She Sails Away

It sounds like a difficult time, indeed. Hoping for a stress-free cruise, no medical evacuations, lots of great weather and lots of peace.

One area I've barely talked about is Eden. This is a large part of what is offered on the ship for lounging, snack-dining, a bar, and entertainment. It is at the back of the ship, and it's reminiscent of the 270 on Odyssey. Huge two-story high windows looking out at the back of the ship at the water. Lots of interesting and varied seating, lots of natural light. There's a small café here that's open a couple of times a day for very limited choices on breakfast and lunch, mostly little snack sandwiches and desserts. They have activities here all day long and into the evening. Lots of crafts here like macramé, Paracord bracelets, sketching. They have had some live music in the evenings here, they usually have a piano player. They have put on a couple of actual performances with some sort of acrobatics and music here late at night a couple of times this week but I haven't made it down there to see them, I am usually in bed by then. This is a gorgeous area and the perfect place to go if you want to read and have some sunlight and not be outside. But for some reason, I just don't click with this area at all. It is absolutely gorgeous and I'm not sure why, but I don't especially care for it as far as spending time there. I have tried it out several times and I end up leaving after a few minutes. But to each his own. There is not a thing wrong with this area, it's lovely. My favorite areas have been The Club, the coffee lounge area on deck four, (Cafe Bacio)---that has huge amount of seating and I've spent quite a bit of time hanging out there with a coffee just looking out the window or listening to live music from the plaza. And just hanging around the plaza area in general is fun. Especially in the evening. They always have live music, there's a huge crowd out on the dance floor and some of those older couples really and truly do ballroom type dancing, and the guys at the Martini bar are amazing. They do all kinds of tricks with their glasses and shakers and pours. pictures of Eden

Our final day! I came up top to the pool deck at 6 AM while it was still pitch black. I wanted to watch the sunrise from the sunset bar area. That area was closed off because of filming. I think it's still closed off. They were filming youngish people (20's) in evening attire, having drinks and dinner in all of the pretty areas. There was a drone circling the ship as well, something the film crew has been using all week. By 7 AM the pool deck was hopping. People were in the water, grabbing chairs, lots of people using the walking trail. Last night in the casino, I saw a woman win $8000 on a slot machine off of $1.50 bet. She had no reaction and just kept punching that button until the last I saw, she had lost back $4000 of that and was still going. I saw that same woman a couple of nights ago win $800 and do the same thing, no reaction, just gamble it all away. I do not gamble nearly enough to comprehend zero reaction to winning $8000. I would be so gone. Last night the singer Andrew Derbyshire performed again. It was sort of a last-minute put together show because the show they were supposed to show had a technical difficulty and had to be canceled. He did an amazing job. I sat up on the top balcony this time in the front row. And I found out that this is the area where the elite and suite and concierge guests have reserved seating. For some reason the middle block was open to just everyday people. So we sat there and watched the whole show and at the last couple of songs, Andrew left the stage and came up top to see us! He high-fived people, he had us singing into the mic, he gave us all a warm acknowledgment and welcome. That was super. I had to sing "ride Sally, ride" into the mic! Today is a lot of indoor activities and games but of course the usual hard push on final sales. There's an art auction, a huge jewelry sale, sales on watches, champagne invitations to come browse the watch and jewelry collections, they're giving free drinks in the casino starting at 9 AM for players, all of those usual things. You can buy a future cruise credit for just $100. I will say that Future Cruise has been busy every day since I've been here and the busiest day of all was embarkation day. Last night was a performance in The Club. It was a live performance of piano music and singing and dancing, it was really a stage show that for some reason was put on in their little lounge area called the club. And it's actually a fairly big space, but it was not nearly big enough to accommodate the thousand people that wanted to come see the show. There wasn't even standing room left. But I heard it was really good. It was called Smoke and Mirrors. We were reminded a few days ago that this is only the seventh sailing on Ascent so far. It is still brand new. Looks like we have a beautiful day ahead with great weather. There are two cruise ships on the horizon keeping pace with us.

