2 New Cruise Reviews: 6/2 Carnival Fascination

GottaCruz · June 8, 2006

That's very tempting, Keith and Rita. How many hours would it take us? Well, if we were that many hours closer to you, we'd go out dancing with you all the time, although Wayne and I would have to take a crash course first so that we wouldn't embarrass you.

By the way, Keith and Rita, is Siesta Key on the west coast of Florida? How many hours did it take you to drive there?

KeithnRita · June 8, 2006

Yes it is. It's a part of Sarasota and is 910 miles from our house. With numerous stops we made it home in 15 hours. :smiley: :smiley:

GottaCruz · June 9, 2006

Aside form the stops, did you take a couple of days and sleep in a hotel or did you drive straight through ? I'm very curious because there are a few places I'd like to go and I don't fly anymore, so I'm wondering how others do these land vacations.

KeithnRita · June 9, 2006

Going down, we always drive to Lake City, FL, which is about 690 miles, and spend the night. That way we can say we are in Florida! We sleep in the next day and have about a three hour drive to Sietsa Key. When we are heading home we usually stop and spend the night somewhere between Dalton, GA to Nashville, TN--depending on how tired we are. Rita likes to shop at Opry Mills Mall in Nashville before our three hour drive home from there.

This year traffic was very light so we decided to drive straight thru. We had a dance that evening and though we might drop by and say hi and dance a few, however we were to tired. We stopped for breakfast and dinner at Cracker Barrel and pretty well stop at most rest stops to walk around for 10 minutes or so to rest our butts!

For our next cruise we are flying to Fort Lauderdale the night before our Sept 2 cruise.

We have Jeff's cell phone number and will let him know when we get there. Maybe we could all meet for dinner the evening of Sept 1.

We will drive to Tampa for our New Years cruise and stop in Lake City to spend the night and spend another night in Tampa before our cruise. The only drawback will be the weather, however after making the same drive two years ago and leaving 23" of snow on the ground, it shouldn't be worse, unless we drive into a snowstorm on our return. :shocked: :shocked:

Mebert · June 10, 2006

GottaCruz and gymbrat33,

Thank you for your reviews of the Carnival Fascination. The cruise is so short that there were several things that I missed on the Fascination. I didn't notice that the ship had a miniature golf course on it. You sound like you thoroughly enjoyed your cruise with the exception of a few minor glitches or in GottaCruz' case the noise in the disco might have been a major glitch.

Based on your reviews I would like to take another cruise on the Fascination and maybe go for 4 or 5 days.

GottaCruz · June 10, 2006

Thanks so much for all the info, Keith and Rita. These land vacations that you take sound very appealing to me lately. We really need to broaden our horizons and do some things other than cruising. I'm going to check into Siesta Key.

Sept. 1 for dinner sounds perfect. We would absolutely love to meet you and Jeff and anyone else for dinner. I had that in the back of my mind ever since you mentioned you had booked this cruise a while back and were leaving from Ft. Lauderdale.

Mebert, We love the Fascination. The glitch with the music happens here and there but there are many times that the music is great and we are able to do a lot of dancing, so we don't let it bother us. It's just that I wouldn't have gained as much weight if I had been able to dance off some of my meals. Anyway, maybe you'll happen to be in Ft. Lauderdale or Weston on the night of Sept 1 and be able to do dinner too??? That would be wonderful.

Maybe gymbrat could join us also.