RedJessi

Hello! We are planning a trip from Florida to California for this summer and are including a little 4 night cruise down the coast from LA to Catalina Island and Ensenada Mexico. Ive never cruised from any ports in CA and was hoping someone has done this itinerary and can tell me what to expect as far as weather, ship turbulence and - of course - recommended excursions. Currently, I'm considering the Bison tour on Catalina Island - not seeing much of interest in Ensenada. I'd love to hear other's experiences!

Hello! I am considering a river cruise for our family summer vacation. We've done a fair amount of Caribbean cruises with several different lines, and one alaskan, but have never river cruised. I'm having some difficulty understanding what's included in the fare looking at the American Cruise Lines website. I am looking at the Maine itinerary and each day lists excursions but provides no info about costs associated. It would seem to good to be true to think they were included - where can I find out the actual costs so I can see if this is in our budget? Thank you!

I found this info and thought it might be helpful We did three overnight treatments on the ship, and aside from the first night, they went perfectly. The first night, hubby's arm sweated and set off his enuresis (moisture) alarm. After that, I kept the room cooler at night, and we had no problems. A few notes: We do nocturnal HD, and it takes 50 liters of fluid. Because heater sets can only hold 5 bags (25 liters), I set an alarm, get up in the middle of the night, and swap out the bags to get the full treatment. If you do short daily HD, you won't run into that! We couldswitch to short daily during vacation, but nocturnal makes him feel better, and you pretty much want to feel good when on vacation. Sticking can be a little more difficult than at home, but that's to be expected any time you are not in the exact position you usually are. To get your weight can be tricky. The ship...it MOVES. And YOU will move too while trying to weigh. The biggest tip I have is to weigh yourself while in port when the ship is still. We were not able to get EXACT weights before two treatments, and you need to be aware of that. Most ships also have the old style manual scales in their spa/exercise area, and you can get a more accurate reading on those! (I just didn't think of that until we were done doing treatments.) If you do short daily, and have a balcony cabin, you can pretty likely set up dialysis on the balcony outside! There are worse things than cruising along in the Caribbean while dialyzing on your balcony. I WILL warn you to be certain you have enough shade to avoid a nasty little sunburn.

It was around $189 per person for my sailing, I believe. We didn't do it.

Cataclysmic!

I will try to keep that in mind for future cruises! Thanks 🙂

Day 2 - NASSAU We opted to stay on board and enjoy the ship with fewer crowds. We climbed the rock wall, played dodgeball (RCL even gave out "gold medals" to the winning team, so we came home with a net souvenir!), swam in the pools, ate many cones of ice cream and watched some of the Little Mermaid. We definitely enjoyed this day and it was proof that often with cruising, the ship is the best destination. At 1:00 my husband and I took the All- Access tour, which we thoroughly enjoyed! Engineering and the Bridge were super cool, but the seeing the kitchens and laundry was also a cool look at all the hard work that goes into making our experience memorable. Liberty may be an older ship, with some dated decor and chipped or worn surfaces, but she still knows how to deliver a good time and seems to have a dedicated crew. We wrapped up the day with some Karaoke and called it a night. Day 3 - COCO CAY We were not interested in the exorbitant cost of the "thrill park" -full disclosure, we are Floridians and when you can hit a big Disney, Sea World or Universal water park for less than half the cost of Coco Cay's much smaller offering, it was a hard pass for us. So we found a nice spot on the beach, under umbrellas, about 50 feet from a snack shack and about a minute long walk to the giant oasis pool and had a great time! No complaints at all - food was easy to get, never a line, finally found the Strawberry Kiwi drink I've loved on past RCL cruises (Liberty only offered water, unsweet tea and lemonade as the complimentary options), and stayed from about 10am to 2pm. We opted to get back on the ship a bit early to experience the Flow rider with shorter wait times. Then it was back to the windjammer for dinner before seeing the Ice show. Definitely catch this! I was amazed at the tricks they were able to do on such a small patch of ice - my daughter was on the edge of her seat, gasping and covering her eyes at some moments. Definitely a talented cast! Day 4 - Disembarking Hands down, easiest disembarkation ever. Literally woke up at 6:45am, rolled out of bed, got dressed, zipped up the bags and walked out the door. We were back at our car by 7:20. 10 our to 10 for self-assist. Let me know if you have any questions - I'll answer whatever I can. In the meantime - enjoy your cruise - we did!

