Oasis 3/14-21/15 trip report (crusing w/ toddler) - includes compasses

To set the scene, we were one branch of a family cruise consisting of 17 people comprising 3 generations. Out of the 17, there were 5 young children ranging in age from 23 months to 6 years old. Our branch was me, my husband, and DD (25 months - young 2y/o); this was our first time on a cruise. We were booked for a Boardwalk Balcony, room 9705.

Here are all the Cruise Compasses, the Royal Babies & Tots info sheet, and the list of officers. This should be set to open access so let me know if there's a problem with the link.

3/9-3/13

We flew out from Oakland, CA on Monday, March 9th. Our pre-cruise entertainment was 4 days spent at Walt Disney World with my sister's family. Aside from us forgetting that a 3 hour time difference while travelling would mostly negate even attempting our plan at magic morning hours , the kids (23m, 2y, and 4.5y) did quite well and we all had a great time. I won't bore you with the details of this part. :)

Friday 3/13

We picked up our rental car and drove down to Ft. Lauderdale on Friday afternoon. We finally arrived at our hotel, The Westin Beach Resort & Spa, and it was super windy. The room was nice, although the louvered bathroom door and louvered shutter were a bit ridiculous. I can appreciate wanting to keep to a spa aesthetic, but bathrooms shouldn't have louvered anything particularly when there didn't appear to be any kind of bathroom fan. Aside from that detail, it was a nice hotel and perfectly fine for the evening.

Saturday 3/14 - Day 1

We had booked the cruise shuttle to get us to the ship. Of course, we were too tight on time in the morning to risk going to get Starbucks for the early side of the ETA. That meant that the shuttle was even later than their latest time window and I totally should have gone to get coffee. Oh well. :)

Getting to the ship was easy once the shuttle arrived. I realized that I had printed out the luggage tags and the 60 page document of useless crap instead of printing out our sail document. Whoops! It wasn't a time-intensive mistake though, so it ended up being a non-issue. Going through security was a bit weird. I wear my daughter in a Tula carrier and haven't had any TSA personnel at any of the multiple airports I've flown from in the last two years tell me I had to take her off. When I offered they told me to keep her on and then did the hand swab thing. However, for the ship security, I had to take her out of the carrier and walk through the metal detector holding her out from in front of me. It was weird. I'm not sure why the difference in procedures. We had a couple bags flagged for inspection: 1) forgot to empty the water out of my water bottle, and 2) the bag of miscellaneous toddler food/entertainment. Those were inspected with no issues and we were allowed to continue through the process and finally board.

Once on the ship we went up to the kids area to sign DD up for the nursury. You start off with the option to reserve 20 hours, but after the 4th day they open the schedule up and you're able to book whatever time might be available over the 20 hours. We then met up with the rest of our group and ended up going to the Windjammer for lunch. It was chaos. I ended up finishing last as it was past 1pm so the kids were antsy and the adults were ready to get into the rooms. Once I figured out that I wasn't supposed to clear my dishes, I left and met up with DH & DD in our room. DD took a nap and pretty soon it was time to go to muster so we put her back in the carrier and she slept through almost all of muster. Afterwards, we went back to the room to see if any of our suitcases had arrived and ended up trying to unpack/put away suitcases instead of going up to the pool deck. I watched some of the Sail Away Party from our balcony while we were pulling away from Ft. Lauderdale before having to change for dinner.

We had My Time Dining, but given all the children, decided to aim for 5:30 reservations each night. Our waiter Michael, assistant waiter Sudhan, and the rest of their team were amazing. They really went out of their way each night to engage with the kids and provide a fabulous experience. It was really brought home just how good they were when one of our excursions ran late so we were seated elsewhere. The service that night was good, but no where near where Michael & Sudhan had set the bar. More on that later.

After dinner, we left DD playing with her grandparents and went to go see Frozen in Time. It was a cute show and was worth the time to see it. If you can get there early and you have kids, on either side of the rink (imagine a football field or basketball court, the sides, not the end zones or baskets) the very first row closest to the entryway are two seats reserved for children. As part of the show, those kids get to ride in a swan cart being pushed by some of the performers. It was cute.

Once that was done, we sat and waited for everyone else to clear out before leaving and wandering back to our room to relieve my parents for the night.

Sunday 3/15 - Day 2

We had the Dreamworks Character Breakfast this morning. DD, despite meeting lots of characters at WDW earlier in the week, is still suspicious of the characters and doesn't want to engage with them without parental backup. The food itself was fine, just standard breakfast fare.

After a bit of a break, we had the Meet & Mingle. DH wasn't feeling too great from the dramamine, so he stayed behind while DD & I went with the rest of the family. The cruise person who was there - Jeremy I think? I'm terrible at remembering names and I didn't write it down as I was trying to wrangle the toddler - was interesting to listen to. He talked about having some things he needed to clean up and his experiences on RCI ships. After his spiel was over and they raffled off the swag, we left. There were too many people to try to see if any of them were from our Roll Call and I figured I'd get the chance to chat with them during the slot pull later in the week.

Outside Jazz on 4 was where Bingo was happening so we decided to go do that. There was nothing really entertaining about it. For $67 you got a machine that supposedly gave you more chances to win, but it also essentially played the game for you. After the games were over, we headed back to our room to pick up DH and then went down to Park Cafe for some of the sandwiches that everyone raves about. We found a table outside and ate, before heading back upstairs so DD could take a nap. I thought the sandwiches were good, but nothing spectacular. So many people raved about them in the reviews I read, I must have had extremely high expectations. They were good sandwiches and tasty, but it wasn't like they were the best things I had ever eaten.

