DAY 4 BELIZE

Ok, so I'm pulling out my Camp Carnival Welcome Aboard for the 2-5 year olds and I can tell you that even the schedule they have on there is not correct or what they did that day.

First of all, had they given me this when I FIRST went up there after getting on board and they told me to come back after 9pm, I could have read about the Orientation.

Then it says on here that between 8-10pm is "Late Registration & Cell Phone Sign Out". They told me to come back at 9pm...not 8pm. It says the welcome aboard party was at 8-8:45pm at Caliente Club. :(

I just missed it all I tell ya. 

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Now, we went to a show that had the break dancers called Fun Force Break and we were told that they would be working with all of the kids to put on a "show" on the last sea day and all parents were invited. I was real excited about this because on NCL on our last cruise (STAR) they had a circus show and all of the kids from each kids club was in the show. It was amazing and we loved it and Sakari loved it. I mean it was just awesome to see all the hard work they did with the kids that week to prepare for the parents. Sakari was so proud and smiling from ear to ear. Well, I figured this was kinda the same thing but the kids dancing. We were told that they would be practicing all week.

I'll go ahead and finish this story now...they only picked a "few" I guess, because Sakari was there every day and she never once practiced a dance or seen these break dancers according to her. We went a few times to check on her or pick her up and the kids that were in the show were in a different room with the music going and practicing. Hmmm...ok. I was a little disappointed. I didn't go to the show at the end.

More to come on this "Camp Carnival".... 🙄

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We started out the day much earlier than the previous day. Same routine of eating runny eggs and the fight for more bacon. Then up to the pool deck to wait on the slow daughter and her family to arrive.

This was a tender port of course, as everyone knows, and I wasn't looking forward to it. The last time we were here in December we decided to fore go the tendering process and booked Bannister Island with the cruise ship because they picked you right up from the ship and dropped you back off there.

We headed down to get our tender tickets and it wasn't early like I did the last time we had to tender. So, we were tender #7. They had us wait in one of the lounges and the nice thing about this is that we weren't just "waiting" in a room like I have down previously. They had the big screen tv going and it was playing something like Funniest Home Videos. It was hilarious and it passed the time away quickly. Everyone was laughing and having a good time. A+ Carnival for having "some" type of entertainment while you way. That was an awesome choice.

So when they called the next set of tenders, they called about 4 or 5 different tickets...which included us. Yippee. (I think they were on tender 4 when we walked in and I thought it was going to take forever).

We boarded the tender and away we went. They made the normal safety announcements once we started moving and added in their little humor to the mix which was nice. They told us it would be a 20 minute ride over to the port. It was nice out and there wasn't a lot of waves.

We arrived at the port. We had our excursion booked for cavetubing with .bz. We had used them a few cruises back and had a great day. Since Kendra wasn't with us on that cruise, she wanted to try cave tubing out and talked me in to going again. She used her normal excuse of "We have beach days planned for every other port, we need to break it up a little." She doesn't understand I thrive on going to the beach in the Caribbean. I would go there every day if I could. But I gave in. The last time we went my camera battery died before we made it in the water and caves and I had left my other one back at the van. So, I figured this was a good opportunity to get the pictures that I didn't get last time.

We made our way to the exit of the port. You will find my complete review of our second time cave tubing, click the following tab:

So we return to the ship and the usual activities go on. We shower get ready to have a "snack" since we had just ate with the cave tubing place and explore around for awhile. Kendra and her family went back to the room and took a nap. <---you see this pattern? I really wish I would have done the same thing every time after port. Lesson learned I guess because by the last port I was really dragging.

We dropped Sakari off at the "Camp", them inquiring about the phone and I told them that it was dead and we had put it on the charger when we got back from port and was on our way back down to pick it up. They grumbled, they gave us the dirty eye, the moaned, they lectured us about how we HAD to have it to drop off a child in case they needed to get in touch with us. I told them, we were going to the Casino and would remain there until we picked her up, that's where you can find us if needed...but like I just told you, I'm on my way down to my room, which is 2 floors directly down, to get the phone right now. Do you seriously want me to go down there and pick up the phone with Sakari and have to walk back up here to drop her off and show you that the thing is in my hand??? So once again, they ask me for the phone number. I blurted it off and said "Don't you have a record of this? I mean after all, you did sign it out to me and everyone's phone number should be on file right?" Sorry, these people and this darn phone was just on my nerves by then. So they grumbled some more, took her and we headed down to the room to grab the phone and off to the casino we went.

