betatke1480

I agree with @DunkelBierJay about Barrachina. Puerto Criollo is a short walk from the downtown pier and had great food when we were there before NYE. In my opinion it was much better than Raices.

Adding: Harmony - November 21, 2021 Oasis - March 13, 2022

I can't imagine anyone doing this... 😂

I'm not familiar with either of the excursions. In San Juan we just walked in OSJ and in SXM we rented a car. However, if you are booking the Zipline Tour though Royal, there would be no reason to worry about distance from the port because as long as the excursion is book through them, they guarantee to get you back to the ship on time.

My kingdom for fresh brewed iced tea on the ship. The boxed stuff is terrible.

I own my own business and my wife gets ~4 weeks of PTO per year. We prioritize that time off for cruises. We are firmly in the "experiences" vs. "stuff" camp, so we put our money towards cruising. Part of why we opened our own business was so that we can have more time to take off and cruise. My old job had me very limited with how and when I could take time off. While not the only reason we started our company, it definitely played a large role. Soon our daughter will be in school, which will somewhat limit when we can take time off. Luckily for us, we live about 15 minutes from Lambert Airport in St. Louis. With this being a large SWA hub, we can fly to cruise ports relatively inexpensively. So while we don't have the luxury of living in FL like a lot on the boards, it's pretty easy to find cheaper non-stop flights to MCO, FLL, etc.

Most of the kid's menus are pretty appropriate, but in our experience, if there's something that they want, the staff typically can get it, either from the MDR or from the Windjammer, and have it brought to the specialty restaurant. They've always been very accommodating to our daughter.

I wouldn’t book anything. The genie will handle it all for you. We are on Oasis in Star Class next February also. The genie will handle all of your entertainment and dining. It’s tough to let go of the planning for some people, myself included, but’s that’s part of what we pay for!

I would recommend one-way car rental or smart-two.com for a shuttle. We've had great luck with the shuttle, and the car rental return is right next to the port for Alamo, Enterprise, and National.

We ended up with the more "catering" side of things as @AshleyDillo referenced when we were on Anthem. On our next opportunity, we know now to push for food to be delivered from a specialty restaurant. That's what we really wanted, but our Genie heard party and went into planning mode. It turned out amazing, with great food, bartender in suite, and "invitations" printed. It was above and beyond what we were expecting. It was a great experience, just having done it, we would go more casual with meat planks or sushi and a bartender. I will say that having a bartender was very inexpensive. I think around $10 per person, which is next to nothing when you consider drink prices. It's a great way to spend some OBC if you have it, since that can be difficult in Star Class. @WAAAYTOOO had great advice. It was very nice to be the bookend of the cabin crawl and have everyone in the suite. It was a lot of fun, and a nice way to end the crawl.

Brilliance and Odyssey just booked recently. Once I put it all down in one place I realized how many I had booked and was even shocked at it myself. 😂

I keep forgetting to update here when I update my signature: 12/29/2019 - Freedom RC Blog GC 2/23/2020 - Oasis of the Seas 6/5/2020 - Ovation Alaska Unofficial GC 10/11/2020 - Brilliance GC 11/5/2020 - Odyssey Inaugural 3/14/2021 - Allure Unofficial GC

Somehow talked the wife into letting me go solo. Actually wasn't that much arm twisting, especially with the great price on a solo studio.

I agree with what's been said. With all of the activities, Star Class was a huge plus for us on Anthem. Not having to wait in lines for bumper cars, or being able to get right in to the shows was fantastic. I also agree that it was quite a long walk back to the aft of the ship every time to go to our room, and I missed the atmosphere of the O class ships.

I loved the Schooner Bar on Majesty. It was very big to accommodate trivia, etc. And the views were fantastic with the windows.