Our Super Last Minute "Breeze"y Adventure - 6 Days in the Western Caribbean Review

[anewmac]

I cant wait for the day when we skip going to port and just hang out on an almost empty ship, how relaxing. Sadly we havent cruised enough to hit a port we have already been to in order to skip it LOL.

 

Good to know how many comfy chairs in the shade are available, my kids get sun sick after awhile so having a place to nap and relaxe without having to go back to the cabin will be good. And Im an early riser too so Im ok with going up there early to snag them LOL (hey I only chair hog 2chairs for the 4 of us, since usually 2 of us are always in the pool or off eatting etc at a time)

 

Seeing that you guys used the thrill ride pass a lot is helping me justify the week pass for all of us. Im sure my boys (hubby included) will enjoy it.

 

Btw your dress is adorble. Congrats on the weight loss. I too was like you afraid to go in to the pool and always felt looked at and gawked at for not being the swimsuit model type. But I have started letting those thoughts go so that I can enjoy my life too.

[ourfamilylovescruising]

Loving your review!! I had one vacation with my oldest son when he was in 8th grade even though it was a school trip to DC we had such a great time and it is something I will hold dear to my heart forever. ( especially when he was in high school LOL) we booked our Breeze trip on short notice too less than a month but for us it was worst because we just back from the Liberty on June 20th so when this deal came up I didn't know what to do.:eek: the funny thing is I haven't told any of my family yet because they are going to think we are crazy.

[Kim_KS]

I'm loving your review! We will be on the Breeze in November and I can't wait. I took my 14-year old daughter on our first mother-daughter cruise in May and it was a great time. I hope we can do it again. It was all about her - doing what she wanted, etc which doesn't happen a lot with 4 kids. Funny though - she missed cruising with her brothers - lol. Kids! :)

[tomsuelaw]

Hi Katie!

 

I was excited to see another review from you. I was already enjoying your Valor review. Love reading about your mother/son cruise now. Thanks for posting!!!

[63galaxie]

More! More!!!

[sjcruiser]

Loving the review and photos!!! Thanks for posting!!

[SinCity2003]

Yay! Can't wait to read the rest. We leave on 8/24 on this same iteneriary. Thank you for posting it :)

[eh24fan]

I have a 14 year old son and I love that you were able to do a trip for just the two of you~

[WiscoGirl32]

Please come back!!!

[gapearl]

Hey Katie, great review! Will you be bringing Anthony on the Splendor with you? Come back with more!

[ktinnc]

Hey Katie, great review! Will you be bringing Anthony on the Splendor with you? Come back with more!

 

Hey Kimberly - My cousin and I are going on the Splendor...she's never been on a cruise so I can't wait to see what she thinks!

[ktinnc]

Hey y'all! The pics for the next installment are uploaded and the text is written....now I just have to get it all put together which I'm going to work on a little tonight. I have been working insanely crazy hours with no end in sight. That's partially why I took the cruise because I knew this was coming up....but being gone for the week set me back even further with work. My boss overworks me (I own my own business lol). I also plan to write back to everyone individually.... but just wanted to say thanks for reading and there's more comin :)

[sunrise&set]

Loving your review! I'm supposed to be looking up a few last minute questions I have, but your review for your last minute mother-son cruise caught my eye. I booked on Monday for the Liberty for my 7 year old son and that leaves on Sunday! 6 days to plan and I usually book a year in advance!! My DH (Brian ;)) can't get away for longer than a long weekend in the summer, so he was all for it. I'm so nervous and excited at the same time!

 

Love your pics and writing style, I'll be looking for other reviews :D. And BTW - you look fabulous!

[ktinnc]

Loving your review! I'm supposed to be looking up a few last minute questions I have, but your review for your last minute mother-son cruise caught my eye. I booked on Monday for the Liberty for my 7 year old son and that leaves on Sunday! 6 days to plan and I usually book a year in advance!! My DH (Brian ;)) can't get away for longer than a long weekend in the summer, so he was all for it. I'm so nervous and excited at the same time!

 

Love your pics and writing style, I'll be looking for other reviews :D. And BTW - you look fabulous!

 

Have sooo much fun!! That's funny you're married to Brian too! I'm so glad I was spontaneous and went on this trip with my kiddo - we made lifelong memories and I'm sure you will too!

