berkeleykel

Today I just did Stay Awhile on the Rhapsody out of Venice and wanted to report back on the details, as it seems like this program is a bit different depending on local authorities and ship. 
By the second to last day of the cruise, we had to go to excursions desk and tell them the number of “checked” bags we planned to have and paid $6 for each of them. We were given Stay Awhile tags for each and told to place these outside our stateroom by 11 pm the evening before disembarkation. The fee is apparently charged by the port of Venice to store the luggage throughout the day in the terminal.
On disembarkation day, we had to check in with the temporary Stay Awhile desk (set up in conf room C right off the Centrum on deck 4) by 8:30 am. We could leave any carry on luggage that we didn’t want to cart around stored in the conference room for free until we were ready to depart the ship.
Per the requirement of Italian customs/immigration, the only times you could leave the ship were 1 or 3.  You had to choose this time in advance.  Then 15 mins prior to our chosen time we had to meet back at the conference room and everyone with that time departed the ship together (we were 3 mins late and were paged over the intercom, so be on time!).  Once off the ship we picked up our checked luggage which had been roped off in a separate area of the terminal.
We were able to combine Stay Awhile with a bus transfer to the airport organised by Royal Caribbean (guest services rep told me this was not possible but I knew he was wrong so concierge worked it out for us). We left in the 1 pm Stay Awhile group and booked a transfer that left the port at 1:30, so the timing worked out well. 
We were allowed to go to any public places on the ship.  There were no periods where we had to leave from/go to a specific place because of cleaning or anything. I’d estimate there were about 30 or so people doing Stay Awhile.
It was a little weird at first because the crew was busy cleaning and all of the food/drink venues were closed. No entertainment, live music, etc.  The crew were working flat out cleaning and prepping so didn’t have time for formalities.  However, this was short lived because by 10:30 am everyone had their game faces on again as new guests were boarding (fyi, the last call for guests from our sailing to depart came at 9:40 am, so there was only a very small turnaround time before new guests boarded).  I was one of the first guests at the poolside bar with a lovely Tequila Sunrise around 10:30.
We mainly stayed in the pool area, benefitting from an empty pool and first choice of sun loungers. We then grabbed a Windjammer buffet lunch before departing (including some of the “welcome aboard” cake which we felt a little guilty about).  The main pool and hot tubs were closed in the early morning but opened up between 9:30 and 10.  Never more than 5 people in the pool (including us) from then until we left for the Windjammer at noon.
We had had a port intensive itinerary with only one at sea day, so it was nice to be able to take advantage of some extra relaxation around the pool deck, which had been hard to squeeze in during the cruise itself. I think it was a good choice and would do it again.  It was also nice to bookend the cruise with lunches at Windjammer.  lt felt like we came full circle on the trip rather than being rushed off first thing in the morning.
 
 
 
 

I know exactly how you feel.  After many years of wrestling with the whole tipping minefield, I have decided to treat it just like any other of life's mysteries - The only control I have is over what I do....I cannot control what happens beyond that.
We tip-as-we-go ALWAYS.  That is the only thing that really works for us.  You NEVER know if you will see the person again who has served you so tip while you can and forget about it.  I canNOT control what happens to the money once I leave it on the table or, in some cases, give it directly to a server.  That is beyond my control.  I do what I should do - I tip - what happens after that is none of my business.  I trust that they have an equitable process worked out where those who need to get tipped, will.  If they do not, frankly, it's not my problem.

Authentic may be bad word choice, I found some of the food nearly inedible.  Maybe we went on a bad night.

This may be an idiosyncratic take, but we greatly preferred the layout of On Air on Symphony over Spotlight Karaoke on Wonder. As we ended up there most days for karaoke, trivia, game shows etc it made a big difference to our quality of life. That plus the better entrainment on Symphony and the fact we found Mason Jar to miss the mark on authentic Southern food, Symphony wins for us hands down. 

