Fantasy cruise - 4 night, December 7th - short review

Good morning everyone!

My husband and I along with another couple (first time cruisers) just returned from a quick 4 night cruise aboard the Fantasy out of Mobile.

I will be doing a short review and hope to get started on it today. If you have any questions beforehand, please

feel free to ask.

Thanks!

Will be following along.

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Also following. I will be on her in 166 days and can't wait. We sail her on our Honeymoon and will be celebrating our 20th on her.

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Looking forward to the review.

Keith

Hear y'all had quite a wild ride!:D Had a stabilizer repaired yesterday morning, before we boarded.

Hope your cruise was great. Love Fantasy!

OK - here we go!

First a little background. I'm Angela (52) and my husband is Glen (53). This was my 10th and Glen's 9th cruise. This was our first 4 day cruise - all of our others have been 5 or 7 day cruises.

We have a family cruise booked for February, 2018 - there will be about 20 or so of us going including family and friends. We decided that we would like to sneak in a quick cruise for just the two of us since Glen's birthday is in December so I looked around and came up with the Fantasy out of Mobile.

Glen will not fly so we have to book cruises that sail from ports that we are able to drive to. We live in north Georgia so the farthest we have driven has been to Port Canaveral and Tampa. Mobile would be fairly easy at 6 hours.

We didn't book until November 15th or so. We have always stayed in either balcony or ov cabins but I was willing to do an interior this trip since it was just the 2 of us and it was going to only be 4 days; however, Glen wanted an OV so that was ok with me too. I originally booked an Interior guaranty and when Glen decided he wanted an OV I changed my booking to an OV guaranty.

I've always been a planner and it was killing me to wait to see what cabin assignment we would get. About 5 days before sailing, we finally got our assignment - it was an aft starboard side cabin on the Riviera deck. We wanted aft but had always stayed on the port side but it was ok - we were going on a cruise.

Now we originally thought it was only going to be just the 2 of us this cruise - no other couples coming along but that changed on Thanksgiving weekend.

My oldest daughter's friend texted her telling her that her Mom and Dad wanted to go on a cruise the first week of December but they had never been. Since she knew we had been on several she wanted me to contact them to try and help them decide what they should do.

I have known them for some time and called and talked to them about what they wanted to do. They originally had planned on doing a 7 day out of Miami or Fort Lauderdale but decided since they had never been and didn't know what to expect that they would just come along with us on the shorter 4 day until they decided if it was something they would like doing.

When we originally checked the only cabins available were interiors with upper and lower bunks. They didn't want those needless to say, so my PVP told me to keep checking and hopefully something would open up. I checked 5 or 6 times on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but nothing! Late Sunday evening they called and said they thought an OV had opened up and wanted me to check. Sure enough - one had opened up so we snatched it up in a hurry and suddenly they were going with us!

By the way, for future reference our traveling companions were Sam and Annette, both 42.

I gave Annette a list that I always go by for packing and told her to fine tune it to her needs. We went over how the embarkation process goes, about sail and sign cards, putting a credit card up for on board purchases, etc. They had lots of questions and we tried our best to answer them.

We normally drive down the night before just for peace of mind and to rest some but due to the fact that Glen and I were leaving our 4 youngest kids (15, 13, 4 and 3) home with our oldest daughter Whitney (23), we decided we would just leave early Thursday morning to do the 415 or so mile drive. Since Mobile is 1 hour behind us we knew we could leave early enough to be there in plenty of time before the ship sailed.

Thursday, Dec. 7th - Sailing day!

We were up early and headed to Mobile. We left our home and picked up Sam and Annette and hit the interstate about 5:45. We had planned on leaving earlier but were running about 30 minutes behind. Unfortunately around Cartersville we ran into the beginnings of the Atlanta traffic. This put us about 45 more minutes behind schedule but we still had plenty of time.

We stopped for a quick breakfast and gas and headed on down the road. When we reached Saraland, AL which is about 12 miles or so from the port we stopped for a bathroom break and some Marble Slab ice cream which is a weakness of mine. Sam also wanted to hit an ATM to get a little more cash for the cruise.

We arrived at the cruise terminal around 12 or 12:30 I believe. There was basically no line to park at the parking garage (I had already prepaid for our parking) and we unloaded our bags with the porter and went on up to park. We went down the elevator and right up to check in for our cruise. There were only a few people in front of us and then we went through security and on to the next que of lines for our sail and sign cards. We were on the ship before 1:00.

Since it was so close to time for them to open up the doors to the cabins we decided we would go ahead and put our carry ons in our rooms in the closet. Our room was completely ready by then so it was fine.

Once we had gotten rid of our heavy jackets and carry ons we headed up to the Lido deck for some lunch. Glen had a salad and I believe the rest of us headed to Guy's burgers for our first burger of the cruise.

