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Christie

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Posts posted by Christie

  3. Hang Gliding

    in Shore Excursions

    Posted

    :o

     

    If I find one on Puerto Rico, I'll let you know how it goes so you can do it on the group cruise.

     

    Probably not due to liability issues nor hang gliding expertise on the islands. Over the past couple of years, Royal Caribbean has implemented an age limit of 65 years of age for their scuba excursions. I recently challenged this with my doctor signing off on a waiver and they wouldn't honor it. So, I doubt if they would offer hang gliding. 

    I used to live in College Station too. Is the Chicken Oil Company still in business?

     

    Hi there!  The excursion doesn't need to be through RC necessarily.  

     

    It is still in business! 

  13. Car Seats Required in Taxi's?

    in Royal Caribbean Discussion

    Posted

    I am one of those crazy car seat people. Our normal car seat is probably 35 pounds, but i bought a $49 cosco scenera for travel only. It's 11 pounds and has great safety reviews. I also bought a generic car seat backpack to put it in.

     

    I've easily paid for it many times over by not having to rent one from the car companies, it fits great on the airplane, and i know it's clean.

     

    That being said, typically when we go to Disney, we don't rent a car and I'm not lugging the car seat in case we take a cab. We have been in a position where we took an Uber, and i baby wore her and put the seat belt under her butt (didn't want the force on her back if we were in a wreck). I was nervous but it turned out ok. Now that she's almost 2, if we found ourselves in that situation, I would probably put her in the middle with just the lap belt.

  16. Live Blog: Group Cruising with a Toddler

    in Live Blogs

    Posted

    Day 8- Debarkation

     

    Well, until the day that I'm able to retire on a cruise ship, this day must come. It was a great cruise and I felt fulfilled and good about our trip when it was time to go. Not to mention, I was ready to soak in my tub at home and get my pillow back.

     

    I spent a lot of time planning this morning before we left. We were only allowed one duffel bag and backpack each. I was going to push the stroller with Kenzie with my backpack underneath. On my back was her car seat in a carrying bag and I was pulling a duffel. My husband was pulling two duffels and had his backpack. We walked out the room at 6:40 and were like aaahhh the ship is soon quiet and we are going to walk right off. Take the elevator door down to 4 and BAM! Found all the people. Now we had to navigate through the casino with all of this stuff, around people's bags and casino chairs to find the end of the line. No one was helpful. Someone was kind enough to light up a cigarette about 5 feet away from my daughter. It was by far the worst part of the cruise.

     

    Once the line started moving though, everything was fast. Love the ramp in the terminal. It was just under 20 minutes from the line starting to move to us waiting for our private transportation.

     

    We had booked through Town Car Now from recommendations on here and great reviews on Facebook. I would give them a 3.5/5. The rate was good and communication beforehand was excellent. I personally feel that a private transportation should be there 5-10 minutes early with a sign with our name on it. This man was 5 minutes late and we had to truck through bushes with all of our stuff to get to the car. The car was clean, but there was a terrible rattle and at one point I noticed the check engine light on and another alert light on the dash. I was honestly worried about our safety with the baby in the car and if something happened if we would miss our flight. At one point, we definitely smelled oil burning. Luckily, we made it safely to the airport, but I'm not entirely sure the driver made it home.

     

    We arrived at MCO with plenty of time to spare. We were able to get some breakfast, speed through TSA pre check (the best $85 I have ever spent), and then had to entertain Kenzie in the gate area. She stayed awake through the whole flight to AUS, but luckily slept on the 2 hour drive home. All in all, a successful trip home.

     

    While the early flight made the beginning of the day somewhat stressful, I totally appreciated getting home relatively early on a Sunday. I have the laundry done, groceries bought, and I don't feel behind starting the week tomorrow.

     

    Tomorrow I'm going to go back and add photos to all my posts and give my overall impressions of the ship, plus some pointers that I picked up with traveling with Kenzie. Stay tuned!

  17. Live Blog: Group Cruising with a Toddler

    in Live Blogs

    Posted

    Day 7- Sea Day

     

    Well, it's the last day of the cruise. Of course, part of me is sad, but this has been a very successful trip for us. I am ready for a couple of comforts of home too.

     

    Kenzie woke up right at 7, and I decided to give my husband some time to sleep in. We hit the Windjammer nice and early again with minimal crowds. We walked around the ship and sectioned off a corner in the R Bar to serve as her jungle gym. When it hit 9:00, I brought her up to the open play area in Fuel. We certainly loved the large open play area on Oasis that was open 24 hours a day, but they do a nice setup here too.

     

    My husband texted me shortly thereafter and said the nursery called with a cancellation and we could now do the guacamole class. We dropped her off, went downstairs 45 minutes before the class, told us no problem, and then told us they were full. We tried to figure out something else to do for lunch, but Giovanni's Table wasn't open for lunch. We booked Giovanni's Table for dinner instead. Then, Sabor contacted us and said they could squeeze us in. So we ran back down just in time for the guacamole making class to begin.

     

    The class was a good price point I thought. It is normally $35/person but they were running a special of $30/person. This included make your own guacamole, a margarita making demo, a margarita (and later they offered a second), lunch, and an avocado slicing tool per couple. The ingredient that surprised me the most in the guacamole was the fire roasted tomatoes. I think it definitely adds that extra flavor that we have come to love. I'll add pictures on Monday. Tons of fun.

