sea days – Page 5 – Wanderlist Vacations

MSC Divina: Day 6 Recap – Christmas Eve Edition!

In addition to being our last sea day, it was also Christmas eve. Having never spent Christmas on a ship, we weren’t sure what to expect, but MSC didn’t disappoint.

We spent most of the day bouncing back and forth between the various activities indoors, despite the excellent weather outside. We started the fun off with a Pictionary win, and followed that up by tying for the win in the first round of Christmas trivia! I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again, the entertainment staff is outstanding. I really don’t know how Jaime is able to keep up with it all, but we’ve enjoyed every round of trivia we’ve participated in.

Lunch found us back at the buffet, which we’ve been somewhat disappointed in over the course of the week. Breakfast seems to offer the most stations open, along with the largest selection of items. When we’ve eaten lunch in here, half the stations are generally empty. It’s definitely a change from other lines we’ve been on. The other buffet related item that’s somewhat annoying is that they only have lemonade at the beverage stations during lunch. At dinner, it’s just water and tea. My irritation with the lack of buffet selection was tempered by our view of the ocean as we ate, though :).

After lunch and a bit of time resting, we headed back down to play Scattergories. Fun, but there were a large number of teams, which made it run a bit long, causing Jaime to be late to the final round of Christmas trivia. We all knew this because the guy I mentioned in my day 3 recap that promised to correct Jaime at every turn walked in loudly and rudely reminding Jaime that he was late. Seriously, you’re on a cruise, relax and enjoy yourself. We did head in to that final Christmas trivia round when Scattergories was done, but lost that one by 3 points.

After trivia, we headed to the theater for a special event. MSC had secured a visit from Santa and Rudolph, and had them set up on stage taking pictures and giving out presents to every single child on the ship. You read that right. Every last one who came in and waited in line got a gift. It wasn’t just small MSC logo items either. The presents were things like small Lego sets for boys, art kits for girls, and a couple of other types of presents I never got a good look at. We were in there the entire time, and that line was really, really long at the start, snaking from the stage up to the back of the theater, and back around again. It took just over an hour, but they got through everyone and still had a pretty good pile of presents left. I have to say, we were very impressed, MSC obviously knows how to do Christmas at sea the right way!

That took us in to dinner in the MDR, where we had a special 7 course Christmas eve meal. Things started off really slowly, as we only had the initial course before the first hour elapsed. They appeared to take notice of that, as things started coming out a lot faster, and all of the tables around us ended up losing out on one course, the pallet-cleansing sorbet set to arrive right before our entrees. While it would have been nice to have things a little more relaxed and in the proper order, we wanted to make it to the final bingo at 7:45, so we weren’t complaining. My dinner:

Beef Carpaccio
Festive Holiday Salad (no pic of that, however)
Chilled Three Melon Soup
Fresh Pasta
Honey-Baked Virginia Ham
Traditional Panettone Slice for dessert

All of it was pretty good, although the carpaccio was a little drier than it generally should be.

We made it to bingo on time, and enjoyed one last performance by the Bingo Boys. Seriously, this is the best entertainment staff we’ve had on any cruise we’ve been on. If you’re sailing the Divina any time soon, don’t miss bingo, even if you don’t play.

Since we’d been in the theater for bingo, we already had great seats for the show, and the special Christmas performance didn’t disappoint. It was a mix of singing, dancing, and some acrobatics. Great stuff!

We capped off our night by blowing some time (and a small amount of money) in the casino while waiting for the midnight buffet. I have to say, I love that the casino is smoke free.

It’s been a while since we’ve been on a line that still did a midnight buffet, and frankly I just assumed no one did it anymore. MSC proved me wrong, and in a big way. Every single station was open, with a mix of finger foods, bread, and a ton of yummy desserts. They also had a few carved watermelons, and different bread sculptures. We could see that a lot of time and effort went in to this, and were glad we stayed up for it. I swear there was more food in the midnight buffet than they actually have out on the lunch or dinner buffets. It was great stuff and worth the wait!

That about covers day 6. Our final day here on the Divina will be in port in Nassau for Christmas day. We were here last month on the Escape as well, and we’re really hoping that we don’t get all the rain we did on that last visit!

