Anthem Review, 9-Night Cruise to Bermuda/Caribbean, 8/11 – 8/20, Teen Family Style

[KarenB99]

All About Us

 

First, my sincere thanks to all the seasoned, regular posters on this board. You made planning for this trip so much fun for me. As other posters have said, planning is more than half the fun of a vacation for me, and we booked this 16 months before departure, so I had plenty of time to prepare, and devoted much spare time in the past three months to scouring these boards for every tip and trick I could find. Thank you! You all made our cruise so much better than it otherwise would have been.

 

While I always write up a summary of our vacations for my family, I never post them on message boards, but I was so impressed with the generosity of so many review writers who helped me be “in the know” that I have decided to share our trials and tribulations on the 8/11 Anthem cruise. My apologies in advance for the length and the level of detail I sometimes dive into; you are under no obligation to read our day-by-day diary of what happened during our 9-day adventure. If I display any hideous posting lapses in judgment, it will only be because I’m one of those last holdouts with no online footprint. You won’t find me on Facebook, I don’t tweet, and you’ll never see me on Instagram unless I slipped into one of my kids pictures by accident. I only text because otherwise, I’d have no communication with my busy tweens/teens. So, I’m highly likely to spell out a word you think I should have a cute acronym for or mess up some other online custom I’m not yet privy to.

 

We are avid Disney fans. I vociferously plan for our next Disney trip as if it were a matter of national importance. And to me, it is, because I think it’s really critical to have an awesome plan, awesome schedule, and to know 6 months in advance exactly what you plan to eat for dinner in the distant future. I know not everyone likes to vacation this way, but I do, ergo my kids do, ergo my husband patiently tolerates us, and thus I knew this would be the right cruise for us. We have done 5 prior cruises. A stellar Celebrity Cruise before the kids came along, 3 awesome Disney cruises in 2000, 2007, and 2013 that set our activity expectations high but food expectations low, and a mistake of a 4-night Carnival Cruise in 2010 that that I’d rather not recall. We mostly vacation to Disney resorts in Florida and California as we’re in the Disney Vacation Club and we’re making preliminary plans for Disneyland Paris next year, but every three years or so, we slip in a cruise for good measure. Every time we do, the kids ask why we can’t cruise twice a year and hit up Disney every three years or so. When they are older, they will do the cost benefit analysis and the answer will be clear.

 

We are an active couple with a 15-year-old son (his birthday was the day before the cruise) and 12-year-old daughter. We live in the Western New York region, so we were a good 5-6 hour drive to Bayonne. We booked the cruise in April 2015, long before there were cabin reviews and a good sense of the activities and rotational dining plan. When we got back from our February vacation and I started diving into planning this one in earnest, I saw the horrific reviews and comments on Cruise Critic, coupled with terror-spreading threads about dining issues, and we nearly cancelled, but I went back to my roots of: food is not the most important thing in the world to us, I love to plan, and this is right up my alley, so we forged on.

 

We chose Dynamic Dining Classic, early. We like to do shows after dinner, so that was our main impetus. By the end of March I had locked into our show schedule, iFly, Northstar, FlowRider Lessons, and most of our excursions. By July, I started checking our online schedule daily to make sure Royal Caribbean hadn’t played any tricks on me, and found the Puzzle Room open, so I booked that too. I took advice from some of you and went with a BOGO dinner package, and when I realized we’d never get back from St. Maarten in time for dinner on Day 5, I booked Jamie’s Italian. I pored over your reviews about the Labadee Zip Line best time and weighed your words mightily. Some of you said go in the morning because the wind picks up and you might get cancelled. Some said go in the afternoon because the photographers aren’t around in the early morning. This was hotly debated over dinners at our house. Finally, we managed to have a great plan we could all live with. We knew from you how to get an Arrival Appointment at 10:30 and why that was important. We booked drink packages and Voom packages and all digital images packages and we were ready.

 

Yes, we got the expected change in show schedule, but it didn’t impact any of our other plans. Yes, we even got an unexpected itinerary change, but that too didn’t impact our plans. OK, I lied, sometimes I go for the story but I’ll give you the harsh reality: I changed all of my Labadee plans after that, but it didn’t change the overall spirit of what we were setting out to do. This was going to be a great vacation.

 

Finally, some apologies in advance to anyone I may offend in the making of this review. This is just my family’s perception of how our trip went, and now that you’ve seen how I like to vacation, you can understand what I liked and what I didn’t care for. Sometimes, I can be super sarcastic, so just imagine a cute smiley face after potential caustic comments, like the one directed to the FlowRider hogs. Sometimes, I dwell too much on Disney, so that word crops up a time or two. I haven’t found a treatment for this condition yet. Ask my poor team at work how much I mention Disney when we are embarking on something groundbreaking. When on vacation, we are a show-loving, non-drinking, get to bed by 11 in order to get up early and do everything kind of family. I may well bore you, we are so totally not party people, and we only sat on the pool deck once or twice over 9 days. I will possibly annoy you. My goal is just to help a few future travelers out there, they way so many of you helped me. I wrote this 20 page Word document on our 8 hour drive home, (yes, you read that right, any fact-checkers out there. It took us 6 hours to get there, but 8 hours to get back, courtesy of New Jersey and Pennsylvania construction, but mostly just the first 5 miles lousy miserable miles out of the terminal slowed us down by 1.25 hours) and we had a ton of fun reliving some of the moments as I read excerpts to my gang, to get their approval on my rendition. For those of you who read on, enjoy!

 

And now, we’re off!

[KarenB99]

Thursday 8/11, Day 1: Embarkation // Easy Breezy Embarkation, Bumper Cars, North Star, Assembly Drill, Delayed Sail Away, Chops Grille, Welcome Aboard Show

 

We arrived at the terminal at 10:35, fresh from a mediocre stay at the Elizabeth, NJ Country Inn and Suites. Our arrival time was 10:30 – 11:00. We would have been slightly more prompt except for two inhibitors: 1) a 7:30am fire drill at the hotel, which was not only super annoying but also proved to be a false alarm, which the staff knew and still had no guest empathy for, and 2) it was much harder to find the port than we’d been led to believe it would be; our generally awesome GPS got very confused, and when we made it to the grand Cruise Terminal monument, there was no signage showing which way to go. We would have arrived at 10:30, had we turned left instead of right at the statue…

 

What a terrific embarkation process. Royal Caribbean has this aspect of queuing theory absolutely mastered. We were checked in, lined up in blue chairs, given Cruise Planners, and boarded by 11:30 and went straight to the SeaPlex for bumper cars, based upon tips from Cruise Critic. Our one regret, we assumed from prior cruises on other lines that we’d be queued up for pre-boarding pictures, but this never happened. We were pretty shocked no one mentioned where or how to get these pictures, since Disney builds that into the queue, but we didn’t even see the photo backgrounds until we were almost aboard and at that time, even though we had the picture package, it would have put us back several hundred people in line. So, off to the bumper cars we went. But, bumper cars were not starting until 12:30, so we headed to Windjammer for lunch and for our first experience of many in hunting for a good table. Mission accomplished, way in the back. Everyone found something they loved at lunch. I knew about Two70 for lunch, but with teens in tow, Windjammer was the better option for us.

 

Next up, we headed to the bumper cars. Only one pink car was in play, and my daughter spied it then wanted it. We were probably 14th in line, (as the cruise progressed, I would realize that was a miraculously low number) so I told her to start picking alternate color options that she could settle for. This would be our first experience with the terrible queue management practices on board the ship, as the staff member responsible for counting off bumper car participants tried to send in just one of our party of 4 into this round; we said we’d all wait for the next session so we could be together. They could, throughout the ship, benefit from a trip to Disney to learn some basics of monitoring for budgers, setting guest expectations, ensuring lines are headed in the right direction, and counting accurately. We would see this variation on a theme at the trapeze line, the FlowRider line, the NorthStar line, the rockwall line, and so on. For all the props I gave them for embarkation line management, they lost all of their earned points with horrific activity line management. Anyhow, they finally found a solo who would fill in that last lonely car, and they were off. Soon it was our turn, and since we were first, I had a very happy daughter racing to the lone pink car. This was tons of good family fun; however, I wish I hadn’t been so focused on taking pictures, as my husband took advantage of my lack of bumper car competitiveness and smashed me so hard I was fairly shaken and I little wounded from the safety belt. All in a mother’s day’s work….

 

We next found lounge chairs and I left the family swimming while I went to find a specialty restaurant and settle the specifics of our pre-purchased BOGO Dining Package. We wanted to do Chops on Night 1 and Wonderland on Night 2. The lines at the specialties were short in size but long in duration, as the computers kept crashing. I waited behind one couple at Wonderland and after 12 minutes of the blow-by-blow of every night of their dining, I finally asked where else I could go, and I was off to Chops. They had scheduled our BOGO for Chops on Night 1 (yay!) but Jamie’s on Night 2 (boo – we had Jamie’s reserved for Night 5 for our late return from St. Maarten). It took another 15 minutes before our reservation was moved to Wonderland for Night 2. All’s well that ends well. It took a little over a half hour of persistence, but we got exactly what we wanted.

 

I returned to the pool deck and my gang was ready to dry off and do something else. Our rooms were now available, but we noticed the NorthStar standby line was commencing. We headed over to join the fun and we were 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th in line for the first ride of the day. Yay! But boo, this quickly turned into our second experience with horrendous queue management. The shy young boy running the line did not communicate to anyone at all, and some pushy blonde lady kept edging her way closer and closer. Please note, before I offend anyone, I may sometimes be referred to as a pushy blonde lady myself, so that is not necessarily an insult toward her, just an observation. I told my husband we had to watch out for her, as she was a budger, and he said to relax, we were clearly in the line and she couldn’t push through. He is so gullible, as she and 5 other family members of hers then walked right to the front of the line. All hell broke loose in the growing queue, as guests 1-6 were pretty outraged by this, as were we, guests 7 – 10. Well, we all still made it on, but she started yelling at everyone that she had already come over and talked to the worker to secure their spots while they waited at the bar. And shy NorthStar worker guy let her bully him such that she and her extended family waltzed to the front of the line, a line they had never once waited in. The people behind us who didn’t make it on that ride were far more annoyed and more vocal. A little more training of the activity employees would go a long way, though pushy blonde lady probably gave him high marks on her post-cruise survey. The NorthStar ride was excellent. Great views of the Statue of Liberty and New York City. We are so glad we did this bonus ride, as our scheduled ride would be later on a sea day, and we’d read that it often goes down, so now we have checked off Bumper Cars and NorthStar from our long “must do” list.

 

Next up: to our cabin. We were in stateroom 11110, and it was the best cabin we’ve ever had on any cruise. We were cautious about booking a non-balcony room, as we typically sail with balconies, but this is one of those Category F Superior Ocean View Staterooms with an unusual shape and 302 square feet of the most well-designed space at sea - ever. I highly, highly, highly recommend this stateroom to anyone and everyone, but especially to a family of 4. We had tons of space for both beds (even upon converting the couch), a sitting area with two chairs in front of the slanted wall with the extra-large port hole, immense amounts of storage, plus enough floor space to maintain a display of the full menagerie of all our towel animals collected throughout the cruise, and still walking space and random nooks to put our snorkel equipment and other assorted items and sundries that would clutter up most mere normal staterooms. Any time we walked past the other cabin on Deck 11 that had an open door, I made my kids peek into those rooms, whether balcony or virtual balcony, and then thank me for my masterful planning to score one of these rooms. At one point in our 16 months prior to sailing, there was a balcony sale on Anthem that made balcony rooms slightly cheaper than our room and we decided to keep our room. That was a great call. We loved it. With my kids' ages and genders, we know the pull out couch would be an issue, so we agreed our approach would be: guys each in their own twin bed and girls on the pull out. The pull out worked great for us, it was the equivalent of two side by side beds, but there was no way my son and daughter would have tolerated those sleeping accommodations. This solution worked for us, but we did pine for the Disney pull down upper berth. We also worried about how we’d deal with the tiny bathroom. We’re accustomed to those Disney split bathrooms, but getting the 4 of us ready for the day was never really a problem. Before sailing, I picked up a 7x7 bin for everyone at the Dollar Store, so it was like a college dorm. Everyone had everything they needed for bathrooming / grooming in a compact bin that fit in the shelves, from toothpaste to lotions to hairspray, in one bin and everyone had to manage their own supplies, so the bathroom was always tidy. The girls in our group would pull their bin out to the table / mirror area in the living room to complete hair/makeup at that mirror. This room is an eleven out of ten on all fronts. And, it was beautifully maintained by Betty, so a shout out to Betty!

 

The Mandatory Assembly Drill was a breeze. We’d already mastered the Wash Your Hands song from our stateroom TV, and we really enjoyed sitting in the air conditioned Royal Theater watching a video, as opposed to standing in the blistering sun near the lifeboats while wearing life jackets on board Disney. Big points to Royal Caribbean here. And frankly, some of our fellow guests were a bit icky, so we wanted them to remember to wash their hands. Heck, we’d like to offer up some additional lyrics about covering your sneeze, not coughing on your neighbors on the elevator, not blowing your nose into your hands in the FlowRider and rinsing them in the water, and especially NOT shoving your used Gatorade bottle up the free lemonade dispenser such that your mouth germs are all over the lemonade cap that everyone else will need to use, but that last one seemed hard to fit into the repetitive part of the song that only had three distinct notes, so I’ll refrain from sharing the rest of the gross things we saw other people doing and just say, I’m glad we were encouraged at least to wash our hands. It WILL make your mother proud! (After your turn on the Anthem, you’ll think that last line there was hilarious.)

