Cruiser Formerly Known As Cheapo Dad's Trip Report on Odyssey of the Seas Sailing to A Minus B Plus C Plus H Islands

[harryfat1]

One special aspect of the Quantum class is “Seaplex”. It’s a two-story multi-use facility that has sports events/laser tag/bumper cars (No, No. Not all at the same time although that would be a mild version of the “Hunger Games” or "Mad Max via RCI").

 

In the original version of this area on the Quantum and other ships, it was more of a video game area.  But in the “Ultra” class, RCI realized they could make a lot more money if they changed the area to be more like having a sports bar in Playmakers. 

 

I doubt I would have visited the upstairs part in the original Quantum setup as I’m not a video games person but I know for sure I wouldn’t visit Playmakers during my stay as it’s an extra-charge food and drinks place. But I’m sure many people enjoy this venue.

 

I will show the bumper car event later on

 

 

 

This is the "other side" of the view opposite the harbor so I highly suggest you sit on the other side of Windjammer when you eat your first lunch - unless you enjoy watching containers and cranes...

 

[harryfat1]

Picture of the pool area on a sunny afternoon.  Too bad we didn’t have such nice weather when we were at the beach yesterday.

 

 

Going back inside the ship, here's an area where you can look down at the bottom of deck 5 via the see-through glass panels

 

 

Ahhh, yes.  The iconic Royal Caribbean “days of the week” sign on every elevator.  For cruises, you don’t have much use for the regular days of the week as in the “real world”. 

 

For your cruise vacation, it’s all about the day # of your sailing (i.e. day 3) but RCI has a subtle reminder for you in case you are on a long ocean voyage and lose track of what the real world is experiencing.

 

But we don't care.  For us, it's day 1 of the cruise...

 

 

[harryfat1]

So we made it back to deck 5 to try and check in at the muster station outside of Giovanni.  This time, the workers were there and we were checked off and we were done with the Muster Drill.

 

As I mentioned in my Navigator report, I wonder how many people know how to tie a life vest.

I know nobody misses the “good old days” of standing in the hot Florida sun and crammed with hundreds of your BFFs 10 deep waiting for them to show you how to tie the life vest. But at least you see it being done.  If you go back further than that, we old cruisers have pictures of having to put on the life vest and standing out there on the Promenade deck.

 

Yeah, sometimes the good old days aren’t good.  I get all that. 

 

In the back of my mind, I just hope there will never be an instance where people need to assemble for a real-life muster drill and most people don’t even realize where their life vests are as they snoozed through their safety drill on the phone while sipping on a Bahama Mama at the pool deck before going down to deck 5…

 

Anyway, enough worrying. Throughout the afternoon, they were announcing over the PA system to urge people to check in to the muster stations. I think up to one hour before sailing, they still have over 800 people who haven’t checked in yet.

 

More Deck 5 pictures of outside the Muster Drill area by Giovanni's Kitchen

 

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

We made our way back to the Royal Esplanade (or Promenade).  The area is still very busy with people making meal reservations and booking shore excursions.  For those that need assistance with the ship’s Wi-Fi or have phone app issues in general, they have Internet helpers staff to answer any questions people may have.

 

 

 

Guest services is always busy on day 1 so avoid this area unless you really need to speak to them.  At least wait until much later on day 1 to stand in line.

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

At 1 PM, they announced that the cabins were ready for people to go.  In theory, you probably can go in earlier at 12:45 or even earlier as it’s not that “magical” where at exactly 1 PM, they waive the magic wand, and the cabins are ready.  We didn’t see any workers in the hallway so they cleared out before the 1 PM announcement.

 

I’m curious to find out from others' experiences how much earlier are the cabins ready for your cruise? Not counting the special extra cost programs like the key.

 

Having sailed on the Navigator just a few months prior, I got used to the concept of not having a cabin key at check-in area back at the cruise terminal.  Instead, we would get the room keys at the door slots at 1 PM.  But the Odyssey also opened the cabin doors so that was a bit different than what we had on the previous cruise. 

