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Oasis of the Seas - Review - Sept 4 to 11 Western Caribbean

borg1of2

By borg1of2,
in Royal Caribbean International

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borg1of2

borg1of2

Posted
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Just got off of the September 4, 2010 Oasis of the Seas Western Caribbean 7 Day cruise. Here is a little bit about us. Myself and DW have been on 3 other RCCL cruises, all Radiance Class, so this was a big step up. This was our first cruise with DD (15 Month) and one of the primary reasons for booking Oasis, the Royal Babies. We were booked on the Inaugural from back in 2008, but life changed when we got our DD and had to move to a later sailing, we felt 6 months was too young for the Inaugural with all of it’s activities and us being new parents. Enough about us.

 

Embarkation

I was very impressed with the pier. We drove up to the drop off a little after 10 and they were just starting to take luggage. We off loaded the tons of junk, more on that later, that we squoze into our car and I parked in the lot right there at the loading area. First row second car in, perfect spot, and no need to hike over to the main parking garage, same price of $15.00 per day. Check-in proceeded smoothly and after check-in found the Pier Cooridinator to see if anything was still left, nope all sold out, so we proceeded upstairs. This area was a little disorganized as they were boarding yet, apparently the ship was an hour late getting in the AM, so things were backed up. They were trying to section people off, not sure why, and the refreshment station, only 2 that I saw, except for what Suite area had, were quickly depleted and not getting refreshed. Kind of a disappointment. Boarding started about 11 and we were on-board by about 11:30.

 

Ship

First impression was just trying to get a feel for things. Where I was which way was what etc. As much pre-study I did, I still don’t get a feel until I’ve walked it. I partly think it would’ve been nice to have a deck map, but do know it would be too much to have and figure out, so the only way is to just use the ship signs. Very impressed with the signs throughout the ship. Each elevator area, there are 4, 2 forward and 2 aft, have top to bottom deck listing showing what is on each deck. If you are into tech stuff, then also at most of the elevator areas were electronic guides to map you to anywhere you want to go. Touch screens worked great. We made our way to Central Park Café to take in our first meal, the famous Roast Beef sandwich. Yes it was very good. The café also offers made to order and prepared salads and other types of sandwiches. They also have an excellent offering of deserts and cookies, YUM.

 

After lunch we continued our tour around the ship trying to get a feel for things. At 1:00 we were allowed back to our cabins. Pretty impressive given they were an hour late getting in and still made the 1:00 cabin ready.

 

Cabin

We were booked in a D1 – 10198, Port Side Forwardish cabin (closer to the forward elevators then the aft) – Cabin attendant was Dennis and he was great.

As others have posted, the cabin is smaller than on other ships, comparing D1 to D1. I really loved the balcony, very big. The storage space is less, but like all previous cruises you find a way to bring the way too much stuff that you brought. This being our first with DD we had tons of baby stuff. Every drug you can imagine, tons of diapers, wipes, emergency food, milk, formula, toys, etc. Once we figured out how we were going to arrange the cabin we got unpacked. We slid the couch down and the pack-n-play next to the closet. Trying to create a separation between the crib and our bed for optimum DD sleeping. We also brought a sheet and some Velcro to create a curtain separation between the bed so that when we put her down for naps and bed she wouldn’t see us and would hopefully go to sleep easily. It worked great!! We emptied out the Fridge with the mini bar stuff and stuck it in one of our boxes we brought and under the bed it went. There is tons of storage space for luggage under the bed, which was nice.

 

Also under the bed was hidden one of the few electrical outlets. We brought an extension cord and power strip thinking we would need it and hope we could hop out on the balcony with a laptop and watch a movie in the evening. We never did, primarily because once you open the balcony door the AC shuts off, so with a sleeping baby you really don’t want to be heating the room up, however by the end of the cruise it didn’t get too warm, just sticky due to the humidity. The other outlet is under the desk area, two outlets for US plugs and I think one for EU type plugs.

 

Flat screen TV with very nice system to review account, look at your personal schedule, book shows, etc.

 

Master Switch turns off all lights, but does leave the AC on. Very nice when leaving and entering the room.

 

Dining

We are MDR people and unfortunately had a few problems. Day 1 we didn’t get to check on our table before hand, knew better, and when we got to dinner at 6 and were shown our table, it was right at the main door way coming in on Deck 4 and was surrounded by work stations of dishes and stuff to support the various tables in that section. To us this was not an acceptable location. The Waiter attempted to find the Head Waiter and ultimately we were then shown to a different table which only had one seat and not room for DW and a high chair for DD. Frustrated with the whole thing we left and went to Wndjammer. First time for us eating dinner at Windjammer. After a long day it wasn’t a bad meal.

