Cruiser Formerly Known As Cheapo Dad's Trip Report on Odyssey of the Seas Sailing to A Minus B Plus C Plus H Islands

[harryfat1]

11 hours ago, Biker19 said:

They don't because that is dynamic number - they can change based on number of tables and arrangements of those tables, but figure just over 1/3 of 100% capacity - they can seat everyone turning over the tables 3x. In some articles on the "regular" Q class dining venues are listed at about 430 seats (x4 venues) or about 1700 in the whole MDR.

Thanks for the info.  I want to talk more about the dining room spacing but I don't think anyone else cares so I will move on.

 

But just a quick question on turning over 3X, that only applies to my time dining, right?  Set dining only has 2 seatings (say 5:30 and 8 PM) so those tables are only 2X?

[harryfat1]

6 hours ago, hucifer said:

Love love LOVE that show. It's what made me obsessed with cruising when i was a wee lass. I couldn't wait to board a ship and play shuffleboard (which seemed to be the only activity they ever talked about).

Throw them overboard?

 

Edited to add: Any wagers on how many people are going to ask me if I'm being serious? 🙄

I was going to remind you that RCI would charge you $10 per hanger (similar to the $25 beach towels) that you misplaced until you said you weren’t serious…🤪

 

As for the original Love Boat TV show, Princess hired the actor Gavin MacLeod (Captain Stubing) as their salesperson for a few years after the TV show went off the air as people still associated the Princess Cruises as part of the Love Boat.  I remembered flipping through the old Princess travel brochures in the past with his face in the front.

 

[harryfat1]

Onward with the trip report:

 

+++++++++++++

 

By then it was close to 5 PM and we wanted to be on the top deck for the sailaway party.

 

Made it to deck 15 and I am probably in the 0.1% minority in voicing this complaint – I am not a fan of these protective glasses.  They get in the way of taking pictures  To take pictures, you need an unobstructed view.  Taking pictures through any glass is not good.

 

Don’t know why they have them in the Odyssey.  Maybe they have them on all the Quantum class as I assume they serve to protect the folks from the wind during sailing?  I know they didn’t have them on the top decks on the Navigator.

 

 

Especially if you try to take pictures on an Alaska cruise, these glasses would be a major distraction. For Alaska, you want a wide deck area with no glass in the way to see the scenery.  

 

 

 

 

I know the Quantum and Ovation does Alaska run annually, I hope they don't have glass partitions like the Odyssey or all the photographers will be unhappy.

 

As such, I highly recommend people go down to deck 5 for the sail away as there are no glass barriers if photography is important to you.  But my older son and wife wanted to be where the action was on the top deck as they wanted to be at the dance party so that’s where we ended up.

 

 

 

[GimmeOcean]

8 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

Maybe they have them on all the Quantum class as I assume they serve to protect the folks from the wind during sailing?

Anthem definitely does. I agree, annoying. I figured they were to keep idiots from sitting their kids on the railing.

Edited January 27 by GimmeOcean

[harryfat1]

My older son and my wife went to deck 14 for the sailway party while my younger son and I went upstairs so you folks get a bonus sailway coverage from 2 perspectives.

 

First, we will run through my pictures and then switch to hers afterward, or else it becomes too confusing if I insert the pictures in the exact order they were taken.

 

The pilot ship out there chilling waiting for us to cast off

 

 

 

We cast off a little after 5 PM.  Per the port schedule I read online, we were supposed to be the last ship to sail away that day but for whatever reason the other Princess ship and the Viking ship were still in port when we sailed away.  I want to say the Disney ship was also still in port when we left even though they were supposed to leave 1 hour before us but they could have sailed before us.  I didn't make it to the far Aft to check but I know for sure the Princess and Viking were still there next to us when we cast off.

 

 

Maybe they are waiting for some delayed flights?

[harryfat1]

7 minutes ago, GimmeOcean said:

Anthem definitely does. I agree, annoying.

Yeah, same partitions.

 

Wow.  I wouldn't be happy on glacier day in Alaska if I had to deal with these.

[harryfat1]

Hanging out with my new BFFs on deck 15 trying to position the phone lens in between the openings of the glass partition to get a clear photo

 

 

[harryfat1]

The police boat was out in the middle of the harbor directing traffic. 

 

I could hear him over the boat's speaker system telling the small boats to move out of the way when these mammoth cruise ships were coming through.  Don't want a 165K Gross Ton ship smacking into you....

 

There's the yellow water taxi making a run between Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood Beach (going as far as Margaritaville, where we were yesterday)

 

 

Gotta love the Samsung zoom lens.  No need to bring my SLR to the Caribbean anymore like in the old days

 

The police boat with 3 motors.  Probably can go pretty fast

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Speaking of police boats, my favorite was from San Pedro back in August.

