WAAAYTOOO

...unfortunately... I wish they would just spruce AL up a bit - paint, new carpeting, replace some furniture and call it "good". But that's not going to happen.

So far, so good. We had mimosas with breakfast ! BIG splurge for me. I almost never drink alcohol and certainly NEVER in the morning...but it seemed appropriate. We're in Nassau today (blah) so we will not be getting off the ship. Kinda coolish and windy here anyway. Dinner tonite in the CK. Dan will be happy. I think tonite is lamb shank. I'll find something. Which brings up an interesting thing from last night's dinner. Last night's menu was really bad (for me). There wasn't a darn thing I wanted. Dan got braised veal which he thoroughly enjoyed. So I asked for the children's menu. LOL. I got plain spaghetti with marinara and chicken fingers. I also asked if they had a small tossed salad. I didn't want anything fancy...just some lettuce, tomatoes and olives with some ranch dressing. Anelyn, our server (AWESOME lady) asked the chef to prepare me a special salad, which came out exactly as I had asked for it. SOOO nice. I chopped up the chicken tenders and mixed them in with the spaghetti for a kinda low-budget chicken parm (without the parm ). It was a thoroughly delicious meal, and all a la carte. Could I have gotten this in the MDR ? I don't know. Maybe. ...but I was impressed that both Anelyn and the chef were so quick to make a special meal for me. I wanted to tip the chef and I asked Anelyn to please give the money to him. She said "no" that she would bring the chef out to meet me. He was such a sweet, young and gracious guy. It was an honor to meet him and give him his tip in person. IMO, THIS is what tipping is all about. Both of them had gone waaay out of their way to make my evening memorable and I appreciated it. An interesting side note regarding the picky eater story above....both @OCSC Mike (wife) and @Ampurp85 kept passing across my mind...with the tales of their pickiness. I knew they would be proud !

I also really love my folding, hanging toiletries bag. I attach it to the ceiling with magnetic hooks and it so convenient.

The only intel I have (since we have not cruised on Icon and most likely will not for some time) is that the return on the machines is set at 81% which is extraordinarily low. I cannot confirm that information.

I've never seen this one before !

That's part of the "shadiness" I was talking about. Very unfortunate.

Yeah, but it says Sky Class amenities. That should be everything including SL/CK and internet. I think what they’re doing with the Sky JS is very shady. Either they’re Sky Class or they aren’t.

I think my most useful shipboard accessory is a collapsible clothes hamper.

Yes. Dan snorkels almost every time we stop at PDCC. He has his own equipment. Never a charge

This post has absolutely nothing to do with my blog or Allure….just thought I would throw in a little Cruise Planner intel. For those of you who may be visiting Labadee and may be interested in renting a cabana, I have noted some dramatic price reductions on some of my non-holiday, non-summer sailings….particularly for the over-the-water cabanas at Barefoot. These reductions have been greater than 50% below the recent (outrageously high) prices for the OTW cabanas. So if you are interested you might want to check prices. The prices for sailings during the summer or around ANY holiday remain ridiculously high, but those for random uninteresting sailings seem to be almost reasonable.

I think it's important to add that there are reports that the details of the ladies' account are in dispute. No way to know, at this time, exactly what is true. Diligence is your friend.

Sorry, @GregD but she upstaged you BIG time with this one. Matter of fact, she shoved you right OFF the stage !

Ahhhh......

The coffee machine in the SL is bus'-up (down for the count). Apparently it needs "parts"...so it will be the CL for coffee on this particular voyage...but since we are living on deck 11 and the CL is on deck 11 we are in luck ! I have to come here to get onto the 'puter anyway. At least I won't have to go all the way forward and down to 4 !

I'm also anticipating some changes to the system. With talk of reciprocity between Celeb and Royal, I would expect any changes to occur at that time. It's the perfect opportunity to rebaseline. Yes, I fully expect the thresholds to tier levels to increase.

