Legend - My long review

[Silc]

I love penny slots! I max out my bets, you win so much more that way. My favorite machine is the butterfly seven machine. If you are looking at the cashiers window you will see a crew door to the left. It is on it's own wall before you turn a bit and see 4-5 more machines and the 2 quarter pusher machines. This was my first win that hooked me:

 

a whole $12 - woohoo!

 

AND I have a 5 minute video of me winning 6000 pennies lol After it rolled past the 700 mark I was trying to figure out what I had won (3 oranges, 1 double, 1 triple) and thought hello, I should film this!

 

I was on the Sensation in July 2006. My best friend and I each put $20 into a 2 penny slot machine, played max credits, and won over $1900!!!!!!! All the screaming and yelling going on, you would have thought we'd won a million! But hey, $1900 out of a 2 penny machine is not a bad way to spend your last night on the ship!:D

[Polar Bear]

Do you know anything about the aft cabins? Mainly the ones on Verandah Deck. We have a hold on one until Monday(cabin 7300). After seeing your photos and reading your review, can not wait to sail on the Legend. Have a hold on a booking for Dec2008.

Thank you for your insight.

[neatokimmo]

Day 5 - Belize

 

I will try to hurry this along a little, I know it is taking me forever to finish up. I am actually cleaning and cropping pics as I go.

 

We arrived in Belize to beautiful sunny skies. We had booked a cave tubing excursion through cave-tubing.com so we we wanted to get off the ship asap. This port required a tender because there is a huge barrier reef and the cruise ships could damage it. These tenders were different than the ones from Grand Cayman, they were much much faster! I'd guess the tender trip was 15-20 minutes and we were going so fast the front tip of the boat stuck up out of the water. It was a fun ride but if you get motion sickness, take your pills before you leave.

 

We arrived in time to be the first group cave-tubing.com had for the day. After just a few minutes we were loaded up into an older bluebird type bus and off we went. We went through many downtown areas then the country. We saw orange groves and cashew fruit trees before reaching the rainforest.

 

Ok, a little bit of truth here. I live in east tn. We have trees/woods, you name it, I live in a lovely part of the world. I don't know what I was expecting, but the forest is a very sterile area, no animals, bugs..nothing. It looks just like home expect there are palms instead of oaks. And really, our caves are much cooler!

 

But not to say we didn't like the excursion, we really did! They marched us along a path for 45 minutes or so way past where the cruise ship people stopped. We got an extra cave out of it. And we lost 10 pounds of water weight too (95 degrees that day!). The water was like a swimming pool, you first get in and shriek a little then it feels really good!

 

We had 39 people on our trip that day so they broke us down into group of 10 & 9 and we each had a guide. We all linked up by grabbing each other's feet and off we went. At times we got stuck in low water because the rainy season hadn't started but all in all it was a pretty peaceful float. There were several times we had to scrunch our rear ends up to keep floating and not smack rocks but that was half the fun. One thing I noticed on the trip was everyone else was floating in singles. We were the only group being guided, several people were stuck in low spots or not moving at all. After seeing all that, I wouldn't book cave tubing through the ship!

 

For those who are squeamish about booking this excursion, we saw nothing that flew, crawl, slithered or swam while on our tour. Like I said, it's freakishly clean.

 

I say we were in the water for 1.5 hours. The park where you leave for cave tubing has a nice changing building if you want to change out of your wet clothes at the end. An hour bus ride back and $45 poorer, our fun cave tubing trip was over (and those pics are in the water cameras that are at Wal-Mart now).

 

We spent so time shopping in the area at the port and directly across the street. Just a note to us tourist types, the first store directly across the street has great postcards, stamps and a mailbox to send them in. But in the main area, we went to every single store. I bought my favorite item of the trip, a carved wooden seashell. I also got a cutting board made of strips of native wood. If I had the extra $100 I would of spent it on the bowls they had. Next time right? Michelle bought a cool carved crab and tucan with a striped beak. Most stores had the sme wooden items, but the shell & crab were only in 1 store.

 

We headed back to the boat about 45 minutes early because we were just pooped (averaged 4 hours of sleep at night and a 1.5 hour nap every day - whew). The tender boat back was just as fast but we were in someone else's wake. Every minute *whap* *whap* as everyone in the boat lifted 3 inches and bounced back down. My poor rear end, after being scraped by rocks in the river the boat about killed me lol

 

Here are some pictures from the boat (can you tell I'm super careful with my camera? I love it and don't want to mess it up!)

(if this isn't the prettiest color in the world then you need to adjust your monitor)

 

a sandbar?

 

I'm pretty sure this is the Legend

 

 

a shot of the supper club with Belize water in the background.

 

Check it out, there is the Valor in our dining room window!

 

Warning - food pics next!

[neatokimmo]

Belize day continued...

