Lake Pleasant Cruise in Arizona

Posted on January 1, 2024 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Phoenix from Lake Pleasant Charters

While cruises are usually thought of as lasting at least several days, there are day cruises available that often just last a few hours or less. Arizona is more associated with dry desert than water or cruising, but you can take a lake cruise there. My husband John took one through Lake Pleasant Cruises on a boat named Phoenix, which he has written about here.

bird in flight

Pleasant Harbor Marina, Arizona

Arizona’s Lake Pleasant Cruises offers locals and tourists a chance to cruise this
freshwater oasis 43 miles from Phoenix Arizona. Lake Pleasant is a man-made
reservoir created by the Carl Pleasant Dam in 1927. The lake covers 10,000 acres
and has 116 miles of shoreline. The lake has several islands that are home to an
odd variety of animals including wild burrows, bald eagles, Blue Herron, Mule
Deer, and a variety of egrets and smaller birds. Lake Pleasant is a great area to bird
watch.

cactus

Lake Pleasant Cruises offers several cruise options including a sunset dinner cruise
that I enjoyed in mid-June. The ship caters to just 120 guests and cruises the vast
shorelines and islands in search of wildlife, scenery and statue-like cactus that
tower above the terrain like giant soldiers guarding the lake. They also offer
private cruises for weddings, parties or corporate events. Mainly though, they
cater to tourists who want to experience a short cruise on this scenic lake.

egret

During my cruise we relished a really tasty barbeque meal as the sun and
temperatures dropped while enjoying pristine views in all directions. On one
island the crew pointed out several nests of egrets. On another island snow white
egrets perched themselves on tree branches searching the water for a meal of
small fish. As the sun sank below the horizon a whole new palate of color bathed
the scenery with a new post card like view. I definitely recommend a sunset cruise
to experience the colorful transition of this area. The wildlife is also very active at
this time of day.

sunset

During our cruise we did not spot any wild burrows but did see them on the drive
to the marina. If you are planning your Lake Pleasant Cruise here’s a guideline for
wildlife.

Bald Eagles: January-June
Blue Herron: February-June
Mule Deer: October-January
Wild Burro: Year Round

​Dinner cruises cost $80 to $105 for adults and last 105 minutes. Standard cruises
cost $30 per adult for a 90-minute cruise. Also note, they are closed during July
and August and mid-December through mid-January. Seating is not assigned and
first come, first served, but don’t worry, every seat has a view. In addition to the
inside area, the boat also has a top deck that offers incredible panoramic views.
The Phoenix is wheelchair accessible and has two bathrooms. Boarding begins 30
minutes prior to departure times.

For more information or current prices please visit http://www.lakepleasantcruises.com
info@lakepleasantcruises.com
Pleasant Harbor Marina
8708 W Harbor Blvd, Peoria, AZ 85383
602-456-9955

Lake Pleasant, Arizona

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2024
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Hits and Misses on Celebrity Constellation

Posted on December 29, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Constellation in Aruba

As always, hits and misses are purely opinion and other people may feel differently.

Hits

We had a stateroom with an oversized balcony which at the time was priced as a regular balcony cabin. Starting in April of 2033 that cabin and the others like it changed to deluxe veranda cabins so we got a good deal on it.

oversized balcony

Between a covid outbreak and thousands of flights getting cancelled due to weather or no staff our January 2022 sailing was less than half full at just 700 passengers. Which is great when you are a passenger because nothing is ever crowded and you rarely ever have to wait for anything. It’s not so good for the cruise line as they didn’t make as much money as usual or for the crew who outnumbered the passengers so their total tip count would be way down, but this is about what works for me and that low passenger count definitely worked for the passengers. With such a high staff to passenger ratio, the crew were very attentive.

dinner in the dining room

Menus for the entire cruise were available in the app. Besides being able to decide what to order ahead of time, if you want to go to a specialty restaurant or eat dinner at the buffet it’s nice to know which night’s dining room menu you’d prefer to miss so you can make plans for that night – or if there’s a menu you really don’t like you can make alternative plans because of it.

solarium

The ship had a great adults-only solarium. Besides having a covered area with glass windows with a pool and hot tubs, the pool was similar to the sort often found in pay-extra thermal suites with jets and racks to sit on over the jets, only this one was free. The water in the pool and hot tubs wasn’t as warm as generally found in thermal suites, but people weren’t paying to be in that area either. The solarium even had a little café that served healthy breakfast and lunch options, of which some were free. In other things sometimes found in thermal suites, this ship had a free sauna in the locker room by the spa & gym.

archery in the reflections lounge

The Reflections Lounge was a great hang-out space with floor to ceiling windows, and they often had activities there. We went to archery and Deal or No Deal of which the archery was free, but the Deal or No Deal is their replacement for bingo so it had a price – and good prizes.

little nook by windows

The ship had quite a variety of seating areas near windows in public spaces so even people with inside cabins could find somewhere to sit and watch the sea go by.

After having been on some ships with pretty tiny showers it was nice to see a bigger one on the Constellation. A bigger shower means a longer clothesline which comes in handy when you have wet swimming suits that need somewhere to dry every day. Even handier on long cruises if you handwash laundry in the cabin.

cruising duck

We found our first duck on this cruise, tucked into the center of a round couch sort of thing that spiraled out from that point.

The cabin closet had more than the usual number of hangers found in cruise ship closets. It also had plenty of other storage space for two people, which was all that we had.

desserts at the buffet

Food on the ship was mostly good – at least mine was. John tended to get served overcooked proteins at dinner, but mine were always fine. The dining room service was quite speedy, which could have had something to do with the crew to guest ratio since they didn’t have nearly the full amount of meals to cook. It was quite nice to have quick service throughout most meals. The only slow one was when I asked if they had gluten free pancakes in the dining room one breakfast and nobody knew. It took them awhile to find out so we had to wait to order, but they did indeed have them.

pool deck

Plenty of space was always available in deck chairs, buffet tables, and theater seats. There were generally more empty spots than ones that were taken pretty much everywhere onboard. No crowds anywhere.

Caribbean Sunset in the Reflections Lounge

Some of the bars each had their own different specialty drinks so people who wanted to try different things could find something new. You could also order standard drinks at most of them.

No indoor smoking always makes a ship a more pleasant place to be.

gym

The ship had a nice gym.

La Petite Chef cooking steak on a plate

The petite chef show at Qsine was lots of fun. It’s as much about the experience as it is the food with the little chef show before each course, and the food there was delicious.

The ship was clean and well maintained. Boarding and disembarkation were quick and easy.

