aubreyc1988

I did a 4 day cruise solo a few weeks ago to get to diamond, left my husband at home...he understood I was doing it for us haha! I was lucky because I got the 4 day cruise comped via the casino so didn't play solo supplement, and I am prime in the casino so I got free drinks while I was in there...and my flight was only 100.00 RT. With my upcoming cruises next year with my husband, we will now both be diamond, get the 4 free drinks each + the free drinks we get in casino for being prime + a free day of internet...so yeah, worth it I think

On NCL Encore last year, on the last night of our cruise, my husband found a lady who had climbed over the balcony railing and was passed out on a balcony overhang. Hard to explain, but she eventually woke up (was drunk) and my husband helped her get over the railing back onto the balcony. Totally agree that one doesn't just "fall over" these railings, it takes effort of some sort.

That is what a lot of people tell me. I hope it is not the norm for everyone, but I did gather my courage and tell them off. I am a pretty reserved person about stuff like that so it took A LOT for me to be mean to these idiots. I only went to breakfast at buffet twice, one early on and then before disembarkation. Other times I just went to Cafe Promenade and got a croissant lol.

Usually there isn't anything worth noting, but since the cruise I am eyeing is past final payment, no harm for me to wait and see what happens.

Before I knew it, it was time to leave 😞 My flight to DFW wasn't until 6pm, so I did ResortPass day pass at Kimpton Surfcomber in Miami Beach. I paid 18.00, which was worth it as I spent the day lounging and sleeping on a pool chair. It had a nice vibe, music was sort of alternative/chill music and wasn't too loud My flight ended up being delayed for 2 hours because of weather in Dallas, but thankfully my plane did take off at 8pm. Because of the storms, what is normally a 2 hr flight took 4.5 hrs because they were flying around it. I also wasn't able to get the front seat, but did get row 7 and the middle seat was empty so it was another nice flight. I DID have a good time on my trip, but four day cruises are...interesting! I am now just waiting for my cruise points to show up so I can see my status update to DIAMOND 🔷 I hope you all enjoyed reading, next cruise will be in Jan/Feb sometime, not sure what yet. I also have the Harmony booked in April on a casino comp (RCI casino is pretty generous to me as of late) Hoping to see a few more offers before making a decision on my winter cruise

I was aware before booking this cruise that it was probably going to be a problem. I was just hoping it wasn't going to be. While I may cruise solo again in the future (whenever I get closer to diamond plus), I will make sure some other people I know will be on the ship because I just never felt like I could have more than a drink or two at a time because of the whole harassment potential. Also, when staff asked for my room number for ship charges, I gave them this little card with it written down...and then they would repeat it back out loud to me. *facepalm* This was the four day cruise, I can't imagine what the three day would have been like for me.

I did do the buffet a few times on the Freedom, 2x for breakfast, one time for lunch. I found this buffet to be much better and better than the Allure actually. Definitely still lackluster for me. I didn't know about El Loco Fresh until it was too late 😞 Sad breakfast picture. Only thing I ate was the hashbrowns. Idk how one can mess up bacon and a pancake so bad, but it definitely was baaaaad. I didn't eat or drink in Playmakers but it is a nice addition. It will be something I'll circle back to on my next cruise when I have diamond drinks. Just didn't make sense for me to pay for drinks in here when I could go a few feet to the casino and drink for free.

In July, I did a land trip to Nassau to Baha Mar, and was planning to take the city bus to go there again, but my solo friend was pretty hungover (Although she SWEARS she wasn't :P) so I just ended up going to The New Duff, a little food place I went to in July After eating lunch here, she wanted to go back to the ship, so off we went. Am I the only one who find these mannequins funny?

MDR experience was OK. I think the menu could use a revamp. I find NCL's food to be way better than Royal's. I always do Royal's set time dining, my seating was a 6, which was nice, considering it was 5:15 on Allure. Sometimes service took a long time. Somethings were good, others were not. Had a good seat though! The servers were great.

Events on the ship were great, in fact I think they were better than the ones on the Allure. I didn't have a chance to even scratch the surface. I went to the ice show, Marquee, missed Once Upon a Time (I think I've seen it before though), missed the comedy (Was too busy drinking at Vintages), went to Sing It if You Know It, a lot of trivia, bean bag toss, some other pool games, and another game show I forgot the name of. I love the star lounge, the Allure had a lot of game shows in Dazzles and it just isn't a good space for it. Anchors parade was pretty cool, I had a great spot and watched it from the stairs of the casino Pool deck was amazing, definitely love the colorful design. There was chair hogging but you could find a seat. Only place I never found one was in the Solarium. Who needs it, anyhow 😛

It was my first time at Coco Cay, and it was fabulous. Only negative was the LONG blaring announcement and "Perfect day" music at 8am...lol. I convinced my solo friend to come onto the island with me and we went to Chill Island/Snack Shack. All of the snack shack food was amazing (For some reason I only have a photo of the funnel cake) but I did order the crispy chicken sandwich, mozzarella sticks, and funnel cake. Everything was hot and fresh and VERY good. I don't know what the buffet was like, but next time I'll see if it is any different from the standard private island buffet fare. I did go into the water for a bit, drank a bit, lounged a bit. Perfect day, as they say. I did look into the waterpark, might be something I do next time with my husband when we come back, but the pricing WAS pretty high for this...not sure if it is worth it? Thoughts?

