perfect match

We were in the Ft Lauderdale area, so plenty of water, plenty of time on much smaller boats (not exactly mega ships like Wonder), plenty of good food to eat, plenty of good entertainment to be enjoyed, pools big enough to actually swim in, and beautiful beaches. Somehow we managed to enjoy ourselves! 😂😂 Our next two vacations will be on mega cruise ships, Allure in April and Wonder in September. 🛳️🛳️ Can’t wait! 😆

They must be! I must remember ear plugs on our next cruise! Thank you very much for an awesome trip report. I really enjoyed following along with you. Even though I ended up a more than just a little bit behind, I’m all caught up now. I’ll be sure to look for your future postings both here and on YouTube.

Thank you very much Laurie for another great review! I enjoyed raising along with you. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for your next cruise so I can sail virtually along with you again.

Seems like our land trip distracted me from CC last week. We’re home, I’m trying to catch up here but have only made it through page 5 so far. Tomorrow is an early morning for me so this night owl can’t even stay up like I want to since I’m going to need to be functional tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll catch up here and everywhere else I want or need to by the end of the week.

Bill, I’m not at all surprised that you and Gina won the Love & Marriage game. You and Gina are definitely operating on the same wavelength. It must have been fun running into that couple from your roll. Sadly, the roll calls I’ve been on since cruising restarted have been totally dead or nonexistent. I miss the roll call that we had for Symphony back in 2019. I don’t belong to that other social media site and have no interest in joining there since I already spend way too much time online anyway. Like you said in a couple of posts, I guess I’m getting old! 😱😂

Thanks, I’ll be looking on the Bahamas forum in December. I’ll be full blown trip planning mode for our Allure cruise by then!

Wow! Glad you got a seat on a flight that will work for you, and thank goodness for that timely text! We live in Central FL, so only about a four hour drive to our resort for us. At least I hope that’s all it is. It took us 61/2 hours to drive to FLL for a cruise once due to accidents, construction, weather, you name it, if it could slow us down it happened! Good thing we drove down the day before our cruise! We were so exhausted by the time we got to our hotel that we ditched our plans to go out for a nice dinner in Ft Lauderdale and ate sandwiches in our room from them Subway that was right around the corner from our hotel. I hope your flight connections go smoothly for you and you’re able to connect with your flight in Atlanta. Oh, and if they can’t move you to the comfort class seat you paid for then they should be reimbursing you for the difference in what you paid. I’m guessing that the phone rep you talked to didn’t understand the difference in seat classifications, maybe some more training needed there.

You just got one more subscriber! We leave in the morning for a land trip, but I’ll have my tablet and WiFi, so I’ll still be checking in. DH is very much an early bird and I’m a night owl 🦉 so we only have one somewhat late night on this trip. we have a 2BR condo, so plenty of room for us to spread out on this trip! 😀 Right now I think I’d better go write the note I promised our cat 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛ sitter before I get any more involved here on CC and don’t get it done. Hope you have a great sailaway.

Thank you @Roguepersonfor an excellent review. Thank you also to everyone else on this sailing who also contributed. I’m not going to mention any of your names because I don’t want to leave anyone out, but all of your contributions made this review stand out in a really good way. I hope everyone who was heading home has arrived safely. 🚢

Bill, Gina looks fantastic! No wonder she’s posing for pictures! You look like you’ve lost some weight too. 😀

Are you planning on doing a review? I’d love to hear about that Sun Cay sunken sculpture snorkel and iguanas tour. I’ll go check out the Nassau forum. Maybe there’s info on it there. I’ve snorkeled around Pearl Island but never saw any sunken sculpture there. Maybe something they’ve added recently.

It looks like you’re running the gauntlet to get to the blow hole!

That is so not fair! I could gain weight just watching you eat, and once I gain the weight it never wants to leave! My DH is like you, he can eat whatever he wants and stays slim. Drives me crazy! 🤪 I did a bit of downsizing for our room on Wonder, too. We usually sail in a JS but on our upcoming Wonder cruise we’re in a Boardwalk Balcony. At least we in the very last Boardwalk Balcony on the starboard side so I won’t completely lose sight of the ocean. We’ll also be able to see the AquaTheater from our balcony, and DH will enjoy people watching. I am glad that the room layout on Wonder is different than the one we had on Oasis. We felt really cramped in that room. DH had broken his collarbone two weeks before we sailed and had surgery to repair it 5 days later. His doctor dis clear him to sail, so sail we did. His injury made the lack of space and awkward layout of that room even more uncomfortable than it might have been otherwise. That was the cruise that convinced us to sail Junior Suites. Unfortunately we will now be sailing in our Boardwalk Balcony for the price we’ve been paying for our Junior Suites.

Note to self - Quickly go and cancel that plate of fruit that I was going to send to Laurie since she liked the first one she got so much! 😂😂😂😂 No, Laurie, I wasn’t really going to do that. I just couldn’t resist the comment. How awesome for you that you got to go on a helicopter 🚁 ride, and to land on a glacier no less!Kudos to the company you booked with for being able to make that happen! Laurie, I think that your grandfather was following along with you on this cruise. He wanted you to know he was there so he showed himself in the mountains. ❤️❤️

I will most definitely be looking for it! We will be recently off Allure when you sail Wonder, so I’ll be suffering from some post cruise depression when your review comes out. Wonder will, at that point be the next vacation for us, so your timing is perfect! I think one of the main things that keeps me booking cruises on Royal is those Freestyle soda machines. We love the variety they offer and the ability to get non alcoholic drinks we would never be able to get in a bar. We’re on Wonder Sept 8, 2024 celebrating our anniversary.The roll calls for our recent cruises have been pretty nonexistent so I’m hoping our Wonder cruise will have a more active one.

