Tuesday - February26th

I literally have to look at a calendar because I forget it is February!!!

This day we are scheduled to tour each hotel, its rooms and amenities.   I am thoroughly impressed with each one of these resorts and what they have to offer.  They are all 4 DIAMOND resorts!  We started with our resort we are staying at Portofino Bay.  We already knew we had the biggest rooms of the 3 hotels, they are massive!  If you love pillows, you will love this place!

We passed through the lobby and piazza area, just beautiful!

We roamed around little street areas and saw the main pool and the quiet pool areas. I absolutely LOVED the cabanas!

Quiet Pool

We made our way back out to the Main Piazza and walked back towards the main pool area.

This is where most of the restaurants are located, indoor and outdoor

zero entry main pool

We then made our way down to the Mandara Spa which is huge!  There was also an exercise/workout area down here.

After we left the spa, we were shown some rooms with an adjoining kid suite. This was a regular room with a King bed and the ajoining room had two small beds and their own table. The theming was adorable!

We then moved on to Hotel Royal Pacific.  It reminded me a little bit of the Polynesian but seems alot bigger and newer, absolutely beautiful gardens!

I loved how spread out everything seemed here. The restaurants are huge. This resort fills up quick because it is the lowest priced on site hotel of the 3 but I think it is just beautiful and great for families!

We checked out the pool area which looked so inviting!

view of pool from above

We got to see one of the rooms; they are considerably smaller that Portofino but fine for a family of 4.

this is the view from the room above

We made our way downstairs to check out the pool closer and to see some of the restaurants.

waiting for the restaurant to open, lol

beautiful pool

This restaurant downstairs has a great feature.  They have a separate room dedicated to families with small children. The parents have their own tables in the corners, the kids have a place to play and even their own kid-sized buffet!

Our last hotel of the site tour was The Hard Rock Hotel.  You got a different vibe (pun intended) the minute you walked in the door. There was memorabilia everywhere you looked. The expansive lobby area was loaded with seats, lounges....almost like mini living rooms including a movie screen showing a movie.  Our guide told us they have concerts here 10 times a year for a great price....yes, right here in the lobby. This is a great hotel for music-loving teens and young-at-heart parents who don't mind it getting a little loud from time to time.  You could spend hours just checking out the walls of memorabilia, even the bathroom was cool!

one of the check in areas

view from the room below

huge bathroom

check out the sunglasses on the fountain

Our lunch was in a private room downstairs and took place in conjunction with a Royal Caribbean Cruise Line training session.  There was also some additional Universal training as well.  Here is where we learned about the still-being-built Cabana Bay Beach Resort.  It will be a value-priced resort with 900 standard rooms and 900 family suites. It will even have a 10 lane bowling alley! It will not, however, have Front of the Line Access that the other resorts have.  The price is fantastic at just over $100 a night for standard and I think this will be a popular resort for families....it is on the Islands of Adventure side and within walking distance.

Universal and Royal are partnering for a land/sea package

It was somewhere during this training that I could not find my glasses.  I thoroughly checked the bathroom area, under our table and no glasses.  I had no spare, so I kept looking and since our training was over for this session, I went to check with Lost and Found. I described them and they had them!  The man from lost and found brought them up but wanted to see picture ID and I did not have any on me! It was back in the room in one of my purses.  Not sure why that was needed but he gave them to me and I left the Hard Rock and walked across the street to Portofino.  This was the free time portion of our day but I was starting to not feel well so I decided to take advantage of the free time and rest.

guitar fountain at the entrance

Alot of the girls were heading back in to the parks, one got a massage and I spent the afternoon napping and trying to feel better. However, when I woke up a few hours later, I felt worse. I debated skipping dinner but I had really been looking forward to this dinner at Mama Della's Ristorante, a true Italian dining experience. I thought maybe once I got out and got some fresh air, it would help.   I headed downstairs and as I walked outside, I heard opera singing.  In the main piazza, way up overlooking a balcony, there were opera singers serenading the crowd.

perfect preshow to our dinner!

We entered the restaurant at 7 and had our own private room with a really long table back in the back.  The opera singers that were outside were going to each table to sing.  They asked if we had any requests when they got to our table. Of course, I requested Bella Notte!  I could barely keep it together as they sang this song that is so dear to my heart. It was done so beautifully!

We had more food here on one table than I have ever seen!  We started out with bruschetta which was SO good! The next serving was antipasto, with meats and cheeses and breads. Then they brought out a mixed greens salad with some type of delicious vinigrette dressing. Then about an hour after all that, which gave us a chance to enjoy all the appetizers, the main courses came out.   There was lasagne, pasta/mussels/scallops/shrimp, sliced steak.  Keep in mind, there were about 6 dishes of EACH entree set on the table. It was just fabulous! Even though I wasn't feeling that great, I did have some of each thing I thought I would like.

click on the picture to see how good!

Slice Steak

I ate small portions but still was not feeling that well which makes it hard to join in the conversation. I knew some wonderful desserts would probably be next....like cannoli....and I did not think I better mix that with all this goodness.  I  excused myself and went back to my room and got comfortable and put a cold wash cloth on my face and laid down.  I fell asleep about 9:30 or so to the wonderful nature sounds from the ihome on the nightstand. I did not wake up til 5 in the morning!

It was a great evening and not feeling well, thankfully, was temporary. I am so glad that I chanced it and went down for dinner.  I am still amazed at the amount of food we had and it was, by far, the best Italian food I have ever eaten!

Tomorrow is wrap up day and back to Pop Century for a few hours and then Magical Express to the airport for my 7:10 flight back home.