Jax

Dinner last night Chops

the wedge
lobster

petite filet
key lime pie
crab cake
spicy jumbo shrimp

Red velvet I think it’s for @Sweety hope I got that one right

After lunch we did escape room completed with 3 seconds left.

Lunch was Izumi

This morning we enjoyed a dirty duck swap. Renee was the big winner.

Our love birds

Last nights show

chefs table last night

 Scallops

tomato soup
 

lobster
filet

the world 
 
 

Day 2 at sea
Today we got up early and took a walk on the walking track. Then had breakfast in the Coastal Kitchen. Forgot pictures at breakfast. Had our daily Starbucks. Sister and I hid some ducks. We have not found a hiding place for the big ones yet.
Lunch was Playmakers. The food was outstanding . My favorite this time are the Jalapeño poppers. I’m getting bad at pictures forgot to take one of poppers.

We saw the first show of One sky

Dinner night one in Main dining room

escargot 

Shrimp

 
prime rib
 
Boston cream cake pie

Sisters nails this cruise.

Lunch today in Coastal kitchen 


Scallops

Caesar salad

blackened Cajun chicken

dark chocolate cookie

What we have to hide for two weeks 

In our cabin

This made me 😃. We were one and done with Royal for a full 11 years because our first cruise with them was THAT bad. We then booked Norwegian since it was a new ship sailing out of our backyard, and hubby's response was "why not? It can't be as bad as Royal!" Anyway, after all this time, we now love both Norwegian & Royal. However, we are with you on Holland. We will not sail them again, and my SIL works for Carnival and even she won't sail them. 🤣
You also resonated with me in that i sense your dad married into a Jewish family, which is a theme in my family. Two men in my family have married Jewish women, and some of their kids are now very interested in their Jewish heritage, and even I'm having fun exploring that with them, even though i can't offer much except, "you're 11 nearly 12, and it would have to be a major cram to get Bar Mitzvah'd since you've never picked up a Torah and don't speak a single word of Hebrew. You cannot have a Bar Mitzvah just for the party." 😅
Anyway, you have a great itinerary and i love Odyssey reports. Looking forward to yours!

This type of sailing is on our bucket list!
I am glad that your Mom is able to go with you guys. Such a blessing!

That was novel-worthy. I can be long-winded for no good reason… this wasn’t that.
1. To echo @Lovetocruise2002, glad your mom is able to go & wishing her the best.
2. Love the Full House reference from a 30-year-old, lol (yes I know there are reruns & Fuller House, which was pretty weak, but still).
3. I hope you do get to Israel someday. I’m not at all religious and I was in high school when I went (part of a sponsored basketball trip) so I didn’t come close to fully appreciating it but it was still meaningful & I’m sure it would be 100x moreso for you.
4. Live blogging is a great way to document a trip, even a random Caribbean cruise with no special meaning… so all the more reason for this one.
Hope everything goes smoothly over the next 2 weeks… you’ve clearly dealt with enough bumps in the road related to this cruise.

Hi All!

