2019 Bahamas Day 4: CocoCay

Like Nassau, we had also been to Coco Cay during our 2015 Bahamas cruise on Enchantment. While there we had rented two snorkel sets and had taken turns swimming out with our oldest son. At the time our youngest son wasn’t “water safe” enough so we were unable to do this as a group activity. As it happened, both Eileen and really enjoyed our short turns and were looking forward to doing this again on the current trip.

Given that rental cost was around $40 per person for the full day I decided to look online before the trip to see if we might be able to find some decent new gear that we could buy at a reasonable price and at least not have to get expensive, old, abused rental equipment. I found a full facemask with small fins (making for easier packing) at Amazon. (If the link doesn’t work, the title of the item was “COZIA Design SNORKEL SET with SNORKEL MASK - SWIM FINS included - OCEAN VIEW free breathing SNORKEL MASK FULL FACE with adjustable FLIPPERS”). Reviewers commented positively on the full face mask as being great for visibility, not needing to chomp down on a snorkel, and the comfort of the fins. Negative comments centered on needing to “burp” the mask about every 15-20 minutes to prevent too much CO2 build-up, incompatibility of the mask for those with any kind of beard (which was clearly indicated in the info describing the set), and LACK of fin comfort. There were several who warned that the fins were uncomfortable until they discovered and removed a strengthening piece meant to be used only during storage, so it is possible that the fin complaints were folks who hadn’t noticed this.

Not knowing too much about how to evaluate things, I read the reviews and decided to go for it. ALMOST. At the last minute I chickened out.

Turns out this was a fortuitous turn of events, because the day dawned for us to go ashore and we were starting to think we wanted a quiet day. I had slept very badly that night – took me forever to get asleep and then I kept waking up really hot, so when we finally dragged out of bed around 830A I was already tired. On top of that, it was clear that a thunderstorm had come through sometime in the early morning, so while it was clearing up to be a nice day it was definitely humid.

Lots of time to decide, of course, so we headed down to WJ for breakfast and then caught Morning Trivia at Schooner. Once again we were victorious (although against only two other couples), this time getting a paltry 9/16 on questions about the longest/tallest/largest/etc. Sample: what airport has the longest runway (NOT which is the largest airport)? This time we won priceless RCL highlighter pens (and two more keychains).

From there we went up for a competitive round of mini-golf at Mariner Dunes. We both sucked equally and ended up tied after the end of nine holes. We then completed an “Art Tour” of the ship by taking the elevators at both the aft and midships to the top deck and then working our way down the stairs, checking out the stairwell art as we went. Nothing we saw qualified as anything we’d want in the house.

By this time it was about 11:30 and we were feeling like it was time to sit out on the balcony and veg out until lunch. Our balcony faced the pier, but that’s so narrow that unless you look straight down all you see is ocean. We were also out of the direct sunlight, so another bonus.

This trip we would have no longer needed to tender to the island since Royal had completed the permanent pier a few months before our trip. Actually, it was still partially under construction as while smaller ships like Mariner could dock the larger classes need more length. A few pieces of the new “A Perfect Day at Coco Cay” project were in operation by our arrival, although several other parts were not expected to finish construction and debut to passengers until a month after our cruise (May 2019), with full operation of all planned features not expected until December 2019.

By the time of our cruise, here’s what was officially in operation:
• The pier
• Up, Up, and Away Helium Balloon ($39-$99) – although supposed to be ready we never saw this when we looked to shore. I think it was actually not yet completed.
• Chill Island: beach (free) and chairs (free), umbrellas ($), sun beds ($), snorkeling ($), Chill Grill (free)
• Ocean Lagoon Freshwater Pool (free), snack shack (free), swim-up bar ($)

Went up to WJ for lunch – they were serving the same pork ribs as on-shore, so chalk up another win for me! After that we decided to grab our tablets and head down to a shaded area on the pool deck, where we proceeded to relax and read, this time with a couple of Coco Locos each. Amazing how quickly 3 hours passed! At 4PM they started playing a game on the pool deck that involved the contestants being sent to get something and return to their chairs – last one back each time was knocked out. When the host sent them to “bring back someone in a red t-shirt” we decided it was time to go as we didn’t want to become unwilling participants in future rounds, which seemed like a good possibility.

We returned to the room for a few minutes and got ready for dinner, and then went back downstairs around 515P in order to listen to the band again. Dropped by the MDR first and went in to place our bottle of wine on our table so I wouldn’t have to carry it around. We’d taken it back to our cabin from Chops since we’d planned to drink on our balcony earlier in the day, but we’d ended up with our Coco Locos instead.

When the band finished their set at 6P we went over to the MDR for dinner. When we got to the table I noticed that the bottle of wine wasn’t there. This wasn’t a shock, since I hadn’t told anyone when I dropped it off that it was ours, and since we’d carried it out of Chops instead of having them label and deliver it for us we assumed that the MDR staff had pulled it aside since they didn’t know the source of it. Sure enough, our waiter (Johnlee, assisted by Tomas, both from the Philippines) had placed it on the waiter station and quickly retrieved it when we mentioned that it was ours. Although this was supposedly Formal Night we saw very few jackets or ties on the men. Frankly, we saw more attempts to dress on the supposedly more rustic Alaska cruise than we did on this Bahamas cruise. Adherence to the formal dress rule doesn’t matter to us (we were dressed in more business casual ourselves).