 

I know conceptually there’s nothing wrong with open empty cabins as there's nothing to steal but just not used to my cabin being wide open for anyone to peek through.  Had to get used to the notion of someone potentially stealing my cabin keys on the prior cruise and now the idea of open doors to just walk in.

 

Anyway, paranoia aside, our 2 cabin doors were open for us to just walk in after grabbing the cabin keys from the outside mail slot.

 

 

[harryfat1]

The first requirement I have when booking our cabins is that they are connecting cabins as it’s easier to exchange stuff between the cabins inside instead of going outside (or balcony door).  So, this is what the 2 cabins looked like before we messed it up with all the junk.

 

Maybe I’m just super anal (9.2) but I never liked those YouTube videos where people do a cabin tour after a few days of the cruise and the cabin is a mess.  I want to see/show a clean cabin as much as possible. 

 

 

 

Our cabin to the right, the boys to the left.  We had to ask the cabin attendant to separate their beds later on

 

 

Same bathroom as most newer style ships

 

[perfect match]

Harry, we had a similar experience to yours in booking what we wanted to do online once we boarded the ship. We got to port early AB’s since we were in a JS we were able to wait in the suite area. It was a nice place to wait. At the rate prices are going up lately, we may never be able to afford even a JS again though. ☹️ Well, we do have a JS on each leg of our upcoming B2B on Allure, but that’s the last we may have for a while.

 

Anyway, as soon as we got on board I logged on to the internet and was able to book both the free and paid slots that we wanted on both the North Star and iFly. I was also able to book The Book and sort out a problem with my excursion in Grand Cayman. My pre cruise booking for The Book had disappeared from the cruise planner somehow. I have no idea how or why that happened but I was able to replace it. My Grand Cayman excursion disappeared when they added additional times available pre cruise and I tried to change to a different time slot. It cancelled my booking but wouldn’t let me rebook the new times. I had to go to the Shore Excursions desk to get that sorted out. The paid sessions for both North Star and iFly were always marked as sold out pre cruise from the moment they appeared on the cruise planner pre cruise, but as I said earlier, I was able to get both our free and paid spots booked on day 1. 
 

My one comment about having to book everything on day 1 was that it really made our first couple of hours on the ship feel very hectic. I would much prefer to already have all of those bookings done before I step foot on board so I can relax and enjoy the ship instead of having to take care of things that could have been done beforehand. I’m hoping that on Allure I will e able to do my bookings beforehand like I have done on all of our past Oasis class cruises.

[LuCruise]

7 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

...

Maybe I’m just super anal (9.2) but I never liked those YouTube videos where people do a cabin tour after a few days of the cruise and the cabin is a mess.  I want to see/show a clean cabin as much as possible. 

 

Our cabin to the right, the boys to the left.  We had to ask the cabin attendant to separate their beds later on

 

 

Same...take photos when you open the door and everyone has to stand back.  My family knows the drill.

 

Btw...not sure if you got an email just prior to your cruise, but we did for this one and it let you specify things like if you wanted the beds separated or together, to open the connecting door, etc.  It worked for us and our kids beds were separated when we entered (and connecting door open - we did this request for each room)

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

7 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

Maybe I’m just super anal (9.2) but I never liked those YouTube videos where people do a cabin tour after a few days of the cruise and the cabin is a mess.  I want to see/show a clean cabin as much as possible. 

 

While it's nice to see that, there are plenty that you can find (a lot done by one agency) that cover them all without any luggage, etc. in them.

 

I much prefer to see one partway into the cruise so I can see how people live in the cabin. It's easier to see the actual storage amounts and locations when there are clothes in there, etc. That is the best way for me to get if a cabin is going to work for me. The perfect view with nothing of real life in there doesn't help to know how that cabin will actually be when you're living in it. 

