She Sails Away

Being that this is a seven night cruise you know what that means. Right on cue for Day 6, a dramatic uptick in the amount of hacking, sickly coughing on board kicked in yesterday. This morning, even more prevalent among the masses--coughing and coughing. Oh well, this is generally how it goes on weeklong cruises.

It is our last day, a day at sea, and we have the most perfect beautiful weather. It's just classic sunshine and blue skies. At this point the ship is hopping. I had breakfast down in Central Park, and strolled boardwalk. The captain had a 30 minute Q and A at the Aqua theater. They're doing a family carnival on boardwalk soon and there will be face painting and music and all kinds of stuff. They are having another parade on the promenade soon as well.
 

On the promenade, they put out the last day flea market type sales, all of those port T-shirts, two for 30. I have been cruising long enough to remember when they were two for 20, ha. Even though I have bought many of these shirts before and they don't hold up worth a hoot in the wash, I bought one for my husband and one for myself.  People are swarming the tables like there's no tomorrow. Those huge watches are out, glittery costume jewelry, tiny handbags and shawls, lots of jewelry. 
 

A couple of days ago I came to my room and found that my cabin Steward had left me these amenities. I thought, aw, he left me a gift. Then I realized he was trying to rectify a situation in the shower. I forgot to mention it here. This is what happened:

You know how in these showers there's that container on the wall with shower gel? Correction… A shower gel that is somehow also shampoo and conditioner and soap? Well of course I don't bother using that, (it strips your hair and honestly I don't feel like it gets you clean at all), I bring my own soap, my own shampoo and conditioners, plus my own body wash and bath poof and everything else. 
 

however, a couple of days ago I did want a little bit of it so I pushed the button on top to get a squirt out of the bottom, and the entire apparatus ripped right off the wall and crashed to the bathroom floor and broke into pieces. Some of those pieces were little tiny black dials and buttons and what not. I mean it was demolished. It looked like a gorilla had come in here and just torn it off the wall and smashed it to pieces. I was kind of apalled because all I did was push the button and I didn't push all that hard.

I gathered up the pieces and put them in a pile on top of a dry washcloth and meant to ask my cabin steward about that the next time I saw him. But the next time he came to the room I was already gone and he took away the pieces and then a couple of days later these amenities showed up in my room. I think they realized it was pointless to come and try and fix it while I was still here. I have a feeling this thing has ripped off the wall before because it came off soooo easily. 

Safe travels today! That disembarkation day is rough, mentally and physically it's just a mess to get through.

PS: those parents setting their baby on top of the piano… I don't know, is it just me? That seems incredibly rude. Would you pick up a grown human and set them on top of the piano? Probably not.
 

Our piano player guy has had people walk in and set plates of half-eaten food on top of his piano so they can free their hands up to rifle in their tote bags and stuff. I just find it unbelievably disrespectful.

Wow, a medical emergency right at the very end. That's so sad and I hope that person is OK. It's so fun to see you guys enjoying all the different dining options and maximizing your UDP. I bet you're really looking forward to changing ships and having just two people in the room! Looking forward to the next leg of your journey! We're going to miss each other by one day in Port Everglades.

The ship had so many moods today. The first part of the day, the ship was so peaceful and empty and quiet. No music blaring poolside. Lots of empty space. Just a really quiet sunrise, quiet couples soaking in the hot tub or shuffling around for walks, just mellow tranquil vibes. 
 

And then at 2:30 it was just like BAM, everybody was back on the ship, the pool was jammed, the music was blasting, all the chairs were taken, there were wet towels everywhere and chaos and noise and overflowing hot tubs, and people were three-deep at the lime and coconut.

Then this evening it got kind of quiet again because everybody dressed up in their best and went off to the main dining room for hours and it got relaxed for a little bit. Then everybody was out of the main dining room and milling around the promenade in ballgowns and what not and it wasn't chaotic, but it was a very party atmosphere, like a New Year's Eve party with everybody all glittery. I saw two women wearing Cinderella gowns. By that I mean, huge huge pillowy skirts with layers and layers of krenolin underneath, floor length skirts that are about 8 feet wide. One of those ladies was with her husband on the dance floor and he was having a time swinging her around while balling up that skirt in between them to smash it out of the way. 
 

Fun memory about Jamaica: (even though I did not get off the ship. )

We were the only ship in Port today. There was a DJ in port playing music all day today and we could hear him from the ship.  
 

