North Star on Quantum of the Seas

Posted on November 3, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

North Star on Quantum of the Seas

Unique to Royal Caribbean’s Quantum Class cruise ships, the North Star is a viewing pod that rises 300 feet in the air above the top deck of the ship for the best 360-degree view at sea. It’s a glass bubble somewhat resembling one pod of a giant Ferris wheel – only bigger, attached to an arm that not only rises up and down, but also circles from one side of the ship to the other.

North Star in down position

We knew we wanted to try it before the cruise even started. The app said it had to be booked onboard, but when it finally appeared in the available activities for the cruise on Royal’s website it said all times were booked full. Luckily the app was right and we were able to book it onboard. My niece Melissa suggested going up at sunset, which sounded like a good time for great views.

sunset at sea

We booked a time for the next day that coincided with sunset of the day we booked it, only to find out the next day when we actually had our ride that the ship had gone far enough north that the sun set over an hour later. The time we booked was the last time open that day so we wouldn’t have been able to schedule a later one and see the sunset from way up there anyway. There were people waiting to go when we came down so it wasn’t that it didn’t run any later, just that other people had already booked that time. It was starting to set while we were up there and went down shortly after we were done so we got some sunset photos, just from the deck rather than up high.

waiting area for the North Star

Check-in is on the top deck next to the pod. There’s a small waiting area with a bit of seating to hang out in while waiting for the group ahead to finish. When it’s time you take stairs or if needed an elevator up to the boarding level, where only people whose turn it is for the ride are allowed to go.

our group of 6 in the pod

This is an awesome experience. The glass bubble holds up to 12 passengers as well as a guide. The somewhat oval pod has a metal floor surrounded by glass walls. There’s no seats, but a metal railing runs around the inside at a height convenient for most people who are inclined to do so to grab. People can move about the enclosure as they please, taking any photos desired.

view of the arm holding the pod from inside the pod

You can see the view off into the horizon as well as an aerial view of the ship. It rises on a long arm that brings it out over the edge of the ship as it rises until the arm goes straight up, then out over the other side on the way back down.

the guide and the other people in the pod

There were four other people besides our group of six. The pod was pretty spacious and never felt crowded. Everyone had space enough to move around and take photos from all different directions.

disgusting smoke trail

Unfortunately at the time of our ride the ship was spewing massive amounts of thick brown smoke, the likes of which I have never seen coming out of a cruise ship smokestack before or since, not even on that same ship. Hopefully it was not as toxic as it looked since it left a trail behind the ship that went on for miles. This definitely marred the view in that direction, though that is probably the least of any worries that trail of smoke caused. We did not see that coming from the ship at any other time on our cruise when we went up to the top deck. Just that day. The smoke was plainly visible from the top deck too so it’s not like it could only be seen from the pod. If that is something this ship does on a regular basis and not just a one-off it definitely should be required to undergo some repairs as nobody should be allowed to emit that much pollution no matter who they are.

looking down on the ship

Other than the smoke, the view from up there is fantastic as you can see everything for miles around. You can also look down onto the ship for an aerial view you’d never get anywhere else.

guide and his control panel inside the pod

The guide warned us not to touch his control panel, and to be careful not to bump into it while taking photos.

looking down to the ship and sea from the pod

It does cost a bit extra to go up the North Star, but not a lot. They have different prices for different amounts of time in the ride. Ours was $19 per person for the extended experience, which I would guess by the titles was the medium length one since they also had standard and premium. There may be some complimentary rides available in port or on boarding day.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Posted in Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean | Tagged cruise, North Star, photos, Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, travel, unique cruise ship experiences | 2 Comments

Gluten Free Mini Rum Cake Bites

Posted on October 27, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

mini rum cake bites

Easy Gluten Free Mini Rum Cake Bites

Grease 10 muffin cups in muffin pan. Heat oven to 350 F.

Topping

3 Tablespoons butter (for dairy free use plant butter)

2 Tablespoons rum

3 Tablespoons brown sugar

Melt butter, remove from heat, stir in brown sugar, then rum. Divide evenly into prepared pan.

Cake

1 egg

½ cup Gluten Free 1-1 flour (I use Namaste)

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

2 Tablespoons almond flour

½ Tablespoon cornstarch

½ teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons liquid vegetable oil

1 ½ Tablespoons rum

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ cup any type of milk

Beat egg in mixing bowl, blend in rest of ingredients. Divide evenly into prepared pan. There will just be a small portion of dough for each cake. Bake 15-16 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean at 350 degrees F. Drizzle top (soon to be bottom) of each cake with about 1/4 to 1 teaspoon rum per cake according to your taste as soon as they come out of the oven. When you finish drizzling, run a knife around the edge of each cake cup to prevent cakes from sticking to the pan. Place cookie sheet over pan, invert, and lift off cupcake pan. Makes 10 little cakes.

mini pecan rum cake bites

For pecan rum cakes add 1/2 cup chopped pecans in the topping.

coconut mini rum cake bites

For coconut rum cakes add 1/2 cup coconut in the topping, stir 1/2 cup coconut into the dough, and use coconut milk and coconut rum. Use melted coconut oil instead of the liquid vegetable oil.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Posted in recipes | Tagged coconut rum cake, dairy free rum cake, easy rum cake, gluten free rum cake, mini rum cake, mini rum cake bites, pecan rum cake, rum cake | 1 Comment

Entertainment on Celebrity Constellation

Posted on October 20, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Celebrity Constellation in Bonaire

Celebrity Constellation had entertainment in the form of live bands scattered around the ship playing at various bars or by the pool at different times of the day. The outdoor movie screen usually had a couple different movies each day, some with a second showing available. There were a variety of scheduled activities each day and sometimes parties. The main entertainment was of course the nightly shows.

The first night’s show was a family-friendly comedian. He was pretty good other than making fun of Carnival cruise passengers, which the audience didn’t seem to appreciate. We’re not the only ones who sail with other lines. I wonder who he makes fun of on Carnival’s ships? Carnival used to be our go-to line, but we haven’t sailed there recently because most of the other lines are more restrictive with smoking and Carnival’s ships have gotten way to smokey for me. Not because passengers there are a bunch of criminals as implied in his routine.

cruise ship show

On the second night the ship’s own cast put on one of their production shows, a pretty typical cruise ship show with singers and dancers. The best dance act had a lot of lifts and acrobatics. The show included two aerialists who performed just with ribbon, no ring. A male went first by himself using both ribbons, then his female partner joined him using one ribbon each. They performed together, mostly but not always in contact with one another. Our first cruise on Celebrity several years ago was the first time we had seen an aerialist on a cruise ship. They seem to be becoming more common on cruise ships now and are usually included in Celebrity’s production shows, and often on other lines now too.

Broadway Boys

Night three’s show was the Broadway Boys, an outside act of 4 former Broadway performers who now do their own thing. In this case singing way way-way off Broadway on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. The show consisted of tunes originating on Broadway that made their way out into the world and shows that started out elsewhere and worked their way into Broadway. Stage lighting effects have come a long way from what they once were in terms of enhancing the show, but they still manage to shine the lights blindingly out into the crowd no matter where you sit. Not that there was a crowd. With the ship at significantly less than half capacity (more crew than passengers that sailing) nothing was crowded. And yet, in a theater lightly sprinkled with people and open seats all over the place, – nearly all the seats were open – a group of 4 managed to wander in 15 minutes after the show started and plop down right in front of us. Or at least the tallest guy in the group did. If they had moved along another couple feet before sitting or gone down one row (all of the rows in front of us were totally empty) they would have been out of the way. With the top of his head apparently not enough for blocking the view, he even raised his arms up above his head to clap at the end of the first song after he sat down. At least he didn’t do that through the whole show. Social distancing anyone? Yeah, they could have sat just about anywhere else and had nothing but open seats all around them. This cruise was taken shortly after cruising resumed following the covid pandemic so ships were only sailing at about half capacity. Between several storms around the country cancelling multiple flights just before that cruise and other flights cancelled due to lack of crew nearly half the people booked for the cruise didn’t make it so passengers were very sparse.

Night four had a trumpet player. Whether it was him or the microphone turned up way too high, whenever he played the trumpet it was earsplittingly loud. So loud it hurt our ears and we walked out on his second song. We weren’t the only ones. We ran into other people just outside the theater who left for the same reason. We could still hear it for quite a way down the hall into the shop area of the ship. We went to one of the bars that had a singer and guitar duo who played at a much lower volume and listened to them and watched some other passengers dancing instead. The music was nice and some of the passengers were pretty good dancers. The microphone in the theater was overly loud on most of the shows, but the trumpet was the worst of all as he played right into it.

Rock City aerialist

Night five brought a production show called Rock City with the ship’s cast of singers, dancers, acrobats, and an aerialist. Most of the songs are familiar to anyone old enough to have grown up with them, which is probably the majority of the people onboard since Celebrity generally caters to an older crowd. Though still less than a third full, the audience had the most people we’d seen at a show on that cruise. Only the male aerialist performed in this show, his female partner was nowhere to be seen. The last couple numbers had boys in skirts with 3 of the acrobatic type dancers.

fiddle player from New Zealand

The show night six was a fiddle player from New Zealand, with 8 years playing in Lord of the Dance and world tours under her belt. She had a lively show with a variety of music, and sense enough to stay away from the microphone in the center of the stage unless she wanted to say something so she didn’t blast everyone out of the theater like the trumpet player did. Maybe she had seen his show.

