Vista: Montego Bay
Last night I set my phone not to change time and I set my first alarm for 6:30. I woke up at 5:30. I could sleep another hour. But I can’t get back to sleep. And the more I lay here the more hungry I get. I think for the first time on a port day I can eat breakfast in the MDR. I check the schedule. It doesn’t open until 7? What? My excursion is at 7:45. I can’t do that. Lido breakfast doesn’t even open till 6:30. I don’t really want to take a shower right now with all of the other cabins silent. This is all just wasted time I guess. The coffee shop doesn’t even open until 6:30.
I wonder if we’re running late. I don’t see land.
Here is the schedule of events for today.
It looks like it’s raining now.
Lido Deck
Yes that’s a wet deck. An extremely wet deck.
We have to be late.
Lido Buffet
Biguns here tried to cut in front of me in the omelet line and I wasn’t having it.
We’re getting closer.
Dining Room
Our excursion meeting place is the dining room. Since ours is the first excursion to leave and the last to come back they wanted to make sure we get out the door first.
Surprisingly the other Dunn’s River Falls tours aren’t behind us. It’s some Appleton estate rum tour that’s going to be second off.
When you get off the ship for pictures they have a guy looking like Bob Marley to pose for pictures with. Something he did to me and nobody else I saw–coming and going–both times. I had my monkey hanging out. And each time he pointed my monkey and and said, “respect mon, respect.” I don’t know the significance of it but maybe there is some.
Either general debarkation got off before us or there are a lot of cheaters out there because there were people in other excursion lines before I got off the ship. And our excursion was supposed to be the first off. With the rum excursion behind us.
I didn’t get a picture but you go into that big building. Taxis are to the left and excursions to the right. My ticket had zone 1 on it and sure enough way down at zone 1 was my excursion. There was no line because nearly everyone on my excursion had already boarded the bus and wasn’t that many. I counted 25 when I boarded. There were way more than 25 people getting off that ship before me.
We boarded the bus at 8:20 and pulled out at 8:30. It was a nice big bus like we had in Belize but I kept fighting my air vents. They kept closing.
This is where Usain Bolt went to school.
This is Discovery Bay. It’s where Columbus landed.
At 9:30 we passed the Appleton Rum place which explains why they were one of the first excursions to leave after us.
At 9:42 we had a rest stop for 15 minutes. They were selling water shoes for $10 for anyone who didn’t already have them. I don’t know what the quality is but that’s a good price. The water shoes on the ship were $40. I have a pair I bought a year ago at a shoe store back home but hadn’t used yet.
They had beer and snacks at this stop. I was going to hold off on the red stripe since we have them on the ship but when that fridge opened and I saw how cold and frosty that top left one looked, I had to grab it. The red stripes were $4. A bit pricey for a foreign country. Pricey for a convenience store in the US as well. I know they tried to charge the lady in front of me $6 for two Pepsi’s and she put them back.
The rest stop is where they wanted you to change clothes and get your water shoes on. We left the rest stop at 10am.
“The jerk store called, they’re running out of you!”
We arrived at Dunn’s River Falls and were given bracelets while waiting in line.
I have this thing about germs. I don’t like them. I don’t like shaking hands. I won’t refuse but I’ll go wash my hands as soon as you leave. Everything I’ve seen shows that you hold hands on this thing. So it’s going through my mind. Who is going to be in front of me and behind me. This kid directly in front of me sneezes into his right hand. I’m horrified. I also hear a sneeze out of someone In the family behind me. This is not good. I have to change it up. I fake a water shoe problem and let some people pass.
Now there’s a girl in front of me. At some point she does a two handed sneeze. I’m going to have to reshuffle the deck again. I let some more people pass. At some point I realize the people I’m with aren’t with my tour guide. I ask what ship they’re on. They say Harmony of the Seas—not good. I look around and find my tour guide and she gets me with the right group.
They split us up into groups of probably 30 people. Only 7 were actually on the Vista. We had a long wait. We were encouraged to leave anything not going with us in the locked bus. The people from the other ship were renting lockers and we had to wait for them. This put us as the absolute last group on my tour and would take away any time for us to change clothes at the end.
I realized this on the walk down but I had no clue how big this was. I had only seen pictures of the last little stretch. They said it’s 960 feet. That’s the length of three football fields. You absolutely need water shoes. You will absolutely get soaked from head to toe. There are three checkpoints where you can get off of the falls if you want. I only noticed one. By the time I saw it I was hoping it was the last and not the first–It was.
One good thing is we had a couple of people up ahead of me in my group that I knew if they could do it, anyone could. You know those straps they put on your car bumper to pull it out of the mud? That’s how they got one of these people over one of the big rocks–not really. But they did it with two people pulling and one person pushing.
I killed my phone battery because I tried to video the entire thing.
There was a lot of stopping to waiting for the group ahead of us. Stopping for people taking pictures. Stopping because someone slipped and fell. So there was a lot of dead time in my video. I tried to cut that out.
There are also a lot of times where my phone got spun around and was just recording my shirt. I cut all of that out of the videos as well.
At the end when my battery started dying it went into power save and stopped recording. I did get a shot at of the end right after I got off and realized it had stopped recording.
