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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
First off, I apologize for the length. I tried to cut out a lot of
stuff from my journal, and it still ended up being HUGE. So my apologies again, hope this doesn't bore any of you. I had a great time, would love to do it again in a few years! David ================================================= VOYAGER OF THE SEAS - WESTERN CARIBBEAN - 4/4/04 ================================================= 4/3/04 - PRE CRUISE: GETTING FROM HERE TO THERE Flight from Sacto to Denver uneventful. Flight from Denver to Miami uneventful, had some nice turbulence on our descent into Miami gave a nice little adrenaline rush to the start of our vacation! Stayed at Hilton Airport, never will go there again. Not only did we have to wait for a shuttle for over an hour: first one we must have missed, second one we saw was already full, third one we almost got on but was kicked off because they took airline crew (pilot & stewardress) first. So we finally made it on the 4th shuttle. Not very happy customers by this time. The free shuttle from Hilton to the Dolphin Mall was great and just what the doctor ordered. 4/4/04 - DAY ONE: MIAMI Overnight at Hilton Airport was fine. Gift shop lady complained about breaking a $20 when I bought two rolls of Rolaids for $3 and some change. Told me I should have went to front desk to break the $20. Screw 'em, they work for the most frickin' expensive hotel I've ever been in, they should be able to break a $20. This was the second black mark on my Hilton Airport experience. Cab to the pier cost us $23 bucks. Ouch. Knowing that we had to look forward to a similar charge when we returned in a week did not make things any better. Tipped a porter to take our luggage. There was still a line at 11:20 when we got there, they hadn't started letting people on yet. We had our documents already filled out on the internet, so all we had to do was give them credit card info and our signatures and we got our Sea Pass. I think we were aboard by 12:15. Wow, what a ship. We found our room already cleaned, but no luggage or tux yet. We dropped off our carry-ons, grabbed the cameras, and explored the ship. Going out on deck 12 we met a bar staff guy who sold us our first new drinks: Miami Vice as we were leaving the Port of Miami. We waved at people, Trisha flirted with a "hottie" on the coast guard ship that was just below our viewing spot. First casual dinner (late seating) met Mike & Martha and their two kids… nice folks from Long Island, NY. For dinner I had the cod filet with mashed red potatoes and a banana cream rum-cake for desert. Karen & Trisha had the Chicken Philadelphia (chicken breast stuffed with cheese & broccoli) and for desert the white chocolate parfait. Overall we quite liked our dinner. Rusen was our waiter and Lord our assistant. Both guys were complete gentlemen and quite friendly. We went to the Bon Voyage Parade on the Royal Promenade and had a good viewing spot; Karen won a raffle for 2 tickets for the Tulum Express in Cozumel. We never win anything, so even though we already had plans for Coz, we were excited to win something. Came back to cabin after the parade, our suff was now there. Trisha conked out right away, Karen and I were still wide awake so we went up to JR's at 12:15 a.m. and had runny milkshakes (tasty but would've been better if they were thicker) with all of the teenagers that were there. Came back to cabin and conked out. 4/5/05 - DAY TWO: AT SEA Woke up at 8:30! Wow, that's sleeping in for us! It felt good! Sea breeze was nice cool, not too balmy (yet!). We had breakfast at Windjammer, a quick one due to finding out that a "Shopping Talk" seminar was starting at 9:00. During the meeting, we managed to catch a free Del Sol Frisbee that was tossed out into the audience. It changes colors when put into sunlight (or UV). This was our second win (we're NEVER this lucky!). K&T went and gambled in the Casino. K lost but T won $45 in quarters. I merely "observed" and meanwhile enjoyed my second new drink: a Coco Loco. We had lunch at Johnny Rockets (K & T had grilled cheeses & a strawberry & chocolate shake respectively; I had a grilled ham & cheese and a rootbeer float). The food was good. K (a second time) and T were both unimpressed with the shakes, as they were still runny. My rootbeer float came with real ice cream, to my happiness. Then K&T went to bingo, while I decided to sit in the sun and read on our balcony. About 15 minutes later, I decided to work on my tan instead of read (mostly due to the fact that sitting in the sun was making me too sleepy to read). K&T came back - didn't win bingo but did win another raffle (win #3, what the heck is going on here?!?), the prize being tickets for 2 for the cozumel submersible excursion. Again we already had plans for Cozumel, so we didn't want the tickets. But it was exciting to win. By the way, bingo cost $35 per "6-pack" of cards; so it cost Karen $70 for her and Trisha. The cost was the major reason I did not play. They came back with stories of a "really funny guy" who did the bingo. At 7 pm, K&T went to the spa to get their hair done for our first formal night. I wore my slacks, a nice silk shirt and clip on tie, and the tux jacket as my formal getup. K&T came back and looked gorgeous. We stood in line for 20 mins at the Magic Flute, which was slow to open due to formal pictures being taken. For dinner, I had the shrimp cocktail appetizer, lobster bisque soup, and some pasta dish with chicken and a creamy Cajun (to me, it was Cajun-light) sauce. Both Karen and Trisha had the oxtail broth and Caesar salad, and beef tenderlonin for dinner. Dessert consisted of strawberry shortcake for Karen and I, while Trisha opted for the sugar-free chocolate mouse cake, which she didn't like. After pleasant dinner, we returned to cabin and played some cards. We could tell we were in the Caribbean Sea, the weather outside was quite warm and humid. I had a hard time getting to sleep due to the warm temps. Karen set the wakeup call to 5:30 a.m. due to an early arrival in Belize. 4/6/04 - DAY THREE: BELIZE 5:30 a.m. came way too early. K&T ordered breakfast from room service, I was still 'tasting' the lobster bisque and pasta and decided to skip breakfast. We sent some postcards off. While they were eating, I went up to the jogging track (deck 12) and took some pictures of the sunrise. We caught a tender to Belize City, our first tender ever! Weather was very mild, so the sea was calm and the tender trip was a breeze. The Voyager was about 4 nautical miles off the coast, so the tender ride took about 15-20 minutes, but it felt like only 10. Went to meet Coral Breeze at flagpole to start our Cave Tubing tour, they were nowhere to be found. A guy named "Marvin" came up and offered to take all of us Coral Breeze people. Found out he was with Wet-N-Wild Cavetubing, a tour through Eco Tours Belize. Marvin took our names down and how much deposit we had paid and we gave him the remainder of the money that we were going to pay Coral Breeze. He said that CB was not going to make it and that they had authorized him to take us. We were sweating it, because we were supposed to meet CB at 6:30 to start at 7, and Marvin showed up at 6:50. Marvin agreed to make our 12:30 departure time. We boarded his bus along with 7 other passengers from Voyager of the Seas, so our group consisted of only 10 people!!! The van itself was not in the best of repair, Marvin had to bolt down one of the seats and the A/C spewed out some sort of rubber foamy stuff on one poor passenger. Marvin apologize profusely explaining the top had just been re-furbished the day before. He drove us down the back-streets of Belize City (poor living conditions) and stopped at a gas station to fill up. Gas was $7 something in Belize dollars, or over $3.50 in USD. Guess we can't complain about paying $1.95 a gallon back home. We arrived at cave tubing site where we geared up with tubes and head lamps. Walked at a good pace through the official rain forest (gets over 140" of rain a year). Saw examples of several plants, including a gum tree (once used to make chewing gum), pineapple, avocado, a mimosa (carnivorous plant), strangler figs, and others. Also, Marvin spied a basilisk lizard and was able to catch it. We were near the river, so he carried it there and dropped it in the river. The lizard swam "ran" back to the shore. Pretty neat. We crossed the river and hiked a while more until we reached the beginning place. He led us to the furthest cave, pointing to where the shorter route started. So that was good: we got the longer trip! We hopped in the river and away we went. We floated down the river, paddling frequently as the river was quite slow. I'd actually almost describe it as a creek. The water was nice, most places it was nice and deep. Floating into the caves was awesome. In some places the river got pretty low causing "ripples" in which, in Marvin's words, it was time to "butts up, feet forward!" to try and float over them. Alas, us heavy people sometimes had a hard time going over these rapids as our tube or butt would get stuck on the rocks. My headlamp was also kind of dim, so I didn't get to see a lot of cave features. I was more worried about paddling and keeping up with the group. Eventually we made it back to the point where we had originally crossed the river and so our tour was nearly over. We walked back to the starting point where we were served BBQ Chicken, Rice & Beans, a tropical coleslaw (with pineapple and, I think, a cooked banana) and lemonade. It was delicious. On the way back to town (it was a good hour long drive to get to the Cave Branch River from Belize City, so another hour going back) we saw a big bus (Greyhound size) pulled over broken down. It was the official Voyager of the Seas tour. As we zoomed by (another bus had already stopped and was helping out), we knew then that we would make it back to the ship in time before it leaved, because it would not go anywhere until those people made it back. Being on an independent tour, we did not have that guarantee, and had been worried about missing our ship the whole day. Now we could relax. The tender ride back to the ship took about 15-20 minutes but felt like 30. Not sure why they went so slow on the way back. On the ship, Karen and Trisha went to listen to a talk about shopping for jewelry (Diamonds and Tanzanique), only because it was being held in Cleopatra's Needle and Bingo was following it. They wanted to get good bingo seats. I joined them about 10 minutes prior to bingo starting, just to watch (I was not going to pay $35 to play bingo!). I ordered a drink, a yummy Pina Colada. K&T did not win anything this time, but we were all entertained by Hamish, the assistant cruise director, who was the "funny guy" that they had told me about. He was very funny. After a quick trip back to our room, we headed to Studio B for "Ice Jammin", the show on their ice rink. It was spectacular. With music selections from world-music (Africa, Japan) to jazz, Latin, and rock-n-roll, the skaters were simply awesome. While there, I had another drink: a grasshopper on the rocks. I think I had the only green drink on the ship! After the show, we went to dinner and opted to try Island Grill instead of dressing up for "smart casual". We arrived at the perfect time to watch the sunset. It was our second time eating in full view of the Carib Sea (first time was at Johnny Rockets, but this had a better view); it was enhanced by the movement of the ship. After dinner we retired to the cabin so Karen could get rid of her headache; unfortunately it never happened so we stayed there and missed the "Dreamscape" show. Bummer. 