One of the nicer things about this ship is that there wasn't 100 other people crowding the top deck waiting to see us pass under these bridges. Even though mentally you know these ships have passed under these bridges hundreds of times without issue, it's still exciting to see the perspective as it looks like it won't and then suddenly fits. Doesn't hurt that I'm fascinated with photographing and viewing bridges and lighthouses. Guess I should have known all along that I'd be a cruise fanatic then!
How to not have to deal with chair hogs - Step 1: Have no pool on board. Step 2: Be only 40-60 degrees outside with high winds.
Getting closer...
Hmm, that looks too high?
We made it!
Even with all the jokes that Grandma needs little Tommy to show her how to work her computer, there were a lot of passengers that hung out in the respective deck lounges constantly not for the reading or game playing but for the best connection to the ship's included wi-fi! It looked like someone took a stereotypical picture of millennials all in a room together and never interacting with each other and applied that face aging app to it. There were three wi-fi routers on board, each named for their deck. A couple times we'd find it easier while in our cabin on deck 3 to connect to the router on deck 2. However, the other nice thing about always being in the USA, it didn't leave us with a surprise roaming phone bill by going on cellular most of the time. Never go on cellular while on a bigger cruise ship or you'll connect to one of their "Cellular at sea" towers and be charged a whopping fee for roaming.
As you may recall from my previous trip reports, there's two ways to make Dad's taste buds happy. Offer some sort of meat and potatoes meal and provide plenty of cookies. Dad jokes that he needs me around to translate the fancy terminology on menus and whether or not it's something he would like. I've tried explaining what the cooking terms mean but he usually just interrupts to ask "Yeah but do I eat that?" I guess my foodie nature skipped a generation. On this cruise, they would provide twice daily these trays of fresh baked warm cookies at 10AM and 3PM. Princess has a similar offering which I have yet to encounter where they feature a rolling cart of cookies and pitchers of cold milk to enjoy with it. I never bothered to ask but I believe the only time I saw milk on this ship was in pitchers for breakfast cereals. On this first day, the kitchen only brought out a total of 6 cookies. I had a fellow cruiser once joke that trivia games was the only time she sees this many people out of their cabins and then they scatter back away. Apparently in the absence of trivia games on this ship, it's fresh warm cookie time (aside from cocktail hour) that brings out the masses. People we hadn't seen all day would suddenly appear in the Chesapeake Lounge, get their cookies, and leave. Dad went down to get his first try of these cookies and reported that passengers were even knocking each other out of the way to get to the cookie tray first. He mentioned it to our guest speaker Rachel and she took it upon herself to tell the kitchen to make more cookies at a time. When she stopped in the hall later to let me know that, another woman nearby told me about being the passenger that a gentleman nearly knocked over. The waiters would try to combat this as the cruise went on by moving around the room and offering one cookie to each person. Downside to that is when they don't have enough to offer to everyone in the room or they only offer to the people on whichever side of the room they chose to walk to first before leaving the tray behind on the counter by the coffee. Next day we did see more cookies made but it was obvious by the size difference that they'd simply made the same amount of dough and rolled them smaller. If you're going on this ship and desperately love cookies, bring your own. Or perhaps pay for your excursions by operating a cookie selling side business in the back of the lounge.
Next up was our standard 5:30PM nightly cocktail hour in the Chesapeake Lounge. We're not normally drinkers. I like the blended drinks and am just as happy with a smoothie version of a pina colada than ones with alcohol. Dad likes the occasional light beer but only drinks and very rarely so on cruises. We were definitely in the minority as the line for the drink table often snaked across the room and out the door. There was also always a table of finger foods and usually one or two trays of something served by other wait staff walking around the room. Over the cruise we noticed a lot of repeats like cheese cubes and more fancier options like mussels in white wine sauce. Tonight was our first cheese board and grilled teriyaki salmon. It became a running theme during the cruise of spotting how they reused the same ingredients over and over. One night's spinach and artichoke dip became artichoke crostini another night.
