PRebecca

Those should be the right test, just make sure they are unopened.

This always makes me feel a bit guilty....we're booking bottom end to start with and hate to be a pita.  The guilty feeling is on my end though...I've never had anything but stellar customer service.  I suspect decades of being in customer service has made me uncomfortable being an actual customer.

I am both excited and terrified to begin my first live Blog here of my first ever Star Class sailing and also….our wedding! I can only hope it is HALF as good as the amazing bloggers I read religiously here! 48 DAYS! Here we go!    The Story- My husband and I (I will explain!) booked this cruise for our wedding 2 YEARS ago during a Black Friday sale at an amazing price! We both LOVE cruising…so much so that we have a YouTube channel called BoosCruize so it seemed natural that we would choose to tie the knot in a small ceremony on the high seas! So after much research we decided on the Star Loft Suite 1720 on Oasis Of The Seas! This suite had a HUGE rectangular balcony that could fit guests and also give us the ocean view we wanted….and a Genie to help us pull it all off! What could go wrong?!? Enter…COVID 🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️ As you can imagine we basically needed a new pair of britches every other day for the last two years as things changed. It’s a good thing I buzz cut my head or I’d probably be bald and NOT by choice LOL     A year later we weren’t even sure if this cruise would happen but we also KNEW we wanted to be married. So when a company came to us and asked to throw us a huge West Coast “David Tutera” style wedding in Hollywood that will be published for magazines we obviously said YES! We now have two bi-coastal weddings Lol It was amazingly gorgeous but nothing was our choice. It was all chosen for us….right down to our tuxes. We feel BEYOND blessed but it also wasn’t what we had in our head two years ago. So now here we are….our guest list of 50 has gone down to 12 due to covid complications. Are we upset? HECK NO! We completely understand and are going to have the time of our LIVES on a gorgeous ship surrounded by people who love us! We can’t wait!    Who: We are an LA couple. Jarell is an international Flight attendant (yaasss benefits!) and I am an actor who just moved from NYC in time for a pandemic to close Hollywood 😂😂   Where: We are sailing on the Oasis Of The Seas out of Miami in the Star Loft Suite 1720 with stops at Coco Cay, St.Thomas, and St. Maarten    When: We sail November 7th-14th, 2021   I think that covers most of the back story and introductions! So happy to meet you all and take you along with us on this very special journey that is over 2 years in the making! Can’t wait to see who our Genie will be!    For good measure I have included a photo of the happy grooms from our West Coast Wedding!     

Thanks, Jill !!  We do love it.  We are soooo glad we made the decision(s) we did.  We were actually pleasantly surprised at the summer heat.  Maybe we were just prepared for it to be much worse, but it was no worse than the summers in VA.  I think the "hot season" is just longer than it is elsewhere...but I've been MUCH hotter in TX than I ever was in FL this summer.
Closed on the house on 9-15 and we are busier than ever with all of the add-ons.  Got the garage epoxy floor done, ceiling fans, pendant lights and plantation shutters all installed.  My motorized bamboo curtain will be installed probably on Thursday.  Signed contracts for the water treatment system and the emergency generator on Thursday and got the contracts all in place for the bird cage enclosure.  The built-ins will start in late October.  The move is Sunday, 9-26.  Can't wait to be done with all of it !!

I like the idea of a lanyard but with my luck it would just become a hammock for a meatball I dropped at dinner.  I stocked up for my cruise with these cloth "Hanes" masks. They are a comfortable fit for myself and wife and a great price if you can get over the fact that they are made by Hanes and look like underwear material. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Hanes-Wicking-Cotton-Masks-10-Pack/783560599 

I am sailing Nov 3. The check-in window was open, we checked in fully and got our boarding time and then they closed it for the 45 day thing. It re-opened yesterday and all  my info was intact as well as my previously selected check-in time. I didn't have to do anything. 

I've had an opportunity to cruise a few cruise lines during this 2021 cruise restart.  All of them have been with reduced capacity.
Having recently encountered two terrible boarding day procedures I've got give credit to Royal Caribbean for implementing the best boarding day process I've experienced.
On those other lines it took hours for me to board the ship.  Neither of them improved the muster drill routine to a notable extent.  For both the other cruise lines their boarding day process cast a dark cloud on the start of my cruise vacation and in both cases it took a few hours after finally getting on board before it felt like I was on vacation.  Even then I felt exhausted and didn't feel like doing very much on the first night.
Contrast that with Royal where I was car to cabin in 20 minutes.  Upon boarding I was free to grab a bite to eat and a beverage then I could visit my muster station at my convenience for a one-on-one safety briefing that took less than 60 seconds.   
Upon boarding Royal I immediately felt like I was on a cruise vacation.  It was like I got an extra cruise day to enjoy.  I was quickly into vacation mode and it was all stress free.  
I will say people arriving before their appointed time is a problem on all cruise lines.   Don't be that person.  If you arrive before your time you are part of the problem and you deserve the long wait times you will encounter.  However once you are allowed inside the terminal there is no excuse for the other cruise lines to make boarding such a stressful and lengthy process.  
Hat's off to Royal for creating the best boarding day process.