Depends on where you are (and assuming you're not counting the infamous cabanas on Coco Cay). Excursions in Europe are typically more expensive than in the Caribbean, for example.
This is the most expensive one on the Anthem cruise I have booked for later this year:

My husband and I have had this cruise booked for awhile but were 50/50 on cancelling until very recently. Just made the decision to stick with it yesterday and made the final payment today with hours to spare. This will be our first vacation without our kids (8 and 3) who will be looked after by my mother- and sister-in-law.  We live London so for us it is a quick and ideal train ride away to Southampton.  Looking forward to scenery and relaxation! 
 
 

My husband and I have had this cruise booked for awhile but were 50/50 on cancelling until very recently. Just made the decision to stick with it yesterday and made the final payment today with hours to spare. This will be our first vacation without our kids (8 and 3) who will be looked after by my mother- and sister-in-law.  We live London so for us it is a quick and ideal train ride away to Southampton.  Looking forward to scenery and relaxation! 
 
 

Lots of people at the Taylor Swift Trivia too ... And heard hundreds of tweens singing the songs was definitely something!

 
Definitely fining some of the individual venues are undersized for the ship - Dueling Pianos and Swim and Tonic come to mind but other areas as well

Part 4 - a cloudy, rainy, no good day .... That was still lots of fun
 
The next day was a sea day and we all slept in a bit ... I gotta say the window screen really make the rooms day as it was after 8 by then but was still pitch back in the room.
 
I went to Pearl Cafe for coffee and food and the steak and eg sandwiches are pretty great

 
At 11:30 we had a meetup for a shot glass exchange which was fun to meet a bunch of people and we picked a mystery shot glass which was a custom made on for the cruise which was cool 

 
We then had much at Giovanni's Kitchen - overall we enjoyed it - with he meat platter, pasta carbonara, pizza, and tiramisu being our favorites. I will say the open concept for this in the promonade did make it really noisy and felt more like a restaurant in a mall or something. 


 
As mentioned I had created the lanyards for a bar crawl and set up a couple of meeting points for people to get them and then hamg bout any maybe hit a bar or 3 ... First one was after lunch and we met at the 1400 Bar. We really liked this bar overall and the 1400 is a great drink - was awesome to get as the group (gave out about 40 lanyards at this meet up) with everyone getting the drink with the smoke bubble.

 
After hitting up a few bars with folks it was getting close to dinner time. I definitely prefer a set dining time vs the My Time Dining but 5pm is pretty early. I guess my sone enjoyed the escargot he tried the day before as he got his own for dinner that night. There was a slightly different menu for Icon for Day 2 that featured Main Lobster - our server didn't know how long it would last, might only be 1-2 months total


We then had reservations for the Ice Skating show and we really enjoyed it..the one on Symphony of the Seas was just weird and we kept finding holes in the plot. This was sort of odd too but it just worked better as a collection of segments vs a storyline type show. Victor, the juggler, was really good - definitely recommend this show 

Later that evening we did Taylor Swift Trivia in the Music Hall - which my 9 year old took very seriously 

 
We had reservations for the Comedy show that night but while we made it to the Attic prior to start of the show, they said they were full and you had to get there 15mins prior to start of show with reservations. It was annoying in the moment but it worked out well as we stopped by Dueling Pianos and saw some folks we met earlier had a spot up front and we joined them and had an absolute blast. 
 
I think I got on Sarah's good side by requesting a Janice Joplin song so got picked for a number of things including leading the conga line - which is not something normal to my personality, but we were about 7 bars into the bar crawl by that point 😂

 
These shows get packed so definitely get there at least 45 mins early if you want a seat
 
Was really late for us so we headed back to bed at that point. 
 
Coming up next, a much sunnier sea day but people were making up for lost sun and the pool deck was packed! 

Prices in general are crazy but for some reason the UFS on Symphony seems to be immune.  It was priced almost the exact same for Aug 2025 as we paid this past August 2023 in Europe.  So after swearing up and down to my kids (and myself) that having a slide in our room was a one and done experience, we are now booked again for the UFS out of Bayonne in 2025.  Given the rise in Star class prices more broadly, it was only like GBP 2k more for a family of 4 for the UFS than a 2 bedroom aqua suite, and with 2 kids under 10 I think the UFS is a no brainer at that price difference. 

