Brickman
04-23-09, 12:25 PM
I took a wonderful cruise a few coughcoughhack weeks ago. ;) The first cruise I had ever taken was one of those three day trips down to Mexico. The ship was stinky smoky {cigarettes} and although it wasn’t great it wasn’t bad for a first time. The most interesting things were the party antics on ship and at Pappas and Beer and you can you tube that stuff if you really need to know.
Since then I have been advised well on other trips and getting the traveling cruise thing down. First off the best thing ever about taking a cruise is taking your brain and putting on a shelf for seven or ten days. Everything is paid for so unless you want to consume $5 beers every 30 minutes you can come away with full room service, all your meals, covered. Of course if you decide to try out the Spa treatments and go nuts every few days with reflexology, or deep tissue, or seaweed wrap, or Princess Cruise’s better than anywhere else deep stone massage you will pay the price of your relaxing trip.
I took the Panama Cruise, leaving www.inletcam.com Ft. Lauderdale on a Wednesday and returning 11 days later on a Saturday.
First seating dining was assigned for 5:30, now we have been very lucky, on every cruise the people seated at our table were entertaining, engaging, great story tellers of their excursions or previous cruises, their lives. If we didn’t like our dinner mates we would have easily been able to opt for anytime dining and getting our own table in the dining room below, or paying an extra $20 per person and dining at a few specialty dining rooms that required reservations and came with a totally different menu. We lucked out again, three great adventuresome ladies from Chicago! No nonsense Martini, Scotch on the rocks and red wine, the mid-west done them well!
How bad can dining room mates be? We had a breakfast {you can choose to eat with others or a table by yourself} with a loudmouth lady, brow beaten husband, loud attorney son… she was deriding the Germans as rude pushy people, hello? There was a family of them at the next table! We finished our breakfast before she even finished 1/3 of her meal. Mean, nasty, rude had to always have a picture WITH the Captain blah blah blah.
Now this cruise route we took is usually a very smooth trip, but on the second day the waves were 4’-7’ and just the way the wind was blowing made the ship’s bow a little bouncy, I was supposed to meet my wife on the 14th deck, needless to say I made the mistake of watching the water sloshing out of the pools, one minute you could see people’s ankles, the next they were floating up high. Back to my room where I had a little seasickness for the first time since I was 8. Rule #1 Room selection, low and center yourself on the moving axis. Rule #2 90% of new ships have sliding glass doors and balconies. Get one. The bigger the better, but the biggest isn’t as important as location. They have family suites that are usually at the rear of the boat, the family that is seasick together sticks together?
First Stop: Aruba. Nice place, don’t let you teenage daughter there alone, a desert island. The excursions one can choose on cruises can be everything from interesting to down right stupid. We did the submarine ocean fish viewing @ 145’.
Second Stop: Cartagena Columbia. Old city tour and beautiful skyline.
Third Stop: Panama Canal. From the east it’s up the three Gatun Locks to Gatun Lake, the locks are gravity fed to raise and lower the ships. Open all the locks at once and it would empty the lake. It’s the water from this lake that does the trick. 30,000 lives were lost building the canal, so although it’s a canal it feels like there is so much more. For this cruise we stopped in the lake for people taking excursions. The ship heads back down the locks to Colon (Cristobal), Panama where it picks up tour goers.
It was wonderful scrambling around the ship taking pictures of the Panama Canal. But getting off the ship by tenders and taking the Eco-Cruise 612A of the lake turned out to be even better, because after the sleepy little lake tour of flowers, monkeys, birds, and three toed sloths they took us to the locks and we got to watch our ship come back through {see pics}. An incredible engineering accomplishment, it was great to see the Panama Canal from the ship and a great big bonus seeing the ship from the land. The cost of the Island Princess to go through the locks that day was in excess of $250,000
Fourth Stop: Limon Costa Rica where my wife and 74yr old father in law went zip lining through the forest canopy and I went on a coffee been www.goldenbean.net tour. I like my coffee not heights.
Last Stop: Ocho Rios, Jamaica I enjoyed taking a nice relaxing walk on the pier while the others swam with the Dolphins.
Recommendations: We arrived on a Tuesday and the cruise started on Wednesday and flight left for home by 4pm Saturday, a lot of airport waiting. They want that ship empty and boot people off early.
The Saturday airlines were a zoo, simply because a lot of cruises are 7 days {Sat-Sat} people arriving and departing. But if one left on the other date, flew in Friday, went cruising Saturday – Wednesday, the airport wait time and lack of seating for the thousands of people would not be so bad. They simply lacked seating for the thousands of cruise passengers.
