Propelled to Cruise: Our Photo Review of the Allure 2-16-14

[dacsmom]

I am enjoying your review, your pictures are wonderful. I am excited about my October Allure cruise.

[At Sea 4Ever]

Waiting for your next post..... : )

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[LBumb]

terrific job

[tinkerbell1984]

Thank you for this. We are going in May, our first Royal cruise and so excited!!! Subscribing to this! I was wondering when the Dragon Ice Show and Madagascar Aqua show were so I wouldn't book other things around them. Looks like they are afternoonish so it shouldn't be a problem! Thanks!

[ginadc]

Day 5: In Which We Get off the Ship for the First Time Since Fort Lauderdale

 

Okay, so the ship is a destination in itself, but like the slogan says, “the sea is calling.” And although it had been under us and all around us for the past four days, it felt like a crime to go on a weeklong Caribbean cruise without at least dipping our toes in said sea.

 

So we had booked a St. Maarten/St. Martin (one of our favorite islands) tour with Bernard’s Tours. We could have probably just grabbed a water taxi or something and done our own thing, but with three kids it’s kind of nice to have someone else in charge and not have to figure out where you’re going or what you’re doing next.

 

The Guavaberry stand at the St. Maarten port in the shadow of the Allure:

 

 

Bernard’s Tours came highly recommended by both Cruise Critic and Tripadvisor. We went with their standard day tour and were very pleased with it. Our tour guide was not the famous "Mailman," although we met him, but another guide named Junior who was also quite funny, personable and full of detail about the island. The day included:

 

 

- A stop at the Iguana Farm, where the Kraken and a donkey fell in love. (They probably make a similar sound.)

 

 

 

 

(It was really cute-the donkey kept following her. My guess is he thought the giant flowers on her dress were the real thing.)

 

- A tidepool area stop to meet the “Sea Urchin Man,” which was definitely a highlight. He taught us what several different types of sea life look like both alive and dead, and we all got to hold live spiny sea urchins and other critters. The sea snail was way cool.

 

 

- A 90-minute break at Orient Beach. We have been to this beach multiple times in the past and I never get tired of it, nor do I think I ever will get tired of this perfect blue oasis. The waves were high but the water stays very shallow pretty far out, so the kids had a great time.

 

 

 

More to come! In the meantime, a couple of quick answers to questions:

 

- Kids in cantilevered hot tubs: I don't think they are allowed. On the Allure as well as on the Freedom-class ships, the cantilevered hot tubs are kind of right on the border between the Solarium and the main pool deck, so you might be able to make a case that they're not a Solarium feature. But I have yet to see any kids in these hot tubs on three cruises that featured them. I wouldn't let my kids go in them (and they've asked)--there are multiple other hot tubs that are clearly open to kids, and I know that Superdad and I really enjoyed the chance to relax in these and enjoy the gorgeous view without getting splashed by kids belonging to us or anyone else.

 

- Times for LYEM and Dragon on Ice--yep, they shouldn't conflict with any evening shows you've booked. Both are either late morning or early- mid afternoon, and each show runs at least twice.

[JamesEM]

Enjoying your review, will be on the Allure this Fall.

[celly]

Loving your review, thank you!

[Mouse's Shadow]

Thanks for the review. I love your formal night pictures. I'm trying to convince my DH that he needs to rent a tux. So far no luck, But I still have a while to work on him.

[TryingCruising]

I'm loving your review! Thank you for sharing. It's helping to continue the excitement as I wait through a 3 hour airport delay to get to lauderdale and board Allure tomorrow!

[dacsmom]

We did Bernards Tours before and really enjoyed it.

[malefevre]

Thank you very much for your pictures!! Really enjoyed them. Even more excited about our 3-30-14 Allure cruise w/ the kids & grandkids!!

[ginadc]

Sorry that it's taken me so long to get back to this review...crazy work week is my only excuse!

 

Let's see, we left off partway through day 5 on St. Maarten/Martin, a tour with Bernard's Tours.

 

After we left Orient Beach, we stopped in Marigot for something to eat.

 

 

Many people went to the bakery but we had only had a small snack at the beach and were pretty hungry, so we stopped at Rita’s for creole food. It was delicious, but the stop was only 40 minutes and the wait for food was a tad long, so in retrospect we should have stuck with the bakery.

 

 

 

Then we went on for our final stop at Maho Beach, where we could watch planes arrive and take off at Princess Juliana Airport, practically right over our heads.

 

 

 

The bar/restaurant nearby keeps a handy schedule of arriving and departing flights:

 

 

 

Ships at anchor in Phillipsburg, viewed from the tour bus:

 

 

I think I've hit my photo allotment, so more in the next post...

