SHORE EXCURSIONS -as most of you cruisers know, it’s much cheaper/flexible to do your own thing as opposed to taking a tour with the cruise ship, and of course that’s what we did. Exception to this is Costa Maya where there is absolutely nothing to do unless you take a tour with the cruise. Many people did do Mayan ruins tour, or sea kayaking tour since that was the only thing you could possibly do there. One other advantage to taking a cruise ship tour is that the ship will WAIT for you if the tour is late. If you’re on your own, you could be in deep shit as we witnessed some people did in Costa Maya, more on this later.

OK, I’m back to Sunday. We looked around the ship, watched super bowl, went to dinner which was excellent, and went to bed early since we were exhausted from our wedding the day before, and then traveling.

Monday-Princess Cays . We arrived fairly early, got breakfast in the main dining room, and then went on a tender to beautiful princess cays. There is not much to do there except to lie around on the beach. There are plenty of deck chairs, although shade could be a little sparse especially on the LEFT side where it’s more crowded. If you go to the RIGHT, there are fewer people, but Barbecue/food/restrooms are to the LEFT of where the tenders arrive. We just had some drinks and lounged on the beach until early afternoon. You can rent snorkel gear/catamarans/jet ski’s but they aren’t cheap. I did go snorkeling with my own snorkeling gear, but snorkeling was not impressive. Again, this is just a day on the beach, not much more. We went to dinner, saw comedy/music show in Princess Theatre.

Tuesday-Day at sea . I got up early and got ourselves a couple of deck chairs by the aft pool. View from there is spectacular as you can see the ship’s wake leaving a white trail in the vast blue ocean. We lounged, we ate, we played bingo and lost (of course), played some video games, napped, read some books, etc. This was our first formal night. I’m so glad that I have my own tux. I was constantly amazed by the way people interpret “formal” attire. I think we saw “rhythms of the city” that night in Princess Theatre. This was a very, very impressive production show, although I’m no connoisseur of production shows. You read these reviews by some snobby people who live in Jersey who put these shows down comparing them to Broadway shows, but hey, we’re on a cruise! If you want to see Broadway shows, go there. I thought that it was impressive and entertaining, far superior to Carnival shows.

Wednesday-Georgetown, Grand Cayman . I have reserved a FULL DAY snorkeling trip through Captain Marvin’s on the internet. If you go here, you have to do Stingray City, but I wanted to do more. This island overall seemed like a very wealthy town. You see so many Lexus’s, BMers, and Mercedes here that you feel like you’re in a nice neighborhood in San Diego. I can’t imagine that shopping here would be very cheap. Anyway, we tendered ashore, then walked a block to Captain Marvin’s office, where we were transported to the boat on a van. I think the cost of this trip was $55 each and it was well worth it, especially when you consider that the ship charges something like $40 for a 2-hour trip to stingray city herded in like a cattle. We had a big boat that could fit about 20 people with a bathroom with only 12 of us, and a guide who snorkeled with us to show us the Good Stuff. We first went to the area where we snorkeled for Conch shells for lunch. It was about 20 feet deep on a sandy bottom and it was actually quite difficult to find these conch shells. Our guide/captain Marlon found 4 of them. 4 guys including myself who tried got nothing, but 4 shells were enough to eat. He then took us to Coral Gardens which was beautiful place with so many fish, and we actually encountered a stingray as well. I thought snorkeling in St. John was good, but THIS was out of this world. He then took us to the yacht club were we lounged for a bit, and had lunch (included), and conch shells were marinated and ready to eat. It was kinda chewy but I liked it. We then headed for the barrier reef, which is just about 100 yards away from stingray city. This was actually the highlight of the trip. There was a 6-foot green moray eel that they’ve been feeding for two years that our guide lured out from the cave with bait. It was an amazing thing. He also lured out a couple of 5-foot nurse sharks that they’ve been feeding and I actually got to swim with them and pet the sharks. That was awesome!! We then headed for the stingray city which was crowed with these huge bus-like snorkeling boats that they herd people in on. I was so glad that I wasn’t in one of those things. Stingray city is amazing! They know that you’re gonna feed them, so they just come charging towards you. We then headed back shore, and they dropped us off right by the pier on time to get on the last tender. It was an incredible day! I highly recommend Captain Marvin’s trip. It was well worth the money and spending the entire day. If you get herded like cattle in one of those 2-hour snorkeling trips, you’ll be missing out.

