March 27th, Part 1
Around 6:20 am, we were all awoken by repetitive loud thuds coming from above our room.
I'm a light sleeper and I wake up two or three times a night but Kira and Rob are heavy sleepers and even they were up. Not exactly the way I had envisioned my birthday starting.
I tuned into the Good Morning show...
We got ready for the day and then had a little family chat. Should we try to get another room? Ugh, we would have to pack up, move, unpack again, sanitize the other room, take down all of the lights and decorations and then put them up again.
As we were chatting, the noise above got louder and we decided that we would go try and get another room if there's one left. Before heading down, Rob and I went up to have a peek at the gym. It seems like we were directly below the treadmills and the gym opened at 6am every day.
Rob headed down to Guest Services while I went back to the room to let Kira know what was going on. We were going to see if there was another room we could move to and then grab some breakfast at Enchanted Garden.
Hey, when you're not standing in the middle, these elevator doors make you look taller and thinner!
Rob stood in line at GS while I chatted with the DVC CM. Super nice guy, he told me we had 2420 passengers on this sailing. I also found out that the DVC CM's don't have extended contracts like the other CM's, they only work one sailing and then back home to Florida. They get to choose which sailings they do.
Once Rob spoke to a CM, I joined him and they were able to find us a new room. The lovely CM asked if we wanted to go have a look at it first but I didn't really care, as long as it wasn't under or next to something super noisy. She changed my room key, gave me a birthday button, as well as two celebration buttons for Rob and Kira and then we headed off for some breakfast.
Once we got seated at a glorious, quiet table in the corner, I texted Kira that we would be moving to a new room and asked her if she could start taking some of the decorations down.
Rob was looking forward to his 12-course breakfast.
He even got his precious chocolate croissants! He devoured five of them that morning.
This was mine, minus the toast, which I ate every day. I know, I'm boring but I know what I like and I like what I know.
We hatched our plan while we ate. I would head to the new room, take photos and video while no one was around and Rob would head to our old room and grab the spray and wipes and go clean the new room while Kira and I packed up our stuff and then he would come back and help us move our stuff over. They said they would move our stuff for us, we just had to give them a call but honestly, once we were all packed up and ready to go, it was just easier and faster for us to do it all. It took us two trips but it all worked out.
Here's our new digs, room 7094, a Deluxe Family Stateroom with Verandah. It was bigger than our old room but there were things we didn't like about this design that you don't really think about until you are in it, unpacking and organizing and living in that space. Things like the closet is way smaller, no shelves or drawers over by the closet and the toilet bathroom is smaller. Rob hit his head on the wall a few times and I hit my knee several times. The area in front of the desk was way bigger, Kira and I were dancing/twirling over there together and still had space
The first closet was set up differently and the second one was quite small compared to the regular verandah rooms.
We were pretty close to midship elevators, and on the opposite side of the ship, which took Rob and Kira a few days to get used to. Good thing one of us has a great sense of direction.
Back to the room where were worked as a team to get it all done.
A little over 90 minutes later, we were settled in our new room.
It took some rearranging because that storage area next to the closet was missing and we had to rethink how we were using the space but in the end, we had plenty of room for our stuff and we were thankful we didn't have to spend the rest of the cruise under treadmills! On our way out of the old room, I ran into our neighbours two doors down and we ended up talking about the treadmills over our heads. They were an older couple, not the type to complain it seemed but when I mentioned the treadmills, he paused and said "Oh, is that what that sound was this morning?"
I don't understand why they are even putting passengers in those rooms during this reduced capacity phase anyway? This ship is ten years old, I'm sure they get the same complaints over and over. I did notice that, out of the six rooms more forward than ours, only two of them seemed occupied. Those empty rooms would be directly under the weights area of the gym.
Some of my door decorations were losing their magnets so I didn't put them up on the new door. I have since purchased some heavy duty magnets that should work better.
Once we got settled in, I sorted laundry, Rob started laundry and Kira and I got some chicken strips for her and I showered because I had gotten all sweaty from the move. The shower was very clogged up and didn't drain very well. I was standing in two-inch deep water the entire time. Also, our toilet had the longest flush in toilet history.
Knowing I use the bathroom a few times each night, Rob said "Yeah, that's gonna wake me up."
We made sure we mentioned both issues to our new stateroom host, Alain, when we saw him. Both were fixed by the time we went to bed that night.
We got a good view of Havana as we passed.
Rob had a lot of issues with the washers and dryers and ended up putting all of our clothes on double cycles. While he was dealing with that, I was totally knackered and needed a nap
When I woke up, we all headed to D Lounge to do the Marvel Face Off. We thought it was trivia but it was more of a gameshow and only a handful of people actually participated.
The pool was super busy with long lines.
Rob grabbed some strips and a piece of pizza.
And then spent some well-earned reading time on our new verandah.