I Belize in MAGIC! MITSUGIRLY revisits the Western Route. My Novel.
Day 3: Sea Day
DAY 2 on the ship: SEA DAY NOVEMBER 12
I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 9:30am. THIS is NOT what I consider sleeping in. What is wrong with me. I guess I couldn't wait to get started on my day of no plans.
It was 80 degrees outside and sunny and the ship was in calm water now. No more rocking and I noticed everyone's faces had returned to their normal color.
I ran into our butleress and told her about the shower and she said I was in luck that maintenance was right across the hall. I told her no worries, any time today would work because the rest of my family was still sleeping. Two seconds later: knock knock...it was maintenance. "Um ok, my family is still slee......" "Alrighty then, yes, I see you are already in. Ok then, I guess you are fixing this right now then"
I would hear others say they had an issue with the shower draining on the cruise as well. So, we were not the only ones and my daughter said her room had the same problem and she was going to have to call them to fix hers too.
They did something real quick and the smell of sewage immersed the room with it's aroma and then they were gone. I immediately started trying to justify the smell to the hubby and informing him that it was not me and not last nights dinner that came out.
There is one thing I wanted to mention about the water...it smelled like a musty something or other the entire cruise. I also noticed it in other places like the restroom and even pool. I'm not sure what is going on.
Since it was a sea day, I wanted to eat breakfast in the MDR and have Seaday Brunch. In the past, once I discovered this, we would go because I always enjoyed getting the huevos rancheros meal. However, the last time I had it, it just didn't taste good to me. Therefore, I decided that I would try something else this time around. We headed to the MDR at 10:15am.
We do not speak to the hubby until this happens and the red glow in his eyes are reduced to a nice shade of green.
They came around with the goodie basket and Sakari discovered this....
After this day, she was hooked on the cinnamon rolls and had to have them every day.
I would get hooked on these (below) and have to have them every day. I do not know what they are called. At one point during the cruise, I asked one of the workers in the buffet what the name of them was and his reply was "pastry". Well, I know this...but what type? "Breakfast pastry". LOL Got it! Breakfast pastry---> making note for future reference. I also elected to get a croissant but there was no butter on the table. I can't eat it without butter. I would later have to ask for some and like magic, it appeared within 2 seconds. These guys are amazing.
My breakfast arrived and I couldn't wait to dig in.
The hubbys meal...he's watching his figure! (Actually he's not a breakfast morning type of person and can't really eat when he first gets up so he usually tries to just get a little something to please me and he knows 2 hours from now those famous "well, you shoudda ate breakfast" words would be coming out of my mouth when he was ready to eat and I was still full).The hubbys meal...he's watching his figure! (Actually he's not a breakfast morning type of person and can't really eat when he first gets up so he usually tries to just get a little something to please me and he knows 2 hours from now those famous "well, you shoudda ate breakfast" words would be coming out of my mouth when he was ready to eat and I was still full).
Sakari's breakfast
Now let's talk about my grits. I'm from (well born there at least) Birmingham Alabama. I was raised on grits. I love cheese and could add cheese to every single thing I eat if possible. So this discovery of cheesy grits a few cruises back was a delight. However....I scooped a bite of these grits with my fork and put it in my mouth and went to savor the flavor and swirl it around in my mouth and....there was nothing. Nada, Ziltch, zero. Wait, what just happened? I tried again...but this time I watched. It was SOUP! Like no staying on a fork or anything. Yucky. I attempted to peel off the cheesy part on the top in hopes that some of the grits were stuck to it. It didn't work out that way.
When our waiter returned he said "you no like grits?" I told about the consistency and right away he ran to get more. Ahhh, now that's grits!!!
These guys work really hard to please you. They really do. I'm not a complainer and would have told him "it's ok, nevermind" but he zoomed off to quick for the words to come out of my mouth.
Sakari absolutely LOVES cottage cheese. So, when she found a fruit plate that had cottage cheese listed with it, she knew that's what she wanted for "desert".
When it arrived...oh my. Here comes that shocked face again.
She removed the strawberries, took out her spoon, ran it from one end of the cottage cheese to the other and had 1 scoop of it on her spoon. Yum, that was it. It was done and over instantly.
The girls giving birthday hugs.
It was officially pool time! We headed back to our room to change into our bathing suits and Sakari decided to leave the room steward one of our friendship rocks.
Off to the water park we went and met up with Kendra and family.
Sakari headed for the water slides and she's up there in the crowd about midway.
Meanwhile...the hubby was chilling and digesting his belly while using social media to show everyone what he was doing on his birthday.
