GregD

Just watched it again on YouTube to get my fix!

Pretty sure this is on our list. We are actually booked at the Premier Inn Royal Mile This is my favorite form of torturing the freeloaders

Exactly!! I made sure to hype her up a bit in the post cruise survey Sadly, not Aberdeen. We are flying in and out of London, so first a few days there to get over jet lag. Then train from Waverly to Edinburgh. We will do a few days in Edinburgh, then up to Inverness for 2 nights, then 2 nights in Skye,2 nights in Glencoe area, then a little further south for 2 nights to go to Islay. Then back to Edinburgh for a night to see the Tattoo. Then back home via the train to London for one final night. All in we leave July 19th and come home August 6th. There is about an inch on the driveway......I've left it there out of protest.... We despise having to lug stuff around so if we can check it we do. If it gets lost on the way, we get to do @TheBoss518 favorite thing, and go shopping. We could have gone crazy with luggage too. With her recent "gift" of gold medallion status, we all could have checked 2 bags for free. We would have looked like @Jax with all of that luggage.

I will do better

Final thoughts, This was our first time on Allure, and while she did not have all the new things that the Amped ships had, I wasn't too disappointed. I don't need the giant purple slide, or new bars etc to have a good time. All of the crew members we encountered were fantastic. That being said, she does need some help. Like Sabrina said, there were some maintenance issues that need to be addressed. While I didn't notice chips, broken knobs etc in our room, the tub in the master had a soft spot from being repaired at one point. It was soft enough that I felt if I stood on that spot, I would fall through. We were all also talking about the room layout and how narrow the space is between the bed and shelving in the room. I think this is particular in the deck 9 rooms. I vaguely recall the deck 8 ATS on Oasis being different and better, but I could be wrong. I do feel like this sailing went very fast as well, though with the added days in Orlando prior, the overall trip felt very long, and I was ready to sleep in my own bed by the end. 4 nights was too few though for this class of ship with so many things to do, we felt like we were constantly running from one thing to another. Helia was a great genie. She was in constant communication with us asking if we needed anything. While I was a little nervous that first day with the elevator issue and she actually hid in the corner after telling another guest to wait for the next one, she was very personable and eager to please. We had a nice discussion on the last night about open communication. I think she got some early bad reviews, probably from Star Class newbies. She disclosed that her manager shared some feedback with her from the surveys, and she lamented how she was frustrated that the guests did not communicate their issues with her. She remarked how she understands how expensive these vacations are, and that she would hate to be any cause of stress for her guests. She absolutely does not want to say no to anything if she doesn't have to. She definitely read the survey, because every evening there was a glass of scotch AND a glass of wine waiting for me in the room, as well as drinks for the kids and Heather. This wasn't discussed in our emails to each other, but they were listed in the survey of "drinks you like" This will probably be our last time in star class for quite some time. The way that prices are going, and all of the changes to the program, the value just isn't there anymore. What's next for us...We will be in a VERY long dry dock. We don't have a cruise booked again until April of 2026 when we do a B2B on wonder. All is not lost we have our trip to Scotland coming up in July of this year. If the mods allow, I will blog it here. There will be a "cruise" on Loch Ness and a ferry to Islay Scotland for some Lagavulin and Laphroaig and to the Isle of Skye, so there are ships involved at least Thank you again to everyone for following along our neighborly (neighbourly?) adventures!

There WERE shenanigans on the ship earlier thought!! I forgot to mention that during our second showing of Mama Mia, during the intermission there was about 15 security officers scouring the theater looking for an individual. They all had a piece of paper with a photo of who they were looking for. I did not witness if they found that person or not, but I'm assuming they eventually found the person.

Back at home has been busy, since we left the day after Christmas the house was still a disaster, so we spent the day putting everything back together. Our departure from the ship was quite easy. We went to CK for breakfast and @Lovetocruise2002 and her family were there as well. We said all our goodbyes and wished each other well. Helia met us on 17 and escorted us off the ship. From CK to the curb was about 10 minutes, and that is even with a photo stop. We had prescheduled a Lyft and that worked out for us. He was a few minutes early and we headed to the airport. He was the slowest Miami driver we have ever had. He did the whole way 5mph under the speed limit. But at least we made it. Remember how I mentioned that we said goodbye to Sabrina etc..... There had been a change......Surprise!! Reunited part 3!!! They got to the airport right behind us!! After security, their gate was next to ours so we continued chatting etc. Eventually we had say goodbye for real and we boarded our plane. All of our flights were fine, no delays, gate changes or shenanigans.

Just landed back at home…I already hate it. I’ll be back later with our final thoughts too.

Hahahahaha, whoops, thank you, I fixed it

As soon as Mama Mia round 2 finished, Lydia and I ran up to the solarium to meet @TheBoss518 and Johnny. We had dinner scheduled at Samba Grill. We have a Brazilian Steakhouse near home that we occasionally go to, which we like, so we thought we would give this a try. I also do not recall it being discussed on the boards often, so we thought why not give it a try, if it wasn’t good, than it’s not like we wouldn’t be able to find other food on the ship We started with a caipirnha, which is a well known drink from Brazil very similar to a mojito, but I think better. The first part of your meal, is the salad buffet. We skipped most of this because we didn’t want to fill up on this and not be able to eat all of the meats. You are also brought additional “snacks” to the table. The little Brazilian cheese breads are so good, I could eat baskets of those. You are also brought a plate with fried bananas, chicken empanadas, fried yucca and some polenta. Now it was time for some meats. So like any other restaurant of similar style, everything is brought on skewers and slid onto your plate. They will keep going until you flip your token from green to red. We started with bacon wrapped chicken and sausage links. We skipped the sausage because even at home it’s not our favorite. Next up was filet mignon and lamb chops. Pork loin and picanha. Finally flank steak and short ribs. The only thing we universally didn’t like was the short ribs. They were still very tough. They also bring you a plate of sweet potatoes and grilled vegetables, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini and broccoli. Very quickly we reached capacity and the token got flipped to red. We did save room for some dessert though. These are also on the buffet. We had the flan and the mango and passion fruit mousse. Both of these were really good. The star of the show though was they brought over a plate of grilled pineapple that was sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. We ended up eating three plates of this. Lydia kept us entertained by singing along to Mama Mia… The biggest highlight of the meal was that our waiter Vulroon was a CK waiter of ours on a previous sailing. We both played the “I think I know that guy/family” game and when I brought it up we confirmed it true and we had a great time reconnecting. It really was great seeing someone we had known previously. I’m pretty sure this was the first time we had a repeat crew member. I read about it all the time here in the blogs and now I get to be a member of the club

I forget who was talking about spare tags….but I will have these….I’ll open the bidding at…. #selfassistforthewin.

Johnny wasn’t as thrilled as he hoped with his ramen, so sushi in bed it is

Mama Mia round 2. I have a very happy freeloader!

We were one number away from the big jackpot at the end…..

We too went to Izumi for lunch, though we didn’t get nearly as much food.