Company Men

Night 7 was a quartet of singers called the Company Men. Our stateroom steward said they were staying in the section of cabins he takes care of, and that they are really nice guys. They all had very good voices. Their schtick in the show was song mashups, so bits and pieces of a bunch of songs, but never a complete song other than that they put the bits and pieces together to make their song. We’d have preferred whole songs, but it’s their show and they do their thing.

cabaret show

Night 8 brought a Broadway Cabaret production show with the ship’s orchestra and singers. It would have been better if the volume had been turned down a bit from people in distant cabins wearing earplugs could probably hear it to something a little more reasonable. Sometimes things are too quiet to understand the words, this was quite the opposite. Too loud to hear many individual words. It seems like whoever was in charge of the theater sound system on that ship has a hearing problem they are unaware of and turned the volume up so high people with hearing aids take them out and still think it’s too loud. Seriously, we talked to another passenger who actually did that.

dueling pianos

On night 9 there was a piano duo billed as man vs women pianos. They both played very well. The guy was the better singer of the two. Their show would have been really good if they’d have stuck to playing songs, but they ruined it with their fake bickering over whether Billy Joel or Elton John is best and whether men or women are better piano players. They played songs or parts of songs from a variety of piano greats of the past few decades.

Night 10 the Company Men were supposed to perform again. Instead of the usual ship’s orchestra for background music they had pre-recorded music for this show, but their computer system crashed. They got a couple songs out before, and did one acapella after, but then ended the show early and said to come back for the late show in hopes they’d have it fixed by then. They were actually quite good acapella but didn’t want to do the entire rest of the show that way. This time they had done whole songs rather than bits and pieces in a mashup so it would have been better than the previous one they had.

opera singer

The last night’s show was a singer who had previously been a sub for a variety of parts in Les Misérables. Pretty much everything he sang sounded like opera, whether it was supposed to or not. Even an Evanescence song. Which I suppose is fine of you like opera. (Not a fan.)

acrobatic dancers in the Rock City show

Overall the entertainment on the ship was good, but as far as the theater goes turning down the microphone would have made it a whole lot better.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Posted in Celebrity, Constellation, Shipboard Life | Tagged Celebrity Constellation, Celibrity cruise, cruise ship entertainment, cruise ship shows, photos, travel | Leave a comment

Neighborhoods on Wonder of the Seas

Posted on October 13, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Wonder of the Seas in Saint Martin

It’s not surprising that a cruise ship as big as Wonder of the Seas is divided up into what Royal Caribbean refers to as neighborhoods. Other than self-contained areas like the Boardwalk, Central Park, and the Royal Promenade, it’s not always obvious where one neighborhood ends and the next begins, or sometimes exactly which one a particular feature belongs to, but on paper it does give somewhat of a guide to what to find onboard and where to find it. The neighborhoods all refer to public spaces on the ship, not to the areas where passenger cabins are located. Strangely enough since food is a huge part of cruising there is not a Food Zone. Perhaps that is because there are eateries scattered about most of the public areas of the ship with the main dining room on decks 3, 4, & 5 and the buffet on deck 15.

ice show

Entertainment Place

Entertainment Place is found on deck 4. The theater sits at the front of the ship. It extends up to deck 5 and down to deck 3. This is where stage shows and singing & dancing production shows are found, similar to what most cruise ships have, but certainly not the only shows to be found on this ship. Deck 4 also has a comedy club called The Attic where comedians perform their act on a small stage. It’s home to the Diamond Club, a lounge reserved only for guests at the highest levels of Royal Caribbean’s loyalty program. Next door sits the Golden Room which was originally intended to be a high roller casino for the Chinese cruise ship market, but since the ship was not sailing in China it was used as a small non-smoking casino that most people onboard probably didn’t know existed instead. The ice-skating arena sits at the center of the ship, with an art gallery hallway running along one side outside of the ice area, linking the main casino to the rest of Entertainment Place. Besides ice shows the skating arena is sometimes used for things like glow-in-the-dark laser tag. It may sometimes have open skating sessions for passengers as the ice arena did on Explorer of the Seas, but there weren’t any during our cruise. Maybe that was a pre-covid thing or just for the smaller ships as there weren’t any during our cruise on Symphony of the Seas either. The large smokey casino is on the other side of the skating rink bordering the main dining room. There’s a set of elevators between the casino and dining room, and restrooms just outside of the casino. There is a music hall on deck 8 & 9, a card room on deck 14, and the AquaTheater is not in that area either so not all of the entertainment is located within the Entertainment Place area of deck 4.

Royal Promenade

The Royal Promenade located on deck 5 is designed to look somewhat like a city street with shops along the sides and apartments rising above, though in this case the “apartment” windows actually belong to promenade view inside cabins on the deck just above the Royal Promenade. Although there isn’t any actual car traffic, it does have a car sitting out in the middle of the promenade and some car-themed decor mainly centered around Route 66. One of the bars along the promenade called Boleros has a bench made from part of a car.

car on the promenade

The promenade is also home to guest services and some eateries as well as shops and the Bionic Bar – where the bartenders are robots. It is also sometimes home to the Rising Tide Bar, which is a bar on an open elevator that sometimes rises up to Central Park. Free food is available at Sorrentos Pizza and Cafe Promenade, though specialty coffee and tea at the cafe cost extra. The pizza place made gluten free pizza on request, but the cafe had nothing gluten free. It did not have any hot chocolate either, though that could be found down the way at Starbucks, who did have non-dairy options. There’s also a place called Spotlight Karaoke, which probably should be part of Entertainment Place, but apparently the promenade is where they had room for it.

the outside promenade deck on Royal’s Oasis class ships is the best cruise ship track ever

The outside promenade deck, which runs around the outside of deck 5, is set up as an awesome track. It is not part of the promenade neighborhood, but rather goes along with the gym for fitness.

spa treatment room

Vitality Spa & Fitness

Although spa and fitness are included in the same neighborhood, they are not on the same deck. Both are at the bow with the spa on deck 5 and the fitness center on deck 6 – other than the aforementioned track which runs along the outer edge of deck 5. The spa has a thermal suite as well as a variety of treatment rooms for things like massages, teeth whitening, seaweed body wraps, and acupuncture.

gym

There’s also a beauty salon where services include haircuts, up-doos, and manicures. While most spa treatments are a one-time thing, you can book use of the thermal suite for the entire cruise, though this one charged extra for use of the thermal suite’s hot tub. The fitness center has a plethora of fitness equipment and also offers classes including yoga and Pilates.

the ultimate abyss slides end on the boardwalk

Boardwalk

The Boardwalk is found at the back of deck 6. It is an outside area surrounded on three sides by the interior of the ship. The top is open to the sky and the back is mostly open, though it does have some structure surrounding the AquaTheater at the very back of the boardwalk. The entrance to the boardwalk is a set of giant sliding glass doors just behind the aft elevator bay. A series of stand-alone carousel horses in various states of completement lead the way to the carousel, which has some other animals besides horses. Passengers of all ages can ride the carousel for free whenever it is open. Shops, a bar, and eateries line the outer edges of the boardwalk, with staterooms rising above to the top of the ship, a few with windows on deck 7, and balconies from deck 8 and above.

water show

At the very back of the rows of rooms each side from deck 8 up has one suite with balconies that wrap around so they have views of both the AquaTheater and the ocean. Eateries on the boardwalk include the Dog House, which has hot dogs at no additional charge, and Johnny Rockets where the burgers and shakes cost extra, but breakfast is free. Between them are a couple shops, one of which is a candy store. The other entire side is taken up by Playmakers, a sports bar and arcade. Outside of Johnny Rockets there’s a colorful climbing area for small children. The landing for the 10-deck Ultimate Abyss dry slides sits at the center back of the Boardwalk, just in front of the AquaTheater. The AquaTheater puts on an impressive water show which includes aerialists as well as dancers and divers. The rock climbing walls tower above the back of the boardwalk, with their entry platforms on deck 7, though you can get there from this level by stairway.

garden and pathway in Central Park

Central Park

Central Park is another open area on the inside of the ship, located as the name indicates in the center. The park is on deck 8, and like the boardwalk it has inside balcony cabins rising above it on higher decks. We stayed in one of those cabins and liked it a lot more than we thought we would before we went on our cruise. There are gardens with live plants, and some plants growing on walls under an overhead walkway where there aren’t any cabins. Pathways wind between the gardens.

elephant sculpture in the garden

There are a couple of structures resembling greenhouses that are actually skylights to the Royal Promenade. The third greenhouse-like structure is where the Rising Tide Bar sits when it is at the garden level. Looking down on them from above the shape of the three structures together somewhat resembles a very large fish, eel, or perhaps sea monster undulating up and down through the deck. Here too the edges have shops and eateries. Most of the eateries at this level are pay-extra, other than the Park Cafe where the food is free. There’s also one small bar and some places to sit. Deck 9 has interior cabins with windows above the park and the balconies start on deck 10.