[rncruiser]

39 minutes ago, LuCruise said:

 

Btw...not sure if you got an email just prior to your cruise, but we did for this one and it let you specify things like if you wanted the beds separated or together, to open the connecting door, etc.  It worked for us and our kids beds were separated when we entered (and connecting door open - we did this request for each room)

We got the email for both of our cabins but they didn’t pay attention to our request. My kids still had to ask the cabin steward to separate their beds. 

[rncruiser]

8 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

At 1 PM, they announced that the cabins were ready for people to go.  In theory, you probably can go in earlier at 12:45 or even earlier as it’s not that “magical” where at exactly 1 PM, they waive the magic wand, and the cabins are ready.  We didn’t see any workers in the hallway so they cleared out before the 1 PM announcement.

 

I’m curious to find out from others' experiences how much earlier are the cabins ready for your cruise? Not counting the special extra cost programs like the key.

 

Having sailed on the Navigator just a few months prior, I got used to the concept of not having a cabin key at check-in area back at the cruise terminal.  Instead, we would get the room keys at the door slots at 1 PM.  But the Odyssey also opened the cabin doors so that was a bit different than what we had on the previous cruise. 

 

I know conceptually there’s nothing wrong with open empty cabins as there's nothing to steal but just not used to my cabin being wide open for anyone to peek through.  Had to get used to the notion of someone potentially stealing my cabin keys on the prior cruise and now the idea of open doors to just walk in.

 

Anyway, paranoia aside, our 2 cabin doors were open for us to just walk in after grabbing the cabin keys from the outside mail slot.

 

 

Many years ago I recall getting off the elevator a couple of minutes prior to being allowed to go to our cabin. There are doors that were closed that separated the lobby area from the cabin hallway. Staff opened them at precisely 1:30. 

[EllieinNJ]

On 1/21/2024 at 7:40 PM, harryfat1 said:

The Odyssey was in theory built for the Florida crowd as there’s no regular Quantum class ship based there with the Quantum/Ovation/Spectrum out in Asia.  Anthem is/was deployed in New Jersey/Europe so they must have wanted a Quantum class ship in Florida for the non-European sailing months. 

 

I think if they want to attract cruisers like myself who have done the Voyager/Freedom/Oasis-class ships in the past sailing out of Florida in the winter months and want to experience a new class of ships. If based in Florida/Europe regularly, then they would want this new Quantum class to have more sun space and be able to sell the way overpriced casitas.

 

That worked well in the first few years after Odyssey but now they also have to juggle with the need to switch Anthem out of New Jersey to bring back repeat passengers from that region to give them a new “ultra” ship to get excited over during the winter sailing months.

 

However, Florida in December 2023 was cold/rainy so if the same holds true for the December/winter period of next year, those sailings won’t find too many people outside for a big part of the cruise on the more open decks of the Odyssey.

 

That's why we were excited to book the 7 day Odyssey when it came to NJ..  New shows but same milk route stops.  But we didn't know that it doesn't have an enclosed pool and solarium.  Now a little disappointed cause it will be COLD in February.

 

We also booked the 5 day Liberty to Bermuda for September, 2024.  This class is new to us. 

Edited January 23 by EllieinNJ
edit

[harryfat1]

1 hour ago, EllieinNJ said:

That's why we were excited to book the 7 day Odyssey when it came to NJ..  New shows but same milk route stops.  But we didn't know that it doesn't have an enclosed pool and solarium.  Now a little disappointed cause it will be COLD in February.

 

We also booked the 5 day Liberty to Bermuda for September, 2024.  This class is new to us. 

The solarium in the Odyssey is covered.  Take a look at some YouTube videos and you will see.

 

We are not Solarium people so I don't have many pictures of the area but you will see online that it's covered so at least you can hang out there for part of the cruise.

 

We like 270 area more so you will find more pictures of that area in my trip report.

