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My First Crack at a Review - Allure Aug 31-Sep 7, 2014

cruisinmama!

By cruisinmama!,
in Royal Caribbean International

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cruisinmama!

cruisinmama!

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Posted

Hi Everyone!

As an obsessive planner and the unofficial travel coordinator for all of our group and family travel plans the past few years, I have endlessly scoured the CC boards for info on each of my cruises. So, I figured that it was about time to “pay it forward” and write a review of my own. This will be my first review ever though, so bear with me and I apologize in advance if it is too much useless information. Also, being a mom with 2 little boys time to focus is at a premium, so while I will try to be as comprehensive as possible there will definitely be some things I will miss, but am happy to answer any questions that I can along the way. And for that same reason this review will obviously be from the perspective of a person cruising with little kids, so not all of it may apply to those of you traveling without kids and there are certainly things I won’t be able to comment on as I didn’t experience them (read = the shows). But, I will try to make it as universally helpful as I can :)

To that end, for those that don’t wish to read a play by play style review and just want the basics here is an overall synopsis of my thoughts on Allure:

 

 

The Ship

Beautiful. Awesome. Fantastic. A great ship for families, and between the Royal Babies program and the Baby Splash Zone one of the only ships we will consider until DS2 is out of diapers and able to enjoy the kids club and the regular pools. He is a serious water lover and it would just break my heart to make him sit there and watch all the other kids (particularly his brother) having fun in the pools and not letting him splash around as well. So that was a huge factor for us.

As far as how it compares to Oasis, we love them both but our preference is Allure simply for the slight difference in choices (Samba vs. Solarium, Rita’s vs. Seafood Shack and Chicago vs. Hairspray). Now, that being said, with Oasis going in for refurb soon and the show changing to Cats I am very curious to see what Oasis has to offer next year. And we are definitely curious about some of the other ships that have those 2 baby-friendly features, like FOS, but are worried we may be spoiled now. :eek:

With the boys our favorite spots were the Baby Splash Zone/Kids Pool Area and the Carousel. For our alone time our favorite places were Central Park and Vintages.

I will say that the ship is definitely showing her age however. We were on Deck 12 and there was a very noticeable musty/mildew smell in the rooms and hallways and obvious carpet stains all along the port side of the deck as if they had experienced a major leak or something. So, while she is still a beautiful ship, she is definitely ready for a little TLC.

 

 

Cabin

We had 2 connecting balcony cabins, 12294 & 12296. The location was great, close to the elevators and very little noise. It was port side and we were able to see each of the ports as we sailed in. We would not hesitate to choose this location again. For those wondering about bed location – 12296 had the bed by the closet and 12294 had the bed by the window.

 

 

Entertainment

I honestly can’t say much about this as the only snippet of a show we saw at all was the performance the Ocean Aria stars put on for the Crown & Anchor party. But, if they were any indication I imagine the shows were all great.

Music around the ship was good, and particularly fabulous in Central Park. I only wish it lasted longer as we spent a lot of our time there and were always disappointed when the musician packed up for the evening. I was also surprised at the lack of any kind of music around the pool area until the last sea day of the ship. I know Carnival always has a steel drum or Calypso band playing almost constantly during the day, and although I can’t remember for certain I sure thought Oasis did as well. But on this cruise there was literally no pool area music at all until the very end which I found surprising. Not really a deal breaker or anything, just something I missed since it makes hanging out at the pool feel more like a fun pool party and its absence was definitely noticed.

