Meet the Shaneyfelts

Advice for a First-Time Cruise

Happy Thursday, y’all!  
I just returned from a cruise to the Bahamas on Saturday and I recapped Part 1 and Part 2 earlier this week.  I had some requests for tips and advice for cruising, and I am happy to oblige!  I loved the little tidbits of advice I received about cruising from a few readers, and I wanted to create a list of my own.  Hopefully, these tips will help you for your first cruise or your fifth cruise!

PACKING
-Bring a jacket or a sweatshirt in case you get cold while on the ship.
-The only items of clothing that you need are dinner outfits, bathing suits, pajamas, and 1-2 lounge outfits.
-Don’t pack a beach towel because the ships provide them!
-Bring way more sunscreen than you think you’ll need.  You do not want to have to buy anything on the ship…..SO expensive!

SCHEDULING
-If you can, do the early dinner time.  This leaves time to see more shows after dinner!
-Excursions are so much cheaper at the port!  We saved $100 by buying our Atlantis pass at the actual resort instead of pre-buying on the ship.  (Not all excursions are offered at the port.)

PORTS 
-Carry some cash with you at each port and make sure you have one and five dollar bills
-Be prepared to be bombarded by locals at each port of call wanting you to get in their taxi or pay for their tour

TIPS
-Take the stairs all the time!  It’ll help you feel better about eating so much 🙂
-Deck chairs go fast so don’t wait too long before going to lay out on your days at sea
-Get to know your room steward.  They are some of the nicest people on the ship and will help you out if you ever need it.
-If at all possible, try not to check your luggage when you disembark.  It takes so much longer to leave the ship and you’re one of the last groups called.

What would I have done differently?
-I would have packed a small blanket because I did get a little cold each night while sleeping.
-I would have packed a few snacks for when I was hungry between meals.  The only food items available on my ship 24 hours was pizza and ice cream.  After eating more fattening foods for my meals, I did not want anything fattening for a snack.
-Check with your ship about bringing canned cokes on board.  If you’re a coke drinker but don’t want to order the drinking package, you may be able to bring a case of your own for your room.  Carnival allows it!  I’m a water drinker, but cruise ship water has a weird taste to it.  If I would have checked, I could have brought a case of Coke Zero.

Dustin’s advice:
-Pack a few extra outfits in case you need them since there aren’t any clothing stores on board (that you want to shop at) (Total opposite of what I said!)
-Pack an insulated water bottle (like Nalgene or Swell)–you will need this when you get off the boat and at the pool
-Dustin also says to bring cash in lower increment bills (He wanted me to reiterate this point ha)
-Take some sort of motion sickness medicine (or prescription patch from the doctor) with you in case the ocean gets rough
-Bring a carry on to the ship that has an extra outfit in case your luggage takes hours to get to your room like us
-Bring a backpack/bag to take with you off the boat
-Have sinus meds/Tylenol/cough drops in case you get sick  (Dustin had sinus drainage so we had to pay $7 for a small box of cough drops)
-Relax and enjoy it all!

Linking up with Annie today

Cruise to the Bahamas: Part 2

Today I’m sharing the rest of our cruise with you: our stop at the cruise line’s private island, a stop at Nassau, the last day at sea, and the day we left.  If you missed part 1 yesterday, click here.

I was SO excited for our first stop on the ship.  I had researched the private island, Half Moon Cay, and we had decided not to do any excursions but to enjoy the island as if it were a resort–laying out and swimming in the ocean.  We ended up staying in the ocean the entire time minus eating lunch because it was the most beautiful water ever!


For those of you who have never cruised before, be prepared to take 184,973,827 pictures. Seriously, there are photographers roaming constantly wanting to take your picture, so we had to get a picture as soon as we got off the tender boat onto the island.  (These pictures are so expensive to buy so we took a few pictures of the good ones.)

This stop required a tender in which means instead of walking straight out of the boat onto the island, we had to board a 2 story boat and ride over to the island.  
 Can you see how gorgeous the water is?  It was the clearest water I’ve ever been in and you could still see straight through to the bottom even when we were 5 feet out.  You can see why we ditched laying out and played in the ocean the whole time instead.


