thanksgiving – Page 2 – Wanderlist Vacations

Our 5th Favorite Port: Grand Cayman

Getting back to the main topic of the blog, I figured I’d do a few posts on our favorite ports to date. Starting things off at #5 is Grand Cayman, specifically on our Thanksgiving cruise in 2012 on the Carnival Legend, which was the second time we’d stopped here. I have to admit, one aspect of this stop would have kept it out of my top 5 if it were solely up to me, and that’s the dock area itself. I’m not a huge fan of tender ports, but I get that they’re a necessary evil. What makes this one particularly annoying for me is how small and crowded the dock area is, which is really my only complaint about this port. Outside of the dock area, the area around the port is clean and the locals have always been friendly to us.

On this visit, my wife had booked us on a non-cruise line excursion directly through Tours Cayman. The specific tour we were booked on was a combo tour of the turtle farm, followed by a trip out to Stingray City. We’d also done the stingray swim on our last visit to Grand Cayman in 2006, but that one was a cruise-sponsored excursion that was pretty well crowded. This time around, we were with a much smaller group, and with only two ships in port, had a much better experience.

Cayman Turtle Farm: The facility was larger than we expected, and offered interaction with and viewing of a variety of turtles. The turtle interaction areas were interesting, and my daughter definitely enjoyed being able to handle the small turtles. They do have rules around handling them, with the primary one being that you should always hold the turtles over the water, not over the concrete. There were usually one or two staff members around to remind people of that, but occasionally you’d see kids (and sometimes adults) breaking that rule for the sake of a picture or two. Seriously people, it’s a pretty easy rule to follow. Outside of the turtles, there’s a variety of other sea life to see, as their site shows. In addition to all of that, they have a lagoon-style area that you can snorkel in. They’ll let you check out snorkel hear, sans fins, to go out and explore the lagoon. I’m glad we didn’t have to pay for the gear, because it wouldn’t have been worth it for me as there really wasn’t much to see, and not having fins made it a very long swim around the entire lagoon. The kids I encountered along the way seemed to be having a blast, though. All in all a good stop on our tour.

Stingray City: Again, this is one we’d done on a previous stop, but this experience was much, much better. We were on a charter boat carrying ~20 people plus a couple of outstanding guides. When we arrived at the sandbar, we all got into our snorkel hear and hopped in the water, and got plenty of time to swim around with the stingrays. Our guides were very active in the water as well, ensuring that anyone who wanted to be close up to the rays got that chance. They were also taking pictures with their own waterproof gear, which I was thankful for. Yes, it cost us a little (not sure of the exact price, but it was very reasonable, if I recall). I had my GoPro with me to get some video and pics of the rays, but shortly after getting in, I realized the case was filling up with water. Turns out, the seal had failed. I’d used it fine a day or so before, so not sure what happened this time around. Basically left me with a cheap point and shoot in an AquaPac, so we definitely bought the pics the guides took of us.

After the tour ended, they took us back to the dock and dropped us off, and we walked around the shops for a bit before heading back to the ship. Not being a fan of long lines, we went back and hour early, as tender lines can get pretty long the closer you get to departure time. All in all we had a good day, and wouldn’t hesitate to book a tour with Tours Cayman again, they were great all day long!

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.

Turkey Day on a Ship

One year ago today, we were boarding a ship to enjoy our third straight Thanksgiving on a cruise. As I sit here and look back on that today, I realize just how much I’ll miss not spending Thanksgiving on board this year. Couldn’t be helped, though, with our daughter Bayley at college this year, we didn’t really figure her schedule would cooperate, and this isn’t grade school anymore, you can’t just pull a kid out of college classes for a few days and expect the professors to let her make that work up. The education comes first. Thankfully, we’ll still be spending the holiday with her, as we’re driving down Tuesday evening to spend a few days with her. More on that at a later date, for now let’s head back to last year.

Thanksgiving on a cruise ship is a blast, no cooking or cleaning to worry about, no stress of hosting family, just a week of relaxation and fun. On this trip, my mother and step-father were with us, as they wanted to take us all on one last family vacation before Bayley started college. Frankly, without them paying most of our fare, our string of Thanksgiving cruises would have been broken, as we simply weren’t in a position to do a cruise last year. So let’s look back on that week:

The Ship

The Breeze is the largest ship we’ve been on to date, and we were all interested to see how that played out. It also represented a departure from the normal decor that adorns most of the contemporary lines (gaudy chic? :)). The breeze’s decorum is definitely one of my favorites to date:

The ship was very easy to navigate, and offered plenty of food choices. I enjoy a good burger, and definitely liked being on a ship with Guy’s Burger Joint. The Pig Patty was a winner for me. Additionally, BlueIguana offers a delicious steak burrito. Another yummy stop was Fat Jimmy’s C-Side BBQ, which is only open on sea days. We tried it on day one, and overall wasn’t bad. The line’s generally kinda long right when it opens, so if you go, wait until it’s been open an hour or so. Frankly, Guy’s and Blue Iguana are the same the first day or two. Regardless of th wait, it was nice to have more than just the buffet and pool grill to eat at. My only complaint was the pizza station, as it takes way too long to get a slice of pizza on a Carnival ship. We experienced that on our previous two Thanksgiving cruises (both on Carnival too). Minor annoyance most of the time, but after skipping dinner to spend extra time in Curacao, pizza was one of the only things open when we got back on board, and if I recall, I waited 45 min for two slices. Yikes. Eh, we were on a ship, so one little thing like that’s not going to ruin my day.

