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

[cruisemeister8]

 

Now if it’s just up to me, the semi-illiterate numbers guy, I would just say “hey, how about that? Chairs. Take a picture. As I am sure you never seen chairs at home”. But as Cruisemeister8 has shown in post #912, A chair by any other name can still hold people’s butt comfortably (think Shakespeare will not be happy with this comparison) and perhaps she can much more eloquently describe this setting than yours truly…

 

 

 

Dang, that is a nice hotel! And yes, you mentioned $114 out the door! I need to start booking on these last minute apps rather than trying to be a planner and book at the "early" rate way in advance.

 

That is also a very pretty pink building in the background of the first picture. I wonder if it's a hotel or condos?

 

And oh boy, you showed us more chairs! Looking at this picture I had one thought. The scene is missing Labadeean porters with their palms up for green motivation to unstack those loungers for us.

 

I'm so sad that your comedic warm-up act is making room for the headlining fat lady to perform. NO!! We must know that you made it home safely and see pictures of how much work was piled up on your desk while you were gone! LOL!

 

This has been great fun chatting with you.

[harryfat1]

Did you feel the little earthquake this evening? :D Unusual to have one here and have it be at ground zero on the USGS site (Hayward fault)

 

Yes...those are interesting palm trees....and I don't think we have that particular variety here, or it is uncommon. Thank you. :D

 

We have very much enjoyed all of your photos and your review. Did you happen to notice the tagline for urinals dot net on their home page? It is very funny.

 

Didn’t feel a thing. I just looked up in the news – magnitude 2.5 is pretty small. Think a train coming by will probably register a 2.5 shake?

I think I heard on the news awhile back that the palm trees in SF were dying as they were infected with some disease but they are different species than the FL ones.

 

Yes, I like the urinal comment. You see their top 10 favorite urinal? Number 1 is from SF – made in flower shapes . Think you enjoy it the most since it combines your two favorite topics

 

http://www.urinal.net/archive/topten.php

 

Glad you like the pictures. Pretty much done with this project. Just few more pics for day 9 and some closing thoughts and “it’s time to turn out the lights, the party’s over…”

[harryfat1]

Look like foxtail palms. Way to tell them apart from royal palms is that they have "bushy" tail like look... hence the name. Christmas palms are similar looking but from my knowledge they grow in groups together.

 

 

Enjoying the review!

 

Thanks for the info.

 

We don’t see this type of palm tree here in CA. The ones we see are imported from elsewhere and the top looks more like a pineapple or something from King Julian’s head

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+palm+trees&espv=2&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=HkjYVJfZD_XesATgt4HQBQ&ved=0CB8QsAQ&biw=1745&bih=868#imgdii=_&imgrc=fgvYHmTG1u0VPM%253A%3Bovn7Y1R6WvRWFM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.socketsite.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2013%252F05%252FEmbarcadero-Palm-Trees.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.socketsite.com%252Farchives%252F2013%252F05%252Fsan_franciscos_dying_palms_mystery_was_solved_two_years.html%3B510%3B406

[harryfat1]

Dang, that is a nice hotel! And yes, you mentioned $114 out the door! I need to start booking on these last minute apps rather than trying to be a planner and book at the "early" rate way in advance.

 

That is also a very pretty pink building in the background of the first picture. I wonder if it's a hotel or condos?

 

And oh boy, you showed us more chairs! Looking at this picture I had one thought. The scene is missing Labadeean porters with their palms up for green motivation to unstack those loungers for us.

 

I'm so sad that your comedic warm-up act is making room for the headlining fat lady to perform. NO!! We must know that you made it home safely and see pictures of how much work was piled up on your desk while you were gone! LOL!

 

This has been great fun chatting with you.

 

Well, you can still pre-plan all you want. What you can do is book a hotel that is 100% cancellable and then start to look for better deals as you get closer to the sailing date. If no good deals along, you still have your initial choice. If something good comes along, you can cancel your original reservation and switch. Just be flexible.

 

Actually you brought up a good point I need to emphasize to everyone. The name of the company/app says “last minute” but that’s a misnomer. You DO NOT need to book the hotel last minute.

 

I went back to my original invoice from the company to check the timing. For my December cruise, I booked the Galleryone in June – 6 months out prior to the cruise when I saw the price and the good reviews so DO NOT think you have to wait until last minute. The only thing is you have to fork over the $114 today and then it’ll be refundable if you cancel at least 3 days prior to check in date. So if you cancel your cruise 3 months out, go ahead and cancel the hotel with zero consequences.