I hear "Golden Room" and all I can think is...

 
Though I guess if you do well enough in the casino... 🤔

Day 7 😞
Today , CocoCay , I do love this place but prefer to have a sea day as the last day of the cruise , ohh well "You can't always have what you want , but if you will try sometime you'll see you get what you need". We started with late breakfast at the balcony at 9 am and got ready for the island.

I grabbed few month ago tickets to the beach club for 65$  pp which comparing to the price I see now it's a pretty good and. We wanted to get there early , Sunil with the other genies organized all the star class to meet and escorted  to the Island so it went really fast. We were one of the firsts to arrive the club so we could have chosen were we wanted to seat. We took one of the large beds near the pool and the bar. I went to sweem in the infinity pool and it was very refreshing , I will spare from you pictures of me in the pool. 




Later we started to enjoy the club drinks 

When you enter the club they ask you to go to the host and reserve time for lunch , we asked for 12:30. When the time arrived we went to the resturants were the host escorting you to the washi washi station and stay until you wash your hands properly. It brought me back to the pre school time , but I was happy to see they followinge the  procedures. For lunch you get  the appetizer box which includes several salads and ceviche. For main course my spouse went with the filet mignon and I also wanted to try it per @Matt recommendion but had also request  from @Tiffevento test the lobster and compare it the ship 🙂 so I took one for the team and order a surf and turf. I thought they will bring me a smaller portions but it was full one. 

The lobster was very good.
THe food was good and since they get the meat from the ship I guess it may be better since they have a good grill chef. That's also was the only place until now they ask us to cut the stake and check if it is cooked the way we wanted. For dessert we took the rum cake as it was different from the regular dessert we got until now.

We stayed another hour in the club and since it started to get hot we went back to air conditioning at the ship. 

We just got accepted , from a balcony to a JS Yeah!

I cant wait for Winder to sail from Barcelona! and its on my wedding cruise in September!!!

Day 6:
Today is a mixed bag of emotions.  We are, of course, so happy to be on a cruise, but today is the last sea day and tomorrow is the last full day of the cruise, so we are starting to get the "cruise is almost over" blues.  I feel like there is so much still to do onboard.  It really is amazing how much there is to do on an Oasis Class ship.  We decided we'd use the first part of the day to try to do some activities that we haven't got to yet, so after breakfast, we set out to have some fun.
Christian wanted to do the zipline, so we headed there.  It was supposed to close at 11:45am, and Christian and I got there at 11:25am.  The height requirement is 52 inches, and he was plenty tall enough; but the weight requirement is 75 lbs and he was 74.2 lbs.  Steven showed up 2 minutes later and took him to get a water at the bar right near us to see if it would push him over the 75 lbs.  While I was getting my harness on for the zip line, I told them that Steven also was wanting to ride and Christian wanted to try to weigh himself again.  They told me they weren't taking anyone else,and this was at 11:34am which is 11 minutes before they were supposed to close.  I know I could have called Sunil, but figured I'd just mention it to him later.  The Ultimate Abyss is right near the zip line and it was another thing on our to-do list for the day, so Steven, Christian, and I all rode it.  It was slower than I expected after all the youtube videos I've seen, but I was told the humidity can affect the speed.  It was still fun though, and Christian rode it twice. 
We passed the pool deck at one point and were so surprised at what we saw.  We counted 33 people in one pool at the same time.  I guess they are loosening some of the restrictions.  In addition, almost all of the pool deck chairs were taken.  It almost felt like pre-Covid times seeing everyone out on the deck having a blast. 
We then went to Sugar Beach, before heading to our room for lunch delivery from Johnny Rockets and a surprise from Sunil.
Zip line and Ultimate Abyss:

 