One good thing covid brought to cruising is having people individually watch safety videos on their phone or cabin TV and check into their muster station on their own instead of the old much-hated muster drill. Hopefully they continue with the new system and keep the old muster drills a thing of the past. It’s a lot quicker and easier and no getting stuck in a crowd.

The bathroom had separate shampoo, conditioner and body wash, and even had hand lotion provided. This used to be pretty much standard, but some of the ships have started going to that nasty all-in-one stuff which was horrible enough when it was just shampoo combined with conditioner, but some even have the body wash included as part of it now.

Misses

Although this cruise was during the peak of a covid outbreak some guests sat in the theater with chin diapers, noses hanging over their masks, or no mask at all even though they were required in all inside spaces. Also some of the stage acts called for audience participation and since yelling and loud singing in indoor spaces is a good way to spread covid that was a bad idea even if there weren’t that many people in the audience. Especially since everyone tended to cluster in the areas with the best stage view rather than spreading out around the entire theater.

the promenade deck doesn’t go all the way around the ship

The outside promenade deck doesn’t go all the way around the ship, which is always a miss to me. Promenade decks that go all the way around are great for walking or jogging around them, while the ones that are more like an oversized balcony aren’t that useful.

Constellation had no ship model ornaments in the gift shop. It had other sorts of models of the ship in the logo shop, but not the most useful one.

top deck track

The running track is just a painted line on the top deck. It only goes around a small space so it would take a lot of laps to amount to anything. It goes through and above smoking areas which is not where anyone exercising wants to be. Plus top deck tracks are always in the wind and weather as well as the main thoroughfare for people transiting that deck so never really a pleasant place to run. There was really nowhere to run on this ship. It did have a nice gym, but masks were required and it’s pretty tough to run on a treadmill while wearing a mask.

it helps to bring your own outlets and USB ports when the ship has 2 outlets and no USB ports

Being an older ship, there were only two outlets and no USB charging ports in the cabin. Luckily we come prepared. I have a plug that turns one outlet into 3 and a clock with 2 USB ports which gave us enough places to charge things.

No outlets in bathroom for shaving or hairdryers, and the hairdryer they had is the sort you have to hold a button down the whole time while using it.

What time is it?

All of the ship’s clocks were covered up with a sign or photo saying isn’t it time instead of displaying the actual time.

solarium hot tub

The hot tubs were more warm than hot and the pools cool.

The future cruise people could only book what was available online. Even when faced with massive cancellations and people unable to get there due to flight cancellations, they were unwilling or unable to make a deal to keep people who were already there onboard for the next sailing instead of letting one more cabin sit empty. Apparently having more people onboard to spend money on other things and provide the crew with more tips was not worth it to the cruise line to make anybody willing to stay on for the next cruise a good deal even though it would have been to their benefit to make something rather than nothing.

Cruise ship internet is known for being notoriously slow. Now that a lot of them including this one have all-inclusive packages that include internet there are more people online than ever making it so slow that it couldn’t even open an email account sign-in page, let alone an actual email. So pretty pointless having internet at all when it’s totally useless. Hopefully they update to Starlink if they haven’t already done so. The last cruise we took (on a different cruiseline) installed it the day we boarded and we had the fastest and most reliable internet we’ve ever had at sea even though that cruise crossed the Pacific Ocean. That was a huge change from previous ocean crossings when there was no internet service at all whenever the ship got too far away from land.

No self-serve guest laundry and ridiculously expensive laundry service.

Smoking areas in the center of the pool area and upper decks where there’d have been smoke everywhere had there been many smokers onboard. Luckily there were only a few.

dueling pianos

Microphones in the theater, especially the one at the center of the stage were set so loud that the music was often distorted. They had a trumpet show one night and the guy stood right by the center microphone. It was so loud it hurt people’s ears and pretty much all of the already small audience left during the first or second song. You could still hear it outside the theater even in areas far from it. The next time they had an outside performer it was a fiddle player and she made sure to stay away from that microphone. She either had more sense or saw what happened to the trumpet guy.

earworm stairway art

A lot of the artwork around the ship was weird, odd, or just plain bad. The photos in the hallways to passenger cabins were blurry shots of things people wouldn’t generally take photos of like telephone poles and street corners. The stairways each had a different sort of art. One had weeds, one had blobs, and the other had childish things. Odd statues seem to be a requirement in cruise ship art and this one had its share of those as well.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023
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Caribbean Christmas Decorations

Posted on December 25, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Rif Fort in Curacao had lots of decorations

On a couple of our port stops from Celebrity Constellation, we saw some Christmas decorations.

Christmas trees at the port in Aruba

Aruba had some at the port.

port shop in Aruba

Some of the port shops had decorations too, mainly ones for sale.

welcome to Curacao

Curacao had Christmas nutcracker soldiers guarding the welcome to the port sign.

Curacao port

The port building had some decorations too.

decorations at Rif Fort

Rif Fort near the port had lots of decorations. It’s not an actual fort anymore, but rather a former fort converted into a shopping mall.

reindeer at Rif Fort

Reindeer left the wintery cold of the north for the sunny south.

Christmas at the fort

There were lots of Christmas scenes at the fort.

fountain in Curacao

Even a fountain just outside of the fort had decorations.

decorations between the fort and the port

We saw more decorations on the way back to the ship. It’s fun to find them in random places.

Railroad Bridge Park in the snow

Back at home a local park goes all out with Christmas lights.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023
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Saint Thomas Island Tour

Posted on December 22, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Wonder of the Seas at Crown Bay

Before our cruise on Wonder of the Seas I looked up places we could walk to from Crown Bay where Royal Caribbean’s ships dock in Saint Thomas. Google didn’t show much other than a beach and a place called 99 steps. This is an original Danish step-street built in the mid-1700’s. The bricks came from Denmark as ballast in ship’s holds. Step-streets like this one were built to access hillside dwellings. There are palm trees and flowers at the sides of the stairs. Blackbeard’s Castle – one of three national historic landmarks on the island – was supposed to be at the top of another staircase accessed from the top of the 99 steps.

tour busses at a viewpoint

Instead of walking there we ended up doing a bus tour. Sometimes impromptu bus or taxi tours are great, sometimes not. This was one of the disappointing ones that don’t go to much in the way of interesting places, but the driver did point out a tower on a hill which was all that is left of Blackbeard’s castle, the rest of which is a hotel that has been closed since being damaged in a hurricane several years ago. The walk also pretty much would have just taken us into Charlotte Amalie, so really either way would have been a disappointment unless the 99 steps themselves had been fantastic.

backside of a fort snapped in passing

The tour bus drove by some interesting things that the driver mentioned in passing, but other than the backside of a fort snapped through the window on the way back that was the earliest building made by Europeans on the island (which he mentioned when we passed by the front on the way out), I didn’t get photos of anything other than the places where we stopped.

ships in both ports

We went to a viewpoint on a hilltop where we could see both the Havensight cruise port which had 2 Holland America ships and one MSC, and Crown Bay where our ship was docked. From there the two ports looked closer together than they do from down below, but still just a bit too far away from each other to get a photo of all the ships at once without wide angle or panoramic options. I did manage to get ours plus a couple of the ones at the other port all in one photo though.

donkey at the viewpoint

There were some little souvenir booths, a guy with a donkey, and a whole lot of tour busses at the viewpoint. Most were open-sided trucks, but ours was a fully enclosed white bus. Not a full-sized bus, but bigger than all the other ones there. Probably too big for all the tight spaces we went in and out of that day as well as for the area’s skinny little roads, but our driver did have some mad driving skills. You had to tip the guy with the donkey to take any photos of it. Gotta make a living somehow.

