ChristyLNDRN

OMG, I just finished up all of day 3, and then somehow deleted it right as I was writing the last sentence...my laptop is evil!! I'll try again:

So, I had realized in my last post that I never talked about lunch.

Around 11:30, our cabana attendant came by and announced that it was lunchtime. He escorted us, and the couple in the cabana next to us, over to barefoot beach for the "upgraded lunch". In addition to the usual burgers and dogs, there were shrimp skewers, steak (it was a little tough) jerk chicken, and various potato salads. Cookies and brownies for dessert I believe. I'm not sure how this compares to the standard buffet. It was decent, but nothing spectacular. All the picnic tables in the area were wet from the rain, and it started raining again right as we got our food, so we took our plates back to our cabana.

Around 3:00, we packed up to head back to the ship. I wanted to do a quick walk of the grounds to get some pictures, but as soon as we left the cabana area it started raining again, and harder. Here is one picture I did manage to take, of a map that gives you a good idea where Labadee is. You can see it towards the top right:

Shortly after this, a shuttle was going by with one of the other couples from the cabana area. The driver saw us getting wet, and he stopped and picked us up, and drove us back to the dock. I tipped him for that! I also tipped our cabana attendant as we were leaving.

Headed back to the ship:

Once back on board, we headed back to the solarium hot tubs to warm up for a bit. Tonight we had reservations for Frozen in time at 7:30, and 150 Central Park at 8:30. I did not take any pictures at either of these two places, but here is a rundown:

Frozen in Time: Another show that we really enjoyed. We had previously seen the ice show on explorer and were blown away. This was great too! We arrived probably about 25 minutes early, and headed for one of the front rows. We were turned away by a guy saving half the row for his party. This annoyed me, but it was early, and there were plenty of seats, so we moved along. A note on seat saving: There was an announcement made before every show that saving of seats was not allowed. However, this was not enforced, at all. We got in the habit of getting there about 20-25 minutes early and taking our kindles to occupy ourselves as we waited, so it was not an issue for us. As mentioned in other reviews, the sand artist during the show was really cool.

150 Central park:

For a refresher, here's the menu we had:

I was a bit nervous about this dinner as I am a bit of a picky eater. However, I really enjoyed the experience! It was great to step outside my comfort zone and try a few things that I never would have ordered for myself.

After we sat down, we declined the wine pairing as we typically have just one glass, maybe two at dinner. There was no wine list on the table, so our server asked us a few questions about the kind of wines we like. **Ding, ding, warning bells should have been sounding in our heads!** He ended up bringing me a glass of Pinot Grigio, and two wines for my husband to try, a cabernet and a Pinot Noir. He ended up ordering both of them during the meal.

If you've read reviews of 150 CP before, then you know that they bring you bread, and unsalted butter. On the table there is a dish of 6 different salts from around the world for you to salt the butter with. We tried them all, it was pretty cool. One of them tasted just like hard boiled eggs! I won't go into every course, but overall, the meal was great.

Now, back to those warning bells....when we got the bill at the end, it seemed a little high to me as we had pre-paid with the dining package. I took a closer look, and saw that DH's glasses of wine were $17, and $23 respectively:eek: My glass was more respectable at $10.

Totally our fault for not asking to see a wine list, but we did feel a little swindled, and it ended the meal on a bit of a down note. Live and learn!

After 150, we went to the Love and Marriage game show in the Opal theater. It was pretty funny, although not quite as hysterical as the one we had been to on Explorer. Totally depends on the participants! Oh, and as a side note, we enjoyed Amy as the cruise director...we found her to be energetic and funny.

Ok, well that wraps up Day 3 (for the 2nd time!). I'll start working on Day 4 tonight after the kiddos are in bed. Thanks for the comments...otherwise I start to feel like I'm talking to myself:)

Day 3, Labadee, continued:

Looking up at our cabana from the steps down to the water. There was a ladder at the bottom of the steps. We shared the path with the cabana next to us.