[rncruiser]

2 hours ago, EllieinNJ said:

That's why we were excited to book the 7 day Odyssey when it came to NJ..  New shows but same milk route stops.  But we didn't know that it doesn't have an enclosed pool and solarium.  Now a little disappointed cause it will be COLD in February.

 

We also booked the 5 day Liberty to Bermuda for September, 2024.  This class is new to us. 

We spent most of our time in Odyssey’s solarium. It is covered, and in the Caribbean it is air conditioned. I hope it can be heated as well. 

[harryfat1]

19 hours ago, perfect match said:

Harry, we had a similar experience to yours in booking what we wanted to do online once we boarded the ship. We got to port early AB’s since we were in a JS we were able to wait in the suite area. It was a nice place to wait. At the rate prices are going up lately, we may never be able to afford even a JS again though. ☹️ Well, we do have a JS on each leg of our upcoming B2B on Allure, but that’s the last we may have for a while.

 

Anyway, as soon as we got on board I logged on to the internet and was able to book both the free and paid slots that we wanted on both the North Star and iFly. I was also able to book The Book and sort out a problem with my excursion in Grand Cayman. My pre cruise booking for The Book had disappeared from the cruise planner somehow. I have no idea how or why that happened but I was able to replace it. My Grand Cayman excursion disappeared when they added additional times available pre cruise and I tried to change to a different time slot. It cancelled my booking but wouldn’t let me rebook the new times. I had to go to the Shore Excursions desk to get that sorted out. The paid sessions for both North Star and iFly were always marked as sold out pre cruise from the moment they appeared on the cruise planner pre cruise, but as I said earlier, I was able to get both our free and paid spots booked on day 1. 
 

My one comment about having to book everything on day 1 was that it really made our first couple of hours on the ship feel very hectic. I would much prefer to already have all of those bookings done before I step foot on board so I can relax and enjoy the ship instead of having to take care of things that could have been done beforehand. I’m hoping that on Allure I will e able to do my bookings beforehand like I have done on all of our past Oasis class cruises.

Yeah, I’m not a fan either of having to book everything as soon as possible on boarding day. Too much stress to get everything done within a short period and at a certain point, it’s just a matter of luck as when the App refreshes and more slots are opened.

 

Not sure why they won’t release the free time slots pre-cruise on the app.  I can understand they want to reserve some time slots for people to book upon boarding but not all the slots should be allocated this way. Guess they want to force people to pre-reserve the paid iFly and NorthStar experience from home.

 

Glad you were able to get “The Book” reservation resolved. That’s the only reservation people need to make for the Odyssey.

[harryfat1]

12 hours ago, LuCruise said:

Same...take photos when you open the door and everyone has to stand back.  My family knows the drill.

 

Btw...not sure if you got an email just prior to your cruise, but we did for this one and it let you specify things like if you wanted the beds separated or together, to open the connecting door, etc.  It worked for us and our kids beds were separated when we entered (and connecting door open - we did this request for each room)

Yeah, we got the email and made the request and I guess they fulfilled the opened door aspect but not the bedding situation.

 

For my upcoming Carnival cruise in December, as part of our reservation online, we can request the bedding configuration now.  But there is no guarantee the request will ever make it to the workers configuring the bed on boarding day.

 

The bedding isn’t a big deal as I can reconfigure it myself with the help of my boys to move the beds around but the inside connecting doors need the “magic key” from the ship staff to open as well as the balcony dividers outside if you have those cabins.

[harryfat1]

12 hours ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

 

While it's nice to see that, there are plenty that you can find (a lot done by one agency) that cover them all without any luggage, etc. in them.

 

I much prefer to see one partway into the cruise so I can see how people live in the cabin. It's easier to see the actual storage amounts and locations when there are clothes in there, etc. That is the best way for me to get if a cabin is going to work for me. The perfect view with nothing of real life in there doesn't help to know how that cabin will actually be when you're living in it. 

