Allure of the Seas 6/3/12 - a picture review

[BillOh]

Hello everyone! I just got back from the Allure on Sunday and had an amazing time. Having spent so many hours researching the ship before hand on cruise critic, I became inspired (primarily by this review by LittleMissMagic) to write my own review from the perspective of a 26 year old. I also utilized reviews such as the following extensively in my planning: BrianAlt, DarthGrady, obsessedsc, PhoenixDawgCruising, BillOh, two by QTMichele, and Radio.

 

I have decided to write this review in a slightly different manner though as I'm not one to want to spend too much time during the trip recording everything I did that day. As such I'll break my review up into separate sections focusing on different aspects of the cruise, for example: planning, arrival, ports, food/restaurants (tons of food porn pics to follow), activities, entertainment, departure, etc.

 

So bear with me as I attempt to complete this review, which is my first one to be posted in the forums. Hope you all enjoy!

 

Up next: Cruise planning

 

Who hoo! my first shout out!, your welcome. With my return to Allure in the works, I still read every review and quite frankly I still find something new or interesting in almost every one.

[BillOh]

More please!!! Fantastic review so far - you guys are adorable - reminds me of my daughter and her boyfriend... ;)

 

And they say accountants can't get hot women! (Somebody said it, I don't remember who ;) )

[BillOh]

While the chair was nice, $30 seems a bit steep for the use of which would probably last only 30 minutes. I can't imagine how anyone could sit in that chair for any longer period of time. Nor can I imagine how anyone would want to spend so much time of the cruise when there is so much else to do onboard. Here's a picture from another website of this room:

 

 

Being past 50 with arthritis in your back can change your perpective ;) We absolutely loved this on Jewel, but during the sales speech they told us they only sold this package to 20 couples and for us it was never crowded. I've heard reports they over sell it on Allure and it was crowded. I'll definitely ask about this next year.

[BillOh]

 

Does the Quest work like that on Freedom & Voyager classes as well? I'd imagine its just the Radiance and smaller classes where it works like it did on Enchantment.

 

As far as the Love & Marriage Show went,................

 

Quest is definitely best on the smaller ships in the smaller venues. We loved Quest on Majesty and Jewel the most. BTW, here is me and Mrs BillOh as contestants on Love and Marriage on Jewel

 

[terpfan101]

Can't wait for the food report. I'm going on the allure December 9th and I booked the central park dinning pk. I also made chararter breakfast reservations for the last 2 mornings. Did you do any of those?

Where is the best place to watch the parade?

What deck do you enter the spa on?-----I have to plan my route out after I board.

This will be my first cruise as a diamond member----can't wait to see the difference.

Anyway---thanks for all your time in writing these posts and I've loved all of them!

 

Hi there PIGSKIN! I will talk about that package but well worth it. We had booked a character breakfast for the second sea day but were just too tired to get up for it at 8AM and ended up sleeping in the latest that day of the whole cruise. I somewhat regret not going to it as Todd & Stacy did and it looked great (chocolate breakfast that is). I wasn't too concerned with the characters. We didn't do the dreamworks parade so can't help you with that. The spa is on deck 6 at the front of the ship.

 

I'm going to try and finish up with the entertainment section today. :)

[zanydoc]

Did your friends Amy and Aaron enjoy their crown loft suite? We are staying in one in October and it looks pretty cool--thank you for the picks! And thank you for your great review...

[terpfan101]

Did your friends Amy and Aaron enjoy their crown loft suite? We are staying in one in October and it looks pretty cool--thank you for the picks! And thank you for your great review...

 

I'm fairly certain that they did. Would they get it again? I'm not exactly sure...but maybe Aaron will chime in on here. I guess the question you have to ask yourself is whether it is worth the premium over another suite such as a grand suite. Since once you get to grand suite level, you get all of the gold card benefits of a true suite. So any premium is just for additional space and for the loft suites, the uniqueness of the loft factor. I guess the only real negative to those suites are that they are at the top of the ship which is a pain to get to since you can only use the aft elevators to reach deck 17. Additionally, it's not as central as decks 6-9 which I mentioned earlier are IMO the best decks to be on for each access to the entire ship.

