WannaCruise

We are in fort Lauderdale!!!!   Yeah!  It's chilly for me (75) but way better than Chicago!  We were through security in an 30 mins and took our check-in pics while eating breakfast at Chili's.  Flight was packed but on time and everything ran smoothly.  We are now ensconced by the pool with drinks and a book!  

Hyatt Place near the cruise port has spacious rooms.  It's near Harbor Shops which has a wine store, a Publix and some good restaurant options.

Our spring breaks have been all over the map.  I’m a teacher, husband is a teacher and we have 3 kids.  One year we had 4 different spring breaks 😢.  Jane

Works for my kids too!  

Works still for my mother..and I'm 42 😂😂😂

Ah ok...well then as you know, your kids will LOVE Symphony!  The piano stairs are just one of the really cool touches on that ship!
Exactly....March 2024 we booked Wonder for a room for 3 instead of doing a booking for 4.  It really feels empty....don't know how else to describe it.  Will really miss him.  Treasure these moments.  He did say though, that as long as we are paying, he'll still come with us...lol. It's like bribery, but it may just work.

Ah ok...well then as you know, your kids will LOVE Symphony!  The piano stairs are just one of the really cool touches on that ship!
Exactly....March 2024 we booked Wonder for a room for 3 instead of doing a booking for 4.  It really feels empty....don't know how else to describe it.  Will really miss him.  Treasure these moments.  He did say though, that as long as we are paying, he'll still come with us...lol. It's like bribery, but it may just work.

Enjoying your review as we were on Anthem in March...and with it's US port out of NY, I can see us going on her again.  Really enjoy that ship.
Your "obstructed" balcony looks like a great option.  I assume it's just that small white part that is the obstruction? Not bad at all.  Anthem  has really nice balcony rooms...very deep and plenty of space and storage locations.
I found Spectra's Cabaret "interesting", but a little odd.  Not sure what it was about although it has some nice visuals.  DD and I saw it by accident in practice (we were in the 270 in the day and they were "performing" something informally and didn't realize until the end what it was). and then we all saw the real show.
Interested in your thoughts on The Gift if you saw it.  It hadn't started up yet when we went in March.
Looking forward to hearing more.

Thanks for the reply.  That's what we are hoping with our CC company as well...that the pending charge will just drop off but wasn't sure if Royal had to do something (or if it would disappear due to lack of claiming ).
I still want to go ahead and actually purchase the item but not sure if that will complicate things.

I've got that going on too - there's a triple charge in pending transactions somehow for one item AND and a large pending charge for multiple items. Thanks to I think it was @FSUFAN, I looked more carefully at the Surf & Stream price that didn't go through/leave my cart (even though I got the pending charge) and noticed that it was for 2 full amounts instead of the lower price on the 2nd device. Insane. 
I'm going to wait a couple days to see if those pending charges fall off. In the meantime, I screenshot the cart that still has everything in it with the $total that matches the pending credit card charge.
I generally love going through the Cruise Planner and figuring out all of my extras - a little fun shopping spree - but it's been more stressful than fun this time around.

I am looking at purchasing a coffee card, which is supposed to cover 15 drinks  (I know that a size over small may counts as 2 punches).
One question though....when I go to purchase it in the planner, it has both DH and me to select and has a counter per guest.
It's a bit confusing.  I assume we can just purchase 1 card under my name?  If I select both of us, then the price is X2
i.e. If I just highlight me, then it costs $41.34 CAD.  But if I select DH and I, then the cost is $82.68 CAD.

Thanks for the quick response!

I have a teen and also recommend ziplining in Roatan.  There are quite a few places.  I use Ronys tours, but Victor Bodden is also good.  I would zipline in the AM, eat luch at a local restaurant and then go to West End Beach for snorkeling/beach.  The snorkeling at the left side of the beach is excellent.  Equiptment can be rented easily.

I guess I was lucky.  I managed to get everything purchased and/or cancelled without any issues.  Early bird and all of that, I guess...

Just got off the phone with Royal. The reason the cruise planner website is glitching is the credit card system is down. Says it should be restored by the end of the day. 

Hard to tell. The 9 month old’s favorite thing on the ship was eating. Royal lost money with the kids sail free with the 9 month eating so much.
the 7 year old loved the waterslides and ice skating best. 
The two year old and the stowaway piano player were best friends but that wasn’t his favorite, that goes to the hand sanitizer stations. He never passed up a chance to sanitize them. 
 
photo of 9 month old seeing her first cake pop.

