Wow, when my parent’s told me they
were planning to go on cruise for summer break, I was shocked! I had never been
on a cruise before, so I wondered what it would be like! Then my mom told me
all the details. We would be going on The Royal Caribbean Cruise fleet! Did you
know that this cruise liner owns the biggest ship in the world, Oasis of the
seas! Also, you should know that Royal Caribbean names their ships by putting a
cool word and (of the seas) after it! We would be leaving from Seattle and
going to Alaska, where we would be stopping at Juneau, Skagway, and Victoria
B.C.. It would be a fun-filled week in the ocean, I couldn’t wait to get
started.
When the
day came to leave, we made sure we had everything we needed for the cruise.
When I locked the door, I thought how a week later we would be coming back home
with all those exciting memories. So we drove to the Oakland airport left for
Seattle. When we got to Seattle, we were excited to see the new places! I went
in a gift shop to look for souvenirs but my dad warned us we didn’t have much
time. So when we went to the front desk, we found out that there was actually a
cruise desk since so many cruises leave from here. The package deal costed $50 but they would
give you a tour of the city while the boat was getting ready and they would
drop off your luggage at the boat so you don’t need to worry about it. The tour
was amazing! I found out that 2nd ugliest building in the world is
in Seattle (it’s shaped like a huge smashed guitar). Also, the Space needle
isn’t as tall as I pictured it but still pretty tall. We even saw the Starbucks
headquarters! I wish we could have stopped by and grabbed a creamy Hot
Chocolate from the makers of it all. Last but not least, we saw the Seattle
Seahawks (football) stadium. All of the football fans in our bus cheered. Then,
we reached the cruise. When we got inside the dock building, there was huge line for the cruise check-in.
We were waiting for about 1 hour in that line and it wasn’t fun watching those
huge cruise ships stuffed with sweets waiting for us. Finally, when we were
done with the line, we took a couple of pictures and stepped onto the cruise
boat! We did it!! We were on a cruise for the first time in our lives!!!!
So, while
we were waiting for the luggage, we explored the cruise and found out that:
·
Tween Deck-For Crew Use only.
·
Deck 0-For Crew Use only.
·
Deck 1-Cabins
·
Deck 2-Cabins
·
Deck 3-Cabins
·
Deck 4- Edelwiess dining hall and Cruise lobby
and the Broadway Melodies Theater and cabins!
·
Deck 5- Cabins and Edelwiess dining hall and
Cruise lobby and the Broadway Melodies Theater. Many shops along the entrance
to the Theater. Also, front desk and picture gallery is there also. Deck 5 is
the main deck. It includes a Ben and Jerrys Ice Cream shop.
·
Deck 6- Cabins and many louges and a bar.
·
Deck 7- Library and card room with cabins.
·
Deck 8- Crown and Anchor Study and cabins.
·
Deck 9- Windjammer Café and Solarium (indoor
pool and café). Also has a spa and outdoor pool. Deck 9 is the first outside
deck.
·
Deck 10- Adventure Ocean kids club and Teenager
arcade and movie area. Also the walk-a-mile lap area. Also includes indoor gym
and Rock-Climbing wall.
·
Deck 11- Includes the Viking Crown lounge and
the Captains quarters.
Did you know that there are 8 guest
elevators that travel to decks 1-9, 4 elevators that travel to decks 1-10, and
only two elevators that go to the Viking Crown Lounge.
We
were pretty hungry so, I wasn’t very happy when I heard the captain call us all
out for the emergency testing. Basically, where we stand for 15 minutes with
life-jackets at the desired station while the crew makes sure the ship is ready
to leave dock. After that, we ran to the Windjammer Café and ate quickly. Then
we got the cruise compass of Day 1, which is a very helpful piece of paper
which tells you all the statistics of that day (temperature, ship speed, etc.).
It also tells all the events going to happen that day on the ship, what time,
and where. We played a game of royal bingo and rested in our room for a while.