Brayden enjoying the ......what does Carnival call this? NCL we always call it the toilet bowl...but they actually swirl around and then you drop down the middle and out below. Carnival you just swirl around and stop then have to walk down the steps in the middle.
Kam participated in spraying everyone as they went down the water slides...as long as she wasn't getting sprayed she was good.
Right when it was time for mommy to come down the tube and Kam spray her...these 2 girls showed up, tapped Kam on the shoulder and said to come play with them. They held hands and danced around and Kam completely missed mommy coming down the slide and I had to take over the job of spraying them.
Kendra and B
Kendra
Sakari
Kim
Kam got caught under the water bucket dumping once and you would have thought someone was killing her. I will have this child liking water by the end of the cruise!
Sakari trying to get Kam to go down the baby water slides. She wasn't having it. I told her to come with mamaw. I sat down, went to put her with me and an employee yelled at me and said no! He said "no adults". Really? Is it that big of a deal? Since when? We have been on tons of cruises and they never had a problem. Then he said "one time, just you, one time only...just you". Um, I'm only sitting here to try to get my granddaughter to go down the water slide. I'm not sitting here because I want to go down it. Really? He kept saying "go...one time". I told him, if my granddaughter is not going, neither am I. I really don't know what the big deal was. I actually watched him allow 2 grown men (and I'm going to use the word "hefty" here to be extremely nice) go down racing each other later in the cruise. They went so fast that their bottoms slammed into the end of the slide and there wasn't any water left in the slide when they were done. What's the difference I ask???
I absolutely love how colorful this area is. It's very inviting and fun looking.
The one thing I found weird about this area is there wasn't a bathroom close by. We discovered this once when both Kendra & I had to go to the bathroom and went inside and down the hall and ended up in the spa. Well, I wasn't about to walk all the way back so we just went in the bathrooms/shower area there and then back out. For a waterpark to not have a restroom close by when there's tons of kids in this area is just crazy planning.
I caught the girls dancing to the music down below...I guess Kendra was the official dance instructor.
Around 2:30pm, we decided that we would like to try out the ropes course and head to the other side of the "fun" area.
We headed back to the room to get dry clothes on and grab our tennis shoes and found that we had a towel ?animal? or...flower already sitting on our bed...in the middle of the day. Weird.
Daddy decided that he would stay down below and take pictures of us girls on the ropes.
As we were standing in line, Sakari spotted this....a friendship rock....and it wasn't hers!! Oh the excitement!
I posted it to our roll call and it was one of the ladies on there that had left it on the ship.
Kendra and Sakari on the ropes
We had a lot of fun. It wasn't very crowded either. We could actually continue to go around and around as much as we wanted.
I remember seeing the ropes course on the Carnival ship for the first time (online) and thought how much fun that would be. It was shortly after that, NCL put in their ropes course, ziplining and plank over the water. I did NCL's ropes course (several ships) before getting on a Carnival ship that had one and after doing NCL's, I have to say Carnival's isn't much. It's so small, just a square and doesn't take long to complete. NCL's is MAJOR! Like goes so many different directions, all over the place. It's crazy. But, this one is still good for a little fun and I'm not complaining.
They also have putt putt in this area below. Sakari would decide to leave one of her friendship rocks here.
It was her painted dot whale tail rock
We did a little putt putt and Kam cheated most of the game "Go Kam!" We cheered her on and she was excited.
I noticed the girls were playing some foosball....I just had to join in and help Sakari show Kendra who's boss.
I was getting a little hungry. It had been awhile since we had breakfast. The hot dog stand was open and I headed over there for a hot dog. Only they didn't have any hot dogs and my only choice was a sausage. I only took a few bites because it wasn't that good and the outside skin was really tough and I could barely chew it.
Sakari left another rock (dolphin) at the hotdog stand after they closed.
After not eating my sausage, I looked around for the kids and heard someone yell for me. They were back on the ropes course again.
I would take videos of Kendra trying to walk the "beam" and post it on my social media with the caption "I can't believe she was a gymnast once" or something along those lines...only for her gymnastic coach to come back with "I thought I taught her better than that". LOL
Then came a game of bean bag toss.
Brayden had made a couple friends and was playing pool.
A little bit of gym time.
I will admit, Sakari is better at getting the bean bags in the hole than Kendra.
This girl is constantly biting her fingernails...like constantly.
B had disappeared and when I ask Kendra where he was, she said he had went with his friends to go play basketball. B is a lot bigger than Sakari and appears older, but I still get worried at how he has pretty much done things on his own for several years now. I'm just a worry-wart. But they are growing up. This would be the first cruise I allowed Sakari out of my site and trust her with going places on her own (I would secretly watch her for the most part). She's very responsible, so I'm not too worried about her...it's people around her that I worry about.