Looking across the way to cabanas 4, 3, 2, and 1. I think on the very left those might be the hillside cabanas? Someone correct me if I am wrong!

View of Nellie's Beach:

Our cabana attendant checked in with us after a little while, and we had him bring us two Labadoozies (YUM!) and a couple of beers for the cooler.

Still overcast:

One last cabana shot:

We stayed here from 8:30 to around 3:00. All aboard time was 4:30.

Day 3, Labadee, continued:

Cabana #5, to our left if you are looking out at the water:

More views from cabana #6:

The front area of our cabana, which saw very little use as it was raining on and off throughout the day:

Day 3, Labadee, continued:

Welcome to Rainy Labadee:

To access your Nellie's cabana, you need to check in at the suite beach, Barefoot Beach. We walked quickly through the rain, and checked in with the concierge for the suite area. He had a clipboard, and all the cabanas were pre-assigned. The Nellie's over the water cabanas are numbered 1-10. Here's a link to a Labadee review which has a great picture of the numbering system. Scroll down to post #11 and you will see what I mean.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1770883

Now, I think any cabana would be fabulous, but I personally would have preferred not to have #1 or #10. #1 is turned inward, so I think your view would be mostly of the beach. #10 is sitting almost directly on the beach...so it would be much less private than the other cabanas. As I said, our cabana was pre-assigned...#6 as it would have it. I was a happy camper.

A very nice gentleman with an umbrella walked us over to #6. There were the floating beach mats waiting for us next to the cabana, as well as a cooler with 4 huge bottles of water. We then met our cabana attendant, who got us our bracelets (I think to get into the suite beach for lunch later) and told us to let him know if we needed anything. He brought us 4 towels a few minutes later.

The view from our cabana:

Inside of our cabana:

From across the way, from left to right: Over the Water Nellie's cabanas

4, 3, 2, 1:

Immediately to the left of #4 were what I believe to be the two Nellie's hillside cabanas. Beautiful location, but I believe no direct water access? I may have a picture of those two coming up. Lots more pics coming!

yay! I'm so excited you had an over the water at Nellies! We booked one for our April Oasis cruise...in fact, it's the only "excursion" I have booked so far! I can't wait for you to keep going with your review and I'm guessing you have lots of info and pictures of Labadee and the cabana.

 

Can't wait for more!

Indeed, I have lots of cabana pics and those are up next! It is almost naptime here for the kiddos, so I should be able to post them soon!

Awesome review so far, great job sis. I can almost hear you talking a mile a minute...looks like the trip was so much fun. I wish I had stowed away in your luggage!

 

Proof that the wave cam on the Port Everglades webcam really zooms in:

 

Thanks to my big brother for making a cameo appearance on my review:)

Thanks so much for adding the sailaway picture!!

Labadee, Day 3 continued:

It started to rain as soon as we docked! We hung out on our balcony for a few minutes, trying to decide whether or not to make a run for it through the rain to our cabana. We decided to go for it! I packed some extra dry clothes, and we headed for the gangway. Of course, when we got there, it was raining even harder! That was not going to keep us from that cabana! Off the ship we went:

I was literally skipping down the dock at this point...I was REALLY excited about the cabana, despite the rain.

Is there a pool in the Solarium open to the sky? I prefer laying poolside in the sun. The pictures appeared that the areas were covered. Enjoying your review and pictures.

It's kind of both, if that makes sense. There's glass, then a break where it's open to air, then more glass, then open air. I would say it's more covered than open though.

Day 3: Labadee

We woke up to overcast skies on Monday morning:

Still, it was a beautiful view!