I'm not sure if this was the night (or if it was the night before), but after dropping Sakari off at the kids club, we were walking to the casino, and we seen people sitting at some of the slot machines. We decided, hey why not go ahead and sit at our favorite machines, since they seem to be available for some reason...so we parked in front of our favorite machines and we noticed that they were still not in service. So we waited...and waited...and waited. I think we waited for well over and hour or maybe longer. We had pulled out a long time ago. I'm not sure what they were waiting on. No one seem to know what was going on (the staff) and every time someone ask when they were opening, they didn't know. It was well after 9pm that night and I still have no clue what the hold up was. I know they have to get so far out of port before opening, but have never experienced this type of wait before with NCL and we have done this route multiple times.

So I had found my new game and it treated me well. It's Kossack Kash I believe. It was another game that was similar to my favorite Cave King game (that wasn't treating me well the entire cruise). It had the same "sounds" and bonus rounds and it kept me playing forever. It's also one of those slot machines that is a multi-game machine and you actually have to "find" it on there.

Another game that I over heard a guy say to someone as I was passing by was "Hey try that cow game over there. It is fun and gave me a lot of luck." So when there wasn't anyone looking, I jumped on it. It was called Invaders from the Plant Moolah. Instead of having the normal reel spins, they dropped in from above. Then if you got 3 of a kind, those would be zapped by the cows and they would moo (this was the funniest sounds ever because each time it changed) and it would keep zapping. Once you got 4 zaps, you start going into the bonus round with anywhere from 7 and up spins. Let me tell you what...at first, I thought this is a dumb and old game...but it was addicting. I couldn't get off of it. It wouldn't allow me to loose. I walked out quite the winner that night and every time I thought I would stop playing because I had won, I kept going thinking "now I'm going to loose all of the money I just won"...but I didn't. It just kept stacking. I would continue to play that game (and Kossak) during the rest of the cruise and came out ahead every time. Everyone else that played it did too.

So we went to a show at Encore. It was called dancing in the streets. Everyone had said what lousy shows they had, but once again, I enjoyed it. The dancers were very talented and the props and lighting was amazing. It was definitely something I would expect from a NCL show on any given night. They had 2 live singers within the routines and the girl had an amazing voice. The guy was "ok". We walked out happy that we had went.

Sakari had fallen asleep and it was a VERY long walk back to the room where I found Kendra knocking at the door telling me that Brayden had a fever and was still not doing good. At this point his back was full of huge blisters. Poor little guy. No wonder he was moaning the entire day. I come prepared on cruises with "boo-boo" supplies and medicine. I had some kids Tylenol and she whisk it away to give to him and they all went back to bed.

I packed for our next day trip to Little French Key. Once again, I had myself convinced that this was going to be THE highlight of the ports and I was excited.

For some reason I don't have ANY pictures from this day back on the ship. I'm not sure if there just wasn't anything exciting or it was all something I had already taken pictures of.

So here I'll share a picture of one of the public restrooms.

What is the significance of this you ask? Well, they were all very nice and I noticed that they were all very clean all the time. Another thing that I noticed was they smelled like heaven!!!! I don't know what they had in there, but they smelled so good all the time. A+ Carnival for the smell and cleanliness.

Now on my last cruise on the STAR, we found multiple things in need of repair on the ship. Just minor things, but it was still noticeable. Since I'm a picture freak, I have a trained eye for details and I will notice things other might not notice.

I have to say that the ONLY thing I found wrong in any of the places on the dream was 1 thing in this restroom. It was the strip in one of the bathroom stalls that had fallen over. I have to say again A+ Carnival for keeping your Dream ship very clean and repaired.

Another thing I wanted to point out...when they cleaned the restrooms...INCLUDING OUR ROOM, they always did this:

Just a nice little "added" touch. Did it make a difference to me? Not really, but I thought it was that extra mile they went. I have never seen NCL do anything special like that. I know...it's just toilet paper. But once again A+ Carnival!!!

For those of you that are "menu freaks" (like me), I will take the time to post some of the bar menus here with prices for your planning and viewing pleasure.