I LOVE Comedians with Guitars......You didn't tell me that part...

[jenseib]

THat dive site looks so cool! I would love to swim over a sunken ship! It reminded me of the Titanic photos at the beginning of the movie.

It was. And it didn't have the creepy factor with it because no one died in that shipwreck.

Love the snorkling photos! I love snorkling though I haven't gone in years! I think that little "Nemo" probably swam back crying "Mama, Mama, I just saw the most humongous fish ever!"
I used to have to keep telling myself "don't smile, don't smile" because every time I'd smile with joy, I'd get water in my mask!

LOL
Yes. You have to keep a serious face ooor eyes burning with saltwater.

Luvin the fishy pics!

 

[Timon]

Great updates Jen!

I just love Grand Cayman!! It's my fave stop in the Caribbean, despite the tendering

Last couple of times we did Stingray City and 2 snorkel stops and LOVED it! Love me some stingrays

What's up next?

 

[jenseib]

Great updates Jen!

I just love Grand Cayman!! It's my fave stop in the Caribbean, despite the tendering

Last couple of times we did Stingray City and 2 snorkel stops and LOVED it! Love me some stingrays

What's up next?

We had a great time. If we ever go there again I definitely want to do the stingrays. This was our "cheap" last minute trip and I really did try not to overspend...try is the word
I did think the tenders were pretty good. I tender once at Cozumel till our dock opened and that was so slow.

 

[jenseib]

Hi everyone. I have not dropped off the face of the earth. It's been a couple of days since I updated and I hate to go that long, but with the holidays fast approaching, life has gotten in the way. My goal is to get some more written up by the weekend, but Claire's b-day is Monday and we have a few activities this weekend to celebrate it.
I still have not gotten all my decorations out either, which is so unlike me.
I also came up with the brilliant idea of making photobooks from our family trip for family as gifts. Someone warn me not to do that again if I ever say I am going to do that in the future. it's really not THAT bad, but it takes a lot of time looking through the pictures and finding the few out of 6000 I want to use in it.
I have also had some requests for certain resort pictures from some people on facebook, so I have been to try and get those edited and up there lately as well.
I also took some fat Ben pictures (if you follow Dees Amazing adventures of Flat Ben thread you know who he is) and I am slowly but surely working on some of those photos to send to her as well.

So please forgive me and know that I will be back soon.

 

[AquaDame]

I am certain they will be beautiful and treasured forever and we promise to make you step away from the computer if you ever try something so awesome and thoughtful again!

We will be here, no worries! Thank you for the wonderful trip so far!

 

[jenseib]

I am certain they will be beautiful and treasured forever and we promise to make you step away from the computer if you ever try something so awesome and thoughtful again!

We will be here, no worries! Thank you for the wonderful trip so far!

Thanks. I am so happy to be done with those. I now just wait to see the final product!

 

[jenseib]

We continued our snorkeling fun.

This boat went by a couple of times. If I remember right, it had windows down below and it was an excursion to look at sea life.

Theres Brook.

A last look under the sea.

I was now to the point that I had to go to the bathroom. I was also starting to get a little cold and waterlogged, so I got out.

Brook and Lisa soon followed.

We got one more group picture as we waited for the rest to come back onboard.

Soon it was time to go and everyone had returned. We motored on over to where we had gotten on the boat and set off back to the ship. We tipped our guys because they were fabulous.
We decided to go back and freshen up and get a bite to eat then meet up with Carolyn, Susan and Shelly.

I took a few pictures as we walked back.

Hey, theres a rooster walking around.

I really had to go to the bathroom quite badly at this point. We spotted public bathrooms and Brook and Lisa declined to go in, but at this point a hole in the ground was gonna work for me, so I went in. Surprisingly these were pretty decent bathrooms. I would say on the line with the Castaway Cay ones. Not fabulous, but decent and they werent dirty.

Now that I felt so much better, we headed back to the tender area.

Easy to find the Mickey Boat!

Disneys area was so much nicer than the Carnival one. They had a shaded canopy with cold water and cold towels waiting for us.

We soon were on a tender.

We made some chit chat with the one guy. I think he took a liking to Lisa. He was very friendly, but honestly we had a hard time understanding him and we did a lot of smiling and nodding.

A guy came on wearing a Fantasy Inaugural Sweatshirt and carrying a guitar. We kind of heard hints of whispers that he was new entertainment coming on board and that the 2 other ones had left that morning. I never realized this, but I guess a lot of the entertainment does not stay on board the whole week. They will get off at a port and fly home, or fly into a port and join the cruise midway.
I LOVED this guys sweatshirt by the way. I sure wish I could find a way to get one myself.

We soon set sail back to the ship and we saw some people enjoying themselves.

I took a few pictures of the Carnival Destiny as we went by her.

Back to the Magic.

As we were pulling in, we had a to wait a minute for the other tenders to get out of the way. All of a sudden Brook says, there is Carolyn on that one. I couldnt believe she saw her. She said Susan wears big sunglasses with bright white rims and they caught her eye. LOL. We hollered back and forth and let them know we would meet up with them in about 45 minutes or so at Margaritaville.

Looks like the red could use a little new paint.

We have arrived!

 

[disprincess4ever]

Sat down and got hooked to this thread and your dream trip reports. Took me 2 hours to read them all! And imagine my excitement when I saw that you had updated this morning.
Anyways, your reports are written so wonderfully, and the photos are top notch! I love your perspective about the Magic, since you sailed on the new class first. I've been on the Fantasy, but am going on the Magic next summer, and your opinion gives me an idea on what to expect (such as size difference and aging details)

 

[jenseib]

Sat down and got hooked to this thread and your dream trip reports. Took me 2 hours to read them all! And imagine my excitement when I saw that you had updated this morning.
Anyways, your reports are written so wonderfully, and the photos are top notch! I love your perspective about the Magic, since you sailed on the new class first. I've been on the Fantasy, but am going on the Magic next summer, and your opinion gives me an idea on what to expect (such as size difference and aging details)

Thanks so much for reading along. I try to give out details. I know when I research things, I want to know it all, or as much as I can get, so I try to give out as much as I can remember to others so hopefully it will help with planning.

My next goal is to update my current Dream TR. I hope to get that up by tomorrow.

 

[Woth2982]

Great update! So funny Lisa found Susan on another tender! I am not shocked that Carnival was not as nice as disney (you get what you pay for lol) I have actually been on the ship you took a photo of. The Destiny has actually been taken out of service and is being renovated and the name is being changed. It needs it. It is NOT a nice boat lol. I am not a fan of Carnival lol.

 

[jenseib]

Great update! So funny Lisa found Susan on another tender! I am not shocked that Carnival was not as nice as disney (you get what you pay for lol) I have actually been on the ship you took a photo of. The Destiny has actually been taken out of service and is being renovated and the name is being changed. It needs it. It is NOT a nice boat lol. I am not a fan of Carnival lol.

You know I read when we got back that that shop[ had taken of a ton of water somewhere and many rooms were flooded.

 

[Caretames1]

Whew, caught up here to!


I wanna snorkel!! It looks so awesome underwater. You got great pictures of the fish and the wreck.

Looks like the ship is going run you over!

Love the underwater group shot. That's a great memory.

That is one sexy snorkel picture.

Okay, maybe I missed it, but what is a tender?

 

[jenseib]

Whew, caught up here to!


I wanna snorkel!! It looks so awesome underwater. You got great pictures of the fish and the wreck.

Looks like the ship is going run you over!

Love the underwater group shot. That's a great memory.

That is one sexy snorkel picture.

Okay, maybe I missed it, but what is a tender?

A tender is just a small boat that basically ferries you from the ship to shore. I have no clue whay it's called that and the official meaning.

I am so jealous. I just looked at Brooks pictures. Her camera is MUCH better. She got some really clear and focused shots underwater.

 

[MEK]

All caught up again.

snorkeling looks so fun! I am definitely getting a water proof camera before I cruse. It looks like a must.

I love the picture of the three of you in the water. That's awesome.

You also got amazing pictures of the ship while you were out on the boat. Just perfect.

I have to laugh at your "hole in the ground" comment. I totally get that. Good to know there are decent BRs at the tender stop.

 

[jenseib]

All caught up again.

snorkeling looks so fun! I am definitely getting a water proof camera before I cruse. It looks like a must.

I love the picture of the three of you in the water. That's awesome.

You also got amazing pictures of the ship while you were out on the boat. Just perfect.

I have to laugh at your "hole in the ground" comment. I totally get that. Good to know there are decent BRs at the tender stop.

I thought I had a pretty decent underwater camera and looked at Brooks pictures last night, WOW, her's are fabulous. I am so jealous. I am happy I had one though. It's really fun to use and get pictures you wouldn't normally get.

 

[brookelizabeth]

I didn't see "Guitar Man" get on the tender! I just saw him going through security, when I practically killed myself with my lanyard (and totally got talked about that night on Deck 0 I'm SURE! The dude remembered me at the next port! ). I was so baffled by his guitar, I asked him if he was going out to play on the corner!

Between that, and the lanyard, I needed to find a hole that moment to go crawl into and DIE.

 

[jenseib]

I didn't see "Guitar Man" get on the tender! I just saw him going through security, when I practically killed myself with my lanyard (and totally got talked about that night on Deck 0 I'm SURE! The dude remembered me at the next port! ). I was so baffled by his guitar, I asked him if he was going out to play on the corner!

Between that, and the lanyard, I needed to find a hole that moment to go crawl into and DIE.

Now you got me trying to remember. How did you kill yourself with the lanyard? I was probably too mesmorized following him on the ship because I LOVED his sweatshirt so much. You were probably dying next to me and I was ignoring you.

 

[jenseib]

Snorkeling sure works up an appetite, so we headed straight for some food.

We all got chicken tenders and fries.

They were pretty good too.

A view of Grand Cayman.

We all headed back to our rooms to freshen up a bit. I guess I felt the need to take a picture of our towel animals lined up. LOL

We met back up and headed to the tenders once again.

A peek over the side at the water.

A look back at the ship.

We have arrived once again. Which way to go?

There it is.

Let’s stop and take a touristy picture!!

I tried to get a shot of the floor, but as you can see, that wasn’t too successful.

It was kind of a maze to get to the restaurant part, up stairs over this way and that, but we found them.

The place was pretty empty and we found sat a table next to them.

Here is the view out the windows. And there is a deck out here as well.

 

[jenseib]

The other gals had ordered food, but since we had just eaten, we didn't, but we did each order a pop.

We weren't there for long and decided to get moving. For some reason the waitress put it all on one bill. So annoying. I swear she said that it was $1.50 American to $1 Grand Cayman, but we asked Carolyn how much we owed her and she gave us a price that seemed way too little. I think Lisa gave her the money for our drinks since I paid the tip on the snorkeling excursion, so I am not for sure what the exact total came to.

We decided to take a bus around the island and see what it looked like. Lisa and I debated on this a bit. It sounded fun, yet we weren't sure we wanted to do it. Finally we said OK and went along.

As we headed out we took picture of Margaritaville.

Lisa and I.

They had a pool area here too.

Another stop for touristy pictures.

We had a few issues finding this bus stop. We were told it was behind Margaritaville, but honestly we just didnt see it, nor any buses around.

We decided to look in here a minute because who ever heard of bamboo socks?

Well they had them and sheets and just about anything you could think of made out of bamboo. The clothing was VERY soft, and PRICEY.

We won't be taking those home with us.

We kept on looking

Lots of Banks in Grand Cayman. And jewelry stores. At one point Shelly asked what the local time was as it was an hour ahead on clock she saw. I thought that was correct, but the ship stayed on Galveston time. But then later we saw another clock that had the same time as Galveston. Weird. We never figured it out. Some people said they were the same, while other said it was an hour ahead.

Finally we asked someone where the bus stop was. Well we weren't too far ......and this was not really a bus. There was an area with lots of vans parked. These were the buses. They asked where you wanted to go, more like a taxi that followed a route. We said we just wanted to make a loop and end up back here. So we all got in and started off. This van still made stops throughout the island, but very few people got on or off. You could tell some people used this to get to and from work, and I must say, if you got on near the beginning of the route and worked near the end, that is a long ride ....at least it seemed like it to me.

The whole reason for this ride was to see some local life. I will warn you now, I took quite a few pictures .......through a window in a moving van, so needless to say, they are not great, but it will give you an idea what the island is like.

Our bus is fresh too!

Lets just say some of the decor is kind of interesting.

 

[jedijill]

I'm wearing bamboo socks right now (but they came from Target!)

Jill in CO