I ended up doing trivia every morning, since I am an early riser. A lot of nice people on this ship let me join their teams later on in the cruise, because solo I was doing bad lol Casino bar staff was great on this cruise, much better than what I had on Allure. I had a great time with William and Fe! A little tangent, this being my first solo cruise and all, I wanted to touch on sailing at a women under 40 by herself. To put it mildly, not something I want to do often or maybe even again. The amount of people who thought it was OK to touch me while I was sitting at the bar without my permission was astonishing. By Day 2, I decided that I would going to humiliate anyone who did this to me, so several times, random guys at the casino bar would touch me/rub my back and I would say VERY loudly "Do NOT touch me" and they would scurry away like the little rats they are. This would also happen to me when playing slots occasionally, some guy would think that it was ok to touch my arm or back or something. Eventually, this stopped, I guess word got around that I take no BS. Regardless, this did make me feel kind of unsafe and lonely, like I couldn't say hi to someone because apparently that is an invitation for getting assaulted or something. I was VERY careful in how I went back to my room and these incidents didn't get any worse after I was calling them out loudly in public, so I never had to ask for security. Just something to note if you are planning on traveling solo. I did end up meeting a couple of nice people who didn't try anything and they were great. One night we went to Vintages, ordered Veuve (which the bartenders kept us topped off) and went to the pub for the live music, which was great

So since I was solo, my other solo friend and I went to a few shows, drank in the casino bar mostly since we have free drinks, and just relaxed. Not too much to report. The halloween stuff was fun on embarkation day but I don't have any photos of that sadly. But I do have pictures of slot brutality lol. First night I was betting max and got nada...so I switched to minimum and got a few hits After such awful luck on slots, I decide on day two to switch primarily to tables, which was a great decision. The one above was on roulette, I just did a drive by with 5.00 This one was 3 card poker with 100.00 buy in. 100.00 buy in, also three card poker Then went back to slots...big mistake, got down to half of what I came with. SO around midnight on the sea day, I decide to do another session of three card poker. I bought in with 100.00 and it was gone really fast...and because I didn't have any money on me, I had to do the dreaded room charge. I usually avoid this, even though I get the fee waived. I bought in for one more hundred because me and the guy next to me had been drinking and we were having fun with the dealer. The guy next to me was like "Hey, lets play the next hand blind". The dealer says "yes yes yes, what hand would you like". Guy next to me says "Royal of course" and I said "I'll settle for a straight flush"...and I kid you not, I got a straight flush. Sorry I didn't get the cards in the photo, she snatched them away before I got permission to take a photo. At this point, I was up 200.00 overall, and ended up playing three card on the last night with that 200 and got nothing 😞 But ended up even in the casino for the cruise, which I'll take.

This was my first cruise solo (left DH at home 😛), which I took because I am/was 8 points away from Diamond. I was comped via Casino Royale and was assigned stateroom 2344, which is a HC Oceanview. I did clarify with my room steward when I met him that I am not HC and did not want to be taking away a room from someone who needs HC accessibility and he said it was fine 🙂 I took the risky approach and flew in the day of. I figured if I missed the ship, worst case is that I would spend 4 days relaxing in Miami. I flew out of DFW at 7am on Spirit airlines (I know they get a lot of hate, but I never have a problem with them) in the big front seat (Spirit's "First class), which I paid 50.00 extra dollars for. It was a last minute decision to splurge and it was worth every cent. I landed at 10:45 am, was off the plane at 11am, and was in an Uber to the Port of Miami by 11:15. Here is where the embarkation chaos started. I had selected a 12:30 check-in time, so I arrived early and was fine with waiting. They directed me to the 12:30 queue. However, it seemed like the 11am queue was never ending. At 12:20, a man from inside the port building came out and said "All these people in the 11am queue have really late time slots, what is going on out here". So finally, they let me in 10 minutes early lol. It was SO hot outside, I just don't understand why Royal doesn't go back to letting people wait inside the terminal. They build these beautiful air conditioned terminals and then force us to wait outside, doesn't make any sense to me. After I entered the building, it went pretty fast. Whenever I got to the security line, there were people there who were causing drama about open bottles. A lady in front of me literally argued with the security person for 10 minutes about her open bottle of water. Once my bag went through the scanner, they wanted to look inside of it, which was fine. I didn't carry on any wine, just had my toiletries in it. Once they were done snooping, they gave me my open backpack. I went to the left side of the security after passing through the metal detectors to zip up my bag before going up the escalator to board. A security guard came over and was just YELLING in my fast to MOVE and go on the escalator. I told her calmly that I would go on the escalator once I had zipped up on my bag. She just kept on SCREAMING at me to move, when I was literally in no one's way or blocking anything. I ended up just ignoring her frantic screaming and calmly zipped up my bag and then moved to the escalator. I won't lie though, I was pretty pissed at this whole embarkation thing and I am a pretty chill person. If I could rate this -10, I totally would. Once onboard, I left my irritation behind and met my friend (who was also traveling solo) at Schooner and I bought a Long Island Iced Tea. Because I am not diamond yet, I had to pay full price but it was a strong drink and I was feeling it for a bit after. Then after that drink, I went to Sorrentos instead of the buffet for a couple of quick slices and then to my room to drop off my backpack. I did end up moving the chair so that it faced the window and I had coffee with a view every morning, which was nice. I mean, I would have preferred a balcony but the room was SO big and FREE so I am not complaining.

