Carnival Sensation Review - June 15-19 2017

[*Cassie*]

We lucked out and the line at Southernmost Point wasn’t bad at all yet, so we got our photos.

 

 

It was already pretty hot out in the sun, though, and with the mile walk down there we were ready for a little break in the shade, so I took that opportunity to video chat my kids. Unfortunately it wasn’t working great, but I got to briefly see their sweet faces and talk to them, so that was nice.

 

We next made our way over to Higgs Beach. I had seen some photos out on a pier that look really neat, but we were bummed to find that it was closed for some construction. So we kept on walking. Our next stop was the West Martello Tower. It was a cute place, but it was very buggy and they were starting to bite, so we didn’t stay for long.

 

 

 

Then we realized how far we actually walked and that we’d have to walk back… It was so hot out. But we made our way back and went down Duval Street this time. We had to stop for a few photo ops on the way.

 

 

My mom asked this random guy to join her for a photo! He seemed unsure at first, but then said heck why not. He was a good sport!

 

[*Cassie*]

We stopped at a few souvenir shops and I found a postcard to send home to my kids and our traditional trip souvenir of a magnet for the fridge. I also stopped in a kids shop and found something for my daughter there. Then we found the Tropical Juice stand. We wanted to get one of the whole pineapple drinks. It was huge, so we all shared one. It’s $15 and you choose whatever drink (with or without alcohol) you want in it. We went with the Pina Colada. It was yummy!

 

 

Walking on, we passed by the famous Willie T’s dollar bar.There was live music playing. Looked like a fun place to hang out!

 

 

And finally, Kermit’s Key West Lime Shoppe! I picked up a bunch of souvenirs here for the fam and of course had to get a chocolate covered key lime pie on a stick for myself. Oh man it was good!

 

 

 

I think it was around noon now and we had to be back on the ship by 12:30 (I believe), so we started walking back over to the port. We briefly stopped to check out the statues around the Custom House.

 

 

I still needed to find a place to mail my postcard home to the kids. I didn’t see any mail boxes around anywhere, so I asked someone in a shop and they suggested going in to the lobby of the resort that was right there to ask them. They right away said yes of course they could add it to their mail for me. Unfortunately, it has still not arrived. I’m not sure if I did something wrong or it really is just that slow? Guess we’ll see if it ever shows up.

[*Cassie*]

We then walked back over to the ship, made it through security, and of course the first thing we had to do was grab a drink. I went with the strawberry daiquiri this time.

 

 

 

We were ready for some lunch, but first needed to go back to our room to take our motion sickness meds and freshen up a bit.

 

The buffet once again didn’t look too appealing, so we all decided on pizza. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so good. The fruit from the buffet was, though! I always love all the fresh fruit each cruise. Oh and I had picked up a Diet Coke from the bar up there and I don’t know what the deal was, but it was completely flat. Like, so awful I couldn’t drink more than a few sips. I can’t remember if he opened a new can or had poured it, I’m really not sure, but it wasn’t good. I didn’t want to bother standing in that line again, though, so I just grabbed a lemonade.

 

 

Dessert was tasty, though! I believe this was another cheesecake (can’t remember what flavor) and a chocolate cake pop today.

 

 

After eating we thought we’d try our luck at the casino. I guess we weren’t far enough out at sea yet though, so the casino wasn’t open yet. So we grabbed another drink while we waited. I was in the mood for something peachy, and asked our bartender for a suggestion and went with that, a peach bellini. That was a first for me, but I liked it!

 

 

Once the casino opened up we made our selection of slot machines. None of us our big gamblers and honestly didn’t really know what we were doing. But we finally kinda sorta figured it out and each put $10 down. Molly and I each lost ours fairly quickly, but my mom found herself up $1 and decided to cash out while she was up!

 

[*Cassie*]

We then wanted to go find the “secret” deck up front. It’s always one of my favorite quiet spots each cruise. It was empty, as usual.