Originally, the whole reason behind getting a balcony was so we could sit outside and watch whatever was happening at the Aqua Theater or just hang out while DD was napping or sleeping. In reality, we neglected to take into account that our version of balcony weather is SF Bay Area weather which is about 10 degrees cooler with about 35% less humidity than Florida and the Caribbean. DH ended up deciding to get the internet package so during naps we were catching up on our backlog of shows on Hulu or napping ourselves until it was time to get ready for dinner each night.

It was formal night in the MDR so we headed down after getting dressed up to meet up with everyone else for group photos. We had negotiated to trade internet access for someone to sit in our room while DD slept if we could get her down before we would need to leave for Majority Rules. She didn't go to sleep so we stayed in instead.

Monday 3/16 - Day 3

Labadee, Haiti

This morning we ate breakfast in Johnny Rockets. It was nothing to write home about. None of us found it to be that great.

After breakfast we changed and left the ship for our Sandbar Island Getaway excursion. There wasn't much to do for the younger set, so this was a nice option. My only complaint is that it would have been nice to have an extra hour out there. The excursion is only scheduled for 2.25 hours and about an hour of that is travel time from the ship to the sandbar. The adult version of this excursion is immediately after ours got back, so there's no real way to extend it without making it difficult for the adult version to eat lunch at a "normal" lunch time.

Lunch was a buffet with food from the ship. From the seating areas you could see the zip line people flying in and watch the waves crashing onto the rocks. It was late at this point so we opted to split off from the other two families and go back to the ship for DD to nap. After showering and getting cleaned up, she of course didn't want to nap. We should have gone with the rest of the group to go to the children's splash pad area that's on Labadee. Given how much sun we got during the excursion though, I shudder to think of what we would have looked like if we stayed out in the sun instead of going in for a nap. DH got toasted whereas DD and I mostly avoided getting burnt.

DD finally fell asleep and we had to wake her up to get dressed for dinner. After dinner we had the Oasis of Dreams show, so we all walked over there to get seats. It's a very cool show. There were some technical difficulties during our showing (the trampoline part of the stage wouldn't turn to the trampoline side) that stopped the show for maybe 10 minutes while they fixed it. Those divers have balls of steel. I couldn't imagine volunteering to dive from those heights on dry land into a stationary pool, but doing it on a moving ship in an ocean takes it to a whole different level even in calm seas.

We took DD back upstairs after the show to go to bed. DH had waffled on putting her in daycare, so we missed out on the Big Band music and Classic Rock concert in Dazzles that night. :(

Intermission

That's it for tonight. I'll work on the rest later this week. Sorry about the lack of pictures. After taking pictures all the time at WDW, I wasn't carrying my phone with me around the ship so I wasn't taking any pictures. I have pictures of the towel animals though. :p

Cheers, great effort. I look forward ot more.:D

Looking forward to the rest of your review

Cindy

A Royal Caribbean press release in the fall indicated the Oasis would have dynamic dining on the 3/14 sailing, with no more "main" dining room. Evidently it did not. Did you hear anything about it?

To set the scene, we were one branch of a family cruise consisting of 17 people comprising 3 generations. Out of the 17, there were 5 young children ranging in age from 23 months to 6 years old. Our branch was me, my husband, and DD (25 months - young 2y/o); this was our first time on a cruise. We were booked for a Boardwalk Balcony, room 9705.

 

Here are all the Cruise Compasses, the Royal Babies & Tots info sheet, and the list of officers. This should be set to open access so let me know if there's a problem with the link.

 

3/9-3/13

We flew out from Oakland, CA on Monday, March 9th. Our pre-cruise entertainment was 4 days spent at Walt Disney World with my sister's family. Aside from us forgetting that a 3 hour time difference while travelling would mostly negate even attempting our plan at magic morning hours , the kids (23m, 2y, and 4.5y) did quite well and we all had a great time. I won't bore you with the details of this part. :)

 

Friday 3/13

We picked up our rental car and drove down to Ft. Lauderdale on Friday afternoon. We finally arrived at our hotel, The Westin Beach Resort & Spa, and it was super windy. The room was nice, although the louvered bathroom door and louvered shutter were a bit ridiculous. I can appreciate wanting to keep to a spa aesthetic, but bathrooms shouldn't have louvered anything particularly when there didn't appear to be any kind of bathroom fan. Aside from that detail, it was a nice hotel and perfectly fine for the evening.

 

Saturday 3/14 - Day 1

We had booked the cruise shuttle to get us to the ship. Of course, we were too tight on time in the morning to risk going to get Starbucks for the early side of the ETA. That meant that the shuttle was even later than their latest time window and I totally should have gone to get coffee. Oh well. :)

 

Getting to the ship was easy once the shuttle arrived. I realized that I had printed out the luggage tags and the 60 page document of useless crap instead of printing out our sail document. Whoops! It wasn't a time-intensive mistake though, so it ended up being a non-issue. Going through security was a bit weird. I wear my daughter in a Tula carrier and haven't had any TSA personnel at any of the multiple airports I've flown from in the last two years tell me I had to take her off. When I offered they told me to keep her on and then did the hand swab thing. However, for the ship security, I had to take her out of the carrier and walk through the metal detector holding her out from in front of me. It was weird. I'm not sure why the difference in procedures. We had a couple bags flagged for inspection: 1) forgot to empty the water out of my water bottle, and 2) the bag of miscellaneous toddler food/entertainment. Those were inspected with no issues and we were allowed to continue through the process and finally board.

 

Once on the ship we went up to the kids area to sign DD up for the nursury. You start off with the option to reserve 20 hours, but after the 4th day they open the schedule up and you're able to book whatever time might be available over the 20 hours. We then met up with the rest of our group and ended up going to the Windjammer for lunch. It was chaos. I ended up finishing last as it was past 1pm so the kids were antsy and the adults were ready to get into the rooms. Once I figured out that I wasn't supposed to clear my dishes, I left and met up with DH & DD in our room. DD took a nap and pretty soon it was time to go to muster so we put her back in the carrier and she slept through almost all of muster. Afterwards, we went back to the room to see if any of our suitcases had arrived and ended up trying to unpack/put away suitcases instead of going up to the pool deck. I watched some of the Sail Away Party from our balcony while we were pulling away from Ft. Lauderdale before having to change for dinner.

