Is this short cruise for you? Margaritaville at Sea Review

Well, I did it. I took a micro cruise. I took a two night cruise on the Margaritaville at Sea Paradise cruise ship out of the port of Palm Beach. This is my review. Hey, hey, hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to La Lido Loca. I'm your host, Tony, here with a cruise review. In this review, I would like to share with you the process of getting to the cruise port, what it's like to embark on the cruise ship, what the food is like, what the cabin is like, how much everything costs, what the port stop is like, port stop, singular port stop. We're going to talk about the general experience. We're going to talk about who I think this cruise ship is for. That's the lay of the land, so let's get on with it. I left my house here in Spring Hill, Florida and made my way to the port of Palm Beach. Now, it was about a four and a half hour drive and a pretty pleasant drive across Florida. When I got to the port of Palm Beach, my options for parking was to park somewhere offsite in Palm Beach, which I was unfamiliar with any parking sites there, or I could park at the cruise port, but there's no self-parking at the cruise port, so if you're going to park at the cruise port for your Margaritaville at Sea Cruise, you're going to have to give your car over to the valet. That's what I did. I did valet parking. The parking, $22 a day, so for the two-night cruise, it was $44. Once you've secured your valet parking, you're able to offload your luggage terminal side right there at the terminal, and there's someone there that will check your bags in to take them onto the cruise ship. I didn't have any bags to be carried onto the cruise ship. I was carrying all of my own luggage, so I went into the terminal to continue on with the embarkation process. I had to show my proof of vaccine. I had to show my negative COVID test, but this cruise line does have opportunities for unvaccinated guests. They also have opportunities for people that were unable to do their test at home, and the testing options were interesting. You could have brought one of your free government tests with you, and they would have watched you do it. They would have proctored it for you for less than them doing a test that they provided, so if you're going to cruise on this cruise line, you've got a lot of options when it comes to testing, whether you're vaccinated or not. It's interesting in that perspective. Of course, there was a security scan for the luggage that I was carrying, and then of course I had to go through a metal detector, and then I was onto the counter where I was able to check into my cabin. That process is not that much different than other cruise lines. Look at your passport, secure your payment method, give you your keys, that kind of thing. Now where it did get a little different, after I left that counter to check into my cabin, I went into another area where there was a lot of activity. They were selling drink packages, they were taking dinner reservations, and they were doing the safety drill in this area. As far as drinks go, they were selling a 10-pack of drinks for $99, which is a couple dollars less than what they would normally charge. I think they charge $12 or $13 for a cocktail. Also, you needed to make your dining time reservation there for their main dining room called Finn's. Also, if you wanted to make a reservation for the steakhouse, you could do that there. Again, there was a lot of activity going on even before you got on the cruise ship. Then there was a section where they were showing the safety video, and before you embarked on the cruise ship, they asked you to sit and watch the safety video. Now I sat down and I watched the safety video, but I noticed that other people that sat down about 30 seconds into it, they got up and just went onto the cruise ship. That was actually happening. I was kind of shocked there, but look, I'm very compliant. I just sat there and watched the safety video, and then I embarked onto the cruise ship. Before we get too much deeper, let's take a second and talk about this cruise ship. This is an old cruise ship, 30-year-old cruise ship. Margarita Village Sea used to be called Bahamas Paradise, and their model was to take older cruise ships and continue to have them in service, to continue to give that cruise experience. They used to have a two-ship fleet. They used to have an old carnival cruise ship called the Carnival Celebration, renamed the Grand Celebration, and then unfortunately during the pandemic, it was sold and scrapped, leaving them with just one cruise ship, an old Costa cruise ship called the Classica, which was renamed the Grand Classica, which has now been renamed Margaritaville at Sea Paradise, that has been rebranded for Margaritaville and has been updated in certain areas to reflect the Margaritaville theme. And look, when you get on the ship right away, you recognize it's an older cruise ship. It's an older design, fairly closed