Tag: dinner

Sailing With Disney – Let’s Get This Party Started!

I’ve mentioned before that embarkation day is a love/hate thing for me. Going in to this boarding day, I was excited enough to not care how painful boarding would be, but we still decided that we weren’t going to rush to the port, instead opting for a slightly later arrival in the hopes of avoiding some of the crowds. Well that didn’t really work, as in our excitement we still left a little too early :). Around 11:30, after moving our cars over to the cruise parking area at the hotel we’d stayed at, we grabbed a Lyft and headed to the port. For anyone who’s familiar with the area, it took all of 5 minutes to get from our hotel, the Radisson, to the port. So much for a more relaxed arrival time that would allow us to walk on with little wait!

After passing through security, we headed for check-in. For non-concierge folks, there are two possible lines you end up in, either the first time Disney cruisers line, or the Castaway Club line. Being our first Disney cruise, we obviously landed in the former. It moved pretty quickly, and start to finish I think it might have been 10 minutes before we had our cabin keys are were off to wait for our turn to board. Not too bad! Part of that check-in is getting your boarding group number, which in our case was 25, about 22 from where they currently were. No biggie, we decided to get in line for a picture with Minnie prior to boarding, which definitely killed some time, as they were all the way up to group 17 by the time we finished.

 

After wandering the boarding area for another 20 minutes, our boarding group was called, and it was time to get things rolling. One of the cool things about boarding on Disney is that as you walk on to the ship, you’re welcomed on board by name:

Once on board, we headed for Royal Palace, as we wanted to try and get reservations for the brunch buffet at Palo, and hadn’t been able to prior to sailing. Having boarded at 12:55, we only had 5 minutes before they opened the room to allow passengers to come in and request dining changes like this, so we jumped in a line that was surprisingly short, with only 5 or so groups in front of us. As you’ll see in a later post, we did manage to get the reservation, so that little victory behind us, we headed to lunch. We’d decided ahead of time to eat our first meal in the Dream in Enchanted Garden to avoid the buffet crowd. Not a bad call, other than somewhat slow service. The dining staff were very friendly and quick to respond to whatever you needed, but it seemed like there were too few of them in a space where there are too many tables crammed around each other. The sundae at the end of the meal made up for it, however. Amazing. That proved to be a common theme on the cruise, as their ice cream is delicious!

 

After lunch, we headed to the room. We were booked in cabin 7004, a Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Porthole (OV) all the way forward on deck 7. It’s a fairly spacious cabin with plenty of storage with a porthole that overlooks the front of the ship. One thing I really like about the room’s design is the split bathrooms. One bathroom with a sink and toilet, the other with a sink and bathtub/shower combo. Having another bathroom with its own sink separate from the shower allowed more than one person to be getting ready for dinner at the same time. So nice :). My only gripe about the room was the slanted front wall, due to that being the front of the ship. I intentionally chose that side of the bed (power outlet and USB ports in the alarm clock FTW!) and ended up hitting my head more than once. Really, that’s all I’ve got in the complaint department where the room is concerned, I really liked it. Here’s the 360 shot of it, take a look around!

Here are a few more of the room, including the bathrooms, and one of the couch after it’s been turned into a bed:

 

After dropping our stuff in the room, we gave Bayley a tour of the kids club since it would be the only time she’d be able to go in. As expected, Disney’s got a great setup down there. I posted some pics of it during our tour of it back in December, but to recap, some of the highlights include a Star Wars themed section where kids can fly the Millenium Falcon, Andy’s room from Toy Story, and large video enabled floors where games can be held. As we walked through, there was in fact a game going on at one of them, which Jen and Bayley happily took part in. Jen thinks they were frogs, stepping on the screen to throw out its tongue and catch bugs:

 

After a little walking tour of a few areas, we headed up to deck 12 to take in the sail-away party. Having mis-judged the number of people who’d be attending, and getting there as it was starting, our initial spots weren’t that great, so I moved around a little to get a better view:

 

It’s a good time, complete with a number of Disney characters, so if you want a good view, get there a little early and get up against the rails on either side of deck 12, or up front by the stage on deck 11.

