Backing up And Spinning in Place

I had watched a cruise ship special while I waited for my trip. It was filled with fun information and it was about turn over day for the Oasis of the Seas. Freedom of the Seas was in port and it is the Oasis’ Sister Ship.

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Also the Disney Dream was in.

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The Disney Dream did a similar route to the Carnival Sensation. It did a four day cruise and then a three day. The Freedom of the Seas does a 7 day.

Both of these ships are much larger then the Sensation with twice the passengers. We had a light load with only a bit over two thousand people on board. With fewer passenger’s we where the first out. I got to see one of things, that to me, is coolest about a cruise ship.

They back up, spin in circles, and parallel park like a car. I had watched the Monarch of the Seas dock on a television special. They spun it in a circle when they went to port. Being on the ship as it spun around was very cool

You saw the photographs above. We parked on the rear upper deck and watched our ship back out of dock and spin around to open water.

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And off we went. About this point we lost cell reception from land. The Florida coast line was attractive.

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Later, the Dream came up from behind us and passed us moving a lot faster.

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And then the Dream passed us.

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We unpacked our clothing. I’m not used to unpacking when I travel but Tim is. I took the closet and he took the drawers. There was more then enough room. Our room could easily hold four people and all of their luggage without anyone tripping over anyone else.

A Grand Suite on the Carnival Sensation - U98

Around one thirty we decided to see if our Cabin was ready. There had not been any announcements about cabin’s so we decided to go look. I figured that the decks would be locked down if they did not want us on them.

We were in room/cabin U98. This is a Grand Suite on the Upper Deck in the middle of the ship. We had an extended balcony as well.

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There are two twins that are connected into a king. The bed was VERY comfortable. After the hard ass bed we had the night before, this was blissful.

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There is also a couch, a chair, and an ottoman. The couch is a pullout bed if you want to shove a few more people into the suite. It has more then enough room for more people.

From Bahamas - 2011

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The fridge never got cold. It stopped things from being warm but I could not grace it with more then being a bit cool. It was not cooler then the AC. The AC kept the room cold. Tim said he could do with more air flow and resolved to bring a fan the next trip.

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There is also a chair behind me as well as the door. There is a lot of room here.

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The door stays open by itself. Getting something to hold the door open had been a lot of discussion. We did wedge the chair in front of it just in case while we played with the lock. The lock and the handle are separate so you will not lock yourself out unless you turn the actual lock from the inside. There is a lip to get back into the cabin and Tim and I both tripped over it several times until we got used to stepping high.

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The bathroom also is a step up. The light switch is on the outside and it is at normal level. Therefor, if you try to turn it off from the inside of the room you almost fall out. The tub is very tall. The lip of it was above my knee. The shower was in the center of the tub which was also odd feeling. It is very deep but not very large through the center.

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The tub is nice and deep to lounge in. However, if the ship is rolling be careful about stepping into it. It is high enough that you are very much off balance stepping in. There is a rail and the counter is right there.

Carnival Sensation - First Views

We entered the ship right at the base of the four story atrium. Another group entered as we did and said, “You can’t even tell that you are one a ship!”. It was true. It was like being inside of a Vegas Hotel. Lots of neon, bold colors, crazy decorations, and a bar full of people right in front of us. We stepped into the glass, neon elevators and headed up so that we could get out of the flood of boarding people.

Boarding officially starts around 1230 but if the ship is ready they start taking them as early as 1130. We were on board by 1200.

We went up to the Lido deck. I figured that wherever everything was, up would mean the open decks. The Lido deck is where the pools and the buffet are. There is also the Mongolian grill and a burger and hot dog buffet as well. These are all free ship food places. We had our backpacks and bags of soda so we wanted to find some place to settle down until we could go to our room.

We picked a table at random and settled in. My husband went off looking for something to eat. I guarded the bags and people watched. The food lines where already very long and it was only about 1230. However, most people were carrying their bags and waiting to go to their rooms

The Pool on the Sensation is very small. It is around 15 by 30. It looks to be very shallow. It is not a swimming pool. It is a body of water to play in. If you just want to splash around head to the aft (rear) of the ship and try the water park. There are several slides and lots of water works to splash around in.
At each end of the pool is a circular hot tub. There are two of these. Lounge chairs abound. They are full of sun burnt people. These sun burnt people seem to be enjoying themselves. I left them to it. I was interested in swimming in only one body of water and it was not on the ship.

