Our Victory Vacation 1/9/10 - 1/16/10: It rocked! (Literally and figuratively)

[VictoryLover2]

Thanks everyone for your nice comments! You've got me motivated to some how do my school work and at least write the review for the Day at Sea tonight.

 

Regarding some of your posts: yes I agree that too many people had negative comments on this ship and itin and I just can't understand it. So I am doing my best to give it the accolades it deserves - as I told Karl with a K on Sunday! And I'll tell you more about that as I progress thru the week.

 

Blue Devil Bud - don't burden yourself with your laptop. Take a note pad and make quick notes right before you go to bed or while DH showers and while you wait at the airport. That's how I used my time because I was determined to enjoy every single second...and I did!!!

 

Karl with a K is still there?!!!! He has been on the Victory the last two time we have been on her...

Brookie & Ed:cool:

[ricew001]

We ran into Karl with a K at the airport and he was taking 6 weeks off. Most of the staff we talked to said they work 6 months on, 2 months off.

 

For the Verizon charges, I think they may differ according to your plan, but here's what I was quoted - keep in mind I haven't received my bill yet so we'll see if this is accurate! ;-)

 

On the Victory: 2.49/minute; Texts are .50 sent and .05 received

San Juan: .69/min; domestic texts rates

St Thomas: 1.99/min; domestic texts

Barbados: 1.99/min

St. Marteen 2.89/min

St Lucia 1.99

St Kitts 1.99

 

but I had no cell phone service in St Lucia and I don't think I had any for St Kitts either. This was quite concerning as on the St Lucia day my Dad was having some tests ran and I was anxious to hear that he was ok. I ended up calling home from the ship. I left two voicemails and my sail and sign showed a 0 charge for them; but when I did get through and talked briefly my bill was $20 for that call. I think ship charges were $6.49/min. I'm a talker and those minutes add up fast for me! LOL!

 

They also said to keep our phone shut off unless we were using it. I remember reading someone's post who said their phone roamed and picked up charges because it was connecting constantly. And they advised us to dial *228 and and chose option 2 to update our international roaming.

 

I do suggest calling your phone plan and confirming because my guess is that these charges vary base on your own plan.

[LoneStarCruisinCouple]

All I can say is AWESOME!! Your review as to The Victory and your cruise are simply wonderful and Lisa and I can't wait for our Fun In The Sun. Not until September. We are Lisa and Gary Lone Star Cruisin Couple and we are from Sugar Land,Texas. We shall be setting sail for our 23 Wedding Anniversary Cruise with The Voyager's living "La Vida" On The Victory Loungin"Laughin"Lovin"and Drinkin In The Caribbean, September 4-11 2011. Can't wait as after reading all so far we are ready as our Tooth Brushes are packed and we can use the Carnival Bath Robes a bunch. Just Kidding of coarse. Looking forward as to reading more about your cruise as we have a lot of different activities already planned. We are in cabin 8433 Aft Wrap Starboard Side and have an Asti-Chocolate Covered Strawberry Sail Away Party planned to set things off for our Cruise. A bunch of us are staying at The Marriott Resort and Stellaris Casino several days before we set sail and got a very good price for rooms with Price Line $105 an evening. We last year were in San Juan and had the pleasure of using Albert Aguirre for our tour guide and had agreat and wonderful time and to those of you that should find yourselves with extra days in San Juan could highly recommend Albert. He is very much in love with his island and so very informative as to all the History and all. Rain Forest is worth seeing as well as The Luminescent Bay at night. We have two personal friends that both own Tour Businesses one in Saint Thomas. Henry Christopher of Triple EEE Tours and Spencer Ambrose Of Spencer Ambrose Tours In Saint Lucia and all I can say is nothing but good. They are both retired police officers and know everyone. We have Charted a Private Catamaran in Barbados with Calabaza Sailing Cruises and normally don't put more than 16 folks on there Cat's as to be able to give the quality of service that they are known for. In Saint Kitts I am throwing a Anniversary Beach Lunch Party for my wife along with some of our friends from Cruise Critic at Spice Mills Restaurant thanks to the help of Roger one of the owners. Just hoping that we shall have such a great and wonderful time as you had. Keep the reviews coming and also thanks for stopping by on our board as very nice of you to take your time regarding The Train Ride for one of our fellow cruisers TrvlQueen. Oh Ps If any of you can would also recommend trying out The Chef's Table while on The ship as thanks to TrvlQueen we all shall be taking part in this great and wonderful tasting opportunity. Have a great and wonderful day and as They Say All For Fun And Fun For All. Lone Star Gary:)