 

That night at dinner we were the only ones there! The other 6 didn't make it, they must of had rough days too! We were able to get some one on one time with our waiter and he got us a set of the cookbooks and had them signed by everyone. I thought that was sweet!

 

My first appetizer haha...

Sweet frozen goodness

 

Duck again, very good. Warning - the noodles under it are VERY spicy.

 

Michelle said these were fine, I thought they looked a little pitiful.

 

Duet of mussels - I normally don't like seafood in red sauce but this was good. That round thing in the middle was pastry again.

 

Turkey Bow Tie Pasta - this was a surprise, it looked so plain when it came out. But the sauce was light and it all went well together.

 

 

More in the next post....

[dallas52]

thanks for the info on the store in grand cayman, we are booked at cave-tubing also. sound like fun, looking forward to it. finishing packing tonight so we can leave sat morning also. we from near charlotte so it takes about 9 hrs to drive it. enjoyed your pics and review. :)

[neatokimmo]

And here is the pike, mahi mahi or red snapper. I had all three, and they were all really good. I should really look it up. BTW, the sauce on my fish was the same as what was on the bow tie pasta. It looks a little different because of the chopped tomato on my fish.

 

I can never remember what this is called. It's the Italian cake with lady fingers in it. She thought it was good. I didn't get dessert this night (ok, I got another frozen glass of yummy if you must know - mango!)

 

This was also the grand gala midnight buffet night! I don't think we had a show, it was the beer and bathrobes party. Many people wore their bathrobes to the buffet. Some chose a different route all together:

 

 

YIKES

 

Midnight Buffet - it was mostly cold stuff, sweets and just a couple of warm things. They had little steaks that were tough (I try not to eat steak on ships, I don't like it) and fancy green beans.

 

 

[neatokimmo]

Warning - lots of sugar ahead!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tried the 2nd choco cake - good, the rum balls - too strong and the last pineapple cake, very good.

[neatokimmo]

Finally Day 6 - Costa Maya

 

We had problems docking here, the water was very rough. We had to kick it in reverse and change our docking station. Once off, it was a pretty pretty day.

 

The Valor while we were changing docks

 

 

Check out the water smacking against the Valor

 

And my question for those on the Valor, do you have really cool pictures of the Legend for us? We spent most of the trip together!

 

The Legend peeking through the fountains

 

We skipped the stores because we knew there was shopping elsewhere. We went to the back of the complex and bought bus tickets to the cat meow for $3 each. One quick trip and we were there!

 

 

We hung out at the Cat's Meow all day. We did get an hour massage from here for $20

 

We drank some, shopped some and wandered around. We didn't have any issues while we were there and I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what my new career could be in Costa Maya!

 

 

Next - more Costa Maya pics

[neatokimmo]

 

 

 

 

[neatokimmo]

Dinner that night was so so. I admit it, I drank like double the amount of beer I should of and for the first time the boat was moving and I could feel it. I picked through dinner, I have pictures (ok fuzzy pictures, like sort of how my head felt haha) but I can't tell you if any of it was good or not.

 

I had lobster bisque - did not like that at all! It was orange??

 

 

Some sort of cold seafood sampler. It was ok, I liked the salmon in it a lot.

 

 

Jumbo shrimp fuzzy pic - I can't comment on the dish as a whole, I just ate the shrimp. Those were very good!

 

 

The french sounding beef dish. Michelle said it was good.

 

Dessert was baked alaska, reminded me of a dairy queen ice cream cake. It was ok.

 

Several seasick pills later, I'm A-OK!

 

Jazz show that night we liked it:

 

 

Just one more palm tree

 

[neatokimmo]

Last day - and my almost last post!

 

We just sort of hung out all day. Michelle had to pay for her artwork and we were just too sleepy to do much of anything. We packed up a lot of stuff in the afternoon and that evening. We did the galley tour:

 

 

The painting I wanted but couldn't afford for $1400

 

 

Dinner that night was good. The mushroom soup was good. So was the crab cake:

 

and garden slug errr snails err..

 

they really taste like mushrooms but how hungry was someone to figure that out?

 

Quail - pretty but way overcooked, mostly tasted like stuffing and Carnival makes gross stuffing.

[mac4cruise]

Great review looks like you had a great time. We have been on the Legend twice and we had a great cruise also, looking at you pics brings makes me think of all the great that we had. Very good keep it coming I like your pics of the food

[neatokimmo]

 

Veggie under cheese medley - she said it was good

 

Neptune, 2 long skinny shrimp (yum) 2 pieces of fish (not so yum)

 

Now I'm tired, I can't remember what this is called. It was like a warm custard. It was good.

 

And somewhere in here I ordered prime rib and didn't take a picture? What was wrong with me? It was a decent cut but too fatty in half of it for my taste. I ordered it rare and got medium which is the best a big production like this can do. I liked the outside rub though and that makes or breaks prime rib I think.

