noon we decided to catch the end of the brunch hours [8:30am-12:30pm] for lunch. We prefer to be seated and served for our meals. It just makes it easier. Here are the lunch items on the brunch menu:

Our happy place today was the solarium. There were plenty of seats when we first arrived but it’s getting kind of busy now. Nice and warm and we’re sitting on the sunny side. Compare those pictures to this picture of the indoor family pool.

It’s a little rough today. But the captain announced that it would be improving during the afternoon. In his noon briefing, he said we were off the coast of Cape, Lookout, North Carolina. There are lots of whitecaps and a definite, rolling motion. But is not enough to cause us a problem.

One of the busiest places on the pool deck was this drink stand. but the most popular place hands-down was the soft, serve ice cream I counted 47 people in line. 🙄

Speaking of cabins. Here are our cabins. We hoped to open our JS door and create a small apartment for the three of us. that is working very well. The cabin attendant let us use his door stop. We close all the doors when we leave and at night. However, all of the other time our door is open. This would work well for a family. There is another door that opens onto the hall. There is a key slot on that door. It can connect to make the "family suite larger." but the attendant needs to unlock this door with his key. So, they can not open the door to our hall on this cruise. Here is our cabin Here is the studio. It is very "cozy." 😉 It has a virtual balcony--which is a nice feature.

Well, I am back. I have a couple of things from yesterday to post. The Anthem of the Seas is a large ship. DD and I explored the various public decks to orient ourselves. A sign says just under 3 laps of the track on deck 15 is a mile. I am sure we did the equivalent of that in our travels. My favorite spaces were the solarium and Two 70. One of the most crowded areas and the spot I will stay away from way the family indoor pool. Another popular spot was the Seaplex with the bumper cars. The line wrapped around each side and down the hallway. Before dinner DH and I went to Two70 for drinks and to listen to Caribbean Vibes. They are a pretty good group—but way too loud. When they began my Apple watch alerted me that the sound level was above 90 decibels and can lead to temporary hearing loss. HaHaHa 🤣 After a few songs we took our drinks back to the cabin and watched March Madness.