Once again back to our room to sit on the balcony and enjoy the sunset, which finished up around 8PM, putting us in perfect position to head down to the headliner show at the theater by 830P. We had skipped a few trivia events during the afternoon and also skipped the 8P event since they had all been Name That Tune style games and our seats were better left to others with more skills in those areas. We were also aware that we’d won a lot of the trivia events so far on the cruise and we were starting to pull back at this point so that we weren’t keeping others from winning the priceless trinkets.

The headliner was a comedy magician, Tim Gabrielson. He was very entertaining. The magic was of the “where’d your $50 Bill go?” variety as opposed to big stage tricks. We had a great time. Once that was over we called it a day – once more no Quest (now called “Crazy Quest”) for us.

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2019 Bahamas Day 3: Nassau

Having been to Nassau previously on our Enchantment cruise we already knew that we were going to spend the day onboard. There’s nothing here that is our kind of thing. An expensive day at Atlantis holds no interest, and of course we LOATHE shopping. Finally, heading to Senior Frog’s sounds like our idea of hell – so ship day it was to be.

We awoke around 745A docked in Nassau, between Disney Dream and Carnival Liberty. At breakfast we watched kids shoot down the water river/water slide on Disney. On our way to morning trivia we took a quick spin through the very sad Library. Decks of cards and several chess, checkers and Scrabble sets. Three bookshelves of sad looking books (oooh – look – by Lenny Dykstra!). After coming in 2nd w/14 of 15 on trivia, we spent the next 30 minutes pleasantly chatting with the Ohio couple next to us – scoping out our main competition! They normally cruise on Celebrity so asked them a few questions about the entertainment. Sounds like they don’t have the large theaters on their ships so the entertainment is more about bringing small acts onboard.

Our balcony that morning was perfectly situated to give us no direct sunlight, so we spent an hour of so pre-lunch sitting outside (during which time I wrote up Day 1). Later in the afternoon we figured we’d probably need to move to the other side of the ship to avoid the sun. A quick WJ lunch around 1220P and then back for another trivia game at Schooner at 1P.

…AND THE STREAK CONTINUES! Another win, albeit a shared one. This game was “Name the Celebrity” from a set of photos. We (and the other three teams/6 people) all got 15 of 20 and all shared in the joy of priceless RCCL keychains. This was our 6th win in 5 cruises, so we’re feeling pretty good. It certainly made up for last night’s pathetic showing. Of course, we still want an undisputed win – and it would still be nice to have more people competing…but we still took the prizes!

With about 75 minutes to kill prior to our scheduled time at the escape room we returned to our balcony for a bit more relaxation and still-manageable sunlight. Once we found the escape room starting area up in the VCL we sat down with (staff) members Chris and Luciana to await the arrival of the other couple signed up. Chris was hysterical, telling us we’d interrupted his moves to get Luciana to “say yes” – to what, who knows? Anyway, we ended up rescheduling our time to Day 4 since the other couple didn’t show up.

Since we now had time, we once again made our way to Schooner for more trivia. Along the way we stopped at the Sports Bar and grabbed some new-to-us drinks to enjoy during our game. (E had one of the hard ciders while I had…I forget. Whatever it was it was NOT a short-list candidate.) This time it was brain teasers along the lines of those things where they’ll write “ROBIN” in a circle and you have to figure out that the answer is “Round Robin”. This time we won fair and square, with 11 out of 20. As the prizes were more keychains we gladly gave them up to whoever wanted them, which in this case was a couple of young kids.

After that, we grabbed a couple of snack sandwiches from Cafe Promenade and made our way out to two deck chairs out on the (extremely) quiet Deck 4. These were out of the sun, facing the Disney Dream. Here we relaxed with our tablets and read until it was time to catch one more trivia event. This was Name That Tune: Pop Songs where we once again showed our “skills” by scoring a measly 4 out of 32. The only song we could ID by title AND artist was “Hand in My Pocket” by Alanis Morrisette, plus two other songs where we got the artist only. We’re SO un-hip.

Dinner was at Chops, which turned out to be underneath the Adventure Ocean deck – so lots of stomping overhead through dinner. Apparently, there were about 500 kids aboard our cruise, which certainly matchee the eye test we’ve already done. We each got our own 1st course (me: Lobster Bisque, E: Crab Cake) and shared the Black Pepper Bacon (really, pork belly) since we’d never tried that. Glad we tried it, although not going to be a go-to dish in future. I think the steaks were among the best prepared we’ve had on any ship. More flavorful than expected. We finished up the wine we’d bought on the prior night and also started on a new bottle.

We rounded out the night by seeing the Gallery of Dreams production show. Strange production. Pretty much a “nothing” musical score, and the dancing didn’t really seem to give all the dancers that much to do to really show off. A couple of interesting set pieces crammed onto stage showing some technical artistry (but certainly not up to the standards we saw on Freedom OTS), but the costumes were mostly “meh”. Eileen thought that the Russian costumes were pretty good but the others didn’t show much in the way of design or execution skills. (E and I met doing community theater and have been involved in theater tech for decades, so we "see" shows differently that most people.)

