CocoCay is just ok

Coco ok. Today we were in the Bahamas, specifically, the private destination CocoCay. Although its better than Nassau all day, it's just ok. You have to tender to CocoCay, which can be daunting due to the occasional (READ: more often than not) choppy southern Atlantic. The tenders are good sized, and have a ginorm platform not be front acting as a dock which helps but lets get real, you're going from a ship to a boat in the middle of the ocean. Be careful. We got to bfast super early so we could relax & not have to rush to the first tender. The early morning tenders & any tender after like 9a tend I be F-U-L-L full & have long lines, I strongly recommend you plan accordingly. We had a beach cabana massage scheduled for 9 so we needed to make haste to get over there. The captain came over the announcement system & said we could start making our way to the tender stations on deck 1 forward and mid-ship. So we did. We were greeted by a combo of cruise directors staff & other who quite frankly were disgusting & rude. They decided to talk smack about passengers loud enough for all of us to hear. This has got the be one of the most unpleasant and very first staff experiences I've had on board. Some of you may know, I'm not one to keep quiet when I'm in the right...(poor Sean) It went a little like this...they said something to the effect of 'as soon as the captain say they can do something they rush to do it' me: " he's the effing captain, it's comes with the badge." Them: 'just because he says we should be ready doesn't mean we are' me: "then your obviously in need if serious performance management." Like are you kidding?! If we're not supposed to listen to the captain & his instructions isn't the compulsory in his directives moot? Exactly. Obviously talking back at them changes nothing, so I made sure I took a moment to speak with the diamond concierge & give names. To be completely honest, not to start trouble to to preclude this from happening to a first time cruiser who's sure to be affected by their rudeness. I get it I work retail, I talk about my customers...off the sales floor, where they're not in earshot. Sorry about that. I've been trying to keep everything positive but he shock of the whole ordeal was huge. Moving on. Once on CocoCay, we made our way over to the Island Oasis cabana club for our massage. We were early, so we did he unthinkable. Scoped out some beach chairs set up shop & about 20 minutes later headed back tot he club for our appointment. The cabana club is cool, the beach cabanas are like those in Labadee. From what We could tell, the service level provided was definitely lower than that our our experience but I was just a squatter waiting for my uber romantic couples beach massage. (How cheesy are we?) I did notice that the cabana club has wicked convenient t things like a bathroom with in spitting distance of the cabanas (not so in Labadee) and a neat bar in the middle of everything and a little baby kitty. (!!!!!!!!!). The one thing these cabanas lack? Convenient access to the beach! For $200-$250 you'd expect them to be right on the water line or have their own beach access, right? Not the case. They are on the tender side of the beach so swimming not safe...that's if you can avoid the rocks. Our (free) beach chairs were closer & way more convenient than any of he cabanas. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but it did when an island staff member told me that the cabanas were added just a while ago. Ah makes sense. An addition after the success seen in Labadee. The chairs we had selected were on snorkel beach. If you're looking for peace & quiet this is not the beach for you. Thankfully, CocoCay is small enough to get from beach to beach easily enough if you discover the beach you're on isn't for you. We stayed put because we'd decided we were headed back to Freedom as soon as we'd had lunch. Lunch was delish. Classic BBQ with some nice additions like ribs, salad bar & dessert. We grabbed a tender back to the ship, we caught it right as it was closing for the trip, so we were stuck on the top deck. Thankfully we had towels. Hottest bench ever!!! Back on freedom by 2pm we planned out the rest of the day. Showers, nap, beautification, all the formal picture stops, name that tune, dinner. We turned in shortly after dinner. Tomorrow is the first at sea day, there are huge groups on this sailing plus ship maintenance will be taking the port side of the pool chair section on deck 11 & 12 out of service tomorrow so it'll be a tense day of deck chair chess tomorrow & I intend to get my chair right where I want it (read: have had it for a week). I promise I'm not a chair hog or one of those people who reserves a section big enough for 20 people. But I do like a nice convenient pool front chair that I am wicked careful not to leave longer than 30 minutes unattended. Ever. Later. Smiles & smooches. Stephanie & Sean (I really like alliteration)