We booked it a little last minute but we decided to squeeze a cruise in for our family Summer vacation. It was a little weird to only have three of the five of us but we still had fun. We let Emilee invite her cousin Lizzie too so she wouldn’t get to bored having all of her parents attention all of the time. 😊😁😉😉
We flew out on Father’s Day. There was a layover in Nashville and everything was delayed and they switched our seats for no reason, Ryan got a notification his tire on our car we parked at the Kansas City airport was flat, and it was a long exhausting day-but we made it to Florida! We stayed in a hotel that night and the next morning we took an Uber to the port. We flew into Ft Lauderdale because it was cheaper but our boat left from Miami. We ALMOST forgot that and went to the wrong port 🤦♀️ but we didn’t and we remembered before we missed our onboarding time. We talked with Allison and Matthew right before we got on the boat. We did the Wonder of the Seas with Royal Caribbean. It is the biggest boat we have ever been on. It was big but it was still pretty easy to get around and didn’t seem like it was to far to places. It was bigger in that it was wider for the most part.
There was a theme night each night and a dance party with the theme every night. I told everyone we didn’t have to go to the dance parties but we had to dress up. The first night was 70’s night. Since we just had Ryan’s bday it was a prefect time to use our costumes again. Ryan’s platform shoes didn’t fit in his luggage but he still fit in. The girls were good sports and wore matching hippie outfits. The other nights were fancy night, white night and Caribbean night. I did not take as many pictures as I meant too. I was going to buy a picture package and get some from the cruise line but I didn’t realize I had to get them before the last day or they were gone. So unfortunately I didn’t get a lot picture memories.
So our first day on the boat we explored, got settled in our rooms and had a fun dinner in our 70’s attire. The second day was at Coco Cay, Royal Caribbean’s private island. We started at the water park. They had a wave pool and a bunch of slides. Ryan went down the first one with us and got a little motion sick so we left him on a beach chair eating ice cream cones and the girls and I went on a few more slides. When we had our fill of that we walked over to the beach and did some snorkeling. That was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. We saw some cool fish, a shipwreck, a stingray that seemed to like Emilee, and some cool plants. The girls played on the beach for a while and we had a relaxing day on the beach until we were ready to go back to the boat.
Our third day on the cruise we were at Nassau. We had been there before so we decided to try something different from our last visit. We went to the Royal Caribbean private beach club. It was pretty nice. There were a couple beaches- the girls spent most of their time there, swimming and playing in the sand. They also had several different pools- party, relaxing, little kids, adult only different options like that. Ryan and I went to the relaxing pool for most of the time. They also had lots of food options that were included so there was always plenty of food to eat. We went back to the boat a little earlier this day to get out of the sun after a few hours. The other cruises we have done have been in winter months. The weather is still nice then but not quite so intense. The middle of summer is pretty darn toasty so we had to go find air conditioning after a few hours.
Our last day on the boat we were at sea floating around. We enjoyed the pools, shows, and activities they had on the boat. Ryan and I got a massage, the girls hung out with some friends they made. We all did a cupcake decorating class together. It was pretty fun. The frosting was so heavy it smashed our cupcakes. The frog turned out pretty cute though. We all passed and got our culinary award!
We got off the boat on Friday at 7am. Our flight was not until 7pm. We had reserved a rental car to drive through the Florida keys until it was time to go to the airport. The car rental place didn’t end up reserving a car for us…they told us we were fourth in line for the cars as they were returned but didn’t know when that would actually be. Dumb. So we went to the airport and got our tickets moved to an earlier flight. It was another exhausting travel day home. We had to run to our flight on the layover but we made it. Ryan’s dad picked us up since our car had a flat. We went back the next day and met the tow truck to get it fixed. By the time we got home we all went to bed and crashed until morning. We had a very fun trip. A cruise is a fun way to see several places and have lots of entertainment options. I’m sure we will do another one sometime.