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🎊⚓Shining, Shimmering, Splendid! NYE SY 12/31/22 – 01/07/23🎊⚓


Lovetocruise2002

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We're so looking forward to sailing Symphony and Harmony down the road especially for the entertainment. Allure and Oasis were amazing, but it looks like Symphony and Harmony take it to the next level! We're hoping she stays in Bayonne in 2025 and maybe we can book her while she's still local. 🤞 😎

Enjoy the rest of your cruise! Thanks so much for sharing!

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47 minutes ago, JohnK6404 said:

We're so looking forward to sailing Symphony and Harmony down the road especially for the entertainment. Allure and Oasis were amazing, but it looks like Symphony and Harmony take it to the next level! We're hoping she stays in Bayonne in 2025 and maybe we can book her while she's still local. 🤞 😎

Enjoy the rest of your cruise! Thanks so much for sharing!

I’ve done HM twice now and SY twice. They are practically identical. I agree with you in that both ships Entertainment is one level up from Allure, but Oasis has Aqua 80 and that I would say is the same calibre as The Fine Line and Hiro. However, the ice shows on the older two cannot compare to HM and SY, and we all know Oasis has Cats, so just about anything is better than that.

Bottom line, there are pros and cons to each. We will sail HM one more time in March and then probably not again once she heads to Galveston. OA we already have more sailings booked on her, and SY I would do again as well if the price is decent. 
 

If you get a chance to sail SY out of Bayonne, don’t hesitate. It’s a great ship! I like her this time more than the first time in July 2019. 

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6 hours ago, melmar02 said:

We decided to do Whole 30 this month, and your drink pictures are killing me.😆 I'm living vicariously through all the food and drink photos!🤪

My hubby, grown kids and I attempted to do Whole 30 a couple of years ago.  Some quit at 15 days, two at 16 days, and I was the winner at 17 days.  We were all miserable. Sugar seems to be in everything. Good luck!

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12 minutes ago, asquared17 said:

@Lovetocruise2002 i am drooling over the food pics 😍

was that the black truffle butter tortellini last night??? if so, my ultimate ALL TIME favorite CK dinner dish. would eat that sauce on any pasta at any time forever.

It was! That dish is hit and miss sometimes but Symphony’s CK did a fantastic job with it. Texture of the pasta was perfect too! 

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13 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

It was! That dish is hit and miss sometimes but Symphony’s CK did a fantastic job with it. Texture of the pasta was perfect too! 

you are HYPING me up for our sailing on her next month!! i hope we will be able to have dinner in there (we are in a JS) as it's our favorite/highlight for dining on our budget 😅

although you guys are really selling me on the chicken soup!!

tonite's scallops looked tasty too -- and the dish next to the scallops (i'm seeing pasta but i think i'm just obsessed with truffles 😂)

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18 minutes ago, asquared17 said:

you are HYPING me up for our sailing on her next month!! i hope we will be able to have dinner in there (we are in a JS) as it's our favorite/highlight for dining on our budget 😅

although you guys are really selling me on the chicken soup!!

tonite's scallops looked tasty too -- and the dish next to the scallops (i'm seeing pasta but i think i'm just obsessed with truffles 😂)

I am allergic to scallops but I just asked Hubby and he said, “They were good.” Lol

The chicken noodle soup is a must try! Kids are sad that tomorrow night is the last night for it. Next sailing we are back in star and they want to know how they will get that in specialty restaurants. 
 

The dish to the left of the scallops is Truffled Risotto. So tasty, but very filing and heavy. 
 

And FWIW, go to CK on the first day and see what reservations they will allow you to make. They were allowing JS guests throughout the week to dine there on this sailing.

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11 hours ago, Yesiamthere6 said:

My hubby, grown kids and I attempted to do Whole 30 a couple of years ago.  Some quit at 15 days, two at 16 days, and I was the winner at 17 days.  We were all miserable. Sugar seems to be in everything. Good luck!

Yes, sugar is everywhere! We typically eat pretty low carb anyway, but we've been eating out 3-4 nights a week since Thanksgiving. I'm hoping staying out of restaurants for the next month is not only good for the scale, but for building our cruise funds. I've got a final payment coming up and another excursion to book!

@Lovetocruise2002 Thanks for the martini pic. In all the times we've dined in Chops, I've never actually tried it - that will have to change in April! 

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Right? My conundrum as well. When we sailed with @bellemiche they had one and I believe it was great except for internet connections. I even hovered over pulling the trigger on the sky one bedroom but Cabash/Vintage Magnet would not be happy. He is #deck17 and when we are on any other class he misses deck 17 and I hear about it.....daily. Maybe a shorty sailing, my previous RUBs for these were always super pricey, one day! 

I am enjoying this blog, I love the pics. I'm not feeling so sad missing sailing her this season. I'll wait until she comes back down here. 

Ugh, but then there's the college commitment I made🙃

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13 minutes ago, Neesa said:

Right? My conundrum as well. When we sailed with @bellemiche they had one and I believe it was great except for internet connections. I even hovered over pulling the trigger on the sky one bedroom but Cabash/Vintage Magnet would not be happy. He is #deck17 and when we are on any other class he misses deck 17 and I hear about it.....daily. Maybe a shorty sailing, my previous RUBs for these were always super pricey, one day! 