Prices in general are crazy but for some reason the UFS on Symphony seems to be immune.  It was priced almost the exact same for Aug 2025 as we paid this past August 2023 in Europe.  So after swearing up and down to my kids (and myself) that having a slide in our room was a one and done experience, we are now booked again for the UFS out of Bayonne in 2025.  Given the rise in Star class prices more broadly, it was only like GBP 2k more for a family of 4 for the UFS than a 2 bedroom aqua suite, and with 2 kids under 10 I think the UFS is a no brainer at that price difference. 

Hello all, thought I would do a trip report/live blog for our cruise on Icon of the Seas - which is in only 3 days (eek!)
 
This is the February 17-24, 2024 sailing and is doing the Western Caribbean itinerary:
Day 1 - Leave Miami
Day 2 - Sea Day
Day 3 - Sea Day
Day 4 - Puerto Costa Maya, Mexico
Day 5 - Cozumel, Mexico
Day 6 - Sea Day
Day 7 - Perfect Day at CocoCay
Day 8 - Return to Miami (sad face)
 
Who we are - we are a family of 5 from New York that are looking forward to escaping the cold and snow we currently have on the ground. It is me (Phil), my wife (Judi), daughter Olivia (14), son Peter (12), and daughter Emma (9). Here is a photo of us from our cruise the same time last year (on Symphony of the Seas) having completed a Pirate Scavenger Hunt we did on St. Thomas (which was tons of fun)

 
(we look basically the same, just a year older)
 
 
As the title implies, we are staying in one of the new classes of rooms, a Family Infinite Oceanview Balcony. I was excited to try out this room mostly due to the space for fitting all 5 of us - we shall see if we like the Infinite Balcony (a.k.a. window) or not.
 
We have a few fun things planned - including celebrating both my birthday and Olivia's - she is turning 15 and I am, well, more than 15. For her birthday we have booked Izumi Hibachi for lunch (first time doing that) and for my birthday Judi and I are doing the Empire Supper Club (very excited for that).
 
We also have booked lunches at Giovanni's Italian Kitchen and Hooked - last cruise my kids had a combined 42 oyesters at Hooked so figure we will get our money's worth there, especially as we got these 40% off during Black Friday sale.
 
I have also been planning a bar crawl with members of a Facebook Group for this cruise and ~60 people have expressed interest, so we will see how that goes. I made up lanyards with required drinks based on suggestions from JJ Cruising. 

 
 
Our travel day down to Florida is in 2 days - due to this being a school holiday week in New York the flight prices to Miami and Fort Lauderdale were just crazy so we are actually flying from Westchester (our local airport) to West Palm Beach and then getting a rental car to drive down to Miami to stay over for one night.
 
I have watched tons of videos on the ship and have my spreadsheet ready! ... just hope we are. 🙂 

Compulsory balcony selfie.


 

Silversea included the hotel stay in my fare both pre-cruise and post-cruise.  For this occasion they used the Mandarin Oriental in Santiago.  




The view with the Andes mountains in the background.

 

Week 2 Day 2 - Palma de Mallorca. Excursion: Mallorca Beach Transfer
My husband and I had a discussion about excursions the day before and ended up doing a major reshuffling of excursions for the week. We had originally planned to stay on the ship in Palma, do an RC excursion to Cassis in Marseilles, and do an RC excursion to Pisa and a beach from La Spezia (in addition to a Pompei on your own excursion in Naples, which we kept). Due to weather in La Spezia looking rainy and slightly chilly and a desire to spend more time hanging in our wonderful suite, we decided to cancel the La Spezia and Marseille excursions, but added in a quick beach excursion in Palma so I could get my beach fix in (England is not renowned for its beaches, especially if you plan to actually get in the water).
 
