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Navigating around the hurricanes. 4 night Navigator Cruise 9/23-9/27


GregD

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We are all tucked in for the night. TOMORROW IS CRUISE DAY!!!!! As expected, our royal up bid was not accepted. Regardless we are so excited. We cant wait for the look on the kids faces when we get to the port. We have told them that we have a LOOOONG drive tomorrow and plan on giving them the ipads immediately upon entering the car so they will be distracted and not pay attention to the GPS. (they like to look at the miles/minutes remaining) Our plan is to get to the port around 10:15 and drop the bags with the porters. Return the rental car (10 minutes away) Uber back and be one of the first people on the ship. 

See everyone tomorrow!

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5 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Odyssey pre-cruise dinner...my vote is obviously for La Bamba on that one!! I will see you all there. 

As for Tequiztlan, I think that would make a great pre-cruise meet up for Allure 03/14/21. @emsff02 you need to YOLO and book that one! ?

I forgot Odyssey was out of everglades, that makes more sense.

As much as I would LOVE to do that, we are on Oasis in Star class 3 weeks prior!! There is no way I could swing that, but a weekend in Miami....hmmmmmm

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9 hours ago, emsff02 said:

 

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I love, love, love this picture !  It brings back SO many <not so> wonderful memories of the delightful female teenage years. I feel so sorry for you, knowing what’s coming !  

Only teasing.  If you all manage to live through it, teenager-ness is wonderful ??. That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, right ?

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1 hour ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

I love, love, love this picture !  It brings back SO many <not so> wonderful memories of the delightful female teenage years. I feel so sorry for you, knowing what’s coming !  

Only teasing.  If you all manage to live through it, teenager-ness is wonderful ??. That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, right ?

Thank you! We always joke that she is 9 going on 19. She is our little drama princess. Some of the tears were because she was watching the news that morning and discovered what rip currents were. She was convinced that we were all doomed just stepping into the waves and she “just wanted to be able to swim.”

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WE ARE ON THE SHIP!!

Today went so smooth, after we left the waterless hotel! We piled the kids in the car with the iPads and off we went to the port. Lydia asked as we drove past on the causeway, are we going on a cruise?????? Nah kid, we are not.

She bought that answer and went back to the iPad.

I then had my parenting fail of the day. I reach behind me to tap Johnny’s leg, which of course makes him cry, so the surprise!! We are going on a cruise fell flat??‍♂️
 

It took a few takes to get a good video to send to family.

once at the port everything went according to plan. We pulled up, dropped the bags with the porter, drove the 6 minutes to return the car.

we called our Uber which was there in 30 seconds and back to the port we went.

Here is the obligatory propeller shot

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took this elevator 

 

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Got our muster station bands

 

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The Royal Promenade 

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windjammer for lunch!!

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from drop-off to on the ship was 5 minutes!!

phone is in airplane mode, connected to Voom, LETS DO THIS!!!

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Okay, time to get caught up here. I give a lot of credit to those that are able to keep up with these. Its been a crazy busy cruise so far!

So back to Day 1 stuff.

Following luch we headed to the back of the ship to check out the slides. Day one lines were very short, so we all got lots of rides in. My younges was too short to do the blaster, but he loved the riptide slide. As I am typing this up I am sitting on the suite lounge deck and can see that the lines today are short as well. I'm sure that since most kids are in school, that is helping keep the lines low. There are very few children on this sailing.

After the slides we got changed and ready for sail away, and the "mustard wharehouse drill" as Johnny called it. We did sail away on the helipad.

He's ready to move on.

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Here comes the coast guard.

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Finally the lines are pulled

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And we are off

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New terminal under construction

 

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We are heading towards Miami because she was nosed into port. Need to spin around in the turning basin.

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Once we turned around in the turning basin, we followed her out to sea.

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Cabin Tour:

We are in a 2br Grand Suite 8694. This is on the very back of the ship. General thoughts, there is tons of storage in this cabin. We did notice some vibrations when the ship was sailing. It never really bothered us, and at times almost seemed soothing. The times it was very noticable was when backing into ports and whether the azipods were fully rotated, or switched into reverse, you really felt the vabrations then. Unfortunately this woke me up each morning. So here I am on a relaxing cruise and I have woken up at 5-5:30 each morning.....Everyone else slept through it. 

