DJsMrs

First kid free vacation in almost 13 years 🥳 Well, free of our kids anyways 😂 
Hi there, my husband and I are high school sweethearts that recently celebrated 22 years together and 16 years of those being married. We are 35 and 37 with 3 kiddos (12, 10 and 6 years). 
Our last cruise was back in December on Independence with the kids for their first cruise.
We haven't had a real vacation as just a couple since 2010 which was a 4 night sailing on Monarch of the Seas. The kids are staying with grandparents and we are using the trip to celebrate our belated 16th anniversary (May 12th) and my birthday which was this last Monday. 
We are in a basic interior room as budget won out and we aren't really ones to hang out in the cabin anyways. So this won't be a fancy suite report, sorry 🙂
We live in the Nashville area but are driving the kids up to Indiana as I write this as that's where family lives. We fly out of Indianapolis early tomorrow morning to Houston. From there we are headed to an AirBnb in Galveston and board Allure on Sunday at 11. 
It'll be an early wake up call as we have to leave for the airport around 2:30am. 😴 
This will be my first trip report so no promises, but hopefully I can update it daily during downtime.

I swear my son had ramen at Izumi on the Ovation last year.  I can't find pics though.  
As to ramen and udon stereotypes, I am uncertain that any of the aforementioned stereotypes that noodles are a cheap dish and not to be served with sushi is accurate.
We just got back from 2 weeks in Japan.  We had sushi at least 6 times.  Out of those 6 times, udon or ramen was an option at 4 of those restaurants.  
Also, ramen was on average more expensive than Udon, and ramen was also on average more expensive than sushi.  Even ramen at mom and pop shops.
Just an FYI.

I need to drag you with me when I take my mom to try real ramen because this blasphemy will not stand!

Day 3 - Sitka
We got off the boat right at 12, and then took the shuttle buses downtown. It’s about 6 miles from the cruise terminal to the main town area. The buses were quick, convenient, and efficient. 
After getting dropped off, we walked to Harbor Mountain Brewery, which is about a 25 min walk from the drop off point. They have a pizza place (campfire pizza) in the same location. It was such a cool place, and both the pizza and beer were excellent.
That’s corn, goat cheese, and pea shoots on the pizza. Not a combination I ever would have thought of, but we loved it!

After lunch, we walked over to the Raptor Center, which was really cool. I’ve never been that up close to a bald eagle.
From the Raptor Center, we hiked the Totem Trail at the Sitka National Historical Park. It was very pretty, especially out on the beach looking at the snow capped mountains. 
 

 

 

We walked back to town and stopped in a few shops along the Main Street before heading back to the ship. 
Pub Trivia was about to start, so we grabbed a roast beef sandwich from Park Cafe and went to the pub. We won our second round of trivia, but there were only two other teams playing. 
Dinner tonight is back in the MDR at 8:45, which is really tough for us, because we normally keep a senior citizen (or as I learned from @Ampurp85 live blog, the correct term is “vintage”) schedule for dinner. 
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Sitka, but I was blown away by the natural beauty of Alaska. We had an awesome day, and tomorrow is another busy one. We sail up Tracy Arm Fjord in the morning and stop in Juneau in the afternoon. 
 

Pro Tip - heed this warning... it's dive-bombing season for crows (they're guarding their babies)- so if you see these signs when you're back in VanCity.   It's a news story every spring and people are often walking around with umbrellas on bright sunny days to keep their head safe - they are serious about guarding their littles!    Have a GREAT cruise!

Pro Tip - heed this warning... it's dive-bombing season for crows (they're guarding their babies)- so if you see these signs when you're back in VanCity.   It's a news story every spring and people are often walking around with umbrellas on bright sunny days to keep their head safe - they are serious about guarding their littles!    Have a GREAT cruise!

Day 2 - Sea Day
Today was fun - didn’t take a ton of pictures though. 
Started the day with breakfast in the MDR, which was very good. Need to remember to ask for the pastry basket next time. 
We tried our luck at another general knowledge trivia game and came in third this time.
Got some coffee from cafe latitude. I bought the coffee card prior to sailing, and I just assumed it would be added to my sea pass card like the kids’ soda package. Nope, there was a physical card in our cabin that we had totally ignored. The guy at the cafe was super nice and gave us a new card after looking us up on the list. Had a nice relaxing time reading in vintages and watching out the window. The younger kids have had a blast in the Optix teen club. They’ve mostly been playing video games with other teens. 
There was a slot pull event for the Facebook group, which was a lot of fun, even though we picked the coldest machine in history. $420 in a wheel of fortune game and no one got to spin the wheel! Everyone walked away empty handed, but it was a great time. 
We played bingo in the Colony Club - three rounds without sniffing a Bingo!
I sat in the Centrum and watched the classical guitar player for a bit while the rest of the family did their own thing. 
Towel animals in the cabins were awesome. The plushie behind the towel animal is named Catthew (get it,? if Matt is short for Matthew than Cat must be short for Catthew).