Tonight we got to meet Tony and Phiz from Australia who were making the most of their time in the US visiting New York first and then continuing on to Miami once the cruise ended in Jacksonville. When the waitstaff came around offering our first of many "fill in the blank" on a crostini, Tony asked if it was gluten free. The response was "Umm, I think so?" While Tony did try the crostini, I personally would not have felt comfortable with the waitress' uncertainty. At the very least, I would have answered "I'm not sure, let me go check with the kitchen first." Shoutout to this sweet young lady pictured above setting up this night's snacks. We had some nice chats and it made me smile to see her grossed out reaction when I used my phone to help us both find out exactly what is in the falafel she was serving another night. She was scheduled to have her wisdom teeth taken out when this cruise ended so hope she's doing well!
The cocktail hour itself runs from 5:30PM to 7PM. Many people would bring their latest cocktail (no one cared if you had 1 or 5 in that 90 minute time frame) down to dinner around 6PM or 6:30PM. Dinner itself was scheduled from 5:30PM until 7:30PM where you could get as much wine or beer as your heart desired. Then at 8PM was considered "Late Bar" back in the Chesapeake Lounge to coincide with the evening entertainment. And yes it was just as popular then too. Not sure how some of these people were still upright and walking by 9PM. While there is no room service, if requested, a wait staff member would bring you up your choice from the menu on a tray to your room. I recall one night a passenger with balance issues doing just that because the ship was too rocky and she didn't feel safe leaving her room. A couple other times we were in the dining room and a waiter apologized for having to step away and deliver a tray to someone. Never an issue but appreciated them saying something first.
This is the wine list that was available for the entire cruise at lunch and dinner.
My appetizer tonight was the Maple Brown Sugar Scallop with a Red Onion Marmalade and Shoepeg Corn Risotto. It was fairly good though the maple became a little too caramelized with the brown sugar making a hard crust on one edge.
Dinner entrée was Chicken Marsala with Balsamic Wild Rice Pilaf and Roasted Asparagus. Can't go wrong with chicken and mushrooms. The chicken was nice and tender and cooked evenly.
I try not to make anyone else at my table have their food picture taken, even Dad, so only occasionally will I include shots of his meals. His dinner tonight was the Tenderloin of Pork with Dirty Rice, Roasted Red Pepper Demi, and Green Beans. He liked pretty much everything but the green beans. Funny thing is I don't like asparagus from the can so he never realized I'll eat asparagus until it came on the side of a restaurant plate. For him, he only likes vegetables like asparagus and green beans when they're soft from a can. Just like with your kids, sometimes you have to pick your battles.
Each night around 8PM or 8:10PM, our Cruise Director Ali would hold an overview to learn about the next day's excursions and answer questions. This usually only consisted of her reading the "Ship to Shore" one page daily schedule put into our cabins during evening turndown service. A lot of the times, the offered tours were the only thing scheduled for the bulk of the day so that is also when she'd cover times to meet and where to meet. Normally on the big ships, you get a tour ticket delivered to your cabin that tells you an excursion start time, an earlier time to meet, and where to meet whether it be a lounge on the ship or on the pier. Here I had to ask where to meet since she hadn't bothered to cover it and found that everything except for our tender port called for meeting up on the pier. One of the pro tips I have for anyone sailing on ACL in the future, use your phone to take a picture of the Ship to Shore so that when you're out and about you can refer to it for activity times, time of departure for the next port, and the address of where the ship is docked in case you end up using your own transportation to get back to the ship. Ali also always included her phone number and Hotel Manager Cheree's phone number on the schedule. I'm guessing they were both ACL provided phones given the similar numbers.
The nightly entertainment for tonight was the first of many singing acts - the husband and wife duo of Robert and Stephanie. Many other cruisers recognized them from previous sailings. They both are from New York and trained as Broadway singers so they performed a few shows throughout the first week with somewhat different themes. Tonight was dubbed "Hear their renditions of classic Broadway Musicals."
For the evening entertainment, they'd lower the blinds and move the couches out to sit like the rows of chairs while the performers stood at the front of the lounge. Each act brought on their own equipment except for microphones.
Aside from the Late Bar, the waitstaff would come around with paper lunch sack style bags of popcorn and a few ice cream sundaes in fountain soda style glasses. There was only a few sundaes on the tray but people would bum rush the staff for those bags of popcorn. Dad had been looking forward to the promise of root beer floats that we'd read in other reviews. He asked after a couple days of nothing but sundaes and they finally prepared a couple glasses worth. I also noticed that they took another passenger's request for strawberry ice cream sundaes (making just the one) and seemed disappointed when it was the same night she was too full to have any dessert.
No comments:
Post a Comment