MaryS

Day 3:
Yesterday brought us to Coco Cay.  I was just here in September but my wife has never been as we’ve always missed it when trying to tender.  It really is a wonderful place and they did an excellent job with the redesign.  We were cleared just after 8am and I headed straight to the Thrill Waterpark.  Entry was simply scanning your seapass to enter and exit.  They do a queue system for Daredevils Peak and I was thankfully in the very first group.  By about 930-945 they had given out all the slots for the entire day so if you want to ride it I would get there early.  I was probably 20th in line and waited about 15 minutes.  A ton of stairs but a real rush and good fun.
I hit the two drop slides next and managed to hit every slide in the park and some twice in just over 90 minutes.  Only one I missed was the group raft one as the line was way too long and I was solo anyways.  I enjoyed the park and managed to get entry for $32 awhile back.  Was selling for $65 a week or so ago which imo is more than its worth.  Afterwards I lounged in a chair on the beach until I met my wife for lunch at the snack shack around noon.  Spent and hour or two at the Oasis pool and bar then headed back to the ship around 130.
Walked onto both slides onboard multiple times then took a long nap.  Pre-dinner drinks again at the R Bar then dinner again was at Chops.  Food was cooked perfectly and we had the same waiter which was nice.  After dinner I spent a couple hours between the piano player in the Schooner Bar and on the promenade.  Watched the beginning of the Quest then headed to bed.  Today is a sea day for Thanksgiving and we have very little planned.  I was busy enough yesterday that I forgot to take many photos, sorry!  For anyone wanting the compasses I plan on scanning these and our Explorer ones to the website on return.  Have a great and happy Thanksgiving all!

Happy thanksgiving from Perfect Day!

Happy Dan kindly took some pictures of the dock area when the sun passed behind some clouds while I was in the shower.  He’s a good egg

 

And she did..after almost 40 years I have trained her well.

Gliding into St. Thomas right on schedule.
 

It's midnight on a Royal ship and everyone is hungry..

I beat the line.  Love that Sorrentos offers an alternative to pizza.

Lies, pure lies.  All that is around the bend is an awesome place to watch the wake.

For the record, at no point will I be using this jogging track for its intended purpose.

We shall find out..with all this aluminum I'm going to have to start affectionately referring to the pits as Reynolds.

In case you were wondering...CVS receipts are a mile long, even in Puerto Rico.

The haul...just to assure the stinky pits won't happen again, got plenty of options

And since the UDP is cutting into my sit in the Diamond Lounge and squirrel away cans of Coke Zero time....
It tastes better in a bottle anyways.

I really had no plans to venture out into San Juan during this port visit. I will be back in San Juan at the end of December for the Royal Caribbean Blog Freedom Group Cruise over New Year's. That cruise actually leaves from San Juan and I will be flying in the day before, so I will have some time to explore San Juan before getting on the cruise.

I did, however, want to get off and snap some shots of the ship in the dark all lit up and amplified.


She's so impressive she makes amateur cell phone shots look awesome

Now it's time for the latest round of photographic evidence of my gluttony!
Chops bread in special exclusive Thanksgiving turkey leg shapes for our holiday sailing

Tuna tartare artisically turned as to not see the bite I took before I remembered my faithful followers

Shrimp cocktail -1..dang my mother is quick.

Meat party!!!
Bone in ribeye

Filet with meat tartar sauce, photobombed by asparagus..dry, no salt, no butter, no fun. Thanks mom ?

They haven't started decorating for the holidays yet.  I helped.

Also, found the butter for my aspargus.
My steak tasted faintly like a Christmas tree.  Otherwise it was decent; more impressive than my prior Chops experiences.  Not saying much as we got the special @WAAAYTOOO treatment with barely lukewarm food.  Still on #teamGiovannis when it comes to the best filet.  Coastal Kitchen didn't get a fair shake as we are in genpop this sailing.  
No dessert for me as I couldn't finish my steak and thus I don't deserve dessert.
My mother didn't finish either as she didn't gnaw off all the meat from the bone.  But she doesn't play by the rules.
Warm chocolate cake

She forced me to order a dessert so she could try two..but buttered asparagus is bad for you ?‍♀️
Key lime pie

All this washed down with the swill I affectionately ordered as the free Diamond red stuff.  Merlot, Cabernet they asked...I just nodded and said the stuff that you eat with steak.  It tasted like wine that people who know nothing about wine would drink.  It swirled around the glass just like the expensive stuff the table next to us ordered.
This is night 3 in a row that I ordered red wine but then realized the entree I really wanted was fish.  I had no choice but to order red meat as to not upset any nearby Pinnacles for wining wrong.  We all know they are the experts at wining. ?
 