[lucyjlou]

did you have the international calling package on your verizon plan, or were these just the standard rates? I know they have an international pkg that is $5 per month, wondered about that. I will call them myself at some point too,but just curious.

[ricew001]

Lucy, I believe these were just standard rates. But I need to call today to make sure I didn't activate some temporary plan that I no longer need to be paying for now that - sadly - I am home!

Something I did that was very helpful was buy a small notebook to keep my pre and post cruise notes in, as well as my daily journal entries during the cruise. It was a spiral notebook and I stuck my pen to the ring binder. It has been so helpful. And it gives me my permanent "travel journal."

[kinabina]

So you're on 5/8 - 5/14? Thats Awesome! Disembarkation is always a sad day. When we got off the Inspiration and saw all the people smiling and going through embarkation..its was gut wrenching..i wanted to go back on so bad!

 

You'll be getting off as I'm getting on. Maybe we can waive to eachother...LOL

[ricew001]

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

 

For elegant evening we changed out of our bathing suits and got all purty. DH wore a suit – I forgot to pack his tie much to his delight and I wore a long black dress. We stopped near the casino and had our photo made and we were very pleased with it. My Mom was ecstatic over it!

 

For Dinner, DH had lobster – he ordered two of them and was very pleased with them. I had the prime rib which was good. For desert I am sad to say I had the worst butter pecan ice cream ever. Oh well, no shortage of calories on this cruise, so I’m good!

 

This night there was a lot of movement on the ship and everyone agreed with us on that. We stopped by the coolest map near the casino. (You’ll find you constantly cut through the casino. That’s a tip I have for Carnival – they seem to do a lot of contests in the casino which creates a lot of congestion and it’s hard to get through there…but then again they may do it there just to generate more traffic!) Anyhow, the map shows where we are, where we are going, and where we have been. That was a popular spot because it was cool to point out to other people where you are from and how far away it is from where you are now.

 

We were seated in Rodel and Nadia's section of the dining room with a really nice young couple from Maryland, Ken and Ashley. She was feeling a bit sea sick so I shared all of my bonine, ginger gum, and ginger vitamins with her! The next day she said she was better.

 

We all then proceeded to the Red and Black lounge where they were holding the try outs for the Legends show. We were sitting back near the bar when this guy runs up and asks the bartender to fulfill his “weird request” – soak a towel with water for him. He was pretty bossy about it and they spoke English as a second language, so when he left they looked at us and we looked at them and were like “um, really?” Later when the Brittney Spears try outs started, he ran out on the floor and wrung the towel out over the try outs white t-shirt. Didn’t help her any, our new friend Ashley won the contest!

 

So they asked for someone to try out for Frank Sinatra for the Legends show to be held on Sunday night. We all talked DH into it. He won, well he had no competition but he did a magnificent job anyway. And that’s not just because he is my DH, but other people came to us during the entire cruise telling us how great he did. So when Ana, the karaoke host went to pin his Legends flashing pin on him, she said “Are you married?” From all the way at the back of the bar before I knew it, I had said “YES.” The entire bar erupted into laughter!

 

We left the karaoke for the piano bar and then went back to karaoke and back to the piano bar and then to the Arctic Club. We then went to our room and changed out of our fancy clothes and went to the Pizza buffet. While the pizza was good, and very hot that was not a smart move for two people with major heartburn issues! We came back to the room at 1:15 a.m. but DH wanted to go back out. I said go for it and I went to sleep. He came back sometime around 4 a.m. When you’re married to a musician, you’re kind of used to that!

