LIVE NOW (ish) food report - Eating our way across land and sea ~ including QSDP ~ September 2019

[4holibobs]

Originally Posted by Pez01

Have a fab cruise I’ve really enjoyed following along x

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Thanks so much

[Loobylou_82]

Really enjoyed reading your Disney food report, but can't wait for your cruise report. Not been on Harmony of the Seas [yet]. Hope you can include some photos of the ship. Have a great cruise.

[eeyore]

Have loved reading your food report look forward to hearing about the cruise too, thanks for sharing

[DisneyPrin]

Thank you for writing this food report, have loved reading along! We're staying at POFQ so glad to see that you enjoyed the food there & have jotted a few restaurants down to add to our list. I'm a big frozen Minute Maid fan too, think my fave is the cherry!

Enjoy your cruise!

[4holibobs]

Hi everyone, I have picked up a special internet deal $42 for the remainder of the cruise so I’m going to try and catch up with the cruise section of the report.

Just a quick note to say that this cruise was meant to be the Eastern Caribbean taking in Coco Cay, St Thomas and St Maarten. However, there’s a tropical storm due to hit St Thomas and St Maarten the days we are there and St Thomas have already closed their port, so the Captain has announced we are changing schedule to Western Caribbean. We are now doing Coco Cay, Costa Maya and Cozumel.

We had trips booked in both St Thomas and St Maarten and we have been refunded these so we can book new ones when the become available.

Cruise Day 1 - embarkation day

Lunch - Solarium Bistro

We waited until we had dropped our bags off at the room at 1pm before heading to lunch at the Solarium bistro on deck 16. It was very quiet - almost like people hadn’t discovered it yet! The Solarium area is for over 16’s only, but anyone can access the bistro.

There were lots of seats available, we were probably one of maybe 10 or 12 couples in the whole place.

Choices were bbq chicken, battered fish, mashed potato, couscous, paella, coleslaw, shepherds pie, salad, bread rolls.

I had bbq chicken and salad. It was enjoyable. The chicken was moist and had a nice flavour.

Unfortunately I forgot to take my phone with me (first fail of the report!) so I only have one photo of my food taken on DH’s phone... also after I had taken a couple of mouthfuls- sorry!

We sat on the balcony for sail away and rested in the room. I felt a little poorly today - I think Disney has worn me out - DH did suggest we skip the main dining room and head to the buffet for tea, and whilst it was tempting I forced myself to get ready and head down to dinner as I thought it would help me to feel better and take my mind off how I felt.

Drinks - Schooner Bar

We had a 7.30pm dinner reservation so we headed down to Schooner Bar around 7pm. I had a Diet Coke and DH had a Coors light which came to $8.49. We like Schooner bar, its on deck 6 and some of the seats overlook the Royal Promenade, and you can watch the rising tide bar go up
and down.

It wasn’t particularly busy when we were there and we found a table for two easily enough. There was wait staff, but DH went to the bar to order and pick up our drinks.

They had a special offer on the ultimate drinks package - buy one for $70pp per day and get one for $35pp per day. Both people in the stateroom have to have the same package, so I couldn’t have the refreshment package and DH have the ultimate.

Dinner - Main dining room

We took our drinks down to the main dining room and were given a table for two in the middle of the restaurant.

There are two queues in the foyer, one for guests without reservations (which was pretty big) and one for guests with reservations. I was able to get a 7.30pm reservation each night but one when I got a 7.45pm. I reserved these back in May this year.

There are also two traditional dinner times, 5.30pm and 7.45pm. You have the same time and same table each night with this option.


When you check in you are shown to your table and given menus, however, there’s a girl with some sanitizer ensuring that everyone washes their hands before you go into the restaurant. She says ‘washy washy’ - she’s going to be well known on the cruise I feel.

The waiter introduced himself and his assistant waiter and we were brought iced water and asked if we wanted more drinks (we didn’t).

DH chose calamari to start, fish of the day (which was sole served with saffron rice) and pear and blueberry cobbler for dessert.

DH said the calamari was nice but the whole pieces of octopus were quite chewy, he left these two. The sole was a little dry, perhaps as if it had been standing under a lamp, he enjoyed his dessert which came with vanilla ice cream.

DH had a coffee afterwards which came in a large mug!