MSC Divina: Day 5 Recap

Before we get to day 5’s fun, I wanted to take a second to call out one of the highlights of our trip: The entertainment staff. The Divina’s entertainment team has easily been the best all around group we’ve had on a ship. From the Bingo Boys, to trivia, Scattergories, Foosball, arts and crafts, etc, the sea days have been an absolute blast. This group has a level of energy and enthusiasm I envy, and they’ve really been fun to watch.

Alrighty, on to day 5

We arrived in Old San Juan pretty early as far as I could tell, with debark scheduled to start at 8. The daily schedule indicated the gangway might be closed from 8:15 to 9:00 due to dock activity, so we set our alarms for 8:30, hoping to avoid the same debark lines we saw in St Thomas. I had actually been up since 7:30 and had never heard an announcement that we could get off, so shortly after 9 we decided to head down and see what was going on. Not sure if we’d missed the announcement, but the gangway was open with no lines, so we headed ashore.

Being that we waited way too long to plan this and all the stuff we wanted to do was full, we decided to just walk around. As we exited the security area, a tour guide approached asking if we wanted to join a 1+ hour tour of the area. For $15/pp, we figured why not, and hopped on. There were around 25 people including us on the bus, and it ended up being a pretty good tour. He took us over to the newer San Juan area, stopping at the Walkway of Presidents along the way to allow people to take some pictures. We stopped at a beach in the newer area of San Juan, along with one of the main government buildings, and then finally a 10 minute stop at one of the island’s forts that overlooks a cemetery. Along the way, he did a very thorough job of telling us about the area, and did so in both English and Spanish to ensure everyone on board had the chance to learn. Definitely worth the $45 for the three of us in our opinion.

He dropped us back in the main square in Old San Juan around 11am, and after walking around the little square area for a bit, we decided to stop and eat lunch at CB Cafe and Restaurant at the top of the square. While it was a little pricey, it was really good. My cheese tortellini was excellent, and frankly the sauce on all three of our meals was really, really good. In addition to my tortellini, I’ve included a shot of Jen’s chicken Mofongo, as it definitely won for best presentation.

We spent the next 2-3 hours walking around the area doing some shopping. Considering there were 3 ships in port (us, the Carnival Valor, and the HAL Nieuw Amsterdam), it never felt overcrowded in the shopping areas. The girls picked up a few things along the way, and once done, we headed back to the ship.

One thing about getting off and on in port we’ve noticed with MSC: There’s nothing at the end of the gangway, just the pier. On other lines, you’ll typically see photographers trying to take more pictures to sell you as you get off, and when you come back, others may offer water, juice, and maybe even a cold, wet towel to help you cool down. None of that here. I don’t care about the pictures, but it would certainly be nice to at least have some water there, especially after a hot day walking around the area. I admit we considered walking over to HAL’s gangway for a cold towel 🙂

Once aboard, we decided to give the water slide a try, since it was supposed to be open from 2-5. As we were walking up (somewhere around 3pm), one of the pool staff was walking away from the entrance, having just locked it. Some kid standing there said we had a wait a little longer, but after 10 minutes of seeing no one come back to re-open it, we gave up. We got tired of watching the Valor’s water slide fully functioning while the guy running ours inexplicably stood a deck up doing seemingly nothing. When you only have a three hour window for something like this, I really expect you to be open when you say you’ll be open, especially in port when the weather is perfect.

Next up was trivia, once again hosted by Jaime. We paired up with a really nice older couple from Canada that we’ve played with before, and lost by only one point. I gotta say, this trivia has set the bar for future trips, it’s really that good! Difficult, non-repetitive questions, and a great host!

At this point it was right around 4pm, so we headed up to deck 15 to see if there were any runners. Sure enough, a passenger was standing at the end of the gangway on her cellphone, and a short time later (maybe 4:10), her husband came running down the dock. That was a long run, too, as they had already closed the closer gangway, so he basically had to run the length of the dock.

After they closed up the gangway, we headed back to the wine bar where the girls made Christmas wreaths as part of another holiday themed arts and crafts event. The MSC staff has done a really good job of integrating holiday activities in to the schedule this week!

