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So many medical emergencies lately!  What is going on?  Hoping all the emergencies recover quickly!

About 2 years ago, I found a duck. I took it to see the tag, then put it back because I thought "I'm a grown man, I really don't want this duck".
A few days later my kid found another one and was incredibly happy about it. I should've given him my duck. I'm stupid.

We hide (and find) ducks on every cruise.  I'm sorry some folks are hiding them irresponsibly, and I'm sorry some fun-haters are put off by the whole concept.
We will continue to hide them, and if folks are not interested, just leave us alone.  We are on the cruise to have fun.🤩

 
 
 
 
 
 
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At first look, this is just a picture of the artwork on Odyssey, but a quick zoom in shows a creative way to hide a duck
 

Thank you! Great recommendations!

We did the Crystal Caves excursion and loved it!  On our second day…we took the city bus to Horseshoe Beach…another great time!  

Thanks for this post @Leroyr55.  I am doing an 8 night on her as soon as she arrives in Bayonne…in just 16 days and 12hours.  Getting pretty excited as the days go by.  

Thanks for this post @Leroyr55.  I am doing an 8 night on her as soon as she arrives in Bayonne…in just 16 days and 12hours.  Getting pretty excited as the days go by.  

We ate at Jalapeño Inferno in super duper north Scottsdale 🙃 (my mom complains she lives in the boondocks 🤣). Anyways, where in Phoenix are you staying? I can definitely recommend something closer. I was born and raised in Phoenix so I have experience on this topic (and I still live in Phoenix unlike my parents who moved to Scottsdale lol 😂). And the last time I was in Flagstaff was for the 4th of July 2 years ago but I definitely have some recommendations, just need to find the list I have, give me a bit on that one but I will definitely get back to you!
- Ashley 

I’m not gonna start a new live blog for this FR shorty…I will just post a few nuggets here.
The good news - we are in the top 10 Pinns on this sailing !
The bad news - there are only 9 Pinns onboard 😂
It’s raining big time today. I hear thunder out there !    We’re on our way [back] to Puerto Plata, DR.  It’s our only port of call on this sailing.  We are seeing more of this port than we are of Nassau, which I didn’t think humanly possible. We like PP so that’s fine with us.
Lunch yesterday at Giovanni’s Kitchen and I’m happy to say that it was a great lunch.  I have had few awesome meals at GK but this was really good.  I got the Chicken Parmesan even though I knew it would fill me up and I would not be hungry for Chops (which was an entirely accurate prediction).  Since I judge all meals relative to my non-ethic love for Chicken Parmesan, I can say, this was the BEST chicken parm yet !  It was super thin and extra crispy.  It’s the new “bestest” standard.  Dan had the seafood linguini and man, it was overflowing with clams and shrimp.  Both meals were really excellent.
Since we both really hate the “Welcome Aboard” menu, we went to Chops on our first BOGO voucher and it was very good.  If I hadn’t still been stuffed from lunch, I think I could have rated it as “excellent “.  I guess I should do that anyway.  I can’t blame them for the fact that I stuffed my face at lunch.  😥😥. We both got a filet and the steaks were very flavorful and tender.  I felt a little bad for our next door neighbor.  He ordered a T-bone and while I didn’t examine it closely, it looked “wrong”.  He said it was underdone and gristly.  IMO, when a customer is completely dissatisfied with his/her steak (which he clearly was), they should be offered something to replace it.  He was not given such an offer.  They were a young couple, probably inexperienced cruisers, and I think the poor service (in their case) left a sour taste in their mouths.  I know it would have, for me. They never uttered a word of complaint.
The second of our BOGO vouchers got kinda FUBAR but we got everything straightened out, eventually.  When I made our rezzies (when we first boarded, yesterday) I told the gent helping us that I wanted Giovanni’s on the last day (day 4, which is Caribbean night -my very LEAST favorite menu) but it turns out he made the rezzie for night #2 and I didn’t catch it until later in the afternoon.  When we went to Chops for dinner, I asked how we could go about fixing this and the Host (at Chops) said he would take care of it but that we must pay for the meal before the end of night #2.  I thanked him but said that we would go over to Gios and do it rather than bugging him with doing it….since we have to pay, anyway.  So we did just that.  After dinner we walked over to Gios and got our rezzie changed and pre-paid our night 4 BOGO.  So we got what we wanted in the end but with a little extra work that could been avoided (IMO).
We’re going to the ice show today at 1:00 even though we have seen this show MANY times.  There is a production show at 9:30 called Once Upon A Time, which I’m sure we’ve seen but I can’t recall it….so we will hop over there, most likely.  I look for the ice show to be VERY crowded today with the crap weather…but hopefully we will be ok since we should have a reserved section.  I say “should” b/c we seem to have randomly bad luck with reserved seating on some of the ships -particularly during afternoon performances.  Sometimes there just isn’t any enforcement of the reserved areas so basically there IS no reserved area.  