The RC excursion to a beach outside Palma (Playa de Palmanova) was a repeat from our trip on Wonder last summer so I already knew what to expect.  I didn’t write down the specifics,  but you can see my blog from Wonder last year for more details if you are interested. The main thing is to make sure you have euros to pay for the loungers/umbrella which I think cost us somewhere under €20 for the day.  You are picked up and dropped off in front of the Hotel Tropico and there is an ATM in front if you are short on cash.  There is a small section of the beach that is watched by lifeguards if that interests you. There is an outdoor shower further along the beach, as well as public toilets (cost I think is EUR 50 cents, coins only) although the toilets are not in the best shape. We spent around 1.5 hours in the water and then changed and had some ice cream and cocktails along the beach. The length of the excursion (4 hours) was plenty for us, although there is an extended option if you want to spend more time there. Based on the time stamps on our photos I think we arrived around 9:45 am and had to meet back at the bus around 1/1:15 pm. The weather was pretty good — around 80F — although it was a bit windy. We brought a small safe with us to store our cash, credit cards and phones while we were in the water, although it felt like a pretty safe area. The water was relatively clear and we saw several small fish. Waves were minimal.  The beach seemed cleaner than it had the previous year, and is sandy so we brought a bucket and shovel with us.
In sum I don’t think the beach is anything special, but has all the basics you need for a few fun hours with minimal fuss. 
 
 

Day 4 - La Spezia.  No excursion/did not leave the ship. 
 
This will be brief because I have almost no recollection of what we did this day between breakfast and dinner time. We slept in and had breakfast at Johnny Rockets because we wanted table service and it was open a bit later than Coastal Kitchen.  The servers there were exceptional and gave A a toy when he was upset over something, probably being denied MORE JUICE. 
I think we probably stayed in the room all afternoon for video games, legos and air hockey.  
For dinner we have Jamie’s another shot but I was disappointed to see the menu was basically the same from lunch. The penne carbonara was slightly better than the arrabbiata had been.  The kids pasta again remained untouched. 
After dinner we all went to see the magic show, which was the same as the one that had been in Wonder the year before.  The magician was was Spain and did a bilingual show which is why I think they like him for this itinerary. We were sat very front row and the kids were super excited. 

Day 3 - Marseille. No excursion/did not leave ship. 
One of the main benefits of the b2b and of having done the same itinerary the previous summer is that we didn’t feel the pressure to take full advantage of the ports, so we were able to spend more time in our room and around the ship.
On Day 3 we played 3 rounds of trivia and peaked for the trip - we won twice and came in second once. To be fair though the sessions were more lightly attended than usual since it was a port day. In the afternoon we made a special request of the genie to help us skip the line for laser tag.  I was never quite able to figure out the time that laser tag and ice skating sessions were made available to book in the app and missed out on both during week 1. During week 2 I managed to book ice skating for day 1 but didn’t manage laser tag for day 3. We  set up a time in advance to meet up with the genie and he led us into a side door and worked it out with the event staff to have us slotted in.  I don’t think this would have saved time over having a booking, but if you can’t get a booking this saves you from being subjected to the standby line.  A is too young to play so he and I “watched” (you can see very little other than the outside walls) from the stands while husband and M played.  When we returned to the room afternoon snacks were waiting for us.  The genie had snacks sent to us every day around 3 pm (we had asked for fewer snacks than the day before to avoid food coma).
For dinner we went to Wonderland. This was a highlight for us. We loved the atmosphere, food and presentation.  The waiter was super attentive and the Mad Hatter even refilled our water!  The only downside was that the cocktails tasted pretty meh, but they were 10/10 in style.  The potted shrimp and the mushroom dessert were our favourites.  The kids liked their fried mac and cheese. 
After dinner M went to kids club while husband, A and I saw Hiro again. It was great to see the show from the front/center seats that the genie had saved for us. Hiro is exceptional and I hope we’ll be back on Symphony at some point to see it again.  We loved seeing and hearing it from our balcony throughout the sailing as well, including later that night. 