We had planned to walk back via the Promenade to give a listen to the salsa group in Boleros as well as the guy performing in the pub, but our timing was wrong and they hadn’t started up yet. Since we were getting a bit pooped we decided to head back to the cabin and relax. We never did manage to hear the salsa group. We eventually did find the pub guy. He was a guitarist and we got bored with him midway through his first song.

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2019 Bahamas Day 2: All Aboard!

Monday, April 8, 2019

Boarding day started with us getting up a little bit later than expected since I’d carefully set my phone alarm to 845P instead of 845A. D’oh! Nevertheless, we had more than enough time to shower and go down for an AWFUL breakfast. We both took just a couple of bites of greasy powdered eggs and sausage and gave up. We were about to board, so it wasn’t like we were going to be too far away from a ton of food. At 10:05 we hailed a Lyft driver who arrived in about two minutes, and by 10:25 we were walking into Terminal A at Port Miami.

A note about a new part of the online check-in process. This was the first cruise where the online check-in assigned us a time window for boarding. Since I had waited about 5 weeks to check-in the first available slot was noon. Since you are required to select a time window to complete check-in I did so. However, I knew from reading Cruise Critic that check-in times are NOT enforced – at least, not yet. Therefore, we just ignored our time window and showed up at the terminal at 10:30 as planned. The new process also means that, assuming you already have your Sea Pass card printed out, you simply approach one of the iPad-equipped agents standing by the entrance who quickly takes a photo of you and sends you onto the ship. From the time we entered the terminal door to walking up the gangway was well less than 10 minutes. A huge improvement as compared to our prior cruises and really well done by Royal!

In prior cruises we’ve always ended up with at least one bag carried on-board with us that was just too dang heavy. Usually it was because we had a couple of bottles of wine in a backpack. Although the wine bar we had been to the prior night had bottles for purchase, we didn’t find anything that we really wanted to try, so this time we decided to use our OBC to buy wine onboard and so walked on board with a backpack containing only our small electronics. So much nicer!

We like to board as early as possible which means that we often have a few hours in which to explore before we’re ready for lunch – and even before we’re ready to have a drink, if such a thing could be imagined! Creating a tour plan was something I’d done to fill time pre-cruise. It wasn’t like we’d ever had a bad experience exploring the ship without a plan. (“No – don’t go out that door! Oh, no…MAN OVERBOARD!”) On the other hand, having a route in mind did encourage us to linger a bit more during our wanderings and make a more conscious effort to look at the artwork more closely than we’d previously done. Without a route in mind I tend to be thinking more about where to go next rather than simply enjoying what I’m seeing. We did spend a lot of time down on deck 4, looking at the “art” and playing our favorite “OK, someone puts a gun to your head and you HAVE to buy something” game and, once again, confirming that E and I are scarily in-sync when it comes to our tastes.

Not OUR ship, but this is Miami's Terminal A for Royal Caribbean

We meandered on our tour for just over an hour, ending up at the Windjammer to have some lunch. The Voyager class ships have the WJ layout that includes both the two main island stations at the back as well as the “corridor-style” serving stations down each side which I’m not a big fan of. On the other hand, their eating spaces seem well laid out so, while not our overall favorite from a “flow” perspective (we’re fans of Radiance-class WJ) it wasn’t as bad as the Freedom class. While eating we took advantage of the roving drink guy who was offering the Drink of the Day (Mai Tai) to start our cruise off with a drink. The Mai Tais did NOT make our short-list of “go-to” drinks.

For the first time ever we purchased internet access. Our excuse for doing this was because our 8th grader was on a trip to DC at the same time as us and we wanted to be available in an emergency. Of course, we knew that relying on internet access wasn’t good enough, so we’d set up other family members as his emergency contacts to be sure he would be covered. The REAL reason for getting internet access is that I had an Android game that only worked with live internet access and I wanted to play it! Yeah, TOTALLY a first world issue!

Ended up getting myself a Surf and Stream package, and for the wife got her a bundled Surf and Royal Refreshment package. The Stream would allow us to listen to SF Giant games if we wanted to – so we thought. The reality is that the stream was so slow that the audio would constantly pause while more buffered. I believe that there’s almost no value in the more expensive Stream package. As we crept up to the cruise we thought it increasingly likely that we’d NOT be getting off the ship at Coco Cay. Nassau was already off the table, so we thought that perhaps taking in a ballgame might be something we’d want to do while sitting out on our balcony reading and enjoying a cocktail or two (or three…). We had expected our internet credentials to be waiting for us in our room, but such was not the case, so we ended up having to go to guest services to get that info. Actually, as we started to get in line at Guest Services one of the roving agents asked what we needed and quickly re-directed us across the deck to the Voom booth. There, the agent looked us up on a print out and gave us our codes. Took about 2 minutes. (Our stateroom attendant later brought us the official printouts around 515P, during sail-away.)