4/7/04 - DAY FOUR: GRAND CAYMAN Got up kind of late (8 a.m.) due to no early port time. We had breakfast in the main dining room. Met some nice folks from Florida and another couple from Europe (unfortunately didn't get to talk to them much as they were at the other end of the table). The FL couple had traveled more extensively than us, and had some good stories to tell us. They said Rio was their favorite place of all to travel to, but for our Western Carib. Cruise, they recommended Altun Ha and Xcaret Ecological Park (in Cozumel). Of course we already had plans for Coz, but I took a note to save it for next time. After b-fast, we got dressed up to go ashore and spend time in the water. However, there was a "win a cruise" bingo game happening first, so we went to that. Again, I didn't play. I had the drink of the day, "Rum Punch", and let me tell you: they make them strong in La Scalla Theater! I'm still not sure if there was any punch in that drink. :-) K&T didn't win. Hamish was the guy doing the bingo again, he's a vibrant, funny, engaging person. I thought he'd make a fine Cruise Director. Directly after bingo, I stood in line to get tender tickets and met a nice lady from Sacramento! Yay, finally someone from Calfifornia! Got our tickets about 30 minutes later, I rushed back to cabin to throw on some sun block, and get down to Deck 1 to catch the tender. We managed to get on the first tender, although our tickets were for tender #3. Yay! Tender ride was slow, but only took about 10-15 mins as we were a lot closer to shore than we had been in Belize. We could not find the Nativeway people, so we had to talk to the lady in the info booth and she ended up calling them. We met Eldon at the gazebo at the north pier. He took our names and told us to meet back in about 30 minutes. We walked around for a bit and came back, Eldon met us and led us to where the tour bus was. It was already full of people! They had room for us and another party of 3, and we were off. (Evidently, they had a group of about 15 people all together, some of which had gone with Nativeway before.) We drove down to the Yacht Club marina, past 7 Mile Beach. We saw a Pizza Hut, KFC and Wendy's fast food stores, and a "Papa Johns Pizza" too. Cayman was really built up, nothing at all like Belize City. On our way into the marina, we got to see a good-sized iguana at the side of the road. Cool! Met our guides at the boat, and Michelle who was to be our videographer. She was Australian. After a slow ride through the marina, we finally made it out to the ocean where we could open throttle and speed up. Michelle talked to everyone and got us on tape, except for one elderly lady who exclaimed "I don't want my picture taken" and refused to be filmed. We were amazed at how pretty the water was. Made it to Stingray City, spent 45-60 minutes there, it felt like 20. We donned our masks and snorkels and jumped in, the water was only about 3.5' to 4' deep. We avoided the stingrays at first, until the guides caught one and we could touch it or hold it. After a while we relaxed… but still kept one eye peeled so we would know if a stingray was coming near us. I also practiced snorkeling, as I hadn't done it in 20 years and the last time had been in a lake! I tried to show Karen and Trisha, but they weren't really into it. We all go to hold the stingrays, and some even were brave enough to feed it. Our guide went and found "Darth Vader", a huge black female ray that was famous for two things: first, it was old (at least 27 years old), and second, it had been filmed on a National Geographic special. It was the only black ray there, the rest were dark brown. We then got back aboard our boat and went to snorkel some more at Coral Gardens, a coral reef area. K&T opted to stay on the boat, but not me! I got some flippers and headed out. I had no idea what kind of fish I saw, but I saw at least 4 different kinds. It was fun to swim around with flippers, boy was I glad that salt water is so buoyant. Back on the boat, a lady said that she had seen a barracuda in a spot where there were no fish around, yikes! Michelle said she saw some mini-lobsters and a moray eel. We spent about 45 minutes at Coral Gardens. Trip back to the pier was fine. We tipped the boat guides $20, and the van-driver $10 because he gave us a lot of info. I also bought Michelle's dvd for $60, she said it would be on my ship by the last tender, or if not, they'd mail it to me in about 2 weeks. We only had about 1.5 hours left before last tender. We really enjoyed Nativeway, the guides were friendly and knowledgable, and we had a blast. I, especially, have discovered that I love to snorkel and can't wait to do it again some day. Getting back into Georgetown at 4:15 local time, we knew the shops closed up around 5 pm. We weren't very interested in spending more time walking around, so we decided to just go back to the ship. No Tortuga tour, no Hard Rock Café. Oh well, next time! Tender ride back to ship seemed slow, but probably wasn't. Boy were we famished! I had a small cup of punch after snorkeling, but other than that, none of us had anything to eat or drink all day. Plus we got sunburnt; K&T didn't use any sunscreen that day, and I had, but obviously I had missed some spots. All 3 of us couldn't wait to get back and take a shower. We decided to try and make reservations at Portofinos… we were lucky and got a table for 6:30 pm, only about an hour away. Perfecto! For appetizer I had the tiger prawns on risotto & spinach. Excellent! Trisha had the corn chowder (she liked it). Karen wasn't interested in an of it, but on the waiter's (Tsolt, from Hungary) recommendation she tried the thin-sliced beef dish which he then asked if she wanted oil and malt vinegar, and she said yes. It was gross… or rather, not to our taste. Next up, I had a pasta dish: lobster spaghetti - chunks of lobster in spaghetti with peas and zucchini and lobster sauce. It was delicious too. Karen had Caesar salad. For entrees, we all chose the filet mignon and we were all happy with it. We also had a variety of breads and probably 4-5 glasses of iced tea each! Even though we were completely stuffed, Tsolt convinced us to try the Tiramisu. Wow! It was a very elegant-looking desert and came with a B52 shot (baileys, kahluah and crème). I'm the only one who enjoyed the B52 shot, but it was a bit much. Overall we were very happy with Portofinos, the food and service was great. Came back to the dining room to change into shorts and loose clothes and made our way down to La Scalla theater to catch the "Love and Marriage Show". We got there in time to catch some of the try-outs. It was hilarious. This was the first time we got to see Richard the Cruise Director, he was pretty darn funny too. We laughed a lot. We don't recommend anyone sitting up at the top towards either side, due to being close to the bar… the bartenders and waiters were quite noisy and sometimes we couldn't hear the show. The show was totally hilarious and not to be missed. We went to the Mardi Gras parade, and felt that it was very similar to the Bon Voyage parade. We were at a bad spot (at one of the ends of the Promenade) and had to stand behind people, so we didn't get to see much. Pretty much felt that we wasted our time with that one. That was it for the night. We wanted to try the self-service ice cream machine, but it closed at 10pm, we just missed it. While out and about, I stopped at the Guest Relations desk to see if they had my Stingray City dvd from Michelle. Sure enough, they did! Woo hoo! How they made the dvd so fast, I'll never know. Went back to the room, joked around for a bit, and then crashed. (Note: we watched the stingray city dvd the night after we got back, and it was great, worth the $60!) 4/8/04 DAY 5: COZUMEL Woke up at 6:30, had breakfast in the Windjammer: Cantaloupe, cereal, scrambled eggs and a slice of French toast. It was quite yummy and hit the spot. Spent next few hours catching up on my journal, met K&T for "Cozumel Shopping Highlights" at Cleopatra's Needle. We ended up winning a Silver Emporium necklace & bracelet ($8 value). Then K&T played bingo and I observed. Drinks were 2 for 1, so I got 2 Pina Coladas for me, and 2 Strawberry Daquiri's for K&T. Hamish was hilarious as usual. After Bingo it was time to disembark to Cozumel for our Dolphin Discover excursion. We were docked at the Punta Lagosta pier, right downtown - so no need for a tender. Yay! The taxi ride to Chanknaab Park was quite the thrill, it seemed that our driver only knew one speed: accelerate. At one point, on a single-lane highway, he decided to pass the civilian car ahead of him at the same time another taxi was coming directly at us. Both cars scooted to the side allowing us to survive the experience. And zoom, away we went. What a thrill ride! Chanknaab was gorgeous, but all we did was wait around in a large group of about 50 people. Finally they had us all rounded up from our taxis and then brought us into the park, where we waited and waited some more. Eventually, they were ready to take them out to the dolphins after everyone had gotten a life jacket on. I paid $20 so that I could be an observer - this covered the $10 taxi fare and $10 park entrance fee. I was allowed onto the pier where family members could watch and take pictures. Unfortunately, K & T's group were led to one of the furthest pens from the pier, so my pictures of them were very small. I ended up taking pictures of the pen closest to me, and got some great shots of Foxy the dolphin. 20 minutes later, they were done. Overall, we felt this was not worth the money spent: the Dolphin Encounter cost $100 per person, and we waited around for about 4-5 hours for a 20 minute experience. For $35 more a person, they could have done the "Dolphin Swim" and got a lot more time with the dolphins. These were Chanknaab's prices, the ship's excursion did not charge anything over, so we blame Chanknaab. We ended up buying 3 of the photos, and also felt that their staff in the gift store was not very friendly. Perhaps this was because of the 10 or so cruise ships in Cozumel that day… with the possibility of 40,000 people (counting pax and crew) being on land from cruise ships alone. After waiting for so long, we were in no mood to stick around and look at the rest of the park. So we got in a taxi and headed back to Cozumel for some shopping. This driver was a tad slower, much to my dismay. We were dropped off at the Punta Lagosta Mall. We walked and shopped all they way up the main street until we got to Los Sinco Soles, and had our dinner at Pancho's Backyward. At one point we also stopped in a store and Trisha got half of her head braided. By 6:00 we had arrived at Pancho's Backyard and ordered food. Karen and I had the carne asada (which came with rice, beans, guacamole, quesadilla and a chicken enchilada with mole sauce); the meat was cooked to order (medium) and was delicious. We forgot to say "no sour cream", but the dollops were not huge, so that was fine. The chicken enchilada was dry even with the mole sauce, and was made with corn tortillas which are not to our liking. Trisha ordered the chicken enchilada and ended up eating the chicken out of it, along with most of the salsa that had been placed at our table. : Overall, we were happy with the food. We were too tired to try their famously large margaritas, instead we watched other people drink them. Pancho's Backyward was nice and quiet and had a very relaxing atmosphere. The marimba players were not playing while we were there. The total price was just over $60 for the three of us - with no drinks ordered, I felt this was a tad on the expensive side… but worth it. They gave us a lot of good food. We shuffled, stumbled, and shopped our way back down the main street back to the Punta Lagosta pier and boarded the ship at around 8:30, about an hour before "last call". Also, it was quite warm and muggy and I had developed some "chafing in the nether regions" to quote Colby from Survivor All Stars, so it was good to get back on the ship and stop walking around to make the rash worse. At 9 pm, we went to La Scalla theater to watch "Broadway Through the Ages". It was a very well done show, though I thin we enjoyed "Ice Jammin" and "Love & Marriage Show" a bit more. We had intentions to go to Karaoke Night, but that fell apart. Trisha conked out, Karen and I went to Johnny Rocket's for shakes. This time I had vanilla (Karen had strawberry) and lo and behold, there was still some ice cream in mine… it was just a tad thicker than before. The shakes hit the spot. We got back to our cabin around 11:00-11:30 and crashed. 