 

Another lesson learned is don’t try and resolve a MDR seating problem with Guest relations. Each time we tried to go to the MDR to resolve the next day it was closed, except the My Time always seem to have someone there, but they couldn’t help. Guest Relations only made the situation worse. The second night we had to deal with another Head Waiter and were given a table on Deck 3. It was fine and that was our table for the rest of the cruise. Waiter was Brito and Assistant was Harry. They were both excellent and brought us back to why we enjoy the MDR.

 

Food was very good, similar menu as previous cruises, but still nice and I tried a few dishes I hadn’t had before. DD loved all of the different foods and they did an excellent job bringing her meal first so that we could get her started.

 

Our last night we decided to try Chops for the first time. Turkey night in MDR, so not a bad choice of a night to give Chops a try. Chops was nice, I had the Rib Eye and it was a good medium quality, not high quality, steak. Dining experience was very good, probably like MDR use to be many years ago. DW found the items, crab cakes and lamb, to be better in the MDR than in Chops.

 

Other Misc. Dining. We generally had B’Fast in Windjammer. Standard selection, I like the fried eggs and found the prepared omlets to be easier then the made to order. Great Fruit selection. We did try B’Fast at Johnny Rockets. Food and Service there was terrible. Food was cold and we got limited service. No coffee offered had to go get it, and no refill offered on any drinks, including water. We had lunch at different places around ship. We did Central Park Café one additional lunch and we really enjoyed that again. I also like the wrapped hot dog at Wipe Out Café!!

 

Entertainment

This is where things went awry for us. We had pre-booked all of the shows and when we got on board, we got consumed by the juggling of things with DD and really didn’t have a good reminder system on when and where we had shows booked. Our first show was Hair Spray on Sunday. We were able to put DD in Day Care and really enjoyed the show. She would not have mad it for the 90 minutes!! Our next show was supposed to be Frozen in Time. Because of the problems with MDR we had to skip it to try and get our table straightened out. This was a huge mistake as nothing happened, Guest Service was useless, and we ended up spending the time we could have been in the show standing around. The only other show we made was the comedy show, which was a good time. We completely missed our Oasis of Dreams, forgot what night, happened to walk down after dinner and saw a bit of show and then later that night realized we were suppose to have gone. With 6:00 MDR and 7:30 shows, you really need to do dinner in an hour, which they’ll accommodate, you just need to let them know. Thought we would get it in later and it was the last for the cruise. There is just a ton of entertainment on board this ship and you really can’t see it all, IMHO. Our favorite time each night was the after dinner trip down to Board Walk and taking a ride, or two, on the Carousel with DD. It was just pure fun for all of us.

 

We spent a good amount of time up on the Sports Deck. Still didn’t make it to the rock climbing wall. We did do Flow Rider lessons which were very helpful and spent several mornings and other times trying to get better on the flow rider, stand-up not boogie board. We also spent time at H2O Zone with DD. Had some difficulty the first couple of days as it was always being closed for “maintenance” But ultimately we got there and she really enjoyed her self. Only negative comment is the water sprayers for the little ones are turned off, apparently on all H2O zones throughout the fleet due to it’s system was not contained and they can’t cross contaminate. This needs to get fixed!!!

 

Disembarkation

We scheduled ourselves to be last off. We had no rush. We had one problem with our bill and Vitality Spa charge that I had to deal with and then made it up to Windjammer for B’Fast. After that we took our time walking around the ship one more time and then got in line to leave. Seems like a lot of people waited for the last to get off, so the line was a little long. Otherwise we got the pier, got a porter who wisked us past a lot of the line and we were out in our car very quickly.

 

Overall

We enjoyed ourselves very much. Very nice ship, so much to do. I did mis the movement of the ocean, however we had very smooth ocean, so even the smaller ships would have had little movement on this cruise. We also missed seeing more of the ocean from the areas of the ship. Will we do Oasis/Allure again, maybe. There are other ships/classes we want to try out. We booked Freedom for next May, after her re-fit to get a Royal Babies, so how we will like that class.

 

If anyone has any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

 

Scott

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borg1of2

borg1of2

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Didn't you get a map as you walked in? We each got a little booklet with a map of the ship.

 

Glad you enjoyed your trip.

 

Nope. All we got was a piece of paper showing the restaurants and what was open for lunch before we could get to the rooms. That booklet would have been nice!!

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usvicruiser

usvicruiser

Posted
Posted
Too bad, it actually also has information about the ship and a spot in the back you can write your stateroom # on. They must have missed you. We used it a few times before we got used to things - also used the touch screens.