A little about myself since I haven't posted on here before, I am Ashley, a 30 year old from Arizona who has been cruising mostly with my parents (and grandparents before they passed) but sometimes solo, with friends, and with groups since I was 9 months old. I have mostly done Royal Caribbean but I have also done some Celebrity and Princess as well as one each of Holland America, NCL, and Carnival (we don't talk about those, there is a reason it was one each). Anyways, all that to say I am very loyal to Royal with nearly 80 Royal Caribbean cruises under my belt. When I am not cruising, I am a full time software engineer to pay for my cruising habit.
And now for some history on this cruise.... my parents and I first booked this itinerary for October of 2021 in the summer of 2020. Heck, we also booked cruises in June of 2020 when our May cruise was canceled, August when June was cancelled, November when August was cancelled, so on so forth, you get the idea. Fast forward to summer of 2021 and well over 40 FCCs later, the restart was finally happening and the final payment due date for this cruise was quickly approaching. There we still a lot of unknowns about Israel and what the covid requirements would be to go there and as that was the main reason we booked that cruise (more on that later...), after a family meeting we cancelled it and I spent 2 weeks in October on the Symphony of the Seas with a friend (and my parents ultimately joining for the second cruise after some convincing) instead where I finally earned pinnacle after waiting the entire restart only a little more than 1 cruise away (I promise, I am not a snotty pinnacle, I refuse to wear the pin and prefer to go with the flow instead). With that I had finally made it back on a ship for the first time since January 2020 but I still hadn't made it to holy lands.
Fast forward again to February 2023 when my parents were on the Celebrity Beyond celebrating their 40th anniversary without me (to quote Stephanie Tanner: how rude... not, they deserved the vacation without me and they had their neighbors with them to take my place, also I am pretty sure my work would have killed me if I took another cruise at that point). Before they headed out on their cruise, I looked at the itineraries released just a couple months before for Europe in 2024 and found this one, and made the mistake of emailing my parents with the details. It didn't take much convincing that we had to book this cruise. A week later, after a lot of back and forth with them and the future cruises agent on Celebrity Beyond, we finally got this booked and everything confirmed. Note to my future self and really everyone reading this: never book Royal on Celebrity, while we have successfully booked Celebrity on Royal before with no issues, this was a nightmare to say the least, the on-board agent had no clue what the different cabin categories were and after pleading with her that Odyssey had J1s, J3s, and J4s and they were all Junior Suites, she was finally able to find more than just the J1s available.
With the cruise finally booked, let's talk about why we wanted to do it: Israel. My mom and I are Jewish and my mom has always wanted to go to the holy land but has said she would never do it by land, she just didn't feel comfortable due to some experiences her parents/my grandparents had when they went. And similar to me, she loves cruising. So this seemed like the perfect solution. I had also unfortunately aged out of birthright during Covid as a result of them changing the age policy during that time so this would give me a taste of Israel to see if I wanted to join a volunteer trip or something else in the future. When June 2023 arrived and the flights opened up to book, there wasn't a doubt in our minds that we were going on this cruise. Before booking the flights we had a family meeting and I made one important note to my parents: If this cruise doesn't go to Israel, are you still ok with going for the other ports? They both said yes. My mom has always wanted to go to Santorini since watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants so while it was not Israel, there would still be something on her bucket list to cross off. Even though the itinerary at the time didn't have Ephesus, Turkey on it, we knew it was likely this would appear if Israel was removed and my dad wanted to see the House of the Virgin Mary after missing the opportunity to see it while on the Splendour of the Seas in 2000. After that discussion, our flights were booked and we started making hotels and other plans for the trip including booking excursions for every port except Israel since conveniently none were open for Israel and also I knew if we did make it there, we would want to do a private tour so we could cover both the Christian and Jewish heritage there adequately.
Once again, let's fast forward this time to November 2023. Unfortunately, we all know what happened on October 7th. The days that followed made it very obvious that this was sadly not like other times Israel had been attacked. They were not getting out of this quickly. We received the not at all surprising email that this itinerary was changing. Out was Israel and in was Turkey, as I unfortunately predicted, along with Mykonos. After yet another family meeting (I think this is at least the 3rd one in this story, sensing a theme here...) we unanimously decided we were still going, barring any crazy world event. It was full steam ahead and I finally decided to start planning the tours for our pre-cruise stay in Rome. We also booked an excursion for Mykonos through the ship and I left my dad to figure out Ephesus himself. I still don't think he has that planned, you can tell who is the planner and who isn't in this family.
Now let's fast forward to February 2024. It was Super Bowl Sunday and I had plans to go to the Phoenix Open with my dad in the corporate tents on the 17th hole. Instead, I got woken up by a call at 6am with news that my mom had passed out just before midnight the night before and they were in the ER room at Mayo Hospital. This cruise was far from the first thing on my mind, I wanted to know how my mom was doing, what had happened, if there was anything they needed as the hospital is less than a mile from my house, I can literally see it from my backyard. In the weeks that followed, and what seemed like hundreds of doctors appointments, a couple dental appointments, and a surgery later, we finally brought up this cruise again. Her doctor's gave her the all clear to go, they just warned that we had to be careful, she couldn't over exert herself. Another family meeting and the swapping of tours later to some less strenuous ones, we were once again on track for this cruise to happen.
Now finally we have made it to today. We fly out in a little more than 2 weeks on the evening of 4/30. We finally settled on a hotel for our one night post cruise in Rome before flying home so the last thing is planned. As many hurdles as this cruise had and the amount of times we thought this wouldn't happen, we are looking forward to it finally happening, even if it is a little different than originally planned. I am just grateful that we are all still here to enjoy this as a family. I have never done a live blog of a cruise before. Not here and also not on that other cruise board that shall not be named. Something about this cruise feels different, while I hope this isn't my last big European adventure with my parents, I know there is a chance that will be the case so I really want to remember this and document it. Not only are my parents getting older, I am also getting older and who knows what will come for my future as well. While we have plenty more cruises planned as a family out of the US to the Caribbean as well as the Mexican riviera on the west coast, I don't know that I will have a trip like this as a family once again.
I promise my future posts won't be as much of a novel. There was a lot of backstory to cover and I hope I at least made it interesting to read. In the coming days I will start to talk about our plans for both pre-cruise and on the cruise but figured it made sense to start with the back story first.
Since I have never done this before, not sure how to end these, I am sure I will figure that out better as I go. So for this one I guess I should say TTYL!
 