[kac31]

We had Richard Spacey on the Oasis in 2010. He was AMAZING! Hoping the CD on the Allure in October is better than you have mentioned! Enjoying your review!

[terpfan101]

I hope everyone's had a good week and thanks for continuing to read my review. I should be finished with the entertainment with this post and then it's on to the food sections.

 

Our headliner show featured a singer named Tony Tillman who was also somewhat of a comedian. He was very good. Here you can see a brief biography of him: http://www.specialvarietyacts.com/Tony-Tillman and a video of him in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIrE1SqzlA0. He sang a good variety of songs, primarily those from the 50's to 70's and primarily of the Motown, R&B, Rock & Roll genres. He has a great voice and a great deal of energy. His band was also very talented. As a fan of music from all years, I really enjoyed hearing some of the older classics. I can imagine some younger people may not have enjoyed him as much but I think most people over the age of 30 would definitely enjoy him. Finally he added some comedy into his show by interacting with the audience. All in all the comedy show was great and I enjoyed myself much better than expected. To anyone who has been on the Allure or Oasis comment as to whether the headliner is typically a singer and if not what other sort of headliners do they have?

 

Next up was Blue Planet which we saw on the second to last night. I didn't have too many expectations about this show going into it however after seeing it I decided that this was definitely the best show that I saw on the Allure. It combines singing, dancing, acrobatics, and gymnastics in a show that is basically themed about the Earth. Some of the songs that they used were: Around the World by ATC, Kiss the Rain by Billie Myers, Higher Ground by the Red Hot Chili Peppers/Stevie Wonder, Pride (In the Name of Love) by U2, and several songs by The Beatles. Here's a couple of pictures I took:

 

 

Check out this thread for some great pictures: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=33376923. Also see this video from Royal Caribbean about the show which includes a few highlights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRiKl-QXOng.

 

Another thing that was great about Blue Planet was the sets were excellent and very lively. From a large tree in which cast members were mixed in with the branches to a giant screen that recreated the ocean, the set was very well done. I would say I enjoyed this show mainly due to the set, singing and music, and acrobatics. Definitely don't miss it. I have seen a few people who weren't too crazy about the show, but the general consensus was that it was a fantastic show. Here's a brief clip I took:

 

Finally, there was the comedy show. I just love seeing good comedians live, so I was extremely excited for this show. Our week on the Allure featured two comedians, the first named Jeff Wayne and the second named AJ Jamal (great video of him here:

). Both were excellent but I guess I would say AJ was slightly funnier. They both incorporated a bit of humor relating to the cruise ship as well as other humor. I along with the entire crowd were laughing quite a lot during the entire show. When AJ started talking about the ship I started to take a quick audio recording and got the two minutes about the bathroom that I alluded to earlier. Don't mind the laughing in the video which may or may not be mine. :o

 

 

I really loved the venue of the Comedy Club as having such a small space really made the show a whole lot more intimate and it felt like you went to a great local comedy club. Both comedians interacted a good amount with audience members. Note that the front row is more likely to get involved, however it wasn't anything bad...just interactions. Also people not in the front row were also roped into the show, just a whole lot less than those up front.

 

While the venue itself was excellent, its small size did have some drawbacks. Mainly was the fact that there was only one comedy show during the entire week. Since the venue can only hold at most I believe 120 people, there were 12 identical shows during the week. This would allow only a little under 1500 people to attend a comedy show, which is a little under 25% of the passengers on board. I guess after removing children under 18 from the population, closer to 40% of the adults were able to see the show. However, I'm sure there were plenty of people who wanted to see the show but were unable to. Each night there was a line of people waiting to get in as we would pass by the club, so if you don't have reservations, do be sure to get there early to wait in line. For our show, which was on the final night at 10:30PM, there were actually probably 5-10 open seats even after people were let in from the wait list. I'd imagine this occurs due to people packing and wanting to get to bed early on the final night or people taking in other things that they missed. So if you can't get a reservation and have difficulty getting in earlier in the week, the final night would be the best chance at getting in.