 

We had My Time Dining, but given all the children, decided to aim for 5:30 reservations each night. Our waiter Michael, assistant waiter Sudhan, and the rest of their team were amazing. They really went out of their way each night to engage with the kids and provide a fabulous experience. It was really brought home just how good they were when one of our excursions ran late so we were seated elsewhere. The service that night was good, but no where near where Michael & Sudhan had set the bar. More on that later.

 

After dinner, we left DD playing with her grandparents and went to go see Frozen in Time. It was a cute show and was worth the time to see it. If you can get there early and you have kids, on either side of the rink (imagine a football field or basketball court, the sides, not the end zones or baskets) the very first row closest to the entryway are two seats reserved for children. As part of the show, those kids get to ride in a swan cart being pushed by some of the performers. It was cute.

 

Once that was done, we sat and waited for everyone else to clear out before leaving and wandering back to our room to relieve my parents for the night.

 

Sunday 3/15 - Day 2

We had the Dreamworks Character Breakfast this morning. DD, despite meeting lots of characters at WDW earlier in the week, is still suspicious of the characters and doesn't want to engage with them without parental backup. The food itself was fine, just standard breakfast fare.

 

After a bit of a break, we had the Meet & Mingle. DH wasn't feeling too great from the dramamine, so he stayed behind while DD & I went with the rest of the family. The cruise person who was there - Jeremy I think? I'm terrible at remembering names and I didn't write it down as I was trying to wrangle the toddler - was interesting to listen to. He talked about having some things he needed to clean up and his experiences on RCI ships. After his spiel was over and they raffled off the swag, we left. There were too many people to try to see if any of them were from our Roll Call and I figured I'd get the chance to chat with them during the slot pull later in the week.

 

Outside Jazz on 4 was where Bingo was happening so we decided to go do that. There was nothing really entertaining about it. For $67 you got a machine that supposedly gave you more chances to win, but it also essentially played the game for you. After the games were over, we headed back to our room to pick up DH and then went down to Park Cafe for some of the sandwiches that everyone raves about. We found a table outside and ate, before heading back upstairs so DD could take a nap. I thought the sandwiches were good, but nothing spectacular. So many people raved about them in the reviews I read, I must have had extremely high expectations. They were good sandwiches and tasty, but it wasn't like they were the best things I had ever eaten.

 

Originally, the whole reason behind getting a balcony was so we could sit outside and watch whatever was happening at the Aqua Theater or just hang out while DD was napping or sleeping. In reality, we neglected to take into account that our version of balcony weather is SF Bay Area weather which is about 10 degrees cooler with about 35% less humidity than Florida and the Caribbean. DH ended up deciding to get the internet package so during naps we were catching up on our backlog of shows on Hulu or napping ourselves until it was time to get ready for dinner each night.

 

It was formal night in the MDR so we headed down after getting dressed up to meet up with everyone else for group photos. We had negotiated to trade internet access for someone to sit in our room while DD slept if we could get her down before we would need to leave for Majority Rules. She didn't go to sleep so we stayed in instead.

 

Monday 3/16 - Day 3

Labadee, Haiti

This morning we ate breakfast in Johnny Rockets. It was nothing to write home about. None of us found it to be that great.

 

After breakfast we changed and left the ship for our Sandbar Island Getaway excursion. There wasn't much to do for the younger set, so this was a nice option. My only complaint is that it would have been nice to have an extra hour out there. The excursion is only scheduled for 2.25 hours and about an hour of that is travel time from the ship to the sandbar. The adult version of this excursion is immediately after ours got back, so there's no real way to extend it without making it difficult for the adult version to eat lunch at a "normal" lunch time.

 

Lunch was a buffet with food from the ship. From the seating areas you could see the zip line people flying in and watch the waves crashing onto the rocks. It was late at this point so we opted to split off from the other two families and go back to the ship for DD to nap. After showering and getting cleaned up, she of course didn't want to nap. We should have gone with the rest of the group to go to the children's splash pad area that's on Labadee. Given how much sun we got during the excursion though, I shudder to think of what we would have looked like if we stayed out in the sun instead of going in for a nap. DH got toasted whereas DD and I mostly avoided getting burnt.

 

DD finally fell asleep and we had to wake her up to get dressed for dinner. After dinner we had the Oasis of Dreams show, so we all walked over there to get seats. It's a very cool show. There were some technical difficulties during our showing (the trampoline part of the stage wouldn't turn to the trampoline side) that stopped the show for maybe 10 minutes while they fixed it. Those divers have balls of steel. I couldn't imagine volunteering to dive from those heights on dry land into a stationary pool, but doing it on a moving ship in an ocean takes it to a whole different level even in calm seas.

 

We took DD back upstairs after the show to go to bed. DH had waffled on putting her in daycare, so we missed out on the Big Band music and Classic Rock concert in Dazzles that night. :(

 

Intermission

That's it for tonight. I'll work on the rest later this week. Sorry about the lack of pictures. After taking pictures all the time at WDW, I wasn't carrying my phone with me around the ship so I wasn't taking any pictures. I have pictures of the towel animals though. :p

Hi,

Could you please post the link for the compasses again.

Thanks Paul

Hi Paul,

The link is where the red text is. Does it not work when you click on it? When I tested it in a different browser, it worked but had them in an additional random folder so I fixed that part.

Let me know what problem you're running into so I can fix it.

A Royal Caribbean press release in the fall indicated the Oasis would have dynamic dining on the 3/14 sailing, with no more "main" dining room. Evidently it did not. Did you hear anything about it?

