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.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

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

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

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)

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

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

Everglades Airboat Excursion

Posted on August 25, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

sunrise at sea

Cruise ships often offer a disembarkation excursion for people who want to kill some time before a late flight. As our flight from Miami wasn’t until 5:30pm, we decided to give one a try when we disembarked from Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas. One of the offerings was for an airboat ride in the Everglades, which sounded like fun so we signed up for that.

wild alligator in the Everglades

At about day 2 of the cruise they sent out an exit survey wanting to know what people’s plans were for getting off the boat. I suppose they just want to have time to get everything prepared, but getting that notice so soon after boarding always seems like they are trying to kick you off the boat when the cruise has barely started. On Symphony of the Seas they wanted it done in the app. The questionnaire was short, but did not offer the right answer to the main question. There were options for self-assist (take out your own luggage) and a variety of departure times where you leave your luggage outside the room and then pick it up in the port. There was not anything for people who were on one of their departure tours. On an app the option to write in your own answer isn’t there like you can do on a paper form even if it doesn’t actually give you that choice.

wild bird at the Everglades park

I asked guest services who said to just ignore the survey and they’d send out the info on the last full day of the cruise. It would be nice if they either just included that answer or didn’t give the survey notice to people who would just confuse things if they filled it out. I also asked if we would have access to the bags at all before they went to the airport and they said we pick them up in the port and wheel them out to the bus so at least we knew we could add a few last-minute things if necessary.

airboat dock

We normally prefer self-assist, partly so we have all our things until we actually leave, and partly because you have more freedom of when to depart. The time for the excursion was of course pre-set, but we still would have preferred taking out our own luggage to have last night and morning access to our things. The instructions however were to tag the bags and leave them out for collection by 11pm so we did what they said. Next morning when we went to the meeting place at the skating rink we did see a few bags people had brought down themselves lined up behind the check-in desk, but most people had checked them as directed. There wouldn’t have been room for everyone’s bags there.

bus bay at Miami cruise port

Someone from the crew led the group partway out, but for collecting the bags, going through customs, and finding the correct location for our bus we were on our own. Luckily there were people out in the bus area who knew what came in where and were able to direct passengers to the correct bus bay. There was a bus parked in the one we were sent to, but it departed empty. After waiting for some time, someone who obviously worked there showed up in that area and soon started texting wildly and making frantic phone calls. With that finished he said the bus would arrive in 12 minutes. After loading all the luggage and people headed to Miami airport after the excursion, they added in another group headed to Fort Lauderdale. The bus driver later said he was only supposed to take the Fort Lauderdale group, but the other bus never showed up so he took everyone. Luckily the one bus had enough room.

each airboat has a different name

The driver said it was about a 40-minute drive to the park in the Everglades where we were going assuming we didn’t hit congested traffic. I didn’t time it, but the traffic didn’t seem bad. The bus eventually turned off the freeway at an exit marked as Alligator Alley. The park had a fleet of airboats, each with a different name. Since the only one I can remember is Hog Wild that was apparently the most memorable name, at least for me.

the airboat glides right over the grass

We started out down at the zoo for a bit, but shortly someone said the wind had died down enough to go out in the boats so everyone went back up to the dock. It took several of the boats to hold everybody. There are some channels through the grass, but the boats also skim easily over top of it since they have no propellers or anything in the water to tangle in the plants.

alligator in the Everglades

Our boat driver found an alligator and stopped near it so everyone could see it. He said there are some alligators they see often enough to have named them and this was one of them. It was not afraid of the boat at all, instead it swam up closer to people watch. I guess that alligator liked watching people as much as the people liked watching it.

big airboat

We took a fast ride through a small channel and then pulled into a large channel which the boat driver said had been dug by the army corps of engineers after World War 2 with intentions of draining the Everglades to make more land for farming. Luckily they weren’t entirely successful. Though it doesn’t cover the area it once did at least there is still some of that unique habitat remaining.

