cloudsail

4 hours ago, ready2cruzagain said:

Thank you for this!!!! I was finally able to figure out what Walleye Cod Fillet is!  It looks like they take Walleye and Cod and mix them to make a Fish Cake.  So technically it should not say fillet which was confusing me.  Will have to try it for sure now.

Oh, I think what looks like fish cake is actually the mashed potatoes :). It was a very small piece of fish so in the picture it was probably mostly covered by the garnish on top. 

We've never sailed HAL but I've heard some very good things, so thinking about it for Alaska next year. The ships we'd be looking at are probably the Eurodam or Oosterdam.

My one concern is, the HAL ships seem significantly smaller than those of the other lines that go to Alaska (we can see our cruise terminal from our house so have good visual comparisons). The one time we cruised to Alaska eight years ago was on the NCL Pearl, and I remember quite a bit of motion on the last night. We are not super prone to seasickness, but I am a little worried about rough seas on a small ship. In your experience, what is the motion like on HAL ships going to Alaska? 

Our other option would be Princess, which we've also never sailed on. If anyone has opinions about HAL vs. Princess I'd be interested too.

Pictures from the MDR menus as well as some of the dishes during a five day cruise from early this month:

We picked up the kids then let them watch Pokemon in their room while we packed. I realized I still has unused OBC left, so got a cute charm bracelet from the gift shop. I'm still wearing it right now, as it reminds me of everything we loved about the cruise. Before bed, husband went for a last round of wings from the Local.

All packed up

Love to cruise charms!

Last chicken wings

Our kids had wanted pizza at dinner but there wasn't any in the buffet, so we got some from the kids menu in the MDR to go. It came really quickly, much faster than when you are eating it in the restaurant.

I managed to get a couple pictures of our rooms after turndown.

Pizza to go

Turndown

Turndown

Pajama party

On 11/20/2019 at 3:13 PM, Firepath said:

Thank you for your report - it makes me want to go to the Bahama!. It's funny to me that your MDR menus are exactly what we had on POA in Hawaii two weeks prior. Makes me wonder if they have a standard menu fleet wide at a particular time.

I noticed this too from other people's trip reports and thought it was funny. But I guess it's way easier to have a set menu across the fleet and source the same ingredients than to try to change things up for different itineraries.

Thai spring rolls

French onion soup, surprisingly good

Smoked salmon tartare

New York steak

Pad Thai, the noodles were a little hard, flavor was fine

Dessert menu

White chocolate amaretto cake, not good at all

Mint chocolate mousse, delicious

Warm apple strudel, really good

Last night on the ship! After the balloon animals we came back to our cabin for a bit and the kids did their homework. Then we dropped them off at Splash Academy for the pajama party and pillow fight. We headed to the Palace MDR for dinner.

Homework

Splash Academy hallway

We found that while the portholes seemed like a good idea, most of the time it was actually very hard to see our children. The high shelves block the view of about half of the room.

Appetizers

Featured entrees

At 6 pm we headed to the Bliss lounge for balloon animals, a family activity run by the wonderful kids club staff. We learned to make a sword, a dog, and a hat. It was a lot of fun and the kids each left with an armful of balloons.

We showered and went to the buffet to feed the kids.

It was Mexican night at the buffet.

Chicken fajitas

We took the tender at 4 pm back to the boat. By that time staff was cleaning up and most people seemed to be heading back.

In our stateroom the disembark instructions were waiting for us.

Reception for the villas.

Tender

We went there twice on a five day cruise. The first time we rented a clamshell (vented) and the second time we rented a cabana. I put up a bunch of pictures in my review:

Went on a road trip over the weekend, back now. Continuing with GSC....

The best part about the beach near the cabanas was the snorkelling. All you have to do is walk past the rocks and you immediately see schools of fish, big ones and little ones. Someone even said they saw a ray, though it was gone before we got out there. This was way better than the other side where we swam way out and just saw one or two fish far away. We only brought the waterproof cell phone covers so I didn't get very good underwater shots (planning to get a gopro next year), but I was super happy to get in some good snorkelling that made bringing our own masks worthwhile.

Our kids really loved playing with the yellow floaties that came with the cabana. We let them climb on the rocks a little bit when we were in the water with them, but otherwise we told them to stay off the rocks and they didn't have trouble obeying this. There was more than enough beach and shallow water area to occupy them.

