Beautiful Barbados, and a note about comments to this blog...
Yes, I know I am a day late... I'm on vacation. Sue me...
Thank you, those of you that have posted comments. A couple of notes on that. After EACH day's post there is a line in small print saying who posted it and at what time (by the way the time is messed up a little, I certainly wasn't up at 5 AM yesterday...), along with the number of comments and a little yellow pencil icon. You can post your comment, by clicking on the yellow pencil, after the relevant day, rather than having to scroll right to the bottom of the page. In fact the internet cost by the minute is so expensive on the ship that I hadn't checked back to the beginning of the blog (where some of you have posted your comments) until today, so had missed them at the time. FYI, I actually work off-line for almost everything short of uploading pictures and the text, but have been building in an extra session during each day to check the comments... it's a lot of fun to read them. I will be able to reply to some comments directly. I will do this in the "comments" section for that particular day. But as I don't have time to reply to each comment directly, I will also try to address the questions that you have asked in future posts. I guess you'll have to keep reading and I'll have to keep writing!
We arrived in Barbados on the 51st anniversary of the day that Hurricane Janet hit; the last hurricane to ravish this island. Travel-fans should therefore be able to work out that Barbados is a fairly safe bet for travel during the hurricane season...
Today we chose an organised shore excursion - we booked it onboard - called "Wild Feathers and Swim". Having worked on cruise ships in the past, we knew that you will always pay more to be on an organised tour, but there are certain advantages (no organising to do on your own, no chance of getting ripped off by taxi-drivers, no chance of getting left behind etc) which make people feel comfortable taking them. We found that quite a lot of the tours offered much more than we really wanted to do (with small kids) so wouldn't have made good sense for us. However, once we had done a little bit of comparison-shopping on the other islands and had found that Disney's markup wasn't as much as we assumed, and because we couldn't think of any way to do the tour that they offered by ourselves anyway, we booked. Too much detail? Maybe, but there is subtle thinking going on, and the cruise itself costs at least a few dollars, so I think it is OK to try to economise a little here and there if possible without selling ourselves short. This will be the subject of another special post - "Top 10 ways to avoid blowing your life savings while on the Disney Wonder without being a cheapskate" - which will come as soon as I work out which are the best 10...
But I digress...
The "Wild Feathers" part of the tour was trip to to a new attraction on Barbados called the Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary, located in the only area of mangrove swamp on the island, near St Lawrence Gap on the South Coast of the island. The sanctuary has attractive grounds with boardwalks leading down through the mangrove trees in the "wild" part, as well as some large and attractive walk-through aviaries in the "sanctuary" part of the park. The highlights were seeing the flamingos, which here were orange, rather than their more usual pink colour. The guide was very interesting, and children and adults alike enjoyed this visit. We spent about an hour at the sanctuary, which wasn't too rushed, as it is not a huge property. It would be well worth visiting for anyone staying on the island, especially for the many hotels and apartments in that part of the island.
The "Swim" part of the tour was at the nearby Rockley Beach (or Accra Beach, as the Accra Beach Hotel is located on the same beach). This was a spectacular stretch of white sand beach, again on the South coast. There is a continual surf here, which can get quite high at times, though not today. The kids enjoyed jumping in an out of the waves, something they have not done yet so far on this cruise. Gabriella, and one of her friends from the kids club, particularly had a great time, and she made her first attempts at body-surfing. She was quite impressive! We had about 90 mins on the beach, which was not quite long enough, but what can you do... Our driver was informative and kept up a running commentary for the entire trip, which filled in quite a few details for me.
Once we were back on board, and had eaten our late lunch, our children wanted to join the kids activities again, and so spent the next 2 and a half hours there happily involved with an on-deck scavenger hunt (each of the age-groups 3-4 and 5-7 did their own age-appropriate hunt), detective school for Gabriella (where they took fingerprints, looked through microscopes and followed clues to find out who had stolen the goo - always with the goo!!), and a visit to Wonderland with Alice for Kiara. And that is just a small sampling of the activities that would go on for 16-18 hours of every day. We picked the kids up just as they were going for dinner, so stayed with them while they had a partial meal to tide them over to the main meal, which as you will know by now is at 8 PM.
I took the chance to speak with one of the kids counsellors about her job and how many kids they normally deal with. She explained that on this special sailing there are actually less than half the number of children (360 registered in the kids club) as on a "regular" 7-night sailing (700-1000 registered!!), so often they are dealing with three times the numbers that they have right now. Far from being a problem, the system is so good, and there are so many staff, that I can see that it would all work just as well with the normal number of kids on board. In fact, she said that it had sometimes been more of a challenge to pull off some of the activities with fewer kids, so you can rest assured and know that the staff really know what they are doing, and your kids will have a great experience, no matter how busy a time of year you are going...
