Caribbean Cruise and Log cabin in the Smoky Mountains

[TrueBlue]

NEW UPDATE ON POST 34 AND 43

Althought this trip isn't going to happen until October next year (2012) I just had to start my pre trippie to try and keep all my plans in the one place

There is 3 holiday destinations i've always wanted to go it. The first is a Caribbean Cruise sailing with Royal Caribbean, the next is a road trip taking in San Francisco, LA, Vegas, Yosemite, Grand Canyon etc and the third is the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

We've been going to Florida for a few years now, we're going again in October this year which will be our 4th time. I really can't see myself doing a beach holiday to Majorca again for a while as i'd really love to explore the states.

Since this years trip to Florida is already booked, paid for (well almost) and organised I started planning ahead for 2012. We have to go at school holiday times as we have 2 sons but I refuse to give them the money for the summer holidays so we tend to go in October. Our schools get 2 weeks off up here in October so it suits us perfectly.

Since the beginning of this year i'd been waiting patiently (or not) for Royal Caribbean Int to release their cruise dates for October 2012. We decided that instead of doing 2 weeks in Disney next year we'd do a weeks cruising and possibly a week of Disney.

As soon as the dates we wanted got released in May I did a quick search on the internet for prices of the cruise we wanted to do. I was surpised that it wasn't as expensive as I imagined it would be.

So...armed with some prices I went to a few travel agents to see if they would price match for me. We decided to go with Thomsons and we have booked the following :

Sail date

Sunday 7th October 2012 from Port Canaveral, Florida. We are sailing on the beautiful Freedom of the Seas ship



I have chosen a catagory D1 stateroom with large balcony. I have even chosen our room number 9318. We could have had the 10th deck but straight away I noticed our room would either have been underneath the swimming pool or the restaurant so we decided that wasn't such a good idea.

Cruise itinerary

We set sail from Port Canaveral, Florida at 4pm on the Sunday (7th October 2012). As far as I know we are allowed on the ship from approx 12 noon or something like that and we can take our time to explore the ship before we set sail.

Day 2

We are due to arrive at Cococay in the Bahamas at 7am on the Monday. I'm hoping to be awake and on the balcony to see us arriving here. There is not a port at Cococay so it will be tender boats taking us to the island.

We'll probably take our time getting off the ship as we'll have breakfast and relax for a while first. There's not too much to do on this island but i'm planning on booking the Aqua park for the 4 of us. This is inflateable slides and trampolines out in the sea. You are equiped with life jackets and can spend as much time having fun on them as you like.

We can come back and forth to the ship on the tender boats as we please. Apparetely they go back and forward to the ship every 10 mins or so and you can come and go as you please.

We depart Cococay at 4pm

Day 3

Day 3 is a sea day so will spend all day on the ship. The Freedom of the seas is huge and there's so much to do and see on her. I know the kids are dying to have a go on the Flowrider machine and the climbing wall. My eldest son Callum who'll be 15 at the time is looking forward to having a game of basket ball out at sea (he loves his sports). I'm hoping to just relax on a sunbed and read a book on this day but I always end up with itchy feet and have to go and do something.

Day 4

Day 4 we are due to arrive at St. Thomas at 11am. I haven't really had a look at this island yet to see what excusions there is to do but I don't think we'll venture too far. Maybe just chill out at the beach and have a look at some of the shops.

I might change my mind nearer the time...we'll see.

** OK... so I did change my mind I have now booked us an excursion with Sunny Lister tours which comes in at only $40 per person. We visit an Iguana farm, Sea Urchin thingy, we also go shopping, then a trip up the mountains for a birds eye view of our ship then a couple of hours at the beach before returning back to our ship **

The ship comes into Port at St. Thomas so again i'm hoping to get a good view from our balcony of our approach and docking.

We are due to depart St. Thomas at 7pm

Day 5

Day 5 we are due to arrive at St. Maarten at 8am.

I really really want to go to Maho Beach to see this :

youtube/watch?v=za2GlaeHz3U

Not sure how brave i'll be getting up so close so I imagine i'll be standing a wee bit further away

I guess it's just one of those things you have to experience as the chances of doing this again are pretty slim.

We'll probably just stay around the beach area and have another look around the shops on St. Maarten.

