Tag: travel agent

It’s Almost Vista Time!

We’re T-20 days until we board the Carnival Vista, and I have to admit that I’m getting pretty excited. Granted, this is our parent company’s national conference, so it’ll be a busy week, but still, we’re both pretty excited to see this ship in person!

Our 3 previous Carnival sailings were over Thanksgiving, and they were some of the most fun times we’ve had. You can read about each of them by hitting the review links in our About page. Of those 3 cruises, I’d have to say that I probably enjoyed the Freedom sailing in 2011 the best, in large part because of the itinerary. Costa Rica and Panama were awesome stops, and we had a lot of sea days, which we all absolutely love. We also had one of the best cruise directors we’ve ever encountered on a sailing, Brad Calabrese. A very visible and personable guy who made the cruise a lot of fun.

Look, I know people love to bash Carnival, and frankly I think that criticism is misplaced in the vast majority of cases, and usually (in my experience) comes from people who haven’t sailed the line in a long time. I admit I wasn’t a huge fan after our 2004 sailing on the Imagination, as that sailing held little in the way of kids activities for Bayley, and the sight of people throwing up on the dock before getting back on the ship really perpetuated the “party ship” designation they used to have. Frankly, our experience on the Thanksgiving sailings showed us how much the line has changed, and helped us fall in love with cruising again. I urge anyone who hasn’t tried them in a long time (or ever) to consider them if you’re looking for a fun family vacation.

I do find it somewhat amusing that my two favorite lines are one that so many people have the wrong impression of (Carnival) and one that so few Americans know about (MSC). I’m certainly not going to apologize for that, both have provided us with some amazing memories, and we love sailing both of them 🙂

Anyway, if you’re interested in seeing what the Vista has to offer, follow us here on the blog, and on the following sites, as I plan to post quite a bit over the course of the week!

See you aboard the Vista on December 3rd!

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: 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!

 

We’re Back for Round 3 on the Divina!

Are we really on the Divina for a 3rd time in less than a year? Yes we are! I’ve mentioned before that we really like what the Divina has to offer, and when an opportunity presented itself to sail on her the week before Bayley started back to college, we jumped on it. The itinerary is similar to the December and March sailings, with the exception of a stop in St Maarten replacing the stop in St Thomas. It’s been a long time since Jen and I have been there, so we’re definitely excited for that one. Now, I’m probably not going to do daily posts, as I’ve covered our past two sailings pretty thoroughly (See: December / March), but will throw one up here every few days, so if you’re interested, be sure to stop by and check them out!

Embarkation this time was a little slower than the past two sailings, but from what we heard it was due to the previous sailing starting departure a little later than normal. No problem. We had the Yacht Club check-in room to hang out in, complete with drinks and snacks. Yes, we are sailing in a suite again, and while we could have chosen a really low rate on an interior or balcony room, splurging a little more for Yacht Club and everything that comes with it was never in question. Definitely worth it to us!

We’re on board with a couple hundred other travel agents this week, and got to kick things off at 5:30 with a cocktail party in the Black and White lounge, where Ken Muskat and a few of the other MSC NA executives spoke to us for a few minutes before wandering the room and meeting with all of us. Part of this includes a little social media contest, so if you see me tagging @kenmuskat in all my pics, that’s why J. I’m, never shy about posting a ton of pictures on board anyway, but now we’ve got a little challenge to keep me busy!

The food has been delicious so far, as Le Muse doesn’t disappoint. We ate there for lunch shortly after boarding, and all had the filet mignon, which was excellent, followed by some crispy Nutella dessert that was absolutely delicious (sorry, forgot to take a pic). Dinner saw me ordering the lasagnetta, which I loved just as much this time as last. I’m not normally one for meatless lasagna, but this dish is incredible!

We’ve gushed over the entertainment team in the past, and on this sailing have already run into 3 of the team that were on for one or both of our previous sailings. We are missing a couple of them, Jaime and Domenico especially, but so far the team on board has been great. Bayley’s stayed in touch with a few of them, and from what she’s heard, the activities have completely changed between our last sailing and this one. Seems to be the case so far, with a round of movie poster trivia in the evening, followed by the “Let’s Bet” gameshow last night, both of which were a blast! We came close on that trivia, scoring 16, only bested by a team with 18. Well done!

