Herb Family Cruise 2023 Part 1

We just got home from the best cruise! We seriously had such a blast and I would book another cruise tmrw if I had the money for it. It was the best! 
So we left Saturday morning, November 4th and drove to our hotel in Texas City, Texas. We stayed about 30 minutes from the port on Saturday night. 
Here we are headed out for the vacation of a lifetime!

We drove over to the port, parked our van and hopped on the shuttle to go to board the ship. 
We met the rest of the Herbs at the port. Mimi and Grandpa came  as well as Uncle Phillip, Aunt Stephanie and their kiddos. It was so fun to see everyone. 

It was so cute to see all the hugs and love between the cousins. They were so excited to see each other and to go on this awesome trip together. 

We checked our bags and got all checked in and then we were able to board the ship. 

Naturally we had to take a group picture before boarding. 

I just love all these faces so much!

We also took a pic of just our family. 

After we got onto the ship, we got to go have a special lunch. Mimi had bought us all "key" benefits. This meant that we had priority times for all the activities on the ship, reserved seats at all the shows and priority embarkation and disembarkation times on and off the ship. But it also meant we had a really nice embarkation day lunch and disembarkation day breakfast. 
We loved having the key and we were so grateful to Mimi for spoiling us.

Our lunch was delicious and the kids had their own table and ordered for themselves. It's so weird how big they are all getting. 

After lunch we explored the ship and signed the kids up for kids club. 

We ended up on  one of the top decks for the sail away party and that was fun!

We also had to try "The ultimate abyss" slide. This slide spanned 10 decks vertically and it was so fun to ride. So from deck 16 we hopped on the slide and went all the way down to deck 6. 

Then at deck 6 the kids had fun playing on the climbing platforms. 

I went back to the room after a little bit so I could unpack. Chris kept the kids and wandered and explored the ship so I could get some unpacking done. 

Then we went to dinner. 

Our first night our seating got messed up and Mimi and Grandpa weren't sitting with us. 
So they ate across the dining room from us and then came over and joined us later. 

We had a delicious dinner and the photographer came over and took another pic. 

After dinner we went up to one of the upper decks to play mini golf. Mini golf was one of the kids favorite things to do and they couldn't get enough. 

Then we explored more and found the floating bar. 
It was pretty fun. We just ordered some sodas and enjoyed the ride. 

Chris and I had alot of the kids with us at this point, so we took them all on the floating bar. 

As it was rising, Stephanie and Phillip found us and took some pics of us all. 

Then we kind of split up and some of us went to a comedy show and others went to play mini golf again. The little boys found a worker making balloon animals and had to get one. 

After the comedy show, we all met back up to head to bed. It wasn't super late but we were all tired from our first big day and we wanted to make sure we had lot of energy for our first full day of sailing. 

So the next morning we got up and went down to the dining room to have a nice, order from the menu breakfast- and then we went out to play on the ship. 

Tanner and Chris immediately wanted to try out the flowrider. 

Tucker couldn't wait to play mini golf. 

We also went swimming and did all the water slides. 

We played hard and swam hard. 
We grabbed lunch at the windjammer buffet and then it was back to swimming and playing. 

There are few things that make me happier than my kids in matching outfits and these matching swimsuits are giving me all the feels. 

We also indulged in lots of ice cream cones. Every time I saw the boys they had another ice cream cone in their hands. Sometimes one in each hand. 

Monday night was our first formal night on the ship, so we took a little longer to get ready and take pictures. We took some group pictures before dinner. 

I also snapped my own pics of the kids in their cute outfits. 

Tucker and Bailey were being little weirdos but I was cracking up. 

 

This picture is one of my favorites from the trip. Grandpa was being so funny with the kids and I had to snap a picture of them. 

After taking all our pictures, we went in to eat. The food on formal night is a little fancier so its fun. 
And it's always fun to get dressed up. 

The photographer came around and snapped individual pics of everyone in their fancy clothes. 

Benson didn't want to pose for an individual shot, but he agreed to take one with me. 

Sweet Benson was completely exhausted and passed out halfway through dinner. Luckily Dad is eternally patient and let Benson sit on his lap throughout dinner. 

These three were inseparable at every meal. They had so much fun sitting together and laughing and eating all the food. 

After dinner, we all went back to our rooms to change and get warmer clothes because we had reservations for the show at the aqua theater. It was called "The Fine Line" and it was so fun to watch.

Because of our "key" benefits, we had seats super close to the front and it was great. We ordered mocktails and had fun watching the show. We weren't quite in the splash zone, which was nice, but we got sprinkled with water occasionally. 

That night after the kids went to bed, Stephanie and I snuck out and went to the 90's dance party. It was lots of fun. I knew all the songs and we danced our little hearts out. 

After that we went back to our rooms and slept hard. 

Day 3 was another cruising day and again we did our best to do all the fun things. 
We went ziplining, ice skating, swimming, water slides, flow rider- literally did all the things. While also eating all the yummy food and mocktails. 

Even Bailey tried the flow rider. I was so proud of her. 

Tucker was the first person in our group to try the zipline. He was so brave and he loved it. 

Benson was bummed that he was too small for the zipline but as soon as Tucker finished, he went to play mini golf with Benson and cheered him up. 

Tanner also tried out the zipline and loved it. 

We ate all the endless ice cream cones too!

One of our favorite places to be was by the pool with ice cream cones in hand. 

 

The photographer caught us walking back over to the water slides and so we had to get a picture overlooking "central park". This ship is so awesome. 

Then we went ice skating. We had a nice private priority time so we had the rink almost to ourselves. It was wonderful. 

While we ice skated, Bailey got to go to a cupcake decorating class with Mimi. She loved it and had a great time. 

After ice skating we all went to watch the "Columbus" musical. 
It was good, not our favorite show, but it was a cool show to watch. 

Then we took the kids rock climbing. It's a weird sensation to be rock climbing while moving on the water aboard a cruise ship, but the kids did great and they loved it. 

 

On our way back from ziplining, Benson found a duck. Now this might seem weird, but on royal carribean ships, people hide rubber ducks for others to find. They usually have a tag saying where they came from and you can keep it or you can re-hide it. 

Benson was so thrilled to have found on that he definitely wanted to keep it. I couldn't even begin to tell him otherwise, so he kept it!

Later during the week, the kids would find about 4 more ducks. It's a pretty fun things and the kids all enjoy looking for them and just keeping their eyes open as we explore. 

Eventually it was time for dinner and then we did more playing. 

The kids went to "club ocean" a few times on the cruise, but the teenagers were able to check themselves in and out so they also had fun wandering the ship. Our nights were typically full of shows or mini golfing after dinner.

But we also didn't stay up super late because we were so exhausted from all the hard playing. 

Stay tuned for all of the excursions on part two of our cruise! We had the best time.