Bahamas 2019 Day 3

D3: Coco Cay

Like Nassau, we had also been to Coco Cay during our 2015 Bahamas cruise on Enchantment. While there we had rented two snorkel sets and had taken turns swimming out with our oldest son. At the time our youngest son wasn’t “water safe” enough so we were unable to do this as a group activity. As it happened, both Eileen and really enjoyed our short turns and were looking forward to doing this again on the current trip.

Given that rental cost was around $40 per person for the full day I decided to look online before the trip to see if we might be able to find some decent new gear that we could buy at a reasonable price and at least not have to get expensive, old, abused rental equipment. I found a full facemask with small fins (making for easier packing) at Amazon. (If the link doesn’t work, the title of the item was “COZIA Design SNORKEL SET with SNORKEL MASK - SWIM FINS included - OCEAN VIEW free breathing SNORKEL MASK FULL FACE with adjustable FLIPPERS”). Reviewers commented positively on the full face mask as being great for visibility, not needing to chomp down on a snorkel, and the comfort of the fins. Negative comments centered on needing to “burp” the mask about every 15-20 minutes to prevent too much CO2 build-up, incompatibility of the mask for those with any kind of beard (which was clearly indicated in the info describing the set), and LACK of fin comfort. There were several who warned that the fins were uncomfortable until they discovered and removed a strengthening piece meant to be used only during storage, so it is possible that the fin complaints were folks who hadn’t noticed this.

Not knowing too much about how to evaluate things, I read the reviews and decided to go for it. ALMOST. At the last minute I chickened out.

Turns out this was a fortuitous turn of events, because the day dawned for us to go ashore and we were starting to think we wanted a quiet day. I had slept very badly that night – took me forever to get asleep and then I kept waking up really hot, so when we finally dragged out of bed around 830A I was already tired. On top of that, it was clear that a thunderstorm had come through sometime in the early morning, so while it was clearing up to be a nice day it was definitely humid.

Lots of time to decide, of course, so we headed down to WJ for breakfast and then caught Morning Trivia at Schooner. Once again we were victorious (although against only two other couples), this time getting a paltry 9/16 on questions about the longest/tallest/largest/etc. Sample: what airport has the longest runway (NOT which is the largest airport)? This time we won priceless RCL highlighter pens (and two more keychains).

From there we went up for a competitive round of mini-golf at Mariner Dunes. We both sucked equally and ended up tied after the end of nine holes. We then completed an “Art Tour” of the ship by taking the elevators at both the aft and midships to the top deck and then working our way down the stairs, checking out the stairwell art as we went. Nothing we saw qualified as anything we’d want in the house.

By this time it was about 11:30 and we were feeling like it was time to sit out on the balcony and veg out until lunch. Our balcony faced the pier, but that’s so narrow that unless you look straight down all you see is ocean. We were also out of the direct sunlight, so another bonus.

This trip we would have no longer needed to tender to the island since Royal had completed the permanent pier a few months before our trip. Actually, it was still partially under construction as while smaller ships like Mariner could dock the larger classes need more length. A few pieces of the new “A Perfect Day at Coco Cay” project were in operation by our arrival, although several other parts were not expected to finish construction and debut to passengers until a month after our cruise (May 2019), with full operation of all planned features not expected until December 2019.

By the time of our cruise, here’s what was officially in operation:
• The pier
• Up, Up, and Away Helium Balloon ($39-$99) – although supposed to be ready we never saw this when we looked to shore. I think it was actually not yet completed.
• Chill Island: beach (free) and chairs (free), umbrellas ($), sun beds ($), snorkeling ($), Chill Grill (free)
• Ocean Lagoon Freshwater Pool (free), snack shack (free), swim-up bar ($)

Went up to WJ for lunch – they were serving the same pork ribs as on-shore, so chalk up another win for me! After that we decided to grab our tablets and head down to a shaded area on the pool deck, where we proceeded to relax and read, this time with a couple of Coco Locos each. Amazing how quickly 3 hours passed! At 4PM they started playing a game on the pool deck that involved the contestants being sent to get something and return to their chairs – last one back each time was knocked out. When the host sent them to “bring back someone in a red t-shirt” we decided it was time to go as we didn’t want to become unwilling participants in future rounds, which seemed like a good possibility.

We returned to the room for a few minutes and got ready for dinner, and then went back downstairs around 515P in order to listen to the band again. Dropped by the MDR first and went in to place our bottle of wine on our table so I wouldn’t have to carry it around. We’d taken it back to our cabin from Chops since we’d planned to drink on our balcony earlier in the day, but we’d ended up with our Coco Locos instead.

When the band finished their set at 6P we went over to the MDR for dinner. When we got to the table I noticed that the bottle of wine wasn’t there. This wasn’t a shock, since I hadn’t told anyone when I dropped it off that it was ours, and since we’d carried it out of Chops instead of having them label and deliver it for us we assumed that the MDR staff had pulled it aside since they didn’t know the source of it. Sure enough, our waiter (Johnlee, assisted by Tomas, both from the Philippines) had placed it on the waiter station and quickly retrieved it when we mentioned that it was ours. Although this was supposedly Formal Night we saw very few jackets or ties on the men. Frankly, we saw more attempts to dress on the supposedly more rustic Alaska cruise than we did on this Bahamas cruise. Adherence to the formal dress rule doesn’t matter to us (we were dressed in more business casual ourselves).

Once again back to our room to sit on the balcony and enjoy the sunset, which finished up around 8PM, putting us in perfect position to head down to the headliner show at the theater by 830P. We had skipped a few trivia events during the afternoon and also skipped the 8P event since they had all been Name That Tune style games and our seats were better left to others with more skills in those areas. We were also aware that we’d won a lot of the trivia events so far on the cruise and we were starting to pull back at this point so that we weren’t keeping others from winning the priceless trinkets.

The headliner was a comedy magician, Tim Gabrielson. He was very entertaining. The magic was of the “where’d your $50 Bill go?” variety as opposed to big stage tricks. We had a great time. Once that was over we called it a day – once more no Quest (now called “Crazy Quest”) for us.