bwest the man

Does anyone know if captain jacks on coco cay is included with the unlimited dinning package? It would be reasonable to think it would be as they honor the beverage package and now voom on the island. 

It is up to the ship to decide if they want to change time to match a destination or not. San Juan doesn't observe daylight savings so they will be an hour ahead of EST. With the time just changing overnight it could be a couple of cruises depending of schedule to see if the ship changes time or not currently. 

Just off the independence and they had it. The big difference for me was the much faster service compared to the regular side.

This will be my first Oasis cruise. What is the "carnival Food" you mentioned people were eating in Johnny Rockets?

It was the boardwalk family carnival they held the last sea day. They had various cakes, cupcakes, Carmel apples, popcorn, cotton candy and other snacks to go along with the games, face painting, and other activities going on. Was from 11:30-12:45 I think but not sure on the time.

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So glad to hear about the "Secret Sands" excursion! Are there still enough trees to utilize natural shade? Or are umbrellas available? I'd really like to try this, but we must have some shade.

Yeah there was plenty of trees there for natural shade. They didn’t have any umbrellas. It they didn’t need any either with all the trees there.

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You mentioned you had two Boardwalk Balcony cabins were they next to each other and was the partition on the balcony opened by steward.

Yes they were and the room steward opened them up no problem. There were many balconies with the dividers open on our sailing.

Now for some final thoughts and wrap up, overall it was still a good cruise and we had a great time, but moving forwards I wouldn’t cruise on Oasis again out of Port Canaveral due to the amount of kids who were largely misbehaved onboard. We chose the Oasis due to wanting to see cats and the fact we could go to universal beforehand for a couple of days, which was very nice. I did a few scopes live from the Oasis and in St Thomas on periscope @sirbryson if you want to see any of them including secret sands beach.

We used Cocoa beach shuttle service from our hotel in Orlando to the ship and then the ship to MCO, they were very good about going to the ship but we had to wait around 30min in the van going back to MCO. I priced an Uber from the port to MCO and it was $78 for an Uberx and $113 for an XL. We used Uber to get from MCO to our hotel an universal and it was around $50 for the XL with tip.

We did express walk off at around 8am and had a slight wait due to a customs backup, they weren’t fully staffed due to it being Christmas Eve, but we’re still off the ship and through customs in under 30min. They already had many bags out for people to get and they are just laid out and not on a carousel. Check in was a breeze we arrived early at 10am as our driver was flying, and the terminal was open and ready to go with no waits. Boarding started a little before 11am and we were at park café by 11.

I wish they would go ahead and make the casino non-smoking throughout it. It isn’t as bad as other ships but it limits the time I and many others can be in there playing. The dealers were all very friendly as well. Overall it was a good cruise and I’m looking forward to being back on the Independence next march and the Freedom out of San Juan in October.

I’ll be happy to answer any other questions you may have.

Hi, we are sailing on Freedom Jan 6th. We are thinking about the jet ski excursion. Are you able to roam around on your own for an hour or do you have to follow a guide around for an hour?

 

I am looking for more trip reports on San Juan because my adult kids want to do the ATV excursion and I'm still nervous about it. They can make their own decision but I would feel better if I could hear more positive experiences post hurricane.

 

Thanks

It’s follow the leader and they are strict about it as there are several very shallow reefs that could cause some damage to the jet ski or you. You are spaced out 100 yards apart and they have a chase to assist if needed.

As far as San Juan maybe check out the port of call board page for more info.

Now moving on to the dinning and bars, I thought that the bar service was good throughout the week with no real problems. One thing I noticed was that different bars have different prices for the same drink and sometimes they were over the drink package limit. I wasn’t charged the overage for the drink, but I wonder if people who don’t have the package are getting charged the higher price for the same drink you can get at one bar for several dollars cheaper? I really like the new drink mix for frozen drinks and the blenders they use.

