Palooza: Partying at one place with a ton of people like there’s no tomorrow. Urban Dictionary defined it and I lived it! If you are considering taking a cruise sometime in the future, by the time you finish reading, your vacation will be booked!
Today, I’m going to talk about the cruise ship specifically and I’ll write separately about my experience on each island. We had a max of about eight hours to spend at each destination, so most of my time was spent on the actual ship. This cruise was a graduation present for my boyfriend, planned by his mother two years in advance. In the summer of 2018, I was invited and we picked December as our sail away date on the Norwegian Breakaway. For the three of us, our stateroom was priced a little over $3,000. I paid $1,625 to secure my spot in the spa suite with a balcony. What I didn’t know about this suite though, is that we had free and unlimited access to the –wait for it– SPA. I was absolutely SPOILED and the next time I cruise, I will NEVER downgrade from the spa suite! This included access to a private pool, hot tub, two saunas, a steam room, a salt room, heated stone lounge chairs, multiple rain showers and the perfect view of the ocean through large glass windows. Other amenities throughout the ship include a theater, a rock climbing wall, four water slides, a ropes course, separate pools for kids and adults, four hot tubs, an arcade and Jimmy Buffett’s Margarittaville. There was also a jewelry store, cosmetics store, liquor store, a clothing store, an adult night club, a teen club and a comedy club. Lastly, there were multiple restaurants and bars, and an all you can eat buffet all throughout a ship that holds 4,000 people. It’s also their FOURTH BIGGEST ship.
Day 1
My boyfriend (Lamonte), his mother (Ms. Lorriane), his cousin (Diane), and her husband (Shawn) and I stayed at the Marriott Hotel in Cocoa Beach, Florida. We caught a shuttle to Port Canaveral via Norwegian for $7/person the next morning, left the hotel around 11am and got to the port around noon. Before the cruise, Ms Lorianne ordered three Norwegian name tags for our luggage. With this specific name tag, ship employees will take your luggage once you get to the port, take it on the ship and leave it at your stateroom door. It’s the same process as checking in your luggage before a flight. The security process was like TSA high on espresso. We stood in a super long line for maybe ten minutes, got our passports and IDs checked, put our bags and shoes through machines to be scanned, went through metal detectors and were done. But, that was half of the boarding process. We then got in an even longer line for 30 minutes to get our room keys. After that, we took a family picture in front of the ship and walked for two minutes through a clear glassed tunnel. I hopped and skipped through the tunnel until I officially stepped foot on the ship. During boarding, there were multiple ship employees spraying hand sanitizer into our hands to prevent illness from spreading on the ship. Apparently, if you become sick during the cruise, you and everyone in your stateroom can be quarantined…
Immediately, we were met with a frenzy of people trying to catch an elevator to get to their floors. It took us maybe five minutes to find an empty elevator to fit all of us, and then we finally got to the 14th floor. It wasn’t until we stepped off the elevator that we realized our room was at the front of the ship… and we boarded all the way in the back. So we walked for another five minutes (felt like 30 minutes) through a narrow, blue carpeted hallway until FINALLY, we got into our college sized suite. The room wasn’t terribly small. We had a balcony, a couch with a pullout bed, two twin sized beds pushed together and the bathroom was more spacious than expected. In fact, the bathroom was the highlight of the suite. The water stayed hot 24/7 (sometime too hot) and the toilets water pressure was so vicious, NOTHING could clog it. Remember the scene in Soul Plane when Kevin Hart’s ass got stuck in the toilet after he got diarrhea from the beef stroganoff? For a moment, we got scared that would happen to us, minus the diarrhea.
After settling in, taking a shit and not getting stuck on the toilet, we went on floor upstairs to the buffet which was located past the pools and the outside bar on the top outside deck. On a scale of 1-5, I’ll rate this buffet at a one. When I think of a buffet, I imagine pretty good food to satisfy all my taste buds. If I want a burger, fries, a hot dog, crab legs, fried shrimp, cocktail shrimp, mussels, shrimp fried rice, fried fish, all the pastas, chicken fingers, steak and duck drizzled in blueberry sauce, I should be able to find it. But, this buffet was too basic for my taste. In fact, it was so basic that when I left, I was still hungry! Who leaves a buffet hungry! It just wasn’t filling; there was no seafood, there was barely any food for people with dietary restrictions or on special diets, it took me 10 minutes just to find soy milk for my tea, and the same food was served everyday… Supposedly, every night they served a different theme of food, buttttttt, the same food was still served every night lol. Maybe if they had lobster tails, or some shrimp or crab legs I would have been happy. Though apparently, according the the Norwegian Facebook page, this is the first time many people witnessed the buffet lack of food and taste…
Before we sailed off, everyone on the ship had to attend a mandatory safety exercise on the 6th floor for 30 minutes. Basically, in case of an emergency evacuation, every group has a designated “lifeboat” to board. The boats were located on both sides of the ship and could they fit a max of 250 people. We were also informed that if we are not in our designated lifeboat, the cruise employees will find us and take us to our lifeboat. It was quite interesting but boring.