 

Going back to only having one comedy show, while I think they should keep doing the comedy show the same way in the Comedy Club, I would have liked to have seen a headliner type comedy show in the Amber Theater. This is what most other ships have as their comedy shows, so I would think that the Allure could do the same. I guess the only limitation would be the other shows that occur in the Theater (Chicago, Blue Planet, Headliner) that might make it hard to do another show. Other alternatives would be to have late night (after midnight) adult comedy shows in the theater or to have some additional shows in the Comedy Club during the day time. I don't think that venue had much use during the day. Nevertheless the comedy shows were excellent! Well that's all I have time for tonight. I'll try to get a good amount written this weekend. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

 

Up next: What I'm sure a lot of readers have been anxiously waiting for...the sections on food.

[stroh33]

Did your friends Amy and Aaron enjoy their crown loft suite? We are staying in one in October and it looks pretty cool--thank you for the picks! And thank you for your great review...

 

Hello All! Amy and I loved the crown loft, but like Jeremy said I am not 100% sure we would book it again. Amy and I find ourselves cruising every few years and when we saw the loft it was something we wanted to experience. It was the best room we have ever been in but now that we tried it next time we will settle into something less extravagant! The best things about the room for us were...

1) The View (ours was 1748 and overlooked the ocean which was a must for us)

2) The rain shower in the upstairs bathroom (Amy already had remodel plans for our master bath at home lol)

 

The worst part of the room was the elevators and while we never had to wait more than a few minutes the windjammer and pools created a lot of traffic so you just had to be a little patient. Amy and I have always been "stair" people but 17 floors is a lot of stairs :) We always had to keep in our mind what part of the ship we were on, it was really easy to hop on an elevator in central park or the boardwalk and then realize you were on the wrong side of the ship so you had to get off on 15, walk across the pool deck, and then go up to 17. This cruise was absolutely amazing!

 

Jeremy I am loving your review, I hop on here all the time just reminiscing. We miss you guys and hope everything is well! Let me know if you have any other questions and I can't wait to read more.

[RazorbackIslandGirl]

Terpfan- I am LOVE LOVE LOVING this review!!:D I was on the Allure in Oct & will be back on the Oasis for the second time in Sept. You should try the Oasis! You would never know she is older than the Allure as they are both taken care of so well! I really think you would enjoy the entertainment on the Oasis. I chose her to double back on because of it. You two are a darling couple! It looks like y'all had a GREAT time! I appreciate all the time & effort you are putting in to this! It helps those of us out here waiting for our next adventure to make it, yet another day, of our countdown! We're all like junkies waiting for our next fix!;):D So, Keep it coming!! As are many, I'm salivating just thinking about your food review!:rolleyes:

[Familygoboston]

Loved the comedy snippet- Jamal was very funny! After extensive research into shows on Oasis and Allure, it seems the headliners are either very high energy, top of their game ( meaning Vegas or national tv ) one man shows. We had Earl Turner, who did a mix of comedy, 60,70 and 80 s soul music and some musician impersonation. I was prepared to be bored, and even though the content wasn't my favorite stuff, he was very entertaining!

 

OR they often have some kind of tribute band, like Abba or the Beatles. We were really keeping our fingers crossed for one of those, but no luck:(

 

I wonder if they choose based on demographics? On our cruise we were certainly among the youngest. It was Diamonds in December, and without the kids cruising, the whole demographic of our cruise skewed much older.

[sauvichick]

Check the following site out it includes the finest quality scans of cruise Compasses and menus to date.

 

http://www.thepreismans.com/

 

Thank you so much for posting the link! It is extremely helpful for a Royal newbie like me!

[terpfan101]

Aaron & RazorbackIslandGirl, thanks for the kind words. Onto the next part!

 

On the Oasis class there are tons of places to eat, both free and for a fee. I think we tried a good majority of the places onboard. I'm going to start by touching upon the complimentary venues other than the MDR which I'll cover in a subsequent post:

 

Park Cafe:

 

I think this was probably my favorite food places (excluding the specialty restaurants) on the entire ship. If I recall correctly, we had three breakfasts here and three lunches here during the week and they were all excellent. Below are a couple of pictures of the food at Park Cafe. The salads were great here as were the other sandwiches we tried. I recall Lindsay once got a vegetable quesadilla and it was pretty good. I also tried the tuna melt which was very good. Of course the roast beef sandwich was great. We probably frequented Park Cafe more often due to being so close by. You could also eat pretty healthily here. I'm definitely glad that Park Cafe will be making its way to other ships in the fleet. As far as breakfast options go, they had several breakfast sandwiches along with a make your own bagel station which I used each time. It included several bagel choices along with several cream cheese choices, tomatoes, cucumbers, and smoked salmon (my favorite!). We never really had a problem finding a seat either inside or outside, but if you do there are tons of seats in Central Park.

