pizza – Page 6 – Wanderlist Vacations

Ship Inspection Saturday – Carnival Fantasy

One of the things that we do as travel agents is the occasional cruise ship inspection. As mentioned in my post back in October after we toured the NCL Getaway, this is generally a 3 hour tour of the ship, hosted by a rep or two from the cruise line, and it’s intended to give us an idea of what our clients can expect should we book them on the ship. This is my second ship tour, and my wife’s fourth, as she did two more while down in Ft Lauderdale for Cruise3sixty a couple of weeks ago. For this one, we were getting a look at the Carnival Fantasy, the only ship from any line currently based out of Charleston, SC. She’s an older ship, having launched in early 1990, but the last refurbishment has her in pretty good shape. The decor is pretty standard for other older ships we’ve been on, too. Overall, we were pleasantly surprised at how well the Fantasy has been kept up. Let’s take a closer look…

We drove down from Charlotte early this morning, getting to the port around 10am. Check in for the tour wasn’t scheduled to begin until 11am after all the guests from the previous sailing debarked, so we walked around trying to figure out where to meet. Fortunately, the port area isn’t all that big and we found the spot pretty quickly, and hung out until the Carnival reps arrived. Things didn’t exactly kick off on time, as there was a lot going on. They ended up with surprise Coast Guard and USDA inspections happening after the ship got back in to port this morning. No biggie, things happen, and we were just a small blip on the list of things the crew had to deal with before they left port this evening. I think we may have been delayed 30-45 minutes boarding as a result. Here’s a couple quick shots of the port, including the front of the terminal. When you arrive and park, a shuttle brings you to this entrance and drops you off here, at which point you’ll go through security and check in for your cruise!

Another tip: As you board the ship, you’ll notice a bunch of crew wearing red sweatshirts that say “Just Ask”. If you need to know anything, like where you can grab some food or where you’re room is, they are there to answer those questions. No need to get in line for guest services!

Once we were on, we hustled to check out a couple of rooms. Since we were late, we really were moving fast, and my pictures show it. With more than two dozen people in the group and a schedule to keep, there really wasn’t time to stop and ensure the pictures were clear. The first set here is from a standard oceanview room:

Not bad, a little small compared to more current ships, but I’d be more than happy to sail in it. Next up is the only shot I got of an interior down the hall:

And finally, we have a Grand Suite, the largest room category on board. Note that being an older ship, the only categories that actually have balconies are the Junior and Grand Suites

Due to our time constraints, those were all the rooms we got to see. After finishing there, we were guided around a few other areas as we headed in the direction of the dining room for our lunch. Here are some shots of different areas we saw along the way, including: the show lounge, casino, a couple of bars, the kid’s club, and the Forum Aft Lounge, where they were setting up to host a wedding reception:

There were a couple of weddings going on today before sailing, from what we saw. We entered the port at the same place they did, and the wedding parties were shuttled in to security the same way we were. While I’m familiar with how on-board weddings at sea (or in a foreign port) work, this was my first exposure to weddings that take place in port prior to the ship’s departure. Not everyone in the wedding party was going on the cruise, so after getting everyone on the ship, they hold the wedding, followed by the reception, and then those who are not sailing are escorted off. Pretty good way to get a shipboard wedding on a budget.

Let’s get back to the tour. After a quick visit to the kid’s club, it was time to eat. They took us to the Jubilee dining room at the aft of the Atlantic deck (8), one of the two main dining rooms on board. We all sat at one of the five tables set up for us, and were served by the staff as if we were cruisers, eating some of the same things served at sea. The menu was pretty well set too, with the only choice we got to make being fish or beef for the main course:

and here are the courses, in order (I had the beef):

The spaghetti carbonara was spectacular, as was the warm chocolate melting cake, which is one of our all-time favorite desserts (we usually eat it more than once when we’re on Carnival :)). The braised short ribs were good quality meat, and perfectly cooked, but I’m just not a fan of what ends up being stringy meat (like pot roast type meat). Jen had the beef too, and enjoyed it, but said both the spaghetti and short ribs were better on her tour of the Splendor a couple of weeks ago (they serve the same food on all ship tours).