** okay okay, another change of plans! We are now booked onto another island cruise, this time with Bernards. They receive fab reviews so really looking forward to it. I can't quite remember what we do on the tour but again it involves shopping, sightseeing and we finish up at Maho Beach to watch the planes coming in **

Day 6 and 7

Both these days are sea days before we head back to Port Canaveral. I'm hoping to just relax, read, sunbathe and explore the ship again on these days... bliss

Day 8

Day 8 we are due to arrive back in Port Canaveral at 6am

As far as I know we can stay on the ship and have breakfast before we have to leave.

What we're planning next

Since booking the cruise a few weeks ago i've been searching for something else to do for the second week. I'd priced up tickets for Disney but really grudged paying about £600 for tickets as we'd only have about 4 or 5 days left before we come home. That on top of extra spending money plus having to pay for a hotel and car was really going to bump the holiday price up.

I thought about just spending the last of our days at a beach resort somewhere around Clearwater but i'm not really a beach type of person, I like to keep on the move especially as we'll be doing lots of beach days plus relaxing on the cruise ship. I really don't think I could spend even more days relaxing.

I then looked at having a few days at New York after the cruise. We were probably going to be flying with Continental from Edinburgh - Newark - Orlando anyway so thought on the return leg we could just have a few days in New York.

I mentioned this to the boys but they didn't seem overly keen on this idea.

At this stage I was starting to tear my hair out and wished i'd never booked the cruise. If I hadn't paid a £600 deposit on it i'd have probably just cancelled the cruise and just done Disney again for 2 weeks instead.

Then on Satuday I had a brainwave

I've always wanted to go to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. I spoke the DH and the boys about it last year and showed them pictures and trip reports from other dibbers who had did this area of the States. I totally fell in love with the Log Cabins overlooking the mountains.

I asked the kids if they fancied a trip up here if it didn't work out too expensive. They thought it was a great idea so off I went into planning mode again!

First I had a look at how we could get there so thought i'd start off with checking out flights. I asked on here about internal flights and a few people got back to me with some airlines. I had a look but it was going to be approx £500 (if not more) for flights for the 4 of us - and this is just one way!

I then had a look at google maps and typed in Port Canaveral to Pigeon Forge. It came up as 684 miles and approx an 11 hour drive.

This seemed quite do-able for us so at the minute this is what we're planning on doing.

After we depart the ship at approx 9am we'll pick up a hired car. I've been looking at the SUV's and it should only be approx £150 for 5 days.

So we're going to drive up the east coast of Florida and up into Georgia and stay overnight at a place called Savannah. The next day we'll get up early(ish) and continue through South Carolina and into Tennessee.

** the above has now changed too we are now driving the whole 600 miles in the one day! I reckon if we can get off the ship before 9am then we can be in our log cabin by 7pm that same night I added an extra night on to the cabin so we're now mega excited about this bit ***

I'm hoping to arrive in Pigeon Forge around 4pm at the latest.

I'm really excited about this next part of the trip as i've always wanted to stay in the log cabins high up with views over the Smoky Mountains.

This is one of the cabin's i'm considering booking :









Although this is classed as a one bedroomed cabin it actually sleeps 6 or 7. As well as the king size bed there is also 2 queen beds which i'm sure are up in the attic space.

For anyone interested in these log cabins, this is the website

sugarmaplecabins/

They have anything from 1 bedroom luxury cabins to 12 bedroomed cabins!

On the first day we arrive here we'll just check out our surroundings and log cabin then probably head back into town (Pigeon Forge) and have something to eat then buy a bottle of wine or something and head back to our cabin and relax on the deck admiring the views.

Almost all these cabins have an outside hot tub on the balcony so I imagine that will be used quite a lot

The next day (tuesday) we're planning a day at Dollywood - Dolly Partons theme park. It's only a couple of miles away and has lots of great rides and coasters plus there's country and western shows/live music going on as well as far as I know.

Wednesday we are planning to explore a wee bit of the Smoky Mountains. I'd like to see Cades Cove and do a bit of the Loop (think this is an 11 miles one way driving system through park of the National Park). I still have to research this a bit more...considering I only came up with the idea on saturday night i'm doing not too bad lol

Thursday is the day I think we're going to come home. We might spread it out and stay another night, we haven't decided yet.

I haven't booked the flights yet as they don't become available until November this year but we're planning on the following flights :

Flying British Airways from Edinburgh - Gatwick - MCO on Friday 5th October. I want to arrive a couple of days before the cruise to make sure we're there on time lol

On the way home again we'll be with British Airways flying from Atlanta, Georgia - Heathrow - Edinburgh.

Atlanta's approx a 4 hour drive from Tennessee but our flight isn't until 9pm or something like that at night anyway so we should have plenty of time if we take it easy driving there and stopping off half way for food.