 

I tried to get one of those, unfortunately they ran out, which was very disappointing since the information about the ship is something I really would have loved to have as a memento.

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emmy

emmy

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Posted

Very nice review :) we were docked next to you in Cozumel on Grandeur and the seas were quite calm and even on the smaller Grandeur we felt very little movement on the seas. Perfect weather.

 

What a treat to be docked next to the OASIS. Glad you enjoyed the ship.

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Monopoly2

Monopoly2

Posted
Posted
Just got off of the September 4, 2010 Oasis of the Seas Western Caribbean 7 Day cruise. Here is a little bit about us. Myself and DW have been on 3 other RCCL cruises, all Radiance Class, so this was a big step up. This was our first cruise with DD (15 Month) and one of the primary reasons for booking Oasis, the Royal Babies. We were booked on the Inaugural from back in 2008, but life changed when we got our DD and had to move to a later sailing, we felt 6 months was too young for the Inaugural with all of it’s activities and us being new parents. Enough about us.

 

Embarkation

I was very impressed with the pier. We drove up to the drop off a little after 10 and they were just starting to take luggage. We off loaded the tons of junk, more on that later, that we squoze into our car and I parked in the lot right there at the loading area. First row second car in, perfect spot, and no need to hike over to the main parking garage, same price of $15.00 per day. Check-in proceeded smoothly and after check-in found the Pier Cooridinator to see if anything was still left, nope all sold out, so we proceeded upstairs. This area was a little disorganized as they were boarding yet, apparently the ship was an hour late getting in the AM, so things were backed up. They were trying to section people off, not sure why, and the refreshment station, only 2 that I saw, except for what Suite area had, were quickly depleted and not getting refreshed. Kind of a disappointment. Boarding started about 11 and we were on-board by about 11:30.

 

Ship

First impression was just trying to get a feel for things. Where I was which way was what etc. As much pre-study I did, I still don’t get a feel until I’ve walked it. I partly think it would’ve been nice to have a deck map, but do know it would be too much to have and figure out, so the only way is to just use the ship signs. Very impressed with the signs throughout the ship. Each elevator area, there are 4, 2 forward and 2 aft, have top to bottom deck listing showing what is on each deck. If you are into tech stuff, then also at most of the elevator areas were electronic guides to map you to anywhere you want to go. Touch screens worked great. We made our way to Central Park Café to take in our first meal, the famous Roast Beef sandwich. Yes it was very good. The café also offers made to order and prepared salads and other types of sandwiches. They also have an excellent offering of deserts and cookies, YUM.

 

After lunch we continued our tour around the ship trying to get a feel for things. At 1:00 we were allowed back to our cabins. Pretty impressive given they were an hour late getting in and still made the 1:00 cabin ready.

 

Cabin

We were booked in a D1 – 10198, Port Side Forwardish cabin (closer to the forward elevators then the aft) – Cabin attendant was Dennis and he was great.

As others have posted, the cabin is smaller than on other ships, comparing D1 to D1. I really loved the balcony, very big. The storage space is less, but like all previous cruises you find a way to bring the way too much stuff that you brought. This being our first with DD we had tons of baby stuff. Every drug you can imagine, tons of diapers, wipes, emergency food, milk, formula, toys, etc. Once we figured out how we were going to arrange the cabin we got unpacked. We slid the couch down and the pack-n-play next to the closet. Trying to create a separation between the crib and our bed for optimum DD sleeping. We also brought a sheet and some Velcro to create a curtain separation between the bed so that when we put her down for naps and bed she wouldn’t see us and would hopefully go to sleep easily. It worked great!! We emptied out the Fridge with the mini bar stuff and stuck it in one of our boxes we brought and under the bed it went. There is tons of storage space for luggage under the bed, which was nice.

 

Also under the bed was hidden one of the few electrical outlets. We brought an extension cord and power strip thinking we would need it and hope we could hop out on the balcony with a laptop and watch a movie in the evening. We never did, primarily because once you open the balcony door the AC shuts off, so with a sleeping baby you really don’t want to be heating the room up, however by the end of the cruise it didn’t get too warm, just sticky due to the humidity. The other outlet is under the desk area, two outlets for US plugs and I think one for EU type plugs.

 

Flat screen TV with very nice system to review account, look at your personal schedule, book shows, etc.

 

Master Switch turns off all lights, but does leave the AC on. Very nice when leaving and entering the room.

