Day 6, Bye Bahamas! Hello customs!

We had to check out of our hotel early because if we did not we were afraid we would miss our bus!

So we got all packed and made a day bag again because we were not going to lug around the luggage all day. So we checked it in with the bell boys again. Not a problem. We then sat by the pool and got fried. Well I did! I also got bug bites on the island, they were like mosquitoes but not. They burnt, hurt, itched. We had to buy some cream at one of the stores at the market place did nothing!

14 bites total!

I am a little fried!

Our bus left around 1:30pm so we had time to kill. We wanted to get all checked out and out of the resort by 9am. We went over to the Lucaya market place and had breakfast. Pretty good. I did not like the water on the island or on the cruise so I always got bottled water. The milk is also like whole milk and nasty! I am used to 1% American milk and the milk on the cruise and on the Bahamas is like 25% fat! But my mom and brother had no issue with the water.

We got on the bus and then headed to customs. We had to fill out this card about how much we spent and you are absolutely not allowed to bring fresh fruit and cigars! So don’t do that! You were allowed to shop and bring back items but something about this duty free thing. I have no idea. I did not get that at all. The guys coming back to America in customs are intimidating but just keep a straight face and you should be fine 🙂 I was nervous!

Customs going back onto the ship was pretty easy. All in all customs was pretty simple. Just be organized and have all your paperwork in line!

We got back to the ship we had lunch and just kind of hung out. We watched the sunset; go to the top deck 10 and just watch! Its breath taking!

Celebration Cruise

Deck 10

We went and watched the theatre show again and had dinner! They serve nachos at 10pm! and they are delish!

Window sitting is the best!

Tomorrow we say adios to the ship, and hello to Harry Potter!

“See you all real soon”

~JR

Day 5 Hello Dolphins!

Oh my goodness! Dolphins! I was not going to do this at all, never even crossed my mind. I am so glad it did and I got to do this!

I was going to surf in Fort Lauderdale but the ocean was to calm, no waves! So I had extra sending money and we were looking t the shore excursions and the dolphin swim came up. I was like nah, that is way to expensive. The lady at the front desk asked if I was sure and I said yes. she started to get everything ready and then out of nowhere I said sign me up! haha alright then inner Jackie. Here we go. My brother had signed up for the 7 hour jeep tour and he said it was amazing!

So with the Dolphin Swim with UNEXSO you ride a boat about 25 minutes and get off, get flippers and head to the docks. The dolphins come up and do tricks then you actually go into the ocean with them and swim with them. Motion tricks for them and get photos. You cant bring camera in the water with you but the other group takes photos for you and videos. It was a lot of fun! There was a neither option that you watch the dolphins do tricks, motion a trick and get a photo but you don’t actually get to go swim with them.

They had Parrots and turtles after the swim!

The trainers and dolphins!

UNEXSO!

We did some more shopping my mom and I while my brother was out on his Jeep tour. We had dinner (Pizza Hut!) Went back to the room and relaxed!

We try!

Brother and Sister for life!

Picture Perfect

Giant Checkers at the resort!

Overlooking the marketplace and the Bahamas!

Tomorrow, We head to the ship, get burnt, and see an amazing show!

“See you all real soon!”

~JR

Day four Baby!

We got out of the ship pretty fast. The directions were a little confusing but what do you do. You have to go through customs which was alright, felt like we were checking in to prison.  🙂

We had a 10:00am bus time and we go to the bus lane around 9:30 and they let us on. The drive was about 25 minutes more of less, the drivers are like tour guides and super funny! They also had taxis and drivers you could of done, don’t know the prices on those. The round trip cost was $18 per person.

They Drive on the wrong side of the road or is it the right side??

We got to the hotel and had to leave our luggage with the bell boys because the rooms were not ready. I would suggest having all your “valuable” and needed items for the day to be packed in a day bag when you arrive on the island. You can go back and get things out of your luggage but it is always so busy and just not worth it. We had nothing stolen, or heard of anything being stolen from others. So that’s good!

We looked around the resort and then went and got lunch at Subway! We went to the Lucaya Market place. There are so many shops/ food places! About the same thing in each little shop but its fun to just see how they interact with you and pull you in! Bahama people speak broken English and they call you “Honey”, “Baby”, “Sweetie” they called my mom “Momma”, and “Honey”. Not much of anything for my brother. I so wish I would of got a video of them talking with us but I did not. Most of the time I was laughing while other times I was uncomfortable but it was a good uncomfortable.