Magens Bay

Later we pulled over into a small lookout above Magen’s Bay. It’s a popular tourist beach in a sheltered cove. Legend has it the bay was used as a place to hide while lying in wait for unsuspecting ships by Sir Frances Drake, a privateer sanctioned by the English to pirate Spanish ships. The bay’s name comes from Jacob Jorgenson Magens, an early owner of the property whose eventual heirs donated it to the island’s municipality as a public park.

Mountaintop

After that viewpoint we went to a place called Mountaintop, which had a giant Cruzan rum store that also sold zillions of overpriced souvenir trinkets. It advertised world famous banana daiquiris. It had a rack of “I love my dog” signs in which we found our dog’s name (Piper) as well as the names of Piper’s dog friends she stayed with while we were away (Brody, Gracie, and Angus.) Who knew our dog and our friends’ dogs all had popular enough dog names to appear on stuff in a souvenir shop. We didn’t buy any of them though we might have if they hadn’t been so overpriced. The shop was quite crowded so people pretty much had time to either wait in line for a banana daiquiri, for the restroom, or to shop. Maybe a bit of two, but not all three unless you were quick enough to the back of the store to beat the line to either the restroom or the bar. I think most of the people from our bus went for the restroom, but we got there first and beat the line so we had some time to wander around the store since we didn’t go to the bar. This shop must have had some sort of deal going with the tour busses because so many of them went there that they could hardly get in and out through the crowd of other busses, let alone find a place to park. Our driver had to back up a steep curved hill to get out because there were so many other busses he couldn’t even get down to the circular driveway to turn around.

Tree Limin’ Extreme Zipline (internet photo)

The driver mentioned a zipline somewhere in the vicinity. We did not go there or see it, but it would be something fun to do. That would be the sort of thing to book on your own and take a taxi to unless at some point ships start having excursions that go there.

windmill at Crown Bay

The driver offered to let people out in town so we could have walked to the 99 steps from there and then back to the ship, but I get motion sickness sometimes and was feeling a bit queasy from all the tight turns and steep hills and didn’t want to get out and walk in the heat right then and John didn’t really want to walk anywhere in the first place so we just stayed on the bus and went back to the port with everyone else. Nobody else wanted to walk back to the ship from town either so everyone stayed on the bus.

iguana at the cruise port

Probably the highlight of the day was all the iguanas in the rocks by the water at the cruise port. The rocks are right next to the water, but there was so much seaweed floating in it that it kind of looks like a beach in some photos. There was also a big white bird there. Its size and shape was similar to a heron. I had not seen a white heron before, but google says they do exist and that there are heron species in the Virgin Islands with white juveniles.

white bird overlooking seaweed and garbage

Besides seaweed the water there was full of garbage including a lot of plastic which is terrible for the ocean creatures. Royal Caribbean really ought to hire somebody to keep that clean because besides being horribly polluting to the ocean it also makes their cruiseline look really bad having all that garbage floating amongst the seaweed at their private dock.

map of Saint Thomas

A map somebody was handing out as we entered the port area showed parasailing available on the island, however it was far enough away from the cruise dock that it would probably take prior planning for booking and transport before the cruise to insure doing it. I didn’t keep that map, but found a map of the island online. Taxis are available at the port, but making sure a return taxi and a parasailing trip would be available before traveling all that way would be a good idea. The map also mentioned the zipline (called Tree Limin’ Extreme Zipline) somewhat near the Mountain Top place where we went, but showed it on a different road. Those appeared to be in the same general area of the island, high above a place called Coral World Ocean Park. There were no excursions offered to any of those places through the ship or near the dock so checking out the availability of both the activity and transportation back to the ship prior to the cruise would be a better plan than just randomly taking a taxi there without knowing whether space would be available for your chosen activity that day or how easy it would be to get back to the port afterword. Taxi drivers might know whether or not those things are something you could do on the spot, but then again they might not. I didn’t ask any of them so I really can’t say.

parasailing at Saint Thomas (internet photo)

Back before covid there used to be people offering all sorts of last-minute activities at most of the Caribbean ports, but so far post covid island tours are all that we have seen other than shuttles to town or taxis, except in Cozumel where they have booths along the street with on-the-spot bookings for pretty much any of the same things you can book pre-cruise. We have not seen any of the people with signs offering last-minute snorkel adventures or other fun things to do like we used to see frequently by the ports.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023
Posted in Caribbean, Ports of Call, Royal Caribbean, Wonder of the Seas | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Costa Maya Snorkel

Posted on December 16, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Meraviglia and other ships in Costa Maya

Having been to Costa Maya on previous cruises, we knew there was nothing much at the port but a pool and shops and a couple paid things to do. We’d already done the random taxi out to Chacchoben Mayan ruins and a kayak adventure at Bacalar 7-colors lagoon. This time we booked a snorkel excursion. You can book excursions through the cruise or random online sources, or just get somewhere and see what there is to do. We often book our cruises through Vacations to Go and they provide another excursion option with a list they send out of excursions to book through them. That was where we booked our snorkel excursion as well as the previous kayak excursion.

entrance from to Costa Maya cruise port from the dock

Ship’s excursions have an advantage in that they provide transportation from the port and if you return late the ship will wait for you. Things not booked through the ship generally leave you on your own to get to their designated starting point. Some provide transportation from somewhere near the port if the place they are going is quite far, while with others you get there completely on your own. Excursions booked through Vacations to Go do include directions to the starting point and a recommended mode of travel, which for this excursion was a taxi.