The saddest day of the cruise came way too early.  I had my last in-room espresso from the Lavazza machine and finished shoving the rest of my stuff into my suitcase and zipping it up.  The first call I even heard in the room was that they were debarking luggage tag numbers 1 through 33.  By 8:30 they had all the numbers called and kept making announcements that all numbers had been called and to GTFO the ship.  We still hadn't heard from Alan but they didn't page our name, so no harm done. Alan rang the doorbell promptly at 9:15.  He had a crew member with the luggage cart and they followed us the entire way off the ship, even going so far as to put the luggage cart into the elevator with us so we had eyes on it at all times.  Alan was able to walk us up to Passport Control where we had to say our final goodbyes to him.  He told us to keep in touch with him, add him on Facebook, etc., so now we don't have to feel creepy about all the cyberstalking we did before the cruise 😂 Our luggage cart was handed off to a porter.
The machines stared deeply into our eyes and cleared us through.  We didn't have to stop at Customs to talk to anyone. If there had been a line or a crowd to get off the ship, the Genies can bypass all of that but since we left so late there was nothing.  We were in our car and on the way probably 15 minutes after leaving our room.
And thus ends the best Star Class experience for us to date!  
When I get back to an office with a real scanner I will get the Cruise Compasses all scanned in and sent to @Matt to add to the website.

Yay!!! Room switched team floor 17 baby! 1720 was the only one available. I took it! The first lady i spoke with couldn’t hold it and made me close my web pages. I logged back in and could not find it. She told me it was gone and I had a mini stroke. Called and spoke to someone different and she was able to locate it and help me out. I am sooo happy. Thank you everyone for your input. I absolutely love this blog!!

Day 7 a perfect day.
We had to get up early to take our B2B test, how it went I already wrote yesterday so let's just say that I am still  waiting until now to get the email with the results. 
It was our first visit to perfect day , strange but none of the cruises  before brought us to this Island so we were excited to check it out.


The first thing we done was the Jet Ski experience ,it was so much fun as the tour takes you near some Islands and most of it was done  in high speed. We got to see many starfishs , both of us enjoyed it so much so we consider to take it also next week.


After the tour we went to eat some taco's , nothing special but did  the work. As it was very warm and humid day we decided to go to the Oasis lagoon which was quite full but still enough space  .

We took some drinks from the wet bar , dancing to the music (at least one of us) and swim around. The other parts of the Island was not so as crowd  and the water park was almost empty.


By the way Coco Cay is also the only place the crew can get off and if they do not have assignment on the ship or in the Island they can enjoy it.




 
  Around 2 PM we headed back to the ship , you can see here how hot it was and how one crew member repurpose the servicetray to fight it.

 
See you next time

Loving the updates, thank you! I hope it was a Perfect Day!

What a fun decision! I went thru the same thing last year and landed on the CLS after getting the same advice as above.  I'd still like to try the OS one trip to compare.
Best of luck and happy cruising in whichever cabin you choose 

I just realized that as of Monday, I have reached Diamond Level!  I had 73 points when I got onboard the Allure last Sunday.  If my reckoning of the Double Points promo is correct, together with the double points I’d gotten as a solo cruiser, I am now (unofficially) Diamond. Yay!
 

The show cast is working out in the aquatheater. My mother insists she is enjoying the view of St. Maarten.
Her view:

And my drydock is officially over!

What?  I'm booking more every week.  It's a great time to cruise.  No lines, no elevator wait.  
My test results from this morning just came in...

 
I'm cruising this weekend!
Bring.  It.  On.    

The journey started OK , we board our flight to EWR on time  and went to sleep , few hours before the schedule arrival we got the message from the cockpit that Newark experiencing weather issues and our flight will land in DC instead. I already new we lost our connection flight so I purchased internet package and went online to reserve us a car ready to do the 15 hours ride if needed. After a while I saw Unites rebooked us to Orlando but they sent me via Chicago and my spouse on different flight that will bring her around 1 am to Orlando. After passing  immigration we went to a huge line for rebooking , have up on the line after 30 minutes as there was only one representative to deal with all the issues. We went to find another place less crowded finally we found a representative to talk to. Told her we are Ok to go to a nearby airport and she found us tickets to West Palm Beach, we grabbed them as they will bring us around 1Pm and we will be both on the same flight. Currently seating in United club waiting for the flight .
Whenever I started to be upset over the situation I reminded myself that we maybe had so e delays while other lost had their house flooded or even worse, lost their lives due to Ida
Another good example why never to book a flight on the same day of the cruise.
 
 

This odd character will hopefully be on Serenade on Nov 8 😉
half empty ship sounds good to me

Yes, it's always exciting to go on a brand new ship. I felt the same when I got assigned.