I was up early and dressed quickly.  I grabbed my Bible and cameras and headed out. 
It was warm and humid and I loved it.  My camera did not, however, so photos had to wait.  I went to an MDR hoping to score some hot chocolate.  I picked Taste over Savor for absolutely no reason whatsoever.  The sit mid-ship on deck 7 across from one another.  They gave me a window seat and at that early hour there were very few other patrons. 

I headed back to the room after about 30 minutes and found my family had gotten up.
This is the deck on the room John and I shared with Johanna and Katriel: 12182.  The other stateroom was slightly smaller, but had an angled deck as it was the last stateroom of that category before the larger ones start: 12180.
As you can see, we were perfectly around the corner from Splash Academy, which was a great location. 


And we headed back down to Taste together.
It took a few minutes for a table for 10 to be arranged. 

I met a woman in the restroom who had a DCL lanyard on.  I chatted with her a few minutes.  She had 27 DCL under her belt, as well as oodles of numbers of every other line she could rattle off. She likes them all and said we’d love this ship.  She did say, however, she thought that when I got off NCL I would find I was within a few hundred dollars of what DCL would have been.  Seeing as how DCL base fare was almost $6,000 MORE than the NCL base fare I wondered out loud where she thought I would see the charges.  She was speechless.  She asked what kind of rooms I’d compared and was absolutely astonished we’d gotten the rate we’d gotten on NCL.  She also acknowledged that as a FL resident she never saw such gaps in pricing.  That’s not me boasting, that’s me overwhelmed with gratitude.  She acknowledged we’d saved a bundle and that we would nowhere come near that number.

Since I am mentioning restrooms, I want to say now how great their bathrooms are.  This ship is only two years old and you can tell some tremendous thought went into the design.  The bathrooms were large, easy to find, and plentiful.  They also had automatic toilet flushing, automatic soap dispensers, automatic faucets, and automatic dryers.  They also had automatic towel dispensers and garbage cans by all the exit doors, with signs that said to use a paper towel to open the doors.  All the enter/exit doors opened inwardly. 
We got to the sports deck and found it oppressively busy.  I sincerely hoped this wasn’t going to be our lot for the entire cruise. 
There are limited hours for each activity, and from pre-trip reading, I knew there was very limited hours for the bungee trampoline.  Although it was hot and we wanted to swim, we all reasoned that it was worth the wait to get this done now in case it wasn’t available later in the week.
Johanna was too small so she worked to conquer this thing.  It took her a while, but she made it.
I had to go back to the room to get shorts and socks for those not wearing them. 



By the time they each had their turns we were ready to melt.  The ropes course line was very long so we bailed on that activity in lieu of waterslides.
Two of the waterslides say no piercings or metal bathing suits whatsoever.  I had to skip that one that day because my suit had metal.  Tab had to miss them all together because her pierced ears were too new (and only recently healed of infection). 

The little girls played in the kids’ water area all day long.  It was a great set up IMO.  There was an inner, free form shape with about 6-10 inches of water and a slide.  There was an outer free form shape with sprayers and seats and such.  Along both areas were bench-style barriers that adults could sit on to watch the kids.  I spent many hours on the benches and in the water.  Right next to it was the salt-water family pool.  My above ground pool at home is bigger.  But it was never such kid soup that it felt dangerous to let Tabitha go into it.   There was a life guard by the family pool, and the waterslides were somewhat next to/above this set up.  There were adjacent bathrooms and this whole section was between two bars.  What was NEVER available were lounge chairs.  Chair hogs must have been out very early to claim these, too, I might add.

This first sea day was the most crowded we ever found decks 15 – 17. 

Around 2:40 P.M. Marie went to the Splash Academy to join her age group on the sports deck for some games.  Kids over 10 are allowed to check themselves in and out of the club.  The deal with signing out, however, is they have to have been there for two hours.

Did I mention I hung around the kids’ pool all day?  I love this kind of thing.  They are happy splashers, I am in the sun; it’s all good.

After 3 P.M. the boys queued to do the rock climbing wall.   They were the only ones who ever did it.  Maybe next time.

And, John and I stayed by the water.  Occasionally, we would head up to some slides with Tabitha, or go watch Marie play.

Around 4 P.M. we decided to head in to clean up for dinner.  We asked Marie to meet us in the stateroom by 4:45 P.M.
Our dinner reservations were for Teppanyaki at 5 P.M.  Our chef, Michael, kept us in stitches.  And while I can’t say it was all super yummy (some Asian food thrills me, other dishes do not) the service was amazing.  The maitre d’ for Teppanyaki had been in communication with Cher and Stewart had a wonderful, personal meal prepared for him out of sight.  But we all enjoyed watching our “Japanese cowboy” make dinner.