We have used Victor Bodden twice now, and have had a great experience. I bet the teens would love the ziplines that they have. We had a blast on those last year. Our tour also included a stop at a chocolate "factory"

I'm a scheduler, but that's me as a person.  I like to plan and know what's coming up....plus that just helps with the excitement for the time between the cruise to when you board.  For planning, I'll look at other cruise compasses (or on app) to similar itinerary on our ship and even spreadsheet it out to see the options.  I know that this may not be the same as our cruise but it gives me an idea.  I am happy that pre-booking for shows is returning for some ships as this helps too.
We also do traditional dining, but even when we had My Time on Allure, I had booked dinner each night (around the show times)

Throw down a deposit on a refundable rate and make your decision later.  YOLO 😇

It was an excellent view for a supposedly obstructed balcony. Ours was a 2-berth on the starboard side, while the corresponding one on the port side is a 3-berth. The obstruction was the davit, which is a huge pillar-type structure that holds up one end of a lifeboat, so it completely blocks the view towards the aft; but looking straight out or towards the front of the ship we had excellent views. One thing I meant to mention about it is that the entrance to the cabin is slightly narrower than normal because part of the structure of the ship juts out right by the door, maybe about 3 inches. It might make it a bit awkward for someone who is mobility challenged and has difficulty manoeuvring. I would have no hesitation in booking this cabin again.
I saw The Gift and enjoyed it but I knew from the boards beforehand to expect a very tenuous storyline. I'll be sharing some pics later on. It wasn't performed until almost the end of the cruise. DH did not see it; he fell asleep before it started and only wakened up as it was finishing 🙄 😴. 
We are booked on Anthem again next spring but out of NJ this time, as we recuperate a trip to New York that got covidated early in the pandemic. It's the 23rd of April, an 8-nighter immediately prior to her return to this side of pond. If that's a date that might work for you, check  it out; the prices right now are VERY good!
 

Enjoying your review as we were on Anthem in March...and with it's US port out of NY, I can see us going on her again.  Really enjoy that ship.
Your "obstructed" balcony looks like a great option.  I assume it's just that small white part that is the obstruction? Not bad at all.  Anthem  has really nice balcony rooms...very deep and plenty of space and storage locations.
I found Spectra's Cabaret "interesting", but a little odd.  Not sure what it was about although it has some nice visuals.  DD and I saw it by accident in practice (we were in the 270 in the day and they were "performing" something informally and didn't realize until the end what it was). and then we all saw the real show.
Interested in your thoughts on The Gift if you saw it.  It hadn't started up yet when we went in March.
Looking forward to hearing more.

We ate all our dinners in the MDR on this cruise. We had My Time Dining and I had booked us a set time of 8 pm each evening. Although this kind of defeats the purpose of MTD it means we can count on having a table just for ourselves. It's not that we don't like to be social but we talk to each other in Portuguese so it can be a bit awkward if you're sharing a table with others who don't speak the language. With the My Time set-up, we can still chat with the people at the tables next to us but that awkwardness is eliminated simply by the fact of being at a different table.
Our waiters always brought us a printed menu and I can confirm that the menus in the app were accurate.
Day 1 menu:

Maryland-style crab cake. I used to really love these (even though I have been told on numerous occasions that they are nothing like the real thing). However, since the restart they have not tasted the same and I was a bit disappointed not to have chosen the mushroom soup instead.

One of the things I really like about European sailings are the pie and curry options on the menu. These were previously only offered on sailings out of Southampton but now appear to be available on other European sailings. They certainly were on our Odyssey sailing back in May.
Chicken Saag:

Prime rib, which DH asked for with fries:

Blueberry and pear cobbler. It was nice enough but nothing really special.

And the Royal cheesecake, which DH said was a bit disappointing in that it came without any strawberry sauce. Later on in the cruise, it would occur to us to ask for some strawberry sauce to go along with it.

While we were finishing up our lunch, they announced that the cabins were open so we headed off there. Our luggage had already arrived (earliest ever!), which was great as it meant we were able to unpack straight away.
There was a copy of the Day 1 Compass on the bed, which pleased us greatly as there had been none at Guest Services. Instead, where they would usually be, there were QR codes to scan for a digital copy. After our cabin steward came to introduce himself I made sure to ask him to get us a paper copy every day.
Our cabin was an obstructed balcony, 6560, which had I had seen recommended by various previous cruisers due to having very little obstruction. As you can see from the pics, they were correct. Really the only obstruction is the davit to the right that blocks your view aft.
Views of and from our obstructed balcony cabin:

 

These two were taken on arrival in Vigo and you can see how little obstruction there is:


And these two show that there's plenty of water visible!