 

 

We walked over to check out the view on the side and when we turned around we realized mom wasn’t there. Hmm where did she go?? So we walk back to leave, open the door and find this… :')

 

 

Poor mom started feeling motion sick watching the water so she had to escape and now had no drink, so we had to stop and grab one more! I can’t remember what this one was called, but something peachy as well. Maybe margarita??

 

 

After finishing those, we went back to our room for a little cat nap before getting ready for dinner. I forgot to mention I got the social media package for the week, so that I’d be able to use Facebook Messenger to talk with my hubby and MIL about the kids. So I took that time to upload my Key West photos. The service worked pretty well, but there were a few times it wasn’t working. We mostly had issues with Instagram and Snapchat. Facebook usually worked fine.

 

We debated getting a nice photo taken, there were some cute backgrounds, but we didn’t want to stand in the lines. Our group photo didn’t turn out great, bad lighting, but it will do.

 

 

[*Cassie*]

Another first for me, this was my first time getting to see the waiters performance. That was fun! Molly was picked to stand up and dance with our waiter, but when she saw they were doing a choreographed dance she called it quits and sat back down.

 

 

 

Dinner tonight was yummy. I started with the chilled strawberry bisque, then the prime rib, and pineapple sherbet for dessert.

 

 

 

 

[*Cassie*]

After dinner, Kabir was starting a music trivia in the atrium in between the production show times. I’m thinking it was 80’s music, but not entirely sure. He would call someone up who had to pretend to be that singer. Some of them were sure entertaining to watch!

 

 

Molly wanted a front row seat for the show, so we went early and listened to Johnny the piano man do the pre-show.

 

 

 

 

And after the show we went to the comedy club, which was another first for me on a cruise. There were two comedians tonight, Jaylyn Bishop and Roman.They were both great, but we really loved Jaylyn. We weren’t allowed to take pics during the show, but here’s the empty stage.

 

[*Cassie*]

We then called it a night and found some surprises back in our room. The room steward left this message on the mirror, which remained there the rest of the cruise.

 

 

Then our towel animal with fun times and a birthday card.

 

 

It had a $50 spa gift card and $12 for pixels. Now I was really kicking myself for not getting a nice group photo taken earlier that evening.

 

 

 

 

 

Coming up… Cozumel!

[happy cruzer]

Did your mom try any sea sickness remedies? Seabands work for me and for bad cases I take Bonine. I get all kinds of motion sickness just found what worked so I could still enjoy.

 

Love your pictures.

[*Cassie*]

Did your mom try any sea sickness remedies? Seabands work for me and for bad cases I take Bonine. I get all kinds of motion sickness just found what worked so I could still enjoy.

 

Love your pictures.

 

I believe she used bonine. I just take ginger root pills, so she also had some of those a few times. We'll have to suggest she try something stronger if we can (hopefully) talk her into another cruise eventually!

 

And thank you! :)

[*Cassie*]

I still needed to find a place to mail my postcard home to the kids. I didn’t see any mail boxes around anywhere, so I asked someone in a shop and they suggested going in to the lobby of the resort that was right there to ask them. They right away said yes of course they could add it to their mail for me. Unfortunately, it has still not arrived. I’m not sure if I did something wrong or it really is just that slow? Guess we’ll see if it ever shows up.

 

Hey hey, it finally arrived today! Guess I left it at the wrong spot because it was postmarked on 6/20, which was 4 days later and the day I arrived home. But Sophia loves receiving any kind of mail, so she still loved it anyway!

[*Cassie*]

Cozumel

 

Our morning started off at sea. We weren’t going to arrive at Cozumel until noon. So after getting ready, we went right up to get breakfast.

 

 

After breakfast I wanted to check out the Serenity area, since I realized we hadn’t been there yet. It was still mostly empty at this point. We thought about grabbing a drink to get the full relaxing lounge chair experience, but our excursion for today was The Amazing Cozumel Race, so we thought that might not be the best idea. It was still nice to just hang out here for a bit.

