Escape From Home Life to 4th of July on the High Seas - A July 2019 Cruise Trip Report (Completed 6/21)

[cstorm65]

I've been on 3 cruises 15+ years ago (before kids) and they were all with Royal Caribbean and I enjoyed them... I agree, I would love to do a Disney cruise, but my salary doesn't agree... I've been looking at cruises for next summer... I really like the 4 night cruise where you go to the private island twice and Nassau... My husband and youngest son have never been on a cruise... Better to start slow, just in case it's not their thing...

Definitely! We had only done the 4 night on the Disney Dream prior to this 7 night on Royal, but I think doing that 4 night first was good for us. We knew what to expect and figured out we do like cruising which gave us some confidence that we would like the longer length cruise.

 

[cstorm65]

Day 5 - Part 2 - Can We At Least Get a Picture Honey?

We left off just having gotten on the road from the port area over to the boat for our excursion. It was just about a 15 minutes ride and we were quickly on our way! DW and DS7 were ready to swim with some stingrays...well, DW was ready to see them, maybe not swim with them!

It was a nice little drive out to Stingray City on the boat.

We left the dock area at 11:30 and arrived at Stingray City at around noon and DS7 couldn’t believe what he was seeing! They were some big stingrays!

DS7 and I ventured out into the water, but DW wanted no part of it to start with. She just videoed us from up on the boat and got a couple of pictures!

As you can see from the photo DS7 was all of a sudden super scared to death of being in the water by himself. He just wanted to hold on to me the entire time.

At one point I had talked DW into coming in the water with us to get some pictures. She came down the ladder and made it all of 45 seconds before she screamed when she thought something brushed her leg and hurried back up into the boat! It was quite the scene. I tried to say, “Can we at least get a picture together honey”, but she wasn’t having it. So we went to Stingray City and we didn’t get a picture there!

Anyway, DS7 wanted his snorkel so we let him wear that for a bit and he would look around at the stingrays underwater, but you couldn’t pay him to allow me to let go!

Overall this was a great part of the excursion for me. I loved getting to see the Stingrays up close and so did DS7 even though he wouldn’t get away from me at all. I will say he finally got brave enough to swim a bit on his own and did so for about 2 minutes before they announced it was time for us to go! Go figure!

I don’t think this is something we’d need to do every visit to Grand Cayman, but it was awesome to do this time! We were also glad we were on a smaller boat tour, probably only 35 people or so. There were only two other small boats at Stingray City while we were there so it wasn’t too crowded, but as we were leaving several other boats came and some of them were big, probably holding 150-200 people each. So it was nice to get in and out early before the big rush. Overall, Stingray City was so worth it and a one of a kind experience!

Up Next: Fun with Starfish​

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

DS7 and I ventured out into the water, but DW wanted no part of it to start with. She just videoed us from up on the boat and got a couple of pictures!

I am not sure what I would do with sting rays... probably somewhere in between DW and you. Sounds fun though.

 

[cstorm65]

I am not sure what I would do with sting rays... probably somewhere in between DW and you. Sounds fun though.

So much fun! DW just didn't want to get touched by their fins if they swam by. It's definitely something you will get 10 different opinions from 10 different people!

 

[cstorm65]

Day 5 - Part 3 - Fun with Starfish

After spending a good 50 minutes at Stingray City we all loaded back up on the boat and headed to our second stop, Starfish Point. The stingray stop is obviously the popular stop on this tour, but I was pretty optimistic about Starfish Point as I figured it would be a little more low key than seeing the stingrays. It turns out I was correct. DS7 loved Starfish Point, probably because he wasn’t scared like he was to start at Stingray City. We got here at about 1:15 and ended up having 40 minutes to snorkel and see the starfish in the area.

As you can tell the water wasn’t as clear and blue as it was at Stingray City, but it was certainly clear enough to see the starfish and enjoy our time here. DS7 enjoyed getting to use his snorkel gear to actually look at things underwater.

We were able to get a family picture here as DW wasn’t as scared as she was at Stingray City!

We got back on the boat and by 2:00 we were heading back to the dock after a great tour. I thought it was awesome on the way back that the captain let all of the kids who wanted to drive the boat a little bit when it was out in the open!

