KWong

OK, fair enough. In that context, I kind of feel like it creates more complications than there needs to be, but it's something to consider.

Apparently I forgot to add this: Day 6 – Debarkation Day (aka You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here) I know people don’t like talking about this day, but I’ve always found it helpful to know how people got home, especially when you have to fly. For us, we had a 2pm flight back to Toronto, so realistically we had plenty of time to get off the ship. For this trip, we were assigned tag number 32, with an estimated debarkation time of 9:30am – about as middle of the road an assignment as one can get, I think. This gave us, in theory, plenty of time to get ready, pack up and leave. When we woke up (roughly 6:30-ish), I looked outside and discovered that we were in the process of docking, so barring any unforeseen clearance issues, we’d be getting off the ship shortly. We got dressed (in our travel clothes… le sigh), and headed up to Windjammer one final time. The buffet was actually not that busy, perhaps a testament to our going up a little later than the norm. And this worked out well for us. Not that we were going to overdo it on food, but certainly we weren’t “fighting” the masses to find a seat. After breakfast, we went back to the room to do finish packing our carry-off bags and do a final sweep of the room. After exchanging goodbyes with our attendant, we headed down to the Promenade to wait. While we were waiting, we saw some of the charter cruise workers come in with display boards for their t-shirt stands. In hindsight, I should’ve taken a picture and/or bought a shirt. Not that I’m a huge metal fan or anything, but “70,000 Tons of Metal”? You know you’d want a shirt with that on it as well. Regardless, we were called ahead of schedule, around 9:15, and dutifully made our way to the 4th deck and the exit ramp. Unlike previous Oasis class cruises, we headed straight down to the baggage area – a nice surprise, given that I was expecting a 30-60 minute wait to go down. The lines were indeed kind of long – I estimated about 45 minutes for the Suites, 60-90 for everyone – but since we have NEXUS, it was a simple matter of picking up our bags, showing the officer in the centre exit our cards, and heading through customs. Our debarkation, from ship to outside the terminal, took us under 10 minutes. With so much time before our flight, we debated going somewhere else for an hour or two, but we decided just to go to the airport. Bit of a misstep on our part, because we were at the terminal well before 10am, and the 3 hour bag drop window was still over an hour away. So that meant some waiting. Once the window opened, there was somehow only one Westjet employee at the counter helping three separate lines (special assistance, check in and bag drop). So this was… interesting, but eventually some other agents made their way to the counter to help out. This was not ideal, but since we’d checked in on the ship and had TSA Pre-Check, we had very little concern about making our flight. And indeed, we were through security around 12. A little later than I expected, but still nothing to worry about at all. We got a pre-flight meal at Shula Burger (note: onion rings look much better than they taste), and with little fanfare, got on the flight home. Once at Toronto Pearson, we went over to the NEXUS line, where there appeared to be only a few NEXUS kiosks working. Fortunately, there were several of the standard kiosks available, which we used to breeze through customs. Easy peasy, and after picking up our luggage and car, we headed home.

The helmets (which I believe were skateboard helmets) were a requirement. I don't recall there being a release waiver for the helmets. I sympathize with your daughter though - I'd not wear a helmet if I could avoid it. With that said, there were enough first timers on the rink that I took the stance that the helmet would help protect me somewhat from them. I saw a lot of wipeouts, and thankfully I didn't add to that total.

OP isn't looking to drink the vodka on the ship. Rather, they want to purchase and bring it home. 2 years ago my brother brought beer onboard at embarkation (I think he read the DCL embarkation rules or something). They took the beer, gave him a receipt, and returned it on the last night. We ended up drinking warm beer that night.

OK, here we go:

I saw that on my last cruise as well. Not what I would do, but to each their own. For us, we carry our electronics on with us, as well as swimwear, wine and the 12 non-alcoholic bottles of stuff. That generally amounts to 2 backpacks and a rolling carry on bag. A little bulky, but manageable for the few hours we have to lug the stuff around.

Same. Wasn't too hard - start with the zinc oxide sunscreens and check the other ingredients to make sure its reef safe. I wish they would ban aerosol sunscreens full stop. I do use a non-aerosol spray that works quite well, probably because it's non-continuous and you aren't meant to hold it 2 feet away from you when spraying.

I'm working on scanning those. I'll try to get those posted here or with Matt over the weekend

You forgot about Johnny Rockets for breakfast.

In truth I only know that your accent differs from my wife's. If you hadn't said anything I wouldn't have known what, exactly, the dialect was. So don't give me THAT much credit ?

Well, enjoy your cruise!

IIRC on my Harmony trip the amps on the USB port was enough to charge my iPad on its own, but not enough if I needed to charge something else. So not dissimilar to a cheap 2 port USB hub.

You really don't have that much time in Barcelona, and I think it might be a mistake to cram as much as you can in the 48 or so hours that you're there. But with that said, I think the X-factor is whether you've done an Oasis class ship before or not. If you have, I'm not sure that Allure will hold that many surprises for you, so take your time getting on. If you haven't, it might be better to get onboard sooner.

Customer Relations might be able to help you if you email them. I know Dora the Explorer was one of our movies. That was a hard pass for me.

That sucks. When my wife got hurt on board (due to a panel in the Boardwalk bathroom falling on her foot) the Allure they were very attentive once she reported it, even though the injury was minor. You'd think they'd be the same even with one of their externally operated excursions.

