Roland and Pam

Age: 45
Occupation: Operations Manager
Number of Cruises: 2
Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean
Ship: Rhapsody of the Seas
Sailing Date: February, 15th 2004
Itinerary: Western Caribbean

We flew in to Houston, Hobby airport out of Midway airport Chicago. Avoiding the larger O’Hare and Bush Intercontinental airports is something I strongly encourage based on our experience. Galveston Island is a beautiful place and not to be missed. Don’t let your impressions of the island be solely based on the most expeditious route from Houston to the cruise terminal. If you do you will be sadly disappointed, as were most passengers. While the terminal was surely lacking in aesthetics, I was very impressed with how quickly we were processed and boarded.

The ship-board food was great. Reviews I had read on this website lead me to expect quantity at the expense of quality but I am emphatic when I say this was not the case. I might suggest, however, that when attending the buffets, walk the food line first before you commence filling your trough. In this way you will select foods you will most enjoy as opposed to all of the food you can possibly enjoy. If you think I’m being flippant when I say “trough” you’d best reserve judgment until you witness the size of the plates presented you at the beginning of the line. You can easily fill this platter up with enough food-stuff to nourish a family of 4 for a solid week. While this may sound just exhilarating, understand that you may want to spend the cruise doing something other than looking for the next available restroom. Believe me. I know of what I speak.

We shared a dinner table in the dining room nightly with Bill and Jill from Massachusetts (Man, been a long time since I’ve had to spell Massachusetts) and they were one of the highlights of the cruise. Just the most fun, pleasant couple you could know.

The ship is pretty neat. Lots to see. They were constantly busily fixing this and that and constantly painting things. I’d sooner have seen them spend an ounce of effort cleaning a window or two as there was not a clean window to be found.

We were so fortunate to have a stateroom with a balcony. This was a surprise presented me by my traveling partner upon arrival. I’m guessing an $800 surprise. An option we entertained but rejected when making our reservations due to the cost. Please be assured that neither of us would have survived the cruise had it not been for that balcony. This little refuge, no larger than a sheet of plywood, was surely where some of our most pleasant moments were spent. To anyone who might argue that it’s a mighty big ship and there’s plenty of places to go, I will sharply argue that while it may be large ship, most of the vessel is occupied by cabins; cabins whose habitants are chomping at the bit to escape, as a result there is constant competition for common or public resources.

On a similar note; If you have any premonitions about making use of the areas around the pool or on any of the sundecks be prepared for strife. The first sunny day we emerged on to the sundeck to find not a single lounge chair available. Mind you, nobody was sitting in them, but they had all been “reserved” by the presence of a towel tossed there upon. We punted and decided to find a spot in the sun where we could lay our towels on the deck and sit. The only available area was adjacent a shuffleboard court. Now I don’t know what it is about kids and shuffleboard but we witnessed infinite variations of games that bored and unattended kids could contrive using the resources available on your stock shuffleboard court. X-Treme shuffleboard does exist. I have witnessed this. While we both lay on the deck in defensive fetal positions we were pummeled and our drinks knocked over by errant shuffleboard pucks and were privy to some of the most interesting sibling rivalries revealed. The thot occurred to me on several occasions to simply put the pucks in my bag or throw them overboard but I resisted the temptation.

On another similar note; Got kids? Thinking about bringing them on a cruise? Don’t. Save yourself the money. Save the kids the boredom. And above all else, spare your fellow guests the aggravation of dealing with your unattended children while you’re passed out in your cabin while your towels are up on your deck chairs that you haven’t sat on for 4 hours making then unusable by anyone else. There are soft ice cream machines in the restaurant with which all of the kids enjoyed making cones. Children were allowed to make cones unattended with which they would then proceed on deck, and the ice cream would invariably topple off the cone and land on the deck, the kid would break in to tears, run off to where they thot their parents were only to find vacant deck chairs and then run off to their cabin to find their passed out parents. I’d always sit anxiously waiting for the crew to show up and paint the spot on the deck where the ice cream fell.

Still trying to tie these similar notes together; If you want to lay in the sun, this is what you have to do; Brink a bicycle chain lock on the cruise. Arise at 0700 every morning. Pack a bag full of insignificant belongings and your bicycle chain. Pick out the chairs of your choice anticipating wind direction and sun position relative to the ship’s direction of travel for the day. Systematically set on the chair these insignificant objects such as flip flops, a dirty towel or two, hair brush, sun screen bottle, photograph of your mother in law, what have you. Use the bicycle lock to chain the chairs together. Your failure to perform this task as described will result in your return to the sundeck after breakfast to find your belongings in the middle of a shuffleboard court being pushed back and forth by those arguing siblings I was mentioning earlier whose parents are passed out in their cabin. You need to prepare some measure of a gauntlet to prevent your chairs from being commandeered. What’s my point? There aren’t enough deck chairs or deck space for all of the passengers.