 

 

 

Sorrentos Pizza: We tried this pizza a couple of times just to have a slice as a snack. The pizza was good...better than frozen pizza but not as good as any pizza place (probably better than the big pizza chains though). However on the final day they started to use little tiny pizzas which appeared and tasted like they were frozen. Not sure why they switched but it was for the worst.

 

Promenade Cafe: I think we only once got something to eat here and it was just a cookie which was fine. The options didn't seem too appealing, they just had a few wraps in the case along with several dessert options. I believe this was the only food place open 24 hours a day (other than room service which has a service charge between 12AM and 5AM).

 

Boardwalk Dog House: To those unfamiliar with this venue, it's a hot dog stand on the Boardwalk where you can get one of seven hot dogs made of either pork, chicken, beef, or veal. They are supposed to be different styles to represent the countries of Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland and the United States. Here is the menu. If I recall correctly, I tried both the Warsaw and the Sicilian, each with peppers and onions. They were both pretty tasty and it was a good snack place to hold me over until dinner after our day in Jamaica in which we didn't really have a lunch. More on that later.

 

Also on the Boardwalk on the Allure is a doughnut stand where they put out doughnuts for you to take. We never tried one but it's located across from the Boardwalk Dog House. On the Oasis, there is no dog house and it is instead a full blown doughnut shop. To me that makes little sense as the Dog House is far more substantial and there's no need for a full doughnut place IMO.

 

Solarium Bistro: This place is only open for breakfast and lunch as it turns into Samba Grill for dinner. I can't remember for sure but I believe we only ate here for one breakfast. It was pretty good for breakfast as they had some healthier items to choose from such as turkey bacon (which I'm used to and thought was good). They had lots of grilled vegetables as well. It was a good breakfast option. I think I walked in to check out the lunch options one day and it didn't seem too spectacular. I'm also not a huge fan of buffets so wasn't so keen on eating there.

 

Windjammer Marketplace: Prior to going on this cruise, I set out to avoid the Windjammer at all costs. The reasons for this were as I said above I'm not a huge fan of buffets (due to the ability to overeat and for hygiene reasons). Additionally on the Enchantment we hate more often at the Windjammer due to having really only two options, and it was pretty poor in my opinion. Finally, on the Allure there are so many dining venues that I figured there'd really be n need to eat in Windjammer. Well up until about day 4 I was successful at avoiding Windjammer, but alas we slept too late (until about 10:45) on the second sea day that the only place to eat breakfast was the Windjammer past 11AM. It was perfectly fine and not very crowded (though much more crowded than I expected it to be at 11AM). They stopped serving breakfast at 11:30AM for a quick turnaround to lunch. They had your usual buffet breakfast foods. I had fruit, bacon, eggs, potatoes, and a muffin. Lindsay probably had eggs fruit and oatmeal. I also stepped into the Windjammer one evening at about 6:30PM to check it out and see what they had for dinner. I was a bit hungry so got a tiny plate to try just a few things (a spoonful of Pad Thai and some mozzarella and tomatoes). It was actually pretty decent and would probably be pretty decent if you had to dine with young children.

 

Vitality Cafe: We never tried this venue but it was very small. Everything food wise was free while beverages (mainly smoothies) cost extra. The food looked fine and healthy.

 

Wipeout Cafe: Another place we never ate, mainly because it serves essentially only junk food. Burgers, fries, nachos, etc were all being served here.

 

Up next: Main Dining Room

[lala364]

Loving your review! The pictures are wonderful. Thanks for sharing and keep it coming.

[FloridaGram]

Since I forgot to add a little background about myself above, I am 26 years old from the DC area and am an accountant. So by nature I am very detail oriented and most definitely a planner. Continuing on with the review...My apologies for the lack of pictures and TONS of words in this post...I promise more of the former and less of the latter (I'll try on that one) in subsequent posts. Also ask any questions along the way and I'll be sure to answer them.