I chose the French onion soup, chicken Marsala (I swapped the mash for a jacket potato and carrots instead of asparagus) and for dessert I had he sugar free ice cream which was vanilla and a fruit salad.

The soup was lovely, I lifted off the majority of the cheese and the crouton and ate the soup. IlThe chicken was nice, it wasn’t dry, although the Marsala wasn’t strong tasting. The carrots were nice (I could have eaten more) and the jacket was soft and fluffy.

The ice cream and fruit were light and enjoyable.

We noted that the food came out hot, which compared to our cruises on both the Oasis of the Seas and the Allure of the Seas (the same class of ship) was a difference as it was one of our biggest complaints about these ships. We wondered if they kitchens were fitted closer to the dining room on this ship, or maybe it was the area we were sat in, or the wait staff?

We finished dinner at 8.30pm and although we have a 10.30pm reservation for the ice show I’m still not feeling 100% so we have come back to the room and are getting our pyjamas on and reading some magazines we have brought with us but haven’t had chance to read yet. We have the balcony door open and love listening to the sound of the sea.

Apologies if this report changes tenses - I have written some up afterward and some at time but the ships internet is slow so I haven’t got time to check and double check everything right now.

Thanks for reading

[collybird]

I'm not in the know about cruises so apologies for my ignorance but the drinks packages seem so pricey, are they actually good value? And the norm? We have only done a Disney Cruise, soft drinks were included but I imagine the cost of this hidden in the overall price.

[Loobylou_82]

Hope you are feeling better Holibobs. Thanks for showing the menus on the ship and some photos of the ship and your stateroom, it looks lovely. Can't wait to see more. Your OH chose what i would have chosen to eat ! I was mentally choosing it as reading the menu.

[4holibobs]

Originally Posted by collybird

I'm not in the know about cruises so apologies for my ignorance but the drinks packages seem so pricey, are they actually good value? And the norm? We have only done a Disney Cruise, soft drinks were included but I imagine the cost of this hidden in the overall price.

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They do tend to be the norm, but in our opinion they are expensive so we don’t get the ultimate package. For a beer and a strawberry daiquiri it’s $22.40 so you have to have a few of these each and every day to break even let alone have good value for money from the package. I don’t think we will even break even from the refreshment package which was around £200 for us both. You can get free drinks from the Windjammer Buffet and on Coco Cay and there are water stations around the cruise ship so it depends what you are happy with. Believe me though there are people who make the package work for them drinking cocktails at 10am - they are the minority but you do see them!

Originally Posted by Loobylou_82

Hope you are feeling better Holibobs. Thanks for showing the menus on the ship and some photos of the ship and your stateroom, it looks lovely. Can't wait to see more. Your OH chose what i would have chosen to eat ! I was mentally choosing it as reading the menu.

See more...

Thank you... after that first day on the ship I did feel much better. DH has really enjoyed all the fish on this trip, we don’t have it much at home but he’s loved it. Thanks for reading and commenting... there’s more the come!

[4holibobs]

Cruise Day 2 - Coco Cay

I woke up a couple of times in the night, and eventually woke up at 7am... so much for sleeping in on the cruise!

The ship didn’t move too much in the night, there seemed to be a nice sway when we were sat on the bed but not when we were asleep.

Breakfast - main dining room

The dining room on deck 3 offers either a la carte or buffet breakfast. The benefit of the a l carte we learnt from our waiter last night is that you can also use the buffet.

We went down for breakfast at around 8am and we given a nice table for 2.

I chose an omelette with mushrooms and onion, this came with a tomato and a hash brown which I gave to DH. I live on omelettes at home on weekends as eggs and veg are free foods on weight watchers. The omelette was quite small once I had taken away the tomato and hash brown, so I may ask for two next time, and I could tell it was cooked with oil, which I’m not used to, but it was nice (the photo below is from day 4 (I think) so the omelette looks a little bigger than it was).

DH chose bacon, sausage, mushrooms, eggs,
and baked beans and his also came with a tomato and hash brown.

I had water to drink and DH had an orange juice and a coffee.

Whilst I was waiting for my breakfast I went to check out the buffet options and picked up a yoghurt and musili for DH and some fresh fruit for myself.

I took some photos of the buffet options available -

The breakfast didn’t take long to come out maybe 10 or 15 minutes and it was piping hot when it came.

It was lovely, and a great start to our day.

