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Overall thoughts: We had a great cruise this week on OY. It was great downtime and super relaxing, making the blog not too interesting, but much needed for our family. The kids were working like crazy with school stuff leading up to Christmas break, and Hubby and I have been dealing with a lot too over the month of December. It was nice to take some time to breathe and enjoy each other’s company this past week. OY is a beautiful ship! Modern, clean, friendly staff just about everywhere. It has the activities of QN class that my kids like, but also some nice upgrades to dining that are missing on QN class. It’s a “compromise” ship for our family between QN class and OA class. While not perfect, we would gladly sail this ship again. Like with all sailings, you just have to do your research, set your expectations accordingly, and you will have a great time.

Thoughts on our cabin: We had 8724 this week. It’s the middle loft on Deck 8. As some of you know, I love the GLS. I think I like it even better than than Star Loft. I fell in love with this cabin on Anthem and this one on OY is identical. The one thing that is different between this GLS and the one on AN is that the balcony door opens like a normal door. The whole family loved this change! It is so much more convenient than the normal sliding door. The mirrored glass is also a very nice touch. You do some some noise bleed from 270 in this room. We can hear music whenever there is something going on in 270, much like the ATS on Oasis class. If you are travelling with young kids, or if you go to bed early, this is something to keep in mind. The other minor complaint from the freeloaders about this cabin is that the downstairs lacks a vanity area. That is what puts the Star Loft over this cabin. The Star Lofts on OA class have a vanity area on both levels. But overall, I love this room and would not hesitate to book it again.

Before dinner, we met Sergii for a few rounds of Bumper Cars. The times for Bumper Cars for this cruise have not been the best. They have all been over the dinner hours. For example, 5-7:30pm; 6-8:30pm, etc. so we waited until tonight since it’s more casual tonight. We wrapped up our last dinner at Giovanni’s Kitchen. Another great meal, but sadly SC food coma has started to set in and we could not finish our meals tonight. @LandstromCruise, I tried the lasagna but I did not love it. The taste was good, but it had way too much cheese for my liking.

Now at FLL waiting for our flight. Very smooth disembarkation. Sergii came to our suite to pick us up around 8:10am. Walked us all the way down to the luggage claim area in the terminal. That is where we said our goodbyes to Sergii. Lyft was $18.80 for an XL and took about 5mins for it to show up. It was not mass chaos as it normally is in Miami. FLL is crowded today but the crowds are moving. From Suite to gate, it took about an hour and twenty minutes.

Thanks Justin!! You inspired me, I figured it out. I owe you one! These are a few of my favorite things

I think that is everything. If I left anything out, please ask. It was great meeting @WannaCruise and @recogneyes this week! I always love to meet others in this blog community. We should be sailing with @recogneyes again in March, so that is good, Hubby will have more company at the FlowRider! Next up for us if all goes well is the Icon inaugural! That one will just be Hubby and I. As for blogging, I sure those of us on it can do something joint Thank you all for following along with us this week and for the well wishes for my Dad.

Final thoughts on our Genie: Our genie for this sailing was Sergii. In pre-cruise communication with him, I could already tell he was very thorough. We had a fantastic week with Sergii! He is a former loyalty ambassador so he has a lot of knowledge about the brand. Sergii is kind, personable, and he listens very attentively in conversations. There were times this week when something was mentioned by one of us in passing and the next thing you know, Sergii either made it happen, or got it for us. There were many times this week he went above and beyond. He reminds me of the “old school” genies, before the pandemic, before the cutbacks, where genies still went the extra mile. If anyone gets Sergii in the future, they are in good hands with him.

Thoughts on Star Class on OY: If you can get a good price on OY, then SC on this ship is good value. The reason being that there are only 5 SC cabins in total on this ship. That means that if each of those cabins were at full capacity, you would only have a maximum of 22 SC guests on any given sailing. I believe that gives the genie more flexibility in terms of getting reservations for you. Not as many SC guests to work around. Because there are only 5 SC cabins, there are only 2 genies on this ship. As I mentioned before, there are 2 pairs of loft attendants as well, one pair for the port side lofts, and one pair for the starboard side lofts. Our attendants were Tristan and Ronald on this sailing, and they were fantastic! Very friendly and personable. We had zero issues getting into the dining times, activities, and shows that we wanted. There were even a few times this week that we changed plans and it was never an issue. In contrast, just 9 months ago on HM, we could not move thing. Again, I think this is partially due to the low number of SC guests on OY.

Early morning here in Puerto Williams but the weather has cleared and it's too beautiful of a morning to let it uncaptured.