Here is the kids room, prior to the beds being split

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Kids bathroom

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This stateroom had a large walk in closet

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Living room with more storage. There is also a table with 4 chairs.

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Master Bedroom

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Hers and Hers closets in the Master

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Vanity Area

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Dinner Time!!!

We ate in the MDR for dinner each night. We like the food there, and with our youngest not being very adventurous with his meal choices we dont want to pay the cover at a specialty restaurant for him to order grilled cheese.

So here is the night one menu. Standard across the fleet.

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So Johnny ordered...........wait for it.................

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Grilled cheese with a side of broccoli. (He actually loves broccoli) He ordered this for dinner EVERY night on our Anthem cruise.

Lydia had her best day ever with pizza and french fries

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Heather and I ordered the escargot and antipasti plate for our appetizer.

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I had the chicken marsala, it was okay

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Heather had the prime rib, which was very good.

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Heather and I had the creme brulee for dessert.......which was actually overcooked. We ate one bite and said no more.

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1 hour ago, emsff02 said:

 

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One bite is about all I can stand of creme brûlée, as good as it is.   It’s just sooooo sweet.

...and speaking of waaaytooo sweet, do NOT fall for the Addams Family ads from IHOP for those cool-looking purple whupped cream pancakes.  I tried it this morning (including the whipped crean hot chocolate).  I thought my teeth were going to drop out of my mouth.   Delicious but waaaytooo sweet 

 

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Well, we are sitting in the airport to go home. Time to get cought up on this. 

Following dinner we dropped the kids off at Adventure Ocean and Heather and I grabbed a drink and wandered around the ship. Heather wanted to play bingo......so I wanted to play bingo. We lost...... oh well. Adventure Ocean was done at 10pm so we grabbed the kids and it was time for bed. 

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Nassau:

The next day we woke up in Nassau. I woke up early that morning due to the vibrations of the azipods as they turned the ship around to back into the slip. This is the main draw back to those aft family suites. The superstructure around the balcony does not bother me.

As we backed into our slip, we joined Carnival Elation with is wHeird add on balconies

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Majesty Was here too

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Our destinaton for the day.

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We hopped up to the Windjammer for breakfast. This guy was helping the Washy Washy Duo with the mornings entertainment.

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After breakfast we met our fellow excurioners at Studio B where we got our wristbands and signed waivers for Atlantis. This worked well. We went to Atlantis last February on Anthem, and all this was done on the pier and was a jumbled mess. We had followed @Matt's advice and had brought a bumch of bottles of water with us from some beverage purchases. As we made our way to the shuttles, there were some locals stategically staged at the exit hawking water for $2 stating that they are $5 at Atlantis (they are not). A quick daredevil shuttle ride and we were there.

It was absolutely amazing how empty the resort felt. One of the benefits of traveling off season. We found empty seats immediately in our area of choice. We rode all of the slides with wait times of less than a minute for any of them. Walking around, it felt like there was less than 500 people there. The place almost felt empty. 

Food and beverage at Atlantis. Tip, at the snack shop by the splash pad area there is a water bottle fill station, so water is not an issue. For soda drinkers, the fountains are self serve, so once you buy your cup I got multiple refills. The food was tasty too!

One crazy thing that happened, I went down The Abyss slide, and went so fast that as I hit a water curtain in the slide it gave me a bloody nose!!

While the excursion notes said 5hrs, we were told that the last shuttle to the ship was at 6pm so you had nearly 9 full hours there. We headed back around 4:30 though.

When we got back, Grandeur had replaced the ugly Carnival Ship

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Night 2 Dinner:

Once back on the ship we got ready for dinner and headed to the MDR.

Tonights menu

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The spoiling of my kids has started.

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On Anthem, our kids were surprised with Chocolate Covered Strawberries by our waiter, so Johnny had expected them with this cruise, so on night one was dissapointed they werent there. Irene, our waitress made up for it on night 2.