It's almost cruise day!!

And that is for dogs that come on the ship? I don't mean to derail the original topic but are dogs allowed on Oasis? Like, private pets? Or is it just for seeing animals, do you know? I'm on Ascent right now and there is a person here with two small dogs that they take everywhere in a stroller. They are clearly not therapy dogs, just older floppy dogs that tend to sleep a lot. I was wondering the same things as the original poster.

You guys look so happy! Sounds like you're having a blast despite the occasional poor service and salty food. Love these photos!

OK I have recollected myself. What I said yesterday about being ready to go home, it's true because I'm just kind of cruised out at this point. But a lot that has to do with getting seasick on day one, dealing with the side effects of sickness medication on day two, and then two visits to medical on top of that. But today is a new day and the weather is gorgeous and the water in Grand Cayman is amazing shades of blue and it's been a great morning. We are tendering using a third-party that has a double-decker open air boat and that's always a really exciting adventure. We are anchored between carnival pride and a smaller celebrity ship. I explored port and looked in shops and watched roosters wandering around among the shoppers. I canceled my stingray excursion because of my wound on my finger. It's not all the way healed yet and it didn't seem like a great idea to be putting it in the salt water just yet. there are some pool deck activities planned today, there's a small sort of miniature golf game available in the club indoors, and some shows and songs and the usual lively disco parties on the dance floor tonight!

I do! So much better. Pain is gone.

Thank you!

All right. My day took a turn. During the backstage tour, I developed very sharp pain in my ear and jaw and it radiated all the way down my neck. It was constant. This is never happened to me before. I mean I get ear infections or ear pain once in a blue moon but never this sudden and it's never radiated down to my jaw and neck. I went to sleep for a little while but it didn't go away. I made it down to medical just before they closed. They have no idea what's wrong with me. No ear infection, nothing obvious. They didn't really know what to do with me. They gave me a steroid injection for the pain. And fortunately, I already feel a lot better but you know what? I'm ready to go home. There's nothing like not feeling well on a vacation to make you want to just go on back home. The backstage tour was so interesting. We saw the galley, the bridge, the engine room, the laundry room, and the recycling center. I thought the recycling center was just amazing. There is so much involved. They can't just hang onto all of the crushed bottles and glass and cardboard and wait till they get back to land and dump it off. They do so much to try to minimize their waist and they do a lot to make gray water safe enough to dump back into the ocean. They originally said we would not be allowed to take photos but then when the tour started they said that we could. We all did. Tonight is a magician. He calls himself Magic Bones. I have a see at the end of the aisle on row two. The people next to me have been playing Jenga with the seats for 20 minutes.

There are definitely some younger folks here, just not many of them!

Day five continues. I have the temperature in my room set at 66 which is as low as it will go, but it's struggling to stay at 70. So many people in the buffet this morning popping food into their mouths and licking their fingers and grabbing the ladles. I know this is normal behavior but somehow it shocks me every time. All of the bar staff is terrific. I have visited every bar multiple times to get multiple bottles of water. It doesn't seem that people are tipping very much but maybe I'm just missing it. Future cruise has stayed busy every day this whole week. People are buying up more celebrity cruises for sure. Today there was an hour long presentation on all of the cruises that they offer that go to Europe. Looks like a full house. There was a small presentation in the theater this morning for select guests, I'm guessing elite guests only. It was the dance captain and a couple of dancers doing an informal chat about their careers, putting together a show, working on Celebrity, etc. The activity staff are really fun. They do tons of games in their lounge called The Club throughout the day. They are terrific. Fun games as well. Lots of team games where each side of the club bands together to be a team. It's kind of nice, nobody gets left out. Spa staff are on the prowl everywhere today trying to drum up some business. Many folks have claimed a lounge chair on deck somewhere and are settled in for the day, despite the heavy wind. Film crew still has the magic carpet on lockdown. Came back to my room to escape the constant coughing for a little while. Going to rest up and hit the all access ship tour this afternoon. Should be really interesting. I've never done one before, has anyone here?