[ginadc]

Day 5, St. Maarten/Martin, continued

 

In addition to just playing in the surf at Orient Beach, one of the highlights of that stop was watching this guy on water jet boots. He looked like an oceangoing Iron Man, even doing flips and other stunts. No doubt if any of us regular folks had actually paid to rent the things, we would not have looked nearly as suave.

 

 

Back to our ship--hooray!

 

 

 

It was hot and blindingly sunny on St. Maarten/Martin, so as soon as we returned to the ship, more pool time (and more froyo machine time) was in order.

 

The dress we bought the Kraken on St. Maarten (her big sister has a matching one):

 

 

Princess crew members snapping shots of our ship:

 

 

Sunset sailaway, snapped from the "Sun Deck"--forward Deck 14. A great sailaway spot.

 

[ginadc]

Day 5, Evening

 

 

Then we had to hustle the kids back to the cabin early and get them changed for dinner and Ice Games at 7. We had Chops reservations for later, so what we really wanted to do was dash through Park Café or the Dog House and grab a quick bite for the kids—but Techno Boy was not having any of that. You may remember that he and our tablemate’s 6-year-old daughter really hit it off…well, let’s just say that he was heartbroken at the prospect of not having dinner with K. (I so wish I could post the adorable picture of the two of them together on Formal Night, but I don’t post pics of other people’s kids on public message boards!)

 

So we made a quick run to the MDR right at 6 pm and asked Michael & Crew to feed the kids only, on an accelerated schedule. They were very accommodating, and we made Ice Games with no trouble. The idea is “Monopoly” with various settings from the ship as the properties. The kids really enjoyed the show—I think I have seen more entertaining ice shows on other Royal ships, but it was a good time nonetheless.

 

Then we dropped the kids at Adventure Ocean (with a little bit of drama about missing the start of Pirate Night) and headed off to Chops.

 

Let me say now that Chops is, by far, my favorite dining venue across all of the Royal ships we’ve sailed on (5 now). Superdad and I are both huge fans of good steaks and other cuts of meat, and we’ve been impressed by the quality of the food as well as the service and ambience in Chops pretty much every single time. It’s the one specialty dining restaurant we absolutely will not miss.

 

I had the forest mushroom soup and the short ribs, and we shared the crimini mushrooms and leeks. Everything was excellent—the soup is justifiably famous. And the short ribs were absolutely divine: rich, decadent, melt-in-your-mouth and full of flavor. My mouth still waters when I think of them almost a week later. And of course, I had the famous red velvet cake, which is absolutely as good as advertised.

 

This was one of our “early” nights. We had a 9 pm reservation at Chops, so by the time we picked up the kids from late night Adventure Ocean, it was after 11. After a long hot adventurous day on St. Maarten, we were all more than ready to turn in!

 

Day 6, At Sea

The last two days of our cruise were two straight sea days. This morning, we had pre-booked a Dreamworks Character Breakfast in the Main Dining Room. As it turned out, this was a Madagascar breakfast—the characters vary by day. It probably would have been more exciting for the kids had it been Shrek or How to Train Your Dragon instead, as they had had tons of opportunities to see the Madagascar characters early in the week and not so much with the others. But they were happy anyway. The breakfast included three characters: Alex, King Julien, and Gloria. (No Mort or penguins.) My daughter wanted to know why Melman wasn’t on the ship, and our waiter explained that he was too tall to fit.

 

 

We had a fun conversation with one of the guys wrangling the characters and kids for pictures. He said that he was one of only 8 staff specifically tasked with all of the Dreamworks stuff on board—considering how much Dreamworks activity goes on, that seems like a pretty small crew!

 

After that: a leisurely day of Boardwalk and pool time. The kids finally got to make their “Pets at Sea” animals. (Kraken named her fancy fox Jewel Mary Magic Sparkle.)

 

 

 

 

Never tired of the carousel!

 

 

Or the H2O Zone:

 

[ginadc]

Day 6, At Sea, continued

 

A lovely perspective from our balcony:

 

 

At 5 pm we had reservations for the kids to do a cupcake decorating class at the Cupcake Cupboard.

 

 

This is something they had been talking about excitedly since Day One of the cruise. I have no idea why it was such a big deal for them, but they loooved it—none more than the Diva, who nonetheless never bothered to eat her cupcake.

 

For planning purposes: when you reserve a cupcake class online, it gives you a two-hour window, but for the kids’ class at least, the whole affair doesn’t take more than about half an hour. The Cupboard manager said that she has no idea why the system sets it up that way—but anyway, don’t worry that by scheduling your kids for a cupcake decorating class you’ll be killing two hours! (I'm not sure how much longer, if any longer, the adult classes are.)

