My Allure review June 2017

[madimorg]

My review is of the cruise only; my reviews of ports is also posted but I’m not including them on the ship review. We cruised on Allure on June 4-11, 2017… we are a group of five girls in our mid 40s. Three had never cruised, one had cruised before but not on Allure and I had been on Allure before. We had a Grand Suite booked on deck 10 port side, cabin 10254. After four prior cruises, this was my first time in a suite and taking advantage of suite perks; yes I’m now officially spoiled and have already booked my next cruise in an Owners Suite. We flew into Fort Lauderdale two days before the cruise and we flew home the day after the cruise. We arrived the cruise port of Port Everglades around 10:20am and entered into the terminal; we were then informed that we’d entered the wrong door and that we had to go in a different door for suites… I had no idea that it made a difference. We got right through the check in process without any wait. I had purchased the photo package in advance that included all photos and the digital images, so we made sure to stop and get our obligatory boarding of the ship photo. We had our photos taken every chance we had and actually got so many fantastic images. We pretty much did our own thing with posing and photos and they were great. I don’t care for the photos where they say “put your hand here, tilt your head this way, chin up or down”, etc… I was happy that the photographers let us be ourselves and cheese it up if we wanted. Next we were up the escalator and sitting in the suites waiting area. I had no idea that there was a separate waiting area with really comfortable seating in a relaxed environment… another perk I really liked. Boarding started at 11:00am and we were some of the very first few people on board. Easy as can be. Our first stop was to head to the top of the ship and check out the Suites Lounge to get something to eat and a drink. I should point out that all of us had the full drink package. The suites lounge was nice but we never really used it much. The boarding day snacks were good but nothing spectacular; they were exactly what we were looking for though and hit the spot. We then toured the top decks of the ship, pool areas, etc… and before we knew it, it was time to get in our cabin. We were in our cabin at 1pm and unpacked our items. The Grand Suite had plenty of space even for five females. We stowed our luggage under the beds after nesting the luggage inside of each other. We brought an over the door organizer we hung on the bathroom door for miscellaneous items. We also brought a blue tooth speaker which was so nice; we used it for music on our balcony and in our cabin multiple times. The cabin lights were confusing to us; we never did get them fully figured out… lol we’d just flip different switches and eventually get things to come on. I wish the bathroom had had an outlet but instead we had to do our hair at the vanity area or at the little kitchen island area. The double sinks and bathtub were really nice. Our refrigerator was empty when we got there which was nice; no mini bar items taking up space in it. We also had a bowl of fruit in our cabin and off and on throughout the week we were delivered items like a cheese plate, fruit, etc… Our concierge contacted us about 7 days before the cruise and I let him know we’d like five chairs on the balcony, extra towels, 5 robes, 5 wine glasses in room, etc… all of this was done and in place when we got to the room. A rollaway was brought into the room and the room attendant set it up every night and put it away every day. She folded it and pushed it into the corner of the room which was understandable but I would’ve loved if it could’ve been removed completely during the day. Even with five of us we never felt crowded. Two slept on the bed, two on the pull out couch and one on the rollaway next to the couch. We brought magnetic clips for the walls and used them to pin up the daily activities and business cards and any important papers and then we had magnetic hooks for our beach bags and hats. We had door décor that we attached to the outside of our door with magnetic hooks as well. We did the sailaway bon voyage on our balcony with the wine that we’d carried on ship; we brought on board the two permitted bottles. We found the ship to be beautiful, clean and everyone so accommodating and nice. No complaints at all with the ship or her employees.

