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Cruisin' questions

Bartdog

Bartdog

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Mar 30, 2002
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hi, all, going on a cruise next month for the first time in over 21 years. My wife was pregnant with our first when we went in December of [1994].

The particulars: Freedom of the Seas, 7 nights to Mexico, Grand Cayman, Roatan, Mexico again.

Does it make sense to get the beverage package? The customer support person, reading from her script, kept repeating that drinks were $5.50 and up. I'm guessing $5.50 will get some kind of rotgut that will have me sick as a dog. I'm thinking I'll want 4-5 mojitos or bourbons a day.

Anyone had experiences with this boat? Any shore excursion recs?

Gracias por su ayuda.
 
Last edited:
Bartdog said:
hi, all, going on a cruise next month for the first time in over 21 years. My wife was pregnant with our first when we went in December of 2004.

The particulars: Freedom of the Seas, 7 nights to Mexico, Grand Cayman, Roatan, Mexico again.

Does it make sense to get the beverage package? The customer support person, reading from her script, kept repeating that drinks were $5.50 and up. I'm guessing $5.50 will get some kind of rotgut that will have me sick as a dog. I'm thinking I'll want 4-5 mojitos or bourbons a day.

Anyone had experiences with this boat? Any shore excursion recs?

Gracias por su ayuda.
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First of all...have a great time!
I don't know if they allow it but in the past we could carry on some booze in our luggage so we had it in our stateroom.
On the 1st day, give a good tip to one of the pool area waiters....tell them that you want a chair saved for the next day for you and the wife....it did wonders for us on a Disney cruise!
 
Bartdog said:
hi, all, going on a cruise next month for the first time in over 21 years. My wife was pregnant with our first when we went in December of 2004.
Click to expand...
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Bartdog said:
hi, all, going on a cruise next month for the first time in over 21 years. My wife was pregnant with our first when we went in December of 2004.

The particulars: Freedom of the Seas, 7 nights to Mexico, Grand Cayman, Roatan, Mexico again.

Does it make sense to get the beverage package? The customer support person, reading from her script, kept repeating that drinks were $5.50 and up. I'm guessing $5.50 will get some kind of rotgut that will have me sick as a dog. I'm thinking I'll want 4-5 mojitos or bourbons a day.

Anyone had experiences with this boat? Any shore excursion recs?

Gracias por su ayuda.
Click to expand...

As far as booze, I always just "sneak" on plenty of booze in water bladders you can buy cheaply at any sporting goods or camping store. I usually bring Sailor Jerry, Black Seal Rum, Powers Irish Whiskey, Kentucky Spirit (by Wild Turkey) bourbon, and Russian Standard Platinum vodka. They're good enough on their own and excellent as mixers plus cheap enough I wouldn't be really ticked if they were confiscated (never happened). There are plenty of free mixers available like lemonade, OJ, various juices etc and I believe most allow you to bring on 2 two liters of Coke. So that's plenty for a week long excursion especially when buying other booze on the excursions.

As far as excursions you just said Mexico so I don't know where you're stopping. There are plenty of stops in Mexico although the most common is probably Cozumel in which case I rec the cruiselines Tulum trip. Tulum is amazing but far from port and when destinations are far from port you want to stick with the cruiselines own excursions as they will wait for you but if you go independent you might be left behind.

As far as Grand Cayman and Roatan they're small enough you should save money and time and schedule your own excursion. At GC I had enough time to do the submarine trip plus a snorkel trip to Stingray city and the barrier reef plus eat turtle chowder and turtle steak and drink local beer at a restaurant near the sub dock. You could only do one or two of those if you do the cruise tour because they waste all kinds of time. BTW Stingray City sounds incredibly lame, but we had more fun there than anywhere else.

At Roatan just rent a car (and rent or bring a TomTom or other GPS device dont rely on your phone) and then go to Carambola mountain to hike around and see chocolate and vanilla farms and amazing vistas, then cool off by snorkeling for an hour or so in one of the many walk in reef spots and finish with dinner at Temporary Cal's Cantons, it's a great local restaurant on a cliff overlooking the ocean and jungle with great local seafood like snook, cracked conch and Caribbean spiny lobster.
 
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When we went on Royal Caribbean, the beverage package was for sodas. We purchased the wine package for dinner, which was a good deal if you like wine. Their wines are not great, but if you did not finish it, you could take it back to the room. We also ordered a bottle of Grey Goose for the room to have cocktails. The drinks on the Lito Deck can get pricey. When were on the ship, some guy jacked up a $3,000 bill the first night and his credit card was denied. They dumped him off in Mexico and told him he had to find his way back.
 
Off topic but one of my most memorable cruise moments was on a Disney cruise when my then 8 yr old daughter runs up to me on the pool deck with a huge bowl of ice cream and with a beaming smile tells me "Daddy, it's free ice cream!"