Every one got edamame (gag) and salty soup (gaggity gag).  (Everyone but Stewart.  He got a garden salad.  Lucky him.)

The Seaweed Salad was delicious.

The meat and veggies were fantastic.  And the portions were enormous.  The assistant maitre d’ of Teppanyaki asked how are meal was.  With all the enthusiasm a five year old can project, Johanna said, “The chicken! is EXCELLENT! Yum!”  And it really was.

Dessert was lame.  But we’d fix that later. 

We tried to take some family photos.  I had visions of doing this after dinner each night.  Nope.  It was always crazy windy outside and/or my camera would be too foggy and need more time to warm up than we were often willing to take.  Meanwhile, inside was often too dark.

The boys went up to play mini golf, and the older girls went to their club.  So John and I took the youngest two to Savor for dessert. 

We really enjoyed meeting one of the supervisors in this restaurant.  He is from India and showed us pictures of his daughter.  On both the DCL cruise and this one, we were regularly approached by crew members who would talk with our kids.  They would ask how old and then talk freely with us about their children.  I am always so humbled that these folks bend over backward to serve us in this opulence, while they go 7-9 months without seeing their own children and families.  My kids loved to talk with these folks. 
We headed back to the room, and even with our clocks having turned back the night before we were tired, early.  Katriel was asleep by 9:15 P.M.  Wait.  Maybe it was 10:15 P.M.  That pesky time change…

 

did not go smoothly.
I was up early and after hot chocolate and Bible decided I’d tackle that power room door that was locked from the inside.  Of course it wasn’t a simple knob that locked by pushing in a center circle.  No.  This was the kind of lock you twist the lock to engage it.  Nice.  Now, I do have experience with this type lock, but I’ve always had an arsenal of do-dads to address it with.  Nary a bobby pin or screwdriver amongst our packed items.  I did try to MacGyver it with a paper clip, but the door knob was too smart for me.  Despite the fact we had gobs of stuff to do to get ready to leave we decided it would be best if John headed up to Walmart for some tools.  And an umbrella stroller for the ship. 

The rest of us went after eating as much as we could from the fridge and then starting the miserable work of throwing out food.  Ugh. 
John got back with a super-cute hippo stroller and a case of small screwdrivers.  While I was hoping for a tool designed precisely for unlocking this type of knob, I thankfully did get the stinking thing open.  I had been afraid the property management company would call a locksmith and keep all or some of our $300 security deposit.
Somehow we got 10 people and all their luggage into/onto the van, with certain items separated out because they weren’t going on the ship with us. 
Originally I had scheduled us 10:30 A.M. boarding times for the Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) Getaway.  I’m still chuckling about that. 
Our rental house was calculated to be 3.5 hours from the Port of Miami, but people had warned me it would take longer than that.  Of course it takes a lot longer if you have to travel northeast before you can travel southeast because you have to turn in the cooler and rain covers that you’d rented with your stroller but not returned with the stroller.  Nice, no?

At some point we left the rental house and programmed in the address for Kingdom Strollers and the Port of Miami.  GPS had us arriving around 1:40 P.M.  All aboard is 2:00 P.M.  Who doesn’t like to start vacation stressed?

The good news is the kids were supernaturally well-behaved in spite of the fact that four of them were crammed in the way back of the van together.  They watched Muppet’s Treasure Island on a 9 inch screen, followed by a few episodes of Andy Griffith. 

I prayed a LOT that we’d make it on time.  Mercifully, the roads were clear and we made no errors in following the GPS directions (and that is saying a LOT given the mess of roads in Miami!).  And we pulled into the port at 1:30 P.M.

We tried to drop Nan and Kelly off at Terminal B where they needed to check in, but the attendant told us we were not allowed to pull over, even though countless other vehicles were pulled over.  We went up a way and tried again, but were again told, “Nah, man, you can’t do that.  They will give you a ticket.”  We still aren’t sure WHY we couldn’t, nor do we know who might have given us a ticket, but we found the parking garage and unloaded.  Thankfully, our van fit, and thankfully, there were large open areas available to park and unload it.  Sadly, it was a bit of a walk for my mom and sister to get back to Terminal B, but the boys helped them with their luggage up to the luggage check.