 

Tomorrow: Barbados!

[sallyb]

I hope I get to read all of this awesome review before I leave for the Victory on Saturday morning!

[1stcruiser1]

Absolutely Fantastic review!! You are really good at writing it! Did you happen to see how much the beer and mixed drinks were at Megans Bay?? Thanks and can't wait for the rest- you are doing a GREAT job!

[ricew001]

Thanks 1stcruiser!

I saw at St. Marteen that you could rent two chairs, an umbrella and get 5 beers for $20. I am not a beer drinker so sorry I can't confirm prices at other places. I found mixed drinks ran from $7 to $10 at most places, including the ship and Hard Rock Cafe.

I would suggest St. Marteen for your beer-drinking beach day. Megan's Bay was really crowded but I know plenty of people who really liked it. I only saw one place to get drinks and there were long lines there. I decided WHEN we go back (it has to be "when" and not "if") I will pick an excursion for St Thomas and do a beach day at St. Marteen. I also really liked getting the half day resort pass in St Lucia at theromanticholiday dot com. That gave us a nice, private beach and all the amenities at the resort - including drinks!! I've seen others mention some other resorts too so you may want to explore that option a bit. Whatever you do, you will enjoy it!

[ricew001]

Thanks Sally! I am trying to get through this for all of you LUCKY folks who get to go this Sunday. You are going to have an absolutely fantastic time I know! I will live vicariously through you! ;-)

[ricew001]

Wednesday, January 12. 2011

Given DH’s preferences for late nights, we decided to go with the 12:45 p.m. Flavor of Barbados tour, which was listed as the top tour in the Shore Excursions list – and we LOVED it! Price was $49.99/person but it was 3.5 hours long and you got to sample rum and drink rum punch so how could you go wrong? I had been watching this excursion online but decided to wait until we got on the ship to book it – just in case it was a rainy day or I was sick or we found something different. So this was one of the charges on my Sail and Sign card which I will detail for you as I progress.

 

We found Barbados very HOT and windy and rather exotic; we loved it!

 

Arrival was scheduled for 8:00 a.m. and this was a great time to have the Oceanview window. We were able to see the other ship in port which was magnificent. This was our first morning having breakfast in the dining room, which I found as the best breakfast option. We were seated at a table of about 10 other people so that was cool to meet that many people. I had hash browns and bacon that were delicious, but the waffles were really dry and without flavor. DH had eggs and ham and said they were perfect. We liked the option of getting all the fresh fruit and juice with our breakfast too.

Since our tour wasn’t until 12:45 we thought we would explore the ship a little bit more. We went to the Serenity Deck for adults only that I LOVE! The hammocks, the beds, the chairs, the bar, the view. Really nice!

 

We went back to shower and found one of the housekeepers and asked for ice. We tipped him and had tipped our room steward early on so we could be sure to keep ice and that had worked pretty well for us.

 

I am going to post a few of the pictures we took that morning and then the next post will detail our excursion and include pictures of it.

 

NOTE: Be sure to buy RUM in Barbados and especially the FourSquare rum. Now that I’ve done my research on that distillery and how there rum is better than Captain Morgan’s I wished I had bought more than just the two bottles! In case some of you leave before I finish my post I had to get this tip in! ;-)

[triptaker17]

Thanks for the great review so far! We are heading out on the 2/20 sailing, 30 DAYS FROM TODAY:D Getting excited from reading the review and planning my stops ohboard... Can't wait to read what happens next.

[JeremyisOff!]

We board Victory on the 30th, looking forward to the rest of your review...

[spotte]

Thanks 1stcruiser!

I saw at St. Marteen that you could rent two chairs, an umbrella and get 5 beers for $20. I am not a beer drinker so sorry I can't confirm prices at other places. I found mixed drinks ran from $7 to $10 at most places, including the ship and Hard Rock Cafe.