We heard at 28 days out from Shane that he would be on vacation and our genie would be Ghandi. Yesterday I had a new email from Ghandi requesting our what’s app number. This was the first time the genie has requested our number but it worked out  just fine as we heard back from Ghandi and will meet him tomorrow at 10:30 after we board.

Here we are again it’s time for another cruise. This time we are celebrating our 35th anniversary. We originally booked these dates as a b2b. But things changed when the cruise line decided to cancel those dates and change it to a a transatlantic. I was so upset first because it was our favorite ship and it was going to be our anniversary cruise. So after many sleepless nights the transatlantic dates and cabins showed up so we snagged our new cabin choice. We changed the cabins we had on the b2b to just one cabin for the 14 days.
 
Who will be going this time : Me, hubby, sister and sisters fiancé 
Saturday we made it to Miami with no flight delays. We are staying at Intercontinental Miami. 
 

 



 

 

Great, another review of Paradise Beach coming! We're going in July for the first time after overly researching it and having @Jax do a great job of scouting out the beach daybeds a few months back. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Here are our plans for the ports. 
Roatan: We booked the 3 Reef Stop Snorkel with Roatan Getaway Tours. We paid a deposit by PayPal and will pay the balance when we meet them in port. Communication by email has been pretty quick.
Costa Maya: We're staying on the ship. The current plans are Flowrider in the morning, and we have Escape the Rubicon booked that afternoon. If that does wind up getting cancelled, we'll probably all laugh at how bad mom is on the golf course instead. 
Cozumel: Paradise Beach. We've been here a few times, but not since February 2020.
Usually I can get the kids to wrap up our school year before we leave on an April/May cruise (we homeschool). This year though, they are both dragging their feet in a couple subjects. They will both have papers to finish when we get back and DD, who is taking Biology this year, will have a couple labs to complete. All their other subjects will be complete this week. This is also the last week for our co-op, so after Friday, my teaching duties are over for the year. I gave myself a break with work this trip too, and my last wedding is this Saturday. I'll have all next week to pack! DS is the only one who may need a new shirt for formal night. The rest of us are all the same size as fall's cruise, and I just replaced the kids' swim suits right before we went to Great Wolf. I actually feel prepared and calm - not normal for me, but I like it!

Our family has always sailed in suites. DH and I in Jr Suites before we starting letting the kids tag along, and then the 2 bedroom grand every time the kids have been with us. We really love, and need, the extra space of the separate living room. DH is up without an alarm by 4:30 every morning, and he needs a place to go while the rest of us sleep until a more decent hour. DD is on the spectrum and needs a place to really move around to process the activities of the day before heading out to dinner. Being spoiled in the suite lounge has been a big perk for us too. We're budgeting to replace a car and living room furniture soon though, so we decided to try out connecting balconies for the next few cruises. We're almost diamond plus, so the drink vouchers help take care of what we are missing in the suite lounge, but we sure will miss the service and breakfast in Chops or Coastal Kitchen! 
Along for the ride: Myself, DH, DD (15), and DS (12)
Rooms: 12150 and 12152 - pretty far forward for us aft facing dwellers. 
Itinerary: 7 day Western Caribbean - Galveston, Sea Day x2, Roatan, Costa Maya, Cozumel, Sea Day, back in Galveston.
Pre cruise purchases: soda packages for the kids, 50 photo package (pared down from our usual 100), 24 bottle water package, 3 device internet.
We have MTD with reservations at 6:45 each night. I would do 150 Central Park, Jamie's, or Sabor, but we were in a star class room a year ago on Allure, and didn't eat in the MDR. Since we have only had the new menus on our Liberty cruise this past fall, we will most likely stick with the MDR this time. Who knows, maybe DH and I will have a date night and just send the kids to the WJ. I'm sure we will do Johnny Rockets once for lunch - it's kind of a tradition, and the kids have already been asking about it.
What else... I booked all our entertainment. I want to say it opened up about 45 days out. I meant to make a note, but forgot. I also was able to book Escape the Rubicon about a month ago. It's still showing on my calendar, and they haven't refunded my money yet, so hopefully it is opened back up.
We have a little bit of OBC that will find its way to the casino from the RC card - we redeemed the points on the Bank of America site about 30 days out and they posted to the cruise planner just a couple days later. 
That's all I can think of for now - let me know if you have any questions, and I will try to answer them along the way.

@Lovetocruise2002Marla sent you a message in her email today.
"Oh.. say hi back to Sabrina, she and her family were so kind and friendly towards me. I will always remember them 😊"
No other updates on the upcharges lol

Aw...I miss her too. She is genuinely really awesome and fun. Thank you for letting her know that we are thinking of her.