I’m going to take a second to give a huge shoutout to the wait staff today too, they did a great job, and were even sure to learn our names. After we ate, they even busted out some music and got some of us to get up and dance, just like a regular MDR experience.

After lunch was over, we headed up to check out the buffets and outside areas on the Lido deck. The buffet stations on the Fantasy are all pretty standard for Carnival, but note that this ship has not undergone any of the Fun Ship 2.0 upgrades, so no Guy’s Burger Joint or BlueIguana Cantina. It does have a Mongolian Wok though, which we always enjoy.

No, we didn’t sample any of the buffet food, pretty sure that would have been frowned upon, plus we were full from lunch.

On to the outside areas. Here’s the main area on the Lido deck:

At the back of the ship, they have Waterworks 2.0, added during its last refurbishment a few years ago

They’re definitely some nice slides for a ship this old, but the one downside here is location. Being right behind the stack, it was a bit noisier, especially as you walked out to this area (walkway shown in the first shot above). It is what is is, though. The other odd thing about the aft design is that one deck down is the Serenity adults-only area. I shot this looking down on it from the back of the ship where the waterslides are:

Between the noise from the stack and the kids on the waterslide one deck above, I can’t imagine this is very serene, but having never sailed the Fantasy, that’s pure speculation. If you’ve sailed this ship in her current configuration and can speak to the noise level in Serenity, feel free to comment, we’d love to hear how it really is!

Update: Based on a comment on our Facebook page, it sounds like the location of Serenity is a non-issue!

After we finished on Lido, we did a very quick walk through of the spa, which was a pretty standard setup for Carnival. There seemed to be plenty of gym space for those wanting to work out, too.

Once we finished our walk-through of the spa we were out of time, so we headed down to deck 3, gave our passes back, and sadly left the ship. All in all it was a good tour, and left us with a pretty solid impression of the Fantasy. As mentioned, Carnival has done a really good job with upkeep. Is it small? Yes. Are you limited in room types? Yes. It’s not the Dream or the Breeze, but it’s still a worthy option, especially if you’re looking to cruise out of an east coast port outside of Florida. It’s only three hours from us, so I personally would like to give the ship a shot in the near future if we can carve out some time.

One last thing before I leave you with more pictures of the tour: A big thank you to Joanie and Kirsten, our tour guides from Carnival. They took really good care of us today!

Dining at Disney

This year we decided to do Thanksgiving in the Orlando area. With Bayley only having the 4 day weekend, a longer trip was out of the question, and hanging out in Florida for a few days seemed like fun. As part of that, we had to decide where to eat for Thanksgiving, and after some discussion, decided to dine at one of the Disney resorts. We’d been going back and forth on exactly where that would be, but in the end decided (pretty much at the last minute) that we’d have a couple of meals at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort. We were spending a little more than we wanted to, but with no plans to visit any of the parks, figured we’d enjoy the meals.

Dinner #1 came Wednesday night, a few hours after we got to Orlando, at the Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show. My mom and step dad were here for this one too, as they’d been in St Pete for a few days visiting Bayley at Eckerd, and drove up to Orlando with her and stayed with us overnight (they flew home Thursday). My wife had been constantly searching the Disney Dining site in the days leading up to the trip, and saw a table open up for ths show, so we grabbed it. Turns out that table was in the very back of the theater (upper floor 2 section), so we were a ways away from the stage. No biggie, we could see just fine. The food was good, at least the ribs and chicken I had. My wife enjoyed the pulled pork, too. The dessert, a warm pineapple bread pudding with caramel sauce, was delicious too. We got a little bonus food, too, as one of the guys at the table next to us knew the executive chef, who brought him over a large plate of steak and shrimp from ‘Ohana, and they shared it with us, too. Delicious, and a nice little bonus on the night. Huge thank you to him and his friends for that!

