jbrinkm

Went to comedy tonight. Decently funny - it was Lester Briggs & Brad Mastrangelo. Thought about going to Battle of the Sexes but decided to just get ready for bed since we have Falmouth tomorrow and a morning excursion. 

Oh, I forgot to say, we sat on the deck late last night and nibbled at the cheese & crackers, the cake and the cupcakes. The chocolate cake was pretty good @Ampurp85! It was moist, which I find many of Royals' cakes are not. It had chocolate decorations on top too which added even more flavor. I wouldn't say it is the best cake I've ever had but it was better than most of the included cake on the ship. (I did not care much for the vanilla cupcakes - they were a bit bland).

Mini golf was fun but hot, and I screamed the whole way down the Ultimate Abyss. Much faster and darker than I expected.

Cute towel animal, and next to it was a note saying to return luggage that is not yours. 

Crepes in WJ tonight!

And I love this stairwell landing.

So we went to go to dinner last night in the MDR and on the way down, we looked at our table number. With the huge embarkation delay and running around all afternoon, we hadn't stopped to check before. We have all been linked since we booked, but somehow we were all assigned to different tables! The kids were on a different floor!! The manager fixed it for us and found three two tops to push together and we ended up by the window so we ended up with a really nice table, but we still can't understand how that happened.

These rooms are really well designed and it is clear that this is a newer ship than Allure. 

We're off to mini golf and the dry slide. Oh, and my husband created a WhatsApp group for the "Morning People" - my mom, my daughter and him, so I created one called "Party Animals Up All Night" for my son, my Dad and me.

Lunch at WJ, nothing special, but here is some dessert I tasted. They had a very small gluten free section and a real ice cream station. I could have done what @OCSC Mike's wife did to make a chipwich but I didn't want that much. The pudding had fruit mixed in which was delicious- I finished that but just had a few bites of the others.

I got these little magnetic guys and I'm going to put one more out each morning and cross my fingers they don't get stolen. Flyers colors @ScottD!

We got each of the kids a drink at the Bionic bar which they enjoyed. We found these scrabble pieces in our hallway. I wrote, The Eel is SUS

Watched a little belly flop then did a really fun Zumba class in the promenade. He was calling EVERYONE in to the dancing. Then he told us all to go shower

They don't seem to be offering the flash mob. I'm disappointed.

Two years ago, my son left Mamma Mia early and went back to the room and then locked himself out. We all had our phones on silent for the show so he just wandered around and messaged us that he was a "stray Theo." Current status of our WhatsApp chat:

We went to HiRO last night. I'm not sure how I feel about this show. There were parts I really enjoyed and parts that were a little boring. Does it have a story line? The only other aqua show I've experienced was Ocean Aria on Allure which had a lot more diving but not as much of the tightrope. The "walking" was pretty cool.

I have a story about our MDR experience last night but I need to snap a pic to go with it so I'll come back to it. My daughter was super interested in the belly flop so we're standing out here but I want to do Zumba so I'll only be here for about 15 minutes.

If you read my blog last year, you know my husband likes to dress up on cruises and also get my son to dress up. These are the watches he brought this year:

Sunset and ship friends sailing near

13 hours ago, Cactus527 said:

Though being stuck in an Uber for a hour sounds awful.

The poor guy was clearly stressed but there was literally no alternative. The app did increase our fare with the traffic so hopefully he didn't lose too much revenue, plus as I mentioned, we tipped him a lot more than we would have.

14 hours ago, Ampurp85 said:

. I wantJamie's arrabiata now

It was soooo good

Oh, and we had to get my dad to download the app, create a Royal account and install Whatsapp.

10 hours ago, JohnK6404 said:

Your Goldens seal the deal!      

Mine would probably love to meet your "pups"!  

Aren't they the best 

Our wonderful TA from MEI, Jennifer, gave us and my parents a bottle of wine and a cheese and fruit plate. She gave the kids some cupcakes. So we are stuffed from two meals in the last 5 hours, and we have a whole cake, cupcakes, and cheese/fruit plates in our rooms. We need an @OCSC Mike in our bathtub to help us eat it all.

We pulled up just after noon and were checked in and to Jamie's by 12:33 for our 12:30 reservation. It was packed and loud in there because no one could sit outside. Central Park was extremely slippery and we saw one girl wipe out leaving the restaurant. 

