Gemynii

Liked the review helped me look forward to cruising an older ship dh & I are looking forward to our cruise Oct 19 2013

I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

Hope you have a wonderful cruise and a Happy 25th Anniversary!

That sounds like a good plan, 10-12 for the walking tour. You might want to hop on the jitney at West Street and George to go over to the Fish Fry. It's about a mile and a half walk and you might be ready for a little sitting after the walking tour. :)

Thanks for the reply.

On Google maps, it shows the walking tour plus to and from the Fish Fry to be about 3.6 miles. Since we'll probably still be recouping a bit from walking 3.5 miles in Key West two days before, a short ride on the jitney halfway through the tour sounds good.

Aren't West St and George St parallel? It's kind of confusing when I look at the map since there's West, West Hill and West Bay. If we go to the Fish Fry after checking out St. Fancis Church #13 (which Google maps shows on West St not Delancy),we will have to backtrack to get to George St.

Unless we head up George St after seeing Government House #11 and go past Christ Church #16 to Vendue House #15 then catch a jitney (if that's where the stop is) and past the Hilton #14 on our way to the Fish Fry. After eating lunch, we could always do the tour backward down West St, east on West Hill and Duke, then north at Market St to see tour stops 12, 13 and the Greek church.

Can you tell I'm a planner? Is there a site where I can view pickup locations for the jitney?

We'll be in Nassau on Tuesday, 12/10/13 from 8am-5pm and are planning to do the self walking tour here: http://www.frommers.com/destinations/newprovidence/0251010008.html When we get to the corner of West Street and Marlborough, we will detour to the Fish Fry to try out Goldie's before continuing the rest of the tour.

I just wanted to know if anyone had an opinion on what time we should actually leave the ship to start the tour. The Frommers site states that the tour only takes about 2 hours and even though we will probably go a bit slower since I plan on taking tons of pictures, I don't want to get to Goldie's before they open at 12pm.

I'm wondering if we should just sleep in until about 8am, have breakfast onboard around 9am and leave the ship around 10am so that it times out better.

Thanks!

I just read and enjoyed your review. The pictures showed up just fine in the review.

 

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Forums mobile app

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it!

That's funny about the pictures... I see them again, too. They've been gone all week with just a Photobucket message saying "Limit Has Been Reached" and my account says "Bandwidth Limit Reached". But, hey, if they continue showing up, then that's great. :D

great review

We both really enjoyed your review. It brought back so many memories of the excitement and fun and adventure of doing a cruise for the first time! Thanks for sharing so much of it, and have fun on your next one!

 

Alice and Bob

Thank you! Glad ya'll enjoyed the review. Sorry about the pictures being seperate now.

On our prior cruise, we were able to call before we sailed to add OBC to our account, but I have seen other threads here were it was said that they no longer allow that and that you must buy Cruise Cash to add funds beforehand. Maybe someone can clear it up who has sailed recently. I was just planning on pre-paying gratuities ahead of time and buying $100 Cruise Cash. If we spend more, I'll add it while onboard.

* I mentioned in one of my previous posts on this thread that we don't have a bank account or credit card. The reason for this is because our debit card number was used online for a large amount (money was in account to cover check for mtg pymt, etc) and even though it was disputed, it was not resolved because "it could not be proven that we did not make the purchase ourselves" and we were left with no way to pay that month's mtg on time and tons of nsf fees from other checks that were not able to be paid. Bank still says we owe them over $2500. *

Online it says the money is non-refundable when its on your card!! Are you saying we can withdrawal it?

Any cash you add at check in or while on the ship is refundable.

Even the non-refundable Cruise Cash that you buy online can be "withdrawn" by transfering it

to a slot machine in the casino, playing once, cashing out to bank, then picking up the cash

at the window. *There are threads on here that go into more detail on how to do this*

I hope you have a wonderful cruise!

We don't have a bank account or credit cards. I just use a pre-paid reloadable card (no fee Bluebird card from Walmart) to make payments on the cruise. I set up our account as cash on Cruise Manager with no debit/credit card linked to it. We did it the same way on our previous cruise.

At check in, they just verified that there was a credit on the account (we had $230 OBC) and we boarded without having to add any more. By day 4, I believe, we were informed of a low balance because gratuities for 3 had been charged to the account, so I did a 5 minute trip to Guest Services and added another $100. We received a check for the amount we hadn't used on the last morning. Aside from taking cash into ports, we kept our money (other than 1's for tipping) locked in the safe.

Using a cash only option for your account is very easy. :)

Enjoying your review! We loved the Paradise and will hopefully sail on her again in the future. Trying a sister ship 1st, then want to do a 7 day... but definitely want to go back on the ship that got us hooked on cruising. :)

It is listed as an excursion at your embarkation port if its available on your ship. But they sell out fast. I think they only have about 15 available per sailing. If you book relatively last minute you won't find any available. But if you book a year or so in advance you have a pretty good chance of getting one. But I think you can't book excursions unless you have made final payment. At least that has been my experience.

You can definitely book excursions before final payment. I purchased FTTF back in May and a Freeport excursion in June. Our final payment, which we haven't made, is due in October.

