2016 Cruise: Day 1: Embarkation

After the free breakfast at the Comfort Inn, we left around 9:30 to head to the port. We found the place to drop off our bags easily and then proceeded to check in. We were seated in the waiting area by 10:20 for a little bit of a wait and were on board by 11:30.

Ben wanted me to see the famous Royal Caribbean Promenade first thing.

We walked around and saw the pool and the adults-only area, the Solarium (where I planned to spend a lot of my time).

 

 

We went up to a bar called Olive & Twist where you have a beautiful view of the front of the ship and the water.  The drinks were really good here too!

 

 

We were ready for lunch about now and since none of us wanted to endure the madhouse of the buffet, we decided to eat at Johnny Rockets. The crew had handed us 1/2 off coupons as we boarded that were only good for today so we thought that sounded good.

We all ordered burgers and a basket of fries and onion rings.

By now, it was 1:00 so we headed up to our rooms on Deck 6. Nick was in an interior room overlooking the promenade just a few doors down from us. Ben and I were in a balcony room on the center of the ship called the "hump." I was so excited to have a balcony this time!

We didn't have luggage yet of course so after checking out our digs, we continued our tour of the ship, seeing the casino next. 

Next we saw the gym and steam rooms.  Guests are allowed to use the steam and sauna at no charge--it's almost like having your own little spa day!

Next we went to see the water slides which were new and had just been added prior to our sailing.

There is also a surf-machine thing called a Flowrider--none of us wanted to tackle this!

So it's 3:00 and we haven't had our first drink yet. Something is definitely wrong with this picture!  We went to a bar called the Schooner Bar and I got a mai tai.

We then went to our rooms to wait for the safety drill and then it was time to sail away from Galveston!  My pictures are a little flawed because I had cracked the camera on my phone.

Around 5:00, Nick had his luggage but we didn't have ours yet. We were getting hungry and had this great idea: we would go down to the dining room early and beat the crowd.  Only the dining room was a complete madhouse so after grabbing a glass of free champagne, we wandered around and looked at the artwork until 7:00 when our pager went off.

I thought the dining room was so pretty. It was also located on our side of the ship so it was an easy walk down every night.  I loved the beautiful staircase.

We had a nice first dinner and met our waitstaff who would serve us the rest of the cruise. After we all rolled out of the dining room, we went upstairs to our rooms to unpack and get settled.

Once that chore was out of the way, we all went down to the casino to try our luck on the slots. We won $400 on the first night of our Carnival cruise last year and wanted to see if our cruise slot luck would continue. We all put in $20 on our favorite game, Wheel of Fortune. We won $40 on a spin and played that down to our original $60 and cashed out. 

We decided to go up to Olive or Twist where they were having 80's hour. It was really fun and lots of people were dancing.

I got another delicious mai tai and enjoyed the view.

Then it was over to the Schooner Bar to hear the guitarist Voytek. Ben saw Voytek on his very first cruise in 2001. He was very excited to see he was here again. I was sad that there weren't very many people there to see him but I shouldn't have worried because after this, it was standing room only every night.

 

Afterwards, we finally made our way back to our room, stopping long enough to lose $60 on WOF in the casino. I checked my phone before bed and saw we had walked 11,544 steps! It was a great first day!