MITSUGIRLYS JEWEL OF A CRUISE review and pictorial
Day 7: Sea Day
So here we are...our last sea day and I'm so sad.
Sakari wanted a picture with all of her towel animals...and Trixie of course.
I didn't set the wake up call today and we were up by 9:30 and off to the buffet we went. Today was extremely annoying, not just because of the crowd still, but there was even less cereal to chose from for the munchkin (thank goodness there was still pancakes and eggs as a back up) and we couldn't locate ANY milk. I tell ya, this cruise they were really unprepared for the amount of passengers!
We dropped Sakari off at the kids club for a little while and after this I honestly can not remember what we did to kill our time until we had to pick her up about a hour later when they closed. It's all a blur now. They said they were having the "circus practice" and to make sure they were there. When we picked her up, she said they didn't do anything related to the show. But, she was excited that today was finally the day that she got to get up on stage and perform for everyone. She's such a ham.
Once we picked her up, we decided to head to the Blue Lagoon for some lunch. The service wasn't as bad this time around.
I ordered potato skins and they were yummy. (If you haven't noticed, almost all of my pictures of MY plate, I have already dug into the food. I completely forget each time to take a picture when if first comes out. I have almost always done this. When I'm hungry, I'm hungry...if you haven't noticed yet. Well this would be no exception.)
Sakari ordered her favorite cheeseburger and fries.
Wait....what kind of fries were these? They were really thin and I had to try them. Um, ok. Not the greatest and not their normal fries. I LOVE THEIR FRIES...and this was not cutting it. When the waiter came by, I ask about the fries and he told me "These are our special homemade fries. It's what we make up here." I didn't disagree, but knew this wasn't the truth because Sakari had fries several times up there on the cruise and they were always the yummy fries like in the buffet or MDR. We noticed also that day that they served these fries in the buffet later that day. Is it possible they had run out of fries too and were now forced to make their own??
Hubby had a tuna sandwich along with the non-yummy fries.
My wings came out and they were slathered in sauce. I don't remember the last time I had them having this much sauce. I'm not a real bbq sauce type of girl and it was a little too much for me. Not only were they cooked with the sauce, but they had poured some over them on the plate as well. I know the picture don't look slathered in sauce, but it was just too much for me or maybe I was just having a non-sauce type of mood day. But if you look closely, you'll see where they poured some sauce on the tops of them. Look CLOSELY. LOL
Now here's another time that I probably could have fit in with the White family...but it is what it is. I had to take my napkin and roll my wings up in them to remove most of the sauce. I ended up with several red napkins that looked like a murder scene had been cleaned up. When the waiter walked by once and glanced over, I proceeded to try to cover up the murder evidence by rolling them up in a ball with the cleanest side possible facing the "viewing" part of the towel laying on the table. How embarrassing. I know once we left he probably wondered what had happened and started looking for bodies. Thank goodness I was never called down to the naughty room after this episode.
We headed back to the balcony and watched tons of more flying fish. It would be the only thing we were able to see (animal related) from our balcony this cruise. I was a little disappointed. I did find myself spending a little more time than normal in my room this cruise just because I felt the need to since we had upgraded to this room. Otherwise, I would have been out and about joining the crowd and activities.
Our room was a complete mess at this point. I know the room steward probably walked in to our room each day with disgust on his face and wondered if this is how we live at home. Well, I'm on vacation and I try my best to stack the dirty clothes in a pile or somewhere out of the way. I usually bring this HUGE Glad ziplock bag, that is actually probably bigger than Sakari, on each cruise for our dirty clothes. I would discover the first day that I had forgotten it along with a few other items. There's always something to be left behind. I guess I'll just have to keep trying and cruise more so someday I'll get it right. This time around, we tried to stack our dirty clothes in the closet, but before long, we were running out of room and they kept falling out of the door.
Anyhow, I proceeded to start to pack our clothes away and wiping away the tears as I did so. I didn't want to leave. I promise I won't complain about the fries or the crowds in the buffet, or the diminishing cereal or milk or even the long wait in the MDR's....just PLEASE let me stay...at least for another week. PLEASE! I'll be good. I swear.
