When Life Gives you Lemons, Make Yourself a Cocktail!

My husband and I got the idea to go on a cruise. It had been a while since our last one, and it is a great way for us to see the beautiful Caribbean since we live on the West Coast. We settled on a date, booked our tickets, and decided it was a great opportunity to bring my mother-in-law along. Flights, hotel for one night, and the week long cruise were booked, and we were all excited and looking forward to the trip.

The day of our departure arrived. Our flight was leaving at 6:20 am, so my amazing mother decided to pick us up at o'dark thirty. The three of us loaded our stuff into the car and headed out. We breezed through security, and had ample time before our flight started to board. We were off to a great start!

We landed in Orlando and called a car to take us to our hotel. We had the most AMAZING driver. She was personable, and polite; we talked the whole 50 minute ride to our hotel. I was excited! Everything was actually falling into place perfectly. Mind you, before the trip took place I stressed myself out thinking and planning for three people, plotting out every move we needed to make to ensure we made it on the cruise seamlessly (because that's what I do).

“I was excited! Everything was actually falling into place perfectly.”

The Cruise Begins - Sunday

We board the cruise the next morning. We have never made it through the lines so quickly. The Royal Caribbean staff were amazing, walking my mother-in-law through all of her documents, getting her setup on her phone, and connecting our two reservations so we would all be on one. When we got on board, we decided to drop our backpacks in our rooms, and then go exploring. To our surprise, our mother-in-laws bags were already outside her stateroom. We quickly got her setup and headed down to our room. We found a couple of our bags already ready for us, met our cabin steward and dropped off our things.

Since this was the first time my mother-in-law had been on a Royal Caribbean ship, especially one as big as the Harmony of the Seas, we spent the better part of the afternoon hitting up bars, and walking around the ship. The only excursion I had setup before our cruise was to swim with the pigs in Coco Cay. In all selfishness, I really didn't care if we did anything else. Being a huge animal lover, the only thing that would make my life complete would be to go to an island where pigs swim, and to be able to swim with them, feed them, and even hold them! I mean, really, what is better than that? We walked to the Excursion booth and were quickly told that our itinerary had changed. Our original agenda of Coco Cay, St. Thomas and St. Maarten, had now turned into Coco Cay, Cozumel, Roatan and Costa Maya. But we should be happy because we were getting extra ports, right? Not so much.

Coco Cay - Monday

So on the second day, we arrived at Coco Cay. For those of you who don't know, a lot of the cruise lines have swooped in and essentially bought their own island. This allows them to customize excursions and give you an experience where it's just you and your fellow shipmates (in our case 7000 of them), being able to share this island without the interference of other pesky cruisers. Literally, in case you didn't catch this before, I was like a kid on Christmas. I had told EVERYONE I was going to swim with the pigs, and I could not wait for it to start. We get off the ship and the weather is sketchy. There are some serious looking clouds, and rain off and on. It was somewhat windy, which lead us to cancel our earlier excursion of kayaking. Someone was looking out for me that day, because an hour before our excursion, the skies cleared, the sun came out and it was the PERFECT weather for swimming with our swine family friends. It did not disappoint! The staff, the experience, everything was so fun! We all had a great time.

Cozumel - Wednesday

On the fourth day we docked in Cozumel. The three of us decided that we were going to do a submarine tour through a barrier reef. We met our guide and headed to meet our submarine. Well, it was a boat. A boat with a hull underneath with tons of windows so you could look out into the water. Okay, that'll work, I guess. We headed out towards the reef. It started incredibly lack luster, with lots of water, and really nothing else to see. Needless to say, we still had a great time. The reef was beautiful, with tons of fish. Our guide was super knowledgeable and friendly, he really made the trip a lot of fun.

Roatan - Thursday

The next day we woke up to Roatan, a bustling little island off the coast of Honduras. My lack of traveling, and little knowledge of Honduras, lead my husband and I to decide to spend the day on the ship. We took advantage of the fact that many of our ship mates would be out site seeing, and spent the day laying by the pool and riding water slides.

It was around this point that all of us were becoming increasingly familiar with an unwanted guest known as Hurricane Dorian. The storm was increasing in intensity, and 100+ mile an hour winds had pummeled the Virgin Islands. We were safely out of harms way, but we were being told that we would not be getting off the ship on Sunday as planned. Tuesday, maybe.