We headed off the ship around 9am and today we are in Coco Cay in the Bahamas.

There were various things you could book here beforehand, cabanas, access to the water park, different snorkelling or scuba trips, but we decided to just head for the beach and have a relaxing day. DH said he needed to rest his feet from all the walking at Disney!

We made our way to Harbour Beach where we grabbed two loungers and an umbrella right on the front of the water.

We have a fantastic view of the ship and we are close to the bar, restaurant and restrooms.

There are fountain stations with water, tropical/mango juice, strawberry/kiwi juice and lime and lemonade juice. You can help yourselves to these you don’t need to be on a drinks package. I’ve been mixing the water and tropical juice, it’s really nice.

Lunch - Skippers Grill onshore at Coco Cay

Lunch is operating from 11.30am to 3pm and is a buffet. It was quite a large spread out space with lots of benches to sit at.

There were lots of hand wash stations and this is something we have noticed on the ship too for example in the entrance to the Windjammer buffet.

They had burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches with different meat fillings, bbq chicken, fries, corn on the cob as well as a tachos section, salad and salsa. For dessert they had fruit, cookies, brownies and ice cream.

DH had a burger and he said it was really enjoyable, not a ‘cheap’ burger, he also had some corn, some pulled pork which he said was really tasty and a soft tachos wrap.

I had bbq chicken, corn on the cob, 2 tachos wraps, and some salsa bits including fresh coriander, tomato, red onion, guacamole, sour cream and cheese.

Lunch was fabulous, to say they are cooking it on the island, it was really good. There were (inevitably) a lot of flies around, but we had lunch early just as the food had been put out so hopefully had it as fresh as possible.

We didn’t have any dessert, although the brownies looked amazing.. we have taken two bananas with us to eat later.

We had a great day at Coco Cay. We liked it much better than Labadee (also a private island for RC). On our way out there was a bar area where there was a live singer. You left around 2pm, with the ship departing at 4.30pm but you could have stayed right until 4.30pm as there were enough amenities on the island for you.

We headed to the tour excursion desk to see if they new trips had loaded. They had, there were interactive screens where you could view, books and print your excursion tickets yourself if you wanted to. We have managed to get on two snorkelling trips in both Costa Maya and Cozumel.

Drinks - Sorrentos pizza

We made a reservation at the future cruise shop to enquire about some cruises for next year this afternoon. Before heading there we took our reusable cups to Sorrentos pizza where they have two coke freestyle machines. Sorrentos has free pizza and antipasto pretty much all day long.. sometimes it smells delicious and sometimes it smells like cheesy feet!

We both chose Minute Maid no added sugar lemonade. You can fill the mugs up as much as you like and although we depart the cruise on 29th September, they are set to work for 2 weeks.

After our next cruise appointment, we headed to deck 16 to go in the whirlpools. It was quite quiet and we sat in the Solarium area for a while, which was really pleasant.

Drinks - Schooner Bar

We came out of the room at around 6.30pm and headed to the Schooner bar where we found a table for two in a prime spot overlooking the promenade next to where the band were playing. It was a great spot for people watching!

DH had a blue moon beer and I had a strawberry daiquiri - $22.40. The daiquiri was quite strong, but I enjoyed it. It came with a paper straw which but the time I had finished it had disintegrated at the top and bottom.

We still had half an hour before our meal when we finished our drinks so ordered another round, this time DH had a blue moon and I had a Diet Coke - $8.49

Dinner - Main Dining Room

There was a guy on a portable piano like what we have seen in Disney Springs signing outside the main dining room tonight - he was a great artist and I could have listened to him for hours.

You can access the menus for all meals on the Royal Caribbean app which is free to use. It also has your own personalised calendar of the meals and shows you have booked, as well as what’s on at any given point. It’s useful if you are in a large group as there’s a free chat facility. You can connect to the WiFi to use the app for free.

I’d also looked at the menus and decided there was nothing I fancied from the main menu starters, but I noticed the kids menu had chicken noodle soup so I asked for that. It was no problem. I ordered chicken breast with baked potato (this usually comes with mashed potato but again it was no problem to swap it out) and sugar free ice cream (strawberry) and fresh fruit for dessert.

DH ordered prawn cocktail, lasagne and apple pie with vanilla ice cream.