That about covers everything so far. We’ve got 2 sea days on tap before St Maarten, and I definitely look forward to relaxing during them. We’re all really happy to be back on board and looking forward to hopefully showing you some sides of the ship we haven’t covered before. Stay tuned!

Follow us on social media to keep up with all of our posts onboard!

 

Oasis of the Seas: Debark and Final Thoughts

This one’s a bit overdue thanks to a pretty hectic schedule, but the delay also gave me a bit of time to reflect on the whole week and not be too blinded by the debark experience. Let’s get right down to it!

After a really smooth embarkation, I was surprised at how bad debark was. We had a 10:05am departure time, which we thought was fine, but delays pushed that back to just after 11am. No biggie, we had a couple of days for the drive home and weren’t planning on doing it in one day anyway, so we hung out in the promenade area waiting for our number to come up. When it did, we headed to Silk, waited our turn, and exited the ship. Then the real fun began.

After exiting the gangway, we waited in a bit of a line that took us into the typical warehouse setup where you have to find your group’s pile of bags. I really missed MSC’s conveyor-style setup at this point. Once in there, we located our bags and headed for the customs line. Wow. We walked the length of the warehouse, back and forth multiple times, winding our way to where the customs desks were. Frankly, there was no need for the line to be setup the way it was, there was no wait at all, other than having to stop constantly for people having trouble walking their bags through the maze. Pretty poor line management in here, in my opinion. Getting through customs was pretty fast after we got up to the front of the line, so we headed outside to find our parking shuttle. The failure in design of this terminal became even more obvious at this point.

Since we were late getting off the ship, we were now in a sea of people trying to both depart and arrive. The side of the terminal set up for shuttles is way too small to handle the number of people coming and going during busy times. Only a few shuttles at a time can get in there and park due to the limited number of primary spaces , so there are attendants working the line of incoming shuttles and buses, only allowing new ones in when others fill and leave. For some reason, they were leaving the spaces in the center of the lot open most of the time, which seems like wasted space. We stood out there for at least 30min while our shuttle was in line waiting on access to the pick up area. During all of that, you’re basically having to navigate around all of the people arriving at the terminal, which makes for a really fun time. All in all, I think we ended up at our car around 12:30pm or so. Definitely one of the slowest debarks we’ve ever had.

Moving on, the cruise itself was fun, as I think I’ve showed throughout the previous posts. I do think I’ve finally found a ship that’s too big for my tastes, however. It’s a beautiful ship, I just felt (for lack of a better word) disconnected from everything going on around the ship the whole week. Hopefully my reasoning behind it will become apparent in my positives and negatives, but feel free to check out the previous posts from each day too, as I think I called most of this stuff out in each of those.

Positives

  • As mentioned, it’s a beautiful ship, it really is. Plenty of things to photograph, certainly not the older style decor.
  • The food in MDR was good all week. Royal had been one of our favorites for food, but we weren’t sure what to expect since we hadn’t sailed them in 8 years. We weren’t disappointed in the main dining rooms! The pizza, however, had no shot against MSC’s.
  • Our MDR service was excellent. Gerson and Rydon provided some of the best service we’ve had in a long time! Gerson mentioned he was retiring in the not too distant future, best of luck to him, enjoy it!
  • Bayley and I enjoyed Johnny Rockets, and frankly, the cover fee isn’t bad at all. I think it was $6.95/pp, which allowed you to order whatever you wanted from the menu, save for shakes and alcohol.
  • I really liked the boardwalk area, cool spot to hang out.
  • The girls had fun at the cupcake decorating class. Granted, it was $22/pp, but still, it was a fun time for them. The other kids in the class seemed to be enjoying it, too.
  • All of our excursions were a blast. That big zipline in Labadee is really, really fun, too. The stuff on Labadee and the waterfall/river tubing were the ones we did through Royal, and we were not disappointed with any of them. Score one for ship-sponsored excursions!
  • With the exception of Cats, we enjoyed the shows we attended. We made it to Frozen in Time, two of the shows in the Aqua Theater, and Come Fly with Me and enjoyed them all.
  • The Dreamworks partnership is pretty cool, and gives kids (of all ages :)) the chance to take pictures with characters all week.