I just said yes, honey its "free"

 
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Like other cruise lines, Royal Caribbean will let you bring two bottles of wine on board. My wife and I took full advantage of this when we went on a Princess cruise a few years ago. I've heard RC is very stringent about checking bags for stowaway booze. My wife and I were able to get a handle of vodka and a handle of rum on board with us on our cruise. As someone mentioned, get the plastic water bladders at a sporting goods store.

If you forget to buy those, stop at any Dunkin Donuts and ask to buy one of their Box O Joe coffee boxes. It has a non-metallic bladder inside of it that you can remove and fill with liquid.
 
With very minimal google skills, you can purchase a wine corker for about $25 from numerous websites. That & little creativity will allow you to buy a bottle of cheap wine (i.e. the crap they sell at Walgreens for $5 per bottle), dump it down the sink, and refill the bottle with your booze of choice. For brown booze, a yellow-tinted chardonnay bottle works great. For clear booze, food coloring & a merlot bottle will do the trick.

In late June we spent a couple of weeks on Roatan. Tribe's suggestion is spot-on; rent a car, drive around; hit Carambola Gardens, then drive over to West End or West Bay Beach & hang out a bit. There are some good places to eat there, or head back to Temporary Cals (it is outstanding, has awesome views, and is inexpensive).
 
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SeaPA said:
With very minimal google skills, you can purchase a wine corker for about $25 from numerous websites. That & little creativity will allow you to buy a bottle of cheap wine (i.e. the crap they sell at Walgreens for $5 per bottle), dump it down the sink, and refill the bottle with your booze of choice. For brown booze, a yellow-tinted chardonnay bottle works great. For clear booze, food coloring & a merlot bottle will do the trick.

In late June we spent a couple of weeks on Roatan. Tribe's suggestion is spot-on; rent a car, drive around; hit Carambola Gardens, then drive over to West End or West Bay Beach & hang out a bit. There are some good places to eat there, or head back to Temporary Cals (it is outstanding, has awesome views, and is inexpensive).
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There was an article I read about two or three years ago that was originally intended to be a test of some relatively expensive smuggling device (I can't remember maybe a fake laptop or something similarly large enough to hold a liter but look like something else), but to test it they took it on 6 of the major cruiselines but did it by one person using the smuggling device, one person using my aforementioned water bladders, one used shampoo bottles cleaned out and refilled, one simply buried bottles in the luggage under clothes and one brazenly just carried the bottles loose. In all six guidelines tested the gut just carrying booze had it confiscated and Disney confiscated the bottles in the luggage but told them they were only.doing it because it was glass. And everyone else got through no problem.

So the moral is there's no need to get fancy with your smuggling. Just take it out of glass bottles and put it in some water bladders and/or some plastic shampoo bottles and place it in your luggage. The cruise employees don't care unless you're loaded down with drunken fratboy levels of booze, like I said we took the equivalent five bottles and had zero issue. And if you're drinking more than five bottles of liquor in a week or less...let me give you some contact info for my new addiction facilities.
 
Dr. Nole said:
Off topic but one of my most memorable cruise moments was on a Disney cruise when my then 8 yr old daughter runs up to me on the pool deck with a huge bowl of ice cream and with a beaming smile tells me "Daddy, it's free ice cream!"

I just said yes, honey its "free"
Click to expand...

Disney.....literally robbing American families for decades, all under the bogus rubric of "family values." Cut-throat profiteers.
 
My point with the wine corker is simply this - pretty much every cruiseline allows you to bring on a couple of bottles of wine. The corker allows you to fill those bottles with the booze of your choice, then you bring them with you in your carry on bag, without them questioning it at all. It's exceedingly simple, and the tool costs $25.
 
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The bring your own booze rule (or prohibition thereof) could be quite beneficial to cruise aficionados who also dabble in felching.
 
The family and I have been to Roatan twice now and it's now one of my favorite destinations. The first time I went I hated it. We rented a car on our own and drove around for a few hours and saw a few nice things, but the weather was horrible and the places we found ourselves in were very sketchy looking. The second time we went, a friend recommended hiring a tour guide to take us around and it was well worth it for us. Ron took us to all the best places away from all of the touristy areas. We friended Ron on FB before the trip and planned out what we wanted to do when we got there. He picked us up at the cruise terminal and took us to a private resort/beach so that the kids could swim and reef snorkel. He worked it so that we could use the facilities at the resort to shower/change. I can't recommend hiring your own tour guide enough, unless you're really good at directions and have an affinity for pre-planning, I'd think about a tour guide. But like everyone else said, I'd stay away from the ship excursions, you'll have a lot more fun on your own and probably spend less money.
 
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