Clint and I had our Glass Bottom Boat tour at 3:00pm so we headed over there, we still did not have our room.

The glass bottom boat was $35 each. It was pretty cool! We saw a lot of reefs, fish and SHARKS!! They even fed the sharks right outside of the boat! Crazy! They had drinks available to purchase. But we did not.

The sharks were about 12-13 feet.

We got back to the hotel and we had our room. We then un packed a little and went down to the beach. We got subway for dinner again! We just were not ready to try the cuisine!

Finding Shells! They are super white and small!

We made it to the Bahamas

Stay tuned for tomorrow post about swimming with the dolphins!! and pool time! More subway and Pizza Hut! and shopping!

“See you all real soon”

~JR

The Money Breakdown…:/

To start this I want to say we took advantage of the upgrades since we live in WA and were going to FL. This is a trip that is not taken very often the last time we were in FL was in 2003 for a Disney World trip my aunt took our family for her last wish, she died of Breast Cancer 2 weeks after we got back.

Grand Bahama Island

One thing I had not mentioned was the number that they first called us from was an area code that we knew, that was from around our town. So that was the only reason I answered. Then we got the booking number etc.. They also gave us a personalized webpage where we could look at things to do, where we were staying. We did not get our official itinerary until about 4 weeks before we left. That made me crazy! I plan things so far in advanced. I have my wedding planned; never dated, don’t have a boyfriend 🙂 Call me crazy!

Ok enough with all the side tracking!

9 day Vacation; includes Hotel, Food in Florida @ Hotels, Cruise and Food, 9 day Car rental $1,470

*Port passes for 3 $129, travel insurance $24.99, Orlando Hotel Upgrade $314

Plane Tickets round trip for 3 adults $2,029

Park Tickets; Universal Studios/ Magic Kingdom $674 bought at Under cover Tourist (https://www.undercovertourist.com/) They are amazing! Really Recommend!

*Hotel Taxes at Ramada Fort Lauderdale $30 for 2 nights, we spent around $15 for taxes on the meals at the hotel

*Hotel Taxes at Park Inn Radisson $30 for 2 nights, we spent $11 for taxes on one meal

Cruise Taxes $20 a night x2 for all you can eat buffet/ water/ tea/ juice/ soft serve ice cream :), $9 per person per night for gratitude, then my brother bought a comedy show ticket for $11

*Bahama Hotel Taxes $95 for 2 nights

We spent around $40 on food for 3 days, we ate at Subway twice and Pizza Hut and had breakfast at the hotel and also at a restaurant in the market place.

We bought around $50 in merchandise at the market place. That’s a whole different post 🙂 The women selling the items are so much fun to bargain with.

*We had to park the rental at the port for $17 a night for 5 days $65

We also paid for us to be shuttled from the port to our hotel about a 20 minute ride and the drivers are so much fun! $18 per person round trip $54

We also did some excursions on the island; My brother and I did the glass bottom boat tour where we saw sharks, fish and corals $35 each, My brother did a 7 hour Jeep tour for $75 and he saw so much of the island I wish I would of done that but I decided to swim with the dolphins at UNEXSO so much fun!!!! That was $189 and $30 for 3 photos.

*The car rental had some fees, we did the bare minimum and it was $95 for 9 days!

So a grand total……..for a 9 day vacation that was “all expenses paid :)” $5,441 about $201 per person per day 🙂 To me that is great to think about it that way and not that big ol’ money. We started savings from August 2014 and had the money and even left over of what we saved after vacation.

But if you were to take this trip, accept that call do the extended vacation 9 day it would cost around $1,914 for 3 people.

We also had to get passports, we had to have them to stay on the island. Customs was a breeze to got through but you had to be organized and had all the papers in order to make it a breeze. The hard part was actually getting on the ship…that was the most time consuming!

I will continue this trip tomorrow with more about what we did, how we did it and some time saving tips!

“See you all real soon”

~JR

The Beginning of a Great Great Time

So this is where all the fun begins right?? We agreed on this vacation, paying the fees without knowing the whole vacation. Who does that? We did.