I would suggest St. Marteen for your beer-drinking beach day. Megan's Bay was really crowded but I know plenty of people who really liked it. I only saw one place to get drinks and there were long lines there. I decided WHEN we go back (it has to be "when" and not "if") I will pick an excursion for St Thomas and do a beach day at St. Marteen. I also really liked getting the half day resort pass in St Lucia at theromanticholiday dot com. That gave us a nice, private beach and all the amenities at the resort - including drinks!! I've seen others mention some other resorts too so you may want to explore that option a bit. Whatever you do, you will enjoy it!

 

Which beach was that at where you could get the chairs, umbrella and beers for $20. Loving your review so far, we leave in 8 days, can't wait.

[seashinesunshine]

I love your review!!! It is so nice to hear all the positive stuff. We did the Victory 2 years ago and are set to sail her again in TWO weeks!!!!! Keep it coming!

[BOOGALOO509]

First of all many thanks for the time and effort you are putting into your review, I am enjoying every post. My wife and I are from the UK and have just booked this cruise for March 2012. I know it is still a long way off but we are already very excited about it.

 

I have a question I hope you can help me with concerning currencies.

 

I understand the US$ is the currency in San Juan, the Eastern Caribbean$ is the currency for many of the islands and in Barbados they have the Barbadian$.

 

Were you able to use US$ freely in each location or did you need the correct currency for each port visited?

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

John

[TrishLoves2Cruise]

Loving your review. I have been looking forward to reading your updates every day.

Keep it coming!! Sounds like you took full advantage of the vacation each and every day!!

 

Can you tell me if the Serenity deck was at the Forward of the ship or the Aft?

[ricew001]

Thank you all for your feedback!!

 

I will try to address the questions in this one post:

 

In St. Marteen, ride the water taxi over to the shopping district. I think it's like $6 round trip, As soon as you get off you'll see the beach there with the umbrellas. It's a festive area with a live band and lots of bars and restaurants, including the Hard Rock Cafe.

 

Sunshine - I LOVE YOUR PROFILE PIC!!! I am a major cat lover and I believe that's a Himalayan which is one of the most beautiful cats ever!!

 

Regarding the currency - yes everyone took American currency and in most cases if you tried to hand them a card they quickly asked you if you had cash. I saw that happen to us and others over and over!! We ended up using our debit card a couple of times and got charged a small currency exchange rate for it. I highly recommend functioning on cash if there's any way you can.

 

The serenity deck is behind the water slide. I know kinda crazy when it's an adults only area that close to the entry for the slide! It is on the opposite side of the putt putt where the whale tale/funnel (is that what you call it?) So I'm not sure if that's front or aft. I never really did get those terms down pat. LOL! I prefer not to cloud my brain with such details on vacation as learning new words - at least if they aren't the name of a really good drink! JK!

[seashinesunshine]

 

Sunshine - I LOVE YOUR PROFILE PIC!!! I am a major cat lover and I believe that's a Himalayan which is one of the most beautiful cats ever!

 

Thank You! I love my kitties, we have one of his sisters too, they are both Himalayan Siamese, very long hair! They are also both "mitted" which means they have white feet instead of black feet like a normal siamese. The legend is they were from the monastaries in the Himilayan mountians and their feet were white because they were on holy ground. Nice story anyway.:) Both of our cats were also born deaf. They are much loved!

Keep the review coming!:D

[KMYork]

Continuing to enjoy your review since we will be on Victory Feb 27!

[ricew001]

Wednesday, January 12. 2011: Flavor of Barbados tour

 

I should back up with the story of this cruise a little bit, just a little. What landed us on this cruise was the St Kitts railroad. I’ll elaborate on that later. For now, let’s just say St Kitt’s was DH’s choice and the Barbados tour was mine. He had not said too much about the islands until the day before Barbados when he said that was an exotic island he didn’t know too much about and was looking forward to it.