4/9/04 - DAY 6: COSTA MAYA Woke up at 6:30 to get off at Costa Maya at 7:00. K&T went to grab a bite to eat at Windjammer while I finished getting packed for our Mayan Ruin excursion. We made it to Deck #1 at 7:4 or so. The ship was supposed to be docked by 7:00 am, but was over an hour late in docking. We finally went to shore, but my legs were still chafed and sore and I could hardly walk. I decided to cancel the Chachoben Ruins excursion because I could hardly walk, and that tour would consist of about 90% walking. We sepnt about 1.5 hours in Costa Maya shopping, and Trisha found a lady who braided the rest of her hair. We bought a lot of souvenirs here. We were the only ship in Costa Maya, there wasn't a whole lot here for us to see or do. Mostly it was a place to relax or to catch excursions. K & T briefly entertained the idea of going horseback riding while I went back to the ship, but they ended up scrapping that idea and we all went back to the ship. We ended up going to Windjammers so I could get a bite to eat. Played bingo later that morning, no winners. At 9pm, we went to the "El Gaucho" show, which was a guy who was from Uruguay and who was very talented and funny. After that was another show, called "The Quest", but I was tired and went back to the cabin to read and go to sleep. K&T said the show was good. 4/10/04 - DAY 7: LAST DAY AT SEA Woke up late (8:00) and went to WJ for breakfast. K & T played bingo twice today (ouch $140 for Bingo!) and didn't win anything. During the second game, someone won the carry-over cash prize of $9,000.00. Wow. Rest of the day was spent packing & lounging and getting ready for departure. We figured out our tips and got "brown" luggage tags, which meant we were the 6th color to be called, scheduled for some time between 8:00 and 8:30 the next morning. Went to Magic Flute dining room and saw Mike & Martha. Originally I wasn't feeling the greatest, but I mustered up my courage (ow, ow, twist my arm) and had some good food. I had the shrimp cocktail for an appetizer and the New York steak for dinner; K&T both had the Turkey dinner. Food was good. Can't remember what we had for dessert. We went to the Farewell Party in La Scalla theater, but it was mostly just a "thank you for using RCCL" and a quick promo of the "Your Cruise In Review" dvd that they were offering in the photo gallery. (As an aside: Karen ended up buying it and we just finished watching it last night… not worth the $30 we paid for it, as it consisted of about 10 minutes from our cruise and the rest felt like advertisements.) We gave our room attentdent, waiter, and assistant waiter their tip envelopes. We left the head waiter's tip on the table. Our head waiter was "Rajeesh", and although Martha said good things about him, we were severly unimpressed. He never once introduced himself to us, and on our last evening, he talked only to Martha. We only left him a tip because we felt it was required… but if it had been up to us, he would have gotten nothing. 4/11/04 - DAY 8: DISEMBARKATION IN MIAMI Karen got up early and had breakfast in WJ. We got down to the Schooner Bar which was the closest we could be to the gangway. They ended up calling BROWN towards 8:30 a.m., which was right on time. We passed through Immigration quickly. We did end up having to wait for our luggage a bit; somehow they had gotten separated; and then we went through Customs with no trouble at all, luckily they did not choose us for inspection so it went very fast. We then caught a cab to the Hilton Aiport hotel, which cost us $20.xx this time, instead of $23. This cabbie drove a little faster than our first guy. At the Hilton, we waited around for an hour until they got us a room, as it was still fairly early in the morning (about 9:30). By 10:30 we had a room. We noticed that they had a Easter Brunch going on, but the price was $29.95 a person, so we were like "forget that!" Then the other shoe dropped… we found out, much to our dismay, that the Dolphin Mall was closed, or that the shuttle was not running. There was nowhere that we could go for free, and we weren't interested in paying a high fare to go somewhere via taxi after just having to pay $20 to get there. So… after worrying about it for a few hours, we decided to plunk down the money at the buffet. However, as we did not have reservations, we ended up having to wait in line for 50 minutes before finally being seated after people who had reservations. The also took some people who had signed up after we had, because they had a larger party and a larger table had come available. To us, it looked as though we would never get seated. The food was OK, but we did not eat $30 worth each. This was the final straw for this hotel, we will never EVER visit them again. Warning to all: if you want a hotel, stick with something close to the pier (do not get hotels nearby the airport because they are not close to the pier at all, and there is nothing to do around there). 4/12/04 - DAY 9: HOMEWARD BOUND We got up at 4 a.m. and made it down to the lobby by 4:50 to catch the first shuttle to the airport. We were determined to get on, airplane staff or no! Actually it ended up being no problem at all. We also made it into the Miami Int'l airport without any problems. Our long flight from Miami to LA was uneventful, and we actually made it there 30 minutes early. At LAX, however, the plane to take us to Sacramento was very behind. We ended up staying there for 2.5 hours before the plane finally arrived. At Sacramento, the guy working at the Hertz rental car desk was a moron, and took up another 45 minutes of our time. A guy who was behind us in line, and who had the good fortune to be served by a different Hertz employee, actually got his car before we did. Grr. Driving 2 hours home, we got lost once and got stuck in a accident backup for about 15 minutes until we could take the detour. Finally got home at 4:00 pm (was expecting to be home by 1:00pm) and were we ever happy to be home. OVERALL SUMMARY: Overall, a kickass vacation! Flying from Sacto (78 degrees) to Denver (36 degrees) and then to Miami (84 degrees) was great. Boarding the ship went smoothly with only minimal waiting. Treated like royalty aboard the ship, the only downside to the whole ship was the volume of passengers (3000+). We met some really nice people from all over the country (actually, all over the world). The entertainment on the ship was also wonderful… a show every night on top of music, shopping, food, bingo, the works. The private balcony was GREAT! We also had no bad weather, so we never got sick and didn't need to take any medicine. Woo hoo! The ports of call (Belize, Grand Cayman, Cozumel and Costa Maya) were great too. I definitely would love to do it all again, however this time I'd pick more snorkeling excursions and more Mayan Ruin excursions to make up for the one I missed. I absolutely loved snokelling! |
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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
Thanks for taking the time to write such a thorough trip report. This was
obviously your first cruise, and I think you made the best of it, but I also think that next time (and there WILL be a next time), you will probably do a little more research for your pre/post hotel, and cruise excursions. All in all, it sounds like you had a wonderful time. I just think you could have saved a few bucks along the way... Pam |
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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
We stayed at the Wydamn Suites for much cheaper and it was WONDERFUL! They had
free shuttles running, the rooms were two bedrooms and huge, a big hot breakfast and close to everything including the airport. We signed up at the website to become free members and when we got to our room, it was stocked with FREE beveraes that we had listed as our favorite and some snacks as well, CANT beat them!! |
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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
I really enjoyed the review of your cruise. It was great. Thanks.
"Grey Wolf" wrote in message ... First off, I apologize for the length. I tried to cut out a lot of stuff from my journal, and it still ended up being HUGE. So my apologies again, hope this doesn't bore any of you. I had a great time, would love to do it again in a few years! David ================================================= VOYAGER OF THE SEAS - WESTERN CARIBBEAN - 4/4/04 ================================================= 4/3/04 - PRE CRUISE: GETTING FROM HERE TO THERE Flight from Sacto to Denver uneventful. Flight from Denver to Miami uneventful, had some nice turbulence on our descent into Miami gave a nice little adrenaline rush to the start of our vacation! Stayed at Hilton Airport, never will go there again. Not only did we have to wait for a shuttle for over an hour: first one we must have missed, second one we saw was already full, third one we almost got on but was kicked off because they took airline crew (pilot & stewardress) first. So we finally made it on the 4th shuttle. Not very happy customers by this time. The free shuttle from Hilton to the Dolphin Mall was great and just what the doctor ordered. 4/4/04 - DAY ONE: MIAMI Overnight at Hilton Airport was fine. Gift shop lady complained about breaking a $20 when I bought two rolls of Rolaids for $3 and some change. Told me I should have went to front desk to break the $20. Screw 'em, they work for the most frickin' expensive hotel I've ever been in, they should be able to break a $20. This was the second black mark on my Hilton Airport experience. Cab to the pier cost us $23 bucks. Ouch. Knowing that we had to look forward to a similar charge when we returned in a week did not make things any better. Tipped a porter to take our luggage. There was still a line at 11:20 when we got there, they hadn't started letting people on yet. We had our documents already filled out on the internet, so all we had to do was give them credit card info and our signatures and we got our Sea Pass. I think we were aboard by 12:15. Wow, what a ship. We found our room already cleaned, but no luggage or tux yet. We dropped off our carry-ons, grabbed the cameras, and explored the ship. Going out on deck 12 we met a bar staff guy who sold us our first new drinks: Miami Vice as we were leaving the Port of Miami. We waved at people, Trisha flirted with a "hottie" on the coast guard ship that was just below our viewing spot. First casual dinner (late seating) met Mike & Martha and their two kids. nice folks from Long Island, NY. For dinner I had the cod filet with mashed red potatoes and a banana cream rum-cake for desert. Karen & Trisha had the Chicken Philadelphia (chicken breast stuffed with cheese & broccoli) and for desert the white chocolate parfait. Overall we quite liked our dinner. Rusen was our waiter and Lord our assistant. Both guys were complete gentlemen and quite friendly. We went to the Bon Voyage Parade on the Royal Promenade and had a good viewing spot; Karen won a raffle for 2 tickets for the Tulum Express in Cozumel. We never win anything, so even though we already had plans for Coz, we were excited to win something. Came back to cabin after the parade, our suff was now there. Trisha conked out right away, Karen and I were still wide awake so we went up to JR's at 12:15 a.m. and had runny milkshakes (tasty but would've been better if they were thicker) with all of the teenagers that were there. Came back to cabin and conked out. 4/5/05 - DAY TWO: AT SEA Woke up at 8:30! Wow, that's sleeping in for us! It felt good! Sea breeze was nice cool, not too balmy (yet!). We had breakfast at Windjammer, a quick one due to finding out that a "Shopping Talk" seminar was starting at 9:00. During the meeting, we managed to catch a free Del Sol Frisbee that was tossed out into the