harryfat1

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From an outside observer, it's hard to tell what song is being played 20231228_160518.mp4 I think the Blue channel is more popular This could be the Marcarnea A fun activity for little kids as well. They billed this event as a family dance party

As with previous events, y'all will get two different perspectives as seen through my cell phone from high above as well as from my wife's cell phone from below You see them below Here they are down below So the idea is that there are TWO different channels - green and blue - as seen by the color of the headphones and you can switch back and forth to whichever channel has the music you like and you then dance to that music You can see the blue or green colors on each headphone

At 4 o’clock, we headed back to 270 (not like it’s a very long walk as it’s closer than going to the elevator) for the “Family SHUSH Silent Party”. That’s where they issue each person a headphone and you dance to the music based on what channel you are listening to. Since it’s a daytime event, it’s for the whole family, not like the 11 PM party that’s more for the grown-ups. I was upstairs taking pictures while the rest of the family danced downstairs Long line to get the headphones

At 3 o’clock, my wife went off by herself to some raffle thing at the shops as the boys and I went back to the cabin via the secret door on deck 6. You can tell from her picture that it was an extremely popular event with tons of people there wanting to win something. No, she didn’t win...

After they were done with the rehearsal, it was interesting to see how much work it takes to take out “the book” and then put in the potted plants when the book isn’t there so the area isn’t as bare. Like in those movies where they hide the evidence by making over a new room as if nothing was there when the police came - Honest, officer, I tell you I saw a man fall into the hole of the big red book. I know you can't see the red book now where it's potted plants but I tell you I saw with my own eyes that there were TWO LARGE books here... Books? What books? What are you talking about?

As the restaurant was near 270, we heard some music from the theater and dropped by for a few minutes as they were wrapping up some mini rehearsals. Looks like they might have added a couple of new performers to their group as the newcomers were practicing with the props on. Lots of people at 270 in the afternoon

Onward with the trip report ++++++++++ So we are done with Giovanni’s. Unlike Chops Grill on Christmas Day where the service was super slow, we had much faster service at Giovanni’s and we were done in 75 minutes, even with all the food we ordered as they all came out pretty fast. The place was less than half full that day and on day 8 when we walked by. I don’t know what RCI defines to be “overbooked” as it’s not how I define overbooked in a land-based restaurant unless they were really that understaffed and couldn’t serve a full restaurant effectively. Personally, I think they could have switched us to day 8 so we could have gone to the belly flop contest but whatever…

Thanks for reporting back on the words in the ceiling. I would have never thought about looking up to see the words if I wasn’t bored standing in line waiting for them to open in the morning. I apologize for intruding on your vacation by having you upload a picture while you are out on the Sea. You could have waited until you got back to reply but I appreciate your quick response. After you come back from the cruise (not now), tell me how was the sail away from NJ? Do you see much of NYC skyline sailing away? It would fun to go to NYC in December to see the holiday decorations and then sail out to see the NYC skyline but I don’t think our clothes in CA are ready for the NYC in December. The stores here sell the “winter” clothes designed for CA winter, not NYC winter. It’s not as bad as trying to buy a parka jacket in Hawaii but I don’t think our CA winter clothes will survive a NY winter storm.

Glad you appreciate the details. That’s what we “bean counters” do to be detailed enough to count beans. Of course, I might be slightly more anal than your average bean counter in taking pictures of chairs and condiments… Hopefully, you will have good weather on the transatlantic crossing. It rained on our cruise on day 8 and since the Odyssey is different than her sister ships in not having an indoor pool, there’s not much happening on the top deck on that day. If that’s the case, people will be at both ends of the ship – at the front of the ship will be the solarium crowd, and at the back of the ship with the 270 crowd. It depends on your preference for which type of activities you like to do on your cruise. Six sea days could mean a lot of visiting uncles in prison and crazy aunt in the basement... Although I think those are more common during the holidays when you have a rare gathering of “big groups” like multi-generational families and since it's not easy to get everyone together for a big vacation, people will want more pictures to be taken together to remember the event than just your basic couples taking their 20th cruise together where they don’t need more pictures of each other…

Haha, yeah, at first after seeing the “mini-shuffleboard” area, I thought this was the kid's version. Similar to ships having a baby pool and an adult pool. I actually walked around the area to see if there’s an “adult version” of the shuffleboard but found nada. I think RCI took out some of the space designed for shuffleboard to make room for the big chess board and the weird-looking soccer/billiards combo game I showed previously.

Thanks for continuing to read along and for your kind words. The VR sphere is very pretty at night as it’s all lid up and it’s quiet up there most of the time as other than bean bag toss, nothing is going on up there. Almost sad to see a place that was supposed to be dedicated to high-tech VR to be just hosting non-tech bean bag games. I hope they find some useful events for the area going forward. Yeah, walk outside the ship at night time if it’s not too windy – I believe you are going against the jet stream going south so it’ll be windy at the beginning of the cruise and much calmer wind heading back up northward. The pool area is nicely lit at night so you can get some colorful pictures there as well. I didn’t know about the “white” theme either before the cruise. Not like RCI tells you on their handy dandy app what were the themed clothing on a nightly basis. We just know from experience days 2 and 6 are your typical “dress up night” – won’t use the F word (Formal) as people will just argue on what is considered Formal. There’s a Caribbean night as well if you want to dress for that. Yeah, the main reason for writing these trip reports is to share our travel experience so new cruisers have a realistic expectation of what their future cruise might look like. And people just thought I write these trip reports in order to showcase “Baby Got Back” videos…🤪

The food was pretty good. Not the “Wow This is the best cruise I have ever had" but certainly worth a try at $13 or whatever sales price you can get for it.

