Ktcruiser

I just got off the phone with emed.  It seems that my order was delayed multiple days and it was longer than my credit card company allows holds.  I guess my credit card company (Capital One) wouldn't process the payment so it wont ship.  Good thing I called 🥴.   They cancelled my order and told me to go online and reorder.  I am afraid that if I place the order on a Friday again, I will be in the came problem.  I am going to reorder on Monday and hope for the best.  I still have a little bit of time but starting to cut it close!  Hope you can get your order issues resolved! 

On Freedom now (1/14/2022 sailing) and I am hearing there are only about 400 kids onboard.    We don’t need to make reservations.    

I just got off the phone with emed.  It seems that my order was delayed multiple days and it was longer than my credit card company allows holds.  I guess my credit card company (Capital One) wouldn't process the payment so it wont ship.  Good thing I called 🥴.   They cancelled my order and told me to go online and reorder.  I am afraid that if I place the order on a Friday again, I will be in the came problem.  I am going to reorder on Monday and hope for the best.  I still have a little bit of time but starting to cut it close!  Hope you can get your order issues resolved! 

I just got off the phone with emed.  It seems that my order was delayed multiple days and it was longer than my credit card company allows holds.  I guess my credit card company (Capital One) wouldn't process the payment so it wont ship.  Good thing I called 🥴.   They cancelled my order and told me to go online and reorder.  I am afraid that if I place the order on a Friday again, I will be in the came problem.  I am going to reorder on Monday and hope for the best.  I still have a little bit of time but starting to cut it close!  Hope you can get your order issues resolved! 

Good morning everyone!  We made it to florida and today is cruise day!!  Direct flight from Cincy to Orlando was pretty easy (although completely full!!  We took uber from the airport to our hotel for the night at Cape Crossing Resort and Marina.  Last night we ordered doordash from one of the local restaurants.
Here are my thoughts about the resort here:
-Great setting and location, right on water and at marina,  about 15 minutes from cruise port, about 20 minutes from Cape canaveral.  It took us around 40 minutes to get here from the airport
-This is more of a condo type resort vs a hotel. We are in the main building in one of the rooms they call suites, but there are free standing condo's in here too that may be nice for people looking for multiple rooms, full amenities with washer/dryer, etc.
- Ordering Doordash was convenient  last night and I appreciated having the kitchen with regular plates, silverware, dishwasher, etc.  I underestimated some of the local places being closed on the holiday yesterday so our choices were mostly chains.
- Our room is modern, nice balcony with plush balcony furniture.  Bathroom is nice and bed was very comfortable.  The only negative was that we went to get ice out of the tray in the freezer, the ice tray looked really gross.  I went to the main office, and the guy at the check in counter gave me ice out of the ice machine from the main fridge in the lobby.   We had packed our own bourbon, extra water, and bottle of Cava sparkling wine for the room in our checked luggage.  This worked out well.  The tv is a smart tv.  We connected our amazon prime wirelessly and watched a movie last night so it was a relaxing night in.
- Our check for Harmony was supposed to be at 11:30, but all of the checkins got pushed back 2 hours due to mandated CDC cleaning. We asked for a late check in when we checked in yesterday and will be departing at 1pm.  They charged $10 extra for the late check out, but it seemed worth it to relax at the resort.  the pool looked really nice and welcoming last night and was open until 10.  I will probably go for a swim this morning.
-  Tonight is dinner at CHOPs at 5:30.  We will make the rest of the reservations for our 3 night dining package and our included specialty restaurant as soon as we board!
 
 
 
 

Given all the alerts that have been popping up on my phone over the the last few weeks and days it's pretty clear this one is different.
From sporting events cancelled, games being played with no live audience, state after province after country reporting dramatic increases it seems very reasonable for a minor policy update for an already very safe mode of vacationing - cruising.
Holiday sailings are projected to be very busy, much more busy than we've seen since the restart.  The timing of this variant is pretty lousy with the peak of restart cruising upon us next week.  It stands to reason, all things considered, that something had to change.  Do they start calling people and canceling their cruises to get numbers down?  That wouldn't go over very well.  They can't catch a break.  Something has to change given what we do know and don't know about Omicron.  
A minor mask policy change seems like a pretty reasonable response.
I've sailed other lines during the peak of Delta and some of those lines didn't have the concept of vaccinated venues.  It never occurred to me at the time that those cruises were intolerable because of the mask policy indoors and lack of vaccinated venues.
Like it or not the pandemic isn't over, we are not done with unpopular protocols and the potential for changes down the road.
It could be a lot worse.  The industry could be shut down again if there are major cases on board.  A minor mask policy change is the least we can all do to keep the industry going.  