Activities we did on ship were a Galley Tour that included a champagne brunch and the wines of the world wine tasting. Both of these activities were okay but I had my disappointments. The Wines of the World wine tasting was really nice and we would’ve thoroughly enjoyed it but there was a large table near us who treated it like a happy hour and were so loud that we couldn’t hear the guy giving the wine talk and walking us through the tasting. I truly don’t know why they came to a wine tasting because they were so involved in their own “party” that they weren’t really taking part in the tasting… and when I say they were loud, they were so loud and laughing that we were struggling to even hear what glass of wine we were supposed to be tasting next. The Galley Tour Brunch was okay but I was a little disappointed in the group sizes on the tour… again we were so deep in a tour group that there was no way to hear anything. I’d done an All Access Tour on a prior cruise and had no problems hearing. But for the cost the Galley Tour was good… the brunch portion of it was fantastic!!! We really loved the brunch portion. We also did the zip line which was fun and we were able to get front of the line wrist bands for being in the suite; we only rode once and were glad we didn’t have to wait since the line was fairly long the day we went. And we did a ride on the carousel too… how could we skip it. We went to the casino once but I think it’s a bit too strong smelling of cigarette smoke... no problem for me since I’m not much of a gambler either; I spent my $5 free credit coupon and $10 of my own money and that was enough.

We ate dinner in the Coastal Kitchen most nights and it was good; my group really loved it. I actually liked the menu with more selections in the Main Dining room and it may sound odd but I liked the busier atmosphere and activity of the Main Dining room more than Coastal Kitchen. Coastal Kitchen is a beautiful space, and had really good food but to me it was so subdue and dimly lit that I found myself feeling more tired after dinner. The rest of my group loved Coastal Kitchen. We also ate at Park Café several times, Sorrento’s Pizza, the Buffet once, Dog House (sooo good) and we had room service breakfast several times and on the last night had room service dinner from the Main Dining Room and ate on the balcony.

The Suites Sun Deck and Bar was fantastic… we loved this space. We used the cabana one day at sea and loved it but it didn’t have much of a breeze. We also liked that the towels on this deck could be taken without having to do the checkout system. The shower outside was nice to cool down in. We really enjoying mingling with people around the bar and relaxing in the sun loungers. We used the solarium pool also. We found all areas to be very clean and didn’t see too much of an issue with finding chairs.

Shows… we didn’t make too many of the shows. It seemed that we continuously ran out of time or were exhausted from our day. We went to Ocean Aria and loved it… such a great show. We went to the

Comedy Club and it was so good; I liked it even better than when I went last year. We also watched The Quest on Friday night and had good seats even though the lines were insane to get in. We also went to the Friendly Feud Game Show and were one of the “families” to get on stage (we lost) but had so much fun and laughed at ourselves.

Our concierge, Dexter, was great. We loved him. He kept calling us “The Girls” and acted as if he knew us anytime he saw us. We really liked the invite to the champagne sailaway on the helipad leaving Nassau… that was a very nice perk that I’m glad we took advantage of.

We took advantage of the walking/jogging track on a couple of days… we especially loved the view off the back of the ship. We watched a sunset one evening in the chairs on the back of the ship at the walking track. It’s amazing that more don’t realize there is a sitting area there. I also took part in a TRX class on ship and really liked it. I’d never done TRX and had been wanting to try it so I figured this was a great opportunity.

We took advantage of the many bars on the ship. We really liked Vintages and their white sangria. We also did a tapas night at Vintages and loved it. Boleros had great coconut mojitos that were worth waiting in line for. Trellis bar was our favorite simple due to the great bartender…. I think her name is Alyna or something similar (blonde with her hair in a bun). She made the best drinks we had all week. Her mudslide drink was amazing as was everything she made. She was one of those bartenders that you could say “make me something good” and she’d know exactly what to make. We began always going there when we wanted a drink.

Our cruise vacation was so nice and all of us had a great time and can’t wait to go again. I’m now booked for Oasis of the seas in 2018. The Allure of the Seas may be a mega ship but we never felt crowded or overwhelmed.

 

 

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[fridaythe13th]

Enjoyed your review. When will you be on Oasis? I'm going with a girl friend 5/13/18.

[madimorg]

Enjoyed your review. When will you be on Oasis? I'm going with a girl friend 5/13/18.

 

 

 

Sadly not until Oct 2018

 

 

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[easyboy]

Thank you for your review!

 

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[pasodancer]

Great review -thank you for taking the time to do it for us!//