 

I don't know why but I've always been fascinated by cruises, well at least for the last 5-10 years. My first cruise ever was after graduating high school in 2004 and was on the Navigator of the Seas with my family, my first cousin's family, and grandmother. I had a great time on that cruise (we all did) but surprisingly that was the only cruise I would take until deciding to go on one with my girlfriend just this past August which was on the Enchantment of the Seas. Ever since I heard about the Oasis class of ships being built back when I was a college student, I've been amazed at the design and feature and knew that I wanted to cruise on one at some point in my life.

 

Anyway, my girlfriend Lindsay (see picture of us below from our Enchantment cruise last year) and I began to discuss vacation options for 2012 back in the fall of 2011. A cruise was definitely a consideration but I hadn't thought too much about the Oasis/Allure. I can't remember when it first occurred for me to consider those ships, but it probably had something to do with reading the above mentioned reviews. We eventually settled on the Allure of the Seas on June 3rd as it would be a few weeks after she graduated from grad school with a masters degree in speech language pathology. A sort of celebratory graduation cruise if you will.

 

 

I booked the cruise in the final days of December 2011 after getting a deal from an online travel agent for the particular sailing of $275 in OBC. Having experienced a balcony on my first cruise and an interior cabin on the Enchantment, I knew that I'd be perfectly content with an interior, especially on the Oasis class which had so much to do that I couldn't foresee spending too much time in my cabin. A few months after booking the cruise however I started getting the urge to upgrade if the prices dropped and started to see that the cruise wasn't selling too well. I began to religiously track the number of available cabins once a day which took about 5 minutes each day and monitoring the prices around final payment time.

 

Keep in mind throughout this time I was planning excursions, show reservations, and specialty dining...I will touch on that during my review for those areas of the cruise

 

Sometime in February I had a slight hiccup with the whole process. I had booked our flights on JetBlue through Chase Ultimate Rewards program using credit card points in early January. I had thought that the time of the flight said it departed from Washington Dulles at 7:55AM and arrived at about 10:30AM in FLL. I also must have ignored that on my confirmation email. In February I received a phone call from JetBlue advising me to call about a change in my flight's schedule. Upon logging into the website I saw that the flight time was now leaving at 1PM or so and arriving at 4PM in FLL. I freaked out and then was even more perplexed upon seeing that the flight was initially supposed to be after I needed to arrive in FLL!! Well I called JetBlue and the wonderful customer service agent was able to change my flight to whenever I wanted at no charge (the fare had risen slightly since I booked for the 8AM flight) since the flight changed by several hours. Phewwww thankfully crisis #1 averted. More on crisis #2 in a future post!

 

In late March after final payment prices dropped new guarantees opened. An oceanview guarantee (category Y) was the same cost that I paid, but I hesitated due to not wanting to receive a category I which is exclusively on deck 3. Then a few weeks later category XN and X opened up at $100 more total and $225 more total than I paid for my interior. Additionally category Y dropped in price so that it was actually $200 cheaper total than I paid. I knew I wouldn't get a refund or OBC but at that point decided to roll the dice with the oceanview guarantee and hope prices dropped a bit more on the category X and XN.

 

Anyway I called my TA to upgrade to the category Y and was astonished when she came back and said that I'd be receiving $200 back as a refund since the price was less (but that I'd get $100 less in OBC). I later learned from my actual TA rep that I got a refund because the TA had booked through a group rate. Never heard of getting money back after final payment but I was happy. (Has anyone else heard of this??) Well this caused the dilemma of now having to upgrade to a balcony and paying significantly more so I kept watching for the price drops. I was assigned a category I oceanview on deck 3 which I wasn't too excited by but figured I'd hardly be in the stateroom anyway.

 

I later learned upon seeing my credit card statement that I actually received closer to $400 as a refund (don't know why but guessing again due to the group rate). So at that point I pretty much gave up hope of upgrading as it'd easily cost close to $600+. Well sure enough prices on those two balcony guarantees never dropped below what they were at first and so I couldn't justify upgrading from my reduced fare. About five days before my sail date I logged in and noticed that I was upgraded to an oceanview balcony (category D5). I was very excited. An oceanview balcony in June on the Allure for a hair under $2,000?!? It was certainly my lucky cruise (unfortunately this didn't carry over to the casino)! I began to pack and get last minute things in the final few days and we were all set to go.