We decided to return to our room post-lunch, but rather than take the mid-deck elevator that would let us out just steps from our door we decided to instead take the forward elevator and walk down the corridor to look at the art that was in our area. It turned out that the luggage was being staged in the hallway at this time and we happened to run across our two bags, so we rolled them back to the room with us and unpacked.

Now nicely settled, around 1P we legged it up to the rock wall desk as that’s where they were handling sign-ups for the escape room. We made a quick reservation for 2:30P on Day 2, and then went to Boleros to pick up our second drink of the trip. Royal is now using paper straws which neither of us like, but E had brought along some reusable aluminum straws, so we took the drinks back to our cabin and enjoyed them while confirming our internet access. We relaxed on our couch until it was time for the 4P muster drill. One bit of pre-muster homework was to locate the most likely bar to get our sail away drink from, and it seemed that Boleros was still going to be the best choice.

Muster was a bit strange. We went to our outside C16 location, but as soon as they scanned our cards they sent us back inside….to Boleros! A crewman came in and announced that our muster station was, indeed, outside and that we were Boat 18, but we were meeting inside because of “reasons”. He then wished us a nice cruise and left. We all looked at each other wondering whether we’d just had a 30 second muster drill? A few people did wander away, but were back within about 2 minutes saying that we actually were not yet done. Soon the standard announcements were made…but there was constant chatter inside and we literally couldn’t hear a word, nor were any crew trying to quiet us down. There was one crew member who gave us a totally silent life jacket demo, but that was it.

There was one HUGE benefit of our Boleros-based muster, however. E and I happened to be sitting at the bar, and when the bartender returned at the end of muster I said something like “oh, look, our favorite person is here”, which was enough for him to decide to start filling drink orders starting with us! So we quickly got our sail away drinks and went back up to our balcony to sit while we pulled out of Miami. My sail-away drink was a Citrus Rita, which I thought was pretty good. Would be happy to get it again.

Mariner was docked at Terminal A headed toward Miami, so we had to proceed to the turning basin before we could reverse our facing and start to head out to sea. On the way into the turning basin we passed the docked Norwegian Sun and MSC Armona. By the time we’d turned around the Sun had already headed straight out to sea, so we followed her. It took about an hour before we finally cleared the berthing channel and were truly on our way. As my balcony chair was in direct sunlight for the first half of that time I got pretty heated up so took a quick shower before we went to the MDR for dinner.

I had sent email to rccldining about 2 weeks before sailing requesting a table for two and was pleasantly shocked when they quickly replied saying “done”. Sure enough, we had a nice table for two on Deck 5. We ordered a bottle of wine to go with our meal. Just before dessert an officer stopped by our table and made some quick small talk in praise of our wine (a Ravenswood Zin) and I asked him if he’d ever spent any time in California. He said “yes” and we made a few more comments before the Executive Chef joined him and then they moved on. I hadn’t been able to see his name tag so asked E if she had figured out who it was. Turns out it was the Captain, so we had our Brush with Greatness!

Post-dinner we went to the Schooner for our first trivia of the cruise. It was 70’s Disco Music Trivia, and we SUCK at music trivia. It was a train wreck. We got 3 (of 20!) and didn’t even meet the minimum threshold when the host said “how many got four or more right?” Total humiliation. To console ourselves we went out to the Promonade and sat outside the Pub, where a live band (Euphonic Jive) was playing. They were REALLY good and we decided right there that we’d try to find time to listen to them again.

During their break we went back down to Schooner to listen to the pianoman, Mathew Gauthier. While he had a nice voice, his piano arrangements were not very interesting so we only stayed for about 4 songs before going back up to the Promonade to people watch while waiting for the band’s next set. From there we made our way to the theater to catch the welcome show.

At the welcome show we were introduce to CD Ricky (Matthews) from Jamaica and a couple of the comedians (J.R. McCollum and Basil) who were onboard. Each of the comics did about 12 minutes and then Ricky did a quick wrapup. Ricky is no Marc Walker – although I admit he did grow on us as the cruise went on. A lot of energy. Post-show we made our way back to midship via the outside deck and thence to our room where we called it a night. The one request we made of our stateroom attendant was that we have 2 wine glasses in our room each day, so when we got back there were 6 clean glasses on the vanity. (Ironically, we never had wine on our balcony as we’d expected, so the glasses went unused.)

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2019 Bahamas Day 1: SJC to MIA

Getting There: San Jose to Miami

The toughest decision was whether to upgrade to First Class for the SJC-MIA flights. (We would never normally consider FC, but since we were trading in points it became a viable option.) Getting to Florida (whether FLL, MCO, or MIA) from the Bay Area is simple, but is NOT a comfortable trip. The main carriers are American, Delta, and United. American flies absolutely the WORST planes to Florida from here. None of the carriers can be said to have comfortable Economy seats, but AA’s planes are particularly crammed full of narrow seats, most of which lack both personal IFE AND power at the seats. So AA wasn’t a real player for us. They DO have some good timing options, so it is a shame that they use such poor equipment.

Seriously, American (top two lines)?  You want us to use our own devices for IFE…but don’t put power into the seats on the Airbus planes so we can keep our tablets running?  And you use the same narrow seats in Economy and Economy+?  And those narrow B737 seats?  No thanks!