audience. It changes colors when put into sunlight (or UV). This was our second win (we're NEVER this lucky!). K&T went and gambled in the Casino. K lost but T won $45 in quarters. I merely "observed" and meanwhile enjoyed my second new drink: a Coco Loco. We had lunch at Johnny Rockets (K & T had grilled cheeses & a strawberry & chocolate shake respectively; I had a grilled ham & cheese and a rootbeer float). The food was good. K (a second time) and T were both unimpressed with the shakes, as they were still runny. My rootbeer float came with real ice cream, to my happiness. Then K&T went to bingo, while I decided to sit in the sun and read on our balcony. About 15 minutes later, I decided to work on my tan instead of read (mostly due to the fact that sitting in the sun was making me too sleepy to read). K&T came back - didn't win bingo but did win another raffle (win #3, what the heck is going on here?!?), the prize being tickets for 2 for the cozumel submersible excursion. Again we already had plans for Cozumel, so we didn't want the tickets. But it was exciting to win. By the way, bingo cost $35 per "6-pack" of cards; so it cost Karen $70 for her and Trisha. The cost was the major reason I did not play. They came back with stories of a "really funny guy" who did the bingo. At 7 pm, K&T went to the spa to get their hair done for our first formal night. I wore my slacks, a nice silk shirt and clip on tie, and the tux jacket as my formal getup. K&T came back and looked gorgeous. We stood in line for 20 mins at the Magic Flute, which was slow to open due to formal pictures being taken. For dinner, I had the shrimp cocktail appetizer, lobster bisque soup, and some pasta dish with chicken and a creamy Cajun (to me, it was Cajun-light) sauce. Both Karen and Trisha had the oxtail broth and Caesar salad, and beef tenderlonin for dinner. Dessert consisted of strawberry shortcake for Karen and I, while Trisha opted for the sugar-free chocolate mouse cake, which she didn't like. After pleasant dinner, we returned to cabin and played some cards. We could tell we were in the Caribbean Sea, the weather outside was quite warm and humid. I had a hard time getting to sleep due to the warm temps. Karen set the wakeup call to 5:30 a.m. due to an early arrival in Belize. 4/6/04 - DAY THREE: BELIZE 5:30 a.m. came way too early. K&T ordered breakfast from room service, I was still 'tasting' the lobster bisque and pasta and decided to skip breakfast. We sent some postcards off. While they were eating, I went up to the jogging track (deck 12) and took some pictures of the sunrise. We caught a tender to Belize City, our first tender ever! Weather was very mild, so the sea was calm and the tender trip was a breeze. The Voyager was about 4 nautical miles off the coast, so the tender ride took about 15-20 minutes, but it felt like only 10. Went to meet Coral Breeze at flagpole to start our Cave Tubing tour, they were nowhere to be found. A guy named "Marvin" came up and offered to take all of us Coral Breeze people. Found out he was with Wet-N-Wild Cavetubing, a tour through Eco Tours Belize. Marvin took our names down and how much deposit we had paid and we gave him the remainder of the money that we were going to pay Coral Breeze. He said that CB was not going to make it and that they had authorized him to take us. We were sweating it, because we were supposed to meet CB at 6:30 to start at 7, and Marvin showed up at 6:50. Marvin agreed to make our 12:30 departure time. We boarded his bus along with 7 other passengers from Voyager of the Seas, so our group consisted of only 10 people!!! The van itself was not in the best of repair, Marvin had to bolt down one of the seats and the A/C spewed out some sort of rubber foamy stuff on one poor passenger. Marvin apologize profusely explaining the top had just been re-furbished the day before. He drove us down the back-streets of Belize City (poor living conditions) and stopped at a gas station to fill up. Gas was $7 something in Belize dollars, or over $3.50 in USD. Guess we can't complain about paying $1.95 a gallon back home. We arrived at cave tubing site where we geared up with tubes and head lamps. Walked at a good pace through the official rain forest (gets over 140" of rain a year). Saw examples of several plants, including a gum tree (once used to make chewing gum), pineapple, avocado, a mimosa (carnivorous plant), strangler figs, and others. Also, Marvin spied a basilisk lizard and was able to catch it. We were near the river, so he carried it there and dropped it in the river. The lizard swam "ran" back to the shore. Pretty neat. We crossed the river and hiked a while more until we reached the beginning place. He led us to the furthest cave, pointing to where the shorter route started. So that was good: we got the longer trip! We hopped in the river and away we went. We floated down the river, paddling frequently as the river was quite slow. I'd actually almost describe it as a creek. The water was nice, most places it was nice and deep. Floating into the caves was awesome. In some places the river got pretty low causing "ripples" in which, in Marvin's words, it was time to "butts up, feet forward!" to try and float over them. Alas, us heavy people sometimes had a hard time going over these rapids as our tube or butt would get stuck on the rocks. My headlamp was also kind of dim, so I didn't get to see a lot of cave features. I was more worried about paddling and keeping up with the group. Eventually we made it back to the point where we had originally crossed the river and so our tour was nearly over. We walked back to the starting point where we were served BBQ Chicken, Rice & Beans, a tropical coleslaw (with pineapple and, I think, a cooked banana) and lemonade. It was delicious. On the way back to town (it was a good hour long drive to get to the Cave Branch River from Belize City, so another hour going back) we saw a big bus (Greyhound size) pulled over broken down. It was the official Voyager of the Seas tour. As we zoomed by (another bus had already stopped and was helping out), we knew then that we would make it back to the ship in time before it leaved, because it would not go anywhere until those people made it back. Being on an independent tour, we did not have that guarantee, and had been worried about missing our ship the whole day. Now we could relax. The tender ride back to the ship took about 15-20 minutes but felt like 30. Not sure why they went so slow on the way back. On the ship, Karen and Trisha went to listen to a talk about shopping for jewelry (Diamonds and Tanzanique), only because it was being held in Cleopatra's Needle and Bingo was following it. They wanted to get good bingo seats. I joined them about 10 minutes prior to bingo starting, just to watch (I was not going to pay $35 to play bingo!). I ordered a drink, a yummy Pina Colada. K&T did not win anything this time, but we were all entertained by Hamish, the assistant cruise director, who was the "funny guy" that they had told me about. He was very funny. After a quick trip back to our room, we headed to Studio B for "Ice Jammin", the show on their ice rink. It was spectacular. With music selections from world-music (Africa, Japan) to jazz, Latin, and rock-n-roll, the skaters were simply awesome. While there, I had another drink: a grasshopper on the rocks. I think I had the only green drink on the ship! After the show, we went to dinner and opted to try Island Grill instead of dressing up for "smart casual". We arrived at the perfect time to watch the sunset. It was our second time eating in full view of the Carib Sea (first time was at Johnny Rockets, but this had a better view); it was enhanced by the movement of the ship. After dinner we retired to the cabin so Karen could get rid of her headache; unfortunately it never happened so we stayed there and missed the "Dreamscape" show. Bummer. 4/7/04 - DAY FOUR: GRAND CAYMAN Got up kind of late (8 a.m.) due to no early port time. We had breakfast in the main dining room. Met some nice folks from Florida and another couple from Europe (unfortunately didn't get to talk to them much as they were at the other end of the table). The FL couple had traveled more extensively than us, and had some good stories to tell us. They said Rio was their favorite place of all to travel to, but for our Western Carib. Cruise, they recommended Altun Ha and Xcaret Ecological Park (in Cozumel). Of course we already had plans for Coz, but I took a note to save it for next time. After b-fast, we got dressed up to go ashore and spend time in the water. However, there was a "win a cruise" bingo game happening first, so we went to that. Again, I didn't play. I had the drink of the day, "Rum Punch", and let me tell you: they make them strong in La Scalla Theater! I'm still not sure if there was any punch in that drink. :-) K&T didn't win. Hamish was the guy doing the bingo again, he's a vibrant, funny, engaging person. I thought he'd make a fine Cruise Director. Directly after bingo, I stood in line to get tender tickets and met a nice lady from Sacramento! Yay, finally someone from Calfifornia! Got our tickets about 30 minutes later, I rushed back to cabin to throw on some sun block, and get down to Deck 1 to catch the tender. We managed to get on the first tender, although our tickets were for tender #3. Yay! Tender ride was slow, but only took about 10-15 mins as we were a lot closer to shore than we had been in Belize. We could not find the Nativeway people, so we had to talk to the lady in the info booth and she ended up calling them. We met Eldon at the gazebo at the north pier. He took our names and told us to meet back in about 30 minutes. We walked around for a bit and came back, Eldon met us and led us to where the tour bus was. It was already full of people! They had room for us and another party of 3, and we were off. (Evidently, they had a group of about 15 people all together, some of which had gone with Nativeway before.) We drove down to the Yacht Club marina, past 7 Mile Beach. We saw a Pizza Hut, KFC and Wendy's fast food stores, and a "Papa Johns Pizza" too. Cayman was really built up, nothing at all like Belize City. On our way into the marina, we got to see a good-sized iguana at the side of the road. Cool! Met our guides at the boat, and Michelle who was to be our videographer. She was Australian. After a slow ride through the marina, we finally made it out to the ocean where we could open throttle and speed up. Michelle talked to everyone and got us on tape, except for one elderly lady who exclaimed "I don't want my picture taken" and refused to be filmed. We were amazed at how pretty the water was. Made it to Stingray City, spent 45-60 minutes there, it felt like 20. We donned our masks and snorkels and jumped in, the water was only about 3.5' to 4' deep. We avoided the stingrays at first, until the guides caught one and we could touch it or hold it. After a while we relaxed. but still kept one eye peeled so we would know if a stingray was coming near us. I also practiced snorkeling, as I hadn't done it in 20 years and the last time had been in a lake! I tried to show Karen and Trisha, but they weren't really into it. We all go to hold the stingrays, and some even were brave enough to feed it. Our guide went and found "Darth Vader", a huge black female ray that was famous for two things: first, it was old (at least 27 years old), and second, it had been filmed on a National Geographic special. It was the only black ray there, the rest were dark brown. We then got back aboard our boat and went to snorkel some more at Coral Gardens, a coral reef area. K&T opted to stay on the boat, but not me! I got some flippers and headed out. I had no idea what kind of fish I saw, but I saw at least 4 different kinds. It was fun to swim around with flippers, boy was I glad that salt water is so buoyant. Back on the boat, a lady said that she had seen a barracuda in a spot where there were no fish around, yikes! Michelle said she saw some mini-lobsters and a moray eel. We spent about 45 minutes