Mar Adentro Dive Center

Once you find your way out of the maze that is Costa Maya cruise port, there are taxis available both inside the port area and just beyond it. With 4 ships at the dock the walkways between the port’s many shops were a writhing sea of people. We tried going to where the exit had been the last time we were at that port, but there was some construction going on and the exit had moved to a different location. We had to backtrack back toward the dock to find the new exit through a long narrow corridor of small shops instead of the short hallway where it once had been, which now led to more shops rather than the way out of the port.

view of the beach at Blue Kay Ecocabanas from the water

Instructions to get to the starting point for our excursion at Mar Adentro Dive Center inside of Blue Kay Ecocabanas said to take a taxi, which is an 8-minute ride. Google maps said walking there would take just over half an hour. The taxi stand at the port sent us to a taxi-bus with a bunch of other people. We made sure it was just taking people where they wanted to go and not one that was doing a scenic tour before getting on. Most of the people got off at a beach. Just us and one other guy stayed on to go to the dive shop. He had a dive excursion there, which he was a bit late for. We were slightly early for ours, having allowed ourselves plenty of time to find the way out of the port and get a taxi.

snorkel boat

There were 6 people booked for our snorkel excursion, but other than the one girl who was already there and waiting when we arrived nobody else showed up. She was a bit worried about the time, but apparently had been mistaken on when her ship departed as it was still at the dock a couple hours after she thought it had been scheduled to leave. One advantage of booking excursions through outside sources is that they usually don’t have nearly as many people as an excursion booked through the ship.

life on a rock

Once they determined that the rest of the people weren’t going to show up we took a small boat out to a reef not far from shore so it didn’t take long to get there. We got a bit wet getting into the boat as we had to wade out to it, but we were going to get wet snorkeling anyway. They would have provided snorkel gear, but we all had our own.

blue fish

Before we got going the boat captain and guide showed us a chart of all the different sorts of fish we might see out on the reef. They also mentioned there were often rays there and occasionally turtles, but we did not see any turtles that day.

snorkel guide

At the site we ditched the life jackets that were required for the boat ride and donned our snorkel gear before jumping off the side of the boat into the water. On some snorkel excursions you just swim around on your own near the boat, but this was the sort where you follow a guide to places a bit more distant.

fan coral

The area had a lot of little reefs on rocky outcroppings with sand or seagrass in between, which we would not have seen if we had just stayed next to the boat. Sealife loves structure. Wherever there were rocks they were covered in small corals of many different varieties, with fan coral being the most prominent. Fish of various sizes and colors swam about the reefs.

small ray

Between the little reefs there were not so many fish, but in some places small rays sat on the sandy bottom. There were a lot of little clear jellyfish, but they were not the stinging sort. Besides a variety of fish from the chart I also saw some cuttlefish, which are related to squids.

found the right boat

A crowd of people from another boat got between me and the others of our group while we were heading back to the boat and I lost track of them. Our little boat had moved from where we originally got out and was hiding behind their bigger boat. Meanwhile another little boat identical to ours had arrived, stopping in the same direction away from us as ours had originally been, though a bit farther away. Having spent the time looking at sea life rather than boats I did not see either of those things happen. Not realizing we hadn’t just swam that much farther from it, I went the wrong way toward the other little boat on the opposite side of the bigger boat from where we currently were. I hadn’t gone too far in the wrong direction before the guide got my attention to find him and get turned around and head back toward the right boat.

little reef with lots of sea life

Reminiscent of our last visit to Costa Maya, the weather was nice during our excursion, but poured down rain on the way back. By the time we got to the port it had slowed down some, but was still raining. You don’t really get that wet from rain when you’re already soaked from snorkeling though.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023
Posted in Caribbean, Meraviglia, Mexico, MSC, Ports of Call, Shore Excursions | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Sitka Cruise Port

Posted on December 8, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Quantum of the Seas in Sitka

The first time I had a port stop in Sitka it was a tender port. The ship anchored near town with a short tender ride to the city. You could get great ship views from the top of Castle Hill. The next time it had a dock, but not in town. They called it the old cruise ship dock. It’s 5 or 6 miles from the city. There wasn’t much there. It was mainly a boatyard filled with a lot of old boats abandoned or undergoing repairs. There was a tent building with a motley assortment of old busses parked next to it, a few of which were used for shuttling passengers to town.

view of the port building from the dock

The ships still dock out there on Halibut Point Road, but other than a couple old boats sitting on the shore the remains of the old boatyard are gone. There’s a big fancy new building and new shuttle busses to go along with it.

the last remaining old boats onshore by Sitka cruise dock

Now it’s called Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal. The dock holds two ships. A constant stream of busses shuttles passengers to town. The free ride takes about 15 minutes to or from town. The lines can get long, but they move quickly. As soon as one bus leaves another takes its place.

entryway to the port building

Approaching the building from the dock you may come across offerings of last-minute things to do. Ours was the second ship in and we waited for the crowd to thin before disembarking so there wasn’t much left by the time we went by, but there were signs from a few things that had been there earlier. The new building has shops, restrooms, and wifi.

visitor’s center at the shuttle stop

Shuttles stop in town by the visitor’s center. There were more signs lined up outside with various things to do, but these too had nearly all filled their tours with just a couple pricey things left among the otherwise abandoned row of signs. We didn’t go inside the visitor center. There may have been options of things to do there, but since we didn’t check it out I can’t say for sure. There are plenty of things you can walk to from the shuttle stop. Walking tour maps of Sitka are readily available online.

Mount Edgecumbe view by the fish hatchery

Views near the waterfront are dominated by Mount Edgecumbe, a formerly dormant volcano that has started to show signs of activity. It hasn’t erupted in centuries and doesn’t appear ready to do so anytime soon, but they are monitoring magma movement and gas.

map of tourist attractions in Sitka

Sitka’s biggest tourist attractions are Fortress of the Bear, which is 5 miles outside of town and not in the same direction as the port, and the Alaska Raptor Center, which is within walking distance of the shuttle stop. Both are available in shore excursions from the ship. On previous trips they were also available last minute on shore, but we didn’t see anything for them on the most recent visit. You wouldn’t really need an excursion to get to the raptor center since it’s within walking distance, but Fortress of the Bear is a long way out on a road with no shoulders so that’s not one you can walk to on your own.

Saint Michael’s church

The closest attraction to the shuttle stop is an old Russian church. There’s a lot of Russian influence in Sitka as the Russians controlled the town for a time, but the original occupants of the area were Tlingit. There are other churches in town, and an old Russian Cemetary which is also a draw for tourists. There are lots of little shops near the old Russian church.

the sea walk has excellent views

The sea walk takes people a short walk – less than a mile- along the scenic shoreline to the National Historic Park, which has trails through the woods with totem poles along the way and a building with some Tlingit artifacts and exhibits, a short film, and restrooms.

