On Day 6 of our Harmony of the Seas cruise, we were back in Cozumel - this time as originally scheduled. Once again, no plans to leave the ship!


Rachel and I went to work out this morning. The gym was the least crowded I had seen it. I had plenty of room in the free weights area, and there was no wait for the Smith machine.

We had to hurry and finish our workout because we had made plans with Judy and Stove to eat breakfast at Johnny Rockets. The breakfast at Johnny Rockets is actually not included in the specialty dining package - it's free for everyone on the ship! A nice upgrade to the Windjammer, that's for sure.




I ordered the Patty 'n Eggs, and it's literally a hamburger patty with eggs! It's good, though - I'm not complaining. The eggs here are much better than that strange liquid they try to pass off as eggs in the buffet. And I am 100% down to have beef for breakfast. I am the opposite of Leslie Knope - I could care less about eating breakfast foods at other times of the day and rather wonder why non-breakfast foods are prohibited in the AM.


We were in port with the Carnival Legend.




And docked right next to the Liberty of the Seas. I have not been on the Liberty, but I have been on her sister ship, the Independence of the Seas, also part of the Freedom class. The slides off the back of the Liberty look pretty cool -



My mom was telling us that she didn't know how that rope got down there to tie us off to the dock. We were so surprised. Really? You haven't seen them throw the line out and reel in the ropes? I took a photo for her -


So today was a big adventure day. Our plan was to do all of the fun activities that we haven't done yet while we're docked in Cozumel. For one, many passengers were off the ship which meant less of a wait for us. Also, never wait until the last day of a cruise to do anything outdoors that might be weather-permitting. You never know when they might shut down activities due to rain or high winds.


First up, we were back at the Flowrider. Stove was ready to try his hand and the flowboard. Rachel and I had cut our wristbands off last evening for formal night, and we'd done the flowboard before on Navigator of the Seas and weren't super enthusiastic about trying again. It was Stove's time to shine.


There's a lot of people who only flowride on vacation, but get really good at it. I've also met people that actually book their vacations around where Flowriders are located. I haven't gotten into Flowriding like that yet, but maybe one day I'll be out there impressing all the kids on the surf simulator.



Get ready, Stove!


His first time out was a little rocky. Stove isn't a boarder - he skis both on the slopes and behind a boat, so this is a new stance for him.


Alright!



Again, I was having a fun time taking video and photos.


Stove went back for a second time!


Wipeout!


They had already closed the line, so Stove wasn't able to try for a third time, but we hung around to watch everyone else. Like I said before, it's pretty entertaining just to watch.

Now this is something that I'm interested in - Private Lessons! I'm the kind of person that wants to do things over and over and over again until I get the hang of it, so a private lesson format would be much better for me to learn.



Not sure how these people were putting up with the heat on the mini golf course...


Warnings and instructions posted by the Flowrider -


You know someone is a confident Flowrider when they go out in a bikini. She didn't fall.





We took a photo to commemorate his Flowrider success.





At the forward end of the Promenade, in the same location that Rising Tides is at the aft side, there is a large area with iPads for booking Shore Excursions. This area rarely had people and seemed like a large waste of space.


The rest of the Shinglebells went up to the pool deck, and I decided to do a little photo tour of the ship. Here's some photos of the gym. It was not crowded at all! This is the very large treadmill and elliptical area.


This is the room where they host classes. You can see the tie-offs for the TRX straps hanging from the ceiling. When this room is not being used for class, it's a great multipurpose area for abs and circuits.


Here's some of the weight machines.


Ahhh, the free weight area! I wish it were larger, but I understand why it's not. Most people who work out on vacation tend to just hop on the treadmill. There's also greater safety risk in the free weight area... you don't really want people over here that don't know what they're doing.


Stair climbers! This is a pretty large amount compared to the total number of machines.


This is the spa area. You have to walk through here to get to the gym.


Very large area here for product sales... probably too large.



All morning, they had these lifts in the Promenade and were removing the snowflake lights from the ceiling. Don't worry - they only shattered one. See the only barriers they had around the lift are temporary stanchions.... and they only stanchioned off one side, so if you were walking form the other side, you could happen to accidentally wander right into the lift.


Since there were no crowds in the gym, I actually went back to workout more. It was just myself and two other guys in the free weights area, and it was really great.

For lunch, we headed to Central Park Cafe.


Rachel wants you to know that this is her salad that she had not yet eaten... that's all the salad that the stingy salad server gave her.


Seeing that, I made sure to get two different types of leaves and just kept asking for more. I got a much better salad here.


Alright, everyone raves about the Roast Beef Sandwich with Horseradish from the Central Park Cafe. Someone from our Facebook group referred to it as "Fan-freakin-tabulous."

