This is the last of three posts about the cruise I took last month. The firs post was about the cost of the cruise and the second post was about the room and the food on the cruise. This post will be about the ship activities and the port excursions.
Ship Activities
There was quite a variety of activities available on the ship. Many of our fellow passengers favorite activity seemed to be drinking and getting drunk. I’m not much of a drinker and the drink prices on the ship were ridiculously high so I did not partake of that activity. Since the motion of the ship made me queasy drinking probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.
The main activities we attended were the shows. There were only two nights where they had what I would consider a real show being performed. Those were the shows with singing and dancing and actual sets. I did enjoy those shows although they were somewhat short and seemed like a random collection of musical numbers rather than a cohesive show.
The standup comedians were my favorite entertainment on the boat. They also only performed two out of the five nights. The other nights had amateur shows. These were basically the ship’s entertainment staff performing on stage without any set other than some chairs. These shows were actually fairly entertaining despite the lack of production value.
We were on ship for Halloween night and a lot of people dressed up and there were some great costumes. There was a Halloween costume contest that was won by a couple of guys dressed up as KISS. They did have authentic costumes and could have easily passed as actual members of KISS. The runner up was a group of guys dressed as the Avengers. The man in the Iron Man costume made the costume himself from metal and spent over $800. The costume looked great, but I don’t know if it was $800 great. Our costumes were much cheaper. We went as Pornstache and a prisoner from the show “Orange Is The New Black.”
Not many people knew we were portraying people from a TV show, but they did still like the guard and prisoner costumers. We were smart enough not to use blackface to make the costume more authentic.
Ports and Excursions
The cruise left and returned from New Orleans. It would have been nice to add a couple days in New Orleans to the beginning or ending of the cruise, but we didn’t really have time for that and it would have increased the cost of the vacation a fair amount.
The ship stopped in the ports of Progreso and Cozumel during the cruise. In Progreso we had booked a tour of the ruins at Dzibilchaltun before we embarked. This allowed us to pay less than half than what the tour would have cost if we had booked through the cruise line. The guided portion of the tour was only about a half hour and after that we had time to further explore the ruins and/or swim in a nearby cenote(sinkhole) for the remainder of the tour time. Since it was hot we opted for the swimming. The total time of the tour including transportation to and from the ruins was a little under about 4 hours. This was just about right since it gave us a little time to explore Progreso before going on the tour and allowed us plenty of time after the tour to get back on the ship. There isn’t a lot to see in Progreso so I’d recommend booking a tour for that port.
In Cozumel we didn’t have a tour booked and decided to just wing it. The tour guide in Progreso suggested that we go to Chankanaab. Admission was $21 each and basically all we got for that was access to the beach. I wasn’t impressed with that recommendation. We still had a good time swimming in the ocean and relaxing on the beach, but I think we could have done that for less. If there is a next time, I’ll either book a tour ahead of time or at least do some prior research.
That wraps up the cruise posts. Going on a cruise was something I’d wanted to do for a long time and I’m glad I did it. Although I did enjoy this cruise, if I ever go on another cruise it will need to be an even better deal and go somewhere I haven’t been.
I have been on 5-6 cruises and it is a great way to preview countries. In the future you can return to the countries you like.
A cruise would be a good way to sample some new countries. I’d never been to either of the ports on this cruise before, but I’d been to Mexico many times so these ports weren’t an entirely new experience.