OCSC Mike

Of course he has. Obligatory menu pic request if you don't mind. I kinda forgot about the B2B lunch b/c the menu didn't work for my wife years ago but now I remember hearing it's the same as The Key lunch which has filet. Our current plan is WJ seafood for me followed by GK for lunch but we could make a last minute change if my wife wants to I guess.

You were clear enough, not sure why I asked, Utopia is impressively fast but no way could they turn the whole ship THAT early. That's a nice perk that I hadn't heard of before. I don't think we went to our new cabin early but that B2B was a while ago. 9:36 is great but I guess that makes sense since you boarded before 10am to begin with. We were stuck in a lounge for a while on Indy during that turnaround b/c apparently someone overslept and crew/security had to go bang on her door to get her to wake up and get off the ship (our guess was that she was passed out from overdoing it on the last night).

I missed this until @WAAAYTOOO quoted it. Agreed. You don't get credit for your traitorous behavior!

Good to know, thanks! I don't usually blow vouchers on coffee b/c of the CL machine but it's an excuse to get iced coffee which I enjoy. Will consider grabbing red bull and possibly some Powerade or vitamin water... whatever random stuff in a bottle my wife got there last month. I assume you mean for B2B cruisers only?

We somewhat enjoyed the one on Wonder last month which is kinda what made me look into the next one. She was a younger Scottish woman with a decent sense of humor. She didn't change songs really except for "Jenny and the Bets" b/c her name was Jenny but we let that one slide.

Like John being in Europe, totally understandable. That's a lot more to keep track of... and for 14 days. We had an extensive itinerary for our 18-day Alaska land/sea trip. Doing loops to the Bahamas and back doesn't require nearly that much organizing, lol.

That's impressive! Love the color coding! Of course, you also had tons of excursions in foreign countries to keep track of. I don't need a chart that says stay on the ship unless it's PDCC day, lol. My handwritten version winds up in the calendar on my phone and then I rely on the app for smaller stuff like trivia or when a performer is playing in the Pub/Schooner/Music Hall. We don't wind up going to half of that stuff but I just click on anything that is a possible activity.

As I frequently post, no wrong way to cruise. I'll also go out on a limb and say having kids with you could make rigid plans a bit more difficult.

Different strokes. We've never been ones to just sit and listen to straight music much, just not our cup of tea. That said, it's more the comedy/talking to the crowd in between songs that was appealing than whatever changes he makes to the songs.

I would love to be able to say that was intentional, lol, but as you can tell it was just a happy accident. Pretty funny though. Changing "A New Hope" to "A New Ship" was what sold me on the idea since it was an obvious fit. Episode VI was an obvious one too. It's the others that need work.

I got a scrap of paper with a hand written grid in pencil, lol. I almost posted a pic. It didn't exactly take high level calculus but if you want to see all the shows (including adult comedy) you need to squeeze 5 into 4N or 4 into 3N (one show only runs during the 4N cruises), so it does take some planning. Plus there are other factors like specialty dinner (we drag ours out a bit while I'm stuffing myself and we both love the GK desserts), our habit of not being able to stay up super late, etc. Some game shows we really enjoy, like Perfect Couple, are held at midnight. So I even went a step further and have a plan to try to make it to that, possibly Quest at 11:20pm, etc. There's a Pesky Parrot drink with Red Bull yellow in it, maybe that will help. Yes, I could just get a Red Bull or Red Bull vodka but I'm not an energy drink guy. Could also just go grab espresso in the CL I guess.

I started looking into the performers on Utopia right now. I know @dustfsu had good things to say about the pub singer. The piano player who performs in the Schooner Bar apparently also does some crowd work type comedy in between singing and some of his songs are parodies or ad-libbed versions. We'll definitely check him out as he sounds fun; just curious if anyone was familiar with him.

I thought you meant the anniversary of Utopia's launch, lol. I wasn't born in May, 1977 (close but not quite).

Never dawned on me but now I remember being on Wonder that week last year & taking pics of the Utopia decorations in the terminal at PC & the sand sculpture they left up on CocoCay. EDIT: Actually, that was in July, and we’ll be on then again next month. In fact, check-in is at midnight tonight.

You already know this but just keep trying… and also try the app. I think at one point recently I could add stuff to my cart via one method but could only checkout via the other.

Well of course YOU get it. There were storm troopers in Xmas pictures you posted iirc.

Some of us just call that “a sailing.” Eating, drinking, lounging, seeing shows, listening to music are all the activities I need (and I could get by without a couple of them if need be).

Yay last minute cruise!

You already know I agree. When the family has the UDP next March I think the plan is to eat there multiple times for both lunch and dinner. But then we'll also have $20/day to spend at the Wine Bar which has apps, pizza, and a couple desserts. I still don't know how people do the UDP without exploding or wasting (smaller meals I guess). The $20/day at Playmakers and GK Wine Bar on top of full specialty meals is a crazy amount of food. How's the lasagna? Only thing pictured I haven't tried.