After the sail-away party, we explored the ship a little more before heading to the main show. We’d been assigned late dining (8:15), which we normally don’t like (this trip did nothing to change that), so we were in the early show. The first show of the sailing was the Golden Mickeys, an awards-style show geared towards celebrating Disney’s vast catalog of movies. We do like the Dream’s theater, as it’s fairly open throughout, with excellent sight-lines in most places. They do use the forward balcony boxes in the shows, so the closer to center the better, but we sat on the sides a couple of times and had clean views of the stage itself. Couple that with snack bars just outside the theater by each entrance, and it’s up there as one of my favorite theaters on any ship we’ve sailed. Far better than whatever it is that Carnival decided to do with the main theater in the Vista.

The show is where I really started to appreciate Disney’s ability to provide outstanding entertainment regardless of location. Prior to this, MSC held the title of best entertainment at sea in our eyes, but Disney’s on a whole other level. For that very reason, I still categorize MSC as the best in the contemporary non-Disney class when it comes to original shows. When you factor in Disney’s vast catalog of movies and cartoons that they can pull from for the show (without having to pay royalties), there’s really no way for anyone else to compete, as Disney’s in a league of their own. The show itself was outstanding, with excellent performers and vocalists, a theme that held true all week.

The theater is also where I started to notice and appreciate Disney’s enforcement of the rules. Leading in to the show, they’d warned people multiple times that no photos or video recording were allowed in the shows, and as usual, people didn’t listen. What set them apart from other lines is that they actively enforced it. In Cats when we were on the Oasis of the Seas, a woman a few seats over recorded a large chunk of it fairly obviously (the screen on her phone was large and bright), and none of the staff members did a thing even though we were all warned before the show about doing just that. In here, the ushers quickly spotted those with even the dimmest screen, walked over, and told them to stop. It made for a much more enjoyable experience. I admit I did take one picture, but well before the show started so I could show our viewing angle:

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After the show ended, we still had time to kill before our 8:15 dinner seating, so we headed to D Lounge to catch part of the Family Fusion game show. Good stuff, similar to the Match Game. I didn’t stay in there long, I wanted to get some outside shots as the sun was going down, so I headed out to get a few shots while the girls watched the game:

 

After that quick stroll outside, I headed back in to meet up with the girls so we could head to our dining room for dinner. For those that haven’t sailed Disney, they have multiple dining rooms that you switch between each night, with your dining staff following you. For night #1, Animators Palate was on tap. That’s a really fun venue, and probably our favorite MDR of the sailing. Being that we had 4 nights in 3 dining rooms, one was repeated, and I really wish it had been this one. Beyond the cool decor, Crush is jumping between the different screens talking to various guests at their tables while they eat. If you’ve ever been to Turtle Talk with Crush at Epcot, it’s very similar, just in a dinner setting.

 

Dinner itself was delicious. From the top left, moving clockwise, I had the Black Truffle Pasta Purseittes, Baked Potato and Cheddar Cheese Soup, Ginger Teriaki dusted Angus Beef Tenderloin, and the Cookies and Cream Sundae. Like the sundae at lunch, it was outstanding. I could have eaten sundaes all week and been perfectly happy :).

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Our only complaint with dinner was how long it took. Felt like we were never going to get out of there, taking just over 2 hours from the time we were seated until we were done with dessert. One of the reasons we prefer early dining is that they actually have a set schedule to keep, needing to get people out quickly so they can clean up for the next seating, a deadline that’s just not there with late seating. Our wait staff was great, it just seemed like another case of too many tables for too few staff. It took so long that we missed one activity that started around 10pm or so. Might have been a character meet and greet, but I forgot to note it unfortunately.

