Cheapo dad’s trip report on Allure of the Seas sailing December 14, 2014

[LuCruise]

That would be me! I've been researching our April 2016 cruise for a few months now!

 

Same here :p

 

Harry, your report has been great. Has gotten me that much more excited for our cruise.

[Coralc]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Durable-5X-Clear-PVC-Badge-Work-Exhibition-ID-Name-Waterproof-Card-Holders-ABUS-/151400290533?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23402918e5

 

 

Oh look...they even say "Cheap Cheapness" on the photo. That is a good deal! :D

 

I love the SF Flower art urinals, I don't think we could afford one, and it probably wouldn't fit in very well with our lowly suburban ranch house décor. :D

 

It was a wonderful review Harry! We thoroughly enjoyed vicariously sailing along with you and your lovely family! Thanks for taking all the time to do it.

 

~Patti :)

[harryfat1]

Yes, my cursory research began over Christmas break while you were returning from your trip, but it kicked into high gear once the other family we are traveling with decided to commit to the trip and join us when final payment was due beginning of January. Didn't want to get my hopes up, since we might have chosen a different spring break trip had they decided not to go.

 

I am sure we will love it, but knowing my wife, she will be "one and done" and looking forward to new things for the next trip like your wife. Maybe they are evil twins, as well?

 

You had a Samsung TV die!? That is my brand choice for TVs too, all still running great after many years of hard service LOL.

 

Thank you for the plastic holder link, that is exactly what I was speaking about. I have many lanyards myself from various tradeshows, but not the perfect holders for the seapass card.....CHEERS!

 

Yeah, my 2008 Samsung TV died. If you Google the words “Samsung TV capacitor lawsuit”, you will see a lot of hits on it. Per my research on CNET, they said up to 7 million TV sets could be impacted by this.

 

Basically Samsung built their older TVs with a lower grade capacitor that prematurely die out in many of the older TV’s and there was a class action lawsuit filed, but I didn’t know about it. And apparently there is a time limit for people to get the free repair and mine died outside the window, so I had to pay out of my own pocket.

 

There is also an YouTube video on how to replace it if you can get the right capacitor and have decent soldering skills to take off the 2 bad ones and replace with 2 new ones with a higher voltage but I’m not handy with that sort of electrical thing and afraid the whole TV might explode on me if I got the wrong capacitor replacement.

 

So depending on when yours was built, you might be ok.

[harryfat1]

Just wanted to say thanks so much for the great trip report! I started reading after my husband and I got back from Navigator a few weeks ago (while I was in bed recovering from the flu.) Loved all the details and pictures, and definitely the jokes. I may have to get us all matching t-shirts before our next cruise with extended family. :) Enjoy your road trip this summer!

 

habanero

--

Navigator of the Seas, Western Caribbean, Galveston Jan 11-18, 2015

Explorer of the Seas, Bahamas, Port Liberty Mar 29-Apr 5, 2014

Majesty of the Seas, Bahamas, Miami

Monarch of the Seas, Baja California, LA

 

Thank you for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed reading the info.

 

Sorry to hear you had the flu. I read this year was a bad one and the flu shot given to people wasn’t as effective as they had hoped.

 

A Road trip has its own sets of challenges, if not more than cruises.

 

The Navigator was next to us in Cozumel. Looks very nice with their upgrades and with them moving to FLL later on, maybe we might sail on her someday.

[harryfat1]

That would be me! I've been researching our April 2016 cruise for a few months now!

 

Same here :p

 

Harry, your report has been great. Has gotten me that much more excited for our cruise.

 

Yeah, I know LuCruise is going next year and actively seeking info on the “question of the day” on the boards. I see quite a few potential candidates for the “Friends of Excel/schedules” support group from your most recent question on scheduling.:p

 

Thank you for the kind words. I’m sure we will talk many times during between now and the time you sail next year. Think by time you sail, you will know more about the cruise/Allure than many of the people that came back on the actual cruise.

[harryfat1]

Don't forget exclusive interviews with wife and kids. Inquiring minds want to know.

 

I second that! I'd love to hear a list of what everyone's highlight of the trip was.

