Lets Sail Away

One random night my husband and I were talking about how much we both enjoyed cruises - As we discussed how great they are, we got more and more excited. One thing lead to the next, and all of a sudden we had booked a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. We booked a 7 night cruise to the following ports: Nassau, St. Thomas, and St. Martin. However, due to a hurricane warning, Nassau was canceled and we ended up going to Grand Turk instead to stay away from the storm.

We thought that we would take advantage of beautiful Florida and go to some theme parks before our cruise. So we ended up doing a quick pit stop to Disney World and Universal Studios before heading out. I felt like it was the perfect way to kill two birds with one stone. It was my first time in Disney World, and if anybody knows me or my family they know that I was in heaven. I did not think it was possible, but we did all four Disney World parks in one day. Ryan being the tour guild that he is, strategically planned when to do every ride and big attraction and how to get the most out of our fast passes. Universal studios is Ryan's favorite park and I am loyal to my Disney parks so I was trying to seem like I did not like the Harry Potter attraction at Islands of Adventure as much as i did. ;)

Florida in August - you never know what weather you will get one hour it was perfect, the next is was pouring rain! 

 One word to describe Hogwarts - BUTTERBEER 

dancing…. always 

Cruise pretty much consisted of soft served ice cream, food, sleep, more food and of course beaches…

Can I  just mention the above picture for a second??? This is Sunset Beach in St. Martin. When a taxi driver showed us pictures of a 747 flying right over people laying on the beach we did not believe it! After the cab driver dropped us off we were in complete shock. We walked over to where a jet was just getting ready to take off. People were holding on to the fence and bracing themselves. I will just say that I was not prepared for what was to come. The power from the takeoff blew me a solid 10 feet on to the beach. I carried the battle wounds with me for the rest of the trip :) This is something that you have to see! Just be warned of the takeoff. Also, I am still bummed that our picture did not capture the entire plane.  

…. and whoever came up with a room with no windows rules! We would call our room the cave because we never knew what time of day it was. Which meant we could just keep on sleeping, right? "should we go back to the cave?" —was definitely a common phrase.

Meagan's Bay was an all time highlight, the prettiest water I have yet to experience!

In conclusion, if you ever want to look good in a swimsuit never go on a cruise. That is why I went with the one piece look 99 percent of the time ;)

Ryan's Rant-

I have a love hate relationship with cruises. I love them because they are cheap, fun, entertaining, and stress-free. However, I do not consider them a great way to see the world because your time is so limited at each port. To me a cruise is a great way to vacation but a poor way to travel. As Nicole mentioned, before our cruise we enjoyed some of the theme parks in Orlando. Islands of Adventure was my highlight. Not only because the park is simply the best, but because we snagged 50% off tickets on KSL in Salt Lake before we left. We did manage to do all four Disney parks in one day. When we say "do," we mean run like a bunch of crazies from the biggest attractions in each park. We started in Hollywood Studios right when the doors opened and did the Rock "n" Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror. We actually got to do Tower of Terror twice because of how we worked our fast passes. After we took the bus to Animal Kingdom and did the rapids ride, the safari, Dinosaur, Expedition Everest, and saw the Lion King show. We then took the bus to Magic Kingdom and did Splash, Thunder, and Space. From there we took the monorail to Epcot. We got to Epcot around 5:00 pm, which I thought would be plenty of time to soak it in. I was dead wrong. Turns out that Epcot is amazing! I could spend a solid two days there. We did Mission Space, Spaceship Earth, Universe of Energy, The River of Time, and walked around the different exhibitions for about 2 hours until the show around the lake. All in all, we spent about 16 straight hours in Disney parks. It was a crazy day, and definitely not for the faint of heart.