Happy Cruise Eve!
It almost does not seem real that cruise day is almost here. Next to the Manhattan Project, I don’t think as much work has been put into researching a trip. The constant searching of Youtube, Blogs and vacation tip sites have hopefully armed us with all of the needed information to have a successful vacation. We do have some positives working in our favor though. First, we have a kid who loves to engage with others. She can talk at length to kids, adults and even statues. The second, and perhaps our strongest asset, is the fact that we are laid back. We never feel like we need to do or see everything. Most things that we have scheduled revolve around drinking…so we have that going for us.
Today has been a day of getting all of the last minute things taken care of. Laundry has been done and the house is clean and ready for us to come home. We are now starting the packing process. The bad part about this cruise is that the trend is to dress up a bit for dinner. This means that between excursions, theaters and dinner it is possible to go through three sets of clothes in one day. I think all of our luggage is going to make an appearance for this trip. There will be no one on that boat that cannot say that we don’t look damn fine though! The downside is that if anything were to happen to our luggage, we would be missing a good portion of our work clothes in the process.
Our arrival time tomorrow is set for 1:30 – 2:00 PM. Lindsey is already prepared for Captain Travel (me) to have us there by noon just to make sure that we have no chance of delays. The word around town on the interwebs is that general boarding starts at 12:30, so there is a good chance that we could just walk on the boat shortly after we arrive and get through security. Once we get on the boat, the fun does not start. They have recently switched to a ticket system for all of the princess meet and greets. This means that once we get on the boat, we need to rush to the area that is handing out the tickets since they are first come, first serve. While, oddly enough, Jennifer has told us that she is not that interested in princesses anymore, I am sure that things will change when they are standing in front of her. The next thing we need to do once on the boat is sign up for the adult drink activities. There are two that we are most interested in, Mixology and Stem to Stern. The Mixology is just as it sounds, a taste and learn about mixing different drinks. It is apparently a must-do on the ship for adults and has all the good stuff I love, alcohol. The other one, Stem to Stern, is a wine tasting session in which I am sure they try to upsell expensive wine to us, which we can not drink until we get off the boat.
Once we get done with all of that business, we should be able to get to our stateroom. We have a room that has a veranda ocean view. It is classed as a “navigator’s porthole” which means that we have a large opening, but unlike the other verandas our has a metal bottom. For us it means that we have a little more privacy in our outdoor area and a little more lounging options. I’ll shoot out some pictures which can better explain what it looks like.
Time to finish packing and get a good night sleep. It is going to be a long day tomorrow of “chillaxing.”