 

Such a good trip report, thanks for taking the time to do it!

 

Sorry folks, talked to the wife and family, but nobody wanted to talk about their experiences. My wife is more private and she doesn’t do forum info sharing like I do. She would talk to you in person but not via email or written postings. Whereas I won’t talk much, if at all, in person. I only write, but don’t talk in real life. My simple/dumb brain can’t process the spoken words fast enough in a verbal conversation. Thus, I write.

 

My kids are moved on with their daily lives and not interested in talking about last year’s family vacation. Especially if they have to write and thus become an English essay assignment homework from school...

[harryfat1]

Day 9 – Time to go home

 

Woke up early to catch couple pics of the sunrise

 

 

 

Then the shuttle driver came out and drove us to the airport. Few last shots of FLL

 

 

 

Crossing the bridge and looks like few more ships sailing today on an off day of Monday.

 

Caribbean Princess

 

 

HAL dam ships

 

[harryfat1]

So we came back on JetBlue. While we were on line, saw some people with Princess tags on their luggage, so they must have just gotten off the ship and got off the ship early to get to the airport. Always dislike flying home westward bound post vacation. Besides the “blah” felling of having to get home after a vacation, it’s one hour longer to fly westward versus going to the east due to wind conditions. I much rather taking the extra hour to fly to the cruise than from the cruise.

 

The flight home was uneventful – typical 6 hour direct flight. Arrived back in SFO in sunny weather. Here is the last picture from the cruise set – us landing and on the way to baggage claim. All smiles. It’s always nice to be home. Started with day 0 from airport and now ending on day 9 with return to airport in one full circle.

 

 

So this concludes the long tome of our cruise vacation. Think it’s a given we had a wonderful time. If we had a crappy time, I wouldn’t have spent all this time uploading these pictures and writing up all the detailed info. If I just want to complaint about the cruise, few paragraphs in one post would have been suffice.

 

For the ADHD crowd, thanks for scrolling along in checking out all the pictures upload. This is all I have. You can now either back to work or find a new trip report to speed read. The rest of the report is the blah blah blah part – like end credits after the movie that many people don’t stay to read.

 

With the trip report all done, time to take out the ship logo under the signature. No “future cruise” on the listing…Very sad.

[harryfat1]

Now that the cruise is over, maybe it’s good time to discuss what was in our cruise? I know this sounds really stupid to bring up as everyone knows what is in a cruise but as an accountant, I like to classify and group things to help my simple mind organize things.

 

For me, a cruise vacation is basically a “FREE” concept. No, don’t get excited, I am not saying a cruise is free as not paying money (although I love the word free – did I mention I am cheap?) but you can more or less categorize a cruise vacation into one of four buckets – FREE.

 

Feeds me – self-explanatory with all the food venues on the cruise

 

Relaxes me – these are the spa/beach/solarium/pool/water related activities

 

Entertains me – All the shows/parades/activities on the ship

 

Educate/enrich me – Learn new things while on cruise.

 

For most part, you can fit into 1 of these 4 categories for most of what you do on the cruise. The question is which of the 4 are more important to you and as such, you allocate more of your time/energy/money to it. As I said in the first post, a cruise buffet is the ultimate buffet on that there are so many options of the FREE categories above, it’s extremely unlikely that two families will have the same cruise vacation as everyone will allocate their 115+ hours on the 7 day cruise differently.

 

As you can tell my posts, we are not foodies. So the “F” part isn’t that important to us but we did eat a lot and often.

 

As for the “R” part, we had some beach time and a little pool time but we are certainly not the solarium type.

 

Think we spent equal time with the final 2 E’s in that we did many shows and parades but also saw the small wonders and did the central park gardening tour and took gobs of pictures of the ship.

 

But each family/cruiser will allocate their time differently within the 4 buckets.

[splash_in_the_water]

Nice review Harryfat1! Looks like you and yours had a great time! so Now that your vacation has come to an end, just keep going and posting with everyday activities....we'll read about it anyway!

 

 

J/K but now that this cruise for you is over, you get to plan another one....That's what's nice about cruising...it's not if you plan another cruise, it's when....