Negatives

  • I don’t think I’d stay in an inside balcony again. It was nice to be able to watch the aqua shows from the balcony and see what was going on around the boardwalk, but I missed the direct view of the ocean and the ability to just sit out there and relax. One key downside of the interior balconies is that they get little to no airflow, so it was really hot humid on our balcony a few times. I tried writing blog entries out there a couple of times and even in the morning, the humidity was too much to deal with after a few minutes.
  • The entertainment staff just didn’t seem that in to it. It’s probably not fair to be judging this right after two sailings on the Divina, but most of them really seemed like they were phoning it in, the energy level just wasn’t there, and at times they were reading off of canned trivia sheets they seemed to be looking at for the first time. Just an overall lack of preparedness in several cases.
  • The venues for some activities are just poorly designed. The battle of the sexes for example, was hosted in Dazzles, which is not designed to host something like this. A good chunk of the upstairs seating can’t see the main stage clearly, and from what I could tell, a lot of people downstairs were having the same issues. We were up against the center glass upstairs, couldn’t see what was going on, so we left after 5min. Other venues on the ship (like On Air and Comedy Live) seem have similar issues with sight lines and capacity for popular events.
  • The reservation system for shows needs work. We felt like we needed to book our shows prior to sailing to be able to get in, so we booked a couple of months out. By the time we sailed, we’d more or less forgotten what shows we had tickets for and on what days we were set to attend. Sure, we should have printed it out, and yes, you can navigate the TV menus to find your reservations, but some sort of visual reminder would be helpful. Frankly, between this and the Escape, I’ve learned to dislike this sort of setup on larger ships. There’s enough to do when getting ready for a cruise without having to worry about making restaurant and show reservations ahead of time.
  • The Coke Freestyle machines were in a bad state all week. Heck, the one in Challenger’s Arcade didn’t have carbonation the entire time. Many were out of ice constantly, and on a number of occasions, half the soda cartridges were empty. Part of the reason I got the soda package was the presence of Freestyle machines, so constantly having to walk to other areas of the ship to fill my cup up was annoying. Ran in to a lot of people in those lines that seemed to feel the same way.
  • Windjammer. Again, wow. This place is way too small for a ship this size. I ate breakfast up there once or twice and had no issues because I tend to get up pretty early, but each time there would be a line of people waiting to get in as I left. Once all the tables fill up, they line you up outside until tables free up. We saw this at all three meals, so if you want to eat there, get there early. Heck, right after we boarded, we headed up there as soon as it opened, and were the first ones in. By the time we were done, there was a really long line of people waiting to get in.
  • Overall, we were surprised at how early some of the included (no-fee) eateries on board closed for a ship this size. By 9:30, you’re pretty much relegated to the few items in the promenade cafe, or pizza at Sorrentos for any late night snacking.
  • I don’t really understand all the love for the Voom internet. Granted, we only got the social media package, which is throttled (and it showed), but reliability was a bigger issue on Oasis than any sailing we’ve been on in the past year. Way too many instances of it being completely out over the course of the week.
  • We’ve seen other agents complaining about items they purchased for clients from Royal’s gifts site not actually getting delivered during the sailing, so I was a bit leery a bout ordering anything, but since it was a milestone birthday for Jen, wanted to do something. I ordered the paisley room decorations, which were there as ordered, but the celebration cake I ordered for delivery in the MDR on night 1 did not.  I said something to our head waiter, who hadn’t been informed of any cake order, but he fixed it and delivered the chocolate/chocolate one the next night. Not sure I’d use the gifts program again, however, considering how often we hear about delivery failure.

As I mentioned, it was a fun week overall regardless of any issues, and I’m glad I finally got to sail an Oasis class ship, but it may be the only time I do so. I should be clear that the number of people was never a direct issue. Once you figure out what areas to avoid during certain times (see: Windjammer), the crowds never seem any worse than smaller ships, save for the bingo line, which was just bad. I guess the good thing is that this sailing was the first in a long time where we haven’t blown money on bingo :).

Even if we don’t sail an Oasis class ship again, I was happy to be back on Royal, as the some of the stuff we really liked about them on past sailings were still there, namely the outstanding MDR service and good food. I’d love to try Quantum class, as well as enjoy some of the smaller classes on future sailings.