This Christmas I am more than excited than many other years because we are going on a trip to celebrate the Holidays. I can only remember one other time in my life that we traveled during the holiday season, so this is definitely a special occasion.
After the crazy year of 2020 and now 2021 my family decided we needed to get out of town the week between Christmas and New Years, so we were not just sitting around the house doing nothing. Since we all have over a week off of work and school we decided to hop back on one of our favorite ships, the Carnival Horizon and stay in the Havana Club to enjoy a 5 day cruise in our own relaxing haven.
Unfortunately, about a month out from our trip we got word that the Carnival Horizon was having propulsion issues and would need to be sent to dry dock immediately. Dry dock is simply the term for a cruise ship “going into shop” to get work done. However, fortunately for us they can get another ship to take us on our trip. This was not the case for the month of sailings prior to our holiday cruise. All of those trips were canceled.
The real bummer in all of this is that the new ship will not have the Havana Club, meaning we will be back in a normal balcony room sharing a pool and hot tub with everyone else. While we were really looking forward to having a cabana like room setting as well as access to a private pool, 2 hots tubs, and a private bar we are choosing to look at the bright side. We still get to go on our tip unlike others before us, Carnival has given each of our 2 rooms $250 in on board credit, and now we are booking our own private mountain side cabana in the Dominican Republic.
I am also hopeful that the one thing to go wrong on our trip has already happened, and our continued stress over pre-boarding covid testing will go over smoothly and provide us all with negative results.
So, keep your fingers crossed for me because this has already been a vacation to remember, but hopefully some fun and great memories are awaiting us once again in the Caribbean.