 

 

 

 

Molly needed to finish getting ready and we needed to pack our things for the day, so we started making our way back to our room. Then we remembered that the café drinks are also included in the Cheers package, so we stopped there and each got a chocolate milkshake and bottle of water to bring to the race.

 

[*Cassie*]

When we finally arrived in Cozumel, there was some kind of delay with the port authorization, so we were told to stay in our rooms or public lounges until given the ok to exit. We took that opportunity to open up our room curtain and enjoy the view since we weren’t moving.

 

 

Finally they announced that those who had booked excursions could exit first, so we made our way off the ship. They of course had the photographers and people dressed up to take pictures with as soon as you exit the ship. So we did a couple of those and then had to get the ship background photos.

 

 

The Triumph and Paradise were docked right next to us. And yes, we wore matching shirts for the race. Had to represent Team 52! It’s a family inside joke and we already had the shirts, so we knew it would be the perfect team name.

 

 

And that view! Oh man do I love palm trees!

 

[*Cassie*]

As you leave the pier, you have to walk through the very long duty free shop. We made our way through and right away we could see the sign for our Amazing Cozumel Race excursion right in front of Three Amigos. The lady checked us in and said we could find a table and sit until all the teams arrived. We took that opportunity to take some photos.

 

 

Here is what we were given: race lanyards, a map of the area we would be exploring, a phone in case we needed to call for help, and in the back there was a booklet on Cozumel and a numbering system translator.

 

 

Once all the teams arrived, we followed them through the port and they put us in taxis over to the downtown area.

 

 

Then we walked a couple blocks over to the square. I had wanted to get a photo over here, but it never worked out since we were in it to win it and didn’t want to stop. So this will have to do.

 

[*Cassie*]

After taking our group photos and giving us some rules, the race was ready to begin! They handed each of us our first puzzle and we were off! I won’t give away too much in case anyone else is going to do it, but here are some basics of what we did.

 

The first puzzle was a find the differences between these two pictures and then add some things up to find the spot on the map you need to go to next. Well, those two pictures were tricky! They looked so similar, so we were having some trouble. All the teams seemed to be at first, but then one by one they were all leaving us behind and we started panicking a bit. But we finally got it and took off running to try to make up some time. Now at this point, it seemed everyone must have been walking, because we quickly caught up with everyone else.

 

We then had to find some clues in a market and then our guide gave us the number for the next location on our map. So we took off running again. Here’s a photo I captured of Molly running through the streets of Cozumel.

 

 

Now we got a little too excited and weren’t paying enough attention to the street names (although, they aren’t marked like they are here in the US, so it was tricky figuring out where you were exactly) and we got a little ahead of ourselves. The main group leader had to blow her whistle and say you girls are lost, check your map. This is when we looked up and saw another team running toward us from another street over, so we quickly headed over there and found the clue we had missed.

 

Here’s Molly trying to figure out the next clue.

 

 

We made it through another couple spots and then found ourselves at the half way point. At this point the time stops for a bit. We were the third team here, so currently in 3rd place. Now they had our three teams all get into a small boat that would take us out to a sunken ship. One person from each team would then swim down and have to read the name of the boat that would then help us solve the next puzzle. All the teams worked together to share the name.

 

 

Molly volunteered to do the diving while I did the puzzle work.

 

 

The boat we were on was a glass bottom boat, so we could see the sunken boat they were swimming down to.

 

[*Cassie*]

The next puzzle then sent us into a museum. We had to do a fill in the blanks for different items found in the museum and then finish a puzzle. We made up some time here and were able to run ahead. But we made a map error at the next one and ended up running the wrong way around the block, whereas the second place team took the shortcut and made it to the henna stand first. Mom did this one for us.

