coronacruiser2013

Here are the menus....scroll down until you get to them....Some may change but they are still good based on earlier post....http://www.royalcaribbeanpresscenter.com/download-press-kit/7/

This just means that you pay your gratuities at the same time that you pay for the cruise instead of having it added to your seapass account each day on the ship and paying for it at the end of the cruise. Personally, I like pre-paying the gratuities. I know some people don't for various reasons which have been discussed a lot ;) on these boards.

 

 

We haven't been on the Oasis yet but I haven't heard anything about long waits. We are doing MTD on our upcoming Oasis cruise and do not have reservations for any nights. Our last RCI cruise we had almost no waits for a table for two in MTD. We usually went around 7 or 7:30.

I would make your reservations for MTD. Make your reservations now. Even though there were 6300 passengers on board, we never had to wait in any restaurant for more than 5 minutes.

My advice is to chill and enjoy yourselves.

This just means that you pay your gratuities at the same time that you pay for the cruise instead of having it added to your seapass account each day on the ship and paying for it at the end of the cruise. Personally, I like pre-paying the gratuities. I know some people don't for various reasons which have been discussed a lot ;) on these boards.

 

 

We haven't been on the Oasis yet but I haven't heard anything about long waits. We are doing MTD on our upcoming Oasis cruise and do not have reservations for any nights. Our last RCI cruise we had almost no waits for a table for two in MTD. We usually went around 7 or 7:30.

You have to pay the gratuities no matter what....so pay in advance and do My Time....make your reservations in advance... the only long wait is for those who do NOT have reservations. And the earlier the better. I know if you have small children it might be more difficult to get ready early, but doing so you have plenty of time to get the early shows. This is just my opinion, but it is grounded in real life experience that just ended 72 hours ago.

I wanted to start off by saying I have been recommended this site numerous times and always read the discussion forums related to the few cruises my wife and I have been on. We are still very young (32 and 33) and have gone on cruises together for over 10 years, so we appreciate how in-depth and useful the forum here have been. I hope I can be useful to you fine people someday. :)

 

We have been on a few cruises so we got the basics down, but we were unfamiliar with Royal Caribbean entirely. We have been on Princess and some other "higher end" ship that we honestly cannot even remember the name of, and we found them to be very boring. Nice and elegant, but we like the bright lights, candy shops, video arcades, movies under the stars, comedy shows, etc. so we thought the Oasis of the Seas would be a perfect fit for us.

 

The first thing we were wondering is how important reserving restaurants are. Online, booked lunch at Giovanni's Table (we are dying to eat "al fresco" on a cruise ship!) and dinner at the Solarium (because of the glowing reviews here). We were a bit unsure of anywhere else because the sushi place got mediocre reviews and Chops Grille looks awesome (another place to eat al fresco!) but the higher price and it getting only okay reviews put us off. However, if we were to decide on the ship that we wanted to go for some sushi or Chops Grille, are we going to be out of luck? Some ships we've been on would not let us make a reservation until a day or two before we wanted to go there to eat. I am a bit worried that there will be nothing to choose from if we decide we want to try something other than the regular dining option.

 

Which leads me to the question about the dining room. We booked the 8:30 PM seating because we read horror stories about "any time" dining. Every cruise we ever took before, we always did "any time" because we never know when we're going to be hungry, and we never know if there will be a show or event conflicting with dinner time. With this 8:30 time we chose...how beholden to it are we? If we are running a little bit late, will they not let us in?

 

We booked the Prohibition event because it sounded like fun. Do I really need to dress up like an early 1900s beer baron? Does my wife need to bring along a boa?

 

Movies under the stars is my wife's favorite thing. Do they have them every night? This is something I am sure we can find out on ship but we were just excited to find out in advance.

 

Finally, the comedy shows. This is a big one for us because we loved them on every other ship we've been on. The big problem is we've been trying to reserve one since we booked this trip 3 months ago (we sail May 10th). It never let us reserve, always stating "this is unavailable for reservation". We booked all other shows just fine. Do they not let you book the comedy show online? Or did so many people actually book this 4+ months ago (which I'd find hard to believe)? Is it really the same comedy show every night twice a night? All the other comedy shows on other ships we saw had different comedians, so we would have no idea how to know which to choose if RCL only "lets" us reserve one (which they have yet to allow us).

 

Thank you all so much in advance and sorry if this is a bit too wordy; we're just very excited. :)

We just returned from a back to back on the Oasis (4/12-4/26). As regards My Time Dining, we have never had a problem...this was our third cruise using My Time. We had the same table (726) for 13 nights. We ate at 5:45 night every night.

We did not do any specialty restaurants, with the exception of the complimentary lunch for consecutive cruisers on Saturday after we had re-embarked. We have found that the Main Dining Room to be a great experience for all the 21 nights that we have been on the ship.

For lunches, I usually got my wife a salad with a couple slices of prime rib in the Park Cafe...you create your own salads....We usually ate lunches either in the Solarium or Windjammer...we would take the food back to our recliners and eat. Also, the Solarium has the best gazpacho you will find anywhere. Breakfasts were usually in the Main Dining room ordering off the menu.

The Comedy Live show usually has open seats.... they open it up for standbys 5 minutes before showtime.

There are only 4 things that you really want to reserve in advance, Hairspray, Come Fly with Me, Frozen in Time and Oasis of Dreams. There is also a diving show called Splish Splash that is open to all without reservations. Just check out your Cruise Compass. The Headliner show was also very good.

Other must do's include the tour of Central Park led by the Director of all things green. 12,000 individual plants, etc....

Also, we took the All Access Tour last year...it is a 3-4 hour tour of the whole ship. From the lowest decks including the engine room and control room to the galleys, laundry, storage, crew areas, helipad, all the way up to the bridge. It was the best $150 pp that we spent....it was much better than the money spent on bingo. You have to sign up at Guest services after you board.

My only advice is to not try to do it all....after 3 weeks we still got turned around sometimes. We usually spent the day sitting on deck 15 just outside the Solarium in the shaded area overlooking the sea.

Enjoy your time on the best ship on the seas....Want to emphasize that I am just a satisfied customer and not a paid shill...some may wonder because of my praise of the ship. Here is the link to my previous review. http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=225507 Hope this helps... I would also refer you to this thread that I started last year after our cruise. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1896085