Everyone was supposed to be back on board at 3:30 but one port excursion ran late and the group arrived at 4:15. We sailed very quickly after they boarded.
 

Even though the port was now empty, the DJ played us off. He didn't just pack it up and roll it all away while we were moving off, he stayed while the shops were closing up and we were rolling away from the port. The DJ addressed all of us at the ship's railing and thanked us for coming, asked us to cheer if we were from Canada, or if we were from England, or if we were from America. He said now that we have been to Jamaica we are family, we are part Jamaicans.      He said, "So if you are from Canada, you are a Jamac-ian. And if you are from England you are a Jamaic-lish. And if you're from America you are Jamerican." 
 

Then he played a snippet from a Harry Belafonte song:

I rode the Abyss again and something unusual happened. Normally when you go down the abyss, the minute you start sliding all of these lights come on. The whole way down, colored lights are flashing and blinking and spiraling and that adds to the experience. Well, this time I went down and not one single light came on and I went down in complete pitch blackness. I mean-can't see your hand in front of your face blackness. It was terrifying, honestly. Much more fun with the lights flashing!

Some quick pics

UPDATE: I went back to guest services and got somebody different than the person I spoke to before. I asked my question about a transfer to the Ascent and he said certainly ma'am, let me go make a phone call. He disappeared and came back two minutes later and said it's all taken care of, Miss Kelly. I said thank you so much, what do I do now? he said you don't do anything, you will get some information on your door tomorrow evening telling you what time to leave the ship and where to go. 
 

so… THANK YOU to everyone for helping me out with that, I have a free transfer and it's going to be so much less stressful than booking an Uber and hoping they show up on time and hoping they're not a psychopathic murderer, plus he didn't say anything about paying for it--and as of yet there's no charge on my account, so there's that as well. Thank you guys! Really appreciate it.

8 hours ago, GregD said:

No problem! Dead bodies do make for a more entertaining story though.... I did witness this on a previous cruise years ago. A vintage dropped dead in the middle of Boleros one night while we were on Anthem. It was horrible because he was dancing with his granddaughter at the time. IIRC it was early on in the cruise too, kinda made the rest of the trip a little subdued on the ship.

That is horrifying!

My cousin was on an Alaskan cruise and a high ranking judge was on board and passed away. She said they missed port because since he was a high-ranking judge (I don't know really in what realm? Washington? State level?) there had to be a certain amount of investigation into the circumstances of his death to make sure they could prove that there was nothing shady involved. So nobody could leave the ship till they were good and done.

Your brother is so delighted with his food! Adorable. I'm glad you're having a good day and look at those photos! What perfect weather. Snack shack looks delicious.

I came back to the room and they're acting all innocent like they weren't just having a giant party right before I walked in.
 

Latest: had to work for a long time but I'm done now. Have about a gallon of iced coffee and just discovered the crew of aqua 80 having a diving practice. Lots of us are gathered around staring. I took a photo but it ended up looking overly gratuitous so I deleted it. None of the women are here, just the guys, these are Olympic level diving bodies in teeny tiny speedos so I'll hold off photographing. 

I found a "house" that looks like a face

Agreed, now that we have started talking about this I'm positive I have heard other people say the same thing, that you can catch a ride to the airport and they'll run you over to the port afterwards if you're getting on another royal Caribbean or celebrity ship. I'm gonna try to talk to someone else to see.

It is BLAZING out there. But very pretty. 
 

Port is hopping and the ship is a ghost town. Very limited activities this morning. Right now the main option is a Selfies scavenger hunt which sounds kind of fun but I'm not really up to walking all over the ship again right this moment. I'm hanging out at Vista Café while my room steward  does his thing. 
 

I went to guest services to ask about the shuttle. I was looked at with great pity, as though I'm too stupid to travel by myself. They explained there is no shuttle taking me all the way to Fort Lauderdale cruise port, only the airport.

I'm finalizing my Uber right now. Is there a way to check and make sure they understand they need to have ID with them? I mean I would certainly hope they have their drivers license with them at least, but who knows. I know they'll need to see it at the port for him/her to get through the gates.

The big focal point outside Café Promenade on this ship is a stretch car with two giant teddy bears in it. There is an employee there polishing it to the hilt right now. I always wonder about employees when I see them doing things like that. Like, what is the rest of his day like? Stair railings and banisters? What an incredibly long day to spend every day wiping things down eight or nine or 10 hours a day, day after day. That's got to be one of the most tedious and hardest jobs on the ship.

