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Over The Water And Back Again--A Transatlantic Trip

By Snookums, edited by Filbert, photos by Filbert

Part 1 -- below (or at the "read more").

April 27 (Sunday, Day 1, Leaving Galveston, TX)

Departure day! The SuperShuttle van to take us to the airport arrived at 5:15 AM for our 5:45 AM departure. He patiently waited outside for us until we were ready, but at least we knew that we would make our flight on time--and we did.

Southwest Airlines departing KCI

We flew to Houston via Dallas and landed in Houston on time. Soon thereafter we boarded our bus for Galveston. We pulled up to the ship and had to wait about 45 minutes on the bus until it could get closer. The amazing thing was that we were told that as long as our luggage had our cruise tags on it, we could just get off the bus and go in the cruise terminal to go through the process of boarding the ship. That meant that we didn’t have to tip the porters at all! (Good for us, not so good for the porters. Sorry about that, guys—ed.) We booked the bus trip on our own, not through Royal Caribbean, so we were certainly expecting to tip the porters. We got to go in the “VIP” line for suite guests (not that we're uppity about things like that—all right, maybe a little—ed.) and it didn’t take more than 10 minutes or so to go through security and to get our room keys and stuff.

The Gibraltar Suite--our transatlantic home

We got to our suite around 2 PM and Filbert took a bunch of pictures of our Owner’s Suite (aka Gibraltar Suite) while Snookums was not-so-patiently waiting to go eat since she was “starving.” We had booked a Grand Suite but got upgraded to an Owner’s Suite because we booked this cruise more than one year ago. The Owner’s Suite (and there are only 10 of them on this ship that holds 3,700 passengers and the only other better cabin is the one penthouse suite) is 618 square feet with a 131 square foot balcony so it’s not too shabby at all. The suite has a 42” flat screen television that swivels completely around so that we can see it from the living area or the bed. This cruise was basically fully booked, having only eight empty cabins.

We noticed right away that the suite did not have any pens in it and only had one sheet of personalized stationery and three sheets of plain stationery. Ship postcards could be purchased for $0.50 each at the Logo store, so Snookums was a bit miffed. There was one complimentary bottle of Evian water but all future ones cost. A fruit basket was delivered but the bananas are already brown. Anyway, this really wasn’t Regent or Holland America or Celebrity and almost seemed down at the level of (shudder) Carnival. We resolved to survive somehow, as tough as it would be. (Famous last words—ed.)

Pictures of our suite:

We went to the buffet for lunch and found more evidence that this wasn’t Regent or Holland America. The food was fine, but nothing to write home about. Then we explored the ship prior to the lifeboat drill at 4:15 PM. The ship has a rock climbing wall, an ice skating rink, an inline skating rink, a mini golf course and a bunch of other stuff, too. Luckily it didn’t appear to have many kids onboard!

Since we were in a suite we were entitled to the concierge lounge and free cocktails from 4:30 – 8:00 PM every day. We showed up at 5:00 and it was a disaster. There were 3 bartenders for what seemed like 150 people standing at the bar. The concierge did confirm that he usually had about 150 eligible people on board but this cruise had about 450 cruisers with concierge lounge privileges. He explained that certain levels of past passengers were eligible to use the lounge, and that this cruise had a lot of them on board. He promised that it would be better the next day. In the meantime, Snookums acquired 5 cans of Diet Coke for the room. (They usually cost $2.01 each and we are NOT going to buy any, harrumph.)

Atrium of Voyager of the Seas

Rain showers on departure day

Entree menu on sailaway night

Our dinner table mates were very nice—Sandy and Anja, two ladies from Denmark who both spoke excellent English, Alain and Carole, a couple from Montreal and therefore French speaking but with passable English, and Len, a divorced man from London. We had a nice dinner with our new friends, then headed straight back to our cabin to bed.

April 28 (Monday, Day 2, At sea)

We slept in. Although our goal was to work out every morning before eating anything, we decided to skip that this morning. We called room service for coffee (for Filbert) and a fruit plate (for Snookums) and lounged around the suite. The room service was delivered after one hour and forty minutes and then the coffeepot was empty! Snookums called them back and read them the riot act. More coffee was delivered in about 20 minutes but by then we decided it was time for lunch since it was 1:30 (after the time change – keep reading).

On this sailing Royal Caribbean was trying something new—at least new for us—changing the ship's time at NOON. So, for six of our days at sea we would lose an hour at noon. Filbert noticed that a spa seminar was scheduled to start at 11:45 AM and then another one at 1:00 PM so Snookums called to find out where these two spa seminars would be held. After a little bit the man on the phone said that they would be in different parts of the spa. We didn’t see how that was possible since there was only one room and just figured that they forgot about the time change at noon thing. Oh well, we weren't interested in the seminars anyway, but wanted to point out their error to them.

When we returned to our room there were chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us from the room service manager in apology for the error this morning. We thought that was nice since after talking to the supervisor on the phone, we were convinced that nothing would happen.

Filbert spent a lot of time today on the balcony which is well shaded from the sun and rain and wind while Snookums used the French chaise near the huge picture window to read her book. Filbert isn’t too happy about the sight lines on this ship since there is no observation lounge at the front of the ship that you can sit in and look at the ocean and waves.

Tonight is formal night and around 5PM Snookums asked Filbert if he would mind not going. Of course he was very happy to not have to put on his tuxedo so we ordered room service. Once again room service screwed up—delivering roast duck rather than the sea bass. So, we are two for two in wrong room service orders. Snookums started getting that special gleam in her eye, salivating over the coming meeting with the customer service manager.