Amazing

This as the easiest embarkation in Miami. Our time to arrive was between noon and 12:30. We arrived at 12:20 and we were escorted right into the security line. Security was easy but you never know if it’s the same as airport security. We got thru just fine except security wanted us to take out extra items from our backpacks. The next part was navigating through the twist and turns of the port building all with great signage to make it easy. After a quick port pic, we were ushered down to the gangway. A few more turns on the gangway and we stepped on to the Splendor!

I’m going to first start with breakfast buffet. Since we were one floor down (get to the room later) we would walk up one flight of stairs and there we were. The food was excellent for buffet style. My fav was the omelette station where a couple times they made me over easy eggs to feed my need. The pastries were not my fav. They seem to be Costco frozen pastries. I didn’t go to the dining room for breakfast although my plan was to try it. Next time! I want to say the Splendor doesn’t have the 2.0 upgrades but we still had a good time sampling the various options. We tried a different restaurant throughout the cruise. Our fav was the deli! Why I’m not sure, maybe it was the amazing easy hot ham and cheese sandwiches or the hot pastrami. I hardly ever eat dairy but as soon as we got home, the hubby and I tried to recreate our memory of being on the balcony eating our hot ham and cheese sandwich. My hubby fell in love with Tandoor. The food had great flavor and he loved the spicy kick of the menu items. There was the BBQ above the lido buffet that we tried a couple times. After a couple tries, we realized the BBQ wasn’t our fav. I’m a big potato salad buff, mainly because I love my own, and the BBQ was like carton style salad which is the worst. This moves us on to the hamburger place. While okay, they had the best potato salad! The hamburgers were good according to my hubby, but my fav was the hot dogs with chili sauce! This was also good for a midnight snack :) French fries I liked because they are the shoestring style. I only got them once but hubby had them mostly every day. The Lido buffet was very nice. A lot of options and fresh fruit! We loved the pineapple and melon options. There was a burrito bar also available at the Lido and the hubby tried it. He said it was similar to Chipotle to him, good but not fabulous. The pizza place was very good according to the hubby but after he ate a small one at midnight, he decided no more lol. One place we didn’t try was Mongolian Wok. I’m sure it was exceptional because the lines were long on embark and sea days, but we just decided to forego this time. Dinner in the Black Pearl was amazing!!! So amazing we pretty much forgot to take food pics. My fav was the chili rellano, it was out of this world taste buds delight! My hubby is a meat and seafood guy and he loved every bite of steak, lobster, salmon..... Hubby’s fav dessert was the chocolate melting cake and mine was the chocolate hazelnut cake ohmygosh just amazing! Our least favs were the apple pie and I didn’t care that every meal was served with rice. There also weren’t many veggies besides salad. I’m a big steam veggie girl and our waitress was very good about switching rice for veggies. A couple nights we went to the Lido buffet for dinner and it seems that many of the items that we saw on the app for Black Pearl menu were being served so we decided a relaxing time at buffet was okay with us. We would grab a few desserts to save for late night snack.

We didn’t hit a lot of activities as we choose vacation for destination, relax and sleep. What I or we did was we went to the Love and Marriage show which was funny and entertaining, a couple comedy shows- some good some not so good, the 80s show which wasn’t that great, the lip sync competition which I loved probably because of the contestants, and Clue which was based on the board game but I didn’t like that I had to go to other paid events to get more clues.

Staff were exceptional! Our room steward was so great! We chose evening room refresh because we know that there were days we wanted to sleep in, hang on the balcony or just watch a movie. The evening time worked because we knew we would be at dinner. We had anytime timing but asked for the same waitress’ section who was Mimi. She was great on accommodating my crazy requests. Everyone was great and I have to give a shout out to our cruise director MarQ. He was great, fun, entertaining and kept activities going.

Ship was great. I know everyone calls it the pink ship but it’s more of a blush color to me. It wasn’t gawdy at all. Everything was clean and we saw the staff cleaning all the time. Never felt like I had to worry about getting sick. They also had antibacterial stations around. We got to know the ship well. We love mini golf and played late at night all alone and always felt safe and secure.

We loved our cabin with one exception. It was below the Lido buffet. Let me explain further. At 3am the staff begins to prepare breakfast so we heard large rolling carts above us. Now I have to say I wake up very early, about 4:30am, but 3am pushed it for me. Now there were two nights, or maybe mornings, we didn’t hear the carts. Maybe so exhausted we slept thru it. My fav was the balcony! I actually fell asleep three times out there for naps and one time at night which the hubby let me sleep for awhile out there until it got too cold. The room was large for just us with a king bed configuration and a sofa bed. Lots of storage and with the electrical strip, provided a perfect amount of function. Bed was very comfortable, as well. We did have one issue with shower drainage but I own that because I have very long hair that has been falling out a lot more since I have aged. The Staff person came right away and fixed it in no time.

This was crazy time! Everyone waiting and some pushing to get down to disembark. Once we got downstairs, the process was smooth.