in, fairly blocky, small elevators. You get the sense that it's an older cruise ship, but even with it being old, it was very well-maintained. I didn't see rust pockets. It was clean, that kind of thing, so it was a nice balance. I didn't know what to expect jumping on a 30-year-old cruise ship, but yeah, definitely you can tell it's an older cruise ship, but fortunately, it was clean and appears to be well-maintained. Now, remember, this is just a two-night adventure. Really, the only reason I was on this cruise ship is we had some friends from our cruising community that really kind of goaded me into going. They were like, hey man, we're going to be on this ship, why don't you come hang out with us? Let's do a little two-day, see what this thing is like. So I met up with my friends Mike and Scott, and then later our friend Chuck joined all of us, and this is how we began our adventure. So I got to see Mike and Scott right when I got on the cruise ship, and fortunately right after I got on the cruise ship, cabins were available. And look, I was in for a big surprise that I did not know about. I thought I'd kept it low-key. I mean, I did talk about it a little bit that I was going on this cruise ship, but I like to pay my own way, and at the end of the video, I'm going to tell you every bit of money that I paid. You can decide whether or not it was worth it, but I guess I hadn't kept it as low-key as I thought, and the folks at Margaritaville at sea had caught wind of the fact that I was going to be on the cruise ship, and they did me a solid. They upgraded me to one of the suites on board. I noticed this at embarkation that I had a different cabin number than what I thought I was going to have, and there's only 10 suites on board, so I really got upgraded to a nice place. Let me just go ahead and show you some of the cabin. It was a nice, big two-room suite that had a nice living room area with a big TV and a table to sit and work or eat at, whatever. Of course, it had all the things. It had a safe and a refrigerator, and then it had a separate sleeping area that could be closed off, and then this cool bathroom that had a tub, like a jacuzzi tub, and a stand-up shower, and of course, a nice balcony, really nice digs for the two days that I was going to be on. I didn't expect it. I didn't reach out and ask for anything. It was a pleasant surprise, so I dropped my bags off, and we went and checked out the lunch buffet. I guess let's just talk about food here. The lunch buffet on day one, and I don't even think I have film of it. Here's some lunch buffet from day two. They had stuff, but this buffet was a little ... I feel like it could use some updating. Just even if you change the way the stations, they just look kind of older and sad. The food was good quality tasting food, but they had several proteins, several vegetables, breads, desserts, and another part of the buffet, they had a pasta station. They also had hamburgers, hot dogs, pretty average lunch buffet, and the food was decent quality. Again, the presentation of that buffet, that's someplace that if down the road, if the money is allowed or allotted, I would probably change the look of that buffet just to make it more visually appealing, but the service was great. The food was good. We did the lunch buffet, and then we moved into the sail away party. They had a great sail away party. You really start to sense what the vibe is like on this cruise ship. I'm going to talk about vibe later, but we had a nice sail away party, and I sailed away for the first time from the port of Palm Beach. Let's just take a second just so you can see it. I'll speed it up, but this is what it looks like to sail away from the port of Palm Beach. Now, I want to say sometime during the afternoon, I met the vice president of operations for Margaritaville at sea for the cruise line there. They used to be Bahamas Paradise. Also met the hotel manager. Met a lot of staff, super wonderful, nice people. She told me about the upgrade and all that, and we got invited to go to the bridge and to meet the captain, which was very cool. We got to meet the captain. I got to meet the CEO of the company. Again, I did not expect this extra attention, but it was really nice to meet the people that were behind this brand because I've always been intrigued by the Bahamas Paradise brand, the fact that they take older cruise ships and they provide a service. The service may not be as obvious looking from the outside in, so I'm going to talk more about that, but we did get invited to go spend time with the captain. That was really awesome, and I got some great insights from the captain. While we were there, they invited us to go to the steakhouse. We did not plan on going to the steakhouse. The steakhouse is a little expensive, but we got the invite to go to the steakhouse. That's where we had our meal the first night. Let me show you some of the steakhouse food. This food was phenomenal. However, this was expensive. There were four of us