irishgirl0525

I was quoted $265 plus 12% gratuity for the vow renewal. which I thought was very reasonable.
 

Hello all! I will be sailing on Allure of the Seas on March 3rd with my husband and our 5 year old daughter. Their first cruise, my 4th but it's been 10 years.
After reading many of the posts here and on Cruise critic, I have come up with the following for our shore excursions, want to get your thoughts if something looks amiss to you.
Our priorities are to balance finding some fun things that our daughter will enjoy but also get some beach time, and we definitely want to enjoy the ship as much as possible.
Nassau-No excursions planned, will likely take a walk and stay in the port area, possibly grab lunch but we would like to enjoy the ship while people are on shore (though my understanding is that in Nassau many people stay on the ship).
Cozumel-Dolphin encounter at Chankanaab and enjoy the beach there before our dolphin time. Lunch  and then as soon as we are done head back to the port for some quick shopping and back on the ship. (I have been to Nachi Cocum twice and would love to do it again but we thought it might be boring for our daughter, except she would love the pool).
Roatan -My original plan was to stay on the ship for this port because I have been there before, but then we read that there is really good snorkeling from the shore so we changed our plans. We will book a private tour through Victor Bodden so we can be on our own schedule. We'll see monkeys and sloths, then go to West Bay Beach to hang and do some snorkeling and lunch.  Head back to the ship by 2 or 3 but that is flexible.
Costa Maya-Maya Chan for the day and probably do a vow renewal ceremony while we are there. They are very reasonably priced for the vow renewal.  We may consider leaving our daughter on the ship if she is loving Adventure Ocean and we'll have some couple time, but that will be a game day decision.   I'm sure when she sees the water activities in the port she will want to do that but I really am trying to avoid that.
 
Some changes to consider. In Nassau, book the dolphin encounter and beach day at Blue Lagoon and do Nachi Cocum in Cozumel instead of Chankanaab because our daughter would probably enjoy the pool there even if there isn't much to do for kids, but we would enjoy the food and drink ?
Any advice or thoughts welcome.
Thank you!

I can ask Hubby more later and get back to you.  But it involves a 30-40min boat ride to Blue Lagoon.

We have been on the Allure four times and have been to Nassau three times. Trust me, there is a LOT to do! If your child is a teen, I recommend the teen club (can't remember the name) on deck 15. There's Adventure Ocean for the little ones also. The pools are very crowded on cruise days but not on port days and the on board shops are closed when the ship is in port. I would gladly stay on the ship and maybe venture of for a brief walk through the straw market. 

Agree with above.....maybe depending somewhat on the ship too but...

My husband and daughter did the blue lagoon beach break and dolphin swim back in March. Pics and details are in my Anthem blog (link in signature below). They loved it and hubby did mention how beautiful it was there. He said that was his favourite beach in comparison to Labadee and Coco cay. And he also mentioned that the water level is quite shallow before it gets deep so great for kids. I feel like it is a pricey excursion though.

We did Blue Lagoon and quite enjoyed it.  Having said that, we are doing same itinerary as you on Symphony and we'll be staying on the ship for Nassau day. We prefer another sea day and Nassau us a good stop to give up.

I'm sure it's just me, but with all of those other beach days planned, I would probably choose to stay on the ship in Nassau....especially if Nassau is near the end of the itinerary.

What ship are you on and have you cruised it before? 

Exactly!

The only thing I'm going to do is POSSIBLY jog around the track if I'm up early enough in the mornings.  Other than that, I'm going to eat what I want and enjoy. Presumably not to the point of exploding ?

The only thing I'm going to do is POSSIBLY jog around the track if I'm up early enough in the mornings.  Other than that, I'm going to eat what I want and enjoy. Presumably not to the point of exploding ?

I just told my wife last night that my #1 goal on our cruise coming up is not to eat myself into a food coma. I have never successfully gone on a cruise and not been miserable at some point from eating too much. Ordering multiple entrees/appetizers combined with sugary drinks is a terrible combination for me, but also way too delicious to pass up. The pain is real but the food is real good. But this cruise is the cruise that I'm going to control myself. Hopefully. Wish me luck...
Side Note: We purchased a 5 night dining package since this is our first Oasis class cruise. I'm screwed.

 

I'll be sure to remind you of this when it's August and we find out you've booked 19 cruises for 2020. ? 

I drink quite a few alcoholic drinks too, and everytime I order a drink I order a bottle of water too.  So for me,  even if I only drink 2 mixed drinks, add in the water bottles and I am at 30 bucks.  I get iced coffee, at least 2 per day in the a.m.  That puts me at 40.  I get a cappuccino after dinner with an amaretto shot.  I am 50+ per day, and that is only 2 alcohol beverages.  The Johnny Rockets milkshakes are new, and I intend to take full use of it instead of waiting in line for an ice cream cone.

On my 1/27 sailing on Allure it dropped from $48 to $42  on 1/4 & the refreshment package dropped from $26 to $20 tonight

I'm not thrilled about the conditions either (or the cost!), but my family has been begging for years to do something like this. So I'm caving this time but then will never have to consider it again ? thanks for the advice to contact the facility!

I loved Chef's Table....not one bad thing to say. I loved the experience, the wine, food and people. The filet was one of the best I've had in my life and all the food was just amazing. My group was only 7. It was worth every penny in my opinion.