small airboat

The boat ride started out cloudy, then the sun came out. The ride didn’t last nearly as long as we had expected it to. Back at the dock we had lots of time left and options of the zoo, food trucks, or a gift shop to spend it in. The food trucks had normal things like tacos or pulled pork sandwiches, but also alligator cooked in various ways. We did not buy anything there, but a lot of people did. The gift shop had a shirt with a cat outline shaped much like Hello Kitty next to an alligator that said “Goodbye Kitty.” There was another one with alligators looking at the back window of a car that had decals portraying a family with a bunch of children. One of the alligators on that shirt had a speech bubble saying “Look, a menu!” They were cute shirts, but we didn’t buy them.

zoo gator

Several signs said that many of the animals in the zoo were rescues or abandoned pets. Natives who came injured would be nursed back to health and released if possible while exotics would stay there. The alligators, turtles, crocodiles, and tortoise had pens with room for plants and grass, but there were snakes in small cages. There were also some voluntary animals. We saw a bright blue bird with yellow feet first outside of the pens and later in a pen with turtles, and a wild baby alligator in a small stream between pens. Also lots of black and brown birds hanging out in the food area begging for handouts.

unhappy alligator

While there was an employee attending it people could hold or take photos with a baby alligator with its mouth taped shut, and they had a presentation about a big one named Cannibal who came to them with rumors that he had eaten all his mates, but they had a female living with him whom they said had been his girlfriend for 7 years and that they had had babies together and he didn’t eat her or them.

airboat driver

Afterwords the bus first dropped off the Fort Lauderdale people since that airport was closest to the park and on the way back to Miami, then went on to Miami for the rest of us. There are set spots at the airports where busses can let people off and it’s not at the front door so there were a couple people complaining loudly about the drop-off point as if they could talk the driver into taking them right up to the front door where they check in even though busses aren’t allowed to go there.

wild baby alligator hiding between pens at the zoo

Overall the excursion wasn’t what was expected since we thought the boat ride would be longer and knew nothing of the zoo, but it was definitely more entertaining than hanging out at the airport for hours on end.

airboats at the dock

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Posted in Port Cities, Royal Caribbean, Symphony of the Seas, USA | Tagged airboat, cruise, Everglades, Miami, photos, Royal Caribbean, Symphony of the Seas, travel | Leave a comment

Covered Bridge Hunting

Posted on August 18, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Comstock Bridge

The town of Montgomery sits just a few miles from Jay Peak Resort in Vermont. On the day we checked out of Jay Peak we had a hotel for the night reserved in Boston preceding a very early morning flight home the following day. Not having to rush directly to the airport that day meant we had time to take a detour through Montgomery and look for the reported 7 covered bridges in that town. Google maps guided us to the first one, and people we met there to the second. The third we found on our own having seen a road mentioning bridge on our way to the first and at that bridge someone said if we drove on through there was another not far ahead. That one turned out to be right next door to a post office, which we were also looking for because we had a get-well card to mail.

Longley Bridge

The first bridge we found was just off the highway, and visible from there. It is called Longley Bridge, originally built in 1863 by the Jewett brothers. Most of the bridges had signs saying they were built by the Jewett brothers around that time period. Conveniently enough for finding it, Longley Bridge is on Longley Road, which appeared to lead to a farm. It was listed on the national register of historic places in 1974. The original bridge closed in 2012 after 149 years of service. People used a temporary bypass bridge for a few years until 2017 when the current bridge was built on the site of the original. Very little of the original bridge was salvageable for the construction of the new bridge.

Hopkins Bridge

Hopkins Bridge, the second one we saw is just a short drive away from Longley on Rt 118. The Jewett brothers built this one in 1875. It’s also just off the highway. It was listed on the national register of historic places in 1974. It’s the longest of the Jewett brother’s bridges at over 90 feet. It was rebuilt in 1999 and is located on Bridge Road.

Comstock Bridge

Next we came to the Comstock Bridge, in the same general area as the first two. This one is in Montgomery Village, and was originally built in 1883. Like the first two, it is near Rt 118 and crosses the Trout River. It is on Comstock Bridge Road and was listed on the national register of historic places in 1974. Flooding damaged the bridge in 1997, and repairs were made in 1998. A restoration in 2003 used as much of the original material as possible. Coming from the highway it’s a narrow road with trees and a few houses along the side and a very small bit of space to park. The one-lane road enters the bridge from a curve. You can drive through this one and get into town from the road on the other side, where you’re out in the open on a fairly straight road.

