Grand Caribbean Cruise

The weather started out cloudy and overcast but before you knew it it was sunny and hot as hell! I love Caribbean weather! Jody and I sat out and suntanned in the morning and I re-read “Selling the Invisible” by Harry Beckwith over a couple of Foster’s oil cans in the afternoon in the shade at the back of the ship.

Watched an amusing ‘Hairy Chest’ contest on the Lido deck (I declined to participate though I am confident that I could have been a contender). Billy Bob from North Carolina ended up winning the contest…with 1000 Nascar fans, and 1000 drunk college kids on board, he was an obvious shoo-in.

I was feeling a little sluggish today…too many margarita shots and cheap Mexican beer with the frat boys on the catamaran from the day before, I suspect.

This boat is packed wall-to-wall with people. It’s a holy roman bacchanal orgy. To give you an idea…the cruise director, Kris, made several announcements bragging that there were 3364 passengers aboard the cruise ship Valor for this trip. Yet Carnival’s own web site states that the ship’s capacity is only 2,974 people. Sound like a recipe for disaster (of Titanic proportions) if you ask me. I’m not complaining…drunk college kids are a lot of fun (but I’ll kick their asses if the ship goes down and they get in my way).

Sorry gang. Carnival’s WiFi (which costs $.75 a minute), is pretty flaky and pretty much sucks. Flickr stalls when I try to upload even low res photos (yes, with full signal strength) and this very post cost just me five bucks because it’s so slow. Gmail doesn’t load either….so I can’t check email.

Hopefully there will be a faster connection on land once in Cozumel.

Jody and I are having fun. I’m writing and taking pictures every day….I’ll post as soon as I get a good WiFi connection.

Update: Buyer Beware: If you purchase WiFi services from Carnival from your laptop in your cabin, NO WHERE on their Intranet does it state that you won’t be credited for unused blocks of time. So don’t buy any more than you have to.

I bought a 100 minute package, and when I was coming close to using it up, I purchased another 100 minute package. When it became quite obvious that the WiFi connection was substandard, unusable, and not worth the money, I stopped using it…never tapping into my second package.

I stopped down to the Internet office and spoke with the Carnival Cruise Internet Manager, Tim, asking if I could get credited for the unused time.

Tim was rude, dismissive and completely unprofessional (and a dork, if you want to know the truth).

Tim told me that if I had “made a mistake and accidentally purchased more time because you clicked the wrong button”, he could credit the account no problem. But since I knowingly made the purchase but simply didn’t use the time, “It’s not my problem”.

“It’s not my problem”, he said.

I’m standing there like…did you just say that to me? It’s not your problem? Did you really just said that to a customer? I was flabbergasted.

Cruise Tip: If you buy more Carnival WiFi time that you need, lie about it to Tim, and he’ll credit your account. Otherwise, it’s not his problem.

Okay, so its 7:25am, and even before the sun has risen, there are dozens and dozens of books, and beach bags, and towels neatly arranged on the choicest of lounge chairs up on the Lito deck.

Not a person in sight, though. Did I mention that it is still dark out?

What the…ahhhh, I see what it going on here. I turn on my heel to walk back to the cabin (to share my smart detective work with Jody) when I spy evidence of a timeless Spring Break rite-of-passage. Last night’s vomit is still clinging to the side of the boat. Classic.

Sun Strategy #1: Stake your claim and grab a lounge chair before the other passengers are even out of bed, otherwise you don’t stand a pina colada’s chance in hell of getting a seat in the sun.

It’s 7am. I know this because of the loud thumping of techno music and dancing bodies coming from the gym, which is, presumably right above our cabin. This must be why they call it the ‘Fun Ship” and not the “Rest & Relaxation Ship”. No worries, though, we wanted to get up and make a day of it anyway.

Update: Turns out the gym is on the other side of the ship. Must have just been some loud kids.

My wife and I usually enjoy vacationing with friends and family, but this year we’ve decided to finally take a trip on our own, just the two of us…our first vacation alone together since our honeymoon 13 years ago.

After going round and round for months about where we should go, we pulled the proverbial trigger and booked a cruise on Carnival Cruise Lines. We’re going to Belize, Cozumel, George Town and Roatan Island. It was relatively inexpensive, considering it included airfare, all of our meals, plus accommodations for the week. And so we thought, what have we got to lose?

The whole idea for this site began when started doing research online, trying to figure out where we wanted to go and how we wanted to get there. We couldn’t find any good resources that told us what to look for (and what to look OUT for) when booking a cruise vacation. It was frustrating, and I got to thinking…Since I am an amateur blogger and photographer, and I do Internet Marketing and PR for a living, wouldn’t it be great to start an online journal and capture the whole cruise experience from start to finish so that others could learn from what we learned!

And so that is the story of how the Grand Caribbean Cruise site was created. We hope that you enjoy it. We’ll let you know how it goes!