I’ll be following since we will be cruising on Wonder next year. Thanks,@OCSC Mike for that trip report you linked here, the one that pushed me over the edge to go ahead and book Wonder! 😂 Well, ok I was planning on booking anyway. I just needed that last little nudge to get me to book. I am very much looking forward to following tour review, @TravelBluebird. I love to hear a variety of opinions on a ship before our first sailing on it.

Welcome back Harry! Hope you had a great weekend and your son is all settled in at school. I’m loving the first of the photos from Ensenada! I mean sea lions 🦭 and mooring lines regardless of the angle from which they had to be taken - what’s not to like? I can’t wait to see the rest!

I’m so glad you got to see eagles, otters, and whales on your excursion, and also that it was able to meet your accessibility needs. I love that you’re enjoying your balcony, too. I know that’s where I’d be spending a lot of my time. I’m really enjoying your review and can’t wait for the next installment!

Love those tender boat pictures, @h20skibum! I thought I had a lot more, but I don’t. Then again, I do tend to avoid cruises where I’ll have to tender. @JamesEM, we haven’t tried Louie Bossi’s yet. There are so many good restaurants in FtLauderdale that it’s hard to get to all of them. I’ll have to put them on my list for our upcoming trip. Have you been able to ride a Water Taxi during the boat show? We’ve always left town just before the show started. I was told in the past that the Water Taxis were out of regular service during the show because they were chartered out to the boat show and were used to transport show attendees to and from the various show venues. I have never been in town during the show, but several taxi boat have told me in the past that is what happens.

Hi Bill! 👋 Good to see you here! I’m interested to see how Carnival compares with RCCL in your eyes. I’ll definitely be following along.

@Sea DogThese pictures were taken on October 21, 2019. The boat show that year ran from October 30 - November 3. As you can see by October 21 they already had all of the local boats at BahaiMar Marina moved out, most of the temporary docks set up, and they were setting up the tents for the exhibitors and bringing in some of the ”jewelry”, aka fancy cars to adorn the yachts that would be on display. I don’t mean to say that you won’t be able to have a good time while you’re in Ft Lauderdale. They’ve been doing this boat show for a long time now and they seem to be very well organized. If there’s anything special you want to do, someplace you have your heart set on eating, anything like that, I’d be sure to make my reservations sooner rather than later. I expect that I will see some of the earliest preparations for the boat show the first week of October when we are there. As long as the Water Taxis are still running, and I think they will be, you may be able to get a good luck at some of the early arrival yachts there for the show. They definitely do not wait until the last minute to bring them in. We live in Florida, and our local public TV station does a broadcasts a tour of the boat show every year. It fascinates me to see all of the big, beautiful yachts on exhibit during the show. There are some smaller boats too. I like to pick out the one I would want if money were no object. IRL there’s no way I can afford any of my picks. Classic case of champagne taste on a beer budget.

I love this picture! Looks like you could reach out and pet that bear! Ok, that’s probably not such a good idea. I think that Grouse Mt. is now on my list of things to do when I finally manage to get to Vancouver. I started making that list way back when the Olympics were held there, but so far the warm tropical ocean keeps winning out.

Me, too. I could not search new cruises at all. I gave up without trying to check on my cruises because the pages would not load.

Yeah, the younger generation wouldn't have any connections to the '70s or '80s singers without RCI as they are single-handedly keeping the era in focus with all the dance parties on all their ships on a weekly basis. They still have the '70s dance party on the Oasis class ships, right? That's what got my boys hooked on the era back on the Allure cruise. 70’s dance party was running when we were on Harmony last fall.

Greg, I don’t know if you’re aware that you will be sailing from Ft Lauderdale International boat show. https://www.flibs.com/en/home.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjw9rSoBhCiARIsAFOiplmee_upCoGboPcbMR0LgkbYk4g30HAOUg2hPg24soPzZJVVllMLr5caAjs7EALw_wcB You will find that the city will be far more crowded than normal and many things you might expect to be doing will not be available as they will be taken over by the boat show crowd. I’m not sure exactly when they take over the water taxis. Check the water taxi website for information or contact them directly and ask. https://watertaxi.com/ All of the regular mega yachts are moved out of their regular berths for the show and miles of temporary docks are installed to accommodate the huge number of mega yachts coming in for the boat show. We will be in the Ft Lauderdale area the first week in October and expect to be sailing on both the Water Taxi and Jungle Queen https://www.junglequeen.com/tropical-isle-dinner-and-show-with-sightseeing-cruise/?fh-u=21b1f5ff-de91-43a6-b2dd-c9b447805358 so we will see what is going on at that point. I did check out Mai Kai and wish they’d hurry up and reopen already! Check out Broward Center For The Preforming Arts and see what they have going on when you’re there. https://www.browardcenter.org/