B2B Allure Of The Seas Pictorial Review - 31st March 2013 & 7th April 2013

[petesweet]

I love wine, but husband - not so much.

 

I promise not to tell your husband you said that!!:D

Kathy

[mais318]

 

Once in downtown I called forward to the driver asking him to drop us off there. I had seen there was a 'Little Switzerland' downtown and wanted to have another look to try and find a birthday present for Sally... yes it was late now. I managed to buy her one here. As a guide for anyone looking..... the watch I bought her was a Tag. The cost here was $3400. This was $500 cheaper than the Allure's 'Tag sale', $700 less than US retail and about £800 ($1200) less that the UK price. Not too bad..... but if the exchange was better then these really would be a bargain!

 

This is the one she chose

 

 

Beautiful watch! That does seem like a pretty good deal, I'll have to checkout the watches when I am on Oasis in a month or so. I just bought myself a used mens Tag Heuer aquaracer and I absolutely love it. :D

[milpston]

I promise not to tell your husband you said that!!:D

 

Kathy

 

Haha. That made me chuckle :p

[milpston]

Beautiful watch! That does seem like a pretty good deal, I'll have to checkout the watches when I am on Oasis in a month or so. I just bought myself a used mens Tag Heuer aquaracer and I absolutely love it. :D

 

I thought so. My only advice is if you buy a diamond one remember to ask for the certification as they had forgotten to put it in the box until I asked.

[Jtm2233]

a question for you....i've posted this in other allure reports...

for an adults only cruise, what do you think is the best cabin location? both in terms of deck and forward vs aft...

 

i want to try to be near the stairs, but i can't figure out if forward or aft is better...and how high or low to be...

i'm pretty sure it will be an ocean balcony room (as opposed to boardwalk balcony), but WHERE?????? :eek: :eek: :eek:

 

thanks!!! :)

 

Last month we stayed in cabin 6252 which is port side mid ship right behind the loyalty ambassador. I have never had a better location. It was the first time we have done balcony but regardless it was a short walk to boardwalk, one flight up from promenade and a easy elevator ride either way to the entertainment on 4 or the pool up on 15.

[milpston]

Last month we stayed in cabin 6252 which is port side mid ship right behind the loyalty ambassador. I have never had a better location. It was the first time we have done balcony but regardless it was a short walk to boardwalk, one flight up from promenade and a easy elevator ride either way to the entertainment on 4 or the pool up on 15.

 

Cosidering how big this ship is I think it's quite surprising how close you are to everything if your cabin is anywhere mid ship.

[milpston]

Day 7 - Sea Day

 

 

 

 

 

[milpston]

 

 

 

[milpston]

As it was day 7 we also got this letter.

 

 

This is a relatively recent change in the way RCI deals with gartuities. We had paid all our gratuities when booking our cruise. All I did was check that we hadn't been charged for them again which we wasn't.

 

Also, this letter had arrived the day before.

 

 

[milpston]

Our wake up call came at 07:20 this morning so that we could make the character breakfast reservation as we didn't make the first one that we had.

 

The weather didn't look too great for just about the first time of our cruise.

 

 

Looking around there was some hope as it looked a little brighter up ahead and maybe the worst of the weather was already behind us.

 

 

 

At 07:40 Chloe said that she would rather sleep than go to the character breakfast (again) so Sally and I sat on the balcony looking at the ominous clouds.

 

At 08:05 Chloe was awake and said she would now like to go to the character breakfast. As I had read the character breakfast starts at 08:00 sharp (and nobody was dressed and ready)we decided to give it a miss until the second week wehere we had another two reservations...... Surely we will make one of them?!?!

[milpston]

Sure enough as we sat there the wind picked up a little and it started to rain. At 08:30 we decided to head down to Johnny Rockets for breakfast.

 

As the weather was letting us down we decided to sit inside Johnny Rockets for the first time. We were lucky enough to get one of the tables in there.

 

 

As you can see there is limited seating in here but, as previously mentioned, breakfast doesn't seem to get very busy. There are probably about 7 tables or so.

 

 

The old style juke box on the tables in the restaurant.

 

 

You can see the chefs working hard in the kitchen.

 

 

On the few occasions we made it here the staff were really friendly. As covered earlier in the week this is a great spot for breakfast. We never made it here for lunch or dinner even though we planned to at some stage. I think this was because I really didn't see the point in paying the small cover charge to eat a burger and chips (fries) when there were nice meals to be had all over the ship.

 

[milpston]

Sally and I both had beef patties, potatoes aand eggs done over easy as she liked the look of mine last time I was here.

 

 

Chloe had sausages and pancakes. She likes to have lemon juice and sugar on pancakes at home but was disappointed that she couldn't get lemon juice anywhere to put on them.

 

 

Throughout breakfast we could see that it had been raining steadily. When we came out we were glad we didn't attempt to sit outside. Looked like a grotty day's weather ahead!

 

 

This picture is the inside of Rita's Cantina and it's as close as we got to going inside.

 

[milpston]

I must have still been a bit peckish after breakfast as I couldn't resist when passing the donut place on the boardwalk. It is just self service so it was far too easy to just grab one on the way past!

 

 

 

I went for one of the Raspberry filled ones and it was actually really nice. I couldn't fault how fresh it was.