 

I think that pink building is condo. Too “uneven” looking to be a hotel. Your typical hotel has a more symmetrical look and feel about it. Only condos with different sizes/shapes of 1/2/3 bedrooms will make the outside look “unique” but I could be wrong.

 

I, too, have enjoyed our conversations. Thanks to you and Coralc and Karen and others, it made my daily ritual of uploading pictures and dumb jokes feel like I am talking to someone on the other end instead of publishing my own diary.

[rainsrabble]

 

This ends day 8’s trip report. Day 9 will be very short as we left for home early in the morning

 

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

[windjamming]

Hi Harry, I first joined your review bandwagon during the first few pages and have been silently following along since then. With the fat lady nearly on stage, I had to post again to share how much I've enjoyed your entire thread.

 

First of all, there's snow outside here on the East Coast (yes, it's late) and another storm on the way, so getting this virtual cruise for the low price of 0 is a great steal. Even better than any Last Minute Deal.

 

Second, anyone can post a review and some pictures of dirt, but you brought it alive with your digressions, jokes, and cost benefits analysis. I am so there with everyone at the Friends of Excel / Complaints Club.

 

Finally, it's been very educational to hear how you planned the trip, especially for a multi-generation family. I cruise with my senior parents and learned some great tips from you on staterooms, excursions, and OBC. Although we don't have a cruise planned, we are looking at a Yosemite trip, and as I start looking at options, I find myself wondering, "what would Harry do?"

 

Thanks for the great review! (Yeah, I know you still have day 9, but based on your past 8 days of write up quality, I'm assuming it will be a great wrap up.)

[cruisemeister8]

I was just reading some of your old trip reports. I must commend you on how you have improved your trip reports over the years, from writing War and Peace to the entire Harry Potter series! LOL.

 

We never got to sail Mariner during her stint on the west coast, so that was a neat story. I know you probably don't remember the details anymore without re-reading your own story; but it was most impressive that you made it back to the Bay Area from San Pedro by 6pm! :eek: How fast do you drive?

 

Anyhow, we don't tend to sail at the same time of year. But maybe someday when we're both retired and time is no object, it would be fun to meet you at a M&M or a Friends of Excel meeting. Like Trainman and Radio, anyone here on CC would be sure to recognize you. Goodness knows we've seen enough pictures. LOL! ;)

[micmacmissy]

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!

[MrsK]

I have been following your report for what feels like weeks :p

 

We were on the Oasis in mid January and I wanted to see how it compared to the Allure.

 

Loved all of your pictures and your comments.

 

Thanks for the entertainment.

[soccerdad72]

I didn't know Primanti Bros. had expanded as far south as Florida! They're a Pittsburgh institution and I know they had added some other restaurants outside of The 'Burg, but didn't know how far south they had gone.

 

I also didn't know they sold pizza! :D They're primarily known for their sandwiches - loaded with the fries and cole slaw on top of everything.

 

Man, now I'm hungry!! :p

[cruisingislife]

I have greatly enjoyed this trip report! I was on the same trip and like you said, no one has the same experience! You all did so much stuff that I didn't even know about! I guess I spent too much time on the Flowrider (5-6 hours every day)! Thank you for letting me relive my vacation through you and to see all of the things I missed!

[Cruisin' Along]

harryfat1:

 

Question for you about Last Minute Travel. (I was unfamiliar with them until your TR.) How far in advance did you find your good deals and make your reservations for your hotels both before and after your cruise? Is it truly "last minute" as in the week or so before, or did you find good deals months ahead?

 

Thanks again for all of your tips and great information! :)

Edited February 9, 2015 by Cruisin' Along
typo

[harryfat1]

Hi Harry, I first joined your review bandwagon during the first few pages and have been silently following along since then. With the fat lady nearly on stage, I had to post again to share how much I've enjoyed your entire thread.

 

First of all, there's snow outside here on the East Coast (yes, it's late) and another storm on the way, so getting this virtual cruise for the low price of 0 is a great steal. Even better than any Last Minute Deal.

 

Second, anyone can post a review and some pictures of dirt, but you brought it alive with your digressions, jokes, and cost benefits analysis. I am so there with everyone at the Friends of Excel / Complaints Club.