This is problematic, lol. I call my wife picky for a reason but she loves chicken parm and only dislikes it if it's soggy. She often asks for it to be made extra crispy with the sauce on the side. But she also loves filet mignon. Her go to at GT has always been filet with a side of risotto. She's not going to skip the filet when we try GK and I figured she would get something like fettucine alfredo as a pasta side but now I'm thinking maybe she has to get chicken parm as her "side" based on your review. Normally I'd help her out but I usually get a filet as well and I love carbonara (although Dan's seafood is tempting too)... that doesn't leave much room, especially since I want to try a pizza too, even if that means taking it to go.
34 days til we board and have GK for dinner on night one and I'm already figuring out what to order. 🤣 I may have a problem.

I posted this somewhere before but the wildlife on CocoCay is pretty crazy between the angry chickens, the dive bombing seagulls, the sharks in the snorkeling areas, and the big iguana that lives on the island in the middle of the Oasis pool, lol. At least the iguana is pretty chill and doesn't come after people.

So many medical emergencies lately!  What is going on?  Hoping all the emergencies recover quickly!

don't get me started on these feral creatures!!!!!!
THEY CAME FOR MY FOOD!!!!!

Has anybody else noticed the recent total lack of seagulls on PDCC ?  When we were there the last 2 times, I never saw a single one !  I wonder if they’ve been “relocated” …

We're coming up on Cozumel,  we passed Mariner- here's the pilot boat with her in the background. Looks like we're headed to the usual dock. Celebrity Apex is there.
Day 2 - we went to the crown lounge for coffee and I really don't like how it is set up. There is only about 3 feet of space to walk in because of the divider making it really cramped if someone gets coffee first then food or tries to go back down the line because they forgot something. 

WJ for breakfast then the kids and I went to the flowrider. We were there about an hour and a half and headed back to the room. DH and I weren't hungry, but the kids wanted to try Mini Bites which is tex-mex snacks by the sports court. Long line and just meh.
The kids went to the teen club for thr afternoon and DH and I found our way back to the casino. I was down. He was up.
We came back to our diamond amenities. 
We tried out the Latin dance class and wound up teaching the instructor a new move or two. 
Formal night - DD ordered the escargot and liked it so much she asked for a second plate. French onion soup and a wedge salad also made it on the table. Entrees- tenderloin, salmon, and beef bourguignon. DH and I also split the lamb Rogan. Desserts- apple cobbler and cappuccino chocolate cake. 






we had Fine Line reservations for 10pm, but the show was canceled due to high waves. We were automatically rescheduled for 10pm on night 4.
 

They just announced that we are stopping in Cozumel on our way to Roatan. We're dropping the captain off for a medical emergency. He just joined the ship.

Where is this restaurant and the name?  I will be in Phoenix mid June with my granddaughter and will be looking for someplace good to eat at.  After Phoenix we will be in Flagstaff for 3 days so looking for places there as well!
Your itinerary sounds awesome.  Looking forward to following along!

Where is this restaurant and the name?  I will be in Phoenix mid June with my granddaughter and will be looking for someplace good to eat at.  After Phoenix we will be in Flagstaff for 3 days so looking for places there as well!
Your itinerary sounds awesome.  Looking forward to following along!