Day 5, a big uptick in the amount of coughing everywhere. Had to leave the buffet early this morning because of the surrounding cough factor. at 7:30 this morning the pool was hopping. This is surprising because this crowd was partying until late in the night. I went to bed at midnight and the place was still hopping. The film crew has the magic carpet blocked off and it has been blocked off all morning. People that wanted to use it to see the sunrise are put out. Gray windy day but the pool deck is completely full and people are using the walking trail by the dozens. It's a day at Sea.

These guys were hanging off a safety bar dangling down the front of Voyager, touching up the paint. Monique Marvez tonight, a hilarious and talented stand-up comedian. So funny. Now it's live music time. A note about the performances. Perhaps it's the age of the crowd, but people tend to come to the performances, settle in the front row, and then have long drawn out conversations about who is missing from the party and where they might be and who's having dinner and when are they going to dinner and what are they having for dinner tomorrow night and dinner dinner dinner. And they just keep talking and talking while someone's trying to perform. This is one of the more chatty crowds on a consistent basis I've ever seen. Tommorow I have a behind-the-scenes ship tour.

And we had an amazing sunset.

Someone in the Oasis cruise Facebook group posted that one of the airport shuttles from Miami to the airport on Sunday morning was involved in an accident. Royal is giving full refunds. They did not clarify if they were traveling to the Miami airport or the Fort Lauderdale airport. We have been in port since 8 AM with several other ships. For some reason, little Voyager of the Seas just now slid into port with us at 4pm. The film crew used the casino for a huge crowd scene this afternoon for quite a while. There would be crazy cheering and sudden silence and then 10 minutes later they would do it again. Hanging out on the magic carpet watching Norwegian Epic sail away. It's like a hat-trick, little Carnival Valor was hiding behind it all day long and I didn't know.

All right, I made the rounds in Cozumel. Vendors are very friendly and approach you quite a bit but nobody is rude or hassling people or anything like that. Lots of friendly smiles and lots of warm welcomes. My husband likes to get a hat or a T-shirt from Ports I visit so I grabbed him a nice one. I did the ultimate tacky tourist thing and got myself a hat from Margaritaville and I'm thrilled with it. It was so fun to walk around and look at Apex and Ascent side-by-side. What magnificent ships. So large! So much glass. There are so many ships in Port today. Ascent, Apex, Norwegian, Carnival, and then two ships in the distance I can't make out. I spent two hours on the top deck this morning, I walked the walking path quite a while which is really fun, this walking path snakes around in the sort of figure 8 and it has a couple of hills up and down built-in. (I can see a similar situation over on Apex.) I spent the rest of the time lounging at the sunset bar and let me tell you that is a great place to hang out. Really really nice. Sunset bar and Rooftop Garden are quickly becoming my favorite place in the ship. Rooftop garden was closed the entire two hours I was up there because the film crew was trying to film a couple playing pickle ball. I watched for a while. They kept doing shot after shot of the husband character swinging the pickle ball paddle at the camera. Then they would stop and talk a while and do it again. The husband character was in his 40s, wearing a t-shirt and shorts. The wife character looked to be about 25 and was wearing a tiny white tennis dress. They also had a drone they were flying all around. They were still at it when I left. None of this bothers me in the least, it annoyed me when the thermal suite was closed for three hours the other night but overall, I think it's kind of interesting. But I have no doubt Celebrity is going to hear a slew of complaints, and people expecting compensation for prime areas being closed off to passengers during prime hours. Back on the ship for iced coffee and recharging my phone battery. One more thought on the older crowd here. Even though there are people well into their 80s on board, these folks know how to party. Nobody is wandering around here confused and dazed because it's their first cruise. This is a seasoned cruising crowd. And those that are able really get out on that dance floor late late at night and they go at it hard to those 70s disco tunes. The ones that can't dance fill the chairs circling the atrium on all three levels and really enjoy.