 Riding on the tender boat back to the ship.


For dinner that night, I wore this romper and it’s back in stock!!!!  I bought it around Easter and it flew off the shelves and online within a week, so I’m so glad Anthropologie brought it back.  Remember, if you’re long waisted like me, this romper will work for you!

For our dinner each night on the ship, we ate at our assigned table with the same people.  I was hesitant about this at first because I was afraid we would be sitting with people that we couldn’t carry on a conversation with, but we lucked out and had great people!  All of them were young married couples like us.
 We became friends with the couple sitting next to Dustin on the right–Joy and Justin from Tennessee.  They were on their honeymoon!

The next day we docked in Nassau–home of Atlantis.  We were really excited about this port until the cruise director came over the intercom right before got off the boat with a warning from the US Embassy–don’t wear jewelry off the ship and stay in highly populated areas since there was a high security threat.  Great, right?!  Way to make us feel safe!
 Our view of Atlantis that morning from the ship.


 Obligatory picture of the ship 🙂

Tomorrow I’m going to be sharing some tips and advice for first time cruisers, and so I’ll share about what it’s like when you get off on an island and the amount of locals who bombard you wanting you to get in their taxi or do their tour.  I bet there were 50 people we had to say “No, thank you” to while making our way to downtown.  And they are persistent people, too.

Basic white girl when…
 You get off the ship and see a Starbuck and you demand go in so you can order a frap and use their free wifi haha!  Notice how they spelled Sarah?


We walked around downtown for a while before deciding to go back to the area where all of the taxis were.  We decided not to do an excursion on this island either since they are outrageously priced, but we decided to hop in a taxi and let them take us to Atlantis for the rest of the day.

We LOVED Atlantis!  

Visitors are allowed to walk around in most of the hotel, but you must purchase a wristband to go to the pools, beaches, and aquariums which is the back of the property.  We decided that the package was worthy of buying because we would be spending the majority of the day there–and plus, we’re just a couple of big kids who wanted to play in their famous pools 🙂
 Everyone must get a picture in this chair!  Thanks to the sweet lady who took it for us!

The grounds on Atlantis are GORGEOUS!  The property is huge and we were constantly looking at a map trying to find our way around.
 This is the lagoon that they have on property.  People were snorkeling here, paddle boarding, and swimming.

We then walked all through the aquariums…
 And this is what this guy did the entire time–taking pictures of wildlife.  Once a wildlife science guy, always a wildlife science guy 🙂


We got to see the sharks!!  This aquarium was one that a slide went through.  I’m not sure if you can really tell, but there’s a tube at the bottom of this picture and one of the drop down slides at Atlantis ends through this aquarium where riders ride through on an inner tube to the pool outside.  I kept waiting on a shark to try attacking that tube haha!  Oh, and there were also people scuba diving in this aquarium, too, and I’m pretty sure that was about $200 a person.


 This was the Atlantis version of a lazy river.  It was a rapids river and so much fun!  This was my favorite thing to do while we were here.  It wasn’t too violent except for one time when a rapid came and pushed a guy’s inner tube into mine which shoved me into the wall and I almost flipped.  Other than that, the rapids were lots of fun! 

Atlantis has lots of pools so we would spend some time in one pool and then rotate to another–we wanted to take advantage of it all!


The casino inside–it was massive and this is just a small portion.


 They had a shopping area in Atlantis–David Yurman, Fendi, Versace, and Gucci just to name a few 🙂


This was one of the beaches on their property.  We didn’t stay here long because it wasn’t as pretty as Half Moon Cay, and there were also a lot of people trying to sell us stuff and they were pretty aggressive.

Toward the end of our time at Atlantis, it started storming so we decided to go ahead and leave and take a taxi back to the ship.  It was pretty scary–especially since we had received that warning from the cruise director before getting off the ship.  The driver kept putting people in this taxi that literally sounded like it was going to fall apart at every turn.  The girl in the backpack in front of us mentioned that this wasn’t the same route we took from the ship to Atlantis and that this was taking much longer to get back–she was right.  Our driver took us through the hood and we got to see what real Nassau looked like–and it wasn’t pretty.  If we weren’t in a van with a bunch of people, I would have been terrified.
 This picture doesn’t do it justice, but we were packed in this tiny van.