 

 

On the Eastern Allure itineraries, formal night is on Friday night—so we got dolled up for our second formal night. Did I mention we really really like having the chance to trot out the finery?

 

 

 

I just love this:

 

We bought the digital photo package--$309 on a weeklong Allure cruise--and I think it was worth it. We made an effort to get photos with every photographer we spotted, and wound up with about 200 pictures in all, many of them really good. Even if we would have only decided to buy half of those without the package, that's more than $1000!

 

This was the first time we had cruised since the advent of the new photo kiosks and folios. Wow, what an improvement over staring at walls full of pictures and trying to spot yourself and your family! The kiosks are pretty easy to use. We had to get a staff member at the photo studio to manually "link" our two cabins so that when either Superdad or I scanned one of our cards, all of our photos came up either way, but that was pretty easy. The photo recognition software worked pretty well. As you're looking at your photos at the kiosk, you will occasionally see another family's pictures in your set. (Or at least we did.) You can select a button that says "This is not me or my party" to help the software be more accurate. We didn't "lose" any of our pictures, but even with helping to fine-tune the software, we still wound up with a couple of pictures of another family on our final disk.

 

Also, just be aware that the disk they give you (you pick it up on the last night, after about 9 pm--it'll be in your folio) does not actually have the photos on it. You use it to set up a program on your home computer that then downloads the photos for you. Not that big a deal, but it seems like adding an unnecessary extra step to me.

 

My Family Time Dining

This was actually the only night we did My Family Time dining, but I think we may try it more often on our next cruise. MFT is different from My Time dining. Basically, you bring your kids to dinner with you at your usual time (it’s for early seating), and tell your waiters that you’ll be doing MFT. They take the kids’ orders before the rest of the party, and bring their food very quickly. They’re done by about 6:40 and then you take them out to the main dining room lobby, where Adventure Ocean reps wait every night to pick up any kids going to AO. They’re there from 6:40 to 6:50, and you don’t need to make reservations ahead of time. Just go out, check your kid(s) in, and go back to enjoy the rest of your dinner in a more leisurely fashion. It’s convenient—you can have part of your meal together as a family, but not have to put younger kids with a short attention span through a drawn-out hour-plus formal dinner.

 

We weren’t sure how this would work given that it was formal night and everyone was in their fancy duds, but it actually worked out very well because that night was also Pajama Night in Adventure Ocean. So we just brought little bags with the kids’ pajamas, and they changed into PJs once they got to AO.

 

So after a relaxing conclusion to dinner, Superdad and I went for a few drinks on our own. We stopped at the Champagne Bar, the Bow & Stern (we love the English pub setting on all the ships with Promenades), went up to Dazzles, and then went downstairs to listen to the performance in Jazz on 4. The quartet was excellent, and I really wish we’d discovered this place earlier in the cruise. We will definitely make time to enjoy these nightspots starting earlier on in our next cruise!

 

Gotta go, but I promise the next update won't be so delayed!

[beach18]

We bought the digital photo package--$309 on a weeklong Allure cruise--and I think it was worth it.

 

Hi ginadc,

 

Did you have to buy the photo package before the cruise or can you purchase it any time?

 

Great review. Thanks!

[lauren0309]

Loved the formal night pictures. Esp. your kids in their formal wear. So adorable!

[jules815]

Really enjoying your review and pictures!

[tenmile]

Thank you for sharing your cruise adventure and for the great pictures. Your family is adorable! What a wonderful cruise you had! We leave for our Allure cruise this weekend, and now the excitement is really building!:D Do you know if we can sign up for the children's cupcake decorating class on the ship? Also, in your opinion, are there an adequate number of chairs/lounges in the pool and Solarium areas on sea days or do we need to get to those areas early in the morning? We are going during Spring Break, so I am sure the ship will be at capacity. Thank you, again, for sharing all of your experiences with us.

Linda

[Jazzzy]

Enjoying your review.

 

You have an adorable family!

 

:) Jazz

[ping1]

Thank you for your review. Loved the pictures.

 

Where do you buy the Mango smoothies?

 

Was it included with the Replenish package?

 

Thank you

[BlueSkiesTX]

Love, love, love your review. We are thinking of booking a cruise with our DDs (ages 8, 5, 3) at the time.

[WEGL81]

This is the first time I've seen this review. What a wonderful sense of humor and all around positive attitude about your trip. Loved the pictures of the kids and the commentary on their personalities. Thanks for sharing this. I didn't notice until now that your review was written last year. We're heading out on the Allure in 3 weeks and definitely picked up some good tips from this review.