In our time away from the children, Maritala and I went to the gym. Yes, that is not a mis-print. We both spent a harrowing 30 minutes on the elliptical trainers. I think I lost about 3 lbs in sweat, and maybe an ounce or two in fat as well. Actually it wasn't harrowing, it felt pretty good, and I am thinking of going today as well. As someone who bikes to work year-round, I have not been getting as much exercise as normal (though there is lots of walking to do and lots of stairs, plus all that swimming) and I have been eating more than usual (though not too much more), so having the gym here is pretty useful. It's a nice gym too, by the way, lots of equipment, TVs built-in (ah, technology,,,) and a great view. It is right at the front of the ship overlooking the bridge i.e you can see the officers driving the boat (sic), the radar screens etc. Cool.
After tonight's show, "The Art of the Story" (a new one for the ship, which was a big deal for the repeat guests - there are hundreds on this special sailing - and was also very good, though scary in places) I got to take part in a music trivia "game-show" - I didn't win - which was also pretty good fun.
As for repeat guests...
I was remarking to Maritala, as our evening meal was interrupted by Chip'n'Dale and their side-kick Conchita Banana, which was an oh-so-typical, oh-so-Disney, wonderful diversion during a late meal with small children, "where else could we get the same kind of vacation experience apart from with the Disney Cruise line?" Disney really does this better than anyone else. It is rather hard to imagine going on a Royal Caribbean or Norwegian cruise (for example, great as both are) with children, after having done this one, without it being a disappointment for the kids. Which is great in some ways (Disney have a fabulous product here, unlike any other, one that I can unhesitatingly recommend - which is great for my clients, and especially good for Disney!) but is sad in another - as nothing else will quite measure up. Hence so many repeaters... OK, if you are a casual Disney fan, you may not need all of the razzmatazz all of the time, but still, imagine keeping two small children awake and interested through a 90-minute evening meal on a regular ship... As I type this, Maritala is saying "let's go on the 2007 Mediterranean cruise next year - it would be so cool..." That is Maritala, a reluctant Disney vacationer speaking, not me!!
Antigua is calling us tomorrow, and I still have to download today's 100 pictures from my camera and work out which pictures to upload... Bye for now...
Thank you, those of you that have posted comments. A couple of notes on that. After EACH day's post there is a line in small print saying who posted it and at what time (by the way the time is messed up a little, I certainly wasn't up at 5 AM yesterday...), along with the number of comments and a little yellow pencil icon. You can post your comment, by clicking on the yellow pencil, after the relevant day, rather than having to scroll right to the bottom of the page. In fact the internet cost by the minute is so expensive on the ship that I hadn't checked back to the beginning of the blog (where some of you have posted your comments) until today, so had missed them at the time. FYI, I actually work off-line for almost everything short of uploading pictures and the text, but have been building in an extra session during each day to check the comments... it's a lot of fun to read them. I will be able to reply to some comments directly. I will do this in the "comments" section for that particular day. But as I don't have time to reply to each comment directly, I will also try to address the questions that you have asked in future posts. I guess you'll have to keep reading and I'll have to keep writing!
We arrived in Barbados on the 51st anniversary of the day that Hurricane Janet hit; the last hurricane to ravish this island. Travel-fans should therefore be able to work out that Barbados is a fairly safe bet for travel during the hurricane season... Today we chose an organised shore excursion - we booked it onboard - called "Wild Feathers and Swim". Having worked on cruise ships in the past, we knew that you will always pay more to be on an organised tour, but there are certain advantages (no organising to do on your own, no chance of getting ripped off by taxi-drivers, no chance of getting left behind etc) which make people feel comfortable taking them. We found that quite a lot of the tours offered much more than we really wanted to do (with small kids) so wouldn't have made good sense for us. However, once we had done a little bit of comparison-shopping on the other islands and had found that Disney's markup wasn't as much as we assumed, and because we couldn't think of any way to do the tour that they offered by ourselves anyway, we booked. Too much detail? Maybe, but there is subtle thinking going on, and the cruise itself costs at least a few dollars, so I think it is OK to try to economise a little here and there if possible without selling ourselves short. This will be the subject of another special post - "Top 10 ways to avoid blowing your life savings while on the Disney Wonder without being a cheapskate" - which will come as soon as I work out which are the best 10...
But I digress...