Since it was our first time there, we wanted to try different things on the menu We sat right next to the pizza-making area and we can see the guy making our pizza

OK. Giovanni’s Kitchen – Specialty Dining on the Odyssey. Not that I’m an expert on the history of the various Giovanni establishments on the different RCI ships but from what YouTube videos I watched, the older version of this restaurant is called Giovanni’s Table, and the newer version is called Giovanni’s Kitchen. So it depends on which ship you are on, you will get one or the other. Food is subjective but many reviewers on YouTube seem to like this newer version better. Leave a comment below if you have eaten both versions and let the people know what are some of the differences as I know they revised the menu a bit as well as re-theming the restaurant in terms of wood (dark wood at the older version). We got the lunch meal for $13/pp on the BF deal. I figured for that price; we can try the lunch as even Chipotle lunch can be $13.

Went back to the cabin to wash hands and use the restroom before going to Giovanni’s at 1 PM. The cabin attendant already made our rooms by 12:45.

After the trivia contest, we made our way to the photo area to see how our pictures turned out from the previous day (aka visiting uncle in prison). My wife and the boys are more picky about what pictures they like so I ventured next door to the Schooner bar to take a couple of pictures as they had a coloring event there. I know the Schooner bar is a staple on all RCI ships but I have never sat down in one to participate in any of their activities on all of my RCI cruises. Same for the solarium. This is about as closed as I got to the bar area while there’s an activity

At noon, the workers are trying to squeeze out all the air from the laser tag event before storing it away They had a visual trivia sponsored by the Next Cruise back at 270 so we wanted to check that out. They were showing various spots that RCI sails to and see if people could guess the names of the places - so it's somewhat of an advertisement for RCI. We got there a few minutes late so we didn’t get a chance to play but we saw enough of the slides to mentally play along When they reveal the answer to each slide, they ask people to shout out the answer. People only knew #2 slide was in Alaska but didn't know the name so I shouted out the answer as Hubbard Glacier as we were there back in August of 2022 (but with Princess, not RCI). As a side note, if you go on an Alaska cruise, be sure to go to at least the Hubbard or the Glacier Bay. The other smaller glaciers are not as grand as those two. RCI only goes to Hubbard on their smaller ships. The bigger Q-class ships only sail roundtrip from Seattle and they typically don’t go to the Hubbard Glacier. Here are some sample pictures from our trip. It’s a must-see item on the bucket list.

OK, so no belly flop contest for today. We went down to the Esplanade (Promenade) to see what was happening there as people were visiting their crazy aunt (aka shopping) Went to 270 to get something to drink and sat there to relax a bit. Some people have the same idea as well. A quick trip back to the cabin at 11:37 to see we are now sailing at 21 knots The boys wanted to do rock climbing so we went up there

Per Mark’s @h20skibum link previously, y’all can access the Daily Compass so I didn’t include that at the beginning of Day 6 post. But there was one activity at 1 PM that we wanted to attend – Belly Flop Contest – that surprised me as I looked at the previous cruise compasses and I saw this event on Day 8 of the cruise. They surprised me by holding it on day 6. As people who read my previous cruise reports, we always made it a point to attend this event as it provides high entertainment value. The issue we have is that I booked Giovanni’s for lunch today at 1 PM thinking today was the World’s Sexist Man contest, which I hold to be less interesting than the belly flop contest. So by 11 AM, when Giovanni was opening up for lunch, we went there to see if they could switch our lunchtime reservation from day 6 to day 8. The guy said they “were beyond overbooked” for the rest of the cruise on all the days and there’s no way they can switch us to day 8. But he said we could eat now if we wanted to instead of 1 PM. But since we just ate breakfast less than 2 hours ago, there’s no way we can eat at Giovanni’s at 11 AM. Thus we were all saddened not to have a belly flop contest as we always enjoyed the event. I went to my archived pictures from the 2016 Freedom of the Seas cruise to dig up for Belly Flop pictures from the past just so I feel like I attended the event…

Because I wanted to change to a later number for all 4 of us. I wanted the late numbers, I think it was in the 50s. I will have to check the disembarkation to get the last set of numbers. I know we would be one of the last ones to get off the ship on day 9 so i wanted the last tags. I hate to have my luggage sitting by themselves in the early tag slots. Getting my kids tags puts us in the later group but not the latest.

Oh, yes, elevators. In the Odyssey, the color on top of the elevator door tells you if the elevator is going up or down. If up, it lights up green. If down, it’s in red like this one here. So you can tell quickly if it’s going in the same direction as you want to go. Speaking of elevators, don’t lean too close to the buttons on the elevator as it’s supposed to be touchless so if your finger or arm or body is within an inch or two of the buttons, the thing will light up like a Christmas tree. For example, we walked into this elevator with hardly anyone in it but the person before us leaned too close to the button and triggered decks 2 to 7 to be pressed by accident