We’d checked out the MDR menu, and between the lack of things that sounded good and our overall exhaustion, we decided to skip it and eat later in the sports bar. After a snack (pizza :)) and a short rest, we headed to the theater for the early show. Tonight’s show was another one of the singing and dancing shows, and again, they’re all great singers, it’s just not my cup of tea. One little soapbox moment, though: If you’re going to come to the show, be quiet. Keep your kids quiet. Two rows behind us, some woman and her kids would not stop talking. They got plenty of angry looks and people telling them to shush, but to no avail. If you or your kids can’t keep quiet for 45 minutes, please do the rest of the people in the theater a favor and don’t show up. You’re just ruining it for those around you.

After the show, we stuck around for bingo, as the Bingo Boys are just that entertaining. Seriously. Even if you don’t like bingo, just go and watch, you won’t be disappointed!

With bingo over, we headed for the sports bar to grab dinner. The room was pretty empty the entire time we were there, since second dinner seating and the second show were both happening. The food itself was fine, but a couple of notes here: apparently all burgers automatically get mayonnaise. That’s fine by me, and I enjoyed my bacon burger, but even the pre-made burgers at the buffet have this, which we discovered on day 1. Not everyone likes mayo, so maybe just leave it off and put some on the side? Also, they have fish and chips on the menu in the sports bar, but when Jen asked if they had malt vinegar, she was told no. We know they do somewhere, since she had it on one of the early sea days, but oh well, she skipped the fish and chips this time. It’s pretty standard bar fare; burgers, sandwiches, fries, finger food, etc. The dessert menu also includes molten chocolate cake, as shown below.

After dinner, we walked around a bit, finally ending up at the Flower Glory Party (60’s/70’s/80’s) before calling it a night. We got our hour back tonight, so hopefully we’ll be all rested up for our final day at sea, where we’ve got a bunch of activities highlighted on the schedule!

One final note – cabin service has really been hit or miss. Mostly hit for Bayley in her cabin (12039) and miss for us (9164). One example: we woke up this morning to find that our steward didn’t empty the trash in the bathroom or leave any toilet paper yesterday, so we’re down to our last few sheets. Time to go rectify that…

MSC Divina: Day 4 Recap

Today was all about getting off the boat and having some fun in St Thomas. After two days at sea, we were ready for a change. We booked an excursion on our own for this stop, one that Jen and I did last month on the Escape, the BOSS Underwater Excursion. We had a blast last time, and couldn’t wait to do it again, this time with Bayley. Note that normally they require cruise ship passengers to book through the line they’re coming in on, but MSC doesn’t contract with this company, so we were free to book it on our own.

Being that we arrived in port after their first trip of the day left, we booked the noon trip. Arriving in St Thomas at 9am, that gave us a couple of hours to walk around the port area. After doing a bit of shopping, we decided to grab some lunch at Shipwreck Tavern, just outside the port area, and we were glad we did. Everyone was extremely friendly, and the food was pretty good. The girls had burgers, and I had a Philly cheesesteak to go along with my rum punch. Definitely a good stop, we’d eat there again.

Just before noon, we headed back through port security to meet up with the excursion contact right outside of our ship. Just like last time, she escorted us to the end of the dock, where we hopped on the boat and headed out to Buck Island. One quick note here, there were only 13 of us on this trip (the three of us, and 10 from the Norwegian Spirit). Last month, the same boat had 49 people. The number of people wasn’t a problem at all last month, but having a smaller number was really cool, as we got twice the amount of time in the underwater scooters because of it. Apparently there were 34 people from the Carnival Valor that were supposed to be on the trip, but their ship was an hour or so late to port, and the BOSS folks couldn’t wait. Sorry guys, but we had fun without you :).

If you’ve never seen an excursion like this before, check out the video I put together from last month’s trip:

Honestly, this is one of the best excursions I’ve done to date, and would highly recommend that anyone coming in to St Thomas check it out. Well worth it, and I can’t say enough about the crew, they’re awesome!

We got back to the dock around 3:30 and decided to head up to the infinity pool at the back of the ship to hang out for a bit. Turns out, the infinity pool isn’t so infinity in port, as the water level is lowered to cover only the regular pool area. Kinda lame, as was the fact that they only had the water slide open from 10am-1pm today. Huh? When we were in port here last month, the Escape’s Aqua Racer was open the whole time, allowing us to give it a go after we got back from our excursion. Oh well.