We were sat at a different table to last night with a different waiter, but in a similar area. The service tonight was even quicker than last night and within a couple of minutes of ordering the starters were out.

Luckily for me (and perhaps the waiter!) I avoided a lap full of soup when the bowl tilted towards me then tilted backwards - it was a close call! The soup was surprisingly tasty to say it was from the kids menu. There were lots of noodles, pieces of chicken and carrot in there. DH enjoyed his starter, although not as much as yesterday. It was a typical prawn cocktail, DH said there were 3 or 4 prawns with it.

Again the mains didn’t take long to come out, my chicken came with a light gravy. It was coated in herbs, and wasn’t try although it was quite a thin piece of chicken like it had been butterflyed. The baked potato was fluffy, and the veg cooked nicely. DH said the meat in the lasagna was ground, he described it as mushy, although it tasted nice.

My fruit seemed better presented tonight, and although I ordered sugar free vanilla ice cream , the waiter said the only choice was strawberry - he bought me it and I’m so glad he did it was the best course of the day. It was sweet and had whole pieces of strawberry in there. It was really good and refreshing, almost like a mixture of sorbet and ice cream.

DH enjoyed his Apple pie, it came out like a parcel, he said there was a lot of pastry, but it was nice.

DH had a house red wine with his meal and a coffee to finish.

He stopped at cafe promenade to pick up a latte. This is included in our refreshment package (note Starbucks is not included).

When we got back to the cabin we were greeted with our first towel animal of the trip, and also a covered plate with 4 cookies in it (this is because we are Emerald Members of the Crown and anchir club which is a loyalty club with Royal Caribbean and you get different perks depending on your status). The cookies smell delicious, but I’m going to try and resist as I already feel less bloated tonight after a day of pretty much clean eating... we’ll see how long I can resist them for!

We are still feeling tired so despite having a 10.30pm reservation for the comedy show, we have decided to have another early night.

It’s a sea day tomorrow so we can fingers crossed sleep in a while.

Thanks for reading

[4holibobs]

Cruise Day 3 - Day at sea

Woo hoo we didn’t wake up until 9am! What a great sleep in!

Breakfast - Park Cafe

We headed down to Park Cafe which is on deck 8 in Central Park for breakfast.

They had an oatmeal station, fruit and yoghurt station, bagel station and a panini station. They also had cereals and milk and juice, tea, coffee and water.

DH had an English muffin with ham, egg and cheese on it. He said it was nice, similar to a McDonalds breakfast (he ate it before I had chance to take a photo). He also had some yoghurt and musli.

I had a fat free plain yoghurt with a pot of pineapple and a pot of water melon. The fruit was nice and fresh. It was a good light breakfast.

Drinks - aqua theatre

There was a top tier event in the aqua theatre along the boardwalk at 10.30am so we headed down.

The boardwalk is home to the carousel, the hot dog quick service (free), Starbucks ($), Johnny Rockets (free for breakfast only), Sabour Mexican ($), the aqua theatre and some retail shops too. It’s a nice area, but can get quite busy.

Royal Caribbean offer a loyalty programme with starts at gold level after 3 nights at sea and goes all the way to pinnacle after 700 nights at sea. You get different benefits depending on what level you are. We are emerald level and have 12 more nights at sea to complete before we move to diamond when we will get free drinks I think between 4pm and 7pm each day. We will also get access to a lounge.

They were offering out free drinks, quite a good selection- we had fruit punch which was nice. There was a mini aqua show as a taster of the full show later in the week.

They gave some facts about the cruise, and told us there were 3207 passengers on board along with 2250 crew. There were 290 emerald members and 61 Pinnacle members (700 nights at sea).

The most traveled guest has spent 4662 nights (12 years) on board Royal Caribbean ships! She got given a bottle of champagne and had her photos took with the officers.

We headed up to the Solarium and found two chairs with footstools that we claimed. DH went to get us two bottles of water (which hadn’t been kept in the fridge so weren’t particularly cold).

Lunch - Solarium Bistro

We were sat outside the Bistro so just after midday we could see people heading in for lunch so we joined them.

There were lots of tables available and DH went to get two lemonades to reserve the table.

I didn’t drink the lemonade as it was overpoweringly sweet.