Sitka Sound Science Center

On the way to the totem park you pass by the Sitka Sound Science Center, which has a fish hatchery and some small aquariums. I recognized the building when we walked by from an excursion on a previous visit called Birds, Bears, & Barnacles, which went there as well as the raptor center and Fortress of the Bear.

playground by the sea walk

The sea walk has views of the volcano as well as of the sea. It passes by a boat harbor, a playground, and a dock that you can walk out on.

view of the port from the ship

There’s enough to do in Sitka that you can find something worth seeing even if you don’t have any excursions booked or find any available last minute.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

 

Posted in Alaska, Port Cities, Ports of Call, Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Holland America Noordam

Posted on December 1, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Holland America Noordam

Holland America is known for having mid-size ships. They aren’t tiny expedition vessels, nor are they enormous mega-ships like some other cruise lines have. Holland America’s largest ships are the Pinnacle Class consisting of the Koningsdam, Nieuw Statendam, and their newest ship, the latest itineration of a ship called Rotterdam. Names of Holland America ships are re-used for new ships as older ones of that name retire. The previous Rotterdam was a much smaller ship. These three ships carry 2650 passengers and are just over 983 feet long and nearly 115 feet wide, which is big for Holland America, but far smaller than the largest cruise ships in the world. The Noordam is smaller at 936 feet long and 105 feet wide with a passenger capacity of 1972 people.

atrium centerpiece

Holland America Noordam is one of their directionally named ships. Sister ships of the Vista class are the Oosterdam, Westerdam, and Zuiderdam. P&O’s Arcadia is also of that same ship design. Noordam began service in 2006 and is the 4th ship to carry the name Noordam.  It’s also the 4th of the current line of directionally named ships. As the name sounds, Noordam is North. Westerdam is obviously west, Oosterdam east and Zuiderdam south. The atrium centerpiece appears to be the original. I haven’t previously been on the Noordam, but my last time on the Oosterdam it still had its original crystal globe that though not exactly similar to the Noordam’s centerpiece, the style resembles it enough for it to be original. Unfortunately the Westerdam’s original crystal sailing ship centerpiece (which was the most beautiful centerpiece of the three ships) had been replaced by an ugly gray spiral the last time we were on that ship.

views from the glass elevator

There are 11 passenger decks on the Noordam. 5 of these have at least some public spaces, 3 of which are fully public areas. 5 are filled entirely with cabins, other than the bridge at the front of deck 8. That only adds up to 10 because deck 11 isn’t a full-length deck across the entire ship, just a small section at each end with an observation deck at the front and sports courts at the rear. The center of the ship has glass elevators on either side which have a seaview on the upper decks, but when the elevator gets down to the lower decks it looks out on walls painted with birds, then lower down fish. The carpet on the floor in the elevator is changed daily so it always says what day of the week it is.

Lido Pool

Noordam has two pools, the largest of which is the Lido Pool. This pool has a retractable roof making it usable in cold weather as well as warm.

Billboard Onboard piano bar

The ship was refurbished in 2019 with upgrades to cabins and some entertainment areas, and the addition of the Billboard Onboard piano bar to the music walk area. Just before our cruise they added a new library to the Explorations Cafe, and on our boarding day the onboard internet system was upgraded to starlink.

top deck showing some of the radomes – big white balls for radar and sattellite equipment.

We left the port in San Deigo a couple hours late waiting for the starlink installation to be completed, but it was well worth it for better internet service, assuming people can connect – which was an issue for a lot of people at the beginning of this cruise until they got the new system fully working.  It took a couple days before they got the system completely working, but once it was fully up and running it was the fastest internet we’ve ever had offshore. The internet got an upgrade, but there’s no longer any public computers onboard so anyone who didn’t bring their own device is now out of luck for internet use. Phones work for most things, but there are some things that worked on my computer that did not work on John’s iphone.

Library at the Explorer’s Cafe

The Explorer’s Lounge library remodel gave it the fanciest library I’ve seen recently on a cruise ship. Long ago ships all had a whole library room with cabinets of books and games, but lately it’s usually just one or two cabinets full of random old books on most of the ships we’ve sailed on. Noordam now has a series of shelves with new books, each shelf a different section for things like mystery, fiction, and young adults among others. There’s even a book exchange shelf where people who still bring physical books when they travel can trade in books they’ve finished reading for something different. The library seemed quite popular both with the books to check out and the book exchange. We just used it as a place to hide ducks since we use the kindle app on our phones for reading. Unfortunately some passengers were not careful with the ship’s brand-new books, just dumping them haphazardly in random places or throwing them in the hallway outside their cabin door for the crew to find when they finished reading rather than returning them to the book drop as they were supposed to.

ship model Christmas tree ornament

This is the first ship we’ve been on since covid that did not add hand washing sinks at the entry to the buffet. They also did not have anyone there to make sure people used the available hand sanitizer as they entered, another first since covid. They did however have ship model Christmas tree ornaments in the ship’s shop, which is the one thing I always look for there.

aft pool

One really nice thing about a lot of Holland America ships is having the only passenger smoking section under a little covered area outside on a top back deck on one side of the aft pool so the ship sails out of the smoke as it moves forward. There’s no indoor smoking and if you want to avoid it entirely just don’t go out on that back deck. We only ventured out there for a couple scheduled activities we wanted to attend or occasionally for the view off the back.

outside promenade deck

Another nice thing is having an outside promenade deck that goes all the way around the ship, which is a nice place both to get some exercise and to see what is outside. You can see in any direction other than forward from the promenade because it is closed-in as it passes around the bow. The best forward view is from the Crow’s Nest lounge on deck 10, which has floor-to-ceiling windows across the bow. There is an open bow on deck 4, but that is only available to passengers when sailing through particularly scenic places.

ship art on a ship

Holland America’s app started out more functional than some, but still had room for improvement. Apparently they were aware of that because at one point it said it had been updated to add new features and improve function, after which it quit working at all for a bit until they got that settled. When it worked for food it has daily menus, but does not say what time the venue is open so you have to go to the paper copy for that info. It also only gave menus for the current day so no option to look ahead and see where the worst menu is if you want to book a specialty restaurant sometime. It’s even less informative about the bars. Basically it just lets you know they exist. Some might say what deck they’re on, but not the specific location and others not even that. No menu of what sort of drinks are available either even though some specialty drinks are only served at one specific bar. This is the first ship we’ve been on in awhile that leaves a paper copy of the daily events in the room without having to ask for it, though it is significantly smaller than they used to be. The app does make an alert sound when you get a chat message, which is quite useful. Seems like an obvious thing to have, but when we were on Quantum of the Seas only the one person of our group with an apple watch got an alert, not any of the rest of us using phones.