We decided to eat breakfast in the Windjammer, since we had yet to set foot in there. Actually, this would be the one and only time we ate in the Windjammer...there are just so many options on Oasis, so many new things to try. Food was fine. I much preferred breakfast in the other places that we tried. Could be just that I really like my made-to order omelets on cruises, and that isn't available on the windjammer on this class of ship. No problem, I found plenty of omelettes elsewhere:)

Time for another side note: If you remember, I booked fairly late, at 46 days out, and was unable to book a cabana for Labadee at that time. On the excursion page for Labadee, all the cabanas for Nellies said, "Inquire onboard." I did actually call a rep to see if they were indeed all gone, and she did confirm that they had all been reserved already. I asked if any cabanas are held back for onboard booking, and she told me no. I'm not sure if that is true or not. She also said that there was no waiting list. Bummer! In doing my research, I came across yet another helpful CC tip. I read that some people had luck with "inquire onboard" later changing to "book now" on the excursion page. So I stalked the page. And stalked the page some more. I checked the excursion page for Labadee pretty much twice a day until the week before our cruise. I had just about given up, but was doing my standard morning check just for giggles, when all of a sudden, there in front of my eyes, is an Over the water Nellies cabana available for booking. I booked it right away, and received an email confirmation. I then did a happy dance. No, really. My son was a witness!

We arrived in Labadee around 8 AM. Here's a few more pics from the approach:

My kiddos are finally in bed and apparently asleep, so let's continue on with Day 2, shall we?

After my rather short flowrider session, we headed back to our favorite hangout, the solarium of course! At this point it was around 12-ish. It was much more crowded than in the morning, but we were still able to find two lounge chairs together on the first level.

DH hit the Solarium Bistro for lunch--did not write in my notes what he got but he said it was good.

I walked to the Wipeout Cafe and brought back a plate of tacos/nachos. The meat for the tacos was more of a chili as it had kidney beans in it...not my favorite, but no big deal.

After lunch, I noticed on the Compass there was a Jewelry workshop listed at 1:45, so I headed off to check that out. I had previously made a bracelet/necklace/earring set on our Explorer cruise, so I thought that might be a fun sea day activity. However, the selections they had to choose from for you to make were actually pretty much the same as the ones that were on the Explorer two years ago. The only one I could see myself wearing was the one I had already made, so DH and I went to find a hot tub instead.

We tried one of the cantialevered (OMG, I have no idea if that is spelled right) hot tubs that are right outside the solarium....couldn't believe how big it was!

Eventually we made our way back to the room around 4ish...we had MTD reservations for 6, and since this was the first formal night, we needed a little time to get ready. In the meantime, I was a little hungry since I hadn't eaten a whole lot for lunch. I ordered the Spinach/Artichoke dip from Room service. Actually, I had never ordered room service before on a cruise. They send a little dessert plate along with the dip, which was a nice touch, so along with the wine we had brought onboard, we had a nice little happy hour on our balcony:

We headed down to Deck 5 for our first experience in the dining room around 6:00. There were two lines, one for those with reservations, one for those without. I don't think we ever waited more than 5 minutes to be seated on any of the nights we ate in the MDR...it was just waiting for the few groups that were ahead of you in line to be seated.

We asked for a table for two, and were quickly led to our spot.

Our team consisted of Jeldon (waiter) and Denzil (assistant waiter). They were great! When we came back to the MDR for the 2nd time, we were asked if we were happy with the service we received. We said yes, and each subsequent night we were seated in the same section with Jeldon and Denzil, which was great for consistency.

Back to dinner the first night.

I had the Lobster bisque for appetizer, and Carved Filet of Beef Tenderloin for my main course. Dessert for me was the Bittersweet Chocolate Souffle.

For DH: Chilled Banana Rum soup for app, Corvina for main course. BBB Creme Brulee for dessert.

Everything was very good!! I think I remember DH saying his creme brulee was just ok.

After dinner, we had reservations for Oasis of Dreams at 9:00. We had some time to kill before then, so we hopped on the Rising Tide Bar.

View of the promenade from the bar:

It could definitely get crowded on the promenade, especially at night.