The menu seems to be standard fleet-wide, with minor variations based on what the chef chooses to do with a given course's preparation and whether a given seating has a significant number of repeat guests -- One the live blogs on the main site, by Ric, noted how he and several others who did Chef's Table on night 1 with a discount then went back for a second time (due to an even better discount that was offered); because there were so many returning guests, the chef altered the menu so that they didn't get the exact same menu a second time.
The menu does get updated every so often (annually?), but at least on my April 2018 sailing on Freedom, and @ellcee's / @Broons77's / my October 2018 sailing on Anthem, it was the same menu with slight differences in preparation and presentation. And the wine pairings for all 3 of us were fairly different, which itself made for some interesting conversations between us about the merits of the wines and whether one pairing worked better than another.
Chef's Table is definitely not something that fills up, even after embarkation. Each night they can accommodate up to It think 18 or 20 guests, and I've yet to hear of a fully-booked seating. My own seating on Freedom was only 9 people (I went solo), and I think @ellcee and @Broons77 were only a few more than that on each of their times. You can most likely wait until the cutoff date with Cruise Planner (3 days before embarkation) and still have your pick of the days.
Drink fatigue is real. The better a price you can get for the Deluxe package, the easier it is to "break even" across the trip and not feel like you need to be having a "party like it's 1999" day every day. If you think that bringing your allowed two bottles of wine would be enough, at least with MDR dinner drinks, to cut down the amount of drinking you'd be paying a la carte to less than the daily package cost, consider skipping the Deluxe package and just get Refreshment packages instead. Then you have all the non-alcoholic stuff covered and you can get alcohol as / when / where you want it.

Yeah, the packages are definitely being priced appreciably higher for 2019 than they were for 2018. $42/day seemed to be the best sale price for most 2018 cruises, but I'm not seeing anyone who's reported less than $52/day for a 2019 sailing. The good news is that it "only" translates to one more cocktail, or a couple of beers, per day if you typically drink the same amount most days; if you're like most vacationers and do most of your "celebratory imbibing" on embarkation day, you may find that it's enough to make the Chefs Table day and port days more manageable. Here's a quick, rough example of a way to easily hit $52 on a sea day:
Grande cappuccino / latte / espresso with breakfast, and one more in the afternoon: $8 1 "lighter" cocktail (e.g., mojito or one of the sake-based drinks in Izumi, where the alcohol / calorie content isn't crazy) around lunch time, or a sail-away beverage on port days: $13 2 glasses of wine with dinner: $26 (bearing in mind that most decent / good wines will have you going over the $13 per-drink limit by a few bucks) 1 beer at the pub while watching the evening entertainer: $6-7 Total for the above is $53-54, and in my view not an unreasonable or difficult "target" on a daily basis. Throw in a fresh-squeezed OJ with breakfast, and there's another couple of bucks shaved off, which would let you replace a cocktail with a more-manageable beer or two.
You definitely don't have to drink like a frat boy on hazing night to break even or keep up.

We did the Chefs Table on Navigator and it was excellent! Make sure your hungry when go, if that's your plan...we didn't eat breakfast or lunch the next day...?

Run, don't walk, to Chef's Table for the tenderloin (assuming it's on the menu on your sailing).  I enjoyed that more than my ribeye at Chops and the ribeye was out of this world.
Agree with the multiple tips from people to book it on board when the discounts are offered.  As @JLMoran said, I haven't heard of an entire sailing of CT filling up.
Bon appetit and bon voyage!

Sample menus are cool, but simplified to cover all ships in the fleet.  Here are Oasis menus from last week that may be closer to what Allure offers.
Chops Grille

150 CP

Note - they were able to convert the "Tenderloin for Two" into a single serving for just me.  
Giovanni's Table

No, no.  The one that was substandard was the MDR steak.  Whle I’ve never ordered it in the MDR, I’m sure the upcharge Chops steak is fine.

If you want a really, really, really good filet -- then you will absolutely want to do Chef's Table, and kill two birds with one stone. I didn't have it, but @ellcee did when she went to CT on Anthem; she said it was the best filet ever, and even better than Chops (which she'd had just the day before). The rest of the food is equally awesome, IMO, and you're getting some really good wines with the meal. It's also very much a social experience, between talking with your table-mates, learning about the meal first-hand from the chef, and learning about the wines from your sommelier.
Yes, Chef's Table is pricey when you buy it on the Cruise Planner, but if you're OK with going to it on day 1 and not buying the seat for it until you're on board, you should likely score a discount for that night from the specialty dining folks who will be hawking specials the whole day. That said, I paid full price as I didn't want to miss MDR and meeting our table-mates on night 1, and I felt the meal and wines were worth every penny I'd paid and then some. If I'd gone to NYC for that meal I'd have been out more than double what I'd paid in the Cruise Planner. If I'd gone to a restaurant in Morristown or Montclair that was on par with NYC, I'd still have paid a lot more.
And keep in mind that if you pay full price, you can expect to be able to have as many glasses of wine as you like; from what I've read here, you do not get that perk if you buy the meal at a discount on Day 1. So while it says you get 5 glasses of wine in the description, you can easily have several more than that. I want to say I had more like 8 or 9 glasses by the time it was all said and done, and they don't do light pours either. If five glasses of wine is your limit, then no reason not to grab a discount if it's offered.
 
The only other specialty dining venue I've been to so far is Wonderland. I happened to like it, but it wasn't a blow-my-socks-off experience the way Chef's Table was. You definitely need to be a seafood lover, given how many of the appetizers are seafood-based. It's good for a one-time experience, but after that I'd spend my money on other specialty dining venues.