The last thing we did as a group was take a tour of the ship. We started on the 8th floor to look at the shops –jewelry, makeup, gifts, etc–, walked past multiple bars and saw a gorgeous chandelier that changed colors and oddly reminded me of the Little Mermaid. There was also an open a center view of floors six, seven and eight. We walked down the glass staircase to the casino on the 7th floor, and from there I found a cute restaurant named Shanghai! Lamonte and I sat down, I ate two servings of dumplings with a nasty chicken ramen bowl and then we continued on with our adventure. The casino ended at a pub and bar called Osheehans, which later turned into an Eagles bar –we have a fans everywhere!–, there was another balcony view of the entertainment stage on the 6th floor, and at the end of the hallway was another bar and Italian restaurant.
Lastly, on the 6th floor, was guest customer services for room service, reservations, excursions, payments and etc. There was another bar, and an open area for live entertainment like Deal or No Deal, children’s games, and musicians. Further down the hall, there was an art auction happening, a comedy club, a French restaurant and cobble stoned hallways. At the end of the hallway, there was another bar named Mix followed by 2 more restaurants and a huge theater, with another bar.
Later that night, we unpacked our clothes, stored them, showered, sat on the balcony as the sun set, and watched some TV. There were only two channels that showed TV shows and movies on rerun all day long. I officially can recite Captain Marvel word for word.
Day 2
I am so conflicted with sleeping while on vacation. Like, do I sleep for 10 hours everyday, or do I stay up until 2am partying and wake up at 6am every morning to watch the sunrise……
Anyways, I was the last one to wake up around 6:50am and started my day watching the sun rise! It was absolutely amazing, calming and a blessing to witness. At 8am on the dot, we arrived at the Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas. This island looked exactly how it does on a map: green, flat and scattered about. After showering, my skin care routine, choosing not to wear makeup in the hot weather, picking a bathing suit and eating at the now 2 star buffet (breakfast was good), we stood in line for an hour at 10am waiting for a tender….. Since we got a late start on our day, and Norwegian doesn’t have a dock in the Bahamas, we had to catch a tender (basically a tug boat) that fit’s maybe 100 people, and takes about 30 minutes to load, pull off and unload. You have to go through a quick screening and ID check before you even touch foot on the tender, so it takes some TIME.
The tender was very, very, very rocky. We sat on the top deck directly under the sun. I had a 20 minute conversation with a MAGA hat wearing couple sitting next to me who loved my hair so much, they tried to touch it. If I had my glasses on and could see I would have told them that Bernie Sanders is my step father and your Cheeto puff is a criminal, but I didn’t want to get kicked off the ship in less than 24 hours.
Arriving to the Bahamas at 11:30am, I realized that this particular sliver of the island was owned by Norwegian. Soooooooo I went to the Bahamas but I didn’t technically visit theeee Bahamas, so hopefully in 2020 I can try this again. Okay! after eating lunch, having fun, touching the sand, getting in the water and sun bathing, Lamonte and I spent about three hours on the Island before we got back on a tender and made our way back to the cruise ship.
After changing our clothes and eating a quick snack at the buffet, we made our way to the spa where we fell asleep on the heated lounge chairs until the ship took off. It was at this exact moment, where shit got real, and I got sea sick. Immediately after waking up, I couldn’t understand why it felt like the Earth was rotating at a faster speed. I wanted to throw but, because I’m a thug and can’t get caught slippin, I kept my composure.
Later that night we went to dinner at a restaurant named Manhattans where I had a lovely glass of rose, blue fish and a walnut and apple dessert. I honestly think the buffet was better than this restaurant and I was slightly annoyed that this was my second day in a row without great food. So I walked over to Shanghai for some dumplings but they wouldn’t seat me because I didn’t have a reservation EVEN THOUGH there were multiple open tables for an hour. I then decided to just drink mimosas for the rest of the night and try my best not to get hangry even though everyone knew I was hangry.
On the seventh floor near the bar, there’s a small arcade area with a little bowling alley. We played around in that area for a moment and Lamonte played a basketball arcade game for a while. Eventually, we made our way toward the casino and I dibbled and dabbled in gambling with a machine game. I tried to win $1,000 but of course the machine was cheating and I lost $10. Getting back to our room that night, we had TWO TOWEL ANIMALS that were sooo cute laying on our bed. One was a bunny and the other was a Babadook.
Day 3
Today was a SEA DAYYYYYY, where the engine on the ship was turned off and we just sail at sea all day and all night. I woke up around 7am and spent maybe an hour or two in bed before we all went to breakfast. After getting my servings of cantaloupe, pineapple, watermelon, kiwis, waffles and home fries, we noticed that some cruise members were singing and dancing in a single filed line through the buffet. They were singing “Good morning. Good morning to you. Remember to wash your hands.” It was very cute.
