Wisdumb

We arrived at the pier right around 11:30am, and the line was already quite long and reaching out the doors of Terminal 18. This is an area I do have to commend Royal Caribbean on. We made it through security, checked in, bought neck lanyards, and were on the ship by 12:00pm. Considering the vast number of passengers boarding it was quite impressive.

Initially we had intended to eat at Giovanni's for lunch, per some cruisecritic searches about the topic, but I was feeling tired and we just wanted to grab a quick bite to eat since the rooms would be available shortly after 1pm. We went up to the Solarium Bistro instead and found the lines to be pretty minimal. Finding a table on the other hand was a bit more complicated. After standing around awkwardly for 10 minutes or so we finally spotted a table opening up and made our way over to it.

As far as the food goes, it was okay. I had some sort of chicken which was actually quite good, but the pasta was hard and chewy. I found this to be a trend throughout the week when it came to the thicker cut linguine type of noodles. They had curried rice with seafood in it available which was also good, and my girlfriend was a fan of the mashed potatoes. All in all I'd say the food selection at the Solarium Bistro was average to good, but I wasn't one to complain since I was hungry, tired, and did not want to wait in long lines of people at the windjammer. After grabbing a bite to eat we explored the ship for a while before heading to our room to check it out.

We had a boardwalk balcony on deck 12, room 12323 to be exact. We met our room steward, Maria, who would proceed to exceed every one of our expectations throughout the week. If anyone is lucky about to have Maria on deck 12 you will understand why I say this. She went above and beyond all week long, even coming up with recommendations and tips we might like her to do before we would think of it ourselves. This is one trend that would continue throughout the week. The service was simply incredible. 11/10 across the board.

Day One:

True to form, I put off all my packing until the Friday before we were leaving. I ended up doing laundry and packing until around 2:00am. Since our flight left Detroit Metro at 7:25am, we had to be up and out of the apartment by 4:30am. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep and was pretty exhausted throughout the day.

After parking and taking a shuttle to the airport, we checked our bags and made our way over to the TSA checkpoint. I had assumed since we were leaving so early we would breeze through security, but it actually took well over an hour. After finally making it into the terminal, we stopped at the Coney Island for breakfast. It was around 6:30am by that time, so I figured we'd have plenty of time for breakfast since our flight wouldn't be leaving for another hour. The Coney Island was also directly across from the gate we would be boarding at, so I let myself relax a bit. This was around the time it really started to kick in... I was going on Oasis of the Seas! Today!

Not long after, they started announcing the final boarding call for our flight and paged our names over the loud speakers. I looked at my phone and it wasn't even 7am yet! Our flight was scheduled to start boarding around 7:10am, so I was a little concerned. Luckily we had already asked for the bill, so I quickly paid and we walked over to the gate.

We boarded the plane instantly, went straight to our seats, and waited for departure. The plane ended up closing the doors almost 10 minutes prior to the time on our tickets, but it seemed like everyone was on board at least. We took off from Detroit Metro Airport and began our almost three hour flight down to Fort Lauderdale. I pretty much spent the entire flight using their free Wi-Fi to do some last minute reading on cruisecritic about places to eat on embarkation day, and switching back and forth between that and the flight tracker. The flight flew by, and we landed in Fort Lauderdale over a half hour ahead of schedule!

After landing and claiming our checked bags, we made our way over to the Royal Caribbean rep for the shuttle transfers. She told us it would likely be 15-20 minutes until the next shuttle arrived, so we sat down and waited anxiously. It actually ended up taking over a half hour, perhaps even 45 minutes, until the bus actually arrived. In the future I think I would just take a cab from Fort Lauderdale to Port Everglades, but we wanted to make everything as simple as possible since it was our first big vacation like this and figured you can't really go wrong using a shuttle from Royal Caribbean. Aside from the wait, everything went smoothly.

I got my first glimpse of Oasis of the Seas coming over a bridge on the highway. The sheer size of it was beyond impressive, and we were still miles away. As we got closer I pulled out my phone and tried to snap a few pictures while driving up to the pier.

Planning the Cruise:

Now that you have a little - or rather, a lot of - background about myself, I'll explain the process of planning the cruise. Feel free to skip ahead, but I figure some people might be interested in this.

I am not a planner by any means. My girlfriend will be the first to tell you I drive her crazy with my lack of planning. My most common response to just about everything is "we'll see" or "maybe". I can't tell you exactly why, but I think it has something to do with freedom. Having plans and schedules always feels restricting to me, and I love having options to change my mind at the last minute. I am a master procrastinator by nature and always have been, but for whatever reason when it comes to cruises this all gets flipped on it's head.

Spreadsheets, tables, various dates, compare and contrasts. It's not uncommon for me to have five or more cruise vacations planned across multiple dates, cruise lines, destinations, and price ranges. My family has jokingly called my their travel agent for as long as I can remember.

After compiling price comparisons between Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and Carnival for December 2016, we were pretty much set on Carnival Glory leaving out of Miami. It would have cost us around $1200 each in total, including airfare, prepaid gratuities, and shuttles to and from the pier. Now I always wanted to go on Freedom of the Seas, then after the launch of Oasis of the Seas, obviously I was intrigued by that. My favorite cruise of all time was on Sovereign of the Seas in 1996, so from a young age I've always had a bit of a Royal Caribbean bias. The price of Royal Caribbean's newest ships were just too hard to justify though. I was just starting out a career, and a few hundred dollars here or there makes a big difference.