Yeah, since my wife is a teacher and we spend Thanksgiving and Xmas with family on land, we try to cruise twice in the summer. We stick to PC since it's a short drive and my wife said no more Wonders. Since we much prefer Oasis class, that left Utopia.

How's the temperature out there? I'd love to have one of our meals out there (either lunch or dinner) but was afraid of it being too warm. I did notice the fans in your pic.

See ya onboard! This will be the 2nd leg of a B2B for us. Haven't been on her yet either but doing our first Utopia B2B on June 2nd so that will change very soon. We'll only be missing Symphony for our Oasis class bingo card after that. @dustfsu will also be on this cruise.

It's likely a glitch and will return to normal in not too long. Just keep checking.

The wait is killing me and the forums are a bit quiet so I decided to start this one a little earlier than usual. Standard warning... My intro posts are very long but my actual blog posts are usually shorter and full of pics (mostly food & drink). Blog Title I couldn't really come up with anything clever involving the word Utopia, especially knowing I may be doing at least five of these Utopia B2B's, so the thought of a series of blogs led me to coming up with a long running movie franchise. I'm not even a big Star Wars fan (apologies to @Lovetocruise2002's hubby). I do hope the majority of readers understand the reference and why I started with Episode IV even if they're also not big fans. I tried coming up with five titles in advance but I'm only happy with two of them so far; the rest are a work in progress. Intro I'm WONDERing... oh wait, we're finally going on a new ship! We haven't done that since our first Wonder cruise back in 2023. OK, so Utopia is pretty identical to Wonder as far as layout but there are new shows, destination elevators, a new tiki bar with new drinks to try, a fake food truck, Giovanni's Kitchen is up on decks 11/12 with an outdoor terrace, and the Crown Lounge has been newly relocated to deck 16 and has windows! As a fairly boring creature of habit, this all sounds pretty great to me. We get to keep our general routine (with a few twists) while experiencing the subtle differences from Wonder, most of which seem positive. Cabin After a glorious week in a CP balcony last month (during which I might have spent a total of two hours on said balcony), it's back to the caves we go! We're on deck 10 near the forward elevators, just like all of our Wonder interiors. We actually have the same exact cabin booked for every Utopia B2B. I learned from Wonder that there are at least three different interior layouts and we prefer the one that's similar to a balcony cabin (bed on the side wall, not in the back). We also like to be in the outer hallway, opposite OV balconies, rather than in the maze of interiors that can be found in the middle of most higher decks. Those two layouts alternate along the outer forward hallways on deck 10 so I just grabbed the closest one to the elevators. Bonus Savings We got some dumb luck on our two B2B's for this summer as well as next March as my TA had some sort of promo that gave us double the OBC when I booked these last March (with group rates). Then it got even better when Royal had the brilliant idea to sell gift cards at 20% off which I jumped on before they quickly ended the promo. By no means are these inexpensive compared to my past Wonder group rates but the extra savings certainly made the total cost more palatable. Itinerary Who would want to just go back and forth from PC to Nassau and CocoCay with a turnaround day in between? Obviously us. I'm sure this sounds incredibly boring to many and that's understandable. In my mind, it's not really all that different than getting off the ship to go to CocoCay once and a Cozumel beach club once, which is what we did on two of our last three cruises. As the regular readers know, we primarily sail for the ship and still enjoy CocoCay after 11 visits. There's also a financial benefit in that we won't be spending a penny on excursions which helps offset the inflated cost of Utopia. We don't plan to get off the ship in Nassau and we don't spend anything on CocoCay except to tip on voucher drinks. This one is a 4/3 leaving on a Monday... Day 1 - PC (Embarkation) Day 2 - Nassau Day 3 - CocoCay Day 4 - Sea Day Day 5 - PC (Turnaround Day) Day 6 - Nassau Day 7 - CocoCay Day 8 - PC (Debarkation) I've never been a fan of PDCC on the last day but it's fine. July is a 3/4 so we'll end with a sea day and our specialty meals will shift around a bit on that one. Having been at PDCC with two Oasis class ships (including last month), it's never a concern to us. We get off the ship early, grab "our spot" by Oasis Lagoon, and watch as it doesn't get busy until after 10am. That said, I certainly don't mind if we're joined by a smaller ship and we got two good draws on this one. Grandeur will be with us on the 1st leg and Jewel on the 2nd leg. But wait, there's more! At some point I noticed @WAAAYTOOO will be onboard Jewel during our 2nd leg! After multiple mentions of me being an introvert followed by telling each other that meeting will be a disappointment on both ends, lol, I hope to at least say hi. Planning As the regulars also know, I enjoy overplanning, so I had fun trying to fit in new show reservations and figuring out when to schedule our specialty meals. I'm keeping an open mind but I don't expect to love every show (I'm looking at you, All In). We also don't need to see every show twice in seven days. However, the planner in me couldn't help but come up with a chart that allowed