SweetPea

Day 2 PDCC.
I slept a nice 8hrs and woke up refreshed. I plan to get off at noon for a chicken sandwich. But I will head to the Crown Lounge for OJ and bread. Then the casino. I am trying out my red, casino only outfit today.
I haven't ventured out around the ship yet, but I have plenty of days to do that.
My brother's toilet didn't work yesterday. They were supposed to send someone to fix it during dinner. I will find out if they did.
Stray observations
They were desperate to sell specialty dining. We got accosted 5 times while in Playmakers, twice in the WJ and once in the MDR. The lowest was 40% off.
The internet is great. I made a couple of calls and my brother was able to revise a project and send it out.
Crew have been friendly and fantastic, everyone is eager to help.
Cabin steward said he will just come clean when he can, never asked about whether we wanted evening or morning service.
This sailing has 40% children. Lots of large family groups and reunions. But no tales of poop in the pools, despite them looking like soup.

So none of my plans really worked out. I was basically up for 48hrs straight and my mind didn't function on a proper level.
So shenanigans 🤪.......
My mother started early. Our Lyft driver showed up in a different car than describe.....much smaller. But we had to go, she fell asleep and proceeded to talk in her sleep. He thought she was having a full conversation with her, it was hilarious 😂.
This continued to be a thing. Her talking very loudly to herself and people thinking they are having a conversation.
My brother said she was brand new during her tsa screening. She was narrating everything she did and the tsa worker asked if she was autistic and needed special assistance.
She has a habit of asking obvious questions.....like "why are all these people standing here trying to get a ride," or my favorite  "what's that?" To anything we get, despite telling her we were getting it.
She got to the room and was brand new that the beds can be split. I found out when she shares a room with her bff, they never split the bed. But she legit thought she was staying in a special room.
Since we have casino drinks we let her drink on our vouchers,  she had 4 daiquiris and was drunk. She fell off a casino stool and got lost in the bathroom before dinner. She didn't want to eat but I forced her to and she felt better. I know what you are thinking but she doesn't drink, so that little alcohol took her to the edge. She kept waving to random children and giggling. It was a lot funnier because my brother and I were exhausted and a little lightheaded.

Embarkation day continues.
The casino has a ton of new machines, none of my favorites are on her anymore. I couldn't find a machine to get a good groove on. My brother played eight cents a spin on dancing drums and won $40. He is rich and will play that for the rest of the 10 nights, also that was only part of his freeplay. 🤣😂😭😱. They did make an announcement about people smoking in the non-smoking section.
A side note, it doesn't feel full, the pool deck is always popping but I haven't waited for much. The casino bar needs more or better bartenders,  service was abysmal. They are super strict about traditional dining. 8:30-8:45 is the set time, not before or after.
I request we only be sat together and it was honored. A nice 4-top across from windows. The tables are close.
We had basic welcome aboard dinner. With the exception of the steak, my brother ate everything else. My mother and I split the steak. She tried the chicken and fish and wasn't happy. Food was hot, but somewhat salty.
 
 
 

Travel anxiety is real! I get it. ESPECIALLY on planes!
I also took 10,342 selfies for my boarding photo just now and all of them were terrible. And now I'm hoping they just retake it at check in at the port ....

Travel anxiety is real! I get it. ESPECIALLY on planes!
I also took 10,342 selfies for my boarding photo just now and all of them were terrible. And now I'm hoping they just retake it at check in at the port ....

Travel anxiety is real! I get it. ESPECIALLY on planes!
I also took 10,342 selfies for my boarding photo just now and all of them were terrible. And now I'm hoping they just retake it at check in at the port ....

😋
Naturally. Who only has one early lunch then nothing until dinner? 😁
I'm supposed to control myself on embarkation day in June b/c we're using our first ever D+ BOGO for Giovanni's Kitchen on night one and I'm expecting a rather huge meal.

For reference I will just post an end of evening shenanigans post involving my mother.

