thejewgernaut

Obviously just one cruise of many itineraries, but I am on Harmony with a Western Caribbean itinerary next week and it's something like 11 hours in Cozumel and 9 in Jamaica. I also didn't feel shorted on the Med cruise I took a couple of years ago.

At least for me it seems to be driven by ship selection. The Oasis class definitely has less port stops. There seem to be many stops in various itineraries for the smaller ships.

As always I am appreciative of this forum... we sail in two weeks and I was going to bring wine for dinner. I would have have likely been extremely irritated if I had not known about this ahead of time.

I reviewed the spa junior a few years ago- with pictures - click the link below in my sig for the thread. Pictures are midway through the thread I believe.

Bottom line is great room. Bathroom setup is a little odd but actually great because it has two sinks so two people can get ready at once. Shower and tub are good sized and the overall room is really comfortable. If the price is within your budget well worth it.

Thanks to all who are researching this, and others who cruise, please post your findings- this is important for us alcoholics, I mean, us social drinkers!

Phantom would be spectacular. A number of years ago ago a cast member told me Footloose was coming to Oasis (instead we got Cats) - so I no longer trust crew speculation, personally!

The shows are a big driver for the ships we book. The new shows are one of the main reasons we're sailing Harmony this summer, DW is a big Grease fan. I've been consistently impressed with the shows we've seen - Hairspray, Mamma Mia, Chicago, and We Will Rock You- Royal does a nice job with them.

Here's hoping Symphony has a good show to live up to its name!

Great review, and very helpful.

Do you recall if there were drink package discounts offered for Diamond or Diamond+, and how much were the discounts?

Perhaps a dumb question, but has the D+ discount been consistently rolled out across all of the ships? We're sailing on the Harmony this summer, and I've been debating whether to cancel my purchase (at 20% discount) and hope I can get a 30% on Board or not.

Do I have to pick just one? How about three:

The margaritas at Sabor are fantastic.

The shanghai smash is a nice cocktail - scotch and some other goodies, I forget. Usually my rising tide drink.

Boleros caipirinha is always a winner as well.

Hard to pick just one, particularly with the drink package!

2-3 decks above Boardwalk is ideal in my opinion. If you go too high, you're going to get sports deck noise. Too low maximizes Boardwalk noise. In the middle is just right!

Assuming good service (and we've always been lucky in that regard at specialty dining), we usually tip $10-$25 (for two of us), depending on the restaurant's cover charge (we try for 15%-20%, but we usually buy off the package, which makes the math more effort), drinks ordered, and how much I've had to drink. The Park 150 waiter usually makes out pretty well with that wine pairing...

Great review! I didn't realize that Park 150 on Harmony isn't a set tasting menu like it was (at least this last summer) on the other Oasis ships. Have they made that change on the other ships as well?

Interesting, we were on the same exact cruise and had a much more positive experience. I found the ship to be clean, and we saw people frequently cleaning public spaces. We also did not share your issues with cold breakfast. Labadee had some rocks in the water - but that's not unusual in beaches. To each their own!

You will only get 6 wristbands if you get a cabana at Barefoot beach, and they do not come off easily,so you can't switch them with other people. I don't know what the procedure is on Nellies beach, we have only been on Barefoot.

I don't think there's really any strict controls based on what I saw a few weeks ago... particularly since you can just swim up to the ladder. Tip the attendant up front and I can't see them making a stink.

We just rented the over water at Nellie's a couple weeks ago. It was expensive but well worth it for a group in my opinion. Plenty of shade and easy access. A few other things:

1) while 6 is the limit, the cabana next to us had way more. Probably 8-10 with kids.

2) you get 2 float mats included. We asked for two more and got them for free. I will note we tipped the attendant up front.

If you were booked under one promo and rebook under another promo you lose the perks under the first one and get the perks for the rebooking.

We just did this for our recent sailing, and despite calling multiple times and escalating, Royal held the line and wouldn't do anything for us (we paid $400 to upgrade from a Boardwalk balcony to a JS and lost a $250 OBC). I sort of understand why they do this, but on the other hand, it's a disincentive to upgrade and pay more, and you'd think they would want more $$$ from you.

At least for the Oasis class ships, there always seems to be capacity and cheaper prices last minute, so in the future I think we'll end up just waiting to book until the final 60 days... we care more about the cabin class and price than the promotions.

They did not, and the website specifies JS suites are not eligible for that perk. We had the drink packages so it wasn't an issue.

Thanks for the report. So typical Royal that the people on board don't know about the wine bottle discounts being advertised.

