The World’s Longest Miracle Review, Part 1featured
We’ve been home for less than 24 hours, but I’ve been writing this review in my head for the past two weeks. This first post won’t have nearly as many pictures as the rest (I took over 1300 between my SLR and my P&S cameras) and will be mostly background, but the rest will be VERY picture heavy (mostly because I find reviews with lots of pictures more fun to read because you can see everything…I even read pictorial reviews of cruises I’m not planning on going on).
If you’ve read my last review (now to be referred to as The World’s Second Longest Carnival Miracle Review, or TWSLCMR when I get lazy), you’ll know that we’ve been planning this trip since last October. Why did we choose the Miracle? Because none of the itineraries wowed us and Stephanie claimed it was her dream to visit NYC. I think it’s because of her Sex in the City fixation… maybe ;o)
The planning for this trip detoured when we decided to go on the Miracle in January out of Fort Lauderdale for two reasons. Firstly because the other trip required immediate planning because of a nearer departure date, but also because even though we LOVE the Miracle, Mom was unsure she wanted to go on the same ship twice in one year and unsure she’d want to revisit a port (Grand Turk) we had visited in January. Our January cruise re-enchanted her with the Miracle, and she loved Grand Turk, so onto the planning for May we went.
I do *all* of the planning for all of our trips, with the exception of the actual cruise (we all decide on that and book it together with our fantastic PVP). New York would be a BIG challenge for me. I’m very comfortable with Florida (we used to split our winters between our home in Chicago and Grandma’s condo in Boca Raton when we were younger) and being from a big city, I knew there was a lot to consider when booking a pre-cruise trip to a city as vast as New York.
I started looking into hotels immediately and I was quickly enchanted with the Waldorf Astoria. I really wanted to stay at the Plaza, but at around $900/night, that was clearly out of the question, and the Waldorf Astoria seemed like the next best thing. Mom had a good rate on it from her work (they offer fantastic vacation discounts that we rarely take advantage of) and I was really thinking it would be so great for us.
But the more I looked into it, the more problematic it seemed. First of all, Grandma was coming with us again and she’s wheelchair bound. It would be SO hard to get her into and out of the car on the street. Then there was the car, itself. The hotel didn’t have it’s own parking facilities, so that was a problem, and the rates for parking an SUV at NYC hotels is crazy ($50-$70/night). I went back to the drawing board.
I searched through hotels on Expedia for hotels offering free parking (for kicks, I know these hotels are few and far between and we don’t use Expedia for booking anyways….we’ll book direct or occasionally through Priceline) and I found that many hotels across the Hudson in New Jersey offered reasonable, if not free, parking.
The more I looked into it, the more staying in New Jersey seemed ideal. It was close enough to New York to be a quick ride via public transportation into the city, but far enough away that we could escape the big city. Being from Chicago, the prospect of staying in New York didn’t seem all that thrilling to me just because I much prefer the situation I have at home: we live in a great town a half-hour outside of downtown Chicago that’s far enough away to be very removed from city life but close enough to experience it whenever I want.
The first hotel I found was the Sheraton Suites in Weehawken. It was an all-suite hotel with free parking and a water taxi into Manhattan. It was pretty cheap, too, at around $150/night. We seriously considered this one for a few weeks, but Mom has something against Sheraton’s and didn’t want to stay there, so we looked elsewhere.
A search on Trip Advisor (a must-read before traveling for us) brought up the Westin in Jersey City. The Westin just opened in February, so it was nearly brand new, it had quick access to the PATH trains into NYC and it had gleaming reviews (which is pretty rare on Trip Advisor). Since it was new, there were plenty of good rates that we could take advantage of. We booked under the 3/2 deal, where for every two nights you stay, you get one for free. I think our rate was around $170/night (including the extra guest fee, as they charge for more than 2 guests). Self parking at an adjacent parking complex would be $23/night with no in/out privileges or $29/night for valet with in/out privileges. This wasn’t ideal, but it was half the price of the cheapest parking we could find at NYC hotels. I also signed up for a Starwood Rewards card because we stay in Westin’s a lot, so I figured we may as well get points for it.
With the hotel booked, I booked us a car through Alamo. An SUV for 14 days ran us around $560 (those Chicago city taxes really up the price). This was MUCH more than we paid for our August rental, and a bit more than our January rental. Prices for rental cars really are going up, but we still saved quite a bit over flying (factoring in the limo to/from the airport, the airfare, luggage fees, and taxi fares to the hotel, the pier and back to the airport over the car, the gas, and parking at the hotel and pier).
For a long while, we planned on taking a guided tour of New York City, but at the last minute we ultimately decided against it. I HATE the tour busses that clog up the streets in Chicago, so I imagine my NYC counterparts hate them, too. It was a pretty penny to spend a lot of time on a bus, so we decided to try to do it ourselves. We came to regret this later, but more on that in another post.
