Our Royal Caribbean Cruise

We just got home from the best vacation we have ever been on....a 7 night cruise to the Western Caribbean. It was wonderful and we are officially cruisers now. First of all I have to throw a big thanks to my in-laws for taking my kids for the vacation. My sister-in-law Meridee and her husband Kasey took them for us and they also spent a few nights with Chelton's parents when she needed a break and Chelton's brother Parker and his wife Ashley took them for a day too. It is so nice to have all of them help us out so we could go relax in the sun!!!

My parents came on the vacation with us (they are retired now so they can go on fun trips like this now). We decided to go out of Galveston and with four drivers we thought we would save on airfare and drive to Texas. This was more fun when thought about it than actually doing it. 28 hours in a car is really not that fun. Plus we drove it all in one shot there and all in one shot back. That is a very very long time in a car. But we really truly did save a lot of money driving there. We made a stop in Roswell, New Mexico and took a picture next to an alien and sent it to the kids. They thought that was pretty cool. (Just so you know Roswell looks nothing like the TV show if you ever watched it on the CW---I was pretty disappointed!!).

After making the 28 hour drive we made it to our hotel in Webster (about 30 minutes north of Galveston) and crashed until our cruise took off the next day. We showed up for the cruise on Sunday at 11:00 only to find out that the ship couldn't come in because of fog. The people on the last cruise were stuck on the cruise ship and couldn't get off. They told us we were supposed to come back at 1:00. So we did what anyone would do...we found a Walmart and bought Texas souveniours. We then got a text saying not to come back until 6:00. Yikes. We had to kill more time by getting some lunch. We finally went back at 4:00 and just stood in line. At that time they were letting people on but it was quite the long line and big ordeal. It wasn't the cruise lines's fault but was the port authority's call. By the time we got on the cruise ship everyone was starving and just ran to the food places and most of them were full. Wasn't quite the perfect start of the cruise but they handled it great. They then had to book it to Cozumel because they were four hours behind. We made it late to Cozumel so we had to redue the timing of our excursions but they did it with perfect ease. We pretty much ate dinner and toured the ship and then turned in for bed. Kind of a hectic first day but we were just excited to be there.

We went on Royal Caribbean and the boat we were on was Mariner of the Seas. There was so much to do on our boat we could have just stayed on the boat for 7 days and been fine but we also had stops in Cozumel Mexico, Georgetown Grand Cayman and Falmouth Jamaica. The boat had a rock climbing wall, ice skating rink, mini-golf course, in-line skating, basketball course, 4 pools, 6 hot tubs and lots of shows and activities. There was always something going on and something to do or just relaxing and doing nothing at all. It was wonderful.

The first stop was in Cozumel. I had a friend who went on a cruise and stopped in Cozumel who used this LDS tour guide (Helamantours.com) and recommended him. It looked like something we were interested in so we decided to give him a try. We got it arranged a few weeks before we left. He told us to take the ferry from Cozumel over to Carmen del Playa and he would meet up with us and take us to Tulum to the Mayan ruins. Because of our late start from the fog we were two hours late getting in to Cozumel. The cruise line told us because of this we would have two hours longer to stay in Cozumel. We had no way to let our tour guide know that we would be late so we just had to hope that he would be waiting for us when we got off the ferry. We walked off the ferry and Chelton heard a guy whistle and wave at him and he looked up and saw a guy wearing a BYU hat and he realized that must be our guy. He asked him later how he knew that we were the people he was waiting for and he said that he can usually pick his LDS people out of a crowd because of the ladies wearing the long shorts. I guess it was me wearing my capri pants that set him off. He says it really throws him off when they show up in their swimsuits. I was really impressed because he got there early to make sure he didn't miss us and then he waited hours for us because our boat got in late. I was so glad we booked our excursion with Helaman (his name really is Helaman). He showed us the Mayan ruins and the minute we got in the van he was giving us the history of the Mayan's and explaining it to us from an LDS perspective. It makes so much sense when you know your scriptures. There was so much history that archeologists cannot explain but all we have to do is read the Book of Mormon and the answers are all there. The Mayan ruins were really neat and it was nice to have our own personal LDS tour guide. What a neat excursion. We made it back on the ferry and back to the boat on time.

Our second excursion was in Georgetown Grand Cayman. This was Chelton's favorite stop. We split up from my parents on this excursion but we did run into them. Our excursion didn't start until later in the day so when we got off the boat we had a few hours to kill. We ran into a tour company who was offering a tour of the city so we decided to take advantage of it since we had time to spare. We took an hour bus tour of Grand Cayman. It is such a pretty country. We saw the beach front, the governor's house (who is British as it is a British colony) and we went to Hell. There is a city in Grand Cayman called Hell so they shuttle the tourists in so they can all buy their postcards postmarked from Hell and they all buy it up. They actually have some rocks that the city it is named for that are black rocks all over. We then saw my parents on our last stop at no other than a rum factory. We went in while everyone in our bus was sampling the local rum to buy a picture frame. They were taking a city tour on their excursion. Kind of funny to be in another country and run into somebody you know. After the city tour we met our real excursion and set out on a boat and went snorkeling. As I said this was Chelton's favorite part of the vacation and it was his first time ever snorkeling before. I had been snorkeling in Hawaii once before and didn't have the greatest experience but maybe it helped me prepare for this because I really had a great time here. We got to snorkel over a reef and a shipwreck. They had the most beautiful fish. We really had a great time. My parents went in a submarine with a glass bottom and they really enjoyed that.