 

We went back to the Pool Deck for the Sail Away party, hoping to score that bridge picture so many of you have posted in your reviews. We waited. And waited. And waited. And I started thinking we might not get changed into our cute outfits for Chops. And we waited. And waited. And then we heard it: Alpha Alpha Alpha. Since my Cruise Critic reading has made me an expert on this, I knew what was happening, and then, bam, it was happening very nearby right on the Pool Deck. Wanting to give some privacy to whatever was occurring, and thankfully it was in a deck chair and not the pool, we abandoned the Sail Away Party in order to change for dinner. By the time we got to our stateroom, the ship was moving. We figured that was good news for the Alpha Alpha Alpha situation. We watched the Sail Away from our port hole, while unpacking and prepping for dinner. And, in our own way, we even got that bridge picture, just, through our port hole.

 

Dinner at Chops Grille was better than we ever expected. Service was exceptional. Food was exceptional. My son’s 15th birthday had been the day before, while we were driving to New Jersey, so his birthday dinner had been a quarter pounder at McDonald’s. We told him this was his real birthday dinner, and it more than made up for how he’d been treated the day before! They even brought out an amazing bonus dessert with a Happy Birthday written on the plate and a mini cheese cake, all to the sounds of the singing staff. Such a great meal, but it set the bar very high, and I kept trying to manage expectations for everyone… This would be our best meal of the trip, so don’t expect these steaks and desserts again! That proved to be true. On the ride home, we all agreed the best meal of the trip had been Chops. The BOGO Package was a great deal, we would do it again in a heartbeat, and we’d probably do Chops for both Night 1 and Night 2.

 

We now headed into our biggest disappointment of the trip. The Teen Club was a total bust. For us. Opening night activity: dodgeball. Um, I don’t know a single 12-year-old girl who is dressed up for dinner who thinks: hey, let’s go play some dodgeball! I’m not suggesting American Girl Dolls would be better, but just about any other event would outrank dodgeball. In all our past cruises, my kids have practically lived in the Disney kids’ clubs. Royal Caribbean totally missed the mark with setting the stage for a good week with new friends. Which was fine with me. At 12 and 15, we don’t have too many more years left when they are willing to hang out with us, so it was great to have the extra family time, but I would have liked for them to feel like the teen club was worth it. In our case, it wasn’t. Clearly, other kids enjoyed it, but from what we could tell, there were many groups of kids who came aboard already knowing each other, so they enjoyed doing activities with their existing friends or cousins. My kids are good mixers, but from their few attempts at this Teen Club, they just didn’t feel like it worked for them. On the final nights, some of the activities were: Dating Game, and Dress-up Scavenger Hunt. That was for the 12-14 group. I do NOT want my 12-year-old daughter to be encouraged to date on the last night of the ship, nor to run around with another group looking for appropriate dress-up clothes (we saw a large group of boy/girl teens heading into a cabin under those auspices, I’m glad my kids were with me).

 

So they joined us for the Welcome Aboard Show starring comedian Troy Thirdgill. This was a super funny start to the week. Our favorite bit was what he referred to as the “Seven Percenters” – the people who are just not quite right. (See above note about the man inserting used Gatorade bottle into the lemonade dispenser.) From that point on, we’d point out the seven percenters to each other. We’re pretty sure some people had US on their list of seven percenters….

 

We headed back to the room, inspected the online info on the TV, ordered room service for the next morning’s breakfast to have a quick bite before our FlowRider Lessons, then finished all waivers, and called it a night.

[Valmoisy]

As another Disney addicted overplanner, I'm loving your review. Thanks!

[KarenB99]

Friday 8/12, Day 2: Day at Sea // FlowRider Lesson, Trapeze School, Rockwall Climb, Wonderland, The Gift

 

We were up and at ’em at 7am for our 8am FlowRider Lessons. Royal Caribbean seems to assume everyone is a repeat cruiser who knows exactly what to expect, so while we were left a voicemail that told us to arrive at 7:45, we were not told to check in at the building immediately before the FlowRider area, but a fellow passenger noticed that we were missing the tell-tale blue wrist bands and sent us to the appropriate check-in area. Sidebar comment: our free room service breakfast was relatively subpar and did not motivate us to try room service again. We really didn’t want to sample the “for a fee” options as we were a close walk to Windjammer for all our food needs. In the future, we made sure to rise early enough to eat there first.

 

FlowRider Lessons were great. Everyone learned to do the stand-up surfing, the instructors were excellent, and having multiple chances to go during this small group session made it totally worthwhile. I wanted to do this early on in the cruise so my family could hone their skills as time went on. I myself did not partake in this activity, as I’d rather be the one taking the pictures of the epic wipeouts than starring in the pictures of the epic wipeouts. And they were epic! On the positive side, all agreed that it was like falling into a pillow and then being flushed down, well up, the toilet; it was not as painful as it looked.

 

Hoping to catch Trapeze School at 9:30, we headed over right after FlowRider Lessons. The line was already growing at 9:05 and we hopped right in. We were probably 16th in line, which would mean the 2nd group (they take 12 each at 9:30, 10:00, 10:30, and 11:00). This line was a zoo, with late arrivals coming in to join family members who were holding their spots. We now felt lucky to secure the last of four wristbands for the 10:30 timeslot, and we were shocked by how many people continued to stand in line, long after the wristbands were depleted. That was in part because there was very limited communication from the staff about what to expect and when the tickets were gone. They did a great job of guiding the lucky folks who earned wristbands through the trapeze tricks, so total props for making my family feel like we were ready for America’s Got Talent, but more lost points for queue management and disappointed guests. We tried to act very humble when people asked how we managed to get a turn at Trapeze School, because we could tell they were bummed that they hadn’t. We did, however, fist bump this victory in private more than a few times.

 

Just to explain it for those of you who may want to try: they take 12 budding trapeze artists into the trampoline/trapeze area, have you place your belongings on a colorful plastic ring (this is the only purpose that the ring serves), then fit you with the harness which will squeeze you tight, then teach you the body placement needed to hold on to a safety bar and catch the trapeze bar. Once trained, you get in line by the ladder and wait your turn. The walk up the ladder helps build the tension, just in case you didn't display any yet, but you have safety straps and you really can't slip. Once you're up on the stand, they completely show you what to do to catch the bar, and then you bend your legs and you are in the air. Sometimes, a gentle kick from your handler is needed (if you're me). A microphoned guide will talk you through the process and you'll essentially pull your legs up, dangle from your knees and let your arms come off the bar, and then they will help you do a back flip off. Or, if you're me, you'll let them know you just want to swing back and forth a few times, and they'll help you do that, too. They are giving you all kinds of extra support to get you through the bar (if you choose), so if you were to race home and erect a trapeze set-up in your backyard in honor of your untapped trapeze potential, you probably wouldn't be as good at home as you were during your Anthem session. My daughter completed every trick. My son came close. My husband missed by a mile. And I never even attempted the tricks. But we all had a ton of fun and wanted to do it again. VERY well done, Anthem.

 

We did rockwall climbing later in the day, once again I “volunteered” to hang back and take videos and pictures of my climbing gang. This queue was a bit better managed, as it had an better line formation leading to the harnesses and shoes, but once again, the non-online-waiver signing folks were slowing things down. This was a theme from the FlowRider to the Trapeze School to the Rockwall. I am certain most of them had no idea they could easily complete this function on-line in the luxury of their bed, but for those of you who scrutinized the waiver with the eagle eye of a blossoming new attorney, well, you were not appreciated by the already-waived folks behind you in line. It made me wonder if you read your cruise contract with this much enthusiasm. Anyhow, the rockwall was great fun, and had differing levels of difficulty on each of the three walls. My family went at least 5 times over the cruise and never grew tired of the challenge. Friendly reminder: sign all waivers in your room on night one. Hey, I’m gonna get that added to the Wash Your Hands song.

 

FlowRider boogie boarding was scheduled for the afternoon, so my family figured that with their new stand-up surfing skills, they’d be flowriding masters on those measly little boogie boards. My family figured so wrong. They were flushed up the FlowRider toilet more quickly on boogie boards than on stand-up boards. It was still a hoot, tons of fun. However, it was a pain in the neck when someone really, really good got on. Because, not for nothing, you people who are clearly professional surfers, those of us on the bleachers want to watch our kids wipe out; we don’t want to watch you twist and bounce and jump for seven or eight minutes at a pop, however much fun you are having. I have already suggested to Royal Caribbean that they use a timer for this activity, just like the Ripcord, and even the Trapeze. This would have been far better if every rider had a three minute limit, whether they wanted to bounce and twist and preen for three minutes, or for the younger or less experienced riders, if their best use of time was to wipe out 6 times in a row in their three minute limit, so by later in the cruise they could be amazing for three minutes. Some folks endured only 30 seconds before a wipeout, others were given multiple do-overs by the same instructor who had no empathy for the prior quick wipe-outs, so it never quite felt fair. And while I understand that Fair does not mean The Same, watching some little pipsqueak wait for 20 minutes to lose their turn after a quick wipeout while some folks had many turns and other folks just went on and on and on AND on…. Well, a timer would have level set those indiscretions and increased (most) passengers’ satisfaction. You four guys who hogged the FlowRider every time we were there, you know who you are. And my kids have insisted that I add this final comment, against my better judgment: so… if you are a guy and at least a c-cup or greater, we beg of you, please, please, please invest in a swimshirt. Your lengthy turn on the FlowRider of bobbing and weaving will be far less irksome if you are a bit better covered up. (smiley face!)

 

We then headed to dinner at Wonderland. I really wanted to do this more for the experience than the food. Except for my husband, we are a group of fussy eaters. Finicky, a fancy person would say. For me, putting mayonnaise anywhere near me is grounds for the evil eye coming your way. I won’t even touch a bottle of it. Eww. Same goes for yogurt. Yuck. My kids would be just as happy in Windjammer as anywhere. But, I thought this could be our only chance to have this dining experience and knew the 3 main dishes would meet all our needs, so off we went to our 6pm reservation. This was a great experience. In the end, I’m glad we did it. Heck, I needed a night when I didn’t overeat, lol. And, when I mentioned how much I loathed mayo and yogurt, our server did everything possible to alter the menu away from mayo-based sauces and into some other replacement. My son, however, wanted to gag immediately, so we let him sneak away and run up to Windjammer. We were a little surprised when he came back with not one, but two steaks. We thought he would just eat a burger in the elevator… Our waitress quickly switched out his Windjammer plate for a fancy Wonderland plate, and he devoured the steaks quickly, to minimize any attention; however, there were two teen boys (and one jealous dad) at the adjacent table who were eying that steak enviously. My apologies to their parents for our lack of parental control in allowing our son to go find some food he liked. It was our only way to get him to stay. Tip for non-adventurous Wonderland goers: the waitress told us that if we had asked in advance, she could have just gotten my son a steak from Chops while the rest of us ate the Wonderland food; wish we had done that instead of the clandestine Windjammer run, so just ask about it. A few notes for those of you who read older reviews about this restaurant. there were a few things I expected to be very special at Wonderland that no longer exist: the menu is no longer served blank with water paintbrushes to reveal the options. Apparently, the wetness was ruining the expensive menu frames. And there are no longer real candles at the table, ours was just as fake here as everywhere else. This did not detract from a great night.

 

We are musical theater people. We are happy to see any show with the promise of show-tuney music and great singers. I was a bit worried that most of the shows on this cruise were more rock-centric, which is not my cup of tea. We went into The Gift aware of the many bad reviews saying it was incomprehensible, and we came out loving it. Great show, good story line (think A Christmas Carol, or It’s a Wonderful Life while you’re watching), good moving sets, and really terrific singers. Well done, Royal Caribbean.

 

And since we’re not party people, it was back to cabin 1-1-1-1-Ohhhh (we simply loved saying that number, whenever asked, and it always got a great laugh out of the staff member who asked for it) and we headed to bed.

[KarenB99]

Saturday 8/13, Day 3: Bermuda // Devil’s Isle Cruise and Snorkel, Poor Planning for Excursion Departure, The Grande

 

For our first port day, we had planned a Royal Caribbean Excursion called Devil’s Isle Cruise & Snorkel which met at 11:45 for a 12:00 – 3:30 experience. Our tickets said 12:00 – 4:15 experience, which caused some consternation amongst some of the attendees, as All Aboard was at 3:30. Yikes. (The excursion team cleared that up immediately, saying we'd be back in time and the ship would not leave without us.)