at Coral Gardens. Trip back to the pier was fine. We tipped the boat guides $20, and the van-driver $10 because he gave us a lot of info. I also bought Michelle's dvd for $60, she said it would be on my ship by the last tender, or if not, they'd mail it to me in about 2 weeks. We only had about 1.5 hours left before last tender. We really enjoyed Nativeway, the guides were friendly and knowledgable, and we had a blast. I, especially, have discovered that I love to snorkel and can't wait to do it again some day. Getting back into Georgetown at 4:15 local time, we knew the shops closed up around 5 pm. We weren't very interested in spending more time walking around, so we decided to just go back to the ship. No Tortuga tour, no Hard Rock Café. Oh well, next time! Tender ride back to ship seemed slow, but probably wasn't. Boy were we famished! I had a small cup of punch after snorkeling, but other than that, none of us had anything to eat or drink all day. Plus we got sunburnt; K&T didn't use any sunscreen that day, and I had, but obviously I had missed some spots. All 3 of us couldn't wait to get back and take a shower. We decided to try and make reservations at Portofinos. we were lucky and got a table for 6:30 pm, only about an hour away. Perfecto! For appetizer I had the tiger prawns on risotto & spinach. Excellent! Trisha had the corn chowder (she liked it). Karen wasn't interested in an of it, but on the waiter's (Tsolt, from Hungary) recommendation she tried the thin-sliced beef dish which he then asked if she wanted oil and malt vinegar, and she said yes. It was gross. or rather, not to our taste. Next up, I had a pasta dish: lobster spaghetti - chunks of lobster in spaghetti with peas and zucchini and lobster sauce. It was delicious too. Karen had Caesar salad. For entrees, we all chose the filet mignon and we were all happy with it. We also had a variety of breads and probably 4-5 glasses of iced tea each! Even though we were completely stuffed, Tsolt convinced us to try the Tiramisu. Wow! It was a very elegant-looking desert and came with a B52 shot (baileys, kahluah and crème). I'm the only one who enjoyed the B52 shot, but it was a bit much. Overall we were very happy with Portofinos, the food and service was great. Came back to the dining room to change into shorts and loose clothes and made our way down to La Scalla theater to catch the "Love and Marriage Show". We got there in time to catch some of the try-outs. It was hilarious. This was the first time we got to see Richard the Cruise Director, he was pretty darn funny too. We laughed a lot. We don't recommend anyone sitting up at the top towards either side, due to being close to the bar. the bartenders and waiters were quite noisy and sometimes we couldn't hear the show. The show was totally hilarious and not to be missed. We went to the Mardi Gras parade, and felt that it was very similar to the Bon Voyage parade. We were at a bad spot (at one of the ends of the Promenade) and had to stand behind people, so we didn't get to see much. Pretty much felt that we wasted our time with that one. That was it for the night. We wanted to try the self-service ice cream machine, but it closed at 10pm, we just missed it. While out and about, I stopped at the Guest Relations desk to see if they had my Stingray City dvd from Michelle. Sure enough, they did! Woo hoo! How they made the dvd so fast, I'll never know. Went back to the room, joked around for a bit, and then crashed. (Note: we watched the stingray city dvd the night after we got back, and it was great, worth the $60!) 4/8/04 DAY 5: COZUMEL Woke up at 6:30, had breakfast in the Windjammer: Cantaloupe, cereal, scrambled eggs and a slice of French toast. It was quite yummy and hit the spot. Spent next few hours catching up on my journal, met K&T for "Cozumel Shopping Highlights" at Cleopatra's Needle. We ended up winning a Silver Emporium necklace & bracelet ($8 value). Then K&T played bingo and I observed. Drinks were 2 for 1, so I got 2 Pina Coladas for me, and 2 Strawberry Daquiri's for K&T. Hamish was hilarious as usual. After Bingo it was time to disembark to Cozumel for our Dolphin Discover excursion. We were docked at the Punta Lagosta pier, right downtown - so no need for a tender. Yay! The taxi ride to Chanknaab Park was quite the thrill, it seemed that our driver only knew one speed: accelerate. At one point, on a single-lane highway, he decided to pass the civilian car ahead of him at the same time another taxi was coming directly at us. Both cars scooted to the side allowing us to survive the experience. And zoom, away we went. What a thrill ride! Chanknaab was gorgeous, but all we did was wait around in a large group of about 50 people. Finally they had us all rounded up from our taxis and then brought us into the park, where we waited and waited some more. Eventually, they were ready to take them out to the dolphins after everyone had gotten a life jacket on. I paid $20 so that I could be an observer - this covered the $10 taxi fare and $10 park entrance fee. I was allowed onto the pier where family members could watch and take pictures. Unfortunately, K & T's group were led to one of the furthest pens from the pier, so my pictures of them were very small. I ended up taking pictures of the pen closest to me, and got some great shots of Foxy the dolphin. 20 minutes later, they were done. Overall, we felt this was not worth the money spent: the Dolphin Encounter cost $100 per person, and we waited around for about 4-5 hours for a 20 minute experience. For $35 more a person, they could have done the "Dolphin Swim" and got a lot more time with the dolphins. These were Chanknaab's prices, the ship's excursion did not charge anything over, so we blame Chanknaab. We ended up buying 3 of the photos, and also felt that their staff in the gift store was not very friendly. Perhaps this was because of the 10 or so cruise ships in Cozumel that day. with the possibility of 40,000 people (counting pax and crew) being on land from cruise ships alone. After waiting for so long, we were in no mood to stick around and look at the rest of the park. So we got in a taxi and headed back to Cozumel for some shopping. This driver was a tad slower, much to my dismay. We were dropped off at the Punta Lagosta Mall. We walked and shopped all they way up the main street until we got to Los Sinco Soles, and had our dinner at Pancho's Backyward. At one point we also stopped in a store and Trisha got half of her head braided. By 6:00 we had arrived at Pancho's Backyard and ordered food. Karen and I had the carne asada (which came with rice, beans, guacamole, quesadilla and a chicken enchilada with mole sauce); the meat was cooked to order (medium) and was delicious. We forgot to say "no sour cream", but the dollops were not huge, so that was fine. The chicken enchilada was dry even with the mole sauce, and was made with corn tortillas which are not to our liking. Trisha ordered the chicken enchilada and ended up eating the chicken out of it, along with most of the salsa that had been placed at our table. : Overall, we were happy with the food. We were too tired to try their famously large margaritas, instead we watched other people drink them. Pancho's Backyward was nice and quiet and had a very relaxing atmosphere. The marimba players were not playing while we were there. The total price was just over $60 for the three of us - with no drinks ordered, I felt this was a tad on the expensive side. but worth it. They gave us a lot of good food. We shuffled, stumbled, and shopped our way back down the main street back to the Punta Lagosta pier and boarded the ship at around 8:30, about an hour before "last call". Also, it was quite warm and muggy and I had developed some "chafing in the nether regions" to quote Colby from Survivor All Stars, so it was good to get back on the ship and stop walking around to make the rash worse. At 9 pm, we went to La Scalla theater to watch "Broadway Through the Ages". It was a very well done show, though I thin we enjoyed "Ice Jammin" and "Love & Marriage Show" a bit more. We had intentions to go to Karaoke Night, but that fell apart. Trisha conked out, Karen and I went to Johnny Rocket's for shakes. This time I had vanilla (Karen had strawberry) and lo and behold, there was still some ice cream in mine. it was just a tad thicker than before. The shakes hit the spot. We got back to our cabin around 11:00-11:30 and crashed. 4/9/04 - DAY 6: COSTA MAYA Woke up at 6:30 to get off at Costa Maya at 7:00. K&T went to grab a bite to eat at Windjammer while I finished getting packed for our Mayan Ruin excursion. We made it to Deck #1 at 7:4 or so. The ship was supposed to be docked by 7:00 am, but was over an hour late in docking. We finally went to shore, but my legs were still chafed and sore and I could hardly walk. I decided to cancel the Chachoben Ruins excursion because I could hardly walk, and that tour would consist of about 90% walking. We sepnt about 1.5 hours in Costa Maya shopping, and Trisha found a lady who braided the rest of her hair. We bought a lot of souvenirs here. We were the only ship in Costa Maya, there wasn't a whole lot here for us to see or do. Mostly it was a place to relax or to catch excursions. K & T briefly entertained the idea of going horseback riding while I went back to the ship, but they ended up scrapping that idea and we all went back to the ship. We ended up going to Windjammers so I could get a bite to eat. Played bingo later that morning, no winners. At 9pm, we went to the "El Gaucho" show, which was a guy who was from Uruguay and who was very talented and funny. After that was another show, called "The Quest", but I was tired and went back to the cabin to read and go to sleep. K&T said the show was good. 4/10/04 - DAY 7: LAST DAY AT SEA Woke up late (8:00) and went to WJ for breakfast. K & T played bingo twice today (ouch $140 for Bingo!) and didn't win anything. During the second game, someone won the carry-over cash prize of $9,000.00. Wow. Rest of the day was spent packing & lounging and getting ready for departure. We figured out our tips and got "brown" luggage tags, which meant we were the 6th color to be called, scheduled for some time between 8:00 and 8:30 the next morning. Went to Magic Flute dining room and saw Mike & Martha. Originally I wasn't feeling the greatest, but I mustered up my courage (ow, ow, twist my arm) and had some good food. I had the shrimp cocktail for an appetizer and the New York steak for dinner; K&T both had the Turkey dinner. Food was good. Can't remember what we had for dessert. We went to the Farewell Party in La Scalla theater, but it was mostly just a "thank you for using RCCL" and a quick promo of the "Your Cruise In Review" dvd that they were offering in the photo gallery. (As an aside: Karen ended up buying it and we just finished watching it last night. not worth the $30 we paid for it, as it consisted of about 10 minutes from our cruise and the rest felt like advertisements.) We gave our room attentdent, waiter, and assistant waiter their tip envelopes. We left the head waiter's tip on the table. Our head waiter was "Rajeesh", and although Martha said good things about him, we were severly unimpressed. He never once introduced himself to us, and on our last evening, he talked only to Martha. We only left him a tip because we felt it was required. but if it had been up to us, he would have gotten nothing. 