The last stop we had was in Falmouth, Jamaica. This was my favorite stop. We went to Dunns River Falls which was my favorite stop. It was a 600 foot waterfall that you get to climb up. It starts at the ocean and then with the help of our tour guide (which Chelton and my dad thought were no help at all) we proceeded to climb the falls. They wanted all the people in our group to hold hands and help each other up the falls but the guys did not want to do that which we really didn't need to. It was sooo much fun. I would really like to go back there and do it again. If you ever go to Jamaica I would definitely recommend going here and doing this. I thought it was a blast. This was my favorite part of the excursions by far. After that we went to a place called Dolphins Cove. It was okay. We got to see dolpins but I guess it would have been better to actually swim with the dolphins. They also did a shark show and you could have paid extra to get in with the sharks. We got to get in and swim with sting rays and that was pretty cool. They had some cool birds to see and a snake and iguana that we held and got our picture taken with. We also had a Jamaican lunch. They gave away some prizes which with the help of the staff we won a few things. This was probably the bottom of the excursions and I wouldn't recommend going here unless you were swimming with dolphins (which is funny because I was most looking forward to coming here).

So there were a lot of stuff on the boat that we did. First off all we ate and ate and ate. We had the best waiter and assistant waiter who liked to feed us a lot of food. When we were not eating in the dining room we were eating in the Cafe Promenade where they had pizza and croissant sandwiches and desserts and if that wasn't enough they had a buffet that we could eat at. It was wonderful food.

We had plenty to do to work off the food too. We ice skated and mini-golfed and swam and played scrabble (we brought our own). The hot tubs got kind of crowded during the day so we found the best time at night when they were empty so every night we would go to our favorite hot tub and have it all to ourself.

They have a many activities on the boat that you can participate in and if you participate in certain ones you will be recognized by people on the boat. They did a newlywed game and televised it to all on the boat and the poor people that participated couldn't go anywhere without people laughing at them and pointing at them. Also they do a game called The Quest where everyone in the audience participates but each team has a captain. The male captain ends up in the end dressed in a woman's bra with women's shoes on with lipstick and earrings and parading around the stage. We kept pointing to our team captain the whole cruise. They also had a belly flop competition. We went down to lay out and get some sun. The lady kept saying that no girls had signed up. I had this urge that I was just going to do it. Chelton told me I was crazy and kept asking if I was serious. We went down and I signed up. Another girl about my same size signed up too. There were 9 people total. We had to do two flops. The first one had to be water displacement (how much water came out of the pool when we jumped) which I had no hope for with these 300+ guys and the second one was how much pain we inflicted on ourselves. The first jump I made my flop and then when I was done I started splashing the crowd for my water displacement. (They were filming this for the DVD that everyone takes home and the cruise director made it clear that this was my water displacement). I was in 5th place after my first jump so I was glad that I wasn't in last. For the second jump they put a platform up. I definitely had the other girl beat in the bust department so I got up on the platform and put my hands on my girls so they knew how much pain it would inflict. This drew out some laughs. Then I made my jump with a scream. I probably would have got more points but my legs came down and my flop really wasn't much of a flop. Well....I did end up with a silver medal so I can't say I did too bad. There were some real big boys. At the end they had all nine of us do a flop together in the pool. There was another guy from Utah in the contest so that was cool. After that I was one of those people who was pointed to and talked to and asked if I was one of the "divers." One lady told me I should wear my medal the rest of the cruise and people would buy me drinks. Lets just say I took it off right after that. I hoped that after I changed out of my blue swimming suit people wouldn't recognize me but they still did. Yikes and then in the farewell show they played a blip of the DVD that you could buy and they showed the belly flop and I was in it a lot. But I would do it again. The kids thought my medal was cool.

We also did fun things like we went to Harry Potter trivia (which I was mad that we didn't win). We are Harry Potter freaks and I should have known more than I did. We also did a flip camera scavenger hunt which was a lot of fun. We had to do dumb things like sing "I'm a little Teapot" in the elevator and ask a guy named Bob to dance with me. It won us a free Royal Caribbean pen. I was always looking for dumb things like this to do. They were fun though.

We did get in some rest and relaxation too. They had some good shows too. They had a cool ice show and the skaters were amazing. They had Merrill Osmond one night which was cool and Gary Mule Deer and some comedians.

All and all it was an amazing vacation. The first thing we did when we got home was book our next vacation. This time we are taking the kids with us. We booked an Eastern Caribbean cruise out of Florida. The plan is go do a week in Florida doing Disneyworld and Universal (mainly for Harry Potter land) and then do the cruise. We are doing a slightly bigger ship too. This ship has Dreamworks characters so you get to character dine with Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar characters and do parades and stuff. It has everything our ship had plus a 3D movie theater, a flow rider, an H20 water park with wave pool and out door movie screen. We are excited. I asked the kids if they are more excited for Disneyland or the cruise and they said the cruise (me too)... We are going in Feb 2013...now I just have to wait that long. We are definitely cruisers for life.

The pictures were uploading way too long and driving me crazy so I put all of our pictures on a slideshow...so if you want to see all the pictures...push play...and have fun....

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