I also wish, simply from the perspective of a family with small kids, it would be nice if they would start some things a little earlier. We are early risers anyway and with 2 little ones that both still take naps, we missed out on a lot of the activities simply because they were mostly either during lunch, nap time or late night. Prime examples of this would be the Boardwalk – a place specifically designed with kids in mind, but the carousel doesn’t even open until 12:30 most days and the family festivals didn’t start until late afternoon. Now I definitely understand that lots of people don’t have kids, especially young ones, with them on a cruise so I certainly don’t expect everything to revolve around that by any stretch. However, if you are going to market yourself as such a family friendly cruise for those with young kids I think it would be nice if a little more thought was put into the timing of things so that those same families could enjoy some of the activities as well. Just my two cents…

 

 

Food

Other than the Character Breakfast we didn’t eat in the MDR at all on this trip and instead ate our way around the Allure at the specialty restaurants. Here is the synopsis of our thoughts:

 

 

- - Samba Grill: Ok. The food was fine, no complaints at all. Just not what I would call great and in retrospect I’d rather have spent that money for another dinner at Chops instead. One thing I will say – I had posted on the forums about kid friendly places to eat on the first night and Samba was one of the suggestions because it had dancers, music and a livelier atmosphere. Well, evidently for whatever reason RCCL has chosen to change the ambiance of Samba to something more refined/adult since that poster was there. While it was a very nice atmosphere, there was certainly no music or dancers and it was very quiet and refined and definitely geared more towards adults. It would have been a lovely place for a Date night dinner, but we felt very out of place with our baby and toddler.

- Chops: We were a little worried about Chops because of all the flurry of comments about the new menu. Having never experienced it before I can’t really compare it to what it used to be, but my husband and I thought it was great. In fact we ended up going an extra night. The Forest Mushroom Soup was possibly the best thing we ate on the entire cruise! It was phenomenal.

 

 

- - Central Park 150: The food was very good and the service was impeccable. The wine pairings were fabulous. And, as everyone else always says, the special Cucumber Martini was crazy-good. That being said, while we definitely didn’t regret going at all and are glad we experienced it I’m not sure it would be our first choice to go back. Now granted, our experience with a gourmet menu like this is very limited so maybe we are just too “mainstream” or uncultured for a place like this, but it just seemed like a lot of money to spend for the amount of food you received. Not that it wasn’t worth it – just that we would probably choose to spend that same amount of money on something else next time.

 

 

- - Giovannis: Fabulous. Ambiance was fantastic, as was the service. Food was quite good as well. A top notch place that we enjoyed twice.

 

 

- - Izumi: We originally had reservations to eat here, but long story short circumstances with our boys made a dinner out that night impossible. So, instead we ordered a bunch of stuff to go. Obviously that made the Hot Rocks experience a no-go, but the sushi and appetizers we got were phenomenal. My only complaint at all was that on Oasis Izumi was open for lunch and on this sailing it was only open for dinner which was disappointing. I would have really enjoyed grabbing some sushi for lunch instead of the usual Windjammer or Wipeout Café fare.

 

 

 

- - Vintages: We love Vintages. We ate an entire dinner here on our Oasis cruise, but this sailing we were only able to make it for pre-dinner appetizers/tapas. However, if we had had more time we would have gone back countless times as it is one of our favorite and most relaxing places.

 

 

- - Overall: We really enjoyed experiencing the various specialty venues, particularly Giovannis and Chops. However, there were also things we missed about the MDR experience as well and we look forward to going back to that experience on our next cruise in Feb.

As for daytime options, I do wish that they had better options available earlier. Not being someone who enjoys breakfast foods much it would be nice if they had some other options more readily available or opened up some of the lunch venues a little earlier as I usually just went hungry until after 11. Just my little aside….

 

 

Crowds

Just as you hear over and over on these reviews, RCCL does an amazing job of making a ship full of 6000 people seem uncrowded. The only places you will ever really notice crowds are in the Windjammer, at the pool on sea days (but you can still always find a chair), or at the elevators during peak times like dinner or heading to the gangway. Honestly, on every other cruise I have been on it has seemed more crowded than on Oasis or Allure even though the number of passengers was far less.