For appetizers I got the escargot again, and the lobster Bisque

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This was actually kind of dissapointing, this tasted more like a tomato soup, and there were no pieces of lobster in this. This was not the case on Anthem when I had it last.

Heather got the Calamari. Here is what is left before I acted like a 5 year old with the tenticles hanging out of my mouth.

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Our Mains were the duck, and seafood linguini. Both of which were quite good.

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Johnny got......wait for it.......

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Spaghetti!!!!! He surprised us all and ordered something completely different. He then crushed my Italian heritage by stating that this plate of spaghetti is better than what I make.........

Here he is playing with his napkin

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After dinner we ran into this guy..

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He is quite entertaining, and we began seeking out the elevators he was on each night.

We got back to the stateroom and had our first towel animal

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WIth the kids dropped off at adventure ocean we found a great drink at Copper and Clover

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We took in the show which was eh...Time to board the plane. More to come.

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DAY 3 COCO CAY:

I woke up @WAAAYTOOO early again at 5 am (couldn't resit the pun) curtesy of the azipods rotating the ship. The nice thing is that allowed me to get some great morning shots and explore the ship on my own without large crowds. Here are some early morning shots of Coco Cay from our balcony.

This reverse thrusting is what woke me up earlier.

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All of the carts waiting to offload supplies for the day.

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Water Park

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It certainly will be a perfect day

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Lots of infrastructure for the habitants

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Soon I will be in one of those cabanas back there

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Here comes the sun.

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Wandering around a sleepy ship

Went up to the cosmopolotin club/viking crown lounge

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The suite lounge is nice, and has a nice little breakfast set up with a self serve espresso maker. I wish I had discovered this earlier in the cruise!

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The pain au chocolate brought back memories from my travels in France. I spent a few months there and ate one of those for breakfast every day. These were close, but not as good. I ate them anyway ?

 

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There is some nice outdoor seating that overlooks the sports deck/slides.

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Wandering topside I discovered Grandeur had rejoined us.

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Pool deck shots

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This guy was on board

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Here is the Suite area 

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Here is a close up of the sign. I can tell you that this is not very well enforced. We sat in this area and two people were sleeping in the left most cabana with very obvious blue seapass cards. If it weren't for the fact that the rest of the area was empty I would have gotten security involved to have them relocated, but I didn't want to become the next youtube/news story regarding "profiling"

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On a nicer note, here is the mini golf area.

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The Solarium

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There goes all of the chefs

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Lots of food going ashore.

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A nice place to sit if walking the 15 feet further to the gangway is too far

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Headed back inside

The promenade

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Neat metal wall art

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Gotta get a picture of the car

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Finally the family is up, breakfast from Windjammer is eaten and onto Coco Cay!

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Looking back at the ships

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Don't scare the mermaids!!! ( I hear they bite)

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Ahhhhhh relaxing in the cabana. We were in #8 which was preassigned. I forgot to take a picture but many have been posted before. All of them are new. They changed the design. Now all of them have a front porch vs a side porch. Each one comes equiped with a ceiling fan, power outlet, a comfy couch perfect for naps (personally tested) Two side chairs, 4 lounge chairs, two floating beach mats, two sets of snorkel gear. There is a table like thing that has a locking compartment for valuables and a cooler stocked with cold bottled water. 

Contrary to some other comments, we had a cabana attendant who gave us a buzzer for us to call her any time we neaded something. She got our lunch and drinks for us any time we needed something. 

Again, per a suggestion from @Matt, we had the crispy chicken sandwich and added mozerella sticks.....it was yummy.

So were these

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My kids spent a lot of time here because they weren't tall enough for the regular water park

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They were perfectly content playing here and swiming on the beach.

I had a visitor while keeping an eye on the kids here

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We also had this guy

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Lydia wanted to make friends with him.......she...did....not......

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After a great day here we headed back to the ship. Like other people have said, I loved the additions to Perfect Day. I have been here twice before and still get the island vibe. The island absolutely manages crowds well. Even though we had a cabana, just walking around I could see that there were plenty of loungers for everyone. Even with two ships there were tons of empty seats. We had no issues finding seats at splash away bay to watch over the kids. Bar service was quick when I was getting a drink on my own. I will gladly come back and look forward to coming with the kids when they are bigger and can do the slides. 