I forgot about that scene from the Croods! That's hilarious. Those are some very good points, and I think you have hit the nail on the head! I do know one of the large groups here is 300 people on a group cruise for people who play bridge. my finger doesn't look any better but it's not any worse and it definitely hurts less than it did yesterday. I'm taking that as a sign of improvement! Regarding the man I mentioned who was having trouble breathing the other day. I think you are exactly right, I think he is a COPD patient. I say this because I just passed him exiting the ship to go explore port. He's in a wheelchair and his wife is with him and they appear to have a full-time caretaker with them pushing the wheelchair. No oxygen, he didn't look happy but his wife looked relaxed, certainly more relaxed than when I saw her the other day, and they looked like they were ready to go out and walk around. No oxygen tank or anything like that with them. So he must've had a flareup. I feel so sorry for him.

Hello from the Ascent, just got off Oasis in Miami and headed over here to FLL. Yes, there is a shuttle… Do you want the long version or the short version? Ha. First of all when I went to guest services on Oasis to arrange the shuttle, I initially got someone who told me such a thing did not exist. I returned a second time and talked to someone new and they fixed me up right away. I was to ride the shuttle from Miami to the Fort Lauderdale airport with everybody else, wait until all of the Airport people got off, and then I would be taken to the port of Fort Lauderdale to the Ascent at no charge. sounded great, but it was a complete fiasco and a total waste of time. I recommend an Uber instead. The congestion was unbelievable, I waited in line and waited for the shuttle well over an hour, and after an hour I had made it near the front of the line (not really a line, a loose crowd that were shifting and pushing and shoving each other, there was no line manager and no organization of any kind ) but there was one elderly bus driver in charge of loading everybody's suitcases into the bus all by himself, so we were looking at quite a long while before he got that accomplished. People were frantic and worried about making their flights, everything was super slow, people were crowding and it was pure chaos. After over an hour waiting for this shuttle to get loaded, I gave up and went to the taxi line which took almost 30 minutes. Even so when I pulled away in the taxi I looked back and the shuttle was still sitting there and the bus driver had just barely begun loading the suitcases into the belly of the bus. had I hung in there I might have gotten onto the shuttle, I might've gotten edged out of the crowd and not even made that one. Either way if I had ridden the shuttle to the airport, I would've then had to wait until that one elderly bus driver unloaded all the suitcases again entirely by himself, and only then would I have been taken to the port. Definitely not worth it. I recommend an Uber for the transfer between ports and if possible, have your Uber come just after 10. Traffic and congestion died down dramatically after that for private transport. But ymmv.

The view from my infinite veranda this morning. (I opened the window!) We are docked right up next to Apex. There's a Norwegian ship on the other side of Apex, I'm not sure which one it is. Cozumel today! The room rocked last night but it was gentle. You can close the blinds on the infinite veranda if you want complete darkness and don't want to be woken up by the sunlight. That's a nice option to have. And also....privacy for port days. There is a control panel on the wall next to the bathroom. You can just hit "close blind" if you want or you can close it with a button on the veranda itself. Also, the control panel has a morning, evening, and sleep button to control lighting. If you don't want to walk around adjusting the few lights in the room you can hit one of those and it will give you lights off, soft lighting, full lighting. You can set the air-conditioning as low as 65, but there is not a chance it's getting down to 65 in there. Pretty comfortable though, especially at night. it was a gray drizzly rainy day all day yesterday but today looks to be beautiful. Breakfast in MDR, finally. Of the four dining rooms, Cosmopolitan is the one open for all three meals per day. At dinner you can choose from any of the four, but breakfast and lunch are only in Cosmo. The menu is pretty basic MDR, variations on eggs and omelettes, pancakes and toast and waffles and pastries, cold cereal and hot cereal. The food was delicious and the service was terrific. They did not ask me if I minded sitting with other people, they just sat me at a table by myself. Which was fine.

