Cruise Archives - Escapes From The Little Red Dot

It wasn’t a really restful night as K as woken up a couple of times, probably not used to sleeping on his own and on a sofa bed. That also meant that I had to get up a couple of times with him as well.

However, for whatever reason, I got up at 7 and checking the direction of our balcony, I am thrilled to know that we were facing the East direction. K was also awoken at the same time, which was great considering we had to get to breakfast early today. While everyone else got prepared, simultaneously I also got to enjoy the sunrise out at the horizon, a little cloudy but I will take it.

We left for the breakfast at the main buffet restaurant known as the Lido and was given at table at the entrance pretty quickly. It wasn’t really busy probably because people on cruise don’t wake up that early. There was quite a variety of food and I was pretty impressed by the presence of eggs benedict! The food variety were standard choices from an international selection, though the quality of food wasn’t fantastic. The staff did a good job serving the buffet tho since I didn’t see long lines of disgruntled customers.

We finished our breakfast rather quickly and returned to the room to get into our swim gear for swimming! Since we already gotten a 1 hr slot at the main pool and the jacuzzi at 9am, we were going to enjoy it. Arrived and we lined up to check in and retrieve the towels. We managed to get a sun bench and left our things there. Mommy and K proceeded straight to the hot tub jacuzzi and I tried the main pool. The water was quite cold though that didn’t stop the swimmers from going in! The size of the pool was actually quite pathetic comparing to a standard size pool (but what do you expect?) made worse by the surrounding ankle deep pool perimeter and the depth of the pool was slightly more than 1m deep. K came in to the main pool to do a bit of the kicking but found it too cold to continue and prefer to stay at the jacuzzi. While we had booked the jacuzzi, it meant that we had the full usage of it for the entire 1hr for 2 persons (that meant 1 of us have to stay outside) and this was strictly controlled by the staff there. At times when we left the jacuzzi, other people would use but we wouldn’t mind as long as it was returned when we wanted to use.

The jacuzzi at the foreground and the main pool is at the back

We didn’t stay the entire 1hr and after 30mins, K wanted to go to the waterpark. We stood outside the waterpark, second in line and found that the waterpark was not opened to the public yet and only so at 10am. Probably the kids from the Palace was getting priority usage as we saw people playing inside. While we lamented the “unfairness” in this (as some of the guests there have discussed with us), it would have been better to made it clear upfront. As we stood in the sun waiting in line, mommy and I entertained ourselves with some morning aerobics that was being taught on stage by a trainer, except K who wasn’t having any of that and was getting annoyed with waiting. It’s the school holidays and apparently all the kids were onboard.

I went to the booking station to try and get another slot for the next day leaving mommy and K to continue in line because ultimately, the waterpark has to have one adult to accompany one kid. The line at the booking station was long as usual, and when its time for me to book, I was informed that all slots for swimming and jacuzzi was already filled except a jacuzzi slot at 10-11am at the Zouk Beach bar – I took it.

Returning to the waterpark, i found mommy and K already inside and doing a few rounds of slides while the line outside continued to form. Since my time was already up for the pool or the jacuzzi, I could only watch from outside. The sun was blazing hot, so hot that I am no longer wet from the pool but already starting to sweat! K didn’t stay too long, and they were soon out as the staff prompted mommy and K to leave to allow others in line to use the waterpark. Upon exit, mommy and K went to queue for another slide, but this queue was faster since it was only a slide and it was guaranteed to move as people complete their slide. 2 rounds of that and we returned back to the room for a quick shower.

The faster moving slide though there is a queue too!

Spent some time on the room playing Nintendo Switch (which somehow I failed to connect to the TV) and then we left for lunch. We choose the Dining Room (upper room this time) serving Chinese for our lunch place and was served the set soon after settling down. I may be still feeling a little bloated from the morning breakfast but the food quality here was also a little lacklustre though portions were definitely enough for the 3 of us.

To help us digest, we took a walk around the cruise ship to explore. We first made a booking for dinner at the Umi Uma Japanese restaurant but was advised that all the slots for Teppanyaki and their Korean cuisine promotion fully was taken for the same day and the next day. We could still have their ala carte, but as much as it was disappointing, we made a reservation.

There was a luxury shopping spot with mostly watches and some leather products and jewellery from some high end brands but nothing caught our fancy (or rather, we can’t really afford them).

Shopping options of mostly luxury items like watches and bags

We wanted to go to the afternoon session of the kid’s club that begin at 2pm, and knowing how high in demand the kid’s club was, we went at 130pm and found the queue formed already. And the space have all been taken up! (only 15 children per time of 2 hrs session). What were we thinking, we were up against Singaporeans, professional queuers! With nothing much to do, we went to the drink bar at the reception level 6 and ordered a cake and some coffee and watch a game show that was being hosted by the staff. It was about guessing the name of the Korean band that was showed onscreen and the winner with the most correct guesses would get some prize. Later, as they started to sell popcorn, we also got ourselves a small bucket for 3bucks which we brought back to the room eventually.

The rest of the afternoon was spent teaching K some maths times table, a bit of TV (K had a sudden liking for Boonie Bears) while I took a quick shut eye followed by UNO card game. In an instance, we were just 10mins from the Magic show that we booked for the 545pm slot and we quickly rushed to the Zodiac theatre to check in.

Queuing up to enter the Zodiac theatre for the magic show

The 45mins show was in a pretty huge theatre but due to safe distancing, it was only at most half filled. The show consisted a mix of juggling and mostly magic and interactions with the audience was down so differently, each step was managed with quite an emphasis on sanitisation. The tricks were pretty good I think though I was expecting something more wowing, as the ones that were shown were more the “how did he know that” type.

K got himself a magic trick box set and some light sticks for 18bucks and we returned to the room to dress up for our dinner at the specialty Japanese restaurant of Umi Uma. Ordered the udon for K, a California hand roll and sushi for myself (still full from the constant eating) and Salmon for mommy, and we were satisfied at the end of the delicious meal.

After dinner, we went to level 6 again to walk around and this time, to the small games arcade there to play a couple of games to try win some tickets. We managed to get more tickets on one of the ball machines with a stroke of luck! Then we went on to explore the top deck of the ship since Mommy haven’t seen the Zouk Beach club that had an open air cinema. We also visited the Palm court that was supposedly a bar with a view and then we stayed on at the level 18 to view the laser show at 9pm, which we didn’t realise that it was still available for viewing and that it didn’t require prior booking!

That was the last of the activity before returning to the room and preparing for bed. Played with a couple of the magic tricks from the box set we got earlier before going to bed.