Our 2018 Brilliance of the Seas Cruise- Day 1: Embark

Woohoo!!! Cruise Day!!!!

The day is finally here!!! We’ve been looking forward to going on our Royal Caribbean cruise since we booked it in October. We were counting down the days!

We were so ready for the day to come.

Except we forgot to buy our wine (2 750ml bottles per cabin) that we can bring on the ship, so I had my dad stop on the way over to get us wine. (And then I also made them go to the post office for me while I was gone since I am on top of things- not!)

We dropped the dogs off for boarding at Tampa Bay K9 Solutions on our way to the port. It was tough leaving them for the week, but we knew they were in good hands.

The check in process was fairly quick and painless with fast moving lines and friendly port agents. Hunter even fell asleep on my in the carrier. It made for a funny ID photo of half his face and most of my boobs. At least it gave everyone a laugh every time we had to scan his ID.

Made it through check in and before we knew it, we were on our way to board the ship!

As rooms are not ready until 1pm, we went directly to the Windjammer for lunch with our stuff.

It was difficult to find an available table but 2 really nice women let us crash their table and then we were ready to dig in.

After lunch we went to our stateroom (#8500) to get settled.

With it being flu season, and there being recent Niro-Virus outbreaks on cruises, we brought cleaning supplies on the cruise and gave everything a good wipe down. Impressively, every wipe was still white after using it. I wish my house was that clean.

Besides that, we unpacked our bags and put all our stuff away.

Don’t we all attend our Muster Station Drills in the theater in our bathing suits and sunglasses?

You certainly can’t tell a determined 4 year old who is in V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N that she can’t go in the pool, even if it is cold.

Tampa was pretty chilly (upper 60’s) that day, so Autumn got a big cheer from the people around the pool when she jumped.

Cheers!!!

Price’s favorite cruise drink is a Miami Vice (half pina coloda, half strawberry daiquiri) so that was his first drink on the cruise, while I enjoyed a Pina Colada. The best way of kicking off vacation!

Autumn didn’t last long in the pool, but that didn’t seem to bother her as she was then able to enjoy a Virgin Pina Colada.

And then we were on our way!

Our stateroom was located right at the bow so we had the most amazing view of our journey from port to port.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that you could reserve your time for dinner online so I never did that for our “My Time Dining” dinners, which apparently a lot of people did not. We got to the Mistral Dining Room (MDR) right when it opened, but it was packed, and there was no availability until 7.45. So we snagged that time for the rest of the cruise and made our way to the Windjammer for our dinner.

While it was a bummer to not get dinner in the MDR, it was still great to not have to do dishes and enjoy a good meal with my family.