I'm about to offend a lot of people here..... I've had much better Roast Beef Sandwiches. This did not impress. In my opinion, the bread was too hard, and just too much bread to sandwich ratio. Also, I love horseradish, and it needed more. If I were to get this sandwich again, I would ask them to double.... maybe even triple the amount of horseradish! And then the meat was just okay. It was a little tough.... the sandwich just wasn't great.


When we returned to our room, there was a tray of desserts from the manager of 150 Central Park. We never complained to the manager. We didn't complain to anyone other than our server.... we just left before dessert. So I guess the server must've elevated it to the manager, and this is a nice little apology.


Time for an adventurous afternoon! We set out to do all of the things, which included the Abyss Slide, Ziplining across the Boardwalk, and we even had the Escape Room booked!

Alright, time to zipline! Again, no GoPros allowed (despite GoPros being used in recent marketing campaigns). This is the strictest zipline I've ever been on. They made me change my shoes into velcro shoes because my tennis shoes were slip-on, and that wasn't allowed. I argued that my shoes were not sandals - they were secure around my entire foot and would not fall off my feet. They told me that it didn't matter - the shoes didn't have laces, so I couldn't wear them. I still think that's a stupid rule. In order for my shoes to come off, I'd need to forcefully kick them off with my feet, and I could arguably do that with my shoes even if they had laces on. But they didn't write the rules and are only tasked with enforcing them.

The zipline is very short and not super thrilling, but still fun. It's a lot of hassle for such a short little zip, so after Rachel and I had our turn, we asked if we could go again since there wasn't a line, and they let us on for another turn.


There are actually two mirrored slides for Abyss. This is a dry slide, not a water slide, and you sit on a mat to go down. You are not allowed to wear a swimsuit or wet clothes on this slide. You need to be dry. It takes you from the 13th deck down to the 6th deck, and would be a great alternative to the stairs/elevator, except the operating hours are so limited. We actually sent Judy to take the slide down to Deck 6 for speed once, but it was closed - bummer!


They have two mat sizes - one for kids and one for adults. Rachel and I were handed the ones because we're small adults. Whenever there's a slide with a tube or something that you ride on, I'm usually given the one for kids. It goes back to my my surface area explanation for speed and slides - a larger tube/mat has greater surface area, and I don't have the weight to accelerate with that increased surface area. Minimize the surface area, and I'm sliding right along!

What a drop! It actually doesn't feel that steep inside. It's fully enclosed and dark, but they have lights and noise effects which I guess make it more thrilling?


Unfortunately, the do not allow photography or videography on the slide. I hate it when some people ruin it for the rest of us.... but that's what happens now that everyone's walking around with a camera (phone) in their pocket and needs to update Instagram on their daily whereabouts. I was able to go down the slide with my GoPro, I just had to put it in the bottom of the little mat "sack" that you sit on. It was very tempting to pull it out and film, but I was being a rule follower.


It's very windy at the top of the slide, and I'm sure that high winds and inclement weather would close the slide, so don't leave this for the last sea day!

Creeper shot by Stove. That's me following the rules....


After Abyss, we realized that we were cutting it close to our Escape Room reservation at 4 PM. Also, we didn't realize where the Escape Room was located.... for some reason we thought it was on a lower deck, but it's actually located up on Deck 13 by the kid's club....

So we arrived, and there's a bunch of people, and a crew member is saying, "Rachel? Boyd?" "Yep! We're here!" Then she told us to go ahead and get to know the other passengers there because we'd all be working together as a team.

Um.... what?

I have done my fair share of escape rooms.... I live in Los Angeles. I started doing escape rooms before they were featured on every family sitcom. And I accidentally got my good friend addicted to escape rooms, and he is very competitive, so when I go to an escape room, I show up to get out. In every escape room I've ever done, it's been a maximum of 6 or 8 people. I would argue that 8 people is actually too many to have in one room in order to be efficient and solve the puzzle. The more people you have, the more confusing it gets. And we were about to go into an escape room with 12 people. Even worse..... there were five kids (well, technically three kids and two teens).

To be clear, I do not hate children. But I also don't love children. And I'm very competitive. So I was really disappointed that I'd have to go into this room with all of these kids because when there are kids in the room, you have to step back and let the kids do it or else you look like a competitive jerk.

The name of the room is Escape the Rubicon. The Rubicon is a space ship. I didn't bring my camera, but I brought my GoPro, and I have a lot of footage of the frustrating experience that was happening inside.


You get 60 minutes and three hints to escape. The Rubicon is one room. I've been in more complex Escape Rooms that take you from room to room, but this is not one of them. You're in the same room the entire time. Another thing that differentiated this escape room from others I've done in the past is that the crew member stayed in the room with her the entire time.... that job must suck. Usually, they watch you on security cameras and can overcomm into the room if you need hints or are doing something very wrong that might break the room. It feels more real that way.

