Trip Report: Vision Of The Seas 7 night - Roatan, Belize, Costa Maya, and Cozumel

[shorti503]

We sailed on Vision of the Seas Feb. 6-Feb 13. This was my husband and I's 3rd cruise but our first on one of the smaller ships. This cruise we decided to surprise our 2 boys with their first ever cruise. They thought we were having a vacation to Florida and didn't know until we got to the ship that we were going on a cruise. My 9 year old was so excited. I think I heard at least 100 times thank you so much and once on the boat we kept overhearing him mumble to himself, "I'm on a cruise, I can't believe I'm on a cruise." My oldest however didn't believe we were actually going. Even as the porters were taking our bags he was still asking what we were doing there. I don't think he fully believed what had happened until we had gone through security and we're looking at the ship out the windows waiting to board.

 

We drove to Florida from Illinois and got in a couple of days early to enjoy Florida. We wished the weather had been nicer but we still had a lot of fun. We went to Tampa power plant to see the Manatees. If you have never been its a must see. There were at least 300 manatees there that day (all the brown spots are manatees). After watching them for awhile and listening to one of the volunteers talk to us about the manatees we went to the small museum they had there. The best part of the day was it was free!

[shorti503]

Anyone know how I can get my pictures to upload? Only 1 picture uploaded and every time I try to upload more it says upload failed?

[Keith1010]

Looking forward to the rest of your report.

Keith

[CRUISEBOY305]

Anyone know how I can get my pictures to upload? Only 1 picture uploaded and every time I try to upload more it says upload failed?

 

I get my photos from Facebook. Just copy the photo address like and then use the 'Insert Imagine' button on here and paste the link.

 

 

 

That said, look forward to your review and more photos. I'll be taking Vision to Barcelona in April

[GUT2407]

Looking forward to the photos.

[Clarea]

I would upload photos to a photo sharing site, such as FlickR, and then put a link here.

 

Looking forward to the review.

[KirkNC]

Thanks for the report.

[whitshel]

If your pictures are on your smartphone, download the tapatalk app then its as easy as pie! :D

[shorti503]

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[shorti503]

If your pictures are on your smartphone, download the tapatalk app then its as easy as pie! :D

 

Thank you for the tapatalk suggestion that worked perfectly!

[shorti503]

Check in was probably the smoothest and easiest of any of my sailings, which I was extremely grateful for since we had our kids with us. We arrived just after 10:30 and unloaded our bags with the porter.

 

*Side note- we were able to bring water on board but they would not allow us to check it in so we had to carry it around until it we were able to get to our rooms. I will make sure next time to leave room in a suitcase for the water so that we won't have any issues checking it in next time. After awhile it got quite heavy for my husband to carry around.

 

We explored the ship for awhile, my kids were in awe at how big this ship was, can't imagine how they'll feel once they get to cruise on a bigger boat. After looking around we headed to the windjammer for lunch. It was impossible to find a table to sit at. We ended up finding 4 chairs on the deck and took turns getting food so we didn't lose the chairs. I have to say the layout of the Windjammer was my least favorite. Between the crowding the first day and the layout we missed two whole sections of food. After reading reviews about how hard it was to find a table and then experiencing it first hand I was nervous how the rest of the trip would go, but we never had any other issues. We were always able to find a table without any waiting and once you realized where all the different food was it wasn't that big of a deal.

 

We unfortunately didn't have the greatest weather leaving Tampa it was raining and quite cool. So we unfortunately had to watch sail away through a window.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[BenjiRodney]

Looking forward to more, we are doing this trip on April 2nd on this ship.

[shorti503]

We were able to get right in our rooms at 1:00. We had an ocean view room and were nervous about space and storage for having 4 people in a room. I was very surprised at how much storage they have in those tiny rooms. We had 6 bags and we each also had a backpack. We had plenty of room for everything we even had a few small drawers, a couple shelves and the storage behind the mirrors we didn't end up using. The only disappointment was there was no fridge in our stateroom. I had thought those were in every room. So they had put all the snack bar items on the desk. The kids thought the Pullman beds were awesome and I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't feel to cramped when they were down.

 

We had My Time Dining because we couldn't get on the early seating in the main dining room. I had made reservations prior to boarding for 6:00 each night and I am so glad I did. When we went to dinner that first night there were a ton of people waiting in line and they were all being told 7:30 was the soonest they could be seated. We had THE BEST waitress. Her name was Nalini and she definitely went above and beyond. My oldest son discovered that he loved seafood and would order something with it every night. After the second night without us even asking she would bring out 2 plates for him each night, add the extra seafood to his plate and then would take the second plate away. She even did this on lobster night. When we were in Costa Maya she had went ashore and bought the boys some Mexican candy and gave it to them at dinner that night. The only thing I didn't like about My Time Dining was when the servers do their dancing and singing it was always in the main dining room so we could hear them but not see them.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[whitshel]

Thank you for the tapatalk suggestion that worked perfectly!

 

You're welcome! It was referred to me before I did my Live Oasis cruise last month and it worked perfectly for me too. Great start and pics so far too!!

 

Vision was the 1st cruise we ever took so it has a little sentimental value for me :D

[JustUs275]

Love the look of excitement on your boys faces! :)

Looking forward to the rest of your review - we are doing the same cruise in four weeks.

[Clarea]

Kids look pretty happy in those pullmans.:)