I totally understand why everyone here is upset, but I wish you would just step back and understand why they're doing this. They're fully aware there are people out there like you who would be upset about this. They have plenty of people calling them right now complaining. When they made this decision I'm sure they had a pretty accurate approximation in mind of the revenue they'd lose over the next few weeks by instilling this policy. They know they will lose bookings over this. They've baked that into this decision.
However, their (very) educated decision -- as the people who lead this industry and know more about it than we ever could -- is that this policy will do more to keep cruising (and the public's perception of cruising) safe than the negative effect of people cancelling right now. I understand also that some people here think masks do not work. Unfortunately for those people, RCI listens to their full-time medical staff, who are medically trained doctors whose full-time job is to evaluate the efficacy of masks and other safety measures on cruising. It's a pretty specific job that they dedicate their life to. And those educated individuals (along with other business executives more concerned with finances and long-term viabilty of the company and industry) have determined this policy will help them continue to cruise safety. 
The executives at RCI don't give a crap about politics. They care about what's going to allow them to succeed now and years and decades into the future. That's why these decisions are made. 
That said, I think anyone with a cruise between now and Jan. 5 should absolutely be provided the opportunity to make changes to their itinerary if they don't wish to cruise under this policy. 

Thank you!  I called royal and they were able to make the reservations for me.  The woman I spoke to said the same as above.  The system isn't set up yet allow under 12, even if vaccinated.  She didn't think she would be able to make them but we were both pleasantly surprised that she was! 

The Case of the Disappearing and Reappearing Stacks
In order to pass under the bridge in Vancouver they lowered the exhaust stacks at the top of the ship's funnels.  This along with timing the transit to occur at low tide provided the necessary safety margin to sail under the bridge.
May 13 - Vancouver harbor:

May 15 - At sea.

Day Three - Sea Day
Here is the breakfast door tag I've been using to order a continental breakfast each morning.  Time slots are 6am - 11am in 30 minute windows.  

 

Thank you both.  @Matt love the podcast also! I've found a wealth of information.  I wish I had found this site before my first cruise.  I'm definitely going to be posting a review after I get back!

In the RoyalIQ app used on Ovation (until it is converted to the new app) they have listed some Shore Excursions with pricing.  Pricing in the cruise planner before sailing was better and in some cases sales were offered prior to sailing.   
I booked this one for $318.99:

I booked this one in advance in the cruise planner for $100:

I didn't book this one but I'll post it here for a point of reference:

As you see you can save some money when you purchase in advance and you can save even more if you watch for sales in the cruise planner in the months before cruising.

Today has been a bit of a (good) whirlwind so forgive me if this recap is a bit scattered. I guess like the Sound of Music says, let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start. We checked out from our hotel around 9:45 because I assumed that it would take a bit to get an Uber and I wanted to be on our way to the port by 10. Turns out our hotel checkin wasn’t the only smooth thing. Lots of Uber drivers were hanging around the area and it 2 minutes for our XL to get there. It cost us $10 plus tip to get the 3 of us from our 17th Street hotel to the port drop off. If you have lots of luggage I HIGHLY recommend using the XL feature on Uber. There’s no way our stuff would have fit into a sedan. 
We were at the port by 9:51 and sitting in the suites waiting area by 10:03. I’m pretty sure most of that time was spent walking from the drop off area, through the debarking stragglers, and to the check in area. Since people were wondering, at Port Everglades they have the Key grouped with suites for security as well as check in. I didn’t get a picture of the security set up, but basically it looked like there was one short line for suites/pinnacles & Key and a long winding line for everyone else. Once through security, we went over to the check in area. We told the employee directing people that we had both a suite and The Key so whichever line was shorter. It happened that the Key was shorter and we were literally checked in and through to the next step before my dad even realized what the guy with the iPad was for. I’d say a minute is being conservative. Very fast and streamlined. Next on to the waiting area! 

We made our way over to the suite waiting area as it looked much nicer than the Key area. The Key area was the same seats most people had, just in an area fairly close to the doors to get on the ship. Suite waiting area. We will have to be careful not to get too used to this! 

