Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #201 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Dining area for the Seafood Shack Java Blue and Shake Spot Reflections Dining Room at the beginning of our Muster Drill - this photo doesn't quite do the room justice. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #202 Share Posted May 23, 2016 WOW. The pictures and review are absolutely amazing. Can't wait for more pictures inside the ship. Going with large group in December and can hardly contain myself. Thank you so much. I have a ton more to post so I'll be spreading them out over all of the sea days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staceelvls Posted May 23, 2016 #203 Share Posted May 23, 2016 (edited) following along Edited May 23, 2016 by Staceelvls Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #204 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Our Cove balcony cabin, err stateroom! . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #205 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Our cabin continued... Before we decorated the door. You know, I don't think we ever did get a photo of it decorated! Access panels to ours and our neighbor's staterooms The decor changed when you crossed over into the Family Harbor area. Pictures of that area later...:D . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
njmomof2 Posted May 23, 2016 #206 Share Posted May 23, 2016 (edited) I was worried several pages back that I wouldn't get to see your photos (a common problem when I view at work), but I'm seeing them all and they are amazeballs! Some look like they could be picture postcards. Especially some of the photos from Slovenia. Really terrific. Looking forward to more wonderful pictures and your reports. I'm really interested in hearing about on board activities. I have sons who only cruise Royal Caribbean for the flowrider. My older one leaves for college in August, so I'm always on the lookout for something for the younger one (turning 14). He's a fan of waterslides, but hates them on most ships since they, and the pools, are saltwater (Royal has freshwater in most). Would love to hear more (when you get to that part of the report) on the slides, ropes course and other on board attractions. Thanks for doing this! ETA: I'm a para in New Jersey (not doing IP work but corporate and municipal finance, among other things) so I know how hard Mrs. Trip works, and if she specializes, she's probably even more valuable to her people. Edited May 23, 2016 by njmomof2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimmy Geegitz Posted May 23, 2016 #207 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Ship Pics!!! Great!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmcsharon Posted May 23, 2016 #208 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Were you happy with the location of your cabin? Any noise issues from above? I've got that same cabin and the one next to it for our Med. cruise in September! I LOVE the cove balconies and getting to be so close to the water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #209 Share Posted May 23, 2016 I was worried several pages back that I wouldn't get to see your photos (a common problem when I view at work), but I'm seeing them all and they are amazeballs! Some look like they could be picture postcards. Especially some of the photos from Slovenia. Really terrific. Looking forward to more wonderful pictures and your reports. I'm really interested in hearing about on board activities. I have sons who only cruise Royal Caribbean for the flowrider. My older one leaves for college in August, so I'm always on the lookout for something for the younger one (turning 14). He's a fan of waterslides, but hates them on most ships since they, and the pools, are saltwater (Royal has freshwater in most). Would love to hear more (when you get to that part of the report) on the slides, ropes course and other on board attractions. Thanks for doing this! ETA: I'm a para in New Jersey (not doing IP work but corporate and municipal finance, among other things) so I know how hard Mrs. Trip works, and if she specializes, she's probably even more valuable to her people. Janet, Thank you so much for the kind words. I'll do my best to talk about the slides, rope courses and ski ride coming up soon. We definitely took part of them many times. If I can figure the video out, I filmed riding around on the ski ride while we sat in Palermo. My hat goes off to you. I've learned from Lady Trip that a good paralegal is worth their weight in gold!