Allure of The Seas 11/2 Review

[euphscott]

To do some housekeeping and introductions, I am a 43 year old male. My 35 year old wife and I decided to mix things up a bit for vacation this year. We are generally Disney Cruiseline, Carnival, and Princess fans. I have one lone Royal Caribbean cruise under my belt way back in the inaugural season of Radiance of the Seas. This trip originally was to go to a trade show in Orlando for my wife. So, I figured I could go to Disney World while she sat in a boring room listening to a drone of industry standards and product hawking. She was even good with this! I figured once that bit of business was resolved, we could find a cruise to board and off we’d go. Well, the conference was scheduled to end Sunday afternoon. That made things a bit complicated and lowered our choices. But eventually I suggested “what if we bailed on the last day of the monotony and go give the world’s largest cruise ship a try?” She seemed a bit reserved at that thought, but ultimately, we agreed and booked a Sunday sailing on Allure of the Seas.

 

So, once that bit was settled, I went into planning mode. Airline flights, rental cars, hotels, so many choices, so many options…I am an analyst at work, so this kind of thing is what I eat up and enjoy. I put together what I felt was a doable itinerary. But there was a small problem – I didn’t want to pay high fees to go to Disney World alone ( I AM a fan of the mouse and would have loved it outside of the cost ). My wife however is a Harry Potter goober (she tried to convert me – but I was that guy that fell asleep in the theater on a Saturday afternoon during episode #3 – no I can’t recall episode names! – and gave up on the franchise – I did try). SO, I dangled the “I’ll take you to Harry Potter if you skip your conference and spend time with me instead” line. It was not met with enthusiasm. But it did get a sparkle in her eye. I am a bit convincing when I need to be though – and ultimately, the Harry Potter carrot was too much to resist - so more planning!

 

Recall – Mouse fans here. If you have two or three days, I can get you around parks, schedule you a meal or three and help you get the most of your time. But Universal world now practically owned by the wizard lad? I had no clue…off to boards to learn what I needed to attack that land and get our money’s worth and my wife’s interests quenched. Oh and that world’s largest cruise ship thing. Much work required on cruise critic in order to learn how to handle this beast. Cabin choices, entertainment reservations (?), dining options, drink packages, oh MY GOSH!!! I was so good with my usual cruise lines – so much to learn! But as often happens, if you invest a little Cruise Critic time, you’ll be in good shape (if maybe a little dumber for sitting through a lot of smoking, chair hog, formal night, and tipping debates).

 

So, without further adieu, I’ll let you in on my vacation. I’ll do some comparisons for you, because that’s just what we as humans do (and as cruisers – we REALLY get involved in comparing lines), I’ll offend a lot of you (again – that’s what we do!) and make some of you shake your heads. But I do hope some of my observations are helpful and cause you to consider, because I did get a lot of good advice on CC and got some bad. Thankfully I had a bit of reasoning involved that helped me sort out the differences. Maybe I can help some – and of course if you have questions – I’ll do my best to answer honestly and openly.

 

Sorry – no pictures and no schedules. Those schedules take up way too much space coming home (and frankly, what I did one week out of my life won’t ever help me out in life again) and I suspect things change a good bit from week to week anyhow as weather and personalities change.

Edited November 13, 2014 by euphscott

[euphscott]

Thursday October 30

We live in the DFW area, so we boarded our flight from DFW to MCO with a 6:00 AM departure. With sleep in our eyes (although I am a morning person – my wife is NOT!) we pulled up to security and dropped off our bags hoping all was inside that was necessary (it was not!). The flight itself was pretty quiet. We had a cartoon for the movie as a big portion of the flight was families with young children heading to see Mickey (I was jealous). We picked up a taxi straight away after picking up our luggage in a hurry. We had no trouble getting that cab and were off in a hurry.

 

In order to take advantage of only two days of park time, we chose to book Royal Pacific resort on site ad that gave us early entry (well not on this day!) as well as front of the line Express passes. I have to say, that feature really is nice –for those doing Universal Studios – it does seem worth the cost. The resort was Disney like (I promised comparisons!) and was well maintained. We felt comfortable and happy to be checked in (sans lei ceremony ) . We picked up our tickets, dropped off our bags and walked into Islands of Adventure.