So almost everything was packed up and ready for our sad day tomorrow. It was time to take Sakari back to the kids club to "practice" for the Circus show, so off we went. Once again, it's a blur on what we did to kill time before the show. I'm pretty sure we walked around the ship taking pictures. I drug my poor husband everywhere and still didn't hit all the areas I should have. I almost felt sorry for him...well ALMOST, and then I remembered the waiting he made me do while in Jamaica and I decided to go ahead full speed with the picture tour I was doing!
It was now 3:30pm and we headed back to the theater to find seats for the Circus show. There was hardly anyone there. Weird. We sat in the 3rd row so that she would be able to see us this time around. (Last time on the Star, she was so sad because it was packed and she couldn't find us for the longest time.)
In they came...a few minutes late of course.
She spotted us immediately.
The show began and SIN was the Circus master.
The tigers piled on the stage
For some reason I noticed immediately that Sakari didn't have any tiger ears. They must have ran out of those as well....geesh. (There were several other children that didn't have them too).
But she was equipped with a tail... She was proud to be on stage performing and you could tell it.
YIKES!! She roared at us and it scared me.
In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion (or tigers) sleep tonight...
I'm pretty sure that tigers don't like their tails to be pulled on and some of the tigers on stage confirmed it.
After the show, she continued to practice her roar. I guess it was a roaring good night for her.
We picked Sakari up from the kids club and decided to go have a bite to eat and beg for some ice cream from the ice cream police. I will add THERE ARE NOT SPRINKLES OR TOPPING NOW!! Big disappointment.
Then we headed back to the room and found our VIP plate:
We decided to get ready for the Nick Dance Party in the Spinnaker. Sakari and I decided we wanted to dress up. Daddy did not. LOL We were the "odd" couple tonight.
But...not as odd as the "matching family". The night we went to listen to the comedian, he told jokes about the guy who was force to wear the exact same matching outfit as the wife and child all cruise long. Yes, everyone in the audience knew EXACTLY who he was referring to. Whatever she had on, the daughter had a matching dress and the husband had the shirt to match (always some type of loud Hawaiian print). I guess the matching family didn't attend the comedy show or either they did and didn't get the hint because they continued to match each other the rest of the cruise.
Sakari all dressed up...with her tiger face still. It didn't look right but I wasn't about to tell her she had to wash it off so quickly. I knew that she would give the pouty face if I did.
Now I'm showing you the next picture, not because I know you can't get enough of my little tiger, but to show you what the bed looked like...even made (it was much worse not made). As you can see, the mattresses dip really bad and of course there was a hump in the middle. Yes, they had plenty of padding on the bed, but nothing helped. I have always had THE MOST COMFORTABLE BEDS on all of my NCL cruises and this was the WORSE EVER. I think it's time they replaced them! I do know that I was not the only one complaining about the beds. Other people I ran into had the same issue. It did not make for a good nights rest and was hard to fall asleep in.
Off to the 6pm Nicktoons dance party. We had no idea what to expect, but we figured it would be something like Dora's dance party in the Fyzz lounge. (At Dora's dance party, they put up cones down the middle of the dance floor and the characters stayed on one side to dance and the kids on the other side for most of the time).
This party was different. Here comes the characters....Let's get this party started. Check out what Patrick does to the kids standing in the chair in the booth. LOL
VIDEO:
Now the following characters, I had no clue who they were and my sons girlfriend had to tell me their names. LOL Sakari didn't have a clue either.
Wanda from Fairy Odd Parents, Cosmo and Aang from Avatar
Now notice how Sakari isn't really "close" to these guys. She's either standing within distance or looking like she's ready to dart and run. She was just unsure about this.
It's really weird. All week long she was going to all of the meet & greets, having pictures taken with them, even on the first day when we ran into them going out to the pool deck.
Tonight was different. She had the deer in the headlights look on her face and she wouldn't move from our seats for the longest time. I have no clue what was going on. All the kids were out there dancing with them on the floor and having a great time. We kept telling her to get out there and she would not.
I had to grab her hand and go out there with her to even get her to budge. Completely unlike her and her personality.
She felt better once she found Spongebob.
Then Patrick came along and the world was normal again. He's such a funny one to watch. I <3 Patrick.
Back pack was along for the ride...
Even though we had to stay out on the dance floor with her in order for her to stay out there, we all had a great time. One of the best Nick days.