Now onto dining, we did the late dining this time which was at 7:30 every night but the first night it was 7:45. The dinning room on deck four was really only about half full sometimes a little more depending on the night. Our waitstaff was below standards this time, largely due to our assistant waiter being absolutely terrible. This made it really hard on our waiter who had to due his job and the assistants job. Service took any where from 1.5hrs to well over 2 hours which is just way to long for my liking. On this ship they now bring out the bread in a basket that has two to three different breads to choose from, the cheese bread is only every other night now. The basket also only has 4 pieces or so in it so if everyone wants the same bread at the table you will have to ask for more of that kind. I think this is less efficient than before, and prefer the old way. Now onto the new menus, I really like that you order everything at once as it should speed up service. I do not like the new menus however as I fell that really limited the choices for entrees compared to in the past. They only had two to three dessert choices that were new each night. I would like for them to keep the old menus but order everything at the same time.

You can tell cutbacks are still happening as the quality of food has also gone downhill from our cruise last year. Our head waiter was great in seeing to my dietary needs, lactose free, and having great desserts every night for me. This was much better than last year on the Navigator.

We ate lunch twice at Johnny Rockets as we had two boardwalk rooms and it was good both times. The second time we ate there was the last sea day and there was a huge line to eat there when it opened. They were also having an aqua show and the the boardwalk carnival at the same time. They had a lot of people who were just sitting in the restaurant eating the carnival food and not eating at JR and at first they wouldn’t kick those people out to make room to sit the people waiting in line to actually eat there. A higher up food manager came over when he saw the huge line, and told them to start kicking those people out to seat those guests waiting to actually eat there. The food was hot and fresh and the service was good there. We ate breakfast here most days as well and always got great service and good food except the last sea day when no one came over to take our order after 15min I left as I had somewhere else to be in 15min.

We ate at chops once for lunch as well, and it was a great value for the price. It wasn’t crowded at all probably only 6 tables or so there, the only issue was they only had one waiter working for the whole restaurant which made his job a lot harder, and slowed things down a little. But overall a great meal and would defiantly go again.

We ate at solarium bistro on night two in order to make it to cats on time and get a good seat, and I can say it was the worst meal I’ve ever had on a cruise ship. We saw the menu online as well as on the tv and screens on the ship, which turned out to be the old menu. They have changed the menu and it no longer includes the Mahi-mahi and steak which was listed elsewhere on the ship. This set a bad tone for the meal, when our main course finally arrived the shrimp were extremely salty and almost inedible and the chicken was inedible as it was extremely dry and had a weird taste. So we needed up leaving there and heading to the Jammer for dinner, which turned out to be very nice, with a make your own pasta station and a lot better choices than at lunch time.

Park Café was great as always, and we went to the Jammer for lunch two port day and it was pretty good, although the selections seemed to be the same each time except the carving station. It was easy to find a seat as well for lunch on the port days. Wipe out café was also good, and a great place for a quick snack.

The star of the show though was the new room service menu. We ordered several things off it and they were all very good, and well worth the up charge for it now. The food arrived in around 30 minutes and was hot and fresh still. Moving forward I would probably order it much more often.

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Ok here are the rest of the menus in no particular order as they change from cruise to cruise according to the head waiter. The formal nights are the first two.

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Alright lets due a test with the holiday menu to make sure it works. This was used instead of one of the other menus on day 6.

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Entertainment and activities were all very nice. We had the best headliner I’ve seen on an Oasis class ship so far in Ron Lucas a ventriloquist. The Aqua shows were all cancelled (technical difficulties) except for the very first one and rescheduled for day 7 in the afternoon. It was extremely hot that day, and made sitting in the sun though for it. They also shortened it down to 20 minutes or so and we missed out on the lighting effects. We’ve seen the show before so it wasn’t a huge deal, but still a slight disappointment. I want to talk about Cats for a second, I thought it was a typical broadway production except the vocals were a little subpar. The costumes, dancing, and stage was fantastic though. I am a season patron at the local broadway theatre so I’ve seen many broadway productions. The theatre was full for the first act, but well over half the theatre left and didn’t return for the second act, which is by far the better of the two. The Ice show was great as always, and the comedians were a riot. Come fly with me was also really good, as was the special holiday show they did. Still world class entertainment.