Our dinner finally over, we headed to the Quest game show, which was followed by their version of the marriage show. Normally we like to play along during Quest, but getting there so late and being completely full from dinner, I really wasn’t up for it. There weren’t any really convenient seats for running up to the host, either, so we just watched this round. The host for both of these events, Chris, was outstanding. I highly recommend attending the late night stuff he hosts if you’re looking for fun without the kids :). In case anyone from our sailing happens to read this, I’ll close this post out with some shots from those games, including a picture of the marriage show couples. Couple #1 was one of the funniest pairs I’ve ever seen in this type of show, for reasons that should stay on the ship 😉

 

At this point we’d only been on-board for half a day, but were having an absolute blast, and for the most part our Disney cruise was living up to the hype. Next up, the ship makes its first stop. Did we get off in Nassau? Stay tuned! In the meantime, enjoy a few more pics from day 1:

 

A Short Sailing on Hurtigruten’s MS Nordnorge

After finishing up our stay at the Snowhotel, it was time to board Hurtigruten’s MS Nordnorge for the cruise portion of our trip. As you may have read in an earlier post, things didn’t quite go as planned, and we ended up getting off of the ship after only 36 hours. Nothing’s changed with my feelings on what went down both onboard the ship and since then, but we’ll get to that later. For now, I wanted to offer up what I feel is a fair review of our time onboard.

Getting from the Snowhotel to the ship was a breeze. Hurtigruten has excursions that allow you to tour the hotel when they’re in port in Kirkenes, so we were just able to hop on one of the tour buses when it returned to the ship around noon, and do so without charge, which was nice. Upon arriving at the ship, we wren’t quite sure where to go to check in, assuming we needed to find a building outside of the ship to head into. Wrong! We were told to take our luggage and board the ship, checking in once we got up the ramp. Check-in was an absolute breeze, too. We handed over our passports, she looked up our reservations, and handed us our stateroom keys. No real line, just get your stateroom key, set up your on-board account, and head to your room with your luggage. All in all it may have taken 20 minutes, counting the time we spent waiting on the people in front of us complaining about various things.

Once we checked in, we immediately headed to our cabins to drop our stuff. We had two cabins in two different categories, with Bayley having her own room on deck 3, a Polar Outside room, and Jen and I on deck 5 in an Arctic Superior. Both rooms were fine. Well appointed, comfortable, but a little small compared to your average cruise ship room, and quite lacking in storage space.

As for how a sailing on Hurtigruten compares to other cruises we’ve been on, well, it doesn’t. We knew going in that it wouldn’t, we selected this specifically because it wasn’t your average cruise. They bill it more of an adventure/exploration sailing, as your journey takes you through a number of ports between Kirkenes and Bergen. Some of the stops are short stays of 30min or less, designed to deliver supplies and/or ferry people/cars, so in those ports you’re not getting off the ship, but at the longer stops, you can walk around town, join an excursion if one’s available in that port, or even join the expedition team on an adventure in the area. That last one depends on whether or not your ship has an expedition team, which ours did. We actually put in a lot of time planning the whole trip around ensuring that we were on a refurbished ship that also had an expedition team. Well, that really didn’t end up paying off, did it? 🙂

After boarding and grabbing some lunch in the buffet, we checked out the various decks on-board. The ship itself was really nice. There are 7 decks, with deck 1 being the crew’s deck, and not available for passengers to visit. Half of deck 2 is where the cars are stored while in transit, also not open to guests. That leaves 5.5 passenger decks, with most of your time as a passenger likely spent on deck 4 (restaurant, guest services/excursion desk, shops), deck 5 (outside deck where you can walk around the entire ship), or deck 7 (panoramic lounge, bakery, sun deck). I would have thrown deck 6 in there for the outdoor jacuzzis, but they weren’t operational. Local law requires video surveillance in place, which they had yet to install.

Around 4pm, those of us who boarded in Kirkenes (around 40 people, maybe) met in the conference room on deck 4 for the required safety briefing. That mainly consisted of a video showing us what to do in the event of an emergency, including how to put on the cold water survival suits, yet another reminder you’re not in the Caribbean! During this meeting, the expedition team also gave us a little talk on what their purpose was on-board, and what sort of talks they’d be giving over the course of this sailing. Because of the change in itinerary, they were also responsible for giving us information on what had changed, what the compensation for the change was, and also hosted a Q&A on the changes. Frankly, this is where things started to go off the rails. During the Q&A, one of the other groups onboard expressed serious displeasure at the reason for the change, which was met with a very non-empathetic “well, you get to see the scenery”. Considering we chose this to be able to stop at a number of towns along the way, most of which were now cancelled, that response just made things more tense. If you take a look at the southbound map, you’ll understand. After Tromso, all stops until Bergen were cancelled. At this point, we didn’t realize we’d also be missing key stops before Tromso, too. Yikes.