After getting cleaned up, we headed to dinner. It was another good dinner in the MDR tonight both from a food and service aspect, so we seem to finally be on a roll here! I started with the chilled pineapple pina colada soup, followed by one of the entrees as my second course, the Surimi mac and cheese. Both were good, but it was my main course I was really looking forward to, the prime rib. Mmmmm. This was also the first night that any of us had a steak-based dish where they asked how we wanted it cooked. I ordered mine medium, and was not disappointed. I finished the meal off with the sugar free bread pudding with vanilla ice cream, which was also delicious.

We got through dinner by 7pm, so we decided to hit the early show instead of waiting for our normal seating. Tonight’s show was Treasure Island, complete with pirates, acrobatics, hand balancers, and even an illusion thrown in for good measure (and some other cool stuff I’m sure I’m leaving out). Definitely an awesome show, and one that you shouldn’t miss when sailing the Divina.

After the show and another round of bingo, we headed up to the F1 simulator so that Bayley and I could give it a go. That thing is definitely harder than it looks, but it’s an absolute blast! I was trying to be fully technical with it, focusing on shift points, corner apex, etc, and just kept missing corners and spinning. Bayley drove around the track in 7th gear one lap and easily beat my best time. Grrr…. It’s really fun though 🙂

Not much else for tonight. With an 8am arrival in San Juan on tap, we all wanted to get some sleep, so we didn’t make it to the White Party. There are a couple of annoyances I wanted to call out though:

We’ve walked through the buffet during normal dinner hours a couple of times now, and each time it’s been pretty much only pizza and a few dessert items. Now don’t get me wrong, I could eat the pizza every night if we skipped the MDR, but the lack of overall selection is a bit odd to me. We’ve skipped MDR dinners on other lines before for various reasons, and never had an issue with lack of buffet selection.
If you book on deck 5, mid-ship, just note that you’re likely going to have a lot of extra foot traffic from people heading to the lobby. There’s no way to get to the lobby if you come down the aft elevators other than to walk down the corridors in front of passenger cabins.

Nothing major, just things to be aware of. All in all it’s been a great trip so far, and we’re glad that we have the chance to finally try out MSC!

We don’t have anything planned for San Juan, we’re just going to get off the boat and see where the day takes us. From here in St Thomas, good night!

MSC Divina: Day 1 Recap

Embarkation is a love/hate thing with me. I love that I’m getting on a ship, but I hate the wait and crowds associated with it. We consider it another sea day, so we like to board as early as possible. While I’ve read others state that boarding’s not so smooth with MSC, we found it to be one of the easiest we’ve had.

Ignoring the 2pm time on our boarding passes, we pulled in to the garage at the port at 11:30. From that point, we dropped our luggage with a porter, went through security, and were at the desk checking in by 11:50. Not too shabby. They gave us a boarding card with the number 6 on it, designating our boarding zone, and we headed over to some empty seats to sit. This is where it got amusing.

Shortly after noon they started boarding. One little issue, however; passengers here seemed to be far more pushy than any past boarding I recall. A large group of people were huddled up by the boarding entrance, similar to what you see at an airport gate, and just like those situations, most of them had later boarding numbers. They made multiple announcements to try and get people to move, and sent a guy over to try and force people to make a hole. It only partially worked. You can see the crowd on the left side of this shot.

Regardless, our number was finally called, and we headed up. As I was entering the line, some lady about ran us over with her suitcase as she pushed past, only to stop at the top of the escalator to let us all go so she could wait for someone who was way back in line. Seriously people, you’ll all get on, relax.

Once on board, we walked around a little, checking out the Divina’s beautiful lobby before heading to the buffet for some food. The eats on the buffet were hit or miss. The pizza is outstanding, and easily the best I’ve had on a ship. The burgers and hotdogs were barely warm, fairly bland, and for some reason the burgers had mayonnaise already on them. I look forward to giving the buffet another run when it’s in full swing on a sea day to see if that was a fluke. I definitely look forward to more pizza, too 🙂

After a bit more exploring, we headed back to our rooms to unpack. Jen and I have a balcony on 9 that’s rather small, and has me missing our balcony on the Escape:

Bayley had an interior on 12 that has a better layout and more storage than our room:

Moving on, after an amusing 5pm muster drill that saw most people wearing their life vests when we were told we only had to carry them, we headed to dinner. We have early seating, which is earlier than we’re used to (5:45pm).