Fuller Bridge

From there it’s not too far to the Fuller Bridge, which is in a mainly residential area other than the post office by the bridge. It is on South Richford Road in Montgomery Village. Like the others, it was built by the Jewett brothers, this one in 1890, and listed on the national register of historic places in 1974. It is used daily by residents living on the other side of the Black Falls Brook, which it crosses. Due to much of the structure being cracked and rotten it was replaced in 2000 with only the roof salvaged from the original bridge.

window in the Fuller Bridge

The post office lady gave us a hand drawn map and mentioned there was a bridge up a road we had passed by that wasn’t called bridge anything and a couple more out the other side of town. One of the roads indicated on her map turned out only to have a regular bridge on it, not a covered one. We drove a long way out that road looking for it before giving up when the road split and we had no idea which way might lead to it. Turns out neither would have. Later I found information on a Vermont website saying that the Gibou Road bridge, which was the one we never found, has been dismantled and put into storage at a construction yard until they can afford to rebuild it. I guess that explains why we never found it. The not-covered bridge near the beginning of the road is where it used to be.

inside Hopkins Bridge

That same hand drawn map the post office lady gave us was also on the website, so now there’s a copy of it at the end of this post. The bridge that had once been on Gibou Road is named the Hectorville Bridge, It was moved to that location from Montgomery center in the early 1900’s and may be either returned to Gibou Road or incorporated into a recreational path in town someday when the town has enough money to fix it.

Hutchins Bridge

Hutchins, the other bridge out that way, was close to highway, though Hutchins Bridge Road was about 10 feet off the highway so the actual turnoff is onto a road with a different name. Original construction was by the Jewett brothers in 1883. Back then it led to a busy butter tub factory. Now it’s out in the country. Repairs were done to stabilize the bridge in 1994 and 2008-2009. Like the rest it was added to the national register of historic places in 1974.

Creamery Bridge

The last one we went to was back out the other way off West Hill Road, the turnoff to which was in the vicinity of the first few bridges we went to. After a long drive out West Hill Road, which was the only road for that bridge named on the map, we happened across a sign to Creamery Bridge Road so we turned there. We found the bridge after a bit of a drive down that one. This was the only bridge with a waterfall under it. It also had no name or signage on it as the others had, though it too was built by the Jewetts in 1883. This one did not appear to be in very good shape. It was also pretty much at a dead end with just a muddy track and some woods on the other side of it. A little way above the bridge there’s a wide spot at the side of the road with room for several cars to park. There are some ruins of the creamery in the woods. The Jewett brothers who built all these bridges had a family farm and lumber mill near this bridge, which was also listed on the national register of historic places in 1974.

waterfall under the Creamery Bridge

Roads in rural Vermont are not necessarily always paved. Some of these were and some weren’t. Most of these bridges were one lane only. Once we were finished and headed back to Boston, the google maps directions sent us along a road that started out paved, but then turned to dirt for about 15 miles before another paved section that connected to what was labeled as a highway, but looked more like a small country road. It was a pretty drive along that road though with a section where yellow-leaved trees formed an archway over the road.

Covered Bridges of Montgomery, Vermont

1. Fuller, 2. Creamery, 3. Hectorville (Gibou Road) – no covered bridge currently there, 4. Comstock, 5. Hutchins, 6. Longley, 7. Hopkins

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Posted in USA | Tagged covered bridges, Montgomery, photos, travel, Vermont | Leave a comment

Shows on Wonder of the Seas

Posted on August 11, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Wonder of the Seas

Like her sister ships in the Oasis class, Wonder of the Seas has some pretty spectacular shows including an ice skating show in the onboard ice arena and a fast-paced dancing and diving show with some very high dives into a tiny pool at the AquaTheater. There are also more standard type cruise ship shows in the main theater and comedy club.