 

 

We followed through to the next spots and then the next number was several streets down. Mom isn’t a runner like us, but she was really trying her best to keep up. So proud of her! We finally made it to the last street and we noticed that the other team that was neck and neck with us had turned first and then finished straight, whereas we went straight and then turned, so as we turned we saw that we were ahead of them. Just barely. So we made mom finish strong and we sprinted down the street. We found the spot, which was a restaurant, and we saw the Amazing Cozumel Race logo, but nobody was standing right there (which they were later standing out front for the rest of the teams). Apparently they didn’t know we were so close. But that’s when we realized this was the finish. Yay, we did it and had been the first team to finish the race!

 

Now as they said at the beginning, just because we finished first didn’t mean we were the winners. We knew we were in third the first section, but didn’t know how far ahead of us the other team had been. So we had to just wait until all the other teams finished for the award ceremony.

 

 

While we waited, they gave each of us two drink tickets. You could get a soda for one ticket or alcoholic beverages for two tickets. So we went with daiquiri and margaritas.

 

Not a bad view to enjoy either while we waited!

 

 

They also gave us the restaurant menu and we could order food if we wanted. We decided to split the plate of beef and chicken nachos.They were alright. Hit the spot after running.

 

 

Finally the last teams finished. I can’t remember the exact time differences between first and last place, but I think it was around 30 minutes or so. They asked us if we had any idea the total distance we had explored that day and it was around 4 miles. And then they gave the final results. Big moment here, did we get first or second?! Well, it all came down to 3 minutes. We finished in second and took the silver medal. But that’s ok,we still finished the race first! :cool:

 

 

Honestly though, this race was so much fun! It was just like the show, which I’ve always been a fan of. The locals really get into it, knowing that we're doing this race, and although they've apparently been told not to help, which some we could tell were purposely staying quiet, others really got into it and telling us to come back to their shop afterwards. I’m really glad we did it and hey it helped burn off some of those cruise calories! haha

[*Cassie*]

Once we were ready to go, they provided us taxi rides back to the port. We were feeling very hot and ready to go back for showers, but we had to get a group photo in this spot.

 

 

We also stopped to listen to the mariachi band for a bit.

 

 

I still needed to get a souvenir for my little guy, so we walked through several shops. They pretty much all had the same options. There really just wasn’t much selection for a 2 year old that wasn’t something super noisy... My mom and sister were getting tired of shopping, so I sent them on back to Three Amigos, since we were given free drink coupons there from the race. So they got their margarita while I finished my search.

 

I finally, much to the dismay of my inner voice, just settled on a maraca and then found a little wooden truck. I hadn’t planned on buying anything else for my daughter, but saw that in several places they were hand weaving bracelets with names in them. I stopped at one of the little stands and they told me $10. I really wasn’t wanting to spend more than $5, since I had already found something for her in Key West. I told him that and after waiting long enough, he finally agreed to $5 since there were already two Sophia bracelets made. I also noticed a rum cake shop and knowing my hubby was a fan the last time we were in Cozumel, I stopped to get one for him and took advantage of the free samples they had. Yummy!

 

Then I moved on to find my ladies back. They had finished their drinks and were ready to get back, but first we had to stop to get this photo:

 

 

 

Back through the Duty Free Shop, through security and on to the ship.

 

[*Cassie*]

I’m thinking it was around 5 now and since we hadn’t taken advantage of our Cheers package all day (other than the milkshake), our first stop was of course to the bar to get a drink. I saw someone else had this pretty blue drink, so I asked the bartender what it was. He said it’s basically a blue pina colada. I went with that and it did not disappoint. So good that I ordered another later that night and after asking for the blue pina colada, I believe they said it was the Twilight Zone.

 

 

We enjoyed some live music while we sat. I’m bummed I forgot to bring home the Fun Times, because I can’t remember what her name was. She was so good! Bad photo angle with the drink machine thing in the way…

 

 

Then back to our room for showers and getting ready for dinner. This was a late one for us. I’m usually an early eater with my kiddos, but I don’t think we got there until 7 something. Had to stop for our nightly dressed up photo first, though!

