My first cruise in over four and a half years wouldn't commence, of course, without a bit of anxiety inducing drama. Health issues, generalized anxiety, time management issues, a patch of stubborn weather, and those nasty toll roads would all combine to make my road journey from Sebring to Port Canaveral way more harrowing than it should have been.
The health issues were mainly in the form of a hyperactive internal waste removal system overload. In other words, it seems I had to constantly pee and poop throughout the course of the almost three hour drive! That's right, three hour drive! Well, maybe closer to two and a half, but it really felt like a full nasty three hours.
Once I got to the Cruisetime parking lot, I was politely whisked to the port by the friendly shuttle bus driver Bob and deposited at the MSC terminal. Before I got out of the little bus, I peered out the window and scratched my head wondering why there was a line all the way out the door and wrapped around the building. Turns out one of the terminal gangways was broken and it caused a big backup in the intake of passengers so it took about an hour and a half through a very slow queue to finally get processed and make my way on board the ship.
I thought I'd done my homework by studying the layout of the ship online well before today, but it's one thing to look at cruise ship blueprint maps and videos and another thing to see everything in person. The layout of this ship kept me perplexed from the moment I stepped on board to the morning of final disembarkation. And I wasn't alone. More than once I asked staff for directions and they were as clueless as I was pointing me forward when I was asking to go aft. Thinking about it, a vast majority of them had extremely poor English skills so it could be that they didn't know what the word aft meant and when I asked them "Is this the way aft?" they just nodded in agreement like somebody who doesn't understand what you're saying might do.
As you can see, for $315, booking a guaranteed inside cabin and getting an unrequested upgrade to a deluxe balcony, I guess I shouldn't complain since it was, after all, quite a nice deal, and quite a nice cabin.
But was it very clean? Not really. Often I found long pieces of women's hair to and fro. The couch and other fabrics had little bits of glitter, I guess, from some fancy makeup that women might wear, how the hell would I know? The glass of the shower stall, the mirrors, and especially the sliding glass door to the balcony we're not properly squeegee-cleaned. And before I could even set down my luggage, I looked on top of the desk and found this...
At first, having never seen one in person, I didn't know what it was. Then I remembered seeing people like Jimi the Hobo puffing on one of them. It's a vape thingy. Whatever it's called. This immediately not only grossed me out that something that was in somebody's mouth was left in the cabin from the previous occupants, I would guess, but also I was worried that somebody might think I brought it on board since I well know that the rules against smoking pertain to vaping as well and just like non-smoking hotel rooms people can be subject to a $250 fine for having such items and using them in the rooms.
I was just going to throw it away but that only made me worry that my cabin steward would think I was using it so instead I brought it out to the hallway and luckily he was right there and his first introduction to me was hearing about my gripes regarding this being left in the room to which he, I guess, kind of apologized for.
I don't know, he was one of these stewards that weren't like the really sing-songy type that try to bend over backwards, he was nice enough but behind his half grin I detected a slight disdain perhaps for white people but mostly, I would guess, for his sad life of being a middle-aged man making beds and cleaning toilets all day long. Oh well, boohoo for him.
Okay, okay. I know what you're saying. OMG, Michael's going to go on a tirade and rip everything to shreds because he be a nasty old queen. Which I say, c'est la vie. What does that mean? Who gives a fuck? Let's move on shall we, we have more tea to spill.
So my first couple of drinks after getting settled in were a couple of draft Heinekens at a swanky looking bar called the Brooklyn Bar. Here's a picture I took inside this bar a couple of days later while we were docked at Nassau next to the Disney Fantasy.
They were tasty enough and served in a very nice glass. From my pre-cruise research, and my experience from five years ago sailing on the MSC Armonia, I knew that ordering Heineken draft 16 oz (or were they 14 oz...proly neither as the glasses are likely in metrics so maybe measured in milliliters?) beers were one of the best values. I thought that they were priced around $10 each factoring in the automatic gratuities. Not bad at all.
But when checking my account, I found that I was charged less than $10, somewhere between $9.25 and $9.65 depending on which bar I ordered them since I ordered a couple more Heinekens later on at the Sky Bar up on Deck 16.
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| Grand Total for this cruise w/parking: $476.50 |
So why were they different prices since they were the same drink but from different bars? Were they slightly different sizes? Since I struck up a conversation with the bartender at the Sky Bar as opposed to the bartender at the Brooklyn Bar maybe she gave me a little bit of a discount? Also, it didn't matter where I ordered it but if I ordered more than one drink only the first drink ever rang up.
So like, at the Brooklyn Bar, they scanned my card after the first beer, when I got another they didn't take my card to scan it again. To be sure, when I was finished, before I walked away I said so we're all set I don't have to sign anything? To which they agreed. So basically, more than half my drinks were free. And on several of the days on this trip, I didn't drink at all other than water or Diet Coke. On two occasions they just gave me a free bottle of water and a free Diet Coke. With practices like these, why would anyone buy a drink package? Hey, I'm not complaining, believe you me! But something can't be right here. Bargain rate cruise prices, free balcony upgrades, free drinks. When MSC goes out of business, at least its cruise division, perhaps not its cargo division, you'll know why.