United to Miami had really limited timing choices, none of which worked for us. They arrived in Miami later than we preferred. The biggest issue, however, was that the post-cruise flights all got home quite late on Friday night, which was the same day Andrew was returning. We already planned to have him picked up at the airport and kept with a family member until we got in, but we wanted our flight to arrive home no later than about 8PM so we weren’t imposing too long on goodwill. (MUCH later we’d find out that Andrew’s red-eye flight home wouldn’t arrive until early Saturday morning, long after we’d be home.)

So that left Delta. I had spent a lot of time looking at Delta’s Comfort+ seats on their planes, but reviews on SeatGuru were really discouraging. A typical plane would have 4-5 rows of C+ seats, but the reviews would suggest that more than half of them were actually sub-standard even from an Economy perspective. Too close to bulkheads, too narrow due to in-seat tray storage, too narrow due to impingement by exit doors, etc. LOTS of complaints that being charged a premium price for some of these C+ seats bordered on fraud. Mostly importantly, the C+ seats really didn’t improve on what was already a pretty narrow (typically 17” wide) seat. So moving up to Comfort+ seemed like an absolute waste.

But what about First Class? Those seats were listed as 3-4” wider than the Economy and Comfort+ seats. Sure, lots of complaints that the cushioning wasn’t great, and that all the other things you might want in FC – mostly upgraded food – weren’t that impressive…but those W I D E R seats were the thing we really wanted. Since we were basically getting a pair of Economy seats for free (thanks again, credit card points) we decided to pay for the upgrade. If we hadn’t been subsidizing the trip with points then we’d have sucked it up and endured really uncomfortable planes in Economy seats.

The planes Delta uses SJC-MIA.  The Comfort+ seats give no more width than standard Econ, although kudos for wide-spread personal IFE and seat power.  The First Class seats really give you some nice additional width.  Many reviews says the “Recliners” really DON’T recline much – just a couple of inches, like typical Econ seats.

We had flown Delta for our 2016 Alaska family cruise and had endured no less than 4 flight changes (made by Delta, not us) in the weeks leading up to our departure. Ironically, by the time the dust settled we ended up back on our original flight – which had theoretically been cancelled as the very first change they made. So given that I was making flight reservations eight months in advance for our trip to Miami I fully expected Delta to once again make random changes to our flights.
Delta didn’t disappoint:

• Late October 2018: Minor delay for departure of last leg home
• November 18, 2018: All four flight legs change numbers, but everything else the same
• December 8, 2018: All four flight legs change departure times by +/- 15 minutes. Total time of inbound legs about 30 minutes longer.
• January 19, 2019: Return flight from MIA changed number and equipment (was A321, now A320)
• February 4, 2019: Return flight from ATL changed to depart 2 minutes later the previously.

About 72 hours prior to our flight we each got an email from Delta asking us to pre-select our meal on the longer leg of the flight. We each had a choice of either a turkey-sausage omelet with potatoes or steel-cut oatmeal with fruit and nuts. Apparently, Delta has been doing this for about a year now, as it helps them both streamline on board service as well as ensure they actually have the food that the passengers really want. I like this a lot – I personally hate the stress of worrying about whether my choice of meal will be available by the time service comes around to me. The actual meal was not very tasty.

As our flight was going to board starting at 5:45AM, by working backward we realized that we were going to have to get up about 4AM. YUCK! As usual, I made prior arrangements to use Park N Travel for parking and shuttle service to the terminal. Didn’t want to risk trying to find a Lyft at 430AM to get to the airport. We got to the parking just before 5AM and were in the terminal in more than enough time for our flight.

A (fortunately) amusing introduction to our flight. We were sitting in row 2, so could hear what was going on in the cockpit pre-flight. At one point they were clearly doing some systems testing because we heard a pleasant (but forceful) voice saying "TOO LOW. TOO LOW", "PULL UP, PULL UP", and "STALL WARNING." Better to hear those on the ground than in the air, but did help get the pulse rate up for just a moment there!

The flight in FC was pretty nice. We couldn’t understand the complaints about sub-standard seat cushioning. Seemed fine to us. While a lifetime of flying Economy means that I’m conceptually aware that FC exits the plane faster than I usually do, I truly had NO IDEA how fast FC is actually off the plane!. We kept getting off the plane within about 90 seconds of the door opening. That was amazing (but not something I’d pay extra for.) The food was nothing special, although not ever having to push past a drink cart (since everything is hand-delivered) is nice. Again, not something I’d pay extra for. Boarding first and knowing that there will be no competition for overhead space? Nice…but not worth extra. Now, the additional seat width and leg room? THAT I might be willing to pay extra for – although the reality is that we won’t. It will be tempting...but we won’t.

During our stop-over in Atlanta we had lunch at Grindhouse Burgers. I had selected them based upon reviews from sites that surveyed all the airport restaurants, and this one rated highly on multiple sites without being a really expensive place. Not sure what all those reviewers were thinking – we thought it was pretty poor.