Hi Again! Thanks everyone for the well wishes for my mom and support on this crazy cruise. Ok so some discussion about the plans for this cruise:
The Ship:
This is technically our 3rd cruise on Odyssey of the Seas. We did a back to back on her in December for Christmas and NYE just a few months ago so it will feel a bit like coming home as many of the crew mentioned they would still be on for this sailing. My mom and I really like Quantum class, in particular the Coastal Kitchen on it as well as just how classy the whole ship feels for lack of a better descriptor. My dad prefers Oasis class but we out-voted him, and also the two of them will get their Oasis fix with Wonder in August (once again without me haha).
The Cabins:
My parents are back in a GS, basically the same cabin they had in December just 2 floors lower. Ironically, they both hate the GS on Quantum class but by the time they figured that out it was far too late to change it and prices had been jacked way up. We never have used Royal Up either as we don't love surprises so my parents agreed they will keep what they have and just prepare better for it this time. Hopefully once on board I can post about the downfalls of that category with some pictures, and maybe some pointers to make it work better. Granted, I know we have no right to complain as this category is often booked with 3 or 4 guests and it will just have my parents in it.
I am in a J4. I was in a J3 in December. The JS categories have different bathroom, closet and sofa layouts on this ship so I have some thorough pictures from December that I can use to compare once on board. I think there are pluses and minuses to both from past experience and I am one person so really I could make whatever work, I only ended up with this cabin because it was only $213 more than a balcony at the time we booked this with the 150% single supplement.
Dining:
We booked a 5 night dining package. The other nights we will probably end up at Coastal Kitchen. We are not Windjammer/buffet people so warning in advance you probably won't see much of that in this live blog.

Flights:
We are flying on British Airways through London Heathrow with a 5 hour layover. We will spend those 5 hours crossings our fingers and toes that our bags don't end up lost in Heathrow. Thankfully we all have Apple airtags in our cases which have proven themselves very handy. We did this flight through London instead of Dallas so we would land in the evening instead of in the morning. Last year we landed at 7am in Amsterdam for a British Isles cruise and my mom said never again, so heres to also crossing our fingers that this flight works out better for us adjusting to the time zone. 
Pre-cruise:
I will detail this more later but we have 3 full days in Rome pre cruise, hopefully after a good night sleep after landing later in the evening.
Post cruise:
Given the day of the week this cruise ends (a Friday), and the fact that I, unlike my parents, still work full time, we are only staying one night outside of Rome post cruise and have a pretty early flight the next day home. We would have flown home the same day if we could but it is just not that logistically possible with the distance between Civitavecchia and FCO and how early all the flight options are. We are also taking British Airways through Heathrow with the same 5 hour layover on the way home. Once again, wish us luck.
And I guess just some backstory on Europe for us:
This is my 8th European Cruise. The closest cruise to this one that we did was on the original Pacific Princess aka the Love Boat in 1997. I was just shy of 4 years old so I obviously don't remember a thing. I do know that cruise left from Venice and went to some of these ports but not all of them. All of that to say, most of these ports are going to be fairly new experiences for us (hence why you will see us primarily doing ship tours when I cover that sometime in the future). Also, my mom gets nervous about missing the ship and would have us back on board with many hours to spare if we didn't do ship tours so this is the best solution for us when we do cruises in Europe. I know it means we will just get a sampling of the "Greatest Hits" in each port but I will take it all things considered.

Anyways, I will probably mainly be posting on weekends leading up to the trip given my work schedule. In the future posts, I will try to cover what we booked in terms of pre-cruise tours as well as our shore excursions. Also, will probably cover a little of the dreaded packing process when I finally decide to start that.

Thanks again and TTYL!

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!
 

Just brought the washer sheets.

Sorry, that was unclear, I'll go back and edit. The door inside the cabin that connects the two rooms closes automatically. It's not locked because we asked that it be opened. It's just really heavy and opens into our room blocking off the area around that side of the bed and the bathroom.
The door between the balconies was opened and locked into place by this little thing.

So…the connecting door can’t stay open?  Is there a reason why?  I was hoping it would since I will be in Symphony in a few weeks with my daughter and her 2 sons…I have my older grandson with me.  I was thinking I could go out early in the morning for my walk and have the connecting door open.  No?

I go on May 31st!  My first cruise!