games at the Crow’s Nest

There are no self-serve guest laundries on the Noordam, but they did offer a laundry special of unlimited laundry service for a bit over $200 for the 34-day cruise. For cruise ship laundry service that’s a bargain price, but still nowhere near as cheap as washing it yourself in the cabin. Other than inside rooms that just have a shower, all the other cabins on the Noordam have bathtubs so there is a bit more hanging space to dry laundry than on most cruise ships. That helps since the amount of laundry that can be washed at one time is limited by the amount of space you have to hang it to dry. I do bring extra laundry lines. Luckily there was structure on both ends of the tub to tie them to since the walls above the bathtub were not magnetic enough to hold a hook with wet clothes on the line. On some ships the shower is more magnetic than the cabin walls, but this one was the opposite.

promenade deck porthole

If you haven’t got a cabin with a window or balcony near the front of the ship, the large oval portholes on the promenade deck near the bow are a good place to watch for flying fish. I did one day see one from a window at the Lido buffet, which is at the back of the ship so it is possible to see them even if you aren’t at the front. On long ocean voyages flying fish are the most likely wildlife to see other than when near ports where birds are common and marine mammals might be spotted. We saw dolphins in Hawaii right near the ship, whales nearby in French Polynesia, and turtles and pelicans in Brisbane.

the Diamonds

Entertainment wasn’t the best on this voyage. There were no production shows. They did not even seem to have a cast onboard. Many of their guest entertainers were not all that entertaining, though they did have a few that excelled like the xylosynth guy. Some of the comedians were OK, others not at all. The first one practically assaulted someone who tried to leave the show early, leaving the stage and running up the aisle to grab the guy as he walked out the door. Some of the singers like a girl group from Australia called the Diamonds were good enough to listen to the whole show and even go back for the second one, but others were not even worth staying for one full show. We always picked easy out seats at the back of the balcony where we could slip out virtually unnoticed if the show wasn’t any good.

heated ceramic chairs in the spa’s thermal suite

Scheduled daily activities were also somewhat lacking in things we had interest in, and often if there was more than one thing we’d like they were all scheduled at the same time with nothing else of interest the rest of the day. Not everyone felt that way though as the things that were offered had more appeal to them. Luckily we are good at entertaining ourselves. We did splurge and book the thermal suite at the spa, which gives access for the entire cruise to the facilities there. This class of ship has a nice hydropool and heated ceramic chairs. The thermal suite also includes steam rooms. Not that many people booked it so it was never crowded and sometimes nobody else would be there at all.

pork dinner (not exactly per the description because substitutions are allowed)

The food was generally good, though gluten free dessert options were somewhat lacking. I tend to avoid most seafood, but John said the fish was better prepared and cooked to the correct doneness on this ship than most. That can change over time with a different chef and kitchen crew though. Dining room dress codes have gotten more casual over the years. Shorts, beach flip-flops, and jeans full of holes still aren’t allowed at dinner time though.

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Thanksgiving on a Cruise Ship

Posted on November 23, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Meraviglia in Costa Maya

Apparently booking a bunch of cabins with extended family and cruising together over Thanksgiving is a big thing with a lot of people. We’ve had cruises that started or ended just before or after Thanksgiving before, but this was the first one that actually fell on the holiday. The ship was at or near capacity so everything was crowded. There were lots of large family groups. About a quarter of the passengers were children. Booking the next cruise after the Thanksgiving one might be a good way to avoid crowds though. Our 11-day cruise on MSC Meraviglia turned out to be a 7-day Thanksgiving cruise with a 4-day back-to-back cruise tagged on at the end, though we had booked it as one cruise. The 4-day bit at the end had less than a quarter of the number of people with only about 1000 passengers onboard. The shorter length of that cruise might have been part of it, but also being just after the holiday made it a less-popular time for a lot of people. Previous cruises we’ve taken just before or after the holiday were not that crowded either.

turkey on Carnival Breeze

We had one memorable Thanksgiving spent in a hotel in Miami between cruises, but had never actually been on a ship for Thanksgiving before our cruise on the MSC Meraviglia. The Thanksgiving spent in a Miami hotel is memorable not just for being between cruises, but also because there had been a big storm and there was no internet within a wide swath of the hotel. We had to walk a mile or so to a Burger King or McDonalds to have internet access during the few days we were there. On Thanksgiving everything was closed so our Thanksgiving dinner that year consisted of microwave macaroni & cheese in our hotel room. There hadn’t been any Thanksgiving decorations on the Carnival ship we’d just got off of during our sailing, but as we were leaving the port we saw they had just put up a giant blow-up turkey for the next cruise.

turkey dinner

We weren’t sure if there would be anything special for Thanksgiving on the Meraviglia since MSC is not an American cruise line, but turkey was indeed on the menu that day and they had a formal night in honor of the holiday as well.

Costa Maya snorkel boat

We had a port stop in Costa Maya, Mexico on Thanksgiving, and spent the morning snorkeling. At lunchtime we found the crew had put up a fancy display with watermelon and other fruit carvings, napkins folded to look like flowers, and a Happy Thanksgiving cake at the entrance to the buffet.

cake and fruit carvings at the buffet

The crew did put up a lot of decorations around the ship while everyone was out in port for the day, but the decorations mainly consisted of Christmas trees in various places around the ship.

cake at the dining room

There was a Thanksgiving cake at the entry to the dining room at dinner time, which looked a lot like the one up at the buffet, but with a neater job done on the frosting and without the carved fruit or fancy folded napkins. Special happenings for the day included a kid’s Thanksgiving parade and music in one of the lounges labeled as music for a Thanksgiving celebration. We did not attend either of those events. The dinner tables were set up fancy with napkins folded to resemble turkeys.

dining table set-up on Thanksgiving

The main thing that would make a Thanksgiving cruise special would be getting together with family for all the folks that made that sailing in large family groups. The dining room was more crowded that night than any other night of the cruise, with all the tables filled rather than many empty ones as most nights when a lot of people chose to eat elsewhere. Some of the tables that are usually slightly separated into a line of tables for 2 or 4 were pushed together into one long table to accommodate large family groups.