Drat.  Now there are at least two that are better than me.  

Day 4 - COCO CAY DAAAAAAY! 

After a yummy breakfast in the Windjammer, it was time to get ready to go to Coco Cay. The delay in Port Canaveral slightly pushed back our Coco Cay time from 9-5 to 10-6. We wanted to be some of the first off the ship since we had a Chill Island cabana and I wanted to spend as much time as possible there. We were super super lucky and Grandeur was the only ship docked there that day so only like 2,100 people on the whole island. There were TONS of free chairs and umbrellas all over. I’m super glad we had the cabana (especially for the price we paid) but if we didn’t, it wouldn’t have been an issue at all. The weather was GORGEOUS, calm seas, clear skies, and a high of low 70s. 


People dressed up in junkanoo costumes were hanging around for pictures and a live band was playing “Perfect Day” as we walked down the pier. 


We made a bee line for Chill Island to drop off our stuff at the cabana and get settled. We could have taken the tram, but decided to walk since I wanted to take in the sights on our way. I’m really glad we did because we got to see some stuff a tram ride would have missed. 
 





Hammock grove 

Both sand wheelchairs and strollers (I had heard of the wheelchairs but not the strollers) 

And we finally got to the cabana concierge! They had fruit flavored water and cold eucalyptus scented towels waiting for us when we checked in. Heaven. 

We had cabana number 2 in the front row of cabanas which I was super happy about. Even though there were cabanas on either side, it felt very private the whole time. I also noticed a wheelchair ramp up to all of the cabanas that I hadn’t heard people talk about. Not sure if these are new or just not mentioned as much. 






And the drink and food menus: 


Our cabana attendant was Silver and she was amazing. Super attentive and nice and had suggestions if you were waffling between things. I also lucked out because at one point I ordered a watermelon margarita and the bartender accidentally made a watermelon mojito first. Well both made their way back to me but I was only charged for the one I ordered. BONUS DRINK! 


You can see the NCL Island from the cabanas

Around 1 I decided to take a little stroll around the island and check things out. 







Directional signs are already up for South Beach and Coco Beach Club

Some of the construction that I could see. Pretty sure this is the beach club


And I think this is the portion of South beach that is still open through construction. There was a sign that there was no WiFi there. 

 
Around 1:20 I got a message in our family Whatsapp chat that lunch had arrived. I was almost back anyway so I was only 5 mins or so late to the food. We got crispy chicken sandwiches (we could specify if we wanted things like tomato or lettuce omitted), fries and mozzarella sticks. No pictures of the fries because they were demolished too quickly. I was pleasantly surprised by how well the food traveled. 



At one point a seagull came to visit, but he didn’t come closer than this so the food was safe. About an hour after lunch came, Silver brought over some fruit skewers and a bunch of cookies. Again, no pictures of cookies because they died an honorable death before I could snap one. 

There was WiFi on the island and it was amazing compared to Grandeur’s. My mom took the opportunity to download a bunch of shows to her iPad and I watched the latest episode of His Dark Materials on HBO (armored bears!) The WiFi acted like you needed a login, but if you tapped on “use without internet” from the login screen, you still had access to the internet. No clue how long this will last. Middle test is Coco Cay. Others are from our room on deck 2 on board and the Solarium. In general, I’ve noticed the WiFi is best early in the morning in public places. It was like 2.5 down on the deck 5 chairs around 7am. 

Anyway, all aboard was 5:30 and we started packing up around 4:50. We were one of the last cabanas to leave so we got to chat with Silver a bit before we left after tipping her thank you. She said she’s been with the company for 2 months and came from working at Atlantis. She lives in the housing they have on the island and she said she works something like 6 weeks on, 1 week off. If people live farther away like her coworker from Kenya, they work longer but have longer off. It was funny hearing how they have different impressions of the various ships. They were really happy today was just Grandeur because first of all fewer people, but also apparently Grandeur guests tend to be more laid back and not as demanding. I complimented her in how she was tactful in keeping people out of the cabana area since I had seen her greeting a man without a wristband with a huge smile and a “hello sir! Are you staying in a cabana with us today?” Knowing full well he wasn’t. She said that really meant a lot to her because that’s one of the toughest parts of the job. Apparently some people very very confrontational and aggressive about it which is a shame. 
 
We were able to catch a tram back to the ship and I saw that the sun was setting. It was so pretty that I had to stop like 10 times to get pictures. I’m sure I annoyed those around me lol 





When onboard and back to our room I went to go check the MDR menu for the night to see if we wanted to go there or WJ. Guess who I happened to see when I was there? CRUISING DUCK! I left it there for someone else to find after taking pictures


I recognize those names and I think they might be in the FB group for this sailing. So fun. We ended up settling on WJ for dinner and it was nice and quick but filling. We returned to a cute elephant in the room and then it was some more reading and passing out. 