 

I slept in until 8am and the family slept until I dragged them out of bed at 9 so we could enjoy the insanity of a Windjammer breakfast before disembarking. Somewhere along the way, there had been a time change that our iPhones took care of, jumping us ahead an hour, so it probably wasn’t the luxurious sleep I’m making it sound like. We had a leisurely morning, exited the boat by 11:15 and were the first to check in at 11:22. We had time to shop at the pier, except, all of our cash was still sitting in cabin 1-1-1-1-Ohhhh Nooooooo. So, at 11:35 I informed the nice sign-holding host I needed to run back to my room. She eyed me suspiciously. I mentioned I forgot my cash and needed to grab tip money. She said I had PLENTY of time. I was back well before noon and we were off to a great afternoon excursion. This was definitely my day in the Seven Percenter club, as I know my Sea Pass Card cannot work its magic off the ship. I had gone over our excursion ticket checklist SO MANY times it was almost surprising to me they didn’t have a friendly reminder on there to bring cash for tips and other personal expenses. D’oh. Tip exclusively for me for next time, since everyone else knows this: take cash when leaving the ship.

 

The excursion was well run and we’re glad we did it. I always belabor our excursion choices for months. I locked into my first round on 3/15/16, and then went through my process of setting up spreadsheets, analyzing reviews, choosing back-up choices, making elaborate and confidential family voting systems that would put small countries to shame. This was one of the few 'first choices' that we stayed with, and it totally met our needs. We had a good amount of water/snorkel time, even though there weren’t really any great snorkel sights to see; anyone who wanted to kayak or paddleboard had a chance to do it in a very calm water setting, and the highlight for my family was this unadvertised bonus: jumping off the top deck of the boat into the water. You probably can tell that I, um, "sacrificed" and stayed back floating in the water to get pictures of their adventurous jumps.

 

We were back in our rooms by 4pm, hustling to get showers for 4 and ready for our 5:30 dinner seating at The Grande. We made it to the restaurant closer to 5:50, and we had a great dinner. We did find it odd that my 15-year-old was forced to wear a jacket. He is 6’2’’ with a runner’s body and was given a jacket that would have fit the finalists for the International Belly Flop competition (who were all really nice guys, especially the winner Greg who was like a celebrity on the ship, but is unlikely to share a jacket size in common with my teen son…). It was hilarious, and he hung it on the back of his chair immediately. Meanwhile, most of the men around us were not only NOT EVEN wearing dress shirts, they did not have loaner jackets gracing their chairs, so we couldn’t tell if my son was just targeted for the jacket, or if everyone else was smart enough to say no thanks and politely walk away from the Jacket Hander Outer Guy.

 

For whatever reason, we never made it to our rotational dining before 5:45. We are pretty sure this slowed down our service, as it always took at least 1.5 hours for our meal to conclude. We never complained, because we figured if we’d been more timely, we wouldn’t have thrown off the rhythm of our server team, who were usually on appetizers for the surrounding tables just as we were placing orders. It also didn’t help that three out of the four of us were always making special orders, such as: hold the mayo, hold the tomato, is there another potato that can be substituted, can you bring me something off the kids menu? So, we still give our waiters high marks. They were always hustling, always with a smile, and if our meal was a little slower than we may have liked, we had to take accountability for that ourselves. Just one meal was served lukewarm, all the rest were terrific, as cruise dinners go. (Remember, all of these meals are better than the Disney cruise offerings.)

 

Of the 4 restaurants rotated over 9 nights, we experienced all 4 restaurants but only over 5 nights, as we had done the BOGO, then had a late excursion at St. Maarten, and then opted for Windjammer over a return to Silk. We are glad we made it to The Grande twice and would rank our complimentary dining experiences as follows: The Grande (which lapped the other three), then Chic, then Silk, and a distant fourth, American Icon. We were not sad that we only made it to American Icon once, as that had been our Nights 1, 5, and 9 rotation, so we were lucky to have been busy on Nights 1 and 5. This luck did not just happen, though, as I had reached out to Royal Dining using the email address people have posted to Cruise Critic in order to make the following special request: Please put us in a 4-top table, and because we have the BOGO package for Nights 1 and 2, please ensure we are in The Grande on either Night 3 or Night 4. This request worked like a charm, and I was so happy with the outcome I've almost forgotten that it took no fewer than 7 emails over 3 weeks to finally get a response. In fact, by making this request via email, we received our full rotation a few days before we sailed, thus eliminating the need to wait for the big reveal until we got to our cabin. Yay!

 

After dinner, exhausted from food consumption and a long day in the sun, we just hung out in our cabin, watching the Olympics and Royal Caribbean TV. We had more energy to vicariously watch what our fellow passengers had been doing last night, rather than joining them for more fun tonight.

[KarenB99]

Sunday 8/14, Day 4: At Sea // Time Confusion, DreamWorks Breakfast, Trapeze School, iFly, NorthStar, Rockwall, Silk, Spectra’s Cabaret, Late Night Magician

 

Today was our Big Day. We had planned a character breakfast, Ripcord iFly skydiving, and our NorthStar ride for today, and we were all excited for all of these activities.

 

The times from our originally planned schedule, online television schedule, and actual Cruise Planner paperwork never fully synched. I really, really like schedules to synch, with tremendous precision even, but by Day 4 I was coming to grips with “island time” extending to the ship. Our character breakfast reservation was for 8:00. Our home schedule said 8:00. Our TV schedule said 8:00. The paper Cruise Planner said the event starts at 7:45. I figured if we arrived by 7:55, we’d be fine. Remember though, we are the people who never once made it to our dinner on time, so I was probably setting unrealistic expectations based upon our current demonstrated skills.

 

We got up at 6:45 to enact this plan. Every iPhone in the room said it was 6:45. Well, mine said 6:44, but close enough. My wristwatch, which I had set back last night based upon a note card left in our room and my obsessive need to follow rules, actually said 5:45, but why would I trust my manual time device over all this technology? Try as we may, we didn’t leave the room until 7:55 and arrived at 8:02. Not bad for us! In fact, we were the first to arrive, there were no families with toddlers eager to meet DreamWorks characters nor grandparents changing zoom lenses to best capture the moment. Something was clearly amiss. Although all 4 family iPhones said 8:02am, the staff at the Grande told us it was 7:02am and to come back at 7:45. So much for getting that hour back. While our iPhones had been smart enough to spring ahead for Bermuda all on their own, they required much manual manipulation to give us back that hour. Must have been Apple’s way of encouraging us to walk around decks 3, 4, and 5 getting awesome pictures while the rest of the ship slept, because we had a lot of fun snapping pictures of artwork, funny chairs, the view from Two70, and so on before returning to breakfast.

 

Hint for you: trust your old fashioned timepieces. They may keep better time than 4 iPhones, 3 iPads, 2 laptops, and a partridge in a pear tree, which was the full assortment of incorrect time-telling electronic devices in our cabin.

 

As for the DreamWorks Breakfast, I would rate it a 4 out of 10, using a generous scoring system that does not take into consideration instant replays. We have done every possible character dining experience at Disney World and Disneyland, and this one did not even come close to the worst ones in those settings. Also, I had no real expectation to draw from, as this is not a well-documented experience on line, whereas I typically walk into a new Disney dining experience having read 30 or more reviews and knowing more details than I actually need to know about the food, the characters, and the cast. So allow me to provide some details for any inquiring minds about this character interaction.

 

DreamWorks Dining. Like any other dining venue, you arrive and queue up at the front of The Grande. Guests are taken to a table in order of arrival, with no particular rhyme or reason to the seating; there is no better seating based upon how early you sign up (like there is at the Hoop Dee Doo Musical Review), it’s just by order of arrival. They have a photo background set up in the front of the room, where loud circus music blares. Yes, that's redundant. It's that loud. Menus are pre-set at the table, and though the food is all renamed around a DreamWorks show or character, it is the same sit-down breakfast you could get anywhere. Two staff members from the Kids’ Club wearing hilarious chef’s hats host the event, which includes two characters that will come out and interact with guests. (Yep: only two.) Our characters were: Fiona and Puss in Boots. (Nope: not Shrek.) I would have thought exclusively A-List characters would have been dining at the for-fee breakfast, but no. Each character appears for approximately 20 minutes, and tables are invited by the staff to walk up to the front and pose with them. The Kids’ Club staffers will take pictures with your camera while the professional photographers are also there to capture the moment. And now you know!

 

The service was especially slow at this meal, and our server seemed especially unhappy to have been stuck with, I mean assigned to, the character meal. We were seated at the front and center table by nature of being the first guests to arrive, and this was both a blessing and a curse. We were promised we’d have the best seats in the house to see the characters (which my 12 and 15 year olds didn’t really care about, but still wanted to be here having this moment), but we were not warned that every other family would queue up practically in our laps and meals for the chance to see Fiona. After 5 minutes of parental butts and elbows in our faces, and toddlers crying loudly nearby that they wanted their turn, we asked the restaurant manager if it would be possible for people to queue up in the obvious walkway near the DreamWorks background instead of hovering around our table. She said sure, they always do it that way (in the walkway) but this crowd seemed to want to queue up through the tables which she thought was odd. Hmm, perhaps a little guidance from staff would have had guests lining up in the right direction. Soon all was well with the queue, but then our food arrived. Two of us had ordered the French toast. This was the soggiest, gooiest French toast I’ve ever encountered. We mentioned it to the assistant, who said nothing back to us. We mentioned it to our waitress, and she said that the assistant had already told her so she already asked the chef and he said he was just preparing it soft. I had French toast for breakfast every day in Windjammer. It was pretty good there, especially when smothered with syrup and strawberries. This was twice as thick, so I can see that the chef may have had some challenges getting it just right. But it was NOT "soft." It was a health hazard of raw eggs. I told her it was unsafe to consumption and she offered to bring something else from the menu, but honestly, we were fine from the sides on the plate that had not been impacted by the raw eggs, nor did we want to extend our stay further.

 

Other moments from this meal: I was brought three flat Cokes before receiving one carbonated one. Orange juice was served in glasses not much bigger than thimbles, so my older kids, accustomed to full sized glasses of juice in the Windjammer, needed a few refills. Toast was walked throughout the room and offered to many tables, but not ours. As an aside, my husband RAVED about his eggwhite veggie omelet. Best he had had all week, without the hassle of the 20-minute egg line in the Windjammer. He liked it so much he ordered a second one, which was just as good. Since he especially hated the blaring music, it was only fair that he got the good food. When Puss in Boots came out, the same crowd that had been asked to queue up in the walkway for Fiona, once again queued up at our table, so we had to rinse and repeat on the walkway queuing process. We were forgotten for the Puss in Boots pictures, so promptly at 9:00 after they announced the event was over, we asked the hosts if we could please have our pictures taken real quick, to which they apologized profusely for forgetting us and we then had our lovely photo shoot with Puss.

 

Meanwhile, when Puss left, we were ready to leave, too. As we were packing up, some type of manager-ish woman came over and said: what’s your cabin number. Just this once, I was not proud to say 11110 and did not give it our special flair at the end. Just for a split second, I contemplated rattling off some other random 5-digit number. I figured we were about to be banned from all future specialty dining events. Later that day, we were checking our online account and I was surprised it was showing a credit. They had refunded us our $40 fee for the character breakfast. Which was not necessary, as we hadn’t disliked our food, beverages, seat location, wait team, fellow passengers, nor being skipped for pictures SO MUCH that we’d demand our money back, but since they were offering…. Meanwhile, I was surprised they hadn’t bothered to communicate to us that their plan was to refund us, so we could have been aware and exchanged pleasantries with the manager, giving them full credit for righting this wrong, which wasn't all that wrong.

 

Our Ripcord was scheduled for 11:20 and our NorthStar at 1:30. We had some time to kill and thought: let’s try the Trapeze School again. Yes, you read about this in Day 2, but we liked it and wanted to do it again, so back to the queue we went. Today was much more organized, and by 9:30 we had bracelets for 10:30 so we ran to Windjammer to get some COOKED French toast, and then back to SeaPlex in time for our second chance to be the daring young man on the flying trapeze. Super fun. And while some of you may think it wasn’t fair that we were repeating an experience that many folks never got to have, this was one of the few experiences that mattered to all four of us, and we were willing to wait in line for it, and there were no rules about limitations or restrictions for repeat visitors. I’m sure there are many experiences other folks had in multiples that we didn’t care to do, or hadn’t been savvy enough to do while we were standing in activity lines. That’s one of the selling points of a ship of this magnitude: something for everyone.

 

From there, we went straight to our iFly check in. This was truly our most awaited activity. I had gone there earlier in the week to know that we needed socks and closed toed shoes, so we were all decked out appropriately. Also, the guidelines say you need to weigh 230 or under if under 6 feet, and 250 or under if over 6 feet. Which is fine for our family, but wasn’t for some of the others waiting in our group. None of these guidelines were well managed by the iFly staff. While we were good on all fronts, there was a family of 4 for whom we are speculating none of them met the weight requirements and 3 of them didn’t have socks. They were sent back for socks, so two of them said they were bailing (we surmised this was due to the weight limits) and would go grab socks for the other. Another family of two showed up with no socks and some flip floppy shoes. We asked if they had socks and they said they were told they were fine not to, since their shoes would stay on. However, at the last minute they were told they couldn’t fly unless they borrowed some of the rockwall shoes. Frankly, you couldn’t pay me to wear the rock wall shoes without any socks, so I was really glad we had followed the protocols. I think the experience could have been enhanced with a little blurb on our television about: what to bring to your Ripcord by iFly experience, and several other "what to bring" tutorials for: FlowRider, Rockwall, Trapeze, etc… Note that for the two who dropped out, there was no attempt to find standby riders, so our group proceeded as a party of 10, not 12.