 

Finally, it's been very educational to hear how you planned the trip, especially for a multi-generation family. I cruise with my senior parents and learned some great tips from you on staterooms, excursions, and OBC. Although we don't have a cruise planned, we are looking at a Yosemite trip, and as I start looking at options, I find myself wondering, "what would Harry do?"

 

Thanks for the great review! (Yeah, I know you still have day 9, but based on your past 8 days of write up quality, I'm assuming it will be a great wrap up.)

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the compliment. Very nice of you saying these kind words. As a CPA, I have to attend many tax seminars to hear about the various tax updates and most of them are super boring but there are few that are great and I appreciate the instructors in making a boring topic much more fun and lively. I tried to do that here as well instead of just retelling the days of our lives.

 

I took a quick glance at your reviews – you have really nice pictures. We were in the New England cruise on Carnival in 2013 and visited some of the same ports – we sailed roundtrip from Boston.

 

Great wrap up? You are putting a lot of pressure on me to have a great wrap up? It’d be much easier to just show you the last picture from airport and say “thanks and bye”. Now I have to re-write my closing remarks to even sound decent…

 

Oooh, road trip planning. I like those. But they take much more time and effort than cruise planning. Road trip planning requires you to look at how far you can/should drive daily between stops and then finding a decent hotel along the way that isn’t a Bates motel. Then you also have to look for food places nightly that will fit into everyone’s taste as well as you budget. Cruise vacation takes care of all that for you so it’s a different set of challenge (albeit fun challenge).

 

I am looking at doing a summer road trip that is 3,000+ miles of driving in about 12 days and 8 different hotels/places to stay. Will definitely need an Excel schedule to track the places we will be staying in nightly. Being cheap, I typically just order the free public library books online – don’t know about the public libraries in your area but out here, all county library books are online and you can reserve one that is in another town online and they will transfer that book to your hometown library so you don’t have to drive far to get it.

 

If I do want my own version of the travel book, cheapo person in me would get the prior year’s edition (like 2014) instead of 2015. There’s a premium for 2015 edition that you probably don’t need to pay for in the older edition as these travel books’ info don’t get stale that quickly – Yosemite is the same in 2014 as in 2015. Whatever updates I would find out anyway in our other online research.

 

I use trip advisor as my primary hotel guide as they typically are pretty solid in the viewers’ recommendations. There are many booking web sites for you to get the decent hotel price. If you are AAA or your parents re AARP members, some hotels offer discounts for those. Always get maps from AAA to give you an idea on where you are going. In the remote areas of national parks, you may not get reliable cell phone coverage so don’t just rely on soft copy. For food places, I use Yelp as my primary guide. Both trip advisor and Yelp have free apps so download those and it’ll make research easier.

 

Back to cruise talk - I noticed your 11 month old cruise review is “in progress” but you already completed the more recent cruise review. What’s the story there? Not going to finish it? I’m already forgetting some of the details from our cruise less than 2 months ago, not sure I can review a cruise from 11 months ago.

 

We have no cruise planned either for 2015 or anywhere in near future. My wife is not a real big cruiser fan. She likes it ok but her preference are these long road trips and we can’t agree on the kids school situation for 2015 so we may well have no cruise until winter 2016.

 

Have a great time in Yosemite.

[harryfat1]

I was just reading some of your old trip reports. I must commend you on how you have improved your trip reports over the years, from writing War and Peace to the entire Harry Potter series! LOL.

 

We never got to sail Mariner during her stint on the west coast, so that was a neat story. I know you probably don't remember the details anymore without re-reading your own story; but it was most impressive that you made it back to the Bay Area from San Pedro by 6pm! :eek: How fast do you drive?

 

Anyhow, we don't tend to sail at the same time of year. But maybe someday when we're both retired and time is no object, it would be fun to meet you at a M&M or a Friends of Excel meeting. Like Trainman and Radio, anyone here on CC would be sure to recognize you. Goodness knows we've seen enough pictures. LOL! ;)

 

The older reports are different format. Those were written for the “review” sections where you can’t include picture uploads. Those were not the dynamic daily posting I have for this one inside the Royal forum. If you just write it diary style listing day by day, it won’t be as long as when people asking questions and needing more detail info.