[GreytRacer]

Your review!!!!! Ok, now I need to go and read it. :-)

[ktinnc]

Your review!!!!! Ok, now I need to go and read it. :-)

 

LOL it's not done yet but I did get Grand Cayman written up tonight (on my blog)...tomorrow I'll copy/paste it on here :)

[GreytRacer]

No worries. Apparently, my phone doesn't want me to read your review on it. I can't get to the first post. Dumb app. :/

 

I'll check it out on my desktop tomorrow. :-)

[ktinnc]

Grand Cayman

 

Yay! Our first port day where we were getting off the ship! We had an early wake up call – about 6:30ish. I knew that Grand Cayman time was different than ship time but I wasn’t 100% sure what it was. I thought it was an hour earlier (than ship) and sure enough it was. In any case…not wanting to take any chances oversleeping I had set a wake up call from the ship vs my cell phone in case my phone automatically adjusted to Grand Cayman time. Sooo….got up around 6:30am ship time and got packed up for the day. Woke Anthony and then we had to do something I’ve never done on a ship…… go to the Lido deck for breakfast! The dining room didn’t open until 7:30am that day and we needed to be off the ship as soon as possible (we docked at 8am)….so I didn’t want to take any chances. I eventually figured out we could’ve probably eaten in the dining room and still had enough time but better safe than sorry.

 

 

So we ate on Lido….it wasn’t awful but I only had time to stand in the omelet line (not the bacon/sausage) so I made do. I had packed some healthy snacks in my beach bag too for later in case I got hungry.

After we ate it was time for another first for me – being in a port where you need to tender over to the main land! I was a little unsure of where we needed to meet since we didn’t have a Carnival excursion (I booked privately) but it was pretty easy. We went to the Ocean Plaza and the staff member told us to take a seat and we’d be on the next tender over. Sweet! When the time came (maybe 10 min wait) she led us down to the tender….we boarded….we rode over to the mainland and that was that. Easy peasy.

 

 

Anthony took pics on our tender ride. The Caribbean Princess was in port when we got there and the Carnival Dream arrived soon after.

 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

[Jamman54]

Loving your review!!! We have a B2B booked on the Breeze next summer. Thanks for sharing with us!!

[Sunkissed Mommy]

Thank you for your review. I'm really enjoying it! We leave on a 6-day Breeze cruise this Sunday.

 

Quick question, were the water slides open on port days???

 

We planned to have the Camp watch our son for an hour or two so we could enjoy the slides without having to take turns watching him.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums mobile app

[ktinnc]

More Grand Cayman

 

 



 

I booked our excursion with Stingray Sailing. I had read a lot of good things about them online – on TA and from a recent cruise review or two. This 3.5 hour excursion was $55 for adults and $40 for kids 12 and under. They also required a $10pp deposit at the time of booking. I paid our balance in cash at the end of the day – cash is easier and they prefer it because the currency is different in Grand Cayman. So we tendered over to the port area and followed the directions we had received in the email from Michelle with Stingray Sailing. We easily found Chip (our Captain) waiting where she said he would and he got us checked in. We still had about 30 minutes until everybody needed to be there so we just walked around the port area a bit and went to a couple shops and then took time to get our sunscreen on. We met back up and everyone was there so we headed out a little after 8:15am Grand Cayman time (9:15 ship time).

 

 



 



 

[ktinnc]

Grand Cayman - continued

 

 



 

The max number of passengers they take is 25 and they average 15….but with 3 ships in port (Us/Carnival Breeze, The Caribbean Princess and The Carnival Dream) we had 25 people. They took us to their bus and we all loaded up and drove about 10-15 minutes to the Yacht Club where we boarded the Catamaran. Their catamaran is called the Far Tortuga and the Far Tortuga is forty-three feet long and twenty feet wide and it’s black versus the usual white you see. It was nice. Anthony and I were one of the first ones on board so we went right up to the trampoline and found spots. I’m so glad I had been on a catamaran in Barbados and knew that the trampolines up front are awesome and relaxing (and they are tight so you can walk on them). Anthony loved it!

 



 

So we motored out to the sandbar called “Stingray City.” If you google Grand Cayman you’ll see that it’s the thing to do when you’re there. There were lots of other boats/tours when we got there (but I expected that). The ride out there took probably 30 minutes or more. You could see the other boats off in the distance when we entered the ocean and it seemed like we would never get there …it was quite a distance!

 



 



 

[ktinnc]

More Grand Cayman

 

 



 



 



 



 

[ktinnc]

And More Grand Cayman

 

 



 

Once we got to the sandbar they gave us all snorkels/masks and told us a little about the stingrays. The water was a little rocky so when I was trying to walk to the back of the cat to get my mask/snorkel I held on the whole way except for one spot where there was nothing to hold on to. Wouldn’t you know we hit a wave right then and I almost fell butt first into the bucket that was full of water/masks/snorkels. OMG lol..thankfully most people were off the cat by then and Chip’s Dad (the only other person from their family run company on board) helped steady me. Anyways we got in the water and it was pretty shallow – only about 4 feet? It was quite an experience. I couldn’t decide if I liked the stingrays or if they freaked me out lol. We took pics, we could feed them but we never did …we ended up a little ways from our group so that we could spread out a bit and not be on top of people but then that meant we didn’t hear what Chip was saying and/or if they pulled the stingrays out to hold/kiss. I think they did but we were content just floating/snorkeling and taking pics of them. Here’s a bunch of pics from our time at Stingray City!

 



 



 



 

[ktinnc]

A TON of pics from Stingray City