 

Meanwhile, on to the actual experience, it was phenomenal. We learned our hand signals, got suited up, took a few 'before' pictures, took too many 'before' pictures because now our whole team was heading into the upstairs wind tunnel seating area while our family was snapping away, and then we zipped in to the staging area, assuming we’d be last because of our dawdling. Instead, let the last be first, my husband was selected for the first flight of our group. He is a hang glider and had been waiting for 16 months for this moment, and he nailed it. When he came out, the group applauded and cheered. I am a klutz and decided, jeez, I should have stayed back to take videos, but I also nailed it. So. Much. Fun. My entire gang did great, we all had good flights. Do this experience! My daughter and I have very long hair, which escaped through every crevice of the helmet. The pictures of our hair flying crazy while we flew are amongst my favorite of the trip. And, there was an engineer running the airflow who also coached you through the experience. He constantly reminded people about their hand and foot placement, but more importantly, to smile. The pics from the wind tunnel are awesome. There was a young girl, maybe 8 years old, whose dad had done this before and was eager to do it again, but she was filled with trepidation. It was all over her face. She lasted maybe 20 seconds in the air and then exited. We all gave her the hugest round of applause and cheers. And the two folks who were quite possibly over the weight limit had a very, very hard time in their flights. Jason, the flight master, was terrific with everyone, but they spent most of their time down by the grate. I had read so many reviews about people being denied entry due to weight, that we were just surprised with this outcome. I had read reviews of weight being taken at iFly, NorthStar, and the Labadee Zip Line, but we were never once weighed and only asked about our weight at the Zip Line. I chalked it up to another inconsistency in Royal processes.

 

It was now 12:30 and we had 50 minutes or so before NorthStar check in, so what’s a family to do when already on Deck 15? Why, eat again, of course. So, off to Windjammer for lunch. We were in line for our NorthStar ride at 1:20, and the staff member running it told us that we were the first to report in, but it was down and might be down for a few hours or might be back up shortly, so we should hang out in the area and come back around 1:35 to see. (Thank goodness for that Day 1 bonus trip!) We watched the finals of the Belly Flop Competition and returned to check status, and now there was a new person running the activity, it was working, and they had already queued up a different group of people for the 1:30 tour. Sure.... when we were the first to show up and we were sent away, the employee DIDN’T hold our spot…. (Think back to our Day 1 spot holder for the pushy blonde lady.) Instead we were told that we had to wait for the next tour, since the way they now handle it is, according to the staffer running this session so your mileage may vary: they let 32 people sign up for each half hour, and then send them up 16 at a time for 15 minutes. So, we were part of the second group of 16 people. Hint to Royal Caribbean: if you are really doing four 15-minute appointments per hour, then schedule and assign them that way, instead of two 30-minute appointments per hour. This will assist with guest satisfaction for those of us who get shoved into the second tour. The staff took a very 'well, this is just the way it is' approach to the situation. Another family with us was apoplectically livid about this, as they were trying to get to the 2pm showing of The Jungle Book movie, and they were just generally outraged about numerous times when queuing catastrophes and poorly led lines had somehow worked against them. This was a repeated theme for many other fellow passengers we chatted with in various lines.

 

We had now been going nonstop since 5:45am, so it was time for a break. My husband translates that as a nap. My kids translate that as texting and Instagramming. I translate that as: working to keep the cabin and the day organized, reviewing schedules, getting dry swimsuits put away or hanging up wet ones to dry, etc, etc. After all friends had been connected with, the kids were ready for another activity, so we headed to the Rockwall, and then prepared for dinner. We watched the Bionic Bar put on a show and mix a drink before heading off to eat.

 

Back during that afternoon break, we called specialty dining and cancelled our dinner plans at Jamie’s Italian for Night 5. We had reviewed their menu online and decided it was too fancy for us, and we probably shouldn't go to a restaurant only to have to ask for key ingredients to be removed from every unique dish. I loved having access to the menus on the TV, so we could gather round the television and plan our next meal. You know, on the off chance we might ever experience hunger again… This wound up giving us a $90 credit, so as of this stage of the cruise, our balance was a credit of over $110. Sa-weet.

 

Dinner at Silk was good. Not exceptional, but better than any Asian-inspired meal I might prepare at home. Since, I’m the kind of mom most likely to be microwaving something or arranging a curbside to go meal….

 

Tonight’s entertainment was Spectra’s Cabaret. We arrived at Two70 at 8:00 for the 9:00 show. You can tell we care about securing good seats for shows and then waiting for the show to begin far more than we cared about our getting to dinner early, as we were super early for every show, and as a result, always had seats we loved. We didn’t mind waiting, as we all had those iPhones and could use a bit of down time. By being the first ones there, we got 4 comfy chairs in the front and felt like we had the best seats in the house. Especially the one time Spectra was actually hovered over my daughter’s chair and we both nearly screamed from being so startled, then he had a quick conversation with her while awaiting his spotlight and cue, then before starting the final song he gave a little shout out “OK, Abigail, let’s bring it home!” Made her night! The entire show made my night. Exceptional performances all around, great voices, great dancing, and the technology worked perfectly. A++.

 

Our only annoyance of the show came from fellow passengers: there was one family with 3 kids, two of them young and one a teen, who allowed their children to play all over the Two70 set, as if they were the preshow. The parents paid no attention to them, and the dad even took the teen on what looked like a personal backstage tour, while the two toddler-ish kids owned the floor, even climbing on the stages that clearly had recessed floors that would rise and fall throughout the performance. Finally, a stage manager came out and told the family they had to sit down and keep their kids in their seats. Moments later, the floor was recessed and it would later become the venue for how the performers would appear for the show. Very nice of the stage manager to (potentially) save the life of this toddler, since her parents had no interest in what she was doing.

 

We had so much fun at that show, we headed straight to the next one: Headliner Showtime starring Farrell Dillon, magician. Absolutely amazing and so, so funny. Don’t miss this, his tricks are superlative and his audience interaction is great. We had experienced so much talent in one short night. Another A++.

[ForeverAfter]

Following along! I'm loving all the details. We're another NY family (upstate) who will be cruising following a Disney World vacation so I'm anxious to hear your comparisons. This is our kids (8 & 5) first cruise so I hope it lives up to the magic of Disney.

 

I know I'm jumping ahead, but I'm curios if your family did ripcord at the same time? I've read it might be better to split up to get better pictures/videos.

[KarenB99]

Hi! Your family will love this cruise. It will be different from Disney, but it will have its own magic. I bet your kids will be the perfect age for the younger kids' clubs, which will have many age-appropriate activities.

 

As for the ripcord timing, we thought about splitting up our group in order to get pictures and videos, but in the end, we wanted to be together for this, and it took at least an hour to experience, so I didn't want to commit over two hours to this one activity. Plus, I was worried that Royal could start changing our schedule around, and with two sets of reservations, that seemed harder to manage than keeping the four of us together. Think in Disney terms: working to score then maintain your Anna/Elsa or Seven Dwarfs Mine Cart FastPass+s. We felt better safe than sorry.

 

We had purchased the "all images" digital package for $300 before we sailed, so we relied on their professional pictures for this experience. The videos would have been nice, but someone standing outside of the air tunnel is very unlikely to get as good of pictures as the Anthem pro who is sitting right where you are trained to keep your chin up and smile. We had at least 4-6 great pictures of each of us doing this one activity.

[KarenB99]

Monday 8/15, Day 5: St. Maarten // Rock Wall, FlowRider, Independent Excursion taking a private tour from Bernard’s Tours, Back late, so dinner in Windjammer

 

By now, we were used to getting up early, so we chose to rise and shine and be out the door by 8am in order to accomplish a few ship-based activities before leaving at 12:30 for our shore excursion. In keeping with our general trend, we did some rock wall climbing and FlowRider experiences, then we were getting ready for our private tour with Bernard’s Tours. Yep, I brought some money this time.

 

I highly recommend the private tour through Bernard’s Tours. Our driver was named Sexy and he gave us a great overview of the Dutch and French sides. We followed their basic tour plan, but I had asked to have it reversed to ensure we could see some of the big planes landing at Maho Beach the “airport beach.” We had 40 minutes there, which was more than enough, then went to the French capital, Marigot, for a bakery and shopping stop. I’d read horror stories of the lines at these bakeries, but we had a no lines at all, and got a baguette to share from Le Divin. She gave us one tiny square of butter. When I asked for a total of 8 butters, she looked at me like I possibly had 8 heads. I’m guessing the French islanders must eat their bread sans buerre…. But, my kids don’t, and we polished off the bread and all our butter before heading over to the flea market, which I think was called an open air market, but was really the same collection of the same junk at a variety of different stores. My kids are suckers for these shopping opportunities, so we happily purchased some mementos and returned to our van for the rest of our tour. We enjoyed a few more sights and then went to the La Playa section of Orient Beach. Sexy escorted us in, got us a deal on the loungers and umbrellas ($10 for 2 chairs and 1 umbrella, plus drink tickets for 2 glasses of rum punch or fruit punch, so we ordered 2 sets of this) then the stalking from local women selling their wares and services officially began. Two women in particular were all over us like flies on something I shouldn’t say here, and I was getting super aggravated as we wanted to get the kids signed up to use the water trampoline and settle in, and we just didn't need these two hovering over us. I was prepared to firmly yet politely say no to their services. My gullible husband, however, was lured into a free foot rub by one of them. Before you could say 'free foot rub,' she had her hands inching toward my husband’s thigh and was dripping alleged fresh aloe all over the place. I am not the clingy jealous type, but today happened to be our 19th wedding anniversary and I really could not tolerate these women one more moment, and not using my best manners, I said it was time for them to get the heck away from us. Now. The foot massager lady actually had the audacity to tell me to lighten up because they are the Friendly Island and she’s just being friendly. I told her she could go be 'friendly' with someone else’s husband in front of someone else’s kids. Seriously, I was expecting the incessant offers of hair braiding and personally designed jewelry, but this, this I was not expecting. As soon as they left (and they did come back one more time just to see if my daughter wanted braids or my husband wanted a back massage, talk about persistence), we had a great time! As forewarned, we saw some incredibly old and large women walking around topless, but mostly, just enjoyed some relaxation and swimming at the end of a sticky hot fun day. We were glad to have done the tour in reverse order and felt that starting at Orient and ending at Maho would have not been nearly as good. And lastly, we debated between the standard Bernard's Tour, which was $45 per person, and the private tour, which was $90 per person for our party size. SO GLAD we did the private tour. Compared to all Royal excursion pricing, the private tour was still a good value and was only $180 more that a group tour would have been, plus we were able to control the schedule and avoid any potential Seven Percenters this way.

 

We were back to the ship in plenty of time for All Aboard, but not with enough time for our Early Classic Dining, so we headed to Windjammer and actually became fans of the Windjammer dinner.

 

It seems that any “make your own” station was a magnet for miserable, complaining passengers. My kids heard complainers at every Pasta Pasta Pasta line they entered, and my trips to the Asian Wok also found complaints galore, while my husband’s omelet obsession yielded the same results. Honestly, if I were heading to my local PF Changs during peak time on a weekend evening, I’d expect to wait for my seat and then wait my meal. If I headed to my town’s mall food court along with nearly everyone in my small town also in attendance, I’d expect to wait. I just don’t understand what these people were complaining about – did they expect zero lines and instant gratification of custom-ordered food? You can’t go to too many vacation destinations and enjoy a line-free environment, unless you and your family were featured on an old episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Were there opportunities for improvement, sure, but was this worthy of the level of griping we heard loudly and sometimes obnoxiously stated, probably not.

 

Anyhow, we didn’t let the food complainers bring us down. We never went hungry, we were usually full, and we were always satisfied. Compared to any other consecutive 9-day period of eating in the past year, our 9 days on Anthem totally win out.

 

No evening activities for us. We grabbed drink refills and headed back to our room for more Olympics and Internet connectivity.

 

One comment on the drink packages: my son, daughter, and I had the soda package. I’m a six-pack-a-day Pepsi drinker. I knew it would be painful to drink Coke for 9 days, but it was an easier solution for me than bringing 12-packs of Pepsi on board. My husband is a Sugar Free Rock Star addict. We got him the Royal Replenish package, for all non-alcoholic beverages, figuring he’d need plenty of good coffee to serve as a substitute for his Rock Star. We are not drinkers, so we never considered the alcohol packages. We spent about $450 for the 4 of us for 9 nights and really felt the packages were a good value. We often left our clunky drink mugs in the cabin and instead flashed our cards to any bartender for a drink. Since all I wanted was Coke and all the kids wanted was Sprite, it was easy for us to get those drinks anywhere from any bartender. I agree with past reviewers that the soda machines were inconsistently available, so we were glad that we mostly wanted Sprite and Coke, because if you were looking for orange soda or the other special offerings in the Freestyle machines, you were going to be sorely disappointed a good amount of the time.