Yeah, there was a thread on CC about it and I think I got an email saying that dynamic dining was postponed. If I'm remembering right, they decided to delay the roll out until the later part of this year.

Obviously the renovations in dry dock were tailored to having dd rolled out, so instead of what (I guess) used to be one MDR with three floors of the same theme, each floor had a different theme (Americon Icon, Grande, & Silk).

Thank you for the report! Did you by any chance notice if there was a shuttle from the ship down the long fdock available? We have someone in our group who would not be able to walk down the dock to the area where the property shuttle is located.

Dynamic Dining has been indefintely postponed on the Oasis.

Thank you for the report! Did you by any chance notice if there was a shuttle from the ship down the long fdock available? We have someone in our group who would not be able to walk down the dock to the area where the property shuttle is located.

 

Dynamic Dining has been indefintely postponed on the Oasis.

Are you talking about while docked at Ft. Lauderdale? I didn't see any shuttles there, but I think there were wheelchairs. I don't know if they were offered as a courtesy by the ship (a la airlines) or if they were personal.

I didn't notice any shuttles at any of our ports, but aside from Labadee, we were pushing time so we were focused on getting to where we were supposed to be.

Are you talking about while docked at Ft. Lauderdale? I didn't see any shuttles there, but I think there were wheelchairs. I don't know if they were offered as a courtesy by the ship (a la airlines) or if they were personal.

 

I didn't notice any shuttles at any of our ports, but aside from Labadee, we were pushing time so we were focused on getting to where we were supposed to be.

I am sorry. I was talking about Labadee.

Hi Paul,

The link is where the red text is. Does it not work when you click on it? When I tested it in a different browser, it worked but had them in an additional random folder so I fixed that part.

 

Let me know what problem you're running into so I can fix it.

Hi,

I figured it out. I copied the text into my browser and it worked. Thanks so much for the compasses they are great!!!:D

Best Regards Paul

Thank you so much for the review, and especially for the Compasses, they will help me plan my trip!

Subscribing as we'll be going on the sister ship next spring with our kids (our younger one will be the age of your oldest one).

Sounds like a great trip so far. And extra bonus you started off at Disney World!

I'm thinking of doing the character breakfast as well. I know it's an extra fee but did you feel it was still worthwhile? I'm thinking since it's a specific 'extra' thing for kids that our kids will like it. They loved the character meals at Disney when we went last year.

Looking forward to hearing more.

Hi Paul,

The link is where the red text is. Does it not work when you click on it? When I tested it in a different browser, it worked but had them in an additional random folder so I fixed that part.

 

Let me know what problem you're running into so I can fix it.

Worked great for me! Thank you for posting them!

bobj

Tuesday 3/17 - Day 4

Falmouth, Jamaica

It was nice having a late arrival in Jamaica so we weren't having to run around trying to get breakfast, ready, and covered in sunscreen in a limited amount of time. Even though we decided to hold off putting on sunscreen until after getting to our excursion (we figured after the burn DH got in Haiti, that waiting until we actually needed the sunscreen might be a better choice than doing it early and then sweating it off while in the shade was perhaps a better idea), we were still only right on time getting off the ship and to our excursion check in location. Tight enough that we skipped all the pier photos just in case the show up time was a hard time.

Our excursion for the day was the Hilton Rose Hall all-inclusive resort (booked through RCI). I would have loved to have done the high tea excursion, but they don't allow young children so that was out. Anyway, as it turns out our bus was late so we had plenty of time. Our "momma" for the duration was Taneesha and she was great! She was fun on the bus rides and made sure that she caught our attention at the end of the day to let us know that we should be finishing up and getting back to the bus. As for the resort, it was nice. Two of my sisters came on this excursion with us and our group settled onto some lounge chairs to the far right of the beach in front of where the catamarans were launching/returning. This was only a little problematic as the kids kept wanting to play in the surf in front of us and we had to keep moving them if any of the cats were out because they would be right in the way of the boats returning. Not a big deal, but something we would do differently if we returned. Our server, Andre, was amazing. He really worked his butt off bringing drinks, bringing food for the kids, then bringing plates of food for the adults once the jerk chicken (in the buffet maybe?) was available. He even brought out soft-serve ice cream cones afterwards for everyone. Absolutely amazing service! The jerk chicken was fabulous; I wish I could have some right now.

When we originally booked the excursion, and even in the excursion booklet that we got in our cabin the first day, this was listed as a 4 hour duration. In actuality, it was more like a 6 hour duration. We didn't get back on the bus until 5 and back to the port by 5:30. This didn't exactly work out well with our dinner plans or our show plans as we had had the headliner booked for 8:30pm. After doing a bit of shopping (rum, rum cake, & coffee - yum!) we were back on board ready to get showered and go have dinner.

I tried to change our show to a different day, but this was the last day our headliner, Kenny James, was on board so we changed our reservations to the 10:30pm show instead. Because we were so late, we missed dining with the rest of our group and arrived in the dining room at 7:30pm. We were able to be seated quickly, which was surprising given how often I had heard people complaining about MTD on the boards, but unfortunately, all the tables in Michael & Sudhan's section were full so we were seated elsewhere. This probably would have been a good night to try eating in the Windjammer since we were tired, but this was the only night they were serving rack of lamb and we didn't want to miss it. I don't know if Michael & Sudhan were just that amazing or if the waiters we had that night were having an off night, but it felt like we were forgotten a bit - no fruit brought out for DD (or even offered), left me with the wine list for a long time before taking my order, offering bread as an afterthought, not checking in really during the meal. Even my wine tasted off (DH agreed something was weird, either it turned or the storage was weird or they brought be the wrong wine or something.), but since I had gotten a drink package I wasn't concerned about that. This was the only night that we a little disappointed with the food. It just couldn't compare with what we were able to do at home, likely having a lot more to do with the fact that we have a great source for organic grass-fed lamb here and I can't imagine them being able to have that on the ship given the price. Anyway, one mildly off night out of seven is still an overall win in our book. :)