** we didn't book the British Airways flights in the end, we are now flying with Continental from Edinburgh - Newark - MCO and flying back from Knoxville - Newark - Edinburgh, again with Continental***

I've started this pre-trippie early so that I can add bits and pieces as I go along and hopefully if anyone who is reading this can offer bits of information then i'd really appreciate it as this is like no kind of holiday i've ever planned before.

I'll also try and post the costs of everything so people can have a rough idea if they are planning something similar.

So far the only thing I have booked in the cruise :

7 night Eastern Caribbean Cruise with RCI on Freedom of the Seas. Price including pre-paid gratuities and staying in a Superior 1 stateroom with balcony = £2140.00

[Shortcake]

WOW thats sounds fabulous ...jealous much i want to do a Carribean cruise but hubby's not keen ..we will see after our first cruise with RC in Sept
I will watch with interest

[truesdpr]

Sounds like a great trip Marion - I'm sure you'll love RCI. We did a 5 day with them to Jamaica and Cayman Islands and we were very impressed. Think we had a D1 too - had a huge balcony with sun loungers which was great. We were right at the back of the ship and it was a lovely place to relax with a cocktail or two! My friends who love in Florida are great lovers of Tennessee so we might check that out some of these times too - it looks lovely. Will look forward to hearing all about it.

Pam.

[Guest]

Sounds like an amazing trip!

[Jet]

That looks fabulous! ...have a look on Cruise Critic for trips on St Thomas and St Maarten ...we done independant trips both times we went...and we were back intime for sail away.

[TrueBlue]

Originally Posted by Shortcake

WOW thats sounds fabulous ...jealous much i want to do a Carribean cruise but hubby's not keen ..we will see after our first cruise with RC in Sept
I will watch with interest

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I've always dreamed of doing a Caribbean Cruise, this isn't quite the one I had planned... really wanted to do Barbados and places like that but we would have to have flown into San Juan I think for this one plus I really wanted to go on Freedom of the Seas I'm sure you'll talk your hubby round some day, we found the caribbean cruise cheaper than doing a med cruise with RCI

Originally Posted by truesdpr

Sounds like a great trip Marion - I'm sure you'll love RCI. We did a 5 day with them to Jamaica and Cayman Islands and we were very impressed. Think we had a D1 too - had a huge balcony with sun loungers which was great. We were right at the back of the ship and it was a lovely place to relax with a cocktail or two! My friends who love in Florida are great lovers of Tennessee so we might check that out some of these times too - it looks lovely. Will look forward to hearing all about it.

Pam.

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I read your trip report Pam and loved it! We're roughly in the middle of the ship but wasn't really bothered where we were to be honest as we've never did a cruise before.

I'll mind and take loads of pics of Tennessee to share when we get back

Originally Posted by ukdiva

Sounds like an amazing trip!

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Thanks... I sooo excited about it now

Originally Posted by Jet

That looks fabulous! ...have a look on Cruise Critic for trips on St Thomas and St Maarten ...we done independant trips both times we went...and we were back intime for sail away.

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I've been on Cruise Critic and had a look. Read quit a few trip reports too but there's not too many (with pictures) for the Eastern Caribbean with RCI. I think we're more just looking for a relaxation week so don't want to do anything too energetic. I'd happily just stay on the ship for the 2 weeks but thought i'd better have a look at each port we enter and take some pics

[Guest]

Well, you've decided a holiday for us for 2013. Those cabins are just so beautiful.

[TrueBlue]

Originally Posted by geoffa

Well, you've decided a holiday for us for 2013. Those cabins are just so beautiful.

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They really are superb Geoff. I've had these ear marked for such a long time... it's going to be difficult choosing one as they are all so gorgeous.

I can't believe they even have quite a few 12 bedroomed ones!...think they sleep about 28 people of something

[Shortcake]

I know Carribean is cheaper but isn't it dearer with your flights ? We are in a D1 cabin AFT deck 10 room 1700..eeek can't wait to sip cocktails on me balcony We paid around £3800 for 3 adults departing from Southampton on the Independence for 2 weeks so i don't think its that bad
Will work on him when he see's how much of a fab time we have but wont be looking at going til 2013

Sorry forgot to say i checked how much if i booked now and its £5500 so glad i booked this last March

[anniee]

Sounds fab Marion, DH and Dom fancy a cruise but I'm not quite sure. I have an aunt in Savannah, and mum and dad have visited several times if you need any info on there.