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There are another two, small hot tubs on the Serenity Deck which is the adult only area. This did not open until the second day we were out. The lounge chairs here are also more comfortable. They are padded and for the most part set up side by side.

My husband wandered back with a plate from the Mongolian Grill. It wasn’t bad. I would have liked a bit more sauce. He got it schezuan style and it was quite spicy. I did find the deserts and they are the first things that I took photographs of.

Chocolate Cake – Very Rich

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Candied Fruit Cupcake – It’s like a fruit cake with regular cake. I didn’t try it
but Tim said it was tasty.

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We also had some salad and fresh fruit. There was watermelon, cantaloupe and money do melon. I nabbed a few pieces of french bread and Tim found the rotisserie and had some meat carved. The lines were getting long and we didn’t know how to navigate them. The lines for the Grill the Mongolian and the Rotisserie all pool in the same general area but there are three stations. In the main buffet area there are two sides that mirror each other. This all helps the traffic to funnel through and move quickly because there are three different stations for a total of six places to fill your plate.

It was a lot of food and plenty of places to sit. Sadly, some of those places were outside. Not adjusted to the heat yet, we found a hallway and settled down there.
I also learned not to use unisex bathrooms. The seat did not lift and men had been using it and missing. I do not blame this on the ship. The bathroom was clean. It did not smell bad. It was just obvious that people had been using it and using it poorly.

There are plenty of gender specific bathrooms scattered around the ship. I avoided the unisex ones after that. They are right off of the pool area and lots of people trotted around barefooted. Yuck. My eyes cross just thinking about it.

Heading to Port Canaveral

It was about ten when we left. We stopped at CVS along the way to get some drinks. On the ship, soda costs extra. Or you can buy a soda card. Well, for a 4 day cruise a 30 dollar soda card for each of us seemed excessive. You can bring up to 12 nonalcoholic beverages on board. You can also bring a bottle of wine or champagne each. I grabbed a selection of drinks for the two of us and hopped back into the car.

I’ll say that Florida’s roads are well marked. However, I would expect there to be more signs that say CRUISE SHIPS THIS WAY then there were. We did not see any signage until we were three miles away on the road that leads to the ports. A bit after the signs we start to see the ships sitting at port. They loom up over the trees and they are enormous.

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The Disney Dream has the red stacks and the Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas is the other. My ship, the Carnival Sensation, is smaller and tucked behind them.
The Hertz place was right past the ships. We had barely stopped weaving all over the road as we ogled the cruise ships and then Hertz place appeared. It was not even a mile past the ships. We parked and started walking towards the building. Two employees approached us and asked if we had our mileage. We gave it, they grabbed the keys and told us to hop on the shuttle and enjoy our trip. We blinked and bam, we are on the shuttle and on our way.

That is what we had been looking for. Organization and coordination.
The driver for Hertz was fantastic. He gave some facts about each ship docked. The Disney Dream was at dock with the Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas and the Carnival Sensation. The Sensation is the smallest of the ships by far.

We got dropped off. I did not have to pay the porter for my bag. He did not ask and I did not give. We will see if our bags make it. We printed our luggage tags out in color. I then folded them as instructed and taped them up with clear packaging tape. Then, we stapled them all around the edges and in the center. It will take some effort to remove them. We also have luggage straps around the bags and nothing valuable inside of them.

At the terminal, we have VIP boarding. It means a super short line and a direct walk to the ship. I kept managing to get into the wrong lines. There are signs and the signs have arrows. There is normally a path by the sign. Yet, it is the next path over that I am supposed to take. How, I am supposed to know this I am not sure. Don’t walked by the sign, pick the unlabeled lane one line over instead.
I then got yelled at for taking a photo graph as we walked up the steps to get to the gang way.

The first glimpse of the ship was neon.

From Bahamas - 2011

It was hard not to stop and stare around us. While boarding a ship is not an accomplishment, it felt like it at that moment.

Residence Inn Marriott Melbourne

From Bahamas - 2011

I slept poorly on that rock hard bed. It was awful. I woke up about every thirty minutes. I’d love to say that it was excitement, but it was misery.
We woke up sore and grumpy. I called the airport shuttle to inquire about the shuttle schedule to the port. I was told that they had one shuttle scheduled to go to the port and that it left around noon. We are supposed to be boarded by 1430hrs. That is not much time considering the distance from the airport to the cruise lines was about an hour.