Interesting. How in the world would anyone guess that there was going to be a priest onboard if they don't announce anything ? ...and it's no surprise to me that few, if any, were in attendance. I'm glad he was there for those who care but it seems a bit arbitrary. I guess those who care know to ask ?

Just an FYI, there was no need for the Rolaids. The charcoal caps did their job (apparently) and as is well this morning.

No more than usual as far as I have noticed. It is definitely at or above full capacity though. LOTS of folks. Seems to be a lot of new or newish cruisers. I guess that's not unusual for a shorty. Sitting in the Crown Lounge writing. BOY it's been a long time since I was in this room ! I had forgotten how lovely it is here. It will be a shame when it goes bye-bye during the amplification or whatever they are going to call it now. It seems so weird to look out the back and not see that horrible purple slide there.

Dinner in the CK was very good. The steak was as tender as any I have ever eaten BUT as I feared would happen, I was still waaaytooo full from lunch and couldn’t finish it. In retrospect, I should have asked for a later dining time but I fell back on old habits and booked an early slot. Now I am miserably full…even hours after we ate. Luckily I brought along some of @asquared17’s charcoal pills. Hopefully that will help. If not, good old fashioned Rolaids will do the trick. The casino is a madhouse, which frankly, comes as no surprise to me. I’m sure there are lots of folks who, like us, are here on a casino comp. I’m even for night #1 and Dan is up a little. Dan is feverishly using his newly-found skill of identifying every plant in Central Park with @DDaley’s iPhone trick. I’m pretty sure I will soon learn to hate @DDaley for this. JK It isn’t flawless though. It misidentified one of our schefflera (umbrella plant) as a grapefruit tree ! Too funny. We haven’t witnessed any shenanigans so far. I think I must inadvertently repel shenanigan-ites as I never seem to witness anything of interest or amusement. I will try and be more observant. Tomorrow is a “sea day” which is a hoot when you think about where we actually go on a 4 day cruise to Nassau/PDCC. We’re really just putting around, wasting time. Oh well…I prefer sea days anyway so even a manufactured sea day beats a day in Nassau.

Does Harmony Aqua Theater show still have the whirling dervish ?

That’s absolutely amazing ! We just tried it. He is in absolute heaven over this. Thank you….i think !

Wow ! Phones are so smart these days !

Lunch at Giovanni’s Table was as good as always. I love the chicken piccata but I knew that if I got the “normal” order I would either overeat or waste food so I had them bring me a half order. It was perfect. Dan had the seafood linguini which he said was also very good. @Ampurp85 we both got the Casino Welcome Party invites….the first time I’ve ever gotten one. It is 5-6 tonite in the “new” non-smoking casino annex. Dinner at the CK is at 5:30 so we’ll only be able to stay a few minutes but maybe we’ll get lucky and one of us will win $100 free play ! Yippee ! We got full loungers on our double balcony. We’ve stayed in this room category a number of times recently but never had loungers before. Nice touch. Happy to see that the Central Park flora has bounced back from the freeze-out that it suffered in Galveston a couple of years ago. I’m sure most of these plants are replacements rather than survivors but the place looks really nice and you’d never know it had been in such bad shape so recently. Dan is “Mr Plantman” so he takes for-freakin’-ever to walk through CP. He examines every leaf and tries to impress me with the Latin names for each and every species. I’m certain he makes most of that up. I will have to call his bluff and quiz him sometime. Well, it appears to be nap time. I’m certain that as soon as I lie down our attendant will knock to introduce him/herself. That’s my luck with such things.

Forgot to mention this earlier. Until the CK manager got “the word” that they were only honoring the BOGO on night #1, he had seemed completely ok with allowing us to use our BOGO’s on nights #2 and 4, which was our original plan. Of course, all that changed when we found out that they weren’t allowing anything besides night #1. ….so I think Allure must have a somewhat lenient BOGO policy SOMEtimes.

I’m sure glad you said something b/c I was planning on draining the ship’s bank….but now I will leave a little sump’n for ya.