 

 

Overall

Overall we had a great time and would highly recommend sailing on Allure, particularly if you are sailing with little kids. There is just nothing else out there (except Oasis) with as many options for families with babies and toddlers as there is on this ship. And for that reason alone it is worth the price to us. The rest of what the ship has to offer is a happy and welcome bonus for us. That being said, when the boys are a titch older and DS2 is fully potty trained we will certainly take a look at what our other options are simply because that little milestone opens up a lot of cruising possibilities (and prices).

 

 

As for our final thoughts:

- - Very family friendly. An excellent choice for those with little ones, and one of the only options if they are still in diapers and you want some pool time

- Food - Overall good. Lots of options and quality is good. Although, as I said, I do wish they had more non-breakfast options earlier and that there was more variety available at lunch. Highly recommend Chops, Giovannis, Izumi and Vintages.

- Service - For the most part the service was quite good, and in some cases exemplary. The only negative that we noticed was that almost all of the MDR staff seemed *very* unhappy/surly when we went in for the Character Breakfast. Don’t know if they had just gotten out of an unpleasant meeting, or received bad news that morning or what. But it was extremely noticeable and it affected almost everyone we encountered. Literally, out of about 20 different crew members we encountered only one was actually smiling and friendly. It was very weird considering how nice the staff usually is. So… don’t know what was going on there….

- Ship - Ready for a little TLC and freshening up, but still a fabulous and beautiful ship. Tons of things to do and places to explore or just relax.

So that is the basic synopsis of our cruise for those of you looking for a quick review. If you want the nitty gritty details and specifics I will be doing more of a day to day review as well, complete with Cruise Compasses, Adventure Ocean Daily Compasses, pictures, etc. as soon as I can….. :)

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klfhngr

klfhngr

Posted
Posted

I'm on her in 4 weeks! Even though my 'little' ones are not longer little, I really appreciate the info., especially in regards to food :) They're well cruised boys, 16 and 22 (first cruise they were 3 and 9) and are looking forward to this one! Thanks again!

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Paulette3028

Paulette3028

Posted
Posted
Hi Everyone!

As an obsessive planner and the unofficial travel coordinator for all of our group and family travel plans the past few years, I have endlessly scoured the CC boards for info on each of my cruises. So, I figured that it was about time to “pay it forward” and write a review of my own. This will be my first review ever though, so bear with me and I apologize in advance if it is too much useless information. Also, being a mom with 2 little boys time to focus is at a premium, so while I will try to be as comprehensive as possible there will definitely be some things I will miss, but am happy to answer any questions that I can along the way. And for that same reason this review will obviously be from the perspective of a person cruising with little kids, so not all of it may apply to those of you traveling without kids and there are certainly things I won’t be able to comment on as I didn’t experience them (read = the shows). But, I will try to make it as universally helpful as I can :)

To that end, for those that don’t wish to read a play by play style review and just want the basics here is an overall synopsis of my thoughts on Allure:

 

 

The Ship

Beautiful. Awesome. Fantastic. A great ship for families, and between the Royal Babies program and the Baby Splash Zone one of the only ships we will consider until DS2 is out of diapers and able to enjoy the kids club and the regular pools. He is a serious water lover and it would just break my heart to make him sit there and watch all the other kids (particularly his brother) having fun in the pools and not letting him splash around as well. So that was a huge factor for us.

As far as how it compares to Oasis, we love them both but our preference is Allure simply for the slight difference in choices (Samba vs. Solarium, Rita’s vs. Seafood Shack and Chicago vs. Hairspray). Now, that being said, with Oasis going in for refurb soon and the show changing to Cats I am very curious to see what Oasis has to offer next year. And we are definitely curious about some of the other ships that have those 2 baby-friendly features, like FOS, but are worried we may be spoiled now. :eek:

With the boys our favorite spots were the Baby Splash Zone/Kids Pool Area and the Carousel. For our alone time our favorite places were Central Park and Vintages.