It was a somewhat windy day and there was light rain on and off. Some guy injured himself when he took a floatie beyond the rocks and near the rocky part of shore, and the waves dashed him against the rocks. Needless to say, be aware of the hazards around the water. When I was snorkeling I also looked up periodically to check my position relative to the rocks, as it's easy to get lost in the underwater world and get pushed around by the waves.

Before I forget, here is the food truck menu and pictures of all the items.

Menu

Caribbean Ceviche. There was only shrimp, but it was very good.

Pulled pork sandwich

Fish sandwich

Jerk chicken sandwich. I forgot to get a picture before my son started eating it.

Rum cake and fudge bars

31 minutes ago, brookie848 said:

This is one of the main reasons we will avoid cruises with GSC in the future. When we went, people were waiting over an hour in the hot sun for the return tender. We got "lucky" and only had to wait about 45 minutes. 

 

I can see why people love the island, but overall the whole experience was a disappointment to us. 

 

I'm really enjoying your review!

Thanks!

I agree. Considering the fact that our small ship wasn't nearly full, and we were the only ship at the island, I really don't want to see what the tendering process would be like with a bigger full ship or two ships.

Coming back to the ship we were also lucky because we just caught a tender that was about to leave and we were the last ones on board. It was almost entirely full, so I don't know how long it had been waiting there to fill up.

The beach in front of the cabanas is small and private. I've read other people say that it is very rocky. There's definitely more rocks than the bigger beach, but we didn't feel like it detracted from the beach at. Most of the beach was still fine white sand, and the rocks in the water served to create a small shallow bay that was great for our children to play in.

Walking to the cabana

Cabana #17

Beach in front of small cabanas

Beach with our ship in the distance

Rocks in the bay

When we got on the island, we checked in at the villa and spa desk, then were asked to wait for a bit. Soon someone came to lead us to the tram that drove us to where the cabanas were located.

After a short ride, we got to the tram stop for the cabanas. As you walk up the path, the restrooms are to the left and the food truck is to the right. We ended up not even going to the buffet this day and just ate from the food truck.

Check-in

Tram 

Our awesome driver

Food truck

We had cabana #17, which was to the left

We had breakfast at the buffet again. We got to deck 3 at 9:25, and there was a really big line for the tender. Then once we got on the boat we waited for what felt like forever. It seemed like they were just waiting there for more people to show up so they could fill the tender to capacity. This seemed very inefficient since there was another empty tender just waiting beside us. We didn't end up casting off until 10 am.

Custom eggs over medium with mushrooms and salsa

I really miss these waffles

Line for the tender

We reserved a small cabana, which was only $149 after the $50 shore excursion credit. I thought it was a great deal, even though we ended up spending barely any time in it because the kids wanted to play in the water the entire day, and the cabanas are not close enough to the water to supervise them from.

Day 5 Great Stirrup Cay again

The Dailies:

38 minutes ago, Deeliteful said:

Thank you for your review. Loving seeing your beautiful children do their homework! 😀

Thanks! We just started homeschooling last year and are planning more travel now that the kids are mostly self-sufficient, so we are working on the habit of doing schoolwork in all kinds of environments. Cruises are great because there's always some downtime every day.

Midnight snack courtesy of the Local:

The show ended at 10 and we went straight to the pool deck for the Glow party. We all wore the t-shirts we painted the previous day. For some reason neither of my kids like getting their face painted, and husband wouldn't do it either, so I was the only one who was up for face painting. 

It was super fun and our son especially loved the music and dancing. Our daughter was getting tired despite her afternoon nap, and by 11 she started complaining that it was too loud, so we took them to the buffet for a snack then back to bed.

Decked out pool deck

Glow t-shirts

Face painting

Performers were excellent

6 minutes ago, DZcreature said:

I am really enjoying your review, and all the photos. It is making me want to book a trip on the Sky! 😎. The pool area looks like a good size, and you don't have to share it with too many people.

 

Thank you for taking the time to post.

The Sky definitely made us fall in love with smaller ships! I am now thinking about maybe Alaska on a HAL ship, instead of the bigger NCL and Princess ships that sail there. The motion might be a concern though, since the route is much farther and on potentially rougher seas.

We wanted good seats for the magic show, so got to Stardust Theater at 8:30 pm. We sat in the first row on the second level and the kids did their homework while we waited for the show to start.

I feel like the show started a little slow but it got very good toward the end. Our kids were entertained and we liked the humor interspersed throughout. His last two tricks left us very impressed, especially the one with the wine bottles. Titou himself has good stage presence and was a likeable performer.

Magician Titou