Dinner for Day 2 was at Chops. Our genie stopped by to chat, as he did every evening meal. The service was good. The food was okay (I’m not really a steak person so would have skipped it if left to myself, but my husband is). Our children were terrible. Maybe it’s just me but with staying in star class and especially such a special room I felt particularly self-conscious about their behaviour - I was worried bad behaviour would suggest they were spoiled and entitled more so than when we were in non-suite class with the masses - and their behaviour did get progressively worse during the 2 weeks so it became a constant stress. For example, we allowed my youngest, who rarely has juice back home, to have juice with his meals on the ship and he quickly turned into a diva, demanding JUICE JUICE JUICE like he was dying every time we sat down at a table.  We also didn’t see many other kids in the specialty restaurants which made it feel like we were under a microscope more. 

After dinner M went to kids club and husband, A and I went to see 1977, which had not played during week 1 due to injury.  It took me a while to follow the plot and I think I would like to see it again now that I think I’ll understand it better.  We witnessed another near injury right next to us when the main star tripped and stumbled coming off the ice.  He yelled out in shock but returned to the ice soon afterwards and seemed fine.
I didn’t seem to take many photos that evening but he’s one I did take of our balcony.  The biggest negative of the balcony for me was the lack of loungers. I understand the space was tight, but they could have at least added footstools for the chairs like they had in our regular ocean view balcony room.  It felt like a step-down in that respect.
We felt very sorry for the stateroom attendant having to climb up into the climbing structure to clean it regularly! Our kids actually didn’t make use of it much. The 2 year old was a bit too small and the 7 year old a bit too big.  
We played ping pong only once. On precisely the third serve we knocked the ball off the balcony and it landed way down in front of Playmakers!  We eventually found it set aside waiting for our retrieval at the desk of the carousel attendant.  You might not be shocked after seeing how close the table is to the edge of the balcony. Also there are huge gaps under and around the balcony dividers, so there are many ways to lose the balls easily. After our ball fail my son was too scared of hitting someone 11 decks below with a ping pong ball in the head to try to play again. 😳

Week 2 Day 2 - Palma de Mallorca. Excursion: Mallorca Beach Transfer
My husband and I had a discussion about excursions the day before and ended up doing a major reshuffling of excursions for the week. We had originally planned to stay on the ship in Palma, do an RC excursion to Cassis in Marseilles, and do an RC excursion to Pisa and a beach from La Spezia (in addition to a Pompei on your own excursion in Naples, which we kept). Due to weather in La Spezia looking rainy and slightly chilly and a desire to spend more time hanging in our wonderful suite, we decided to cancel the La Spezia and Marseille excursions, but added in a quick beach excursion in Palma so I could get my beach fix in (England is not renowned for its beaches, especially if you plan to actually get in the water).
 
The RC excursion to a beach outside Palma (Playa de Palmanova) was a repeat from our trip on Wonder last summer so I already knew what to expect.  I didn’t write down the specifics,  but you can see my blog from Wonder last year for more details if you are interested. The main thing is to make sure you have euros to pay for the loungers/umbrella which I think cost us somewhere under €20 for the day.  You are picked up and dropped off in front of the Hotel Tropico and there is an ATM in front if you are short on cash.  There is a small section of the beach that is watched by lifeguards if that interests you. There is an outdoor shower further along the beach, as well as public toilets (cost I think is EUR 50 cents, coins only) although the toilets are not in the best shape. We spent around 1.5 hours in the water and then changed and had some ice cream and cocktails along the beach. The length of the excursion (4 hours) was plenty for us, although there is an extended option if you want to spend more time there. Based on the time stamps on our photos I think we arrived around 9:45 am and had to meet back at the bus around 1/1:15 pm. The weather was pretty good — around 80F — although it was a bit windy. We brought a small safe with us to store our cash, credit cards and phones while we were in the water, although it felt like a pretty safe area. The water was relatively clear and we saw several small fish. Waves were minimal.  The beach seemed cleaner than it had the previous year, and is sandy so we brought a bucket and shovel with us.
In sum I don’t think the beach is anything special, but has all the basics you need for a few fun hours with minimal fuss. 
 
