Category Archives: Friends

We knew something was up when we weren’t pulling into the Cococay dock in the morning.

We knew there was a chance of rain but still held out hope. Then the captain came on and announced that the weather was too bad and we couldn’t dock the ship—the waves were crashing over the pier so they obviously couldn’t risk sending workers down to help dock. So we were heading a few miles out to sea to wait it out a bit…but in the meantime we went out on the decks and ran into a worker and she basically said in her experience it didn’t look good. We were bummed—we didn’t even ever get close enough for a picture (I think we were eating breakfast at the point we would have been closest to the island). So here we are with sad faces with Cococay waaay in the background.

And the smiling faces when we realized we’d get our $600 back for the Cabana. 😄

The cool art installation seen from the elevators:

It was gray and cool but the kids wanted to go to the pool so we sent them off. We figured it would be a great time to hit the adults only hot tub. Ha. Haha. It was packed. There was room in one of the bigger hot tubs… except it was more like a luke warm tub. I was actually COLD sitting in it!! It didn’t help that it was windy, but I was literally getting goosebumps under the water. SAD FACE.

We managed to stick it out for an hour or so (the waiter was pretty good) and then it was back to the room to take a hot shower and get ready for lunch—we were meeting our friends for lunch in the main dining room (where you get seated and waited on vs. the Windjammer buffet). That was good as well, except they missed my main entree…so Tom shared a few bites of his since it wasn’t liked I was going to go hungry.

Then Tom took Katie to get her face painted while I looked at the cruise photos and decided what to buy. I don’t remember what the drama was but she was Miss Pouty Face. Seriously?!

She went back to the pool while Owen and I hung out for a bit. One story of note. Owen had picked out his souvenir with Tom earlier—a watch. He had wanted a build-a-bear like Katie got but we talked him into something useful because he really doesn’t need a stuffed animal (she doesn’t either, but at least she still plays with them). So Tom had taken him too look at watches. When they came back, he warned me that the watch was a bit more expensive than he’d planned. Turns out, he picked out like six for Owen to choose from, and of course the one Owen picked was one that had been in the wrong basket so it was way more money. Tom didn’t have the heart to tell him no after he’d already agreed to get a watch and then spent time picking it out. So…we were walking around while Katie got her face painted and he was carrying his watch (he couldn’t wear it yet because it had to be set and it was not a normal type watch) and we stopped to go to the bathroom. Typically the mens and womens bathrooms are on the opposite side of the ship, but the ones we stopped at were down the same hallway. I headed into mine (carrying my drink) and told him to wait for me. So I get out and…SEE HIS WATCH BAG ON THE FLOOR. WHAT?! GRRRRRR. So I picked it up and waited. Needless to say when he came out I had something to say. I asked why he set it there and he said he didn’t want to take it in with him. OMGKIDS. I told him he ALWAYS needs to keep his stuff with him—even in the bathroom. That anyone could have waked by, seen the bag, and grabbed it…and then he’d be out a brand new watch and daddy would have been PISSED. I mean, it makes me think I’ve failed as a parent. WHY would he think that was what he should do? Ugh.

So then it was back to our room where we spent some time relaxing on our balcony before dinner…

Our nightly plates of French fries before dinner—they noticed we were all always stealing fries off the kids plates so they just automatically started bringing us two extra plates before we even ordered!

Saying goodbye to our awesome staff… Owen really wanted a picture!

Then it was one last ride on the carousel…

Then the kids wanted to go to the daycare one last time, so we let them go. We had wanted them to come with us to one last show but figured we’d let them do what they wanted. So we went to the show with Papa and Grannie. There were lots of employees there as guests, too, so we actually sat next to one of Owen’s Flow Rider instructors! After the show we took the grandparents to say goodbye to the kids since we wouldn’t be seeing them in the morning. Dad admitted that the cruise “wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be.” I guess that’s the best praise we could have gotten! Then we took the kids to bed because we had to be up really early to get off the ship.They had stayed by themselves just fine in the room before so we didn’t think anything about it. We told them they could watch TV and that was that.

This was waiting when we got back to the room. (Sidenote: we ended up getting ~$250 credit to use within the next year. I doubt it will get used.)

Our group kind of bar hopped for a bit. This was my last margarita at the martini bar…

And our group in the elevator as we were on our way to find karaoke for Greg. I snapped a pic because it was totally unusual that there was no one else in the elevator with us!

And then we found the bar! We had to wait for a few people (good and bad) and then it was Greg’s turn and of course he was awesome. So as we are all sitting there having a good time, guess who we see walking in, half crying? OWEN. WAIT, WHAT? With an employee behind him. It was like 11:30! And then Katie walked in behind them. WHAT THE—? Turns out they had both fallen alseep and then Owen woke up and got nervous that we weren’t there, so they went out looking for us! He said he went to a bunch of the bars and when he couldn’t find us, he went to Guest Services and they looked up where our charges were and saw we were next door at the bar so brought him over! GOOD GOD. And then they didn’t want to go back to the room and Katie wanted to stay with us at the bar. Um, no. So Tom took them back to the room and said we’d be home shortly. DAMN KIDS.

So the kids found some ducks—I didn’t even know this was a thing! We put their names on some of them and then they hid them again.