 

While I did do my homework, I never felt like I had a handle on what to do in these parks. So I admitted to my wife – we are kind of flying by seats of pants here, but I will get you to see the boy wizard. Somehow she trusted me and let me off the hook – we were on vacation and away from some pretty stressful jobs for 11 days! As I mentioned we walked into a park – and I honestly wasn’t sure which one we were in! So we grabbed a map and walked towards the first thing that caught our attention. We rode the Hulk roller coaster and just kept going in circles from there. We hit all the rides in that park we cared to hit (including the original Harry Potter ride with only a moderate 20 minute wait) by 3:30 or so. At that point we knew we had early entry and a full day the next for Universal, so we slowed down a bit, drank some butter beer (we paid how much for the Slurpee?), saw the magic wand show at Olivanders and helped her pick her favorite wand to buy. With all this accomplished we decided to take the Hogwart’s Express over to Universal (ahh – off my feet – thank you!!) and then a mad house of people wandering around Diagon Alley. This place made a Star Wars convention look tame. People all over the place wearing clothes of wizards, and make believe characters I could not name or recognize. But love does conquer all and I behaved myself (most of the time).

 

Eventually our blood sugar was waning and the 5:00 park closing was approaching. But wait – there are The Simpsons. Now this was a theme I could embrace! So we squeezed in one more quick ride before calling it a day. We dragged ourselves out and then wandered into Citywalk to find some dinner. No homework done here I was not well versed in our options. But pasta wafted from the doors of an Italian restaurant, so we begged for a table and slumped into our chairs like over worked vacationers. This is hard work (wasn’t this supposed to be a relaxing cruise vacation?) and we needed sustenance. Dinner did the trick, but we still had some rest to catch up.

 

We went to find some sunglasses for my wife since she had forgotten those (on a Caribbean cruise? No sunglasses? Whoops!) and I found a rash guard for some water activities later. Check and done – where is that bed…water taxi take us away! We did like City walk and found it nicer than Downtown Disney (although the construction I am hearing about will change that in a hurry). We crashed in our comfy beds, turned on some TV and don’t remember a bit of what we watched! Good night Orlando – vacation day #1 DONE!

[sjpsoccer14]

I look forward to reading the rest of your review. Great start!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Cruise Critic Forums mobile app

[euphscott]

Friday – October 31

Halloween at Universal Studios. I expected much different than we got. But that is not all bad. We took the early water taxi to the entrance of the park and used our early time to get to see The Minions. This turned out to be wise as the park suffered a power outage almost immediately after we finished. We walked back to Diagon Alley, but due to the outage nothing was working. More wizard wanna-bes everywhere – but this IS love. And that meant I waited in line until power came back on – which was an hour and a half later! She loved it – the ride was ok from my perspective, but since I did not know the story – it was just a fun ride. I probably lost a lot in translation! The rest of the day was spent riding all the rides around the park. While I did not hate things, it was not Disney! I did feel like the rides were well done, but most of them designed in the same way (ride with 3D movies inside) so it became a bit predictable. However – I survived and am glad I’ve done Universal!

 

Being Halloween, the Horror Night event was scheduled for after the park closed. The park was not overrun with Halloween concepts, but the merchandise indicated this was going to be a big deal. And it was! We left the park at closing time and the line to get in with the new wave of visitors was ominous! But the staff kept things orderly it appeared and it seemed like the crowd would have a nice time.

My last observation about the Universal versus Disney thoughts is that the Universal employees were very good at their craft! Many of them seemed to really enjoy their job and we encountered some that went well above and beyond the call of duty. Kudos to the staffing there – I was very much impressed!

 

We went back to Citywalk and wandered into Pat O'Briens for dinner. We had the obligatory Hurricane and found some good food to eat as well with live piano music to keep us happy. Our feet were killing us, but we walked back to our resort, chilled out a bit and fell asleep – bring on the cruise – PLEASE!!!

[euphscott]

Saturday – November 1

We have some friends that live in Orlando that we met on a cruise a few years back. We’ve missed them greatly, so Saturday was going to be a day we spent with them! The husband of this couple now works for Disney, so he has access to some fun things, and we got to enjoy with him! We were fortunate enough to go see a preview screening of “Big Hero 6” which is the newest movie from Walt Disney Pictures. It is a 3D film that we gave a thumbs up. The film has lots of heart and probably going to appeal a lot to boys, but it does have mass appeal and should do well. After the movie we got to have pictures taken with the new characters and some goodies the studio was giving away.

We toured the Disney Vacation Club facilities as this was where our friend works. It was a fun experience to see Disney from the cast member perspective. We then went to visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios where I got a little Disney fix! And I later learned, my wife who does not make plans, conspired to give me a little of this, so I was surprised and reminded of why I love and appreciate her!

 

We had a nice dinner at Brown Derby (something I’d never done – so another new experience marked off) and we got Fast Passes to see Fantasmic – something new for my wife. The night was COLD for Orlando as it dipped into the 40’s. But we were bundled and survived the Florida version of an arctic blast!

 

Wait – I need to step back! We picked up a rental car at the Royal Pacific Hotel. Hertz is onsite there, so if you need to get a car, it’s a very convenient way to square that away. While on Universal property we had no need to park a car, so the cost of a taxi was cheaper than two days of rental car.

 

Anyhow – we returned home to our friends place and spent some fun time visiting. It was a nice way to end our first portion of vacation. Next – an EARLY morning wakeup (although thankfully an extra hour was granted due to going from Daylight Savings to Standard time).

[euphscott]

Sunday – November 2

SO, the downside to being in Orlando and your cruise ship located in Fort Lauderdale is you have to get there in a short amount of time. We toyed with the idea of flying to FLL the morning of embarkation (a 45 minute flight) but the cost was just extreme for the convenience. But with the time spent waiting to board, running through security, collecting baggage and finding a taxi, it just made little sense to us. So, that rental car we picked up at Universal was our one way ticket to Fort Lauderdale. The plan was to drop off my wife and luggage at the port, me drive the car to the airport and then taxi back to the ship. However, we were running up against the clock for a 24 hour car rental – if I dropped her off at the port, literally, it would cost me another block of time, so I dragged my wife to the airport with me to drop off the car. This worked out in our favor as the rental car company had a shuttle and the guy asked us our plans, told us to hop in and we were on our way!

 

For those new to Fort Lauderdale cruising, the airport and cruise port are technically part of the same facility, so transport time is merely a matter of minutes. The taxi ride likely would have cost both of us around $20, but we got a shuttle ride instead, so we saved a little there.

So, all those gyrations (and a 3 ½ hour drive by the way – at least one of us remained awake at all times!) netted us a drop off to the cruise port by 10:45. We met with porters to drop off luggage and then immediately walked into the security line to run our carry-on luggage through the screener. We had no contraband, alcohol, or live animals, so our march through the TSA minor leaguers was quiet and without incident. We then moved to a line to meet with Royal Caribbean check in staff. This moved quickly and within 10 minutes I believe we were checked in and had our room keys and charging cards (all in the same piece of baby blue plastic!). My wife was a bit appalled as my card was not actually gold to match my status. But it did have “Gold” printed on the card, which wore off to an almost unreadable state by the end of the first afternoon! I never did anything about it as I had no need to show off – but we did get some Diamond snobs remind us boldly their lofty status throughout the voyage. That’s ok guys, my mom loves me as much as your mom loves you – it’s all good! But I digress…

 

We immediately took our obligatory first picture of the cruise (does anyone buy those? They can’t be any good with harried looks on your face from getting to the ship and being poked, prodded, screened, asked if you’ve thrown up in the last 24 hours, asked for the credit card that you meticulously entered online ahead of time because you were assured it would save you time, and then told – you are checked in but you get to wait – smile please!). Anyhow – I thought this was a nice touch. After all, most other cruise lines make you wait forever in the lounge (yeah – like a hangar with cruise pictures is anything remotely comfortable or worthy of being called a lounge). The one exc eption is Disney. Their Port Canaveral terminal is the best of them all – hands down – no arguments please, you WILL lose!  So after a long wait (it was probably really only 30 minutes – but I am all checked in and photo’d – I want on there – I need to start eating - NOW!), most lines ask you to stop long enough for a picture you won’t buy before they let you on the ship. At least in the Allure boarding process, they got all the icky stuff done before they let you rest, think about what was to come and THEN whisk you off. It happened in a hurry for us. The higher priority folks did get to go and we saw them prance off to the front of the line, but shortly after, an RCI employee came in roused us from our nappage and moved us along to the gangway – rather quickly in fact. And in an instant, we were on board (cue angels singing, wafting of lovely smells, and vacation really starting). Well – that lasted for 3 seconds before I was asked if I needed to buy a drink package…Aaarghhh…

 

We found our way up to the Central Park district, by way of the Boardwalk – ooops, my first wrong turn! But we perused the Boardwalk for a few moments before realizing our real destination was not here. We wanted roast beef sandwiches. So we made our way to Central Park (only stairs my friends – this is our secret to cruise weight gain prevention – always take the stairs – which means sore calves for the first few days!). We found the lauded meaty goodness and concurred – good stuff – we’ll be back again. Although this was where we encountered our first bit of rudeness – I had two ladies cut in line in front of me, stared me in the face daring me to do something about it and I curled into the fetal position at the confrontation. Rather I figured I was on vacation, if they needed the food those 20 seconds faster than me, my wife could go on ahead, get our table and I’d survive. I did give an ugly look (or was that my normal face?) and moved on. But we found this a lot on this cruise.