Umm...look where we're going son!

We were back to the boats by 2:20 and it was a short 15 minute ride back to the port. I snapped a few pictures of a nice looking course on the way.

And, Grand Cayman has some of the comforts of home too...a Pizza Hut:

and a KFC:

and...this:

Well, maybe that's not quite like home, at least not for us! Anyways, we were back at the port of 2:40 and planned to just look around a bit before taking a tender back to the ship.

Up Next: That was a Good Burger​

 

[cstorm65]

Day 5 - Part 4 - That was a Good Burger

Once we arrived back at port we spent just a little time shopping. We went to a few stores outside of the port and picked up a few things. I’m sure I have pictures of these, but I usually forget to take them until we get back home or something, but if I did I’ll post them wherever they fall in my picture order. Outside of the port I found myself a Grand Cayman t-shirt and DW got her a hat. DS7 was convinced he just wanted a shark tooth necklace, so we found one of those and he loved it!

I also was able to replace my water shoes that had gotten a hole in them that I didn’t check out before the trip, but I found some similar ones for only about $10, so that was a good thing!

Eventually we headed back into the secure port area and DS7 found this guy:

We shopped here for about 15 minutes, but not long as we were all pretty hot and tired and ready to get back on the ship.

We got in the tender line at 3:30 and it only took us 3-4 minutes to get on a tender boat. Of course the best part about tendering is some of the great pictures you get on your way to and from the ship:

We made it back onboard the Liberty at 3:50 and us and our friends decided tonight was a great time to just head up to Johnny Rockets for dinner. We were all hot and sweaty and kind of just wanted to jump in the pool, so we decided for this one night we wouldn’t get dressed for dinner. We just headed up to Johnny Rockets and then we’d go swim after that. We got there at about 4:15 as we hadn’t had lunch on the tour so we were all ready to eat and they weren’t really very crowded.

I had been looking forward to this!

We of course got some fries and onion rings to start and both were delicious.

I got the smokehouse burger and it was awesome! The bbq ranch sauce on it was very unique and it tasted awesome. It was a great burger at sea!

By the end of this I was super full, but you also get a piece of apple cobbler included with your meal or you can buy the upcharge milkshake. It was a big piece of cobbler and a scoop of ice cream. This was out of this world! We all loved it and it was probably better because we didn’t even know we got this included!

We finished eating by 5:30 and headed down to get some pool chairs so everything could take a nice dip in the pool and maybe catch a movie on the big screen. I mean how much more of a relaxing evening could you ask for?

Up Next: That’s a Lot of Balloons​

 

[cstorm65]

Day 5 - Part 5 - That’s a Lot of Balloons

After a great dinner at Johnny Rockets we headed over to find some pool chairs for our evening relaxing at the pool. But first a great pic as we were getting ready to sail away from Grand Cayman.

Before long this was our view:

When we started sailing away I went over to get a few pictures of our last look at Grand Cayman.

Before long we were busy enjoying our time at the pool. They do such a nice job lighting these areas up at night:

It was a beautiful night as we were sailing off towards our next destination.

We headed back to the room at about 8:00 after watching the movie How to Train Your Dragon on the big screen. DS7 was amused by the towel animal.

And DS3 was ready for bed in a hurry...this kid likes his bed time!

After getting the boys to bed DW and I went down to go to the show for tonight which was Love and Marriage. DMiL was ready for bed too so she stayed with the kids. The promenade was getting all set up for the 4th of July.

Look honey...that’s a lot of balloons! I told DW as they walked by with about 10 of these things!

They also had some sales going on, of course they spent our entire cruise trying to sell these dang watches!

We didn’t buy any watches, but we did each find a Royal Caribbean t-shirt at the 2 for $20 t-shirt sale. After getting our shirts it was time for the show, which we enjoyed. And back to the elevator to close out Wednesday.

We got back to the room at about 11 PM and were in bed shortly thereafter. One more big port day tomorrow and we were looking forward to this one!

Up Next: This is a Nice Port​

 

[cstorm65]

Day 6 - Part 1 - This is a Nice Port

It was already the morning of our final port day of the cruise and we were almost in port at Falmouth, Jamaica when I got up. DS7 was up not too long after as well at about 7:15. He had slept with his snake!