The other thing they did was scour the ship for all the Small Wonders:

Owen had started finding them on his own (they are very obvious in some places) but then he discovered how many there were and he wanted to find them all. He thought he should ask a random employee where they all were and write them down. I suggested he go to Guest Services because they probably had a list—and they did! So then it was a dedicated scavenger hunt and he got all the other kids involved, too. They had the list with them and crossed them all off!

Then Aden, Owen, and Linda went ziplining! It was unbelievably scorching hot on the pool deck waiting for them. Like I thought my skin might burst into flames. Crazy.

So one very strange thing about the ship today was that it was VERY tilty. I think we had one instance on the Harmony last year where we could actually feel the ship moving and even then it was slight. This ship, which is barely a titch smaller, should have been the same. But today? Water was sloshing in the pool and a few times it felt like you were drunk and you could REALLY feel it moving. And the weather wasn’t bad at all…so no idea what was going on. Again, no pictures or videos. It was just a pain to have my phone out—I didn’t have pockets so I was carrying it in my purse (and if I was at the pool, it was generally in a bag). Oh well, I don’t need photos of everything, right?

Tom hadn’t been feeling well so was spending a bit of time in the room resting. He made it out of his cocoon this afternoon…just in time to go to Windjammer for chili cheese fries! They weren’t easily accessible on the pool deck like they were on the Harmony, but you could get the same thing at the buffet…so we only had them once. SAD FACE. But Owen had them with us! Katie didn’t want to leave the pool so we brought her some buttered noodles (which we had to force her to eat like four bites).

Our friend Greg was in the Belly Flop contest and actually won 2nd place. It was really fun—and kind of made me regret not attending ship events like this on other cruises. But then I realized that it was only that much fun because we knew people who were participating…and I would NOT have been sitting by the pool in the crazy hot sun if it was just us on the cruise.

Then it was off to napkin folding—everyone had fun except Katie who, because she couldn’t do it exactly like they demonstrated, was a hot pouty mess. A few of us even won small prizes in the folding competition (which almost made her more upset)! (Sidenote: by dinner I had forgotten everything I learned but Aden was rocking it!)

After napkin folding came the Katie drama…we were all talking about what we were doing next and the older boys wanted to go off on their own for a bit. Katie wanted to go with them but I wanted her to come back and shower and wash her hair (and Zander was going back to shower, too) but as I was talking to her, she just turned and ran off to catch up to the boys.

WAIT, WHAT?

Linda was standing there and looked at me and said “Did she just walk away from you while you were talking to her?” She sure did. I walked over to the elevator and saw all four of them heading up. I WAS PISSED. I also half wondered why Zander was on the elevator as he was supposed to have been heading to the bathroom…but Linda convinced me he wasn’t in the elevator so I forgot about it.

So we went up the next elevator and quick checked 9 (Aden’s floor), 12 (our floor), and then walked all around 15 (the pool deck) and no kids. I wasn’t worried for her safety or anything as they’d been off on their own lots…but she had blatantly ignored me and ran off so I thought I’d do a cursory look for her and drag her ass home if I found her. We didn’t find them, so it was back to the room where I not-so-elegantly told Tom that I WAS DONE and Katie was his the rest of the night. She came home with Owen about a half hour later—we sent Owen out on his own and she proceeded to get in BIG trouble. She had to stick to us like glue the rest of the night—we didn’t even let her go see a friend across the room at dinner. Damn kids. Making me be a parent and give consequences on my damn vacation.

At dinner two things happened. First, we discovered that our friends had some drama with Zander after we left them. They thought he was going to the bathroom but he wasn’t coming back so they went to check on him and he wasn’t there—he HAD been in the elevator with the other kids! So they didn’t know this (and the in-app texting was laughable so I didn’t get their messages) and I was lost in my own kid drama, so they had ended up starting to file a missing kid report…when (I think, again, it’s been too long now and my memory isn’t great) he walked behind them at Guest Services. KIDS!!!!

The second thing was Mark told us how during the day, one of the crew members had asked if he was crew or guest (I may be misremembering the exact details but that was the gist) so he joked that he should be a waiter. So he actually asked our waiter for his name tag so he could go to our friend’s table as a joke. So this happened:

He grabbed the bread basket off our table, grabbed a huge tray on the way to their table, and then actually STOPPED BY ANOTHER TABLE AND ASKED IF THEY WANTED BREAD and they didn’t even blink and said yes! Ha! Then he went to the friend’s table and got a double take from them. We got a good laugh out of that.

After dinner we let Owen go to Kid’s Adventure with Aden while the rest of us went back to the room (we were all tired, plus Katie was being punished). But then I checked the hours for build-a-bear (“pet at sea”) that Katie wanted for her memento and this was the last night we’d be able to get it (since we’d be at CocoCay the next day) so since I am not a total monster, we took her to do that, even though she was on lockdown.

This was actually something I complained about on the satisfaction survey as well—they were out of the “good” fluff in the machines so they had to stuff the bears with cheap crap (she won’t ever care but I know, plus they didn’t get to fill it from the machine) plus they were out of the birth certificates. Really? You are out of a basic printed product? So you’re telling me your on-board print center that prints THOUSANDS of multi-color and multi-page documents a day can’t make a copy of a single page birth certificate for a $40 bear? REALLY?

I took Tylenol PM to make sure I slept well…but that meant I was falling asleep when Owen still wasn’t home. He had to leave the adventure club by 10 and wasn’t home by 10:15 and Tom wanted to go to bed so he had to go out and find him. Three last thing I remember is them walking in the door but I don’t remember Tom getting into bed!