Thursday August 3rd – Bar Harbor, Maine
The Plan:
Bar Harbor is a tender port, so. we have decided to book a three and a half hour shore excursion with Cruise Specialists (Our booking company) with includes lunch Our 4 Star Mariner status allows us to cue up early, but time will tell how many 4 stars there will be in our group and whether or not CS will get priority tender boarding. I imagine there are an abundance of 4 star cruisers on board since this itinerary is so popular with the cruising community.
The reality:`
Not to our surprise, the ship. Has booking of around 900 4 and 5 star Mariners! That is out of a full compliment of over 1400 passengers. With that ratio, the priority tendering would just be complete because most everyone who has spent the money to accumulate those many sailing days tends to feel overprivileged. Fortunately, for this port at least, HAL has come up with a workable system I wont go into details but today worker out very well.
Our shore excursion basically consisted of being bussed over the loop road of the Acacia National Park that seems to encompass a major portion of the land mass of the “Island” of bar Harbor, Maine. Our bus was quite new and the driver and guide were obviously the best the company had to offer, with both professionals extremely knowledge of the history and topography of the park and community. The park is so popular that the entrance at time must restrict entrance by private cars due to non availability of safe parking accommodations. There has been talk of completely restricting access for private automobiles.
Even though our guide was fascinating in the stories she shared about the historical characters who had developed the region, I kept falling asleep – lots of famous. And infamous names were dropped.
For me the real highlight of the day was the lobster dinner that was included at the end of the tour at the Bar Harbor Club, obviously set up to cater to visiting cruise ships. My plate is featured in the title image.
Our day started out with a thin overcast and we ended the afternoon in brilliant sunshine.
I would recommend this port to anyone wishing this part of the country, and would enjoy a gore at lobster dinner.
Five stars overall, and 5 stars for our guide and driver.
Jack W Cummings VOV – Bar Harbor, Maine
Cummings Family Adventures 
Love your photos. Brought back many memories as we use to live there and enjoyed beach picnics with local lobster fresh out of the boiling pot directly from the fishermen almost every Wednesday afternoon, and those were the days long before cruise ships ever graced the beautiful Maine harbors. Our oldest daughter was born there.