We went and got breakfast. Coffee was needed by the husband. We where both a bit hungry and tired. It worked out for us. They had a real breakfast, much to my surprise. Often times, the breakfast offered by a hotel is some old bagels and dry pastries. They had eggs, sausage, potatoes, waffles, cereal, oatmeal, and juices. They also had coffee. At one point, I looked around and realized that I was the only adult not drinking coffee. I felt strange. It did not help that someone had switched the television to an evangelist Sunday morning service. I learned that God can read text messages and knows when you use his name in vain. I guess all of those comic strips of them using computers in heaven are true.

We started making a plan B. Plan B evolved as I did some reading and discovered that there was a car rental right by the pier. I asked my husband to see if we could move the drop off. He was tired and grumpy about our sudden lack of premade plans. When he called Hertz they said “Sure, and your rate is the same.” That means the 63 dollars we were paying to rent the car from the previous day covered us dropping off at the pier. They also had a shuttle to the cruise terminal.

This was becoming a better situation. Finding the actual addresses to GPS coordinate ourselves was a little bit harder. People have been cruising for longer then there has been an internet. Some of these established agencies are not online yet. This makes finding simple bits of information hard. Everyone wants to route us to the airport as their home base.

Yet, we found the address, packed up, and headed out.

At checkout the receptionist asks, “How was your stay?”

Tim looked at her and said, “It sucked. The bed was horrible. It was incredibly hard.”

“We hear that a lot,” she chirped. “People either love them or hate them.”

“I hated it,” he snarled. “It was awful.”

“Sorry about that! So, here is your bill,” she checked us out. “Oh yes! The night clerk said that you all were taking a limo from Black Diamond?”

“No. We thought the hotel had a shuttle. We rented a car.“ Tim glared and we left.

We will write a poor review for that hotel. TripAdvisor.Com and I will have a talk.

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Residence Inn Marriott in Melbourne, Florida: Do not stay here unless you like hard beds and shady dealings

Flight to Flordia

Fly early if you can.
We arrived at the airport about two and a half hours before our flight. We normally try for three, but I had gotten off of work at 0700hrs and I was not moving as fast as I might have. We had packed well in advance so we where fine there.

We fly United. Tim flies with them all of the time for work. He travels a lot for his job so he is a premier member and gets perks and miles to fly with them. We went to their self check in section and attempted to check ourselves in. The first terminal did not work. We slid over to another terminal but then we wound up stuck between two high maintainance groups.

The people to our left wanted to change everything about their flight. Instead of going to the check in line for buying and changing flight details, they stood in the self check in line and occupied one of the people. Each of the airline people are assigned to two terminals. They are there to check your ID, put on your baggage tags, and load your baggage. They did not have the time to do any of this thanks to this group.

To our right, was a British couple and three teen age girls. They where upset becuase however they had booked their tickets, it caused the girls not to sit together. One of the three is sobbing becuase she will have to sit by herself. The father is snarling at the guy about how they keep getting the run around. The girls are now all crying. Their luggage is pink but I don’t think that had anything to do with the entire situation.

All told, it took us forty five minutes to get our bags checked in.

Then we had to wade through security. The high maintenance couple to our left appeared near us in the security line. We got out of that line and moved to another. I’m glad we did because they caused another incident over at the security point.

By the time we made it to our flight we had fifteen minutes until boarding. We had not eaten all day, our plan being to eat in the terminal. Instead, we ran through the airport and passed a sign that said ‘Last place to stop for food here’ and reached our terminal. Wheezing and out of breath I ran back to the last stop for food and bagged chips and some apples. As I headed back Tim called and told me that our flight was delayed for an hour due to technical problems with the plane.
So much for running around. We went and got dinner. It was a nice meal that reminded me that you only get plastic utensals inside of hte airport. Unless you are in one of the airline clubs. There, you can get real utensals.

Another flight came in. It was a bigger plane and I assume it was either scheduled to sit for a while or head to Florida. It was our plane now. and we where on our way with an hour and a half delay. This is the type of reason why we had decided to fly the day before. I would not want to live with the stress of trying to fly in the same day as the cruise and having the flight delayed.