 

The dude was doing donuts out in the bay waiting for the Navigator to sail out to the Pacific. Let me drop in a few pictures from that as not everyone here was on the Navigator report

 

This is him starting.  Oh, notice how open the deck is for the Navigator with people just hanging their arms out and taking pictures?

 

 

Running next to us

 

 

 

See the donut he just made to the right?

 

 

In the process of making another one

 

 

Got as far as the lighthouse before turning back after we had gone past the barrier and made it to the open sea.  

 

It must be a fun job to escort these cruise ships out to sea and get to do donuts and not even have to pay for the fuel

 

[harryfat1]

For the Odyssey, we needed to back out and then swing the ship around to head out of the channel.  The popular side to be for Port Everglades sail away is on the port (left side) as that’s where the people are as they wave to say goodbye as you sail away.

 

That's also the same side where the webcam is as you wave to your friends online 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Huh.  Correction to what I said earlier I didn't know if the Disney ship was still in port.  They were.

 

Didn't realize I had a picture of them still in port when the Odyssey made a turn to head out in the channel.  I took so many pictures on this cruise that I can't remember what is what.

 

 

[harryfat1]

Urban legend has it this was the house of a wealthy family who bought a Flowrider for their son when he was younger and he liked the sport. 

 

After a while, he stopped using the Flowrider and the family then planted some trees to “hide” the Flowrider from thousands/millions of cruisers sailing by daily/weekly/monthly to take a picture of their backyard.

 

Not sure how much truth is in this story but you definitely can see the Flowrider behind the attempted camouflage effort. 

 

 

 

Zoomed in and you can see the Flowrider was not running when we sailed by

 

 

[harryfat1]

More Port Everglades pictures as we make our way out of the channel

 

 

 

 

Skyline of Fort Lauderdale

 

[harryfat1]

One thing I like about cruising is there’s a sense of camaraderie between you and your fellow passengers as 5,000+ of you are starting and ending a vacation together as you sail off on each voyage. 

 

Nowhere do you feel that on any land-based vacation as on any given day, many people check in/check out of hotels.  You don’t feel that “togetherness” bonding as you would in sailing away on a cruise ship as everyone experiences day 1 to day X together.

 

I think the people on the other side feel it as well because other than cruise ship sailings, how often do you wave goodbye to cars/trains/airplanes of total strangers leaving town?  Maybe if you have a loved one on that vehicle, you will waive but to wave to total strangers, I can only think of cruise ships receiving this special treatment.

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Another one of those “not really a bucket list per se but a fun thing to do” items is to go to the beach area the day before my cruise and camp out there for 1 plus hour to take pictures/video all the ships leaving port the day before.

 

 

 

Classic Fort Lauderdale beach shot as we start to sail into the open waters

 

 

 

A few more pictures of the area and then we are done upstairs.  I like the Port Everglades sail away but it’s too short compared to other sail aways like San Pedro where it takes a while to get out to the open seas.  For Port Everglades, it’s a fast exit for a couple of minutes and you are done.

 

In case it's not obvious, I love the sail-away scenery from the ship looking ashore.  Waving to people on shore as you sail away and taking pictures of everywhere and everyone is why I like to go on cruises

[harryfat1]

 

 

[harryfat1]

Last 2 pictures for the night and then I'm done for the day. Tomorrow I will drop in the pictures from my wife's phone on the sailaway party downstairs

 

To demonstrate the zooming capabilities of a Samsung phone, you can see the moon in the sky from the sailaway picture.  If zoomed in to the max, you will get a moon shot – from a cell phone. Let that thought sink in for a while.

 

See the moon in the sky?

 

 

Zooming in on my cell phone

 

[rncruiser]

2 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

Urban legend has it this was the house of a wealthy family who bought a Flowrider for their son when he was younger and he liked the sport. 

 

After a while, he stopped using the Flowrider and the family then planted some trees to “hide” the Flowrider from thousands/millions of cruisers sailing by daily/weekly/monthly to take a picture of their backyard.

 

Not sure how much truth is in this story but you definitely can see the Flowrider behind the attempted camouflage effort. 

 

 

 

Zoomed in and you can see the Flowrider was not running when we sailed by

 

 

To add to the legend, I had heard that the owner of the house is the man who invented the ZipLoc bag. 

[perfect match]

On 1/26/2024 at 12:46 AM, harryfat1 said:

By then it was 3 something so we headed back to the cabin since they had promised the suitcases would be delivered.  Of course, they were not delivered.

 

OK, never mind.  Not going to wait for these to be delivered.  Just DIY as I know where the luggage is – just down the hallway less than 30 feet away.  So we went down the hallway and just grabbed our luggage from the group and brought it in to unpack.

 

In not watching Mark’s YouTube video on the speedy unpacking hacks, we were just going about it the old school way in slowly unpacking the shirt-by-shirt method into the closet.

 

If we see our luggage anywhere in the hallway on boarding day we always grab it ourselves as soon as we see it and get it into our room. That way we can get unpacked right away. 
 

