Tanner Life

Cruisin'

So here we are, back from our 8th cruise in just over 3 years. The crazy thing, we are so ready to head back again. We come home to get online and look at either flying back and staying in Nassau or Port Lucaya or cruising again. We seriously need a support group for our cruising addiction.

We had a great, relaxing, lazy, beautiful trip! We'll start with the ship. We went on the Carnival Sensation which was just like our very first ship, Carnival Fantasy. It's much smaller than the Glory, which we've taken 3 recent trips on. It took getting use to the smaller ship feel, but we loved it just the same. Matter of fact, part of it's smallness (is that a word?) made us love it all the more!! It was less crowded, lines were shorter, there were ALWAYS chairs available and debarkation took no time!

Here is a picture of the Sensation while we were in Nassau-

The decor was pretty funny. I'd read previously that it could be a little overwhelming with it's late 80's and early 90's decorations. It is truly a hoot and you are surrounded with purple & pink with glitter for added sparkle. It's very "Vegas" like, but fun to look at for sure! I should have took pictures to show you, I slack more and more in cruise photos. I guess b/c we go so much. I use to take hundreds per trip, two cameras. Now I take my cheaper camera and come home with 25 pics. I digress, the main lounge is set up kind of strange, there are a lot of "bad" seats which is very unlike other ships. There are poles in the way of a lot of seats and the back parts of the balcony are really terrible seats. They aren't multi layered enough to see over the person in front of you. Of course we had "our" seats in both the balcony & downstairs, we were good.

Towel Critter

The buffet restaurant was smaller and we LOVED the feel of it, I mean LOVED it!! It was pretty wide open and you could see everywhere, more like a restaurant than the "cafeteria" feel you get from bigger ships. We had a table, our table, that we sat at every single meal on board other than one I think. Funny!! The buffets were set up neat, with there being several smaller lines rather than one long one. It flowed much easier. The pizza place was in there and that was convenient, plus a bar where I could get soft drinks. That was also convenient compared to other ships. The hamburger & hot dog grill had two huge lines, much easier and quicker than the one line on other ships. It was located right beside the large pool area on the Lido deck. There was a big slide as always, the new "water wars" things that are on Carnival ships, 9 hole putt putt and the smaller pool on the upper deck. (Ok, seriously think more like dunk tank. Those pools crack me up! That is one place where the ship really shows her "old age") I do think the larger ships should take note of some of the layout with this one though, very easy to navigate and things flowed so well!

We were on the depths of the bottom floor, we haven't been "down there" since our first trip. It ended up being SO QUIET and we loved it! It was also right be the aft elevators and all we had to do was jump on them and come out at the Sea view Restaurant, can't go wrong with easy access to the food!! We were in an inside room again, we've gotten use to that. For the money we save and are able to cruise more frequently, we will be ok without our window. We did talk about missing our balcony from the first Disney cruise, but we weigh our options and cruising more works for us!

The shows were good, it was great to see different ones. (Since we did Glory 3X's & Disney Wonder 2X's) The "Welcome Aboard" show was just OK, our cruise director wasn't the most entertaining one we've had for sure. Tory, she's a nice girl, but not a ton of "fun". The 80's show had fantastic music, the juggler/comedian night was great!! We'd seen the juggler/comedian & magician/comedian both before, but they were two of our favorites! Then their final "Curves" stage show was pretty good as well, great costumes. When we compare these shows to the Disney ones though, well... let's just say you can't compare.

Towel Critter

We drove to Ocala on Saturday, it was a super easy drive. We weren't sure what the holiday/school's out weekend traffic would be like, but it was non-existent period. I wonder if prices of gas is keeping everyone home more? Speaking of gas, it was cheaper all the way down and back than we thought. Never more expensive than home, $3.87 or so. We figured it would hit $4 in Florida, but that wasn't the case. We stayed at exit #350, same place & same hotel as last time. We get a government rate, there are tons of places to eat and a Barnes & Noble right there. We ate at Chili's (using a gift card from one of my kiddos this year) and then bought a book & magazines at B&N. I have to say it's still strange not staying at Disney for our trips and I am having SERIOUS withdrawals, we're both ready to go back and get annual passes next year!! (Hopefully with a little Tanner in tow!)

Saturday we were up and headed to Port Canaveral by about 9:30. We ended up taking the little by pass around I-4 and that was great, prevented me missing Disney quite so much. (No tears this time) LOL!! We were at Port Canaveral by 11:30 and headed to embark. There were NO LINES again, going early is the way to go. (They say you can't board until 1:30, not true) We went straight through security without a pause, straight to an agent and were on board within minutes! We ate "lunch on the Lido", Andy talks about that in the days leading up to our trips. Then we hung out and walked around until our cabin was ready @ 1:30. We napped (the lazy trip begins) and had our boat drill. It was also SUPER EASY & FAST, the smaller ship really adds to that as well. Then we stood outside to watch sail away.

Nap Time

Leaving Port Canaveral was neat. A few years ago we watched as we were escorted out of port by a few dolphins, that was neat. This trip it was sting rays & jelly fish. There were about 8 HUGE sting rays that we saw gliding through the water on our way out. The beach around Cape Canaveral was also V E R Y crowded, first time we'd seen that. Then the jelly fish, HOLY MOLY!! I've never seen anything like it, hundreds, maybe thousands. They were rolling IN with the tide and I wouldn't want to be swimming out there having seen so many. Yikes!!

We did keep with our plan and didn't take any "dress" clothes, we packed in just one suitcase! (even our toiletry stuff) We ate all of our meals in the buffet restaurant and were thrilled with our decision! I read 4 fantastic books, more on that later. We didn't do any excursions, thanks to my friends over at Cruise Critic we found some GREAT CHEAP ways to enjoy the islands. I'll blog about that soon too. We found fantastic things to do and we'll choose that route again for sure! We saved SO MUCH money compared to other trips. We didn't have to tip waiters in the dining room, we didn't buy a single photo (crazy for me), we spent VERY LITTLE on the ship and none on excursions. I only went online once and went on the night it was 50% off of minute rates. I checked email, sent one reply and wasted no $! We went SO CHEAP!!

We spent a ton of time on a back deck of the ship. There were two little decks on each side of the buffet restaurant with tables & chairs, it was very quiet, pretty, great views! We watched the sun set from back there every night. It was a great place to sit and relax, of course I always had a book in hand. We could be found out there a ton! We cracked up one night on our walk around the top deck when the winds were like tornado force, we had to put our heads down, grab onto a doorway frame and literally pull ourselves out onto a viewing area. It was hilarious!

We played Bingo every night, imagine that. We had cash set aside for our little bingo adventures though. I actually played 7 games one day by myself (Andy was in a "spinning" class that he loved). I was just lacking ONE number four of the rounds. Crazy! We saw several kinds of game shows, the regular night shows and one late night comedian. We watched a few movies in our room during "rest time" and Andy went to the free golf clinic as usual.

I'll go ahead and skip to debarkation. I'll post blogs tomorrow about our port days. We did have one day at sea and it was typical sun & fun. Our debarkation day, yesterday, couldn't have been easier. They now call you according to a number zone, they give you the previous evening. You can NOT get off any earlier even if you take your own luggage now, just an FYI. They started calling number zones @ 8:15 though and we were zone 18. We were sitting in our car, totally done and cranking up to leave, by 9:20! You can't beat that! Our ride home was uneventful. It took about 9 & 1/2 hours, but we stopped a TON!

Towel Critter - what is it????