Being the first night, I’ll reserve overall judgement, but the service wasn’t the best, and the food was hit or miss. Bayley and I ordered fettuccine Alfredo as our main course, which was really good, but the portion we got was that of a side, not a meal. For dessert, toffee cheesecake and the cannoli. The cannoli was amazing, one of the best I’ve ever had. The cheesecake was just okay.

With dinner over, we headed to the welcome aboard show. The singers were really good, but the song choice seemed to target an older demographic, and we all agreed it was a bit boring. Being that the acrobatics weren’t a part of this one, we’re looking forward to the shows that do include it.

One quick note, this is one of the most beautiful theaters we’ve seen on a ship. There don’t appear to be any obstructed views, and the seats are comfortable, save for the lack of legroom. The seats also appear to be staggered in a way that attempts to avoid your view being blocked by the person in front of you.

After a little stint in the (smoke free!) casino, we hit the 10:30 trivia, which was an absolute blast, before heading off to bed. The entertainment staff on the ship has been great so far, so we’re really looking forward to the sea day activities.

All in all, a good embark day. With two sea days ahead of us, we’re looking forward to exploring the ship, playing some more trivia, and relaxing :).

Feel free to follow us on Twitter or Instagram to see pics of the ship and our stops along the way!

Norwegian Escape – First Impressions

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, kicked off by a cruise on the Norwegian Escape that sailed on 11/19, the first full 7 day sailing since the ship arrived in the US. While I plan to go in to more detail in future posts, I wanted to get one out on our overall impressions of Norwegian’s newest ship. First, a little history.

I’ve mentioned before that we haven’t cruised NCL in quite a while due to issues we had on our first sailing with them, on the NCL Jewel in March of 2006. The MDR food on that sailing was horrible, but that paled in comparison to an injury our daughter suffered to one of her hands due to negligence on the part of one of NCL’s tour operators. NCL’s response to the incident was pretty bad as well, and that played a big part in our decision to stay away from them as long as we have.

Fast forward to this year, and our company’s national conference aboard their newest ship, giving us the chance to see how much has changed with the line. It was just my wife and I, and we both went in with open minds. So what did we think? In a word: Redemption. We had a blast, and saw that many things have changed for the better. As mentioned, I plan to go into more detail on certain areas in later posts, but here’s the overall pros and cons list:

Pros

It’s a beautiful ship, not gaudy like others.
Our room, a standard balcony, was excellent. Having the bed next to the balcony door was great, there was plenty of storage space for the two of us, and there were more outlets (including USB ports in each of the bed-side lights) than most ships we’ve sailed. The bathroom layout was great too, with a ton of shelf space.
The food was much better than last time. We only ate at the included restaurants on 4 occasions on this sailing, with all being good. The only place we had food we really didn’t like was in the Supper Club during the “For The Record: The Brat Pack” show.
The specialty restaurants we ate at were outstanding. I’ll go in to more detail later, but the list of ones we ate at: Cagney’s, Teppanyaki, Food Republic, Moderno, and La Cucina. Some of the best specialty restaurants we’ve eaten at on any ship.
The “For The Record: The Brat Pack” show was one of the best shows we’ve seen on a ship. Again, the food in here was pretty bad in our opinion (as was the service), but the show more than made up for it.
We never felt like there were 4,000+ people on the ship, even when debarking in each port. Getting off in port went a lot smoother than other sailings on smaller ships.
The staff was outstanding. It can’t be easy dealing with over 700 travel agents, and they all did a great job all week.
The photo setup is cool. Whenever you get your picture taken, they scan your card, and your pictures are put into a specific folder for you in the photo area, so no searching through dozens of other pictures to hunt yours down.
The only slide we had the chance to ride (due to the others being closed during times we were free), but the AquaRacer is a blast, especially with the tandem tubes. There’s a shot taken from the clear section of it while Jen and I were riding tandem in my pictures below. Here’s the full video of that same run:

Cons

The smell of smoke around the casino is flat out bad. We noticed it as soon as we got on while walking around the Atrium, as the smell is already embedded in everything in the casino, and the ship only had two sailings prior to ours. The problem here is that it’s in a central area, being open to the Atrium like other ships in it’s class, so you have to put up with it any time you walk through there. They need better ventilation here.
The movement of the ship, even in calm seas, is more than we remember on any past cruise. It was rocking back and forth pretty much the whole cruise, and at one point even started getting to me, and I’ve never gotten motion sick in my life. Someone mentioned that NCL was using smaller keel technology, not sure if that’s true, but whatever the issue is, it’s very noticeable based on a number of people I heard complaining about it both on the ship and after the cruise. It also caused a constant creaking sound in our room as the ship rocked.
Lack of bar staff. There was almost always a wait at the bars when we went up to get our soda cups refilled. In most cases, there was only one person behind the bar, which during the day on sea days was problematic when there were 10+ people waiting for drinks of some kind.
Margaritaville’s setup is bad. Good food, and the same key lime pie from the main restaurants, but the wait was ridicu-bad. On sea days, it wasn’t uncommon to find a 2+ hour wait around meal times (we got in after a 40min wait on a port day), all while half the tables sat empty. We heard after the cruise that the kitchen in there was too small to keep up with the demand when full. Again, no idea if that’s true, but regardless, they had to deal with it. They’ve since changed it from a free option to charging for items a-la-carte. It actually started with the 11/28 sailing, which IMO is wrong. Announce and give people warning it’s coming, but to blindly do it right as people are about to get on just feels wrong.
I’ll say it again, the food and service in the Supper Club for the Brat Pack show were both bad, start to finish. Both can be fixed, so hopefully Norwegian listens to the feedback from us and other guests.
I’m not a fan of their “Freestyle” setup. I get the point, it allows guests to only pay for the food and shows they want, but it means having to plan part of your schedule ahead of time. We felt like we needed to make reservations for specialty restaurants and shows before we cruised, which doesn’t really feel “freestyle” to us. We also don’t like the lack of assigned MDR seating from one aspect: getting to know your servers. It’s always fun getting to know them, and in many cases they learn your habits and will have things ready for you that they know you’ll want.
The outside setup on the ship is odd. There isn’t much space on the upper decks to hang out on sea days due to a good chunk of the space being taken up by clubs. The open area around the main pool is tiny compared to other ships we’ve been on, and my own pet peeve, the only place to watch the wake coming off the back of the ship (outside of aft cabins) is deck 8, which has no chairs to sit and enjoy it on. Spice H2O takes up the other good spot, with a huge video display taking up the center of the back of the deck.
The main theater’s design is just, well, bland. It’s really the only area of the ship where my earlier “it’s beautiful” comment doesn’t apply. Additionally, whoever designed the cup holders needs to be reassigned. They aren’t big enough to hold NCL’s own soda package cups, unless you put one of their plastic water cups in there first and then put your soda cup in that (picture below).
The announcements from, well, anyone, were pretty difficult to hear and understand, when we actually got any. Example: when waiting to get off in ports, we never got any updates as to when they expected to be able to allow us off, or even where to go, so people were just sort of wandering around until we finally got the announcement that the gangway was open. On other lines, our CDs have been good with ensuring guests are kept up to date with any delays, where to go after debark starts, etc.
Show scheduling was an issue all week. Our early show the night we boarded (The Brat Pack) was cancelled due to cast illness, with them re-booking us for the later show, which was also cancelled. We ended up seeing it the next night, but ours wasn’t the only show with this issue. Million Dollar Quartet also had cast illness (heard later it was Jerry Lee Lewis) that resulted in them cancelling the last 3 nights of shows. They did fly in Tenors of Rock for the final night, which we caught, but whatever was going on with the other cast members must have been bad (hope they’re okay), we’ve never seen show cancellations like this.

Yea, there were a few negatives above, but all in all it was a great week that gave us a much better experience this time around, and we’d definitely sail them again as a result. I’m not going to comment on the cruise director, her staff, or any of the on-board activities they run, as we never had time to enjoy any of it. On sea days, we were in sessions for our conference and missed out on all of that.

I’ll be posting reviews of the specialty restaurants and our excursions separately, but in the meantime, enjoy some shots of the ship! Oh, and that last picture calls out one more highlight from the cruise: Guy Harvey was on board for this sailing!