 

But even the “War & Peace” version back then blew up the cruise critics software limit as they never anticipated anyone writing THAT much for a review and I can’t upload the story on my end. I had to specially email them the info in MS Word attachment for them to load it on their end to show up online. Don’t even want to try to upload anything like the current version online…

 

I didn’t start looking to be this detailed but with enough people commenting that they will never go on the ship and whatever I show for them is the closest they will get, then I felt I should do a little more to show them what I have so that dragged out the days.

 

Wasn’t that hard of a drive to go home on a Sunday night after the Mariner. Always traffic in LA area around 405 but once we got on 5, it was smooth sailing. Typically the traffic is bad coming down to LA. I always hate that in after being in the car for 6 plus hours – your butt start to feel numb and then you run smack into the gridlock LA traffic around 5 PM and crawls along at 10 MPH for miles and miles. Ugly.

 

Oh, I am betting on most people have short term memory and in less than a month, this report will fade away into the background and join all other trip reports in the deep depths of the ocean bottom. Only until a real anal evil twin that will research for Oasis 3 in 2016 might dig this up. Who knows when our next cruise will be – 2015 or 2016?

 

May not even be on a RCI ship as we typically prefer to change brands/ships as to give a new look and feel so we can photograph/video tape the crap out of it. So highly doubtful anyone will recall this by time we sail again months/years later.

 

Originally we thought about Disney cruise but the price is way too high (they want more for a 3 day cruise than what I paid for a 7 day cruise on the Allure). The hell with them. Maybe we can try NCL but I don’t like the free style cruising. If we do, then we will be sitting in the “peasant cruiser” section of NCL as we would be first timers and have all the NCL repeat cruisers thumb their noses at us. I had to laugh out loud when I saw another poster referencing my usage of the “peasant cruisers” in their post. Too funny.

 

Seems like I get into trouble with my name calling in every report I write. In my Carnival report, I called some of the workers naz*** and during one of the heated debates about the Mariner back in 2010, the other side was losing the debate against me and then someone went and read my entire report to “get some dirt” on what I said to discredit my comments and they referred to that in a post. Pretty funny stuff. Almost like being nominated for Supreme Court where everything you ever write about anything in your past will be used to judge you.

 

So if the pattern holds true, then by 2017, someone will dig this up and say I believe in the caste system and want to bring back peasants to work on my yard...

Edited February 9, 2015 by harryfat1

[harryfat1]

I didn't know Primanti Bros. had expanded as far south as Florida! They're a Pittsburgh institution and I know they had added some other restaurants outside of The 'Burg, but didn't know how far south they had gone.

 

I also didn't know they sold pizza! :D They're primarily known for their sandwiches - loaded with the fries and cole slaw on top of everything.

 

Man, now I'm hungry!! :p

 

Yeah, per their web site, think they have couple more in FL.

 

They got good reviews from Yelp and I figure I can give them a try as they are close by and that one in FLL opens 24/7 – never closes so they must get some decent late night business.

 

Funny how I posted all the cruise ship pictures for 7 nights and you didn’t say a thing about being hungry and then I get off the ship to get some takeout food, you get hungry. Guess I know what type of food you prefer…

[harryfat1]

I have greatly enjoyed this trip report! I was on the same trip and like you said, no one has the same experience! You all did so much stuff that I didn't even know about! I guess I spent too much time on the Flowrider (5-6 hours every day)! Thank you for letting me relive my vacation through you and to see all of the things I missed!

 

Thanks for your kind words in this being your first cc post.

 

Wow, 5-6 hours a day in Flowrider. That is intense. Do you go to sleep hearing the water swooshing by your ear?

 

Everyone has different cruise experience, even on the same sailing. I bet if we never got the cabin upgrade and stayed at CP and maybe had more sunshine to enable us to use the pool more and no access to the secret balcony, it would have made us do different thing and results in different cruise experience.

 

Next time you go on the Oasis class ship, maybe stick to max of 3 hours a day on the Flowrider and give yourself a chance to see more of the ship. We tried to see as much of the ship as we could and I know we missed many spots ourselves.

[harryfat1]

harryfat1:

 

Question for you about Last Minute Travel. (I was unfamiliar with them until your TR.) How far in advance did you find your good deals and make your reservations for your hotels both before and after your cruise? Is it truly "last minute" as in the week or so before' date=' or did you find good deals months ahead?

 

Thanks again for all of your tips and great information! :)[/quote']

 

Thanks again for your kind words.