4/11/04 - DAY 8: DISEMBARKATION IN MIAMI Karen got up early and had breakfast in WJ. We got down to the Schooner Bar which was the closest we could be to the gangway. They ended up calling BROWN towards 8:30 a.m., which was right on time. We passed through Immigration quickly. We did end up having to wait for our luggage a bit; somehow they had gotten separated; and then we went through Customs with no trouble at all, luckily they did not choose us for inspection so it went very fast. We then caught a cab to the Hilton Aiport hotel, which cost us $20.xx this time, instead of $23. This cabbie drove a little faster than our first guy. At the Hilton, we waited around for an hour until they got us a room, as it was still fairly early in the morning (about 9:30). By 10:30 we had a room. We noticed that they had a Easter Brunch going on, but the price was $29.95 a person, so we were like "forget that!" Then the other shoe dropped. we found out, much to our dismay, that the Dolphin Mall was closed, or that the shuttle was not running. There was nowhere that we could go for free, and we weren't interested in paying a high fare to go somewhere via taxi after just having to pay $20 to get there. So. after worrying about it for a few hours, we decided to plunk down the money at the buffet. However, as we did not have reservations, we ended up having to wait in line for 50 minutes before finally being seated after people who had reservations. The also took some people who had signed up after we had, because they had a larger party and a larger table had come available. To us, it looked as though we would never get seated. The food was OK, but we did not eat $30 worth each. This was the final straw for this hotel, we will never EVER visit them again. Warning to all: if you want a hotel, stick with something close to the pier (do not get hotels nearby the airport because they are not close to the pier at all, and there is nothing to do around there). 4/12/04 - DAY 9: HOMEWARD BOUND We got up at 4 a.m. and made it down to the lobby by 4:50 to catch the first shuttle to the airport. We were determined to get on, airplane staff or no! Actually it ended up being no problem at all. We also made it into the Miami Int'l airport without any problems. Our long flight from Miami to LA was uneventful, and we actually made it there 30 minutes early. At LAX, however, the plane to take us to Sacramento was very behind. We ended up staying there for 2.5 hours before the plane finally arrived. At Sacramento, the guy working at the Hertz rental car desk was a moron, and took up another 45 minutes of our time. A guy who was behind us in line, and who had the good fortune to be served by a different Hertz employee, actually got his car before we did. Grr. Driving 2 hours home, we got lost once and got stuck in a accident backup for about 15 minutes until we could take the detour. Finally got home at 4:00 pm (was expecting to be home by 1:00pm) and were we ever happy to be home. OVERALL SUMMARY: Overall, a kickass vacation! Flying from Sacto (78 degrees) to Denver (36 degrees) and then to Miami (84 degrees) was great. Boarding the ship went smoothly with only minimal waiting. Treated like royalty aboard the ship, the only downside to the whole ship was the volume of passengers (3000+). We met some really nice people from all over the country (actually, all over the world). The entertainment on the ship was also wonderful. a show every night on top of music, shopping, food, bingo, the works. The private balcony was GREAT! We also had no bad weather, so we never got sick and didn't need to take any medicine. Woo hoo! The ports of call (Belize, Grand Cayman, Cozumel and Costa Maya) were great too. I definitely would love to do it all again, however this time I'd pick more snorkeling excursions and more Mayan Ruin excursions to make up for the one I missed. I absolutely loved snokelling! |
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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
I enjoyed your post. We did a Western Caribbean cruise same week, on the
Mariner of the Seas. I find it interesting to see how others spend thier time aboard ship. Thanks, Sandy K. "Grey Wolf" wrote in message ... First off, I apologize for the length. I tried to cut out a lot of stuff from my journal, and it still ended up being HUGE. So my apologies again, hope this doesn't bore any of you. I had a great time, would love to do it again in a few years! David ================================================= VOYAGER OF THE SEAS - WESTERN CARIBBEAN - 4/4/04 ================================================= 4/3/04 - PRE CRUISE: GETTING FROM HERE TO THERE Flight from Sacto to Denver uneventful. Flight from Denver to Miami uneventful, had some nice turbulence on our descent into Miami gave a nice little adrenaline rush to the start of our vacation! Stayed at Hilton Airport, never will go there again. Not only did we have to wait for a shuttle for over an hour: first one we must have missed, second one we saw was already full, third one we almost got on but was kicked off because they took airline crew (pilot & stewardress) first. So we finally made it on the 4th shuttle. Not very happy customers by this time. The free shuttle from Hilton to the Dolphin Mall was great and just what the doctor ordered. 4/4/04 - DAY ONE: MIAMI Overnight at Hilton Airport was fine. Gift shop lady complained about breaking a $20 when I bought two rolls of Rolaids for $3 and some change. Told me I should have went to front desk to break the $20. Screw 'em, they work for the most frickin' expensive hotel I've ever been in, they should be able to break a $20. This was the second black mark on my Hilton Airport experience. Cab to the pier cost us $23 bucks. Ouch. Knowing that we had to look forward to a similar charge when we returned in a week did not make things any better. Tipped a porter to take our luggage. There was still a line at 11:20 when we got there, they hadn't started letting people on yet. We had our documents already filled out on the internet, so all we had to do was give them credit card info and our signatures and we got our Sea Pass. I think we were aboard by 12:15. Wow, what a ship. We found our room already cleaned, but no luggage or tux yet. We dropped off our carry-ons, grabbed the cameras, and explored the ship. Going out on deck 12 we met a bar staff guy who sold us our first new drinks: Miami Vice as we were leaving the Port of Miami. We waved at people, Trisha flirted with a "hottie" on the coast guard ship that was just below our viewing spot. First casual dinner (late seating) met Mike & Martha and their two kids. nice folks from Long Island, NY. For dinner I had the cod filet with mashed red potatoes and a banana cream rum-cake for desert. Karen & Trisha had the Chicken Philadelphia (chicken breast stuffed with cheese & broccoli) and for desert the white chocolate parfait. Overall we quite liked our dinner. Rusen was our waiter and Lord our assistant. Both guys were complete gentlemen and quite friendly. We went to the Bon Voyage Parade on the Royal Promenade and had a good viewing spot; Karen won a raffle for 2 tickets for the Tulum Express in Cozumel. We never win anything, so even though we already had plans for Coz, we were excited to win something. Came back to cabin after the parade, our suff was now there. Trisha conked out right away, Karen and I were still wide awake so we went up to JR's at 12:15 a.m. and had runny milkshakes (tasty but would've been better if they were thicker) with all of the teenagers that were there. Came back to cabin and conked out. 4/5/05 - DAY TWO: AT SEA Woke up at 8:30! Wow, that's sleeping in for us! It felt good! Sea breeze was nice cool, not too balmy (yet!). We had breakfast at Windjammer, a quick one due to finding out that a "Shopping Talk" seminar was starting at 9:00. During the meeting, we managed to catch a free Del Sol Frisbee that was tossed out into the audience. It changes colors when put into sunlight (or UV). This was our second win (we're NEVER this lucky!). K&T went and gambled in the Casino. K lost but T won $45 in quarters. I merely "observed" and meanwhile enjoyed my second new drink: a Coco Loco. We had lunch at Johnny Rockets (K & T had grilled cheeses & a strawberry & chocolate shake respectively; I had a grilled ham & cheese and a rootbeer float). The food was good. K (a second time) and T were both unimpressed with the shakes, as they were still runny. My rootbeer float came with real ice cream, to my happiness. Then K&T went to bingo, while I decided to sit in the sun and read on our balcony. About 15 minutes later, I decided to work on my tan instead of read (mostly due to the fact that sitting in the sun was making me too sleepy to read). K&T came back - didn't win bingo but did win another raffle (win #3, what the heck is going on here?!?), the prize being tickets for 2 for the cozumel submersible excursion. Again we already had plans for Cozumel, so we didn't want the tickets. But it was exciting to win. By the way, bingo cost $35 per "6-pack" of cards; so it cost Karen $70 for her and Trisha. The cost was the major reason I did not play. They came back with stories of a "really funny guy" who did the bingo. At 7 pm, K&T went to the spa to get their hair done for our first formal night. I wore my slacks, a nice silk shirt and clip on tie, and the tux jacket as my formal getup. K&T came back and looked gorgeous. We stood in line for 20 mins at the Magic Flute, which was slow to open due to formal pictures being taken. For dinner, I had the shrimp cocktail appetizer, lobster bisque soup, and some pasta dish with chicken and a creamy Cajun (to me, it was Cajun-light) sauce. Both Karen and Trisha had the oxtail broth and Caesar salad, and beef tenderlonin for dinner. Dessert consisted of strawberry shortcake for Karen and I, while Trisha opted for the sugar-free chocolate mouse cake, which she didn't like. After pleasant dinner, we returned to cabin and played some cards. We could tell we were in the Caribbean Sea, the weather outside was quite warm and humid. I had a hard time getting to sleep due to the warm temps. Karen set the wakeup call to 5:30 a.m. due to an early arrival in Belize. 4/6/04 - DAY THREE: BELIZE 5:30 a.m. came way too early. K&T ordered breakfast from room service, I was still 'tasting' the lobster bisque and pasta and decided to skip breakfast. We sent some postcards off. While they were eating, I went up to the jogging track (deck 12) and took some pictures of the sunrise. We caught a tender to Belize City, our first tender ever! Weather was very mild, so the sea was calm and the tender trip was a breeze. The Voyager was about 4 nautical miles off the coast, so the tender ride took about 15-20 minutes, but it felt like only 10. Went to meet Coral Breeze at flagpole to start our Cave Tubing tour, they were nowhere to be found. A guy named "Marvin" came up and offered to take all of us Coral Breeze people. Found out he was with Wet-N-Wild Cavetubing, a tour through Eco Tours Belize. Marvin took our names down and how much deposit we had paid and we gave him the remainder of the money that we were going to pay Coral Breeze. He said that CB was not going to make it and that they had authorized him to take us. We were sweating it, because we were supposed to meet CB at 6:30 to start at 7, and Marvin showed up at 6:50. Marvin agreed to make our 12:30 departure time. We boarded his bus along with 7 other passengers from Voyager of the Seas, so our group consisted of only 10 people!!! The van itself was not in the best of repair, Marvin had to bolt down one of the seats and the A/C spewed out some sort of rubber foamy stuff on one poor passenger. Marvin apologize profusely explaining the top had just been re-furbished the day before. He drove us down the back-streets of Belize City (poor living conditions) and stopped at a gas station to fill up. Gas was $7 something in Belize dollars, or over $3.50 in USD. Guess we can't complain about paying $1.95 a gallon back home. We arrived at cave tubing site where we geared up with tubes and head lamps. Walked at a good pace through the official rain forest (gets over 140" of rain a year). Saw examples of several plants, including a gum tree (once used to make chewing gum), pineapple, avocado, a mimosa (carnivorous plant), strangler figs, and others. Also, Marvin spied a basilisk lizard and was able to catch it. We were near the river, so he carried it there and dropped it in the river. The lizard swam "ran" back to the shore. Pretty neat. We crossed the river and hiked a while more until we reached the beginning place. He led us to the furthest cave, pointing to where the shorter route