there, and it cost $384. Again, they gave us that. It was complimentary. Big ups to them for a really nice meal, but an expensive meal, so $384. I did add an additional gratuity to that, which obviously wasn't comp. I would recommend the steakhouse, but again, be prepared. You're going to be paying land-based prices for the steakhouse, but the food was phenomenal. After the steakhouse, we made our way quickly into the main theater for the Jimmy Buffet themed show. The show was called Jimmy's Ship Show, and I tell you what, it was fan-freaking-tastic. If you were a Jimmy Buffet fan, all the Jimmy Buffet hits were there. It was a lively show with a lot of audience participation in a theater where they were selling drinks and where there was a lot of comfortable seating. This is one of the things that I think this cruise line did amazing in the rebranding. They took the essence of Jimmy Buffet and put it in this show, and anybody that's a Jimmy Buffet fan would love this show. I'm not a huge Jimmy Buffet fan, and I love this show. I was really impressed how this one piece of entertainment really tied together all the different components of the Margaritaville at sea branding. It really gave you the sense that you were experiencing something different and something tied to Jimmy Buffet, something tied to Margaritaville. I can't recommend that show enough. Then we checked out a late night game show. We made our way to the casino. The casino, interesting casino, not super crowded. There weren't a lot of people gambling there. They had all the things, though. They had slot machines and blackjack. They had a craps table. They had roulette. They had all the things that you want, but I don't know that they had enough people in there for it to be popping, for it to be lively. It was kind of a hum-ho casino experience. If you're looking for a nice casino night out, at least on our cruise, it wasn't popping. That was it. That was the first day. I didn't really mean to go chronological in this review, but I thought that the first day really demonstrated that this was just like regular cruising. All the components of regular cruising is there. There was other events that we didn't even go to. There was karaoke, trivia, all kinds of stuff like that. One of the concerns I had jumping on a microcruise was, would this be like other cruise experiences? As I laid my head on the pillow on night one, well, it certainly was. As we transition into day two, I'll be less chronological about it. I just want to say about day two, we made our way to Grand Bahama. We made our way to the port of Freeport in Grand Bahama. We could have got there really quick. We could have got there between four and six hours, but we took all night to do it. That's significant, and I'll tell you why that's significant later. I woke up docked in Freeport in Grand Bahama's, of course, a big cargo and shipping terminal. If you've ever been there before, there is a little area that has a Senior Frogs and a Straw Market, but that area is primarily used by the larger cruise lines like Carnival. When we got there, those spots were not open, but we did want to get off the cruise ship. We didn't have excursions. There were excursions offered. We didn't have excursion, and we thought maybe we would jump off and go walk to Senior Frogs, but as we got off the cruise ship, we found out that Senior Frogs wasn't open. There was a little Straw Market in front of the terminal that we were at. We hung out there a little bit. We didn't venture out. We could have taken a cab downtown, but we did see a lot of people getting off the cruise ship. I think it's a good time to talk about one of the main functions of this cruise line. What's wild is every day on this cruise ship is embarkation date. You embark at the port of Palm Beach, but you also embark at Grand Bahama's. You can get on the cruise ship at the port of Palm Beach. You can go down to Grand Bahama, and you can get off the cruise ship and go to an all-inclusive resort for multiple days. They sell packages like that, and then when you're done at the all-inclusive resort, you can pack your bags up, and you can come jump back on the cruise ship, embark again, and go back to Florida. The other thing that's interesting is that happens in reverse. People from the Bahamas are able to cruise on this cruise ship and go and spend time in Florida, in South Florida. We sit outside the terminal, and we just watch people come with full luggage to cruise on this cruise ship originating in the Bahamas or returning from their all-inclusive resort. This was really interesting and unique, something I had not seen before. But as far as a cruise port stop, Grand Bahama's, again, you'd have to take a taxi somewhere to go to the beach or do an excursion. It's not that sexy around the cruise port, just so you know. If you're cruising to go to an interesting cruise port, I wouldn't say that Grand Bahama's was that interesting of a cruise port, but that could be me. Maybe I missed an