for everything on both legs. Better to have reservations and not use them than vice-versa... even though I'm well-aware that you can easily walk into any show via standby, especially the main theater shows (which now also includes adult comedy since The Attic is no more). You also never know when an aqua show will be cancelled due to weather or technical difficulties and it's tough to cram everything into a short sailing. Dining As far as specialty goes, we're sticking with Giovanni's Kitchen for our night one D+ BOGO which will be our anniversary dinner (a day late), going back to Mason Jar brunch on the one sea day after trying dinner last month, doing GK lunch on turnaround day, and having our usual Playmakers dinner one night but that's TBD. Now for some new wrinkles... Utopia has the seafood buffet in WJ on embarkation day (meaning we have it twice). That's not exactly optimal since I usually try not to go nuts on embarkation day with GK dinner that night and for the 2nd embarkation day we have GK lunch. That's just how it worked out and I'm not skipping the seafood so it is what it is. Between show schedules and factoring in my wife (who will want no part of the seafood), I wasn't going to reschedule things around WJ lunch no matter how much I may enjoy it. After I thought I had everything scheduled, I then noticed that GK is actually open for lunch while we're in Nassau. I guess it's a Utopia or a shorty thing. I went back to see if it worked out better to move that lunch to one of the Nassau days but for various reasons decided to leave things as-is. One last twist... we're planning to skip the MDR entirely. We've never been big fans and two of the three menus with entrees my wife will eat aren't part of the Utopia rotation. We have our two specialty dinners (counting Playmakers), two specialty brunch/lunches, and two lunches on CocoCay which my wife enjoys. Since I can always find food somewhere and my wife knows she will enjoy breakfast and at least one other meal on six of the seven days, she's not concerned about the other dinners. It goes without saying but she doesn't exactly eat like me. We'll check out WJ dinner (she's usually happy with the cook to order stations), have some CL snacks, get her a custom pizza at Sorrento's, etc. I also reminded her that GK Wine Bar also has a la carte pizza as well as one of the desserts she likes and her favorite MJ dessert in on the late night menu so she'll be fine. I'm looking forward to skipping the MDR. Besides the seafood buffet on embarkation days, I've seen and heard about some pretty good dinner items in WJ on certain nights (including more seafood on the last night, which I already love b/c it's Indian night). Miscellaneous Cruise Director - We normally pay little attention to who the CD is at this point but we're looking forward to sailing with Marc Walker (Bing Bong) again on this one. He used to live very close to us and my wife has a loose connection to his daughters (who happened to be visiting him onboard the one time we sailed with him a while back). Regardless of all that, he's a fun CD and since we're back to attending lots of shows, we'll actually see the CD far more often than we did on Wonder. We may even try to go The Quest (haven't done that in a while). Crown Lounge - As mentioned, the CL has moved to deck 16 aft. I'm definitely looking forward to the new space and the windows. The only catch is that I'm used to being right above the CL where it's just a quick elevator down for my early morning coffee run. With the new location, I'll likely go up to deck 15 or 16 and cross the ship outside. As lazy as I am, a 6am outdoor walk while most of the ship is asleep and the sun is rising could be pretty nice. Internet - Another small but not insignificant perk for us on a 4/3 B2B is that we usually share one internet account so it becomes completely free with our two free D+ days per person on each leg. We'll even each have our own account at times, especially during the 3N portion. Photos - I didn't wind up taking many non-food pics last time (except when asked for Solarium pics) but I will again try to take more. Hopefully a new ship with new venues and decor will inspire me. Parking - If you read my last blog, you may remember that when we got to the port around 9:30am the garage wasn't open yet so we just parked in the surface lot right next to it (which we had done one other time). It's honestly easier than parking on level two of the garage since we only bring one rolling suitcase each. Wheeling them over the short ground level walk to the porters stationed on that side is quicker than getting them down from level two. We also aren't forced to go through the drop-off loop by bypassing the garage entirely. So as of now, the plan is to park in the lot again... and we may get there even a bit earlier as Utopia is known to begin boarding before 10am. Weather - As most frequent Caribbean cruisers know (especially FL residents), the forecast isn't to be trusted even the night before (or morning of TBH). That said, I can't help but glance at it and it's potentially not great right now. We could never leave the ship and have a great time, so it is what it is, but we'd obviously prefer to get off at PDCC (and for others to get off in Nassau, leaving us with an emptier ship to enjoy). I think that covers everything. As always, questions, comments, and tangents are welcome both pre-cruise and during. With no significant travel, planes, or hotels, I normally don't have much to share in the week leading up to embarkation day.

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