Edited February 11, 2015 by splash_in_the_water

[baman]

Ok this is the best review I have seen. I love the jokes. Your family is awesome. I am going on oasis in2016 so i qanted a similar ship to see. After seeing your rooms i may just have to do the same. I am looking to switch to 2 with my 2 kids. Liked the more space. And the view looked great. I have lost a lot of sleep trying to get through this. I found it 2 days ago and couldn't put it down. I was up till 130am reading last night then had to try to stop. It was so hard. I will be sharing this with all the people going with me. Keep up tge awesomeness

 

 

Sent from my SM-G900P using Forums mobile app

[CruisinBarb63]

Thank you Harry for sharing your vacation with us. I thoroughly enjoyed following along. I have been researching for our Independence cruise in October and just happened upon your trip report. I'm so glad I did. Your report was very entertaining and informative. Again, thank you so much for sharing!

[harryfat1]

Oh look...they even say "Cheap Cheapness" on the photo. That is a good deal! :D

 

I love the SF Flower art urinals, I don't think we could afford one, and it probably wouldn't fit in very well with our lowly suburban ranch house décor. :D

 

It was a wonderful review Harry! We thoroughly enjoyed vicariously sailing along with you and your lovely family! Thanks for taking all the time to do it.

 

~Patti :)

 

I was waiting for a sharp eye person like yourself to mention that. With a name like that, you figure it's a good deal.

 

Thanks for staying with me through this process. Enjoy talking to you - finally get to know your name. Since we live in close to each other, there is a good chance we might run into each other down the road. Although you would need to find me as I won't be able to ID you:p

[harryfat1]

Thank you Harry for sharing your vacation with us. I thoroughly enjoyed following along. I have been researching for our Independence cruise in October and just happened upon your trip report. I'm so glad I did. Your report was very entertaining and informative. Again, thank you so much for sharing!

 

Nice review Harryfat1! Looks like you and yours had a great time! so Now that your vacation has come to an end, just keep going and posting with everyday activities....we'll read about it anyway!

 

 

J/K but now that this cruise for you is over, you get to plan another one....That's what's nice about cruising...it's not if you plan another cruise, it's when....

 

Thanks for the kind words. Glad this info is helpful/entertaining. Have fun on your next cruise.

[harryfat1]

Ok this is the best review I have seen. I love the jokes. Your family is awesome. I am going on oasis in2016 so i qanted a similar ship to see. After seeing your rooms i may just have to do the same. I am looking to switch to 2 with my 2 kids. Liked the more space. And the view looked great. I have lost a lot of sleep trying to get through this. I found it 2 days ago and couldn't put it down. I was up till 130am reading last night then had to try to stop. It was so hard. I will be sharing this with all the people going with me. Keep up tge awesomeness

 

 

Sent from my SM-G900P using Forums mobile app

 

Thanks for the compliment. Glad the info is helpful and hopefully you will find something useful in here for your cruise next year.

 

I have been told I am like bacon/potato chips – bad for you but addictive. Starbucks should send me a gift card for people staying up late looking at the pictures and then is tired the next day and thus have to get a double latte in the morning so Starbucks owe me one for all the business I am bringing to them…:p

 

Have a great cruise next year.

[harryfat1]

As an accountant, or just someone with a more dominant left brain, I find myself strongly preferring objective trip reports. Just as you shouldn’t give a rat’s poop on my subjective comments, I don’t care about other people’s subjective comments. Give me the facts/numbers and let me decide.

 

In this report, I tried to avoid as much as possible the subjective opinions – you noticed I seldom commented on the food taste of each meal? You know what I like to eat but I don’t really talk about what I thought of each plate food. It’s irrelevant what I think as that’s subjective. I just show you pictures of what we ate/what’s available at the buffet, you form your own judgment if you want to eat there or not. Every now and then, I do say we liked something to add to the reading of the info but I won’t give out ratings of food.

 

As a bean counter, some of you might expect me to have a final numerical tally sheet, similar to the Berlitz cruise guide where he adds up each category and gives a rating for each ship. Nope, sorry, no numbers here as it’s irrelevant to any reader what my ranking of the ship is.