Us on the Rising Tide Bar:

Looking up from the bar:

I think we headed to the Aquatheater around 8:30ish to get seats. This is waiting for the show to start:

Another really, really impressive show. I can't believe what they do on a moving ship....not just diving from the platforms, but from the high dive??? Crazy!

I think we turned in early after the show (Drats! Breaking our stay-up late vow already). This friend was waiting for us in the room:

We had 3 towel animals during the week for those who care about those things. Oh, and I should have mentioned before, our cabin steward, Ophelia, was great. We didn't ask for much, just extra towels. She was so happy all the time...always singing while she was working.

That's the end of day 2. Next up: A rainy day at Labadee is better than winter at home!!

First, thanks for the great review, loving it so far and looking forward to the rest.

 

Regarding the Giovanni's menu, could that have been the lunch menu pictured versus the dinner menu you had?

 

Also, a comment on the round chair beds you enjoyed in the Solarium, on the Allure last year those were not to be found in the Solarium but only up on the deck 17 Suites only sun deck. Interesting that on the Oasis they kept those in the Solarium. Certainly the nicer space of the two.

 

bobj

Ahhh! Very good thinking on the menu picture! I was taking those pictures early in the day so that would make perfect sense. And also interesting comment on the difference between the solariums on Oasis and Allure...I would miss those chairs, I loved them! Thanks for input!

So after making it to the top of the rock wall, I was feeling pretty spunky. I dragged Hubby to the Sports Deck to check out the flowrider. (I needed photo documentation!!). I'm fairly coordinated and decently athletic, so I figured I'd give stand-up surfing a try. Why not? Yeah.....I was not very good:

Not so sure this is a good idea:

Yeah, definitely not:

If at first you don't succeed....

You will probably just wipe out in a more spectacular fashion the 2nd time:

Note: LADIES!! Wear a swim shirt! I believe my hubby remarked that he saw some boobies loose during wipe outs. Not mine of course...I knew from CC to wear a shirt on the flowrider:D

Day 2 continued:

Around 10:30 was the C&A welcome back party in the Aquatheater. There was an invitation waiting for us in our stateroom when we arrived. We headed in that direction, but more because I wanted to check out the rock wall.

This is from the balcony where the rock wall is. Captain Patrick on the right at the Welcome Back party.

Here I go up the wall!

Can you see me?

Made it!

Man, that is a BIG wall. I only tried it the once since I made it all the way to the top. My arms and legs were shaking! Oh, and be careful on the way back down....I somehow spun around and slammed into one of the footholds. I had (actually, still do have) a very nice, very large, pretty purple bruise on my rear. Picked a good place to hit though:)

Day 2 continued:

More solarium:

Love the details throughout the ship:

At this point it was around 7:15 and I figured it was safe to go wake hubby up. I actually ran into him on the way back to the room...he had hit Cafe promenade for coffee and pastries. I had picked up a croissant there earlier in my explorations. After quick showers, we decided to try Johnny Rockets, which is free for breakfast.

I had a ham & cheese omelet

DH had a Breakfast sandwich...both were very good.

After breakfast, it was back to the solarium. We got there around 8:30, and perfect timing, someone was just getting up leaving us this lovely spot:

We stayed here for awhile. One of my favorite times of day was 10:30. Why you ask....it's PINA COLADA time!!

Day 2, continued:

Continuing on my early AM walking tour, next stop pool deck.

Look, no chair hogs this early:

Let's talk about one of the most popular topics on CC, chair hogging!

Just in my personal experience on this cruise, it was not a problem. Now, we spent all our lounging time in the solarium, and never sat near the main pools outside. However, we looked for chairs at several different times of day, on sea days, and were ALWAYS able to find a chair.

Early morning: chairs EVERYWHERE.

Mid-morning: Areas filling up, but still plenty of chairs available

Lunchtime: Definitely peak difficulty to find a chair. We might have settled for a chair upstairs in the solarium rather than downstairs by the glass, but we still found chairs together.