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Thanks for this! I'll be on Navigator October 21 and I'm losing my mind with excitement. Your pictures are GORGEOUS! What's the name of the parfait-looking drinks you had at Coco Cay?

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Even though we had a cabana, just walking around I could see that there were plenty of loungers for everyone.

Thanks for this observation -- there are only 2 of us and we can't fathom dropping 100s of dollars for a cabana or a beach bed. I'm worried about finding 2 loungers with an umbrella in the Chill Island region. Last time we reserved a clamshell thingy (official term I'm sure) with the 2 loungers on South Beach and loved it.

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On 9/30/2019 at 8:46 PM, kimberussell said:

Thanks for this! I'll be on Navigator October 21 and I'm losing my mind with excitement. Your pictures are GORGEOUS! What's the name of the parfait-looking drinks you had at Coco Cay?

Thanks for this observation -- there are only 2 of us and we can't fathom dropping 100s of dollars for a cabana or a beach bed. I'm worried about finding 2 loungers with an umbrella in the Chill Island region. Last time we reserved a clamshell thingy (official term I'm sure) with the 2 loungers on South Beach and loved it.

Sorry for the delay in replying. The drinks were Kraken Lava Flows. They are very tasty!

I agree with you on the cabana pricing. We will be back on Coco Cay next November, and it will just be the 2 of us then as well. Chill Island are $900 for that sailing. There is no way I can justify that cost. Now if there is anyone on that Odyssey sailing that wants to share the cost........Bueller?????? Bueller????

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So, back on the ship and we headed to the MDR for dinner again. I somehow forgot to get a photo of the menu.

For starters, escargot, and Asian style pork tacos

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Heather has the Shrimp,

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I had the Steak Diane 

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in true fashion, our server felt we never had enough to eat, Johnny got his strawberries, and Heather and I were each given extra shrimp with our meals. She then brought me the tagliatelle with mushrooms because I had to try it!

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Dessert was the 50th Anniversary party, so we got this cake

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complete with multiple extra lollipops for the kids.

Heather also got the cherries jubilee 

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I got these

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we had an addition to our towel animal collection upon returning to our stateroom 

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with the kids dropped off at Adventure Ocean, we hit the pub, 

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found a duck, Heather was Sooooooo excited!!

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and took in the show, the duck did too.

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The show was Ronn Lucas who is a ventriloquist. His show was great and really funny!!

We found this guy again

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then called it a night.

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Day 4, Sea Day

Day 4 was a sea day. Not too many pictures today. Today I finally slept past 6am YAAAAAYYYY!!! Following breakfast, we had few things on the agenda. The kids went to adventure ocean for a morning session, Heather and I came close to winning a trivia game, and we spent time on the suite lounge balcony.  Later we retrieved the kids for lunch and went up to the pool deck to get some sun, and the kids wanted to swim. We got lunch from El Loco Fresh, and the food was great. I have not eaten at a Sabor so I cannot compare, but I would be perfectly happy eating there again, and again.

While on the pool deck was when we discovered that they do not police the suites area well. Like I had mentioned earlier, there were two people sleeping in a cabana that clearly had blue seapass cards. We were able to get seats, so I didnt make an issue of it.

We watched the belly flop competition, always a good time. The guy that won, washed a kid away with his flop!

We attempted to ride the water slides again, but this day the lines were quite long. I'm very glad we got these in on day 1.

We gave the kids options for things to do, they chose Harry Potter trivia over the ice show. We lost....oh well

The kids went back to adventure ocean while Heather and I took in the wines around the world. I was hoping for different wine than what we did on Anthem, but it was the same stuff. Last time we do that.

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An interesting day, we had two people who were evacuated by helicoptor for medical emergencies. Both times, the ship had to speed towards Miami, then once the person was evacuated, we turned back out to see. Looking at the ships path on the TV was funny seeing the multiple loops. 

Dinner was back at the MDR

Here is the menu

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More strawberries for Johnny,  I go the coconut shrimp this time and the lamb shank. Heather got the prime rib. More spaghetti for the kids.