 

It should not have any bearing on you deciding to take a cruise or have a good time on it. Good cruise or bad is from you, not me. You should go & experience the ship yourself. Then form your own judgment. I just show you the schedules and pictures. Whether you will be happy from it or not is your own personal gauge, shouldn’t be my clip board arbitrary ranking of bed sheet’s softness or waiter service getting a 8.8 or a 9.2 ranking.

 

I think Allure’s score was around 1,440 out of 1,600 out of Berlitz’s numbering system? Something like that. Not the best but not the worst either. I borrowed the book form the public library as part of the pre cruise research but I didn’t write down the exact numbers. The point is these numbers are meaningless/useless when it comes to whether I will have fun or not on my vacation or if this cruise is special.

 

Just as money doesn't buy you happiness, high ranking of a cruise ship by someone else won’t necessarily make it a good/memorable cruise for you. It’s all about your state of mind.

[harryfat1]

As I said before, I prepared a spreadsheet/schedule prior to my cruise but I didn’t look at it during the cruise as it was in my kid’s cabin. I more or less have an idea on what we want to do but with certain things not happening exactly as I had planned it, such is vacation life and things on the schedule were eliminated. So as a member of the “Friends of Excel” support group, just want to caution those that tried to follow your schedule too closely while on the cruise.

 

It’s a big ship and takes time to get to various venues. Give yourself plenty to time to get there. Extremely unlikely you will be able to do everything as you planned from home as it’s easier to say I want to do everything at home in front of the computer getting excited about the cruise planning but once you get to day 2 on the cruise and relaxed vacation mode kicks in, you will (and should) slow down and enjoy what is around you and be out off "follow the schedule" mentality.

 

Just keep in mind it’s your schedule. You created and you can make changes to it all you want and skip whatever. You are the master and don’t be the like the Police Song that says “Your servant becomes your master” and have the schedule dictate what you do on vacation.

[Coralc]

The County Agriculture department is also there to assist with your insect pest and plant problems. :D:):D

[harryfat1]

Bad report is a “good” report: In preparing for this cruise, I went back to the archives and read many reviews on the boards from the past 2 years. Learned from the various perspectives on the pros and cons of the ship. What I find most interesting is some people become emotionally charged when there are negative comments on “their ship” such that they take it personally or I have seen posts from people that are worried because the cruise they are about to sail on has some negative comments.

 

While I understand that it’s an indirect attack on their personal preferences, the contrarian in me says they actually should welcome the negative thoughts. As matter of fact, the more negative, the better.

 

Such that if 10,000 people on these boards all come out and rate their RCI cruise experience as 1 star and get the word out that these are bad ships, then fewer future cruisers will book the RCI ships going forward after they read the negative reviews. As a result, RCI will be forced to lower the rates as they would be forced to have fire sale on the cabins they can’t fill because all the cc people and others on the internet are saying the RCI ship/cruise experience sucks.

 

So everyone should start writing negative comments on how bad your ship/cruise line is and within next couple months the cruise cabin prices will plummet and I can get the owner’s suite for $500 as RCI can't give them away fast enough from all the 1 star reviews (CHEAPO DAD SCORES IN OWNERS SUITE!)….Remember, the more negative on your trip report, the cheaper I can get the cabins so start bad mouthing ASAP... (Did I mention I am cheap?)

[harryfat1]

Speaking of trip reports, what anyone sees on any given cruise is like the blind men and the elephant fable. I assume everyone knows the story behind it. If you don’t, wiki can tell it better than I can:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

 

In essence, what we see/experience on any given cruise is just a small part of the elephant. We can argue until we turn blue in our face that our cruise experience is the one and true picture of the elephant but the “bigger picture” is totally different.

 

So no matter how many pictures I can upload and show, I am only showing everyone the elephant’s butt in detail. If you want to see the other parts of the elephant, you would need to read other people’s reports or better yet, experience it yourself by sailing on her

[harryfat1]

Just as the tax law constantly changes, so does life on the cruise ship.

