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First timer carnival breeze review

canadaman111

By canadaman111,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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canadaman111

canadaman111

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Well everyone I am going to give this review thing a try.

 

I will start with an introduction.

 

I have talked to a lot of you over the last few years and many of you have read my “pre cruise rambling” thread, but for those who haven’t here is a brief introduction. I have 2 boys aged 16, and 15 from a past relationship. My wife has a girl from a past relationship who is 12, and we have a little girl aged 4 together. So all together we had 6 of us.

 

I have wanted to cruise forever and finally talked my wife into it after our friends took a cruise at Xmas time 2016. We spent a lot of time looking a crusies and finally booked in late February 2016. We choose the Breeze out of Galveston, mostly because of the ship. At that point it was the newest ship, the vista wasn’t out yet. The breeze seemed like it had so much to do to keep all of the kids busy.

 

When we booked we planned on flying but not to long after booking and looking at flight costs it became clear we may be driving. We continued to look for flight for a while but soon gave up and decided we would drive. We live in Ontario Canada and driving to Galveston was going to take about 24 hours. We had driven to Disney in Florida years ago and it was about 22 hours so I knew it was going to be doable.

 

So long story short I spent a good year planning the drive. Being the winter here in Canada we couldn’t really plan for the weather and with 6 of us finding rooms in hotels that hold 6 was tough so we decided to keep the days pretty short and make the drive over 3 nights. We pre booked our hotels so that we had rooms for 6.

 

That gets us to it being time to leave. We left home February 22 at around 6am.

 

Here is a pic of us just leaving the drive way

IMG_0859.thumb.jpg.008039320efb348933fb4ef13b13135f.jpg

 

 

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canadaman111

canadaman111

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We were on your cruise. I hope you had as good of time as we did! It was our second time on the Breeze, and second time cruising with Schwartz!!

 

We loved Schwartz!! He was so awesome. He had room service deliver a plate of desserts, a ship on a stick, a picture of himself, and a hand written note to my 4 year old daughter. We were so touched

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canadaman111

canadaman111

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We live about 3 hours from the nearest border crossing. We made it across without any difficulty. We caressed in port Huron Michigan on i69. The weather was not a problem at all, is was like -4 C but most importantly there was no snow.

 

After crossing the border we continued on i69 through Flint, and Lansing Michigan. After Lansing turns and heads south into Indiana where we went through Fort Wayne and Indianapolis. From there it was just 1-2 hours to Terre Haute Indiana where we had a room at a Comfort Suites booked. The hotel was nice enough and had a nice pool for the kids to burn some energy after being in the car all day.

 

We drove about 9 hours that day and things went better then expected. The kids were quite well behaved, even the little one. As long as we stopped every three hours or so she was good.

 

 

 

 

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Silent Penguin Excellent Advice! Rare

Silent Penguin

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We drove about 9 hours that day and things went better then expected. The kids were quite well behaved, even the little one. As long as we stopped every three hours or so she was good.

 

You definitely did your homework. Heck, I behave a lot better if we stop every few hours.

 

Staying tuned....

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canadaman111

canadaman111

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Friday morning February 23 we were on the road by 7am. One of the perks of stopping in Terre Haute night 1 was that 10 minutes past there we entered Illinois and time went back an hour. So we left at 7 and 10 minutes later it was 6:10. I thought that was cool since we had a little more distance to cover today and it allowed us to still get to Texarkana Arkansas around dinner time.

 

Here is a morning of day 2 pic. At 6 degrees C or so you can see it was warm enough for us Canadians to put our shorts on. Also we knew it would get much warmer as we headed south that day.

IMG_0865.jpg

 

Once entering illinois we turned south on i57. We spent a few hours in Illinois before enter Missouri. Funny story here, my 4 year old heard us saying Missouri and called is misery. Lol. And by this point of day 2 we were all kind of in misery.

 

Crossing the border from Missouri into Arkansas you crossover the Mississippi River. Here is a pic or 2 of that.

IMG_0869.jpg

IMG_0870.jpg

 

After that it is a long drive across Arkansas to Texarkana right on the border of Arkansas and Texas. We got there about 5pm and checked into the Hampton Suites we had booked. It was an awesome room, it was a big square shaped room with 2 queen beds and a pull out couch. It was so big though they could have had 4 queens in there if they had wanted too.

 

So we are 2 days and 18-19 hours into the drive and so far we were very surprised at how well it had went. The kids were being as good as could be expected. We were worried about day 2. Day 1 everyone was excited to leave and day 3 would be exciting to actually get to where we are going so we figured day 2 would not be very fun. It ended up being just fine.

 

We ate dinner at Naamans BBQ after some recommendations from someone in our Facebook group. It was pretty good, the pulled pork melted in your mouth. After that is was back to our room. Even with my extensive research I did miss the fact that this hotel had an outdoor pool and not a indoor pool. I don’t think it was warm enough even for us pasty white Canadians to swim outside. So we hung out for a bit in the room and off to bed we went. Tomorrow we would finally make it into Texas.!!!

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