Cruising to the Bahamas

My husband planned a surprise gift for me on my first birthday after wedding to “Bahamas”. This was the best surprise ever and a very romantic trip.

Caribbean islands are one of the most romantic islands in the world. Caribbean islands consist of a list of islands including Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Cancun, Cozumel, Barbados, Haiti and Jamaica.  I always wanted to go on a Cruise trip. So he looked for cruise lines from Texas and Florida (ports in southern USA).  Galveston and Houston are two ports in TX, which has multiple cruise lines to Mexico and Jamaica but not to Bahamas. Miami is one of the largest ports of calls in southern USA. So, he started browsing different cruise lines from Miami to Bahamas.  After some research in internet (Trip advisor, Cruise Critic, Yelp) he finalized Royal Caribbean cruise lines.  Royal Caribbean has a large variety of cruise lines. The cruise line we traveled is called “Majesty of the Seas”, 3 Night Bahamas Cruise.  Since this was our very first cruise trip, we wanted to keep it short, to avoid the seasickness and any health issues that might come up due to journey.

Booking tickets and Bahamas visiting visa:

My husband and I are both Indian citizens, we need Bahamas visiting visa to enter the Common wealth of Bahamas.  You can check specific visa requirements under http://bahamas.visahq.com/requirements/India/resident-United_States/.  Once you determine you need visiting visa, follow the instructions under

http://www.bahamas.gov.bs, click on Non-Residents tab and select “Visiting the Bahamas” and then select “Visa Requirements”(direct URL was too long to post here). Texas residents can mail in their completed applications to Miami Consulate. Please call the consulate before posting the documents (sometimes the address in the website is not updated). Visiting visa usually takes 1 week for processing, so plan accordingly.

Cruise lines always run some promotions or deals, look out for them(Priceline, expedia, cruises.com etc..). We booked the cruise online via http://www.royalcaribbean.com/home.do.  There are different types of rooms (usually called staterooms - cruise terminology), Interior, Exterior and Suite/Deluxe.
Booking the right stateroom and the correct deck is very important in your cruise travel to make sailing as enjoyable as possible. “Majesty of the Seas” has 12 decks (floors), deck 4 being the main deck of the ship.  As the deck numbers keep increasing passengers can feel the motion of the vessel. So the higher number of deck you are, the more movement you feel. As, I already said this is our first cruise trip; we wanted to play it safe. So, we booked our stateroom in deck 4(interior stateroom). I think interior staterooms are a good deal, unless you are into a view or a balcony for two reasons, one they are very inexpensive compared to the other staterooms and two, in our case we were not spending much time in the stateroom expect for sleeping and getting ready.  So stateroom did not really matter that much (we were in fact glad we did not spend much money on stateroom).

Before you board (week before you board):

This is the time for you to learn all about Cruising, things to do on board and ports of call on your cruise trip.  There will be a lot of documentation provided by your cruise line, please go through it and complete all the paper work before hand. Check in at least a week before your travel date and print Sea Pass (This is a crucial document, it is your primary id card for the entire cruise trip) and your baggage tags.  All you need to carry while you are on board is your sea pass, any on board expenses will be charged to your sea pass (A credit card will be associated to your sea pass). I really like this concept since all you need to carry is this one card, no other id or credit cards needed anywhere on board. Check-in process will also need you to specify a dinner time. Since this was my first cruise trip, I was wondering what it is. Basically, there are common dinning ares in the cruise and once we select the dinner time, we will be put in the common dinner area in that time slot. There are other dinning options as well in case you miss this slot. Now, its time to decide on what activities you will be doing on board and in the shore.  Shore Excursions can be bought before hand or in the cruise (I would suggest buying them before hand to save some time on the shore). Yes, its a bit expensive when bought via cruise lines, but it has its own upside.  When shore excursions are bought via Royal Caribbean they provide transit to the excursions if needed, this helped us a lot to get to Atlantis, Bahamas (will talk about this in a bit).