On the not so good side is just about everything else. The service was not up to Disney standards, as our server was really struggling to keep up. Other sections around us were already on to the main course by the time we got our drinks. At one point another server had to step in and help get things caught up in our section with main courses. Our dessert didn’t arrive until after all of the other servers had completed their service for the main part of the show. All in all just not the service experience people typically expect out of Disney. The show itself was a bit cheesy, too. We all really liked the fire dancing portion, but the rest of the show really seemed geared towards little kids, a fact that was very evident early on when they performed their own version of the Hawaii Five-O theme song (not really “traditional” ;)). All of the young kids seemed to be enjoying it, and really the only way I could recommend the show is to those who have young kids. For those who do go, one tip: Go to the late show (8:15pm). It gets out right as the fireworks at Disney are starting, and you can easily see them from just outside of the stage area. My pic of it below is pretty bad, but only because I took it with a phone camera in low light 🙂

Dinner #2 was the following evening on Thanksgiving. This one was also at the Polynesian, this time at ‘Ohana. This had been our target restaurant for Thanksgiving from the start, and it took quite a bit of checking on the Disney Dining site to find an opening for Thursday. We’d eaten here once before, a long time ago, and were looking forward to the food, and it did not disappoint. The steak was delicious, as was the pork. Now I’m not sure what was up, maybe it was just us, but our service here was basically a mirror of the night before. Sections around us getting great service, while once again our server was struggling to keep up. I’ve worked in food service and understand that there are off nights, but two nights in a row at a place that prides itself on service seemed very out of character. Regardless, it certainly wasn’t anything to ruin the night, we left full and happy :).

Other restaurants we’ve hit during this trip (which doesn’t end until tomorrow morning):

Mia Pizza, near the condo we rented. Good pizza, which I finished off for breakfast this morning. We got a couple of larges since there were 5 of us, along with some garlic bread, which was also yummy.

A N.Y. Pizza House, which we ate at for lunch on Friday while we were in Cocoa Beach. I had two slices, one regular crust and one Sicilian slice, both with pepperoni. The slices were delicious, and huge. Had I known how big they were I’d have skipped some of the cheese fries we had as an appetizer (also delicious). My wife and daughter both had pasta, (baked ziti and fettuccine Alfredo) and neither really liked them all that much. They did agree that my pizza was delicious, tho :).

That about covers it for the food. Other meals were either at chains or here at the condo, and all we have left tonight is Hard Rock before a show, so I’ll skip the rest of it as I’m not big on reviewing chains.

Weekend Trip to Woodward

Earlier in the week, my wife decided she wanted to go up to Woodward, PA for the weekend to see our daughter. It’s been almost a month since we dropped her off there after our Bermuda cruise, and she was missing her quite a bit. I admit I was against it at first, since she’s headed off to college in Florida next month, and being away from her for more than a month at a time was something we all needed to get used to. In the end, I lost the battle, and I admit it was one I was fine with losing. I miss her too 🙂

Camp Woodward is a cheer / gymnastics / action sports camp about 30 minutes outside of State College, PA. She’s been going there for six years now for cheer, first as a camper, then as a junior camper (basically low-level staff who work the cost of camp off), and now as staff. We generally stay on the south end of State College, as it’s an easy drive over from there. This time was no different, as we booked a last minute deal on Hotwire for the Courtyard. There really weren’t many hotel options to choose from, as the town was pretty booked up for some reason (more on that later). The night before we left, we also decided to rent a car for the trip, as we’ve been putting a ton of miles on my wife’s car lately, and I’m getting ready to sell mine, so I didn’t really feel like putting 1200+mi on it right before doing so. Fortunately, Priceline had a pretty good deal on a full size that made it worth the money when comparing fuel costs of that one vs my wife’s Ford Flex. The only downside is that the fairly well loaded Chevy Malibu we ended up with wasn’t nearly as comfortable on a long drive as her Flex. We had the same car for two weeks last summer in SoCal when we were out there touring colleges, and really didn’t find that one comfortable either. Oh well, it saved money, as well as wear and tear on her car.