When we were done playing all the games at the Sports Square (it was so hot and humid) we decided to go back to the basketball court to check on B. Only we didn't see him of course. I instantly said "see, you shouldn't have let him run off like that because you know he's not going to be where he said he was going to be". Then about 20 seconds later, here he come from around the corner. He was getting a drink of water outside of the basketball court and still there. Oops. My bad. Ok, maybe he was good this time.
I was tired of being in the heat and decided it was time to take Sakari to the kids club for awhile.
Along the way, she placed another friendship rock. It was one of her favorites...A wolf on the hill howling at the moon.
She would also put out her bird.
And another upstairs on the way to the kids club.
When we arrived, they said it was "family game time" and we could not drop her off but were welcome to stay with her and play. It has a/c so I'm game for just about anything at this point with air.
We pulled out a game of connect. Only when we opened the box, one of the legs was missing and there were only 5 game pieces.
We decided to play twister, but the spinner board was broke and they had rigged it with a rubber band trying to hold the spinner on. You had to hold the board, pull the rubber band down below and hold it tight and then try to keep it loose enough for the hand to spin. This got old really quick and I gave up.
We pulled out a game of trouble. I knew the dice had to be there as long as the bubble was. Well it was there, but there were only 2 yellow game pieces, 1 blue game piece and 3 red pieces.
What is the deal here? Do these kids have anything to play? I was getting frustrated.
Then we pulled out the Jenga...whew...all there to my knowledge. It was a fun game. We had a lot of laughs. Sakari's pretty good at this game....but so was I. hehehehehe
By the time we were able to actually find a game 1) with all the pieces 2) that worked & 3) that we liked...they started saying it was time to clean up and leave.
We finished our game anyhow and was the last to leave. Sakari lost that game.
It was 6pm and that meant that Sakari could officially go to dinner with the kids. We headed down to the buffet and checked her in for dinner. She left a rock along the way: "Calm", which is what I was about to be after offing these children.
Kendra brought Kam and B. Prior to the cruise she hyped up the kids club and said it was school to Kam. Kam has been begging to go to school for awhile now. We didn't know how she would react to this kids club. But she managed to go and sat in the chair with "sissy" (Sakari). Kendra darted out of her sight super fast.
We watched from a distance and when they put food in front of her, she looked at them really weird and pushed it away in disgust. I don't remember what they had on the plate but Kendra informed me that Kam usually only likes chicken nuggets. Well, I'm not sure how she is supposed to survive this entire cruise then.
It was time for adult things and that meant the casino for us. Heidi was treating me pretty well tonight.
We were killing time until the comedy show at 7:30pm and then headed off to see the show
The guy was funny and we love to laugh so I always love to go see these shows.
After the show, we raced to the theater to catch the "88" show. The seats were full and we were forced to sit all the way at the top and all the way at the end close to the wall by the stage above. I couldn't see anything...like anything unless they were at the tip of the stage toward the audience. It got annoying not knowing what was going on. What I did see, I really didn't care for. I really don't care for these singing and dancing shows honestly. I've seen a few good ones and then mostly terrible ones. Just my honest opinion is Carnival's entertainment does not compare to NCL's line up. It just don't. So, we would decide not to go to any more of the song and dance shows the rest of the cruise. We ended up leaving that night. It made no sense to stay and not be able to see and not enjoy it.
We headed to the buffet for dinner. I guess you could say this was our lunch and dinner combined since we hadn't had lunch (unless you call 2 bites of a sausage lunch). Us adults wanted to enjoy it in peace.
They had some noodles (Carbonara) that were really really good! They serve these noodles at one of the Italian Specialty restaurants on NCL and it's what I always get. Yummy!
The one thing I hate is the hours of the buffet on Carnival. It just makes no sense. The kids club closes at 10pm. The buffet usually closes at 9:30pm. You are forced to feed the kids either pizza or something from the deli...or they live on ice cream all week, which they would have no complaints about.
We decided to go up and get the kids early just to make sure they got to eat. We wasn't sure if their 6pm dinner with the kids club would carry them over until breakfast the next day (or if they even ate any of it).
At 9:45pm, they actually still had the buffet open, but was closing. The kids would not starve tonight!
And I would help myself to dessert now and have some bread pudding.
Sakari would leave another rock on the table and we would head back to the room to pack for our first day in port tomorrow.
When we arrived in the room...they had taken our towel "animal/flower". Boo!
We headed to bed at 11:30pm. Zzzzz