Orsino

We were on Oasis in February. The Key seating for the Ice Show is excellent and close to the rink. I understand Key seating for the AquaShow is also very good (our show got cancelled so we didn't see it). Main Theater, the seats are good (not balcony, but not front row orchestra either), but not close to the stage. The seats are in the back where the seats have a generous rake creating good sight lines. Again, these are good seats, but not close.

I posted notes on my Key experience in the original Key thread. I will put links to those notes here for anyone interested. Please note that it looks like the Key is a moving target, both by which ship and date as RCL makes changes to the program. Two Adults (no children) with The Key on Oasis of the Seas sailing from Port Canaveral (RT) on 10 Feb 2019 (7 Nights). Cost 19.99 pp per day. 10 February Key Times Schedule 11 February (Nassau) Flowrider Notes 11 February - Main Theater Seating (Cats) Notes 12 February Sea Day Flowrider Notes 12 February - Rock Climbing Notes 12 February - Ice Show with No Reservations 14 February (Sint Maarten) Flowrider Notes 15 February Flowrider Notes with brief Rockwall Commentary 16 February Flowrider Notes, RockClimbing Fail, Parade Fail. 17 February Disembarkation and final thoughts

The Key looks like it continues to be a moving target. I'm not sure how I feel about the Priority Access for flowrider and rock climbing rather than dedicated hours. I agree with the poster who is uncomfortable cutting the line, even if one is perk eligible. It's an awkward situation that I would also feel weird about. But I would probably get over it because I'd be mad at myself if I paid for a perk and didn't use it. It could work out well for us, since we would be able to go to Flowrider during more convenient times. I do agree that there should be a separate line. Oh. Scratch that. I think I'd prefer the dedicated hour over that. That's easily three to four times the amount of wait we had compared to the dedicated hour.

If you have the UDP, you can get 40% off bottles of sake at Izumi. I don't know if you have to be eating there or not though.

I can only report what I experienced. I asked multiple people and they all insisted we had to go through the standard line. I don't think expedited security can be counted upon.

In my experience, specific to Oasis and Port Canaveral is no. The Key benefits do not start until after Security.

I'd recommend going to a restaurant other than Chops since Chops will likely be busy. We went to 150 Park on Oasis and were the only ones there making reservations. Very quick and convenient to Chops which we went to after booking our dinners.

Since you have to book onboard for UDP anyway, just ask the person helping you if Hibachi is available for UDP. That's what I did and she called Izumi to ask. Answer: first night only. Izumi booked me for the first night no problem. Super easy. (Just don't be like me and forget to ask until the end. She was very nice about it, but had to undo what she booked for Night One for me.)

Convenient versus inconvenient varies by person. Unfortunately, one doesn't know in advance what times will be for the Key on the flowrider or any of the activities.

I'm sorry your disembarkation went poorly. Our experience on Oasis on 17 Feb was vastly different. I didn't expect to use the Key benefit because the letter we were given said the Key escort started at 8:15 (or 8:30, I don't remember exactly). We needed to be off earlier so self carried our luggage. To my surprise, we were escorted off after breakfast (about 7:30AM). I don't know that it saved us time, but we apparently skipped "the ramp" (whatever that is). The people we were with seemed to like skipping it. And while we didn't get front of the line access to customs, we sort of merged partway in so skipped some portion of the line. While we self-carried, the other Key guests leaving at the same time had key-checked their luggage and were brought to it. I saw no problems even though it was 7:30AM. Super smooth early Key disembarkation on Oasis. I am hesitant to proclaim this would be true for all future Key passengers, and the wording of the letter conflicts with what I experienced. but that's something about the Key I saw all week. What was written down was NOT what we experienced. Fortunately, the discrepancy was (almost) always in our favor.

When giving feedback on Key experiences, I think it is vitally important to include the ship and sail date. Key implementation is not consistent across ships! So if you are weighing options, be sure to look for reviews that are specific to your ship. Unfortunately, I think twangster's excellent review of The Key is now too dated to be relevant to people considering buying today. Both because Royal is tweaking the program and the experience on a 'sold out key' cruise simply has to be different than one of the first that had fewer key holders.

Embarkation Lunch at Chops on Oasis (we used Key) was a different menu than what we had for Lunch at Chops later in the week. I don't remember the details, but we did notice differences (more choices later in the week). We ended up ordering the same thing we ordered on Embarkation Day anyway so we thought the menu was fine. I can say that the filet and burger were available on embarkation day for us.

I didn't catch which ship you are on. I think which ship really matters when it comes to The Key and show reservations. I was on Oasis last week and the reservation situation seems to be not well defined. The verbiage on my cruise planner did not change to state I needed reservations before my cruise. However, when I got to my stateroom, the Key letter in there said reservations were needed. (I had reservations anyway since I made reservations before buying the Key, so I didn't care). In actual practice, they didn't require me to have reservations. When I went into Cats, the guy looked at The Key and let us in without scanning. When the AquaTheater broke and we decided to go to the ice show instead (i.e, no reservations), the woman said she needed to scan my card, but I would be able to go in even without reservation. No problem there either. I think implementation is ship dependent. It looks like Anthem is strict about reservations, but Oasis is not. But I don't know if Oasis is shifting policy. I don't think they need to, it looked like it worked with no problems last week. Worst case, go in with standby and you will still get a good seat in The Key section. Just be sure to get there before the Seat Keeper leaves (5 min before show).

I think with the key selling out on cruises, royal was either going to increase the number of keys or increase the price. Increasing the price makes sense if they are easily selling out, and is the better of the two choices rather than diluting the product with more than 100 keys. Of course that is easy for me to say since I bought at 19.99.

It is my understanding that you all can show up at the same time regardless if you have The Key or not.