 

Finishing up day 1, here are the snacks that were delivered soon after we made it into the room, as well as the champagne that was waiting for us, and a close up of the jacuzzi.  You needed to ask the stateroom attendants to fill the jacuzzi (I started doing it myself the first day and they seemed a bit miffed). It takes around 2 hours to fill and they empty and sanitize it every 24 hours. It seemed like a bit of a faff so after the first day we didn’t ask for it to be filled again until around day 5. The controls were pretty slow and clunky but it got surprisingly hot and the jets were pretty powerful. 
For lunch we were told by the genie that no reservations were necessary for lunch at any of the specialty restaurants so we were free to go wherever we wanted that was open. We chose Jamie’s Italian. To be honest, we used to live within 2 blocks of a Jamie’s Italian in London for 3 years and ate there maybe twice. It’s not really my favourite — I find it dry and boring — but I was hoping it would be better on the ship. I thought the arrabbiata was pretty bland and the kids hardly touched their pasta. It was also kind of weird to see Jamie’s place plastered everywhere. The server was nice though and we ended up seeing her a lot around the ship throughout the week shilling for the specialty restaurants. 
For dinner we went to Coastal Kitchen for the infamous night 1 filet and it was absolutely amazing, best steak on the two weeks of the ship by far.  I was not a huge fan out CK as a venue though. It’s hard to describe but it seemed to lack character. It had the downside of feeling too pretentious for rowdy children but without enough redeeming qualities to make the stress worth it, if that makes sense.  That was the only night we ended up there for dinner, although we went back for breakfast a couple of times. The service was great. 
Eta: the weather for week 2 was way different than week 1. When we first boarded in Barcelona (and in all of the port stops) it was sunny and sweltering. Week 2 boarding was rainy and windy. I heard they paused boarding at one point due to the wind, and the genie later told us a big crate of supplies fell over and was destroyed while trying to load it onto the ship.  Thankfully we had had our fill of nice weather already that it didn’t bother us much.  It cleared up later and we had a beautiful rainbow and sunset in the evening. 

Now the upstairs. 
 
the kids bunk beds had these large thick orange sides you could add to prevent rolling off the side. My 7 year old still didn’t quite feel safe up there without anything between his head and the slide, so he ended up sleeping on the sofa which converts to a bed. We left it as a bed the full week since there wasn’t really a need for a sofa up there. 
The master bath has double rain shower heads.  
 
I swore I took a photo of the kids bathroom but apparently not. I liked the decor but it was a bit hard to give them a bath with the tub tucked into the corner.  There was also a weird TV like thing in the mirror except it didn’t seem to play anything. 

While the kids were trying to kill themselves on the slides and enjoying the legos and video games, I took some detailed photos around the room. 
 
First downstairs, including the downstairs bathroom when you first enter the room. Yes the fridge (which is across from the bathroom at the entrance) is no where near the mini bar; yes it’s really annoying. 

The Legos are a mix of small (normal size) and large (toddler size) so they worked great for our 7 and 2 year olds. 
The top of the dining table comes off to turn into an air hockey table, although the power is a bit weak and the table too was really heavy to lift and move.
The controls for the blinds and lights deserve their own post. I had to have help from the stateroom attendants (whom l did not see for several hours, so we were stuck with closed blinds for a while). To open the blinds, you have to select and the unselect the blind you want to open/close. This only operated the long heavy blinds. The thin layer was manual, as were the blinds upstairs by the master bedroom. 
Chalk was provided for the chalkboard wall running behind the dining table. 

Day 4 - La Spezia.  No excursion/did not leave the ship. 
 
This will be brief because I have almost no recollection of what we did this day between breakfast and dinner time. We slept in and had breakfast at Johnny Rockets because we wanted table service and it was open a bit later than Coastal Kitchen.  The servers there were exceptional and gave A a toy when he was upset over something, probably being denied MORE JUICE. 
I think we probably stayed in the room all afternoon for video games, legos and air hockey.  
For dinner we have Jamie’s another shot but I was disappointed to see the menu was basically the same from lunch. The penne carbonara was slightly better than the arrabbiata had been.  The kids pasta again remained untouched. 
After dinner we all went to see the magic show, which was the same as the one that had been in Wonder the year before.  The magician was was Spain and did a bilingual show which is why I think they like him for this itinerary. We were sat very front row and the kids were super excited. 

Day 3 - Marseille. No excursion/did not leave ship. 
One of the main benefits of the b2b and of having done the same itinerary the previous summer is that we didn’t feel the pressure to take full advantage of the ports, so we were able to spend more time in our room and around the ship.
On Day 3 we played 3 rounds of trivia and peaked for the trip - we won twice and came in second once. To be fair though the sessions were more lightly attended than usual since it was a port day. In the afternoon we made a special request of the genie to help us skip the line for laser tag.  I was never quite able to figure out the time that laser tag and ice skating sessions were made available to book in the app and missed out on both during week 1. During week 2 I managed to book ice skating for day 1 but didn’t manage laser tag for day 3. We  set up a time in advance to meet up with the genie and he led us into a side door and worked it out with the event staff to have us slotted in.  I don’t think this would have saved time over having a booking, but if you can’t get a booking this saves you from being subjected to the standby line.  A is too young to play so he and I “watched” (you can see very little other than the outside walls) from the stands while husband and M played.  When we returned to the room afternoon snacks were waiting for us.  The genie had snacks sent to us every day around 3 pm (we had asked for fewer snacks than the day before to avoid food coma).
For dinner we went to Wonderland. This was a highlight for us. We loved the atmosphere, food and presentation.  The waiter was super attentive and the Mad Hatter even refilled our water!  The only downside was that the cocktails tasted pretty meh, but they were 10/10 in style.  The potted shrimp and the mushroom dessert were our favourites.  The kids liked their fried mac and cheese. 
After dinner M went to kids club while husband, A and I saw Hiro again. It was great to see the show from the front/center seats that the genie had saved for us. Hiro is exceptional and I hope we’ll be back on Symphony at some point to see it again.  We loved seeing and hearing it from our balcony throughout the sailing as well, including later that night. 

Dinner for Day 2 was at Chops. Our genie stopped by to chat, as he did every evening meal. The service was good. The food was okay (I’m not really a steak person so would have skipped it if left to myself, but my husband is). Our children were terrible. Maybe it’s just me but with staying in star class and especially such a special room I felt particularly self-conscious about their behaviour - I was worried bad behaviour would suggest they were spoiled and entitled more so than when we were in non-suite class with the masses - and their behaviour did get progressively worse during the 2 weeks so it became a constant stress. For example, we allowed my youngest, who rarely has juice back home, to have juice with his meals on the ship and he quickly turned into a diva, demanding JUICE JUICE JUICE like he was dying every time we sat down at a table.  We also didn’t see many other kids in the specialty restaurants which made it feel like we were under a microscope more. 

After dinner M went to kids club and husband, A and I went to see 1977, which had not played during week 1 due to injury.  It took me a while to follow the plot and I think I would like to see it again now that I think I’ll understand it better.  We witnessed another near injury right next to us when the main star tripped and stumbled coming off the ice.  He yelled out in shock but returned to the ice soon afterwards and seemed fine.
I didn’t seem to take many photos that evening but he’s one I did take of our balcony.  The biggest negative of the balcony for me was the lack of loungers. I understand the space was tight, but they could have at least added footstools for the chairs like they had in our regular ocean view balcony room.  It felt like a step-down in that respect.
We felt very sorry for the stateroom attendant having to climb up into the climbing structure to clean it regularly! Our kids actually didn’t make use of it much. The 2 year old was a bit too small and the 7 year old a bit too big.  
We played ping pong only once. On precisely the third serve we knocked the ball off the balcony and it landed way down in front of Playmakers!  We eventually found it set aside waiting for our retrieval at the desk of the carousel attendant.  You might not be shocked after seeing how close the table is to the edge of the balcony. Also there are huge gaps under and around the balcony dividers, so there are many ways to lose the balls easily. After our ball fail my son was too scared of hitting someone 11 decks below with a ping pong ball in the head to try to play again. 😳