kids climbing thing on the boardwalk

Youth Zone

Youth Zone is where the kid’s club areas are on deck 14, which is really deck 13 since there is no deck numbered 13 on this ship, and on deck 16. Royal has separate programs for varying age groups starting at age 3. The age groups are 3-5, 6-8, and 9-11. There are also activities for teenagers divided by age to 12-14 and 15-17. The kids’ area called Adventure Ocean is located at the front of deck 14. The teen area called Social 100 is just back of center on the port side of deck 16. Children’s activities include things like crafts, art, science, scavenger hunts, games, stories, and themed parties. There’s an arcade not far from the teen area on the other side of the ship.

waterslides on the pool deck

Pool & Sports Zone

The pool and sports zone is mainly found at the front and back of deck 15 and the back of deck 16. The very front of deck 15 houses the glassed-in adults only solarium, which also has a bit extending down to deck 14. This area has its own hot tubs, bar, and even a free bistro, which is a great place to go for lunch as it tends not to be as crowded as some of the other food venues. There are of course many deck chairs in the area as well as a towel station. The forward elevator bay sits between the solarium and the open deck. The pool deck of course has even more deck chairs, some of which sit in the shallows of the beach pool on the starboard side of the ship.

beach pool

The entrance to the ship’s 3 waterslides lies near the beach pool. There’s a lot of stairs to climb to get to the top of the slides. There’s an open area in the center of the pool deck looking down on Central Park. On the port side there’s a splash park with waterslides for small children called Splashaway Bay. The outdoor movie screen sits at the front end of the open area over Central Park. Behind that you find the Lime & Coconut Bar, followed by main pools on both sides of the ship. Beyond the aft elevators there’s a pay-extra eatery called The Mason Jar on the starboard side, and the Windjammer Buffet on both sides. At the back of deck 15 there’s a flowrider on the port side and a playground for small children called Wonder Playscape starboard. A ramp alongside the playground leads to deck 16, though the kids can also get up to that deck inside the playground which is on both levels.

octopus at the mini golf

A mini-golf course called Wonder Dunes sits just forward of the playground on deck 16. It’s very well decorated with lots of whimsical features and a giant octopus that can be seen from shore, but they seem to have put more thought into how the course looks than they did into actual playability of the holes. The port side across from Wonder Dunes has a sports court, and in the center a zipline goes across the open area over the Boardwalk. The entrance to the zipline is near the stern, which also has a bar called the Wipe Out Bar – maybe people head there after unsuccessful tries on the flow rider? Behind that bar at the very back of the ship there’s a giant purple anglerfish with stairways inside that serves as the entrance to the 10-deck Ultimate Abyss dry slides.

suite sundeck (internet photo)

Suite Class Neighborhood

Oasis Class ships built prior to Wonder just have 7 neighborhoods, but Wonder added an 8th one with the Suite Class Neighborhood, which is of course only for people who are staying in suites – and junior suites don’t count. This area is located on decks 17 and 18, where suites are the only staterooms to be found. Suite guests can hang out there without having to associate with the peons from smaller quarters on the rest of the ship. They have their own bar, sundeck, and plunge pool at the front of deck 17. In the back section of that deck, along with the grand suites, there’s a lounge just for suite guests and their own private dining room called the Coastal Kitchen. The front and back sections of deck 17 are not connected because those decks don’t run the full length of the ship. Deck 18 is just over the back section of deck 17 and has another sundeck in the midst of some fancy suites including two one-of-a-kind enormous suites, the Ultimate Family Suite, which is two-decks high, sleeps up to 10 people, and has a slide from the upper to lower levels and other family-friendly amenities like its own air hockey and ping-pong tables, and the Royal Loft Suite, also two decks high. It has more square footage, but only sleeps 6. There are also crown loft suites and owners suites in that area, but none of them are one-of-a-kind.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Posted in Royal Caribbean, Shipboard Life, Wonder of the Seas | Tagged cruise, neighborhoods on Wonder of the Seas, photos, Royal Caribbean, travel, Wonder of the Seas | Leave a comment

Cruise Ship Cabins on Quantum of the Seas

Posted on October 6, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Quantum of the Seas in Icy Strait Point

Like all major cruise ships, Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas has a variety of staterooms and suites to choose from. From budget saving inside cabins to spacious suites, there’s something to suit every cruiser. There’s a total of 2094 rooms which includes 125 suites, 1446 balcony cabins, 148 oceanview, 375 inside (some with virtual balconies) and 28 studios. Most are 180-200 square feet, with the majority of balconies at 55 square feet. The major categories are interior, oceanview, balcony, and suite. Other than suites that vary considerably, the major differences between sub-categories of other cabins is usually their location within the ship or whether anything may be blocking all or part of the view. Generally cabins higher on the ship and closer to the center are considered more desirable and therefore more expensive, but if you are prone to seasickness lower down and close to the center has the least movement. Checking the deck plans before booking is a good way to see if there are any cabins within a category that are bigger than normal or have an extra-large balcony. Those are often found in corners or curved areas of the ship.

inside studio

Studio cabins are the smallest at about 100-120 square feet, with the smaller size for the interior which are listed as 101 square feet and the larger for the balcony studios at 119. Although intended for just one person, they have full sized beds. Some are adjacent to a larger cabin with connecting doors so that they can be used either as a separate cabin or as an extra bedroom to the larger cabin. Solo cabins on Quantum include interior with virtual view and balcony cabins. The virtual view is a real-time video window so the occupant can see what’s outside and whether it is day or night even though they are in an interior cabin. It is separate from the TV and there is a curtain that can be drawn over the video window, or it can be turned off. The biggest advantage of booking a studio cabin for solo cruisers is avoiding the single supplement that comes with rooms intended for two that can be as high as the cost of having a second person in the room.

interior cabin with virtual balcony

Interior cabins on Quantum pretty much all have virtual balconies, which is a live-feed view of the outside same as in the interior studio staterooms. Standard size is generally 166 square feet, with accessible cabins at 256 square feet. Accessible cabins are usually the biggest in any cabin category on all the cruise ships. There are even a few connecting inside cabins available for people who want closer connections to their traveling companions than just being next door. Connecting cabins are handy if you are with the people on the other side, but best avoided when possible if you are not traveling with them because even though that door stays locked on both sides if you are not traveling with those people, you can hear the people in the next room through that door a lot more easily than through a standard wall. Interior cabins hold 2-4 people depending on the stateroom.

oceanview cabin

Oceanview cabins are mostly located on the outer edges of deck 3. These are standard-sized ocean view cabins at 182 square feet. Some of the higher decks have spacious ocean view cabins at the front, which are listed as 214 square feet on Royal’s website, but if you could snag one of the corner rooms they look considerably larger in the deck plans. Oceanview cabins hold up to 4 people depending on the designated number for each particular room.

it’s sort of a trundle bed except both sides are the same height

We stayed in one with 4 people and discovered that instead of two bunks or one bunk and a couch bed, this ship uses a pull-out in the couch that turns it into a double bed. There was plenty of storage for all 4 people because in addition to two closets and 6 drawers, there were also 4 pretty spacious wall-mounted cubbies above the beds and couch. Once again connecting cabins are something to look out for whether it is because you want to book two together or want to avoid the noise of neighbors you’re not with.

accessible oceanview cabin

Accessible cabins are usually larger than other cabins of the same category. The ones on Quantum were definitely more spacious than the standard oceanview cabins.

bathroom in accessible oceanview cabin

It’s not only the cabin area that’s more spacious in accessible cabins. The bathroom here is more than double the size of the bathrooms in the standard cabins. The shower is level with the floor for roll-in access for wheelchair users, unlike standard cabin showers with a rim you have to step over on the way in. Normally that larger shower means a longer clothesline that pulls out from the side of the shower, but Quantum did not have a clothesline in the shower. It was also lacking for toiletries, having just a combo shampoo/body wash and no conditioner. We had to ask for washclothes as well.

balcony cabin

Standard balcony cabins are 198 square feet with 55 square foot balconies. Though listed as larger, the main difference we noticed between our oceanview cabin and my nieces’ balcony cabin was the balcony instead of the window. It had the exact same furnishings, but in the oceanview the couch was up next to the framework around the window, which was wide enough to sit in the window. The balcony cabin had a bit of space between the couch and sliding door. There are a bunch on deck 6 listed as having obstructed views and among those as well as any of the other decks if you choose your cabin carefully using the deck plans there are some with bigger balconies and the same category listing as others with regular sized balconies. Cabins on Quantum came equipped with teapots, something I had only seen previously on P&O. There wasn’t any tea in the cabin, but teabags are easy to come by in the Lido buffet.

standard balcony

The standard balcony was pretty much average size as far as cruise ship balconies go. It did have a little table, which some ships don’t.

accessible balcony cabin

Like the accessible oceanview cabins, the accessible balcony cabins were quite spacious in comparison to the standard room.

royal loft suite

Suites come in quite a variety of shapes and sizes ranging from 267 square foot Junior Suites that are pretty much just extra-large balcony cabins up to the 1640 square foot two-story Royal Loft Suite. In between there’s also the two-story Owner’s Loft Suite, Grand Loft Suites and Sky Loft Suites and single story one and two-bedroom Grand Suites. Some of the larger suites have balconies that are considerably bigger than whole entire ordinary staterooms. Bathrooms in the suites are of course much bigger and fancier than those found in other staterooms as well. Other than junior suites which pretty much just get priority boarding, the larger suites also come with perks that you don’t get with regular cabins like access to the suite lounge and sundeck, free room service, in-suite dining with dining room menu items, reserved seating for shows, concierge service, backstage tour, and double loyalty points.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Posted in Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean | Tagged cruise, cruise ship cabins, photos, Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, travel | Leave a comment

Symphony of the Seas Hits and Misses

Posted on September 29, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

life ring

Hits and Misses on Symphony of the Seas is purely my opinion (with some input from my sisters) about the things we liked and didn’t like about the ship during our cruise. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion so it is likely something we didn’t like could be someone else’s favorite thing about the ship.

