Jake and I took our anniversary cruise to the Bahamas on Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas from 12/15/08 to 12/19/08. Here is my review:
We flew into Fort Lauderdale on Sunday morning (because we prefer Southwest), and we took a shuttle via SAS Transportation to our hotel. We found out about SAS on Cruise Critic, and were very happy with the $15/per person fares. As soon as we got our luggage, we called Steve, and the shuttle arrived within 15 minutes. Another couple got on the shuttle with us, then we dropped off some passengers at the Miami airport. Finally, we made it to our hotel.
We got a great rate at the Hyatt Regency Downtown Miami via a Priceline bid – $60! I placed my bid for a 4* in the downtown area about two months prior, and once I got the confirmation I called and requested a non-smoking king room. We had no problems checking in, and we were very pleased with the hotel. Here are some pictures of our room:
On Monday, we took a cab to the port ($9) at around 10:30. A little bit after 11, we were finally on the ship! While most of the cruisers headed straight for the Windjammer, we decided to tour the ship. We also booked my spa appointment! We took TONS of pictures, so here are some of them:
We finally made our way to the Windjammer for some lunch. We tried a few things, making sure to grab some Honey Stung Fried Chicken. We also stopped by Compass Deli and had some quesadillas and a Cuban sandwich. I have to admit – I was very disappointed in the lack of hand sanitizer onboard. The only place we ever saw it was these stands with wipes outside of the Windjammer. Nobody ever encouraged us to use them, and as a result, nobody ever used them (except me)!
At 1, we were allowed to see our stateroom. We were in 9048, which was a Superior Oceanview room:
At 3:15, we made our way to the Schooner Bar to meet up with the Cruise Critic group. I think we had about 20 members there! I had a pear melon martini, which was delicious.
Next, we went to our muster drill. We were lucky again, and we met in Bolero’s, out of the heat!
We chose early dine, so at 6:00 we made our way to the dining room. On the way, I forced Jake to take some Lifestyle pictures, because I love them! We were at a table for 10, but only two of the other couples ate dinner with us every night. They were both really friendly, and we enjoyed the company. Our waiter was Asley, and he did a pretty good job. I don’t remember our assistant waiter’s name, but he did pretty well also. The head waiter was your typical head waiter – came around the first night to check on us, then briefly on the last night to collect gratuities. Dinner the first night was nothing special – I had the pork (just ok) and Jake had the ravioli (which was good as always). For some reason (probably cost cutting), they have combined salads and starters on the menu, making your meals 3 courses instead of 4, unless you specifically ask for a salad and a starter (we did one night). We ordered a bottle of wine and drank half, saving the rest for the next night. Again, I was amazed to find that there was no hand sanitizer in the dining room.
Later, we went to the Welcome Aboard show. I don’t think it was spectacular – the same old Voyage to Remember song from the singers and dancers, and a somewhat funny comedian (Steve Shaffer). Jimmy Rhodes was our cruise director, and Justin was the activities director, and they were both great. A quick note – we mostly missed the auction going on before the show. At the very end, they auctioned off a package that included Diamond Plus C&A status, a couple’s massage, drink of the day coupons, and more (I think), starting at $100. We’re thinking that’s an amazing deal, so we bid on it. Unfortunately, Jake stopped paying attention because he was explaining me how it was amazing considering everything you get, and we got outbid by $10, and we lost it! For future cruisers, this is a a great deal!
Our first port was Nassau. We woke up around 7:30 hoping to climb the rock wall before breakfast. Unfortunately it was closed due to weather, so we headed straight to the Windjammer. Almost every morning, I had an omelet made by one of the wonderful chefs. It’s so worth it to wait for just a little while in line to get hot, fresh eggs!
At 10, we made our way to the first deck for our excursion, the Rainbow Reef snorkel. I’ll mention now that we had decided not to use the elevators during the entire cruise, so we took a LOT of stairs! The excursion was fine – they gave us our gear (we brought our own dry snorkels), and dropped us off. Unfortunately, there were about 3 other boats (including all those on the sail & snorkel) in the exact same spot, so it was a bit crowded. The water was chilly, but not extremely uncomfortable. The waves were pretty rough though, so it made it slightly difficult to move around, especially when so many people were trying to also move around. We saw some decent reefs and fish, but I’m not sure I would do this excursion again. Here’s a picture of the boat, plus a few from our underwater camera:
After the excursion, we quickly headed back to the ship and cleaned up, then headed back to the port and grabbed a taxi to Atlantis. We shared the van with several others and ended up paying $8 for the two of us. We walked around and took several pictures, including by the aquarium, but our main goal was to find some conch chowder. For some reason, this is now very difficult to find, even though when I visited last we ate it almost every day. We finally found Bimini Road, a restaurant in the new Marina Village area. The conch chowder was as delicious as I remembered, and we also enjoyed some conch salad and Kalik Bahamian beer.