That evening we all went and saw the original production of Showgirls. It was actually really good!

Normally we would be really sad about packing, but knowing what we had coming up Heather and I had some excitment in the air.

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Disembarkation Day

We woke up back in Miami. We were nose out this time. 

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The windjammer was crazy, as to be expected, so we finally took advantage of breakfast in Chops. We keep forgetting that we have that option.

Johnny had some of the thicket french toast I had ever seen

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We walked our own luggage off the ship at 8:45 with the suite concierge. Once in the terminal, we were so glad that we had passports. The line for everyone else was soooooooooo long. Unfortunately the facial ID stuff did not recognize the kids, so we had to wait about 5 minutes in line for an actual person who took a cursory glance at our passports and sent us on our way. Ten minutes later we were in our Uber to the rental car.

We used Sixt again, unfortunatly no sweet upgrade this time, so we were in a Toyota Highlander. Off we went for our "Loooooonnng Drive" We kept the kids distracted with the Ipads and had the voice turned down on the GPS to keep things under wraps.

We were staing at Wyndham Bonnet Creek Resort, which is on Disney property near Epcot, so as we drove under the arch and we pointed it out to the kids, needless to say it got a little loud in the car. Heather had her parenting fail and forgot to get a picture of that moment.

We got checked into our room and into our matching t-shirts..........and off to Magic Kingdom we went.

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We took the ferry from the transportation center

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And got on our second "cruise" of the week

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annnnnd we are here!!!

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So we are here for the Mickeys Not So Spooky Halloween Party. Heather was able to get all fan girlish for the Sanderson sisters. She loves the movie hocus pocus, and this is the only time these characters are out. The kids were excited because they got to go trick or treating around the park.

We went on a bunch of rides. We also got tickets to the dessert party on the tomorrow land terrace. This was great because we had a great place to sit for the fireworks with an amazing view. The desserts were yummy too. They had smaller bites of many of the special desserts being sold around the park so we got to sample everything.

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At midnight, we went on another cruise!!!!

Someone wasn't impressed with my dad joke

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Annnnnd they are out

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Love your review!  We were on Navigator in August so it's great to "see it" again.  

Question about Disney as we are planning this next year after Mariner cruise.  Do you remember what time you arrived at your resort?  (which I guess will be quicker for us as we'll be getting off at Port Canaveral vs Miami).  Also, did you check in right away?  Or did you have to store your bags?

The moment when your kids realized must have been priceless!

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The next surprise!

We got the kisd up for the next day, and had this set out for them.

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Needless to day they were really excited. We had been there before, so they know what they were getting to do. For this we had opted to also purchase the VIP Experience package since we knew with only having one day we wanted to maximize our time there. We also wanted to experience the new Hagrid ride, and figured this would be the best way to do so. Average wait times for this ride is 2-3 hours. As I am typing this at 10:30 on a wednesday its already a 90 minute wait. Our tour guide mentioned that on the day it opened it was a 12 hour line!

The VIP Experience includes

  • Free Valet Parking
  • Buffet breakfast and lunch at La Bamba
  • We had a great guide who gave us insider info to the park, behind the scenes looks at rides
  • Priority Front of line access. Once the tour ended, the VIP pass became an unlimited express pass

Our tour started at 9:30 so they told us to get there at least 30 minutes earlier to get checked in and have breakfast. We arrived at the valet, and went right through our own security. If you have not been there, Universal has security like an airport with bag scanners etc, and this gets VERY backed up, so to have our own dedicated one was nice. 

We got the the VIP check in area, got our credentials and headed to breakfast. We met up with our group while at breakfast. The regular VIP Experiences you are in a group of 12. We all got along great and had the same expectations and ride desires so that made things easy. You can book a private VIP tour. I explored that option, but the cost was way more than the cruise we just took soooo no.

The kids were excited to meet these guys

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Once breakfast was done we headed off with our guide to do rides. They weren't kidding with the priority front of line access. For each ride, we actually walked up the exit, our guide nodded to the ride operators, and as soon as the next car was available we were ushered into the car and off we went. For any ride that bags needed to be stored, he held onto them. We did a couple of rides that Johnny was too short to do, and Johnny hung out with him. Our guide Jim used Lydia and Johnny as his assistants frequently, which they loved.