They had a nice choice of food - potato salad, Greek salad, cold ham, pork loin, mashed potato, gravy, spaghetti, tomato sauce, meatballs, chicken on the bone in a sweet chilli sauce, chicken tenders, rice, battered fish, fries, hotdogs and burgers as well as a salad station and desserts.

DH had battered fish which he said tasted like cod, there weren’t any bones in it. He also had some chicken tenders which he said tasted like ‘real’ chicken and wasn’t processed and some salad.

I had some potato salad, two pieces of chicken, one piece of pork, two meatballs, a tiny bit of rice and some salad.

The lunch was really tasty, the meatballs were cooked medium id say but had a nice flavour. The chicken was also tasty, not dry and the tiny pieces of pepper with it were nice. The rice was quite clumpy, and the potato’s in the salad were quite al dante. The salad was fresh, it was w nice lunch.

Neither of us had any dessert, I would have liked some fruit, but they don’t have it at this location.

We have come back to our little seats for the afternoon.

Drinks - Solarium Bar

We love the Solarium area, but boy it gets hot! We moved and found some shade and had two Virgin mojitos to try and cool down!

Dessert - Windjammer Buffet

We fancied something sweet so headed to Windjammer at 2.30pm seeking out some fruit.

They only had a selection of melon so I decided to have strawberry ice cream (it wasn’t as good as yesterday) and a lemon meringue pot which was really lovely (and looked just like trifle!)

DH had coffee ice cream which he enjoyed.

Coffee - Park Cafe/Central Park

We headed up to the top of the ship to watch the flow rider for a while. It’s a really busy area up top with two surf areas, mini golf, a zip line (which we did in 2017 and was good fun) and a basketball court.

Afterwards we decided to head down to Central Park and DH called into Park Cafe for a coffee.

It was lovely and cool... we have been bird watching as we saw lots when we were on the Allure last year, but we haven’t seen any on this ship yet.

Drinks - Schooner Bar

We headed for our usual spot, but we were earlier tonight catching a live singer and pianist singing rat pack songs.

Our first round was a strawberry daiquiri and a blue moon coming to $22.40.

I also had a Diet Coke included in our drinks package.

Dinner - Windjammer buffet

There was nothing I fancied on the menu tonight, so we decided to head to the buffet around 7pm in the hope we could catch a show at 8.30pm.

The Windjammer has plenty of tables available.

This is the first tome on any cruise we have seen a gluten free area.

To start I had French onion soup, this was hot and tasty (I added the bread with cheese on the top from a counter on the side). DH had some tikka fish, rice and potato (I don’t have a photo of his).

We both opted for Indian food for our mains. I had chicken tikka masala, basmati rice, a mini tikka wrap, raita, and picked up a small naan and roti for DH and I to share.

This was DH’s -

It was lovely to have something spicy and because the majority of the chefs on board are from India and surrounding countries, the food was really authentic. We both really enjoyed it.

There was a Mongolian station, hot dogs and burgers, steak, ribs, pork loin and mash and gravy, salad, pizza, stir fry, jacket potato’s, plus there was a Gluten Free area with about 6 choices of different things.

For dessert I had strawberry ice cream with a sprinkle of white chocolate buttons. The ice cream was nice but not as good as last night.

Drinks - Boleros

Once we finished at the Windjammer we headed down to the Royal Promenade to grab a drink to take into the theatre with us, we stopped off at Boleros this time.

I didn’t tell DH what I wanted and when he came back he had ordered us two Virgin frozen mojitos which were included in our package.

For the shows you have to make reservations and they usually open up 30 minutes before showtime. They let guests in without reservations 10 minutes beforehand. We didn’t have a reservation but were let in 15 minutes before the show and managed to get a good seat.

The show was by vocal group mo5aic.. they were 5 male singers who could ‘play tricks’ with their voices making them sound like instruments as well as other clever things. They are based in Las Vegas but we’re flown onto the cruise this week as the entertainment. It was a good show.

When we came out there was a 70’s disco along the Royal Promenade which we stopped to enjoy (and dance!) until it finished at around 10.15pm.

DH grabbed a tea from Cafe Promenade and we have come to bed at 10.30pm, our latest night of the cruise so far!

Tomorrow should have been St Thomas but is now Costa Maya where we have a Catamaran and snorkel trip booked at 10am.

Sorry if this has been a super long post, I didn’t realise I had so many buffet photos until it’s taken me over an hour to do this upload!

Thanks for reading