opportunity there, but I've been there several times, and I'd never come away with, like, oh, this is an interesting cruise port. But definitely options. But with that said, it was nice just to pop off the cruise ship, sit out in the sun a little bit, patronize some of the vendors there. We had some conch fritters and some beer and some sodas and water right there next to the cruise port, and just able to kind of sit outside and enjoy being in the Bahamas for the afternoon. We didn't stay off the whole time that the cruise ship was docked. We jumped back on because we wanted to try Frank and Lola's. Frank and Lola's is another venue there on the cruise ship. It's a pizza place. It's not included, so the pizzas there cost anywhere between $14 and $16. But we heard there was a unique pizza delivery system there. The pizza's delivered by robots! And we had a great afternoon lunch there. Pizza was delicious. That one we paid for. Mike actually paid for that. Shout out to Mike for picking up lunch for all of us. But yeah, we got to try Frank and Lola's. That was really delicious. And if anybody is curious as to whether or not I could take a full-on nap while docked in Freeport, Bahamas after eating a nice pizza lunch, the answer is yes. I napped well on this ship and got ready for the evening because that evening we were trying out the main dining room concept called Fins, and the food was great there. This is an included restaurant, a really nice menu, and the food quality was great. As good as any other main dining room I'd encountered along the way. Then after dinner, we caught this nice sunset, and then we all piled into the cabin to watch Game 6 of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals, where I'd hoped that the Tampa Bay Lightning would win that game and extend the series. Well, they didn't. And so there in the cabin on the Margaritaville at Sea Paradise cruise ship, I watched the Colorado Avalanche raise the cup, and I had to offer them a congratulations. Dejected, I went to the casino and promptly lost some money too, and that was it. Disembarkation was the next day. It was easy. I carried my own luggage off, got off the cruise ship. They brought my car quickly from Valet, and I was on my way to my next destination, which was in Miami. Okay, so that's the nuts and bolts of how the days went, but that's not really the end of the story. I still need to tell you who I feel like this cruise is for, how much money it cost, and give you some final thoughts. To answer the question who this cruise is for, let me go back to the conversation I was having with the captain of the vessel. I asked him that question, who is this cruise for? And he offered up three different groups, and then I've got one to add of my own, but he said that this cruise was for locals, this cruise was for the loyal, and this cruise is for the curious. Locals, people that live there near the cruise area there in South Florida. The loyal, people that have cruised with Bahamas Paradise before, and the curious, what's the deal with Margaritaville at sea? All that makes sense to me, and I would probably add one more. People that maybe want to vacation a little bit in the Bahamas without flying to the Bahamas or taking a high speed ferry, that kind of thing. This was a nice way to get down to the resorts in Grand Bahama. So if you think about that mix, the curious, the loyal, the local, and people wanting to get to the Bahamas, you got to wonder what the vibe of the ship is. Well again, the vibe of the ship is upbeat. It is Margaritaville at sea, there's a lot of drinks flowing, a lot of bars open, a lot of activities for social interaction, a lot of people having fun. And let me tack on one more thing kind of related to vibe. This cruise ship travels slowly. It travels slowly from South Florida to the Bahamas. And so if you're someone who doesn't like to cruise because of the motion of the ocean, wow, this was one of the chillest, smoothest cruises that I'd ever been on. There were times where it didn't seem like you were moving at all. We were just slowly on still water making our way from South Florida to the Bahamas. I thought that was really neat because I don't think I've ever been on a cruise that really had seemed that kind of calm when it comes to the sailing aspect of it. So that was interesting. You can't guarantee that's the way that the water is always going to be, certainly. But yeah, the captain even mentioned that most of the time it's just a real slow, chill sailing from South Florida down to the Bahamas and from the Bahamas back. There's no kicking up the speed for any reason because there's no need to because it doesn't take long to get there. That's kind of cool. Now with all that said, it still begs the question, two night cruise, what is the value proposition here? Why would anybody do this? Let me tell you how, first let me tell you how much this cost, just to give you some sort of idea what this cost. So for me, before I got on the cruise ship, I