I am enjoying this blog, I love the pics. I'm not feeling so sad missing sailing her this season. I'll wait until she comes back down here. 

Ugh, but then there's the college commitment I made🙃

That’s sums it all up right there. The wifi has been pretty good this sailing. I have no problems uploading my pics and videos, except for when sitting at the Aqua Theatre waiting for the show to start. Today when I sat back more along the counter, the wifi was good. But that could also be due to the fact that not many are on the ship right now. 
 

I am also very much #teamDeck17 and don’t know if I can actually pull the trigger on an ATS lol. Hubby I already know would not love it too much. 

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39 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

@Jax the more I look at these, the more I want to try on

You know I was pleasantly surprised. Although wifi was temperamental and prevented me from uploading more pictures I am not sure if that was due to the room as many onboard were complaining about crappy wifi.  

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Since I have some time now, I wanted to give some feedback on the Portrait Session. Originally, we booked this for the March Oasis 2022 sailing. But for those who follow the live blogs, you all know how that story went. Anyway, we rebooked it for this cruise at the Black Friday rate of $174.99. That is the sitting fee, plus it includes 5 digitals on a USB. 
 

The plan has always been to take the 5 digitals and run with it. I have seen @dodgestangpost his pics several times in the past and the look fantastic, but we were pretty skeptical on what they could do.  We have one empty wall in our house that has stayed empty for 10 years now (since we moved in) and the goal was always to fill that wall with the large family portrait. That was the main mission here. But we would use the digitals to make our own canvas back home. 
 

The instructions when purchasing in the cruise planner is to make your appointment with the photographer once on board. We did that first thing last Saturday and no one was around. The next stop was the suite lounge, and Mohamed very quickly secured us a reservation for the next day. Had we had the opportunity to do this on the Oasis sailing back in March, Allan would have made the reservations for us. We wanted this done asap as we seasoned cruisers know that the sea air shrinks our clothes 😉

The next day, we met with the photographer and he suggested we take some in the studio and then head to Central Park. All of us, except for Hubby have long hair. It was a sea day. That was an easy pass. And humidity is bad for curls lol. We took all our portraits in the studio but they can basically go wherever. You can even schedule them on a PDCC day and take beach pics. 
 

Going to be very honest here, our session with the photographer was super quick (maybe 15 mins actual photo time), and we did not feel like the poses were great. It felt like he was rushing. The kids would not stop complaining and eye rolling. Teenagers are most difficult. Leaving there, we did not feel too great about whether or not we could even choose 5. 
 

We had a follow up session with the photographer the next day to view photos. This is where I would suggest to do this earlier on in the sailing because this is the part that is time consuming. They show you the photos in the form of a slide show, then they show you your photos in various layouts for canvas or acrylic products.
 

We were floored. The photos came out great! There was no way we were going to just be able to walk away with only 5. We have not taken family portraits for almost 10 years. Life is busy at home, and there are not many good photographers around that will do the style that Hubby likes. We asked for time to think and consider the prices, and we made another follow up appointment for two days later.

Here is an example of some of the prices: 

D4349BEC-656E-49B6-A7CD-84E588B6004B.thumb.jpeg.66767863327f5e2a876e58d7c109a59d.jpeg

CD076113-1C72-4B7B-8B06-A4C8E3A0E60C.thumb.jpeg.782dd05f2ca89e7ee1dfdba4c51ae19f.jpeg

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1B36C284-26CF-40F4-AA0F-2D373B7FADF3.thumb.jpeg.b24524d6cd022b56220f2c854a52bef1.jpeg
 

If you purchase a product from them, then you get the digital packages at 50% off. 
 

Two days later (on the second sea day), after much debating, and giving up my Effy purchase from Cozumel, we decided to go for it and walked away with a canvas of the Parquet collection, as well as 15 digital prints. 5 from the ones included with the original purchase, 5 additional ones that we purchased, and they included the digitals to the 5 canvas selections. We are happy with our decision, although Hubby did grumble slightly. In the end, the decision maker was the fact that we probably would not do this back at home, and we really did like many of the shots. 
 

Is it worth it? That depends on your situation. For us, it was. If you are the type who does this frequently with your family back on land, then no, probably not worth it. We did some research while on board to compare the cost of just purchasing the digitals and doing the canvas on our own at home, it is pretty much the same, except Hubby was saying that if we did it on our own with Shutterfly or something similar, we would not be able to get the sizing or layout that they were offering with the Parquet collection and he really liked that. 
 

We were able to pick up the digitals on USB the day after confirming the order. We picked it up last night between Flight and the comedy show. The canvas product will be shipped back home to Canada. Shipping is included to Canada and the US. Other countries they have additional info but we did not ask. It should also be exempt from duties. Hopefully they are correct on that. They said to expect shipping to take 6-8 weeks. 
 

I know that many of you might be wondering at this point what the final product looks like. Keep in mind that Hubby downloaded the files to his laptop, and sent these to my phone (which I blog from) so the quality is a lot better with the original file (which I do not have). But here you go…

Hello, from the @Lovetocruise2002 family. Come say hello if you see us on board one day. 🙂

 

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