After lunch (say 2pm-ish): Noticeable increase in chair availability. I will say the last sea day we hit the solarium at this time and it was still very crowded.

In my experience, there were far more chairs with people in them than chairs with only towels. Now saving seats in the theater? That is a different story, my friend, one for another day.

Kind of a tie in to the chairs: I've read in so many reviews that Allure and Oasis feel less crowded than other ships....again, just in my personal experience this is completely.....TRUE! We checked at Guest Services, and there were about 5800+ passengers on our sailing. About 800 kids according to our waiter. These ships just do a great job of dividing all the passengers up into different areas. I expected long lines and hordes of people. I found neither. In ports, we just walked right off, no lines. Now, we didn't try to get off the moment the ship docked, but we didn't wait for an hour or anything like that.

We also never had a problem with getting an elevator. As we are young and in fairly good shape, we tended to take the stairs whenever possible. However, we did use the elevators fairly frequently but never experienced waits.

Yes, when shows let out there are large crowds in an area. The promenade got packed during parades and certain other events...but that was very easily avoided. Again, these are just my experiences. Yours may vary.

Moving on: Back to the solarium:

Happy feet, with a view:

LOVED these chairs in the solarium:

There were probably about 8-12 of these in the solarium, and I thought they would be claimed at all times. We were able to use them several times during the week, although we usually were done with breakfast and ready to lounge by 8:30-9:00.

Day 2 continued:

A good time for a side note related to Central Park. If you remember from Day 1, one of the first things I did was to make dinner reservations for Chops and 150 CP for later in the trip. Later on that afternoon, as we were passing through central park, I actually stopped to look at the menu for 150 CP:

We had scheduled 150 CP for Friday, which would be the Hearth Menu, as shown above. Now, I am a fairly picky eater, so 150 was already a bit of a stretch for me, but I wanted to be adventurous and try it out. However, I much preferred the menu for the 1st half of the week, the Heirloom menu. Just personal taste, and knowing what I would be more likely to eat. So, we popped into 150, and rescheduled that for monday night. We had Frozen in Time scheduled for 7:30 that night...I had previously scheduled Chops for 5:30 to eat before the show. Well, 150 doesn't open for dinner until 6:00, so that was not going to work. No problem, we switched to 8:30 instead, and planned to eat after the show. For some reason, the gentleman at the front desk couldn't change my Chops reservation, so he sent me there next. One more quick stop, and Chops had now been moved to Friday night at 6:30.

End of side note! Back to more day 2 pics in next post....

Continuing on to Central Park:

And since we are currently touring Central Park, here's the Menu for Giovanni's Table, where we ate the first night:

I may have missed a page of the menu, because we had almond-encrusted scallops, and spinach and ricotta crepes, and I don't see either of those on these two pages.

Day 2 continued:

Finishing up my morning tour of the empty boardwalk:

Layout of Deck 6:

Day 2 continued:

This looked like a great spot to relax, aft along the jogging track:

Great views of the wake from here:

Jogging track:

Aqua theater again:

Rock wall:

To be continued at naptime. DD, who is not known for her patience, wants to play with Mommy.

Day 2:

Excitement strikes again! I woke up early just after 6 AM. My kids get me up around 6 every day at home, and despite my best intentions, I find that it is very hard to reset my body's clock and actually sleep in on vacation. I'm also not one to just lay there in bed when there's an awesome ship to explore. DH grumbled a little when I started making noise, so I grabbed my soda cup, told him to go back to sleep, and off I went to explore, camera in hand.

Side note: I bought the soda package the previous day, up at one of the bars on the pool deck. Coke Freestyle machines were fun, and easy to find. They were a little cranky at times, but overall they worked pretty well. There were two machines side by side on the forward end of the promenade, which were the ones I used the most by far. Note that the machine on the right of this pair had plain water, while the left hand machine only had flavored waters...it took me a day to figure out how to get just plain ice water when I was headed up to the Pool deck for some sun. Also ran into some machines in the windjammer, which I only used once, because we only stepped foot in there once on the whole cruise:) Also found one machine around the corner from the Wipeout Cafe in the kids arcade...this was a surprisingly convenient location for me to duck into if I was headed aft.