It’s a personal preference thing.  I don’t need/want to see what other people’s cabins look like after they live in it for a few days. 

 

From my end, I rarely upload pictures of my cabin as part of my trip report after we have settled in and unpacked. Not interested in sharing that part of the trip with anyone. Unless there’s something I want others to see specifically like the size of the sofa or magnets, will I take pictures of inside the cabin after we have unpacked.

 

Well, I did take a picture of toilet paper in the bathroom in my previous Navigator trip report to discuss the rough texture of the TP.  Not sure if that needs to be discussed again in this trip report unless there’s a demand for it…

 

[harryfat1]

12 hours ago, rncruiser said:

Many years ago I recall getting off the elevator a couple of minutes prior to being allowed to go to our cabin. There are doors that were closed that separated the lobby area from the cabin hallway. Staff opened them at precisely 1:30. 

Cool.

 

Maybe next cruise I will stand by the outside corridor at 12:55 to see if they open the doors exactly at 1 PM.  Well, maybe not.  I’m not that bored…

 

[harryfat1]

Few things to point out about these new style cabins on the Odyssey compared to the older ships’ cabins:

 

I like the overhead bins above the bed.  Good place to toss stuff in like sleep clothes away from the cabin steward when she cleans the room. In theory, the cabin has enough storage spaces on both sides for 2 people on a 7-night cruise but if the area is filled with 4 people, the overhead bin will serve as an extra storage area.

 

More USB plugs for all the electronic devices we are all bringing aboard. However, the drawback of providing technology is it can be outdated fairly quickly.  Like these older USB ports.  These are the older generation of USB type A plugs.  These were the original version and most commonly used especially for the older devices although many times I tried to plug them in the wrong side.

 

The newer version of USB type C eliminates the directional plug-in as both sides work and the faster charging bricks utilize the USB type C cables.  If you are in a hurry to come back to the cabin for a few minutes and need a quick charge, don’t use these USB plugs.  Instead, invest in the newer style USB cable.

 

 

I took pictures of the cables from the cruise to demonstrate my point but now I can't find them amongst the thousands of pictures we took from the cruise.  Oh, well, whenever they show up, I will refer back to this post.

 

Hey, like I said from the beginning, I'm not a professional reviewer and you are getting what you paid for...

[harryfat1]

 

 

 

This is the view of the very obstructed cabin. The risk of getting the cabins on deck 6 is that you could be getting something that blocks your view.  But we have no choice as RCI stopped building many of the double/double connecting cabins.  We had to take whatever was available.

 

To refresh everyone’s memory, here’s the deck plan again on where we are in cabins 6286 and 6288:

 

 

The good thing is the boys’ cabin has more space as the ship’s curvature started to slant from their cabin so their cabin is wider than ours and provides a more unique “end of the road” perspective.

 

I wouldn’t be too happy if we just got our cabins as is but with the outside balcony dividers opened, it was a pretty good setup. But as I mentioned previously, it’s very hard to find a double/double configuration with inside connecting cabins.  Outside of the Voyager/Freedom class where the Royal Promenade cabins are mostly double/double connections, most of the newer ships have a very limited selection so sometimes you just have to suck it up and book what is available.

 

[harryfat1]

Oh, yeah, the balcony divider opening up. 

 

For the Princess ships, you can open the balcony dividers on both sides if both sides are ok with it.  For RCI ships, you have to request to have it opened and then wait for the staff person with the “magic key” to open them for you.  Supposedly on some sailing if the weather is really bad, they could deny the request to open them but we haven’t sailed in any treacherous weather to have this request be denied.

 

We were surprised that the inside cabin connecting door was opened when we first walked in.  Typically those are only opened upon request as well.  We made the request prior to the cruise along with the beds divided but they only honored the door request and not the bed separation.

