Cruise – Day 1 (3/7/20)
We headed down to California Friday afternoon. I worked from
home until 1pm and then pulled Blake out of school a little early. We then went
to Kylie’s school and picked her up. We loaded up the car and then Jeremy arrived
home and jumped in the car and we were on our way. The drive was pretty smooth
other than a few emergency stops for Kylie to run to the bathroom. The girl
gives no warning and it’s always an emergency.
😊 We arrived at our hotel at around 9pm which
was the Double tree resort that was right on the water. We got our room key and
headed to the room. When we got in the room we discovered it was a king bed
instead of two queen beds. We all went back to the office and they ended up
upgrading up to the King deluxe suite which included a pull-out couch and a
balcony with a view of the water. We all ate our yummy cookie and headed to
bed.

When we woke up the next morning the kids ran to the window
to see the “big boat”. It was there just like we told them and they couldn’t
stop staring at it! We all got ready fairly quickly as they were so excited to
get on the big boat. We couldn’t get on until around 1pm and at this time it
was 6:30am! Haha! We decided to try and get some of their energy out by going
for a walk to the boardwalk. There was a path from our hotel around the water and
over the bridge. It was still pretty early at this point but it was a beautiful
day. The kids had so much fun going over the bridge and walking around. There weren’t
very many shops open but we found a little coffee shop and we ordered a muffin
to share. We continued to walk all along the water to get a nice view of the ship.
At one point we received an email that said the debarkation process was taking
a little longer than expected and to postpone our arrive by 2 hours, which put us
at about 2-3pm to board. It was probably 8:30am when we received that email so
we still had a while and the kids were asking every 5 minutes if it was time to
get on the boat yet.
😊 We ended up finding a big slide and an
outdoor gym near the beach and the kids played for a bit. At 10am we finally
found a food place that opened which was Waba grill! We were all so excited to
eat and shared a teriyaki chicken bowl. Blake’s absolute favorite thing to eat
is rice and chicken with his favorite sauce which is teriyaki sauce! After we
finished, we headed back to the hotel to get ready to check out.
We spent sometime
relaxing on the balcony and then packed up the car.


We decided to head to
Costco to fill up the car so we could just head home when we arrived back from
the ship. As we were waiting in line at Costco I received another email that
said there was a passenger onboard that was sick and they needed to test them
for COVID-19 even though they didn’t show any symptoms of the virus. Because of
this they had to stop the debarkation process. The email went on to say that
they wouldn’t have any other information until 6pm. This was about 5 hours away
from when we received the email. We were devastated and frustrated. The kids had
been staring at the ship all morning and no joke asking when we get to get on
every 5 minutes. We decided to go into the Costco to just pass some time.
After, we headed to Chick-fil-a to let the kids play but also eat lunch. We
didn’t end up staying too long as it was packed and the kids weren’t in the mood
to listen. We decided to search for a park and ended up finding one. We stayed
there for a few hours and then decided to drive to Sea Lion pier. We walked along
the pier and saw a sea lion!

It was pretty cold though so we hopped back in the
car and took the kids to McDonalds and they had ice cream. We hung out there
for a while and received an updated email a little after 6pm which said they
didn’t have any additional information as the test results weren’t back yet. This
was frustrating! The kids at this point understood that there was a problem and
we were waiting for the boat to tell us it was our turn to get on. They were
being as patient as can be expected. We ended up leaving McDonalds and drove back
to the hotel that we stayed at the night before as we had paid to park there while
we were on the cruise. We hung out in the car for hours….the kids fell asleep
and Jeremy and I took turns taking walks. We finally received an email very
late that said they still hadn’t received the results but they had made a
decision on what to do. They said they would send an email soon. At this point it
was 9pm or later and I knew there was no way we were getting on the boat. I
started searching for a hotel so I would just need to hit book once we received
the final word that we weren’t getting on the boat. That’s exactly what the
email said and we booked our hotel and arrived shortly after 10pm. We were all
starving and exhausted but Jeremy and I tried to be super excited and make it a
fun time. We checked-in and headed to our room. We got the kids on board with eating
at the hotel restaurant which was super fancy. We headed down and ordered food.
Blake fell asleep on the table and Kylie was overtired so we headed back to the
hotel room so she could have a tantrum in peace. We went all out and head
drinks, dessert, kids meals, etc. to help make it more fun. As we went to bed we
received a final email that said the test results came back negative and they
would have us board at 11-2pm. They made it a 6 night cruise and took off one
of the ports.
