Day 4 - Stir Fry Station, Cafe al Bacio, Games and Shows

While Grandma Trudy and Ross were shopping in St. Thomas, Sweet Pea and I headed to the Oceanview Café Buffet for lunch.   We decided to try the stir fry station. 

 

 

There is a nice display of attractive veggies to choose from and some less attractive already-cooked meats.  I liked the concept of this station where I could choice what I wanted in my stir-fry and have someone cook it fresh for me.  It's a great idea in theory, although the execution of cooking each guest's food was a little slow.

 

 

We were somewhat confused about how the stir-fry station worked as there were no instructions.  Other people in line had no idea either.  There was an older woman in front of us and we watched as a cook held her plate behind the counter and then added various foods to it per the woman's instructions.  The cook then turned around and stir-fried the food from the plate on the grill. 

 

After the woman took her now cooked meal, I tried to hand my empty plate to the cook. 

 

"Put food on the plate," the cook informed me.  Oh, okay.  My mistake.  I tried to load up my plate, but some of the food was really far back in the case and it was a struggle to reach it.  It was just an awkward set up. 

 

When my plate was finally piled with veggies and meats, the cook (who was very hard to understand) said, "What sauce?"  There were no choices listed anywhere. 

 

"Soy sauce?" I guessed.

 

"Do you want spicy?"  she countered.

 

"No.  Not too spicy. Maybe a little."

 

"Okay," she said, as she took my plate and started cooking it.

 

I ended up being really happy with my stir-fry, although it was a little salty.  Maybe soy sauce wasn't such a good choice? 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet Pea liked her stir-fry also although she had rice instead of noodles. (And melon.  Of course, the fruit choices were all types of melon.)

 

Instead of getting our usual post-buffet ice cream, we decided to get some tea and a treat from Café al Bacio.  It is hard to just pick one treat from such a beautiful assortment!

 

Café al Bacio always has a variety of tasty cookies to chose from too.

I ordered a slice of coconut chiffon cake, which was excellent. It was really moist with an earthy coconut flavor.  The frosting was creamy without being cloyingly sweet and the toasted coconut coating added a great texture.

Sweet Pea ordered a small glass of mango mousse, which was also very good.  Creamy and flavorful with an actual raspberry on top. 

 

We split a pot of tea, which was adorable as usual.  I love the little Tea Forte leaf that sticks up out of the pot.

 

Enjoying our little mother-daughter break.  :)

 

 

 

We lounged around until Grandma Trudy and Ross returned to the ship.  They had walked all the way back from their drop off spot in St. Thomas, but did not find the exact perfect t-shirt for Grandma Trudy until they were almost right back to the ship.  How funny!

 

Because of their unexpectedly quick exit from the bus, I had inadvertently taken our sunblock back on the boat with me and as a result Grandma Trudy got quite sunburned during her shopping trip.   Ross was better off because he had been wearing a long-sleeved hooded swim shirt (from Land's End.  Highly recommended.  Those things are the best!) so only his legs really got much sun.   They also ran into a couple that we knew from the ship who let them use their sunblock.   The couple had been shopping for diamonds and had purchased some gorgeous earrings and a tennis bracelet.

We started off our evening with the show "Momentum".  I had heard that Celebrity had a Cirque du Soleil show with aerialists and based on the description in the daily schedule, I thought this was it, so I encouraged all of us to go.  Unfortunately, this was not that show.  There  an aerialists, who was very entertaining, but the rest was mostly just a dance show.  There was one stand-out act with an incredibly strong and acrobatic couple.  They were very polished and amazing to watch.

On our way to dinner, we stopped to watch a game show called "Living Room Games" which I think was supposed to based off of the TV show "Hollywood Game Night".   The cruise director, Alexander, pulled Ross over to participate in the show.    We love these ship game shows and they are even better when you know one of the contestants. 

There were several different rounds.  The first involved blindfolding the contestants and giving them giant foam letters.  They had to solve a clue and then unscramble the letters to spell a word that was the answer.  For example, each team member is given one of the following letters: M, P, A and C.  The clue is "A place you might pitch your tent."  The team them must unscramble the letters and hold up the word "CAMP".   

I want to say that the cruise director Alexander (above, in the blue suit) has been amazing.  He is always full of energy and makes an effort to get to know the passengers.  He is always around and very approachable, not to mention hilarious.  He is the best cruise director that we've ever had.

Another game required the contestant to finish singing the lyrics to popular songs from various categories, such as 80's Music and Boy Bands.  There were two people on Ross's team who were especially good at this so his team was really entertaining to watch. 