 

First meal consumed, we began our discovery of the behemoth. It was a feast for the eyes for sure taking in the enormity and many amenities of this ship. It is very different from our previous experiences. We did pick up quickly our bearings (well – one of us did anyway) so finding our way around was not too daunting. Mental notes were made of foods to try throughout the week and clubs or bars to check later to see what sort of scene would develop.

 

We did the spa tour just to see how much of a mortgage we’d need to take for some pampering. The tour was the pushiest we’ve ever encountered. And the prices seemed to have gone even higher than the normally obscene pricing the Steiner folks require for their sales pitch, I mean spa services. We never returned once we convinced the pressure cooker attendants we did not know what our schedules or budget allowed just yet. Sad – it was a pretty spa. But paying 3 times the going rate at home for pressure to buy products you don’t need – no thanks – we’ll relax on our own!

By this time, we realized our cabin was open – so off we went to see ours. Normally it’s not all that exciting – but this cruise we were trying something new. We booked cabin 12323 – a Boardwalk view balcony, 4 from the end of the ship. And I tell you – it was a wise choice! Yes, you can hear some noise in the evenings with water shows, aqua shows, and other activities. But if you close your blinds (and this is the key – because the lights emanating from there at all hours are BRIGHT!!) meticulously (wife’s hair clip did the trick) you can let it go. But during the daylight hours, we got a lot of people watching with the Boardwalk and ocean views out the back of the ship beyond the aqua theater. We were able to watch part of our beloved Cowboys lose to the Cardinals from our balcony on the big screen below. Myself – I was exhausted, so I curled up on the couch and left the balcony open – the noise lulled me into a nap prior to safety drill.

 

Safety drill did occur at 4:30 – although at 4:15, security was knocking on our door making us get out – they meant business!! I was a little miffed at the 15 minute early insistence as I hate to be the first ones there, sitting and waiting forever for the drill that always brings out bad behavior and people talking over the announcements. This one was reasonably quick with a crazy wash your hands video included that really was kind of campy! It was still cold on deck from the Florida cold snap, but we were in the sun and on a cruise ship, so complaints were minimal. And then finally sail away! This ginormous vessel was moving – but only because my eyes told me so. I could not feel anything moving. But loud horns and people cheering led me to believe the land moving around me was really the ship pushing away.

 

We got cleaned up and ready for dinner. This would be our first foray into Royal Caribbean’s version of anytime dining. This first night was a mess. We showed up at 6:00 and waited a good while (35 minutes maybe) to get a table. Apparently they were only seating those with anytime dining reservations. I now understand the concept better, but the thought in my mind was that anytime meant we showed up differently each night – not the same time every night – that’s traditional dining to me! But alas we made it and were fed with plenty of time to go see Chicago.

 

Chicago was another nod to my wife. I did not really care. Although, I do give props to the live orchestra that backed the cast. That was my favorite part. The singing and dancing was of little real interest to me. I am told it was great. I was fighting sleep from an exhausting couple of theme park days and 4:30 wake up call to drive to the port on time. Tonight, sleep shall be wonderful…and it was! Good night Allure of the Seas.

[laedw]

I'm loving your review. Thank you.

[Lionesss]

Very detailed.

 

Nicely organized............

 

 

Waiting for more.

 

Thanks for posting.

 

Sea Ya

[Folk Singer]

Well thought out and interesting. thank you

[StarSong2001]

Please sir, can I have some more?

 

Leaving on Allure in 2 weeks (!!!) so very interested in the rest of your review.

[Mouse's Shadow]

Can't wait to read more.

[hutat]

You have my full attention! Subscribed!

[rodenboy]

Subscribed! Really interested to hear more!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[readytolose]

Great start! Thank you for sharing your vacation with us!

[VillaHappy]

I'm all ears, too! Get it? ;)

 

Can't wait for the rest of your review!

[PathfinderEss]

Enjoying your review, looking forward to more, please.

[JamesEM]

Looking forward to rest of your review, I was on the Allure the week prior to yours.

[SilkySal]

In March, we will be in the cabin just under yours, 4th from the end! Great to hear that you liked the views!;) Subscribed to hear more of your interesting review!:cool:

[MeandHer1968]

We were on this cruise also. . Cant wait to hear your opinion of it. . We loved it and had a great time. .

 

Sent from my SM-G900T using Forums mobile app

[StarSong2001]

Is there more to the story? :(