Grandeur of the Seas - End of Day 12 (Sea Day) & Disembarkation

So since we were all specialty restaurant -ed out, tonight's dinner was brought to us by the magic number #53, that is the number to room service. Since it was already getting dark (no lights on the balcony?!) and super windy and cold, we opted for an indoor picnic. Sometimes it's nice to just take a moment and eat your dinner while sitting on your cabin floor watching and fantasizing over the replay of other ship's suite cabins and onboard amenities on one of the TV's promotional channels. What? No one else does that?

The one thing we hadn't yet ordered from Grandeur's room service that we did on Oasis was the pizza. This time we ordered pepperoni and cheese and they both came correctly. On Oasis we ordered pepperoni and it came as cheese. Kudos to RCL for including whole pizzas on their room service menu for free (aside of the room service delivery cost). Princess charges extra for the pizzas specifically but nothing else. I also ordered a burger just to try it. This was the first time anyone at room service bothered to ask how many people were eating to confirm how much silverware to send. I recalled after hanging up that they neglected to ask how I wanted my burger cooked. On the plus side, the food came just under 30 minutes later. Not sure why they were less busy at dinnertime on a sea day than they were at lunchtime on a port day.

This is what they call The Royal Burger - it was also nice to see that they always included condiments. My first Celebrity cruise we ordered a room service hot dog and I had to get a very nice crew member cleaning the closed buffet to duck under the ropes and dispense some ketchup for me. Unfortunately, the burger was a little undercooked so I only ate a couple bites.

Someone helped themselves before I could get to the pizza for a picture. I'd say this was comparable to a medium sized pizza at home so depending on how hungry everyone in your family/cabin is, you could easily get one pizza for all. Don't think they'd let you do half pepperoni/half cheese so if your family preferences are as split as Dad made this pizza box, you might as well get one of each.

After dinner we headed over to the theater for the Late Night (10PM) comedy show by Craig Murphy. I liked how the adult shows from these comedians on this trip wasn't just about using curse words and sexual references every other word. We had put our suitcases out in the hallway before heading down and when we came back to the cabin, only one had been taken. I don't know if our cabin was the cutoff for how many luggage pieces each cart could hold or what but it felt weird having our luggage picked up at different times just like it was delivered at different times on day 1. I wanted to get in a quick shower before bed despite the late hour and it reminded me of waking up early on disembarkation morning last Grandeur sailing and finding our cabin bathroom flooded. So when I hopped out of the shower and saw this, I thought history was repeating itself.

In the end, I think it was more remnants of splashed out water from my shower since the showerhead system is at the end of the shower that the floor drain also sits. The sudsy water on the floor never got any bigger and was easily cleaned up. 

By the time we woke up in the morning, our other suitcase had been collected. We packed up our carry on and camera bag and was out of the cabin by around 8AM. This time Carlington had only locked one of the two elevators leading to the concierge lounge so we were able to get upstairs quickly. We could barely step off the elevator before running into the mob of people all standing there waiting for Carlington to send them straight down to the gangway. With no rush to be anywhere, we went over to sit by the windows and wait. Carlington noticed the large group starting to gather and went down in the second elevator with one group so that he could send it back up and keep it locked as well. Everyone swarmed that second elevator when it came back up so we just hung back and waited for the next round. Instead, we watched someone who'd disembarked already get picked up by a stretch limo. Given how these past 12 days had been, I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that that person was a Pinnacle who'd just spent the sailing in the cheapest inside cabin. But I digress...

One of the nice things about being suite passengers (yes and Pinnacle) is that you get priority luggage tags and priority disembarkation which means you get to bypass the line leading into customs and the port employee at the front of the line gives you the next available agent. He compared our faces to our passports, handed them back, and we were on our way to luggage pickup in minutes. We set about searching the suite/pinnacle area for our luggage when I hear a porter yell out our last name from several sections over. I respond and he wheels over my suitcase that either was put in the wrong spot or someone took only to realize it wasn't theirs. We soon found Dad's suitcase in the suite/pinnacle section where both should have been. Thank you to the vigilant mystery porter who recognized the priority tag and returned it! This is the first time we've ever had an issue with luggage not being where it belonged so I hope it's not the start of a new trend.

We hopped into the first taxi in line when we came out of the terminal and unfortunately our return to Baltimore was marred by a crooked cabbie who overcharged us from the start. What normally is a $40 ride back to our house cost us around $75 this time. Dad looked up the same route on Uber and it would have been $35. What a welcome home huh?

Final thoughts - would I sail RCL again? Abso-freakin-lutely! Would I go on a longer cruise like this again? Sure. Would I visit any of these same islands again? Sure but I'd consider things like a resort day pass or just explore the port area if I don't stay on the ship. Would I sail in a 2 bedroom grand suite on the Grandeur again? Probably not. We would have been just as happy if not more comfortable in the same one bedroom grand suite we had last time. Would I buy the Ultimate Dining Package again? It depends. On a bigger ship like Oasis, we would have had more restaurant choices and not been able to work our way through the entire menu. But I think even on a smaller ship like Grandeur, I'd miss not being able to have specialty restaurant meals at least a couple times so I'd go for one of the 2-3 night packages. Would I buy the soda package again? Yes as long as the ship had a Freestyle machine. 

If there's any other questions you'd like answered, please feel free to ask in the comments below each post. Until next time fellow travelers!