Hits

One of the best things about Symphony of the Seas is the variety of things to do. There are of course the usual cruise ship things like pools, hot tubs, and organized activities. On this ship there is so much more. Lots of things people can do on their own. It has waterslides as well as 10-deck dry slides. There’s a flow rider, rock climbing walls, mini golf, ping-pong tables, a carousel, piano stairs, running track, and even a zip line among the many options of things to do onboard.

pool deck, waterslides, and Central Park

There’s also a lot of different places to go, which is nice to keep a ship that carries so many people from feeling crowded. At least it never felt crowded anywhere during our cruise, but then again it sailed less than half full so there was a lot more space per person than there would be if the ship was full. Which was definitely a plus. People can hang out on the pool deck, in the solarium, go to any of the fun stuff mentioned above, or go to other areas of the ship like the Boardwalk, Central Park or the Royal Promenade.

When booking a cruise Symphony of the Seas offers extensive cabin choices. Besides the usual inside, ocean view, balcony, or suite, this ship has inside cabins with outside spaces in the balcony cabins above the boardwalk and Central Park, and some inside cabins with a view window above the Boardwalk and Royal Promenade as well. It also has a greater variety of suites than most ships. Even some of the completely closed in inside cabins have a virtual balcony view.

elevator bay decor

The crew on this ship was very attentive. Granted they didn’t have as many passengers to take care of as usual, but they did all seem to go out of their way to help passengers in whatever way they could. Typical of crews on other ships we’ve been on, somehow they manage to remember individual passengers even when they see you in other areas of the ship than where they work, or from one venue to the next if they work more than one area. Even when people aren’t wearing masks I’d find it hard to remember a new group of faces every week, yet cruise ship crews manage it even with people who are masked a lot of the time, which they were on this cruise as it was taken when cruising first started back up again after covid and masks were required in all indoor public spaces.

running track on the promenade deck

Symphony of the Seas had the best outside promenade deck I’d ever seen on a cruise ship. (Royal’s other ships in the same ship class have the same, but Symphony was the first of those ships I sailed on.) I always prefer ships with an outside promenade deck that goes all the way around the ship. It’s the best place onboard for a run. Some ships have top-deck tracks, which are usually just a painted line. Those are awful. Besides not covering a lot of distance, they are out exposed to the elements and on some ships pass through and/or above smoking areas. They’re also generally the main passageway for that deck so crowded with people just going from one place to another rather than actually using the so-called track. Symphony not only had an outside promenade deck fully encircling the ship, it actually had the outside promenade deck set up as a track. Promenade decks are great for tracks. Besides going all the way around the ship, they’re at least partially sheltered. Usually mainly overhead, but this one was behind the lifeboats on the sides and enclosed at the bow so more shelter than usual, but less view since on the sides it’s just bits between lifeboats. It also had distance markers so if you started at their designated starting point you would know how far you went. Signs overhead and along the sides of the ship ranged from informative to encouraging to entertaining. There were also a few chairs and a bit of space at the stern where people could sit and watch the wake go by. On each side an open space held something to do, one with shuffleboard and the other with ping-pong and cornhole.

bionic bar

A big hit for our sailing rather than for the ship itself was that nothing was ever crowded since it had less than half the guests the ship could hold during our sailing. There were some areas of the ship closed since there were less guests. One whole level of the normally 3-deck dining room was closed, as well as at least one section of cabins. Other than that one level of the dining room none of the public areas were closed, and it wasn’t needed as the parts that were open always had lots of empty tables.

gym

The ship had a nice gym with lots of equipment. Some cruise ship gyms have just a few treadmills or elliptical trainers with never any available. This ship had lots, always with plenty of them empty. Which could have something to do with the number of passengers onboard compared to the amount it holds, where on a full sailing perhaps there would not be so many always available, but there were still more of them than average.

skaters doing lifts in Symphony’s ice show

The shows we saw onboard were quite good for cruise ship shows. We didn’t go to every show available, but the water show and ice show were spectacular and the one theater production we went to was well above average.

piano stairs

There’s a lot of things to do onboard that the ship promotes, then there’s also the hidden gems like the piano stairs. Near the buffet people might hear piano music and just think it is background music unless they investigate a stairway between the elevators. While each stair isn’t actually a functioning piano key, they are painted to look as if they are. The stairs do each have sensors that light up the stair and play a song as people pass by. If there is more than one person on the stairway it plays at normal speed, but a lone person can make the song play faster or slower by moving faster or slower on the stairway.

solarium

The solarium was a favorite hang-out spot for us. It had plenty of deck chairs and its own hot tubs, but is enclosed in glass rather than out in the open like the pool deck so more protection from sunburn or inclement weather. During our sailing we could always find open deck chairs there.

rising tide bar

The food was good, and there are quite a variety of places to find it onboard. Besides the dining room and buffet there were a lot of other food venues, some of which didn’t cost anything and others that had a surcharge. It also had a lot of bars, mostly of the normal sort, but the bionic bar had robot bartenders and the rising tide bar was basically a bar on an elevator as it sometimes sat in the Royal Promenade, and other times rose up to Central Park.

dinner in the dining room

The dining staff were very accommodating to special diets. They didn’t just take off the sauce and serve dry food, they made special sauces for the gluten free meals. They even made a gluten and dairy free Grand Marnier soufflé for me and it was delicious. Besides adapting dining room choices for special diets when ordered the previous day, they also had a gluten free section at the buffet, and some of the other food outlets like the café and pizza place had gluten and/or sugar free items available as well. The sugar free desserts they made onboard used a sweetener that is not aspartame or other nasty chemicals.

The photographers at the ports were available if wanted, but not blocking the line exiting the ship so anyone not wanting photos could walk easily past.

wayfinding sign

It’s a big ship, and finding your way around could be confusing, but there is plenty of easy to read and well-placed signage to help people find their way.

The one good thing about covid and cruises is the disappearance of the much-hated muster drill. Instead of packing all the passengers together in a small space now people individually watch safety videos and check into their muster stations on their own instead. This is supposed to be done shortly after boarding. It’s quick, easy, and just takes a few minutes, but there’s always those few people who think the rules don’t apply to them whose names get called repeatedly close to sailing time to complete their drill because the ship can’t sail until everyone does.

As cruise ship apps go, Royal Caribbean’s is really good. One of the best actually. It isn’t perfect, but it is way better than what some of the other cruiselines have. It has a lot of useful features for both pre-cruise and while onboard. Most of them actually work most of the time.

Misses

The first miss happened weeks before the cruise even started when they cancelled a snorkel excursion to Saint John that we had booked months prior for our port stop in Saint Thomas. We booked a different one, but since it was booked not long before the cruise we ended up on a late-day second run of that excursion and the place it went was not nearly as nice as Saint John is supposed to be.

snorkel excursion in Saint Thomas

The next miss happened before we got onboard. Once people got into the port building and upstairs to be processed, they were assigned to one of about 6-8 lines. Choosing which line you wanted to go into was not an option and really shouldn’t have mattered that much since they weren’t very long lines. Some of them had two help desks and others just one, but even the one-desk lines like the one we were sent to wouldn’t have taken long to pass through if people just went to the desk for their line when it opened up. Which they all would have done except for the port worker at the desk end of the lines who would direct people from some lines to a desk for a different line. Mostly from the lines on either side of ours – which had two desks each – into our line’s one, though sometimes she’d briefly go bother other lines.

finally made it to the gangway

All of the other lines cleared several times over while we were stuck in the unmoving line before even the loudly complaining people at the head of it finally made it to a desk. Then the next group stood at the head of that line for ages while all the other lines emptied again and again. People could pretty much only get out of our line by running to whatever desk for a neighboring line emptied before the people in that line got there when the port worker wasn’t looking because she never once sent anyone from our line to a desk. We finally made it to the front of the line and our desk emptied while she was away, but just as we started walking toward the desk she noticed and scurried over to direct people from the next line who had just gotten there so recently they hadn’t even stopped walking yet to our desk instead. Shortly after one for the next line over emptied while she had her back turned so we made a run for it or we’d never have gotten helped. The people behind us were still standing at the front of that line as we finished up and headed off to the ship.

casino

We have gotten used to, and much appreciate, ships with no indoor smoking. This one had a smoking area in the casino. Smoke, of course, does not stay within a designated smoking area. Besides wafting into the rest of the casino, the smoke would sometimes congregate unpleasantly at the entrance to the dining room or waft into the gym where it is extremely detrimental to anyone trying to get in a workout.

The outdoor smoking area wasn’t kept at the back where the ship would sail out of the smoke or within a confined area to keep it from migrating elsewhere. It was right on the main pool deck and as usual the smoke spread well beyond the area where it was actually allowed.

boardwalk area

There was no self-serve guest laundry onboard, which is pretty common these days, but still a miss in my book.