Got a Lyft from the airport to our hotel, Hampton Inn and Suites Midtown. Took about 15 minutes. The room was very comfortable. For dinner, there was a wine bar called Lagnieppe (recommended by someone on CruiseCritic) that was ½ block away that was INCREDIBLE! It offered wine-by-the-glass and build-your-own meat+cheese platters inside - plus live music starting at 9P on Sundays, when we happened to be there - and outside had tons of seating with a food window to get things like churassco and fries. We both had this and it was delicious. A great chimichurri sauce, and I think the fries were among the best I’ve ever had.

We had semi-planned to buy a couple bottles of wine on our way out the door of the restaurant, but as we looked through their collection we couldn’t find anything that appealed to us (plus prices were on the high side). So in the end we decided to keep the backpack light and order our wine onboard.

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2019 Bahamas 4N Bahamas on Mariner of the Seas: Planning

Sunday, April 7, 2019 through Friday, April 12, 2019

Background

They made us an Offer We Couldn’t Refuse.  That’s how we ended up on a 4 night Bahamas cruise on Mariner of the Seas instead of going to Victoria, BC.  So let’s rewind a bit…

In July 2018, as we prepared to ship Robert to his freshman year at Western Washington University in Bellingham, we started to think about what we wanted to do in April 2019 when Andrew went to the OTHER Washington as part of the 8th grade trip to DC/NY/Boston.  Having a week in April for just the two of us to do something on our own couldn’t be missed.  But what to do?

An initial idea was to see if we could find a short cruise – anywhere – that took off after Andrew left but didn’t keep us out of town following his return.  Ideally, we’d be able to find something like a 2-4 day cruise out of San Francisco heading up to Vancouver, from where we’d then drive down to Bellingham to see Robert for a day before flying home from either Vancouver or Seattle.  It turns out Princess has cruises exactly like that, but they didn’t start until May.

We did find a couple of random cruises that ALMOST worked, in that they left the day after Andrew flew out, but most of them arrived home the day AFTER he got back.  The only cruise that seemed to work was the same 4 night Bahamas cruise on Enchantment of the Seas that we’d already been on in 2015.  While that was certainly a viable option, it wasn’t novel enough to get us really excited so we turned to Plan B.

Plan B was to get Andrew off to DC, then fly up to Victoria for a couple of days, followed by a short seaplane trip over to Vancouver where we’d spend the day tooling around Stanley Park on rental bikes.  From there, we’d rent a car and drive down to Bellingham to terrorize Robert, and then drive back to Vancouver for an afternoon at Capilano Suspension Bridge before finally flying back home.

This is still a trip we’d like to make…but then I made a couple of discoveries.

The first was that I had somehow overlooked the fact that Royal Caribbean actually had TWO ships doing the 4 night Bahamas itinerary.  In addition to Enchantment out of Port Canaveral they were also running Mariner out of Miami.  The fact that the ports were the same as our 2015 trip wasn’t a big issue.  We really liked Coco Cay, and saw no reason to leave the ship in Nassau.  We’d rather spend that day exploring the ship.  We hadn’t been on a Voyager class ship yet, so the novelty factor was soaring again - cruising was back in the running.

The second discovery was the clincher.  I realized that we could cash in various credit card and hotel points and pretty much take the entire vacation FOR FREE!!  Ka-ching!  Winner winner chicken dinner!  I see people on Cruise Critic all the time talking about cashing in points, but this was the first time we’d ever done anything like this.

So this trip began to take shape at the end of July 2018, as we took advantage of a BOGO with OBC to book a hump cabin (another first) on Mariner (100% paid for with credit card points), booked first class seats to Miami (the bulk of which were paid for with the remaining credit card points, so we splurged to upgrade mostly to have the extra seat width, with the out of pocket costs still less than it would have cost us to pay for Economy seats), a pre-cruise night in Miami (100% paid for with my Hilton points), pre-booked Chops and a soft drink package for Eileen (100% paid for with the OBC that came with our reservation), and made plans to redeem our RCI credit card points to supply all the OBC we’d need once we boarded.

So, to recap:

• Cruise, with awesome hump balcony: FREE
• Airfare to Miami: FREE (with some $ out of pocket to get First Class on all legs)
• Hotel in Miami: FREE
• Chops: FREE
• Royal Refreshment: FREE
• All other onboard expenses: FREE

Our only anticipated out of pocket expenses were going to be meals while flying out and back, Lyft fare to/from airports on both ends of our trip plus Lyft to PortMiami, and a couple of bottles of wine we’d be picking up in Miami before boarding.  In other words, a 4 night cruise was going to cost us just a couple of hundred dollars.  THAT’S the Offer We Couldn’t Refuse.  Torturing Robert at WWU was going to have to wait for another year.  Sad for us, but welcome news for him!

So, with the promise of an outrageously inexpensive cruise beckoning, I traded in lots of points at the end of July 2018 and got us booked for an April 2019 trip.  Eight months of anticipation ensued.