Now let's get to the food. This was yet another cruise I totally ignored the dining room. This buffet was large enough so that even rubbing elbows with my fellow other 5,000 passengers, I never had to wait in line very long there were many Buffet stations. Once again, as I've said before regarding MSC food, It's mighty fine and serves my simple tastes for simple homestyle cooking with an Italian flair. My favorites this week were jerk chicken, beef braciole, chicken parmesan, mashed potatoes, sautéed mushrooms, shells and spinach pomodoro, penne alfredo, lasagna al forno, beef and ricotta ravioli, and their rigatoni bolognese. Oh, and of course, their pizza! I could live on their pizza!
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| The NY crust style was better but this pan pizza was good too |
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| This is the stuff! |
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| Pic taken from the ship. I walked to the far end of the island straight ahead! |
The seas on the way out in the Straits of Florida after we left Port Canaveral were quite choppy though and even a big ship like the Seashore was actually rolling on the waves. Surely not as much as say Majesty of the Seas back during this cruise, but quite enough to rattle a few people and make them feel a bit off balance. Of course, as usual, I was loving it.
The best of the shows was the first night. On the first night they had this show called Encore which was a medley of various Broadway show tunes and dance numbers. West Side Story, Wicked, Hairspray, Cats, Phantom of the Opera, and other big hits all rousing to a crescendo finale with I Dreamed a Dream from Les Mis while they danced and stood defiantly proud and waved a big French flag. I'm afraid this part thoroughly confused Miss Paula Deen.
What? Paula Deen? Paula Deen was there? Well she must have been because I heard her say that she was confused when she was FaceTiming her family quite loudly from her next door balcony the morning after as I was discretely enjoying my coffee and chocolate croissant. Well perhaps it wasn't Paula Deen, but it sure sounded like her. I guess she never saw Les Miserables or perhaps any of the medley of chosen shows since I think she described the show overall as being "different songs." Well she and her husband have the drink package you know, but she's a little worried since her husband's sugar dropped low in the middle of the night and he had to open up the mini bar and grab a Sprite and is wondering if that's covered. I almost wanted to blurt out from my side of the partition to assure her that indeed it would be since I know how drink packages work regarding items in the mini bar. By day two, my balcony neighbor Paula wasn't feeling too well, she FaceTimed to her fam that she was feeling nauseous but she said it wasn't because of the rocking of the boat since, of course, we were at dock at the private island which she had misidentified as Princess Cay. By the way she talked about her illness, I have a feeling that there's something else going on and that her family knows about it. I have a feeling this may be Paula and her hubby's last cruise. Cue the Funeral March. End scene of my imaginary scenario for The Voice of the Lady Behind the Balcony Partition.
Activities were totally terrible on this ship. Trivia was worthless. The first general trivia was really hard and it was hard to understand the entertainment crew personnel with his thick Afrikaans, and the second trivia directly following it was actually a really easy geography trivia but the hardest thing was trying to understand any of the jumble of whatever words were being totally mispronounced out of the little Pinoyboy's mouth that was conducting the game. Twinkie fem Pinoyboys can be wonderful as trivia queens, but not so much on this ship.
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| Cabin #11171 |
Highlights: Swimming in the gorgeous turquoise blue waters of the sea at the Bimini Beach on Ocean Cay. Munching on that awesome rigatoni bolognaise and of course the pizza. The show "Encore" with its medley of very well done Broadway hits. Relaxing at the Brooklyn Bar to some cool bossa nova sippin' a Diet Coke! Sunning on my balcony. Watching TCM classic movies Cleopatra and one eerily ironic film about dead people cruising on an ocean liner during WW2 called Between Two Worlds.
Not So Greats: Breakfast offerings were totally meh but the so-called "biscuits and gravy" were an insult to Southern American culture...how dare they...do they want to start a war? Another "nope" was perhaps a similar misinterpretation of American musical theater traditions as performed under European authorship and direction..."Road To Nowhere" was their, I guess, dream-like themed musical show staged with primarily unique music and bizarre costuming. Three Black men dressed as the Three Blind Mice. A knock-off Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz presented as a young girl who finds an old Victrola and is warped to a whacko world inhabited by strange creatures like Tin Lady and Stilitskin? Black hooded death figures and a bad witch who becomes a good witch yet still needs the girl to curtsey to her because she's better than everyone else? The show on the last night "Divas" was redeeming but my enjoyment of it was highly curtailed by the loudmouths and kick-happy brats all around me and their hapless parents of this new generation of breeders that apparently feel the general public must also endure the same punishment as them in tolerating their squawking, screeching, snot-nosed, spoiled little devil spawn.
Overall, it was a good cruise, but I'm sure happy to be back home...by myself. All. By. My. Self. FINALLY!!!!