After the meeting broke, we headed to the excursions desk to see about signing up for the midnight snowmobile excursion, something we were really looking forward to. That’s when we found out that we were getting close to some heavy wind, and that as a result we’d likely be missing the ports involved, as you get off in one port and rejoin in the next one after finishing up the excursion. While it was extremely disappointing, bad weather happens, regardless of where you’re sailing. That meant the only excursion we still had a shot at on the entire sailing was the midnight concert in the arctic cathedral once we got to Tromso the next day. I’m pretty sure that’s when all 3 of us started considering our options for leaving the ship.

After the disappointment at the excursions desk, we headed to our rooms to unpack before dinner. At some point during that time, we did head up to the sun deck for the first expedition team talk during our time on-board. This ended up being somewhat disappointing, as it was almost impossible to hear her unless you were right up front near her. We saw several people around us walk away indicating the same issue. I did catch some of it, with information on the area and birds that you might see if you were looking. I think it lasted 20-30 minutes max. Honestly, I found the idea of an on-board expedition team more exciting than the reality of it. I pictured a small team that in addition to giving the talks, could, at any minute, throw you into a zodiac and head to land for some snowshoeing up a mountain, vs a team that basically was on board to give short talks and walk around towns giving local history. Not saying that’s bad, just not what I think I was expecting. We didn’t sit in on any other talks during our short time on-board, and didn’t follow them around at either of our stops, so I can’t speak to anything beyond that initial meeting and talk.

At some point in here (it may have happened before the talk, I don’t quite remember), we had our first stop in Vardo. This was a short one, about 45 minutes, so we took the short walk over to Vardøhus Fortress, about the only scenery available in that amount of time. It was a pretty icy walk, so we were glad we had our ice grips with us! The expedition team also led a walk over there for anyone who wanted to go, giving a history of the place along the way, but we did it on our own.

Dinner was up next, and was delicious. I was expecting fish to be served every night, but our first night on the ship actually brought us some more reindeer, this time a filet. While I’m here, I should cover eating on board overall, too. All meals are in the restaurant at the back of deck 4. Breakfast and lunch are buffets, and are seafood heavy, which we completely expected. Dinner is a typical 3 course meal, and is the only time you have an assigned seat in here. When entering the restaurant, you are supposed to use provided antibiotic gel, similar to other lines, and you also have to scan your room card, so that the kitchen knows how much food to prepare. This is true for every meal, as they’re trying to avoid a lot of food waste. There’s no special dress code for dinner, just wear what you had on during the day, and no formal nights. It was nice not having to take a second set of clothes for dinner! No way could we have pulled that off having only taken one suitcase each.

We’d entered the windy portion of the cruise prior to dinner, so Jen and Bayley were already feeling pretty uneasy. After dinner, we headed back to the room so they could rest a bit. It was at that point when we decided staying on the boat really wasn’t an option. After discussing where we would want to spend our time after getting off in Tromso, I spent an hour or so looking at flights and hotels for that intended itinerary before approaching the guest services desk to ask about the possibility of getting off the ship. Frankly, we could have done so without asking, all we had to do was close out our on-board account and check out right before debarking, so upon learning that, I spent another 2-3 hours Sunday night getting everything booked while the girls attempted to rest and feel better. I briefly covered the new itinerary in the vacation reset post, and will be covering each stop in upcoming posts, too. Honestly, I don’t remember doing much else that night, other than dealing with booking stuff and trying to get answers out of guests services on a refund of our cruise fare. Frankly, I found dealing with the on-board guest services manager to be a pretty frustrating experience.