Embarkation day continues....
We got in at 10am, by the time we walked to baggage claim my bag was up. A min later so was my mother's. A few minutes later we had all bags. I saw a Royal shuttle rep collecting pax. But no idea when they left. It was humid, I was wearing capris, at 83 degrees by 10:20  I was sweating hard. I have Lyft Pink and was supposed to get priority pickup but it took 10min longer than the 2min quote time.
There is some construction happening, so we arrived at 11:15 and by 11:19 I was on the ship. I did get a new photo taken but express is the best! You even have your own screening machines. Boarding was actually quite fast as it took my brother 9min to meet me at our muster station.
The rooms were ready at 1:15. We are on deck 3 in catty corner rooms. The kind that are tucked back behind some stairs. I love it. They are using some sort of smell good, that keeps the room smelling fresh. I have a loveseat but my brother's room just has the vanity chair. I think it was an added room after the Amp because the layout is different. The mattresses are super firm in both rooms.
But anyway we did muster and made our way to Playmakers. They serve food after 11:45 and it was 11: 27 when we got there.  My mother only drinks frozen drinks, so my brother and I got a beer. Me a Voodoo Ranger and him the Kentucky bourbon ale. Our server was great, he is actually going home to the Philippines the same day we disembark. For food we got the 50 wings split between bbq and the hottest. Plus onion rings, plain and garlic parm fries. ........my brother still made a WJ stop after we dropped our carry-on in the rooms.

They gave me express and still took another photo.

Travel anxiety is real! I get it. ESPECIALLY on planes!
I also took 10,342 selfies for my boarding photo just now and all of them were terrible. And now I'm hoping they just retake it at check in at the port ....

I've yet to see these!

I've yet to see these!

+1. The only thing I ever eat is the fruity pebbles rice krispy treat.  😂😂

I don't know about anyone else, but I always find the Chef's Choice amenity to be so sad looking lol

Hi All!
Once again I am back to recap day 6, an actual sea day, aka the day with all the crown and anchor things 🙃.
We started our day off with breakfast in Coastal Kitchen... again... I am sorry, we are boring. Anyways, today I managed to get a photo of our tray of pastries before we attacked it so here it is:
\
After breakfast, our normal stateroom attendant, Linton, was back and he had done my room and had one of the cuter towel animals I have seen:

Next up (after my parents may or may not have booked another cruise...) we had the Pinnacle Cheers with an Officer Lunch. It was in the dining room on deck 4 and on the other side of the same floor was the Diamond Plus lunch. Anyways, here are a few photos I captured there:






After that, we headed to the backstage tour. At least on Odyssey, the actual backstage tours and not just the panels are back, although it still started with a panel Q&A before we headed back stage where we were not allowed to take pictures. Here is a picture of the panel:

Then I came back to my room where the chef's choice amenity had been delivered. I know these vary ship to ship and even sailing to sailing but here is what I got this time:


I then wandered around the ship a bit. It was quite busy since it was a see day, I will try to capture some ship photos on a port day or in the morning one day when it is emptier. Anyways, after that, I got some Sorrento's pizza... for science 🤣:
 
Then once again it was time to rest and get ready for dinner (not that the rest was really necessary on this incredibly lazy sea day). Once again, we had dinner in Coastal Kitchen:








After dinner, we once again spent a bit of time in the pub before heading to bed:



Tomorrow we are in Limassol, Cyprus. On boarding day we found out our mall transfer here had been cancelled so we booked "Panoramic Limassol & Shopping Tour" so we will be doing that tomorrow. We also have Chops Grille booked for dinner tomorrow so I promise you will finally see less Coastal Kitchen 😂.
Thanks again and TTYL!
- Ashley
 
 

Travel anxiety is real! I get it. ESPECIALLY on planes!
I also took 10,342 selfies for my boarding photo just now and all of them were terrible. And now I'm hoping they just retake it at check in at the port ....

Travel anxiety is real! I get it. ESPECIALLY on planes!
I also took 10,342 selfies for my boarding photo just now and all of them were terrible. And now I'm hoping they just retake it at check in at the port ....

Travel anxiety is real! I get it. ESPECIALLY on planes!
I also took 10,342 selfies for my boarding photo just now and all of them were terrible. And now I'm hoping they just retake it at check in at the port ....