The usual guests saving deck chairs all day in spite of signs saying towels left unattended will be picked up, but they never are so there’s more chairs occupied by towels than people happened on the pool deck. With the reduced number of passengers empty loungers should have been easy to find, but there were sometimes whole sections of chairs claimed with towels or other belongings with very few people in sight.

formal night at the Titanic stairs backdrop in one of the four poses every onboard photographer used

If you happen to buy a photo package it’s hard to get much variety in the pictures other than different backgrounds. The photographers all want to use the same 4 standard poses and most won’t try anything different if you ask. They won’t shoot the photo until you do what they want if you try to do something different on your own either. Their preferred method of delivering the photo packages is by email. We were lucky we had asked for a flash drive because the email they sent had less than half the photos we’d had taken and the ones that were there were not of as good quality as they were on the flash drive.

entrance to the ultimate abyss slides

In spite of all the Covid precautions to keep from spreading germs, I still managed to catch a cold on this trip. At least it wasn’t covid.

One of my sisters was really looking forward to having a beach day, so the biggest miss for her was when the ship did not stop at Cococay due to stormy weather.

The bathroom just had all in one body wash/shampoo in the shower rather than separate shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. Good thing we all brought our own.

the rock-climbing wall was never open at the same time as the zip-line

Although the ship had a big variety of things to do, they never had the sort of things open at the same time that you would be dressed the same for like the zip line and the rock-climbing wall. They seemed to be short on staff to run those things with the same crew members running one for a bit then moving to another. Perhaps they schedule fewer crew when they have fewer passengers, but it would have been nice to be able to do the zip line, followed by the giant dry slide, then the rock-climbing wall since the same clothing would be appropriate for all three. They also didn’t have any ice-skating sessions for passengers.

This was the first cruise ship we’ve been on that had no clothesline in the shower. Usually they have the string you pull across the shower from one side and hook into the other. Even if people don’t do any laundry in their stateroom bathroom, that clothesline is pretty much a necessity for wet swimming suits. With 3 people having wet swimming suits every day and no clothesline we had to get creative finding places to hang them to dry, especially since the shower had nothing available to tie a line across it to. I’ve since purchased wall magnets with hooks on them which solve the problem of nothing to tie lines to in the shower as well as being useful for hanging things on the cabin walls. The showers seem to be more magnetic than the walls because the hooks can hold more weight without sliding down the wall there.

With three people the room could definitely have used a bit more storage space. They never seem to think about that when they add extra beds so a room will sleep more people.

looking over the Royal Promenade

To me the one of the biggest misses of all was the post cruise survey. Instead of having dialog boxes where you could say what you actually want it was just ticking a bunch of meaningless ratings boxes with no opportunity to explain anything or provide any actual input. And since they generally consider anything less than a 10 the same as 0 even the number ratings are useless. Like they don’t really want to know what you think.

Even worse than that is their registration. You can’t pick your boarding time until you complete the registration, which opens at midnight a set amount of days before the cruise – the last one I took was at 45 days. They open this at midnight per the time zone you are in though, not for everyone at the same time. So if you live on the west coast by the time registration opens all of the earliest boarding times have already been taken by people in earlier time zones. To make it fair it should open for everyone at the same time rather than by time zone so all of the people have the same opportunity to get an early boarding time regardless of where they live – or just let you pick it when you book so people who book earliest get first choice. Even at that though it is still better than the cruise lines that just assign you a time with no input on your part whatsoever.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Posted in Royal Caribbean, Shipboard Life, Symphony of the Seas | Tagged bad things on Symphony of the Seas, cruise, good things on Symphony of the Seas, photos, Royal Caribbean, Symphony of the Seas, travel | Leave a comment

Bars on Celebrity Constellation

Posted on September 22, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Celebrity Constellation in Costa Maya at sunrise

On most cruises I don’t buy more than a drink or two (including specialty tea or non-dairy hot chocolate), often none at all. Lately more and more of the cruise lines have gone to all-inclusive fares, which means they jack the price way up and then include a drink package and other things like internet and pre-paid gratuities. Some also include things like shore excursions or specialty dining.

Cafe al Bacio coffee bar

Sometimes all-inclusive is just an option, but when it’s the only option we generally try to avoid those cruises because paying all that extra for the included alcohol package just means we are subsidizing other people’s drinking. My opinion on the gratuities is that they should always be included as part of the fare – partly because unsuspecting newbies aren’t then surprised by that on their bill and selfish people can’t have that money removed from the hard-working crew who very much need and deserve it, and partly because it’s just easier to have it paid in advance. Unfortunately it is usually a separate charge added daily to people’s onboard accounts unless they actively choose to pay it in advance. With internet I’d rather buy a package separately because cruise ship internet is always notoriously slow and the more people who use it the slower it is so if it’s included people use it who otherwise wouldn’t and it gets extremely slow – to the point of not even opening sign-in pages to some websites or email, let alone the website or email itself.

Cellar Masters

Though we usually avoid those all-inclusive fares, on the Celebrity Constellation we found one sailing on a really good sale that had the all-inclusive at about the same price or possibly even less than what normal fare without it would be, so we did book that one. After the first couple days the internet was practically useless. Since we did have the drink package we probably had more drinks on this cruise than on all the other cruises we’ve taken combined for at least the last 10 years, but even at that it wouldn’t add up to anywhere near enough to have covered the cost of buying the package separately. There were days I didn’t use it at all. Most days we didn’t have more than a couple drinks, of which one was likely to be a specialty coffee for John or tea for me, or maybe just bottled water. He did usually have a glass of wine with dinner, so he used it more than I did.

Crush, with the Martini Bar in the background

The Constellation has 7 main bars – the Martini Bar and Crush, Rendezvous Lounge, Celler Masters, Sunset Bar, Mast Bar, Pool Deck Bar, and Café el Bacio which is a coffee bar and gelateria that can serve spiked coffee, tea, and hot chocolate drinks as well as non-alcoholic ones. They have non-dairy and lactose free milks available on request. It also has bars in the casino and Reflections Lounge. The casino bar is open when the casino is, and the one in Reflections Lounge is open when the lounge is in use for activities expected to draw enough people to make it worthwhile for them to open the bar.

Martini Bar

The Martini Bar is the featured bar of the ship. It serves martinis on an ice-topped bar that is nearly always surrounded in people. The entertainment crew sometimes set up golf putting events there. Crush is a specialty vodka bar next to the martini bar, but we never saw anyone there, not even a bartender. We never actually went to those bars though, just passed through occasionally so it ‘s possible it was open sometimes when we weren’t in that area.

duet performing at Rendezvous Lounge

Rendezvous Lounge is a large central bar that often had a music duet playing. This one drew quite a crowd in the evenings. We went there one night when the microphone at the theater show was so loud the music hurt our ears. The music at the bar was much quieter and pleasant to listen to. There’s a small dance floor by the tiny stage and some of the passengers were quite good dancers and put on a pretty good show– better than the ship’s actual entertainment that night.

Cellar Masters wine bar

Cellar Masters is a fancy wine bar. We walked through it occasionally, but never actually went there. I don’t like wine and John just has a glass with dinner. They did have wine tastings there, but that is not included in the drink package. The casino bar is of course there for the same reason casinos always have bars – people gamble more when they are drinking.

Sunset Bar

Sunset Bar is at the back of the ship just outside of the buffet. There are tables on the deck around it where people can eat their food from the buffet or have a cocktail from the bar while they watch the wake and see where the ship has been.

Mast Bar

We did have a drink at the Mast Bar one day. We just had ordinary stuff. I had a piña colada and can’t remember what John had. Some other people came along and ordered up a fancy version of a mudslide with chocolate sauce all over the glass and things. It had a ton of ingredients in the blender. It looked all fancy and delicious, but wasn’t something I’d actually order as it has kahlua, which is coffee flavored and I don’t like anything that tastes of coffee, plus it had whipping cream which would cause complaints from my lactose intolerant stomach. The bartender there was really friendly. While we sat there sipping our drinks John had a good conversation with him all about the bartender’s opinions of different types of alcohol John asked him about. He was quite knowledgeable. The Mast Bar looks a lot like a smaller version of the pool deck bar and sits one deck up almost directly above it.

pool bar

The Pool Deck Bar was the one we used the most since it sat just outside of the solarium, which did not have a bar of its own. The solarium was our favorite hangout even though its pool was more cool than warm and the hot tubs more warm than hot. It had a row of extra comfy deck chairs facing floor to ceiling windows where people could read or watch the sea go by. We mostly got mango or pineapple mango daiquiris, or sometimes a piña colada.

Cafe al Bacio coffee bar

Café el Bacio is mainly a coffee bar, but they also have fancy teas, hot chocolate, and the option to have the drinks spiked. Some of the alcohol is included in a basic drinks package, others like a shot of Baileys or Amaretto cost $1 extra. If you order it they say you can upgrade to the premium package and not have to pay that dollar, but the upgrade is $10 per person per day so you would have to drink a whole lot of those or some other expensive drinks to make that upgrade worthwhile. We definitely came out ahead just paying that dollar a couple times. There’s also gelato on the other side of the room from the coffee bar, which costs extra other than if you’ve sailed on Celebrity before you get one free scoop.