I saw a family walking off the ship in port, a mom and dad and two little boys, maybe seven years old and barely 4 years old. No stroller. It is so hot and that little youngest boys leg were churning to keep up with his family and I thought, oh, Poor little guy. Between the heat and the really fast walking and walking and walking, he's going to be fried within an hour and mom and dad better be prepared and not have unrealistic expectations and yell at him. I mean I think it's great families are here exploring and doing things together, but when my kids were that age they would just as soon be in the pool. They would gladly go along with me whatever we wanted to do and we've had some great fun exploring different things at that age, but at the end of the day, they were so happy in the water. 
 

There was an arts and crafts thing in Boleros, that turned out to be coloring pages with a bucket of markers available. There was a group of teenage girls crowding and snatching up fistfuls of markers like their life depended on it.

I sat down next to a family where one of those girls belonged, and as they sat there coloring, the teenage girl sneezed hugely without covering. Her family absentmindedly said, "bless you", and no one seem to think to tell her to cover her mouth. I had to get up and leave. I thought if I moved to a different table it would look like I was making a statement and I'm not trying to do that, I'm just trying to make it through one more day without picking up some communicable virus. 
 

pictures from the deck

That's exactly what I saw! Thank you so much for clarifying. I feel silly for jumping to conclusions.

I was so exhausted last night and completely drained this morning. I get this when I cruise and I know what it is… It's a lack of normal amounts of caffeine. Back home, I start my day with a Rockstar… 180 mg of caffeine. Then after lunch I usually have about 80 mg more. Of course they don't carry rockstar here on the ship (and I had zero room in my suitcase to bring any) so I've been making do with one latte a day and it's caught up to me. I gave in and bought a Red Bull this morning which tastes like hairspray but, splitting hairs here. Rockstar is also a chemical bomb. But.... I already feel like myself again. 

I got breakfast at Windjammer and brought it back to my room and there was a note in my door. The first one is inviting me to an art auction tonight, no thank you. The second is a laughable note from Royal Caribbean. It says, "we know you're anxious to begin your culinary exploration of all the dining options this ship has to offer, and we can't wait to share them with you. To that end, we would like to warmly welcome to dine with us in Solarium Bistro." 
 

And it says they went ahead and booked me a table for tonight at 6:30 for dinner.

Do you think they'll be serving raw chicken again? Yikes. Thank you but no thank you by any means. I have not set a toe inside of solarium bistro since day one.
 

Every day I have plans to go to playmakers and every day I'm just not quite hungry enough. Hoping to have dinner there tonight though.

I know I sound like I'm obsessed with this for continually bringing it up but I just want to clarify. Our cruise Director, Elvis, has put an announcement on our State room televisions explaining that the helicopter evacuation yesterday was a guest who needed medical attention, they are in Florida at a hospital and expected to recover. He must've recorded this before the 3 PM helicopter so I'm assuming that was the crewmember one.

Tomorrow is that sad, loose ends day where you pack your bag throughout the day, and half of you is participating in the final day of your vacation aboard, and half of you is already off the ship. But I have a whole other cruise to look forward to on a sparkling brand new ship with a brand new cruise line to me. Excited.

there are 800 people aboard doing a dice tower board game cruise. Yesterday they had the aqua theater reserved for a private event. There were four panelists sitting at a table on the aqua theater stage talking about games. A lot of their events have taken place on the deck two library, which doesn't seem to be available to the public under normal circumstances this week.

Thank you for weighing in on the taxi versus Uber. I'll go ahead and lock in my Uber today. But I will go to guest services first and looking into transfers.

On 1/17/2024 at 12:04 PM, asquared17 said:

i've just found out that they are doing IV therapy in the spa onboard oasis, per @She Sails Away

rest assured, i will be checking this out, as i have a metric ton of questions about this (having had IV therapy before) and my skepticism is VAST.

 

meanwhile it's something absurd like 2 degrees here.

please let our weather be gorgeous and WARM.

After chatting with you I am totally interested in this myself! I will be so interested to see what you find out. Ask those hard questions!

People who hung out at a bar last night and chatted with the bartenders have posted in our Facebook group that the two medical evacuations are as follows: one was a crewmember and then later one was a passenger, both were taken to Fort Lauderdale, both are expected to recover.
 