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #210 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Ship Pics!!! Great!! I'll have plenty of them coming! We had 3 sea days on this cruise so I'm going to mainly be showing ship pics on the reports for those days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #211 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Were you happy with the location of your cabin? Any noise issues from above? I've got that same cabin and the one next to it for our Med. cruise in September! I LOVE the cove balconies and getting to be so close to the water. cmcsharon, To be honest, yes and no. This was our first time in a cove balcony but not the first time on Deck 2 (we had an OV on our first cruise). Sound wise, it was silent. No noise from above, the elevators, other passengers, nada. It was neat being over the automatic gangways (when we ported on the Starboard side). I always like to watch for pier runners, especially when you have a front row view! It was also very nice for being so close to debarking and embarking the ship. No need to battle with everyone else for an elevator. A quick hop up or down a 2 flights of stairs and you were either off the ship or back in your room in a jiffy. We were actually the first ones off the ship in Dubrovnik. I've never actually been the first ones off before! We left port late every night so on several nights the captain had the pedal to the metal so to speak so it was fun to watch the spray and waves from our balcony. Now, the not so good...the elevators. I mentioned it in my Cliff Notes. This is my biggest compliant of the ship. Those elevators annoyed the crap out of me (and just about everyone else). A lot of people ended up using the stairs or would get in an elevator going the opposite direction just to be on one. I don't ever recall having that much of an issue with elevators on our other cruises. I did eventually find that it was easier to get an elevator midship or aft. If we were in a hurry, that's what we did. I hope this helps some! Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #212 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Fun Times for May 1st - Embarkation Day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jess427rn Posted May 23, 2016 #213 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Random question.... Do you know if CCL is still doing the towel animals? I haven't seen any [emoji17] Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pafoster62 Posted May 23, 2016 #214 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Your review is so fun to read! Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #215 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Per our usual boarding day ritual, I spent the first couple hours running around poking my head (and camera) everywhere checking things out. After that, we return back to our cabin to change and get ready for our reservations at the Steakhouse. Yes, free booze will get us every time! I’m Irish, what do you expect?! Well, we were supposed to have our muster drill at 4:30 pm but we never heard the call to muster at our stations. We had dinner reservations at 5:30 pm so we didn’t think much of it. Until it we were getting ready to head up to Deck 5 (Promenade Deck) and we heard the call to muster. Grrr! The one good thing was the fact that we were not going to be standing around crammed in like sardines in the hot, humid and sticky air of the Caribbean next to the life boats. Everyone was divided up into different muster stations around the ship. Our muster station was B3 which happened to be the Reflections Dining Room. Works for us! Thankfully, all dining locations were closed during the muster drill. They actually swiped our S&S card this time instead of just clicking their little clicker thingy. We were also happy that they only did the drill in English. I was expecting them to do it in a variety of languages. Whew! That made it short and simple. Off to the Steakhouse! As you can see, we were one of the first ones in there. We like to eat early on a cruise. We always eat late at home due to our work schedules and commutes so its nice to eat early once and a while (please it allows us to snack more on ice cream later!!!) The outdoor seating area for the Steakhouse. It was a little too cool to sit out there on embarkation day but I can imagine it would be great in the Caribbean or warmer weather in the Med! As usual, the Steakhouse was outstanding. Some of our friends had a less than stellar meal later that same evening but I heard that they were swamped and probably a bit unsure of everything still. We were lucky. There were only a few people there so the service was outstanding. Now I know that a lot of people out there slam the house wine that they offer for free. Do you really expect them to give away a high end wine? Of course, it’s going to be a low tier wine. They are a business after all and out to make a profit. Thankfully they also offer a reduction on their better wines if you so choose. Our palettes are not so refined. Even though both of us individually make a lot more than our parents combined and hold white collar professional jobs, we are blue collar people through and through and wine tasting is not really our thing. Don't get us wrong, we like to drink it, but being able to rattle off all of the "notes" of a wine is beyond us. I remember one time many, many moons ago, we lived in San Diego and took a weekend trip to Palm Springs to get away. We decided to splurge and got a room at the uber fancy JW Resort. I pulled my little Toyota pickup truck (single cab, 2-wheel drive of course!) and parked it amid a sea of BMWs, Mercedes and Jaguars with a couple Range Rovers thrown in for a manly effect. We hopped out of our truck, grabbed our backpack that held all of our clothes and toiletries and then grabbed the most important item we had. A 36-gallon cooler filled to the brim with beer. Yep, we went clinking