 

 

The night before we had the table magician, Pankaj Gonbare, stop and do some tricks with us. It was so much fun and we were so bummed afterwards that we didn’t think to record it. So we were excited to see him coming around the next night. We ended up talking with him later that evening and the next. He’s a really nice guy!

 

[*Cassie*]

For dinner tonight I started with the home style meatballs (I can’t remember the exact name of it, but I think that’s it?). They were so good and I would have loved to have more as a main dish!

 

 

Then my mom and I both had the lamb shank. This was a first for both of us. I thought it was ok, not my fave but I’m glad I tried it. The cauliflower under it was amazing, though.

 

 

And the fruit plate for dessert.

 

 

 

I guess I must not have taken any more photos of the rest of the evening and since I don’t have my Fun Times I can’t remember exactly what we did. I’m pretty sure after dinner is when we were going to check out karaoke.We walked in and it was pretty dead and the bar in there wasn’t open yet, so we went back over to the casino bar to grab a drink. We eventually went back in and there ended up being a few good singers, but mostly just entertaining ones.

 

After that we walked out and found the production singers at the casino area stage performing, so we stayed there for a while watching them. The magician was here hanging out with them, so that’s when we talked with him a bit.

 

We had wanted to see Jaylyn’s comedy act again this evening, which we realized would be starting soon. Molly had met a group of guys in karaoke though, so she was of course wanting to hang out with them. So we split up for awhile. The show was once again great!

 

Once it was over we went up to the Red Frog Pub, which is where Molly had been headed when we left. Do you remember me mentioning that she has an amazing ability at losing everything? Well, it was bound to happen that she would lose her s&s card at some point during this cruise, and sure enough there she was panicking because it was nowhere to be found. We first went back to the casino bar, which was the last place she remembered using it, and we were hopeful that maybe she left it inside the bill holder thing. But no luck. So we went straight to Guest Services and had her card cancelled and got her a new one. Lucky for her, apparently the first one is replaced at no charge!

 

She wanted to go to the club for a bit yet, but mom and I called it a night since it was already after midnight. Too late for this mama! ;p

 

I took this quick pic and went straight to bed.

 

 

 

 

 

Coming up… a very rainy day at sea… :(

[Clarea]

Really enjiying the excellent photos.:)

[ABQrobin]

Cozumel Amazing Race looks like so much fun. Thanks for posting it, I have always wondered about doing it. Might have to give it a try next time, if we can get our son to take a week off work and join us.

[momof4girls]

Wow that Amazing Race looks fun (and something completely different I don't usually try at ports). Not sure I'd want to do it in the middle of summer, but it looks like it'd be a great replacement for a beach day during those winter months

 

P.S. Very surprised at your Cardinals remark...figured you for a Cubs fan!

[JaniceB]

Enjoying your review and pictures! Looks like a great time!

[Mutumbojimbo]

Cozumel Amazing Race looks like so much fun. Thanks for posting it, I have always wondered about doing it. Might have to give it a try next time, if we can get our son to take a week off work and join us.

It's definitely our favorite family shore excursion. Our boys were 14 and 9 and loved it, although we only came in fourth.

[*Cassie*]

Really enjiying the excellent photos.:)

 

Thank you! :)

 

Cozumel Amazing Race looks like so much fun. Thanks for posting it, I have always wondered about doing it. Might have to give it a try next time, if we can get our son to take a week off work and join us.

 

Yes, it's so much fun! I definitely recommend giving it a try!

[*Cassie*]

Wow that Amazing Race looks fun (and something completely different I don't usually try at ports). Not sure I'd want to do it in the middle of summer, but it looks like it'd be a great replacement for a beach day during those winter months

 

P.S. Very surprised at your Cardinals remark...figured you for a Cubs fan!

 

Yeah, it was definitely hot out, but we had a great time! And, no way. I grew up more in the Southern part of IL, so much closer to St. Louis.

 

Enjoying your review and pictures! Looks like a great time!

 

Thanks for reading! We definitely had a fun trip!