 

As I mentioned in post #955, Last Minute Travel is not really just last minute. I booked my hotel room 6 months before the cruise. Think they have rooms up to 11 months out. The price changes often like the stock market so you do need to check frequently and if you see a hotel/price you like, book it. If you see a better price later on with another hotel on the same night, cancel the first one and book the second one. Rinse and repeat until the very end.

 

I got this info from the Florida boards. Many people there use this company.

[mangs8]

Dear Harry,

 

It is I, your evil twin brother Sam, so happy to have found you after all these years!! I started anally planning trips when I was 14 years old for my first visit to Disney World. It's the perfectionist engineer in me, I guess, although I am now in sales. I have been intently reading this entire thread the past 6 lunch hours. You have saved me a TON of additional research I no longer need to do thanks to your exhaustive, comprehensive and hilarious review.

 

We are sailing Allure for spring break, and got a room on the aft/starboard side of deck 12, as well (really looking forward to the "secret balcony" access as you have gleefully pointed out ad nauseum). I started my spreadsheet a few weeks ago, and my wife is already sick of all the things I am telling her we can do on the cruise (she is the "just show up" type). My twin girls aged 12 years are really excited, though. We are also travelling with close friends who have 3 girls near their age, as well. We will be able to wave across the promenade to them from our balconies under the zip line!

 

Your sense of humor and sarcasm really resonate with me, you truly are my evil twin! Funny thing is, if i saw you and your wonderful family on a cruise, i probably would just think stereotypically "look at that Asian guy taking pictures all over the place" and never have gotten a chance to know you like i feel i have in some small way reading your review this past week. I will be taking just as many "food pics" as you on my cruise, as well. I also use the term "peasants", too funny!

 

As we are staying in FLL both before and after, I am glad to see there is a Primanti's outpost down there after enjoying it so much during my 8 years in Pittsburgh. FYI, I would recommend the app Urbanspoon instead of Yelp in the future in finding restaurants while traveling, I find it to be a better resource. And booking tables on the OpenTable app sometimes gets you into a restaurant when they say they are already booked when trying to call for a reservation.

 

Your review was so good, i actually have only 1 question - where did you get the lanyards that held your seapass cards in just the right size plastic case?

 

God bless you and your family, my "brother from another mother"!

[janeyzee]

Oh, I am betting on most people have short term memory and in less than a month, this report will fade away into the background and join all other trip reports in the deep depths of the ocean bottom. Only until a real anal evil twin that will research for Oasis 3 in 2016 might dig this up. Who knows when our next cruise will be – 2015 or 2016?

 

If you do decide on RCI for the next one, we just heard today that the newest Oasis-class ship will be named Harmony of the Seas and you should be the first to review it!

 

I'm going to miss this thread when you're done, you've been my nightly entertainment.

[harryfat1]

Dear Harry,

 

It is I, your evil twin brother Sam, so happy to have found you after all these years!! I started anally planning trips when I was 14 years old for my first visit to Disney World. It's the perfectionist engineer in me, I guess, although I am now in sales. I have been intently reading this entire thread the past 6 lunch hours. You have saved me a TON of additional research I no longer need to do thanks to your exhaustive, comprehensive and hilarious review.

 

We are sailing Allure for spring break, and got a room on the aft/starboard side of deck 12, as well (really looking forward to the "secret balcony" access as you have gleefully pointed out ad nauseum). I started my spreadsheet a few weeks ago, and my wife is already sick of all the things I am telling her we can do on the cruise (she is the "just show up" type). My twin girls aged 12 years are really excited, though. We are also travelling with close friends who have 3 girls near their age, as well. We will be able to wave across the promenade to them from our balconies under the zip line!

 

Your sense of humor and sarcasm really resonate with me, you truly are my evil twin! Funny thing is, if i saw you and your wonderful family on a cruise, i probably would just think stereotypically "look at that Asian guy taking pictures all over the place" and never have gotten a chance to know you like i feel i have in some small way reading your review this past week. I will be taking just as many "food pics" as you on my cruise, as well. I also use the term "peasants", too funny!

 

As we are staying in FLL both before and after, I am glad to see there is a Primanti's outpost down there after enjoying it so much during my 8 years in Pittsburgh. FYI, I would recommend the app Urbanspoon instead of Yelp in the future in finding restaurants while traveling, I find it to be a better resource. And booking tables on the OpenTable app sometimes gets you into a restaurant when they say they are already booked when trying to call for a reservation.