The "Wild Feathers" part of the tour was trip to to a new attraction on Barbados called the Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary, located in the only area of mangrove swamp on the island, near St Lawrence Gap on the South Coast of the island. The sanctuary has attractive grounds with boardwalks leading down through the mangrove trees in the "wild" part, as well as some large and attractive walk-through aviaries in the "sanctuary" part of the park. The highlights were seeing the flamingos, which here were orange, rather than their more usual pink colour. The guide was very interesting, and children and adults alike enjoyed this visit. We spent about an hour at the sanctuary, which wasn't too rushed, as it is not a huge property. It would be well worth visiting for anyone staying on the island, especially for the many hotels and apartments in that part of the island.
The "Swim" part of the tour was at the nearby Rockley Beach (or Accra Beach, as the Accra Beach Hotel is located on the same beach). This was a spectacular stretch of white sand beach, again on the South coast. There is a continual surf here, which can get quite high at times, though not today. The kids enjoyed jumping in an out of the waves, something they have not done yet so far on this cruise. Gabriella, and one of her friends from the kids club, particularly had a great time, and she made her first attempts at body-surfing. She was quite impressive! We had about 90 mins on the beach, which was not quite long enough, but what can you do... Our driver was informative and kept up a running commentary for the entire trip, which filled in quite a few details for me.
Once we were back on board, and had eaten our late lunch, our children wanted to join the kids activities again, and so spent the next 2 and a half hours there happily involved with an on-deck scavenger hunt (each of the age-groups 3-4 and 5-7 did their own age-appropriate hunt), detective school for Gabriella (where they took fingerprints, looked through microscopes and followed clues to find out who had stolen the goo - always with the goo!!), and a visit to Wonderland with Alice for Kiara. And that is just a small sampling of the activities that would go on for 16-18 hours of every day. We picked the kids up just as they were going for dinner, so stayed with them while they had a partial meal to tide them over to the main meal, which as you will know by now is at 8 PM. 
I took the chance to speak with one of the kids counsellors about her job and how many kids they normally deal with. She explained that on this special sailing there are actually less than half the number of children (360 registered in the kids club) as on a "regular" 7-night sailing (700-1000 registered!!), so often they are dealing with three times the numbers that they have right now. Far from being a problem, the system is so good, and there are so many staff, that I can see that it would all work just as well with the normal number of kids on board. In fact, she said that it had sometimes been more of a challenge to pull off some of the activities with fewer kids, so you can rest assured and know that the staff really know what they are doing, and your kids will have a great experience, no matter how busy a time of year you are going...In our time away from the children, Maritala and I went to the gym. Yes, that is not a mis-print. We both spent a harrowing 30 minutes on the elliptical trainers. I think I lost about 3 lbs in sweat, and maybe an ounce or two in fat as well. Actually it wasn't harrowing, it felt pretty good, and I am thinking of going today as well. As someone who bikes to work year-round, I have not been getting as much exercise as normal (though there is lots of walking to do and lots of stairs, plus all that swimming) and I have been eating more than usual (though not too much more), so having the gym here is pretty useful. It's a nice gym too, by the way, lots of equipment, TVs built-in (ah, technology,,,) and a great view. It is right at the front of the ship overlooking the bridge i.e you can see the officers driving the boat (sic), the radar screens etc. Cool.
After tonight's show, "The Art of the Story" (a new one for the ship, which was a big deal for the repeat guests - there are hundreds on this special sailing - and was also very good, though scary in places) I got to take part in a music trivia "game-show" - I didn't win - which was also pretty good fun. As for repeat guests...
I was remarking to Maritala, as our evening meal was interrupted by Chip'n'Dale and their side-kick Conchita Banana, which was an oh-so-typical, oh-so-Disney, wonderful diversion during a late meal with small children, "where else could we get the same kind of vacation experience apart from with the Disney Cruise line?" Disney really does this better than anyone else. It is rather hard to imagine going on a Royal Caribbean or Norwegian cruise (for example, great as both are) with children, after having done this one, without it being a disappointment for the kids. Which is great in some ways (Disney have a fabulous product here, unlike any other, one that I can unhesitatingly recommend - which is great for my clients, and especially good for Disney!) but is sad in another - as nothing else will quite measure up. Hence so many repeaters... OK, if you are a casual Disney fan, you may not need all of the razzmatazz all of the time, but still, imagine keeping two small children awake and interested through a 90-minute evening meal on a regular ship... As I type this, Maritala is saying "let's go on the 2007 Mediterranean cruise next year - it would be so cool..." That is Maritala, a reluctant Disney vacationer speaking, not me!!
Antigua is calling us tomorrow, and I still have to download today's 100 pictures from my camera and work out which pictures to upload... Bye for now...
[Back to... St Lucia - and kids club comments...]
posted by Alex at "Let's Take the Kids Travel Agency" | 7:04 PM
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