Year 2 Day 283 – “Living the Dream”. Sunday, 2/05/2023. Day 15 of 14-night Wonder of the Seas Caribbean Cruise and day 1 of 7-night MSC Meraviglia Caribbean cruise. Changing ships in Port Canaveral. I Love the photographers on The Wonder of the Seas. We are provided two free photos per cruise because we are Diamond Plus. I love these.
Up early today, Haha out of the shower before 5am. My phone and Fitbit time are an hour ahead. I didn’t realize it until 5:30am when Steve says I am going walking. I said OK but we should go get coffee we are leaving the ship at 7:30am. He says “Dolores, it’s 5:30”, what no its 6:30. He looks at his watch. Nope, I was wondering why you got up at 4:30 and went in the shower. Yea, I was wondering why I was so tired. Well up and at it early today. Once I turned my phone off Wi-Fi and airplane mode the time set correctly.
We ate breakfast gathered our carry-on bags and headed to deck five to await our departure.
We proceeded to pick up our luggage and got a porter to take us outside where the Country Inn and Suites shuttle was picking us up. While waiting for the shuttle one of my bags broke and everything flew all over. Some nice women gave me a bag. There are such sweet people in this world. It is pouring here in Florida today. Country Inn and Suites transported us back to pick up our car nice and smoothly.
We then did a little shopping for essentials and got to Terminal 10 in Port Canaveral to get on the MSC Meraviglia.
What a disaster. It was pouring. There were no directions on where to go or what to do. We waited in a line to park the car. Sign says pay after and they took the money before. It was $146.78 for the week.
We parked our car on the lower level of the garage, but we still had our luggage. After we walked out of the garage, they took our luggage. They had everyone’s luggage sitting in the rain on the sidewalk waiting for the cages to load. Steve says why don’t you put the bags under the roof while you wait for more cages. Oh, yea great idea the gentleman says. Yikes this is a disaster. We proceeded through security and my carry-on bag was run through the x-ray machine three times and then searched. They said my small tweezers looked like a bullet. We finally got on the ship. When you get on you have to use the kiosks around to register a charge card. They authorize $250.00 right away. MSC is weird because they have different level experiences. We are the Bella which is a guaranteed room. They assigned our room number. It is on the back of the ship on deck 14. We always do forward. Hopefully it is good. The view is nice once we get out on the balcony.
We also have no evening dining room or time assigned. The early dining at 6pm was closed. Next dining was at 8:30pm. No way do we want to eat at 8:30pm. We were put on a wait list. We headed to the buffet. MSC has the best best best pizza. I wanted to keep eating it. I am going to have to be careful and sit away from the pizza area. I have heard the ship is only 75% full with 3,400 people. We walked around the ship to familiarize ourselves with it again. We did a 13-night cruise out of New York City a few years back that ended in Miami. We loved the ship at that time. MSC ships are fancier than Royal Caribbean ships. Meraviglia’s Promenade deck welcomes you with a walk of 96 meters designed in the Mediterranean style containing shops, bars and restaurants. The arch-shaped ceiling is a Led screen, that completely covers this route. Look at how you are welcomed aboard with this ceiling. How awesome is that.
The candy shop had some great big statues made of chocolate.
The Brass Anchor Pub seems really nice. Here’s a short little video of the pub.
There offer a nice assortment of darker beers in that pub.
Of course, we had to check out the casino. It is smaller than the Wonder of the Seas, but nice. Let’s hope the machines are a little looser than the Wonder.
Hopefully the ship will be a lot nicer than the Wonder for being crowded. We will be in Nassau, Bahamas at noon tomorrow. Here’s your thought to ponder tonight.
Today’s product recommendation is for the Rev-A-Shelf. I love this for my pots, pans and lids. The one we recently installed is the 21 inches with a spot on the top shelf for the lids. We will also be installing a smaller one for baking dishes. These are awesome. https://amzn.to/3CzOwwq https://amzn.to/3ZcBuyq
To view the complete daily diary, click here: Living the Dream – Deestimes – Make every step of the journey count