We had decided the easiest way to have breakfast since we were trying to get off the ship to our excursion today was to do room service. It arrive at about 7:20:

I don’t remember what all we ordered and we were trying to get organized for our beach day so I didn’t write much down, but it was a nice easy way to have breakfast and still get out of the room on time.

By 8:30 we had disembarked and had this great view of the Liberty of the Seas.

I had seen a bunch of pictures and videos and always thought this port area was set up nicely with a big secure area that had nice looking shops and food vendors. Once we got into the port area DW agreed that this was a nice port area! I just like how it is organized, well laid out, and there is actually space to walk.

We stopped for a few pictures with the ship before heading to find our ride to the beach.

For this day we had booked a private excursion to a place called 876 Beach Club. This was a relatively new property that we only paid $21 per person for and that included transportation, entry, a beach chair, and access to the inflatable water park. It did not include any food or drink, but that is good for us since we don’t drink so the all inclusive places usually aren’t a good value for us. They did have a full bar and food items as well.

Anyway, we had to walk a bit to find our bus since it wasn’t a ship excursion, but we found it pretty easily by 8:50 or so. We got on the bus and we pulled out right on time at 9:00. There were two groups of people on our bus, some for the place we were going and then some for a place a little further down the island. We got to the place at 9:10, which was awesome. The knock on Falmouth is that a lot of the resorts are over an hour from the port, but this place is so close...it was great! Everyone was ready for the beach day, even DW’s mom!

Up Next: There’s Nobody Here​

 

[cstorm65]

Day 6 - Part 2 - There’s Nobody Here

After our quick drive from the port area we had arrived at our beach club destination of the day. When we got out I was thinking we have to check in, but an employee there just checked my paper I had printed off and took us to our chair. We only had to pay like $10 per person prior to travel through the tour company and were going to pay the balance when we arrived, but the guy said, “No problem, we’ll take care of that later.” Let me just say all of the people here were so nice and helpful, although it did seem a little unorganized, but probably some of that was due to them being a new place. Anyways, I know you guys are just waiting for the view...so here it is:

DW and DS3 wasted no time getting in the water.

Meanwhile DS7 and I were busy finding life jackets so he and his friends could go out to the floating water park. Also, it was important to note they were very strict and attentive to making sure everyone going to the water park had a life jacket and they had a lifeguard on duty. They also had a couple of kids, who I think were the life guards kids that helped our kids learn how to do the toys on the floating obstacle course. Those kids were awesome at helping our kids!

After spending some time doing that DS7 came back up to play in the sand and shallow water a bit. So, I got to take some more pics of the view from our chairs! Does it get any better than this?

Behind us you can see there is a building here, but we never went inside of there.

And they do have a large number of stacked up chairs ready for guests, but I don’t think there were more than 12-13 people here the day we were. I mean it seemed like there was nobody there!

DS3 was busy playing in the sand and you can tell he was enjoying it!

DMiL also took a few minutes to snap a picture of DW and me. I mean we were there on this beautiful beach, we had better get a picture!

And back in the water for some more fun!

That’s it for now. Next time I’ll wrap up our stay at the beach and we’ll see what we can get into at the port!

Up Next: “I Want a Soccer Ball Too”​

 

[cstorm65]

Day 6 - Part 3 - “I Want a Soccer Ball Too”

We left off still enjoying our time at the beach in Falmouth, Jamaica. We had done our time on the water toys and now DW and I were just relaxing in the water with DS3. We tried to get a selfie here, but the best part is the reflection in our sunglasses!

Some more fun water pictures:

DS7 loved the water play area, which was kind of set up as an obstacle course. It was a little hard to pull yourself up on the toys if you didn’t have much upper body strength, but once you got up there it was a ton of fun! This picture also shows still how un-crowded this place was at around noon.

We had arrived at about 9:15 and we had booked a 4-5 hour tour, so we thought the bus would come get us around 2:00. Well, when the bus dropped us off they said they would be back at about 4:00, which our all aboard time was 5:00. Not to mention by 2:00 we were all tired!