Got dressed up for dinner and went back to the Colony Club for flag trivia - we got 18/20 and finished around fourth. 
On the way to dinner, we got some professional photos taken. Then we saw a family taking mirror selfies, which looked like a good idea. It didn’t work so well, though.Someone from the crew saw us attempting this and offered to take our picture the old fashioned way. As he took a bunch of family photos for us, I noticed he had a bunch of stripes on his sleeve. He was probably much too important and busy for that, but I really appreciated him offering to help us out.
He wasn’t a great photographer, but the picture did turn out substantially better!
Dinner was at Chops, which was very good. The lack of vegetarian options was disappointing though. It would be nice if there was one main without meat. 
The onboard show, Now and Forever, is kind of weird. It’s a jukebox musical, but without any plot and with some very strange song choices. The ending medley from Mama Mia was entertaining though. It left me wishing they’d just put on that show.
Another weird thing that surfaced yesterday - there was only body wash in our shower. No shampoo or conditioner. Is that normal? We ended up buying some from the hair salon, but I was shocked not to have it in our cabin. 
Tomorrow is our first port stop in Sitka!

The final countdown is on!
 

I always remember this fun fact from a customer service seminar.    If a customer has a bad experience they'll happily tell, on average, 10 people.   If they have a great experience they'll typically tell 2 or 3.
People love to complain - keep that in mind when you're reading the bad reviews.   Definitely worth considering, but I wouldn't take it as gospel.

The final countdown is on!
 

You can pre-order your drinks, neat - then add ice and mix as needed throughout the evening - Your genie will definitely hook this up for you.

I always remember this fun fact from a customer service seminar.    If a customer has a bad experience they'll happily tell, on average, 10 people.   If they have a great experience they'll typically tell 2 or 3.
People love to complain - keep that in mind when you're reading the bad reviews.   Definitely worth considering, but I wouldn't take it as gospel.

I'm sure there's a review out there of someone on a cruise ship saying "1 star out of 5! Ship was in the middle of the ocean for extended periods of time and I couldn't get off!" Like @CanHardlyWait and others have said, take negative reviews with a HUGE grain of salt.

A few shots from our bridge tour courtesy of Suite Concierge, Kenny…
 

Day 6
-This one will be brief for a change.
-We did the escape room at 1pm. Our group of 8 & 4 others. It’s held in a room with blank walls in Adventure Ocean. As the entertainment staff member running it explained, it was originally all decorated in Chinese and so when Wonder never made it there they stripped the room. She said it was supposed to be redecorated but hasn’t happened yet. Anyway, the puzzles were incredibly challenging and it took all 12 people working on different parts simultaneously. We managed to solve it & “escape” with one second left (you’re given 35 minutes). She told us we were only the 5th group in 115 sessions this week to solve it.
-We took pictures on the Promenade then had dinner in CK. It was lobster night & they serve a poached lobster dish rather than the lobster in the MDR & it was very good. Across the table I think we covered every entree & many thought it was the best meal of the cruise.
-We saw Effectors II after dinner and most everyone enjoyed it, especially my nieces. I’m not a broadway guy, haven’t actually seen a single broadway show on any cruise. I thought this was a good mix of broadway type singing/makeup/dancing along with some special effects.
-As usual this cruise has flown by. Very much looking forward to going back on Wonder with just my wife to enjoy the aspects that don’t fit with my family’s preferences (not a complaint, I’m very thankful & the suite neighborhood is great, we just do things differently). Waiting until next March is the hard part.
-NOTE: I may have a photo dump, mostly of food & drink, that I would post after we get home.

Also no rule preventing you from leaving kids in port when you return to ship. 

Time to start the bilge pump I guess.  

One word.   Brightline 
I'm saving $3k on business class to Singapore by flying from Miami instead of MCO.  By then Brightline will be in service so I may use it to fly from Miami.  With $3k in savings I've got some wiggle room.   

