Sail Away, Cruise Days 1-2-3.
It’s now after lunch, and we’ve got some time to kill before our Aft Balcony room is ready. Time to explore the ship!
Since we had checked our luggage, it was being brought to our room and we obviously didn’t have access to any of it. As a first-time cruiser who did my homework, I had learned that it was best to carry a backpack with everything you think you might need until your room is ready (which is typically midafternoon on that first day. We each had our bathing suit with us and had planned to try to spend some time in a hot tub since it was only May. It wasn’t frigid by any means, but thought that it may have been too chilly for a pool.
I felt like I had watched just about every YouTube walk-through video of the ship, so I had a pretty good idea of the layout. Many of them are older videos. There’s a group of hot tubs on Deck 16 by the pools. The videos talked about another “secret” hot tub on a Public Sun Deck on Deck 18. The videos mentioned that most people don’t venture up there because they assume that it is a part of the Haven.
As you can see on the map of Deck 18, the public hot tub is opposite the Vibe. The map clearly says “Public Sun Deck.” That was our hope, but I honestly wasn’t sure if it would be available for us because I had also read that they had expanded the Vibe Beach Club and eliminated the public access to that area. Yup. It was our fist hiccup, and honestly wasn’t that bad because as we were headed back down to explore, we heard an announcement that our floor’s cabins were ready! It was about 4:30pm. Later than we’d hoped, but I think they were slightly behind schedule due to issues with the prior cruise disembarkation.
Our Room
Our Aft Balcony was cabin 9378. When booking this cabin, we had learned that Deck 9 has the largest balconies (They’re already extra-large back there to begin with). I think I remember hearing that our balcony was 105 square feet. Other than the huge balcony, the room was identical to every other standard balcony cabin on the ship. On the Joy, the larger cabins in the corner are a part of the Haven, and the largest room in the center (Cabin 9980) is ADA Accessible.
Since we had access to our room, and we already knew our way around the ship pretty well, we decided to take the time to unpack prior to our 6pm sail away. Unfortunately I do not remember the name of our room steward, but he was fantastic! I’ve read so many mixed reviews of room stewards who are overworked with too many rooms to care for and inattentive. That wasn’t the case at all with our room. Everything we asked for (like robes and an extra lounge chair for our balcony) we received promptly. He knew all of our names, and would greet us every time he saw us by name. We handed him a hundred dollar bill at the end of the cruise and it was money very well spent.
Speaking of the Sail Away Party that typically happens as ships leave port, we had intended to head up to it along with participating in a meet-and-greet from our Facebook cruise page. It never happened, as we were enjoying the amazing views from our balcony. It was so peaceful, I didn’t feel the need to mingle with a crowd.
We had decided to use our two specialty dining meals at Cagney’s Steak House, and Le Bistro, NCL’s French restaurant. Night 1 was Cagneys. We wanted to enjoy the departure, so we made an 8pm dinner reservation. My wife and son had the filet. I had a rib eye. They were good, but not fantastic. I mean… it wasn’t Morton’s by any stretch, but passable. The desserts were fantastic though.
The Casino opened at 9pm once the ship had entered international waters. I didn’t gamble that first night, but I did spend plenty of time there throughout the cruise.
Since it was my first cruise and I wasn’t too sure how I’d be with the motion of the ship, I had taken medication. IT wasn’t needed. Also, one of the reasons the Joy is currently in dry-dock getting refurbished (again), is to fix a vibration issue. Yes, we heard the engines in the back of the ship, but there wasn’t any serious motion or vibrations. In fact, I was very surprised when the ship first pulled away from the pier, I couldn’t even feel it and was surprised to see movement out sliding doors.
Besides the stellar views of Manhattan from the water and the Statue of Liberty, another highlight was heading under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The deck of the bridge is quite high, but there’s not that much clearance. It’s pretty unbelievable. I’ve got a video of it that I’ll post from the return trip. when I get to posting about that point in our trip.
Day 2 – At Sea
My son was 18 at the time, and today was the day that we introduced him to the casino, since he could gamble while on the ship. He didn’t seem to find the allure of the slots, but he did enjoy Three Card Poker. Honestly, besides the Casino, and becoming more comfortable with the layout of the ship, I don’t remember too much about that first sea day other than the fact that there was endless water everywhere. I honestly don’t think I was surprised by this, but it still was pretty cool to see. There were other large commercial ships out on the water that we’d see occasionally. We had dinner on that second night at the buffet. The selection was good, and I really enjoyed the large selection Indian cuisine. People had said in reviews I’d read that it was very good, and yes, I wasn’t disappointed at all.
Day 3 – At Sea
More of the same. We saw the Footloose show in the Theater. It didn’t have very good reviews. It was a long show, and a very good production. We had dinner in the Manhattan Room, the ships main dining room. The service was very good, and the food was honestly just about as good as Cagney’s.
We had our phones on airplane mode as directed. The “Free at Sea” came with 150 minutes of internet for myself and my wife. We didn’t pay for an additional wifi package. To be honest, my wife and I didn’t use our minutes at all. We let my son use them. I loved the fact that I could completely unplug.
One of the cool things that I was able to find when doing my research prior to leaving was this computer model of the North Atlantic. It showed the forecasted wave height for the next 7 days. As an inexperienced cruiser, I was curious to see what type of seas we’d encounter. Here’s a link to it, I highly recommend bookmarking it for future use:
North Atlantic Wave Model
There were intermittent rain showers that last full day at sea prior to our arrival in Bermuda. One thing I clearly remember was watching the wake of the ship from our balcony and seeing the water get clearer and clearer as we headed south. It was also getting warmer and more humid.
We were arriving in Bermuda the next morning! We didn’t stay out late that night, as we spent time getting organized. We had three full days in port, and we had probably 5 days worth of activities planned. The ship was docking at 8am, and we were wanting to start exploring the second we could get off the ship.
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