So the host there at the Beach Club helped us find a taxi to take us back and we negotiated a fair price to take the nine of us in our party back in his van. We did that at about 1:30 and then we had about 45 minutes to get our stuff together and settle our tab. We had ordered some hot dogs and french fries to snack on, and the boys loved them by the way, and we had to pay for a few drinks. We also tipped our host/waiter as he was super helpful to us!

This place also had nice indoor restrooms for the guests to use which is a very important feature as well as a foot washing station. You guys know how miserable it is with the sand everywhere, so that was a big benefit.

Our driver came back at about 2:15 and had us back to the port by 2:30 or so. It was an added expense, of about $5 per person, but we wanted to be back earlier than the tour transportation would get us there. Also, this way we had a little bit of time to shop in this awesome port area!

After we had looked around for a bit DW had been looking for something to get the boys. She had settled on a soccer ball for DS3 since he played a little soccer that previous spring, but DS7 ended up whining a little bit and saying, “I want a soccer ball too.” We tried to tell him that we were going to get him something else, but he was tired and that is what he wanted at this point, so we said if that’s what you want as your Jamaica souvenir then that’s what you’ll get!

They actually were playing with these soccer balls today in the backyard! This “One Love” sign was pretty cool in person, but it is really hard to even tell what it is in the picture, but hey, we tried!

Eventually we finished up in the port area and headed back on board the Liberty of the Seas at about 3:00.

We had to get cleaned up because it was 4th of July dinner tonight in the dining room and we weren’t really sure what to expect!

Up Next: This is the Best Cheese Ever!​

 

[cstorm65]

Day 6 - Part 4 - This is the Best Cheese Ever!

After getting back to the room we spent a little time making sure we got the sand out of all of our swimsuits, water shoes, etc. That is the worst part about the beach is how the sand gets in all your stuff, but hey...I’m not complaining! After cleaning things up a bit DW stayed with DS3 while he took a quick nap before dinner. DS7 and I headed down to the Promenade for a bit...first up was to check out the 4th of July decorations...they had it looking good!

Of course you know we didn’t just go to look at the decorations though, we had something else on our mind...

Yep, we got some Ben & Jerry’s. It was our first of the trip and let me tell you, we enjoyed it!

After our ice cream we walked down deck four a little bit and got some great views of Jamaica!

DS7 was a little hungry as all he had eaten was a hot dog at the beach club at around noon so we went to get him a slice of pizza from Sorrento’s. I had to get what became one of my favorite appetizer type dishes onboard, it was this spicy cheese from Sorrentos. It was amazing! Just enough spices and red pepper flakes to make it a little spicy and the cheese was covered in that and some olive oil. It was divine!

We ended up back out on deck four to enjoy our snacks and had some more great views:

Up Next: Sail Away​

 

[chamberlain]

Loving your trip report! Your beach day at Jamaica looks really nice. Those soccer balls are so cute and a great souviner for your boys. My only problem would be finding room in the suitcase for one!

 

[cstorm65]

Loving your trip report! Your beach day at Jamaica looks really nice. Those soccer balls are so cute and a great souviner for your boys. My only problem would be finding room in the suitcase for one!

That place was great and the price was good as well! They loved the balls...now, they play basketball with them more than soccer, but hey, that's how it goes! As far as the space we were just lucky we drove from home to the port. If we would have had to fly the boys would have had to carry those things on the plane, definitely no room in the bags!

 

[NancyLuvsMickey]

That obstacle course looks like fun!!! But I bet it's not as easy as it looks!!! And what gorgeous views!!! I could look at sand and clear blue water all day...

Mmmm, ice cream is always good!!! And those cheese slices look delicious too!!!

 

[cstorm65]

That obstacle course looks like fun!!! But I bet it's not as easy as it looks!!! And what gorgeous views!!! I could look at sand and clear blue water all day...

It was a gorgeous place for sure! I did not try the obstacle course, but you had to have a lot of upper body strength! DS7 flew all over the thing of course, but I would have had trouble!

Mmmm, ice cream is always good!!! And those cheese slices look delicious too!!!

Both were delicious!

 

[PAsFab5]

I can’t believe how big your boys have gotten! The first trip report I followed your little guy was only 1!!!!! Thanks for the cruise overview, I have never been on one and we are considering one for next June (2021) so this is giving me a much better idea of what to expect!

