Today something wonderful happens. We go on a cruise! Yay!!! I can't express just how much I love cruising - how much I love the gentle rock of the boat (or in the case of our last night the pretty un-gentle rock of the boat) as I drift off to sleep, how much I love lazing around by the pool doing nothing, and how much fun it is to wake up in a new place and see something novel and different each day. I love everything about it - it's traveling for lazy people!
We wake up around 10 in the morning - it was bliss! We'd had four straight days of waking up at the butt crack of dawn and getting to wake up when I was ready to wake up was a luxury indeed. Especially on VACATION! :)
We eat a leisurely breakfast, strip the beds, pack up odds and ends, and are ready to leave by noon. Because we move slow!
But before we leave, it's time for another awkward family selfie! (do you see how not excited my dad is about taking another selfie?)
Raymond and I wanted to hit up Super Target before we left for the cruise. I wanted to buy some more summer clothes because Orlando ended up way hotter and more humid than I was anticipating. I needed shorts! And tank tops! I was sweating through my jeans. Doh! So we spent a blissful hour wandering about (and buying more bottled water) before my brother could not resist the Starbucks any longer and had to partake of his daily sustenance.
It took about an hour to drive to Tampa, and it was a super easy drive. We found our reserved parking spot from The Parking Doctors pretty easily, though it was less...fancy than I thought it'd be. For some reason I thought it'd be like The Parking Spot at LAX, with a big multi-level garage, etc. Uh, it's not. It's a squat building (we never went in) with open fields surrounding it where cars are parked. We made a reservation (we paid less than $50 for 5 days of parking, so price wise there are no complaints) online and when we arrived, we were directed to park in a dirt patch with a bunch of other cars. The good? They were efficient, helped us unload then load our luggage into their van, and our car and our belongings were safe for the week we left it there. So it got the job done even without the fancy building and iced bottled water LAX parking offers.
They dropped us off at the pier and we had to fill out luggage tags we got from the porters because RCI doesn't provide us with luggage tags anymore. Then we went to check in. When we got there (it was around 1 pm) there were no lines at all and we walked right up and checked in after filling out the health form.
Because we booked two cabins, we checked in separately, though right next to each other. Check in was quick and efficient and before we knew it, we were onboard!
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| getting ready to board! |
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| we are boarding! We in the tunnel people! |
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| My awesomely bad photo of Raymond boarding. |
No matter how many cruises I've been on, even if it's going somewhere I've been before (NOT the case this time), I'm always excited. As I boarded Brilliance for the second time (we were on her in 2011 when we did the Western Mediterranean) I was still wonder struck at how gorgeous the ship still is and how exciting it was that I got to go on a cruise again. So excited that I had to take a photo of my ship card. Because that's how I roll:
When we booked our cruise in January (yes, we're those people who book 11 months out, before hotel availability even comes out) Royal Caribbean was having a special: 50% second person. Usually you pay full fare for the first two, then discounted fare for the 3rd and 4th. We looked at booking a suite, but it was exorbitantly expensive. Also, aside from the extra points a suite accrues (and um, a much larger room), I don't think RCI makes the suite experience special in any way. Yes, you have priority boarding (which I do anyway with my dinky platinum card), but if I were going to splurge for a penthouse, Norwegian's the place to do it. The suite amenities on NCL's ships FAR outweigh those given on RCI, and for a 5 night cruise, I didn't want to spend close to $10k for the privilege of staying in a larger room. We hemmed and hawed over a junior suite, which had a friendlier price tag of about $6,000. We stayed in a JS last time when we went to Europe, but that was for a 12 day cruise where we'd SERIOUSLY need the room or we'd maim each other. Being el cheapo, I couldn't pull the trigger either. We settled on a superior ocean view with balcony (a D1 cabin) that's a little larger than the standard room (194 sq. ft v. 164 sq. ft - though the 194 includes the balcony) with the standard bed that could be separated into two twins and a sofa bed. I was not excited about it, but I was excited about the price. As opposed to about $6,000 for a JS, the D1 was only about $2000 for the four of us. Then I seriously started thinking about fitting four grown ass adults into a 194 sq. ft room for almost a week and I grew less excited. Getting two connected balcony rooms was feasible, but we'd be looking at around $3,000. But if we booked a D1 balcony and an inside room on the same floor (category M) then for $2,200 we'd get two cabins, two bathrooms, and four beds. Score! So for an extra $200, we got an inside cabin for Raymond and I across the hall from my parents' superior balcony cabin.
I have to say, it was REALLY nice to have our own space - not to mention two people sharing a bathroom instead of four is SO MUCH EASIER. Especially since the cabins are so small. I haven't been in an inside cabin since I was 15 and went on a cruise to Ensenada with the school band. While it was small (and much improved from the inside cabin on the Viking Serenade from my hazy recollections), it was laid out well and for two people, it was a perfectly cozy and comfortable cabin. The sofa was small, but on the rare occasion we sat on it at the same time, we weren't crowded and squashed together. The beds were comfortable and the bedding is much nicer than I remembered. We (all four of us) so enjoyed having two rooms that my dad declared that this is how we'll cruise from now on! (does this mean no more penthouses though? Because that would be sad). The one issue is that we had a hard time finding each other and would miss each other. Raymond and I got the internet package (my parents gave in later in the week and did so as well) so we could text each other via whatsapp, but my parents are not as good about checking their texts so it was harder to get ahold of them.