Thursday-Costa Maya . I read some conflicting opinions about this place. Some say it’s not that bad, and others say it’s a waste of time. I strongly agree with the latter. This place has been there a few months. It has a nice pier for docking, and then some bars and stores, and that’s it!! There is nothing to do here. Vendors are quite pushy, and I didn’t think prices were very good and they were not very amenable to bargaining since they don’t have much competition. I was surprised to find that Monarch of the seas was also docked here. This is one of those places where you might consider a Cruise Ship tour since you cannot arrange a trip by yourself, because there is nothing here. Yes, cruise ship tours are expensive and there aren’t that many to choose from. Jungle beach break, biking and sea kayaking, and Mayan ruins tour. All are quite expensive and I don’t believe that there are any Mayan ruins big or impressive enough there to pay that much money to see, but I could be wrong. There was this Mayan dance thing going on there but it was not worth standing around and watching for. We were there for a couple of hours and then went back to ship. We then saw something sobering here as we’re watching Monarch of the seas leave. Monarch of the seas left before we did and they sounded their loud horns 5 times staring about 30 minutes before their departure. As the ropes were pulled and the ship pulled about 5 yards off the pier, we saw a middle-aged couple dashing to the ship, yelling and waving. Monarch was only about 10 yards off the pier when they got to the ship where the gangway used to be, but all they could do was watch their ship take off… They may have had a good reason why they were late, but I just couldn’t imagine how ANYONE could miss a ship at this port, where all there is a pier and a few stores. They must have been idiots, but there were dozens of us on GP watching this whole scene and we couldn’t help but feel bad. Officers from GP came out, talked to them, went back into GP, and finally let them into GP about an hour later. I later found out the Monarch was heading to Grand Cayman…and we were going the opposite way. They must have flown back from Cozumel, but we learned a good lesson. Know when your ship is leaving, and don’t be late because they ain’t gonna wait for ya. Even if they are 10 yards away. And just in case, you might want to have some extra money/plastic/medications with you. We left this port about 1.5 hours late because one of the Mayan ruins tour was running late due to accident on the road. Again, ship will wait for you if you’re on a ship-arranged tour. We went to dinner, skipped the show and went to bed early this night. There was a champagne waterfall that night but we couldn’t make it.

Friday-Cozumel . Unfortunately, this was our foul-weather day. It did get better as the day progressed though. We docked at this new pier in downtown and it appeared that you could shop all day around this area if you were into that. We were not, and we had a snorkeling trip in the morning booked with eagle ray divers so we took a cab for about $8, close to Chankanaab Park where the marina was. $40 per person and we had the snorkeling boat to ourselves with a guide and a captain. They took us to three reefs and did some drift snorkeling where they dropped us off, and then picked us up down the current as we drifted with a guide. Although it was cloudy and chilly, water was amazingly clear. Amazing number and variety of fish. We had a huge swarm of fish charging the boat as my wife was feeding them some bananas. They dropped us off at one of the hotels on the beach so that we could take a cab back to the pier. We ate lunch on GP, then headed out to Chakanaab Park for dolphin swim. We paid $120 each on the internet, or you could pay $140 through princess for the same thing, your choice. It costs about $8 on cab to get there, $10 each to get into this park, and $120 each to do dolphin swim. Yes, it’s not cheap, but it was an experience of a lifetime. You have to go to their website to see some pictures and read the details. We headed back to pier after this, shopped a bit. My wife bought some ubiquitous silver jewelry, and I bought some cigars. I believe they were Dominican cigars, of course. This was our second formal night. We somehow missed “lights, camera, action”, which I heard good things about. I think we were exhausted and went to bed early.

Saturday-day at sea . We slept in, ate brunch at horizon court. Lounged by the pool, read some books, played video games, lost the jackpot bingo, and can’t remember the rest. I think we did the galley tour that day. We went to Sabatini’s for dinner, which I talked about earlier. We were completely stuffed. We bought our portrait pictures. We finalized our cruise account, which was a big damage, of course. We then completely packed our luggage and left them outside our cabin door. This is always a sad moment-packing to go home from your vacation/honeymoon.

Sunday-Ft. Lauderdale, disembarkation . We went to the main dining room for breakfast and waited for our tag color to be called. This was SO MUCH better than Carnival. We could stay anywhere on the ship until our tag color was called, so we were in our cabin, sitting out on the balcony, watching TV, etc. We were out of the terminal 5 minutes after our color was called and took a cab back to the airport.

IN Summary: It was a great cruise/honeymoon. I do have a few complaints, of course, major one being the itinerary. This was much less exciting compare to the southern Caribbean itinerary that we did before, but that’s the price you pay for not leaving from San Juan. However, I believe that they can pick better ports than Costa Maya. That port is simply a waste of time. It has potential to be a big resort in perhaps in a decade or so as Cancun did, but it’s very far from that at this point. There are other ports that other cruise ships stop such as Ocho Rios or Labadee, which I imagine have to be better than Costa Maya. I don’t know what to say about Princess Cays. I guess it’s ok since people want to relax after a day of traveling. I do have problems with additional fees for ice cream and alternative dining and I’m sure that Princess enough about the ice cream issue. Besides from above, the ship was beautiful, crew was fantastic, and we really had an excellent time there. Will we cruise princess again? Definitely! Will we cruise Carnival again? Well, maybe. I personally liked princess better and I have to try Royal Caribbean and Celebrity and see how they compare. I hope that you find this helpful, and have a happy cruise!!