So although I could've sworn I saw a body bag thankfully I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

today we are in Jamaica. There's lots of griping in the Facebook group that we're there for such a short time. Gangway goes down at 10 and we need to be back on board by 330.

Not a chance I'm getting off the ship, nothing I want to do in Port, and Jamaica is under a travel advisory for violent crimes. I've heard rumors that you can be approached in Port by drug dealers and just generally be harassed so I'm not gonna skip off the ship to go buy a T-shirt and risk anything like that. I am 100% fine staying on the ship from here on out. 
 

Celebrity keeps sending me emails to prepare for my cruise and so forth and so on and it's continually a surprise to me that I have a cruise coming up with them on Sunday. I am really looking forward to seeing my solo cabin and that infinite veranda.

I have a beef with them though, hopefully I can get it straightened out at some point, it's a minor beef but still.

i've been using my Celebrity Visa and acquired enough points to turn that into $125 worth of onboard credit. I did all the transfer things and everything went through but it never did show up on my account. I called Celebrity directly and they said yes, I can see that you did that, let me adjust that and fix that for you. Never happened. Called again and got the same response, a promise that it would be fixed, it has never happened.

so we will see if I can ever get that $125 back in some way. It would be great to have it for onboard credit this coming week. I do have a $100 onboard credit that came as a promotional credit and I'm sure I will smoke through that very quickly.

I was up at seven this morning and in the hot tub by myself by 730. I had the choice of hot tubs and it was great. We're having one of those really pale mostly white sunrises and the sea is super flat. The ship is super quiet this morning.

They have two towel stations here, one on each side of the pool deck, but all week long, only one towel station is open at a time. Something you need to take into account when you plan where you're going to spread out for the day, you just need to factor in time to walk all the way back to your towel station to drop off your towels if you're in a hurry to get somewhere by a specific time. 
 

And while I totally understand the reason and the necessity of having a towel station, I really appreciate it when I sail a different line that does not require towels checking in and out. It's kind of nice.
 

tonight is "dress to impress" so guess who will not be dining in the MDR?

I have decided I'm done in the casino, the slots seem really stingy and I don't do table games. I mean I would love to do table games if someone wanted to fund my losing streak. Those are fun games but I'm not good at them. Somehow my son is a whiz at roulette, on our cruise on Symphony he walked away with a good chunk of money.

Meanwhile, I have spent a fortune in the spa but it's been great.

We have a stand-up comedian who has been performing all week and I have been unable to get a reservation to save my life. We were not able to pre-book the comedian and I guess I just missed the window when I boarded and didn't get over to reservations.

So that leaves Cats as the only show I haven't seen yet and I'm not even 100% sure I'm going to go. I have most definitely gotten my mileage out of the Aqua show and I'm glad I saw the ice-skating show even though it wasn't very exciting.

Now that Sunday is approaching, I'm starting to second guess about how I'm going to get from Miami to Fort Lauderdale. I had planned on an Uber. Do you guys think that's the best bet? Or should I go with a taxi?

OK, to recap. Two crewmembers went in the water while they were cleaning the ship while it was docked. They were rescued. Meanwhile we had two medical evacuations by helicopter, one around 9:30 in the morning and one around 3 o'clock.
 

And I'm going to go with whatever everybody's saying and say those were both medical evacuations, no deceased person.

Recapping the rest of my day seems kind of small compared to those gigantic events.

But, I had a massage, some time in the room, talked to various loved ones on the phone, and went back for the final performance of the aqua show and actually got a good seat even though I was in the standby line. Really really wonderful show as I have mentioned many times. Also, Francesco the piano player was stationed around the corner from my room today in front of adventure ocean. I lurked in the hallway a little bit and listened to him play. So many people walked past him without even acknowledging him like he's invisible, and here he is playing concert hall quality piano  as loud as he can. 

And along those same lines, when the aqua show was wrapping up its final minutes and they were doing the last few minutes of their song which was going to be followed by everybody taking a bow, scores and scores of people got up in mass and left the theater to get a jumpstart on the crowd exiting. So they're walking out of the theater during the final minutes while the performers are still performing. How rude is that? I understand if you have a reservation and it's critical you leave but there's no way that many in the audience had reservations that couldn't possibly wait long enough to give these people a good round of applause like they deserve. 
 

Somebody standing in line beside me told me she heard the aqua show on icon is even better than Aqua 80. I don't know what they're basing that on. I'm sure it's going to be fantabulous. But… How large does that aqua theater have to be to accommodate all the people on the ship in chunks? Or do they just do an aqua show every single night so that everybody can get reservations in and see it at least once while they're cruising?
 