Activities on the Breeze were in abundance. As I’ve mentioned in past posts, we love to stay active on sea days, especially if there’s a trivia event, which there were plenty of on the Breeze. We attended several, and even managed to win a couple. It is amusing to watch the people who take trivia on board way too seriously, too. Arguing with the person running trivia over whether an answer is right or not (especially when you’re blindingly wrong) seems a bit ridiculous when you’re on vacation, but to each his own. It’s all in good fun, and it’s not like the prize is super valuable, although I admit we enjoy winning them, and have at least one from each of the four Carnival cruises we’ve been on.

The ship has several things to do outside of scheduled activities, and we took advantage of two of them. The water slides were an absolute blast, as was the ropes course. The course is situated up high and provides a great view of the ocean on a sea day. I’ve got GoPro footage of my trek around it, definitely a highlight of our time on board.

The Stops

We broke one of our rules on this one, as all four of our stops were back to back. Normally we like an itinerary that breaks it up, but for this trip it was a no-brainer. We went easy with activity scheduling to avoid getting all stressed about planning. I’ll lay out what we did stop by stop. Some of this is probably a repeat from my ‘Choosing Cruise Excursions‘ post, so I won’t go too deep, but we had a blast in every port!

Grand Turk: This was our planned beach day. It’s a tiny strip of sand with little to do, and served as an excellent choice for hanging out on the beach since you basically walk off the ship and right to the beach. We did walk through the shops, picked a couple of things up, etc, but overall just planned to lay on the beach or snorkel. While we were hanging out on the beach, someone came by selling helicopter tours. After he walked by, we discussed it and decided to spend a little money and have some fun. My wife stayed behind, concerned about her motion sickness, so it was just four of us. Since we had a group, they cut $10/pp off the price for the 8-ish minute ride, for a cost of $40/pp. We had an absolute blast, and had a great view of our ship and the beach where my wife was waiting for us. Well worth the money in our opinion, and frankly I think my wife would have been fine, it was a very smooth ride.

Dominican Republic: For our second stop, we’d booked a dune buggy tour ahead of time with Pro Excursions. While the port experience was one of the worst we’ve had (covered in that past post I mentioned above), the dune buggies were an absolute blast, one of my favorite excursions, and any stress getting the correct taxi was worth it. We were covered in mud when we were done, and smiling the whole time. I think the pictures say it all 🙂

Curacao: We got off the ship with no plan whatsoever. We figured if there were tour guides offering island tours at a good price, we’d grab one, but if not, we’d just walk around and shop. As we got off, we found the tour operator stand, and grabbed a cheap tour. It was a little over two hours, if I recall, and half of that was probably spent in traffic :). Beautiful island, but they definitely share some of the traffic problems cities in the US have. Our time in port was 2pm -11pm local time, and by the time we got back from the tour, most of the shops were starting to close up. We were able to do a little shopping, and did walk around the area a bit.

Aruba: We had a blast here. My wife had set up a private tour before we went, so it was just the 5 of us in a van with the guides. The tour took us all over the island, and included stops at Philip’s Animal Garden and a local donkey sanctuary (among regular scenic stops). Our guide had lived on the island most of his life, and obviously knew his stuff. This was a 5 hour tour, and we enjoyed every minute of it, as it basically took us from one end to the other. When we got back, we walked around the shops for a while, picked up a few things, and headed back to the ship not long before departure. Aruba is a very beautiful island, and is on my short list of ones I want to go back to.

We also bought Faster to the Fun passes for trip, which I know some people don’t think Carnival should sell. For those who aren’t familiar, they sell a limited amount per cruise, and a single FTTF pass covers everyone in the cabin. Benefits of the pass include priority boarding, priority tendering (which we didn’t need on this trip), stateroom available as soon as you get on, priority line access at guest services, and priority debark. My main reasons for getting it were priority embarkation and debarkation, as being Gold level we wouldn’t otherwise get priority there. We treat boarding day as an extra sea day, and like getting on as soon as we can. For debarkation, Charlotte’s an 11 hour drive from Miami, so getting off as early as possible helps me get home in time to some sleep before I have to go back to work the next day. We bought a pass for my parents cabin, too, and we all found it worth the cost ($50 per cabin). For the first time in a long time, I had to use guest services for a couple of things, and not having to wait in the long regular line was a huge benefit.

Overall, this was one of our best cruises to date. A great crew, plenty of activities, and some great stops made for yet another awesome Thanksgiving on board a Carnival ship. I highly recommend cruising over turkey day at least once!

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: