9 Night Royal Carribean Southern Carribean cruise review and tips

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, welcome back to RView, we’ve got a great show for you. Today, we’re going to talk to you all about our nine day Royal Caribbean cruise. That was the southern Caribbean route. So stay tuned.

intro
Welcome to RView 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. Georgia and Lisa travel in their 40 foot class, a tip and motor coach and tow their Jeep Wrangler, always looking for fun and adventure.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, welcome back to RView. I’m Lisa RichartHernandez. And I’m George Hernandez. And we have a great show for you today we’re going to tell you, we just got back from a nine day Royal Caribbean cruise. And we’re going to tell you all about our itinerary where we went and what are all the pros and cons and why don’t we start George by the very first day we got there. Let’s talk about check in and start from day one and kind of go to the end.

George
Yes. So we did a cruise on Royal Caribbean grandeur the sea, which is the smallest ship on the fleet. But check in was awesome. In my opinion. It was really quick. They’ve got it streamlined. Where what did it take us 10 minutes to go from from the curb to our room.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it was I have to I have to really give them credit. Now we got there about 1230. So we’re a little early checking in, considering the boat doesn’t leave till about four o’clock. And you can’t get into your rooms I think until around two o’clock. But literally we just got out of our Uber handed them our bags, which we had pre printed the tags ahead of time at home, which is also a helpful tip. They’ll give that to you in your cruise package. And you just sort of fold them and staple them onto your bags. And then they already know where what floor and what room your bags go to. And then also, we downloaded the Royal Caribbean app ahead of time. And we uploaded the pictures of our passport and our photos and answered some questions.

George
Yeah, we had all the pregame stuff.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So they literally just scanned or like had a little iPad scanned our passports and was like Have a nice day. Have fun. See you later go on. And we walked onto the ship. And then now you get your cards when you arrive at your room. Your key cards?

George
Yes. So they were waiting for us in our room. We got our key cards. And we went to our muster station. We call it our mustard station. Yes. Which I am so grateful they streamline that also. Yeah, so

Lisa RichartHernandez
that was like one of the positive things that came out of COVID instead of everybody happiness, drop everything at, you know, three o’clock or four o’clock or whatever, before we sail and everyone putting on their life jackets and standing in the big huge crowds and listening to this whole demonstration. You literally just take your once you get your cards, you go down to your muster station. You could the girl has another iPad. She scans your card. She’s got a lifejacket on ask if you have any questions. Kind of gives you a quick like, literally less than two minutes safety. I mean, I don’t even know if we were there two minutes.

George
No, but I mean, that’s all you need. Yeah, know how to use a lifejacket. Here’s how it goes here. Right? Do here’s where you need to come if God forbid anything happens. That’s all we need to know. Yeah. And they also had a video running on the TVs in the rooms. So you could have watched it there too. But you still have to physically go and get your card scanned.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so that was really cool. It made it so much faster. Like getting on the ship now is great. So all of that we were really happy about we actually had an interior room this year. And so this year this cruise, we just weren’t really sure how we were going to feel about that interior room. But when we got there I mean it’s it’s a little bit smaller than we’re used to. But it was it was nice. I mean, I have

George
no complaints. I actually didn’t end up mining it at all because it was like sleeping in a cave. I feel like I got better sleep. I do too. And like a window or balcony because yeah, the sun always wakes us up no matter what when we’re in one of those rooms. This one there was no sun.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I had no idea what time it was not a fact

George
we woke up a couple of times like at 11 and we were like oh my god what happened?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I call it Vegas dark. The interior cabins are like Vegas dark, super dark.

George
Now they are small. And they’re tight and it was just Lisa and I and you know when Lisa was getting ready at the vanity, it’s kind of like okay, I’m gonna go to the bar and wait for you down there because it’s it is a little tight that’s all but it

Lisa RichartHernandez
is what it is. One tip is we unpacked all of our bags because we were going to be on the ship for nine days and put all of our clothes and the different drawers and hung everything up. And then we stored our big suitcases underneath the bed. The big giant suitcases fit under there so they are completely out of the way And, and that worked out really good.

George
Yes. And this time travel tip, we did bring our power strip, which was huge. To charge all our phones we were able Lisa was able to use our hairdryer all at the same time. Otherwise, there’s only two outlets in the whole room. Yeah, you

Lisa RichartHernandez
definitely. That’s, that’s a good a good tip power a power strip. And I also I did bring my blow dryer and stuff too. Yeah. But you know, it was a little one on there. But

George
yeah, but the power strip helps tremendously, because you can do a lot of things at once. Yeah. So that’s our travel tip number one.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yup. I always bring earplugs just in case anyways. And I didn’t really have to use them that much. But they are nice to have.

George
Yeah, no, it was nice and quiet in the room. I was very happy with the room. Yep. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
the bed was comfortable. That’s the most important part. Yes. Tiny, tiny shower.

George
While they’re all kind of pie me. Yeah. Okay,

Lisa RichartHernandez
so we get out, we get to our room. And we just decided to okay, we’re starving now. And we’re going to go down and get some food. So this is where the reality of this small ship all started. We kind of like to do a little walk around, get the tour walk through the casino. sort of see where are you familiar with the ship get the lay of the land. And the first thing we did was the buffet. And I was like, really disappointing. Where do we even start with? I know I don’t I don’t want to be started our podcasts off on a negative note. Everything else was really good. And then I would say that the food and

George
we don’t go on a cruise expecting gourmet meals we have expectations of hey, we’re on a cruise. Don’t be you know, but this was a massive fail. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I mean, it was I’ve had I don’t even know I don’t even I don’t even really want to speak I don’t even really want to insult any any other restaurant.

George
Just don’t don’t even go there just it was not good. Like, I don’t know if it’s cutbacks.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I don’t know. I mean, you can still cut back but you can still have seasoning. And like for example, when we when we go on a Carnival Cruise. Our first thing is our bad meal. We look for guys Burger Joint. And that’s on, you know, most of the chips and we go get a burger, which are like these really good cheeseburgers and fresh made french fries. And they’ve got a million different kinds of toppings, and they’re just really good. And then they also have like a taco place, but even their buffet, for example. Let’s just go. I wanted to get a salad. I was trying to start out healthy. And on the salad bar, the topping choices were let’s just say carrots, cucumbers, egg, all like jayvees need men, it was like like maybe four, maybe like six little things like not a lot of options, where normally we go on a cruise and it’s like, you could make a gourmet salad every single day if you wanted to. It was just it was kind of

George
I thought it was like, Okay, it’s day one. And we’re just they thought they weren’t up and running right there. They’re not up to speed. I thought the same thing. They’re not up to speed yet. It’ll be fine tomorrow.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And they did have some burger patties and hot dogs. And I did have a burger.

George
I had one too. And I’m not sure it was. It was even me

Lisa RichartHernandez
like literally the burgers that you get from Costco that are frozen and you just put them on the grill are better than the burgers that were there. You know what I mean?

George
Yeah. Okay. Moving on. Because we could talk about that for I know

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was that for so anyways, we just got cocktails. And the first night I’m on the cruise. We went down to the casino and had a good time kind of checked out all the different bars. And one thing I will say is the service was excellent. And they make great cocktails, like really good drinks. We went to the Schooner Bar, where they have like a live piano guy. That’s where they have a lot of activities and stuff. And he and the Skinner bar was I felt like our favorite place to hang out. I would say,

George
yeah, it was it was fun. It was a good crowd every night they did trivia there. The again the piano guy was really really good.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I wish we could remember his name. He’s been doing it for some like 10 years are a ridiculously long period of time. Yeah.

George
All the staff I think you just said all the staff was incredible. Yeah, good. All the bartenders remembered our drinks after the first night. Yeah, and walked back to the bar and they knew what we wanted.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And they’re all really smiley and nice and friendly. So that was great. We always remembered every night to grab a couple bottles of water from the bar and they would just give us the we would always ask for four bottles of water. So I would have one at night to drink get one The morning to drink and those were included in the drink package and was really nice. So that’s just a little cruiser tip. Also, if you want to get some, if you’re like me and like to have just like water to drink in your in your room, that’s a Yeah. Don’t forget to grab them from the bartender, I

George
highly encourage drinking water because you can get dehydrated really, really fast.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So the second day was just a fun day at sea. And it was a formal night. I like to get my red carpet blowout done my hair when we’re on cruise night. So I did schedule that in advance. And they just basically wash your hair and blow dry it and style it. And now I

George
gotta say, oh, yeah, that was really good. I kind of enjoy that. It’s

Lisa RichartHernandez
weird. It’s almost like a facial for men.

George
Yeah, I mean, they, it was way more than a shave. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
do you like towels and the straight edge razor? No.

George
But some kind of lotion on my face and made me you look, the younger?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So why don’t you start? You’ve got the list on the itinerary of all the places that we went, why don’t you already touched

George
on it. Day one was the day at sea. Day two was a day at sea. I will say I don’t know what was going on if there was a storm or something. But we were up on the upper deck trying to get some sun on those two sea days. It was the wind was so strong. It was like 45 miles. It felt like it was gonna blow me off to

Lisa RichartHernandez
read my book. Because my pages I couldn’t like hold it open, like strong enough with TV. And

George
yeah, I walked from one end of the ship to the other and I had to lean into the bat. It was Yeah, but day three, we hit Boonta Plata and the Dominican Republic. And we ended up going to and I’m gonna butcher this Dona Wagga falls.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, that that was probably my favorite thing that we did, I think, yeah, that was really cool. It was. So this is an excursion, we bought it ahead of time. And you get to go there’s a whole bunch of waterfalls there that day. I think it depends on how much rain there is and which ones are open. But there was five waterfalls open that day. And we got

George
I think there was a total of 12. But they hadn’t hadn’t had any rain. So only five were

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So it’ll if you’re if you’re doing that excursion a little vary, based on probably the time of year that you’re there, how many are open or whatever. But at this time, there was only five which is I’m guessing that might it must have been a low season because he showed how much higher the water got. And that was really high. Yeah, really

George
high. And he said if he comes during rainy season, then it may not be open because it’s like, not a flowing river.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah. So that’s pretty cool.

George
Now, please, Travel Tip number two, read the fine print. Read the fine print. It was

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was a strenuous? 45 minute uphill hike. Yes.

George
And I mean, like, pretty straight knows where they stop. They stopped at least four or five times on the way up just to make sure everybody was okay.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, like we’re in our 50s. And there were people that were way older than us. And I was like, oh, man, I don’t know if they’re gonna make it, you know. But we you were in you’re wearing water shoes, and they give you a bottle of water. And they say don’t drink this until you get to the top because you’re gonna need it. Well, sure enough, I think everyone finished their bottle water bottles at the top of the of the hill before we

George
Yeah, luckily it was in the whole walk up was shaded. It wasn’t in the imagine if it was in the sun and people would probably be

Lisa RichartHernandez
burned out. Yeah, yeah. And so it’s also like, if you have any knee problems, or if you have ankle problems, like, maybe choose a different excursion, honestly, because I mean, my knees, there’s a part that you’re going uphill, and then there’s a part you’re going downhill like to get to where you’re going to jump. And like it’s not like steps. It’s like, it’s like hiking. I mean, there’s rocks and ruts and Yeah, going downhill, I think put more pressure on my knees than actually going uphill. And I was like, Whoa, gotcha.

George
And there were some sections that had steps, but they’re not like,

Lisa RichartHernandez
they’re like a piece of wood, right? sort of stuck into the dirt. Like not a real step step. Yeah. So

George
it was very strange. One funny part was when we finally got to the top, there was a guy underneath a tent with a little first aid kit. And he’s the guy that walked us upside down the here’s the hospital in case anybody needs anything. And there’s our ambulance. And it was a donkey. Literally a little red first aid kit and a donkey. That was their emergency response team. Yeah, yeah. So we made it all the way up. We all survived. And then we got to the first basically a jump so they built all these structures within the waterfalls and within the it’s more like a canyon, a really, really narrow canyon with water running down the middle. And they built these structures that you can jump off of. And I said to myself the whole way up, I got to be fair or I might not do this because I’m not a big fan of heights. So we got there and I was the first one. And I looked down, and I was like, oh boy, why did I go first? But when I jumped down, it was actually higher than I thought. I don’t know why Why didn’t seem that high. But when you jump and you feel yourself falling and falling and falling, and then you hit the water. It was a, it was a good drop. Like it was a good drop.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I mean, 20 it was like two stories like,

George
oh, at least at least, I think they said that one was 25 feet, which would be two stories. Yeah. And then you hit the water. And it’s cold.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Because it’s I mean, it’s cold. But after you just did that 45 Yeah. It felt great refreshing, a little bit of a shocker. At first.

George
It was cold, but it felt great. Yeah, yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And then we did like five more of those with slides, like some you could either slide down or walk through, I think the biggest negative would be there are so many people. Like, if if you had that with like a low, a little tiny group, or it would be a lot cooler, I think like you’d have a bit more time to sort of enjoy the beauty that’s around there. Because it’s really cool. But there was like, tons and tons of people got a

George
lot of people. And it felt like we were constantly standing in line waiting for the next job or the next slide. And it kind of took away a little bit from it. But it was it was it was fun. Yeah, it’s really awesome. I would definitely do it again. They allowed me to carry my GoPro, but they don’t allow cameras. And of course, you know why? Because they’re gonna sell you pictures at the end of the tour. I will say we’ve been to many, many places where they the prices are just ridiculous. They were really smart. They just took all the pictures, they don’t even separate you, they just sell you a whole bundle of your group. And it was 50 bucks. And you got every single picture every video that they took of your group. And I thought it was well worth the price.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, cuz we paid like 150 before. Like, 10 picture. Right? Exactly. Yeah, so that was cool.

George
So that was cool. Another quick tip, if you haven’t done a cruise, maybe book your excursions through the cruise line cruise line. And here’s why. If you booked your book your excursion through, for example, Royal Caribbean, like we did, if you’re late, if something happens to the bus, the cruise line will wait for you. If you do it on your own, and you’re not part of an excursion, the cruise ship will not wait for you. When it’s time to leave, they will leave and it’s up to you to get to the next port, or meet them back in Miami when they get back. So that’s something to keep in mind.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It’s easy, they meet you right at the dock the this for all the excursions like there’s these little people holding up their paddle of whatever your excursion is, and you just meet them on the dock at whatever time they bring you to the tour bus you go to that and they tell you when they’re gonna pick you up and super easy can’t get lost can’t get left. It’s a little bit more expensive From what we heard from some other people that like just did it on their own or whatever. But I don’t want to get stranded in a foreign country on a cruise.

George
Yeah, exactly how to save $24. All right, right. So do that. And also the all the vendors are vetted by the cruise ship, and they make sure they have insurance and everything to take good care of you. So they for we ended up in Puerto Rico. And I enjoyed cruising into Puerto Rico, because there’s the ship stop, literally in downtown San Juan. So you can get off the ship and walk to whatever you want to do. And it’s a very walkable city.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I don’t think like we’ve done different surgeons in San Juan before, like, we’ve been to the Carty factory, which was cool. And some other things. We’ve been to San Juan several times. So that’s one of those ports that you can go to and still have a great day and not necessarily have to pay for an excursion. I think if that was if I was going to choose one place to not have an excursion I would choose San Juan. I

George
think of all the ports that I’ve ever cruised into. I think Old San Juan is the friendliest user friendly port because everything’s right

Lisa RichartHernandez
there. Yeah, the whole downtown. You can just walk around, do shopping. And there’s like tours and cabs and stuff right outside there too. Or if you wanted to just take one of those little tour buses, you’d probably be fine. Yeah. Because they’re only like an hour or two different restaurants. All right. There

George
are a ton of restaurants. Great shopping.

Lisa RichartHernandez
You can walk up to the fore and you can tour the fort from there. So you really don’t need rides for that stuff. No. Very we’re lucky I got to meet a fellow realtor. My friend Shelly with exp she’s one of the top top Realtors with them in the country and I’m, so we ended up she picked us up in her Jeep. She lives there six months and one day out of the year. So that was really fun. And she took us to lunch and had a great meeting with her. We hope to go back and see what it’s like to actually live in San Juan and go visit her sometime. So shout out to Shelly on her podcast.

George
So we were gonna take you up on the offer for sure. That’s right. That was what a day for day four. We were in Antigua. And that was our beach day. Remember, we took the we didn’t it’s an excursion. They took us his little beach. It was nice.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Was that by sandals? Yes. Okay.

George
Yeah, it was, you know, it just gave us an opportunity to get off the ship and go sit on a beach. Yeah. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
if I recall correctly, there was not much to do right when you got off the ship. So you do want to take like an excursion to a beach there. Because the beach was very pretty. Yeah. That’s the place where they have a really good pina coladas. Yes. Yeah. Lady, she, you know, like on the ships and most places, you get that pre mixed pina colada stuff. Now, this lady made it from like, coconut milk and pineapple juice and some kind of dash of cinnamon or nutmeg are.

George
That’s what it was. Yeah, it

Lisa RichartHernandez
was really, really good. We’ve had I always say, I’m not gonna drink the frozen drinks because of the calories but they had to have like, I think, I don’t know, I might have had three different small cups. But they were really

George
tasty edible. And I tried to look up the name of the it’s not a restaurant. It’s not a bar. It’s just like this little shack. So I wish I could give them credit, but I’m sorry, I can’t.

Lisa RichartHernandez
But it was right outside of sandals.

George
Yeah, it was delicious. The beach was nice. The area we were in was, you know, a little crowded, but it was fine. It was just nice to get off the ship and

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah, they charge you like $20 a share. Of course they got like a little shop there. You can buy T shirts and souvenirs and that kind of thing. Yep. Now it was Antigua

George
were the were the on the pier. They had the pool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
No, I don’t I don’t think that was Antigua.

George
Okay. All right. So let’s move on.

Lisa RichartHernandez
There are so many tropical ports. This one I apologize for getting them somewhat confused. Yeah. It seemed like one big tropical, beautiful water. gorgeous beach vacation. Yeah, it’s a difference. One each day. I took

George
a lot of notes, but it’s like, certain things just are popping into my head right now. And I’m like, oh, where was that? Yeah. All right. So day six. We ended up in St. Maarten. We’ve been there before.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Did we already switched? Are we already on day six? Yeah, already. Day six.

George
We again so St. Maarten that was at another beach day. Oh, St.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Maarten is that’s where the we did the bus to the beach. Orient beach.

George
It was

Lisa RichartHernandez
orient beach. I believe it was yes. It was already? Yes. Because St. Maarten that island is half Dutch and half French I believe. Yes. Two different countries. They use two different currencies. They have two different like, I guess, basically.

George
Oh, they have to school systems to

Lisa RichartHernandez
have everything on this like fairly small island. So it was pretty interesting.

George
And their borders. A bridge? Yeah. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
that’s where we took the the bus to orient beach and it was like, a bunch of little restaurants on the beach. And yeah, it was a cool little stop. So Rum Punch was included in this, this and then we had to pay for a chair. And so we sat there for a little bit. And we were only it was a short period of time. We’re only there for like two or three hours. And

George
then that was the weird one that we didn’t leave till one in the afternoon. Yeah, so

Lisa RichartHernandez
I was wondering for it would have been nice to have like, got left earlier when the ship got there to go to the beach because there wasn’t a lot to do while you’re waiting to get there. But kind of you know, the off the ship tours, little shops that they have we did that and Sharpies and had a cocktail and waited for our time, which was one o’clock and then we took the bus to the beach orient beach. And this is where the nude beach was.

George
Yes, not where they dropped us off. But we knew it was there. So we asked the girl that was kind of like our tour guide. And we asked her Hey, is this where the nude beaches and she said yeah, it’s down though. That end is if you want to go just walk down there so why not? Check it out? Check it out. So we walked out there and everybody’s naked you know, and it’s so funny because I guess everybody has like this fear preconceived that everybody’s gonna be looking at you. And they don’t care.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, let’s just say for clarification, this is no Playboy Mansion. We’re talking about every body shape and size. He no naked

George
and nobody’s judging and nobody cares. Yeah, so

Lisa RichartHernandez
we did have a drink there. Yes. Happy Hour

George
perch Bar and Grill, which we got there at happy hour, which we didn’t realize. And Lisa went to get us drinks and she came back with for drinks.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, like there It’s buy one get one free instead of like one for half price or whatever. I don’t know. So we ended up with four drinks. So we actually stayed in the nude section a little bit longer than we were thinking we were going to because we had a handful of drinks now

George
we ended up actually eating there was really good food. BLT was incredible. Yeah. Yeah. So we just hung out we we did not get naked.

Lisa RichartHernandez
There were some shops that stopped by there. We did a little bit of shopping. And so

George
ironically, at the nude beach, there’s a shop that sells bikinis. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Well, it wasn’t just all nude there. I mean, there was parts like, there was even like some sort of topless area a little bit or whatever. I don’t know, if you have kids in a family and you’re like, worried about or offended by that I would maybe choose a different excursion. But or stay

George
on the section where they drop you off? Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I mean, because there were definitely kids where we’re at. And they wouldn’t know you wouldn’t let your kids go down that far. And it was about a 10 minute walk maybe while we

George
were there. So we wanted to check it out. Check it out and see what that was all about. And I thought it was quite interesting. Yeah. We went back to the ship that day, after five cocktails and I think that’s the night I passed out.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, the rest of the night blur for George after the free rum punches, which are very strong, but don’t taste strong, obviously. Yes. Because they have that juice in there. But

George
yeah, I don’t know what happened. It was like somebody hit me in the back of the head with a hammer and then we woke up the next morning in St. Croix. Oh, yeah. St. Croix was a very, very pleasant surprise.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So my biggest regret is not going snorkeling or scuba diving in St. Croix, because that is apparently like the place to go diving and stuff. And we had we had done like the beach excursions the other two days. And so when I was planning the trip, I saw that there’s a beach like, right, they’re off the ship. So you could go to the beach. And but it was like a drizzly sort of a rainy day. That was the only day we even had just Yes, the only day that it wasn’t like a pouring rain. It was like a annoying rain, annoying little drizzle that came by so it wasn’t like you want to just lay out at the beach. So we did a lot of walking around that day. And what we found was a bunch of dive shops. And we did find a good restaurant. I had lunch there. Yeah, the food was very good. Yeah. And

George
but apparently, yes. diving and snorkeling is the thing in St. Croix.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So we made friends with this other couple that was on the ship. And there was she said that was her first time going snorkeling, snorkeling, and she thought it was incredible. She said she felt like she was in an aquarium. She’s there’s 1000s of fish around her. It wasn’t like so we’ve been on snorkeling excursions before we’re literally like, they bring you out and the the guide like, drop some breadcrumbs in the water and like 10 fish come around. You’re like, oh, yeah, a fish. Yeah,

George
there’s definitely more people than fish. Right? And she said,

Lisa RichartHernandez
No, that was not what it was like at all. She thought it was beautiful. 1000s of fish. So I would highly recommend checking that out and St. Croix like, and I would definitely plan either snorkeling or diving excursion. Yeah, if we ever go back for sure. I know. Because we’re certified divers, and we haven’t done that in so long. So we’re gonna have to probably get

George
and when we were walking back to the ship on the pier right next to the pier, we saw this beautiful turtle.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I mean, the water was so crystal clear. Oh, my gosh, all the way down. Like probably, I don’t know how many feet deep. The water was, I would say at least 30 literally right next to where the cruise ship was parked. I mean, you could just see almost the bottom of the ocean. It was amazing. Yeah.

George
That was yeah, that was unbelievable. There was something about St. Croix we walked around. Oh, I was gonna say it’s not really. There’s not much to do there. If anything, right. You got the little beach on the left, and you got the little town of Fred. What was it called? Frederick. Frederick stead was the name of the little town. And it’s just dive shops and restaurants. Yeah. So there really wasn’t much to do there. There. I don’t know

Lisa RichartHernandez
what other excursions there were, but the ones that I would recommend would definitely be like snorkeling and stuff and you don’t again, if it was a sunny day, it’s fine because the beach is right there and people were snorkeling, like right off the boat. Yeah, and right around there. So I think that would still be a fun thing to do. It just wasn’t the right weather for us to do it and have We’d gone on the excursion we would have done it anyways. And once you’re in the water, it doesn’t really matter if it’s raining,

George
right, exactly. Now, we were kind of tired by day. Seven. Yeah, with two more to go. So they eight and nine were two days at sea. And the good thing is on the way back, the weather was cooperating, or we were going with the wind. So it wasn’t as when the and we Yeah, it was really

Lisa RichartHernandez
nice pool days where we just hung out by the pool. Speaking of pools, there’s two pools. There’s the main pool, like every cruise ship has sort of the main pool where the activities and stuff are. And they had fun games all day like ham, you know, most handsome man or Harry’s, I was just just or scavenger Hans, and they had an illegal Olympics in the pool with different kinds of relay races.

George
Yeah, they did a good job keeping everybody entertained. Yeah. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
so I will say the cruise directors did a great job. The staff did a great job, everybody was super friendly. Then there’s the inside pool, which is the Serenity area, which is just for adults. But they never opened like the glass ceiling or anything. And I don’t know if it didn’t open or chose not to definitely

George
open I saw the tracks. I just don’t know if it was working. Because it was hot enough for it to be open. Well,

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was closed the whole entire time. So it was kind of like weird, like, why would you be in a beautiful day inside there. But a lot of people were sitting inside and I guess it was just, you know, for them to sit by the pool and read their books or whatever. But not a lot of you don’t get any sun or anything in there. There’s a little bar in there. That was nice. Yeah.

George
And you’re away from the kids, which ironically, it must have been spring break for some area because there were quite a few kids there. There were

Lisa RichartHernandez
but I would, let’s talk about that for a minute. This we’ve been on a lot of different cruises. We have four kids, we’ve taken our kids on a bunch of different cruises and what they like our activities, and we, you know, because we weren’t taking our kids, and this was a free cruise, you really just didn’t pay much attention to that before we booked it. But like there’s no pool for the kids, like a lot of times there’s water slides or waterpark, little water park or anything else for the kids to do. There was just the one fairly small main pool. There was probably maybe what 10 kids in there.

George
Probably more than that. But they did have a little the typical daycare for the kids and the arcade. But everything was tiny. It definitely was not catering towards kids. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
it wasn’t like if you have kids, this is the one you should go on at all, there was not a lot of stuff for them to do. Now, it was I guess, we can kind of go into maybe some of the restaurants and pros and cons of this. Restaurant, we’ve already talked about the itinerary, which, you know, we can we’ll post some pictures on our social media and stuff like that, and on RV podcast.com. So you can sort of see some of the places that we went. But the the ship overall was incredibly small, much smaller, I think then even the carnival ships that we’ve done. And so they did a great job with the actual entertainment like the shows that they had. were excellent. And the comedians were excellent and the music was excellent about that magician.

George
He was great.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, but the there just wasn’t a lot of different options. Like we went like up to the nightclubs several times and there was nobody there dancing or doing anything.

George
It was just a weird vibe. And we even spoke with other people who have cruised on many cruise ships and they they kind of said the same thing. It was like we didn’t realize this ship was this small. I mean small to the point where we knew people by name so we were hanging out with people

Lisa RichartHernandez
and we say this ship is small Don’t you have this let’s put the yeah just so you understand. Royal Caribbean has a new ship coming out called Icon icon of the seas it’s going to be the world’s largest cruise ship

George
right so I did a comparison and grandeur of the sea the length of grandeur The sea is 915 feet icon of the sea is gonna be 1100 98 feet almost 300 feet more or almost 300 feet

Lisa RichartHernandez
longer. Yep.

George
Grandeur of the sea has 11 decks. Icon of the C has 20 decks double That’s double the height, capacity grandeur the C 2446 his passengers icon of the sea 7600 passengers. So that’s almost triple the amount of passengers. This is the statistic that I thought was pretty interesting. Grandeur the sea total crew 760 icon of the sea is going to have a crew of 2350 people that is almost the size of the guests on Grandeur the sea. So it’d be like every guest on the ship was working. Yeah. So that’s just amazing. So that, and we’ve been on some of their bigger ships, so we understand just how big they are. So I can’t wait to see this one. And there’s a big difference. And there’s a pros and cons to that. So we did a cruise with our kids on Oasis of the Seas. thinking oh my god, they’re going to love this massive giant ship, which they did. But one night when we were having dinner, we were like, Okay, what’s your favorite? What’s your what do you like and what do you dislike? And they all said the same thing. We love the ship. It’s big. It’s so much fun. There’s so much stuff to do. But the downside is, it’s so big that like, for example, they met some friends on the first day. And they didn’t see them again, because the ship was so big. They just didn’t run into them. Were when we were on Grand Tour the see the day we met somebody. That was it. We were friends for the rest of the week. I saw them everywhere. Yeah, yeah. So there’s a good side to that and a bad side to that, you know, it’s all

Lisa RichartHernandez
I would say Granger the sea was a lot of old school. cruisers that liked the small ship are happy with the basic food. Really just wanted to see the night shows. And that’s about it. Just wanted to hang out. Yeah, like like it wasn’t a big party. for them. It wasn’t there wasn’t a lot of like nightclub action. There wasn’t the casino was just sort of average amount of people. One thing I didn’t like about the casino is they allow people to smoke and they are still one that’s on every cruise ship but it was really small and they’ve changed it around and some different ships but we got really smoky in there and that

George
was really smoky. But overall, I enjoyed the casino. That’s how we got the free cruises. I’ve got a very good casino rating. And they took care of us. It was good. We got to know a lot of people and we knew everybody. Everybody knew. I knew everybody. They did hold three poker tournaments. And Lisa and I won one of the tournaments least I got second. George got first. Yeah, we ran over at the so it was fun. They they did a lot of stuff in the casino, the entertain you and get you all hyped up. They did a slot machine tournament

Lisa RichartHernandez
blacked out they did a blackjack turn. Yeah, yeah. They had some good stuff on especially on the days. See. So that was that was fun.

George
Yeah, so the casino was good. I had no problem with the casino.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And the shows were excellent. Yeah,

George
we talked about that. Let’s let’s talk about the restaurants. Okay, so

Lisa RichartHernandez
one of the things that they started with all these new cruise ships is that you can pay for these extra, like nicer, quote, unquote, restaurants. So there’s the dining options are the buffet, which is open pretty much all day at the wind jam or the Windjammer and then you have your dining room. And so you can go to the dining room for lunch or dinner. We had they didn’t have like the open seating, which I highly recommend if they do but because they did an art dinner was at eight o’clock. And that’s kind of hindered us from seeing some of the shows. So if you want to see a lot of the shows, I would probably do the earliest Dinner. Dinner available. Yeah, if I had to change things around I would do that because we missed a couple of shows that people said were really really good like the Beatles was a really good one apparently. So anyways, it was nice to get to meet our table mates with you are just a couple traveling alone. They’ll put you with strangers at a table generally speaking, we met the our table mates to people had never showed up and the other two girls were exchange students from Spain,

George
and buddies and Yolanda. Yeah, they’re so sweet. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was actually I looked forward to seeing them every night at dinner just to hear about their day. And their perspective as like a 22 year old, you know, right

George
and just the excitement in their eyes with whatever little thing they found that they are they were doing and they just had a blast and it was so nice to see. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
they just have traveled all over the world and they’re, they teach English in Miami at a school there and they’re on an exchange program from Spain. So that was pretty cool. They the service in the dining room was excellent. We had a great service or he every day, you know, we’d look at the menu and he would say, oh, yeah, this is a good get these things. Those are the best things. And so we took his advice and he had pretty good advice on that usually. Ooh, mash. Mash. Is that

George
his name? Yeah, he was awesome.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So the other dining options are chops restaurant, a visa, which is sushi and then zoomy. zoomy is the Italian

George
No, Izumi was the sushi and then the Italian was Giovanni’s table.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Okay, yeah. So those three things, so it’s like $50 a person. So it was like 100 bucks, I guess a couple around, they’re added to the fee. If you wanted to do that. And you’ve got to make reservations to go to that dinner. The very first night we decided we didn’t want to wait. We were we didn’t want to wait till eight o’clock. We were hungry because we got on the ship early and ate. And so we said, hey, let’s just check out the sushi place. We got right in with no problem but didn’t have any reservations or anything. I think the Sushi was very good.

George
They the Sushi was very, very good.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I would say of all the dining experience restaurants. I think this issue one was probably the best in my opinion.

George
I would say sushi Steakhouse, Italian. Yeah, that order. Yeah. So one thing, travel tip. When we first got on the ship, we happen to run across a guy, his name was EDA. And he was selling packages for the restaurants. So we we opted to buy the three was a three meals 333 Night option, which saved us a few bucks instead of paying night night. And that was a great move. And he worked that chops. We actually requested him to be our waiter. And it turned out to be really, really cool. And we’ll tell you about that in a second.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So Well, I mean, we talked about the sushi place. So the second place that we did go was chops and we had dinner there was gonna go right into that. I think we did I think did steak and lobster there.

George
Yeah, it was good. It was it was very good. When you pay for the extra restaurants. It’s

Lisa RichartHernandez
it’s better quality food. Yes. Like a better quality steak.

George
Better presentation better. Just, everything is a little bit better. But you’re also paying extra.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah. You can kind of have like, as much as you want. It’s like a four course meal. You’re not going to walk away. Hungry. Oh,

George
not at all. I think you’re allowed to bring a bottle of wine. If you have a bottle of wine. There’s some some kind of weird thing like, you know, if you buy a bottle of wine duty free, you can bring it

Lisa RichartHernandez
something like that. Yeah. I’m not sure we’ll have to look that up. But I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up before we had

George
to drink packet. So that was included anyway. But Ida like I said, EDA, we ended up being our waiter because you just hit hit our soft spot. And he asked us if we were there for anything special. And I said, Yeah, we’re here for our anniversary. And so we had our dinner and then all sudden he comes out with a guitar and he serenaded us and he actually did a really, really good job.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it was I think you have a video of it. Right? Well, yeah, we’ll post that for sure reels or something like yeah,

George
and he again, the service people are just above and beyond because that’s how they’re going to make their money, you know, on the tips and they just, they do a great job. So kudos to all of them. Either did a great job, a mesh did a great job. And then our guy at the Sushi was Ashwin. I wrote all their names on purpose because they did such a good job. Oh, that’s good. Yeah. So chops Steakhouse, good food.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I would say I would say that the three upgraded ones were were well worth it. Definitely above average. I’m not a big Italian food fan anyways, so the Italian food to me was sort of average. Yeah, I love it. I would say all of garden level nicer than that. A little

George
bit nicer. Yeah, let’s not slam that hard.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Garden is a national chain.

George
Olive Garden is nice. But they they did a really good job. It was a nice presentation. It it’s just the weirdest thing is that they everything just lacked flavor. Yeah. And that’s what was really frustrating because a lot of the food looked incredible. And then you bite into it and you’re like, Wow, this Oh yeah. Your chicken sandwich.

Lisa RichartHernandez
One day we go into the dining room for lunch because I said alright, I’ve had enough of this buffet. Like let’s try the dining room and see if it’s going to be better. So I’m like, Oh, well they have a chicken sandwich. It’s got like a spicy Creole seasoning and some kind of spicy man ism lettuce and onion and tomato or something like that. And I don’t charge I said, seriously. You have to have to work really hard to make chick Couldn’t have this sandwich have no flavor, and it has no flavor at all. And it was just so weird. Like, I don’t know, even the french fries are just

George
like, Yeah, I don’t know if they ran out of spices or something.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, no, like, give me some salt and pepper ketchup. Yeah,

George
any so much. Even the desserts were like, not flavorful. It was the weirdest thing. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah. So I don’t know what was going on with the food on that that particular ship. Generally speaking Royal Caribbean has had like, a little bit like a step up. Usually, I always thought from carnival food, if you’re comparing the two Carnival Cruise Lines to Royal Caribbean, but this time, it wasn’t the case. So I just don’t know if the chef’s differ different, different ships and who’s in charge of it or whatever. But

George
I think that may have something to do with it. Whether they had cut backs, I mean, I don’t get it. But if if you’re going to cut back on anything on a cruise, food is not it. Right? I mean, you know, that’s what people are going to talk about. And if it’s not good, that’s not good for you. Right? But we don’t know.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And I mean, there was people that had were on a cruise with us that like had never cruise before. And they thought it was amazing. So, you know, it’s all about perspective, I think. And we live in Charleston, South Carolina, we always give that as a disclaimer, like we live in a foodie town. And we like to consider ourselves foodies. So although, you know, we’re kind of like, okay, if the only option is eat at the Golden Corral, we’ll take that. But like, that wouldn’t be our first choice. So if you know, you’re good with whatever, then just go and have a great time and just know and don’t have expectations of a gourmet meal, you know, or maybe it would can be considered gourmet. But it’s

George
an I was just gonna say it’s all perspective. Remember, I was talking with that girl by the pool, who loves Royal Caribbean, we love Royal Caribbean. Also, we love the line. And she says she does four cruises a year. And she only does Royal Caribbean because he absolutely loves the food. So, you know, again, it’s all perspective. We, we love our food. And what I

Lisa RichartHernandez
like about Royal Caribbean is when you buy the drink package, there’s not a 15 drink limit on a daily basis. Doesn’t seem like much. But when you’ve got like two or three days at sea in a row, like running out of 15 drinks, like it’s not really that hard to say, okay, like I had a couple of drinks for breakfast.

George
saying you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning. So that’s another tip. That’s another great tip for maybe somebody who hasn’t done a cruise or somebody that’s on the fence about buying the drink package. You got to know yourself, we know ourselves. And we’ve proven it over and over and over. Because we’ve done many cruises where we’re like, do we really need the drink package on this one, and we go ahead and get it. And then I always get a itemized bill at the end. So that shows you all the drinks that you had on the cruise. And when I flip to page number five of 100 drinks on each page, I’m like, okay, yeah, we’re we

Lisa RichartHernandez
well also that like they had all top shelf liquors and stuff. So we paid. Another tip is buy the drink package ahead of time don’t wait to get to ship to buy it. We bought it online, in the prices do change. I think when you’re buying them online, the sooner it is, I think usually the better. We got the drink package for like $49 a person per day. Yeah, that’s what it was. So that’s so you figure that’s like five drinks, basically, because like I drink a Grey Goose Martini. And Grey Goose Martini on the ship or an Espresso Martini would be 12 to $15 a piece. Right? So you know, if you’re just going to have a couple of martinis and maybe at lunch, you want some pina coladas or whatever you’re going to have. You’re going to use that 50 bucks up really quickly. And then some Yeah, it it goes by more quickly than you really think it does. And you know, you’re staying up late we were sitting at the casino and I think that’s part of it too is because usually when we’re sitting at the tables, they keep coming by only one another drink. We’re like, Oh yeah, sure. And you know next, they’re not really strong drinks. So by the time you’ve had four drinks, you’re not over the course of a couple hours you’re not like you know well we

George
did get like that a couple times. No, that

Lisa RichartHernandez
was your fault.

George
But the bottom line is if if you enjoy a cocktail and you don’t want to worry about it get the drink package is well well worth it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And buy it ahead of time because it was $80 on the ship. When you when you got it if you waited to get on the ship is $80 a day. Yeah, that’s crazy. And everybody in your cabin how To have it so if you’re a couple and the like the wife doesn’t drink but the man the husband does. You both have to get the drink package. Yeah. And that’s the same on Carnival Cruise. They all do it because obviously that wants otherwise you don’t bring your drinks. I’ll give you a drink. Right? Right.

George
So get the drink package it’s worth it. There was several bars on the ship. The the one in the main lobby, that was a nice one every

Lisa RichartHernandez
night there was like some sort of line dancing or trivia or they had something entertaining pretty much every day like around dinnertime and Oh, really all pretty much all

George
day. I was gonna say yeah, yeah, definitely. There was no downtime as far as entertainment. There was constantly something going

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, and, and a lot of nice participation in it and stuff. And it was it was a good time, I would say the what Royal Caribbean is really doing a great job of is the entertainment part of it, and the shows and watching so when you’re in your state room, you can watch they have all the information on icon of the seas. Obviously, they’re really promoting the world’s largest cruise ship. And they talk about how they have really gone out and hired like, excellent shows like they’re gonna have cats. Now they’re bringing in Broadway shows Broadway shows like Cirque du Soleil shows really great stuff. Yeah, so you know, I think cruising is going to become hopefully those days fun days at sea are going to be just as great as the destinations that you go to you’re going to enjoy just as much time on the ship at the destinations

George
and with those big ships that’s what they’re kind of creating. I mean they the all those big ships have a center area that they call Central Park and that’s unbelievable in itself so the Broadway theater feel fits right in with with those ships.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And they had they had movies outside by the pool every night you could watch a movie

George
you definitely were not going to be bored on the ship there was always something to do and

Lisa RichartHernandez
one thing I did miss that the Carnival Cruise Lines that we generally always whatever ship it is that we go on usually always has a comedy headliners Comedy Club. And that’s George and I is like usually favorite thing. We really like to go see the comedians more than the scene dancing shows. Yeah. So there was the comedian was only there like mean, two nights and the magician one night?

George
Well, it was one comedian one night, then the magician. And then I think another comedian got on and the other one got off from port so it was to two different comedians. Two different nights and we watched the magician so we watch so three night shows

Lisa RichartHernandez
magician was like from like, a finalist and America’s Got Talent. Like

George
he was really good. Yeah, it was interesting. I sat in the front row because I’m like magic. I think it’s funny. Fascinating. Magic. And no, I saw let’s just move on. So that that part of it that they that yes, they do have the entertainment down. They have the hospitality down service. Excellent service. I’d give it a 10 the entertainment I give it a 10 cleanliness, I give it a 10 Oh, yeah. So clean. The only thing that kind of led us down and I’m just going to chalk it up to it being a smaller ship. And I don’t know what happened but the food was just not. Yeah, not up to par for a cruise ship.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. I would say anything negative I had to say it would be the food. Everything else was great. Really was Yeah, even our interior room was when I mean the guy came twice a day always cleaned. Like we got up in the morning went on our excursion you put a little thing on your door that says I’m out having fun or I’m sleeping it off. And if we put we’re out having fun, he came he made the bed he cleaned the bath. Like we got back to the room after our excursion, took our shower, went out for our dinner and then nighttime activities. He came again made the bed put little towel animals and stuff and I mean it was excellent. I mean, never was a day that we didn’t have a towel or had to ask for anything

George
and all the bathrooms even the public ones were very clean. They did a great job with

Lisa RichartHernandez
hand sanitizer wash you wash you they would stand out there outside of the buffet the buffet and I heard that one time the lady every single time like a dude say and sanitizer was the washi Yeah. Okay,

George
and the other thing I gotta say is thank you. Thank you Thank you disembarking the ship was a breeze also. Oh yeah. Finally streamline that and I’ve said to Lisa before, if you walk into The Casino in Las Vegas and you’re a bad guy or you robbed the casino or something they can pick you out of the crowd in a heartbeat because of facial recognition. Well now we got off the ship everything was moving so fast. I was like what’s going on? And now they have these little like iPad iPads on a stand and you stand in front of it and it looks at your face and and either gives you a green light or a red light. We got our green light. We walked off and we were in our Uber it was again like breeze 10 minutes.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, if that. Yeah, no lines, no chaos. I guess maybe that’s also part of it being a small ship.

George
Maybe but I think even on a bigger ship, I think it would go fast.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, 100% definitely be faster. But yeah, it was it was that was really cool. Okay,

George
so in that, let’s let’s do a little bit if it’s your first cruise that you’re thinking about doing or you’ve been on a cruise, but not a lot of cruises, there’s some cruise etiquette. One of them is wait for your number to be called wait for your number to be your whatever your letter your color. And they do know that people some people have to catch flights, if you have to catch a flight, they allow you to get off the ship first let them get off.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And we were off get by like before 9am. Right. And

George
we weren’t even like the first group they. But that’s because I think people were obeying the bylaw seemed

Lisa RichartHernandez
like it. Yeah. You know, it’s like when you’re getting ready to board an airplane, and they call you by zones. And it’s the people that are in like zone three that are standing right in the front and everybody’s way with their suitcases and you’re just like, dude, I’m zone one. Are you going? Are they like, oh, no, we’re zone three. It’s like, we’ll just move away and wait for everybody to get comfy confused every way. Yeah. So the

George
other thing was, and this was announced on the ship, because they’ve streamline the muster station, please, let’s not screw it up. Let’s not screw it up. Everybody has to do it, the ship will not leave until everybody’s card has been scanned. So an hour after we were supposed to leave the captain is on the speaker saying please, we’re still missing a few people. We cannot leave until everybody has been scanned. So let’s let’s all stick together and do follow the right thing so that we don’t end up going have to stand in a muster station with our life jackets on with a big crowd. Let’s just behave people.

Lisa RichartHernandez
All right, well, I think we’ve pretty much touched on everything from the itinerary to this ship and, and all the different restaurants and food. If you have any questions about the Royal Caribbean cruise that we just did, feel free to reach out to us at our view podcast.com and share these podcasts with your friends like and comment. The more followers we have, we had a little bit of a hiatus. Over the last couple of months, my mother had a fall again. And she’s doing fabulous. Now we’ve got her in a sister living home right here in Mount Pleasant, right about 15 minutes from my house. And she has her own little apartment there and she keeps busy all day long. So she’s in good hands. And that frees up us for our travel times. And to be able to do some more podcasts for you guys and share with you our travel stories and tips and advice as we go along. So we’re hoping that 2023 is going to be a great year. We’ve got some other trips coming up. We’re going to be in Fort Lauderdale next month on April we’re going to be staying at yacht haven for a week or so down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So we’re all about that. We’ll be excited to share the information about that with you. And then we’re going to be heading back up to Nashville one of our very favorite places. And we had just done a podcast with Joey locker from locker southern view. We’re gonna go check out that land and that the development onto that and meet with some business partners out there. So we’re looking forward, forward to that and April and then we’re gonna have a hiatus in May because we’ve got our daughter Lauren, graduating from the University of South Carolina on May 5. And then our oldest son Ryan graduating from Marine boot camp. He is currently stationed down as a recruit and our asylum Parris Island. So

George
he graduates on Lisa’s birthday. Nice gift

Lisa RichartHernandez
on May 19. So we’ll be down there for that. So that’s just a lot of exciting stuff going on for us in the next couple of months. So stay tuned for our podcast. We’re also going to do one with Carol sausage and RV park in Georgia. He just shipped us some sausage and it was literally the most delicious thing. That was we’re gonna do another talk with him this week. So we’ll tell you all about that and I think they’re planning a sausage That’s next year, which there’s just so much material there.

George
We’re gonna leave that we’re gonna get a whole podcast.

Lisa RichartHernandez
That’s right. That’s right. So all kinds of good things. So stay tuned, please subscribe to our podcast and we look forward to talking to you soon. Have a great day.

George
Thanks for joining us.

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