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Busch Gardens

Posted on November 17, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Busch Gardens sign nowhere near the entrance

Our original plans included a one-night stay in Tampa after our cruise on Celebrity Constellation, which was supposed to be followed by boarding Royal Caribbean Serenade of the Seas the next day. We booked at a La Quinta specifically because it had guest laundries and the plan for our day on shore was to do all our laundry between cruises and take the covid test for the next cruise that was still required before boarding any cruise ship at that time. Several days before we were to disembark the Constellation we got the news that Serenade of the Seas was cancelling all future cruises for the next couple months, starting with ours.

statues

With people cancelling cruises right and left at that time due to covid or the inability to get there due to their flight having been cancelled, we thought Celebrity would bend over backwards to make deals with anyone wishing to stay onboard for the next cruise as the ship would likely sail less than half full again. It holds over 2000 passengers and had just 700 for our sailing. We were wrong about that though. They weren’t willing to do anything other than what was already available on the internet to anyone who may or may not be able to get there. We could actually have booked that sailing for less online through Vacations to Go than onboard through the onboard future cruise staff. Even through Vacations to Go it was not any sort of bargain though. It was not even remotely a good deal at a price considerably higher than what we’d paid for the cruise we were on at the time, so we just decided to go home.

animals at Busch Gardens

We could only get a nonstop flight either too early to get to the airport from the time people are allowed to disembark the ship or not until late in the evening where we wouldn’t get home until the middle of the night and it’s a very long drive home from the airport. At the time nonstop was the only way to go to prevent the possibility of getting stuck at some random airport if the second flight of the journey got cancelled. We decided to just keep the already booked hotel in Tampa and fly out the next morning. The hotel just happened to be across the street from Busch Gardens. Since we no longer needed to prepare for the next cruise and it was right there we decided we might as well go.

roller coaster up close – taken from the ride’s exit path

It’s cheaper to buy the tickets online than it is to buy them from the park when you get there, plus you avoid the ticket line. For $25 less than the entry price per person at the gate the online ticket also included a free meal. Free food is a great bonus considering the price of food in the park. The free meal was redeemable in several locations within the park.

flamingos

At the one we went to if you didn’t have the free meal ticket a meal consisting of one meat, one side, and one drink cost $45 for pre-made cafeteria food from warming bins or cold trays depending on the item. That was also what was included in the free meal. They had other things you could add, but they all cost extra. The portions were generally not very big. Even with the online discount tickets aren’t cheap, but still $70 less per person than buying it at the gate and then purchasing that minimal meal inside. (There is cheaper – and one would hope better – food at some of the many little stands.)

roller coaster

I hadn’t been to Busch Gardens in many years before this trip and mainly remembered it having a lot of big crazy roller coasters. It does have a lot of those, but it also has so much more.

the first roller coaster we rode

Unfortunately not everything was open, but there was still a lot to do. A couple of the roller coasters were not up and running and some of the other things were closed too.

roller coaster

Our hotel was right across the street, but from a totally fenced off side of the park. We could see roller coasters out our window, but the entrance was on the opposite side. We had to go to the end of that block, cross the street, walk past the entire park including a parking area, turn another corner, and walk a short distance down that block to gain access so a pretty long walk to get to something that was right there.

view from the top of a roller coaster that looked mellow, but was actually very jarring with jolts and jerks on every corner

The park is divided up into a variety of sections so you can’t just go straight from one roller coaster to the next. There might be a couple within the same area, but then you have to walk to another area to find another one. There are other things to do in each area. I suppose that keeps the lines shorter since people are busy walking from one area to another rather than just heading straight into the next line. We were there pretty early and the lines were very short, but later in the day after more people arrived lines for things got longer, though nowhere near where they would be in peak season.

carousel (not in the little kid ride section)

There’s a whole section of little rides for small children. There’s a few child-friendly things in other areas of the park too, though like other things not all of it was open.

Sesame Street topiary

There are plants throughout the park, and some actual small gardens.

no way

One crazy looking ride goes up a giant pole and then drops down, first facing the people downward before it drops, then springing them upright again before it quite gets to the bottom. A lot of people got off that ride and then had to search for their shoes that fell off while they were on it. A couple months after we were there a teenage boy fell off a ride similar to the drop one at a different park and died. I have to be careful what I ride due to motion sickness issues and that one was a definite no. Some of the roller coasters are fine, but the ones that spin people around too much or the one with sudden changes from forward to backward are not anything I would do because I really hate barfing and that’s what they’d cause.

train

There’s also a train, which people can ride around to see various animals and the location of some of the roller coasters, or they can use it as transportation between one station or the other. It actually has 3 stations, but one of them was closed so it was just stopping at 2.

roller coaster over a train station (taken from inside the train)

You don’t have to get off at any particular station so once you are on it you can ride it around as many times as you want. It takes awhile to make a full circuit though.

zebra seen from the train

There are some animal exhibits in different locations in the park, with the majority of them in a big area where the train goes through. You can see quite a lot of different animals from the train. People can also pay extra to ride in the back of a safari truck on dirt roads that crisscross through the area and get closer to some of the animals than the train, which mainly skirts the edge.

meerkat

A paved trail goes by some animal exhibits that you don’t see from the train or truck. One of them was meerkats. It was mainly meerkat holes. Only one meerkat came out of a hole while we were there. It was much smaller than they look on the TV show Meerkat Manor. It must have been a young one because it was far smaller than the 9-14 inches adult meerkats grow to.

water ride – we did not go on it remembering from a previous visit it can get you really wet and the day was too cold to walk around in wet clothes. You have to pay to use the squirt guns to shoot at these people now and nobody was using them so it wasn’t as bad as it could be, but the ride can get unlucky people sitting in the wrong place wet on its own – and the wrong place could be anywhere depending on how the raft turns.

Busch Gardens has 10 roller coasters, 2 drop rides, 2 water rides, and some other rides. In addition to the little rides for small children there are also some play areas. There’s an ice skating show in the Moroccan Palace and for the little ones a couple Sesame Street shows. Besides the safari, there are other behind-the-scenes type animal tours people can book to have a closer look at some of the park’s animals. There are gift shops scattered throughout the park, but none of the roller coasters we went on exited directly through a gift shop like so many attractions do these days.

giraffes

It was a nice way to spend a day. Even with some things closed there was still more than enough to do there to fill a day. It would take more than one day to see and do everything.

elephant

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Food on MSC Meraviglia

Posted on November 10, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Meraviglia at Ocean Cay

Food on MSC Meraviglia is definitely far better for people who are not on any sort of special diet. They have plenty of food available, and the food is good – it’s just a bit tough if you need any alterations. Most cruise ships will take pre-orders in the dining room for people with special diets and then make that food for them the next day altering it as needed such as using gluten-free flours or non-dairy products.

pork dinner

Options for special diets were far more limited on the Meraviglia. They didn’t take any pre-orders or make any gluten-free items in-house. Their solution was to bring out a menu with only the items that already don’t contain gluten, dairy, or whatever it is a person needs to avoid marked as possible options. From those limited choices they then removed any offending items like sauces or gravy that contained anything not on that person’s diet. Some of our meals came entirely with no sauces or toppings at all, but others at least had a sauce on the meat that appeared corn-starch based. I don’t know if that was the standard sauce for those meals or not. The food we had generally tasted good even with the lack of choices and sauces.