ICE SHOW

spring at the ice show

The ice-skating show on Wonder of the Seas is called Ice Spectacular 365. Scenery and costumes cover the changing seasons over the course of a year. The show starts with a depiction of spring including butterflies and flowers in both the scenery and the light effects on the ice. Skaters dressed in bright colors perform to cheerful music.

summer at the ice show

Throughout the show it changes to summer, fall, and winter. The tone of the music changes from one season to another as well. Performances are sometimes large groups of skaters, sometimes pairs, and sometimes individuals as one would expect in a skating show.

bikes on the ice

This one also had a few different things like a trio with one girl and two guys who would sometimes pass her to one another above ground. The pairs weren’t always the typical one guy and one girl either as there were a couple numbers with two guys and one with two girls. One number included bikes with light-up wheels.

aerialist on ice skates

There was also an aerialist skater. Reservations are required to assure a seat for this show, but it doesn’t cost anything to make them. Making reservations as soon as possible after boarding is the best way to make sure you get into the shows you want to see before they get all booked up.

winter at the ice show

Reservations just get you in the door though, they don’t give you any particular seat so it pays to get there early if you want the best seat choices. For the ice show the end opposite the wall with the scenery gives you a better view than the seating on the other two sides.

WATER SHOW

high wire

The water show, called inTENse almost didn’t happen the night we booked it due to waves high enough to slosh water out of the pool. The captain was able to change course to calmer seas so the show started just a bit late. People with reservations for the late show that day weren’t so lucky – rough water cancelled their show. They give the excuse that when water sloshes back and forth there may not be enough depth to land the highest dives safely and that people would be disappointed if they didn’t get to see the entire show, but since there’s only a couple dives from the highest point at the end of the show there’s not that much to miss. Personally I’d rather see part of the show than have it cancelled entirely and would guess a lot of other people feel the same way. Whether anything else would actually be affected and the high dives just take all the blame or if that’s really the only thing they couldn’t do only the ship people know for sure. If it’s too rough or windy the high wire act might not be a go either, but that was just a small bit at the beginning and again not a major part of the show. Dancing and dives from lower areas are the majority of the performances.

dancing in the water fountain

The cast was nearly all female. Just one person walked across the highwire at the very start so we weren’t sure if it was too windy up there for anything else or that was all this show has of that the first night we watched it. The Hiro show on Symphony had a lot more going on with the highwire. When we saw the show again later in the cruise it was again just that one walk across the highwire s0 apparently it’s just not a big part of that particular show. We thought the person up there was male one time and female the other so it looked like it was not always the same person.

there’s a lot going on in this fast-paced show

The show had a lot of divers and dancers and sometimes a water fountain around the pool. The pool itself changes depth from no water at all to 13 feet deep for the high dives. The bottom goes up and down throughout the show, independently on either side or the middle so any of them could be deep, shallow, or no water at any time.

light sabers?

There were some synchronized swimmers who would sometimes perform with just their legs sticking up from the water. A lot of the diving was either from the edge of the pool or the lowest platform, but there were some dives from the middle platform and the two at the end from way up at the very the top, one person on each side.

bouncers

A duo with the one male cast member and one of the females did some tricks on bouncy ropes strung across the pool area during one part of the show. They each had their own separate rope.

aerialist

There were also several aerialists on various different apparatus, or it could have been the same person on a variety of different things. It doesn’t cost anything to see this show, but reservations are recommended to assure getting in. Once everyone with a reservation is seated they start letting in people without reservations until the theater is full.

aerial drummer

more drums up high in the theater structure

For a different (we thought better) view of the show there are platforms at the bottom of the rock-climbing walls that can be accessed through doors at the end of the corridor where the staterooms are on deck 7, or from a stairway up from the track on deck 5 – no reservation needed. There’s not a whole lot of space there, but it’s a great view for a few people and you can get there before the theater opens since going through the theater is not required to get to the platform. The side we went to even had a few chairs.

view of fountain dancers from the rock wall platform

Although we’d already seen the show from the theater seating one night, we watched it from the rock wall platform another day. Besides being a different perspective, we could see things you couldn’t see from the stands.

another dance seen from the rock wall platform

The app wouldn’t let us book the show a second time so that was a good way to see another performance without having to vulture our way in by waiting to see if there was any space left after everyone with reservations got seated.

