New Year’s Cruise from Tampa: Sail into the New Year

Even though my 2021 New Year’s Cruise didn’t quite go as planned, I had had such a nice time on my 2019 Cruise, I wanted to give it another shot. I booked a four night Western Caribbean Holiday Cruise on the Royal Caribbean Brilliance of the Seas out of Tampa. I had enjoyed my aft balcony so much on my previous cruise that I jumped at the chance to book another for this cruise. Aft balconies are often bigger, and this one certainly fit that bill.

My Happy Place

This cruise only had one port, Cozumel, in between two days at sea, and of course, I used that time to take full advantage of my balcony. If I wasn’t on the balcony, I was probably eating in the outdoor seating area at the aft of the buffet. That really was the bulk of my cruise, staring at the wake and enjoying being outside in the sun.

Of course, I also did my morning walks around the track, watching as the sun came up and burning off some of that buffet food. I did not get a drinks package for this trip, instead choosing to purchase drinks as I wanted them. Also, unlike some other cruise lines, Royal Caribbean allows passengers to bring on a bottle of wine or champagne and up to twelve standard size non-alcoholic drinks onboard.

When I booked my cruise, there were no My Time dining options available, so I had to choose between the 5:30 and 8:00pm traditional dining times. I’m not a night owl, so 8:00pm is too late for me. I selected the 5:30pm slot, but never actually made it to the dining room for dinner. When my choice was between watching the sunset from my balcony or eating dinner with strangers, I opted for the sunset each night. I thought the buffet food was really good as well, so that was fine with me.

Watching College Football on a Cruise

One day, my college football team was playing, and as luck would have it, the game was available to watch on board. The Brilliance of the Seas has a bar named simply as The Pub where there were TVs available and good service. Some other fans were there as well, so watching the game was fun and a little bit social. Unfortunately, The Pub didn’t serve and food, but we made do with the small sandwiches offered at Cafe Lattetudes and an extremely overpriced can of Pringles from the gift shop.

Cruise Stop in Cozumel

In Cozumel, I was only off the ship for a brief time. A neighbor had asked me to look for a particular brand of tequila in the port shops, but I was unable to find it. My balcony had great sun all day, and I enjoyed watching the people come and go from the port. I especially enjoyed watching for the pier runners as it was getting close to departure. This night was also New Year’s Eve, and for the second year in a row, I decided I’d rather get a good night of sleep than to stay awake until midnight and party.

Disembarkation Delayed by Fog

The most interesting and exciting part of this trip was on the way back. The last night, a fog rolled in in the evening. I had heard about issues getting into Tampa during fog, and started to think maybe we might have those issues too. Sure enough, when I woke the next morning, we were anchored outside of Tampa Bay along with two other cruise ships.

Our captain had tried to get back before they closed the channel, but we didn’t make it on time. We would have to wait until the fog burned off to get back to port. I was able to get some cool pictures from the upper decks of the other ships caught in the fog. You could only see their top decks, so it looked like a couple of ghost ships.

We ended up anchored until around 1:30pm, but it still took around four hours to get under the Skyway Bridge and back to the Tampa port. Going under the bridge was really cool. I had been outside to see it when we went out, but it was nighttime. This time we got to do it during the day, and it amazes me that these ships even fit. The bridge is the reason that only smaller cruise ships can sail out of Tampa, and when you watch the smoke stacks go under the bridge, you know why. It looked like an optical illusion, and I was sure we were going to hit, but we didn’t!

The delay caused a lot of issues for people, especially those with flights. It also caused a huge backup at the port for people who were missing out on the first day of their cruise. They wouldn’t end up boarding until around 9pm and would not make it to all of their ports as a result. Thankfully, I was driving, so it wasn’t much of an issue for me.

Since the ship employees are usually extremely busy on turnaround day, they asked us to all be out of our cabins by 12:30pm. We could leave some packed belongings, if needed, in the closet, but had to spend the rest of the day in public areas. It wasn’t ideal, but there was still plenty of food and drinks to go around, so we made the best of it.

This was a good cruise, and while not necessarily one of my favorites, it was certainly memorable.