Review: Allure's Thanksgiving At Sea: Suite Class, Smiles, & Steerage

[denamo]

Thanks for your review.  Hope the app can work better to be able to book entertainment when we're on the Allure for a New Years eve cruise. 

 

The one aspect of your review I found most disturbing was AO.  That is totally unacceptable to expect children to sit on a spot for two or three hours.  So wrong!

 

Sorry for your bug bites.  Like you, we are experienced cruises and rarely will book a ship's excursion.  Sounds like yours were less than desirable.  Glad your friends trip to the ruins was good.

 

As a fellow Texan, hope to meet you and your family on a cruise one day.  It would be wonderful if Royal would sail the Icon out of Galveston.

[Biker19]

8 hours ago, Bailey & Sophie said:

I thought the concept was walk in and dine when you want to.

You can do that, but depending on ship, capacity and time of day, you may need to wait a while for that flexibility.

[SummerBeee]

Thanks for such a great review. As others have said your family is beautiful.

 

Post #45 I think mentioned concierge lounger attendant Dexter. He is now a Royal Genie. I’ve sailed in a GS once (January 2020) and he was our attendant. I sailed on Allure the week after Thanksgiving and saw Dexter at the Ice Show with star class guests.

 

I hate that your suite experience wasn’t the norm. 

[zanydoc]

RCCL Fan-Well, you said you’d like to hear from some other parents who had a different experience on this cruise-so here goes! Now, granted we have a somewhat different family make up than yours...one 16 year old son and one 89 year old handicapped mom, all vaccinated. 

 

We are Diamond and took this cruise for the double points to help us get to Diamond Plus along with an upcoming Christmas cruise on Harmony-which will put us at 177 points, yippee! We stayed in an amazing balcony accessible cabin on deck 11. Lots of room for all four of us and nice and close to the elevators for easy access for Mom. We had a small hiccup trying to board as for some reason they didn’t have the images of our vaccine cards which I know I downloaded...so they had to retake the pictures of our cards and the ipad camera our agent was using was having a glitchy issue. It only delayed us about 20 minutes though. Also, my Mom had to go in a specific line to go through security with all the other peeps and their mobility devices which a was another 10 minutes or so-then she got a pat down, too...she said it’s the most excitement she’s had in years, lol! 

 

We got on board and my husband immediately got on the App and made us show reservations for OceanAria, Ice show, Mama Mia, and comedy show all the while walking to our muster station which was on deck 4 of the theater. We watched the short demo and then they scanned each of our setsail passes and that was it. Muster and show rezzies done. My husband and son then went directly to the activities desk on 15 by the Flowrider and signed the waivers and got the bracelets so they’d be good to go for Flowrider the moment it opened...Yes, that is where they would then spend hours on end while my Mom and I would enjoy Diamond day drinking and trivia, Lol!  We reconvened for lunch at Park Cafe and would continue to have lunch there pretty much every day of the cruise-wonderful salads and paninis and desserts-loved it! We did have lunch one day in the Solarium Bistro which had a little more variety. We totally avoided the Windjammer for the first time ever in cruise history and I didn’t miss it one bit. 

 

We ate in the MDR every night. I thought we had late seating, but it turned out that my Mom was the only one who did and the rest of us were down for my time-not sure how that happened, but it was the only other glitch that happened the entire cruise. After our first lunch, I looked at our seapass cards and realized the error and went to have it fixed in the dining room. They ended up putting us all on MTD and then I made reservations for 7:45 every evening. We had the same terrific head and assistant waiter every time and we even went an hour early one evening because it conflicted with Mama Mia and they sat us at a different table in the same section, so we could have the same staff as another party was at our table. I agree with you that the dining room food and service was excellent and was also very happy to see the soufflé.  We mentioned to our assistant waiter the first night that our favorite rolls were the ones with the pumpkin seeds and from then on out they were at the table every night. She also memorized all of our names and new them all the 2nd night-that hasn’t happened for us in many years. It was a nice touch. 

 

I did notice the VERY big difference in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated venues as well as treatment. I can see why they are doing it, but I also see why it made you feel like you were in “steerage”—not cool. The only actual weird experience we had with it was when we actually tried to sit in an unvaccinated area in the Ice skating show and were told to go sit in a vaccinated only area.  We tried to sit in the very top row right when you walk in because my mom is handicapped and can’t go on all those stairs and didn’t want to sit on her rollator and they told us we had to move after we had already sat down. The top row on the vaccinated side was already full of people. So, she ended up sitting on her rollator and we were sitting on these funny regular chairs that they pulled up. Not sure what that was all about, but musical chairs it is! 

 

We enjoyed the cruise immensely! I almost feel like we were on 2 completely different cruises as our experiences were so polar opposite. I would definitely have felt the way you did especially since you spent so much extra to have that suite and all the benefits it is supposed to have. I think the big difference is that we only had a party of 4 and we were all vaccinated. We also didn’t have a child that was trying to enjoy Adventure Ocean. It used to be his favorite place and we’ve had nothing but good experiences in there-so sad that they’ve taken these draconian measures.  I hope that changes soon.  

 

Oh, and by the way-we did take a cab to West Bay and did not have a good experience there that day.  Water was also brown and murky as well as rough. And the vendors were out in full force bothering us all day. One woman even started massaging my husband against his wishes and continued to do so even after repeated request to “please stop” finally escalating to “stop touching me” and culminating with him running back in to our roped off area for a reprieve-I mean, Yikes! 

 

Thank you for your review and all your input. I didn’t know about the Margaritas at Sabor and am grateful for that info! Hopefully your next cruise will go much more smoothly and Merry Christmas!