Costa Maya - Friday

The next morning, we took our time. Sleeping in was much needed to the amount of partying we were doing. We had a leisurely day walking around Costa Maya, checking out the jewelry and souvenir shops, and watching people swim with the dolphins. It was a nice change of pace, as we really had nothing planned, and we just kind of did what we felt like. More time was spent at the pool, and we made good use of the drink package and endless supply of food on board. That night we got another announcement from the Captain. At this point Dorian had graduated to a Category 5 hurricane, and was slowly creeping towards the Bahamas. We should be back to port on Wednesday, maybe. But the good news is, we have a spot available tomorrow in Cozumel. Wait, what?

Groundhog Day Begins

Saturday the day started similar to another day just a couple days ago. We look out the balcony, and we're back in Cozumel. Weird! We decided we would spend the day visiting the Mayan Ruins. It was awesome! We toured the ruins of San Gervasio, which was the site where the Mayans praised the goddess Ix Chel, the goddess of the moon and fertility. This spot was filled with so much history! Many Mayans traveled miles to be married at ceremonies in this location in order to be blessed with fertility and children. Our tour guide was by far my favorite. He knew so much about the ruins, and had such enthusiasm, considering he was of Mayan decent himself. After touring the ruins we headed over to a beautiful beach, where we ate some amazing Mexican food, and spent the afternoon basking in the sunshine.

Our tour was a nice a break from reality, where I was quickly coming to grips with the fact that our original plans after the cruise, i.e Pitbull concert on Thursday and then driving to Reno on Friday to celebrate my birthday, were quickly approaching. I alerted my family that the birthday party road trip was going to be postponed until Saturday, hopefully. That night the Captain alerted us that the hurricane was not cooperating. It had slowed significantly, and had not shown signs of improving. However we were in luck because we had a spot in Cozumel for tomorrow. See where this is going?

The Last few Days

The rest of the cruise seemed to run together. We were back in Cozumel on Sunday, but spent the day on the ship. We made increased use of the drink package, and water slides. My stress got the best of me, after I was sitting in a bar on Monday, preparing for my fantasy football draft, and I got an alert that my flight out of Orlando on Wednesday had been canceled. I quickly logged in and booked a later flight. Five minutes later, canceled. So I called the airline. Not to my surprise, but the straw that broke my back, the airport was closed. No flights were flying out of Orlando on Wednesday. Fighting back tears, I booked us three tickets home on Thursday. Our flight would land in Sacramento at 6:40 pm; our concert was in Lincoln at 8:00 pm. Mostly writing off the chance of making it, and still not even sure if we would be back in port on Thursday, I succumbed to a day of maxing out my drink card.

Land, ho!

Tuesday we were at sea, but slowly making our way a little closer to the right side of the world. We had gotten the announcement from the Captain that we could now expect a Thursday morning arrival. My head was spinning with details. How are we going to get the three of us off the boat, in a car, and to the airport by 11:45 am? My husband and I decided the best plan of attack was to just take our own bags, and disembark ourselves.

Thursday morning arrived, and my 5am alarm jolted my eyes open (not that I was sleeping anyway, I was way too stressed for that). We made our way down to the gangway around 6am. It is PACKED! The stress settles in, and I try to relax. My husband, had other plans. He was on a mission. One of the gangway doors was not operating, so we all had to get off through the same door. About 45 minutes into a rather slow moving line, they manage to get the other door open. People start shifting in opposite directions to better their chances of getting off this boat! My husband saw an opportunity; a break in the line. We darted ahead of a long line of people and we were now a few yards away from freedom!

We disembark. We luckily were able to call the same driver who dropped us off, and she happily agreed to pick us up. She was there and ready for us, even though we got off the boat about 30 minutes earlier than we had planned. We made it to the airport 3 hours early, but there were no other flights that could get us back to Sacramento any sooner.

When our flight did finally take off, I was elated! I could not believe I was back on American soil, and headed home. We had one connection, in LA, and got into Sacramento a few minutes early. My amazing mother was there to pick up all three of us again. She raced us to our house. We quickly threw our bags inside, said our goodbyes to my mother-in-law, and hopped back in the car where we actually made it to the Pitbull concert, on time!