Sort of.  We had so many activities going on in those eight months that, unlike our earlier cruises, we really didn’t get into “vacation mode” until about two weeks before departure.  Royal tried their best; boy, how they tried!  I was the email point of contact on our reservation and starting about 8 weeks pre-cruise I started getting almost daily emails flogging some kind of pre-cruise deal and trying to get me to purchase something using the online cruise planner.  I don’t recall this level of marketing for our prior cruises.  Perhaps it had to do with the fact that I didn’t complete online check-in right away, which I’d done previously?

A note about the RCCL Visa credit card points that we converted to OBC.  I redeemed the points in early January 2019.  They posted to our shipboard account 14 days before our cruise departed.  This was a bit frustrating as there were some pre-cruise expenses (like the internet packages) that I would have preferred to pay using OBC and instead had to use cash.  This wasn’t a huge issue, however, because I expected that our redeemed OBC was going to cover our cocktail expenses (and whatever we didn’t spend would get credited back to our credit card account at the end).

Thanks for reading!  

Want to comment?  You can either comment here or go to the comment thread on cruisecritic.com.

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Welcome to My Memory!

I enjoy traveling, but as I get older my memory gets worse. To combat this, I like to write down my experiences, mostly for my own benefit.  However, I can't write without thinking about an audience, so here you go!

This site is a work-in-progress.  It started off documenting our Alaska 2016 trip but is in the process of being expanded, as I bring older trip documents under the umbrella of this site.  The navigation bar has a lot of empty placeholder links that I hope to build out over time.  Some of the links (most notably the footer at the bottom of each page) assume the older site structure, when only the Alaska trip was here, so please forgive unexpected links in unexpected places.

BTW: Why "Traveller" rather than "Traveler"?  Mostly an affectation - in my youth I owned a SciFi-based role-playing game called "Traveller" and therefore grew up using the alternate (but still valid) spelling.

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2017 Washington DC

  

Our trip to Washington DC in 2017 was one that I didn’t keep a daily journal of.  And I didn’t write about it right away after coming home.  And I (apparently) took only two pictures the entire trip.  So when I (finally) forced myself to try and write about this trip – in April 2026(!) – to say that I had little to go on other than really spotty memories is an understatement.  But, whatever I remembered in 2026 was going to be better than what I remembered in 2027 and beyond, so here it goes…

Obviously, this is going to be short and sweet compared to my other trip reports.  I DO have my Spreadsheet ‘o Fun from the trip, but in 2017 my format was a far cry from what I did later, and therefore its value as a memory aid is far below what later spreadsheets provided.

Anyway…

The purpose behind our trip from June 26, 2017 through July 3, 2017, was to attend my nephew’s wedding which was being held in Bethesda, Maryland on Saturday, July 1. The boys were 12 and 17, and at that time neither of them had yet been to DC.  We can’t recall why R didn’t do the trip as a middle school student, but A would do it in 2019 (during which E and I would do the “Bahamas 2019” cruise).

DAY 1: Monday, June 26, 2017

We flew out of SJC on American Airlines at 920A, stopping over at LAX before finally arriving at DCA around 9PM on Monday, June 26.  I had not been aware of the convoluted flight pattern that planes had to use in and out of DCA.  I recall being shocked and slightly anxious as I wondered why our pilot seemed to be having so much trouble lining up with the runway!

After collecting our luggage, we used the Metro system to get ourselves to the Hyatt Regency Bethesda, where a block of rooms had been secured for wedding guests.  We shared a 2Q room with the boys.  The hotel sat atop the metro system, so we literally take the hotel elevator to ground floor and then step around the corner to an escalator that went down to the underground station.  There was also a large bus terminal in a covered garage area at ground floor level, as well as a small Dunkin’ Donuts shop that supplied us with a number of grab-and-go breakfasts over the next several days.

DAY 2: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

We had a couple of big stops today.  The morning was spent at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, while we had timed entry tickets at 2:45P for the National Archives.  While I know we greatly enjoyed the Smithsonian, I don’t recall anything specifically at this time (i.e. 9 years after the fact).  Ditto for the Archives.  I do vaguely remember that there was a small fair setup on one side of The Mall, with (at least) a small Ferris Wheel.  I think it was on the “other side” of The Mall from where we were walking, however.

DAY 3: Wednesday, June 28, 2017

The original plan for this day was to stop by the Library of Congress before heading to the Capitol at 1015A for our 11A timed entry tour.  We ended up skipping the LoC, however.  I think we might have opted to sleep in another half-hour or so and we might have simply walked past the LoC.  We did make the Capitol tour as planned, and we also ate at their cafeteria post-tour.  We then headed back to the Smithsonian, this time taking in the National Air and Space Museum which was, not surprisingly, a big hit with all of us.  I particularly recall standing in a mock-up of Eagle from Apollo 11 with the boys.

While I don’t recall what we did for dinner on any particular night, I do remember that we joined S&W for dinner out one evening at Mamma Lucia’s for an Italian meal.  The restaurant was a short (7 minute), pleasant walk to a location south of the hotel.  It is possible that we were joined by Paul & Carol – not certain.

DAY 4: Thursday, June 29, 2017

The original plan for the day was to take in three places: Newseum, Ford’s Theater, and the International Spy Museum.  I had pre-purchased tickets for that latter two, but the Newseum website had indicated that it was no problem to buy tickets at the door, which is what we did. 