 

 

I decided not to put you through the ordeal of seeing a picture of me pretty much swallowing it whole ;)

[milpston]

At 10:00 we headed up to the Viking Crown Lounge for the consecutive cruisers meeting.

 

 

The Viking Crown Lounge is a lovely bar which i think is under used due to it's location.

 

 

 

 

The bar was closed off to guests for this 'private function'. Luckily they knew how to keep me happy. There was a choice of complimentary champagne or Mimosa.

 

 

[milpston]

The meeting was hosted by Zack. He is the activities manager from South Africa. There were also representatives from shore explorations and speciality restaurants at the meeting.

 

We were told that if you wanted to get off the ship at Ft Lauderdale or do an excursion then you just take a card off of them and disembark with that as well as your passport and seapass card.

 

We had decided to stay on the ship for the day so all we had to do was meet at the Schooner Bar at 10:30 with our passports and seapass cards. We were also told that set sail passes etc were not required.

 

At the meeting we were told that if you were to be changing cabins for the second week (we weren't) then all you need to do is pack your cases and leave them in your room and the staterooms attendants would have them moved to your next room. I was under the impression for some reason that if you were changing cabins for the second leg of a back to back then you had to disembark with all your cases. I obviously had that wrong.

 

We were given the opportunity to make advance bookings for all restaurants, shows and the spa for the following week. We were told it did not matter if we had shows booked as we could just let him know what ones we wanted reservations for (more than one per show if we wanted) and we could consider it booked. He has 20% of show seats available to him so we could have anything we wanted. I'm not sure if this would be the same if there were lots more consecutive cruisers.

 

Zack also told us that a special lunch in Giovanni's Table had been arranged between 11:30 and 12:30 which I thought was a really nice touch.

 

We were in no real rush to get away from the meeting as it still wasn't looking very good outside.

 

[milpston]

You do get a lovely view out over the pools from here. It looked a bit brighter than this most other days.

 

At least not everyone had been put off by the rain.

[jebl]

I am loving your review and reliving our cruise on Allure in Dec. Getting ready for Oasis in Sept and I have a question about the cabin. I see that you had one with the bed by the closet. Do you think there is enough room to get a mobility scooter past the bed and over by the balcony door?The rear wheel base is 23 inches and that is the widest part of the scooter.

 

If not then I will have to look at changing dates which is a bothe.

 

Thank you and congratulations on your wedding. You are a lovely family and I am looking forward to sailing the second leg of the journey with you.

[milpston]

I am loving your review and reliving our cruise on Allure in Dec. Getting ready for Oasis in Sept and I have a question about the cabin. I see that you had one with the bed by the closet. Do you think there is enough room to get a mobility scooter past the bed and over by the balcony door?The rear wheel base is 23 inches and that is the widest part of the scooter.

 

If not then I will have to look at changing dates which is a bothe.

 

Thank you and congratulations on your wedding. You are a lovely family and I am looking forward to sailing the second leg of the journey with you.

 

Thank you very much for the nice comments.

In answer to your question I think the below picture is probably the best I have to be able to tell.

 

Going by that picture and from memory I would say it's going to be very close either way. I would definitely email RCI with the same question to be sure. I don't know if anybody else has a view on this??

[milpston]

Thank you very much for the nice comments.

 

In answer to your question I think the below picture is probably the best I have to be able to tell.

 

 

Going by that picture and from memory I would say it's going to be very close either way. I would definitely email RCI with the same question to be sure. I don't know if anybody else has a view on this??

 

The more I look at the picture the more doubts I have as to whether you could get a mobility scooter past there :confused:

[jebl]

Thank you so much for your quick reply. I didn't think it would fit either. The photo is very helpful.

[milpston]

As it was still raining we decided to have a wander down towards the promenade.

 

This is the inside of Candy beach.

 

 

This is Pinwheels which is adjoined to the above.

 

 

I'd had enough after about 10 seconds in here so we headed to the Royal Promenade. I realised I hadn't really taken many photos here so decided no was a chance. it was much busier here than normal due to the rain.

 

The Bow & Stern is the pub which we had been to a couple of times. Often has live music in the evenings.

 

 

Sorrentos is the place to grab a pizza.

 

 

Next to Sorrentos are the soda machines for those with the soda package. They only work if you use the cups provided. They were ok. Sometimes they didn't work and sometimes certain drinks were out. There were plenty of options though. I have to say that we only really used them a few times like when we were on the way back to the cabin in the afternoon. We mainly drink regular coke so it was just as convenient to get these from the bar when needed.

 

 

They very often have sales on in the middle of the Promenade as they did on this day.

[milpston]

Thank you so much for your quick reply. I didn't think it would fit either. The photo is very helpful.

 

I'm sure if you contact RCI they'll give you some answers or even come up with a solution.

[luvsun22]

Zack was our Activities Manager on the Jewel back in September, we loved him and were disappointed that he was gone when we sailed her again in April. Now I know where he went! I've yet to do a B2B, thanks for all the information on the process and all the pics from the Promenade.

[milpston]

 

 

That was the outise of On Air Bar in the background. this is where they televise any sport and have a fair bit of other entertainment. We never really made it in there.

 

 

 

[milpston]

This is the inside of Boleros

 

 

 

 

 

 

As it was day 7 I decided to go to guest services and pay our of our account in cash rather than have it automatically be billed to my credit card. The queue only took about 10 minutes.