 

The last game involved putting giant picture cards of various things (i.e. Academy Award winning movies or toys) in order from oldest to most recent.

Ross's team won the whole game by a mile, mostly due to the members who knew the lyrics to every song.  :)  As a prize, they handed out ribbons with a metal X on them.

 

 Next Up:  Dinner at Qsine

 

 

St. Thomas

The Reflection was docked in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands today.   We had an early excursion booked so we ordered breakfast from the room service menu the night before.  It's nice to be able to place your order before you go to bed and have breakfast delivered when you want it the next morning.

 

 

 

 

We ordered some scrambled eggs (not very good) and bacon (good).

 

We also ordered some pastries (not as good as Café al Bacio) along with some of the ubiquitous cantaloupe.  Breakfast wasn't especially delicious, but it was convenient.

 

 

 

After missing the bus in San Juan, Grandma Trudy was ready to leave bright and early for our St. Thomas excursion to the beach today.  We arrived at the theater about 5 minutes prior to the time listed on our tickets,but there was only one Celebrity employee there.  She told us to just go on down Deck 2 to find our group.  We took the elevator to Deck 2, where we saw many people were exiting the ship.  There were no excursion groups to be found.  We asked another employee where the excursions groups were and she told us to just go out on the dock, so we did.   There were several large groups of passengers gathered for various excursions, some of them from other cruise ships that were also in port.  Grandma Trudy doesn't move very fast so I jogged ahead to find our group.  I eventually found someone holding a sign for our excursion and Ross, Grandma Trudy and Sweet Pea were able to catch up.   It was one of the more disorganized excursion meeting experiences we've ever had.

 

We boarded an open air bus that was quite rustic and rode for about 30 minutes to the beach along some steep and winding roads.  Hang on tight!  :)

 

 

Family Selfie (and an inadvertent photobomb by one of our fellow trivia players)!

When we arrived at the beach, we were greeted by a friendly excursion guide who gathered us around for a brief lecture.  He told us that there was a drop-off in the ocean and stinging fire coral beyond the buoys.  He stressed that we could snorkel, but should not swim over the fire coral because even a slight touch could cause severe and lingering pain.

The warnings out of the way, he showed us to beach chairs and let us know that he had some snorkel gear available and toys for the kids.  He offered everyone drinks, including rum punch (which we didn't try), from his cooler.  He told everyone to enjoy themselves and not worry about the time, that he would come around and gather everyone up in a couple of hours.  He also firmly stressed that he worked only for tips and it would be nice if we were feeling generous towards him today.  :)

I parked myself in a chair to read a bit and enjoy the beautiful weather.  It was a lovely day and a gorgeous beach.

Ross took Sweet Pea out for a little snorkeling.  He said that they saw a few fish, but not nearly as many as when we were in Cozumel.  They returned to the beach so Sweet Pea could play in the sand.

I was reading when Grandma Trudy walked by me and said, "I think I'm going to swim out beyond the buoys to look at that fire coral." 

Realizing that I couldn't dissuade her, I just called after her, "Have fun!"

 

There were large iguanas scampering everywhere and even climbing the trees.  There were some roosters and other birds too.

 

 

 

We saw several scary signs warning us away from certain dangerous trees.  These are Manchineel trees, the manzanilla de la muerte (little apple of death) and are generally regarded as the most dangerous trees in the world.  Just brushing up against one of them can cause serious skin irritation, which isn't nearly as bad as what happens if you decide to eat the fruit of the tree.  The fruit apparently has a pleasantly sweet taste at first.... before an unbearable burning feeling sets in and eventually death. 

 

A quote for the literature lovers among you - The following is a line in Flaubert's Madame Bovary: "Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences."

 

Obviously, we gave these trees a wide berth!

 

The bathrooms are quite a walk from the beach, but they were nice and clean.

Far too soon it was time to pack up and get back on the bus.  We did leave the tour guide with a well deserved tip before boarding our open air taxi bus.

If I had only one complaint about this excursion, it was that our time on the beach was too short.  As we were leaving, another set of busses was arriving to drop of the next set of guests and I was envious.

Our bus trundled up narrow roads until we were at one of the highest points in St. Thomas, where we were allowed to unload for some quick photos.  There was a large curb right beside us and Grandma Trudy fell over it as she was getting off.  Luckily, she was not seriously injured, but she did have a pretty hard fall.

Wow, St. Thomas is beautiful!

 

A kind stranger took a family picture for us.

 

On the trip back to the ship, the bus driver stopped to allow any passengers who wanted to get off at a shopping area.  Grandma Trudy wanted to go so Ross got off the bus with her, while Sweet Pea and I returned to the ship.