Beautiful views of Patagonia this morning. So many glaciers.

chiming in about playmakers; J and i tried it while aboard odyssey. we sat there for almost 10 minutes in an empty playmakers and finally left because it was silly to feel like we’d been so thoroughly ghosted still haven’t had anything from playmakers except for the campfire cookie that i got to go on symphony that rainy day we were in roatan… it was quite good!

We are going on our first ever back to back cruise in three weeks! Two 7 nights! We are on Wonder (if you hadn't guessed that by title) out of Port Canaveral. The first half of the cruise has 15 people (kids, parents, sister and family, aunt, cousin). We fly in three days early and are spending a day at Universal (never been there) and one day at Downtown Disney (been over 10 years since been there) with the kids. I say kids but they are in their 20's... One son has been on several cruises to included Oasis so he knows what to expect. The other boy has been on one cruise on Serenade so he's in for a treat. And his girlfriend has never been on a cruise or been to the Caribbean! She's in for a HUGE treat!!! The second half of the cruise is just us two, everyone else is only doing the first half. We have the same room for both cruises so no need to switch in the middle which is nice! Cruise #1 Coco Cay, Cruising, Cozumel, Roatan, Puerto Costa Maya, Cruising, Port Cruise #2 Coco Cay, Cruising, St Thomas, St Maarten, Cruising, Cruising, Port We have been to every port so far except Roatan so very curious about that one. Obviously we have never done this back to back thing and welcome any tips, tricks, or what to expect advice. This will be as much of a live blog as possible.....first half will be less "live" because we want to enjoy the family as much as possible in the moment. The second half will be much slower and able to post. Wanted to get this started.....More to come.......

Challenge accepted.

I'm down if you start the thread! Maybe recruit @SpeedNoodles and turn it into mods gone wild

This morning while waiting to debark I stopped at the photo studio to inquire if I could post the video from the ship's videographer Justin Duncan. They indicated it was okay to post the video but suggested I remove any segments that show a guest's face that would be easily recognizable. I have done that and also removed the sound track which would likely cause a copyright issue on Youtube. This video contains content that was all captured during this voyage. There was no stock footage used or content from another ship or sailing. No sound:

What a truly magical place. I can't thank you enough for taking SO much of your precious time to include us. What a wonderful gift you have given us.

We are all packed up and ready to head out tomorrow morning. We told Sergii we would be ready to leave around 8-8:15am tomorrow. All our luggage will be self carry as we do not put any luggage out. We have trust issues. However, if anyone is wondering, I asked Sergii what time our luggage had to be out by if we did put it out. He said that SC guests on OY can get an extension until about 1:00-2:00am. That still does not replace the luggage cart they used to bring to your room the morning of.

I am glad (but also not glad) to hear that our bad experience in Playmakers today was not a one off. D17 was rolling her eyes at us so bad, that I started to feel maybe we were not being patient enough. But Hubby is the most patient guy ever and even he thought it was getting a bit ridiculous today.

A great last dinner with new friends before one last photo op. The Cloud still hanging out with us but off the pier now.

+1. Enough with the nonsense and allow the staff to focus on the service. I can’t imagine the staff is thrilled to grind the MDR delicate dance to a halt and perform like this is a circus.

This is the best recommendation you can make, IMO. Thanks for this.

Thirty minute stop in Punta Arenas to refuel and pick up some cargo. It's five o'clock somewhere. Meal service was decent all things considered.

We've made it to Punta Arenas to refuel so while we wait I'll continue to post. The short ride to the airport. They held us on the bus while the aircraft before us taxied out to the runway. Then it was time to walk up to the tarmac to our awaiting plane. Row 11 has an excellent view... of the engines. Our plane. I have the row on my side to myself again. With flaps extended my view was somewhat obstructed.

The freeloaders only get a vote when they are no longer freeloaders

I can't believe this one is over so soon ! They seem to be going more and more quickly ! Have a safe trip home and love to your dad and family.

If the ship is going through the canal in reverse the entire way I want to go on that cruise. I have only seen ships going through the canal going forward.

@GregDThanks for the tip amount, it’s the amount I was thinking. I’ll try to be good at Mass, and avoid asking people questions in English. I’ll mostly be good because of the below: Once traveling with a friend (who is a Baptist) we stopped at the “side of the road” Church for I could attend Mass, before we hit the casino. Never hurts to have Jesus helping you to pick out the winning machine. It hasn’t help yet, but you never know. Well, we were running late, so had to make a dash into the Church. I was wearing black sweatpants, and my friend being Baptist and all, had on purple sweatpants. She was getting in the Easter mood. My friend paused at the door, so I pushed her hard to get her legs moving. She about fell on her face. We both looked up to see that we were now standing, wearing our sweat pants, in the middle of the Choir singing. Standing in front of the whole Church, looking like we had seen better days. All eyes on us. Choir kept singing. I thought the Priest was going to take up a second collection for food for us. We had used the wrong door to enter. My friend was looking at me “as to what should we do now” since I was the Catholic. With a bunch of “excuse me’s” we made our way to sit in back of the Church. So embarrassed. When my mind is quiet, I can still hear Jesus laughing over that moment!