THEATER

waiting for the show to start

We went to one theater show, called Tap Factory. We overheard other passengers raving about how good the show was and that they wanted to see it again before we went so obviously our opinion of it doesn’t reflect everybody’s. There were some talented performers, but the show portrayed the main characters as a doofus janitor and drunken factory worker, neither of which would fly for long in real life.

barrel drums and stunts

The setting included metal storage racking and a lot of barrels which were used as drums. There was also an actual set of drums, which is not something likely to be found in any factory unless that factory made musical instruments. The only other prop was a ladder. The background was all virtual, which changed to different factory settings throughout the show.

a ladder becomes an instrument

The janitor was a contortionist who was so good at it that he pretty much creeped out everyone in the audience to the point where at times most people just had to look away. The rest of the cast tap danced and played drums on the barrels and ladder. Everyone in the main cast except the janitor wore overalls, some of which were hanging half off with only one strap fastened, which is not what actual factory workers usually wear. Perhaps it’s not the intent of the show, but it gave off the vibe of making fun of blue-collar workers, which we both were in years past.

pole dancing aerialist

The best part was the pole dancer, which probably wasn’t actually supposed to be a pole dancer, but rather an aerialist – a guy on a pole hanging from the ceiling rather than rooted in the ground. This show looked to be where all the male dancers went.

COMEDY

comedian

There’s a little comedy theater called the Attic near the skating rink. It has shows with 2 comedians who perform one at a time on a tiny stage. It’s adult shows. The two on our cruise had jokes that were not totally clean, but not horribly dirty either. Like most comedy shows, people who are easily offended shouldn’t go. For some reason comedians on any ship that’s not Carnival like to portray people who sail with Carnival as a bunch of dirtbags even though there’s probably plenty of people in any cruise ship audience who have taken Carnival cruises. One of the comedians at the show we saw did that for about half of his set. The other guy was better.

high dive from the top of the AquaTheater structure at the end of the show

Posted in Royal Caribbean, Shipboard Life, Wonder of the Seas | Tagged comedy show, cruise, cruise ship shows, ice show, photos, Royal Caribbean, theater show, travel, water show, Wonder of the Seas | Leave a comment

Icy Strait Point Cruise Port

Posted on August 4, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Quantum of the Seas in Icy Strait Point

Icy Strait Point on Chichagof Island is a cruise ship port near the native village of Hoonah, Alaska. Natives of that village are Huna Tlingit who originally inhabited the Glacier Bay area until the rapid advancement of the Grand Pacific Glacier in the little ice age of the mid 1700’s chased them out of that area into present day Hoonah. The port is owned and operated by the villagers at the site of an old fish cannery, originally built in 1912. It’s the only privately owned cruise port in Alaska. The rest are all ports in cities. The salmon cannery ceased operation in 1953 and the site was used as a maintenance and storage facility for the tribe’s fishing fleet until 1999. There was still a pile of crab pots sitting on a dock when we were there.

port view from the ship

In May of 2004 Celebrity Mercury made the first cruise ship visit to Icy Strait Point. In 2007 the ZipRider zipline opened. The first cruise dock and the adventure center on land followed in 2016 and the second cruise dock and wilderness landing area opened in 2019. There were 3 ships in port the day we were there. Our ship at the original dock, a Norwegian ship at the second dock, and a little Seabourn ship anchored out in the bay tendering to shore.

port map of Icy Strait Point

It originally took a 45-minute bus ride to the top of the mountain to get to the zipline, but with the opening of the red gondola in 2022 the mountain can be accessed much more quickly. The gondola itself is now a bigger attraction than the ZipRider since more people ride the gondola, you can take it both ways, and the wristband for it is good for as many rides as you want up and down all day.

green gondola

A free green gondola connects the land areas between the two cruise ship docks, or people can opt to walk a trail that starts on the beach on the original dock side and then meanders through the woods past an eagle’s nest high in a tree. If there’s a big crowd you can walk the trail before you would even get on the green gondola, but if there isn’t a crowd the gondola is much faster than walking the trail. The green gondola passed over the Tree Top Adventure ropes course. We never saw anyone on it, but passes can be purchased to use it and equipment is provided if you do. There are several courses with a minimum age of 7, one with a minimum age of 12, and a kid’s course for those aged 4-6.

houses near the cannery

There’s a row of 3 old houses where some of the management lives right onsite. These houses sit next to the boardwalk leading from the port area to the old cannery which now houses a number of shops and some old museum pieces from the cannery days. There’s a little graveyard next to the houses – perhaps working in the cannery had been quite a risky job. Two of the houses looked occupied when we walked by them. If anyone was living in the middle one at the time they didn’t have all the obvious signs of use out in the yard that the other two had.