Friday afternoon, we headed out of Charlotte around 2:30pm. It’s generally an 8-9 hour drive to State College with stops, but thanks to some heavy traffic on I-81N just past Christiansburg, it ended up being around 10 hours. We generally take the same route to Woodward for a couple of reasons. First, my dad lives in New Market, VA, which is about half way there. If something happens, or we get a late start or decide to stop for any other reason, we’ve got a place to stay. The second reason is that Harrisonburg, just south of him, is home to one of our favorite ice cream stops, Kline’s Dairy Bar. My dad wasn’t working Friday, so he met us at the Wolfe St location for a treat. I got vanilla in a pretzel cone, and it was absolutely delicious (I love their pretzel cones)

After finishing that, we moved on. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, and we crashed hard after arriving at the Marriott Courtyard around midnight. The room itself was a standard Courtyard room, and the staff were very helpful and friendly. Not really much to report there 🙂

The next morning around 7:30am, we headed to Woodward to pick up our daughter and her boyfriend (he works there too). As soon as we saw her, I was pretty happy to have lost the battle on whether or not we should have gone, as I hope the picture conveys

After a couple of long hugs, we loaded up in the car and headed for Hershey. In all the times we’ve driven up to Woodward, we’d never stopped to see the sights in Hershey, so we decided to head over there to see what we’d been missing. We wanted to keep the costs down, so we weren’t headed to Hershey Park itself, just to Chocolate World (free admission) and to Zoo America ($11/pp).

We chose to go to Zoo America first while it was still somewhat cool out. The place was pretty cool. It’s not a huge zoo, but a good enough size to keep you occupied for a couple of hours. We walked the loop, and even managed to catch the scheduled 11am feeding of the wolves.

After a couple of hours there, we headed for the car to drive over to our next stop, Hershey’s Chocolate World. As mentioned, you can get in for free (including parking), although they do have different activities inside that they charge for. We stuck with the basics, just doing the free Great American Chocolate Tour ride, and walking around checking the place out. We did buy a couple of things in one of the stores, and even got some milkshakes. The shakes were incredible. Most of us got the dark chocolate peanut butter shake, which was excellent, and incredibly filling.

After a couple of hours there, we hopped in the car and headed over to the Museum on Chocolate Avenue for a quick bite of lunch at Café Zooka before heading back to State College.

After the long drive back to State College, we decided to relax a bit at the hotel. The kids didn’t have to be back at camp until later in the evening, so we still had plenty of time to do other stuff. After resting for a bit, we decided to head down the street to the People’s Choice Festival, situated near the Pennsylvania Military Museum. This was one of two arts festivals going on this past weekend, as Arts Fest was also going on in the downtown area. These were the reason for the hotel shortage in the area apparently :). The People’s Choice Festival was closer to the hotel, so we walked around that for a while. Cool stuff, plenty of homemade art and other items to buy, along with some traditional carnival food options. We had dinner plans, so we avoided the food, but enjoyed the walk through the festival nonetheless.

After we finished up there, we finally headed to dinner. We already had a place in mind, somewhere we stop every time we’re in State College, Hi Way Pizza. They offer an excellent flaky crust pizza that the wife and I really enjoy. We’ve tried some of the other popular pizza places in town, but always end up back here :).

After a delicious dinner, we had one last stop on the schedule, Berkey Creamery on the Penn State campus. This is another staple for us in State College, as they make some really good ice cream. As usual, the line was out the door, but they do a good job of getting people through quickly with the way you order and pay. We definitely recommend stopping here if you’re in the area for any reason.

Our ice cream gone, it was time to drop the kids back at camp and head back to the hotel for some sleep. They both had to be up early to greet incoming campers, so they needed their beauty sleep as much as we needed to rest before the long drive home. Before we headed out of town Sunday morning, we picked up a dozen donuts for her group and drove to Woodward on the way home. Well, it’s not exactly on the way home, but gave us one last chance to see her 🙂

Once we said our goodbyes, the wife and I headed home. The drive back was pretty uneventful, and we managed to do it in less than 9 hours, stopping only for lunch. For now it’s back to reality, but we’ll be doing that drive again in two weeks when we go up to get her and bring her home. Yea, it was a lot of driving to only see her one day, but in the end it was well worth it. I love hanging out with her, and as mentioned, will miss her immensely when she’s away at school, so I relish any time we get to spend with her before then. Considering she’ll only be home from Woodward for 10 days before we have to take her to Florida, there’s not much time left. We definitely appreciate the staff at Woodward giving her the day off to spend with us 🙂

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: