Just off the Allure. Some observations, thoughts and experiences including quarantine

[hapster85]

Not that I saw. Personally, I would think twice about leaving an unattended towel for long periods of time if I was going to get charged $25 for it. Especially considering someone else might be looking to replace a $25 towel that they lost. As it was, my sunglasses disappeared by the side of the pool as I swam one day. I can't believe I didn't see someone take them as I was right there in the pool!

 

This is my second Oasis class cruise, I never experienced a time when we couldn't find an unoccupied chair near where we wanted to be and saw many unclaimed, unoccupied loungers even at noon on a sea day. We did however have a couple times where people were sitting in chairs with out stuff on them while we were in the pools, it was kind of awkward to go over and have to take your cover up off a chair someone was sitting on. We had this happen near the kids pools and again near the flow rider.

I'm guessing that the person who's towel went missing, would simply grab one off another unattended chair.

[easyboy]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Hope your daughter continue to be well and good luck on your other intended claims.

 

 

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[JamesEM]

Thanks for your input, I will be on the Allure in two weeks, please let us know how the insurance company handles your claim.

[shellden]

I dont blame you for not running to Dr, if I were at home I wouldn't run to Dr right away either. I may have self quarantined though due to Noro-virus popular on cruise ships. I bring my medicine cabinet (crazy) but Im ready for anything. So glad no one else got ill!! We have had to make trips in Medical on past cruises they are great and even check up on you. Also as far as insurance go for it, who are we to judge. Thank you for sharing

[TinyPinkBug]

A few more notes.

 

The solarium cafe is a great place for breakfast because it is so much quieter than Windjammers. We went straight to the solarium upon boarding to find open tables and a short line. The solarium was also open on the morning of disembarkation! We had an amazingly quiet, peaceful last meal on board the ship.

 

Park Cafe was our other favorite lunch spot, the salads are great. I only wish they offered at least one dressing that wasn't a creamy base besides just oil and vinegar. They should have something like a balsamic vinaigrette there.

 

I don't know how I missed this in the past and most of this sailing, but they have self serve ice water at the pool bar. The day I finally noticed it, they had one plain and one with oranges floating in it. I have been hauling my butt all the way to Wipe out or Solarium for water all this time wondering why they didn't have water closer to the pools.

 

The vendors in the covered artisan market in Labadee are very nice. But as soon as you walk near the back door, the outside vendors start trying to lure you to their shops. The outside vendors were so aggressive, we left and made all out purchases in the building. There was a nice wooden toy kids machete in the building for $8, when we looked at a lesser quality wooden machete outside, the guy wanted $30 for it! We just walked away. No one was really walking through the outside vendors while the building was full. I don't know if they realize they are scaring away their customers with their aggressive sales. Oh, and Nellies beach is a nice sandy but crowded beach in Labadee. The beaches on the other side are more rocky and have more waves. My son likes the rocks and waves better while my daughter liked the calmer sandy beach, so it is personal preference.

 

We did the dolphin encounter at Chankanaab though the ship. The encounter was a bit disappointing since the seas were rough making it hard for my kids and my short self not to float away in our life vests when big waves come in, taller folks didn't seem to be struggling at all. Our group was also too big, we couldn't hear the trainer and one of the dolphins didn't want to cooperate. This was definitely a YMMV activity with a lot of variables. Lockers were provided for free. Picture prices were outrageous. The included food was OK, the included drinks were good and the pool and small beach next to the pool were great! My kids had a blast going up to the swim up bar and ordering a soda, before it got busy. The sea lion show was funny. We didn't get to walk the park much but we had a great time in the area near the swim. We got $20 off during a sale and I think the price we paid was a good deal. I wondered in advance how they handled the transportation since the excursion included park admission. What they did was lined us up and put us in prepaid taxis around 10:30am Then we were told to meet back at either 2:00, 3:00 or 4:00 when we would be put in another prepaid taxi and taken back to port. We were surprised at how time flew and went back at 4:00!

 

There have been posts about more aggressive up-selling lately. We didn't experience this at all. We were not approached even a single time about purchasing any packages or anything!

 

Like others have mentioned, we also got coached from our dining room server about how to fill out the survey. It was very uncomfortable. On two separate occasions we were flat out asked by our server how we were going to rate them, and he would not allow us to avoid the question.

 

Pools were not always opened when listed on the daily schedule! One of the days I spent all day in the cabin with my daughter, I wanted nothing more but to go swim after she had gone to bed. The beach pool was scheduled to be open until 11:00 but when I went up at 9:30 every single pool was closed, although many hot tubs were open. I couldn't see any reason for all the pools be closed, none were emptied for cleaning and this particular evening the ship was very steady. I noticed the pool open at 10pm the following night when the ship was really rocking. We ran into this problem on the Enchantment a few years ago too, that time it was after noon on a sea day and the splash pad and pool were supposed to be opened at 11am but still were not and no one could explain why or was willing to make a call to find out why.

 

We did the meet and mingle. Out of 85 who registered, only about 20 showed up. Turns out many people in our roll call are reporting that they did not get their invite in their cabin. We got ours. The cruise director, Mitch, was hysterical giving out the prizes. Though, the prizes were more lame than I seen in the past and there was no random RC logo item handed out at the door but we still won a hat, a water bottle and a book since the turnout was so low. What was amazing was out of the 20 pple who showed up there was a lady there who it turns out lives just a couple miles from us in the same small suburb in upstate New York!

 

Embarkation was a mess! I am not going to go into too much detail because our embarkation was unusual because it was the same day as the ship's yearly Coast Guard inspection and I don't think it was an accurate portrayal of a typical day. The port workers were obviously stressed and there was extremely poor communication on what was happening. Passengers were annoyed and many were ignoring the workers because there were so many worker telling people to do different things. For example, staff insisted we sit EXACTLY were they told us and would not let us go to get my kids their wrist bands or go to the play area. a=/after waiting forever then waiting again in line still being told by the line workers were still couldn't go over to get the bands, we get to the front to embark and the lady at the front of the line told us we had to go back and get the kids bands and wait again. I said oh, no. 4 different workers insisted we were not to go get the bands, I was not going to start the process over again when I could just get them in kids club. We saw some other passengers get told by one employee to get into a certain line only to have another employee yell at them for not waiting. Then there were others who had managed to walk up and bypass the waiting going straight in line because the workers were busy trying to corral other passengers into waiting areas and couldn't keep up with the flow. At one point during check in, they made all the workers immediately stop working and walk away from the computers. I asked the agent if this was usual, he said he had never had this happen before. My husband was mad because he watched 5 other families come and go at the next counter in the time it took our agent to check us in. Half our sea passes were missing and needed to be reprinted, this happened last year as well. There was a message that my husband had been flagged to talk to a supervisor, it took about 10 minutes for the agent to figure out what it meant which was we were supposed to have direct boarding due to 2 disabled members of our group which we never even got instead it took us longer. It took us a half hour standing at the counter to check in! Like I said, I don't think this was a typical experience and wouldn't expect anyone else to have the same experience.

 

Disembarkation was a breeze, once we realized that the ship was turned around and the exit was through a side door of the dining room. Our bags were easy to find and the line moved along smoothly.

[BillOh]

I feel great thanks for asking. From what you said Royal Caribbean bent over backwards to help you and your family out even though your daughters unfortunate illness was in no way their fault. Some people are just never satisfied regardless of what you try and do to help them. Yes I do think you are being greedy .

 

And you feel the need to share feeling. :confused:

[Cuizer2]

Thanks, that is helpful information. I confess I didn't read the entire policy.

 

My daughter did NOT want to go to medical! She doesn't like going to the doctor and repeatedly told us she was feeling better. She did seem better as she was symptom free for the most of the second day and she was whining that we wouldn't let her go anywhere, but she woke up on the third day vomiting and was not happy when I dragged her down to medical as soon as they opened.

 

Given the above, I am going to have a hard time criticizing your delay. So, sorry, but I'm not going to do it. Instead I'll say this, hindsight is 20/20 (seem like a good name for a news program). The real question is, what would someone else do under the same circumstances without consulting a crystal ball?

[Cuizer2]

Im with Gloworm2 and with you TinyPinkBug. File the claim and I hope you get something back. Insurance companies are a blood sucking drain on humanity so you should milk them for all they're worth because they wouldn't hesitate to milk you.

 

If you really feel that way, don't buy insurance.

[DerekDun8]

Kids/family programming. Many great programs to enjoy. The Move It parade is fun, even the 3rd or 4th time around, even though I wish they would integrate some of the newer characters they have on board into the long running parade. Loved How to train your Dragon on Ice! I was excited to see Poppy and Branch from Trolls appear in two meet and greets! I am sure it has been discussed before, but it was great to see the balloon twisters and face painters return to the ship after having been gone for a period last year. They made my daughter a super awesomely impressive balloon dog on our last sea day! The carousel, FlowRider, rock climbing, minigolf and splash pad were all great, my kids especially loved the carousel and FlowRider this cruise. However the family activity schedule was horrible! There would be no kids activities/shows scheduled all morning, then at exactly 12:15 they would schedule 3-4 activities at the exact same time then nothing again until around 5 in the evening when most (not all) families with younger kids were getting ready for the 5:30 dinner seating. For example, one sea day there was nothing scheduled all morning but at exactly 12:15 they scheduled the family talent show, family art or science class, and the single performance of Let You Entertain Me which is the kids aqua theater show all at once. Then another day they scheduled the only 3D showing of the movie Trolls at 4:30, while also scheduling the Trolls meet and greet at exactly 4:30! You had to pick just one! It would have made so much more sense to schedule the meet and greet at 4:00 and had the movie at 4:30 following the meet or even having the meet immediately following the movie. Plus the kids movie easily ran into the 5:30 early seating. We missed a lot of programming we wanted to see because we just couldn't be in two places at once. I didn't keep the daily planner but having to pick and choose kids activities happened many times because of poor scheduling. We ran into this in a previous sailing but not to this extent.

 

My other beef with kids programming has to do with the kids clubs, AKA Ocean Adventure. Each day they would put out a planner with a list of scheduled activities which would sound great. Unfortunately, they either followed the activities loosely or not at all. When I asked about why they bothered putting out a list of events when they don't follow it, they said they try to but can't always follow it. It was our experience that they rarely followed it. My gripe is that Royal Caribbean has advertises themselves as being an autism friendly certified cruise line, but anyone with experience with autistic kids knows that sticking to the written schedule best as you can is extremely important to these kids, they would be better off just not putting out a schedule if they had no intent on following it. I also think they play way too many elimination games for such a diverse group of kids, I saw kids struggling with the rules because of language barriers. Of course this is a topic that everyone is going to disagree on, kids who are good at these games probably had a blast winning dozens of little Inkies, but kids at the bottom of the age range who have never heard of these games or couldn't understand the rules because of language barriers causing them to get eliminated right away every single game probably hated it. Kids programming is an area where Royal Caribbean could make huge improvements with very little effort and almost no cost.

 

I was on this cruise with you and I totally agree about the Family activities schedule. Most of them were at the same time. So we missed out on some things, but that being said...We had an absolute fantastic time.

[TinyPinkBug]

I forgot a couple things.

 

There was a post here before about mattress toppers. The beds in our rooms needed to be replaced. They are firm but even worse, the beds are sagging so bad that you can see it by just looking at the mattresses. One of the mattresses, you could feel a spring poking you! We had two rooms, and interestingly one room had the memory foam mattress toppers on the beds and the other did not. We ended up moving one of them to the other room to deal with the spring problem. Also, we have used the sofa beds in the past and were surprised at the comfort, but not in this room. It actually felt so hard that we wondered if they had put a board in the sofa to deal with sagging. My son ended up sleeping in bed with us because the sofa was so hard. We requested more mattress pads, one for the sofa and another for the bed (the pads are twin size). The room attendant said she would see what she could do, but it took 2-3 days to get another one, and I think a member of group had mentioned it to guest services when they called to ask how our cruise was.