The Long Road to Cabo, a Carnival Panorama Review: Day 5 – Sea Dayfeatured
There’s this TikTok account that Stephanie is obsessed with — some dog who’s owner wakes him up and decides if it’s a “Bones Day” or a “No Bones Day.” If it’s a Bones Day, you’re up, at it and ready to take on the world. If it’s a No Bones Day, you just settle in and roll (Ed. note: RIP Noodle the Pug).
We woke up for our first sea day and it was cloudy and cold — it was a no bones day.
Lazy sea days are some of my favorite sea days. Part of me wished that we had some warm sun — our pale Chicago skin could desperately use it — but days where you just kind of roll with it? Those are pretty awesome, too. And Carnival absolutely excels at fun sea days. Lazy ones, active ones, it’s impossible to go bored on a Carnival cruise.
We threw on the warmest clothes we had (matching Jingle Jammies — who packs for a Mexico cruise expecting cold weather?!) and headed upstairs to the Lido deck for a quick breakfast. I had one thing on the brain: arepas. Up at the Blue Iguana Cantina, they have these breakfast arepas that are just heaven. Melty cheese folded in between sweet griddled cornbread? It’s SO good. It’s possibly my favorite thing to eat on a cruise ship. It had been a long three years since I had one. They were every bit as good as I remembered them.
Afterwards, we headed down to Ocean Plaza, which is the indoors activity hub of the ship. There was a game of giant Jenga going on. We grabbed some coffee at Ocean Blue and settled in to watch the games and relax. If you’re looking for a low-key breakfast option and don’t want to brave the Lido Marketplace, they do a nice mini breakfast buffet out on Ocean Plaza. Most people don’t know it’s there, so it’s a nice spot to grab a quieter breakfast.
When lunchtime rolled around, we unanimously agreed to do sea day brunch in the MDR. I think Carnival does probably the best job of any of the major cruise lines with their quick service food on the Lido deck (especially on newer ships — the number of made-to-order options beyond the standard buffet is incredible), but we’re brunch girls. And it was Christmas. We don’t observe Christmas, but it felt festive and we just love the spirit of the holidays (even if we celebrate a different one!). We used our Platinum drink vouchers for a round of mimosas, toasted to our holiday vacay and ordered up our faves (that french toast? Drooling just thinking about it).
We kind of slow rolled the rest of the day from there (it was a no bones day, after all!). There would be plenty of time over the week to come to enjoy the activities and the ship, so we headed back to our rooms and enjoyed some much-needed fresh air on the balcony. We watched movies. At some point, I took a nap and Stephanie went down to see the Christmas show (which she said was very festive and fun!).
Later on, we did one of my favorite cruise activities — wander around the ship aimlessly (this may sound like a joke, but I’m not kidding. Wandering around to see what I can find is probably my favorite thing to do just about anywhere). We grabbed some fresh out of the oven pizza and brought it down to Ocean Plaza, where we lost a rousing round of Broadway trivia (not to be confused with Name That Showtune, which I crush at). It was relaxing, it was mindless and it was exactly what we needed.
I think having done so many active cruises over the past few years, where we’re in a new port every day and we’re up before the sun to get ready, spending hours on buses to get half the time we spend commuting in an incredible destination, it’s given me a greater appreciation for the slower ones. The journeys where you don’t have much to recount from your day, but it was fun, it was relaxing and you just feel like a new and better version of yourself — I’m starting to like those nearly just as much.
Our first sea day brought our first formal night. Formal nights aren’t really a thing anymore, but all three of us work remote jobs and rarely find much opportunity to get dressed up anymore, so that’s just part of the fun for us. And with it being Christmas Day, we found our fellow cruisers were also leveling up their attire for the evening. We took a round of (obligatory) family shots on the balcony and (equally obligatory) pictures with the decorations in the lobby before we headed off to dinner.
We’re not home for Christmas much anymore, but when we were, we usually went for Chinese (we’re Jewish, that’s what you do. Literally — nothing else is open). One of the things I love about cruising over the holidays is they have special menus for big holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years. They’re a little leveled up, too. The dining room was surprisingly not busy — maybe our fellow cruisers were at the specialty restaurants, or later diners than we are — so we had the full attention of an incredible staff, and an equally impressive meal to dine on.
After dinner, we took a stroll around the ship and admired all of the festivity and ended in the Liquid Lounge for our first production show, Broadway Beats. I love a good show and I especially love a good Broadway show. I still wax poetic about that time we saw Rock Down Broadway on the Carnival Pride (or maybe it was the Liberty? Or the Valor? That late-2000s glut of cruises we took while Stephanie and I were in college/funemployment/our lost years all blend together). This show had the potential to be one of the better 2.0 productions — good setlist, the animatronic backgrounds weren’t horribly distracting — but we couldn’t get the full production because of Covid protocols. We got a “concert” style show, where the singers sang the set list from their (socially distanced) chairs. Sometimes, they’d stand up and if they got wild, crossed the stage and tossed out an arm while they belted. They even brought the lasers out. But it just wasn’t the same.
Mom headed to bed after the show, and Stephanie and I headed to the other side of the ship for a nightcap at the Havana Bar. What good is that drink package if all you’re going to get with it are lattes and Vitacocos, right? The live music was popping, the dance floor was full and the drinks were strong.
We called it a night after round two and made it back to the room to find our Platinum sweet plate had been delivered. Mom must had called for them earlier in the day (remember the good old days when they’d just, you know, show up?). There was another sea day ahead of us with an itinerary change that had come in a few weeks before our sailing. We didn’t know if it was going to be a bones day or a no bones day, but at this point, we’d just settle for some sunlight and temperatures above 65 degrees.