 

[cstorm65]

I can’t believe how big your boys have gotten! The first trip report I followed your little guy was only 1!!!!! Thanks for the cruise overview, I have never been on one and we are considering one for next June (2021) so this is giving me a much better idea of what to expect!

Thanks for reading along!

The cruise was awesome! We really enjoyed Royal Caribbean...of course Disney is even better, but really no major negatives with Royal Caribbean either.

 

[cstorm65]

Day 6 - Part 5 - Sail Away

There isn’t much to this post, but I did take a bunch of pictures of sail away from Falmouth and so I’m just going to share those here. We pulled out at 4:30, which was just about an hour before dinner.

Up Next: Holy Carbonara​

 

[cstorm65]

Day 6 - Part 6 - Holy Carbonara

After watching a great sail away we headed to the Main Dining Room at about 5:30 for dinner. We had a great dinner tonight and it was a special 4th of July dinner. I don’t think the menu was any different, but they had a different dessert or two for the holiday. We did get a special menu. Here was DW and the boys with our great server Made behind them:

And the special 4th of July menu:

DS3 enjoyed his dinner...yes, you guessed it, spaghetti for the 5th night in a row!

They even decorated the main dining room for the holiday...pretty cool!

I got the coconut shrimp appetizer along with DW and DMiL. We all loved it, but the shrimp were small shrimp. Usually coconut shrimp are the jumbo size shrimp. So that was a little weird, but they tasted really good! I got the Fried Cod and Rice as my entree, well, one of my entrees! It was ok. I was expecting something a little better. The batter wasn’t very crispy which made it not as appetizing to me...I mean, when you are used to Yorkshire Fish Shop in Epcot not much lives up to that.

Now, just when the meal was leaving something to be desired my second entree showed up and it was the Pappardella Carbonara pasta. This was fantastic! It was a simple pasta dish with egg yolk, parmesan, and prosciutto, but the simplicity made it great! I could have eaten another order of this stuff and I wished I had gotten two of these instead of the fish!

DW got the Braised Lamb Shank as her entree and she enjoyed it. I tried a bite and thought it was very tender and cooked well, but wasn’t seasoned quite enough. They did have a big napkin waving celebration because it was the 4th of July!

I went with some pretty standard desserts tonight, a Creme Brulee and a Royal Cheesecake. Both were so fantastic I didn’t even get pictures! I think it was the first time I had gotten the cheesecake and it was a really solid one. Nothing spectacular, but the perfect consistency and tasted great. The Creme Brulee was awesome as it had been on other prior nights. By 7:00 we were heading out of here:

We headed down to the Royal Promenade for the 4th of July party and “carnival”. At 7:15 they did the National Anthem which was nice, but it was crowded.

For the holiday they had different groups of cast members set up carnival style games on the Royal Promenade. It was a great idea in theory, but I don’t think they really thought through the number of people that would be there and packing them all and the games onto the promenade was a big mistake. You couldn’t even walk down the promenade, much less have much room to play games. On top of that there was not even a way to tell where the lines for the games were.

We headed out by about 7:40 after trying to battle the people and went up to the top deck. And there was no one up here!

I mean the games would have been great spread out on the pool deck and there would have been more room for people...but, they didn’t ask me! haha

We took the boys to the kids club at around 8:00 and the adults headed down to the comedian show in the main theatre. We stopped by the photo studio...man they make some money on these things!

On our way into the theatre they had a huge rum cake set up for the 4th of July. I grabbed a piece and it was massive!

We got sat down after getting a drink and were ready for the comedy show:

The show was pretty good...the cake, not so much. Let’s just say the cake had about three times as much rum as a rum cake needs. I mean I like rum cake and couldn’t even hardly eat much of it. It was just soaking wet in rum! Too much for us! Haha

We went up to get the boys after the show at about 9:45 and by 10:15 we were all asleep...before the big 4th of July fun on the promenade happened again outside our window! That’s ok though, it was a great...and tiring day, but we loved it!!

Up Next: Why Are You Spending Money on That?​

 

[NancyLuvsMickey]

What a great way to spend the 4th of July!!!! I just noticed there's an up-charge on some of the meals at dinner time... Back in the good ole days all the meals were free...