They said they hoped to start boarding around 10:30. It took a bit longer than that, but not overly so. I believe they started calling groupings at 10:45ish. The order that I was able to hear was Star Class (back to back didn’t get an announcement. They just got escorted off and then back on first), then Suites, then Key. I assume the order after that was by loyalty level. I was very happy that I knew from message boards to go to the Amber Theater for bag drop off bc there really wasn’t any signage until you got INTO the theater. Also I was happy that we were able to board with suites and juuuuust best the huge rush of Key people to drop off bags. We were the second ones at bag drop off and when we turned to leave the theater there was a rather long line forming. At this point it was around 11. I think we wandered up to Central Park to explore and be close to Chops for when it opened for lunch. This was meant to be 11:30. I went to order a virgin strawberry daiquiri from the Trellis bar and break in my refreshment package but I was told that they didn’t have any strawberry pure mix so my backup drink of strawberry lemonade was also out. Disappointed, I just grabbed a bottle of water and figured I’d grab one at another bar. This would turn out to be more difficult than anticipated. But let’s put a pin in that and get back to lunch! Over we all went to Chops around 11:20 since I had heard of people being let in as early as that for lunch. Well turns out there was an unannounced change in opening time. It went from 11:30 to noon and as we were just about to go off and do something else while waiting, I noticed a line building up behind us. I decided then that I was going to hang out in line because if we had left to return at noon there was no way we would have been able to get in before it was full. Also it was a gorgeous day and what difference does it make to kill time there versus elsewhere? They opened promptly at noon and we were quickly shown to a table after giving the host our room number so he could confirm we had the Key. That’s when we found out from our sever that the delay was due to a surprise health inspection. Understandable and unavoidable. 

Menu is the same one that has been going around of the more limited options. I went with the shrimp cocktail, filet & chocolate cake. 


 
The shrimp were very well cooked but rather small. I’m not sure if that’s how it is on Allure or if it was due to the health inspection. The filet was very tender and the peppercorn sauce had a nice kick and depth to it. My dad really enjoyed the red wine sauce he chose for his filet. I wasn’t as impressed, but I tend to prefer kick with my meat. The chocolate cake was passable but not great. Warning: I like to bake so I tend to be very critical of desserts. You will likely see me saying that many desserts are mediocre. Does this stop me from eating them? Of course not. ?
Oh and since we were delayed in getting started at Chops, right after we ordered I excused myself to make a quick trip up to Coastal Kitchen to arrange for dinner reservations. At least on this sailing they are not allowing Junior Suites to make reservations for the week all at once. Though they aren’t making you wait until the day of. I was able to get a 6pm reservation for tonight and then was able to schedule dinner for the next day when we showed up for our existing reservation before we were seated. So not the end of the world. But back to lunch. Coastal Kitchen was quite quick to arrange and by the time I went back down to Chops the appetizers had not even arrived. I’d say overall lunch there took about an hour and a half. It was nice and relaxing but quite a lot of food for lunch. 
We knew the rooms were ready at this point and since we were very close to it, we headed over that way. Overall I’m very pleased with our room. It’s larger than the hotel room we had stayed in last night and there’s tons of storage. The balcony is also amazing since it’s one of the hump rooms so it’s rather deep. 





the balcony has 2 full sized loungers as well as 2 normal chairs and a table. The loungers  have room to fully recline. 
The room had information about how to connect to the internet (no codes), and more information about Key benefits on Allure. 



We bummed around the room for a bit until it was muster time. We were muster station E1. Our door said we would be in the Royal Promenade somewhere. I was worried we wouldn’t be able to figure out where exactly. I was worried for naught. 

I think we went up to the Solarium to watch sail away at this point but everything is blending together because sleepyyyy. I know at some point we also stopped by the Boardwalk because I saw these really cool art installations showing the different stages of making the horses for the merry go round. 

At some point we also swung by guest services to get our sea pass cards punch for our lanyard and to see about either getting stickers or wristbands for The Key since they weren’t in our staterooms and I knew from past posts that we would run into issues using the reserved seats at shows perk if we didn’t have that. The guy trying to triage the guest services line to weed out the easy things for them was able to hole punch for us but was very confused by our Key question. I thanked him and said we would wait for someone at guest services to help. It was then that my mom saw someone give someone else Key wristbands so we were able to flag him down and tell him that’s what we were also looking for. He seemed surprised that they were not in our room but gave us 3 once he saw by looking up our room number that that’s the number we had purchased. 
Since we had an 8pm show, I went with 6pm dinner reservations to be on the safe side. At 6pm we went to Coastal Kitchen and the host saw us through the glass and immediately buzzed us in. We were quickly seated and our server was great. He checked in very often and had excellent recommendations before we even asked. The menu for Day 1 was very different from past Day 1 menus I had seen from other live blogs. 

classics side. For future posts I’ll only post the rotating menu portion to avoid duplication. 