It was really frustrating. What was even crazier was that they were advertising the exact opposite in the elevators. I can sort of understand every single waiter not knowing the promotion rules (40% on bottles over $100). But it's weird that the Vintages people - who presumably are the ones behind the advertisement in the elevator that was the opposite (40% on bottles under $100) wouldn't know.

It is clear Corporate does a bad job translating the website into action on the ships for the crew. This is why I was really curious how Coastal would turn out, but fortunately that went well.

Hello all! Last week we got off a lovely cruise on the Allure of the Seas with two other couples our age (mid 30's). It was a fantastic trip as always, particularly partying with people our age. I wanted to offer up a few observations we had that I thought the forums would appreciate:

Formal Night confusion: We had multiple specialty dining reservations, so the usual "When is second Formal Night?" question arose (gotta have lobster night!). The compass from two weeks prior said Night 5. So - we booked assuming Night 5. On the first day, the ship delivered a 1-pager to all staterooms that listed every night's show times and dinner type (formal, casual, etc). With 6 people in our party, having our dining plans set was important. This document that was delivered, however, said Night 6 would be the second Formal Night. We asked 3 different people from dining services - and got different answers. Finally we assumed "Well, if they gave this document to EVERYONE on this 5,400 behemoth... it must be right." So we changed our reservations assuming Formal Night was Night 6. Yes, you can guess what happened next! I'm in bed on Night 4, I look at the next day's Compass and... guess what! Formal Night was Night 5, not Night 6 (my friends joked that they could hear me howling in anger across the ship). We had to scramble to change reservations, and we lost our hibachi seating at Izumi as a result, which pissed me off (they did let us dine at the sushi side with an equivalent credit). Izumi was great, but I was really craving hibachi. I was told that I looked like "a small child who found out there were no Christmas presents this year" by my friends as we walked by the chefs who were juggling knives and eggs and all sorts of other crazy stuff.

Coastal Kitchen: We were in a junior suite, our friends were not. According to the RC website, "Those staying in a suite and their guests" can book at Coastal. We were curious if they would allow us to bring our friends in or not for dinner (the language would indicate we can, I've read on the Boards you cannot). Good news - we were able to. We really liked the Coastal Kitchen experience - it was even better than last year on the Anthem. I really like what they did with the Viking Crown space. We ate there twice, and although it was the same menu, it was great each time.

Wine Bottle Discount for Drink Package: According to the RC website, wine bottles under $100 are discounted 20%, and bottles over $100 are discounted 40% with the drink package. We get on board, and they're advertising the opposite in the elevators, and most of the crew had no idea about the 40%. One of our companions who loves wine kept running into issues related to this. Generally he was able to get them to honor the 40% off above $100, but towards the end he got tired of fighting with every server over it. At Vintages (which serves as the wine supplier for the whole ship), one of the Sommeliers said he kept having the issues of guests asking for the discount and asked us to show him on the website what it says (which we did). He told us he was going to talk about it in his staff meeting with the beverage director.

150 Central Park: Awesome as always. We had a lovely anniversary dinner (you can read the review from our honeymoon on Anthem in my signature) - while we didn't intend to be on a cruise a year later, we were thrilled we were! I apologize to anyone on the boat who witnessed me after the wine pairing (they gave me huge pours)- if you were at the midnight comedy show on Night 3, we were the rowdy people. I also was the person yelling "I have been over-served" every 5 minutes. Yes, I'm a jerk.

Live Music: Has definitely been cut back. There was a lot less live pre-dinner music throughout the ship, which was a bummer. I noticed this on the Anthem and thought maybe it was related to the European sailing, but nope. Several days had a DJ instead of a Caribbean band at the pool (the DJ was, however, really good), and there was still live music in Central Park - but overall much less live music around the ship.

Other random observations -

• Sabor was really good. A little warm because it's outdoors, but the margaritas were on point and the food great.
  
• My Time Dining service was very spotty. Our first night in MDR (Night 2) we weren't even spoken to for almost 15 minutes after being seated, which was really weird.
  
• Overall the crew was very friendly and helpful and awesome.
  
• Mama Mia was great- it was apparently the final show for that cast, there was a cool music party with them in the Jazz lounge where they were all saying farewell to each other and singing their favorite songs.
  
• Giovannis is still getting my vote for "best value" specialty dining and was super tasty. We went massive family style and basically ordered everything.
  
• Labadee cabana is still great, but they jacked the prices up quite a bit.
  