 

We boarded the bus in Barbados and had a great tour guide; she was French but had been in Barbados many years. We sat directly behind her so we had a lot of fun interacting with her. She gave a very informative tour, although it still didn’t distract us from the crazy traffic and left side of the road driving!! She told us that cars there cost three times what they do in the states and that there is a population of like 150,000 people and there are 120,000 cars on the island!! But when I checked the facts what I got was the population is about 281,968: I’ll attribute this to my memory and not her facts. I’m sure she gave us the right information. While we were driving it felt like there were two cars on the highway for every one person on the island! We cringed as our bus driver got us through the tightest areas we have ever seen. At one point, I almost fell asleep and Mike couldn’t understand how I could do that when he was scared to death and couldn’t take his eyes off the road.

 

Our stops on this tour were the Mahogany furniture place, the Sunbury Plantation, and the FourSquare Rum Distillery. DH wasn’t fond of the furniture stop as he felt it was a tourist trap – but it was a scary ride down a steep drive and we saw some cute ponies! The Sunbury plantation was beautiful and they gave us yummy rum punch! That’s where we saw the tree that the island is named for and I’ll post a picture of that. They told us there are many weddings held here, it would certainly make a gorgeous venue for a wedding. It was really hot at the plantation. When I commented it was like a North Carolina summer, one of the other tourists from Minnesota said they only get about one day a year like that. WOW!

 

We had a delightful young lady give the tour at the distillery. She was funny and entertaining. Our bus driver proceeded to the bar to drink while we toured. At first that scared us, but when we thought about the traffic, really how much worse could it be? Maybe the rum would calm his nerves! LOL! In the factory, they had what look liked fish bowls of the rum and told us to blow in them to smell the alcohol. The last one was clear liquor that almost burned my eyelashes off! Everyone said it reminded them of everclear.

We proceeded to the taste tasting. They gave us a sample and told us to drink it first. YOWZAAAAAAAAAAA! It burned down to my toenails. A few people almost hit the floor! DH had a Pepsi in his pocket as usual and said “Here, you want a chaser?”

 

Then the bartender said, try the second one – it’s our spiced rum that beat Captain Morgan’s in a test taste. Now my sister is a spiced rum pro and she said yes it is much better than the Captain! The last one they gave us was sweet and 11% alcohol. I really liked it and they said it was hard to find in the states. Well we’ve already searched the web to see where we can order more! I really wish I had bought much more of the rum that day, but we were watching our cash and worried about how to transport glass all the way back to the states. Another one of those notes to self: next time bring an empty bag for the rum and buy plenty of it! Actually, there are limits according to the custom forms, so you may want to do some research on that.

 

They offered some more samples, including some aged rum but by then I was busy trying to decide which rums I wanted. Our tour guide rallied us up and we headed out. DH was anxious to see a monkey and asked about them, but the tour guide said they would hide and not come out until we left. More about monkeys later…..

 

When we boarded the bus the tour guide was telling us stories. I have had hi-cups all my life and often at inopportune times. My Geometry teacher in 8th grade threatened to expel me. I just can’t help it. So on the ride I let out one of my classic hi cups and the tour guide said, Too much rum huh? Later, there were some other mishaps and they were all attributed to the rum, although I don’t think we really could blame it on the rum, but it was still funny. Several times the bus driver allowed us photo opportunities. The traffic was so bad that we had to take an alternate route back to the ship.

 

When we got back to the terminal, we did a little shopping in the terminal. I was on the search for the rum cakes I had heard so much about. I found the prices for them varied from $5 each to $30 each, even for the same brand. I recommend bringing lots of cash (have I said that enough?) and doing your souvenir shopping in St Thomas, Barbados, and St Lucia. If you have Hard Rock café fans, you should plan to visit the Hard Rock cafes in St Marteen and San Juan. By the later ports, the shops seemed to all run together and I found St Kitts to have the most aggressive sales people, while I heard others say St Lucia did.

 

Barbados is so much fun it’s going to require three entries so stay tuned for my review of that night!

