Wake me up!
With only 4.5 hours of sleep we were up at 7:30am Eastern. Surprisingly Kaitlyn and Sophie shot up first and we went down and had a pretty good breakfast. Below is some of the topping for the waffles.
They also had good eggs, sausage and potatoes. We booked our transport through Cruise Control. We had to pay a deposit of half the price and I did it when there was a little deal going on so for 10 of us for a private transfer was $250, or about $25/person which I thought was a good price. The guys called at 8:45am and said he was ready whenever we are. We were scheduled to leave at 9:30. I told Auger’s in a text with no answer so I prank called them and Kate answered and I said it was their wakeup call. Kate just said, “OK, thank you” and hung up. So I walked down to their room to tell them.
Again, a moment we wrote down to remember, I said, “I turned up the heat cause Ella was cold and the fan would then drown out the noise.” Sophie then says, “Like Ella complaining”
The guy was sitting there with a trailer. I walked to a few other ones to make sure. Most of these transports don’t have any large stickers on their door that lets you know it is them so you have to search a little or ask questions. By 9:15 we rolled our luggage out and Augers came out a little later and we were moving by 9:30.
We had a number of things we wrote down that was funny that I will mention on occasion through this process. One was as we were leaving the hotel to head to the port, Chris says about the driver, “He does know where he’s going.” I sure hope so Chris!
The guy was patient and nice so that was good. I did miss his name though. I wanted to pay with credit card. He asked if it was possible to pay with cash so I did so eating through some of the cash quicker than I wanted. It took us all of 45 minutes and we were at the port and in line by 10:30 already.
BOARDING
There was a guy singing outside “BOARDING PASSESS!” My girls got a kick out of his sing song that they remembered this weeks later.
It was also interesting in a way to watch people come out of the terminal with long faces because their cruise had ended while we had big smiles because ours was just beginning. This was also about the time I saw people with 12 packs of pop and remembered I was going to ask our driver if we had time to make a quick stop for some pop but I obviously forgot. Carnival you can take 12 cans of pop per person with.
We get inside and there is no picture taking or video recording apparently. I didn’t see that notification cause I was videoing. Anyway, you do zig-zag through just a bit once inside and there are many stations that everyone in your stateroom walk up to with your boarding passes. Was cool to watch Ally and Kaitlyn walk up to one of the stations just those two. Everyone had to have their own boarding pass in their hand.
Because we were early they hadn’t even started boarding yet. So they crammed us into this holding area and told us to get comfortable with the person next to you, there can be no open seats because they have to fit thousands of people into this area. I did sneak a couple of pictures while we waited.
Apparently by Heather the people would not move their stuff so there was an open seat. Some people just refuse to listen. There was also a group of people sitting across from them that we nicknamed the fedora guys. The one guy apparently reminded them of a grown up version of the “know it all” kid from Polar Express.
I am not sure what this area is used for. There were a bunch of stations with no one really in it so not sure of its purpose. But we waited here for boarding call.
The lady started calling off the boarding call and was difficult to hear. There was a bunch of monitors but the only thing it showed was information for Carnival’s newest ship the Mardi Gras, which we thought was weird since we were boarding the Vista. It would have been nice if some of the monitors showed the boarding numbers. I guess there was a TV way down the end but they covered that up with a ship backdrop for pictures.
Some people got antsy and left before they were supposed to. We waited patiently as our boarding number was C6 but it didn’t take long and were on the ship probably close to 11:30 so it was really only an hour from the time we got there until we were on the ship.
First thing I noted was the Atrium seemed smaller than the Magic which is almost the exact same as Vista. They had already taken down the Christmas tree whereas the last New Years cruise we took the tree was still up. I wish they would leave the decorations up until after New Years at least. Every port we stopped at still had their decorations up. After all, Christmas Season doesn’t end until Epiphany.
The first thing we do is figure out our muster station, or muenster station as Heather called it. The two families were in one area, the Horizons Restaurant, while Kaitlyn and Ally had a different location. We said go to your muster and meet around Guy’s Burger when finished.
Carnival has made the muster so easy. Check in. Watch a brief demonstration on how to put on the life vest, they tell you to watch the video in your stateroom and check to make sure you have enough life vests in your room, and that’s it! We later would watch Disney do it the old way still where everyone had to come out with their life vests on and go onto deck 3 I think it is.
We meet up on the Lido by Guy’s.
Kaitlyn buys her first cruise alcoholic drink now that she is 21.
Heather and I buy our usual first drink.
