Celebration Day 7: Our Final Sea Day

It's our last day at sea, our last day on this beautiful ship and again we ask ourselves… How is this possible? The end of a cruise is always similar to Sunday scaries for us. The packing that has to be done, the goodbyes to new friends and fantastic crew members and the dreaded drive/travel day back home the following day always makes the last day bittersweet.

On our last day, we woke up early to find the best seats! We ended up finding a sunny spot on the Serenity Deck! This really became our favorite place to relax each day. I made buddies with the bartender at the Serenity bar and really enjoyed the quiet pool. Being a teacher on vacation, it was nice to not have kiddos yelling while you read and relax through the day!

I know the real reason you are reading this post is because you wanted to see how Cory’s hangover was after his 15 drinks and his LIT (long island iced tea). Shockingly, he wasn’t too hungover, just needed some quiet time and hair of the dog to bounce back and enjoy our last day!

While we relaxed on Serenity, it quickly became gray and storm clouds rolled in. Being our last day, we decided to wait out the storm and see what the clouds really were going to bring. Luckily, waiting it out was the best decision as we just had slight sprinkles, and cloud cover for a brief few minutes.

The clouds cleared up just in time for Groove for St. Jude! A huge fundraiser for Carnival ships. We love to support St. Jude by either donating a flat fee or donating to get a shirt for ourselves or family members. Think of a telethon combined with a dance party. It is absolutely crazy but such a heartwarming time to support those who truly need it! This was our first cruise that the line for donations was wrapped around the pool area and tshirt sizes ran out well before the event ended. It is amazing to see the amount of money one ship can raise for such a great cause.

After lunch it was time to visit Guy’s Burgers for one last time :( By this time, I was eating gluten full time and enjoying all the extra carbs that I typically would avoid on a regular basis. I ordered my plain jane with an onion ring and added ranch to my french fries to soak up the few drinks we already enjoyed by the pool. Cory was brave enough to try this combination today and he was so sad it was his last day so he could not enjoy it more like I did! (Editor’s note: 10/10 would recommend ranch with Guy’s fries. So good!)

With a tasty lunch in our stomachs and a few hours of rest and relaxation, it was time to head back to the room to begin the packing process. Being the over packers that we are, we take two suitcases on most trips. This works in our favor for the end of the cruise. We use the smaller of our suitcases to take home our dirty laundry and some shoes or whatever else we can squeeze in and use the other suitcase for our clothes we didn't wear or our formal outfits that need to be folded up carefully. Luckily for this trip we did not have to worry about weight limits for each suitcase or having to worry about TSA guidelines.

When it comes to debarking and packing. There are several options for luggage. You can check your luggage the night prior to debarking and pick it up once you are off the ship or you can be like us and carry off your bags. We find this the most time efficient way to get to the car or taxi after our trip. Plus, I tend to overthink packing and like to check my bags up until the very last second to make sure I have absolutely everything packed from the room.

After packing our suitcases it was time to wander the ship for the last time. As usual, Cory lead us to the casino. We decided to play the slot machines, but the casino was packed! I ended up leaving the casino and headed to a show at Center Stage. I was over 40 minutes early which is what is usually needed but since this was the middle of the day there were plenty of open seats. I was glad I had my book and ordered a glass of wine! I loved it. I love being on vacation and just being able to take my book anywhere and not worrying about anything around me.

The show that I went to was less of a show and more of a few performers from Center Stage singing songs from The Greatest Showman and Fiddler on the Roof. The woman performer was absolutely amazing and her voice carried so well through the ship. After the show was done, I wandered some of the shops before meeting up with Cory. Cory was disappointed that he lost most of his winnings during the show and absolutely regretted not joining me for the show.

We ran to the casino to cash both of us out. Although Cory lost a lot of his earnings, we were still in the green and left with some new cash in our hands. While we were cashing out, we discovered some Carnival Scratch off tickets. Scratch off tickets are a tradition in my family and we use them to celebrate all holidays and birthdays so we celebrated Cory’s winnings by buying a few tickets! Luckily for us, we won on our first scratch offs so we hopped back in line to cash in! We decided to get a few more with our winnings and test our luck! We won again. We decided to take some of our winnings and keep them and try one last scratch off. Unfortunately, we were losers on our last card.

After losing our winning streak it was time to get ready for dinner. Since it was the last night, it was a casual night for us so getting ready did not take much time. We decided it was the perfect time to take some pictures of the wake since this is Corys favorite view on a cruise and I had promised him new pictures on our living room wall.

We wandered around the back of the boat on several different floors. We found the best spot to take pictures was in the pool. So I went into the pool (only to my ankles, luckily there was an area you could sit in/walk through without having to go into the pool). When I showed Cory the pictures, he liked them but knew they were not the pictures he really wanted to print.

Once we had some pictures, we headed to our last dinner. The sunset was stunning during dinner and I was able to capture the best wake picture with the sunset! We were sad to say goodbye to our servers at dinner who we really grew to love and share our stories with. Giving our servers a hug goodbye and an extra tip to show how much we really appreciated their hard work and dedication!

With dinner over, we headed to Center Stage for our last show, The Most Magnificent Circus. We had no clue what to expect going to this show, but I was really hoping for some Greatest Showman vibes. This was not the case with this show, the dancing and performance told the story without any speaking. The performers on this ship were so talented but this show was not one we talk about when we refer clients to the ship.

After the performance it was time to get one last smokey drink! We went to Pig and Anchor for Cory’s last smoked drink, another fancy drink with whiskey. If you've read through our other blog posts, you know that was the theme of Cory’s cruise. After enjoying our last drink, it was time to head to our room to finish our packing and get some sleep since we had a long drive ahead of us the next day!

The last night is always bitter sweet. We're sad that a great cruise is ending and dreading the long drive back to North Carolina but excited to get back to our fur babies and get back to our routine again. Our last post about our trip will be about debarkation and our overall thoughts on

our cruise!