harryfat1

After that, there were the singers from the show “The Book” up on the stage. I recognized some of them from the earlier rehearsal. Also on the right-hand side of 270 were the ship’s senior officers and the captain as they all sang together. Jingle Bell 20231224_193157.mp4

Then they had a pre-recorded message from various ship staff wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

They had the kids sitting in the front in the middle while the captain read "The Night Before Christmas" to them.

Thanks for sharing this. I guess it's up to each ship as to how they want to do this event. Being lazy, I like sitting down at 270 for the entire event.

Interesting. I don't recall attending the Captain's welcome party in either 2016 or 2017. Oh, well. It doesn't matter as the important thing is they no longer have it now.

As you walked into the 270 theater, they were passing out the song sheet on which Christmas songs they were going to sing for the night. People can follow and sing along if they want. They sang all the songs in the order as it was presented on the sheet

6:45 ship position reporting Time to go to the night's first big event - Christmas Caroling with the ship's staff. The last time we cruised during Christmas was on the Independence of the Seas and they had to sing at the Royal Promenade with everyone standing around. Here was Independence back in 2017. I assume they still have this at the Royal Promenade? In the Odyssey, it was a much more pleasant experience with everyone sitting and it was more like a show. See the difference?

After the family got back, it was almost time to shower and get dressed for the formal night. One major problem of not having the boys’ cabin cleaned was they had no clean bath towels. The cabin attendants haven’t cleaned their cabin since we boarded on day 1. After realizing the cabin steward was not going to come over anytime soon, I had to make a phone call from the desk phone to Housekeeping and requested 2 sets of fresh towels. Waited 20 minutes. Nothing. OK. This isn’t going so well. I went outside the hallway and waited awhile to find one worker walking by and asked him for some towels and he opened the utility door down the hall and got us 2 sets. I thought about going down to Guest Services to request towels but they probably just told me to call guest services. After the boys started taking their showers, housekeeping finally dropped off the 2 sets of towels I requested. Never thought I had to work so hard on a cruise ship to get fresh towels. In the old days of 2 cabin cleanings daily, you had fresh towels everywhere you looked. Now you have to flag someone down in the hallway to get some…

I took pictures of the room service breakfast menu as I waited in the room with nothing else to take pictures of. Back home months ago at the planning stage, I was planning to have room service for breakfast on Christmas morning as that would be special in utilizing the balcony on Christmas morning in the Caribbean. Well, then reality set in with the strong wind, eating outside is not going to be feasible. Not to mention the breakfast menu is pretty blah. You only get the “free” version if it’s very basic. Anything “hot” results in an extra charge. Forget that. CFKACD not paying extra for breakfast delivery. Free Portion Paid Version

While I was waiting at the cabin for the rest of the family to return from Bumper cars, I went outside to see the weather. The sun came out and we saw more blue skies as we headed further south in the Caribbean. Another picture of the moon from the balcony as the moon is near the full moon phase

Maybe this is the modern version of Santa’s sleigh. You know Santa has to get the red one, right? I wonder if any naughty kid tried to rear end Santa’ car and gave him a big jolt/whiplash? If so, no presents for you for the next 5 years as you are on Santa’s bad list.

Onward with more trip report info +++++++++++++++ After the rehearsal, I went back to our cabin – the one that was cleaned. The attendant went on her break before cleaning the boys' cabin. OK. I guess their cabin is on the “night” cleaning schedule. So where did the family go? They saw on the phone app there was going to be a Santa sighting in the bumper cars area so they wanted to ride the bumper cars again. But they got there too early so they were done with the Bumper Car before Santa showed up We have a Santa sighting Oh, yeah, there's a Football game going on as well...

Food is subjective. Glad you like the RCI burgers. They made a lot of them daily at Windjammer so there must be a big group of people that eat them. I ate a burger at Labadee’s BBQ lunch as it was that or the hot dog.

I understand if someone had to clean 10 cabins and all 10 of them want morning cleanup, then the cabin steward may not get to all of them and therefore need to put 3 of them for the evening cleaning. We can’t ask the impossible tasks but at least explain it to the guests like Brian’s attendant did for him so the expectation can be met. Will have more attendant stories shortly. Look like you and I both like Guy’s Burger but the next poster disagrees. We all like what we like.

I’m fine with the attendant explaining why they can’t fit you into their morning slots because they are full. Ours didn’t tell us a thing. Like I said, probably ranked amongst the bottom 3 cabin attendants I have had. Will explain soon what the rest of the family did after they left 270 while I watched the rehearsal.

Yeah, even at these high prices, the extended time slots were mostly booked for our sailing as people want the experience regardless of the price.

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As I had nothing special in mind, I figured I would get a cup of afternoon coffee and hang out at 270. When I got there, I was surprised by the music and the show there. As it turned it, the cast was doing their walk-through rehearsal for the show, The Book, which is regularly performed at 270 (reservation required). So I sat down and got a preview of the last half of the show. I texted the family on the free RCI app to tell them to come out to 270 via the back door entrance to check out the rehearsal but they didn’t want to the spoiler alert on the show so they came and then left.

Here is the Promenade deck outside on the port side, just one deck below us. Here would be a good place to be for the Glacier viewing on an Alaska cruise. No obstructed glass. Good for the sailaway party as well. Here’s the view of the outside of our cabin one deck above. The balcony with a slanted glass is where the boys are and our cabin is to the left.

By then it was 3 o’clock and my old man memory got fuzzy at this point as I don’t recall why the family went back to the cabin first without me. All I knew was by the time I made it back up to the room, the cabin attendant just started to clean one of the rooms at 3 PM. As I said in previous posts, she never asked if we preferred morning or evening room cleaning since she will clean our room whenever she gets to it. I have never had a cabin attendant clean the cabin at 3 PM. They typically do it early in the morning as I typically see them when we eat breakfast or get ready to get off the ship on port day or they are around when we go off to dinner and clean the cabins while we are out at night. 3 PM is normally their break time. So either she was overwhelmed with too many cabins to clean with 125% capacity, which meant extra towels and more messy bathrooms to take care or she was too slow and couldn’t get to our cabins until later. Whatever the case was, the rest of the family was camped out at the “other room” that she wasn’t cleaning as we have a connecting room so one cabin is the same as another. I didn’t want to just sit in the cabin and wait for her to clean so I went for a walk by myself to check out the ship.

More people at the Bionic Bar: After a while, Santa was done and gone and so was the crowd. I like the fact that the Esplanade is two levels versus the one-level Promenade at the other ships as you can walk on the upper deck if the lower deck is crowded. Well, technically it's not a true 2 deck setup as the upper part doesn't connect at the front of the ship. I will explain in a later post if I can find pictures

Since we are at the Esplanade (Promenade), time for a quick stop to see how the crazy aunt in the basement is doing and make sure she is well-fed (aka shopping). These backpacks are cute if you have little kids.

We went back down to deck 4 after lunch and saw a huge line of people waiting to have their picture taken with Santa whereas the Santa upstairs got no love. Lots of people visiting their uncles in prison today Just like Santa in the mall back home with long lines

I wouldn't get my hopes up for Odyssey having those props as on the Wonder. They had none of that on our cruise. I know Carnival cruises in the past always had props but RCI photography is more bland and just relies on the same props/same gestures. At the end of the cruise, we pretty much know all the photographers on the ship. One guy said, I won't tell you guys to how pose as you all know the routine by now...