 

One comment on the internet package: We spent about $350 for the 4-device surf and stream Voom package. This was the best money we spent on the entire vacation. It allowed our teen/tween to stay connected to their friends at a critical back-to-school timeframe when school schedules were being released, allowed my husband to stay in touch with an in progress kitchen remodel project that we scheduled to have done while we were away (I know, I know, it sounded like a good idea at the time… but really was a seven percent moment in the end....), and allowed me to say abreast of work emails. But mostly, keeping the kids connected and happy meant for a much happier vacation for all of us. If you’ve ever dragged a miserable teenager around, you’ll know why this one goes in the “priceless” category for us.

 

One comment on Wow Bands: These are a waste of time. We got them at guest services on Night 2, after a little incident where my daughter ran to the cabin to change into dry clothes for Trapeze School, ran back to the line, and when I asked for her card, she gave me that look and then ran to the cabin with MY card, and ran back with both cards, just in the nick of time. We figured the bands would alleviate that scenario. And while they allowed us entry to our room and scheduled activities, and my husband could use his for the Royal Replenish package, they were not usable for the soda package, so I was always hauling out our Sea Pass cards to prove we had the drink package, as they were not taking my word for that. (Though they’d take my word on my weight, when it could have been a matter of life and death. Go figure.) In addition, the Wow bands are really hard to fasten. This is another time when I’d suggest Royal Caribbean designers sneak off to a Disney day trip and see how easy the Magic Bands are to use, then redesign the awful Wow bands. Hint for those of you who, like me, still insist on using them: put them on upside down, get the three prongs to go through the holes by forcing them with help from your free fingernails, and then flip it over to be right-side-up once fastened. Much better than trying to fasten it right-side-up the entire time.

[KarenB99]

Tuesday 8/16, Day 6: San Juan // Independent Excursion through Shore Excursioneer .com for Paddleboarding at Tres Palmas Inn, Walking around San Juan including Fort San Cristobal, Awesome Pokemon Hunting, Chic, Alfred & Seymour performers

 

We had scheduled a Beach Break excursion through Royal Caribbean, but they cancelled it 6 weeks before our sailing date. No worries here, I was poised with an Excel chart of options on the options, so we went with our second choice - a Paddleboarding experience through Shore Excursioneer dot com. It did not have any reviews, but at $50 per person, it was the best paddleboarding I could find for our short time in San Juan. (Our short time became a longer time less than a week before sailing, when Anthem’s itinerary extended the port departure from noon to 2:30pm. I assume I can thank all of you who told Royal Caribbean that the day was WAY too short, so again, thank you to you nice vocal people who made that happen for all future itineraries, starting with the 8/11 cruise.)

 

With a 9am excursion scheduled approximately 20 minutes from the port, we were up and off to Windjammer by 7:30. Our cruise pictures with the roaming Flamenco Dancer at Windjammer prove our level of tiredness, with visible bags under our eyes. We will need a vacation from this vacation, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

 

Off the ship, we had to find a taxi to Tres Palmas Inn. My kids were SO excited to be in San Juan. Turns out, it counts as the USA for our AT&T phones, AND there were Poke Stops everywhere, PLUS rare Pokemon roamed the streets of San Juan in abundance. To heck with Paddleboarding at Tres Palmas Inn, my kids would have stayed right here all day. Once or twice they shouted to the taxi driver to slow down so they could catch a particular Pokemon, but I reminded them that they couldn’t treat the taxi drive the way they treat me when I’m home driving them from activity to activity and the see a Poke Stop...

 

We arrived at Tres Palmas Inn in 15 minutes or so, walked in, and then grew a little concerned. OK, I was in a full-fledged panic because, well, that's how I roll, but my husband was telling me to relax and everything would work out just fine. The nice guy at the front desk had never seen confirmation paperwork like ours and had no idea what to make of it, nor did he think it was valid. I asked if there really was a watersports equipment rental place called "Sotavento Water Sports Shop" the name from our confirmation ticket, nearby and he said yes, it was on the property but he would need to make a few calls and he’d let me know. Feeling slightly abandoned in a foreign country (OK, that’s an exaggeration, since my kids were out front still in awe of the vast array of available Pokemon), in a jiff we were all set and the owner of Sotavento's greeted us and we were on our way with three paddleboards, yes, someone needed to be family photographer, so I’m letting them have all the fun….

 

This wound up being my son’s favorite excursion of the cruise. I wish I could remember the name of the terrific guy who ran the rental company. He was supposed to stay with us 15 minutes for lessons (which we said we didn’t need, as this is something we’ve done several times) and then leave us alone for 45 minutes to paddleboard independently. Instead, the water was a little choppier than normal, like, super wavy, so he stayed with us the entire time. My husband and daughter opted to say on their knees the whole time, as it was getting choppier and choppier, and my son proved to be a real natural. The owner took him on an extended paddleboard journey down the water, and when they got back, it was clear they had both had a great time. After paddleboarding, we were allowed to use Tres Palmas’s small pool and shower/bathroom area. Our total time there was approximately 2.5 hours. I’m so glad we gave this unrated excursion a try – it was exactly how our family wanted to spend our short time in San Juan. When we were ready, they called us a cab and we returned to Old San Juan for more Pokemon Hunting, I mean town exploration.

 

We toured Old San Juan on our own for approximately 1.5 hours. This gave us time to see some sights, buy some tee shirts, and head to San Cristobal fort for a brief walk-through. One of the vendors told the kids to expect many, many Pokemon at the top of the fort. This was a ruse, and their sole disappointment of the day. Well, that and the pesky heat and sun that followed us throughout this trip, lol. This was our only port day when we shared the wharf with another ship, I believe it was the Carnival Conquest. No disrespect to that fine ship, but we started humming a little "We Are the Champions" when we saw it. We cracked up when the Cruse Director did an entire bit on how easy it was to spot Anthem passengers vs. "the other ship" passengers in port, as we were all puffed up and proud and they were all, well, not. Go, Anthem!

 

All in all, we had a great day. Dripping with sweat, we returned to the ship and headed to Windjammer for some lunch, before hanging out on the Pool Deck, swimming and enjoying the chocolate ice cream for one of the few times it was available.

 

Dinner was at Chic. If you guessed we arrived at 5:50 for our 5:30 dinner, you’d be correct! This meal was great, once I got over the sensation of having snakes attack our ankles. (There are long dangly cords on the chairs stretching from the seat to the floor, which make the chairs look ever so Chic, and ticklish people feel ever so on edge.)

 

That night’s evening entertainment: Headliner Showtime Starring Alfred & Seymour. We loved them. A hint: don’t arrive to your showtime late. This high energy, hilarious comedy duo knows no bounds when it comes to picking on latecomers and screaming at them to leave, nor pointing out who in the audience looks like they might be a wee bit overweight, but all in all, some of the best laughs of the week were from this show. Maybe we liked it a bit more since we were never victimized by their comedy. They were hilarious when they used their best uptight proper, patrician voice to mock the potential cruise reviews, “Dearest Royal Caribbean Executives, I did not appreciate it when those two African American comedians made fun of me during their headliner showcase….” So many belly laughs from all our, um, growing bellies. A sidebar comment that I agree with so many prior posters that the biggest problem on the Anthem is not the ship, not the staff, not the activities, it’s the rude, entitled passengers on board. Rudeness was in full force at this show, when two women and 4 children under the age of 8 were reserving a total of 16 seats occupying two rows, for their extended family who trickled in for the next half hour, totaling only 10 fannies for their 16 "reserved" seats by the time they all arrived. At least they gave up two of their precious end seats to an older couple who arrived 15 minutes before showtime. This scheme involved regular yelling at the children to ensure their limbs were adequately spread out to demonstrate that the seats were held. Funny enough, they did not appear to enjoy the show. In keeping with the Alfred and Seymour comedy: “Dearest Royal Caribbean Executives, I did not appreciate it when my children and I worked tirelessly and strenuously to save exceptional quality seats for our family members, who may or may not have arrived for the performance where said seats were being saved, only to have this show be less than the highbrow entertainment we had hoped for..." Grrrr. We were kinda sorta hoping they'd get picked on by Alfred or Seymour. No such luck.

[KarenB99]

Wednesday 8/17, Day 7: Labadee // Alpine Coaster, Aqua Park, Water Slide, Zip Line, Float Rentals, The Grande

 

Our original Labadee plan was this: 9:00 Zip Line, 1:00 Aqua Park, All Day Alpine Coaster, All Day Waterslide, All Day Beach Bed. With less than one week to go before our cruise, we received that aforementioned Itinerary Change from Royal Caribbean indicating that we would dock at 9:00 instead of 8:00. However, they never mentioned any possible impact to the 9:00 Zip ride. I have learned from Cruise Critic that I shouldn’t risk a possible unpleasant last minute cancellation, so I made changes to our times as follows: 10:00 Aqua Park, 1:30 Zip Line, All Day Alpine Coaster, All Day Waterslide, scrap the All Day Beach Bed and add two Float Rentals instead. I’d read enough reviews that said there were plenty of shady spots on the island, and when I really assessed our schedule of activities, I didn’t think we’d have much more than 30 minutes to sit, so we were better off in free loungers than in a $195 beach bed for those 30 minutes. In hindsight, I made the right call cancelling the beach bed at the 11th hour. Not only did we spend less than 30 minutes sitting in our free loungers, our spot on Nellie’s Beach was so much more breezy and comfortable than the intense heat of Adrenaline Beach, we made the right choice for our day.

 

Here is how our day actually unfolded:

 

9:00 off the ship

 

9:10 professional pictures with the Anthem in the background

 

9:25 settled in at Nellie’s Beach, we nearly moved to Columbus Beach, but loved our breezy spot and quieter beach (we were not yet aware of the attack seaweed)

 

9:35 signing waivers for the Alpine Coaster

 

9:40 in line for the Coaster, though nearly a walk-on with just 2 riders ahead of us, the video and brake practice was very slow going, by the time we took two rides, it was 10:10 and we were (purposely) late for our Aqua Park time. We LOVED the Alpine Coaster. We are major coaster riders and found this fun and exhilarating in part because it was a little rickety feeling and also because it had an added sense of danger of being so close to the track. Our first time down, I used the brakes at every sign that said to brake. This was heavily mocked by my family. Apparently, those are suggestions and not rules. For our second ride, I confirmed that it wasn’t necessary to do so, and had even more fun. We did this 3 more times during the day, and made a very cute POV video on our last ride, with my son driving like a maniac and me holding on for dear life with one hand while recording with the other. Screaming might just be involved in this video.

 

10:15 signing waivers for the Aqua Park, as reported by nearly all other reviewers, this was MUCH more challenging than you’d think, and very hard to climb onto the play pieces, especially while donning life jackets. One young, obese boy of approximately age 6 was very much stuck in the middle of the blue/green play area, and just kept screaming “I need somebody to help get me get up.” "Hey lady" or "Hey mister" came next. I'm fairly petite and was not physically able to give the type of help he needed, as he weighed about the same as me (we talked enough in this exchange that, well, it came up), so I told him I just couldn't. I asked where his parents were, and he said they were over on the dock staying dry. A hint to parents: don’t send your weak swimmers who can’t climb on these toys into the water alone. This is not a swimming lesson. I'm surprised Royal Caribbean doesn't have a requirement for parents to accompany younger kids. This young lad swam over to another dad who was sitting on the trampoline, and he kindly tried to pull the boy up, but this kid could not even help support half his own weight and this man also told him no, I can’t help you as it could be dangerous, and called over to the life-guard type woman to come rescue the kid. My family had a great time. My rock wall expert especially loved it, my daughter conquered all of the obstacles she wanted to, and my husband and I speculated we were really showing our age whilst pushing shoving or pulling each other on to various trampolines…. Our self-shortened 45 minute timeframe was enough for us, and we were glad we had chosen one more Coaster ride first. No regrets. One word of caution: I read a few reviews that mentioned jelly fish stings in this area, and I saw at least 2 ugly jelly fish near the blue/green play area. My daughter would have left immediately had I mentioned it, so I shared this observation many hours later at dinner... Just, keep an eye out.

 

11:05 signing waivers for the Waterslide. Are you sensing a theme here? Why on earth they don’t have all of these waivers available on line with their TV waiver program is beyond me. This was our third of four waivers for the day. No two waivers were exactly the same, so pay attention closely to what info goes in which box. The Waterslide was the one dud of Labadee as far as we were concerned. The line was slow, it was hard to hear the safety guy call “next” so the queue helped each other out with that, and the slide was super slow. No thrill. No fun. We never went back to use our “all day access” as there was too much fun to be had to waste our time here. (With full respect for any of you big water slide fans out there.)

 

11:30 we headed over to lunch, since earlier an employee told us it started at 11:30. Whoops, it started at 11:45. So, my husband claimed a picnic table while the rest of us went to the Alpine Coaster, which had 35-40 people waiting in line. We estimated that to be at least a 45 - 60 minute line and retreated to the picnic table. By the time we got there, lunch was being served. It was not the best meal ever, but certainly convenient and totally on par with any cruise line private island fare we’ve had. The line was so short when we were there, but later in the meal, it was crazy long. Funny thing, when the line was crazy long, people were only using half of the available lines. Staff kept trying to direct people to the second line, but it was like someone heard a false rumor that all the bad hot dogs were in the farther line. We loved that farther, shorter line. Hint: take the short lines, always!