Dinner was formal, so we got all dressed up – Jake in a coat and tie, me in a nice black dress. I think the majority of the passengers were also formally dressed, though I don’t remember any tuxedos. We took some formal pictures with the Christmas tree and the piano, but we skipped all of the backdrops. Again, dinner did not impress us much. I had the beef filet, which only comes medium well or medium rare, and Jake had the duck. After dinner, we went to the Captain’s Welcome Aboard Reception (open to everybody), with free Bahama Mamas and champagne. I think he was funny based on the laughs he got, but it was really difficult to hear everything he said. We went back to the room to change clothes, and we discovered our towel animal and pillow chocolates! Next, we headed back to the theater for the show of the evening, Boogie Wonderland, and the Love and Marriage show. I enjoyed them both, but they were about what I expect on Royal Caribbean cruises at this point. Jimmy had made a quick appearance in Boogie Wonderland, and it was great! I really wish the Love and Marriage show hadn’t been quite so late. It was at 10:15, and we were pretty exhausted at that point. Another note on late shows – we’ve always had main dining, so it hasn’t been an issue, but is it now normal for late dining shows to come after dining instead of before? I remember that on Mariner, the late dining passengers had their shows before dinner.
On Wednesday, we made it to CocoCay! For some reason I felt like we needed to get up early again, but looking back I wish we had taken that day to sleep a little bit later. I was worried that the waves looked a little bit rough, but we soon found out the tenders were in fact running. After another Windjammer breakfast, I finally convinced Jake to get off the ship and go to the beach. We had all kinds of plans for the day, including snorkeling and kayaking. At first, we walked all the way to the right and found some hammocks. After relaxing for a little while, we decided to get up and walk. This part of the island was the nicest – not crowded at all, calmer wind and waves. The kayaks are on this side of the island too. Unfortunately, there were very few chairs. We headed back and walked all the way to the other side, where the Island Oasis cabana area is located. This area seemed pretty nice too, but again, limited seating. We finally picked a couple of chairs in the middle part of the island and just lounged until lunch, enjoying some wonderful Coco Loco drinks. We mostly enjoyed the BBQ, although the macaroni & cheese was pretty awful. We decided that because the water was fairly rough, we’d skip the snorkeling and kayaking and just relax. At one point, Jake swam partly out in the snorkeling area to check it out. He got away with not wearing fins or a vest, but I was pretty nervous that he might die while he was out there. The plane is out by the floating dock – not too far in general, but with the waves and the current, it looked like more of a challenge than we wanted. We skipped the straw market and headed back to the ship at about 2 I think. I also got some nice pictures of the ship here.
My spa appointment was at 4:30, so we cleaned up and wandered around the ship a little bit. We caught the belly flop contest and got some free ice cream. I made my way to the spa (which was conveniently just down the hall from our room). I had signed up for the Ladies’ Pamper Session, which included champagne, a back massage, scalp massage, aromatherapy facial, and foot/ankle massage lasting about 50 minutes. I never actually got my champagne, but I did have some nice strawberry cucumber water. Virginia was my therapist, and she did an amazing job. At the end, she described all of the products she used and wrote me a “prescription” form, which included monthly massages. 🙂 The prescription form included all of the prices, but she never tried hard to get me to purchase everything, so I was grateful. For whatever reason, gratuities are not automatically included in the spa treatments.
Next was dinner, which was Italian. Dress was casual, which meant everything from t-shirts and shorts to nice dresses or button up shirts with slacks. I had the chorizo pasta which wasn’t spicy at all, and Jake had the chicken marsala. We also got a second bottle of wine. The waiters sang Sole Mio, which was fun. We decided to head back to the room and rest a little bit before The Quest, which wasn’t until 11:30!
We typically enjoy both watching and participating in The Quest, but we had only experienced it on Voyager class ships in Studio B. We got to The Spectrum early to get good seats, only to find that the dance party was still very much going on. The room was very loud and smoky, and filled with the younger crowd, so we sat down in the back and waited for things to get started. In the past, the teams have always been divided by sections of seats. This time, Jimmy had everybody form teams of 4-8, and he had a leader from each team take a number. Since it was just the two of us, we decided to sit back and watch. The game itself was about what we expected, having done this before. The main problem I saw was that, due to the room configuration and spread out groups, there was a lot of crazy running around that doesn’t seem to happen in the past.