I'm not a real fan of the fries so I gave my fries to Glen and opted for potato salad instead. For some reason though the potato salad this trip just wasn't as good as I remember it being before. Maybe it was just me though.

We explored some of the ship with Sam and Annette (I had been on the Fantasy in May with my daughter Whitney, but this was Glen's first time on her as well as Sam and Annette's first time on any ship - period!

Our weather in Mobile was not the best on embarkation day. It was very cold and windy and was drizzling rain from time to time.

We had our muster drill around 3:30 and because of the weather we were not required to go outside to the lifeboats, everything was done indoors which was more than ok with us.

We headed back to the cabin for a little while and our suitcases had arrived so I unpacked everything and we went and found Sam and Annette and did some more exploring.

We were supposed to sail at 4:00 but it was more like 5:30 or 6 before we finally left port. There was quite a bit of traffic coming in and for some reason they let all the ships in before they let us out.

Our captain had already been on the intercom to tell us that we were in for some rough waters between Mobile and Cozumel so we should be prepared to use the hand rails and take extra precautions when walking around the ship.

I hated this for Sam and Annette because they weren't sure how they would fare seasickness wise and I knew that sometimes it can get pretty rocky if the wind and water is up.

We watched sail away from the aft of the ship on deck 10 (right outside the Lido buffet) which is a great area to watch because there are tables and chairs and it's also covered which was nice since it was raining intermittently.

After sail away we headed to our first dinner of the cruise. Since we had booked so late we ended up with Your Time Dining which was great because there was only 4 of us. I had only done YTD one other time and that was in May when we were on the Fantasy. As it turned out, YTD was great this trip. Not one time did we have to wait for a table - we went right up and were seated immediately. YTD on the Fantasy is located mid ship on deck 8 and it's the Celebration Dining room.

We had a great wait staff - sorry I don't remember all their names but they were awesome. We were in and out in around an hour each night and that is great for us as we don't like to spend too much time in the dining room.

Hear y'all had quite a wild ride!:D Had a stabilizer repaired yesterday morning, before we boarded.

Hope your cruise was great. Love Fantasy!

Yes...you could say it was wild! It was definitely not smooth by any means. There were several green people that we encountered, thankfully it wasn't us though!

Hope you're having better weather than we did! Enjoy!

Nice start, following.

Thanks for the review.

Sorry everyone - life got in the way.

I'm going to work really hard today at trying to get some more of this posted.

OK - back to the YTD. We did have the YTD but ended up being in the same section with the same waiters each night. I asked the first night if we could request them again and they said sure so that's what we did. Like I said earlier, they were on the move and we were in and out of dinner around an hour or so each night. All I had to do was tell them at check-in each night that we would like to be in the same section we were in the previous night with the same wait staff and it was done.

I have seen YTD lines really long on several ships but I believe it was probably the larger ones. There was not one single night on this cruise that the dining room was full - there were always tables sitting empty. I'm not sure if more people opted to go to Lido for the buffet for dinner since it was just a 4 day cruise or what, but I was really surprised. That did make it easier for us to get the same wait staff each night though.

We did a little more exploring after dinner - they were having free liquor tasting at the shops near the showroom but we didn't partake of any. We had a little time before the Welcome Aboard show so Glen and I headed back to the cabin for a quick nap. I had only slept about 2 hours before we got up to drive to Mobile so I was exhausted and didn't want to fall asleep during the show. The Welcome Aboard show started at 9:30 and it was a good show. Mikey the cruise director is one of the best if not the best cruise directors we have ever had. John Heald was our first cruise director in 2004 and he was awesome but Mikey is great too! He is full of energy and truly seems to care about all the passengers and really wants everyone to have a great time. He is very personable and approachable. After the show we went to Lido for a snack and drink and headed to bed. It had been a very long day!

Friday was a sea day for us. I couldn't wait to get up Friday and head outside to get some sun. I love the sun and if you give me sun, a lounge chair and a book I am set for the day.

It wasn't meant to be...Friday was just as gloomy and ugly as Thursday had been in Mobile. I was shocked because out of all our cruises this was the first sea day we had ever had that was ugly. When I say ugly, I mean you couldn't really even go outside. It was cloudy, rainy and windy.

The sun did peek out for a few minutes so I changed right quick and headed outside...about the time I made it to the Lido deck a great big clap of thunder sounded and lightning lit up the sky so I decided there wasn't going to be any sunning that day. I returned to the cabin and took a nap! I have to admit that it was nice to be able to do that and not feel guilty about not being outside. With 6 kids I rarely have an opportunity to nap so it was a welcome change.

Today was our one and only Elegant night so after our nap Glen and I got showered and ready for dinner. He doesn't like to dress up but we never have the occasion to unless we are cruising so he always does for me.

waiting to hear more.thanks

Sorry - busy weekend - will post more tomorrow!

Thanks for following along.

So far a great review. We were on the Dec 11th cruise and our weather was perfect to and from.