I will say that the ship is definitely showing her age however. We were on Deck 12 and there was a very noticeable musty/mildew smell in the rooms and hallways and obvious carpet stains all along the port side of the deck as if they had experienced a major leak or something. So, while she is still a beautiful ship, she is definitely ready for a little TLC.

 

 

Cabin

We had 2 connecting balcony cabins, 12294 & 12296. The location was great, close to the elevators and very little noise. It was port side and we were able to see each of the ports as we sailed in. We would not hesitate to choose this location again. For those wondering about bed location – 12296 had the bed by the closet and 12294 had the bed by the window.

 

 

Entertainment

I honestly can’t say much about this as the only snippet of a show we saw at all was the performance the Ocean Aria stars put on for the Crown & Anchor party. But, if they were any indication I imagine the shows were all great.

Music around the ship was good, and particularly fabulous in Central Park. I only wish it lasted longer as we spent a lot of our time there and were always disappointed when the musician packed up for the evening. I was also surprised at the lack of any kind of music around the pool area until the last sea day of the ship. I know Carnival always has a steel drum or Calypso band playing almost constantly during the day, and although I can’t remember for certain I sure thought Oasis did as well. But on this cruise there was literally no pool area music at all until the very end which I found surprising. Not really a deal breaker or anything, just something I missed since it makes hanging out at the pool feel more like a fun pool party and its absence was definitely noticed.

I also wish, simply from the perspective of a family with small kids, it would be nice if they would start some things a little earlier. We are early risers anyway and with 2 little ones that both still take naps, we missed out on a lot of the activities simply because they were mostly either during lunch, nap time or late night. Prime examples of this would be the Boardwalk – a place specifically designed with kids in mind, but the carousel doesn’t even open until 12:30 most days and the family festivals didn’t start until late afternoon. Now I definitely understand that lots of people don’t have kids, especially young ones, with them on a cruise so I certainly don’t expect everything to revolve around that by any stretch. However, if you are going to market yourself as such a family friendly cruise for those with young kids I think it would be nice if a little more thought was put into the timing of things so that those same families could enjoy some of the activities as well. Just my two cents…

 

 

Food

Other than the Character Breakfast we didn’t eat in the MDR at all on this trip and instead ate our way around the Allure at the specialty restaurants. Here is the synopsis of our thoughts:

 

 

- - Samba Grill: Ok. The food was fine, no complaints at all. Just not what I would call great and in retrospect I’d rather have spent that money for another dinner at Chops instead. One thing I will say – I had posted on the forums about kid friendly places to eat on the first night and Samba was one of the suggestions because it had dancers, music and a livelier atmosphere. Well, evidently for whatever reason RCCL has chosen to change the ambiance of Samba to something more refined/adult since that poster was there. While it was a very nice atmosphere, there was certainly no music or dancers and it was very quiet and refined and definitely geared more towards adults. It would have been a lovely place for a Date night dinner, but we felt very out of place with our baby and toddler.

- Chops: We were a little worried about Chops because of all the flurry of comments about the new menu. Having never experienced it before I can’t really compare it to what it used to be, but my husband and I thought it was great. In fact we ended up going an extra night. The Forest Mushroom Soup was possibly the best thing we ate on the entire cruise! It was phenomenal.

 

 

- - Central Park 150: The food was very good and the service was impeccable. The wine pairings were fabulous. And, as everyone else always says, the special Cucumber Martini was crazy-good. That being said, while we definitely didn’t regret going at all and are glad we experienced it I’m not sure it would be our first choice to go back. Now granted, our experience with a gourmet menu like this is very limited so maybe we are just too “mainstream” or uncultured for a place like this, but it just seemed like a lot of money to spend for the amount of food you received. Not that it wasn’t worth it – just that we would probably choose to spend that same amount of money on something else next time.

 

 

- - Giovannis: Fabulous. Ambiance was fantastic, as was the service. Food was quite good as well. A top notch place that we enjoyed twice.

