Sambo goes Cruisin' November 2016

A new cruise ship just began calling Florida home, and my dear friend (and neighbor from our last house in Westlake), Julie, is a travel agent. She got a free two-night cruise on the ship for two people, and she invited me!!! All I had to pay (for the entire trip including food and alcohol and fun on the ship) was my airfare to Florida - which happened to be on sale!!! I was in- and so excited!!! Although she did have two small conditions for me to go... 

1. She is not on social media, so she asked me to post lots of pictures for her! 

2. I had to try as many things as I could on the ship! DONE!!!! 

So I got up very early on a Tuesday morning, met Julie at the airport, and in a few hours we were having lunch on the ship!! 

Got a picture for the kids right away! All the fun Pixar characters are wondering around on the ship!

 

Lunch with a view...

After lunch, we headed up to the top of the ship to watch it set off! Free in the sea! 

Good-bye land!

What an awesome way to watch the sun set!

Free alcohol the entire cruise for us so we got some fun drinks to start!! 

Cool statues, art, and things to see all over the place! 

A few rows of this guy's face would rotate every 30 or so seconds and give him a new look! Weird! 

A huge lady's face made out of all wine corks at the Wine Bar in Central Park! So cool!! 

We had to stop at the Bionic Bar! Wow- this was really cool.. a totally robotic bar!!! You put your order in on an iPad then watch as the robots pick bottles out of the ceiling, shake up your drink, and slide it across the bar when you're ready to claim it! SO futuristic!

Cheers!

Before heading back to our room, we took a walk in 'Central Park'. Open air, perfect weather, and cool restaurants along a paved path! 

Our balcony overlooked one of the stages, so we got to watch the water stage performance from our room in our pjs! It was really nice because it was a late show (and it was the crazy election night, so we wanted to be watching the TV too!). Notice the performers flying over the stage! 

 The next morning, there was a big meeting for all the travel agents, so I had a pretty wide open ship and lots of activities to go check out! Yay!

I started with the HUGE slide! It started on the top of the ship and went down 15 stories - of course it only took about 10 seconds to get down, but it was a fun 10 seconds! The scariest/ craziest part of the slide for me was the platform you had to stand on right before getting into the slide. It was SO SOOO high, with a glass bottom and nothing but ocean below! Pictures don't do it justice!!

The Abyss! Only found on the Harmony of the Seas. 

All ocean in front of me! 

Even the floor was glass so just ocean below me! Took my breath away!

View from the bottom! 

And it was so much fun, I did it a couple times!! Round 2! 

OK... I am ready to try everything... so up I go! This is the tallest rock climbing wall I've ever been to personally. I didn't feel afraid at all.. until I got all the way up! 

Made it all the way to the top!!! Yay! 

I was so scared to propel down, I ended up climbing most of the way down!! I just couldn't make my hands let go of the wall and push off with my feet... I was SO high! Hah!! 

Love the progression in this picture... 

Another thing I was very excited to do was zip-lining across the top of the ship! 

This will be my view below...

The two people standing above the 'S' are almost where you take off from...

I went for a jog around the running track and did a quick workout in the surprising large gym!

Love the little towel-animal people the cleaning service leaves in your room! 

Found this little guy watching tv! 

The ship had so many other fun attractions and things to do! Here are some of them! 

Surfing!! 

Huge sports court! 

Pools with special areas of kids... looks like a lot of fun! (And also pools where no kids are allowed!)

 

Random climbing things outside the restaurants so the kids stay entertained!

Breathtaking views! 

Many coffee bars- yum!! 

We got to see two good shows while onboard (besides the Water Show we watched from our balcony)! 

The first was an Ice Show... the story line wasn't very exiting, but the skating was fantastic!!!

 And the special effects were really cool too! This really looked like water but was just lighting on the ice!

And we also made it to a matinee showing of Greece the Musical!! 

We spent a couple hours touring the huge ship, checking out the various rooms, dining spots, kids clubs, amenities, pools, and restaurants. Since this was a short cruise with mostly travel agents on it, they had lots of cool perks available for us to do. All the restaurants were giving samples of their favorite dishes, and all drinks and activities were free.

View from the dining room... 

The next pictures are from some of the rooms on board the ship... we got to tour some huge suites and also the smaller ones (all so Julie will know what all the rooms look like when booking for clients!). 

This is a inner cabin room with a 'fake' window to help guests feel like they have a balcony view! 

A big 2 story suite with an loft upstairs with bed, huge closet and bathroom... and incredible views!! Can't imagine waking up here in the middle of the ocean!

Bunk beds in a suite... 

Huge balcony in huge suite (4 bedrooms and sleeps 16 people)!! Wow!! Even had it's own personal jacuzzi! 

Same size room as ours... 

A HUGE thank you to my incredibly sweet and wonderful friend Julie!!! I had such a wonderful vacation and loved all my time with her!! I hope to book a cruise soon... this was so fun!!

Good-bye Harmony!