 

12:10 we went back to the Alpine Coaster, and many folks must have abandoned the coaster line to go create that huge line at lunch, as it was now a walk on, so we took two rides and had great fun.

 

1:00 was time for our check in for our Zip Line 1:30 flight, we planned to arrive between 1:00 – 1:15 and headed down our long walk to the check in building. This was an amazing experience. There were certainly some confusions and issues, like why did they ask for our weight and write it on our tickets, but then give the same sized (big) harnesses to all four of us, which may have worked for my son and husband but were way too huge for my daughter and me. But overall, we were lined up, resized into appropriate harnesses, and seated in the training area before we knew it. We loved the mini zip ride, the crazy truck ride to the big zip ride (here is the one time you’ll hear me say: Disney should come ride this truck to enhance their Animal Kingdom Safari Ride), and the overall zip experience was just terrific. Only one regret: no photographer waiting for us at the bottom. For nearly $100 per person, I feel that Royal Caribbean could staff a photographer at the base of the zip line for the entire day, like they do for the Ripcord ride. We had our camera for some family pics at the top, but it would have been nice to capture the moment officially.

 

2:30 we still hadn’t turned in our float rental tickets yet and decided that we might not want to use floats. The place was clearing out, so we probably wouldn’t stay much longer. We asked if we could get our money back and were told we could turn in the tickets at guest services for a refund, so we didn’t even attempt to get our floats. If you’re keeping track, you might have realized that after securing our seats in the morning, we probably spent a total of 15-20 minutes seated at our loungers, and by now we were a bit hot and tired, so the floats would not have enhanced our day. We returned back to Nellie’s Beach without floats.

 

2:45 and the Abandoned Float Gods then shined upon us, as there were a slew of floats sitting on loungers in the vicinity. One woman offered us her family’s three floats as they headed back to Anthem, so we floated until 3:30 on three “free” floats, which felt much more enjoyable than the $32 for 2 floats we nearly spent. Thank you, nice family! Cuz at Nellie's Beach, you really needed those floats. There was a creepy seaweed all over the bottom of the beach, even way out, and we needed something to keep our legs out of that goo. Another family mentioned that a little crab had crawled on them when they were in the water. Very authentic, but not desired. Floats are your friend.

 

3:30 we headed back to the ship, a long, hot journey of tired, weary travelers.

 

4:00 we were back in our cabin and had 1.5 hours for the four of us to shower, dry hair, and prep for The Grande. Our goal was to be en route to the restaurant by 5:15.

 

5:45 we walked into The Grande and experienced another amazing meal there. Thank you, lobster tails! Some day, we’ll be on time….

 

After dinner, we just hung out in our cabin. The kids were not interested in the teen club, and my work email was beckoning me. We are not “party people” so heading to The Quest was not particularly appealing to us. We were just fine to chill in our cabin and maybe even fall asleep early…

[KarenB99]

Thursday 8/18, Day 8: At Sea // Puzzle Room, We Will Rock You, Swimming, Relaxing, Eating

 

All we had planned for today was the Puzzle Room at 10, We Will Rock You at 2:30 (well, actually our materials all said 2:45, but the Cruise Planner and show poster said 2:30, so we figured better safe than sorry) and dinner at Silk at 5:30. A nice, easy day.

 

Escape from the Future was very well done. I had lucked into scheduling it online on the 4th of July when I was stalking my schedule and it was available to book. When I checked again on July 6th, it was full. Many people on board lamented that they couldn’t get reservations for it. Now that it was our day, the first puzzle appeared to be: finding it. Again, if Royal Caribbean took their online interactive TV to the next level, you’d click on an activity and it would tell you where it was and what you need to bring or wear. But, they are not there yet, so I called guest services and they told me to head to the SeaPlex and look for a room called Fuel. That we did, and then we met the rest of our group, plus Brandon our leader. We've done highly interactive Escape Rooms before, part of a chain called 5 Wits, where walls shrink in on you a la Star Wars unless you solve the riddle. This was nothing like that, it was the low key, MUCH harder version. Put your thinking caps on! The puzzles led nicely to the conclusion and everyone made some form of contribution. It was entertaining to see certain family dynamics play out for some families, who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent. We escaped with 5 minutes to spare, in a group with many puzzle fanatics and bright people. I’m not sure I believe any review where someone says they escaped with 35 minutes to spare…. Unless Stephen Hawking was in their group. At 25 minutes in, we were still finding valuable clues. All in all, good wholesome fun. I’d do it again for sure, as there is no way to participate in all of the many puzzles required for escape, so it would be a whole new experience a second time. A Royal Thumbs Up for this activity. Book it online if you can! If you can't, go to SeaPlex and beg to be let in to one of the sessions.

 

We hung out poolside and then had lunch at Windjammer. The pleas for 10 out of 10 were in already full force, and we enjoyed our lunch.

 

We Will Rock You was at 2:30 and was an amazing show. Exceptional voices, and of course the music is amazing. As a singer myself, I was impressed to see how the cast of The Gift, with very “Broadway” voices, transitioned nicely into the Queen sound. Spoiler Alert: I was so disappointed that they never actually performed Bohemian Rhapsody during the show. The no-music curtain call seemed so odd. We started to leave (as we like to escape the shows just before the Cruise Director appeared to pitch additional activities), and then I heard it: ‘Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?’ We retreated to our seats faster than you can say: ‘Scaramouch Scaramouch will you do the fandango’ and sang along with this amazing cast in this amazing performance of a classic. I was a little ashamed my kids couldn’t sing along better. I know what we’re doing for 3 or 4 hours out of our 6 hour drive home.

 

That night's Silk menu did not appeal to us at all, especially my 15-year-old who was hoping to maintain a perfect “steak every day” run on the cruise, so we agreed to scrap dinner and head to Windjammer. We arrived right at opening at 5:45 and thoroughly enjoyed not having to fight for a seat. The cake desserts were aplenty, the staff was uber-friendly. And you may be surprised to hear this, but they reminded us to rate them a 10 out of 10 when we get our email surveys in a week.

 

The kids changed into swimsuits and planned a quick swim; but the water was freezing, and the only hot tub available was in the smoking section (P.U. and no thanks), so we headed to the Solarium. I reminded my 15 and 12 year old that if asked, they were 17 and 16 years old, respectively. Feel free to chastise me, but it was Day 8 and we had watched numerous other passengers violate every rule we had ever seen in print, and we had not broken any. Plus, we had not been swimming on the ship since Day 1, so a little swim at the Solarium at 8:30pm when it was pretty dead (no more than 10 other people in the entire pool) seemed like a well-earned minor infraction to me. My son is 6’2’’ and often gets confused for a much older man than the boy he is, and my daughter is taller than I am, and they just wanted to soak in some warm water. They were not 6 and 7 year olds planning to raise a ruckus…

 

After the illicit swim, we headed back to Windjammer as my son wanted to close the place. The nice lad pushing the ice cream cart adorned with American flags earlier tonight was still pushing his cart. We had a great conversation with him. He asked us to please come back the next day at 10am for a special Windjammer treat. And, you may have guessed this was coming, but he also encouraged us to score the Windjammer as a 10 out of 10. Ya know what, I think I will.

[KarenB99]

Friday 8/19, Day 9: At Sea // Trapeze School, FlowRider, Rockwall, American Icon, Farewell Show, Packing Up

 

Another slow day was planned. We were excited to see that Trapeze School was on the schedule at 9:30 and our trusty FlowRider and Rockwall standbys were available. Otherwise, my objective was to pack during the afternoon so that, for once, we would not be the panicked family racing to get our luggage set out before the last piece was hauled away from our deck.

 

We arrived at Trapeze School at 8:45, which was earlier than ever before, yet we were farther back in the line than ever before. We enjoyed talking to another family about their onboard experiences and learned they had been shut out of an earlier Trapeze session and had encountered queue / line issues that made us look like featherweights in the bad line division. Wow. Meanwhile, they were heading to Ripcord shortly, so we gave them our best advice to ensure they wouldn't be sent back for socks, and some ideas for how to handle the braids their girls had gotten on Labadee with the helmets that make hair fly. Then the line was moving. The kids were given wristbands for 10:30, which meant we would make it to the 10:00 dance party at Windjammer. Not that we wanted to dance, but my kids felt that they had made a commitment to the ice cream cart kid and I didn't want to disappoint them by saying he had told every single person whom he scooped ice cream for to come by at 10:00 for the big sendoff.

 

Back to Trapeze School, the third time was NOT a charm. My daughter had been successful with the partial skin-the-cat move and backflip dismount on both prior trips. My son had come so close he thought for sure he'd make it this time. My husband and I were out, we did not need to do this another time and we were upstairs in the SeaPlex getting a new angle for our videos and pictures. In both past sessions, about 33% - 45% of passenger attempts at the trapeze tricks that we watched had been successful. On this day, we didn't see any successful flights the whole time we observed. I started to wonder if it was the food catching up with everyone's core muscles, not enough chalk on their hands, or what it could be. My daughter was up. She's a dancer and has great core strength, so I thought this would be a good gauge of what was going on, as she was now a seasoned trapeze artist. OK, I use the term loosely. She launched. Her legs flopped and flailed. She didn't come close to hooking her toes or knees onto the bar, and even her dismount flip was not her usual self. Then my son was on deck. Same thing, he looked worse today than in all other attempts. And then it hit us: on both other days, the microphoned guide had been one of the big guys, who also supports you through your trapeze attempt. Today, it was the female member of the crew who was doing it. I'm all for equality and women's rights, and she is certainly fit and strong, but I don't think she had the strength to help pull off giving the passengers the extra boost for them to maneuver the tricks. When we asked the kids what was up, they both said it felt like a totally different experience with her at the helm. Again, we saw over 15 people NOT make it in the 35 minutes we were there, and no successes. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't the same high of having the successful experience they had before. I think training for this program should be done with fellow employees, maybe a late night Sea Plex training for staff, and not with passengers. We didn't mind, but other folks could have had a better experience.

 

Our slow meandering day then led to another FlowRider experience, another rockwall climb, and lots and lots of afternoon packing, during which the kids went for a final swim. At 4:15 we headed to NextCruise, but the line was just too long, so, we'll contemplate subsequent Royal Caribbean cruises at another time. We decided this could be our big chance to get to dinner early. We shopped around a bit, trying to spend down a $60 credit that lingered, and at 5:10 we headed over to dinner at American Icon.

 

It turns out, if you show up early, there is a line! We asked the nice ladies in front of us if this was a line for Classic or Dynamic and they must have thought we were Seven Percenters, so they gave us a nice slow, clear, well-enunciated explanation on the difference between the two meal options, and before we could explain we were just trying to get into the right line, the doors opened up at 5:15 and we were off to Table 144. Which was never as easy to find in a new restaurant as they promised it would be. Guess what else? If you get there on time, the bread is WARM. We knew there was something to be said for those early birds and the worms they were getting!

 

The meal was nothing to write home about, except for the hilarious moment when my husband realized he ordered raw meat and we couldn't stop laughing. It was also fun to surprise our nearest table, another family of four we sometimes chatted with, by already working on our shrimp cocktails when they walked in. We told our wait staff we were trying to get to the 7:00 farewell show so we'd like to be done by 6:45. And that is exactly when we walked out, so a final thanks for the accommodating service. It was not their fault that I thought the shrimp scampi was missing the promised butter mentioned on the menu. Maybe it's back at Le Divin with our baguette lady....

 

We went to our final show of the cruise, the Farewell Showtime starring comedian Ed Regine. It is a good thing they mentioned the “comedian” part, or the audience may not have realized it. Sadly, Ed was the singular show of the cruise that was not a smash hit. Even more sadly for the 8/20 cruise, he is going to be their Welcome Aboard Show. I felt really bad that the (albeit small) audience did not make a connection with him, but not bad enough to force myself to laugh at his stale jokes, nor his racist jokes, nor his raunchy jokes. Thank you to the few of you who did laugh, as it made all the rest of us feel better about the situation.

 

We stopped over to pick up our Photo Package, but they said to come back at 10:00, so we retreated to our room, placed our luggage in the hallway, and the kids decided they needed one final evening run to Windjammer. At 10, we returned for our pictures, we were glad we got the 'all photos' digital package, as we never could have narrowed our 132 pictures down to a reasonable number of prints. The photographers did a great job throughout the ship. Thanks for the memories!

 

It was our last night to sleep on board the Anthem. An announcement was made that we would be arriving in Bayonne very late at night/early in the morning to accommodate a medical emergency. Thus bookending this cruise with medical issues. I thought the announcement was well done, stating this decision would be made to help with the safety of any of our families under similar circumstances. We hope all worked out well for this family.

 

Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite, Anthem! Thanks for a great trip!