Transport. Florida laws require a full car seat for your 3yo, booster for your 5yo. When my kids were of that age I'd just bring the car seat and/or booster with me, since I could check the seat for free and the booster fit in the overhead with no problems. Latch system made it easy to put the seat in a cab or Uber. If you don't trust that, you can hire a private car or rent one for the day. Peace of mind trumps cost when it comes to the kids. Where are you staying if you don't mind my asking? Cozumel. There are some ruins on the island. I've not been, so don't know if it's worth seeing. You have to take a ferry to Playa del Carmen to get to Tulum or Chichen Itza. The latter is about 6 hours round for 30-45 minutes at the site. Tulum is about half that travel time. And there's still the ferry to deal with. Because of the ferry factor, these are about the only two excursions I'd ever book through the cruise line, and even then I'd just do Tulum. If you ever vacation in Cancun, that is probably the time to go to Chichen Itza. Definitely book the internet package, but keep checking to see if the prices change.

In fairness, is this not the standard upon which we compare all our breakfast sandwiches to?

I believe that they do, in the aqua theatre.

Love this. Great pics!

After lunch, we decided to try out the Perfect Storm waterslides. During minigolf, we were talking to a couple of older teens from Michigan about the slides, and they thought that the slides weren’t great, and that they were slow to the point of almost getting stuck in the tubes. But after we went on a few times, I have to conclude that they perhaps adjusted the water flow, because while the slides weren’t as fast as what you might find at an onland waterpark, they had more than enough speed to get you to the bottom in a hurry. If I had a gripe about the slides, it’s that there aren’t enough clear panels to let you see out of the tubes, especially where you travel to the edge of the ship. Really felt like a missed opportunity. After we went on the slides, the kids wanted to hit the pool, so they went there while my wife and I relaxed. While we were there, we had the fortune (misfortune?) to witness the Sexiest Man contest. This was definitely… something. Still not sure what, exactly, but it was something. All I will say is that the guy in the Rey Mysterio mask was robbed. Our final dinner featured Rack of Lamb and Steak Diane, both of which were wonderful. It also featured “Asian pork tacos”, which based on the description, we guessed was actually pork bao. And that’s exactly what it was. I can’t say it was great. An interesting note was that for the last day, they were trying to get people to go to Chops at a 50% discount. It was tempting, but at the end of the day my wife and the girls wanted lamb chops, and why forgo the included lamb chops in the MDR in order to pay for lamb chops at the specialty restaurant? For us, the value add was simply not there. After dinner, we did our final packing and set the bags outside the room. After everyone else went to sleep I took a final trip across the pool deck, where it was pretty quiet. Going back downstairs, I went to the theatre to watch the comedian, Anthony Acosta. I had a bit of an incident where I wanted to exercise my 2-for-1 beer voucher (I think everyone gets this?) and the bartender was utterly confused by this, thinking I wanted a Diamond happy hour drink. We did get it sorted out and before the show started he came over to apologize to me. Which was nice, but completely unnecessary, since we weren’t arguing – just trying to sort out what voucher I was redeeming. In any case, he gave me another beer, so I ended up with 3 beers for the price of 1. Yeah, that was a lot. Thankfully it was a macrobrew as opposed to something with a lot of flavour, so I got through them all. The comedian, Anthony Acosta, was pretty good I thought, but his style is quite edgy, self-deprecating and plays a lot off of his ethnicity, and could easily rub people the wrong way. If you watched his act and did not enjoy it at all, well, I wouldn’t blame you one bit. After the show, I went over to Sorrentos to wash down the beer with some food, and headed to bed.

Day 5 - At Sea Final day. I hate final days, because you know you have get off the ship and head back to the Real World. Unless, of course, you’re Super Mario. But I think even he gets off the ships every once in a while. Despite the late night, I was up relatively early, and we ate breakfast at WindJammer. The lack of speed in the MDR made us give up on them as an option, and besides, the buffet never seemed crowded. The only real drawback is that one could easily overdo things at breakfast, so I tried to limit myself to one pass at the buffet. Seemed to work, as I was able to load my plate but not to excess. After breakfast, we took Olivia up to Adventure Ocean and… there were no kids in the 9-11 room. Curious. Since it was exactly 9 we figured that maybe some kids would come in later. Olivia didn’t want to be the only one there, so we took a walk around the upper deck and came back about 10 minutes later. Still no kids. Looking into the 6-8 club, there were very few kids in there as well. As a result, Olivia opted to hang out with the rest of us by the pool. This was, to be honest, a bit of a strange phenomenon for the kids. During our August cruises, the kids clubs were usually full, so there wasn’t much concern about meeting new kids and having fun. But here it was the opposite, and I can see why Royal has started to move towards a merged 6-11 program. Since Hannah and I had sushi making mid-morning, we opted not to swim and instead played a round of minigolf – something that I’d yet to do on a cruise. It was fun, as far as minigolf goes, plus the views were really nice at the front of the ship. On A Roll took place, unsurprisingly, at Izumi. The idea here is that all the items you need to create your sushi are mise en place, and the chef instructs you on how to assemble each item. We made a California Roll, Shrimp/Avocado Roll, Spicy Tuna Hand Roll, and two Ebi Nigiri. As you can see from the pictures (and Matt has described before in the blog), this is a massive amount of food, which we then got to eat! Note: We were not allowed to take the food out of the restaurant (apparently there is a health regulation against this), so I highly recommend you bring along a “non-participant” to “help dispose” of the sushi. Once we were stuffed to bursting, we headed back upstairs to meet with my wife and Olivia. They were now hungry, so we headed over to Windjammer. Hannah and I weren’t all that hungry due to maki overload, but we still grabbed some veg in order to balance out our food pyramids. I should note that at Windjammer they have an assistant waiter there with a guitar whose sole purpose is to sing songs featuring “washy-washy”. They are not great songs, but I definitely appreciate their attempts to hammer the point home about washing hands.