 

Your review was so good, i actually have only 1 question - where did you get the lanyards that held your seapass cards in just the right size plastic case?

 

God bless you and your family, my "brother from another mother"!

 

Hey, family reunion time. Bet you and I look just like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito from the movie Twins…

 

Yeah, sorry, the fat lady is singing on the stage now. All done – turn out the lights, the party’s over. No more pics to share except for just couple on day 9 in the morning and I am out of relatives to talk about anyway – other than the crazy grandpa that says he was abducted by aliens but we save that for the next cruise report…

 

But shouldn’t you have been researching this stuff earlier? You are going on a cruise in less than 2 months and you are only researching now? We have people hear researching stuff for 2016 cruises now (you know who you folks are). Once you get more familiar with cruise critics people, you will realize researching 8+ months out is considered normal around here. So make sure you pick up the pace on the cruise after the Allure and get a jump on the next one.

 

The secret balcony will be gone in less than 3 months so that’s part of the history you will be seeing as you take pictures of while you are on board. Years from now, you will be able to say you were on the ship before they changed out – people won’t believe you as by then all the Oasis class ships will have no public balconies in the back. Only old timer cruisers will have photo evidences to the contrary. Yeah, that’s why I talk in ad nauseum about it.

 

Pictures are family effort. I didn’t take all the pictures – just uploaded them. Family deserves the credit for that.

 

I will take a look at urbanspoon. Have seen their info online but never looked at the details. Most of everyone I know of uses Yelp. I use them more than just for food. My Samsung TV died last month and I used Yelp to help me find a TV repairman. Also used Yelp reviews to find gutter cleaner and my friend said he found his dentist using Yelp’s reviews.

 

As for lanyards, there are two parts. You asking about the neck part of the plastic part? The neck part came from work place’s marketing department as they were giving those away to promote the company, but you get them in any craft store like Michaels or Amazon online. If you are a Disney fan, they sell them as well. Or you can buy them on the ship if you want a RCI logo one.

 

The plastic card holder part can be bought on eBay. 5 for a dollar include free shipping – cheapo dad scores. But if you are leaving soon, you might need to pay a little more to order from a US based seller as to guarantee you guys have them ready before sailing. They work great. Stick card in there. No need to take them out for shows or top get on/off the ship as Royal have hand scanner that can scan the bar code in the back without taking them out other than opening cabin doors.

 

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

 

Have a great cruise with the wife and your kids.

[harryfat1]

If you do decide on RCI for the next one, we just heard today that the newest Oasis-class ship will be named Harmony of the Seas and you should be the first to review it!

 

I'm going to miss this thread when you're done, you've been my nightly entertainment.

 

Guess RCI really has a liking for musical theme names/places. Dining room is called Adagio. The third Quantum class is called Ovation and now 3rd Oasis is called Harmony.

 

It’s unlikely we will go on another Oasis class ship anytime soon. Some people probably think we are such big Allure fans that we couldn’t wait to go back after this cruise. Not really our style. One and done is my wife’s preference.

 

We may go back on Oasis 4 after 2018. New ships typically has higher cost premium. I can wait when she’s few years older.

 

We go on any ship and take more than enough pictures and video tape everywhere we can see and pound the thing to death and hence no need/urge to come back as we cruise through the lens of cameras. We need something new/different to experience and see and take another several thousand pictures and analyze things to death on a new class of ship. Can’t do it with the same type of ship while there are many others we haven’t experienced.

 

I, too, have enjoyed chatting with you and sharing the info from our cruise.

[soccerdad72]

Funny how I posted all the cruise ship pictures for 7 nights and you didn’t say a thing about being hungry and then I get off the ship to get some takeout food, you get hungry. Guess I know what type of food you prefer…

 

Touche :p

 

To be fair - I also commented many pages ago about the chilled fruit soup. :D We really loved the MDR as well on our last cruise and love fine dining a lot, but something about Primanti Bros. that just hit close to home to me. :cool:

[mangs8]

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!

Edited February 10, 2015 by mangs8

[habanero111]

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

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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

[FunX5]

We have people hear researching stuff for 2016 cruises now (you know who you folks are). Once you get more familiar with cruise critics people, you will realize researching 8+ months out is considered normal around here. So make sure you pick up the pace on the cruise after the Allure and get a jump on the next one.

 

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