travels, races, and other musings

DCL vs. RCCL Final Comparisons and Thoughts And now we revisit the big question, are we cruise people or are we Disney cruise people? Well, I will say, I think that my heart does, in fact, belong to Disney. That said, we did have a good time on Royal. There were some ups and downs and it was a lot of fun to have some new experiences. I’ve seen other break down their thoughts category by category and I think that’s helpful, so I’m going to take a stab at it. Ship Feel/Aesthetics/Cleanliness I will say that from the outside, the look of Disney’s fleet are hand-down, the most beautiful cruise ships on the sea. Period. Inside, in the public spaces I thought that the Mariner was quite nice, having just been overhauled and updated. The public areas all seemed really sleek and nice and definitely felt on par with DCL in terms of decor. That said, everything was always LOUD in the public areas. I prefer the bright cheery atrium on DCL with it’s big portholes and quiet music. Promenade was...

Walt Disney World I don’t usually write full on detailed trip reports of WDW. This was our fourth trip with our first being four days in April 2013, then we went again for a few days in June 2014, combined with our first ever cruise on the Disney Dream. Our most recent trip in October 2017 was a full week. So for this trip, we were mostly focused on trying a few new things and hitting our favorites. I’m still a planner, though and I had some detailed plans, but I also had some days that were less planned (*gasp*). As I mentioned in the last entry, we split up, with Roger returning home. He’s not as big on the parks (definitely prefers cruising) so he wasn’t super sad to miss out. The path that leads to the boats at Wilderness Lodge. Since we now know how things work, at this point we can get away with having fewer plans (new folks - don’t try this - I recommend PLANS) and when things don’t go your way, like torrential rain and lightning storms shutting down half the rides for mu...

Debarkation and Walt Disney World Having purchased The Key, we were able to attend a sit down debarkation breakfast. But it sounded long and the selection limited and we decided it just sounded simpler to go to Windjammer instead so that’s what we did. After breakfast, we hopped back to the room to grab our carry on bags and went to where we were supposed to meet for our special “priority” debarkation with The Key. I have to say, we did get to skip the line, but it was sort of awkward and ill handled. I felt really self conscious as we got odd (and a few downright dirty looks) as we were basically just lead to the front of the line to have our cards scanned and get off the ship. Once in the terminal building we found our luggage, reshuffled some items and then got in the line for customs and immigration. And then we waited and waited and waited and waited. And waited. We have debarked in 5 ports: Port Canaveral, Miami, Puerto Rico, Civitavecchia (Rome), and Vancouver. I was going t...

CocoCay Royal Caribbean’s private island of CocoCay certainly looked amazing when I woke up in the morning and went to have a look. Regrettably, our port side stateroom did not look out onto the island, but at the sea instead. I made my way to decks 12 and 13 to get a better look and snap some photos. We got changed, ate breakfast in Windjammer and went ashore as soon as possible. In advance of our sailing, I had purchased all day waterpark passes for us to enjoy the waterpark. Let me pause here to talk about things that cost extra on Royal. There are some thing that are extra that I don’t mind paying extra for: specialty coffee, upcharge restaurants, bottled water, alcohol, and tickets to a water park that cost $250 million dollars to build. That said, I don’t want to be bombarded with these things and I do feel that I was. Before our sailing, I received emails nearly daily about adding on to our trip with these extras. Once onboard the ship, every time we entered Windjammer, so...

Nassau(ish) I woke up before everyone, tossed on my running clothes and made my way up to the jogging track. We were still sailing into port and the track on the Mariner is way up top on Deck 12 and it was CRAZY windy up there and already getting hot. Unlike on the Disney ships where the track is on Deck 4 and somewhat protected, being way up in the wind and heat was less than ideal. On the plus side, they didn’t have to shut down a portion of the track in order to moor the ship. Unfortunately, in the negative category, the track is narrow and in a walkway that people frequent at all hours of the day and it’s extremely short. 8 laps for a mile (vs. the 3 laps I’m used to on the Magic and Wonder, I can’t remember how many laps make a mile on the Dream/Fantasy). So that’s a really long way of saying that by the end of my first 8 laps I was going stir crazy and decided that weight training in the gym sounded awesome, so that’s what I did. I wandered into Windjammer after that (the buf...

Embarkation Day I woke up before everyone else, as I often do, and quietly put on my running clothes to sneak out the door for a morning run down the beach. It was a calm and peaceful morning with no indication that a powerful storm had taken place the night before. I enjoyed an easy 30 minute run out and back on the beach. Very few people were out. I saw a man fishing, a few other people out for a stroll and a group of people that had signs they were marking sea turtle nesting sites with. There were a lot of sea turtle nesting sites, which was really great to see. When I got back, everyone was still asleep so I quietly got myself something to eat and checked my email and Facebook until they began to stir at which point we all ate breakfast and showered and got ourselves packed up and ready for the day. We were ready a little earlier than we perhaps needed to be, but we didn’t have any other plans for the morning so we went ahead and checked out and took our rental car back an...

Kennedy Space Center When we were originally planning this vacation we started with the cruise. Let’s just try a few nights on Royal Caribbean to see if we like it as much as Disney. It would open up more (and often cheaper) itinerary options for us. Then we started building other portions of the trip around it. I knew one thing that I wanted to do was to visit the Kennedy Space Center and this is the main reason we flew in two days early instead of one day early like we normally would with a cruise. I had done a little research online and found that, like many tourist attractions, earlier is better and visit Atlantis first so that’s what we did. They opened at 9 AM and we were there right around that time. I had already pre-paid for parking online so that was taken care of and I also had tickets so we were able to bypass the ticket windows and head straight for the turnstiles. We went right away to the Atlantis building where you begin by watching a video in one room, then you...