Caribbean Sunset in the Reflections Lounge

When we went up to the Reflections lounge to try out their Deal or No Deal game, which has replaced bingo, a bartender came around with a tray of drinks he called Caribbean Sunset so we gave that a try and it was good. The menu for that bar has a different drink for each sign of the zodiac, but we didn’t try those.

Overall the ship had plenty of bars and enough variety of drinks that everyone should have been able to find something they liked.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Posted in Celebrity, Constellation, Shipboard Life | Tagged bars, Celebrity, Constellation, cruise, cruise ship, cruise ship bars, photos, travel | 2 Comments

Ocean Cay

Posted on September 15, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Meraviglia at Ocean Cay

All the major cruise lines have private islands in the Caribbean, some more than one. Most all of them have an island in the Bahamas. MSC is no exception with their island called Ocean Cay Marine Reserve. We had two stops there on our 11-day cruise on MSC Meraviglia. It’s a fairly small island so it’s not that hard to hike all around it, but they do have shuttles that will take people who can’t walk that far or who just don’t want to. The island is actually made up of two separate islands. The main island where the ship docks is connected to the smaller one by a bridge.

north and south beaches on either side of the lagoon between the two islands that make up Ocean Cay

The island was formerly an industrial mining site, which literature about the island says was for sand evacuation. Beaches in some places are not naturally the white sand beach tourists gravitate to so sand is sometimes brought in from elsewhere to create those white sand beaches – or to fill in islands that are mainly mangroves rather than dry land. That was not likely the purpose for the sand from this island though as it was mined for aragonite which is a naturally occurring calcium carbonate crystal used in the production of cement and steel.

view of part of the island from the ship

It took several years to transform the former industrial site into a tourist destination. MSC designated the surrounding waters as a marine reserve. Restoration efforts to the island began with clean-up of discarded industrial debris from the island and the ocean around it. Fish like structure and there wasn’t much of that at the designated swimming beaches so they mainly hung out near the breakwaters that lined the ends of many of the beaches and some edges of the lagoon between the two islands. The breakwaters are probably there to prevent erosion rather than to create structure for fish, but they work for that too. Hopefully over time as the island recovers from its industrial past more marine life will find a home there. There is a reef near the lighthouse, but people are not allowed in the water in that area so I have no idea what sort of sealife resides there.

shops at Ocean Cay

The first thing you come to after disembarking the ship is their welcome pavilion, which has a tower and transport stations for people who want to ride the shuttles. There’s a rentals and excursions shack off to one side and shops along the main walkway.

employee housing

Not far from there is housing for workers who live on the island, but that area is not open to guests. A bit farther up the walkway there’s a beach for crew only which is also not open to guests so it’s nice to see they give the crew somewhere to go since they are most likely not allowed to use the passenger facilities.

snack shack at Bimini Beach

There’s a big main barbecue area that serves lunch not too far from the dock, and snack shacks and bars around the island near the various beaches. There are also restrooms near all the main tourist areas and an expensive ice cream shop not far from the dock.

pathway to the lighthouse

One pathway leads to a lighthouse, in which people can book a lighthouse climb excursion to the top. At the time of our cruise it only cost $9 if booked pre-cruise online or $10 if booked onboard. A big bar with a lot of outdoor seating sits at the foot of the lighthouse so it must be a popular spot to hang out. The lighthouse is out on the end of a sort of point with the reef on the far side where people aren’t allowed to swim or snorkel. They are allowed on the side nearest the ship where a shark net makes a boundary for how far people are allowed to swim out from the beach. That is the nearest beach to the ship.

this cove is for the birds

We walked past one cove that looked like it had been a nice swimming beach with platforms out in the water that people could swim to, but it was roped off and closed when we were there. It looked like a recent hurricane had pulled a lot of sand out of that cove as most of it had a steep rocky drop-off at the water’s edge and even the part that was more level was all rocks. On our way back there were a couple giant pelicans and some sort of crane or something enjoying that abandoned swimming hole. Perhaps either nature or MSC have or will put some sand back on that beach so it can be open again for human use.

relaxing on Bimini Beach

Both maps of the island provided by the ship and views of the island from the ship show dark areas near some of the beaches. In a lot of places dark areas mean reefs, which means good snorkeling. We hiked over to the one called Bimini Beach on the map, which besides being the farthest from the ship and therefore likely to be the least crowded, it also had a large dark area on the map. Big yellow buoys some distance from shore most likely indicated the end of the swimming and snorkeling area because wave runners often went by quite fast not far beyond the buoys. I also saw a kayak out there.

breakwater at the edge of Bimini Beach

Near shore the water had a lot of sand mixed into it and was often too murky to see anything at all – not even the bottom when it is just a foot or two deep and you think you are walking on sand until in some areas you come to a rocky ledge. The farther from shore and deeper the water the clearer it got. Out by the buoy it was fairly clear. The dark areas turned out just to be seagrass in the sand, no reefs or structure of any sort which meant fish there were very scarce. I did see some really big ones swim by at the edge of the murky area, but that was it.

fish in the rocks at the breakwater

Out by the buoy there were a couple ladies who had not seen any fish at all. That was at about the middle of that stretch of beach. They took off one way looking for fish and I went the other toward the breakwater at that edge of the beach since the breakwaters looked to be the only structure there. I’d gone out barefoot as I don’t like dealing with snorkel fins in the sand and it looked calm enough not to need them so it took probably twice as long to swim to the breakwater as it would have with fins, but since there weren’t any time restraints that didn’t matter. When I got to the breakwater I first saw some sergeant majors, then some small parrotfish and some other little fish. They were all small. Some were youngsters that haven’t grown very big yet and the rest were just small varieties of fish.

bridge between the islands

On the way back to the ship we saw people standing on the bridge looking at the rocks below. They said they were watching crabs crawl around down there, but I couldn’t find the crabs they were looking at. Crabs do like rocks though, especially for something to hide under. John said he saw them, but I never did.

barbecue pavilion

The barbecue pavilion was packed with long lines stretching out quite a distance on both sides and we’re not stand in line if you don’t have to people so we went back to the ship for lunch on our first visit. The second time around there were only 1900 people on the ship instead of the 4700 on the first part of our back-to-back cruise so there wasn’t such a crowd and we tried the barbecue that time. MSC isn’t the best with lines, often making them slower than necessary. They did open a second line when we were about halfway through, which cleared up the wait fairly quickly. There was a variety of salads, barbecued chicken and pork ribs, fresh fruit, rice and beans, cookies and brownies, burgers, hot dogs, and fries so a pretty good variety of things, some of which were different than what is available onboard.

Sunset Beach

On the second visit we decided to try a different beach since the snorkeling hadn’t been that great at Bimini Beach where we went the first time with most of the seabed being sand and seagrass and almost no fish other than at the breakwater on the edge of the beach. We tried Sunset Beach on the second time around. It had some rocky structure at one edge that looked like the sort of place fish would hang out, but the water there was so murky not even the rocks were visible, let alone any fish who may or may not have been within the rocks. Getting too near those rocks meant swimming blind rather than seeing anything underwater.

fish at Sunset Beach

Swimming away from the rocky shoreline, out deep enough to find clear water and moving toward being in the water in front of the area set up with beach chairs, the bottom itself was rock near the rocky area of the shoreline, with dips and bumps making structure enough for small fish. Further up the shoreline more in line with where the beach chairs were the bottom changed to sand covered in decent sized rocks and not as many small fish as the part where the bottom was rock, but still enough to spot them fairly frequently. Once in awhile a bigger fish swam by (mostly yellow snappers), but those were few and far between. Though not great, the snorkeling was definitely better at Sunset Beach than it had been at Bimini Beach.

lighthouse

After having had a chance to check out the lighthouse a bit on our first visit we decided to book the lighthouse climb for the second one. The lighthouse climb is well worth the $10 charged for that excursion, at least if you get a good guide like the one we had. As always the quality of the guide you happen to get can make or break an excursion. She mentioned that the snorkeling is good in the corner of the marked swimming beach in front of the ship that is closest to the lighthouse (Lighthouse Bay), which is the only area near the lighthouse where swimming or snorkeling is allowed.

fish by the shark net

Our second visit was an overnight. I wanted to go out for an early morning pre-breakfast snorkel as soon as there was daylight to try out that area by the lighthouse, but there was a gate shut across the entry and passengers weren’t allowed off the ship until 8am. I did go out then and try snorkeling from that beach. It’s the closest one to the ship and has lots of colorful chairs and beach umbrellas, but most of the chairs there are plastic folding chairs. There’s a few adirondack chairs, but no loungers. There weren’t many people on the beach at 8am, but there was one guy laying on some sort of cushiony thing. I don’t know if there are a few of those provided, if it is something you have to rent, or something he brought himself. The little folding chairs would not be comfortable for spending the day in, but as a place to put stuff while snorkeling one of them worked fine for me. The water is shallow and sandy at the edge of the beach. Over on the end nearest the lighthouse it gets rocky before it gets deep. There’s little fish near the shore. They get bigger as you go out farther. It’s not all that deep even out by the shark net where there was a school of pretty good-sized fish that followed me all around. Our lighthouse tour guide did mention that they feed the fish there so they are pretty friendly.

lighthouse show

After dark the lighthouse puts on a show with thousands of ever-changing LED lights that make different colors and patterns. It can be seen from the ship if you find a good viewpoint as well as from the shore. The small bit of outdoor promenade deck that Meraviglia has was a good spot to watch, on the Starboard side anyway since that was the side facing shore. People with balconies in the right place could watch from their cabin, but ours was on the other side of the ship. On our first visit the ship left soon after the lighthouse show so not many people watched from shore, but since the ship stayed overnight the second time there were two lighthouse displays an hour or two apart with a beach party going from the start of the first lighthouse show to the end of the second one so a lot of people went ashore for that.

