blantsimonetti

Hello. I am fond of photography, learning new languages, travel. I keep a blog and write reviews for online games.

That's interesting that they are now offering a second specialty dinner that makes good use of the Vintages space, and for significantly less than Chef's Table. Sounds like it was two fewer courses (no "palate cleanser" before the appetizer, and no pasta course), and no special presentation from the chef, but otherwise very similar to CT. I think this is a smart idea; Vintages was never busy on either of my sailings, and if this can help to make more people aware of the space then maybe it will also help to save that space from being replace during AMPED updates.
Have you done CT before? Any chance of a comparison of food quality / offerings? Also curious to know if the courses offered are simply selections from the on-board specialty restaurant menus / CK menu, or if this was a one-off menu specifically designed for this event.
Oh, and were you allowed to have more than one glass of any wine(s) that you especially enjoyed? Any discount at the time of the event to buy a bottle of any of the wines served with the meal?
Thanks in advance!

Other photos from the ship in Nassua

Hi Joe,  Yes.  that is correct.  We also did Chef's table for Thanksgiving night which was superb.  It was the same menu we had on Grandeur in March, but appreciated having a different chef with a slightly different interpretation on oasis and really enjoyed it being in the suite lounge on the 14th floor.  
I think the food quality was higher at Chef's table, but I still really enjoyed the experience and food at Vintages as well!!!    Yes you are correct about the number of courses, and the dinner at Vintages was more about presentation of the wines vs the food.  The menu was a special menu just for them, although it likely pulled some of the dishes from the specialty restaurants and other locations.   You could definately have more wine if you liked it.    I did not feel limited in anyway and got more of several of them because i esp. love CAVA love Italian wines. The CAVA really served as a palate cleanser as well ( In fact, it was the palate cleanser that is served at Chef's table). :).  I did not ask about a discount on the bottle of wine served with the meal, but that is a really great question!!!!  They have only been offering this dinner for 3-4 weeks.  It started on Oasis and is now spreading fleet wide so I am sure the offerings will evolve.  I enjoyed it so much that I would have done it a second day if they offered a different menu. 

Day #3 First Sea Day
The first sea day was on Tuesday.  I got up and went to the gym.  This was also the morning of the cruise critic meet and mingle.  Most everyone there won prices in the drawing and you got to pick the prize you wanted.  So of the more popular prizes that went first were free voom minutes, buy one get one free specialty restaurants, johnny rockets, and 4  bottles of wine or champagne.  My name was drawn late in the game.  I got a RCL water bottle.  After that, someone on our facebook group had organized a cabin crawl.  We got to tour one of the loft suites on the crawl which had a great view of the aft and the flow rider area. We were also all able to tour the suite lounge and Coastal kitchen on deck 14.
At 10:45, we had the top tier event in the aqua theatre with the special diving show.  This was one of my favorite top tier events, and since I had no drink package this cruise I grabbed 2 glasses of champagne and 2 mimosa's as I walked in :).  Here were the stats for the cruise: 3000, C&A members, 359 diamond members, 140 diamond plus members, and 24 pinnacle members.   After the event, we went to lunch in the dining room which we like to do at least a couple of sea days during the cruise.  I really love the tutti fruti salad bar that they mix up for you at the bar.  I was planning to get that, but when I walked up to the buffet area in the dining room, they also had a station for custom stir fry that they made for you.  Greg and I both got that!  It was really good.  On oasis they, have a seperate faster line in the main dining room if you are going to just get something off of the buffet vs. ordering from the menu.  This was nice and an express lane option.  We were seated on the opposite side of the dining room from those who were ordering off the menu. 
In the afternoon, we went to the wines around the world tasting in the main dining room.  I enjoy the wine tastings, but have not done any of them in a while because I have had a drink package during many of my recent sailings.   It was nice to get to go to the tasting again for something different.
Before I knew it, it was diamond happy hour again, and we headed to the diamond lounge and then our early seating for dinner.   Overall, it was a perfect sea day.
Random Observations:
They did finally offer a 3 night specialty dining package today for $85.   I was trying to decide whether to do this or do Chef's Table.  I opted for Chef's table on Thanksgiving night.  There were no discounts for this this week, and according the the chef, he does not really discount it anymore on Oasis.  I had a lot of onboard credit this cruise, and was able to easily make the reservation using the app

 

Welcome @blantsimonetti !

We did private tours in 2016 when on Harmony, Florence, Rome and Naples, we liked the driver so much in Rome that we asked if he could do our Naples tour and he said yes, so we got back on the ship and he drove through the night to meet us.
We used Rome Private Tours in all 3 cites, they were great. I didn't find them but hooked up with a group from Cruise Critic that ended up being a terrific group.

Day 5: Mykonos
Today was another day without much of an agenda. Port time was 7-4, but we didn't have early plans, so we slept in a little bit and lazily got ourselves ready this morning. The 7 and 3 year olds (as we call them the evens) opted to stay on the ship while the odds (13 and 5 year olds) tendered into port with us. I had read that Mykonos was famously windy, and today was no exception. It was a bright and sunny day, but the wind was pretty brutal. We had been looking forward to this island for the postcard, whitewashed landscape. However, we were a little disappointed that the roofs were not all blue like Santorini. Expectation management, I guess. We did find a few blue roofs and got the obligatory pics near them.

 


We wandered through the maze of streets (no street names here, just find your way around) and up to the windmills that overlook the town. 

From there, we did some shopping, and my wife bought a pair of sandals, which apparently is what you do in Greece. Since it was the very end of the season on the island, she got a good deal. Next was a great quest for gelato, which is a family tradition for wherever we travel. Again, being the end of the season, a lot of places were closed, so we had just about given up hope when we found a place as we re-entered the port area on the way back to the tender. The tender ride was a bit choppy headed back to the ship, and my wife got some sea spray through an open door on the boat, but we made it back to the ship in time to grab a quick, late lunch at Windjammer.
Following lunch, we dropped our daughter off at Adventure Ocean, and the teen, my wife, and I went to watch the art auction for a little while (mainly for the free champaign). Then it was time to get ready for the second formal night of the cruise. Like I said, the girls love dressing up and we had a good time pretending to be fancy at dinner. The younger three went back to Adventure Ocean, and we went to the headliner show in the theater. This was American Dream, a Motown tribute band, and the show was really good, probably our favorite of the cruise. My oldest didn't know a lot of the songs (parenting fail on my part), but she enjoyed the high energy of it all.
Last night the seas were a little rough, and the motion was more pronounced than we had experienced on this cruise or our one before it. I'm going to blame the motion of the ocean for what happened...my wife and I were walking down a corridor, when the ship rolled a bit, causing me to stagger just a little. As I did, I rammed my watch into the end of the railing on the wall- shattering the glass, making my watch unreadable. So anyway, we ended up in the shops tonight, looking at watches, which was funny because while we were at the airport on Friday, I asked my wife "who buys watches on a cruise ship? I guess enough to be profitable for the ship." Well played Royal Caribbean, well played. But I do have a nice watch now...
Tonight was also the first night I became really aware of crew sanitizing all of the handrails and public spaces around the ship. Didn't think much of it at the time, but it all became clearer on the night before we disembarked (this is called foreshadowing). Unrelated- last night both my wife and I woke up with some stomach discomfort, but we wrote it off to the motion of the ship.