Lots of reports of this from March 2020 into summer of 2021. 
 
Fake news? 

I live and play in Western Oregon.  The weather in the Coast Range  is similar to Southeast Alaska.  Not particularly cold, but often quite wet.  I seldom use rain pants, other than the heavy rubber ones we wear while fishing.
How do we identify tourists?  They wear rain pants.
 
Seriously, if you're comfortable wearing rain pants, by all means go for it if that's how you are inclined.  My experience, you can be wet from the rain, or wet from sweating inside your rain pants.  You're still wet either way.  And rain pants that breathe?  An oxy-moron designed to sell rain pants.
 
In a boat is a different story.  Inactivity while wet can be very uncomfortable.  One good blast of spray, and you'll likely remain damp and cold for the rest of the excursion.  Water shedding clothing will be worthwhile. 

@dejavu21has it nailed.   Take the bus up to the bridge - then back to Canada Place.   The train station isn't too far away from Canada Place (not walkable, but much closer than the airport).   If you can store your bags at Canada Place somewhere you could hit the suspension bridge, whip back, and then grab a cab over to the train station - it's only 10-20 minutes away (10 in lighter traffic - 20 in rush hour).
 
Have fun!

@dejavu21has it nailed.   Take the bus up to the bridge - then back to Canada Place.   The train station isn't too far away from Canada Place (not walkable, but much closer than the airport).   If you can store your bags at Canada Place somewhere you could hit the suspension bridge, whip back, and then grab a cab over to the train station - it's only 10-20 minutes away (10 in lighter traffic - 20 in rush hour).
 
Have fun!

You can’t leave the damn towel animals unsupervised for a second. 

Final thoughts:
Allure was a great ship. She seemed to be well maintained with no obvious signs of rust, wear, etc.
The entertainment offered is what we have come to expect on a ship. Some things are ok, some are really good. Oceanaria was fabulous. We've seen O in Vegas and it's a little mind boggling that they can pull this show off on a moving ship with a smaller pool. 
Our cabin was great - it's what we expect from the 2br suites, just with a slightly larger balcony. We never did use the side of the balcony that wraps around the master bedroom. I went over there one morning, but the neighbors were on their balcony and I wanted quiet. The only draw back was that you could hear noise from the aqua theater in the living room, but shows were over by 10pm.
Activities - there really was too much for us to do even without the Abyss or water slides. We never even made it to the main pool deck or a single trivia game. We had a hard time trying to balance a chill vacation with doing everything. Because of work stress, I think DH would have preferred the former. I was worried Allure was going to be "too big" for us in terms of things to do, and that turned out to be correct. Freedom class is a better fit for us - we sail on Liberty again in the fall. She's our favorite ship, and we'll get our first crystal block on her. 
Cabin attendant - Ida was great, fast and polite. However, I saw him working rooms way down the hall - like almost to the mid point of our deck. I don't know if he was covering for someone or they were all assigned to him regularly. Either way, his towel animal game suffered. In the 2 bedroom with the kids, we have always received an abundance of critters (I think the record is 16 on a 7 night). We know the cutbacks have shortened their time in each room, but because this was a star class sailing, we thought this wouldn't affect us. We received a total of 4 for the week with the first one arriving on the afternoon of day 3. They were all placed in the master bedroom, which DH and I thought was odd - why not put them in the kids' room or the living room? Was this a big deal? Absolutely not, but it is one of those little details that make cruising special over a land vacation, and the lack was noticed.

 
Food - was good throughout the week with just a couple of misses, like the burger in Chops. There was just too much of it for us. 
Internet - seemed pretty fast. I didn't have any upload issues. 
Genie - Smitha was very sweet, and did a great job at shuffling our reservations around. Again - the food! I don't know if we would sail star class again though. Having a genie and the opportunity to squeeze one more thing in because she could reserve seats for us may have actually been a drawback for us as DH really needed a more relaxing week. The delivery of drinks in the afternoon was nice, but because we had that, we didn't really use the mini bar other than the water. I had one beer, and we drank our bottle of wine, but I don't think the kids even opened a soda in the room. I think sky class is probably a better fit for us although the regular 2 br suites face the side and not the aft of the ship. We have sailed both the aft and side facing on 2 BRs on other ships and MUCH prefer the aft facing rooms. Our next Oasis class sailing is on Harmony next spring, and we're going to try two connecting balconies for the first time. Wish me luck!
I think that's all for this one - let me know if you have a question about anything, and I'll be happy to help if I can!