 

Dining

We are MDR people and unfortunately had a few problems. Day 1 we didn’t get to check on our table before hand, knew better, and when we got to dinner at 6 and were shown our table, it was right at the main door way coming in on Deck 4 and was surrounded by work stations of dishes and stuff to support the various tables in that section. To us this was not an acceptable location. The Waiter attempted to find the Head Waiter and ultimately we were then shown to a different table which only had one seat and not room for DW and a high chair for DD. Frustrated with the whole thing we left and went to Wndjammer. First time for us eating dinner at Windjammer. After a long day it wasn’t a bad meal.

 

Another lesson learned is don’t try and resolve a MDR seating problem with Guest relations. Each time we tried to go to the MDR to resolve the next day it was closed, except the My Time always seem to have someone there, but they couldn’t help. Guest Relations only made the situation worse. The second night we had to deal with another Head Waiter and were given a table on Deck 3. It was fine and that was our table for the rest of the cruise. Waiter was Brito and Assistant was Harry. They were both excellent and brought us back to why we enjoy the MDR.

 

Food was very good, similar menu as previous cruises, but still nice and I tried a few dishes I hadn’t had before. DD loved all of the different foods and they did an excellent job bringing her meal first so that we could get her started.

 

Our last night we decided to try Chops for the first time. Turkey night in MDR, so not a bad choice of a night to give Chops a try. Chops was nice, I had the Rib Eye and it was a good medium quality, not high quality, steak. Dining experience was very good, probably like MDR use to be many years ago. DW found the items, crab cakes and lamb, to be better in the MDR than in Chops.

 

Other Misc. Dining. We generally had B’Fast in Windjammer. Standard selection, I like the fried eggs and found the prepared omlets to be easier then the made to order. Great Fruit selection. We did try B’Fast at Johnny Rockets. Food and Service there was terrible. Food was cold and we got limited service. No coffee offered had to go get it, and no refill offered on any drinks, including water. We had lunch at different places around ship. We did Central Park Café one additional lunch and we really enjoyed that again. I also like the wrapped hot dog at Wipe Out Café!!

 

Entertainment

This is where things went awry for us. We had pre-booked all of the shows and when we got on board, we got consumed by the juggling of things with DD and really didn’t have a good reminder system on when and where we had shows booked. Our first show was Hair Spray on Sunday. We were able to put DD in Day Care and really enjoyed the show. She would not have mad it for the 90 minutes!! Our next show was supposed to be Frozen in Time. Because of the problems with MDR we had to skip it to try and get our table straightened out. This was a huge mistake as nothing happened, Guest Service was useless, and we ended up spending the time we could have been in the show standing around. The only other show we made was the comedy show, which was a good time. We completely missed our Oasis of Dreams, forgot what night, happened to walk down after dinner and saw a bit of show and then later that night realized we were suppose to have gone. With 6:00 MDR and 7:30 shows, you really need to do dinner in an hour, which they’ll accommodate, you just need to let them know. Thought we would get it in later and it was the last for the cruise. There is just a ton of entertainment on board this ship and you really can’t see it all, IMHO. Our favorite time each night was the after dinner trip down to Board Walk and taking a ride, or two, on the Carousel with DD. It was just pure fun for all of us.

 

We spent a good amount of time up on the Sports Deck. Still didn’t make it to the rock climbing wall. We did do Flow Rider lessons which were very helpful and spent several mornings and other times trying to get better on the flow rider, stand-up not boogie board. We also spent time at H2O Zone with DD. Had some difficulty the first couple of days as it was always being closed for “maintenance” But ultimately we got there and she really enjoyed her self. Only negative comment is the water sprayers for the little ones are turned off, apparently on all H2O zones throughout the fleet due to it’s system was not contained and they can’t cross contaminate. This needs to get fixed!!!

 

Disembarkation

We scheduled ourselves to be last off. We had no rush. We had one problem with our bill and Vitality Spa charge that I had to deal with and then made it up to Windjammer for B’Fast. After that we took our time walking around the ship one more time and then got in line to leave. Seems like a lot of people waited for the last to get off, so the line was a little long. Otherwise we got the pier, got a porter who wisked us past a lot of the line and we were out in our car very quickly.

 

Overall

We enjoyed ourselves very much. Very nice ship, so much to do. I did mis the movement of the ocean, however we had very smooth ocean, so even the smaller ships would have had little movement on this cruise. We also missed seeing more of the ocean from the areas of the ship. Will we do Oasis/Allure again, maybe. There are other ships/classes we want to try out. We booked Freedom for next May, after her re-fit to get a Royal Babies, so how we will like that class.

 

If anyone has any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

 

Scott

 

 

Hi Scott,

 

WOW !! .You covered a lot of information in your review....Thanks :D

 

I had MTD and didn't make any of the scheduled times...Some of the guest on the ship was complaining of seating location and if you scheduled times after 8:00 pm that you had a 30 to 45 minute wait time.

