Allure sailing April 13th Review.. First cruise ..honest opinion..

[Loganpaulsmom]

]Hi all.. First let me begin by saying this was my parties first cruise. We spent about 3 months looking at cruises, researching and reading reviews and based on all of that we chose the Allure. The main reasons were the size, the kids clubs and from every review we read that a week was too short to see and do it all.

We are Disney travelers and used to going all the time so this was right up our alley.

Let me say that because had no comparison it is hard for me to say that maybe we just chose the wrong ship or if more probable we aren't the cruise people that we thought we were..

I am sure that this review will be a minority opinion but please remember that 1. I am a first time cruiser. And 2. This is just my humble opinion..

Traveling with us..4 adults, 3 children. Ages, 12, 10 and 8..

We had D2 balcony aft facing 6th deck midship rooms.

I will do the review by day..

Up next day 1..

[Loganpaulsmom]

So our day started very early ( try 3:00am early).. We had a 6:00am flight out of Logan in Boston to Washington and on to Ft. lauderdale.

We made it there early and grabbed cabs and headed to the Port.

First let me say it is quite a site to see the ship for the first time. It is massive and beautiful and hard to put into words.

We got out of our cabs and into line and the whole process probably only took 25 minutes and we were on our way to the gangway and onto the promenade.

We were all kind of clueless even though I felt like I had read enough and had a good idea where everything was I was still confused and the promenade was SO busy. We grabbed a coffee at the Cafe Promenade and since it was about 1:00 headed to our rooms.

I had been worried about packing for about a month. I knew the rooms would be a lot smaller than we were used to and I was afraid we would have no room. Usually, when going away I check to large suitcases, and take 3 smaller ones on the plane. This time, 2 large ones and just backpacks.

My first impressions were wow,they are small.but with the balcony it felt bigger but I will say as clean as our room was the sofa was filthy with stains and our room didn't come with a hair dryer.

( here is a very important tip..the hair dryers that are supplied have an ON button that you have to push in all the time in order for it to work. This makes it very difficult to style and dry your hair. My advice, take your own)..

I didn't realize how much my hands would hurt from typing.. So I will continue later..

[UFMOM]

Thank you for reviewing. Although experienced cruisers, we will be on our first Allure cruise in Sept. so I am reading as many reviews as possible. I have heard, but never tried, a hint to use a large rubber band or hair tie to keep the button depressed. My hair is fairly short and dries quickly so I haven't had a problem, but I can see how it would be annoying for extended drying.

 

Mary Ann

[BettyPC]

Looking forward to reading the rest of your review. We are thinking about ALLURE for 2016! Never to early to read all about the ship! Thanks for doing this - it is a lot of work!

[Lionesss]

FYI

 

We have to fly to port so packing is kept very closely monitored so we do not take a hair dryer....but we always take extra hair ties, and place them over the on switch on the hair dryer to keep it on.

We of course take it off when done.

 

Nice start to your review.

 

Waiting for me

 

Sea Ya

[Cruisegirl6]

Appreciate you writing this!

 

I ask people a few questions because everybody has different answers if you don't mind:

 

1- Did you find your stateroom to get on the warm side during the night while sleeping?

 

2- What deck and stateroom number did you have?

 

I can't wait to hear from you about more of the Allure thank you.

[Loganpaulsmom]

Hi all and thanks for following. I have to say it wasn't the brightest idea for me to write this review with only a phone and iPad. I have no keyboard so it's like double the work.. lol

To answer some of your questions.

We were located in room 6618. I felt it was a great location. Equidistant between both sets of elevators and only 1 floor away from the infamous coke machine , for those getting the soda package.

As a matter of size think of it this say the average size of a reg. hotel room is 300 sq. ft. A reg. d2 balcony room is 182 sq.ft interior and I think 52 sq. ft. Exterior. So almost half as big..

Rooms were not overly cold. I tend to get lots of hot flashes and I am usually hot at night. I was comfortable. The shower water was always very hot though..