[FM]

I just finished reading your "All about us" and I was thinking ... there's a female version of me - lol! Very well written! Planning is part of the fun (our next cruises are over a year from now) ... love Disney (our last 3 cruises were aboard the Fantasy) and WDW ... and am checking out CC for all the up-to-dates ...

 

Then when I scrolled to Day One and past, you weren't kidding!! LOL !

 

Going to grab some snacks and a soda ... kick back ... and delve right in :) !!!

[mikechass]

Marking my spot too, won't have time till Tuesday to read this but I look forward to it then.

Thanks for the time and details you've written.

Can't WAIT!!

Chass

[KarenB99]

Haha, FM. Fellow planners, unite! And Chass, too.

 

Yeah.... I should have offered stronger warnings about the length of the review. Sorry about that! I had all that time sitting in construction on the drive home and figured if I didn't write this now, I'd never do it once I got back to the reality of work on Monday. Just finishing up my posting now. Thanks for reading.

[KarenB99]

Saturday 8/20, Day 10: Disembarkation

 

We had requested the 9:35 disembarkation timeslot and received it. But when we read the fine print and realized that breakfast closed down at 8:30, we had our time moved to 8:25.We had a long enough drive ahead of us, without adding an hour of sitting around on the ship. It was no trouble for them to move us, when we went to Guest Services on Friday afternoon. They simply switched out our numbered luggage tags.

 

Here’s another major plus for Royal Caribbean: they do as great of a job getting you off the ship as they do getting you on! We left our carry-ons in our room and headed to Windjammer at 7:45. Us and 95% of the passengers…. Like the welcome aboard lunch, we found a table in the way back and then began our breakfast. I always felt like Disney cruises saved up all their worst food for the farewell breakfast, so I warned everyone not to expect what they’d been accustomed to all trip, but the Windjammer really impressed us. I had my same exact French toast with strawberries, and everyone found some of their favorites there, except for the omelet station which obviously could not supply that kind of demand what with everyone being there at roughly the same time. We left at 8:30, picked up our carry-ons, said farewell to Betty, and headed out. We were through the lines and out to our car within 45 minutes. A++ again, Royal Caribbean!!!

 

New Jersey, though, you get a C-, as it took us over an hour to go the first few miles of our trip. Our sad GPS kept having to recalculate our return home time, adding on minutes and minutes and then a full hour. Oh well, that just gave us more time to recap all of the highlights of our wonderful 9-Day journey on the Anthem!

[KarenB99]

Closing Thoughts

 

In summary, it was an A+ overall trip for our family. While some demerits were doled out for communication and queueing, bonus points were granted for activity quality and the overall caliber of the ship. Given that back in February we were on the verge of cancelling this trip based upon the many bad reviews online, I'm glad we persevered with our plans. From that aspect alone, I really wanted to share some good news about this ship, and felt like many of the folks who complained about having to schedule events in advance on line, or complained about not getting to experience the activities, shows, or meals they desired, they probably were indeed miserable, but they quite possibly picked the wrong cruise and could have selected many other cruise experiences that better suited their style. Anthem suited our overplanning, high-tech style just fine! She's a 10 out of 10 for us. If you're on the fence about booking her, just think about many hours you really want to work in advance to plan your trip. If you relish pre-planning every detail, you've got a winner here! If you want to book a cruise and then not think about it again until embarkation, there is potentially a better ship for you.

 

Here is a final summary of our version of Anthem highs and lows:

 

GREATEST STRENGTHS:

 

The ship is simply gorgeous

 

Our cabin, Category F stateroom 1-1-1-1-Ohhhh, was exemplary

 

The Ripcord, Trapeze, FlowRider, and Rockwall were amazing and kept us highly entertained, the Northstar was a clever gimmick, though not as exciting for our family

 

The shows were superlative in every aspect for our musical-theater loving family, so much talent is on this ship

 

The rotational dining and Dynamic Dining Classic option worked really well for us; we’ve loved this on Disney cruises for years and think Royal is off to a good start with their program; I hope they stick with it

 

The classic menu gave tweens/teens a great core menu to work with; the rotational menu had great variety and flavors; this dining more than met our needs and nearly every meal was terrific

 

Windjammer was great – if you can’t find something you like, you’re not looking hard enough, including seats, we always found good seats, you just had to be willing to watch for someone to leave then flag down a team to clean up after them - they always delivered service with a smile to do so

 

The staff was very kind and very helpful, despite sometimes being treated poorly by passengers - we had read they would be grouchy and we found the opposite to be true

 

The cruise director was terrific, Abe Hughes. He was a self-professed Johnny Carson fan from Johnny's hometown, and you could see it in his delivery style and the way he would let one foot get up on his toes and twist behind him. If he had swung an imaginary golf club, they could have been twinning. We loved watching his late night early morning show, and while we were not likely to be at any of the late night events ourselves, he seemed very comfortable in the role and capable at leading all the activities.

 

Labadee was a wonderful private island, and could be enhanced even more by extending the wifi from ship to shore and having photographers at the big ticket activities

 

AREAS of OPPORTUNITY:

 

Communication – tell your passengers what to expect and when things will start, explain that you need to show up very early for limited activities, don't assume everyone has sailed with you before and knows it all

 

Inconsistency – if you have a rule, abide by it, otherwise, none of your rules will matter to anyone, once they’ve watched you break rules for many other passengers

 

Queues – have a line for an activity, know where the line is supposed to be, stick with the line, and manage the line, in a consistent manner with staff members who have backbones - the customer is not always right, especially when they are cheating

 

Teen Club – have more age and gender appropriate activities, starting with a true ice breaker instead of dodgeball breaking your nose on night 1, and don't push 12-year-old girls into a "Dating Game" experience on board, as very few of them are likely to have started dating back on shore yet, there must be better group activities you can think of

 

Soda Machines – fill them regularly, or stop advertising them so heavily as a perk, and add a mug-washing station (my little germophobe stopped using hers after 3 days, even when I did my best to wash it in our bathroom sink with shower gel) (yeah... I see it now, fair enough, but I was just working with what I had, maybe next cruise I'll bring a mini Palmolive for dish-washing at sea)

 

Passengers – most folks are simply nice people on a well-deserved vacation just like you are, but that Seven Percent (and some days it felt more like Seventy Percent) can and will get under your skin. I don't think there is much that Royal Caribbean can do for us there, this one may have to wait patiently for World Peace or an end to chair hogs, whichever comes first

 

IN SUMMARY:

 

Even with this list of opportunities, there was nothing else we would rather have been doing for the past nine days, not even a trip to Disney. We experienced a great cruise, saw great port cities, indulged in great dining, watched great shows, tried new experiences, and had an awful lot of fun as a family. Your cruise will be entirely different from ours based upon what you set out to accomplish. Good luck and enjoy every moment of it!

[lakelorain]

Great review. You and your family sure have a lot of energy! I don't know how you managed to do so much without being exhausted.

Hope you have many fun cruises together.

[Guest maddycat]

I absolutely love your review. Looking forward to reading the rest.

[First Aider]

Thank you for a really good review!!!! We are sailing the Anthem in January for 12 days. We are going with another couple. I was very happy to read all the things you did on this cruise. We are a bit older than you and hubby, so we will not be doing all those things you did. We cruise to enjoy the comfort of the ship and to just relax. I will do some things and I will be sure to reserve them on-line. Thank you for the time you put into writing the review. This will be our first cruise on such a big ship. And now I am looking forward to doing it. Thanks again!

[Royalcruiser11]

Thursday 8/11, Day 1: Embarkation // Easy Breezy Embarkation, Bumper Cars, North Star, Assembly Drill, Delayed Sail Away, Chops Grille, Welcome Aboard Show

 

We arrived at the terminal at 10:35, fresh from a mediocre stay at the Elizabeth, NJ Country Inn and Suites. Our arrival time was 10:30 – 11:00. We would have been slightly more prompt except for two inhibitors: 1) a 7:30am fire drill at the hotel, which was not only super annoying but also proved to be a false alarm, which the staff knew and still had no guest empathy for, and 2) it was much harder to find the port than we’d been led to believe it would be; our generally awesome GPS got very confused, and when we made it to the grand Cruise Terminal monument, there was no signage showing which way to go. We would have arrived at 10:30, had we turned left instead of right at the statue…

 

What a terrific embarkation process. Royal Caribbean has this aspect of queuing theory absolutely mastered. We were checked in, lined up in blue chairs, given Cruise Planners, and boarded by 11:30 and went straight to the SeaPlex for bumper cars, based upon tips from Cruise Critic. Our one regret, we assumed from prior cruises on other lines that we’d be queued up for pre-boarding pictures, but this never happened. We were pretty shocked no one mentioned where or how to get these pictures, since Disney builds that into the queue, but we didn’t even see the photo backgrounds until we were almost aboard and at that time, even though we had the picture package, it would have put us back several hundred people in line. So, off to the bumper cars we went. But, bumper cars were not starting until 12:30, so we headed to Windjammer for lunch and for our first experience of many in hunting for a good table. Mission accomplished, way in the back. Everyone found something they loved at lunch. I knew about Two70 for lunch, but with teens in tow, Windjammer was the better option for us.

 

Next up, we headed to the bumper cars. Only one pink car was in play, and my daughter spied it then wanted it. We were probably 14th in line, (as the cruise progressed, I would realize that was a miraculously low number) so I told her to start picking alternate color options that she could settle for. This would be our first experience with the terrible queue management practices on board the ship, as the staff member responsible for counting off bumper car participants tried to send in just one of our party of 4 into this round; we said we’d all wait for the next session so we could be together. They could, throughout the ship, benefit from a trip to Disney to learn some basics of monitoring for budgers, setting guest expectations, ensuring lines are headed in the right direction, and counting accurately. We would see this variation on a theme at the trapeze line, the FlowRider line, the NorthStar line, the rockwall line, and so on. For all the props I gave them for embarkation line management, they lost all of their earned points with horrific activity line management. Anyhow, they finally found a solo who would fill in that last lonely car, and they were off. Soon it was our turn, and since we were first, I had a very happy daughter racing to the lone pink car. This was tons of good family fun; however, I wish I hadn’t been so focused on taking pictures, as my husband took advantage of my lack of bumper car competitiveness and smashed me so hard I was fairly shaken and I little wounded from the safety belt. All in a mother’s day’s work….

 

We next found lounge chairs and I left the family swimming while I went to find a specialty restaurant and settle the specifics of our pre-purchased BOGO Dining Package. We wanted to do Chops on Night 1 and Wonderland on Night 2. The lines at the specialties were short in size but long in duration, as the computers kept crashing. I waited behind one couple at Wonderland and after 12 minutes of the blow-by-blow of every night of their dining, I finally asked where else I could go, and I was off to Chops. They had scheduled our BOGO for Chops on Night 1 (yay!) but Jamie’s on Night 2 (boo – we had Jamie’s reserved for Night 5 for our late return from St. Maarten). It took another 15 minutes before our reservation was moved to Wonderland for Night 2. All’s well that ends well. It took a little over a half hour of persistence, but we got exactly what we wanted.

 

I returned to the pool deck and my gang was ready to dry off and do something else. Our rooms were now available, but we noticed the NorthStar standby line was commencing. We headed over to join the fun and we were 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th in line for the first ride of the day. Yay! But boo, this quickly turned into our second experience with horrendous queue management. The shy young boy running the line did not communicate to anyone at all, and some pushy blonde lady kept edging her way closer and closer. Please note, before I offend anyone, I may sometimes be referred to as a pushy blonde lady myself, so that is not necessarily an insult toward her, just an observation. I told my husband we had to watch out for her, as she was a budger, and he said to relax, we were clearly in the line and she couldn’t push through. He is so gullible, as she and 5 other family members of hers then walked right to the front of the line. All hell broke loose in the growing queue, as guests 1-6 were pretty outraged by this, as were we, guests 7 – 10. Well, we all still made it on, but she started yelling at everyone that she had already come over and talked to the worker to secure their spots while they waited at the bar. And shy NorthStar worker guy let her bully him such that she and her extended family waltzed to the front of the line, a line they had never once waited in. The people behind us who didn’t make it on that ride were far more annoyed and more vocal. A little more training of the activity employees would go a long way, though pushy blonde lady probably gave him high marks on her post-cruise survey. The NorthStar ride was excellent. Great views of the Statue of Liberty and New York City. We are so glad we did this bonus ride, as our scheduled ride would be later on a sea day, and we’d read that it often goes down, so now we have checked off Bumper Cars and NorthStar from our long “must do” list.

