Note: These blog posts from our family cruise on the Carnival Legend are being copied from a trip report I posted on the Cruise Critic forums. I wanted to keep all of my travel "journals" in one place so am transferring the report over here to the blog.
A little background before we start...This is our 5th cruise. Two of the cruises we have done alone as a couple, another was done with our long time friends, and one more included our three sons back in 2005. The “kids” have been hinting (no…actually begging) for us to take them again and this was to be the year.
The cast of cruisers included...
- Bob and I (the parental units)
- My sister, Jane (50-something)
And also the 20-something crowd...
- Oldest son, Zach
- Middle son, Matt & wife, Marji
- Youngest son, Tim & fiancé, Erica
The week of August 15th was decided on long ago because Matty is attending chiropractic school and that was the only week of summer that he would be on break. Marji and I are both teachers so we must cruise in the summer.
All four of our previous cruises have been to the western Caribbean...and because Bob and Zach both are divers we decided to keep up the tradition (lots of good diving spots on the western routes!) I had it narrowed down to the Carnival Legend and the Carnival Valor...both with identical ports. The Legend won out because I wanted to do a cruise on a Spirit class ship...something we had not yet done.
About the time I booked the cruise Tim got engaged so of course we had to include Erica, the fiancé. When we discussed the cruise dates they assured us that they wanted a fall wedding so not to worry about dates. Well…little did I know that Labor Day weekend was considered “fall” in their minds! That meant the wedding would be less than 2 weeks after we returned!
Next glitch…schools in Minnesota ALWAYS start after Labor Day…it is the law. Well this year a bunch of schools in SW Minnesota got together and decided they would petition the state department of education to see of they could start early. My school was one involved so after I had the cruise and airfare all booked the school calendar changed. Now school (or at least teacher workshops) were starting the week of the cruise. YIKES!!
I put on my pity face and presented my dilemma to my principal. His response? No problem…just go on the cruise and don’t worry about missing the first week of school. All was well until that principal left to take another job right at the end of the summer! The new principal was not hired until 3 days before we left for the cruise! I was not able to contact him by phone so I just sent an email telling him I was off to the Caribbean…and hoped that I had a job when I returned!
Also Tim and Erica had both just started new jobs but were lucky enough to get the time off to go on the cruise…AND another honeymoon 2 weeks later. They should have just listened to me and gotten married on the ship. For some reason they didn’t want a honeymoon with the parents along…go figure!
So...with that background information...you are invited to sail along on our family cruise!
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