     

    After 2 margaritas and a fully belly, I needed a nap. So we napped until I had to go back to the spa because the eye lash lift did not hold like it was supposed to. They offered to redo it for free. Very nice of them. I am definitely more pleased with the results this time.

     

    When I was done, we picked up Kenzie, spent some time in the open play area, got milkshakes from Johnny Rockets, and a slice of pizza from Sorrento's for Kenzie. We had some time before dinner, so we decided to go ahead and do most of our packing.

     

    We wound up cancelling Giovanni's table for dinner and sticking with the MDR. Dinner was pretty good tonight and Nick ordered the up charge steak from Chop's for dinner. He really enjoyed it. I had the Turkey and Dressing, but it was the smallest portion of dressing I had ever seen! I ordered more :-)

     

    We dropped Kenzie off at the nursery one last time after dinner, met some group cruise folks at the Schooner Bar, quickly lost $20 in the casino, had a glass of our favorite wine at Vintages, took a trip out to the helipad, and had one last drink at the Schooner Bar. I was getting pretty tired so we decided to head back to the room.

     

    Tomorrow we have a pretty early flight out of MCO (10:30), so we will be doing express walk off. This entails taking all of your luggage off with you. I didn't think we would have time to wait for a rental company to open at 8 and drive ourselves, so we have private transportation that is supposed to pick us up at 7:30. Tight time frame, but hopefully everything goes smoothly.

     

    Tomorrow I'll post some final thoughts on this cruise and hopefully edit the old posts with some pictures. Let me know if you have any questions, specifically about traveling with a toddler.

  19. Live Blog: Group Cruising with a Toddler

    in Live Blogs

    Posted

    Day 6- Cozumel

     

    Mackenzie woke up bright and early this morning, and since we didn't have to be off the boat until later on, I left with her to allow my husband to sleep some more. We walked around Deck 12, scoped the sunrise, and wound up in the Windjammer. Before the sun comes up is the perfect time to go to the Windjammer. After we ate, I went out to the helipad with her. I was surprised at how calm it was up there. Definitely a new favorite spot on the ship. She managed to break the screen on her iPad, so we headed back to the room to tell dad the wonderful news

    We called home and took our time getting ready as we watched the ship dock in Cozumel. As I said yesterday, we had big plans today for a food tour. We dropped Kenzie off at the nursery and headed on shore. The line was the cabs was extremely long and hot, but we eventually made it. We had to meet our tour guide at the Mega near downtown Cozumel. It wasn't quite time to meet him yet, so we decided to find a geocache in the area. For those who aren't aware, geoaching is where someone puts a cache (anything from a keybox all the way up to an ammo can) hidden in an area and publishes the GPS coordinates and hints to help you find it. This one was at a bar across from Mega and the staff knew all about it. We dropped off a travel bug in the cache, grabbed a beer from the bar, and enjoyed the scenery. We walked around Mega until it was time to meet up with our tour guide.

     

    I'm going to do a whole post on the food tour (and will link to it), but it was fabulous! We got a great taste of local culture and food and our tour guide was super great as well. Our cab driver for the day dropped us off at the ship and we headed back on board. We picked up Kenzie from the nursery and headed back to the room to shower.

     

    We decided to head up to the rock wall when it opened. I haven't done rock climbing in a really long time and my post baby body wasn't really cut out for it. I got half way up the wall and got nervous and came down. Oh well, I tried. We took Kenzie to the open play toy area in Fuel and let her burn off some energy and then down to Sorrento's for a snack. Annette, the group cruise coordinator, was down there and we sat and had a wonderful conversation with her and her husband.

     

    We had to run upstairs real quick and change clothes for dinner in the MDR. Tonight was Italian night, which everyone raves about. Unfortunately, it wasn't my favorite. We've really enjoyed the MDR and the staff works so hard to interact with Kenzie.

     

    After dinner, we went to Sabor to cancel our guacamole making class for tomorrow. We are super bummed about this, but the nursery is fully booked up. We are on the waiting list, but it doesn't look good.

     

    And just like that, the day was over. Long day, it was hot, and we are ready for bed. Just one more sea day and then it's back to reality.

     

    Some interesting things today:

    - Many places in Cozumel did not want you to flush the toilet paper down the toilet. I didn't realize this until after I threw it in. Whoops. Complete habit

    - I am surprised the nursery has been so booked up (completely booked tonight too). On our Christmas sailing, they were never full. If you know you need a specific time, go ahead and book it right then. I goofed by not booking tomorrow earlier in the week

    - Our waiter told us tonight that they are taking the lamb chops off of the Jasmine menu very soon. This is disappointing to me- this was probably the best food I had in the MDR

  22. Improve my Trip

    in Royal Caribbean Discussion

    Posted

    When you change rooms with RC, you are technically cancelling a room and rebooking. This can come with penalties after final payment date. Usually, they don't have a problem upgrading you and taking more of your money, but going down in price will cause issues.

     

    My suggestion would be to keep checking the site, watch for sales, and find an upgrade that's only a couple hundred more than you originally spent.

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