Now, I've done my fair share of Escape Rooms, but this was a first for Rachel, Mom, and Dad. And I really thought it was just going to be the four of us together in one room for some fun family bonding - otherwise, I wouldn't have suggested we book it.

But no. We were in there with two other families. And they all really wanted to think that they were good at Escape Rooms, but they weren't. So, things start off and the Shinglebells are all a little hands off because you know, gotta let the kids do it..... and the kids sure thought they were doing it. But spoiler - Rachel actually solved every puzzle.

**Okay, up until this point, I haven't given spoilers. If you want to do this escape room and want to know absolutely nothing about it, skip ahead after the next photo. These won't be specific spoilers, but I do talk about some parts of the puzzle.***

There was one translation bit. We were given a hint and told exactly what to do. So I stayed back and thought, "Oh, they're figuring it out." No...... they didn't understand the hint! So I grabbed Rachel and told her how to do the translation, and she translated the entire alphabet while teen girl and her mother were over there not understanding why the words didn't match.

Then we get to a bit where again, we got a hint and were told exactly what to do. Rachel has to call out colors, and the kids just have to push the colored buttons when she tells them to. Super easy. Well, the first kid was too short to push the buttons because they're high on the wall. So then the teens come over, but I think one of them was colorblind because he consistently pressed orange instead of red which meant that we had to start the entire pattern all over again.

We didn't get out of the Escape Room. We were at the very last puzzle, but something just wasn't lining up. And we wasted critical time doing the tasks that we were given by hints.

I asked the Shinglebells for their Escape Room reviews and Judy said, "Locked in a room with dorks for an hour," followed by, "Did we pay for that?"

Yes! It was $22/person, which is comparable to an escape room price in Los Angeles.... but in LA you get your own private room with up to 6 or 8 people.

Rachel's feedback is that there should be an adults-only option, and I agree. It's just not fair to mix adult-only groups with children. We're paying the same price as everyone else, but our experience was negatively affected because we had to stand back and let the children pretend to solve the puzzles. And that would be totally fine with me if those were my kids.... but they were stranger's kids, and I wanted to win!!!

We joked later about how funny it would have been if we had gone into the escape room and acted like we thought it was real. We could have gone super hardcore, "WE'RE WASTING TIME!! MOVE IT KID - THE SHIP IS GOING TO EXPLODE IF YOU DON'T GET OUT OF THE WAY! DO YOU WANT TO DIE???"

So to wrap up this review of the escape room... it sucked that we paid money for that.

We got back to our stateroom in time to watch us sail away from Cozumel. I set up the GoPro for a fun sailaway timelapse.



Good-bye, Liberty of the Seas!







I used this suction mount to attach the GoPro to the railing, and you'll see I also have security cables on there, just in case it wiggled loose.




Rachel and I started the evening at Rising Tides with Expresso Martinis. Can I recommend these enough?



Judy and Stove caught up with us after the Diamond Lounge.


Tonight was the second formal night.Originally, we were booked for a second night at Jamie's Italian, but since we had already tried everything on the menu at Jamie's, we decided to switch it up. There wasn't any availability for Izumi. And our little fiasco at 150 Central Park the night before didn't make us eager to go back. We decided to book another reservation at Sabor. When we dined there the first night, we kept it light since we thought we were going to do a second dinner at Izumi. Also, there was plenty of availability - Sabor isn't the most popular signature restaurant, especially not for Formal Night.



The Shinglebells are not above eating Mexican food in formal attire.



Time to praise the food at Sabor. Shingle bells loooooovee chips with our salsa. Sabor doesn't disappoint.


Spicy Beef Empanada - delicious!


Fried Chili Calamari - also amazing.


Can I interest you in Chicken-Stuffed Jalapenos wrapped in Bacon? Because they're as amazing as they sound.


Red Snapper Ceviche -


Build-Your-Own Tacos with Shredded Beef Short Rib. THIS is the best short rib on the ship, hands down!




Overall, I really enjoyed Sabor (again). It's a fun, casual atmosphere. Service was great. The food was great. It's not very popular, and I don't understand why - but for the time being, it's a great hidden gem. Give it a try!

We returned to our rooms to this sad sight.... luggage tags.


Also these fun towel dudes.


I like the bat.


After dinner, we went to Dazzles to hang out, then decided to go watch the Quest. The Shinglebells were once hardcore Quest players, but we haven't really participated on our past few cruises. Now we just sit in the back and watch.

I appreciated this (very dangerous!!!) human pyramid Quest. They won't let you wear non-laced tennis shoes on the zipline or go down a slide with a GoPro, but go ahead - MAKE A HUMAN PYRAMID ON A MOVING SHIP!!!


I'd also like to point out that no one signed waivers for this.



We returned to Dazzles. We really enjoyed this performing group - they're super talented.


See you tomorrow at sea!