DAY 2 –
Castaway Cay
This was the day I was most looking forward to as Castaway Cay is always my favorite port. We have never had it so early in the cruise, but it felt like a great way to kick things off. I was up early, got dressed, and packed up my stuff to disembark as soon as the gangway was open. I headed up to Cabanas to grab a coffee and bite to eat…and hit a WALL of people. The line to enter was out the door, through the elevator lobby, out the other door, past Daisy’s De-Lights, and halfway down the sun chairs on the pool deck. I immediately gave up on that thought and headed to Cove Café. There were at least 10 groups in front of me so I grabbed a coffee from the drink station and went down the elevators to Deck 1. My SIL met me on the dock, we stopped to buy the soft-side cooler with waters, and we started walking to get seats. Our family always chooses the second, smaller family beach as our kids like the water slides. Given how old they are compared to our last visit, we should have stopped at the larger beach for the better view! We also like as much shade and umbrella coverage as we can group together. Not wanting to monopolize the front row, we grabbed 6 seats on the front and 4 behind. We settled in and waited for the rest of the crew.
About 30 minutes later, no sooner than their feet touched the sand, it started raining. Sideways. Plus a decent amount of thunder and some visible lightning. It lasted about 30-45 minutes in total, and we basically just waited it out at the seats. My SIL walked my mom to the closest bar area for some shelter, but once you were that wet it really didn’t matter. After it stopped, we dried everything off as best we could and went on with our Castaway day! My oldest son ran the 5K during all of that and was soaked. Since he’s 17, he still requires an adult to take him off and on the ship so I walked back with him. After we got his clothes wrung out and his shoes taken apart to dry, we hurried back to get lunch at Cookies Too. In hindsight, we should have grabbed some lunch on the ship before we went back. We always love the Castaway lunch but today it was a miss. My burger patty was a charred hockey puck and the chicken was insanely dry. The sides were fine, so I mainly ate coleslaw and corn/black bean salad. Of course, a chocolate chip cookie with soft serve made it all better.
After lunch, my teens went off to find the Vibe hangout and we didn’t really see them the rest of the day. The rest of us enjoyed the beach and the ocean and went down the waterslides a couple of times. Most of our group had headed back to the ship by 2:30 so my husband and I decided to do the snorkel trail. We were being cheap ($34/person for rental gear) so we just got the required vests and used goggles. It made for a much harder swim, but we were able to see 4 of the sunken items before we had to head back. The water is so salty that you can float with almost zero effort. It’s so very strange but really cool. By the time we got back it was after 4:00 so we packed up and headed back to the ship.
This was the first day we commented on the smell in our toilet room. It was an overwhelming urine smell, almost as though someone had peed directly into the floor drain. Jeffery was on it immediately, cleaning the room and adding some additional fragrance. He also called for maintenance to come take a look. They ended up putting a piece of duct tape over the drain. It didn’t help.
One thing we noticed on this cruise was a lack of organized family activities. It seems that many activities that used to be available to all ages is now behind the various youth clubs. We have great memories of the vegetable and the soap car races, towel folding, origami, drawing classes, etc. when our kids were young. It was fun to be able to participate as a multi-generational group. We had one towel folding class and one drawing experience that was not in a youth club. All that was really offered were some coloring sessions (literally printed pages with markers available) and 3D crafts (cutting and folding paper) that you did on your own, bingo (very expensive) and trivia. So this day started our trivia run. We played almost every trivia offered and most of the time came in first worst. The number of trivia games we lost by one answer was actually laughable, but it made it fun.
We skipped the magician this night in favor of family photos. It was the Silver Celebration night so it was “dress up optional” and was similar to a Captain’s night with free drinks in the atrium, music, and lots of photographers out. We got some good photos and had a drink. The main issue was the heat. It was beyond hot in the atrium and in all the common areas midship on almost every deck. This continued all week and at times was unbearable. I don’t know if the A/C can’t keep up with the number of people or if the doors to the Promenade are set to stay open too long (they are all auto controlled by waving your hand over the button) allowing way too much heat in but it was terrible. We basically stayed in a state of sweat the entire cruise. Thankfully our rooms stayed cool (we kept the balcony door closed and locked almost all the time and the curtains drawn) but even the dining rooms were toasty, and they are typically cool enough that I need a sweater. My husband went to Guest Services and asked why it was so hot. He nicely explained we had been on many cruises before, to all parts of the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, across all seasons, and had never experienced that much heat inside the ship. The guy said “Have you ever cruised before? To the Caribbean?” Ummmm…yes… They just said it was normal and that the A/C was functioning just fine. People were walking around with sweat dripping from their foreheads inside the ship. It was most definitely not normal. But it gave us a good response for the rest of the trip whenever anyone said they were hot…”Have you ever cruise the Caribbean before?”
Dinner was at Lumiere’s and was, as usual, fabulous. It’s a unique menu in a beautiful setting. Our table was tightly wedged between 2 server stations and was quite loud but there isn’t much you can do about that. Since we were only there one night we didn’t mention it. The Head Server brought my niece another celebration cake, this time for graduation, and she realized she may have started something!
We made our way to Deck 10 to watch the Silver Sea Celebration fireworks. They were lovely. Pro tip…they are on the starboard side and Deck 10 is your best bet to see them. Between the smokestacks is quite crowded. Be midship or more forward to avoid the most people. However, right at the rear smokestack (where they block it off behind) is a great place to stand if you are more intrigued with how they are shooting them off than the fireworks themselves. My dad was happily watching the mortars leave the ship the entire time!
After setting our clocks back an hour we were off to bed.