I had hoped to sleep in a little bit on Friday, since we woke up too early on the previous days. Unfortunately, we had to do immigration since we were heading back into the US, and our group was scheduled for 9am. We made our way to the theater, showed our passport and SeaPass to a couple of people, though I’m pretty sure they never really looked at it, got the SeaPass stamped, and were done within a few minutes. I’m pretty sure we could have actually slept in and nobody would have noticed as long as we went through at a later time.
We ate breakfast again at the Windjammer, then we got off the ship. Again, we hadn’t booked any excursions. Mostly we wanted to walk around and sample some Key Lime Pie. The winery listed on our map (Key West Winery) sounded like fun, so we made our way there first. We browed the shop a little bit, and then the staff let us tasted several of the wines. We skipped the tomato and jalapeno wine and tried the orange fermented with chocolate flavor (very interesting), the watermelon (very sweet), the Black Gold (I think, it was the staff’s recommendation, and it was nice and fruity), the Key Lime (how could we not?), and the Hurricane 5 (their most popular, also sweet and fruity). We decided to buy a bottle of the Key Lime, which is supposedly also great as a mixer.
Our next stop was Key Lime Pie tasting #1, at the Blond Giraffe. We tried the pie on a stick (dipped in chocolate), and it was pretty tasty, very sweet. It was fun to see them making the pies too.
Next, we walked all the way to the Southernmost point! It seemed like we walked forever, but we saw some chickens and a fun tree on the way. Apparently they were in the process of repainting the buoy, so the writing was missing. We took some pictures anyway, and this ended up being the pictures we chose for our Christmas card this year!
We hadn’t originally planned to go to the Hemingway House because I thought it would be expensive and I didn’t know how far it was. Turns out, it’s in between the port and the Southernmost Point, and it’s only $12 for admission, so we decided to check it out anyway. I had heard so many fun things about the cats, which I love, and I was not disappointed at all! There were so many cats running around, and most of them were friendly. Many were polydactyl, which was fun. We skipped the tour, though it was included and short, and we spent a while just walking around the gardens and petting the cats. My cat Buster would have loved it there. I took a TON of pictures, but I’ll only include a few favorites:
Afterwards, we walked back to the port area and decided it was time for Key Lime Pie tasting #2. We found our way to Kermit’s and tried their traditional pie, which we decided was a clear winner. It’s not as sweet as Blond Giraffe, which made it easier to eat. They also have all kinds of key lime food samples, so that was fun too.
We finally made our way back to the ship, but this time we walked along the water past some nice bars and resorts. There were lots of pelicans too that didn’t mind posing for some pictures.
For kicks, I mapped everywhere we went that day in Google Maps. I didn’t add it all up, but it’s probably close to 3 miles.
View Larger Map
After all of that walking, we were pretty hungry, so we took our Crown & Anchor coupon books and headed to Johnny Rockets. It wasn’t very crowded, so it took us a little while to figure out that we didn’t really need to wait to be seated, and we finally just headed in and sat down. As soon as we got there, the waiters danced, so that was fun to watch. We ordered burgers and fries, but sadly they were out of onion rings! Everything was tasty, but I’m not sure it was quite as good as the Johnny Rockets onboard Mariner last year. Next we sat in the Viking Crown Lounge for a while and enjoyed looking out to sea in the empty room. The bartender here clearly didn’t speak English well, as she brought me a regular cosmopolitan instead of the pomegranate cosmo, but it was good enough and I didn’t complain.
Later, we went back to the rock wall to finally check that off of our list. Now I have to say, we have gotten pretty into rock climbing at home, so we were prepared to master this wall. The belayer told us that the outermost routes (green and yellow) were the easiest and unrated. Supposedly the blue route was a 5.9 and the red was a 5.8. We climb 5.8s fairly regularly at home, so we thought we’d give it a try. First of all, the belayer was entirely too busy chatting it up with some other staff member (not a rock wall staff member, she just came by to keep him company I guess) to pay too much attention to anybody actually climbing. Second, the wall itself was not extremely difficult, but the rocks were made of some kind of cheap, slippery plastic that made gripping nearly impossible. I got maybe 3/4 of the way up and decided I’d rather stop there than actually fall trying to get the next handhold, since the belayer was still not paying attention. Also, there was a long line of people watching and waiting to climb next, and I figured they probably didn’t want to wait for me to finish. Jake pretty much agreed with me when he tried the same route.