The next morning, after a little breakfast in the main dining room, we continued on our quest to get our refund sorted out, and figure out if they were going to cover our hotel stay in Tromso. It had been offered the day before, and if they were going to offer, we were going to take them up on it. Unfortunately, that didn’t quite come to pass as expected. Knowing Tromso was a popular town, and seeing that there weren’t many rooms left when I searched the night before, I’d already held one, as our existing experiences with their customer service left me feeling like they weren’t going to come through, and I was right.

The wind was still pretty bad, with us hitting gale force conditions overnight, and continuing on into the morning, so the girls spent part of the morning resting in the room while I explored the ship a little, trying to stay upright in the process. At some point, we also had our final stop we could get off the ship at before Tromso, in Hammerfest. We were here for about 90 minutes, if I recall, long enough to check out the area around the port, so we took advantage of it. We just walked around, checking out a few stores, and stopping in a delicious little cafe for some hot chocolate. Bayley and I agreed that they had some of the best (if not the best) hot chocolate we’ve ever had. If you’re in Hammerfest, stop in and give Cafe Cozy a try!

The rest of our day onboard was pretty uneventful. It pretty much consisted of packing, resting, walking the ship, trying to get an answer on our hotel out of guest services, and eating. Dinner was some fish none of us were really interested in trying, so we actually paid to eat at the little cafe mid-ship on deck 4. Jen and I had pizza, while Bayley got a burger. Not bad, to be honest. After dinner, I headed over to guest services one last time to settle our on-board account. It was “fun” having that handled by the same guest services manager who had promised more than once that day to get back to us on the hotel issue, only to have her not even acknowledge she recognized us as I checked out. Personally, all I ever wanted was a full refund, so I was ready to move on with life and enjoy the rest of the trip.

Around 11:30pm, we pulled into Tromso as scheduled, with the 3 of us hanging out on deck 4 with our backpacks, ready to debark. They do have a luggage room on deck 3 near reception, so after vacating our room around 8:30pm, we’d stashed our suitcases there. After waiting for the crowd to debark, we gathered our suitcases and debarked the ship one last time. Our hotel was around a quarter mile away, so we bid farewell to the ship, and headed out into the snowy center of town, excited about what was in store!

I’m sure a sailing on a Hurtigruten ship under normal circumstances is a cool experience, but in this case, it was 36 hours we were all happy to forget. In an odd twist of fate, we actually ran in to a large group of remaining passengers on Friday while walking around Bergen, so Jen decided to walk over and talk to one of them. Sounds like we made the right call in getting off, as they had at least one more rough day, and the last couple of days weren’t all that fun in general. None of them looked all that happy, and I’m sure it didn’t help that they were all standing in the rain outside the Neptune hotel Hurtigruten had put them up at waiting on a bus to the airport, also provided by the line.

One piece of advice I’d like to add to anyone thinking of sailing Hurtigruten: do your homework, and know what you’re getting in to. That’s not a knock on them at all, that’s a statement based on one family we ran into several times. They’d brought their 3 kids, all under 12ish, and seemed really miserable. When we first checked in, we were behind them in line at reception listening to them complain about the lack of kids activities on the ship and affordable excursions on land. It was quite obvious that either they didn’t research this, or if they used a travel agent, he/she didn’t do it for them. This isn’t a traditional cruise line, and really isn’t meant for young kids in my opinion. Based on our research and what we saw on-board, these are things that should absolutely infuence your decision if you plan on bringing a family:

  • There is no kids club, and there aren’t any kids activities.
  • There aren’t a lot of crew-led activities in general, outside a small number of expedition talks each day (if your ship has an expedition team)
  • Some excursions do tend to cost more than what you’d see on most US-based cruises
  • The average passenger age is probably over 50
  • There are a lot of potential add-on charges, including the water package for meals, WiFi (which was reasonable, and pretty fast), among other things. Work with your travel agent or Hurtigruten rep to be sure you understand them all ahead of time.