• Self disembarkation is still a breeze - 50 minutes from where we met on ship with our friends to through the TSA security line in Ft. Lauderdale. We walked off at 6:45 AM.
  
• The new diamond lounge (which is the old concierge lounge location above dazzles) is awesome.
  
• Johnny Rockets breakfast is very fast and still delicious and was pretty uncrowded.
  

Let me know if you have any questions!

Echoing many others we have sailed them B2B and aren't bothered by it at all. We love the Oasis class - the space and the neighborhoods are quite fantastic.

Did it on the Anthem and on the Freedom. Tons of fun, especially with the two channel headphones where you see everyone dancing to different tunes.

May I suggest cocktailbuilder - you can plug in ingredients and play around. I can't remember if they have angostura bitters or not up there - this list assumes they don't. Assuming they have decent mixers, which I added, here are some drinks that came up:

Bronx Cocktail

2 oz of Gin (substitute with tanqueray gin)

1/2 oz of dry vermouth

1/2 oz of sweet vermouth

1 oz of Orange Juice

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with cracked ice. Stir and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Paisley Martini

3 oz of Gin (substitute with tanqueray gin)

1/2 tsp of dry vermouth

1/2 tsp of Scotch (substitute with jameson blended whiskey)

Brown Cocktail

1 1/2 oz of Gin (substitute with tanqueray gin)

1 oz of Light Rum (substitute with bacardi light rum)

1/2 oz of dry vermouth

Stir all ingredients with cracked ice in a mixing glass and strain into shilled cocktail glass.

Half and Half Shot

1/2 shot of Irish cream (substitute with baileys irish cream)

1/2 shot of Irish whiskey (substitute with jameson blended whiskey)

Layer in shot glass.

Snakebite

1 1/2 oz of Canadian whisky (substitute with jameson blended whiskey)

1/2 oz of Lime Juice

Shaken, not stirred. Pour into a rock glass.

Note: the snakebites I've heard of are half cider, half beer... never heard of this version.

Woodfather

1 oz of Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch (substitute with jameson blended whiskey)

1 oz of Baileys Irish Cream

Pour both scotch and Bailey's over ice and stir 3 times.

Orange Buck

2 oz of Gin (substitute with tanqueray gin)

2 oz of Orange Juice

1 oz of Lime Juice

Ginger ale

lime slice

Combine all ingredients, except ginger ale and lime slice, with cracked ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake well and strain into a chilled collins glass over ice cubes. Fill with ginger ale and stir gently. Garnish with lime slice.

Yeah... I'm a little bored tonight.

Reposting from an old thread where I broke down both as I've sailed 2x in each type:

Central Park is quieter, but if you're higher up, you WILL hear the pool deck, which is only an issue on sea days, but you WILL hear it from your state room in the morning. It won't be horrible, but it's not as quiet as you'd think. Balconies closer to the "ground" (Deck 10) it's less noticeable. For some people, it may be disorienting to not see the water, but it didn't bother me, but I don't get motion sickness.

Boardwalk is much more fun, but a key aspect for us has been having a room where you can see the Aquatheater. Our last two cruises we were 4 rooms from the theater (10723 and 8723). You end up being able to see the movies they play, and most of the aqua theater show (you can't see about 20% of the stage from the 10723) Boardwalk IS noisy -- although by 11:30 or so at night it's usually pretty quiet. We stay out late so it's never an issue for us. Like Central Park, higher rooms you can hear the Sports Deck - which is not as loud as the pool, but you can hear it. We started hearing it on Deck 10 (which for Boardwalk is "higher" than Central Park) - could not hear it when we sailed on Deck 8. I also like that you can see the water, albeit just some of it.

I think Central Park is the best part of the Oasis class ships -- I love the restaurants, the uniqueness of the live foliage, and the bars. That said... I actually prefer the Boardwalk balcony, IF you can get one that is closer to the Aquatheater. If you can't get one that has a good view, I'd go with Central Park. For both to control noise overall, I think being closer to the ground is the most important thing.

We mix it up pretty heavily. Usually 3-4 nights of specialty, Coastal Kitchen now that they have it, but we still usually do MDR for formal nights. No complaints with the MDR, we just think the specialty restaurants are worth it.

I've long thought Giovanni's is the best value for specialty dining on the ship. Excellent pastas, a really good steak if you like steak, and awesome desserts. We always go for our first night and enjoy dining outdoors.

Great video. We loved Anthem on our honeymoon (crazy liveblog in my sig) - but then again one of my best friends had a horrible experience on it sailing from NYC last year. Crazy how things can vary!