After getting off the falls my battery was at 3% so I turned my phone off. I wanted to try to capture the lunch and restaurant portion. It is a big part of the reason I chose this excursion over Dunn’s River Falls with Beach lunch. People were complaining about the beach lunch food in reviews. This one was higher rated and had us eating at a restaurant.
As I said we were the last of the Vista group to finish and because of that we didn’t have the opportunity to change clothes or shop after the falls that others on our tour did.
We immediately boarded the bus and headed to the Almond Tree restaurant for lunch. Once we arrived I was able to change clothes in the restroom prior to eating lunch.
This is basically the same meal I had in Belize on the Lamanai tour. These countries must have gotten together and said “This is what we’re going to feed tourists on excursions: Stewed chicken, rice and beans. To make them different we’ll serve it with potato salad and tang, you serve it with coleslaw and watered down fruit juice.”
After lunch they took us to the Ocho Rios shopping portion. It was just one gift shop. I got out and looked around. I sampled a couple of rums. But opted not to buy anything.
They had some weird stuff In there. They had your regular Jamaica tourist items but then they had weird stuff. They had keychain wood carvings of male…private parts…about the size of my bathroom faucet. They had salt and pepper shakers of pigs…procreating. I was hoping they’d take us to one of the shopping centers with a bunch of stores. They took us to a place with penis keychains and salt shakers with porky the pig….porking.
I was disappointed about my phone battery being dead because on the ride back my window was on the ocean side and I could’ve gotten good pics of all of the things I couldn’t get on the way there. On top of that we took a high road back with an awesome view of the vista and mountains in the background.
I should mention they want to sell you a DVD of pictures and videos of your climb for $40. They send a camera man with each group. I wouldn’t totally rely on that though. We had people in our group that ordered them but didn’t get them.
On the way back they played a video of a Michael Jackson concert. The early 90s version of Michael I think. It cut out about halfway back and they switched to Jamaican music.
We got stuck in rush hour traffic. We were real close to the port. So close I wanted to get out and walk. It was frustrating. But I was glad I booked through Carnival and I knew the ship wouldn’t leave me. We got back after all aboard. I went straight to the room and got ready for my steakhouse dinner.
Steakhouse
Here’s the Steakhouse Bar menu.
Watermelon Martini
The round bread I like.
Compliments of the chef.
Shrimp cocktail.
Filet mignon, Baked potato, Mac n cheese
555
Chocolate sphere and mocha-tini
What the peasants are eating in the MDR tonight.
Comedy Club
After the steakhouse I headed down to family friendly comedy. Two minutes until showtime and there’s space available.
After comedy there was a huge line already forming to get into the first adult show. Not surprising. The main entertainment tonight is Hasbro the game show. And the love and marriage game. I’ve always said they should put that in the comedy club and have comedy in the main lounge that night. On the other ships I’ve been they haven’t had comedy that night.
On other ships I’ve been on the comedians both leave on Hasbro night and the new ones start the next night. What they did this time is they had no comedy the first night and worked the show scheduling where one comedian got off today and the other gets off tomorrow. I think they should have comedy tonight, but I wish they could do it without sacrificing comedy the first night.
I do remember Matt Mitchem saying he was doing a comedy act the first night. Maybe he did. It wasn’t in the schedule and I forgot about it.
Alchemy Bar
I headed to the Alchemy Bar where I got a drink from Mark.
Red Frog Pub
After the late night comedy I was unable to get a seat at the Alchemy. The atrium bar is also full. I was just wandering around aimlessly. I even stopped in bingo just for a place to sit down for a minute. Then I remembered the Red Frog Pub is on this ship. I’m going to try their beers I haven’t had yet.
This is Caribbean Wheat.
Comedy Club
I brought my beer to the next comedy show. 10 minutes until showtime and there’s plenty of space available. It may not even be half full.
At the earlier comedy show I tried my luck showing up right when the show started. It was standing room only. That’s fine with me. I don’t mind standing for 30 minutes.
Now that I’ve experienced it I can tell you standing room is also way worse on this ship than any other ship I’ve been on. Other ships have standing room by the bar. There is no bar here. Other ships have standing room by the entrance which extends about the width of the comedy club. In this case it’s one set of double doors. Other than that you’re standing in front of the door the servers are going in and out of. Or you’re standing in front of people.
At one point I’m standing by the door and this girl attempts to push the door open and can’t. I say “they locked you in.” She looks at me and says “really?” I said “no.” She asks “How do you open the door?” I pull the door handle down and push it open.
One minute until showtime at the latest comedy show. There’s still a ton of space available in here.
On the upside this club is so small I don’t need my glasses even sitting in the back. That’s a first cruise reference for those who have read about it.
Alchemy Bar
After comedy I tried the Alchemy again. It’s basically empty. A lot of people going to bed early I guess. I’ll head that way shortly.
This is Fabrico’s first drink for me.
Cabin
I brought back a turkey sammich from the deli.
My window broke.
Walking back to the room in the Lido elevator area. Right by the steps there’s a woman in a wheelchair and a girl pushing. The girl is on her knees laughing saying “I don’t think we’re gonna make it.” Obviously drunk. I’ve got my hands full of sammich and drink but my room is right around the corner from the lido elevator so I go to my room drop off the sammich and go back to help but they were gone. I guess they figured it out.