This is all stuff we knew and expected going in, but we also spent a lot of time researching what to expect. I’m sure I missed a few things here, too. Regardless, I went in thinking this would be a life-changing, bucket list type of thing, so the way it turned out was a huge disappointment to me. The idea of getting off of any cruise ship early had never crossed my mind, and to have to do it here was crushing, but led to some incredible memories that will be discussed in upcoming posts. Additionally, it’s taken a ton of time and effort after we got home to finally get someone in customer service to actually respond to us (copying a couple of key executives on an email tends to do that), but it looks like we have agreement from them for a full refund of the original fare, which was all I ever wanted in the first place, and we all felt was more than warranted given the reason for the changes.

I’ve probably gone on long enough here, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments, and enjoy a few more pictures from our time aboard!

Our 3rd Sailing on the Divina Comes to an End

As you may have noticed from all of our pictures, we’ve had another amazing week on the MSC Divina. As we sit in Top Sail Lounge and delay our departure as much as possible, I figured I’d go ahead and get one more post about our trip out before they kick us off the ship :).

First and foremost, we all agree that things seemed to get even better this trip than last ones, and if you followed our previous sailings, you know we really enjoyed both of them. We’re truly sold on the product MSC has brought to the US, and have seen additional changes this week that have been made since our last sailing to make the Divina even more appealing to this market. So what are those changes?

Pricing of things on board: They have added some incredible deals since we last sailed:

  • If you’ve got kids with you, and they want to try out the F1 simulator and/or the 4d theater, the Divina currently offers a package where for $60/cabin, you get to visit all the tracks on the F1 circuit, plus unlimited visits to the 4d theater, and unlimited bowling! Considering one trip to the F1 simulator was $10/pp when we were here in March, this is a great deal!
  • Spa treatments in port seemed really cheap compared to other port-day deals we’ve seen. I got a 45min Balinese massage for ~$50, and the girls got 55min facials for around the same price.
  • At Piazza Del Doge, you can pick up gelato and pastries for a very reasonable price (and they’re really good, too). I had a small gelato one day for $2, and for the amount I got, I’d likely have paid at least twice that on some of the other ships we’ve sailed. Some of the amazing pastries they have in there are under $1, too!
  • They now have specialty dining packages that are crazy low. We’ve done them before on other lines, but generally end up paying more for similar experiences. See here for more info on what you get and how much they cost!
  • Internet pricing is far more reasonable to me now (full package info here). They moved from time-based to amount of data you use, and for the lower-tier packages they now throttle speeds like other lines do. One tip here: purchase this in advance! You get bonus time for doing so, and in our case, we got 1800MB for ordering the Streamer package (1500MB). With the Streamer package you can post pictures and video, unlike the lower packages that throttle to picture-only speeds. Additionally, we were offered more data at a very reasonable $16 / 500MB if we needed. The internet speed and reliability was far better than past sailings, too, and light-years ahead of what we saw with Royal’s Voom internet back in May on the Oasis.

I’m probably forgetting something in this list, but these are the big ones that come to mind.

They’re getting better about explaining why some things are the way they are. The truth is, catering to the American cruise market is very different from other regions. MSC has traditionally been a European line, and as they’ve ventured into the US market they’ve taken the time to learn and to implement changes based on customer feedback. One of those is the thorough explanation given about the shows near the start of the cruise. This time around, Andre, the current CD, explained to the audience why they don’t have things like comedians on-board, and that the shows aren’t really meant to tell a story, they’re meant to be visually entertaining, with a lot of action, and we definitely find them to live up to that billing.

They’re constantly adding to the entertainment options around the ship. They have a very engaged and intelligent entertainment staff that seem to always be coming up with new ways to entertain the passengers. We’ve seen a few new things added, including a game show or two, and had a blast at every event we attended. Whether you want to be outside or in, there’s almost always something going on, and this entertainment team will bust their butts to ensure you’re having a good time. They’re far more engaged with passengers than most of the ones we’ve encountered on other lines.

The current Captain, Pier Paolo Scala is a very engaged and warm captain. He’s far more visible than most, and happy to hang out and chat with you should the opportunity arise. Heck, I was lounging in the pool in Yacht Club yesterday when he showed up with his wife and son, and he was more than happy to hang out in the pool chatting with all of us. He genuinely seems to care about how things are going for the passengers.

