Day 02 - Monday 03/04/24

 Today was our first full day at sea.  I slept the best I have in a long time at 5 hours.which put me awake at 5am.  I was first to rise and get ready for the day, so I ate breakfast by myself in the Lido area.  Angela later joined me and we first attended the Port presentation by the Destination Expert, Veni Shykin on Belize. He's a part of the entertainment team so it wasn't a selling job for Princess Shore Excursions.  Afterwards we attended the Cruise Critic meet and greet which was held in the hidden Club 6 venue.  It was poorly attended (less than 10 people) and there were 6 officers there including the Hotel General Manager and the Cruise Director.  But we enjoyed a nice conversation with Craig and Dixie from Sacramento.  


After a nice TexMex lunch, we watched the Deal or No Deal game show.  It was interesting but was essentially a bingo game with a low chance of winning.  Afterwards, Fred presented an enrichment talk on the Solar system with pictures of items in our solar system shown according to scale compared to each other.  The pictures were very good.  Veni then returned for his destination presentation on Roatan.


Tonight was formal night, and we were able to get reservations in the Concerto main dining room (one of 3).  Most of the guests at our table were with the Travel With Alan tour group.  We had the grilled salmon and it was quite good.  We think that generally we'll eat in the main dining room on this short cruise.


Just before the evening Production show, the senior officers were introduced by the Captain and then he assisted a just married couple in starting the Champaign fountain.  The Captain did say that there are 3,200 Americans, 200 plus Canadians, and a scattering of other nationalities onboard.  Yes, the ship is very crowded and congested in the hallways and elevators.  


The Production show was Bravo which was very very good.  We then watched the tryouts for the Voice of Ocean contest to be held on the last sea day.  I wrapped up my night watching a bit of the ABBA dance party held in the Piazza.  It was really well attended.





Tomorrow is the first of our 3 snorkeling trips with the first one being in Cozumel.  We received notice of a change of the meeting point to the pier.  They are only giving us 10 minutes to get off the ship which seems a bit unrealistic.  But we'll see. 


I should also make one comment on the Starlink satellite internet.  While it's available, it's quite slow at 3mbps up and .8 down.  I'm not impressed.  But at least it works!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 07 - Saturday 03/09/24 - At Sea to Galveston - Day 2

Image
Today is the last day of the cruise and we slept in late as the programming was very light.  Micca did a great presentation about crew life on a ship. Fred the Astronomer did an excellent presentation about the moon.  They held the Voice of the Ocean competition and a young girl Grace won it.   And the rest of the day we spent lounging around the ship. The evening entertainment was the cast show "Born to Dance".  It was so good we attended both performances.  The first presentation had a technical glitch that marred the set just before the finale.  The second site had the entire show. We also packed and had our luggage out by 8:30pm. It's been a great little cruise with the exception of the mid cruise ban on door decorations and two really bad snorkeling excursions. We liked the general vibe of the ship, and the entertainment was quite good.  We're looking forward to joining the Majestic Princess in Sydney in April.
Read more

Day 04 - Wednesday 03/06/24 - Belize

Image
 Today was our second port stop and it found us anchored off Belize City in the country of Belize.  While we had an 8am arrival, our planned snorkeling trip did not start until 10am, so we didn't set an alarm.  We were able to enjoy a leisurely breakfast before gathering our gear for the day's snorkeling trip.  When we got to the meeting point at the Princess Theater at 9:25am, they told us there was no room and we were asked to return at 9:55am.  So we sat in the Piazza and checked our emails, etc.  I observed during the 1/2 hour sitting there that there was only one tender ticket called and I spoke with a fellow who had an Octopus tender ticket and he was advised that it was at least an hour wait.  The whole Piazza area was packed with people and my observation was that Belize is a poor destination if tender tickets are so hard to get.  Most of one's time is spent waiting for a tender plus the ride to shore is 45 minutes.   We joined our sh...
Read more

Day -01 - Saturday 03/02/24

Image
 Departure day finally arrived.  We were up by 6am and our son picked us up at 7am for the short drive to SeaTac airport.  Upon arrival at the United  Airlines area, we had to manually check in as our travel agent booked us as a part of a group and wouldn't provide the booking code.  It was a real pain to do that compared to the 'old' days when one could just approach the ticket counter, state one's name and destination and a clerk would handle the rest of the booking process. Armed with a boarding pass and less our checked luggage, we made our way to the boarding gate where we learned that our flight was delayed about 15 minutes because the crew 'timed out' last night after a late arrival into Seattle.  It was a full flight and we left our parking position about 10 minutes late from the original time.  With our weight, our takeoff roll was a tad longer than normal.  It was a nice 3.5 hour flight to Houston with an on time arrival. Our luggage was...
Read more