23 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

Bonus coverage for the night before I log off.

 

Saw the full moon tonight from the parking lot leaving work tonight. Just had to take a picture of the moon.

 

 

Crazy zoom from the Samsung cell phone. I will have more moon shots from the cruise later on

 

 

Nice photo from your Samsung! I think my iPhone can do better at zooming in than I know how to make it do, I’m working on my photography skills and have made some progress but I still have a way to go in the learning process. 
 

5 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

Mark,

 

Thanks for the pointer on the PDF copy of the compass.  I’m sure many people will benefit from this.

 

I am a hard-copy kind of guy.  I print stuff out at work when my colleagues just read from the computer.  I am old school in that I need to highlight/write on a piece of paper before my fuzzy old-man memory can retain the info.

 

So I prefer hard copies to touch/feel it.  In the old days, we used to get multiple copies of the compass, we would mark up one copy with highlighter and pens the night before so we could have a game plan for the next day.  Then I take a clean copy home and scan those as a front page of my daily trip report.

 

But the younger generation, like my sons in college, they never print anything out.  They can just read from the monitor and tablet.  I can’t do that…

 

Harry, I can totally relate to you liking the hard copies and even use them the same way as you do. I can manage reading from my iPad but my iPhone, not so much. My aging eyes just can’t manage as well on the smaller screen, and I find writing notes or highlighting to be very helpful. I’m glad we have options. 

[Biker19]

13 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

But just a quick question on turning over 3X, that only applies to my time dining, right?  Set dining only has 2 seatings (say 5:30 and 8 PM) so those tables are only 2X?

Yes, two traditional but the 3X was meant for the MDR as a whole. With the current set up of MTD (starting at 6:30 or later), they may get 2X turnover of tables if that, but it is only one part of the MDR. Back in the days of Dynamic Dining on Q class, the plan was to have 3X turnover of tables.

[Jovocrtt]

Loving your trip report...No one does these any more! Beautiful pics too...and I am a seasoned cruiser and Diamond (finally) member RCCL...

[harryfat1]

19 hours ago, perfect match said:

Harry, I can totally relate to you liking the hard copies and even use them the same way as you do. I can manage reading from my iPad but my iPhone, not so much. My aging eyes just can’t manage as well on the smaller screen, and I find writing notes or highlighting to be very helpful. I’m glad we have options. 

This dates back to my college days when I would highlight my textbooks for passages I wanted to remember.  Think the brain has been hard-wired to only remember things after I highlighted it.

 

The current generation is different.  Many young adults don't even own a printer.  

 

Not that I'm complaining but my boys' college classes don't require them to purchase textbooks anymore.  I thought I would need to pay like $1K+ per year for their school textbooks like the old days but almost all of their classes have free digital books.  Only English classes do they need to buy novels as required reading. 

 

So the younger generation won't be as paper-dependent as us old folks.

[harryfat1]

8 hours ago, Jovocrtt said:

Loving your trip report...No one does these any more! Beautiful pics too...and I am a seasoned cruiser and Diamond (finally) member RCCL...

Thank you for your kind words.

 

Yes, back 10 years ago when I started the Cheapo Dad series, there were many trip reports here on CC. I learned a lot from those writers.

 

Nowadays I think people just use YouTube to talk about their cruise experience instead of using the CC medium and if they are good enough at YouTube, the pay from YouTube is much better than CC as I only get unlimited iced tea coupons at Windjammer from CC for writing these series...🤑

[harryfat1]

As promised, here are some photos from my wife's phone on the sail-away party on deck 14:

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

So with the sailaway party behind us, it was time to start doing the cruise-related activities at 5:30.

 

Since we were at the top deck, it was a quick walk over to the SeaPlex and try the bumper cars.  Now these are not the baby bumper cars similar to the Bugs Land at Disneyland.  The RCI version is much faster/longer than the kiddie version.

 

When you get hit, you will feel it.  We had seen people’s glasses get knocked off from the violent head-to-head bumps.  When you get ht had, the lights lid up of your car lights like a star from a Christmas tree.

 

It wasn’t very crowded as it was dinner for first seating as we stood in line at 6 PM. Well, we still had to wait close to 30 minutes to get on the ride but the line got considerably longer as the cruise went on.  Especially since we were jammed packed at 125% capacity.

 

 

 

 

They had around 12 cars out at any given time.  If you are too young/small, you can’t drive by yourself and need an adult.  Most cars I saw were single riders.

 

While waiting, I timed the interval on how long each session was and it was around 3.5 minutes.  Add in the time to get people off and on, they can process around 12 to 15 people (double riders) every 7 minutes or so. 

 

They need to learn from Disneyland in terms of efficiently loading people on the rides.  They should be counting people ahead of time before the ending of the current run so everyone that will be on the next batch is stationed off on the side and as soon as one session was over, the next set of riders can rush out to the empty carts and less wasted time for the workers to count after the previous group has left the floor.