We watched the sunset a little bit as we sailed away, and then we headed to dinner. I don’t remember much about what was on the menu, except that the Mahi Mahi was the special, and we absolutely hated it last year. I didn’t want any of the entrees, so I had the spinach dip as my appetizer and shrimp cocktail and onion soup as my entree. I think the waiter was a little bit offended, but he brought it to me anyway, and even doubled the shrimp cocktail order (our other tablemates had started doing this, since the single order only includes 4 shrimp). I think Jake had the salmon. I do remember enjoying the chocolate dessert that night. The musicians also stopped by our table and played for us. They were taking requests, but we couldn’t think of anything, so they chose “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You”, which we enjoyed. Then, because they were Philippino, and so were two of our tablemates, they sang a couple of Philippino songs. We didn’t bring any cash with us to tip them, but if you’ve got some, they’re happy to take your tips. 🙂 The waiters also sang “Hey Look Us Over” that night, and the chefs came out.
After dinner we decided to look through all of the pictures that we hadn’t thrown away, and we decided that two of them were worth taking home – a formal picture with the tree, and one of our lifestyle pictures. I really wish that they weren’t so expensive, but I don’t think that’s going to change at all. I also wish one of our C&A coupons would have helped with this purchase. We would have bought a couple more probably if they were cheaper. At some point I’ll scan these in, but I don’t actually own a scanner, and I’m not entirely sure where I put the pictures when I cleaned up for Christmas. We also stopped by the casino to use our free slot pulls. I didn’t win anything, but Jake got a lovely key chain.
At this point, I realized that we had missed the final show. I managed to stop by at the very end and see all of the staff come out on the stage, but that was about it. We got some towel art, not quite an animal, and this was strangely the first night that I figured out who our stateroom attendant was. We learned his name, Irvin, because he had written it on his gratuity envelope. As I was walking back to the room, he was a few feet ahead of me and opened the door before I got there. Unfortunately, I never saw him again, even when I tried to exchange our disembarkation group. For some reason, they placed us early, and we wanted to be last. I couldn’t find them anywhere, so finally I snuck up to the front of the Guest Relations line and got some (beware, that line is LONG on the last night).
Finally, we got up on the last morning and got ready to leave the ship. Unfortunately, I managed to develop a pretty awful cold (probably because there was no sanitizer used onboard). I was hoping we could stay on until 9:30 or 10 and relax by the pool, since our flight out of FLL didn’t leave until 3:20. They called our color sometime while we were still eating in the Windjammer, and then they made the “last call” around 8:30 probably. Our driver from SAS had called earlier to see if we were ready yet, since he was trying to fill up his van, and we had originally told him we’d like to wait a while. Since the last call was shortly after we talked to him, when I told him we were heading off the ship, he was still around and said he would wait. Customs was incredibly fast – pretty much as we were walking off the ship they took our form, asked if we bought anything, glanced at our passports, and sent us on our way.
Once outside, we waited probably 30 mins for the SAS driver to finally make his way back to us after picking up passengers from the other ships. The driver was very talkative (probably too much so), but we made it safely to the airport by 10am probably. He offered to take passengers to the Ramada I think to waste time before later flights, but I was a little skeptical and decided to take our chances at the airport. As an FYI, SAS owns 4 vans, and when it’s really busy they’ll occasionally borrow a 5th – they’re extremely grateful to Cruise Critic and the recommendations. For future warning, the FLL airport is potentially the most boring airport to wait in ever. They have only a few restaurants that don’t have great food, and there is not much seating. We spent about 6 hours in the airport total.
Whew – I thought I would never finish this! I included a lot, but I’m sure I forgot some things. Overall, we enjoyed our trip, though it was short and traveling was expensive and long. It was interesting to see the Majesty, since I had only sailed Voyager class hips before, and we definitely enjoyed the ship. I had heard great things about the Majesty staff, but honestly, I didn’t witness any spectacular service. For the price though, it was a great trip, and though we’d probably do it again, I think we’ll keep saving for a longer, nicer cruise in the future. I’ve got a ton of pictures that I didn’t include in this review, so if you’d like to see them all, visit them here:
http://flickr.com/photos/allison_beck/sets/72157611361702071/