When we selected our hotel, we selected one that was close to an airport. We looked into it and they said that they had a shuttle to the cruise line. This seemed to be the easiest option. We flew into Orlando and rented a car from Hertz. We would then drop the car off at the airport by the hotel and take the shuttle provided by the airport to the dock.

The Hertz rental itself was a bit of a mess. My husband has been a Gold Member of Hertz in the past. He signed up for it. However, he has said that it often does not work. Therefore, he went to the desk to pick up the rental car. There he was told he was a gold member and he could just go and pick out a car. So, when we went to the pickup there was a sign board and his name was not on it. We went into the next office where we were told we were not gold members and given our rental car. Our rental, of course, was located all the way to the back of the lot. It was a little Toyota Corolla. I was hoping for the Nissan Versa we had originally asked for.

The Toyota Corolla has no trunk space. We fit our two large cases in the trunk and it was done. There was not enough room for anything else. Not even a backpack. The third case and the backpacks went onto the back seat.

It was about an hour’s drive from Orlando to Melborne airport. It was a smooth ride with little traffic. We went to the hotel. We dropped off our stuff and went back out, our goal to get something for dinner. The highway sign said that there was an IHOP nearby. However, it seems that the sign lied to us. There was no IHOP.
We wound up at Steak a Shake. This was a very nice experience. Nice enough that we wrote a review. There was also a massive fraternity meeting going on and everyone was dressed in purple. They took up about a quarter of the restaurant. The staff managed to keep them corralled. ‘Thank you.

Back at the Hotel we decide to ask the front desk about the shuttle. She says, “We can help you arrange transportation.” This is where things start to go downhill. “We don’t have a shuttle ourselves” she said. “I can help arrange transportation to the cruise line but it will probably cost a lot. Can’t you just drive? They have parking at the pier.”

“We have a rental car,” we remind her.

“Oh. You sure wanted to the last minute to plan this.” I can’t say what comes after that becuase my head exploded for a moment. We accepted contact information for the airport shuttle and for a private company called Black Ice or something else shady and went to our room.

There we said “WTF” to each other and pulled out our laptops to look up transportation. This is when we learned that the free WiFi that the hotel had bragged about was slow. If you wanted their fast internet you had to pay to play. Also, the bed was rock hard. I flopped down on it, stomach first and almost vomited because it felt like someone punched me in the gut. I was not expecting that and I apologize to my stomach. It didn’t deserve that.

We made some phone calls but no one was open. Frustrated, we decided that we would call in the morning. Worst case scenario, we’d get a cab.

Day 1 in Tokyo

The husband is still asleep beside me. At 1540hrs I woke up with a snap. It is about 0611hrs now but our time, 1540hrs is me waking up a bit late to head to work in an hour or so.

So I'm awake. As the Husband snores beside me, I'll write up yesterday's action.


Everything went pretty smoothly.

We left the house in plenty of time. We got to the airport around 1000hrs, which was the plan. Our flight was laving at 1250hrs but we wanted to make sure we had time to get a good meal. I'm glad we did.

We parked in economy and caught our buss. We made sure to take lot and bus stop numbers down in our phones for later reference. We also took photographs of where the car was from the bus stop. The last thing we want to do is loose the car. Because the Husband was upgraded to first class we got to use the super short line at the airport. There was also a herd of boy scouts making an international flight somewhere. They where all in their little khaki uniforms running to and fro.

As we entered the airport, a man had exited and was turning around trying to figure out which deck he wanted to get on. This TSA lady is leaving and she bellows in this horrible, bitchy SNARLY voice, "WRONG DOOR" to this poor guy. What the hell? There is almost no one around and people get confused at the airport.

Anyway, we grab a wonderious lunch at Fudruckers. They have just opened and the guy doesn't know how to use his credit card machine. So, I pay and give the receipt to Tim to expense later. Yay for cash. Yay for paranoia!

We go to the business lounge. I have never used a lounge before at an airport. I normally get there, find a socket for my electronics and camp out until my flight. My husband, travels three hundred percent more then I do is getting used to all the little perks. These special places where they give you food and comfortable chairs are a bit odd to me. I slink in and peer around, suspicious.