I'm really looking foward to using FTTF in December. I don't really care about having a special line at GS and we don't have a tender port, but it'll be nice to be able to board sooner, have rooms ready early to drop off carry-ons/sodas and be able to disembark sooner (even though we won't want to) to beat the huge line through customs.

It looks like my limit as been reached on Photobucket and the images I posted are no longer visable. The full album from our cruise can still be viewed directly of anyone is interested.

Link to album: http://s456.photobucket.com/user/gemynii_album/library/Paradise

Thanks!

Bump! Gotta read this later. Getting ready for this cruise in January.

 

Reviews and pics look amazing! Nice job

 

~Bob~

Thanks. I hope you enjoy the review when you get the chance to read it. We loved the Paradise and would sail on her again in a heartbeat. I'm sure you'll have a great time.

Kim I looked at all your photos which are great. I thought my DH takes a lot of pictures but you have out done him. And your review makes me want to get on the ship now. We must meet up if possible before the cruise. Maybe do some window shopping at the mall. Oh, and I love the freckles on your DD. Donna

Thanks, Donna.

I'll have a better camera for our Ecstasy cruise, so I'll probably take even more pics. :o

We'll definitely have to meet up before then... whether it's window shopping at the mall or shopping for stuff for our cruise. :)

Paradise clearing the Sunshine Skyway...

What an amazing review. This was like therapy for me. Our house was broken into the other day and personnel items were stolen. Reading your review and seeing your pictures lifted my spirit. Thanks very much for sharing....

I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Sorry to hear about the break in.

I know the last update is from a couple of weeks ago...but bear in mind that it looks like the Legend will only be sailing from Tampa during the "Winter" season now.

 

They took it across the pond to sail in the Med for the summers...so as of right now there are only 4-5 day sailings on the Paradise out of Tampa in the summer months.

Yes, that's why I said Legend or Dream. I would prefer Legend since the class is a favorite for a lot of cruisers and the Port of Tampa is closer for us, but if Legend is in the Med when we chose are next cruise date then we would go with Dream. Thanks, though.

Is it bad that I've only been on one cruise and already do a lot of the stuff previously mentioned? :p

My additions:

- Loading pictures of the next ship I cruise on along with pictures of the ports of call onto a digital picture frame so that I can see a slideshow at all times.

- Placing the frame next to the TV so that it's always in DH's view to try and get him as excited as I am.

- Driving my DD crazy by pointing out signs such as Club "Paradise", "Lido" Street, etc just because they make me think of cruising.

When you pulled into Freeport, was that the Celebration Cruise Line ship in port beside you? What did you think of how she looked? I'm taking her in June and then turning around and taking the Ecstasy back in October....have only been on Carnival but Celebration offered an unbeatable deal for two nights on the ship and four nights at an all inclusive at Freeport for me and my kids.

I actually watched an episode of Long Island Medium that was on yesterday where she did a group reading onboard the Bahamas Celebration. It looked like a decent ship from the areas that I was able to see. It also showed areas of Freeport which interested me since we've never been there.

Our last cruise the door was Metal so magnetic decorations worked well...does anyone know which doors are metal and which ones are not? We will be on the Paradise and I want to decorate our door. If it's magnetic I can get a dry erase board with magnetic backing but I wasn't sure if the doors are metal or not.

They were not metal when we were on Paradise in July. On post #26 of this thread, I posted a pic of our door.

It's called Photoscape and it is free to download. There are some VERY cool things that you can do with your photos. I edited them first, then went to Shutterfly to make a book. I just copied and pasted them from that site to here.:)

Thank you! I'll have to download it asap. :)

I enjoyed your review very much! I gotta ask... what kind of app did you use to edit your pics? I love how they turned out. I'm thinking about doing a self walking tour in Nassau when we're there and I think that any pics that I take of the historic buildings would look great with that aged effect.

Thanks.

Can't wait to read the rest. Thanks for the pic of the cabin. I'm so glad that the Ecstasy doesn't have the life jacket box in the corner of the room like Paradise did... it was quite awkward to get around. For some reason, I'm loving the faux palm trees and umbrellas on the Ecstasy. Does that make me weird? :p

Thank you for this tip. Everyone always suggests the Dollar Store for door decorations. I never thought about looking for them at the party supply store.

I may splurge for our upcoming cruise and hit the party store as well. They'll have a better selection and better quality decorations to choose from. :)

On the Paradise this past July. Bought a bag of "beachy" decorations for $1. Simple, but helped to locate our door in the long hallway. Since the doors were not metal, we used poster putty to attach the decorations.

Ok, so I know Im year late in reading this! Enjoyed the TR, by the way :)

We are going on our second western on the Dream this October. Our first cruise was on the Valor in Oct 2011. Oct 2012 we "upgraded" ship size to the Dream and loved it so much we are coming back again for the same cruise! Matter of fact, we are roughly sailing same week, in same two rooms (Balcony on Lido) with the exact same itinerary :D

I managed to talk DH into our upcoming cruise because of the great deal I got. It's another 5 day and it's not on the Dream, but we'll get to try a different itinerary. Maybe if he has a great time on this one as well, I'll be able to talk him into getting a FCC while we're on the ship. I really want to do a 7 day Western Caribbean, so it would be Legend out of Tampa or Dream out of PC... can't talk DH into driving any further than that. :p