I got the crab cake and roasted chicken and Andrew suggested an order of the cheese tortellini for the table to split  which sounded like a splendid idea. 



The crab cake was pretty good. The aioli was great and had a nice kick to it. It didn’t have quite enough crab vs filler for it to be a truly great crab cake, but I’m also spoiled by the crab cakes I get whenever I visit my friend who lives in a town on the Maryland coast. The chicken was very moist but there was SO. MUCH. CHICKEN. The head waiter actually stopped by at some point to make sure everything was ok with my dinner because I barely made a dent in it. He looked much less worried once I explained that I had had lunch at Chops and there’s only so much food I can fit. The tortellini recommendation was great because I don’t think I could have a full serving of it as it was a bit heavy with the cheese but it was very tasty. 
I forgot to get a picture of the dessert menu, but here it is from the app. 

I got the chocolate & olive oil cake. I somehow missed the & and was surprised when it was a layered bar. My mom got the panna cotta which I grabbed a picture of because it was so pretty. The chocolate portion was excellent but incredibly rich and I could only eat about a third of this because it was just SO MUCH chocolate. The olive oil cake under it was rather tough and coarse. Since I’ve never had olive oil cake I’m not sure if that is just what the crumb is like for that kind of cake or if it was over baked. 


 
Our 8pm show was Mamma Mia and we used the reserved seating perk. The seats in the theater were the first 3 rows in the slightly elevated section behind the sound booth. These are my ideal seats as I am the kind of person who likes lower mezzanine seats for broadway shows so I was a happy camper. View:

I had fun also watching the conductor on a little screen in the sound booth. I still have no idea where they tucked those musicians away at. Under the stage? If anyone has taken the behind the scenes tour who knows, I’d love to find out as it baffled me the whole show. The show was very good and well done. I’ve seen it on broadway many years ago (prob sometime in 2008 or 2009) and I would say it was similar to the talent level of a traveling broadway show. Which is to say very talented, but not winning a Tony. The time seemed to sail by and I’m very happy we got in to the time we did as the other times were 9:30 or something like 2 or 2:30. 
We turned in after the show as it’s been a long day of doing many things and nothing all at once. Here’s some miscellaneous pictures I also took but am too tired to seamlessly work into this entry: 

Umbrellas near Central Park & boardwalk (& prob elsewhere) 

Sad settled on mango and tropical virgin daiquiris. Still no strawberry though I asked at every turn, ever hopeful. There’s some sort of strawberry mix shortage which I hope is fixed by tomorrow. It became a running joke through the day. If I saw a strawberry on something like my mom’s panna cotta we’d make a comment like “do you think I could have a bar tender turn that into a daiquiri???” 

The Royal app has awesome push notification reminders when things you have added to your calendar are 15 mins away. 

confirmation that virgin frozen drinks are $7 each. 

Fruit platter we got which I believe is from the Key. 

I noticed the rainbow bubbles during the day in Central Park and thought they were cool then. But they are MUCH more impressive at night. 

52946388-4336-420B-BDD7-70DD58894E6D.MOV Bonus video I captured of when my mom was trying to sneak the cash envelope out of my dad’s pocket while he was half napping. Then he woke. 
Ok it’s now 1:44a and that means BED! I think I’ll try to do more frequent but smaller updates as this was quite a lot to do all at once and it was hard to remember what happened when. Life is so hard!!!! ?
 


 
 

The adventure begins...  currently sitting in the Delta Skyclub in Salt Lake City waiting for my connection to Vancouver.  
The plan is settle into my hotel room and take the Canada Line into the city.  I hope to catch Ovation's sail under the Lion's Gate Bridge tonight.

Might be the final farewell from me... until Saturday for Symphony...
Overall impression, seemed different than the 7 day sailings from Port Everglades.
As always it is a blast when sailing with a group with a common denominator, #teamdx really shines. Be it Royal Caribbean Blog group members or #rcperiscopers.
Fitting in all an Oasis class ship has to offer in 3 days is possible. However it is highly not suggested. On the same note it would be great if the Oasis class ships would occasionally offer a 3/4 day offering. I'm sure they could sell these condensed sailings at a premium. Add on I'm sure many might take the opportunity to append or prepend a 7 day sailing to the shorter segment.
Overall these three days were a blur, I'm sure Mr. Patron has something to say about that...
Thanks again for following along!
Any questions just ask and I'm sure I can come up with something that sounds true.

Maybe if I invite our Uber drive in for dinner he’ll let us keep the luggage in the car. 