 Dinner that night

And remember how I told you we made friends with a couple from our dinner table?  We hung out with them some and we decided to take a picture together to be funny since the poses the photographer puts you in are ridiculous.
He made us all hug each other haha!  We really enjoyed getting to know Joy and Justin and had so much in common with them.

Heading home like…

Check back tomorrow for some tips and advice!

Linking up with Jenn

Cruise to the Bahamas: Part 1

I have been anxiously awaiting this vacation since we booked it in February, and now that it’s come and gone, I can’t wait to share all of the details and my thoughts with y’all!

We left last Sunday afternoon since Dustin took off of work a couple of hours early and drove all the way to Tallahassee before we stopped for the night.  Why Tallahassee?  D wanted to see the Florida State football stadium ha!

The next day we headed out for Jacksonville, Florida, (our port) and ended up taking a little detour through Monticello, Florida.  My dad had stayed in a B&B a few years earlier and wanted us to swing through because it’s said to be haunted.  He actually wanted us to stop there for the night but…..no 🙂  We drove through some of the streets right off the square and the houses were gorgeous.
We made it to Jacksonville with a few hours to spare and had to make a stop at the Jaguars stadium.  My husband’s obsessed with sports if you can’t tell by now!  I actually had one up on him because I watched Alabama play Florida State in this stadium my sophomore year of college.

We walked the Jacksonville Landing because I had remembered it being fun after the football game.  Even though it was 11 AM, none of the restaurants were open.  It was so strange!  So we just walked around and sweated a bunch.

Once it got to be after noon, we boarded the ship and made our way to find our room…
 I had forgotten that we booked a room with portholes so that was a nice surprise!  Also our room was incredibly small, but that was okay because we were only in there to sleep and get ready for dinner.



 They were serving a buffet lunch in the buffet dining room.  I had eggplant and it really did taste good.  Each day was something different, and we ate breakfast here each morning.  Don’t you love how gaudy this place is decorated??


After lunch we had to go to our Muster area meeting place and watch the crew members correctly put on the life jackets.
And then we had to go practice outside.  That was totally fine with me–I want to be prepared in case we ever needed to use the lifeboats, but since our group was the first to go out on the deck, we had to stand in a single file line and wait on the rest of the ship to practice in their areas.  It. Was. HOT.

This is after we finished, and I’m probably telling Dustin to quit taking pictures and let’s go inside haha!
His favorite part of the room?  The window seat/large area? by the portholes.  

We had a horrible time getting our luggage to our room.  It took hours! We had a reserved dining time at 6 and our luggage literally didn’t come until 5:50, and that’s only because Dustin recognized my hot pink bags on the luggage cart down the hall and ran to go get them.
We quickly changed and ran to go find our dining room.
racerback tank (on sale right now!!!) / white jeans
The official Day 1 of the cruise was at sea (I guess they don’t count the day you leave port). We spent that day laying out on one of the upper decks trying to feel the constant breeze.

Day 1 was also the formal night!  I stressed out over what I was going to wear and just ended up wearing my latest Lilly dress with my gold MK wedges.

I ordered roasted duck that night for dinner and it was awful!  I managed to eat 3 bites and then told Dustin I was going to have to go upstairs for pizza before we went to the show that night.   I’m giving their pizza a thumbs up!  It wasn’t the best pizza ever, but it was WAY better than the duck.
Every night there was a big production in the theatre area and most of the nights it was a type of musical.  Our first night to see one was the night that they performed songs by Beyonce, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga–any diva imaginable.  We’re not talking Broadway material by any means, but watching these shows gave us something to do each night after dinner.

I loved our towel animal that night!  Our stewardess must have known we were Alabama fans 😉

For those of you who may be cruising soon or even thinking of ever going on a cruise, what type of blog post would be helpful to you?  A list of pros/cons?  A packing list?  Tips?

Linking up with Stang&Co