One. More. Payment. I have called and gotten that final dollar amount and I'm queuing up the last payment from my bank for my mortgage. I'm so excited. It was such a weight off my shoulders back at the old home to have this off the table. To know that I could take a much less lucrative job if bad things happened and still make ends meet is an amazing feeling.
I guess it's time to talk about our cruise. We were on Icon of the Seas, one of the biggest/newest ships - and quite different from the others in the features it has. I wasn't sure going into it if I would love or hate some of the changes, and I gotta say, it was really nice. We had a great time, despite the sadness that surrounded that timeframe.
The infinite balcony? I liked it. I don't know that I would like it as much over water, but over Central Park it was quite nice. The chairs and footrest there were super comfortable and I spent a lot of time sitting and relaxing in those seats. I don't think I sat on the couch even once.
The elevators? Pretty cool. You use a pad to select the floor outside of the elevator and it tells you which elevator to go to e.g., "Elevator B". This greatly reduced wait times and the frequency of crammed/overcrowded elevators.
The shows? Ice rink is circular, so that allowed for different things than the rectangle. Pretty decent. Wizard of Oz was excellent. The Effectors was decent. The aqua show amazing as always. The aqua dome is up much higher on this ship than others and fully enclosed, making for a very different experience. Comedians were good - this is the first time I've spotted an early show that I could drop Avery at Adventure Ocean and catch the comedians.
The food? Dining room continues to become more mediocre, but there are lots of other options onboard, some included. I loved hitting Surfside Bites instead of the Windjammer on day one for a snack - and it was so good that we ate there again. The other free eatery at Surfside was great for breakfast too. We went to the Hibachi in Izumi ($) for lunch and it was amazing. We also went to Hooked ($) for dinner on the last night - it was a ton of food, quite good. The creperie is yummy, but the quick chinese and sandwich place were less than awesome - my monte cristo was actually kind of gross. Playmakers wings were HUGE and their fries were delicious.
The drinks? Desserted ($) was not worth it. It was just a messy messy milkshake that wasn't very tasty. The lemon post had some unique and tasty drinks as did the lime and coconut - there is a frozen lime and coconut that I liked even more. I also had 3 interesting concoctions at the Point and Feather along the promenade - can't think of what I only had maybe 2 lavender daquiris from the Schooner bar if that tells you how busy I was elsewhere trying different drinks.
The pools were JAMMED (I never did hit the adult only pool at AFT), but the water slides weren't bad despite some lines. They are nicely shaded for the most part, so we didn't get sizzled. Lots of waterflow, so I didn't get stuck like I did on Liberty - two are racer-style, two are tube where you ride together, and two are plunge. The last two Avery wasn't tall enough for, but it was ok, we enjoyed the others. Miniputt was nice. Avery hit the rock wall several times. Surfside was fun and also nicely shaded, but we're right on the cusp of outgrowing that area.
Cococay was lovely as always. We returned to the free slides and the large pool for a majority of our time. We also popped in at the little lake-like area and the beach proper. St Maarten was super hot. I hadn't planned a lot there, so we just jumped off for a little while and shopped around right at the port. St Thomas was cancelled due to propulsion issues with the ship. I hadn't planned on getting off there anyhow, so my only loss was having the ship more to ourselves. Turns out they cancelled the sailing after ours to go for repairs. That... and the hurricanes that have come through since? I think our timing was amazing to get one more trip in for the year.