Airlines had posted that people could not check in their baggage until 4 hours before the flight, and it’s not like one packs lightly for a cruise. The Travel Lady here probably can expand on and give better advice than me about cruises.
Since then I have been advised well on other trips and getting the traveling cruise thing down. First off the best thing ever about taking a cruise is taking your brain and putting on a shelf for seven or ten days. Everything is paid for so unless you want to consume $5 beers every 30 minutes you can come away with full room service, all your meals, covered. Of course if you decide to try out the Spa treatments and go nuts every few days with reflexology, or deep tissue, or seaweed wrap, or Princess Cruise’s better than anywhere else deep stone massage you will pay the price of your relaxing trip.
I took the Panama Cruise, leaving www.inletcam.com Ft. Lauderdale on a Wednesday and returning 11 days later on a Saturday.
First seating dining was assigned for 5:30, now we have been very lucky, on every cruise the people seated at our table were entertaining, engaging, great story tellers of their excursions or previous cruises, their lives. If we didn’t like our dinner mates we would have easily been able to opt for anytime dining and getting our own table in the dining room below, or paying an extra $20 per person and dining at a few specialty dining rooms that required reservations and came with a totally different menu. We lucked out again, three great adventuresome ladies from Chicago! No nonsense Martini, Scotch on the rocks and red wine, the mid-west done them well!
How bad can dining room mates be? We had a breakfast {you can choose to eat with others or a table by yourself} with a loudmouth lady, brow beaten husband, loud attorney son… she was deriding the Germans as rude pushy people, hello? There was a family of them at the next table! We finished our breakfast before she even finished 1/3 of her meal. Mean, nasty, rude had to always have a picture WITH the Captain blah blah blah.
Now this cruise route we took is usually a very smooth trip, but on the second day the waves were 4’-7’ and just the way the wind was blowing made the ship’s bow a little bouncy, I was supposed to meet my wife on the 14th deck, needless to say I made the mistake of watching the water sloshing out of the pools, one minute you could see people’s ankles, the next they were floating up high. Back to my room where I had a little seasickness for the first time since I was 8. Rule #1 Room selection, low and center yourself on the moving axis. Rule #2 90% of new ships have sliding glass doors and balconies. Get one. The bigger the better, but the biggest isn’t as important as location. They have family suites that are usually at the rear of the boat, the family that is seasick together sticks together?
First Stop: Aruba. Nice place, don’t let you teenage daughter there alone, a desert island. The excursions one can choose on cruises can be everything from interesting to down right stupid. We did the submarine ocean fish viewing @ 145’.
Second Stop: Cartagena Columbia. Old city tour and beautiful skyline.
Third Stop: Panama Canal. From the east it’s up the three Gatun Locks to Gatun Lake, the locks are gravity fed to raise and lower the ships. Open all the locks at once and it would empty the lake. It’s the water from this lake that does the trick. 30,000 lives were lost building the canal, so although it’s a canal it feels like there is so much more. For this cruise we stopped in the lake for people taking excursions. The ship heads back down the locks to Colon (Cristobal), Panama where it picks up tour goers.
It was wonderful scrambling around the ship taking pictures of the Panama Canal. But getting off the ship by tenders and taking the Eco-Cruise 612A of the lake turned out to be even better, because after the sleepy little lake tour of flowers, monkeys, birds, and three toed sloths they took us to the locks and we got to watch our ship come back through {see pics}. An incredible engineering accomplishment, it was great to see the Panama Canal from the ship and a great big bonus seeing the ship from the land. The cost of the Island Princess to go through the locks that day was in excess of $250,000
Fourth Stop: Limon Costa Rica where my wife and 74yr old father in law went zip lining through the forest canopy and I went on a coffee been www.goldenbean.net tour. I like my coffee not heights.
Last Stop: Ocho Rios, Jamaica I enjoyed taking a nice relaxing walk on the pier while the others swam with the Dolphins.
Recommendations: We arrived on a Tuesday and the cruise started on Wednesday and flight left for home by 4pm Saturday, a lot of airport waiting. They want that ship empty and boot people off early.
The Saturday airlines were a zoo, simply because a lot of cruises are 7 days {Sat-Sat} people arriving and departing. But if one left on the other date, flew in Friday, went cruising Saturday – Wednesday, the airport wait time and lack of seating for the thousands of people would not be so bad. They simply lacked seating for the thousands of cruise passengers.
Airlines had posted that people could not check in their baggage until 4 hours before the flight, and it’s not like one packs lightly for a cruise. The Travel Lady here probably can expand on and give better advice than me about cruises.