Our rooms were on deck 9 and we were in 9561 and my parents were in 9556, diagonally across the hall. Literally. They weren't RIGHT across, but two doors down. See?
Well hell, we have to get the beds separated. The last time we slept on the same bed we were both in the single digits. And Raymond claims I bitch slapped him, so he refused to share a bed with me after that. He was 4.
And because our room steward was super awesome, our beds were already separated after we came back from lunch!
But before she did that, we (I) took pictures of the rest of the room:
And our teeny tiny bathroom. It's been awhile since we've had to fight the battle of the molesting shower curtain and the never ending struggle to keep the bathroom floor dry. When we had a D1 on Navigator, we had a real shower door, so it wasn't as big of a challenge to keep the bathroom floor dry and glass does not tend to cling to your body like a monkey when all you're trying to do is cleanse yourself. But I found if I left a few inches gap (thus the challenge to keeping the floor dry) in the curtain it would keep it from molesting me, so not being hugged by the gross shower curtain trumped a perfectly dry floor for me.
We go across the hall to check our our parents' room:
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| having natural light does make the room look bigger |
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| their couch is much bigger than our little two seater |
Their room is both longer and wider than our little cave. And they've got a nice balcony with its view of Tampa.
Even though Brilliance is a mid-size ship, the hallways felt kinda long. It felt a lot bigger than the Norwegian Sun, which was our last cruise when we went to Alaska.
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| the hallway leading from the Centrum to our rooms |
Once we throw down our stuff and I've taken a lot of crappy photos of our rooms, we do what cruisers always do upon embarkation: we eat. We head for the Windjammer and stuff our faces.
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| unattractive photo of delicious food |
I love Norwegian for many things - the mellow atmosphere, the ease of dining, the awesome suite perks...but the buffet (at least on the Sun) sucks DONKEY BALLS. It was small, laid out by someone who had clearly been dropped on his head one too many times, and the seating was always insufficient and the food...not so good. And I'm not a picky eater. It was decent, but never what I'd call really good. Just...average. The Windjammer is laid out SO MUCH better - there were more selections, WAY more seating, and it was just so much more attractive than the buffet on the Sun.
After lunch we went and explored the ship - it's been about 4 years, but it's changed! The library that used to be on the 9th floor has been removed, and it's a smaller seating area now. Some of the cozy seating areas we had on decks 9 and 10 last time had been removed in the 2013 refurbishment, which was a pity because as a borderline antisocial weirdo, I enjoy sitting up there where I can see the crowd and hear the band but not get jostled about and have to put up with weird B.O. But there are a lot of differences, though it wasn't until I started going through old photos that I realized how much has changed!
2015:
2011
That lovely seating area on the deck 10 (now it has that chandelier looking thing) is gone :(
And instead of the scattered comfy seats of the library on deck 9, there's only two chairs by the railing and a table with some seats in the back. I guess they turned the extra space into cabins?
2015
This though, I think is gorgeous. I love the pretty pattern and the lighting. It's very elegant :)
2011...not as elegant
And we continue to wander as we try to reorient ourselves to the ship.
There's a display of gingerbread houses and other sweets leading into what I think is the Schooner Bar.
And there's a cute little pub now:
And past the pub a movie theater! I didn't know this was here. Was this here last time?
I didn't end up catching any of the movies. My mom actually watched Minions, which is what they were playing on embarkation day. My brother wanted to make me watch Sicario with him (he loves that movie) but I didn't want to watch a drama about the war on drugs while on vacation. In Mexico! However, they also have this huge ass movie screen on the pool deck and all the movies were playing up there anyway, so you don't even have to go to the cinema! On the last night my parents (and other brave and hardy cruisers) were all bundled up (in coats AND towels) on the pool deck watching Sicario at 10 pm at night. I went to check on them, then being sane, went back to my nice warm room to finish packing.
The rest of the afternoon (for me) was delightfully spent in the Solarium, my FAVORITE place on the ship. And I LOVE this one way more than the one on the Navigator: because it's indoors with a glass ceiling - you get the sun, AND the A/C. Win!
Raymond joined me for awhile (those are his black socks below) and he played his game while I read and surfed the internet. He then became ambitious and went to the gym while I continued to sit like a lump for another few hours just taking in the sun. All while air conditioning is keeping the frizzies away, of course.
The rest of the day was spent being a lazy bug. My mom watched the Minions movie (my dad bailed when he realized it was a cartoon), they wandered the ship, and had an early dinner before turning in since they were still exhausted. Raymond and I lazed in our room, watched Love Actually (because it is awesome) and toddled to the buffet around 8 pm when we both got hungry. BTW, around 11 pm, we got the munchies (no, there was no pot involved) and went to the cafe inside the solarium. They have a lot of snacks! Sandwiches, pizza, cookies, desserts. And we suffered through Episode 1 of Star Wars because it was release week and they were playing all of them.
After sating ourselves on our late snack run and having our brains fried by the horror of Jar Jar Binks, we went to bed. The next day is a sea day, the BEST kind of day on vacation!
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