2022 Alaska Cruise Part 1

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, welcome back to Rview. Today we have a great show for you all about our Carnival cruise to Alaska. We’ve got all kinds of tips and tricks, so stay tuned.

intro
Welcome to our view with your hosts George and Lisa Hernandez. Each week listen in as George and Lisa talk about their RV and travel adventures all around the world. Giorgio and Lisa travel in their 40 foot Class A tip and motorcoach and tow their Jeep Wrangler, always looking for fun and adventure.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, Friends, welcome back to our view. We have a great show planned for you today. We just got back from our Alaska cruise on the Carnival Splendor. We’re going to tell you all about it today. So I am Lisa RichartHernandez.

George
And I’m George Hernandez,

Lisa RichartHernandez
and welcome back.

George
Yes, it feels like it’s been for ever since we did a podcast and we apologize about that. But We’re back and ready to tell you about our amazing trip to Alaska.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, yes. I’ve been working a lot selling real estate. So someone’s got to fund these expeditions. So we can so we can make these podcasts for you and tell you about what’s going on. But Alaska Cruise was something that has always been one of our bucket list things to do. And we finally did it this year. My birthday is May 19. But we went on a cruise from May 10. Through the 17th. We sailed out of Seattle and went to what was a seven night cruise. It was

George
a seven night cruise out of Seattle. And it was on board the splendor which was absolutely beautiful. We had never been on that ship. And we were pleasantly surprised. It had been retrofitted and 2019 So everything just seemed fresh. Because after 2019 pretty much shut down. So hasn’t been used.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. I mean, when we say we’re happy to be back on a cruise that’s like literally for I guess it’s been two years since we’ve we’ve done a cruise and we were fortunate that we weren’t required to wear masks and the airplane, you know, the airlines had taken away the mask mandates also. So it felt aside from having to get COVID tests ahead of time. Very normal, I guess the new normal, as much as possible. So excited about that.

George
It actually felt like we were back to normal, like you said, and I’ll give carnival, a lot of credit. Everything was very smooth. Everything ran perfectly. And we booked this was the first time that we ever booked our airfare through carnival. And everything went smooth. We actually flew in the same day that we were going on the cruise. So we were pretty nervous about that. Because we booked through carnival, I kind of like that. Because if we were delayed for anything, carnival would just issue us a credit.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so a lot of people flew in early to Seattle because they wanted to take time and visit Seattle. And we’re planning our trip with as busy as I’ve been in real estate this these past few months. It was just we had just done our Seattle trip in 2020 when we did our cross country trip in the RV, and we spent about five days there. So if you want more details in specific about Seattle, we do have a podcast about that from when we were there in 2022. And we did some whale watching there. And we went to the Space Needle and we had some fabulous restaurants and a great podcast. Yeah, there’s depth and I’m sure that now that everything is wide open, or more open than it was during during COVID. It’s even more fun to to visit Seattle for a couple days before or after your cruise. We just chose not to do that because of my work schedule. And we were a little bit nervous about flying in the same day. But

George
we were very nervous. And we flew into Chicago Correct?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, we went from Charleston to Chicago, Chicago to Seattle and once we got to Chicago we got the notification that our flight was delayed two hours. We’re like oh my gosh. So this this shuttle once we got off the flight which was delayed they told us to go to the baggage claims and it was on our little tickets that it was like Baggage Claim Number 14 or something and sure enough there was the person there standing with the Carnival Cruise little sign and we walked over and he signed up in the check your name off told gave you a little ticket and told you exactly where to go to get onto the shuttle bus that takes you directly to the to the to the ship, I guess. Since I’ve been traveling with my mother lately, who was recently just you know, she’s in a wheelchair now. So I’m more more aware of okay, what do we need to do to get our things from one place to another and would this be easy for somebody that was you know, had a hard time carrying the things, we did have to lug those bags quite a good distance from. Yeah, from the from

George
the, from the baggage claim to the shuttle was quite a hike and it was up stay at well, it was all elevators, up the elevator down

Lisa RichartHernandez
the hall over to the shuttle far. So when we got to the bus, of course, they put your luggage on there for you and everything and take it off. But then, when we got to the terminal, it was what time, like three o’clock.

George
It was, it was very late, the ship was leaving at four, I think we got there around three. And we were literally the last few people on getting on the cruise ships. So that was a little bit of a bummer. Because all the luggage handling people were basically done for the day. So we did have to carry our four pieces of luggage on to the ship. It was a little bit of a pain, but it was okay, we got on the ship, we were happy. And I want to touch on something when we were in Chicago. I called carnival because I was panicking because we’re gonna be two hours late. And when as soon as I got them on the phone, they were awesome. They checked everything for me. And they said as long as you leave within, you know, on that flight, you’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it plenty of time. And they were correct. We had time. But I guess if I had if I learned a pro tip from this trip, it would be if you’re going to book through carnival or whatever cruise line you’re using. Try to book the earliest flight possible. Don’t don’t book a flight that’s going to get you there. You know, right, exactly when you have to be there. Because if anything happens, you’re screwed.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, because I think we’re supposed to be there at like noon. And we didn’t get there until three.

George
Yeah, our check in time was 1230. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So anyways, it’s all good. And in, if you’re an East Coast, or like we are, you got to remember the time changes and stuff. So man, that was rough. Yeah, all in all, it’s three hour difference to Seattle from East Coast. And then it was another additional hour once we got on the cruise ship the second day. So it was a four hour time change pretty much the whole time when we were on the cruise. So when we got we got our luggage all the way up to our room. And usually when you first get on the ship, you have to do the muster station. For we call it the mustard station,

George
the mustard station, which for any of you out there that are cruisers, you know, that’s the part that everybody hates. Everybody hates doing the muster station, it’s a 30 minute waste of your time. And we have great news. It’s changed. Hopefully it will stay the way it is now. But the way they’re doing it now is you just go at your own pace. You have to do it before the ship cruises before the ship leaves are they kept saying that if they don’t have everybody showing that they did their muster station, the ship wasn’t leaving. So basically you go down, you find your muster station, you go down, you show them your room key, they scan it. And then you stay in there for a quick presentation on how to put on the lifejacket and do this and do that? Well, we went down, we scanned our key. We stood there for three minutes while they did it. And we were done. And then that was it. No,

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah, if anything positive is going to come out of COVID I would say the muster station is the best thing because normally what would happen is they would be like, they close all the bars, which is the worst part because you’re there and you’re ready to like go on vacation. And then like everything’s closed, everybody go to your sign muster stations. And I thought we used to have to put our life jackets on, go stand outside in this big huge crowd of people. And they would check you in and make sure it was there. And then they would show you how to use a life jacket. And then you had to bring your life jacket back to your room. And it was just like, it was such a waste of time. And you’re just like standing there waiting for everyone to get to the muster station and be there all at the same time. And it was it was just like a always a downer for me. So that was quick and easy. And I hope they keep that up.

George
I absolutely I hope so too,

Lisa RichartHernandez
because it avoids big crowds, I’m assuming was the reason why they do that for COVID.

George
Yeah, I mean, they’re obviously trying to control the crowds. But that was definitely a pleasant surprise. So then after after we did the muster station, we kind of walked around and tried to get familiar with the ship since we had never been on splendor. It was beautiful ship.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It was very pretty, but it was kind of crazy. Decorating was kind of crazy. I’m not gonna lie when there was like, I don’t know what there was like different colors everywhere. I mean, yes, wasn’t like,

George
we read that in some of the reviews. Decorating was a little eccentric. And and it was I mean, you know, but I kind of liked that because I don’t want every ship to look the same because then it’s it’s boring.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I would say that most Carnival Cruise Lines, like most cruise ships, though, are very sort of similar in floorplan like you can kind of if you’ve been on a couple Carnival cruises, you start to find your way around pretty easily.

George
Yeah, absolutely. And, and the rooms are always the same that that’s, I don’t know that I guess there’s not much they can do to change them. So if if you’ve ever been on a Carnival cruise ship, the rooms look exactly the same. We opted for a balcony which again, here’s Pro Tip number two, if you’re going to do an Alaska cruise, and you can afford to bump up to the balcony, do it. It was well worth it. Yes, it did get cold out on the balcony. But it was it was just so nice to be able to go out there and part of this whole cruise as the scenery as you’re cruising. And it was it was just beautiful.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah. So one whole day is just cruising beautiful scenery. So that’s why it was important to have that balcony, I would say

George
yes. And this is going to be a rather long podcast, because we have so much to talk about so many beautiful things to talk about. So we may end up doing it as a two part series. So just bear with us. We want to give you all the facts, we want to give you all the information and we want to talk about beautiful Alaska,

Lisa RichartHernandez
there’s so many things to talk about. So let’s just talk about the room in general. So we got the balcony room. So we have, I guess it’s a king size bed, they push like two beds together king size bed, the mattress was comfortable for me in the bedding and everything has like a little couch in there. This is Pro Tip number three for if we’re numbering them, in which I thought I remembered from our old podcast cruises would have been like two years since we’d done a cruise and I said to George, shouldn’t we bring an electric strip? Like don’t they have limited number of plugs in the room? And he was like, No, I don’t think so. I’m like, Yeah, I swear, that was one of our tips before. Well, sure enough, we got there. The first day, of course, we’ve been traveling zones for the mornings, our phones were dead, let’s plug them in. One plug in the whole one outlet in the whole entire room. So if you and your you know, whoever else you’re sharing the room with wants just to to plug your cell phones in at the same time. Unless you have one of those chargers that has like two things in it, you’re not gonna be able to do it. So Pro Tip number three is to bring you it’s like you know, a power strip with a bunch of plugs in it. Because same thing, like I couldn’t charge my phone or my watch and blow dry my hair. Or blow dryer and girl and heat up the girl or your blow dry none of those. Unless you brought that power strip. So that is like one. One definite thing that I’ve done. I mean, don’t forget your power strip. That’s

George
absolutely, but you did forget that there is a power up plug in the bathroom.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So the plug that’s in the bathroom did not work to charge my curling iron or blow dryer.

George
Really? Yes. Wow. Yeah. So it didn’t work at all.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It was like giving it was like blinking the power was like blinking wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough power to power those types of items. But it wasn’t so that was we had the only the one.

George
Okay, so definitely Bert bring power strip. What else as far as the room? Again, typical. So the beds, like Lisa said, two beds that were put together to make a king sized bed that were very comfortable. Except, you know, if you wanted to cuddle or something. You got the the gap between the two beds. Yeah. Which of course I always hung it up on. But besides that, so it was very comfortable.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so the balcony bathroom. These are other things. You know what when you’re traveling, a lot of times when you stay in a hotel, they’ll give you shampoo and conditioner and things like that. On the wall in the bathroom. On the shower. They have only shampoo and body wash. I have very thick hair and need to have conditioner so I always pack my conditioner with me anyways. But if you’re trying to pack light and you need a hair conditioner there is not unless you go to the salon on the ship which that’s a whole nother story I love the salon and highly recommend that but you’re gonna want to back conditioner.

George
Oh God, if we talked about the salon, this may be a three part series. So another thing that we found out that Carnival has changed, which I don’t really remember them doing before. So maybe I just am having memory issues. But we were able to buy a bottle of vodka for the room.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, and bottles of water. So when I got into the room, so we bought these ahead of time when we booked our cruise and then they were in the room when we got there. A bottle of vodka was like 75 bucks, which I didn’t even tap into but that’s a whole nother story. Yeah, I mean to each his own right, but I did drink all the water and I got to six packs of water for the week and there was a there is a mini fridge in the In the thing, now you’re allowed to carry on a certain number of cans of soda, I believe, are bottles of wine. And you just check with each individual cruise the details on that, because they do allow allow, I always see people with like a couple of 12 packs of soda or whatever. Because although it’s all inclusive, they’re like sodas are not included in your, in your cruise, you have to buy like a cheers. Well, you can get either the package that just is sodas, or you can get a package that has all your liquor and cocktails and stuff to

George
write what it’s called cheers, which is alcohol, and then the other one is bubbles. That one’s only soda.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And I mean, I suppose if you’ve got children, or if you’re big, you know, like, drink a lot of sodas, you bring a couple 12 packs, that saves you probably a lot of money.

George
Yes. And as far as wine, I believe, unless things have changed. It’s one bottle of wine per person. And that’s it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Okay, yeah, I can’t remember the details. I thought somebody told me she could have brought like three bottles. But again, it may it might change for the duration of the crew, like how long the cruises, so just check specifically what you can bring some aboard. And I was very happy to have had purchased those waters ahead of time, because you’re not drinking water out of the fountains there, they put one big bottle of water in the room, it’s $4 for that one big bottle, which I mean, I guess when in Rome or whatever. But I liked having my bottles of water there for me in the morning to be able to have water,

George
one negative as far as we’re talking about the rooms. And it’s not nothing to do with the room. But now they charge you for a room service where before. In the past, they never charged for room service. That was just

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think before the pandemic, they started charging that nominal fee, but let’s just say for example, he wants some chicken fingers delivered to the room. It’s like six bucks.