Then a perfect storm of events occurred.

First, my girlfriend happened to share the idea of going on a cruise with me to her mom. Now she knows how I am, I get excited by ideas, but I don't always follow through on them because a better idea might come along first. So she casually mentioned to her mom that we were talking about going on a cruise but it might not happen and that's okay.

Her mom then made this comment that 'it seems like she doesn't seem to expect much from me'. When I heard this I was like 'THAT'S IT!!! I'll show her!'. Granted she probably had a point, considering I had just quit grad school on a whim, but I didn't take to fondly to being called out like that nonetheless. There's also a lot of interesting backstory about her family and our religious differences that I'm sure played a part in her mom's comment as well, but I digress.

Secondly, Royal Caribbean started running a WOW sale with BOGO and on board credit. I did the math, and long story short we could go from an interior room on the Carnival Glory to a Boardwalk Balcony with $125 of OBC each to spend for only around $200 more per person. I also realized with this sale we could afford to go in May instead of December now. When you factor this in along with the fact they were giving us both $125 to spend, it seemed like a no brainer to me. So I booked it.

I spent the next several months excitedly watching cruise ship videos on the internet, researching excursions and reading reviews (thanks cruisecritic!), and pretty much driving my girlfriend crazy with nonstop cruise information. She didn't seem to mind since I was taking her on the biggest and best cruise ship in the world, Oasis of the Seas, for her first ever cruise vacation (take that mom!).

First I'll start this out with a little background about myself - I am 27 years old, born and raised in Michigan, and I started out cruising as a very young child with my family. My late grandparents were avid cruisers who would periodically get the entire family together for large family cruises. While I can only recall three cruises, I have been on five in my life and I intend to go on many more.

This review will cover my first real cruise as an adult on Oasis of the Seas.

How This All Came to Be:

I've always wanted to go on another cruise since my last cruise on the Carnival Fascination in 1999, but there were always reasons preventing this from happening. Money is obviously a big factor, but another is having someone to cruise with. My parents have been on several cruises since the Fascination, but after a certain age you don't really want to be that third wheel to your parents cruise vacations so I found myself often planning vacations with friends or family, but never actually being able to go.

On several occasions I had priced and planned winter/spring break cruises in college, but could never find friends who had the money or time to go. I was not one for solo cruising, so that was not an option, and I had been single for many years so I couldn't go with a significant other either.

Fast forward to 2015 - during my year of graduate school studying neuroscience, I realized that while I enjoyed learning the topics, I was growing more and more miserable with the actual work involved. I found lab work boring and tedious, and since I was commuting from almost an hour away the combined time between taking my own courses, teaching a lab class, and working in the lab slowly but surely replaced all of my previous hobbies, passions, and social life. I was lucky to meet my girlfriend during this time with my periodical attempts at online dating, and she was a huge contribution to maintaining my sanity in that year or so. After much thought, I decided I was going to quit grad school after the first year and not return for the following semester. I did not have a concrete backup plan at the time, but I knew I would be happier doing something else. So I quit. Just like that.

I spent that following summer unemployed, researching countless hours on the internet about career paths and potential jobs that I would be happy in. I'd be lying if I said I was confident I made the right choice at that time, but I had too much pride to change my mind and I knew if I was that unhappy after a year I couldn't do that for my entire life. Somewhere along the line I had this 'A-ha!' moment when it comes to careers. All my life I've loved technology. Computers, video games, tablets, laptops, cell phones, TVs... you name it! Technology has also always come easy to me, which I suppose is part of the reason I didn't consider it as a career.

I was reminded of something a professor of mine said to me in grad school.

"You seem more interested in the technology of science than the science itself".

I remember telling him that's probably not an inaccurate statement since I love technology, but it didn't really occur to me then that technology could be a better fit for me.

I decided to pursue this path, spent the summer studying to get A+ certified, polished up my resume, did my research, and began applying to places right after obtaining my certification. I picked up a few weekend tech jobs for experience, and within weeks was receiving callbacks and interviews. I took an interview at this local engineering and distribution company located near the same university I went to undergrad at. I was blown away by not only the work environment, but also the people I would be working with.

They ended up extending me an offer, which I immediately accepted and I have been working there ever since.

Why go into such detail about all this? Because this cruise vacation (and hopefully many others to come) would not have been possible for another decade or so had I not gone down the path I did. And hey, perhaps a few people might enjoy hearing about a success story like this and be able to relate or draw inspiration from it. If I didn't believe it before, I certainly believe it now - do what makes you happy.

Hello everyone!

Having just returned from a wonderful trip on Oasis of the Seas, I've decided to give back to the community that I've been a long time follower of but have never posted on. I've spent countless hours on cruisecritic researching various cruises throughout the years, and I've always enjoyed a good review.

Special shout-outs to Gambee and JimZim! I've read several throughout the years and they are always very well done, detailed, and full of quality pictures too.

I've started to put together a review of my cruise on board Oasis of the Seas for those that are interested. I should warn you, it is going to be long and detailed, but I have a quite a few pictures to share throughout as well.

The first few sections will be mostly background info about how this all came together, but once I cover those I promise there will be more photos! Feel free to skip the background stuff if it is too much reading for your taste.

The first posts will likely come very soon since I already typed up drafts elsewhere, but after tonight the rest of the review will be a work in progress and this may take many days to complete.

Stay tuned...