We had to go in via Terminal C.  It moved along well enough, and John went with his three co-assigned kids and I went with my three co-assigned kids to the check in.  We had three questions we needed to ask on check in, yet I don’t remember them now.  What I DO remember is that he and I got different answers, or no answers.  It was sort of ridiculous, to be honest.  But we were checked in by 2 P.M. and let out a great sign of relief.  Surprisingly, we met smack dab up with Nan and Kelly and were able to board the ship together. 
It was absolutely not as pleasant as it was boarding the Disney Magic or Princess Caribbean Princess.
We were all hungry and dinner was scheduled for 5:30 P.M.  We asked a crew member what our options were for lunch at this time (2:15 P.M.) expecting we had missed our chance to eat in a Main Dining Room (MDR) and she concurred.  She added that we would have to hurry if we wanted anything, because mandatory life board drill was starting at 3 P.M.  Seeing as how we were on deck 6 at the time and the available buffet was on deck 15 and we still had all our carry-ons, we reasoned it wouldn’t make sense to try to get up there to food when we had to be back to deck 6 by 3 P.M.  Plus we wanted to dump our stuff. 

We were so late that staterooms were more than ready.
Stewart gasped when he saw how small it was.  I didn’t think it was too bad.  I showed him all the nooks and crannies for storage.  Our luggage was already in the hallway.  Yay.

The adjoining room was slightly larger and the bathroom had a tub.  There are only so many adjoining rooms for 4 on the ship, and it worked out nicely to have a tub for the little girls.  It also had a double sink.  We decided to sleep the older four kids in the first room and the little girls and John and I in the second.  This would allow the little girls to enjoy an earlier bedtime.
There was a letter in our stateroom addressed to Stewart stating they had his food allergies on record and if we needed assistance to contact them. 
The ship and elevators were painfully crowded and I wondered if it would be miserable all week (it was not).  There are two banks of 8 elevators on the ship, for the record.
We returned to deck 6 and worked on loading up the iConcierge app to allow us to text amongst ourselves.   I’d read it would cost $7.95 per device.  The crew member told me it would be $9.99 per device.  It charged us $12.99 device.  Ah – that NCL nickel and diming I’d heard about? 

The drill took For.Ev.Er.and was the least organized I’d been to.   But thankfully it was near a bar and we were all able to break in our soda packages.

Once the drill was over we ran to the buffet for small snacks.to hold us over for an hour. 

We went to the kids’ clubs and registered our kids for their appropriate age groups.  Marie and Tabitha were Dolphins in the 10-12 club, and Katriel and Johanna were turtles in the 3-5 club.  We took the boys up to Entourage and had them register there, too. 
When we booked our cruise back in March one of the perks was to have the dinner show Illusionarium free if you went on the first night.  They had since removed that (and a LOT of other things) since we had booked, but our travel agent went to bat for us and had it arranged.
It was okay.  I wasn’t too impressed, though. 

Although they gave you a menu, it was more or less to inform you what they would be bringing you as it is a set dish.  It was edible, but unimpressive.  The startling thing was how lackadaisically they approached food allergies.  I had read many reports saying how well NCL responds to dietary restrictions, so we were taken aback a bit by this.  We comforted ourselves by reasoning we could head up to the buffet afterward for more food. 
After dinner we poked around the deck a little and worked our way to deck 15 aft where the buffet was, and then up to deck 16 aft where the mini golf was.

So – as we found the soft-serve ice cream we also found those attendants to be just as uninterested in helping us navigate the buffet with food restrictions.  If things stayed the same, this was going to be a long, disappointing, and stressful week for Stewart.
We decided that maybe John and Stewart should head to the customer service and see if there was anyone they could talk to about Stewart’s dining.  I headed back to the room with the other kids.  Marie and Tab wanted to check out their kids’ club, and when Johanna saw the kids having fun, she asked to stay, too.  I took Katriel back to the room for bed. 
John and Stewart returned to the room triumphant.  Having stopped by the customer service desk they were quickly linked to an assistant maitre d, Cher Fuentes.  They were directed to a restaurant on deck 7 to meet with her.  She walked them through the menus for the next three nights and Stewart pre-ordered his dinners.  She was very helpful and informative.John went back to pick up the girls from the club.  Johanna was in tears.  She said she missed her mama.  I think she was kind of tired.
We had met our stateroom hostess, Anna, when we dropped off our bags earlier.  She informed us that tonight we needed to turn our clocks back an hour.  Nothing says vacation better than an extra hour of sleep!

Everyone was in bed by 10:30 ish, I believe.