 

Next up: to our cabin. We were in stateroom 11110, and it was the best cabin we’ve ever had on any cruise. We were cautious about booking a non-balcony room, as we typically sail with balconies, but this is one of those Category F Superior Ocean View Staterooms with an unusual shape and 302 square feet of the most well-designed space at sea - ever. I highly, highly, highly recommend this stateroom to anyone and everyone, but especially to a family of 4. We had tons of space for both beds (even upon converting the couch), a sitting area with two chairs in front of the slanted wall with the extra-large port hole, immense amounts of storage, plus enough floor space to maintain a display of the full menagerie of all our towel animals collected throughout the cruise, and still walking space and random nooks to put our snorkel equipment and other assorted items and sundries that would clutter up most mere normal staterooms. Any time we walked past the other cabin on Deck 11 that had an open door, I made my kids peek into those rooms, whether balcony or virtual balcony, and then thank me for my masterful planning to score one of these rooms. At one point in our 16 months prior to sailing, there was a balcony sale on Anthem that made balcony rooms slightly cheaper than our room and we decided to keep our room. That was a great call. We loved it. With my kids' ages and genders, we know the pull out couch would be an issue, so we agreed our approach would be: guys each in their own twin bed and girls on the pull out. The pull out worked great for us, it was the equivalent of two side by side beds, but there was no way my son and daughter would have tolerated those sleeping accommodations. This solution worked for us, but we did pine for the Disney pull down upper berth. We also worried about how we’d deal with the tiny bathroom. We’re accustomed to those Disney split bathrooms, but getting the 4 of us ready for the day was never really a problem. Before sailing, I picked up a 7x7 bin for everyone at the Dollar Store, so it was like a college dorm. Everyone had everything they needed for bathrooming / grooming in a compact bin that fit in the shelves, from toothpaste to lotions to hairspray, in one bin and everyone had to manage their own supplies, so the bathroom was always tidy. The girls in our group would pull their bin out to the table / mirror area in the living room to complete hair/makeup at that mirror. This room is an eleven out of ten on all fronts. And, it was beautifully maintained by Betty, so a shout out to Betty!

 

The Mandatory Assembly Drill was a breeze. We’d already mastered the Wash Your Hands song from our stateroom TV, and we really enjoyed sitting in the air conditioned Royal Theater watching a video, as opposed to standing in the blistering sun near the lifeboats while wearing life jackets on board Disney. Big points to Royal Caribbean here. And frankly, some of our fellow guests were a bit icky, so we wanted them to remember to wash their hands. Heck, we’d like to offer up some additional lyrics about covering your sneeze, not coughing on your neighbors on the elevator, not blowing your nose into your hands in the FlowRider and rinsing them in the water, and especially NOT shoving your used Gatorade bottle up the free lemonade dispenser such that your mouth germs are all over the lemonade cap that everyone else will need to use, but that last one seemed hard to fit into the repetitive part of the song that only had three distinct notes, so I’ll refrain from sharing the rest of the gross things we saw other people doing and just say, I’m glad we were encouraged at least to wash our hands. It WILL make your mother proud! (After your turn on the Anthem, you’ll think that last line there was hilarious.)

 

We went back to the Pool Deck for the Sail Away party, hoping to score that bridge picture so many of you have posted in your reviews. We waited. And waited. And waited. And I started thinking we might not get changed into our cute outfits for Chops. And we waited. And waited. And then we heard it: Alpha Alpha Alpha. Since my Cruise Critic reading has made me an expert on this, I knew what was happening, and then, bam, it was happening very nearby right on the Pool Deck. Wanting to give some privacy to whatever was occurring, and thankfully it was in a deck chair and not the pool, we abandoned the Sail Away Party in order to change for dinner. By the time we got to our stateroom, the ship was moving. We figured that was good news for the Alpha Alpha Alpha situation. We watched the Sail Away from our port hole, while unpacking and prepping for dinner. And, in our own way, we even got that bridge picture, just, through our port hole.

 

Dinner at Chops Grille was better than we ever expected. Service was exceptional. Food was exceptional. My son’s 15th birthday had been the day before, while we were driving to New Jersey, so his birthday dinner had been a quarter pounder at McDonald’s. We told him this was his real birthday dinner, and it more than made up for how he’d been treated the day before! They even brought out an amazing bonus dessert with a Happy Birthday written on the plate and a mini cheese cake, all to the sounds of the singing staff. Such a great meal, but it set the bar very high, and I kept trying to manage expectations for everyone… This would be our best meal of the trip, so don’t expect these steaks and desserts again! That proved to be true. On the ride home, we all agreed the best meal of the trip had been Chops. The BOGO Package was a great deal, we would do it again in a heartbeat, and we’d probably do Chops for both Night 1 and Night 2.

 

We now headed into our biggest disappointment of the trip. The Teen Club was a total bust. For us. Opening night activity: dodgeball. Um, I don’t know a single 12-year-old girl who is dressed up for dinner who thinks: hey, let’s go play some dodgeball! I’m not suggesting American Girl Dolls would be better, but just about any other event would outrank dodgeball. In all our past cruises, my kids have practically lived in the Disney kids’ clubs. Royal Caribbean totally missed the mark with setting the stage for a good week with new friends. Which was fine with me. At 12 and 15, we don’t have too many more years left when they are willing to hang out with us, so it was great to have the extra family time, but I would have liked for them to feel like the teen club was worth it. In our case, it wasn’t. Clearly, other kids enjoyed it, but from what we could tell, there were many groups of kids who came aboard already knowing each other, so they enjoyed doing activities with their existing friends or cousins. My kids are good mixers, but from their few attempts at this Teen Club, they just didn’t feel like it worked for them. On the final nights, some of the activities were: Dating Game, and Dress-up Scavenger Hunt. That was for the 12-14 group. I do NOT want my 12-year-old daughter to be encouraged to date on the last night of the ship, nor to run around with another group looking for appropriate dress-up clothes (we saw a large group of boy/girl teens heading into a cabin under those auspices, I’m glad my kids were with me).

 

So they joined us for the Welcome Aboard Show starring comedian Troy Thirdgill. This was a super funny start to the week. Our favorite bit was what he referred to as the “Seven Percenters” – the people who are just not quite right. (See above note about the man inserting used Gatorade bottle into the lemonade dispenser.) From that point on, we’d point out the seven percenters to each other. We’re pretty sure some people had US on their list of seven percenters….

 

We headed back to the room, inspected the online info on the TV, ordered room service for the next morning’s breakfast to have a quick bite before our FlowRider Lessons, then finished all waivers, and called it a night.

 

We were just on same cruise just 2 decks below you in 9110 and feel the same way about the room! Big win with this stateroom!!! Tons of spaces for family of 4!!!!

[kaitysmommy2001]

Saturday 8/13, Day 3: Bermuda // Devil’s Isle Cruise and Snorkel, Poor Planning for Excursion Departure, The Grande

 

 

 

For our first port day, we had planned a Royal Caribbean Excursion called Devil’s Isle Cruise & Snorkel which met at 11:45 for a 12:00 – 3:30 experience. Our tickets said 12:00 – 4:15 experience, which caused some consternation amongst some of the attendees, as All Aboard was at 3:30. Yikes. (The excursion team cleared that up immediately, saying we'd be back in time and the ship would not leave without us.)

 

 

 

I slept in until 8am and the family slept until I dragged them out of bed at 9 so we could enjoy the insanity of a Windjammer breakfast before disembarking. Somewhere along the way, there had been a time change that our iPhones took care of, jumping us ahead an hour, so it probably wasn’t the luxurious sleep I’m making it sound like. We had a leisurely morning, exited the boat by 11:15 and were the first to check in at 11:22. We had time to shop at the pier, except, all of our cash was still sitting in cabin 1-1-1-1-Ohhhh Nooooooo. So, at 11:35 I informed the nice sign-holding host I needed to run back to my room. She eyed me suspiciously. I mentioned I forgot my cash and needed to grab tip money. She said I had PLENTY of time. I was back well before noon and we were off to a great afternoon excursion. This was definitely my day in the Seven Percenter club, as I know my Sea Pass Card cannot work its magic off the ship. I had gone over our excursion ticket checklist SO MANY times it was almost surprising to me they didn’t have a friendly reminder on there to bring cash for tips and other personal expenses. D’oh. Tip exclusively for me for next time, since everyone else knows this: take cash when leaving the ship.

 

 

 

The excursion was well run and we’re glad we did it. I always belabor our excursion choices for months. I locked into my first round on 3/15/16, and then went through my process of setting up spreadsheets, analyzing reviews, choosing back-up choices, making elaborate and confidential family voting systems that would put small countries to shame. This was one of the few 'first choices' that we stayed with, and it totally met our needs. We had a good amount of water/snorkel time, even though there weren’t really any great snorkel sights to see; anyone who wanted to kayak or paddleboard had a chance to do it in a very calm water setting, and the highlight for my family was this unadvertised bonus: jumping off the top deck of the boat into the water. You probably can tell that I, um, "sacrificed" and stayed back floating in the water to get pictures of their adventurous jumps.

 

 

 

We were back in our rooms by 4pm, hustling to get showers for 4 and ready for our 5:30 dinner seating at The Grande. We made it to the restaurant closer to 5:50, and we had a great dinner. We did find it odd that my 15-year-old was forced to wear a jacket. He is 6’2’’ with a runner’s body and was given a jacket that would have fit the finalists for the International Belly Flop competition (who were all really nice guys, especially the winner Greg who was like a celebrity on the ship, but is unlikely to share a jacket size in common with my teen son…). It was hilarious, and he hung it on the back of his chair immediately. Meanwhile, most of the men around us were not only NOT EVEN wearing dress shirts, they did not have loaner jackets gracing their chairs, so we couldn’t tell if my son was just targeted for the jacket, or if everyone else was smart enough to say no thanks and politely walk away from the Jacket Hander Outer Guy.

 

 

 

For whatever reason, we never made it to our rotational dining before 5:45. We are pretty sure this slowed down our service, as it always took at least 1.5 hours for our meal to conclude. We never complained, because we figured if we’d been more timely, we wouldn’t have thrown off the rhythm of our server team, who were usually on appetizers for the surrounding tables just as we were placing orders. It also didn’t help that three out of the four of us were always making special orders, such as: hold the mayo, hold the tomato, is there another potato that can be substituted, can you bring me something off the kids menu? So, we still give our waiters high marks. They were always hustling, always with a smile, and if our meal was a little slower than we may have liked, we had to take accountability for that ourselves. Just one meal was served lukewarm, all the rest were terrific, as cruise dinners go. (Remember, all of these meals are better than the Disney cruise offerings.)

 

 

 

Of the 4 restaurants rotated over 9 nights, we experienced all 4 restaurants but only over 5 nights, as we had done the BOGO, then had a late excursion at St. Maarten, and then opted for Windjammer over a return to Silk. We are glad we made it to The Grande twice and would rank our complimentary dining experiences as follows: The Grande (which lapped the other three), then Chic, then Silk, and a distant fourth, American Icon. We were not sad that we only made it to American Icon once, as that had been our Nights 1, 5, and 9 rotation, so we were lucky to have been busy on Nights 1 and 5. This luck did not just happen, though, as I had reached out to Royal Dining using the email address people have posted to Cruise Critic in order to make the following special request: Please put us in a 4-top table, and because we have the BOGO package for Nights 1 and 2, please ensure we are in The Grande on either Night 3 or Night 4. This request worked like a charm, and I was so happy with the outcome I've almost forgotten that it took no fewer than 7 emails over 3 weeks to finally get a response. In fact, by making this request via email, we received our full rotation a few days before we sailed, thus eliminating the need to wait for the big reveal until we got to our cabin. Yay!

 

 

 

After dinner, exhausted from food consumption and a long day in the sun, we just hung out in our cabin, watching the Olympics and Royal Caribbean TV. We had more energy to vicariously watch what our fellow passengers had been doing last night, rather than joining them for more fun tonight.

 

 

Could you please share that email address? I'd like to TRY to schedule our BOGO dinners prior to boarding (in 18 days! Yay) if that's at all possible!

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[KarenB99]

Hi Royalcruiser11,

 

Hey, I just saw your review! Nice! Sounds like you also had an awesome time on the 8/11 Anthem sailing! I totally agree with your positive attitude comments - the negativity abounds, but you can't let it get in the way of your great time.

 

As for the -110 staterooms, wow, right? We felt like we were in a grand suite. What a treat for you to score it on an oceanview guarantee!!! We would book a -110 cabin again in a heartbeat. There are so few of them and now that we're making them sound so great, they might be harder to get in the future, lol. Back when we booked, there was just a ton of misinformation about the shape and space, so we just hoped for the best, and it sure was! So glad you loved yours!!!

 

Happy unpacking and laundry folding and picture sorting and re-entry into the real world!

[KarenB99]

Kaitysmommy2001,

 

The email for restaurant services is: rcldining@rccl.com

 

Your timing is great. Three weeks prior to sailing, I sent a request for our Dynamic Dining Classic complementary dining restaurant rotation, as we wanted to avoid having Grande on nights 1 or 2, when we knew we would be at specialties, so we requested Grande on nights 3 or 4. It never occurred to me to try to pre-convince them of my BOGO choices, so you're one step ahead! Good luck!

 

In my experience, I sent an email to this generic email address, and they batched it out, then all future correspondence came from an actual person and her private email address. She was a little slow on the responsiveness, so I won't bother sharing her name/email with you. Let's hope your inquiry gets batched to a quicker representative. When it was 3 days from my sailing and I still hadn't received a confirmation after several attempts, I had to get a little feisty, at which point I responded to my assigned rep as well as the generic address again, and then I received a quick response and was given our rotation and assured that we'd have a 4-top with Grande on night 3. It was an ideal rotation.

 

Whoo hoo on your upcoming cruise! It will be amazing!! Enjoy!!!