 
 

Today I noticed these cute little overlooks at Central Park.

They are accessible from the aft elevator banks on 9.

Casino update:  I came out + $25 tonite so I was able to repay Lootenant Dayan for his generosity last night.  Now sitting at even Steven after night #2. Winner, winner, chicken dinner !
I have figured out the mystery of using two devices interchangeably.  It seems that logging out (log off.com) is not enough. I must turn off the WiFi on whichever device I do NOT want to use before trying to log on to the second device.  This is a bit of a pain as I choose to take photographs with my iPhone but want to blog with the iPad so I am constantly changing between the devices. But since I broke the code I have had no problems at all and I have not bounced Dan off of his device once since figuring it all out.  I feel so smaaaat.
Night night.  Sea day tomorrow. #sleepingin

The actual coaster was up a short path.  You are seated in a bobsled style car that operates with handbrakes.  Kids have to be older than 12 to ride solo and they can only be the passenger in a car.  It's pretty simple to operate, push forward on the brake levers to release the brake and accelerate and pull back to engage the brakes.
I had an absolute blast.  I ran through it once to get a feel for it and then ran through subsequent times to take photos.  Rules are you have to have everything tight enough not to fly off (hats ans sunglasses) and you can't take bags with you.  You leave them at the start platform.
The coaster takes you up a long hill that ends right next to where the zipline starts.

And then you're off!

It goes through twists and turns and gives you sneak peeks of a great view of the ship. I imagine that's the view the zipliners get.

"You kids get off my blog!" ??

This morning I went adventuring to take some specific recon photos for someone.  Nothing exciting and blog worthy..just some hallway photos. 
As I was leaving my room I realized I only had my phone and forgotten (in the name of research, of course) my room key.  I did have my Digital Key enabled phone with me and again it just blinked green and didn't want to actually unlock the door.
So I did my photo recon which led to being asked to take more photos..I swear one good deed...I don't mind really and it gives me something to do when I am avoid the sun and interacting with people.
Of course since I don't sleep in my WOWband and didn't have my room key or working digital key I had to People of Walmart it down to Guest Services in my PJs.  

I got off the elevator and decided that the least I could do was help guide him all the way to the act of this ship to Windjammer. I asked him if he minded me walking with him to the Windjammer and he took my arm and we trekked all the way across the pool deck. He told me he had paid extra to have a wheelchair and assistance but that someone complained about it? I didn't really quite understand the story and didn't really ask for clarification. 
He said he took a 16 day cruise and he's going to Africa in April.  Pretty amazing travels he has done.
We got to the Windjammer where I asked the greeter if he minded helping my new friend.  The greeter was amazing and he took his arm and started asking him what he was wanting to eat and helped him to the handwashing station.  I didn't think to catch his name tag but as soon as my room service is delivered I am popping back over to Windjammer to get his name so I can fill out a WOW comment card for him.

Swung back by the room and noticed I now have a roommate.  I better still get double points for this cruise, though.  Good thing I have the ability to control the TV with my phone since he's a total remote hog.

They just walked down the aisle in Music Hall.

So, we made it to Tampa. No-issue flight.  Right on time.  Good deal.
The hotel (Tampa Marriott Water Street), has a shuttle from the airport but we decided just to get an Uber.  They were charging $12 PP plus it probably would have taken them forEVER to come get us.  The Uber was $19.07 and it took her 3 minutes to get to us.  
I think the hotel is probably lovely. It was dark when we got here so it could be a dump for all I know.  We are on the Concierge floor (24) and I feel our room is very - meh.

Happy Dan. That’s his nickname.  

I was extremely disappointed in the Concierge lounge. Hopefully breakfast will be better than our evening tidbits.
The Uber driver told us that the cruise ships are less than a mile from the hotel (yippee !!) so we should have a short trip tomorrow morning.
Calling it a night soon.  Flying just wears my arse out !

Hmm..so where did I leave off last night...last thing I remember was robots taking jobs away from service workers

RIP Champagne Bar.  At least at this bar you don't have to feel shamed for not tipping in cash on top of the 18% gratuity for your drink?  Service is pretty slow anyways.
At that point it was pushing 9:30 and I was at the point where if I wasn't actively doing something I was going to fall asleep sitting up.  The only options then were passive activities (watching music).  The first night promenade balloon drop at midnight is always fun, but I knew I wouldn't make it that long without a nap.  
I went back to the cabin intending to take a nap so I could go watch the balloon drop.  Spoiler alert: I didn't end up seeing the balloon drop.