 

So let me continue day 1.. Prior to the cruise I had read about checking out the Spa the first day. Since it was on deck 6 of course I needed to go. I took a guided tour and have to say its impressive! It's 2 floors and gorgeous. There were stations and each one had a person telling you what their specialty was. I got hung up on the teeth whitening and she said if I booked with her that night she would throw in a free collegen eye treatment. I fell hook, line and sinker and said I needed to come back after I spoke to my husband. This was the first experience of " scam" I would encounter but unfortunately not the last.

I made my appt. for later that night.

While my hubby and my son checked out the pool I just had to unpack. I feel more settled that way. By the time I was done with that it was time for the muster drill. Which I though was done quickly. although it was out first encounter with a particular group from a particular country who thought they were the only ones cruising. ;)

Hubby Nd I checked out the windjammer. We are very fast because we left our group for a "minute".. Lol it was ok.. Nothing great.

I ran back for my teeth whitening appt. I say down and if was there that the girl informed me that for $149 this would last 3 weeks but for $285 I could use this stuff for a month and my teeth would keep for " up to" 4 years. I politely declined. However, I did make a massage appt. for myself and my sil's mom for the next morning.

I left and met hubby and my other family members and we registered the kids for kids club.

Just realizing that somehow we missed sail away. Lol

We had all these delusions of what we were going to do first night but after being up since 2:00am the day before we called it quits around 10:30 and headed back to our room.

We had picked up some pizza from Sorrentos. It was not good. I mean it's edible And it will do in a pinch but it's not something that I would run towards ( coming from Boston Nd Italian families maybe I'm just a pizza snob). Lol

We came back to our room all ready for us. Boris from Columbia was our steward. He was amazing! What a hard worker. This was the first time I saw what a hard long day these stewards have and it really made me Appreciate all his hard work during the week .

So that about wraps ups day 1.. Stay tuned for tomorrow.

Please feel free to ask me any questions.

[Cruisegirl6]

Cant wait for more and thank you for answering my questions, I also going through the changes need to sleep in the cold so I do get sleep.

[thjeepster]

We just got off the Allure yesterday!!!

 

We had such a great time!.....I would have to actually say that we had a better time on this ship than we did on The Oasis (not by much but just a little)!

 

Only major complaint was the constant showing of the Basketball Playoffs in all the major Venues!!!....I understand there are major sports fans out there that can't live a week without it....but they can watch it in their staterooms....or in the very least show it at a non-busy location!!!! I would have loved to have seen a movie at the Aqua Theater other than at 5pm....when the sun was out and hotter than hell.......we decided to take a look one night and saw at 10:30pm that there were only 10 people at the Aqua Theater watching the game!!!!!!!....Really?

 

Guess that's more important then showing a "movie under the stars"?

 

 

Other than that it was amazing!!!

[papaflamingo]

Good review. I will say, Royal Caribbean is not known for Pizza.... then again, not many great Pizza restaurants are known for their "cruises." :)

I haven't cruised Carnival since 2007, but have done 4 of them prior to that time. The pizza on Carnival was, IMHO, the best at sea! I do wish RCI could figure that one out. But I've done 18 RCI cruises to 4 Carnival, so I guess it really doesn't matter to me. :)

[Cruisegirl6]

I been on many carnival cruises since 07 and the past year they changed their recipe its more horrible than RC now.

I don't go on cruises to eat pizza, its a nice late late night snack to have and they offer me gluten free pizza also.

[BecciBoo]

The spa is notorious for this, and it's too bad you weren't able to review the comments on CC about the tooth whitening scam....truth is the Dentist is the only real place to get your teeth whitened.

 

After one and only massage way back when, I stay out of the spa. period.

 

Pizza has never been really good on either Carnival we went on nor RCCL. But you can order a specialty pizza with what you want on it, which we have done on Liberty and it was way better than the ones at counter...you might try that next time.

[clochette]

great start I look forward to reading more