After our March sailing, I wrote up a post entitled “Is The MSC Divina Right For You?” to try and help people decide if the Divina is a good fit for them, and after sailing her again 6 months later, I feel like it still applies. This ship and everything on it represent a nice change of pace from the typical contemporary cruise lines, and I encourage anyone looking for something other than the standard US cruising experience to give her a try. I keep thinking that it’s time for us to take a break from sailing the Caribbean, but they keep offering some amazing deals, and we keep getting sucked back in because we like the product so much. It’s a good problem to have 🙂

Anyway, I think that about covers it. Between my handful of posts this week and the ones from our past two sailings (December / March) I hope you’ve found some useful info on the MSC Divina, and should you want to sail with MSC, please give us a call, we can certainly help! Hope to see you soon on the Divina or even the Seaside after she arrives next year!

MSC Divina: Third Time’s a Charm!

We’re starting day 6 here, and as we enter our final sea day I wanted to talk about how things have been on board this trip. Our March sailing was the first time we’d sailed in a suite on any ship, and I wanted to use this cruise as a comparison to make sure that our happiness last time wasn’t clouded by that step up in service. In short, it wasn’t. We’re enjoying this cruise just as much, and in some cases more!

This time around, we’re taking a much more relaxed approach than before, skipping activities we’d normally do in favor of more quiet time, more relaxing in Top Sail or at The One Pool, and in some cases, more naps :). The service in Yacht Club has been amazing all week, and the one issue we had last time with the attitude of the concierge has been resolved with a new face at the desk who is always smiling and willing to help. All of the staff who were here on our last sailing have been great as well. How so many of them recognize us from a sailing that happened 5 months ago is beyond me, but quite a few of them have stopped us to say hello and welcome us back. Between the service, food and the overall ambiance, Yacht Club has definitely proven itself to be worth the money to us.

On the activities, we’ve enjoyed them all so far. We’ve attended and lost at multiple rounds of trivia, and even though Jaime isn’t here on this sailing, Wally has picked right up with challenging questions that don’t feel repeated and phoned in, like they did on the Oasis of the Seas in May. We did have an incident at yesterday’s round of general knowledge trivia with a gentleman who takes this all way too seriously, however. After accusing one team of cheating (which he also did to me earlier in the cruise) and loudly telling our host that one of his answers was wrong, a few of us had had enough and showed proof that the given answer was in fact correct and more or less shut the loud gentleman down. Hopefully he’ll arrive at the remaining rounds of trivia with a more relaxed attitude. There’s no need to take this so seriously, it’s all in good fun. Don’t ruin that fun for the rest of us.

While we’ve been more relaxed during the day, I think we’ve attended more of the late night activities than we have in the past. We’ve pretty much attended every night party they’ve had this trip, and enjoyed every minute of it. The one exception was the White Party, where I headed back before it was over while the girls kept on dancing. I wish I could have made it longer, I just needed sleep. Between the White Party and Cigars Under the Stars with the Captain (he was one of the last people to leave that!), the deck was packed. Our Captain this week has been awesome. Far more visible an engaged than most, with the exception of our captain from the Celebrity Summit. We’ve seen ours in multiple places, including his normal stop in Yacht Club on the second sea day for a meet and greet. During that, we learned that the private island MSC purchased in the Bahamas (for use when they launch the Seaside next year) is the largest of any cruise line, and will have a dock (no tendering!). It all sounded really cool and solidifies our desire to sail the Seaside after she arrives next year.

I’m sure I’m forgetting pieces of the last few days, and if anything comes to mind I’ll be sure to include it in my next post. The final 3 days of the cruise are pretty much sea days for us, as we only got off for about an hour yesterday in San Juan, and don’t plan to get off for more than that in Nassau tomorrow. At some point, we definitely plan to hit the waterslide and F1 simulator again, as well.

As you can probably gather from this, we really do enjoy being on this ship and like the product MSC currently has in the US. They’ve made some positive changes between our last sailing and this one that I’m going to cover in my last post, too. If you’re interested in sailing the Divina, feel free to give us a call for help with booking, contact info is at the link below. After 3 sailings on her, we can certainly help with all of your planning for it!

http://www.wanderlistvaca.com

 

MSC Divina: A Stop in St Maarten!