 

 

- - Izumi: We originally had reservations to eat here, but long story short circumstances with our boys made a dinner out that night impossible. So, instead we ordered a bunch of stuff to go. Obviously that made the Hot Rocks experience a no-go, but the sushi and appetizers we got were phenomenal. My only complaint at all was that on Oasis Izumi was open for lunch and on this sailing it was only open for dinner which was disappointing. I would have really enjoyed grabbing some sushi for lunch instead of the usual Windjammer or Wipeout Café fare.

 

 

 

- - Vintages: We love Vintages. We ate an entire dinner here on our Oasis cruise, but this sailing we were only able to make it for pre-dinner appetizers/tapas. However, if we had had more time we would have gone back countless times as it is one of our favorite and most relaxing places.

 

 

- - Overall: We really enjoyed experiencing the various specialty venues, particularly Giovannis and Chops. However, there were also things we missed about the MDR experience as well and we look forward to going back to that experience on our next cruise in Feb.

As for daytime options, I do wish that they had better options available earlier. Not being someone who enjoys breakfast foods much it would be nice if they had some other options more readily available or opened up some of the lunch venues a little earlier as I usually just went hungry until after 11. Just my little aside….

 

 

Crowds

Just as you hear over and over on these reviews, RCCL does an amazing job of making a ship full of 6000 people seem uncrowded. The only places you will ever really notice crowds are in the Windjammer, at the pool on sea days (but you can still always find a chair), or at the elevators during peak times like dinner or heading to the gangway. Honestly, on every other cruise I have been on it has seemed more crowded than on Oasis or Allure even though the number of passengers was far less.

 

 

Overall

Overall we had a great time and would highly recommend sailing on Allure, particularly if you are sailing with little kids. There is just nothing else out there (except Oasis) with as many options for families with babies and toddlers as there is on this ship. And for that reason alone it is worth the price to us. The rest of what the ship has to offer is a happy and welcome bonus for us. That being said, when the boys are a titch older and DS2 is fully potty trained we will certainly take a look at what our other options are simply because that little milestone opens up a lot of cruising possibilities (and prices).

 

 

As for our final thoughts:

- - Very family friendly. An excellent choice for those with little ones, and one of the only options if they are still in diapers and you want some pool time

- Food - Overall good. Lots of options and quality is good. Although, as I said, I do wish they had more non-breakfast options earlier and that there was more variety available at lunch. Highly recommend Chops, Giovannis, Izumi and Vintages.

- Service - For the most part the service was quite good, and in some cases exemplary. The only negative that we noticed was that almost all of the MDR staff seemed *very* unhappy/surly when we went in for the Character Breakfast. Don’t know if they had just gotten out of an unpleasant meeting, or received bad news that morning or what. But it was extremely noticeable and it affected almost everyone we encountered. Literally, out of about 20 different crew members we encountered only one was actually smiling and friendly. It was very weird considering how nice the staff usually is. So… don’t know what was going on there….

- Ship - Ready for a little TLC and freshening up, but still a fabulous and beautiful ship. Tons of things to do and places to explore or just relax.

So that is the basic synopsis of our cruise for those of you looking for a quick review. If you want the nitty gritty details and specifics I will be doing more of a day to day review as well, complete with Cruise Compasses, Adventure Ocean Daily Compasses, pictures, etc. as soon as I can….. :)

 

Nice very personal review of what you experienced. I was on the Allure in June, and the Carousel was open each day at 10:30am. I know because I was on it at 10:30 some mornings.

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NeuroQueen

NeuroQueen

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Posted

Glad you had a great time. I have been on Oasis three times and I still dream of those cucumber martinis. They will also make them for you at Giovanni's and chops. My poor bar bill!!! It is disappointing that the Calypso band wasn't there daily. We were just on in May and they were there daily. I hope this isn't a preview of things to come. Carnival has been doing away with them as well from what I have read. Have fun on your next cruise.

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