 

 

 

Celebrity Fun Factory Kid's Club Review

I want to start out by saying that we were happily surprised by how much Sweet Pea, age 8, ended up enjoying the kids club on the Celebrity Reflection.

When we booked our cruise with Celebrity, we were worried that Sweet Pea wouldn't enjoy the kids club.  She has been on two previous cruises with DCL (Disney Cruise Line), one on the Fantasy and one on the Magic, and loved the kids clubs both times.   

Celebrity's kids club is called the Fun Factory and just from looking at photos online I could tell that the decorations were significantly less compelling than on the Disney ships.   In the Disney's kids club there was an entire room designed to look just like Andy's room from Toy Story!  No one beats Disney at theming. 

I shouldn't have been worried however.  When we arrived at our cabin on the first day, there was a letter inviting Sweet Pea to the Fun Factory and a schedule of events for the day for the "Cadets" age group.  When there are enough children on board, they are divided into three separate age groups.   She loved getting this special letter addressed to her.  

Below is the Embarkation Day schedule for Shipmates, which is supposed to be the group for children aged 3-5.

Below is the Embarkation Day schedule for Cadets, which is geared towards children aged 6-8.

Last, this is the Embarkation Day schedule for Ensigns, which is the group for children aged 9-11.  Note that by default, Ensigns are allowed to sign themselves in and out of the program unless otherwise specified during registration.

  

The first night, Sweet Pea was somewhat unhappy that there was only one other child (much younger than herself) in the club.   When we picked her up, she said, "Mom, four-year-olds are kind of hard to play with.  They don't talk very much."  She was willing to return to the club the next day, however, and give it another try.

And it's good that she went back.  Despite the fact that there were very rarely any children her age and she was often grouped with younger children, she ended up having a really good time. By the end of the cruise she told us that she actually had enjoyed Celebrity's Fun Factory better than DCL's Oceanear's Lab / Club!  She said while there were some really cool events in DCL's clubs (such as a mad scientist helping them make "slime"), she had spent much of her time in there just playing video games.   By contrast, Celebrity apparently had many more group activities and the counselors worked really hard to entertain the kids.  The counselors on Celebrity really seemed to get to know her, too. 

 

Now, I realize this might not be the case for a child that was a few years older, but some of the activities that she loved in the Fun Factory were:

• Bug Hunt - The counselors had hidden paper pictures of bugs around the kids club like Easter Eggs and the kids got to explore and find them.
• Super Hero Creation - The kids were able invent a super hero that they wanted to become.  They thought up super powers, names and colored masks and capes.
• Hot Kryptonite - A game like hot potato.
• Talent Show - The kids practiced and put on a talent show for their parents.

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While Sweet Pea loved the Fun Factory, there were a couple of areas that I thought were better on DCL.  The first is the hours.  DCL kids clubs are usually open from 9am-12am.  You can drop your child off any time.  Celebrity's standard hours are about 9am-12pm, 2pm-5pm and 7pm-10pm. You can pay extra (either $6 per hour or $99 unlimited VIP pass) to use the Fun Factory outside of those hours, although they also request that you make a reservation in advance.  This did not end up being as big of a problem as I thought it would be.  We only ended up using the Fun Factory for an extra evening hour a couple of times.  

 

The second thing that I really missed about DCL was the use of the wave phones as a method of keeping in contact with parents.  When we checked Sweet Pea into Celebrity's Fun Factory, we had to state specifically where we were going to be on the ship while she was in the club.  This was awkward because not only were we planing on being in multiple places (back to our room to pick up a shawl, then the theater for the show, then the World Bar to pick up a drink for Ross on the way to Cafe al Bacio) but our plans were subject to change ("Oh look, there is a game of Family Feud going on in Celebrity Central right now!")

We expressed uncertainty about where we were going to be every. single. time. we left her there and often came back to check on her since we knew it would be hard for the counselors to track us down. Ross and I frequently talked about how much better the system was on DCL.  The DCL wave phones mean that there is never any concern about being out of touch.  

 

It was not until the 5th(!) day of our Celebrity cruise that I saw someone else had listed "Pager" on the sign-in sheet under the heading "Parent's Location".

"You have pagers?!?" I exclaimed. 

"Oh, sure.  Did you want one?,"  suggested the counselor, obliviously.

Are you kidding?   Of, course we wanted one!  Why are these pagers not standard?  Why didn't a counselor offer us a pager when they saw me struggling to write out all of our locations for the next 3 hours into a text box the size of my pinkie fingernail?   I suspect that that counselors just didn't want to mess with getting the pager set up and signed out. This is really the only (slightly) negative experience that we had with the Fun Factory. If you think a pager would be helpful, remember to ask for it because they certainly aren't going to offer it to you!