ZipRiders coming in for a landing

Depending on which of the port’s two docks your ship is at you might have direct access to the wilderness landing area where there’s a building for shore excursions to meet in, a whale statue, and the cannery with its shops, restaurants, and museums. The ZipRider lands in this area, near that end’s station for the free green gondola between docks. There’s also beaches in this area, and sealife including whales may be spotted near the whale statue or from the walkway to the cannery. The other dock leads to an area with a gift shop and restrooms near the free green gondola station for that end, visitor information, and up a little hill the building where you sign waivers for the zipline and exchange your zipline or gondola tickets for wristbands which are required to take the red gondola up the mountain. That building also has free lockers, a necessity for any zipline riders with more stuff than they can take down the zipline.

red gondola

Booking either the ZipRider or the gondola means you can ride the red gondola up and down the mountain as many times as you want. On a clear day the views are spectacular. At the top there’s a cell phone tower so reception up there is excellent, though at the bottom it is not. There’s a mile long loop trail that goes by a lake, some viewpoints, and the check-in area for the zipline. The red gondola is definitely the highlight of the port. The ZipRider is lots of fun, but you just get one go and it goes fast whereas the gondola takes a lot more time and you can ride it all you want – or just ride the gondola and not the zipline.

view of Tree Top Adventure ropes course from the green gondola

Some of the other excursions offered at this port included whale watching, jeeps, a bear watching tour, and kayaking. Other tours may include fishing or a hands-on traditional native food preserving experience in Alaska’s Wildest Kitchen.

whale statue

For a nominal fee there’s a shuttle to Hoonah. It’s a small native village with a few shops and restaurants. It has totem poles and a carving hut where there could be a totem pole in the making. Like a lot of Alaska, the town is a good place to spot bald eagles. We didn’t go there so I don’t have any firsthand information about the town.

old cannery converted to shops, restaurants, and museum

There are also some free things to do. Walking the trail between dock areas or spending time on the beach, strolling on the boardwalk, walking through the museum and shop area at the cannery, or posing for photos with the whale statue don’t cost anything. Neither does the green gondola. It doesn’t have the spectacular view that the red one does, but you can see stuff from there that you don’t see from the ground. There could be a native Tlingit show at the tribal hall near the cannery. People who don’t want to spend a few bucks to take a shuttle to Hoonah can walk the mile and a half to the village. And of course any wildlife you spot from shore is free. I saw something briefly poking out above the water’s surface near the boardwalk to the cannery, which was probably a small portion of the side of a whale. Back on the ship we saw whales right outside the window from our cabin.

eagle nest by the walking trail between cruise docks

There were no port photographers on the dock at any of the ports on this ship, but they did have someone in a bear suit by the buffet on the morning of the day we went to Icy Strait Point.

Barbara and the bear

Posted in Alaska, Ports of Call, Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, USA | Tagged Alaska, cruise, cruise port, Icy Strait Point, photos, Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean, travel | 1 Comment

Walkabout in Oranjestad, Aruba

Posted on July 28, 2023 by LBcruiseshipblogger

view of the Constellation from the marina in Oranjestad

After we finished our snorkel excursion at our port stop in Oranjestad, Aruba on Celebrity Constellation we had enough time left to explore a bit. We went to shore hoping to find an island tour as we had on Bonaire after finishing a snorkel excursion there. Unfortunately there were no waiting taxis at the port. One lone brightly colored open-sided van/bus sat empty, but the driver said an island tour would cost $100 each, a far cry from the $25 each we’d paid for the taxi tour in Bonaire. We declined at that price. He said he planned to head to a distant beach soon to pick people up who’d gone earlier and could take us there for $25 each, but besides already having seen that area from the water on the snorkel boat, getting left on a beach near to the end of a port stop without a known means of returning to the ship would not have been an inviting proposal even if we were dressed for beachgoing, which we weren’t.

ads and empty booths

We opted instead just to walk around the town in the area near to the port. On the way out we passed through a row of nearly deserted booths along the pathway out and a sign advertising shark attack drinks at Lucy’s bar in town.

shark attack drink

In town we came across that bar and happened to see one of those shark drinks at someone’s table. Possibly another passenger from the ship, or maybe a tourist staying in town somewhere.