Continuing on with our day, we spent some time at a bar called the Shakers drinking Long Islands. This is where Lamonte and I started noticing these 007 style bathrooms all around the ship. All you had to do was find a sign, press a button and then BOOM, the door will slide and your bathroom will appear. It was cool and fun. We walked outside along the deck for a while in the humid sun, sat and watched a few live shows, went to more bars, and had a couple of drinks. I tried to get a table at Shanghai again, but for the second day in a row, they wouldn’t seat me.
Now, tonight was particularly a special night because we had dinner at a specialty restaurant, Cagneys. While there’s complimentary dining and food on the ship, there’s also restaurants where you pay to eat. At some of these restaurants, you can purchase a dining package for either one day or several days where you pay for your meal in advance. I purchased the three day dining package for $125 and ate at three different restaurants. Since some of the other complimentary restaurants were as good as Sodexo (college dining), I was quite excited to eat food I paid extra money for!
So, you know ya girl had to get extra cute for this food that was prepared to nourish her body in God’s name, AMEN! I matched some Banana Republic with Urban Outfitters and Miss Lola clear heeled, heels with some FENTY BEAUTYYYYYY and made my way to my reservation! It’s also important to know that there’s dress codes in these restaurants, so I was pretty casual compared to the families wearing Tux’s and ball gowns lolol, I’m extra but not THAT extra.
I started the night off with a drink called “Sidecar” and it was the only alcoholic beverage to give me a nice buzz so far. My starter was a wonderful piece of crab cake drizzled in a creamy Cajun sauce (I love a good crab cake). Lamonte had a shrimp cocktail that I low key wanted to eat too. As an appetizer, I had a bowl of tomato soup with pieces of mozzarella and a grilled cheese. Then finally, I made the brave decision to try lamb for the first time in yearsssss. Originally I was craving a nice piece of filet mignon but I wanted to take a risk. I got the lamb with a side of mashed potatoes with truffles, portobello mushrooms and mint jelly. Lets just say, this dinner was amazing, worth every penny, a blessing to my soul and stomach and I am so thankful.
By the end of dinner, my stomach was bloating per usual and my clothes became uncomfortable BUT BEAUTY IS PAIN and I had on spanx, so I strolled around with Lamonte to try out other bars. During this time, the Eagles were playing and we ended up winning (of course) and people started singing the legendary E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES! It twas a great night out before bed
Day 4
JAMAICA, JAMAICA! Also known as, from my Nana, GOD’S COUNTRY! I didn’t wake up at my regular 6am rising with the sun schedule, but when I did wake up, I saw the most beautiful view on this planet by far. I saw nothing but large green mountains more beautiful than the Green Mountain State, the Atlas Mountains in the winter, the Poconos in the summer, Vail in its pictures, and every mountain range you can think of. This large patch of green in Ochio Rios was just MESMERIZING.
We started our morning with breakfast at Savor at 8am. I was crazy excited to have food outside of the buffet again. I started with a glass of water to stay hydrated, a mimosa to stay lit and a cup of black tea with soy milk because I was channeling my inner Queen Elizabeth II. Now, to be honest, I noticed that the menu at Savor, a complimentary restaurant, was strangely no different than the breakfast options in the buffet…… Eggs Benedict, waffles, pancakes, hash browns, oatmeal, french toast…… It was all the same….. This was really disappointing because Savor looks like a beautiful restaurant with dark wood floor and walls, beautiful yellow glass center pieces, and a dress code. But, I guess I shouldn’t expect something grand for breakfast, so I got waffles, hash browns and bacon just to fill me up. Something really cute that happened were the women walking around with sweet appetizers. They walked to every table in twos, holding a large plate of buttered cream cheese puffs coated in sugar, and in unison they said “Hi! Good morning! Yummy, yummy, good for tummy, something special this morning! We have….,” and the rest was incomprehensible, but it was good!
Right after, we made our way to the fourth floor and officially set foot in Jamaica. We had a dock on the Island, so luckily this time we didn’t need to catch a tender. We got to Jamaica at 9:30am and came back at 1:32pm.
Coming back on to the ship, I was really excited to walk into my stateroom and find “Happy Birthday” balloons and ribbons taped to the walls. I had completely forgot that we told our waitress at Cagneys last night, that my birthday was today. While my birthday was actually 2 weeks away, I still really appreciated the gesture considering I celebrate my birthday for the whole month anyway. Lamonte and I then went to the buffet for lunch and then the pool! We spent the remainder of our time on the top deck by the bar, stage and adult pool where there was a current dance contest happening. We sat by the pool (I couldn’t physically sit in there because it was nine feet deep and I can’t swim, let alone float), drank endless Long Islands, and danced for at least an hour. Then, of course, we went to the spa and I spent time in the hot tub before I laid down and read my book Americana by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Eventually we passed out, and an employee had wake us up and kick us out because the spa was closing LOL. Lamonte and I ended our night with dinner at Taste and it was pretty good! They had those dumplings from Shanghai (the restaurant that refused to give me a table for the third day in a damn row), so I ordered two servings of that, a New York strip with fries and then some banana bread, apple dessert. I was full, I was satisfied, and I went to sleep blessed!
days
hours minutes seconds
until
Cruisin Paloozing Pt Two
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