Didn't help the mood any to find these delivered to our cabin this morning:
We didn't need these luggage tags though as we'd put in for Luggage Valet. I'd noticed that the charge for both the valet program and our cabana had been posted to our account by yesterday evening. That's one downside to Carnival's private island cabanas; you have to pay now if you reserve pre-cruise. Dad was a little concerned though that our luggage valet tickets hadn't been delivered yet.
Off to our final Coastal Kitchen breakfast as we knew it would be an early start on debarkation morning.
The suite lounge itself is open 24/7 but the two concierges had certain hours of availability. Since we had our genie, the only interaction with Claudine and Federico was to turn in our luggage valet form. We did see them happily helping several other cruisers so definitely take advantage of them if you're sailing Sky Class.
You've seen the Red Hat ladies strutting their stuff? Well it seems we had the new Black Scooter crew dining in Coastal Kitchen this morning:
It seemed even the crew was in a "why bother" mood as our breakfast service seemed lacking. I ordered hot chocolate and was brought this. To stir or not to stir, apparently that is a question:
On every cruise I like to try the Eggs Benedict at least once. That's not a close up picture for detail. That's all that was on my large plate. One of two burnt English Muffins covered up in sauce and a single lonely hash brown. Not even a little dish of ketchup for my lonely hash brown to drown his sorrows in.
After our usual morning trivia, we had plenty of time to kill so we set off on a mission to experience and explore every area of the ship that we'd had yet to see. First up, finally making it out onto the "secret deck" all the way forward on deck 14 where you can walk out over the bridge wings.
These telescopes on each wing take some finesse to get to where you can see anything through them.
The solarium looks out other this deck:
And it wraps around to the other side of the bow:
  
Next up is the Vitality Spa and the Vitality Café. The food here (of the supposedly healthier variety) is free but the bottled and freshly made drinks are an extra cost. The sign states that all the smoothie and juice drinks you get here are included in the Deluxe and Refreshment packages but I've heard if you order one with protein powder, it's above the max cost the package covers so you pay the difference. The bottles of Vitamin Water and Powerade run about $4 each if you don't have the package. Knowing that the spa café had my Vitamin Water, I was a little surprised when Smitha told us pre-cruise that she could only "try" to get it for the cabin. I would have tried one of the smoothie blends but the "why bother" mentality had spread and all the crew behind the counter literally walked away as I approached.
  
These food options are not only low calorie in substance but also in the letters on the labels.
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The earlier rain had forced not only many cruisers inside to resort to last minute shopping on the Promenade but wedged into a corner was the carnival treats being handed out as part of "The Big Oasis Thank You and Farewell Celebration." Fighting one's way through a crowd lined up for sales butted up against a crowd lined up for candy apples meant taking your life into your own hands. Who needs Black Friday craziness when you've got last day Oasis promenade chaos?
 
And of course every cruiser knows this sight - last day at Guest Services line!
 
Our next stop was to ride the Rising Tide Bar - or not:
 
It seems the next departure time was a quarter to never!
With the Rising Tide Bar a bust, we moved on to our other bar themed quest. We each wanted to try one of the dessert flavored martinis from the Champagne Bar. It was a good thing no one was overindulging here today as the preteen/teen left to amuse her younger siblings by spinning them in circles at the entrance while all the adults in their group sat and drank would have made for quite the thrill ride on the way out of the bar.
I had tried a chocolate martini on a previous cruise and hated it because it tasted like they dumped the entire bottle of Hershey's Syrup into a glass. Dad wanted to try one here and ended up loving it. He said he couldn't really taste the alcohol and sent it down like a kid drinking the milk remnants out of their cereal bowl. Then again, he is the chocoholic in the family. His Chocolate Martini was one of the 3 "dessert" drinks that stayed under the $13 max. My Strawberry Cheesecake Martini was priced at $15 and the bartender insisted that as the one to drink it, my card had to be the one he scanned for it. I guess that makes sense if you don't both have the package or you don't both have the same charge account but it obviously didn't matter in our case. With the gratuity on the difference, my martini cost $2.36. Not bad when that's the only charge on your bar tab from the whole cruise! I didn't much like my martini. I expected it to be creamy like cheesecake and the crunchy graham cracker coated rim against the liquid drink didn't mesh well for me.
   
Took a break from exploring to attend our final Progressive Trivia session with the famous Pick Something team. Somewhere along the way though with Andrea's accent we became announced as the Pickle Something team. And yes, all our minds went straight into the gutter so I started titling our answer sheets as the "Pick(le) Something" team. Once the last session's score was tallied, Andrea announced our team in a group of teams that earned a tie for fourth place. Amid our confused faces at our routine place around the piano in front of her, she checked her list and changed her announcement to proclaim our team actually earned third place. Alas, only 1st place got any prizes and whereas on Grandeur the first place winners got a backpack full of one of every prize they had, here the winners got a certificate and a ball cap. Andrea had them all don the hats so a group picture could be taken.
An hour to kill until an afternoon session of General Knowledge Trivia sent us to the Boardwalk for a quick lunch. We'd debated over trying Giovanni's for the lunch lasagna but with only an hour we didn't think there was enough time for a sit down meal. Instead it was off to our other eatery yet to try, the Boardwalk Dog House. We both went traditional with the Coney Island hot dogs and water from the dispenser at the counter. They do have a cooler there if you want sodas or beers.
The rain had come back soaking the boardwalk so we joined the masses huddling under the covered portion to eat our hot dogs. Those who'd chosen to dine at Johnny Rockets this afternoon had to eat one handed:
A quick browse of the shops found a small assortment of bulk self serve candy and general cruise themed merchandise. I was tempted to pick up some candy while here but my visit coincided with a large family of multiple kids all standing in front of the candy bins screaming their preferences while their Dad ran around trying to placate the whims of his baby birds.
One unique item that would be fun to collect from each cruise line. There was also tons of puzzles and coloring items that might have entertained little ones on a rainy day other than sugaring them up. I'm an adult and I still bring a tablet with e-books and games along with decks of cards for downtime.
Here's how cruise obsessed I am. I saw these cups and thought how funny it was that an RCL ship was selling something with Princess on it:
Then I end up seeing these same cups in the store on another cruise line.
We stopped back at the cabin for a pit stop and discovered that Smitha had sent us a Loop message when we weren't in our cabin when she stopped by. I did have my phone on me the whole day but without an alert, I don't know if there's a message until I check. She wanted to know when we'd be available before 4PM to meet and it was now around 2:30PM. We sent her a reply saying that we had plans at 3:30 but would be at the cabin until then. Honestly we probably would have turned right around and left again if I hadn't seen her message. She soon arrived at our cabin with our luggage valet paperwork and assured us that the mistaken popcorn charge and our luggage valet charge had been reversed. I had read that genies will meet with you the last day to go over your account and take care of any erroneous charges but to me that seemed like a waste of time. We had already communicated about the popcorn charge via Loop and she could have left our luggage valet info in our cabin. There were several times during the cruise when she'd have stopped by the cabin or called and found us not there and it seemed to irritate her like we were somehow children that didn't listen about staying put in our cabin. With a variety of types of families that stay in Star Class suites, shouldn't they be used to their cruisers not spending all day in their cabin just sitting around waiting for our dinner and show reservation times? She asked about our plan for dinner tonight and promised to check in then.
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