When we arrived at Key West it was raining accompanied by cold 20 mile per hour northerly winds. Still, if I have to get drunk and cold soaked to the bone, there is no better place than Key West to do it. Apparently, as the ship pulled in to Key West and I was standing on deck watching the happenings, my travel partner was in the cabin showering. She emerged from the shower, walked nakedly to the open doors to the cabin balcony and was greeted, in reciprocal full view, by a Coast Guard cutter and crew escorting the ship in to harbor. If you will, after two days at sea, you get kinda used to parading around the cabin au naturel because…. well….. there just ain’t anybody out there to see you. Later that evening, sitting at the bar at Crabby Billie’s, enjoying some most excellent oysters and Conch fritters, she and I met the boys from the Coast Guard, currently on liberty. Everybody had a good chuckle and it was a most enjoyable evening.

We were supposed to stop at Grand Cayman Island but did a drive-by since the water was too rough to drop anchor and go ashore on tenders. The only question I had was “Why did we proceed at 20 KPH (22 MPH) all the way to this island to find this out when we could have bee-lined directly to Cozumel where better weather awaited us when the conditions at Grand Cayman could have easily been established over the radio? I think they have radios on those things”. Believe me, at first the ship is kinda neat, but after 3 days on board you kinda wanna git off.

While in Cozumel, we took a guided Jeep tour of the island. This consisted of boarding a Jeep which upon start up steadily displayed every single idiot light in the dash and driving to the other side of the island and following an ancient shoreline road along the beach, periodically stopping to climb around a ruin. Our guide explained to me that the Mayan Culture began in the year 300AD and ended 2000 years later. You do the math. The road we followed resulted in a ride for me that was nothing short of painful. On the way out I sat glumly in the back set. On the way back I stood on the back seat and restrained myself by holding on to the roll bar allowing myself to absorb the pounding with my legs instead of my L7 lumbar joint. The trip was interesting and we stopped briefly for some beautiful snorkeling and a picnic lunch that simple but delicious. En route, the guide took frequent opportunity to stop and point out the local wild life….which consisted of iguanas. If I may; where I live we have squirrels. If you come visit me and have never seen a squirrel we may stop to look at a squirrel for a moment or two. What I won’t do is solidly land on the brakes, launching you through the windshield or burying your forehead into the roll-bar every single time we encounter a squirrel. If you’ve seen one iguana you can kinda figure out the program.

I was fairly familiar with the Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Seas vessel, which was touted as the largest liner on earth capable of carrying 50% more passengers than the Rat-race….er…. Rhapsody. We berthed adjacent the Voyager in Cozumel. It is a little longer but it sits a towering three or four decks higher. While previously intrigued with this ship, I quickly concluded that the resulting formula surely meant 50% more passengers competing for not much more available space for activities out of cabin on deck. While we were berthed, I kinda half jokingly called across the dock to passengers on the Voyager asking them if they had any extra deck chairs they could loan us. They generally replied that their ship was too crowded and similarly devoid of adequate deck chairs. I wouldn’t touch that slug.

We took the Galveston Limousine Service (1-800-640-4826) from Hobby almost directly to the cruise ship terminal and not at all directly from the terminal to the airport. Please understand, I offer this phone number because your options to make this Hobby/terminal move are slim. This limousine company is actually a fleet of Ford vans but they will pretty much pick you up and take you just about anywhere that is loosely between Galveston and Houston. While this sounds just grand, understand that if 9 of the 10 people in the van are going to the cruise terminal, this outfit won’t miss a beat running out of route to collect or drop off the 10th slack jaw individual. We boarded the van after disembarking the cruise ship with just enough time to make our flight but had to ride all over Galveston Island to collect a bejeweled lady passenger who had the means, but not the initiative to catch the van at the cruise terminal. While it was extremely touching witnessing her romantic goodbyes bequeathed upon her husband, 20 years her senior, this detour caused us to miss our flight and she didn’t seem to think anything of it.

It was a vacation. Maybe it was everything a vacation is supposed to be. I ate too much and enjoyed it. I drank to much and kinda enjoyed that too. It was routinely aggravating but that was as much the entertainment as the entertainment was. If you’ve ever watched the movie “Dirty Dancing” where the family goes to the resort in the Catskills back in the 60’s to participate in some fairly silly entertainment offerings by the resort you may well appreciate the parallels. If a good vacation is something that gives you a chance to forget about the sublime and really makes you appreciate getting home then it was a good vacation.

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