After dinner we went back upstairs to get DD situated for bed and to see if my parents could watch her while we went to the headliner. They were so we left DD playing with grandpa while we wandered down the the Opal Theater. The theater was no where near capacity so no one was even bothering to scan our cards to see if we had a reservation or not. We ended up sitting on the balcony (deck 5) in the front row. A bit of an error in seat choice as there are glass partitions and rails there that we then had to look through, but neither of us cared enough to move to a different seat. We managed to catch the eye of one of the waiters and had a chocolate martini and some water delivered. He managed to get to where we were seated, walking past half a row of people, and didn't spill a drop! Poor guy, I didn't even think of how obnoxious it would be to walk with a full martini glass otherwise I would have ordered something else. :o

The show ended up being quite fun and right up DH's alley as he's a big fan of the oldies. It was especially fun when Kenny James came down into the audience and grabbed one guy to participate and the guy totally went for it. I don't know that I would have been brave enough to say screw it and actually do it for real instead of half-assing it. Like I said, really fun and I'm glad we went.

After the show we wandered back up to our room, relieved grandpa, and then went to sleep.

Wednesday 3/18 - Day 5

I really have no idea what we did this morning, but somehow we ended up being on the Royal Promenade in time for the Move It Move It parade. We were supposed to go to the slot pull our roll call had put together, but it completely slipped my mind and I forgot. Didn't even remember until our last day on board I forgot it so completely. Whoops! The parade was cute. We had spots on the stairs outside the photos place and DD was super excited to see Puss 'n Boots coming down on the Rising Tide Bar. In later days she would look at the bar and keep asking about Puss 'n Boots. :D We were about halfway down the stairs so we weren't at the farthest point out and couldn't really see down to the other side of the RP. I was holding DD so she could see the aerialist performance and that was a bit nervewracking. I don't know if we saw all the characters that participated since I don't think we saw any of the Madagascar crew other than the penguins, but it was cute regardless.

After the parade was over, we grabbed some pizza from Sorrento's to take back up to our room for a quick lunch before naptime. The pizza is meh, but it's pizza and it certainly wasn't bad enough for us to decide not to eat it. :) DD wasn't really interested in taking her nap so we watched the bellyflop competition from the balcony before coming back inside and insisting on a nap at that point.

This was formal night again, so we all got dolled up to take more pictures with the entire family. We were seated back with Michael & Sudhan again which was great (are you sensing a theme in how much we loved these guys?). Dinner was good, although I still don't care for lobster. I tried a bite of DH's but *shudder* just not my thing. Yuck. I had the Baked Alaska for dessert and was underwhelmed. The recipes I remember seeing for it had a genoise cake surrounding the ice cream before the meringue is spread on top and this was just three kinds of ice cream in a ramekin with meringue on top. Just didn't live up to my expectations for such a traditional dessert. On the plus side I didn't have to go through the effort of making it to realize it was a dud! ;)

We "ran" (yeah right) back up to our rooms after dinner to get changed back into more casual clothes and putting DD in her pjs before going back down to the Opal Theater for the Come Fly with Me show. This was such a neat show! DD was entranced and all the performers did such a good job. Anytime I see an aerial show it always makes me want to take aerial lessons from the local circus arts place. Maybe after about a year or 10 of pilates I might have a core that could support that. lol!

We left the rest of the group to take DD up to the nursery for the rest of the evening while we went to the comedy show. The comedians were funny and we had a good time. They were thrown off by the noise from Jazz though (a broadway favorites song thing was happening at the same time) and so they were riffing a lot about how Phantom of the Opera was next door. Kind of surprising that more sound proofing wasn't built in between the two venues, but my understanding is that the new Oasis class ships will have a two floor comedy venue (reducing the size of Blaze iirc) so hopefully that will either alleviate the sound bleed issue through a location change or by adding in more sound proofing between the two rooms. It really was noticeably loud and I could imagine it would be harder for the people close to the back of the room on that side to hear the comedians. There were a few young women in the audience who sat in the front row and were entertaining to watch. I don't know if they really knew what they were getting into by sitting in the front row. From the sounds of things, the show was slightly different on a later night because my parents weren't happy about a lot of the language and we didn't notice it as being excessive during our show. They mentioned a couple different jokes, so perhaps we missed them due to the spontaneous riff on the noise from Jazz.

Afterwards we wandered into the casino to play some slots. I think the person at the desk must have thought I was really dim because we couldn't figure out how to play the slot machines. After a week at WDW with magic bands being our sole currency and 5 days on the ship with our sea pass card being our sole currency, I didn't even think to check to see if we had to put money in the machines to make them work. :o So um, yeah, the casino takes money, not your sea pass card although apparently they can make it work like that for a fee. No big deal, we got some cash and blew through $40 and still had no idea what made us win so we left. I'm more into craps and DH is way more into blackjack so slots with incomprehensible win scenarios just weren't as much fun.

We went up to the Royal Promenade in time to hear the last few songs of the 70s singer set before the disco party. After grabbing a drink at the pub (some apple pie thing that was just not good, blech) we ended up being opposite the globe as the walkway started rolling out. DH managed to catch one of the glow rings that were being thrown into the crowd. We stayed and danced for a bit, even got caught on video and by the wandering camera guy before we left and went back upstairs to pick up DD and head to bed.

Intermission

Yet another break now that naptime's over. Hopefully the grammar's not terrible as I didn't get a chance to do a full edit pass. More in the next couple days.

edit: bummer, we have a limited edit window. I would have included a link to this post in the OP otherwise.