The guy tells Tim, "Sir, you can use the First Class Lounge" but we were meeting with some of his co-workers. This lounge system is interesting. Lots of chairs and places to charge your stuff with people hanging around trying to shove alcohol and snacks down you.

We didn't stay for long because they started boarding the plane almost an hour early. I ran and grabbed a pretzel and some lemonaid for the flight and we boarded. This was the second rude Dulles employee I've met today. Maybe it was early, maybe I wanted everyone to experience the warm excited blur I was in. He's probably just tired of herding people he can't communicate around. I dunno, but the plane is loading and this one group is hanging back and he just starts yelling at them to get moving. I think they didn't want to cut in line but I wanted to give dude a Valium.

The Husband is swept away to his little area.



I find my seat and sit down. Only its not my seat. I thought that I seemed one seat back but I was in a happy buzz. So, when a guy asks me, 21B? I go... 20B... and get up to ask the kid in front of me... 20B? and he goes 19B? To ask the guy in in front of him who is the true cause of it all being one seat back and in an isle when he should have been in a row. As we are sorting ourselves, a steward goes 'Everyone needs to get seated' and the kid goes 'We're sorting it out, thanks'.



So we sit. My seat mate is a quiet Japanese man who naps most of the trip. There are a ton of kids around me, but I'll give the parents credit, they worked hard at trying to keep them quiet.

The flight wasn't bad. I was in Economy Plus so I had plenty of legroom. They fed us (nasty stuff) and gave us snacks, liquids, and such. There are TVs in the seats. I wasn't allowed to go visit the Husband but he was allowed to come back and slum. He was blocked the first time he went back for a moment until he convinced them that he did belong up there. He wound up sending me a cookie at Dinner and feeling a bit lonely. There were only three other people in first class and he discovered that he wanted to sit with me more. We're trying to arrange that on the way back and I'm not going to argue the business upgrade for me. Not that he'd listen to me again on that anyway.

We arrive at Narita. I'm excited. The flight took us up to the arctic circle and down across siberia. I really want to see a map and trace the flight path on a globe. But we are here and we get off the flight and the airport is HOT.

WTF? Its around 1530hrs, 90 degrees outside and the airport is burning up. We're all sweating by the time we reach customs. They gave us customs forms on the plane to make it all easier. We hang them over, have our index fingers scanned and a photo taken and we're done.

We're still sweating.

We stand at baggage and wait and wait and wait and none of our groups baggage shows up. Finally, a porter asks us if we were on this flight and we say yes. As we look up and down the baggage carousel we notice something down at the end.

Our bags. All taken off.

I guess becuase they had priority stickers on them.

So we collect out baggage. Collect our missing group member who took a different flight, and off we go to find out about taking the bus. Because, of our missing member we have to wait for the bus that leaves at 1750hrs. We hang around, buy some soda and stuff. I got some onigri. Rice balls are tasty. They had fish or something that was tasty inside.

I have no clue if I'm using the right doors or not at Narita. They all have exclamation points and open for me so who knows. I try to watch what people are doing but I feel like an idiot. I'm now illiterate after thirty years of literacy.

The trip wasn't bad. The seats are small and we were hot and the Husband tired so some grumpyness set in. It was about two hours to the hotel with traffic and all. But we made it. We got dropped off at the hotel and checked in.

The Courtyard Marriott Ginza in Tokyo Japan.



Our room for the next 18 days.



Most of the group decided to hit the sack. The Husband wanted to get food and so did I. We showed and changed. I wasn't smelly from the flight, but 2 hours in the non air conditioned airport and I was stank. I was tired but the 13 hours forward had moved me into my night schedule so I was ready to eat and go to bed. We wandered for a few blocks until it got really bright and neon.



We found a place with plastic food on display and energetic staff members moving people inside.



I peeked in and saw a busy but heavenly smelling interior if you ignored the cig smoke. We decided to make the attempt. The exterior menu had English on it, as did the interior. We got these big salads with beef on them and some fried chicken pieces and two sodas.






Everything was very tasty. Service was prompt. It was noisy without being irritating. We eat, were able to pay by card and headed back to the hotel.

We stopped a at convince store, found something that said Milk and had a cow on it, a box that had white grapes on it, and some cola flavored mentos.




Back to the hotel room to set up the internet, and zonk out