I began to pin every thing containing Florida, Bahamas, Travel, Flights and had over 500 pins on Pinterest in less than 24 hours! Call me crazy!

So we had to pay the port taxes for each person and the extended vacation.

The port taxes for 3 people were $314 (Which included travel insurance $24.99, and upgraded ocean view stateroom $99, and upgrade hotel in Orlando)

The extended vacation was $1,470

After we hung up the phone we were in this vacation for $1,784 9 day vacation, cruise, and insurance. Not bad but yeah not that all paid for spill they throw at you!

They had a lot of different options to choose from but we wanted to save money so we opted out of a lot of those. Like all exclusive on the island which included food. We said No and that was a good idea for us.

We had to get flights from WA to Florida which we bought closer to December 2014 when gas prices dropped. Could of waited a little longer and I would advise anyone who is booking a trip like this to be patient and buy your airline tickets about 8-10 weeks before you leave 🙂

There was fine print that I read over and over again. I knew there was going to be a timeshare presentation, we had to pay hotel taxes, gratitude, meals on island. But everything else was covered!

The package included ($1,470): For 3 people; Hotels in Florida and meals included, Hotel on Grand Bahama Island, The Cruise (food, ice water and tea), Rental car for the trip 9 days (We had to pay gas which was a total of $40).

Tomorrow I will continue the planning stages and go more into detail about this crazy offer!!

Flight to Florida

“See you all real soon”

~JR

Not So Scamy “Free Cruise for two to the Bahamas” Phone Call

A few months ago my brother, my mom and myself got back from a 9 day 8 night Florida/ Bahama trip that was absolutely amazing and exhausting all at the same time.

But this trip started with a phone call….. “Hello, You have WON A FREE CRUISE FOR TWO TO THE BAHAMAS!” If you could of got a photo at that time of my face it would be mouth dropped, eyes wide, Christmas morning excitement. It took my brain a few seconds to kick in and say you are seriously going to fall for this. YEP! being a 19 year old crazy dreamer I clicked one in a heart beat to redeem it! At this point no one knew what was happening including me! I was a little skeptical because this was to good to be true right?! How did they get my name and number?? Crazy! Well the lady was telling me all about this my mind was pondering that question; I figured all those scholarship searches and pop ups I randomly put my information in was how my information got to this company. So that’s what I told everyone who has asked 🙂 It may or may not be true. To this day I still have no idea and I don’t really care.

At this point my mom was wondering who I was talking with and my brother was standing by. I put it on speaker phone and my mom was shaking her head and my brother had his credit card ready. They told us only a limited number of passes were given to each state and since we are in WA and the cruise was taking off in FL I guessed there would be a lot left…drum roll please….there were 🙂 Imagine that!

I was just amazed that I won this, however and wherever I did not care! I wanted to go on vacation. My dad was skeptical, my grandparents printed out reviews and everyone said scam, scam, scam. That did not stop us we booked our flights to Florida, gave them a credit card number and extended that 2 day cruise to 9 days and hit Disney World and Universal Studios too.Since we were going to be in Florida why not extended the stay in Florida and the Bahamas. They had  a package just for us. We would arrive in Fort Lauderdale where we would stay for 2 days participate in a time share presentation :), then head to west palm beach to board the cruise ship, stay on the Bahamas for 2 nights and then go back to Orlando Florida for a couple days and come back home. Since we upgraded this was not an all expense paid trip and that was fine, we also upgraded to at ocean view stateroom on the boat.

So that was the extent of the phone call…. There are some scam phone calls and I want you to beware of those ones but the one I got was no scam. We were not coned out of money, we did not stay in cheap hotels, served horrible food, or treated poorly. The customer service representatives were there every time I called and had a stupid little question, the ship cru was amazing, the people on the island were so nice, even the timeshare people we had to attend the second day of vacation told us we did not have to buy a timeshare but they were so amazing, and if I had the money I would defiantly buy one from RCI (Check them out! If you like to travel its a smart concept! www.rci.com)

We took a step out in faith and believed this was true, started saving and my brother, my mom and I went on the vacation June 2015.

Off to planning…… See you tomorrow!! I will cover the trip totals, what we did and all the fun and exciting things that took us by surprise. Stay tuned.

“See you all real soon”

-JR