First stop on my early morning exploration was the promenade, as we hadn't spent much time there the day before:

Walked straight through the deserted promenade to the boardwalk:

Not many people up and about there either!

Aquatheater

Thanks for all the replies and encouragement from everyone. I'm having fun reliving the memories:)

It's raining buckets here in Delaware. DS is at school, and DD is happily entertaining herself (for now) so I'll see if I can get started on Day 2 here...need to resize pictures as I go. Any specific questions, just let me know and I'll try to answer as I go.

Day 1 continued

We had reservations at Giovanni's table for dinner at 6:30. We ended up going a little early at 6:15 and were seated right away, no problem.

Let me tell you, I think this was the best meal we have ever had on a ship. Now, remember that we never really ate lunch, so we were really hungry, but it was GREAT!

For appetizers, we had Scallops, and also Mozzerella that was wrapped in prosciutto on a little piece of bread. Our waiter asked if we would like seconds of the scallops...um, yes please!

DH had Osso Bucco--said it was phenomenal

I had the 8 oz filet--yum!

We shared a plate of spinach & ricotta crepes--very, very good

For dessert:

Tiramisu

Chocolate Tart

Sorry, no food porn...too hungry at dinner time!

After dinner, we had reservations at 8:30 for hairspray:

We really enjoyed the show.

Normally we crash early on vacation. This time, we vowed to stay up late and sleep in. With that in mind, we stayed in the theater for a 3D showing of the Avengers that started shortly after the show ended. By the time ended it was 1 am and I had been up for 21 hours...so off to bed we went. That's the end of day one...a great start to a great vacation! That's all for tonight as well...my kiddos tend to get up early. I'll be back tomorrow, probably at night when kids are back in bed. Next up: Day 2 (at Sea) Rock Walls and flowrider wipeouts, oh my!

Day 1 continued:

View of the helipad from bridge wing:

More sail away views from our balcony. The sky just kept getting prettier as the sun went down:

Day 1 continued

Who needs kids to ride the carousel?

By this time it was almost time for muster. We were in Studio B. It was pretty full in there...people ended up sitting in the aisles, so get there on time if you need a seat. It was pretty painless and quick though. And then it was time for sail away!!

I was pretty excited about sail away. Again, through you wonderful folks at cruise critic, I learned you could "request a wave" from the Fort Lauderdale webcam. You can go on their site, tell them your ship, sail date, and sail away location, and they will try to zoom in on you at sail away for people watching live on the webcam. I watched a few of the older sail aways on their site (they archive them on youTube) and noticed that they would really zoom in on the port side bridge wing. So, I emailed a wave request with the port side bridge wing for my location. As soon as muster was over, we ran all the way up the stairs (we are a little out of shape!!) to deck 14 port side. You go all the way through the cabin hallway to the front, and there is a door to the outside to get you to the bridge wing. When we got out there, another guy had requested a wave for the same site. When you sail by the building where the webcam is, you start waving like crazy. I had my dad and my brother watching live from home... Sure enough, the camera zoomed right in on us, and they saw us! It was great! My dad was on the phone with me, and he was looking at his screen and said, "Tell Mike to wave! He's not waving!!" That's how clear they could see us. My brother got a great screen shot of us that I need to download. I think it helped that I had on a bright yellow shirt.

Us at sail away

Liberty in port with us

Shorter building on the water next to tall building is where the webcam is.

Day 1 continued--More room pictures:

LOVED the size of the balcony...so deep!!

No luggage to unpack yet, too excited to nap, what to do next? How about hitting the zipline? Why not? Oh, and they did have loaner shoes, just like the rock wall. I did have close toed shoes, but they seemed to think they were too loose, as they were slip-on sketchers.