And then we scrambled- did our Muster station (very long line!), got our Freestyle cups, got our Voom working, came to our rooms and started to unpack which also included running back and forth from room to room to give and take things. We brought a pop up hamper for my parents and hand soap. They had our wine and allergy meds my son ran out of. We had a bunch of stuff for our kids and balcony wasn't opened yet. We decorated our doors too!

We were supposed to do the pickleball lesson but they cancelled it due to weather so we switched to night 6. It was also the day we reserved laser tag so I had to switch times and luckily there were still spots available later the same night.

Also we bought birthday package for my daughter (but haven't eaten the chocolate cake yet @Ampurp85)

Ok, we are on the ship. It has been a day! In addition to the horrible weather mentioned in @OCSC Mike and @GatorCruiser's blog, there was a VIP & Secret Service shut down of the port from 11am-noon. Traffic came to a grinding halt. For. An. Hour.

My parents made it in just before and said nothing was moving and all baggage attendants were just sitting around with nothing to do. We were stuck in our Uber. The poor Uber driver had to just sit with us for that whole time. We tipped him well! 

I'll do a series of short posts as I'm able to try to recap our day. 

I don't plan on posting our MDR dinner options - I figure the menu has been the same for a year and people have probably seen all of the options by now. We did have lunch at Jamie's so I've got those (y'all are going to be so sick of my new toy - the collage!)

Appys

Mains

Desserts (we all shared):

Zipped right to Newark Airport. Horrible accident & backup going the other way, we could see all of the feeders also completely at a stand still. Terminal A has been redone really well since we were here last. Raining badly in Fort Lauderdale. Flight had turbulence - we ended up flying over the ocean to go around some of it. FLL airport traffic was a disaster, but we somehow got really lucky and caught the shuttle right away. Homewood Suites Airport/Cruise location. We didn't need fancy- we got here late and leave after breakfast. Hotel is ok. Some wear and tear, short staffed, etc. We are a little tight on space but made it work. 

@Lovetocruise2002 I figured out the collage feature!!

(Please ignore our junk everywhere, kids were tired so we got stuff pulled out before I snapped pics.)

Not too bad (luggage) for four adult-sized people! We each got the bulk of our clothes into a small suitcase and then put overflow, shoes, toiletries and all the cruise specific stuff into the larger two. And we each have a backpack for the airplane. 

Pancake definitely does NOT want us to leave without her.

1 hour ago, SweetPea said:

do hope @jbrinkm's mom reports back and gives us the juicy deets!

I'll definitely report back! I'm super curious myself.

5 hours ago, GatorCruiser said:

Safe travels !

41 minutes ago, JohnK6404 said:

We loved Aruba and Curacao! Have an amazing time! 

Thank you! 

We have all the suitcases in our living room right now but are still moving stuff around and weighing them so no pics yet. I'll try to remember to get one tomorrow, either just as we are about to leave or once they're in the car. Activated our Samsung SmartTags so we'll see how those work. I realized that I did not pack a warm outfit for our return home so I hope it is not freezing here when our flight lands back in Newark. 

4 hours ago, Butters530 said:

Since the Haiti is somewhat dependent on the cruise company RCLL payments

I'm not sure who Royal would even pay right now

4 hours ago, TexanTwoStep said:

I just cancelled all of my excursions at Labadee for our cruise in June so I wont get stuck with OBC.  I really doubt that there will be ships going to Labadee any time soon.

2 hours ago, michaelp1446 said:

Where are you seeing Labadee excursions are being refunded as O.B.C.. Our email for our upcoming 3/24 cruise states "excursions will be refunded to original form of payment..." up to 14 days blah, blah blah"

I sail on Saturday and got emails this morning that I was being refunded directly, not to OBC. 

7 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

Definitely here for this! We'll be on Symphony for the first time in like 2 months. Save travels tmw out of the armpit of our state!

Thanks! We decided to keep the kids home tomorrow vs pulling them early just to make sure we make our flight with Friday/holiday traffic!

7 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

Hmm, i would probably do the survey, but I'm a nerd and $150 for an hour without a sales pitch doesn't seem like a bad deal .... to me. 

I would have totally done it if they sent it to me! I wonder if it is because it is their first time on Royal?

Maybe all of the Symphony sailings got Falmouth

Also, my mom just texted this and then said she scheduled it for day 2.