zrealm

Hot Off the Press also has smoked salmon and cream cheese on a piece of rye toast, which was surprisingly good (and honestly I think cruise line bagels are mostly meh so this as better).

My favorite brunch item was the Burger Bar's French Toast Burger, partially because of how good the French Toast was....

The library collection is largely filled with lost and found books by previous cruises, so quality is, well, mixed.

A recommendation: if you're doing a lot of reservations for a lot of people, type up a list ahead of time of the names and room numbers what you ideally want which day (and a 2nd choice) to make it considerably faster and easier for the person processing it (which will get you better reservations)

1 hour ago, Gabrielle R. said:

Just a quick coffee question:  if there is a Starbucks ‘kiosk’ on board a ship (like Adventure). It would say it on the deck plans right?  Getting the drink package and I so enjoy getting coffee in the morning at cafe promenade, then sitting outside watching the sea go by…. Not a fan of Starbucks…. But NOT A FAN of the free coffee up in the Windjammer. 😉

Oasis ships have the branded Starbucks locations but all ships including them also have one or more included coffee shops (Cafe Promenade or some equivalent) that are included in your beverage package. 

It's open now but widely rumoured it's going to be replaced when Anthem goes into Dry Dock in a few months

3 minutes ago, cathi007 said:

I would never use a debit card, a credit card is the way to go. BTW I hope whomever went to the dr. is ok

I am, thanks. (it was 5 bags of IV antibiotics that ran up such a high bill, amazingly)

We just got back from the 12 day Escape sailing, and I know NCL puts debit holds to make sure they can collect for your onboard account, but the amount is pretty insanely excessive. Our total bill was $4300 (which is pretty insanely high sounding but much of that was from a ship hospital trip that will fortunately get reimbursed by our travel insurance). Our holds were 1888.23, 29, 4347.45, 939.80, 29, 2459.65, 400 and 1000, which is over 2 and a half times that amount. 

Is it just me or is that really excessive? I know it will eventually drop off, but....

We were on this sailing as well (the second part of the b2b). Overall I thought the service was okay but not amazing - we had an issue on the second night with the group around us which wasn't awesome, but we were a bit late to dinner so I can't totally say they are to blame (the head waiter for our section moved two tables together and suddenly everyone going by had to bang into my wife all night long).

The one thing that we did have a real problem with was the comedian from the opening night show. Did anyone else on the ship catch his name? His material was both super outdated and really offensive - it was racist, sexist, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, and we finally walked out when he started talking about the sissifcation of men in the 21st century, since, you know, they watch dance shows and stuff. Ugh.

Congrats, That's time remaining from an hour...........has anyone beat that??

 

 

 

It's a room where about a dozen people are locked in and have to work together to find the key to get out by solving puzzles. A lot of fun and everyone contributes.

The clock wasn't working on our Anthem attempt but we did it in 23:40 by my watch (so 36:20 remaining). It was fun but fairly easy for anyone who did these occasionally (and the person who was running it was a bit too helpful)

We're doing our first ever Back to Back cruise in December and I was wondering what we should expect for the disembarkation/embarkation between the two cruises.

Thanks!

Andrew

We got hit with the same charge and called to get it removed. Ugh. 30 minutes of my life wasted over RCI stealing $6....

AKA "My wife thinks I have a weird obsession with pepper grinders." Which I probably do, especially considering I don't even like ground pepper.

So I've spent so much time reading the reviews and reports from people's trips and found it so useful that I wanted to do my part and talk about my recent honeymoon on the Anthem of the Seas. It was my second cruise and my wife's first.

As a preface - overall we had a fantastic time and my lovely wife Mindy is super excited to cruise again, as am I.

Shows

Overall I would say one of the highlights of our trip were all of the main theatre and Two70 shows, with one unfortunate exception (which wasn’t enitrely RCI’s fault)

The Gift - This show was amazingly well staged and had a lot going on for a 45 minute production - it was fantastic and we would have seen it a second time if it we didn’t see its last showing.

We Will Rock You - I missed the first 10 minutes due to competing in the poker tournament, but was quickly able to figure out what was going on and found the rest super enjoyable. I haven’t seen the longer show so I can’t compare, but the acting and singing was really good and the plot seemed fun and the encore was really beautiful.

Name That Tune - I didn’t go in expecting this to be a big production show but it was and it was amazingly awesome. Bringing that kind of over the top-ness to the game show really made it something special and I’m glad we didn’t skip it. Does anyone know - do they change the songs each time?

Love and Marriage Show - We tried to get on and I’m sad we didn’t but we had fun making out in front of a thousand people at least :) A special thanks to anyone who came up to us later in the cruise to say they had cheered for us to get on or recognized us.