Heather and Ella had to take this picture. We were off to a good start when it came to people watching and this cruise definitely did not disappoint the rest of the way. As we were waiting to catch the elevator up to Lido on the 10th floor (to which we eventually decided to take the stairs because the elevators were so slow and backed up) there was a certain person waiting and one of the doors opened to which the person yelled, “Cindy! Cindy! The Elevator!” So this person became known as CINDY!
FOOD AND STATEROOMS
Not everyone knew exactly what they wanted to eat so we said to meet in our staterooms when they are slated to open at 1:30pm.
Most of us went to Guy’s Pig and Anchor as Leighton didn’t get a chance to eat there last time while the 1s decided to eat in the buffet. The burger line was very LOONNNGGG at this point.
The BBQ was quite good we thought except for the bread. The bread was bad!
While in line I had my Skol hat on and of course a guy stops me and asks where I am from. Turns out, he was from Farmington!
While we ate the adults were able to see on their Hubb app what was going on for the day. I could not do it for some reason and it kept asking for my folio number. Well I won’t know that until we are allowed into our room. So I get impatient and Heather suggests to delete the app and reinstall to see if that helps. Big Mistake! I should have remembered when we didn’t get the app loaded onto Ella’s phone until we were on the ship last time there were hardly any bars for our poor Android run Verizon phones and it took forever. Well, mine wasn’t loading of course so I went to look for a place on the ship that might start catching data and finally found a spot up on 10, aft, starboard. Still took a bit but not bad. In the mean time we caught our first photo of these two ships! Both the Fantasy and the Escape! The very first two ships we ever cruised on!
You’ll see in days to come, that we also see the Magic as well! While I was waiting for the app to download I looked down and the water seemed so far down. The picture doesn’t do it justice.
It was at this point we were noticing the smoking section, even though they technically shouldn’t be smoking while fuel is being pumped onto the ship. I mention something about having cigars, and another moment I don’t remember exactly how it went but Chris said, “I’m going to sneak out and smoke a cigar with the French”
It was 1:30 and time to get to our rooms. Sort of forgot how far down the hall Kaitlyn and Ally’s room was booked from the rest of us. They were very excited to have their own room however, even if it was an interior room. 1320 was their room. We were all on the 1st floor again.
We made our way to 1384 (our room) and 1382.
Our bags were all there but Leighton was the only one that had a bag missing. We unpacked and were a little taken aback by the lack of space this time for some reason. Thankfully Linda told me to pack a power strip (it couldn’t be a surge protector) because there was also a lack of outlets. It seemed like our closet space was really limited and we also couldn’t fit all the luggage under the bed so we had to store some behind the curtain. The kids quickly unpacked while we organized a little bit and they quickly took to relaxing and watching TV.
And also took a nap.
We all took naps in fact and then got up and went to deck 12 along side the main pool around 3:45 to get ready for sail away!
SAIL AWAY!
This is always a good time. Sail Away!
And we had visitors up on 12.
It was a bit cool, but for us northerners, it was shorts and sweatshirt weather and we were doing just fine. I think the high temperature was in the upper 50s to maybe near 60.
Kaitlyn and Ally enjoying their 21 year old drink.
We didn’t think of it until it was too late but we should have had a picture of them and their adult beverage with Disney Fantasy behind them, the first ship they went on when they were 15.
And the kids went down to start the ritual line dancing!
And made it on the jumbotron a couple of times
Now one thing that was annoying is that Carnival kept the loungers up on 12. It took up so much room and it was annoying to try to get around as sometimes you wanted to look out to sea and sometimes you wanted to watch what was going on on the Lido Deck.
We were told there were 6 other ships in port but we only found 5, either way it was busy and we though we were supposed to depart at 4pm we didn’t leave until 5. We jokingly blamed it on Leighton because before this he set off an alarm by going out a door he wasn’t suppose to in the kids club.
Royal Caribbean’s two ships left first.
Then Disney
And then us. Norwegian Escape was last to depart.
But they were throwing their lines as we were leaving.
While it wasn’t optimal that we were leaving an hour later, it did provide us with some spectacular pictures!
And while you can’t see if very well in the picture, for the first time ever on a cruise we saw dolphins.
Unfortunately because we left late, pretty much the party on the Lido was over before we ever left port. They still started the Lido Sail Away party at 4 even though we weren’t leaving until 5. In fact, it was almost sunset by the time we left.