Full disclosure, We all LOVE Harry Potter stuff, so we were excited to go there again

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Fun fact. There are 75000 prisms in these chandeliers in Grigots bank

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Rode the Hogwarts Express

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Hogsmeade

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All in, it was a great day. We felt it was money well spent. Here is a list of the rides we did

ET Adventure

Men In Black Alien Attack

Fast and Furious - Supercharged

Revenge of the Mummy - We went underneath this ride as well and saw how some of the stuff works

Transformers: The Ride

Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts

Hogwarts Express - Kings Cross Station

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey 

Flight of the Hippogriff

HAGRIDS MAGICAL CREATURES MOTORBIKE ADVENTURE!!!!!!!! (more on this later)

Jurassic Park River Adventure

Skull Island: Reign of Kong

The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man

So with our guide we were able to get 13 rides in, which we never would have been able to do otherwise. As far as Hagrid. That ride is now my favorite ride!!! It may not be the fasted on out there, but the way you sit on the ride, the twists, reverses, and vertical drops, yes there is a section where you drop vertically, the ride is amazing!! If you go to Universal, you have to do that ride. You can thank me later. There are two seats across, you either sit on the motorcycle, or you sit in the side car. You want the motorcyle.

After the spider-man ride, our tour was "over" and we said our good-byes to Jim. We headed back into Hogsmeade for some butterbeer, a snack and let the kids do some Magic. We discovered that Johnnys wand was not working. A very nice Wizard who was helping all the "students" practice their spells told us that in the Owl Post shop, there was a wizard who could repair his wand. Off we went, and a few minutes later Johnny had a whole "new" wand and he was a spell casting machine. We were told that wands will be repaired for free for life so keep that in mind if you are ever there.

After this we did two rides in Dr Seuss Land, The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley, which offers nice views of the park, and construction going on in Jurassic Park. We also rode the Cat in the Hat ride.

Sadly the park closed at 7 that evening. There was fright fest going on In Universal Studios, and other private events in Islands of adventure. We took in dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co and headed back to Bonne Creek

 

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Sadly This Trip Must End

Sadly we had to go home. So Sunday morning we packed up, hit the pools at the resort for a little while then headed to Disney Springs for a bit. Our flights weren't till 5pm.

We had a good lunch at Cookes of Dublin and wandered around for a bit before heading to the airport. 

Once at the airport I was glad we had TSA pre-check. We were through security in 2 minutes and off to the gate we went.

We had a direct flight back to Albany. We flew Southwest. I think we had one of the flight attendants who has been featured on youtube videos because we didnt get the "normal" preflight instructions. The ones we had left my stomach hurting from laughing so hard. Unfortunately neither Heather or I throught to get a video.

Once landed, I think it took about 5 minutes for me to put up the following facebook post

Well, made it back home.....I hate it already.

 

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Thanks to everyone who read along with me on our trip. Again I apologize for the sporadic posting, but my computer decided to be annoying and not function correctly and with the kids being little, I kinda sorta needed to pay attention to them. This was a busy vacation as well so it was hard to find some down time. I need a vacation from my vacation. 

I will most likely blog the next cruise which is a Western Caribbean on Liberty. We will be going to Belize, Roataan, and Cozumel.

See everyone then!!

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1 hour ago, WannaCruise said:

Love your review!  We were on Navigator in August so it's great to "see it" again.  

Question about Disney as we are planning this next year after Mariner cruise.  Do you remember what time you arrived at your resort?  (which I guess will be quicker for us as we'll be getting off at Port Canaveral vs Miami).  Also, did you check in right away?  Or did you have to store your bags?

The moment when your kids realized must have been priceless!

So driving from Miami was around 4 hours when you add bathroom breaks etc. We got there shortly after 2pm and at Bonnet Creek our room was ready. We have only stayed at Bonnet Creek when in Orlando. One time we did have them store our bags, and when our room was ready they were in the room waiting for us.

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