Thursday 3/19 - Day 6

Cozumel, Mexico

No breakfast this morning as we needed to get off the ship fairly early to make our excursion. Instead I ran down to Cafe Promenade to get myself a latte (elixir of life) and some random pastries for all of us. Of course when I walked back in the room DD wanted milk so I was off to the Windjammer for a carton of milk and snagged a few sausages for DD on my way back out.

We had decided to do the dolphin encounter excursion with my sister and her family. We were all booked through RCI when my sister found out that she couldn't book her son (23m) even though the facility would allow him. There was no way for us to be in the same group if we booked through the cruiseline and they booked direct, so we cancelled our booking with RCI and booked direct with the Dolphin Discovery folks.

We had bought an internet package so we did a quick google search to find out what the time zone was in Cozumel so we knew when we should be getting off the ship so we could get a taxi out to Chankanaab. Pro tip: Google is WRONG. According to Google, Cozumel is 2 hours behind ship time, but the Dolphin Discovery people were all only one hour behind. So we thought we were showing up on time for our 9am reservation and instead we were an hour late. Whoops!

Supposedly they weren't going to be able to get us in the water until after noon, but somehow they were able to get us in for a 10:10 group. Well, the group ended up being the 7 in our party plus 3 other people. Given the size of the other groups (assuming cruise ships since there were several in port) we totally lucked out.

We ended up upgrading the adults to the dolphin swim adventure. After initially saying no, they offered $30pp buy 3 get 4th free so we went for it. All of us were glad we did since it was a lot of fun. The three kids had a good time being able to pet and kiss the dolphins. After we were done with the dolphins we were walked around to another enclosure and got to meet three manatees, one of whom was a baby. The trainer brought the baby back and forth in front of us a couple times so we could pet it while it was eating lettuce. Very neat.

Of course, there were tons of pictures taken and after we were finished with the manatees we were taken over to the picture stations where we discovered that they want $40 per person in picture per picture and $500 for one cd of the digital copies. o.O Thanks but no thanks. There wasn't a chance in hell we were going to spend $250 per family to get a cd of dolphin pictures. They kept coming back and we kept saying no although we were still looking so they sent someone over who asked what we were willing to pay. When all was said and done, we ended up paying $175 per family to get a cd. While not as good as I've seen others get, it was WAY better than the $500 so *shrug* we'll count it as a win and be glad we got some good photos.

By going direct, our price also included a buffet so after we were done with the pictures and changed we went and had lunch. The food was fine, standard buffet quality. Then we packed up to get a taxi back to the shops so my sister could do some shopping while the rest of us tagged along. :)

For this excursion, we finally got smart and actually remembered to bring our Tula which was great since DD fell asleep while we were shopping. The crappy thing is that for whatever reason, Cozumel security made my husband take our napping DD out of the carrier, take the carrier off completely to run it through the xray machine, and then go through the xray himself holding her away from him. Thanks for waking the napping kid, guys. >< I really don't understand the security protocols in the ports. How much can just an xray scanner find afterall? Anyway, after that bit of security theater we got back on the ship and went to get cleaned up for dinner in the MDR.

Before we left for dinner, we took another look at the cruise compass and ended up deciding to cancel our nursery reservation for the night. The only thing we were really interested in going to was the Quest game, but it started at 11:30 and the nursery closed at midnight so without knowing exactly what Quest entailed or how long it might run, we decided to just punt and not pay the extra for the babysitting.

Dinner was good as usual with our amazing waitstaff. Afterwards the guys went off to go bond in the casino while the girls went upstairs to pick up the bigger kids and let the lot of them play in the supervised play area before going back down for bed.

Friday 3/20 - Day 6

Breakfast in the MDR today with most of the family - the grandparents and all the grandchildren since none of the parents got to sleep in very late with the kids anyway. :) Michael (our waiter) was working in the dining room while we were there, but not our tables, although everytime he'd come by he would high-five the kids or chat with us.

We were scheduled to go see Cats (ugh why did THAT have to be the show on our ship?) but DH had seen it on Broadway already and thought it was beyond terrible and I didn't feel like wasting 3 hours of our last day on ship stuck in a theater watching a meh show.

DD was scheduled to go see Frozen on Ice with the rest of the family (which conflicted with our Cats booking) so after breakfast we took a few turns around the carosel before trying to get her to take a nap. When it was time we woke her up and took her downstairs with my sister so she could go to the show with them. The three older girls got to go for a ride in the swan which was very cool. Meanwhile, I got a latte and some pastries from Cafe Promenade on my way back to the room. Sadly, those pastries were no where near worth their calories. I took a bite of each and was done. DH didn't think they were THAT bad, but I'd much rather eat more of a good dessert than a subpar one. The strawberry ice tart (something like that) was just meh and the chocolate rock cake thing was just way too bouncy like the batter was overworked. Regardless, they were essentially inedible. Definitely no where near as good as any of the desserts we had been having for dinner.

Once DD was returned to us, we decided to take her to get her face painted which was such mishegas. While we're standing watching and in line (although with more space than was likely needed to stay out of the way of the artist) another kid joined the line in front of us. *shrug* no big deal. Then DD starts saying she wants to leave and doesn't want to do this. I confirmed so we left, but she changed her mind by the time we got to the Boardwalk entrance. Back we went, but now there are 3 more kids in line. Argh. We finally make it through and instead of anything interesting, she gets a feather. Totally fine, DD has no idea of a difference let's just gtfo so we can get changed for dinner for which we are going to be about 10m late. Note to self: get the blasted face painting done earlier in the cruise so it's not a thing if you want/need to bail on it a different time.

Last dinner in the MDR. The table sans kids finished before the table with kids (duh) so they left as the waitstaff was parading about. We could have left midway, but stayed to clap along and support our waiters.