[ricew001]

Wednesday, January 12. 2011: The Victory at night

 

We went back to our cabin after the excursion and changed clothes and got ready for dinner, which is where we were going after the “Freddy Mania Sail Away Party”. [i found it easy to change clothes several times a day. The daytime was hot so I always changed out of my icky, sweaty clothes for dinner. Sometimes I changed after dinner too. My tip here is to bring versatile clothing, plan to do a little laundry, and bring plenty of underwear and/or plan to wash the ones you bring. ] I was starving and was glad I had taken someone’s advice on cc dot com and saved some boxed cereals for snacks. I devoured the Cinnamon Toast Crunch while I was getting ready!

 

Well most of the pictures I have for this part of the review are of us leaving Barbados so I’ll share those. We tried to go to the top deck every night that we left port. It was just a fun thing to do every evening and I thought it may help orient me if I had any sea sickness issues but thankfully I didn’t which I attribute to the patch! It’s pretty exciting leaving one port and anticipating the next one. Sometimes I had a frozen drink, sometimes I did the cupid shuffle or danced to whatever was being played. DH ran around and took pictures!

 

At dinner, Mike and I both had the flat iron steak. He originally ordered the pork loin, which neither one of us liked. Nadia as usual took care of us promptly and took it back.

 

We decided to go to “Variety Showtime Starring the Amazing Juggling Talents of Victor Zuniga.” IT WAS FABULOUS!!! We laughed so hard at him and decided he was much funnier than the comedian we had seen earlier! DO NOT MISS HIS SHOW! You’ll really enjoy it. (Again the Caribbean lounge is cold so be prepared!)

 

We went to karaoke with the live band and I sang Hit Me With Your Best Shot – my favorite cousin is a major Pat Benatar fan so that was for him! We’ve seen her many times before. DH sang Brown Eyed Girl. We roamed around the ship a bit and went and chose $56 worth of portraits – two 8 x 10 formals and the photo we took the day we boarded. Now I know many people thing photos are a waste of money but we really liked those shots and haven’t paid for any portraits since our 2002 cruise to Alaska. There was one other photo I thought hard about but left behind..until I went back for it on Saturday night! ;-)

 

We went to the lobby then and listened to the duo "Two for You". It was a nice romantic time as we sat there just the two of us listening to their relaxing sounds. We were quickly getting used to a midnight snack so we headed down to the Mediterranean, where for the very first time we discovered the Deli! We ordered grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and I asked for milk. The nice young man at the deli went and found me some and brought it to the table. I LOVE MILK! I told my DH that I thought that may be the best food I had had so far on the trip!

 

It was a rare night – we were in bed by 12 because we had an early day in St Lucia the next day! WOO HOO!!!

[westmich]

 

Regarding the currency - yes everyone took American currency and in most cases if you tried to hand them a card they quickly asked you if you had cash. I saw that happen to us and others over and over!! We ended up using our debit card a couple of times and got charged a small currency exchange rate for it. I highly recommend functioning on cash if there's any way you can!

 

BRING A LOT of U.S. Dollars!!!!!!!!! Much more than you think you will need!!:D

 

Also, just as a side note, if you come across any U.S. dollar bills that are stamped: wheresgeorge.com, go to the website and enter them. My sons love to track where their bills have been and where they go! :p

[jjamiestar]

Thanks 1stcruiser!

I saw at St. Marteen that you could rent two chairs, an umbrella and get 5 beers for $20. I am not a beer drinker so sorry I can't confirm prices at other places. I found mixed drinks ran from $7 to $10 at most places, including the ship and Hard Rock Cafe.

I would suggest St. Marteen for your beer-drinking beach day. Megan's Bay was really crowded but I know plenty of people who really liked it. I only saw one place to get drinks and there were long lines there. I decided WHEN we go back (it has to be "when" and not "if") I will pick an excursion for St Thomas and do a beach day at St. Marteen. I also really liked getting the half day resort pass in St Lucia at theromanticholiday dot com. That gave us a nice, private beach and all the amenities at the resort - including drinks!! I've seen others mention some other resorts too so you may want to explore that option a bit. Whatever you do, you will enjoy it!

 

Do you recall how much you paid for the St Lucia resort? It looks beautiful!