Posted in Caribbean, Meraviglia, MSC | Tagged Bahamas, cruise, Meraviglia, MSC, Ocean Cay, photos, private island, travel | Leave a comment

ZipRider at Icy Strait Point

Posted on September 8, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

view of Quantum of the Seas from the red gondola in Icy Strait Point

When booking the 1pm time for the ZipRider at the Icy Strait Point port stop on an Alaskan cruise on Quantum of the Seas, my sister Barbara and I assumed that meant we would need to jet off the ship as quickly as possible after a noon docking and get up the mountain for our ride.

view of the beach by the Ocean Landing dock from the ship

Instead our tickets said to meet in the theater on the ship at 1pm. After a bit of a wait they sent all the excursions out, with ours called last. The others were all to meet at a building right at the end of the pier, but we were to take a green transport gondola to catch a red gondola up a mountain for our ride.

green gondola station

After walking to the green gondola the line was so long a girl working there said we’d get to the other side faster by walking the beach trail, which we did. On the far end the line to the red gondola extended quite a long way. There’s a building up at the top of a small hill next to the entry to the gondola where ZipRider and gondola excursion tickets are exchanged for wristbands. The people in that building where you go to sign the waivers and get your wristband for the ZipRider were not happy with whoever organizes excursions on our ship at all. They expected the 1:00 people at the top of the mountain to check in for their ride by 12:45. Our instincts that we should have gotten off the boat and up the mountain as quickly as possible had been right, only to be thwarted by bad instructions on our excursion tickets. What they should have done was have our excursion meet before docking and insure that we were the first people off the ship and to the green gondola before that monstrous line had a chance to form.

trees and plants alongside the beach trail after it goes into the woods

Our excursion organizers weren’t smart enough to have our excursion meet before the ship docked send us out before they opened the gangway to anyone else though. That may not have guaranteed there would be no line at the green gondola at all since the Norwegian ship at the other dock arrived first, but there certainly would have been far less people there since passengers of that ship started out on the other side and only would need that transporter to return to the side they started from if they had come down the zipline or came over there for the shops. It was of course long past the time we should have been done with our zipline ride when we finally got our wristbands and we still had the mile-long red gondola line to get through. There was no walking up the mountain to avoid that one. We did find mom and Linda partway through that line though. They probably got off the ship before we did. We held their place in line while they went to get gondola wristbands and then all rode up the gondola together.

top of the mountain

When we finally got there the people at the ZipRider check-in booth at the top didn’t care that we were long past our scheduled time and sent us on down the trail to the top of the ZipRider along with some other people who happened to be there at the same time we were. Before sending us down the trail we were given thorough instructions on what to do if we encountered a bear along the way. These instructions did not include anything about not being the slowest person in the group.

trail to the ZipRider

The pathway from there to the zipline is a sometimes rough dirt road running through the woods. Even though large piles of deep snow lined both sides of the road in some places it was a nice day and not cold at all. We did not see bears or any other wildlife. When we were nearly to the top of the zipline we passed a row of 4 honey buckets. I guess they want to make sure anyone who is nervous about heights or ziplines has a chance to empty their bladder before they go to avoid any fear-induced accidents along the way. It’s also useful when it takes a really long time to get there and you need to go anyway, or if you just want to avoid lines in the more crowded areas of the port. It even had a handwashing station with actual water next to the honey buckets.

top of the ZipRider

At the top of the ZipRider people are put into groups of 6 because there are 6 lines. Each of the 6 gets assigned a number from 1-6, then when they are ready you go to the line with the number you were given. I had number 3 and Barbara number 4. When Melissa and Jennifer went several hours later they were assigned 1 and 2. #1 of our group asked if they could switch around, to which the guy in charge replied that the numbers were assigned for a reason. He did not expand on that reason. There are lockers by the lower gondola station in the building where people get their wristbands, but they did say people could put things like backpacks on their laps. Hats will fly off, but there’s a little pouch on the back of the seat/harness apparatus where small things like that can go – just remember to get them on your way out. Taking photos and videos on the way down is allowed, but if you drop anything along the way you’ll never get it back.

Barbara harnessed in and ready to go

This ZipRider is billed as the largest in the world at 5495 feet and has a vertical drop of 1320 feet. The average grade is 25% and the top speed 65mph. That largest ZipRider in the world billing is apparently because of the 6 simultaneous lines rather than actually being the longest. The longest in the world is Jebel Jais Flight in the United Arab Emirates at 1.76 miles long with a top speed of 93mph. The fastest is Velocity in New Zealand which can reach 118 mph.

view from the top of the ZipRider

Like most tourist attractions everywhere, the ZipRider exits through a gift shop. It was deserted when we walked through it. A sign said they were short-staffed and had nobody working there that day, but people could buy t-shirts at a different shop. The t-shirts said I survived the ZipRider like it was a terrible frightening experience or something to be survived rather than the really fun thing to be enjoyed that it actually is so I wouldn’t have wanted one anyway even if I were inclined to buy souvenir t-shirts, which I’m usually not. There were also signs about getting pictures there, but they weren’t running the camera that day so getting a picture from your ride down wasn’t an option either.

view of people coming down the zipline from the building at the bottom – and you can see the station at the top too

The little building at the bottom of the zipline had an area to view people coming down, and TV screens that showed the top where you could see who got on next and watch them take off at the top. They look like little specks on the side of the hill until they get closer. It doesn’t sound loud while you are on it, but from the ground it comes screaming down with a good deal of noise. They don’t send everyone at the same time so they come down staggered a bit rather than all at once. Likely not everyone descends at the same speed either. There are giant springs at the end of each line to stop people when they reach the bottom.

landing area at the end of the ride

After everyone is unharnessed and out of the way the empty harness chairs go flying back up the mountain for the next group. You don’t wear any of the harness like on most ziplines, it’s all permanently attached to the line. The bottom of the zipline is at the Ocean Landing area where our ship was docked, right near the station for the green gondola. The bottom of the red gondola is at the Wilderness Landing area where the other dock is.

view from the ZipRider on the way down

It’s really a fun ride and it comes with an excellent view. At least if you get a clear sunny day like we had. It also comes with unlimited gondola rides so you can ride the red gondola back up the mountain again after the ride. You only get one time on the ZipRider per ticket, but if you go up again you can ride the gondola back down. The green gondola between the two cruise dock areas is free so you don’t need a wristband for that one. There was no line at the green gondola when we got done with the zipline so we took it back to the other area and went back up the red gondola, whose line also had cleared by then. We were going to hike the trail at the top, but somebody said there were bears nearby and wouldn’t let anyone go on the trail unless they were in a guided group, which had just left.

inside the red gondola

The green gondola is a ground transport from one port area to the other, but the red one goes up to the top of Hoonah Mountain, ascending over 1500 feet. Views are excellent both from the gondola and from the mountain. There’s also a cell tower up there so the higher you get in the gondola the more bars you get on your phone. Cell service at the bottom isn’t all that great, but at the top it is.

view of the red gondola from the top of the mountain

Posted in Alaska, Ports of Call, Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, Shore Excursions, USA | Tagged Alaska, cruise, gondola, Icy Strai Point, photos, Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, travel, ZipRider | Leave a comment

Olympic National Park In A Day

Posted on September 1, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

view from Hurricane Ridge

After landing in Los Angeles on the way to Las Vegas for a Ninja championship along the lines of American Ninja Warrior, though not in a televised league, my daughter and her crew stopped by for a few days in the middle of their epic road trip. Both my daughter and granddaughter qualified to compete in the world championship of their ninja league, which is what brought them to the USA from Australia where they live. By the time they arrived at my place they had already been to 7 National Parks on their way up the coast, with more to see on their way to Vegas in a side trip from California to Washington then back down to Nevada. Mostly they camped in a sub-par van rented from a discount Australian company based either in California or Nevada, I’m not sure which. The van made a range of noises, though it ran fairly quietly most of the time they were here, perhaps preferring the cooler climate. When they got it the key fob had difficulty opening the door and the back-up key that pulled out of the key fob they were given turned out to be an uncut blank. So when the key fob quit working for good and new batteries did nothing for it they ended up leaving a window a bit open and using a stick to push the unlock button as the only way to get into the van. Which worked until somebody accidently locked it with all the windows rolled up. They had to call the rental company which sent out a tow truck whose driver had a tool that broke into it about as quickly as you could open the door with a key if they’d had one that actually worked.

