Cruise 2017---Pre-Cruise

I had two posts last year?! I might have had more but I made some private since I was in the job market. You can see how the last few months of 2017 went for me HERE. 
So many changes in such a short time!

Oct 2017 was our 20th wedding anniversary. I knew we needed a cruise. We hadn't had a trip together, without the kids (or ANY night without the kids) since our cruise in October 2011.  In around March, I "made" Rob come in to see our travel agent. She suggested Celebrity but they had only long (10-11 day) cruises in October to the southern Caribbean. I really wanted to do a southern itinerary. She found a deal on Adventure of the Seas out of San Juan on October 14. Yes, we'd miss our actual anniversary but we've done that before. It was a mid-ship balcony. Great! Rob wanted to put the hold on it and do some research.

So we came home and he started Googling. He agreed that the ship looked like an okay size (he had previously said this class was "too small") and was pleased it had been updated. Then he started reading reviews that the food had gone downhill. And. He realized we'd be flying on Friday the 13th. Now, he's a pretty logical guy. I was surprised by his wish to not fly that day! We went back to the agent and she said that really the only other thing available (without going to other lines) was the Celebrity cruises. One would leave just before Thanksgiving, but we'd be on the ship for our anniversary. The kids...grandparents...PA Day at the start of Thanksgiving...10 day cruise plus one hotel night? More days, slightly cheaper, but no balcony. Oh... hard choice. The Celebrity trip won.

Late August comes, and Hurricane Harvey. I realized that we had previously looked at a Royal cruise out of Galveston, for that very week, and that ship was now on it's way to Florida to avoid the storm. Phew. Dodged that bullet! Then, Hurricane Irma. We watched and waited to see what would happen to Key West. I hadn't been thrilled to have KW on our itinerary, but then I discovered we would actually be there on the same day, twenty years after we were there on our honeymoon! Cruises immediately pulled KW from their routes. Sad, but hopefully it would be replaced with a nice place we hadn't been before. Nope, Celebrity added Falmouth, Jamaica. Bleh.
 Then Hurricane Jose. Never before, in the months prior to a cruise, have I paid so much attention to hurricanes! We were deeply saddened for everyone, especially Sint Martin. It wasn't on our itinerary, so we looked forward.

And then, Hurricane Marie. San Juan! So thankful we had changed our plans! So sad for the people! Then it turned towards Florida. We watched CNN for hours that night. Where would it hit?! Miami was flooding, it was a mess, and  was our hotel even still operational? We were leaving in just a month. We gave it a couple days and called the hotel. Rob found out that a major, main portion of the hotel was under construction. He wasn't pleased. So he cancelled that and picked another hotel, close to where we stayed in 2008. It looked like things were improving daily in Miami so while we kept an eye on the forecasts, we kept up with pre-trip preparations. For me, that included two job interviews LOL.