Newsuem was FANTASTIC!  So good, in fact, that we opted to skip Ford’s Theater so we could eat lunch at Newsuem and spend more time with the exhibits.  Among the (many) interesting exhibits were:

·         A room featuring several hundred climate controlled drawers, each featuring a newspaper of an important event in American history dating from the earliest publications up to current times.  So, for example, you could find a front-page edition announcing Lincoln’s assassination.  That same room was ringed by display cases with themed displays.  One of them had the garage door from the Watergate complex that a guard found intentionally locked open, causing him to call DC police and precipitate the entire Watergate scandal.  Another display case had a notepad from a reporter who’d won on Pulitzer prize in 2017 tracking down all 100 charities that then-newly elected Donald Trump had (falsely) claimed he was donating to.  Just a list of charities with handwritten notes like “no”, “never received”, “checking – they’ll get back to me” on it.

·         A section of interesting evidence collected by the FBI, including the shoes worn by the Shoe Bomber, the Unabomber’s hideout cabin, and (I think) the D.B. Cooper plane ticket.

·         A section commemorating (and providing a live count of) journalists killed doing their jobs, by country.  There was also a display of the car in which Arizona Republic reporter Don Boles was killed by a bomb in retaliation of his reporting on organized crime.  For some reason I had pretty strong memories of this event from 1976 and I found this simple display really powerful.

·         Rubble from Ground Zero from 9/11.

·         A special display of rock-and-roll memorabilia.

We were really impressed by everything we was.  Sadly, Newseum operated from private donations and closed at the end of 2019.  Such a loss.

We did make it to the Spy Museum in time for our 3:05P timed entry.  I had purchased tickets that included some kind of special game which I VERY VAGUELY recall us doing, even if I can recall none of the details.  Looking at their website in 2026 I can’t find anything that sounds like what we did – but their 2026 website also seems to describe a much more extensive collection of permanent exhibits than we had, and several interactive experiences that might all be vestiges of what we had paid extra for.

DAY 5: Friday, June 30, 2017

On this day we had planned to do “Mall memorials” in the morning – or, at least, that’s what I had written down on the Spreadsheet ‘o Fun.  In 2026, neither E or I could recall what actually happened.  Certainly the PLAN would have been to see (at least) the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and probably also hit Lincoln, WWII, and Washington Monument.  However, we did NOT do this.  Best guess is that it was a bazillion degrees out and we chose not to subject ourselves to the heat.  What, if anything, we did instead is a mystery, however.

In the afternoon we DID follow the plan and made use of our pre-purchased tickets to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, which was another spectacular and moving experience.  There’s no specific exhibit that springs to mind, although I do recall watching a film loop by a survivor and being teary-eyed.

The evening was spent at the home of the bride’s mother, where we enjoyed dinner and drinks.  This was the only place we went to that required use of the bus system rather than the Metro, as we had to head out to the suburbs.  I do recall seeing fireflies as we walked back to the bus stop late at night – something that was a “first” for all of us.

DAY 6: Saturday, July 1, 2017

We had time in the morning to take a guided tram tour at Arlington National Cemetery, which I recall being very interesting.  I had seen the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier when I’d done my own middle school trip around 1977/78, but enjoyed seeing that again, along with things I hadn’t seem previously.

The rest of the afternoon and evening were turned over to the wedding and reception, held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.  We arrived around 530P in order to participate in family photos.  The wedding itself was around 6P followed by dinner.  As expected, it was lovely.  Among the family that had made it out to participate were our Cincinnati family (minus Rachel, I think) and some of our Texas cousins (minus Miles, I think, and possibly minus Carl).  I THINK we sat with David and Judith at our table – but, again, memory is a fleeting thing.

Another “first” for us: getting from the hotel to the wedding was the first time we had taken a ride share, using Lyft.  I’m pretty sure that the previous night, when we’d left the house we been invited to, my aunt (Carol) was talking about how they’d use ride share several times previously, and I believe I thought “well, heck, if Old People can figure it out, so can we”!

DAY 7: Saturday, July 2, 2017

We started the day with a luncheon at the home of friends of the bride.  I recall a lovely house with very pretty garden and finally getting a chance to chat with some of our family members.  Otherwise, nothing.

The Spreadsheet ‘o Fun has nothing listed for the afternoon, so no idea how we might have passed the time.  In the evening, however, we did a Monuments by Moonlight tour.  Knowing this was on our schedule was a big reason we were so quick to punt the walking tour on The Mall a few days earlier.  I do recall lining up for the bus – and how our bus was one of MANY that were cycling through the busy loading area.  I also recall that the night was HOT and pretty humid, and how much the bus’s A/C was appreciated as we’d reboard after each stop.  I most recall the Lincoln Memorial, MLK Memorial, and Korean War Veterans Memorial.  Although the tour theoretically stopped “at” the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, IIRC it was actually an optional walk from the Korean War Memorial stop and, it being dark and nighttime, we we’re confident that we could get there and back in time to reboard the bus.

DAY 8: Sunday, July 3, 2017

The day was occupied by flying home.  We took American at 1255P from DCA via ORD and finally back in SJC by 7:47P.

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