Okay let's backtrack.
I don't think I have ever mentioned this but I have travel anxiety. Usually a couple of days before I can't really eat or sleep. So going into this I had been up since 5am on Saturday morning and only had 2 apples and some popcorn. I intended to update on the plane but slept 2hrs of the 2hrs and 20min flight.
Our Lyft drivers kept canceling so I assumed we would be late. But we made it to the airport about 95min before boarding. I was through the precheck fast and was told by a very unhelpful crew member to wait at the end. I watched so many shenanigans involving nudity. Why show up wearing something that requires a belt but no underwear 🤔????????
My favorite was this woman who went through tsa with $500 worth of full size Victoria secret products that had to be tossed. She somehow thought name brand products were exempt from the liquid rules. They tossed all of it and she cussed them out and cried. I guess not as bad as the guy with 12 jars of hot giadeneria. It's a Chicago special of hot pickled veggies. That guy chose to get out of security and check his bag.
So my brother loves the man wipes from TJ Maxx and they are in a sturdy package that got flagged. They were taken to a special line but got through in 15min. I waited 30min on the wrong side. I finally texted and they were at the gate. I walked over, hoping to stop at Dunkin for 2 glazed. The case was empty of donuts but my brother wanted coffee. The line was 3 gates deep. Despite being able to see no donuts, people stayed in line and kept cussing the cashier out for not having them.
The boarding process was the usual SWA mess. However it was very efficient and we finished earlier than expected,  so we landed early. There was a very rude lady who came from the back and knocking people over trying to disembark before the other rows. I sat my bag down and stood, so people could disembark in order. She got frustrated and pushed my mother out of the way. So she could get off.......wasn't connecting,  was trying to get a man's attention who had sat up front.

Small update on something I think I completely forgot to mention !
When we were on cruise #4 (Freedom) we really didn't gamble much.  Both of us had just made Prime on Explorer and we knew that we could never gamble enough in 4 nights to get any kind of instant reward, so we basically just "coasted" on FR.  Guess what ???  I ended up with an instant reward that was 7 pages long !!!!  Honestly, I think they must have made a mistake.  I hardly gambled at all, and I certainly didn't lose enough money to warrant an IR.  ...but of course, b/c neither of us gambled much, neither of us purchased a Next Cruise open booking.  I am "telling" on myself here b/c I have been recommending to everyone ELSE that they DON'T leave the ship without a NC open booking !  ...and here, I violated my own rule !  Of course, as all gamblers know, these low level Instant Rewards require a NC open booking in order to use the cert so I worried all the way through the Wonder cruise if I would be able to use my Freedom cert or if it would be useless.  Since we were both reasonably close to the lower limit certs on Wonder, I went ahead and purchased 1 NC open booking just in case we got an offer on Wonder.
Well, neither of us got an offer on Wonder.  🙃  (We both got useless $$$ off offers but those are useless without a real cruise to combine it with).  So now I have this NC open booking that I may not be able to use and an Instant Reward booking from FR which I may lose.  Bad juju.
Today (Monday) I gathered the courage to call Club Royale to see if I could book the IR that I received on FR.  I did have a NC open booking but it was NOT purchased on FR, which is where I earned the IR.
I got very, very, very lucky and got an AWESOME CR rep.  You just know immediately whether you have someone on the other end of the line who knows what they're doing or not.  I could tell that Jean was going to be great.  How right I was !  Almost the first thing out of her mouth was, "did you happen to purchase a NC open booking ?".  I was honest, and said, "yes, but it wasn't purchased on FR".  She took down the info and put me on hold....maybe 3 minutes later she came back and said she had gotten authorization to use the NC booking purchased on WN in conjunction with the IR I had earned (I really don't believe I earned it...but...whatever) on FR.
Getting back to the FR IR - as I said, it was 7 pages long.  I don't even get a list of available comp cruises like that when I gamble BIG and lose thousands !  I think it was @Ampurp85 who mentioned something about the comp list being longer/better on the short cruises....which is something I never realized.  Anyway, there were LOTS of cruises on that list that we could have used including a 6 night AD booking that would have gone nicely with an existing 8 night booking we already had...but in the end, we chose a 3 night Utopia cruise (9-13-24) that will combine with our existing 9-16 UT cruise for a 7 night UT B2B.  It was a hard decision as 14 nights on AD sounded pretty damn good....but we went with the new ship.
So not only did we get to use the IR that I got BUT I was able to upgrade the IR from an interior GTY (which was all they had available in the Interior category) to one of the double balcony Central Park balconies for - wait for it - 70 cents !  HA !  I had her add the gratuities which brought the total price to just over $100, but what a GREAT DEAL !  Also, b/c I went from an interior to a balcony category, my OBC went from $25 to $50 !
She also ended up changing a booking I have on EX (3-20-25) from a 4M OV to a 1L OV (one of the panoramic rooms up front) and giving me a $28 refund !  WOOHOO !  Never thought I would get money BACK, I just wanted to get one of the panoramic OV rooms.
So I had a good morning with Club Royale.  Not always the case, but today, I scored !

Yeah! You're finally on the ship! Happy cruising!

I just ordered more red and purple underwear for James and I. We need to get to prime.

Yeah! You're finally on the ship! Happy cruising!

I am in the ship. We are starving so we are at Playmakers. I will post a longer reply after I get some food in me.