As far as other activities on the ship go, all the sports deck activities were very crowded throughout the week, largely due to there being over 1,600 kids onboard this week. The mini-golf course is in rough shape and needs some maintenance badly. On this ship for ice skating they make you go first thing in the morning to sign up for sessions that day, even if the session you wanted to go to wasn’t till 6pm you still needed to go to sign up a 9am. First time I’ve encountered that and I wasn’t a fan of that.

I’ll start with the ports of call. We were originally scheduled for St. Marteen but were rerouted to St. Thomas due to the hurricanes. With this being one of the first sailings to St. Thomas we elected to schedule an excursion with the ship, the secret sands beach excursion. This was an absolutely fantastic excursion and well worth the $40. The beach was fantastic, reserved lounger, great sand, free drinks, and the best part there was only 60 people there. On the way we saw a lot of hurricane damage, but the power crews were out working hard to restore power to the island. The island overall is still about 50% without power. In the morning we went downtown shopping were most of the shops were open for business and had power.

For San Juan, with it being such a short port day and with reports that outside the city there it was still very rough and without power due to the hurricane, we decided to just walk around old San Juan for a little bit again and enjoy the ship while it wasn’t so crowded. In old San Juan I would say that 3/4ths of the shops and stores are open and 3/4ths of those are accepting credit cards for payment. They really need to lengthen this stop or just change ports all together, as you don’t really have time to do anything.

For Labadee we had a beach bungalow on Columbus Cove reserved for the day. I also went on the first jet ski tour of the day which was very nice, my only complaint was that the jet skis go different speeds so you could be lucky and get a fast one that goes 45mph or a slow one that only goes 35mph. It was still a nice tour and I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. As for the bungalow it was great, nice private area with loungers and great service from our attendant. The lunch however has continued to go downhill over the years and has reached a new low. My only real complaint with Labadee which is a major one is that the bars over there shut down a little over 2 hours before we left, and they ran out of all beer except one. I thought that was ridiculous to start closing down the bars that soon before departure and not to bring enough supplies off the ship. It forced a lot of people to head back to the ship early.

We were on the 12/17/17 sailing of the Oasis of the Seas. This cruise put us to the diamond level with Royal, so we have a decent amount of expierence with them. Overall this was a good cruise but probably the worst we’ve had with Royal. Having said that I’ll get into the problems we had and the good as well. I’ll also be posting the dining room menus that they are trying out as a pilot program and get more into that later.

If you have any questions feel free to ask along the way.

On the 17th sailing this month it was 7:45 the first night and 7:30 the other nights. It was really only about half full all week. Early dinning was packed according to the crew, and my time dining was also very popular. I liked the time personally as 5:30 is way to early to eat, but any later than 7:30 you run into issues with show times on Oasis.

I wish they would go ahead and announce the replacement ports for ST. Maarten for Oasis through the end of the year then.

It seems Royal is going the exact opposite of Norwegian with cutting out the a la carte pricing and going to one price for all, maybe a push to try and sell more dinning packages?

$19 is a little pricey, when you look at the old menu and prices. You'd be hard pressed to spend that individually on food. To be the same price for lunch and dinner is also a mistake I think. I'll be taking a pass when we cruise Oasis later this year. Would've went a few times as well, just not worth the $19 a person for me.

I can't see Phantom on a cruise ship, the cast required is just too large for them too do. I think Jersey Boys or school or rock would be a better fit, although I think school or rock is too new to be put on a ship.

How are the drink prices on the ship? Have they been raised where a lot of them aren't covered by the package now and have an additional charge?

Currently on the 11 night navigator holiday sailing and drink prices are the same as before at the pub and on the ship.

It will be a 14 year old design by that point... A bit surprising, IMO.

Yeah, but there will be changes to it. Look at harmony made several changes to the base design to keep it very modern and up to date.

That is VERY bad news for me. I'm on that one

Same looks like the Navigator, Enchantment, Disney Magic, Carnival Victory, Insignia, MSC Divina, and Norwegian Sky in port that day.

Any idea when the new terminal will be ready? We're sailing 3/17/17 and there are 5 ships in Miami that day, including Enchantment. It seems the smaller ship would be better served by a makeshift terminal than the bigger one.

I agree it would be better to affect the fewest number of people if someone has to be affected. It seems they don't do that though and use a priority system instead.