Day -5:
As you can see, today has been a very productive day at work as I decided to create my travel folder with all the various confirmations and travel information I might need. I may have overcompensated a TAD with printing out luggage tags since we didn't have enough for our last cruise. Do you think 15 for 3 people is excessive?? ?  (also, yes that is a picture of one of the beaches we were going to in the hung up on my desk behind the folder. I really should print out another picture since St Thomas got axed) 

Day 4 (sea day)
Day 4 we attended  the cabin crawl organized on the cruise critic roll call. It was nice to get to see other types of cabins. We saw an interior, family ocean view, Jr suite, and a master suite among others.
Later that evening after our main dining room sitting we learned the hard way that you need to arrive extra early to get a seat in the Cinema. We arrived 10 minutes early to “Instant Family” and the Cinema was completely full. We instead decided to check out the casino and met the wonderful casino bartender Timothy. He went out of his way to make a special drink concoction for Corin and she really enjoyed it.
We ended our night listening to a few songs in the king and country pub with some friends we met on board.

Day 3 update (sea day):
Weather made it to mid/high 80s breezy. It was hot.
We designated today as our official do nothing relax at the pool day. Even though we have barely been on the ship it feels like we've been here for a week already. Crazy right?
Other than relaxing at the pool/whirlpool drink in hand we did do a couple other activities. We went ahead and checked out the arcade we had purchased $25 credit for each of us ahead of time since it was 20% off on the cruise planner. The arcade however left much to be desired. The air hockey table is worse for wear the puck will not float across the table and the table has chips out of the surface there was also a few games that would not accept credit on one side making a two player game impossible. We still managed to have a little bit of fun in there. Also most games were $2 per play.
After the arcade we went up to the Rockwall and I enjoyed climbing each of the three difficulties with ease. I will have to do it again because I forgot to look around while I was up that high. Corin made it about halfway on two of the Rockwall Lanes. She plans to give it another shot here too.
*We also forgot to mention we attended the Cruise critic meet and mingle on day 2. We weren't disappointed but it was definitely not what we were thinking it was. Essentially we all met in the colony club and they gave out a handful of prizes through raffle drawing. Afterwards everybody just kind of left.

Cruise Compass Day 3 (sea day)

Better get that credit card ready.  It is pointless to refuse now. @twangster blogs have a certain reputation for motivating people to spend ? Proven track record!

I’m so excited to follow along! I dream of going to Alaska one day! 

Embarkation day success! Tampa Port security was a breeze as was check in. We have never had so many friendly people around us before.
We arrived at the port between 1015-1030  and we're through security within 5 minutes. Check in took no more than another 5 minutes. We had the pleasure of enjoying some company and conversation of Candice and Roy that we had met on the message boards.
Once onboard we headed straight for the helipad and were the only ones out there exploring. The windjammer buffet was packed full with no available seating in or outside so we decided to go to the park café. We were able to get a salad and sandwich from there which was more than enough for us. We grabbed drinks at the pool bar which was not busy and by that time it was still only 1300.
Our rooms were ready by 1330 and all of our prepaid paperwork was waiting for us (Excursions & arcade credit). The only confusion was with our BOGO dining package. We  where initially told that a reservation would be made on our behalf for the first night but that was not the case. We called Chops after the must drill and were told that both Chops and Giovanni’s was booked full for the first two nights but we could pick a different day. We ended up stopping by Chops on the way to the windjammer just to double check and the were actually able to get us into Giovanni’s at 1730 that night.
The food at Giovanni’s was phenomenal. Corin and I were in agreement that we apparently had never eaten good food before because our taste buds were stimulated in ways we had never had. I would list exactly what we ordered but I couldn’t pronounce it let alone remember what it was called. (I do have pictures of the menu for anyone interested) we split the pork belly appetizer and each ordered the filet mignon main dish. Both were FULL of flavor and melted in your mouth. By far the best restaurant experience we have ever had. We have Chops booked for day 5 and the chef’s table on day 6 so our standards are very very high for the next two.
We wrapped up our evening watching the ship pass under the bridge out of Tampa from the helipad and then taking a dip in the pool while (it seemed like) everyone else was eating.
So far we really feel like Royalty with Royal Caribbean. Stay tuned for more updates and pictures.
*Sorry for the lack of pictures form the first day. Was a little hectic.

Thank you! We also love St. John. We want to be back in time for dinner on the boat so at 12pm arrival is keeping us from going there this time. I have also hear great things about Magen’s bay but have read it’s not great snorkeling. Thanks so much for your response!