Above you have all of the compass info from day 2. I don't think I will be posting more compass images - essentially, the activities are largely the same for day 3 - add the ice show at about 7pm and 9pm. The rest will just be my thoughts on our first experience back with Royal after 7 years with other cruise lines. FOOD - OVERALL First night, we ate in the MDR with a "my time dining" reservation at 6:45. This was not a great experience. We arrived to the line at 6:40 were sat at about 7:25 in a nice location and ordered our drinks. My husband and daughter got theirs in about 10 minutes....my glass of wine took a bit longer to show up - perhaps an extra 10 minutes. We placed our meal order, and waited about 25 minutes for the appetizers to show up - my husband and daughter both ordered spinach and artichoke dip, which they each only took a couple bites of before pushing it aside. I ordered the escargot and crispy crab cake. The escargot was well cooked and seasoned - honestly, some of the best cruise ship escargot I've ever had. The crab cake never arrived. And we waited another 45 minutes for our main entrees. Which felt like an excessive amount of time. My husband got the prime rib, which he said was very good - but was served on a plate with a teaspoon sized portion of veg. Weird. My daughter has the stuffed portobello mushroom, which she enjoyed. I had the spaghetti bolognese, which I feel fairly confident was canned ragu sauce mixed with diced, unseasoned ground beef. Edible but bland. Deserts were Cheesecake and Boston creme pie - both were good. But given that the meal took 2 hours, we decided we were not interested in repeat performances and opted to eat in the windjammer for our remaining dinners. This is something I have never done as I've generally enjoyed the MDR experience, but after truly awful experiences on our last Princess cruise and with this being such a short, casual cruise, I decided to shrug it off and just hit the buffet. Which was fine. I feel like RCLs food quality post-covid has fallen to what Carnival Cruise was pre-covid. I haven't been on a Carnival ship in 6 years, so I can't speak to what it's currently like - if it's called as well, I cannot say. I can say that Disney remains the highest quality food I've had at sea with not big changes pre/post covid, while Princess was the worst food I even had on any cruise. This is not to say the windjammer was horrible - we had plenty to eat (though lines for hamburgers got too long for my husband to be willing to stand in) and it was certainly better than cooking it myself! I did notice there was a lack of staff compared to what we previously experienced on RCL and what we most recently experienced with other cruise lines. When plates were put on the edge of the table, they were not collected until we vacated the table. I don't know if this is new policy or if their buffet is just short staffed. Also, no bar staff were wandering about to take drink orders - if you wanted an adult beverage, you had to walk to the bar at the entrance to the windjammer. Overall, It was good - not spectacular but also in no way awful. If I were to do it again, I would try traditional dining at 5:15. If it took longer than 90 minutes, I would go back to the windjammer and not feel like I was missing out on anything other than white tablecloths.

So, Above you have all the Compass for day 1 - embarkation day. For Port Everglades - have picture ID or birth certifications for everyone in the car available on the car - you will have to show it to get to the parking lot. Luckily enough, I had all this info easily at hand and had realized what was going on while we were in line, but I can see people having a stressful experience off the bat, trying to get documents that are maybe in the trunk. Overall, I did not find embarkation to be very well organized. I had done everything on the App, but was still directed to go to the check in desk, where we waited for about 40 minutes in line, only to have the desk person not know while we were sent there, because everything was done. 🤷‍♀️ We went straight to the Windjammer - lots of friendly crew and happy, welcoming faces and we enjoyed a quick lunch. We then explored the ship a bit. We found the kids club and we had low expectations, but RCL didn't quite rise to them. Now, caveat, we've been spoiled by the Disney Kids club - so it's a totally unfair comparison. But, our kiddo (girl age 11) had zero interest in going back. Which was fine, because there was plenty to do onboard. Our room was in a great location, but was otherwise unremarkable. It was our first time back in an inside cabin since 2016! Definitely prefer a balcony, but we weren't;t planning on spending much time there - and we really didn't - so it was fine. Like I said, a great location, which made up for a lot.

The compass is now only digital - and it's a LOT of screen shots to show you a day - like over 2 dozen per day. I'll upload a few but I am not sure I can commit to all of it.