paid $446.94. That was my cabin and taxes. Now once I was on the cruise ship, I paid $158.21. That included a fuel surcharge of $24, which they told me about in the cruise contract, there were signs posted. I completely missed all that. I was talking about how surprised I was, but that was my fault that I was surprised. There was a fuel surcharge of $24 and then I paid $25 for the internet. The internet was not good. I ended up using my cell phone when I was in the Bahamas. If I went back, I wouldn't pay for the internet, the $25 again, and then around $40 for the included gratuity. So all that's inside the $158.21. The rest of that in the $158.21 was the extra gratuity that I added on at the steakhouse. I went to the coffee shop three or four times, had some coffees, some waters. I think I had one drink at the Margaritaville show for like $12. So all in all, that was $158.21. So $446.94 before I went on the cruise, $158.21 on the cruise ship, $50 onboard credit, and then $44 for the valet parking. All in, I spent $599.15. So that's around $300 a night for this cruise, and I could see that giving some folks pause. I think a lot of times when we look at our prices of our cruises, we don't really do the all in, what we spent on board, what we paid for parking, all that kind of stuff. But $300, and I compared that to my local hotel there in Fort Lauderdale. I usually stay at the Hyatt Place at Dania Beach, and I looked up their current prices for today, and if I was going to stay there for the weekend for two nights at Dania Beach, it would be $459. Now that does not include any food. It does not include any entertainment. It does not include any coffee. It does not include any drinks. And so to me, that's comparable, $599.15 and $459.15. By the time I've added in two days of meals and two days of drinks and entertainment, I would be over the $599.15. So I think the argument could be made that if you're going to be in South Florida and you have to stay in Miami for two days, or if you have to stay in Boca for two days, or if you have to stay in Fort Lauderdale, if you have to stay in any of those cities down there on the southern coast, for any reason, it could be as cheap to go on this cruise as it would be to stay in a hotel and get to have that cruise experience. That's a use case for me, and that's certainly why I did this cruise. I went on this cruise because my friends were going on this cruise, and then I was able to tie in another cruise because I was going to be down there in South Florida. But there has been a time in the last year where I got off a cruise in Port Canaveral. I spent two nights in Miami and then got on a cruise in Miami where realistically, I could have gotten off the cruise in Port Canaveral, I could have gotten onto this cruise in West Palm, and then I could have cruised for two days, jumped off, and jumped on that cruise. So I think there's a use case scenario there. I certainly think if you're local, it's worth trying it out. If you want to get to the Bahamas without flying or taking some other kind of ferry from South Florida, even something as simple as you don't have any other vacation time but you do have the weekend off or a long weekend, you can have that cruise experience in just a couple days. My final thought is this. There's definitely a place for this cruise experience. Again, you can't be hung up on it being an old ship. If you're going into this saying this is an old ship and then everything that you're doing is trying to look at how old the ship is or find stuff that would indicate that it's an old ship and you're not really locked into that whole cruising vibe, then you're not going to like it. And so I wouldn't recommend it for that. But if you're kind of like loose when it comes to your expectations as far as the ship hardware and you're just looking for the vibe and you're looking for the food and you're looking for a good time and you're looking for some drinks, well, this one certainly meets it. A big shout out to all the folks I met there from Margaritaville at sea. All the staff there, you know, they were super nice to me. And I don't think that them being super nice to me has really changed the way that I talked about this cruise ship. We ran into several people on this cruise and we asked them what they thought about the cruise and we never got a negative response. Everybody found something positive to say about the cruise. What do you think? Is this something that you would try? Are you a Jimmy Buffett fan? Do you fit in one of those categories of people that this ship might be for? Or is it just too much, too short, too old? That kind of thing. Leave a comment below. Hope you enjoyed this cruise ship review. You can get plenty more cruise content right here at La Lita Loca. Please consider subscribing with the notification bell on. And if you got some value from this video, do me a solid, hit the like button. This is Tony for La Lita Loca and until the next time, we'll see you on the Lido. Bye.