I even think daddy was enjoying himself...but he always dances with Sakari.
This picture is a little blurry because Sakari was moving around like she had ants in her pants at this point, but the look of happiness she gave her daddy in this picture was priceless.
What is the hubby staring at? Could it be a bird? Is it a plane? Is he reflecting on the week gone by? Is he trying to think of a way to come home and surprise me with another cruise?
No to all of the above. Patrick was being goofy and jumping around and he ended up in the middle of the floor right under the "disco ball" and jumped a little and knocked himself and the ball silly. It was pretty hilarious. He's such a goof.
They continued to dance...then check out Patrick again
VIDEO
The dance party was over...but I don't think daddy wanted it to end.
Truth be known, I didn't want it to end either...but the characters were all gone. We hung around for awhile and let the kids dance. Sakari met up with her "Star" friend and had a blast.
When the show was over, Sakari headed to the kids club for 1 last goodbye to all her friends and we headed to the casino with all of our winning slot tickets. We knew we had to cash them in tonight...or forever hold our peace.
Then it was time to go to the Farewell party. Now this was the party that was like the Cirque show when we were on the Star. I really had clue what is was going to be like since we had already seen it the other night.
It ended up being pretty much a singing show. It was ok. The singers were fabulous, but it just wasn't what I was expecting of course. I was hoping for some type of repeat from the night before. :D They had crew members from around the ship singing songs from days gone by (one singer sure liked Journey songs).
We picked up the kiddo from the munchkin club and we headed up to the buffet to see what type of evening snack we could indulge ourselves with as one last attempt to gain a few more pounds to return home with proof that we had a good time.
OH MY GOSH!!! I had COMPLETELY forgot about my favorite thing ever....the crepes! How could I have forgot about this??? I never did notice the crepe station prior to this. DARNIT!
Well tonight, I was gonna get my crepe on!
All the toppings (I swear the amount of toppings seem to diminish with each cruise)
Making my crepe (yea people thought I was a creep taking pictures of my crepe).
Final product (can you believe I remembered to take a picture of it prior to digging in??) So take that ice cream police, I didn't need your services tonight!
We headed back to the room to finish packing.
This is Sakari's turtle dog:
I noticed on the way back to the room that people were putting their luggage out already so I finished packing and deciding what we needed to take with us the following day while trying my best to limit my carry on bag (which is actually an over the shoulder bag, so you don't want it to get too heavy to carry).
We had received these....
I finished packing one of our bags and put it outside our door. Finished the other bag within about 1 minute and put it outside the door...wait, where was our other bag? They scooped it right up and took it with out a sound...kinda like Santa Claus. I went back in for the next bag and swear it was 30 seconds later when I put it out and ....where's our other bag? There was a ninja worker out there somewhere. Finally our last bag went out....well you know the story from here. GONE! No one in site.
It was time for my shower and time to get ready for bed. After my shower, I started thinking about I should probably check our "balance" on our account and see what the damage was before arriving home and get sticker shock. This will be the FIRST cruise we have ever used a cc for the on board charges. We usually do cash accounts, but decided to use the Amex instead and worry about it when we got home.
Now after deciding I would go down to the customer service, I found that I had no clothes to wear because they were all in the suitcases packed. Wait, I still have my outfit for tomorrow laid out. Whew. I went down and got our balance statement...we didn't do too much damage. Just a little over $900, which is usually what we spend. The lines weren't long at all (maybe 5 people in line with about 5 people working the counter). So that was an added plus. I also confirmed that the cruise rewards certificate had been charged to my account because we never did receive anything for it.
I went back to the room and decided to enjoy 1 last night on my balcony under the stars.
Boy were there a bunch of stars out that night.
However, the weird thing was that there was nothing but fog surrounding ONLY the ship. You could see out across the water for a distance and the fog was only around the ship. I tried and tried to capture this in a picture and it just wasn't working out too well. This was probably the best I managed to get. This is me looking out toward the back of the ship along the side of it and down.
Pretty spooky looking huh?
We made it to bed around 12:30am and it was hard to fall asleep. All I could think about it the wonderful week we had and it was all about to end. The thoughts of coming back to the cold snowy weather just made me sick to my stomach.