Rialto Beach

While I’d normally explore a smaller area more in-depth, they wanted to see as much of Olympic National Park as they could in one day while they were here. It’s a huge park covering the majority of the interior of the northern half of Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula and mostly surrounded in national forest. The park includes snow-capped mountains, some with year-round glaciers, forests including temperate rainforest on the coastal side, and beaches along the coast. While not able to traverse the entire park or even the perimeter within a single day, we did manage to visit mountain, forest, and beach. The center of the peninsula is dominated by the Olympic Mountains, which includes one called Mount Olympus so Greece is not the only place with a mountain named Olympus. Mount Olympus is the tallest of the Olympic Mountains and like much of the peninsula’s interior it is within the boundaries of the Olympic National Park. Sheri’s crew included both of her kids as well as a friend and her daughter. They came with somewhat of a planned route of where to go in the park, which we altered a bit the night before swapping out a dog-friendly waterfall for the one they’d chosen which was over a mile’s hike on a no dogs allowed trail and adding in a little hike on a dog-friendly trail near a visitor’s center so that my dog Piper could come along. While dogs are allowed on all the trails in the national forest, there are very few where they can go in the national park. They are allowed in parking lots, campgrounds, picnic areas, roads, and on a very short list of trails.

Hurricane Ridge

We started out early in the morning with a trip up to Hurricane Ridge. Shortly past the visitor’s center the road up the mountain passes through a station where you have to either show a park pass or pay to get in. Sheri and crew had a one-year pass good in all national parks, which they definitely made use of on their trip. It lets the whole carload in regardless of whose name is on the pass. The lower mountain was pretty foggy, but once we got higher up we rose above the fog into sunshine and some spectacular mountain views. The visitor center at the top was not open yet other than one outside restroom with a very long line. Apparently nobody in that line knew if they went just a bit farther down the road there were a couple picnic areas with restrooms and no lines. In the wintertime there’s a ski lift running and skiing at the top of Hurricane Ridge, but this was July so there wasn’t any snow. There are trails there, but not for dogs so we just took in the view from various areas around the parking lot and outside of the visitor’s center.

Peabody Creek Trail

By the time we went back down the mountain the fog in some of the lower areas had gotten so thick we couldn’t even see an oncoming car until it was nearly next to us even if it had lights on, and the road was only visible for a few feet in front of the car. Not the best for a winding road with a steep drop-off and no barrier for much of the way. It cleared up quite a bit by the time we got to the main visitor’s center near the park entrance. We stopped there and Piper and I walked around outside while people without dogs went in. Once they came out we hiked on the trail as the one there is one of the few dog-friendly trails in the park. The sign at the trail entrance says it’s just a short loop, but there’s an intersection out on the trail with the option to take a longer path. Not being familiar with the local flora, Daniel managed to get too close to the greenery and get stung by a nettle. Luckily sword ferns often grow near nettles and fern juice rubbed on a nettle sting will soothe it.

Madison Falls

Our next stop was Madison Falls near the Elwha River. This one was substituted for their original choice of Sol Duc Falls because Madison has just a short dog-friendly trail where Sol Duc is over a mile round trip on a no dogs trail so we could all go without leaving Piper alone in their dodgy van, which we took for this excursion since my car doesn’t hold 6 people. Madison Falls is tall enough to be impressive without being too tall to fit the whole thing in a photo. The trail out to the falls is an easy one to the viewpoint at the end. Steeper dirt trails beyond the viewpoint are probably unofficial, but pretty much everyone there took them down to the little pool at the bottom of the falls. The road was closed just past the parking area for Madison Falls. Sheri’s GPS made it look as if the closure was a mile or so before the falls trail where we’d have had a long hike, but it lied.

Elwha suspension bridge

It’s not part of the Olympic National Park, but in the same general area not far from Madison Falls there’s a pedestrian bridge suspended from one that cars drive over. It’s just a short side trip down 112 to Elwha River Road from Highway 101 and worth a photo stop. The pedestrian bridge is part of the Olympic Discovery Trail, a mostly paved trail with sections all across the north end of the Olympic Peninsula. Also nearby just off Highway 112 there’s a wide spot off the highway with room for about 10 cars to park that passes as a trailhead for the Olympic Discovery Adventure Trail, a dirt trail that goes from there to Lake Crescent. It is also not part of the park at that end though Lake Crescent is entirely within the park. Both the Discovery Trail and adventure trail are dog friendly.

somebody else snagged the lakeside table at La Poel picnic area on Lake Crescent

Lake Crescent boarders Highway 101 with a pull-out for photo ops so it’s easy to get photos of the lake without venturing up to the lodge or any of the area’s trails. The roadside pull-out has a couple informative signs and a parking area as well as a nice view of the lake, but no picnic tables or anything. The map they picked up at the visitors center down the mountain from Hurricane Ridge showed a picnic area called La Poel on the lakeshore a bit farther down the road than the lookout. We decided to go there for lunch. It was a very short distance off the highway and set up like a campground with individual little places for each car, each one with its own firepit and picnic table. Only one of them was right on the lake and of course it was already taken. So was the one closest to it, but none of the others were so we got one just above those with a view of the lake. The Spruce Railroad Trail along the opposite shore of Lake Crescent from where we were is both dog-friendly and a small segment of the Olympic Discovery Trail.

white slug

The picnic table came complete with a white slug on it. I’ve never seen a white slug before. It was most likely an albino banana slug since banana slugs are the native slug species of the area and albinos of that species do exist.

Twilight treaty line sign

On the way to Rialto Beach we passed through the town of Forks, which as all Twilight fans would know is the home of the Twilight books. Bella’s trucks sit out in front of the Forks visitor center, both the book and movie versions. Before reaching town we passed the treaty line sign at a little resort called Three Rivers Resort, which has a restaurant and some little cabins. In addition to book locations around town, there’s also a collection of props from the movie which are free to see at the Rainforest Arts Center. Twilight locations in Forks are from the books as the movies were filmed elsewhere.

Piper in a log on Rialto Beach

Olympic National Park stretches down quite a large area of the north end of Washington’s coast including most of the beaches from Shi Shi Beach at the north end of the park down to South Beach at the southern end. Kalaloch near the southern end is one of the few places with a lodge within the park boundary. Other lodges are at Lake Crescent, Lake Quinalt and Sol Duc hot springs. There are also some campgrounds in and near the park.

Rialto Beach

Rialto Beach is near the center of the park’s beach areas. It has a pretty extensive parking area, which was nearly full the day we went there. It’s the sort of beach that gathers driftwood, which on this beach is mostly whole trees. From the parking lot people go up a little hill and through the driftwood forest to access the beach, which you can’t see from the parking lot due to the rise of the driftwood covered land. The top of the beach is mainly small flat rocks, but there is sand down by the water. Rialto and some of the other park’s beaches are among the few dog-friendly areas within Olympic National Park.

big tree in the Hoh Rainforest

Our last stop on our one-day park tour brought us to Hoh Rainforest, which was the only other pass or pay entry we passed through besides Hurricane Ridge. All of the other places we went didn’t have any of the little toll booths that collect money or check passes and we didn’t see any signs saying passes were required to park there. As with every other rainforest I’ve been to it rained while we were there. The parking area has a visitor’s center, which having the dog I once again did not go inside. Trails there are not dog-friendly, but the kids were tired of walking so they stayed in the van and watched Piper while the 3 adults went for a short walk. (These were not little kids with 2 13-year-olds and the other nearly 11). There was supposed to be a short loop trail that was flat, paved, and accessible, but nobody could find it. The trail started out flat at the entrance which was posted with a sign saying it was that trail, but we didn’t get far before it branched off with names of other trails and none for that one. A large rodent waddled down the trail past a number of people of whom nobody knew what it was. It disappeared down by a small creek just off the trail. After looking it up online later it matched the photos of a muskrat.

elk in the Hoh Rainforest

A short way beyond that we saw a couple people struggling up a small root-filled hill pushing wheelchairs wondering if they were still on the right trail. Since we had no idea if we were still on the short trail either we went back to one called Hall of Mosses and figured to just go a short distance and then back to the van. People were clustered on a bridge looking into a creek and surrounding area. Not surprising since there were 3 elk there, one male with a large set of antlers and two female. On the way back there was a ranger there shooting paintballs at them to scare them away because they don’t want them to get too used to people for fear of them becoming aggressive. That was the second closest I’ve been to elk, with the first being some years ago on a trail ride in the Cascade mountains when a whole herd of them came out of the woods and crossed the trail we were on surrounding us and our horses on their way to the woods on the other side of the trail. The horse I had at the time was terrified of deer, but seemed fine with the elk, perhaps because they were closer to her size.

mossy trees

There was quite a lot of moss on the trees, but being a rainforest it was probably on all of them and not just the ones on that particular trail. Whoever said moss grows on the north side of trees was definitely not talking about a temperate rainforest because moss there grows all over the trees.

Dog-Friendly Trails in Olympic National Park

Peabody Creek Trail at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center in Port Angeles. This visitor center is up Mount Angeles road on the way to Hurrican Ridge, not the one on the waterfront which is the visitor center for the city of Port Angeles.

Rialto Beach parking lot to Ellen Creek (there were lots of dogs on Rialto Beach.) Dogs are also allowed on beaches in the Kalaloch area.

Madison Falls Trail (Elwha)

Spruce Railroad Trail (North Shore of Lake Crescent and part of the Olympic Discovery Trail)

July Creek Loop Trail (North Shore of Lake Quinalt)

Posted in Day Trips, USA, Washington | Tagged beach, forest, Hurricane Ridge, Madison Falls, mountain, Olympic National Park, photos, Rialto Beach, travel | 1 Comment

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