After dinner, we all met up in the portrait area to choose what pictures we wanted and get a digital package. This ended up being the one blight on our cruise and being at the very end it was quite the lingering disappointment that left a bad taste in our mouths. As I mentioned initially, this was a 3 generation cruise. We were cruising together as a family and spent significant amounts of time together. Our parents wanted pictures of all of us as mementos of the cruise that they had paid for. They ended up finding 20 pictures that they wanted of various configurations of all of us and went to buy that digital package. Well, sorry, no can do. You're not allowed to buy digital copies of any picture that doesn't have you or someone from your stateroom in it unless they're your under-21 children and that room is linked to your reservation. When my parents objected and asked for something to be done, they were directed to the manager who told them the same thing. Basically, it's the policy and you're SOL. If you want a picture you're not in, buy the hard copy. Fine, they didn't like it, but whatever, they'll buy the digital copy of the entire family together. Nope, can't do that either; the smallest number of digital images you're allowed to buy is 10. Well, hell. At least the dolphin people were willing to negotiate. This is a jerk move to hold your images hostage. Way to be classy, RCI.

Everyone walked away sans pictures. After a brief consultation, the "kids" decided to buy a few of the hard copy photos our parents wanted as a thank you gift for them. The rest of us bought only a couple pictures in total, no where near what they would have received if our parents could have bought the digital package they wanted.

We had booked nursery time for DD as in previous compasses I'd seen there was a game show, but I didn't look carefully enough at our earlier compasses and had ended up missing it entirely. :( We decided to keep our booking anyway so that we had a couple toddler-free hours to pack and get everything situated without having to chase DD out of the suitcases. We got everything packed up, picked up DD, and went to bed on board for the last time.

Debarkation Day

We woke up early to get cleaned up and make sure we didn't forget anything. We were leaving our room at 7:45 and considered heading for breakfast before deciding that it wasn't worth hauling all our crap around the ship. We had done the luggage valet (flying Southwest and $20pp was SO worth it) so we only had to deal with our carryon stuff and were off the ship and through customs in right around an hour. Of course we missed the shuttle and were the first people on the next bus so we had to wait for it to fill before it left for the airport. We had a 3:30pm flight, so we didn't have a time crunch to worry about.

Getting to FLL was painless, but that airport has a terrible layout. My parents and sister were all flying at around the same time that we were and we were all at the airport by 10. Due to the layout though, none of us were able to spend the next 4-5 hours in the airport together as each gate branch was through a completely different security gate. Ugh, raze that place to the ground and build a better terminal layout. Aside from that minor annoyance, our flights were both on time or extremely close to it such that we landed at our scheduled time anyway.

Post Cruise

Now since we've been home I've been looking at other cruises to do (Panama! Hawaii! Something, even better if it's out of a west coast port!) and trying to convince DH that his seasickness wasn't that bad and that with advance planning a patch would be even better than the dramamine pills. :D

Thoughts/Comments

These will have to be in another post sometime soon. DD won't let me sleep in yet. :(

Subscribing as we'll be going on the sister ship next spring with our kids (our younger one will be the age of your oldest one).

 

Sounds like a great trip so far. And extra bonus you started off at Disney World!

 

I'm thinking of doing the character breakfast as well. I know it's an extra fee but did you feel it was still worthwhile? I'm thinking since it's a specific 'extra' thing for kids that our kids will like it. They loved the character meals at Disney when we went last year.

 

Looking forward to hearing more.

The menu was exactly the same as the normal MDR breakfast menu, just themed to be as incomprehensible as possible. It didn't read terribly well with the design and renaming of the dishes.

Given the size of the characters, not all of them come through the dining room to each table. Alex & King Julian did, but Gloria did not due to the size of the costume. Instead they brought each table up one by one (a la a wedding reception buffet :) ) for the kids to meet her and have their pictures taken. It was cute though and the characters and other staff all had specific dances they did together when the characters appeared before meeting the kids. It was really nice to have done it because most of the other character meet & greets seemed to conflict with DD's nap or one of our reservations for dinner or a show. They gave out stickers to each of the kids for each character and gave out full size movie posters as well. We ditched the poster when packing though, because there is no possible way to fit one in luggage and have it not be crushed and destroyed. Maybe they were for decorating the rooms on the ship if you happened to have brought magnets or clips.

Aside from Gloria not being able to make it to the tables and them not doing autographs, it was essentially the same as what we experienced at WDW character meals as far as character interaction.

The menu was exactly the same as the normal MDR breakfast menu, just themed to be as incomprehensible as possible. It didn't read terribly well with the design and renaming of the dishes.

 

Given the size of the characters, not all of them come through the dining room to each table. Alex & King Julian did, but Gloria did not due to the size of the costume. Instead they brought each table up one by one (a la a wedding reception buffet :) ) for the kids to meet her and have their pictures taken. It was cute though and the characters and other staff all had specific dances they did together when the characters appeared before meeting the kids. It was really nice to have done it because most of the other character meet & greets seemed to conflict with DD's nap or one of our reservations for dinner or a show. They gave out stickers to each of the kids for each character and gave out full size movie posters as well. We ditched the poster when packing though, because there is no possible way to fit one in luggage and have it not be crushed and destroyed. Maybe they were for decorating the rooms on the ship if you happened to have brought magnets or clips.

 

Aside from Gloria not being able to make it to the tables and them not doing autographs, it was essentially the same as what we experienced at WDW character meals as far as character interaction.

Thanks so much for your feedback. I've heard mixed reviews, but am still thinking of signing up (even for a small fee) as it'll be something specific for our kids. Our kids are past naps , but can also see scheduling conflicts with meet and greets. Think I've heard that they have different characters at different breakfasts. Never thought about how some are too tall. The dancing and character interaction you describe sounds cute.

Love reading your cruise report. Sounds like you had a great time.

PS - $500 for pictures? That's crazy...even if with the dolphins.