Things aboard the MSC Divina are going great so far, and while I do plan to post a longer update about our on-board time in the next day or so, I wanted to talk a little about yesterday’s visit to St Maarten. As I mentioned in the last post, it had been quite a while since Jen and I had been here. For this stop, Jen found a local tour operator, Bernard’s Tours, that was pretty well reviewed that had an excursion that sounded interesting that pretty much circled the island.

With a 9am arrival in port and a 9:30 meeting time for our tour, we headed to the concierge as soon as we docked to make use of a key benefit of Yacht Club, a butler escort off the ship. On busy port days, this can be invaluable if you need to get off quickly to meet up with a non-ship tour group.

After exiting the ship and following the slightly convoluted directions to the tour tent, we checked in an sat down. And waited. And waited. It was pretty humid out, so sitting in an enclosed tent wasn’t really the way I wanted to start, but the other ship in port, the Carnival Valor, was a little behind us in docking and debarking passengers, so we had to wait. We got to the tent around 9:15, and if I recall it was 10 or so before we finally got on the bus.

After they split us up into a couple of different groups, we hopped on our bus and headed out. I would say that this was my biggest complaint of the whole tour, that the bus felt overcrowded, even though it wasn’t at max capacity. I think we had 25 on it, and with the two by two bench seats being tight, I ended up crammed in a window seat with some sort of hump under my feet, basically relegating me into a ball while we were driving around the island. Not a fun way to ride at all, and easily one of the most uncomfortable buses I’ve ridden on in any excursion we’ve done in a long time, and this alone would keep me from booking this tour again, as my knees were killing me by the time we got back to the ship.

Our driver, Mailman, was great. He gave us a very thorough history of the island, a ton of info on our stops, and had a pretty good sense of humor, as well. We made a few scenic stops along the way, including at an observation point, and a stop to see some iguanas.

After those short picture stops, we headed for the first of our two main destinations, Orient Bay Beach. Our driver led us in to one of the beach clubs, we paid a $10/2 beach chairs and an umbrella fee, and hit the water. I have to say, the water was absolutely beautiful, and the perfect temperature. We also decided, against his initial advice, to eat while we were there. He’d mentioned that being as touristy as it is, that the food prices would be really high, and we’d be better off waiting until we got to the French capital. We ignored that and hit a local restaurant, Yellow Sub, and ordered a pepperoni pizza, some sort of warm tomato/mozzarella breaded thing for Jen, a huge bottle of water, and a couple of sodas. All total, $23US, which for the size of the pizza (typical medium sized one) seemed like a pretty good deal considering the area. The pizza was really good, too!

After an hour and a half at the beach, we hopped on the bus and headed for the French capital of Marigot. Upon arrival, we immediately headed for a local French bakery, Sarafina’s, where I had the best Napoleon I’ve ever had. Very, delicious!

After walking around the area a while and doing a little shopping, we hopped the bus for the highlight of the tour, Maho Airport Beach. You know, the airport where planes come in right above the beach, and people post videos of themselves being blown around by the blast of departing jets? Yea, that beach. I’ve always wanted to go here, and even though the one AA jet scheduled to land while we were there never showed, we were there for two or three jets departing. I’ll just let my posts speak for themselves on this one J

Following the beach stop, we started to head back to port. We did make one more stop to get some amazing shots of the ships in port, and by “ships”, I mean ours, as the Divina was almost completely blocking the Valor. Sorry Valor peeps, but the few of us on this tour from the Divina got great shots J

All in all, a fun day. Like I said, other than having a great driver, I really wasn’t enamored with Bernard’s Tours, and really despised the bus ride (my knees are still killing me this morning). It didn’t help that after being crammed in the bus for a while, getting off of it at each stop was slowed down by people standing in the way sorting through the cooler near the exit door to find drinks. Just bad placement of that cooler, as most of us back there were just ready to be off the bus.

Regardless, we all loved the island and look forward to stopping there some time in the future!