Exactly. I mean, yes of course that is an option too. I am simply saying if the goal is to reach pinnacle as fast/cheaply as possible, becoming prime or signature and sailing comped in a solo cabin is the way to go.

I mean, of course there are people who do that, but you can also not. It's all about cycling your money through the machines. Sometimes you can get on a really good streak and cycle lots...just depends. Never gamble what you can't afford to throw out the window and not cry about.

Depends. Sometimes you can get lucky. I spent 900.00 on Liberty in Sept. I got Prime, which gets me free drinks in casino and 1 free cruise in 2023. In addition to that, I have gotten around 7-8 free cruise offers since then, have taken Allure in October for free in an Oceanview with free drinks in the casino and done the Freedom last week in an oceanview with free drinks. I won 800.00 profit on Allure and I broke even on the freedom. I have the Harmony in a balcony booked for April, also with free drinks. I think the 900.00 I spent is really working for me 🙂

Imho, the best way is if you did solo cruises comped through the casino as much as you could.

the real bed in the two bedroom/owner's suites is a real game changer, especially if I ever got the courage to split the room with two people. It feels more like an "equal" split I wonder if enough feedback is given...will they bring some umbrellas to the Haven deck? Could easily have a few taken from the Vibe to put on the sundeck in the Haven.

we had one obnoxious couple decide to move after their first night dining with us (three couples total at the table) The waiter said "Moving the problem to someone else, fine by me" LOL I made sure to tip them extra at the end because not sure what happens in that situation regarding tips.

Um, I freaking love this! Love the color scheme of the room. As for it being small, I would say it is similar to my haven penthouse on the joy just basing it on photos. I think the TV area is really nice. Only complaint would be the sink...it needs counter space area for makeup application Love how big the bar is, much needed, and the pool outside is a huge perk for me! (Although I can see how people will miss the more covered pool area...the covered pool areas of the Haven was just not my thing as I wanna see the ocean. Loungers look comfy. Does appear to be a lack of shade. Will probably be years before I could afford to sail in one, so I will have to be satisfied by living vicariously through others 😄 Thanks @LauraS for the photos!

we must have met the same lady! I talked to her on the first day because I remembered being on a cruise with her years ago and she says they pretty much live on ships.

Following along! I was on the Allure on Oct 1 sailing. My condolences to you 😞 I will be doing my first solo cruise on Monday on the Freedom 4 night. Booked it a few weeks ago through casino, sailing solo so that I can get double points and be diamond for my cruise in 2023. I am pretty nervous about going by myself, if I am being honest.

Thanks for the review - wow all the food looked great, with the exception of no hashbrowns...did you ever end up finding any in the morning? Love love love the decor of this ship...and wow the inside staterooms look SO nice and roomy! If I go on the Prima in the winter, I'll have to go in an inside for budget reasons but it probably will be so nice I will not mind!

Soda was 3.25 Cocktails depend on what sort of drink/liquor you get. My Lavender Daquiri at the Schooner Bar a few weeks ago was 16.25 with tip. Drink of the Day is usually 10.00+Gratuity. a simple mixed drink might be around 10.00+ gratuity (Think like simple stuff like rum and coke), stuff on the menu is 13-15.00+ gratuity. Beers/hard ciders were 7-8+gratuity. Wine 9.00+ gratuity...you can go pretty fancy on wine but cheapest I saw was 9.00. Coffee: The stuff at the Cafe Promenade was like 4-6.00+ gratuity depending on what kind of coffee you get and the size. I ordered a double espresso from the MDR one night was like 3.80 with gratuity. My oatmilk macchiato from Starbucks was 8.25 with tip (I did tip an extra dollar on top of the added gratuity)