 

Up next: Flight to FLL, embarkation, and first impressions of the ship.

 

Why that is quite a deal! Congrats. Wat did you do just keep going online and acting like you were going to book a new cruise and see what the price is? On the cruise I am watching I noticed that that OV and Int were actually more than balconies. I thought that was weird.

 

I must get back to your review now, thanks!

[FloridaGram]

I was thinking the same thing...ugh... was it made up right by the time you went to bed? or should I say turned down appropriately?

[ilikepups]

Did i miss it? When are you going to write a review on the restaurants? Not sure how this "thread" thing works maybe i missed it.

[terpfan101]

Did i miss it? When are you going to write a review on the restaurants? Not sure how this "thread" thing works maybe i missed it.

 

I'm getting to the specialty restaurants...Going to try to do that tomorrow or Wednesday :)

[terpfan101]

Why that is quite a deal! Congrats. Wat did you do just keep going online and acting like you were going to book a new cruise and see what the price is? On the cruise I am watching I noticed that that OV and Int were actually more than balconies. I thought that was weird.

 

I must get back to your review now, thanks!

 

Hi there. Well I monitored the price via a website that lets you "monitor" prices. If you google that you'll find the good website. ;)

[terpfan101]

I was thinking the same thing...ugh... was it made up right by the time you went to bed? or should I say turned down appropriately?

 

Not sure who/what you were replying to, but think you're talking about the bed. It was fine when we went to sleep that night and on all subsequent nights.

[TheDMan62]

Love the review!!! It has to be in the top 10 of all-time.

 

My wife and I will be on Allure next March (this will be the longest time between booking and cruise, we booked last July). Ive held off on looking at reviews or comments of Allure, because it makes the wait that much worse. This is the first review that Ive read and i was right, it made it worse LOL.

 

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to write the review and including the pictures!!!

[terpfan101]

Love the review!!! It has to be in the top 10 of all-time.

 

My wife and I will be on Allure next March (this will be the longest time between booking and cruise, we booked last July). Ive held off on looking at reviews or comments of Allure, because it makes the wait that much worse. This is the first review that Ive read and i was right, it made it worse LOL.

 

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to write the review and including the pictures!!!

 

Wow thanks for that compliment...though I'm sure if you read some of those others I mentioned that you'd think those are better! But yes reading reviews kind of do make the wait more difficult, but at the same time it was fun for me and helped me know more about the ship to maximize my experience. Your cruise will be here before you know it. Maybe you can book a short one sometime in between to hold you over? :)

[terpfan101]

Hello everyone...I've been excited to write these food parts being a foodie, so hopefully you enjoy. In this post I will discuss the main dining room, which for the first time on any of my three cruises, I ate very few meals in. As a result of booking the Central Park Dining Package, we only ate four meals (all dinners) in the main dining room. I had wanted to try lunch and breakfast in the main dining room but we never made it to them due to having so many other choices on the Allure. I regret not having done so but I'm sure I'll be back on Allure or Oasis and will try them at that point. Also unfortunately I didn't take as many pictures of dinners in the main dining room as I did in the specialty restaurants. So I apologize in advance for having so few pictures for this section.

 

For reference purposes, we ate dinners according to this schedule (nightly theme in MDR):

Day 1: Giovanni's Table (Sail Away Menu)

Day 2: Main Dining Room (Captain's Gala Formal Night)

Day 3: Main Dining Room (Venetian Feast)

Day 4: 150 Central Park (Surf Menu)

Day 5: Main Dining Room (Chef's Dinner)

Day 6: Chops (Anchored in Excellence Formal Night)

Day 7: Main Dining Room (Feast of Nations)

 

Since I'll be covering the dinners in the specialty restaurants in a subsequent post, I'll skip right to the first formal night and our first dinner in the main dining room. I requested to have late seating (8:30PM) when I booked the cruise and to be placed at a large (8 or 10 person) table. We were both curious to see the other people we would be dining with, especially after our experience on the Enchantment.