With everything unpacked, we headed out to explore the ship a bit more before sailaway. Luckily the weather was cooperating and although it was cloudy it wasn't raining.
A few brave souls using the pool (too cold for us):

The North Star bar was consistently packed solid for the entire cruise:

The brand new Norwegian Prima was also in Southampton but we left first! Bye bye Southampton and Prima! 😆

 

So, finally...
As I said back in the first post on the thread, this was a 12-night cruise on Anthem of the Seas, departing from Southampton, England, and calling at Vigo, Lisbon, Lanzarote, Gran Canária, Tenerife, Funchal and La Coruña.
I won't go into a huge amount of detail about our travels to Southampton since that part won't be of much use to most peeps on the board here, but suffice to say we flew non-stop from our local airport (Faro, Portugal) into Bournemouth, England. This is a tiny airport about a 30-40 minute drive from Southampton and which essentially serves a couple of European low-costs. It was a good way to avoid the big London airports and could conceivably be made to work for people coming from across the pond if you fancied a stop on the way to/from your cruise somewhere that has flights to Bournemouth. 
In the past we could probably have flown straight to Southampton but the airline that served that route from Faro went bust and there is currently only one flight a week on a Saturday, which didn't work for this cruise. Again, however, Southampton could be an option if you can connect in Amsterdam, as KLM operate a twice-daily flight between the two.
We pre-booked our airport-hotel-airport transfers with Westquay Cars for £65 each way. A credit card was required to guarantee the booking but we paid cash to the driver on the day. Booking was not as easy as it could have been since I couldn't get their online booking to work for me. Instead I emailed them and then had to call to give them my CC details.
We stayed two nights pre-cruise in the Premier Inn Westquay in Southampton.


Premier Inn is a well-known slightly upscale budget brand in the UK and this particular hotel is popular with cruisers because of its proximity to the port. It's nothing fancy but was perfectly fine for 2 nights. We added on the breakfast option, which is a bit limited but what there was was nice, and we also had dinner there on our first night. Service was a bit slow but the food was fine (we both had steak) and reasonably priced.
The location is great because there are plenty of shops and restaurants in the immediate vicinity including a large mall if the weather decides to be unfriendly.
It is usually possible to walk from here to the port, although that depends on how comfortable you are dragging your luggage. We would have done it but our dates coincided with the Southampton International Boat Show which meant the walking route to the port was blocked off and we would have had to go a very long way around. Instead we got a taxi. I used Radio Taxis Southampton, having downloaded their app the evening before. We only had to wait a few minutes and the very short ride cost £6.
Boarding for this cruise was the fastest and easiest we have ever encountered. It took us about 10 minutes from getting out of the taxi to setting foot on the ship.
Our check-in slot was 11.30 am and I had booked us into Jamie's for lunch at 1.30 pm, so we had time to settle with a coffee in Two70 and then go for a bit of a wander before lunch. This was our first specialty restaurant lunch ever and I really only booked it because we had some OBC to use up. However, I think I might make this a standard practice as it was really nice to avoid the pandemonium in the WJ for that first lunch on board. 
One of the main reasons we tend not to book specialty dining is that we have very small appetites so we never feel like we're getting our money's worth. However, with lunch costing less than half the price of dinner and having an almost identical menu, I thought it was a reasonable deal. Even so, there was way too much food for us and we didn't even order very much. It was very good and we enjoyed it very much.
Lunch menu:

Meat plank:

Garlic bread:

Prawn linguine:

Tagliatelle Bolognese:

Epic brownie:

Amalfi lemon cheesecake:

 

DAY 7 - Sea Day
Today was our last full day. Everyone slept in laaaaaate. We're usually up and at breakfast by 7:30am. Today, we didn't get to breakfast until 9:00am. We first headed to the MDR, but the line was very long, so we aborted and went to the Windjammer. We were able to drop the kids off just before 10:00am, and headed to...

Apollo 18! The escape room! I'm a HUGE space nerd, so this was a MUST DO on our trip. The host started a few minutes after 10:00am, and there were about a dozen people in this group. It felt like a lot of people, but by the end, it you realize you do need that many people. You go in and start with a video briefing, then you have 50 minutes to finish the puzzle. Not giving away any spoilers, but there are some HARD puzzles in this room. This 100% requires teamwork of finding artifacts, sharing information, and relying on the unique knowledge and problem solving skills of each team member to figure out how to solve the problems. 
Here are some photos of the room, with light editing to remove any spoilers or hints:

The host is there to nudge you along as you get deeper into the countdown. We solved the puzzle with 4m 24s remaining: 

It was super cool. Totally want to do it again (and i'll prob forget how to solve the problems by then!)
After the escape room, we lazily walked through Central Park, and found a secret spot on Deck 7:

We made our way back to AO to pick up the kids, then went to Solarium Bistro for lunch. It was a mirror of the Windjammer menu, but not nearly as busy. There was no menu service during lunch, but here's the menu for dinner:

 
We headed back to the room to pack and say goodbye to our stateroom, and this view:

Our travel family wanted to stick with Izumi Sushi for dinner, and we wanted to try MDR, so we split for the first time on this trip. We headed to Deck 5 and were seated in about 10 minutes. Without fail, my first trip to the MDR starts with a shrimp cocktail and escargots:

All delicious. My last dinner on Oasis was the braised lamb shank: 
Tomorrow is disembarkation!