And I can honestly say, I am really glad we got sucked in again! This was a 7-day cruise (as opposed to our 4-day cruise last year) and the quality of the ship, entertainment, food and the people aboard the ship were WAY ABOVE the quality of last years cruise. If I had never seen this years cruise I would have probably been a hard sale on doing cruises much anymore. But now I really think I may be one of those that just loves to do the cruising thing. Don't get me wrong though, I love doing a very wide variety of vacations so that's not going to be all I do now, I'm just sayin' I could do it again.
This time we set sail aboard the brand new Carnival Magic.
It started out with the same people as last year, we just added two more this year, Josh and Becky. They are friends and co-workers of Dave's (which in case I've never mentioned, he's a high school teacher/coach and, therefore, so are they). And in case you've forgotten, Homann and Snell are co-workers with me at the Junior High. And Snell and Dave date, which brought us all together for this trip. So here we are from left to right: (Katy) Snell, Dave, me, Josh, (Alisha) Homann, and Becky.
This year, unfortunately, there was something new that was not so welcomed, tropical storm Debby. As you can see from the picture that is the status of Debby on Saturday at 5pm.
Our cruise officially left the port of Galveston 24 hours later. During that 24-hour period it was thought Debby was heading toward Texas and that the left side of the storm was going to form at any time. As we now know, none of that is true, it went towards Florida and I don't think the other side formed.
This doesn't mean that Debby didn't stretch her wrath across the gulf. Cause oh, she stretched it...
And the sea was angry my friends. (I've always wanted to say that from Seinfeld- but I'm serious, the sea was angry!)
Here's a little known fact: when there's 9-10 foot waves in the ocean, a cruise ship will not only bob front-to-back (or was it up-and-down?) as well as side-to-side.
Neat.
The ship started rocking harder than normal during a show we were watching and we kinda all wrote it off as getting used to being on a ship again. But when we got back to our room and were getting ready for bed was when we realized this was more than normal. Our safe door was slamming back and forth because it wasn't locked closed, you could hear creaking from the boat and standing or walking was becoming a challenge (and I promise it wasn't alcohol, too expensive!). I had to see what the waves looked like so I went to the lido deck where I could get a good view. As I walked to the back of the boat, I walked past the empty pool where the water inside was literally rolling as waves back and forth from side-to-side inside the pool!
But this was all nothing a little dramamine couldn't take care of.
And by a little, I mean the max dose.
Obviously.
But I did still wake up about every 20-30 minutes due to the severe rocking. At one point I could feel my body and especially my feet sliding around in my bed to the waves. I'm not even exaggerating. I'm not sure how dramamine is supposed to work, but I have a feeling it is something like an anesthesia. Because everytime I woke up, I just remember being like, "whoa, this is weird feeling, but man, I sure am tired..." and off asleep I went.
(I would like to note that this was the "less drowsy" form of dramamine. I've already determined that the remainder of my dramamine will be used as a sleep-aid for those nights I just can't sleep in lew of tylenol PM or any of those other types.)
I know I was pretty drugged up, but at one point I swear I could hear the ship smack back down on waves like little boats do on the water. Our room was on the front of the ship, but we were on the eighth floor. And I looked at the ship several times afterward and thought, there's just literally no way it could do that. So I don't know if that really happened or I was just hallucinating it due to the "drugs." But I do know the ship was a rockin' (but not in the don't come a knockin' kinda way, haha)!
The next day the ship continued to rock but nothing like it was during the night. Everyone on the ship was talking about the night before, including the crew. No one had experienced rocking like that before, so that just means now I can write it off as things I've done but would like to never experience again!
Besides the remaining higher than normal waves, we enjoyed the next day at sea. One of about a billion times they played "the wobble" or songs of the type.
A mix of pina colada/strawberry daiquiri on the left and a miami vice on the right.
Dave turned 50, though I think he could have passed for turning 40, if not younger!
Every night at dinner the waitstaff sings and dances but since we did "my time dining" we only caught it one of the nights (and we didn't always dine there). But the night we caught it in the main dining room they were trying to get women up to dance. So of course Homann and I did. In hindsight, had I had known I was dancing to "Apple Bottom Jeans" or "Low" or whatever the title of that song is, I wouldn't have worn the short dress (of course there was no way to know that!). But they had it choreographed and as you can see we are a little slow following the waiters lead (I blame the dramamine still flowing through my system, haha)!
The last night we went to the Italian restaurant on the ship.
Apparently, that is where they hide all the hot (and gay, unfortunatley) guys on the ship. Oh but they were great eye candy when they did their little dance.
And we did plenty of hanging out by the pool during our "days at sea."
And we thought it was the best thing ever when we made the slide show at the Red Frog Pub, haha!
One of the comedians from the ship:
And last, some other random photos from the ship:
Up next, blogs about the islands!!!
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