It was day three and for the first time, I started to feel a little self-conscious walking around in my shorts and sweatshirt all evening, while everybody else was dressed to the nines. Obviously, I skipped the main dining room and just did a Buffet dinner, which is why I felt completely comfortable staying in my normal clothes. But I think people in casual clothes at dinner time is maybe about 20%, with the other 80% opting to dress up every night. I looked around in the shops tonight and got a high pressure pitch to buy a $300 wristwatch I really don’t want. The shop was having sales on those port of call T-shirts, the same ones they carry on Oasis and were selling last week. On Oasis last week, the shirts were two for $40. Here, the same shirts are two for 50. For me, this ship has a country club feel. It feels upscale. It feels like the clientele expect it to be upscale and there are high expectations just in general and those expectations are being met. I feel a little bit like Oasis was good old Disneyworld, and the Ascent is a trip to Martha’s Vineyard in your best khakis and summer resort wear. Very different vibes, very different energy and focus on the ship. Also, there seem to be so much larger groups traveling together here. There are plenty of couples and small families, but there are so many big groups doing everything all together. Like hanging out at the bar together and doing the dance floor together and showing up at trivia all in a big group. Dinner is such a huge event here. As I said, people get dressed up, if you try to schedule any appointment, they ask you right away what time is your dinner reservation, the masses really disappear at dinner time and re-emerge in mass all at the same time to go to the theater or whatever. The ship does not have quite the same amount of spread out, ‘everybody doing something different’ feeling that Oasis has. This ship is just beautiful. And it is definitely designed to be a warm weather ship. The pool deck is very inviting. Yes they only have one pool, but so far it’s been plenty big enough for the few people willing to get in. The pool chairs surrounding the pool are filled every day, but not many people actually swimming. There are many many lounge spots in the ship, and they are beautiful, plenty of specialty dining, but if this was a cold weather cruise, or it rained all week, that pool deck being taken out of commission would put a cramp on spreading out and really maximizing the enjoyment of the ship. Not only is the pool deck something worth spending time on, but the rooftop garden and Sunset bar area are very valuable real estate areas here, and not be able to spend time in them would be a real shame. They are really really wonderful. Ideal cruise deck spots that aren’t pool-related. I would say the number one activity the ship is designed for (aside from eating and gambling and drinking,) is lounging around, drink in hand. That might be indoors or outdoors, but it feels like this is most definitely a ship designed for just hanging out.

Limited choices on dinner tonight. Didn't like anything on the menu for the main dining rooms, and for some reason, the buffet was half the size as usual. Baked potatoes and pasta and bread and some grilled meats. Played a game in "the club" which is kind of their spotlight lounge. Really fun, too hard to describe here but lots of fun and lots of group participation. N'Kenge did a one woman show today and she was fantastic. Lots of Broadway tunes. The massage was nice. Overall the spa feels somewhat deserted so far this cruise. I noticed they added a spa special into the app for tomorrow. That wasn't there this morning. There's a solo performer this evening, Andrew Derbyshire. Getting ready for the show to start. Remember I mentioned the lack of reservations, as in reservations are not required. I'm not seeing rows of front row prime seats reserved for concierge or suite people either, I wonder if they are supposed to claw their way to a seat like everybody else? That can't be the case, that feels offbrand for this ship. Interesting.

Well I went down to guest services and asked them to do it themselves and they wouldn't do it. That's weird. I much prefer having a hole in the card!

That food looks amazing! I hope you feel a better soon. The bathroom cleaning on oasis was also much more below standard than usual. The bathrooms here are nice although I have yet to see anybody in there actually cleaning them.

Yes, I'm sure it's not as easy it sounds, just to hop off the ship and go home. But it also seems like these folks I mentioned are on the edge of an emergency crisis situation. How terribe. and How exhausting for those poor folks, if this is going to be their daily routine they are going to have such a very long rest of the cruise. I'm sure they can't wait to get back to Florida.