 

Overall though, we would give the Fun Factory a big thumbs up!

 

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Below, I have included all of the rest of Fun Factory schedules for the Cadets (ages 6-8) during our cruise.

 

Day 2 (Sea Day 1)

Day 3 (San Juan)

Day 4 (St. Thomas)

Day 5 (St. Martin)

Day 6 (Sea Day 2) 



Day 7 (Sea Day 3)

 

Murano

We ate at the specialty restaurant Murano tonight.  There are two different menus.  The first menu is the "Five Senses Gastronomic and Vineyard Tour" which includes several courses with wine and is an additional charge.  I did not get a picture of that menu, but was able to find an example from the Celebrity Solstice here.

The other option was a more standard menu and this is what we chose to do.

The service at Murano was the best we had for our entire cruise.  The sommelier was not only actually available here, but was attentive and helpful.  The staff was especially enamored with Sweet Pea.  (I do want to mention that Murano would probably not be a good choice for some children.  Sweet Pea is used to sitting through very long dinners with us and will happily order off of adult menus.)

I failed to remember to take photos of our food until the end of the meal, but have included links to pictures of the same dishes that I found on the web.

For my starter, I ordered the Warm Goat Cheese Soufflé, which was very good.  It was rich and creamy with a not-too-strong goat cheese flavor. I would definitely order it again. (Photo of the Warm Goat Cheese Soufflé from Beyond Ships)

Ross ordered the Diver Scallop Wellington Style, which was not great.  There was far too much "Wellington" and not nearly enough scallop.  The scallop was too small and overcooked, while the puff pastry was doughy.  I can see how this would have been good if it was prepared correctly with a true large diver scallop, but I can not recommend the version that we got. (Here is a photo of the Diver Scallop Wellington Style from Lavender and Lovage)

Grandma Trudy ordered the Creamy Main Lobster Bisque, but did not care much for it.  It did have a fishy flavor, but not the sweet lobster flavor she wanted.  It was not lost on us that it was listed on the menu as "Main" lobster bisque (without the "e") instead of "Maine" lobster bisque.  (Photo of the Creamy Main lobster Bisque from Mami Eggroll)

Sweet Pea's Wild Forest Mushroom Cappuccino was exceptionally good, with a deep earthy flavor and a rich, frothy texture.  Just perfect.  (Photo of the Wild Forest Mushroom Cappuccino from Mami Eggroll)

For her entrée, Sweet Pea ordered the Dover Sole Veronique which was entertainingly deboned tableside.  She loved the show and thought it was delicious.  (Photo of Dover Sole Veronique from ThePreismans.com)

 

Ross and Grandma Trudy split the Chateaubriand for Two, which they both adored.  The meat was extremely tender and served with a choice of either Béarnaise or Cabernet sauce.  Ross thought this was his best meal of the trip.  (Photo here from photobucket user tlcohio)

 

 

I ordered the Herb Crusted Lamb Rack which was excellent.  (Photo from Flickr user snow_cheetah)

 

 

After our entrees, we were offered a selection of excellent cheeses from Murano's cheese cart.  Ross, who is clearly not shy, requested a small serving of each type of cheese that was on the cart.  Luckily, I was able to profit from his boldness.

 

 



Ross ordered a glass of Taylors 20 Year Old Tawny Port to enjoy with dessert, which had a rich fruity flavor.

 

 

 

 

Of course we ordered dessert, too.

 

 

 

Grandma Trudy and Ross split the Les Six Etoiles du Murano for Two, which is a collection of six small desserts in shot glasses to share.  Ross thought these were good, but Grandma Trudy wished she had gotten a scoop of gelato.  (Hey look, I remembered to take a picture this time!)

 

 

 

I had the Grand Marnier Soufflé which was divine.  The soft and fluffy texture was perfect and it had a delightful orange flavor.   This was probably my favorite dessert of the cruise.  I might have regretted it, but I would have eaten another one if it had been in front of me. :)

 

 

 

 

Our server told Sweet Pea that he wanted to make her the Crêpe Ballon Rouge because it has such a fun tableside presentation.   He made a big deal of asking what her favorite type of berries were and setting those aside to use.

 

 

He filled a crêpe with a scoop of ice cream and then folded it over into the "balloon" shape.  Then he cooked the berries and flambéed them (which he assured me would burn off the alcohol) with Chambertin.  He added some balsamic vinegar and pepper and then arranged everything beautifully on her plate.

 

The Crêpe Ballon Rouge was a beautiful and delicious dessert.  I am really happy that they suggested making it for her.