George
Yeah, and it’s minimal. And I think it’s to keep I think everybody from Yeah, I think it’s just to kind of deter people because I’m sure that’s got to be a nightmare for them, especially late night.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, one thing I’ve got to say that they have upgraded that speaking of room service, and really pretty much anything is the carnival hub app. So the carnival hub app, this is another pro tip, you’re gonna want to you’re gonna want to download that before you leave for your cruise. And that is going to have like, it will you know, it’ll do a countdown to your cruise and you get on board. And once you get on board, you get a folio number that’s on your cruise card that they give you. A lot of people get lanyards for their cruise cards to put in. Some people like to bring their own or buy some, we got some from gambling, but these little cards you have to use for every time you get a drink or anytime you do anything, you need your little cruise card. So you go on the Carnival hub app now. And you can order room service from your hub app, you can make your dinner reservations from your hub, you can see everything that’s going on, you can see like an itemized bill, of what you’ve spent, you can see your appointments, they really updated.

George
Yes. And I’m glad you brought that up. Because if we opted for the Dine at your own time option, and you have to have the hub app, because that’s the way you make your reservations. I’m sure you can still walk up to the maitre d and make a reservation. But then with the hub app, you just do it on the app and they just

Lisa RichartHernandez
and it sounds like you know, labor will be ready in 10 minutes, we’ll send you an alert.

George
Exactly. It’s awesome.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It’s like making a reservation. Yeah. But you don’t have to do it like way ahead of time. You can do it like right then. Right.

George
And usually, they’re there within a couple minutes of my new send it so be prepared.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And then they also have for $5, a chat app. So which is part of the hub app? Yeah, and this might be a good time to just let’s just talk about the internet for a second. Or lack thereof. Yeah. So you know, with my business, I cannot be away from the internet. I’m like a rat in a cage if I can’t get my emails and talk to my clients and just keep up with my assistant and make sure that everything’s running smoothly while I’m away. And so I paid for the quote unquote, premium internet package, I want to say it cost me about $150 For the week, it’s a per day type of a thing. The internet was slower than when AOL had dial up and you can remember I mean, it was that slow. Like I could barely I couldn’t get I couldn’t get MMS messages on my phone, which is like if it was a group chat or something or if someone sent me a photo I could not get those very, very difficult. Definitely could not get any kind of internet calling like phone call, like you know, like a video calls or anything and it says on the package. Oh yeah, you’ve got this premium package, you’ll be able to get all your social media and premium things. No, I could not even just like login. I had to bring my laptop with me. And I had to do some things on the internet in in like the MLS and that was like painstakingly slow. So be prepared for that. If your business requires that if you’ve got to do a zoom, you’re not, it’s not gonna happen. No, definitely not. on that ship, not in Alaska,

George
we met a bunch of people on the ship. And we always do. But one of the guys that we met, I just happened to be standing next to him at the front desk. And he was just Ratan bitching at this girl, and rightly so. And he kept saying the same thing. Listen, I paid for the premium and I’m got like zero internet. But yet you’re charging me. So you know, we got to do something here. I don’t know what the final outcome was. But internet service. Now, granted, you’re in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure the service is really hard to get as

Lisa RichartHernandez
satellite service through the ship. And it also was very expensive, I got a notification like on day three, I think that I had already had $75 in like roaming charges on my phone from data, trying to use data because the internet was internet was so bad. And like I said, I wasn’t streaming, you know, YouTube’s or anything, I was just trying to get my email, you know, look at documents that I needed to catch up with, with, you know what I needed to do so,

George
yes, and unfortunately, Lisa does have to work while we’re traveling, a lot of times, she can’t just ignore phone calls. So that was really rough for her. For everybody else. Here’s what I would recommend. Turn your data off, turn your phone off and enjoy the scenery, take pictures. And Pro Tip number four. Make sure that before you leave, download all the pictures on your phone somewhere to an external drive or something, delete all your pictures, because you will fill up your memory got on the phone with pictures,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I probably took over 1000 pictures while we were there for the week. And I took over 1000 and none of them actually captured really the beauty of beauty of what you could see there it was, it was really incredible. So that is a really good tip. I think I have like 12,000 pictures on my phone and my phone finally started working really slow saying you’ve got to get rid of some of this data.

George
Yeah, I’m so glad I did that. I completely emptied mine out and it’s full now again, don’t just from Alaska. That is a that is a really good tip. Okay, and I got one more quick pro tip. And I stumbled across this by accident, but I have to share it with you guys. So we wandered binoculars for this trip. Because everybody said you got to have binoculars because you know, there’s so much wildlife, there’s so much there’s so much that. So I bought these a pair of binoculars and I bought myself a pair of binoculars. And I did a little bit of research and I bought decent pairs. I didn’t buy the super expensive, just decent. But they came with an attachment for your iPhone. So your iPhone actually connects to the binoculars. And believe it or not, it worked great, took great pictures. And I was super happy with it. And everybody was laughing at me like what is that contrast?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Everybody wanted your binoculars? I mean that mean, every single day, people were like, where did you get that? Oh my god, it’s so cool. And he would show him the pictures that he took. And they’d be like, Oh my God, we gotta get that. So people

George
were taking pictures of the brand name with a binoculars and I guess I should have it too.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Can we import what we’ll do is we’ll put a link on our RV podcast website and there’s a there’s a tab on there that says shop. And if you click on there, we’ll put the link to those binoculars to that. And how much do you think the binoculars were like? 80 bucks you said not not like

George
I think one might have been 80 and the other one was like 50 bucks. I mean, nothing.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, they weren’t weren’t super expensive. And I would say binoculars. I mean, we could probably talk about things that you should pack like right now is a good thing and binoculars was definitely one of them

George
a definite must. Yeah, definite must.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So let’s do it. Did we write down a list of packing things? I know binoculars was on there. I know. conditioner was on there because I’m supposed shampoo.

George
And I will say okay, here’s a pro tip number six. And Lisa did it. I didn’t do it. So I guarantee you it works. Because I so overpack that wasn’t even funny. I came home with probably half of the stuff that I packed. I did not use and you

Lisa RichartHernandez
didn’t have things you needed. Yeah, you did a terrible job. I

George
did a terrible job. It’s obviously been way too long since we did a cruise. I didn’t even bring clothes for formal night which and I love to get dressed up and I just I got so wrapped up in being warm, warm, warm, warm, warm, warm, that I just totally screwed up. So the pro tip is if you’re going on a seven day cruise, lay out your clothes by day. Right so here’s what I’m going to wear day one And here’s what I’m gonna wear day two, and I’ve got this excursion so not only do I need to wear day two clothes, but I need excursion clothes and I need evening clothes. And if you lay everything out, then you’re not going to overpack. And you’re not going to forget your formal attire.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So just as an aside, which we kind of, it’s hard to find any information on this on their website. But formal night is usually the like the first one of the first nights it’s usually a fun day at sea. For us. It was the second night for depending on how long cruise we ended up with two. I was gonna say there’ll be two formal nights and so George couldn’t even go to the dining room because he didn’t have anything but jeans or shorts, which, okay, shorts, that was pretty much a waste of time packing. Maybe when you go later in August or something, it gets warm for us in May when we went. I was freezing the whole entire time like freezing. It was.

George
So that’s another kind of I don’t know if we mess something up, but we could not get the room warm. It was comfortable. And Lisa likes it cold. So you know she was okay. But it was cold. We had to jump under the covers that night.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So as far as packing is concerned, don’t forget your formal clothes. Don’t forget your power strip. Don’t forget your air conditioner. You definitely want like a nice pair of like warm boots. Like we were hiking boots that are waterproof. You definitely want a raincoat because believe it or not it rains like 250 days of the year and Alaska everywhere you go. It’s the second largest rainforest, which we’ll talk about later, warm hats. I had wished I had a different colored hat for every day because we took so many pictures and selfies I was like, Oh, this same hats getting old. I want to new ones. I had to buy one that said Alaska on it. But if without a warm hat, I probably would have froze to death. I wished that I had a little bit like I had some light gloves. You if you can find those gloves that you can use your cell phone with you know they brought like the little finger fingertips and US southern people in South Carolina those we don’t we don’t have a lot of gloves for sale everywhere. But you definitely want something to keep your hands warm that you can also still like you know, take pictures and use your phone with mine were my my gloves were so old. They were like disintegrating in my pockets like literally falling apart. And I was like oh man, I wish I had a decent pair of gloves. We were I had packed leggings pretty much every to wear every day. I would wish that I had if I if this is again being a southern girl, but we don’t have these for sale everywhere that you go. But I would have liked to have more of almost like a waterproof type of a ski or travel pan that would be warmer or and I have one pair of like fleece lined leggings and those were like just not even really enough for me. One day I wore two pair of leggings and that wasn’t warm enough for me on my legs. And then I wore on the top almost every day I had like a regular long sleeve t shirt. And then like a sweatshirt and then like another jacket and then my winter jacket.