 

When we were on the Enchantment last year for a five day cruise, we were at a table of eight for second seating dinner. We were the only people seated at the table for the first three nights. I didn't think anything of it after one night, but after another began to think we'd be all alone. It certainly looked ridiculous with just the two of us sitting at a table for eight. I would have requested to move except our wait staff were terrific and I didn't want to leave them. Well during the third night's dinner, the father of one of the two families at the eight person table next to us (served by the same waiter) asked our waiter to ask if we'd like to join them for the final two nights. They would combine our tables by putting the leaves down on ours. I was very thankful for that as we met some nice people. Both families of four had two kids, one had two girls (24 and 21 if I recall), the other had a daughter and son (20 and 18). Anyway I was hoping that we wouldn't have a similar situation occur this year!

 

As we made our way to dinner via the Royal Promenade, we bumped into Amy whom we had just met that morning at the Meet & Mingle. She asked if we wanted to join them in My Time Dining, perplexed I wondered if we'd need to wait for a while but she informed me that "we have some gold card that the maitre' d saw and said it's a magic card...I'm sure it'll be fine." At this point I'm not going to lie, I was torn. On one hand I wanted to go and meet our tablemates and wait staff at our table in the main dining room since we'd only be sitting with them a total of four nights anyway. On the other hand, we had just met Amy and Aaron that morning and I wanted to hopefully hang out more with them. I also knew that at least we got along well whereas we could have people at our table that would not be the case for. Well we decided to go eat with them...in all honesty I don't think I could have said no to Amy anyway!

 

As we were standing by the elevator bank weighing our option, a scary scene occurred. A middle aged woman fell to the ground and began to have what appeared to be a seizure. Her family began shouting in Spanish for help. I was standing by a phone and dialed the operator where the message said "if this is a medical emergency dial 911." Who knew they use 911 on the ship?! Anyway no sooner than I could do that, the loudspeaker came on and somebody said something like "Blue (or Alpha?) team to Adagio deck 5" which was followed by several blasts. Medical personal were quickly on the scene while unfortunately a crowd began to form around the poor lady and employees made everyone get away. It was only a matter of minutes before the lady was taken away or perhaps stopped convulsing. I didn't see what happened but I believe she must have been okay. Needless to say it was a scary thing to see and my heart was racing as we went to eat dinner.

 

Sure enough Amy was correct, as Aaron showed his gold (Suite) Seapass card to the maitre' d who quickly got us a table for four. That's a definite nice benefit to those in suites above a junior suite! We were quickly seated at our table for four. I began to look over the menu for that night's dinner. Here are some pictures of the menu as taken from the TV screen (more on that later):

 

Starters:

 

Chef's Signature Menu:

 

Desserts:

 

I was really looking forward to the escargot as I tried them for the first time ever on the Enchantment and actually loved it. Well sure enough as many people were stating on these boards, they didn't have escargot due to the worldwide shortage. So I went with the scallop substitute which was perfectly fine as a substitute and was actually really good. Heck, I just think anything in that garlic butter sauce would be delicious! I also got a shrimp cocktail as I just love shrimp. Lindsay had a Caesar salad to start. For our main courses I had the filet of beef while Lindsay got the shrimp ravioli, which I recalled she had last year and liked a lot. Both were very good, but you should know that the filet of beef is really just two slices of a tender cut of beef. For dessert I had the double strawberry cheesecake and Lindsay had the bittersweet chocolate soufflé. You will soon begin to see that Lindsay loves chocolate and it will be apparent in her dessert choices each night!

 

 

 

Here we all are together at the table during dessert:

 

Overall the food was great on this night. I will say that service for My Time Dining is very different than what I experience on my prior two cruises at a set time. While the service was very good, and they were attentive to our needs, nothing really stood out as exceptional. I would imagine that is fairly typical with My Time Dining and is just the nature of not necessarily having the same wait staff each night. Also I'll conclude with the fact that I was glad we ate with Amy and Aaron as had we not done so, I'm not sure if we would have become so close during the rest of the cruise.

 

Up next: Day Three dinner in the Main Dining Room

[Sinppu]

Oh this will make my four months go a lot faster! Thanks for taking the time to write such a hearty review!