 

Anyway, one thing to note between the inside opening door of the Odyssey versus the one on the Navigator’s Promenade view cabin is that on the Naviagor, the connection is only ONE door. Whereas for the Odyssey, there are TWO doors between the connecting cabins so in theory, if both doors are closed, it would filter out the noise from the other cabin.

 

Personally, I don’t know why anyone would want a connecting cabin if the other end isn’t your family member.  Maybe you get it as a guarantee type of cabin but I have seen one cabin of a connecting cabin available to book but not the other.  So either the cruise line is holding out on not making that other cabin available or someone just booked the ½ of the connecting cabin and not paying attention to the deck plan symbols on what is a connecting cabin.

[harryfat1]

Anyway, after checking out the cabins and dropping off our backpacks, it was time to go out and explore the rest of the new ship that we hadn’t seen yet.  The sign at the door says the luggage won’t be delivered to the cabins until 3 PM by the cabin attendant.  That’s also something new to me as I thought in the past, the luggage was delivered by the “back room” workers.  Never seen the cabin attendants drop them off.

 

 

Speaking of cabin attendants now is a good time to talk about ours.  At the risk of sounding like a grumpy (grumpier) old man, I would say she was probably the worst one we have had on all the cruises.  From my cruise experience, most are very good but ours wasn’t very good. Not sure if they are understaffed or if she has to work extra hard/long due to the ship being 125% of double occupancy but I was not impressed by her attitude/performance.

 

First of all, she never came by to knock on the door to give us the typical speech to introduce herself and explain the procedure, and ask us when we want the cabins to be cleaned as nowadays they only do it once a day – morning or night.  I think she made a compromise in her schedule in always cleaning our cabins around 2 PM time so it’s a halfway thing.

 

There was another lady that came in during the afternoon on day 1 but it wasn’t our cabin steward and she just came in to drop some paper ads in our cabin.  That's when I asked the outside balcony to be opened and she said she would get someone to do it.

 

Since our cabin attendant never came by to introduce herself, I couldn’t ask her for a hard copy of the cruise compass on day 1.  By the time I finally saw her, it was day 2 in the hallway and she couldn’t give me anything until day 3 and she also didn’t get a compass for me on day 8. 

 

Somewhere in the middle of the cruise, we had a knock on the door and it was her and someone in an officer’s uniform outside asking us if everything was fine.  That was odd as we never had someone asking us that question in the middle of the cruise without us ever initiating any questions or issues.

[harryfat1]

Enough complaining.  Off to 270 we go as I saw from the deck plan back home that we were very close to the door on deck 6 that would take us to deck 5.

 

Opening the door and saw a whole slew of suitcases about 20 feet from our cabins down the hallway toward the Aft.  Our luggage was amongst them but since the sign said the cabin attendant would deliver by 3 PM, we will just let them do their thing while we explore the ship.

 

 

Side note - the luggage on the left (see red arrow), is using the non-RCI size tag that Carnival and Princess, and other ships use.  Those tags are wider than the RCI tags.  So for those of us who have RCI tags and you are going on another cruise line, the tags won't be a perfect fit.

 

 

[harryfat1]

Pre-cruise, I thought I could get to the backdoor of 270 on deck 6 via a small opening (highlighted below in purple)

 

 

So we walked outside to the hallway and headed to the back and saw NO entrance.  Eh?  WTH? Did they seal off the entrance?  No idea as we walked ALL the way around like dummies in search of the entrance that wasn’t there (red arrow line)

 

OK.  Forget it.  Let’s do it the old-fashioned way by going down one flight of stairs near the elevators and walking to the back on our own.

 

It wasn't until the next day did we found the secret door. More on that once we get there.

[harryfat1]

So café 270 near the 270 area in the back is similar to café Promenade on the other RCI ships in providing snacks and drinks (paid and complimentary) but it’s better than that as it has more offerings than the café Promenade and salads as well as sandwiches

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coffee menu if you want to buy the special coffee