Day 1: Please go way ahead of your boarding time. Yes, there will be line for check in process. Keeping aside the line, first day of the cruise is always exciting and fun filled with a number of activities on board.  As we reached the cruise line on our first day of travel, we checked in our baggage just before the security check (outside of the main building), this is a similar to how we check in baggage in airlines, just print your baggage tags and attach to your bags. We reached by noon, completed the security check process and checked into your stateroom.  As we enter our stateroom, we saw it was well arranged with all amenities (just like any hotel room) and a brochure called “Day 1: Welcome day activities”. This is your tour guide for the day, this will contain all the activities you can do on day 1, including shows, shopping, restaurant open table timings, welcome party by the crew members, shopping guide in Nassau downtown show (this show had few perks giveaway - a Royal Caribbean charm bracelet, it was very cute), happy hours in few bars to name a few activities.  The activities list will also specify what kind of dinner it is (casual or formal) which helps us dress accordingly. Evenings are the best time in the cruise, there are photographers all around the cruise, taking pictures.

Day 2:  The second day was the best day for me. We woke up early as we heard the announcements that we reached CocoCay (A private island of Royal Caribbean).  Cruise has anchored near the island and they had small boats to take us back and forth to the island. We got ready got onto one of those tender boats (smaller boats to carry people from cruise to the shore) and reached CocoCay. Tender boats run every 30minutes between cruise and the shore, so you can get back to the cruise anytime you want. The last tender will leave at 4.30 pm. This was one the cutest islands I have been to. It was small, but there was lot going on. Number of shore activities were going on here (parasailing, jet skiing, snorkeling). Royal Caribbean provided Caribbean style barbeque on the beach side. Food stalls were setup on the beach with a variety of barbeque items served. The best was the Caribbean jerk chicken. Hands down it’s the best barbequed chicken we ever ate. The taste was so authentic Caribbean style, we totally loved the food.  We rented floating mats and relaxed on the waters. There were Hammac's everywhere in the island for visitors to sit back and relax. There was this cute little Straw market with a wide variety of shops(bags, souvenirs, beach wear, hats etc.)

 

 

 

We spent the whole day in the island and returned to the cruise by 5 pm. Went back to the stateroom, got dressed and went to dinner. It was a formal dinner night at the cruise, so people were all dressed up and taking pictures. The dinner was a treat at the cruise. We can actually ask the head chef to get some Indian food or any other as a matter of fact(if in case you feel like eating it, they provide biryani, tandoori's, curries(veg and non veg), naan etc....yummm).

Day 3:  Nassau Bahamas. Cruise reached Nassau by 8am, we ate breakfast and were eagerly waiting to get there. There are two options to do in Nassau, 1. Visit the world famous Atlantis or 2. Visit Nassau downtown for shopping (cruise shopping tour guide will provide all details of shops in downtown and the deals going on). We chose to visit Atlantis and booked aqua-venture in Atlantis; this includes all the water park activities (http://www.atlantisbahamas.com/thingstodo/waterpark). The most adventurous slides in Water Park are leap of faith and challenger slide. My most favorite is the Serpent Slide (we pass through a clear tunnel submerged in a shark-filled lagoon). We had so much fun in the water park. We rode most of the rides and then hit beach. We relaxed on the beach till 4.30, shopped for some sovereigns and returned to the cruise by 5(Cruise leaves from Nassau port at 5pm).  We returned to our stateroom and relaxed for sometime. In the day planner, I saw a very interesting event about sale designer handbags and watches sale. Remember shopping in cruise is tax free, yes!!! You wont be charged any tax. Had dinner and visited the guest services to talk about checkout. Let me explain how the checkout will be, so we will receive a checkout slip to our stateroom mentioning what time we are assigned to get out of the cruise. Typically the assigned timings will have all people standing in line for checkout and usually it takes time. So one of the friends whom we met on cruise suggested that we let guest services know that we will be doing a express checkout. What it means is we should be ready by 8:00 am and go to main deck. You will be directed out of the ship into the immigration area. Usually there is no line at this hour and many people don’t know about this and they will wait for their checkout time to get out of their rooms. This was very helpful to us, we were able to get out of the cruise in less than 20minutes(including port of entry.