I wanted to see the shows on the ship so I did not eat in the dinning room ..This allowed me to see all the shows which were good.So for me I ate at different places on the ship.. which made it fun and I got a chance to experience a variety of foods.

 

I had printed the Oasis Tips sheet and had it with me on the cruise. It was very helpful and good information.

 

Overall, It was a very good cruise with a lot to do and see. The ship is big and somehow its a floating hotel on water.:) I'm hoping my future plans will allow me to come back next Labor Cruise 2011 on the Allure.

 

My personal thanks to you for coordinating the Cabin Crawl.It was indeed a success...

My regret is that we didn't get a chance to do the zip line...

I was on stand-by ready to take the pictures as the big chicken :eek:

 

Scott, It was indeed a pleasure meeting you and the family. I look forward to seeing you again on another cruise in the near future.

 

Katie

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SingBill

SingBill

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Posted

Thank you for your honest review. I was on this sailing and sorry I was unable to make the M&M and did not get a chance to meet everyone. I also had an issue in the MDR but checked out the table assignments on the first day and the issue was resolved by our 6 pm dining times.

 

Although I printed out the show reservation times, I liked having the ability to add events to my online travel planner. Made it easy to check daily for what I'd signed up for.

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relaxatsea

relaxatsea

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Posted

Hi Scott,

 

Thanks for your excellent review. I was so happy to meet you and your family and thank you again for your pre-cruise tips and for organizing our wonderful Cabin Crawl! I'm sorry you had so much trouble with the MDR and the show schedule. I just finished writing a review and I also said it is very hard to see and do everything in seven days!

 

Hope your DD is feeling better by now.

 

All the best,

Your fellow Labor Day Cruisers,

Barbara and Orlando

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borg1of2

borg1of2

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Thanks for the review.

 

So how was it with a 15 month old onboard? We are starting to do some family planning and I am wondering about future cruising.

 

It was pretty great. I will say that I don't think I would do it on a ship without the Royal Babies/Tots for the under 3 year olds. Having the ability to get some personal time along with family time is important. It took us a few days to get used to it, but from the beginning we were very comfortable with the care providers at Royal Babies, so that then allowed us to make adjustments and have her there more often. We originally thought all 3 of us would do Hair Spray, but thought better about it and dropped her off for the 2 hours so we could enjoy the show.

 

The sheet we hung up in the cabin really helped create a separate space and it made for naps and sleeping time much smoother. I probably would have like to be in a JS, passed on some really good rates they were offering just before the cruise, but the D1 was manageable, tight as it was.

 

Our next cruise is on Freedom, after they get the Royal Babies, next May, DD will be 2 that month.

 

Scott

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bionicman97

bionicman97

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Posted
It was pretty great. I will say that I don't think I would do it on a ship without the Royal Babies/Tots for the under 3 year olds. Having the ability to get some personal time along with family time is important. It took us a few days to get used to it, but from the beginning we were very comfortable with the care providers at Royal Babies, so that then allowed us to make adjustments and have her there more often. We originally thought all 3 of us would do Hair Spray, but thought better about it and dropped her off for the 2 hours so we could enjoy the show.

 

The sheet we hung up in the cabin really helped create a separate space and it made for naps and sleeping time much smoother. I probably would have like to be in a JS, passed on some really good rates they were offering just before the cruise, but the D1 was manageable, tight as it was.

 

Our next cruise is on Freedom, after they get the Royal Babies, next May, DD will be 2 that month.

 

Scott

 

Thanks for the info. If you don't mind me asking, what was the charge to use the Royal Babies program?

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MaryEBS

MaryEBS

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Posted

Hi Scott! Great review, sorry to hear you had some issues. We never went to the MDR this trip, instead we enjoyed all the various alternative restaurants and that worked out well for us. It was so nice meeting you and thanks for your efforts with the cabin crawl. I share your sentiments about seeing the ocean and missing the movement of the ship. You have scheduled your next cruise for what Roger and I still think of as our favorite ship, the Freedom of the Seas. While there are some things I love on both ships like the Promenade you do know you are on a ship when you sail Freedom. But we did book Allure for next Labor Day! I'm sure we will have a couple of other cruises between now and then on smaller ships. We look forward to sailing with you and your familiy on another trip in the future!

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borg1of2

borg1of2

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Thanks for the info. If you don't mind me asking, what was the charge to use the Royal Babies program?

 

$8.00 per hour. They charge on the half hour increments. Fairly reasonable. They do also have in-room care, but we didn't use that service. It's done through the Guest Relations desk, not Royal Babies.

 

Scott

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