gluten free cake

They did have delicious-looking gluten-free cake as a dessert option, but it was covered in whipped cream and came thawed from a freezer so it was not something they could leave off and therefore not an option if dairy is also an issue. For me whipped cream and milk that isn’t lactose free are the biggest offenders, causing nearly instant gastric distress whereas I can handle small amounts of butter, cheese, or even sour cream if I don’t eat it every day. I’m also OK with small amounts of gluten, though too much will upset my stomach. Dairy doesn’t bother John, but he also has problems with too much gluten, though it is more inflammatory issues rather than stomach upset for him.

gluten and dairy free tapioca dessert with fruit sauce

The only gluten and dairy free option they had for dessert was a tapioca thing that was OK when they put a fruit sauce on it, but not something anyone would want for dessert every night and pretty tasteless when served plain. Sorbet should have been an option, but our waiter said the sorbet on the dining room menu had dairy listed as an ingredient, which means it wasn’t actually real sorbet. The dining room did not offer up any of the actual sorbet from the gelato shop as an alternative even for people whom they had no decent desserts available for. Going to the shop and paying for it was the only way to get that.

Meriviglia’s take on pecan pie – a normal on-menu dessert

Cruise ship waiters and other food service personnel have no understanding of limited tolerance to gluten or lactose. To them it is all or nothing. Either you’re like a celiac or else you don’t have a gluten problem, and issues with lactose comes across as totally dairy free. Which meant every night without fail the starch accompanying my dinner was a baked potato with nothing on it, and nothing available to put on it unless it was one of the days where the meat had some sauce and there was actually enough to scrape off a spoonful or two. The good thing about it was that my vegetables did not come drowning in butter the way they are often served on cruise ships.

turkey dinner

Besides not making any gluten free pancakes or anything, it was also impossible even to get a simple piece of gluten free toast at breakfast in the dining room. As usual the waiters did not understand that there is a difference between celiac, allergy, and tolerance. We’re just limited tolerance where toasting it in the same toaster as other bread isn’t an issue, unlike a celiac whose food can’t touch anything that touched something with gluten in it.  Gluten free toast has not been a problem on other cruise ships, but then again most of them will also make some gluten free items like pancakes and desserts in house where this one did not. Neither did Wonder of the Seas which we went on just prior to Meraviglia so I hope it was just a quirk of these two ships and not a new cost-cutting trend with all of them.

buffet breakfast

There was no gluten-free section in the buffet either, but we really didn’t expect one having only previously seen an entire gluten-free section on a couple of Royal Caribbean’s ships. Most ships will have gluten-free items available somewhere in the buffet, and this one sort of did that. The pancake and waffle station had frozen gluten free rolls or croissants they’d warm up on request. They did not have a microwave anywhere at the buffet to warm them though so by the time they went to the dining room and back it took at least 10 minutes to get them. There were always plenty of items that were not the sort of thing that has gluten or dairy anyway so they were suitable for people with tolerance issues rather than severe allergies or celiac disease. The pizza station in the buffet said the only way to get gluten free pizza is through room service. They would not make any there.

buffet lunch

They did not make anything gluten free at all on this ship. Any gluten free breads they had were pre-made, frozen, and individually packaged so they could heat it and hand it to you without ever removing it from the bag. Which would insure it didn’t touch anything else – a good precaution for celiacs, which as previously mentioned they assumed everyone asking for gluten-free products was.

chicken and salad at the buffet

For most people the buffet had lots of choices. The station that made pancakes and waffles also had a selection of sweet rolls and pastries, There was another bread station with muffins, bagels, toast, and that sort of thing. And lots of stations offering eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, and other breakfast fare. They had a make-it-while-you-wait omlet station, one with fruit, and oatmeal, grits, or cold cereal. They also had rice and congee and a few other breakfast items unfamiliar to most Americans that some of the guests from other countries prefer.

the buffet had a great salad bar

At lunch and dinner the buffet had quite a variety of things to choose from. I always like the many options available on cruise ship salad bars, and this one did not disappoint. There were also plenty of the sort of things that naturally don’t contain gluten or dairy so by avoiding those that do it was easy to find a decent meal there. Dessert not so much.

tostada

Other than the dining room, buffet, and hamburgers/hot dogs/pizza & ice cream by the pool all of the eateries on this ship cost extra and required reservations. We tried the taco place one night when the dinner menu had nothing to offer us but the same rotisserie chicken we’d already had twice. It was good chicken, but it is nice to have something different sometimes. Food at the taco place was either a la carte or $17 for all you can eat. The individual items were mostly low priced, but also quite tiny. The food was quite good, but the service very slow in spite of the fact that there were only two other tables with customers – and they never refilled our water.

sorry, there’s no reservations available

All specialty restaurants required reservations, including the taco place. There could be nobody in there at all, yet they wouldn’t let you in without a reservation – and if you tried to make one on the app while standing there looking into a completely empty restaurant it would say none were available. We probably would have gone there again if we had been able to get in a second time. They could have made a lot more money in that place if they got rid of the reservations and just let people come in and eat as long as there were tables open. The same table that would only get a couple seatings per night with the reservation system would probably turn over at least 5 or 6 times in an evening rather than sitting there empty most of the time. Even more if they sped up their service.

sorbet at the gelato shop

The gelato place next door to the taco place on the other hand was not only generous with their servings, but also one you could just walk up to and order. It was a bit pricey and their topping offerings did not include any ice cream sauces, but they did have several flavors of sorbet to choose from as well as the gelato. The sorbet there was real sorbet without any dairy in it. It was also delicious.

chocolate snail at the chocolate shop

Across the way from the tacos and gelato, the chocolate shop on the promenade had homemade chocolates and fancy coffees (also tea or hot chocolate). Of course none of it came cheap. They did offer some non-dairy milk options and their hot chocolate was quite good.

teppanyaki place

We did not try the steak house, teppanyaki, sushi, or seafood place. Prices for those ranged from $30-$90 per person. Better rates were available in specialty dining packages of 3-5 meals, but they only sold a limited quantity of those packages and reservations on the package had to be made in person for each place rather than on the app as could be done when booking individual restaurants. Booking anything in-person meant waiting in a long very slow line for the one person who handled reservations for everything that didn’t work on the app, which was a lot of things hence the long slow line. We probably would have booked the 3-meal package if we could have made the individual reservations for each place on the app, but it wasn’t worth waiting in that line so we skipped it. (Calling for reservations was not an option either since nobody ever answered those calls.)

pork skewer appetizer

For a person without any special dietary needs, the dining room had great food and lots of choices. We probably would have been better off not to have mentioned having any issues and just ordering carefully since our problems are just limited tolerance to things rather than anything that causes severe reactions.

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