The Quest - this one was a bunch of chaotic fun but where we were sitting made it hard to see\participate in a lot of the action :(

Spectra’s Cabaret - I thought this was okay - parts had really good songs and the robots were fun, but honestly a decent chunk of it was boring. Mindy found it much much much less good because rude passengers kept standing in front of our seats for the show and none of the staff seemed around to ask them not to. I get that people can get to a show late, but, you know, it seems like the onus is on you to find somewhere to watch that is not blocking other people’s seating.

Food

Overall the food itself was pretty good - I thought Windjammer was only so-so and it was impossible to find tables but there was nothing that stood out as particularly disappointing. We took advantage of the BOGO sale and ate in Wonderland on day 1 and Chops on day 2 and the MDR the remaining days.

Wonderland was the highlight of our food on the trip - it did a great job of being playful while also being downright good. Our waiter was fantastic and added a bit of fun to the presentation of every course. You can tell they really thought about how they were putting this venue together when they did, and I HIGHLY suggest everyone go if they can.

Chops wasn’t anywhere near as memorable but the food was rather good.

The food in the MDR was good - we rather enjoyed almost everything we ate there, but to be honest the service was really inconsistent. We almost never got drinks without us having to seek someone down or refills or coffee and several times it took 15 minutes for someone to even notice we had been seated and give us menus, etc.

Our biggest complaint with the food was the lack of any real late night options. We’re late night people and are were usually up until 3am and there was basically no food after 12 or so: just cold pizza from Sorrentos and the same not great sandwiches and cookies from Cafe Promenade. There weren’t really any good options, even paid ones like room service which featured mostly the same bad choices. This seems like something other lines we’ve looked at do a lot better at - both Carnival and NCI have pizza\grill\etc all night long.

Activities

I won what Chris described as terrible backpacks at the meet and mingle, so yay for that!

During the day there seemed to be stuff to do and we did a decent number of them. The escape room was a lot of fun (it wasn’t the most difficult or complex escape room I’ve seen by far, but it was fun and a great way to meet other people on ship). Again, after 11pm or so there really was a lack of anything other than the night club-y stuff going on.

The pools were kind of boring throughout the trip - there were almost no activities and the solarium pools weren’t even filled during the first 2 (coldest) days of the trip. I would have expected there to be more poolside games and competitions,, especially in the indoor area on the cooler days.

It actually surprised me a lot that RCI didn’t make better use of the venues they had on board - there are 3 giant movie screens and a lot of space to do stuff, and there was a surprising lack of things going on. I’m not sure why there isn’t always stuff playing or activities happening that require little to no staff involvement. There also wasn’t a lot of the kind of light activities I feel like one would expect, other than trivia.

Ports

I don’t actually have a lot to say about the ports. I hadn’t expected much out of them and they met that expectation. I’d been to Nassau before and it was about as I remembered it.

Overall (aka tl;dr)

So overall it was great, except for our complaints about the lack of activities, especially late-night, the food late-night and the inconsistent MDR service. We ate a bit too much, gambled a bit too much, met some fantastic people (some of whom I wish we had exchanged contact info with) and will no doubt cruise again though I’m not sure if it will be on RCI or a different line. Thanks to everyone at Cruise Critic who gave advice and reviews and everyone who read this.

Andrew

It seemed to be in a dedicated pair of rooms on the Anthem - I never saw them used for anything else, and most of the esca,pe room stuff itself was fixed into the ground...

Wonderland was one of the most fun dinners I've ever had, and good enough to change my wife's mind about high end dining being a valuable experience - I HIGHLY recommend it

We used it on our just-ended Anthem sailing. It was nice to be able to take care of our own meal reservations for specialty\MTD and it's was a much better interface for looking at our charges than the crappy tv app was.

Is it possible to change the reservation this close to sailing? Originally we hadn't expected a problem because we figured she'd get a new DL in time, but the city took longer than expected to get us the marriage license back :(

Hi! I was hoping someone might know the answer to this. My wife (we're cruising next week for our honeymoon) has the following documents in the following names, and I'm trying to figure out if all of them is sufficient for our cruise (Anthem leaving from and returning to NJ). Normally she'd just get a new driver's license but she hasn't had a chance yet - I'm trying to decide if this is something we need to rush to get resolved or if we're okay.

She's booked on the cruise with her new legal name.

She has:

-A birth certificate with her maiden name

-A marriage license to her first husband listing her maiden and married name

-A driver's license with the name from that marriage

-A divorce decree from that marriage

-A marriage license from our marriage listing her maiden name, her previous married name and her new married name

-A cruise reservation listing her new married name

Thanks in advance!