shops next to the port

Other shops just outside the port were much busier than the booths had been. Of course these shops would be accessible to people not from the ship and as there were only 700 passengers onboard it may not have been worth the time and trouble to open many booths that day. Or perhaps they were unoccupied due to the people who had previously ran them going out of business while no ships were cruising. Some of them also could have been open earlier to provide last-minute tours and had closed for the day by then. All just speculation since we went straight from the ship to our snorkel boat and hadn’t passed through the port area earlier in the day when booths may or may not have been open.

scooters for rent near the cruise ship dock in Aruba

Just outside the port we saw scooters for rent.

bikes for rent

People looking for something to do in town could also rent bikes, which we saw in a couple different places.

submarine rides

Atlantis Submarines had an outlet near the port so that’s something else people could do there.

long row of little shops

There’s lots of small open-sided shops with brightly colored merchandise.

stand in front of one of the little shops

Local crafts are for sale too.

pink palace

We saw a place that looked something like a pink palace with several buildings sprawling across a block. It could possibly have been a hotel, but that’s just a guess.

blue horse statue

The town was dotted with blue horse statues. The first one we came across stood next to a sign that said Paarden Baai (Horse Bay) was so named because in the past horses would be offloaded from sailing ships by throwing them into the bay there, and having a strategically placed horse on shore to lure them in. Though I’d guess a horse suddenly finding itself in the sea would find the land itself pretty alluring. The sign did not explain how they threw horses off ships either. Does not sound like an easy task.

cow bench

Horses were not the only farm animals about town. We came across a cow sitting on a bench near a steak house.

pelican at the marina

We found a live creature too in the form of a pelican at a marina sitting at the end of a little channel that disappeared into a cave under a bridge in the main street.

a boat disappears into a cave under the street

Later out of curiosity in investigating where that channel led, we found that it went inside a hotel called the Renaissance Hotel. The ground floor of the hotel was open to the public with a Starbucks and other shops near to the boat stop.

boat stop inside the Renaissance Hotel

Signs at the boat stop said it was a free water taxi service for guests of the hotel who wanted to go to the listed stops at beaches and other tourist destinations on the island.

you don’t see phone booths much anymore

There were lots of shops and restaurants and a boardwalk by the marina. It also had an old-fashioned English style red phone booth.

bags at a souvenir stand near the port

The motto of Aruba is One Happy Island. They sell clothing and other souvenirs with that slogan printed on them. Our taxi tour driver in Bonaire said that was because when they burned a bunch of seized drugs the smoke wafted over to Aruba. Of course that’s not what they say in Aruba. According to them it’s because of their wonderful weather, beautiful beaches, and the island’s friendly inhabitants.

solar panel tree

There are all sorts of shops and shopping areas near to the port. We also came across a solar panel tree by a building next to a church. We saw trolley tracks by the port and in town, but did not see a trolley on them until we were nearly back to the ship. The trolley takes people into town, but by our experience you could walk there and back and have time to explore in between before the trolley ever goes by. It’s possible that it may run more often earlier in the day when more people are coming and going, or for ships with more passengers though. Or that it went by while we were somewhere where we couldn’t see the tracks. There might have been a sign somewhere with a schedule for it had we looked for one, but we didn’t.

Aruba sign

Posted in Caribbean, Celebrity, Constellation, Port Cities, Ports of Call | Tagged Aruba, cruise, Oranjestad, photos, port, travel | Leave a comment

Cruise Stories

Symphony of the Seas Hits and Misses

Hits

Misses

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Bars on Celebrity Constellation

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Ocean Cay

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

ZipRider at Icy Strait Point

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Olympic National Park In A Day

Dog-Friendly Trails in Olympic National Park

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Everglades Airboat Excursion

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Covered Bridge Hunting

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Shows on Wonder of the Seas

ICE SHOW

WATER SHOW

THEATER

COMEDY

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Icy Strait Point Cruise Port

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Walkabout in Oranjestad, Aruba

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2023

Recent Posts

Categories

Google Translate

Archives

Blog Stats

You can Like My Cruise Stories on Facebook from right here!

Email Subscription

click tiny square logo for RSS subscription

Happy Cruising!