started. So that was good: we got the longer trip! We hopped in the river and away we went. We floated down the river, paddling frequently as the river was quite slow. I'd actually almost describe it as a creek. The water was nice, most places it was nice and deep. Floating into the caves was awesome. In some places the river got pretty low causing "ripples" in which, in Marvin's words, it was time to "butts up, feet forward!" to try and float over them. Alas, us heavy people sometimes had a hard time going over these rapids as our tube or butt would get stuck on the rocks. My headlamp was also kind of dim, so I didn't get to see a lot of cave features. I was more worried about paddling and keeping up with the group. Eventually we made it back to the point where we had originally crossed the river and so our tour was nearly over. We walked back to the starting point where we were served BBQ Chicken, Rice & Beans, a tropical coleslaw (with pineapple and, I think, a cooked banana) and lemonade. It was delicious. On the way back to town (it was a good hour long drive to get to the Cave Branch River from Belize City, so another hour going back) we saw a big bus (Greyhound size) pulled over broken down. It was the official Voyager of the Seas tour. As we zoomed by (another bus had already stopped and was helping out), we knew then that we would make it back to the ship in time before it leaved, because it would not go anywhere until those people made it back. Being on an independent tour, we did not have that guarantee, and had been worried about missing our ship the whole day. Now we could relax. The tender ride back to the ship took about 15-20 minutes but felt like 30. Not sure why they went so slow on the way back. On the ship, Karen and Trisha went to listen to a talk about shopping for jewelry (Diamonds and Tanzanique), only because it was being held in Cleopatra's Needle and Bingo was following it. They wanted to get good bingo seats. I joined them about 10 minutes prior to bingo starting, just to watch (I was not going to pay $35 to play bingo!). I ordered a drink, a yummy Pina Colada. K&T did not win anything this time, but we were all entertained by Hamish, the assistant cruise director, who was the "funny guy" that they had told me about. He was very funny. After a quick trip back to our room, we headed to Studio B for "Ice Jammin", the show on their ice rink. It was spectacular. With music selections from world-music (Africa, Japan) to jazz, Latin, and rock-n-roll, the skaters were simply awesome. While there, I had another drink: a grasshopper on the rocks. I think I had the only green drink on the ship! After the show, we went to dinner and opted to try Island Grill instead of dressing up for "smart casual". We arrived at the perfect time to watch the sunset. It was our second time eating in full view of the Carib Sea (first time was at Johnny Rockets, but this had a better view); it was enhanced by the movement of the ship. After dinner we retired to the cabin so Karen could get rid of her headache; unfortunately it never happened so we stayed there and missed the "Dreamscape" show. Bummer. 4/7/04 - DAY FOUR: GRAND CAYMAN Got up kind of late (8 a.m.) due to no early port time. We had breakfast in the main dining room. Met some nice folks from Florida and another couple from Europe (unfortunately didn't get to talk to them much as they were at the other end of the table). The FL couple had traveled more extensively than us, and had some good stories to tell us. They said Rio was their favorite place of all to travel to, but for our Western Carib. Cruise, they recommended Altun Ha and Xcaret Ecological Park (in Cozumel). Of course we already had plans for Coz, but I took a note to save it for next time. After b-fast, we got dressed up to go ashore and spend time in the water. However, there was a "win a cruise" bingo game happening first, so we went to that. Again, I didn't play. I had the drink of the day, "Rum Punch", and let me tell you: they make them strong in La Scalla Theater! I'm still not sure if there was any punch in that drink. :-) K&T didn't win. Hamish was the guy doing the bingo again, he's a vibrant, funny, engaging person. I thought he'd make a fine Cruise Director. Directly after bingo, I stood in line to get tender tickets and met a nice lady from Sacramento! Yay, finally someone from Calfifornia! Got our tickets about 30 minutes later, I rushed back to cabin to throw on some sun block, and get down to Deck 1 to catch the tender. We managed to get on the first tender, although our tickets were for tender #3. Yay! Tender ride was slow, but only took about 10-15 mins as we were a lot closer to shore than we had been in Belize. We could not find the Nativeway people, so we had to talk to the lady in the info booth and she ended up calling them. We met Eldon at the gazebo at the north pier. He took our names and told us to meet back in about 30 minutes. We walked around for a bit and came back, Eldon met us and led us to where the tour bus was. It was already full of people! They had room for us and another party of 3, and we were off. (Evidently, they had a group of about 15 people all together, some of which had gone with Nativeway before.) We drove down to the Yacht Club marina, past 7 Mile Beach. We saw a Pizza Hut, KFC and Wendy's fast food stores, and a "Papa Johns Pizza" too. Cayman was really built up, nothing at all like Belize City. On our way into the marina, we got to see a good-sized iguana at the side of the road. Cool! Met our guides at the boat, and Michelle who was to be our videographer. She was Australian. After a slow ride through the marina, we finally made it out to the ocean where we could open throttle and speed up. Michelle talked to everyone and got us on tape, except for one elderly lady who exclaimed "I don't want my picture taken" and refused to be filmed. We were amazed at how pretty the water was. Made it to Stingray City, spent 45-60 minutes there, it felt like 20. We donned our masks and snorkels and jumped in, the water was only about 3.5' to 4' deep. We avoided the stingrays at first, until the guides caught one and we could touch it or hold it. After a while we relaxed. but still kept one eye peeled so we would know if a stingray was coming near us. I also practiced snorkeling, as I hadn't done it in 20 years and the last time had been in a lake! I tried to show Karen and Trisha, but they weren't really into it. We all go to hold the stingrays, and some even were brave enough to feed it. Our guide went and found "Darth Vader", a huge black female ray that was famous for two things: first, it was old (at least 27 years old), and second, it had been filmed on a National Geographic special. It was the only black ray there, the rest were dark brown. We then got back aboard our boat and went to snorkel some more at Coral Gardens, a coral reef area. K&T opted to stay on the boat, but not me! I got some flippers and headed out. I had no idea what kind of fish I saw, but I saw at least 4 different kinds. It was fun to swim around with flippers, boy was I glad that salt water is so buoyant. Back on the boat, a lady said that she had seen a barracuda in a spot where there were no fish around, yikes! Michelle said she saw some mini-lobsters and a moray eel. We spent about 45 minutes at Coral Gardens. Trip back to the pier was fine. We tipped the boat guides $20, and the van-driver $10 because he gave us a lot of info. I also bought Michelle's dvd for $60, she said it would be on my ship by the last tender, or if not, they'd mail it to me in about 2 weeks. We only had about 1.5 hours left before last tender. We really enjoyed Nativeway, the guides were friendly and knowledgable, and we had a blast. I, especially, have discovered that I love to snorkel and can't wait to do it again some day. Getting back into Georgetown at 4:15 local time, we knew the shops closed up around 5 pm. We weren't very interested in spending more time walking around, so we decided to just go back to the ship. No Tortuga tour, no Hard Rock Café. Oh well, next time! Tender ride back to ship seemed slow, but probably wasn't. Boy were we famished! I had a small cup of punch after snorkeling, but other than that, none of us had anything to eat or drink all day. Plus we got sunburnt; K&T didn't use any sunscreen that day, and I had, but obviously I had missed some spots. All 3 of us couldn't wait to get back and take a shower. We decided to try and make reservations at Portofinos. we were lucky and got a table for 6:30 pm, only about an hour away. Perfecto! For appetizer I had the tiger prawns on risotto & spinach. Excellent! Trisha had the corn chowder (she liked it). Karen wasn't interested in an of it, but on the waiter's (Tsolt, from Hungary) recommendation she tried the thin-sliced beef dish which he then asked if she wanted oil and malt vinegar, and she said yes. It was gross. or rather, not to our taste. Next up, I had a pasta dish: lobster spaghetti - chunks of lobster in spaghetti with peas and zucchini and lobster sauce. It was delicious too. Karen had Caesar salad. For entrees, we all chose the filet mignon and we were all happy with it. We also had a variety of breads and probably 4-5 glasses of iced tea each! Even though we were completely stuffed, Tsolt convinced us to try the Tiramisu. Wow! It was a very elegant-looking desert and came with a B52 shot (baileys, kahluah and crème). I'm the only one who enjoyed the B52 shot, but it was a bit much. Overall we were very happy with Portofinos, the food and service was great. Came back to the dining room to change into shorts and loose clothes and made our way down to La Scalla theater to catch the "Love and Marriage Show". We got there in time to catch some of the try-outs. It was hilarious. This was the first time we got to see Richard the Cruise Director, he was pretty darn funny too. We laughed a lot. We don't recommend anyone sitting up at the top towards either side, due to being close to the bar. the bartenders and waiters were quite noisy and sometimes we couldn't hear the show. The show was totally hilarious and not to be missed. We went to the Mardi Gras parade, and felt that it was very similar to the Bon Voyage parade. We were at a bad spot (at one of the ends of the Promenade) and had to stand behind people, so we didn't get to see much. Pretty much felt that we wasted our time with that one. That was it for the night. We wanted to try the self-service ice cream machine, but it closed at 10pm, we just missed it. While out and about, I stopped at the Guest Relations desk to see if they had my Stingray City dvd from Michelle. Sure enough, they did! Woo hoo! How they made the dvd so fast, I'll never know. Went back to the room, joked around for a bit, and then crashed. (Note: we watched the stingray city dvd the night after we got back, and it was great, worth the $60!) 4/8/04 DAY 5: COZUMEL Woke up at 6:30, had breakfast in the Windjammer: Cantaloupe, cereal, scrambled eggs and a slice of French toast. It was quite yummy and hit the spot. Spent next few hours catching up on my journal, met K&T for "Cozumel Shopping Highlights" at Cleopatra's Needle. We ended up winning a Silver Emporium necklace & bracelet ($8 value). Then K&T played bingo and I observed. Drinks were 2 for 1, so I got 2 Pina Coladas for me, and 2 Strawberry Daquiri's for K&T. Hamish was hilarious as usual. After Bingo it was time to disembark to Cozumel for our Dolphin Discover excursion. We were docked at the Punta Lagosta pier, right downtown - so no need for a tender. Yay! The taxi ride to Chanknaab Park was quite the thrill, it seemed that our driver only knew one speed: accelerate. At one point, on a single-lane highway, he decided to pass the civilian car ahead of him at the same time another taxi was coming directly at us. Both cars scooted to the side allowing us to survive the experience. And zoom, away we went. What a thrill ride! Chanknaab was gorgeous, but all we did was wait around in a large group of about 50 people. Finally they had us all rounded up from our taxis and then brought us into the park, where we waited and waited some more. Eventually, they were ready to take them out to the dolphins after everyone had gotten a life jacket on. I paid $20 so that I could be an observer - this covered the $10 taxi fare and $10 park entrance fee. I was allowed onto the pier where family members could watch and take pictures. Unfortunately, K & T's group were led to one of the furthest pens from the pier, so my pictures of them were very small. I ended up taking pictures of the pen closest to me, and got some great shots of Foxy the dolphin. 