Well, that’s what I’m going to say at the end of Mass. I’m going to trust that it doesn’t mean “go screw yourself”.

What a treat to be able to "travel along" with you on this spectacular sailing. Thank you for sharing.

The video contained content all captured during this cruise. It was amazing and one of items I love about expedition cruising on Silversea. A USB drive with the video will be left in the cabin during dinner service.

After lunch, we headed to the casino to use our D+ free play. Hubby and I are $7.15 richer Spending the rest of the afternoon soaking up last moments in our room, and packing. Hubby “might” go back to the FlowRider one more time lol

Let's get this PARTY STARTED!!! That's right, for the FIRST TIME, your favorite (only?) Royal Caribbean Blog moderators (me, @AshleyDillo, and @Lovetocruise2002) are sailing on the same ship at the same time! This is going to be epi..... errrr... dare I say "ICONIC"? I am so excited for this sailing. There will be so many new things and so many old and new friends to spend time with. Each one of us will contribute in our own way. If there's something on the ship that YOU want us to document, ask a moderator!!!!!!! More to come!

Well...for first time cruisers....it is probably fun and exciting. After you have sat thru it several dozen times..... Not so much.

completely agree. I still think I prefer Oasis class over this, but I would definitely sail on Odyssey again in the future.

Great blog and to all a cruising 2024!

Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy your experience! We really had great service at Playmakers on Odyssey. I really like the location because of the Seaplex it just makes sense to have it in that themed area. The smell didn't bother us and we much preferred the location compared to the stale cigarette stench we had in Playmakers on Freedom. I would agree the food is a bit underwhelming but the spicy wings are really good. I love spice and rarely satisfied in an American restaurant. Those wings had me crying and sweating! YUM

Shortly after 6am the first group was called. Busses waiting for the short ride to the airport. A final farewell from the crew. It occurs to me the airport can't handle all four aircraft at the same time. My plane hasn't landed yet. A final look back at the Silver Wind. An earlier group prepares to take off.

Sorry you didn’t enjoy it. Yeah it was very cheesy, I just happen to love cheese!

Splurge and have afternoon tea at the Fairmont Empress. You won't regret it.

I was on Odyssey in January of 2022 and the service was bad back then, too. I did like the location, though. And, because the ship was at about 60-70% capacity, it was never crowded.

Vaya con Dios! High school Spanish from 30+ years ago. You're welcome. *above may or may not mean 'Go with God.' Try it after Mass and lmk!

With that we have arrived at Puerto Williams. The Silver Cloud at the pier. I assume the Captain has a very big credit card. Our fuel barge. Looks like the Cloud is doing crew laundry.

I'll have to look up this vessel later. More notions of Shackelton swirling in my head. Right in front of me a whale did a full breach. It was magnificent. All I caught with my camera was the splash. This was less than two miles from Puerto Williams.

Final 360 camera selfies.

Star class FlowRider session was this morning from 9-10am. This was the best session ever! Because OY only has 5 SC rooms, even if every cabin showed up, there are not many to share that session with. However, this morning, only 1 other cabin showed up, and they only stayed for 15mins. Hubby pretty much had the entire FlowRider to himself for the entire time.

On a side note, our loft attendants have been making the most amazing towel animals that I have ever seen on any cruise.

^^^THIS^^^ Thank you @twangster! Best blogs as always

Yes

Yikes, having never been on Q-class or really researched it since there's very little chance I'll be on it anytime soon, I had no idea about the Playmakers issue. Sorry to hear about how bad it is. That's a shame because, like everyone else, I really like the food and also a couple of their signature drinks. I had nothing but great experiences on Indy (2 meals, various bar trips) or Wonder (a couple trips to the bar). Looking forward to eating there on Wonder since we didn't in June (too busy freeloading in CK). Food still looked good though clearly you didn't get to fully enjoy it.

Somewhere off in the distance in this vicinity was Cape Horn. Land ahead of us. Looking back to the Drake Passage. Chilean Dolphins. We've reached the pilot station for Puerto Williams. New ETA to Puerto Williams is now 3:30pm. These fur seals seemed to be just goofing around with each other.