Then, we found out that there is a daily show that happens at night. It is a
very good show, with famous dancers and singers and happens every night. The
problem is, though, that there are too many people on the boat! So, the show
for us started at 7:30 and we ate dinner at 9:00, while others eat dinner at
7:30 and watch at 9:00! So after all that, we sat down and thought about the
first day on a cruise. It had a great feeling to it. The whole atmosphere was
very royal, and everybody pretty much treated you as royalty. So we slept with
happy thoughts!
Day
2 and Day 3 were pretty much the same, we had breakfast at the windjammer café
in the morning, and then walked about 1-2 miles. I bought a Royal Caribbean
Walk-a-mile shirt to support the Make-a-wish foundation. After that, we start
our daily adventures, my brother Shuban has a lot of fun in Adventure Ocean
because it’s like preschool! They play fun games all day while we get to have
our fun and not worry about him. Meanwhile, I spent some of my time at WII
tournaments. They’re really small so don’t think it’s some kind of huge
tournament or something. I did win 2 gold medals, and 1 bronze medal. The rules
are pretty simple, in every tournament the man selects some challenge from WII
sports or WII sports Resort and everybody plays it once. That is one round, so
they do that two more times and add up everybody’s score and the people with
the three highest scores get gold, silver, and bronze. There were 5 tournaments
and I couldn’t go to two so I won in every single tournament I went in! It was
actually pretty easy.
Day
4 we reached Skagway and on that day we planned to do a train ride! What is
cool is that you can pay for all of your excursions, or trips, beforehand on
the cruise and they arrange everything so on the day you reach there they many
buses that will take you to the thing you chose. Since we chose a train ride,
instead of a bus, the train was actually there because there were train tracks
built all along the cruise dock! So we learned many things from our train-ride
like there used to be a very old town a very long time ago and there was a
villain in that town so the Sheriff and the villain had a face-off, the villain
died instantly but the Sheriff died later off. So we saw the grave of the
Sheriff covered in flowers and the grave of the villain next to the Sheriff
with a stone wall surrounding the grave like he is in jail in the afterlife!!
We passed through two tunnels and actually passed into Canada for 5 minutes!
For 5 minutes we were Canadians!
On
day 5, we reached Juneau, the capital of Alaska. We chose to see a glacier and
go whale watching. So we got on a bus and that took us to a glacier called
Mendenhall glacier. There was a lake in between us and the glacier so we
couldn’t see it that well but we had fun hiking to it and climbing rocks. After
that we went to the bus and it took us the docks but before that our bus driver
was driving past a hill and she said,” You will be so amazed at what you will
see next!” The hill passed and we saw a Wal-Mart! Also, we drove past a Burger
King and she told us that the Burger King was the first fast-food store here so
on the grand-opening day, there was a huge line and they ran out of supplies
that they thought would last for a week so they had to call in an emergency
chopper filled with supplies. The same thing happened the next day! At the
whale-watching boat, they were serving free Hot-chocolate! Yay! So, when we got
out on the water, the captain gave us each binoculars and we looked for whales.
We actually spotted quite a lot. There was one pair of whales that was really great
to look at but the rule of conservation and animal rights say that you cannot
be near the same group of whales for 30 minutes so we moved away. The funny
thing is, when we got back on the boat, it took us around the back of the
glacier and we got much better pictures than before and it was much better!
On
day 6, we went to Victoria, British Columbia and instead of excursions we just
took a tour of the city. We saw many shops and many places. We ate Italian
ice-cream and then started shopping there. I got a keychain saying I love
Canada and then we raced back to the ship. Even though, we didn’t do much, we
still had a lot of fun looking at the beautiful city.
On
day 7, finally the end came near. Even though we had a lot of fun with games
and events on the ship, everybody on the cruise knew that the paradise was
going to end soon. To get us home in one day, the captain had ordered the ship
to go very fast so it was great to see the ocean. Now, as it turned night, the
captain stopped the exhausted ship and pulled into Seattle. After a good’s
night rest, everybody was ready so after an hour of getting ready to leave we
finally got off the boat and thought we have now completed a cruise. All I can
say is it’s an experience everybody
should have because it was a great experience! To this day, I am glad
that I chose to go on an exciting cruise!