20 minutes later, they were done. Overall, we felt this was not worth the money spent: the Dolphin Encounter cost $100 per person, and we waited around for about 4-5 hours for a 20 minute experience. For $35 more a person, they could have done the "Dolphin Swim" and got a lot more time with the dolphins. These were Chanknaab's prices, the ship's excursion did not charge anything over, so we blame Chanknaab. We ended up buying 3 of the photos, and also felt that their staff in the gift store was not very friendly. Perhaps this was because of the 10 or so cruise ships in Cozumel that day. with the possibility of 40,000 people (counting pax and crew) being on land from cruise ships alone. After waiting for so long, we were in no mood to stick around and look at the rest of the park. So we got in a taxi and headed back to Cozumel for some shopping. This driver was a tad slower, much to my dismay. We were dropped off at the Punta Lagosta Mall. We walked and shopped all they way up the main street until we got to Los Sinco Soles, and had our dinner at Pancho's Backyward. At one point we also stopped in a store and Trisha got half of her head braided. By 6:00 we had arrived at Pancho's Backyard and ordered food. Karen and I had the carne asada (which came with rice, beans, guacamole, quesadilla and a chicken enchilada with mole sauce); the meat was cooked to order (medium) and was delicious. We forgot to say "no sour cream", but the dollops were not huge, so that was fine. The chicken enchilada was dry even with the mole sauce, and was made with corn tortillas which are not to our liking. Trisha ordered the chicken enchilada and ended up eating the chicken out of it, along with most of the salsa that had been placed at our table. : Overall, we were happy with the food. We were too tired to try their famously large margaritas, instead we watched other people drink them. Pancho's Backyward was nice and quiet and had a very relaxing atmosphere. The marimba players were not playing while we were there. The total price was just over $60 for the three of us - with no drinks ordered, I felt this was a tad on the expensive side. but worth it. They gave us a lot of good food. We shuffled, stumbled, and shopped our way back down the main street back to the Punta Lagosta pier and boarded the ship at around 8:30, about an hour before "last call". Also, it was quite warm and muggy and I had developed some "chafing in the nether regions" to quote Colby from Survivor All Stars, so it was good to get back on the ship and stop walking around to make the rash worse. At 9 pm, we went to La Scalla theater to watch "Broadway Through the Ages". It was a very well done show, though I thin we enjoyed "Ice Jammin" and "Love & Marriage Show" a bit more. We had intentions to go to Karaoke Night, but that fell apart. Trisha conked out, Karen and I went to Johnny Rocket's for shakes. This time I had vanilla (Karen had strawberry) and lo and behold, there was still some ice cream in mine. it was just a tad thicker than before. The shakes hit the spot. We got back to our cabin around 11:00-11:30 and crashed. 4/9/04 - DAY 6: COSTA MAYA Woke up at 6:30 to get off at Costa Maya at 7:00. K&T went to grab a bite to eat at Windjammer while I finished getting packed for our Mayan Ruin excursion. We made it to Deck #1 at 7:4 or so. The ship was supposed to be docked by 7:00 am, but was over an hour late in docking. We finally went to shore, but my legs were still chafed and sore and I could hardly walk. I decided to cancel the Chachoben Ruins excursion because I could hardly walk, and that tour would consist of about 90% walking. We sepnt about 1.5 hours in Costa Maya shopping, and Trisha found a lady who braided the rest of her hair. We bought a lot of souvenirs here. We were the only ship in Costa Maya, there wasn't a whole lot here for us to see or do. Mostly it was a place to relax or to catch excursions. K & T briefly entertained the idea of going horseback riding while I went back to the ship, but they ended up scrapping that idea and we all went back to the ship. We ended up going to Windjammers so I could get a bite to eat. Played bingo later that morning, no winners. At 9pm, we went to the "El Gaucho" show, which was a guy who was from Uruguay and who was very talented and funny. After that was another show, called "The Quest", but I was tired and went back to the cabin to read and go to sleep. K&T said the show was good. 4/10/04 - DAY 7: LAST DAY AT SEA Woke up late (8:00) and went to WJ for breakfast. K & T played bingo twice today (ouch $140 for Bingo!) and didn't win anything. During the second game, someone won the carry-over cash prize of $9,000.00. Wow. Rest of the day was spent packing & lounging and getting ready for departure. We figured out our tips and got "brown" luggage tags, which meant we were the 6th color to be called, scheduled for some time between 8:00 and 8:30 the next morning. Went to Magic Flute dining room and saw Mike & Martha. Originally I wasn't feeling the greatest, but I mustered up my courage (ow, ow, twist my arm) and had some good food. I had the shrimp cocktail for an appetizer and the New York steak for dinner; K&T both had the Turkey dinner. Food was good. Can't remember what we had for dessert. We went to the Farewell Party in La Scalla theater, but it was mostly just a "thank you for using RCCL" and a quick promo of the "Your Cruise In Review" dvd that they were offering in the photo gallery. (As an aside: Karen ended up buying it and we just finished watching it last night. not worth the $30 we paid for it, as it consisted of about 10 minutes from our cruise and the rest felt like advertisements.) We gave our room attentdent, waiter, and assistant waiter their tip envelopes. We left the head waiter's tip on the table. Our head waiter was "Rajeesh", and although Martha said good things about him, we were severly unimpressed. He never once introduced himself to us, and on our last evening, he talked only to Martha. We only left him a tip because we felt it was required. but if it had been up to us, he would have gotten nothing. 4/11/04 - DAY 8: DISEMBARKATION IN MIAMI Karen got up early and had breakfast in WJ. We got down to the Schooner Bar which was the closest we could be to the gangway. They ended up calling BROWN towards 8:30 a.m., which was right on time. We passed through Immigration quickly. We did end up having to wait for our luggage a bit; somehow they had gotten separated; and then we went through Customs with no trouble at all, luckily they did not choose us for inspection so it went very fast. We then caught a cab to the Hilton Aiport hotel, which cost us $20.xx this time, instead of $23. This cabbie drove a little faster than our first guy. At the Hilton, we waited around for an hour until they got us a room, as it was still fairly early in the morning (about 9:30). By 10:30 we had a room. We noticed that they had a Easter Brunch going on, but the price was $29.95 a person, so we were like "forget that!" Then the other shoe dropped. we found out, much to our dismay, that the Dolphin Mall was closed, or that the shuttle was not running. There was nowhere that we could go for free, and we weren't interested in paying a high fare to go somewhere via taxi after just having to pay $20 to get there. So. after worrying about it for a few hours, we decided to plunk down the money at the buffet. However, as we did not have reservations, we ended up having to wait in line for 50 minutes before finally being seated after people who had reservations. The also took some people who had signed up after we had, because they had a larger party and a larger table had come available. To us, it looked as though we would never get seated. The food was OK, but we did not eat $30 worth each. This was the final straw for this hotel, we will never EVER visit them again. Warning to all: if you want a hotel, stick with something close to the pier (do not get hotels nearby the airport because they are not close to the pier at all, and there is nothing to do around there). 4/12/04 - DAY 9: HOMEWARD BOUND We got up at 4 a.m. and made it down to the lobby by 4:50 to catch the first shuttle to the airport. We were determined to get on, airplane staff or no! Actually it ended up being no problem at all. We also made it into the Miami Int'l airport without any problems. Our long flight from Miami to LA was uneventful, and we actually made it there 30 minutes early. At LAX, however, the plane to take us to Sacramento was very behind. We ended up staying there for 2.5 hours before the plane finally arrived. At Sacramento, the guy working at the Hertz rental car desk was a moron, and took up another 45 minutes of our time. A guy who was behind us in line, and who had the good fortune to be served by a different Hertz employee, actually got his car before we did. Grr. Driving 2 hours home, we got lost once and got stuck in a accident backup for about 15 minutes until we could take the detour. Finally got home at 4:00 pm (was expecting to be home by 1:00pm) and were we ever happy to be home. OVERALL SUMMARY: Overall, a kickass vacation! Flying from Sacto (78 degrees) to Denver (36 degrees) and then to Miami (84 degrees) was great. Boarding the ship went smoothly with only minimal waiting. Treated like royalty aboard the ship, the only downside to the whole ship was the volume of passengers (3000+). We met some really nice people from all over the country (actually, all over the world). The entertainment on the ship was also wonderful. a show every night on top of music, shopping, food, bingo, the works. The private balcony was GREAT! We also had no bad weather, so we never got sick and didn't need to take any medicine. Woo hoo! The ports of call (Belize, Grand Cayman, Cozumel and Costa Maya) were great too. I definitely would love to do it all again, however this time I'd pick more snorkeling excursions and more Mayan Ruin excursions to make up for the one I missed. I absolutely loved snokelling! |
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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 10:22:31 -0400, "Sandy K."
wrote: I enjoyed your post. We did a Western Caribbean cruise same week, on the Mariner of the Seas. I find it interesting to see how others spend thier time aboard ship. Thanks, Sandy K. Hi Sandy, Well, it was funny how we didn't do a lot of things we thought we were going to. Originally Karen and Trisha had talked about going ice skating and rock-wall climbing, for example. When it came time to do it, Trisha didn't want to. She also did not want to go out and spend time in the pool or on the deck. So instead we spent a lot of time indoors at bingo, shows, and shopping. The nice thing about the Voyager (and I assume the other Voyager-class ships) is that there is plenty to see or do... so even missing some of the events we had planned, we were never bored. I actually enjoyed some downtime to be able to write in my journal or even read part of a book. So what did you do on your cruise? I'm curious, please share the details! :-) David |
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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
David, I'm so glad you all had such a good time! I don't know how you
could avoid having a good time, to tell the truth. I can't wait for our next cruise! Lisa |
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Our Voyager Of The Seas trip (4/4/04) (VERY LONG)
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