As we were getting to the park right before the jetty, there was someone dressed as a unicorn waving and, at times, doing some precarious acts. Whoever you were, thanks for the entertainment!
Later sail away, but again, the views were awesome!
By this time in the night however, it was getting quite cool and time to head inside.
EVENING TIME
We go back to our staterooms to get ready for dinner and Auger’s open up their one bag to find out something had spilled in it. Never did find out what it was exactly. By 6:55 we registered to eat and at that point it said it would be 40-50 minutes. Last time on Magic we could only register 8 of us and we had to go see the person with the tablet and tell them there was 10 of us. Now they updated it so we could register all 10 of us. It took about 45 minutes until our table was ready and about another 1.5 hours by the time we were done eating. We joked, much like the night before as we were one of the last ones to get a hotel shuttle, here we are once again, one of the last ones to leave.
And of course the Pixels people come around to take photos.
We were so hungry and thirsty by this point we were downing water and all we wanted was our darn bread which took just bit to get.
But at least they started to entertain us. The main lady would say over the speaker to her servers…”10 minutes to shhhhhhhoowww time” “5 minutes to shhhhooowww time”. It became just one of many things we repeated throughout the cruise. Shhhooowww time started and we started throwing our napkins around like we were at an old fashioned German wedding.
And one of the waiters grabbed Sophie and Kate and then Ella and Leighton joined in on the dance as well.
I wish we would have remembered to get his name to mention him on the comments as that is important for crew members to be mentioned.
I did write down I had the duck role, Szechwan shrimp…which was awesome by the way. Ella said her mashed potatoes were the best ever. When we got our food Ally said, “I tucked my hair behind my ears and I went for it”
During this time the lady running the Dining area would talk and kept mentioning the Hubb App, but the way she said it it was more like “the hubub”. So we called it the hubub the remainder of the cruise. If we had drinks we were going to do a shot every time she said “hubub”
We got a little goofy and wanted more bread. A piece dropped when trying to serve Sophie so she picked it up off the floor and started to act like she was going to eat it. We stopped her and put it in the middle of the table. He then came around and gave more bread to Sophie and watched her and then wondered why the bread was in the middle of the table. He said to Sophie “Eat my child. Eat my beautiful child”. It was a funny little moment that I didn’t record very well, I just remember we had a nice laugh at it.
Later that night Ella wanted the shoes Sophie had on but Sophie and Kate took off and never came back to the room so Ella was upset. We went looking for them but never found them. We went to the comedy club but it was 18+ and they wouldn’t let Leighton in which was the first strike in this BS about being 17 and really being too old for the kids club but not old enough for anything else at night. About 5 to 10 minutes in the bouncer left and we tried to get Leighton to come back but he never did. The comedian was a high pitched 58 year old man to which Chris was never sure if he was a man or someone transitioning. We told Chris however that the first half of his routine was about him being a man with a high pitched voice.
There were on this trip Gustapo looking guys. A man and his son the way it looked. They were dressed the same like you might envision Greek mafia type guys dressing in the 80s. Hard to explain but they had similar suits on. They would become the focal point at times the remainder of our trip.
The wives did do some shopping. We tried to watch the Lions and Packers game but there just is not any room to watch that sort of stuff on this ship. It was rather disappointing. Again, we noticed how much smoking there was going on the starboard side of deck 11 and also in the casino. Unbelievable how much people still smoke. While Leighton couldn’t get into the older shows, the 2s and 3s the decided to go around the ship and went to the Welcome Show, the Havana Bar and danced and we met up with them later to find the Vista Rock Band! The new Brittany and Patrick perhaps of this ship. In fact, some were convinced the two were Brittany and Patrick from the Magic. They were very good singers, especially the lady, but it became a bit of an SNL skit as the cruise went along. We went and tried the pizza in the aft with the 2s. We went to bed and Sophie didn’t come back to the room until 1am. She already started having fun with the people from the club.
Couple of other closing thoughts here, you pay $5 per person to use the hubub and you get texts half the time it seems. If we are paying for the product, it should be better than that. Kaitlyn would hardly see any of our texts, especially the group texts. Also, were suprised during the whole cruise how even though we were on airplane mode, had the ship Wifi but did not pay for internet other than on board texting, we would still get push notification from X, Facebook, Instagram, etc. We couldn’t actually look at the posts, but we saw glimpses of it from the notifications. That was kind of disappointing as we make this a time to get away from phones. If we need it to communicate with others on the ship, to see what is going on, or to use it during dining…fine. But I don’t want to see anything from the outside world.
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