 

The only bad thing about the trip happened tonight. Way late we decided to try a burger from lido. I found a piece of glass in mine. It didn't cut me but I crunched down on it (I am glad it was me and not someone older person maybe with not as good teeth). I took it to the pursers desk and they opened a case on it. Will be interesting to see what their response is. I'd like to get a letter saying oops, we threw the last dozen or so out after you called and scrubbed down the grill. We'll see!

 

All in all, this was a fantastic trip! I enjoyed all the ports and all the on board activites. I've talked about it so much that my mom (who is going on the Triumph trip in Sept with me) wants to cancel it and go on the Legend. I'm game! :)

 

Thanks for sticking it out reading all this. I have a lot of pictures, I'll be happy to post anything you'd like to see. The water cameras and the other digital camera will be on disk by Monday.

 

Bye!

[neatokimmo]

There are some skippy butt cheek outfits in the shows. I can't recall seeing a lot of them in the big show with the movie themes. I think they'd like that, I did :) The non-adult comedians were funny and clean. The ones after midnight were just gross, we left. I'm a prude and proud of it! :D

 

 

That night was the juggler, he was a hoot. He was this little guy who moved so fast all my pictures of him are a blur! He used pins, rings, things like that. Afterwards I think this was the comedian night. He was funny but not dirty (42 4 letter words in a row isn't funny to me) so that was good. We also hit the casino (of course) and called it a night.

 

Are there any of the shows that would be ok to take a 10 and 13 yr old to? A juggler sounds safe enough, but you never know. Or, is there an age limit for these things. Our only cruise with the kids had Disney shows, so that was ok to do with them

[neatokimmo]

Hello!! It was a great trip huh?

 

I can't wait for the kiddo, maybe 5 months more? What's 5 months when you've been on a list for 3 years? lol

 

 

Kimmo~

Great review, I love seeing the pics. The ones that make it look like we were the only ones on the boat amaze my coworkers, they keep asking if I was sure the ship was sold out. It was nice to meet you and Shelle and I am continuing to say a prayer every night that you will soon have a little one in your arms :)

[neatokimmo]

I paid between $25-$29 for 4 bottles of twisted Smirnoff (sp?). They had raspberry, watermelon and green apple. The Cruzan rums were 4 for $27 I think. I bought those last time and the pineapple is my fav. The cream rum is $12 and worth every penny :)

 

 

does anyone remember the cigarette and liquor prices on the ship? Could you post what you remember or what you bought. Interested in scotch, vodka and rum.

[neatokimmo]

Fantastic! I would of been so excited!!

 

I was on the Sensation in July 2006. My best friend and I each put $20 into a 2 penny slot machine, played max credits, and won over $1900!!!!!!! All the screaming and yelling going on, you would have thought we'd won a million! But hey, $1900 out of a 2 penny machine is not a bad way to spend your last night on the ship!:D

[neatokimmo]

No sorry, we had the cheapo room, inside. I've heard great things about aft rooms though, I love watching the wake :)

 

 

Do you know anything about the aft cabins? Mainly the ones on Verandah Deck. We have a hold on one until Monday(cabin 7300). After seeing your photos and reading your review, can not wait to sail on the Legend. Have a hold on a booking for Dec2008.

Thank you for your insight.

[cruisebie]

Your pictures of Costa Maya are amazing! I love the one where the ship is framed by the palm trees with the fishing boats on shore in the foreground. The one with the hammock strung between the 2 palms makes me want to be there right now! How perfect would it be to laze the day away in that hammock!?

 

BTW, I'm in East Tennessee too! You are so right, it's a lovely place to live. And you can always tell a native Tennesseean--we are from East, Middle or West Tennessee--never Eastern or Western!

 

That's scary about the glass in your burger! I'm glad you weren't hurt and glad that you took it up at the purser's desk. Like you, I sure hope they threw the rest of those things away!

[jennbill]

My girlfriend is from Chattanooga. Loved your review. Especially your food pics. Makes me hungry.

[m steve]

take the picture to a local framer and you might find that they can get it for you for about half. We did this and it worked.

[m steve]

I hope you understood that. They have loads of catalogs of prints like they sell at the ships auction. Most of these come in limited editions of 1000s. It helps if you know the artist's name. If it was an oil they still should be able to help. These painters usually do flowers in a large series.

[CBussey64]

Your review is fantastic ... I cannot wait for my cruise. THANK YOU for sharing.

[neatokimmo]

Cool thanks for the info!

 

 

I hope you understood that. They have loads of catalogs of prints like they sell at the ships auction. Most of these come in limited editions of 1000s. It helps if you know the artist's name. If it was an oil they still should be able to help. These painters usually do flowers in a large series.