and clanking all the way across the entire fancy-smancy lobby dragging a cooler full of beer. We learned what the Clampetts’ felt like when they moved to Beverly Hills! (Okay, if you don’t get the Beverly Hillbillies reference, then you are way too young!) We got a lot of dirty looks there but we don’t care. We had fun and we didn’t bother anybody. Well, except maybe that gopher we almost hit with the golf cart we "re-appropriated" on a midnight joy ride. But that’s a story for a different day!! Again, I took a left turn at Albuquerque. Sorry. What I’m trying to say is, we don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Yes, we know we are not getting high end wine (that’s what we have in our room along with a bottle of rum). We thought the wine was just fine. That’s just our opinion and we are certainly not wine connoisseurs by any means! After dinner, we walked around some more before we decided to stop in and check out the Piano Bar with Ben Gentry. It’s a good thing we stopped in at the beginning of the cruise. Word spread around quickly how much fun Ben was and it was packed nightly. Again, the early bird gets the worm! We sat down around 9 pm and we left when they broomed us out when they closed. I believe it was around 2 am but I wouldn’t trust that too much. Things were a little blurry by the time we staggered out of there. Thank God, tomorrow is a sea day!! Since we were having such a good time singing along with Ben, I completely forgot to get pictures. And there were soooooo many opportunities for some ransom style photos!! This was taken earlier in the day when it was closed Next up...Sea Day and more ship photos! . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #216 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Random question.... Do you know if CCL is still doing the towel animals? I haven't seen any [emoji17] Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app Oh yes they are! What till you see the photos of when the towel animals took over the entire Lido Deck! I will be posting those along with the ones from our room a bit later in the review. Sorry to keep you waiting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 23, 2016 Author #217 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Your review is so fun to read! Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app Thank you so much, I'm glad you're enjoying it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kapcruiser Posted May 23, 2016 #218 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Great review Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ileys Posted May 23, 2016 #219 Share Posted May 23, 2016 I do not usually chime in on reviews like this, but I must say that you write really well and have probably the best attitude of a traveler abroad that I have seen! I really appreciate your approach towards crossing all borders! Keep it up - we are all eager for more! Thanks - I know that these are not easily produced! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MelodyBL Posted May 24, 2016 #220 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Oh yes they are! What till you see the photos of when the towel animals took over the entire Lido Deck! I will be posting those along with the ones from our room a bit later in the review. Sorry to keep you waiting! Just tell me you didn't get a mouse....I didn't get a mouse. I love the mouse. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hapytobehr Posted May 24, 2016 #221 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Wonderful review....fabulous pictures...... May I ask what camera you are using?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmcsharon Posted May 24, 2016 #222 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Thank you so much for your thoughts on your cabin. I hope the elevator issue gets resolved quickly. Seems like that would be a big complaint for a lot of people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 24, 2016 Author #223 Share Posted May 24, 2016 I do not usually chime in on reviews like this, but I must say that you write really well and have probably the best attitude of a traveler abroad that I have seen! I really appreciate your approach towards crossing all borders! Keep it up - we are all eager for more! Thanks - I know that these are not easily produced! ileys, Thank you so much for the kind words, I really appreciate that!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 24, 2016 Author #224 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Just tell me you didn't get a mouse....I didn't get a mouse. I love the mouse. :) No, I didn't get the mouse either :mad: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare trippingpara Posted May 24, 2016 Author #225 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Wonderful review....fabulous pictures...... May I ask what camera you are using?? I used a combination of 3 cameras. My main one was the Sony a99 dSLT. She's a big heavy SOB but takes great pictures. When I didn't feel like carrying (or couldn't carry her), I used my GoPro 4. Lady Trip carried an Olympus TG-3 (which also takes really good photos as well). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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