George
Yeah, I mean a lot of layers. It was cold. But for me on the other hand, so I didn’t pack a hat. I didn’t wear a hat. I didn’t bring gloves. And I was I was perfectly fine. But I did concentrate on keeping my core warm. So whenever we went out I wore a t shirt windbreaker a hoodie, then a black jacket that I have and then on top of all that I would put on my ski jacket. So it was a lot of layers but it worked out perfectly because if I got too hot then I could strip off the the winter jacket and not not freeze to death. Yeah, it really it really worked out and I just wore jeans the whole time. That was perfectly fine and adequate. But we did luck out like Lisa said everywhere we stopped. People said you guys really need to thank the gods because last week it was pouring and cold and miserable.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Or like yesterday it was pouring rain today that sunshine. We were very lucky. It only rained one day. Yeah, so

George
I guess keep an eye on the weather also that’ll determine you know what to pack what to wear.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yep. Now a lot of people also had like real cameras with really good lenses. And if you’re into photography, I would definitely everything you have. I mean this one guy had I don’t know how big that that that it was lens was massive. He was on a couple excursions with us. I was like tampin his pictures are really good. I’d love to see him. He probably got some good shots of the wheels. But to be honest, like your camera, attachment for the binoculars really worked out great too. And I know they worked out on purpose.

George
They worked out great the It loses a little bit of color. That was the only downside to it. And I did learn one thing a little too late. So I kept trying to zoom in with the binoculars not with the binoculars, but you know, you got it all set up, and then I tried to zoom in my phone so that it would. It’s hard to explain. But when you look it up, you see the circle of the binoculars, right? Don’t try to get rid of that. Just take the pictures, and then afterwards, zoom in on the picture and it works great. So I was trying to zoom in at first to get rid of that circle, and it kind of pixelated a little bit. Once I figured it out and just left it alone. I was waged sharper and more color.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, that’s a great tip. What else as far as packing? Definitely the comfortable, comfortable outlets. Okay, so bathing suit, we did each pack one bathing suit. But neither of us ever, ever.

George
No, we thought we maybe we’d use it at this at the spa, maybe we’d go in the hot tub. I will say there were people in the pools, there were people in the hot in the hot tubs the whole time, there were people in the hot in the hot tubs. I think there were six hot tubs in the whole ship at least. And they were always people in them. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
going in the hot tub, that’s not the problem. It’s the hot tub. So if you’re if you’re cool with you know being cold when you get out, then you know, go for that and maybe later in the season, it’s a little bit warmer. One of the interesting things to me was the main pool area on our ship. It had a roof that was retractable So normally, you know, your fun day at sea for a normal Caribbean cruise or something like that, you know, you’re looking forward to sitting out by the pool and getting sun and going swimming and and all the fun activities. And and it was very different in that because that whole like fun day at sea. I mean, they had a lot of activities. Don’t get me wrong, you know, bingo, and trivia and shows and

George
stuff. And they did a great job to try to keep everybody entertained, but it’s just not the same.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It’s yeah, it’s just not the same as you’re like, Okay, let’s just go sit out by the pool. And that’s what we’ll do on the fun day at sea and maybe go to the casino a little bit or whatever it was like, No, we’re not going to sit by the pool. It’s too cold and the water. I mean, definitely like the kids were swimming in the pool. Yeah, there’s only in there really, we’re not a lot of kids on this cruise.

George
And I’ll say when he kids, every kid that I saw get out of the pool was I mean shivering Yeah, so it’s just not a swimming cruise. You just gotta get it out of your mind. It’s it’s a go see Alaska cruise.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And then the they do have like Spa Suites on a lot of these. So you have access to the spa. And the people that I talked to you that did have that access that it was great when you got in there, but it was cold as heck when you got out and you had to get back to your room. So because I was just cold all the time. I just decided I didn’t even want to get wet and go outside. So we kind of skipped all that bathing suit stuff. But I

George
would recommend that if you do like using the spa facilities when you’re on when you’re cruising plan ahead of time because that’s it was really busy. It was busy because there’s really not a lot of other stuff to do so. I think more people than usual were using the spa than then say a Caribbean cruise.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah. I honestly had like I think four or five massages

George
yeah, thank God they gave a week

Lisa RichartHernandez
before that. It they have a special with a spas and generally it’s on like all the cruises, but if you like if you buy three massages, the first one is 10% off the second was 20% off and the third one’s 30% off. Because almost like by the time you get to your third one, it’s your saving you know you almost get one for free if by to get by the route to get one

George
Yeah, we did several couple of treatments and I will say they did a great job. I think one girl was trying to kill me because I left they’re more sore than when I walked in.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And my poor girls were like how did you get all these knots in your bag? I’m like I told you all my stress level. I’m at a nine out of 10

George
that helped? Yes, we would definitely let’s see what else. Definitely recommend the cheers package if you enjoy cocktails, and we’ve been asked this question many many many many times do we recommend it why do we recommend it? Well I always break it down to this it’s $50 a day which seems like a lot but you get five drinks throughout the day and you’re already at 50 bucks any other any the six drink now you’re in the hole seven drinker in the hole eight drink you’re in the hole and I did talk to a lady that was said Next to me that did not have the package. And she said, Man, I wish I would have now because I thought, you know, it would be cheaper to just pay as you go. But, you know, some drinks are okay. And some drinks are 10 $15

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, like the frozen drinks and like fancy martinis. I guess they’re like 12 to $14 apiece. And so you know, it just sort of depends on what you drink and how much you drink. If you’re just gonna have one cocktail a day and you’re not a big drinker, then

George
yeah, then don’t get it and don’t get it. Anything order a bottle in your room.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. Yep. We that kind of leads into a good thing. We like to go to the Alchemy Bar. Oh, yeah. That’s a It’s there on most Carnival cruise ships. And the Alchemy Bar is like def a sort of, I guess for lack of any better term like the fancies man cheese type of bar where they’ve got craft cocktails. And the bartenders, you know, make these like, specialty drinks. They’re like, I like to drink. Dirty, slightly, very slightly dirty Grey Goose vodka martini up with blue cheese, all of them. And the only place on the whole ship, I could get the blue cheese. All of us was at the Alchemy Bar, and they were fabulous and made really, really good drinks. So usually towards the back of the ship, near where the comedy club is.

George
And I have to give out a shout out to our two favorite bartenders at the Alchemy Bar, Yulia and RJ, they poured some awesome drinks.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. And they remembered us every time we came back. We’re just really great. And they

George
knew what we drank. And they always had it prepared. And they just, they were so the drinks are so good. I’d love Espresso Martini. And Yulia was just on fire. They were so good.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I think he would have had a lot of our specimens. There was

George
one there was one night that I may or may not remember. Yeah, which was in my defense was the first night. But we had been traveling since for a and we hardly ate anything. And we were both just trying to cut loose and relax and I relaxed way too much.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, and we were definitely not the only ones the first night. And then the second day was just a fun day at sea. So it wasn’t like we finally sort of got to hit a little reset there. Maybe slept in a little bit art,

George
let’s let’s let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. Let’s just do an introduction. And then we’re going to get into it. And we’re going to break it down by day and bring you guys along with us on the trip. Okay, so what we wandered around, we went to Alchemy Bar, we went to the Red, Red Frog Pub, we had some cocktails there. We explored the ship again, because we had never been on it and got familiarized walked and found the casino, which was rather large, we went on. So we got comped cruises. And this was a premiere cruise for casino rated players. And it was awesome. When you do a premiere cruise through the casino, you got a special lanyard. And so they give you the lanyard they give you special rates and they just really take care of you they comped a dinner for us one night. And we really appreciate everything they do. And pretty much every night that we came home from either being in the casino or theater or whatever, but every night we came back to our room, there was some kind of gift on the bed. I gotta have we got to water bottles, socks, a waterproof bag, it was just really nice to get all the gifts. So thank you carnival for taking care of us. And we really enjoyed it. Okay, so if you’re interested in finding out about the casino and how to get rated, it’s really easy. Just go to the casino play your favorite game. And they’ll ask for your key card. And that’s how they track you. And the more you play, the more perks you’ll get. We already have our coupon for our next fruit free cruise, I don’t generally go crazy, I don’t lose a lot of money, I don’t win a lot of money. Just go and have fun. And if you’re going to be playing you might as well get rated because they will start giving you rewards for that. So that’s uh,

