jallred

Overall I'd say that his was a really great cruise. I had feared that the bathrooms in the rooms would be really smelly and that our room would feel cramped, but neither was true. (The bathroom smelled, but only because the ventilation worked so well that it pulled the smell from the septic tank. If someone showered the smell disappeared.)

Catalina is a pretty island. It's very much a tourist town. It reminded me of Park City, Utah. We just walked around the place and looked at the old houses and stayed on the beach.

The next day at Ensenada was fun. We took an open-top bus tour (double-decker type.) I felt like all the shop owners just saw us as walking wallets, some of them quite open about it, "Come buy something you don't need!" It was still fun though.

The boat itself was a decent size. This was my first cruise, so I can't really compare it to anything else, but we walked all over that boat. The adult only section was actually 21+ so my sister-in-law who is 19 wasn't able to go. So we didn't either. (It was just the three of us and we didn't want to leave her on her own.)

The only things I didn't like were the limited events on the boat for those who don't drink or gamble. And the second thing was my dining time. When I booked my room I had the options of 5:15, 6:15 or unassigned. I was told that unassigned meant I could go whenever I liked and would just wait for a table like you would at any restaurant. However when I got my sign and sail card I discovered we had been assigned to eat at 8:15! We're used to eating at 5:30 or so and this was way too late. I tried to change it when we got on board and they wouldn't let me. We kind of got used to it, but really we just got used to sleeping on a full stomach. Sort of.

We did love our wait staff. They were probably the best part of the cruise for us. They knew us by name and already knew what drinks we would request. (We got the endless bubbles package and mostly stayed supplied with ginger ale.)

The last night of the cruise was a little hard to sleep through. We were going faster than we had previously in order to make it to port on time and the ship rocked a lot more than it had previously. But none of us got sick the entire time. (we had Dramamine with us just in case but didn't have to open it.)

I think it was a good cruise for a first-timer. Next time we go we'd like to try a different, bigger ship.