Thank you for the review. I am from Lake Tahoe area but now live in Florida. Taking a cruise on the Pacific Ocean is not a great thing if your hubby was not feeling well on a Caribbean cruise. It is always rough and not very warm. Good luck

Final thoughts

We had a REALLY good time on this trip. We weren't quite sure how it would work out vacationing with the entire family, but it was a lot of fun to be able to walk 5 feet down the hall to see my siblings, nieces or nephew, and parents.

When we were booking the WDW piece, I was going into it thinking that we'd do it since we were right there, because there was no way that I'd pay to go back to WDW when we live 4-5 hours from Disneyland. But although I would make some adjustments to our travel plans (fly in earlier, stay off property a couple days to make the time zone adjustment), I would definitely enjoy going back again, especially as a trip before/after a cruise.

As for the pictures on the cruise ship. That's still a bummer. It was even worse because we had been to WDW before the cruise and they encourage you to link your reservations together so that the Memory Maker (picture package) captures all of you and you can download all the photos regardless of which family member is/isn't included. After doing some research into Disney cruise line, it appears that the cruise lines outsource their photography management/storage to the same vendor as Disney has the same prohibitions that RCI does, however Disney does allow you to buy one get the second half off when you're travelling with linked reservations. So it's not as awesome as WDW was unfortunately. DCL picture pricing is already drastically reduced compared to RCI, but my understanding is that they're more expensive so you're paying regardless of which line you use. Knowing this, I'd make sure to bring our dSLR out more so that we had our own pictures without having to deal with the ship pictures.

As for the kid stuff, the babies and tots babysitting worked well for us. Yes it sucked to have to pay for babysitting, but it was no where near what sitters cost at home so whatever. The two nights she was in there, there were movies playing. That normally wouldn't be my preference, but it was vacation so whatever.

DD loved playing in the free play toy area and would ask to play there. My three nieces (4, 4.5, 6) LOVED the kids club. They were asking their parents to go back regularly. I don't know that I would necessarily WANT to cruise with a baby/toddler again (do not run out of wipes, they're $5 for 15 wipes!), but I would definitely like to take another cruise once DD is old enough to be in the kids club with the older kids instead of stuck in the nursery.

As for the pools, in the kids play area, there is a splashpad place with water about 4-6" deep that specifically calls out that it is okay for kids wearing swim diapers to play in. This was one of the hardest things for me to try to get any information on before our cruise. No, they won't be able to get in any of the actual pools, but they will be able to play in the water.

I would buy long sleeve spf shirts for everyone if we went to the Caribbean again. We didn't go up to the pool deck at all for swimming/splash pad because we didn't want to get burned any worse than we already were from WDW and our excursions. Bring a lot of sunscreen. We brought 3 - 4oz tubes for the trip and luckily I decided to pick up another bottle at Walgreens before we embarked.

Between the naps and how much DD loved the carosel, we probably didn't even see half of the ship. The Oasis was a very cool ship to be on and I would have no qualms about sailing on any Oasis class ships again.

I have my teen kids (15-18-20) in 9705 and we're across the hall in a OV balcony. Sounds like you did a lot of walking to/from the cabin.. how was that? Did you like the location or would you have preferred something more central?

With the balcony door closed, did you still get a lot of boardwalk/aquatheater noise? Was there stuff going on after 11p

How well could you see the aquatheater events?

FYI: We've done 3 cruises with extended family (2-3 grandparents, 6 adults and 5 grandaughters). It's a great way to vacation together but still have some individual family time.

Thanks for your help

It wasn't too much walking (we were about halfway down the hall-ish from the aft elevators) unless we were walking from our room to the Adventure Ocean area. I found it felt shorter if we went up and walked on the pool deck before going down a flight of stairs instead of walking down the hallway past all the rooms on deck 14. For anything else in the front of the ship, we were walking through places that were interesting to look at so the perception was that it didn't take as long, even though it was the same amount of walking.

We liked to walk through the Royal Promenade if we were going to the front of the ship instead of the casino (only because of the smoke - they just don't have the same level of ventilation that the Las Vegas casinos have).

Basically, walking anywhere other than past rows of staterooms was more visually interesting so it didn't feel like we were walking and walking and walking without getting anywhere.

We could definitely hear noise coming in from the Boardwalk and Aqua Theater, but at low levels - like whispers/quiet talking sound level. The loudest things we ever heard from the Aqua Theater was any of the announcers talking or sometimes the music when it would get to a crescendo. I don't recall if they had things going on at 11pm (you could look through the cruise compasses I posted in my first post), but we were usually either sleeping or watching tv with earbuds in while our toddler was sleeping. The sound was never enough to bother our toddler when she was trying to go to sleep, even during her daytime nap, or for us when we wanted to sleep later in the evening. If you're used to any kind of white noise - fan, music, etc - then I don't think you'd have a problem with it.

The carosel rings a bell every time they start it going around again; we heard that pretty clearly but it wasn't disruptive to any of us.

We could see pretty well, although I don't know that I would want to count on that for anything you actually want sound for. I watched the bellyflop competition from our balcony and could see just fine, but the way the sound reverberates from the Aqua Theater and throughout the Boardwalk, it wasn't always totally clear (to be expected due to the acoustics). So I wouldn't skip seeing the Oasis of Dreams show expecting to have the same experience from the balcony, but if you happen to be free and want to watch it then you'd be able to see it while standing comfortably at the rail. I think we were a bit too far away to be able to see well while sitting, especially with the distortion through the balcony rail/wall.

When they were playing movies, you could see the screen easily, but they don't jack up the sound so you couldn't really hear it, especially over the competing sounds of the Boardwalk.

Thank you. I was nervous about my cabin choice, but you've relieved my concern. It seems like a convenient deck to go out and grab something from Boardwalk or Central Park and not too far from the pools, surf simulators and teen center.

Thanks for the help!