The last thing we had to do was decide what show to see. I’m a HUGE fan of Broadway shows. I was in show choirs dating back to my childhood all the way through high school, and my parents sent Stephanie and I to performing arts camp every summer. My first solo was “Seasons of Love” from Rent when I was in 8th grade. I’ve seen quite a few shows in Chicago (and “Into the Woods” when I was on a choir trip to Los Angeles), but I was really super excited to see a show on real Broadway. I wanted to see “The Lion King,” Stephanie wanted to see “West Side Story” and Mom wanted to see “South Pacific.” I was willing to negotiate and see “Phantom of the Opera” or “Mamma Mia!” but neither of them wanted to see those. Stephanie found a last-minute tickets section of Broadway.com that offered tickets at discounted prices and we ultimately got tickets to “Hair,” which made me happy because I love the music.
With all of the planning done (and most of it done at the last-minute because with the January travel, I ended up with a much more lacksidasical approach to planning this trip), we started packing and before we knew it, it was departure day.
We put in a request for a Chevy Trailblazer a day before pickup and the Alamo people all but promised it to us, only to find out when we got there that they don’t even have Trailblazer’s anymore. We were given a Toyota Highlander, which was more spacious than it seemed, but it was dirty and missing a seatbelt. Not the best way to start a trip, huh?
Mom worked until 3:00, and Stephanie and I tried to tie up all of our last-minute errands and arrangements. We were planning on leaving around 3:00am, so I wanted to get a good night’s sleep, but the American Idol finale was on and I wasn’t going to miss that, so I got less sleep than was ideal. Compounding on that, our A/C went out, making it nearly impossible to sleep anyways. We put all the fans with grandma, so Stephanie and I were super hot.
Mom woke us up at 2:30am and we packed up the car, secured the house and then drove over to Walgreens for some drinks before hitting the road for the 13.5 hour trek to New Jersey around 4:00am. Stephanie thought it was cool that we would be hitting two major cities in one day because our drive took us right through the gorgeous Chicago skyline.
We were quickly in Indiana (which is always the worst part of the drive since the stench is unavoidable and it’s boring to drive through) and were glad that the sun was coming up early. It would be easier to stay awake and drive in the sunlight than it would to drive in the dark. Stephanie and I were jonesing for a McDonalds breakfast, but there wasn’t a McDonald’s to be seen, so we stopped at a Hardees when we stopped for gas at an Oasis. The breakfast was gross and wouldn’t you know it, we passed a McDonalds 15 miles later.
We escaped Indiana a few hours later and found ourselves in Ohio, which was pleasant to drive through and had the BEST rest stops. They had a variety of food choices (we stopped for Einstein bagels and coffee) and the cleanest restrooms I’ve ever seen at a rest stop in all of my travels. We also found our first signs to NYC!
Indiana and Ohio were quick drives and we found ourselves entering Pennsylvania around 10:00am. The sign welcoming you to Pennsylvania should really say “Welcome to Pennsylvania, Good Luck Getting Out” because it was seriously the longest drive EVER. It was picturesque with lots of mountains and green hills, but it was never ending. We entered Pennsylvania just after 10:00am and didn’t escape until early evening. To say the drive was long and tedious would be an understatement.
Not long after we found ourselves in New Jersey (and in traffic), we found ourselves in Jersey City and approaching our hotel. Jersey City reminded us a lot of our favorite area in Atlanta (Buckhead). It was urban and upscale, close to the city but quiet. We parked the car in the adjacent self-parking garage (which belonged to the shopping mall next door) and Mom and I ran in to check in. I had requested a Manhattan view room on a high floor, and they gave us just that: a room with a view of lower Manhattan/Battery Park (where the WTC was) on the 21st floor, which was a preferred guest floor. The room was spacious and immaculately clean. The bathroom had marble counters and a shower with dual heads. The view was spectacular. We certainly wouldn’t have gotten that much space for such a low price in Manhattan.
A few days before check-in, the hotel manager emailed me asking me for our check-in time so they could prepare for our arrival and encouraging us to ask for any help we may need with planning our trip. We found an apple and a bottle of water complementary from him when we went into the room.
After we checked the room to make sure it was satisfactory, we ran back to the car to get grandma and Stephanie. The only down point with this hotel was the fact that it didn’t have it’s own parking facilities. With grandma, it’s so much easier for us to self-park, but the self-parking facilities were a good seven-minute walk outside to the entrance of the hotel on an incline. It took a long time for us to get the luggage up, too (though we probably should have pulled up, dropped off the luggage, and then parked).
We considered taking the train into Manhattan for dinner, but we were SO exhausted and it was SO hot outside. We decided to get some pizza delivered to the hotel and watch the Ugly Betty finale and rest for our big day in the city the next day, so we called down to concierge to ask for recommendations for pizza delivery places. You can guess what they gave us: Dominos pizza and Uno’s Chicago Pizzeria. We were massively disappointed since we wanted New York pizza, or at least something we didn’t have at home, but we were starving so we sucked it up.
Stephanie and Mom ordered a pepperoni pizza, I got a Mac and Cheese pasta bowl and grandma got a sausage/marinara pasta bowl (which I forgot to take a pic of).
We collapsed in the mega comfy beds not long after eating and went to bed. We had lots of plans for the next day and we needed all the rest we could get.
Up Next: Tiffany’s, Tea Time and Our First Day in NYC
