Days 12-13: Sea day, travel home, and trip reflections

Today was a much needed sea day, since we were tired and a bit sunburned from yesterday. Steve also caught a cold and spent most the day in bed.

Rain on the horizon 

resulted in a double rainbow

Having a cocktail before the seas get too rough tonight.

We were a little irritated before dinner, because we needed to wait to be seated while somebody gave a long speech about the survey and how important it was to give 10s.

Once we were seated, all the waiters were frantically trying to make up time that they had to pause during the speech.

The food was lackluster again tonight. I had a salad as an appetizer, 

butter shrimp as my main (not a lot of flavor and I hate it when the tails are left on shrimp in saucy dishes)

and baked Alaska for dessert, which was ok, but not great (I mostly tasted the chocolate syrup drizzled on).

After dinner, we went back to our room, since Steve wasn't feeling well and we have an early departure.

Day 13

After a really rocky night, we were up by six to grab some coffee, a quick breakfast, and then wait for our exit code to be called. Since we had an early flight (10:50 am) we were one of the first groups to leave the ship. 

Initially we were given the last group to leave, despite entering our flight number/time in the app. A few days prior, Steve visited the customer service desk to get the appropriate departure group assigned.

After collecting our bags, we joined a shared shuttle van to the airport. We did curbside check-in to avoid the big rush before security. The security line was long, but we still arrived at our gate with an hour to spare.

The flights home were uneventful and we were happy to arrive home, snuggle with the dog, and spend the night in our own bed.

Reflections:

Overall, it was an enjoyable cruise, but not spectacular.

We enjoyed the selection of ports and the pacing of ports, and were glad the itinerary had conveniently spaced sea days that gave us time to rest between ports. We also liked that most ports weren't tender ports, so we had more flexibility with how we spent our time on shore.

To date, this has been our longest cruise (12 days) and it started to feel a little long. For me, the sweet spot seems to be 10 days, but this might be due to my thoughts about the ship.

Compared to our cruise on the Majestic Princess, this ship was a bit of a disappointment. While it isn't much smaller, it is an older ship and has fewer amenities (no enclave spa, felt a lot more disjointed, smaller piazza, not all elevators went to the same floors, etc.)

We also noticed a lot more ship noise (creaking, rumbling) and bumping/rocking. I'm not sure if that's ship related or due to sea conditions.

The food quality was about the same as other cruises, but the dining menu seemed less inspired and more repetitive.

Even though we reserved the same dining room at the same time every night, we were unable to get the same table/waiters each night, despite multiple requests (and we noticed others were granted the same request).

Crew members were all friendly, but they always appeared to be rushed/stretched too thin and understaffed.

We opted for the Plus package again, and while I think it has great value and we liked the convenience, we just barely "broke even" on most days, since we rarely drank more than 3 drinks (Steve got enough Red Bulls to tip the value in our favor). We didn't take advantage of any of the casual meals, since the "restaurants" were only open for dinner and on alternate nights. These seemed more like lunch options than dinner, and we preferred the main dining room for dinners.

The Caribbean Princess wouldn't be my first choice for a future cruise, but I would book it again if it had the itinerary we liked.