 

What I have detailed out is what I have known to be correct when we sailed. Thing will definitely change as time goes on with the ship going to dry-dock and possible change in dining venues and new musical coming. I do hope whoever uses this info for your cruise come back and let me/others know what info listed has been changed/revised so that the future cruiser won’t rely on my info to be correct but something has changed since then. It’s better to have no info than to rely on bad info that is wrong.

 

For example, I suggest people might want to stand at certain places for parades or parties, but if they changed things or won’t allow you to stand there anymore, I would certainly appreciate an update from someone so others will know where should they stand instead. Simple info like this to pass onto future cruisers will be helpful in keeping the info here more fresh and people wont get confused with conflicting info.

 

Just as planting a tree/having a bench on the side of the road to help future walkers come by to sit and relax and benefit from it, the tree also needs pruning and trimming periodically to keep its shape for future users.

 

I started this thread but it’s not just “my” thread. Now that I am done, it’s now “everyone’s” thread to drop in the correct info that was changed or just drop a note/upload a picture post your cruise that you found certain part of this to be useful (maybe finding another urinal) and just show me/others what post dry dock Allure looks like that is different form what I showed.

 

I have email notification whenever someone post on this thread so I will always be around to talk to anyone that has any questions after the fact, matters not if it’s days/weeks/months later. Be happy to help.

[CFXTBB]

Thank You Harry for this great review! I loved all of the pictures, details and great sense of humor. With two little ones, I rarely get to read the cruise happenings anymore. I came across your review and I couldn't stop reading. Many late nights later, I'm sad that it's ending. I love hearing all of the different experiences, activities and details that everyone includes in their reviews. It really helps with planning and making decisions for future trips. Thanks again to You and your beautiful family for sharing your trip with us. :)

[harryfat1]

Finally, at the risk of sounding like an awards speech, I want to thank the three groups of people for following along in reading this tome for days/weeks.

 

1 – My evil twins/relatives. For all your OCD/anal planners. My original primary target of this report. I dropped in as many hint and tips that I know of to help you folks on your cruise. Like a buffet, more than most people need or want but it’s there in pictures and words. Pick whatever you think is useful.

 

2 – The previous cruisers. For those that have cruised on the Oasis class ship, maybe there are few pictures in the report that help bring a smile to your face as you remember being in those areas on your previous cruise.

 

3 – The virtual cruisers. This is a surprising group to me. Being ADHD, I never thought there would be a group that will read a trip report for a cruise that you may never be on. I am humbly honored that you folks came along for this ride. We certainly didn’t have a very exciting cruise in comparison to others and I hope I showed you folks enough about the ship that you will keep an open mind to try her or her sister(s) someday.

 

Originally I wasn’t planning to be this detailed but I changed directions as I started writing this when I saw enough people in this group and added more pictures with the thinking if you will never sail on the ship, then at least I can do is show you what I saw - the elephant's butt per previous post:p.

 

Special thanks for the folks that kept a dialogue with me throughout the process as that helped tremendously. Many nights when I upload info, I wondered if I wasn’t just talking to myself in uploading my own diary and pictures. When a stand-up comedian tells a joke at the comedy club, he hears an immediate feedback whether the joke bombed or not. In written comedy, you seldom, if ever, hear any specific comment on what you wrote was funny or not. So I appreciate everyone that has dropped a line to give me a feedback during the past few weeks as I grind away.

 

Think this is all the blah blah stuff I have to say. As I said in one of my previous reports, if you read this whole thing to the end, think you need a cruise vacation more than me. Thanks again for reading and hope to see you on a future cruise someday.

[janabelle61]

I'm sad this review has come to an end but wanted to thank-you one last time. It's been a great ride and I'll miss checking in every day to read the latest installment of "Harry's Family and their Marvelous Adventure"!

 

Thanks again for your information, your humor, and your willingness to share your family's vacation (and your family!) with us through pictures and your own, unique, narration.

[JamesEM]

Thanks for all the time and effort it took for you to produce your trip report, I really enjoyed checking in nightly to checkout the new updates. Having been on both the Allure and the Oasis recently I really liked reliving the my past cruises. Best wishes to you and your family, and hope you do not have a National Lampoon type land vacation.