I have my State room TV on and there's a little lengthy infomercial here promoting icon of the seas. Down at next cruise, the giant posters and marketing materials are for icon. But on my State room TV, the commercials playing for Royal Caribbean feature Star of the seas.

All of those usual knickknack sales in the promenade are going on right now, and it's dress in Caribbean clothes night. The ship has a mellow feel to it tonight, people are out and about but the vibe doesn't have the frantic energy that it had last night.
 

Back in the room for an early night. I'm debating staying in for the night or heading back out for some more fun.

Super Duper humid and sticky out tonight or I would sit on the balcony and listen to the jazz.

Tomorrow is Jamaica.
 

I sent out a bag of laundry today. Since I'm cruising for two weeks, that had to happen at some point.

below is a magnet someone gave me from our cruise Facebook group. pictures from today

37 minutes ago, asquared17 said:

i feel like we need to sage this ship. 

Absolutely. What in the world. A capsizing, a rescue, and two medical evacuations in the same day.

And.... the helicopter just returned and landed in the same spot, people are saying someone was evacuated on it and it's gone.

The Facebook back-and-forth continues over what happened with the helicopter this morning. One person insists they know the full story but don't want to disclose it out of respect for the family involved. They claim there was a serious injury that happened inside of a Stateroom yesterday. If that's the case, why would they wait all the way until 9:30 this morning to evacuate? Wouldn't they have barreled towards land sooner? 

In any case, I'm starting to question what I saw and starting to hope that no one actually died and this is all just a bunch of chaos swirling around an actual event that will hopefully have a positive outcome.

I just had a massage and shamelessly asked the spa staff if they knew what the helicopter thing was all about. They did not, but they casually told me stories of crew members being killed on other cruise lines they've worked on before. I'm sorry I brought it up and I intend to drop it. But if I hear anything definitive from a reliable source, I will let you know.

Your brother is adorable and exudes happiness in that photo.

And on a more lighthearted note we have a new mystery. It's the underwear mystery.
 

When I came back from the island this morning, my cabin steward had been in and cleaned the room. There was a pair of underwear lying in a heap on my desk. This was surprising because first of all, I don't leave my underwear lying on the desk. I am a tidy person and when I get undressed at night all of my clothes go straight into my little dirty clothes hamper in the closet. I am not one to scatter clothes around and pick them up later. Secondly, my room steward has been so cute with his little decorations and so friendly and personable, it seems odd that he would just find a pair of underwear on the floor and randomly leave it on the desk of all places.

Still, I told myself that I must've overlooked that pair of underwear and thrown it around even though I know full well I didn't. I picked it up and guess what? IT'S NOT MINE.

It is most definitely a ladies pair of underwear, white with lace and a little butterfly printed on it. Where on earth did it come from. Why was it on my desk. Do I need to boil my entire desk now and everything on it? Unfortunately I handled the underwear enough before realizing it wasn't mine, to confirm that it's clean underwear, but the mystery remains. Did he find it sticking out from under the bed and assume it was mine? I mean my cabin steward is tidy enough to the point where I think if he found a pair of underwear on the floor he would genuinely fold it into little quarters and lay it gently on the couch or something, not toss it on the desk on top of my papers, which it appears to have been. That is not like him at all.  Obviously this is from the person in front of me who used this cabin but… So many questions. 
 

OK the comments are flying in the Facebook group and everyone who is commenting is very authoritative and confident in what they're saying. It genuinely sounds like two crewmembers who were in a little boat cleaning the hull got capsized and went into the water and that they were rescued and that's what the Oscar Oscar Oscar was all about. People in multiple parties saw them in the water and they saw them get rescued.
 

so that explains part one of the mystery and then it's unclear about the helicopter thing. Many people are insisting it was a simulation, one person is strongly insisting that it was a genuine medical evacuation for a serious injury that happened yesterday. All I know is what I saw, I didn't see a person lying on a stretcher, I saw a bag with something or someone in it. I'm still hoping it was just a simulation. 

There's talk in the Facebook group. Someone said there were two people in the water starboard and an overturned labadee staff boat and then the call Oscar Oscar Oscar went out, and a seanadoo went to rescue them. And then later the helicopter came.

someone else in the group thinks it was a simulation and not a real deal. Wouldn't that be nice if that was true?