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah, anytime you’re gonna play in the casino a lot of times I’ll see you know, like new players sit down and they like you know, don’t give the the dealer their card or whatever, or stick it in the slot machine and you might as well I mean, I don’t even gamble nearly as much as George does. And I still get discounted rates on cruises. So a lot of times like say for example we want to bring our family George may get a free cruise well I may get a you know a deeply discounted one so you know my I’ll buy one room quote unquote, and he’ll get another room and that way we can get a discount for both of us because when you get the free cruise everyone’s like oh can you give As your free cruises, I was like, Yeah, I wish we could, but only George can go with a guest. So it has to specifically be him. And specifically be me who to get the discounts?

George
Yes. And if you’re gambling and you’re not giving them your card, you’re already losing. Yeah, seriously. Okay. So I think we’ve pretty much kind of given an overview of the ship.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Tell us tell us, you had all the stats on the ship. Tell us just about the carnival. sponder In general, a little bit about that. And I think that what we’re going to have to do, because we’re running out of time today is to just give you a like, I don’t know, we might have to break this down by days at a time because we’ve got so many excursions to tell you about so many things in the different cities that we did, aside from just everything that we did on the ship. Yeah, well, very good. We’ve had time to talk about today is really just about the ship and about how we got there. And

George
yeah, let me let me give you some ship stats real quick. And then just stay tuned for our next podcast. And we will break down the trip by day. And we won’t talk about any of this other nonsense that we already talked about. So the ship was constructed in 2007, and launched on August 3 of 2007. Her overall length is 951 feet, there’s 13. decks for guests, guests. But we were told that below deck 00, is where you get on and off for excursions. So below deck zero, supposedly, there’s another seven decks where the crew live and the engine rooms and all that good stuff. So that was fascinating. And carnival, if you’re listening, here’s a pro tip for you. If you had an excursion of behind the scenes, look at the ship. I think a ton of people would sign up because I’m always curious about the inner workings of the ship. I’m sure there’s areas you can take us to that’s fine, but I’m sure there’s plenty of areas that you can take us to see where the wheel people live. So here I go. I’m getting distracted again, but we did a chef’s table in the past. And we did it on this cruise, and we’ll talk about it on our next episode. But the first time we did it, the chef’s table was set up in the in the kitchen. And it was great in the galley. And they walked us around and they showed us the galley. And it was really interesting to see the equipment that they have to use because obviously has to be different than a normal kitchen. The way they do it, how clean it was that that was the part that struck me the most how absolutely spotless it was. And I really enjoyed that. So if we could do it’s behind the scenes of everything else. I think people would sign up for that left and right. Yeah, so let’s get back. The capacity of passengers is 3012 passengers. total tonnage is 113,030 tons. cost to build the ship in 2007 was $697 million. Splendor is a Concordia class cruise ship. Ironically, she’s the only Concordia class cruise ship. There are just in the food and beverage staff. There are 600 and housekeeping has 300. altogether. I think they had they say there was 1200 or 14 1500. Staff. Yeah, most of them are in hospitality. Yep.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And this cruise because of COVID I think was only at like 80% capacity.

George
One lady said it was only 70%. Okay. What what she definitely was not full. No. Which is kind of nice. Yes. It was very nice. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So a good crowd, but nothing was packed. You could get a seat everywhere.

George
Yeah. Yeah. And, and that’s the stats of the ship. It was beautiful. It was like I said it was retrofitted in 2019 and then COVID hits. So we went on a ship that was completely redone basically, and not used.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I guess we’ll wrap this episode up and we’ll start talking about our excursions on the next episode. So stay tuned friends and get it if you already weren’t experienced cruiser, then you could have skipped this podcast and then gone right straight to our excursions. We’ll put that in the show notes. You can also find all this information in our website, which is RViewpodcast.com Or visit us online. We now have a TikTok called Rview. We’ve got some videos on there of some of our adventures and Instagram at our view from the road. So check us out and send us a message if you have any questions. We’d love to help you answer them.

George
Okay, and remember, stay tuned for part two of Alaska and there might be a part three.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It depends on how fast we talk. A good way

intro
Thanks for listening to another episode of Rview don’t forget to drop us a line at Rviewpodcast.com That’s the letter “R” view podcast.com And like, subscribe and follow us so you don’t miss out on our next adventure.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai