I wish I had the time and patience to make this more coherent than it probably will be........
Costa Maya was much better than expected. Stunningly beautiful beaches, nice people, not overly commercialized (yet!). I was really bothered by the number of very small local children we saw on the beaches who were not attended by any adult. It appeared that the 5-year-old was supposed to watch the 2- and 3-year olds
The water was almost TOO hot, though. This would seem to be a great place to visit when the weather is cooler and CC might be a bit too cold to swim. We did the jeep excursion which was lots of fun but we returned late and literally had to run to the ship. I realize that they would not have left us, since it was a Disney excursion, but I really didn't like pushing it so close.
If you are buying from the local vendors in Mexico, PLEASE negotiate prices! I don't like haggling, but you will pinch yourself if you pay the price asked, then find the exact item later and realize you could have gotten it for half what you paid. The street vendors always start high and expect the negotiating, so forget our typical American ways and haggle to a reasonable price.
We had a wonderful serving team and a room attendant who did the bare minimum. It really struck us how much a difference it makes when you have great service people compared to the mediocre few. I hate it for anyone who happens to get poor servers and a room attendant who could care less, because that has to be very unusual and those people will always think the rest of us are crazy!
Sometimes I really wish that Disney would be more firm and less nice. By the end of the cruise I was really tired of rude kids who blocked stairwells, and were loud and crude overall. Twice there were cast members who clearly spoke English and were white-collar types who encountered these thug wantabees and just let them be. This trip we did seem to run into more misbehaving kids, and often this was right in front of their parents. Just amazing. Of course, there were some adults who had problems, too, such as the couple who came very late to the drill and were loudly complaining about having to do this and used some rather colorful language to mouth off about how stupid they thought it was. Not the best start to our cruise, but you just have to shrug off some things.
The spa! Why we haven't "done" the spa before, I will never know. I don't think that we can cruise in the future unless we somehow can limit our spending, because I could spend a fortune as it is addictive.
There were several changes to the menus since we cruised last year. I don't have copies, but we all remarked about the differences. None of us were crazy about Lumiere's menu, which was our first night, but it improved significantly after that! And I can't complain about any place that allows self-service ice cream until 11:00 pm!!
I don't think that embarkation could possibly be any easier than it was yesterday! I just wish we could have stayed on another week instead of coming back to the real world............
Costa Maya was much better than expected. Stunningly beautiful beaches, nice people, not overly commercialized (yet!). I was really bothered by the number of very small local children we saw on the beaches who were not attended by any adult. It appeared that the 5-year-old was supposed to watch the 2- and 3-year olds
The water was almost TOO hot, though. This would seem to be a great place to visit when the weather is cooler and CC might be a bit too cold to swim. We did the jeep excursion which was lots of fun but we returned late and literally had to run to the ship. I realize that they would not have left us, since it was a Disney excursion, but I really didn't like pushing it so close.If you are buying from the local vendors in Mexico, PLEASE negotiate prices! I don't like haggling, but you will pinch yourself if you pay the price asked, then find the exact item later and realize you could have gotten it for half what you paid. The street vendors always start high and expect the negotiating, so forget our typical American ways and haggle to a reasonable price.
We had a wonderful serving team and a room attendant who did the bare minimum. It really struck us how much a difference it makes when you have great service people compared to the mediocre few. I hate it for anyone who happens to get poor servers and a room attendant who could care less, because that has to be very unusual and those people will always think the rest of us are crazy!
Sometimes I really wish that Disney would be more firm and less nice. By the end of the cruise I was really tired of rude kids who blocked stairwells, and were loud and crude overall. Twice there were cast members who clearly spoke English and were white-collar types who encountered these thug wantabees and just let them be. This trip we did seem to run into more misbehaving kids, and often this was right in front of their parents. Just amazing. Of course, there were some adults who had problems, too, such as the couple who came very late to the drill and were loudly complaining about having to do this and used some rather colorful language to mouth off about how stupid they thought it was. Not the best start to our cruise, but you just have to shrug off some things.
The spa! Why we haven't "done" the spa before, I will never know. I don't think that we can cruise in the future unless we somehow can limit our spending, because I could spend a fortune as it is addictive.
There were several changes to the menus since we cruised last year. I don't have copies, but we all remarked about the differences. None of us were crazy about Lumiere's menu, which was our first night, but it improved significantly after that! And I can't complain about any place that allows self-service ice cream until 11:00 pm!!
I don't think that embarkation could possibly be any easier than it was yesterday! I just wish we could have stayed on another week instead of coming back to the real world............
