BrandonOwen

I think it is great seeing all the Insiders here! ❤️

Not "low" places Karah...just "well grounded" ?
 

To be sincere or to be funny...???
Ive got friends in “Low” places ???. But seriously, love you all and thank you all for following along!!!

Whoa!  This blog is really bring all sort of people out of the woodwork! ?

Been soooooo long since I've been here... looking forward to following along Karah!
 

??? I would never do that to my children although they do ❤️ “Uncle Ron” 

Wait!  @Big Dawg Ron is you Nanny?  Oh my!  We may need a Live Blog from BDR!  ???

I’ll be sure to tag you if/when that happens!  I know how bored you will be taking care of my kid with the broken leg!  ????. You wouldn’t believe how many people have volunteered your services!!!
 

I hear I’ve been summoned by the one and only @Lovetocruise2002 ??? it will be fun to follow along once you actually start sailing @Karahvacatimes ???????

As I mentioned previously, this will be our first sailing on an Oasis class ship!   So I guess as they say “go big or go home!”   We had heard so many wonderful things about Harmony and with the addition of new venues  ( PlayMakers, Hooked, el loco fresh etc.) we are positive we’ve made the right choice! ??

Photo credit-Cruise Life Rick
I have sailed on Vision, Radiance, Voyager, and Quantam classes. For me each class has its own sparkle and shine!   Overall I do see myself as a big ship girl and I am looking forward to  being on a ship with a Promenade again!  
Because we have never sailed on an Oasis class ship, we chose to do another first. No, not a “sweet” suite as my title might suggest, but rather a category 2J Central park balcony  located on deck 11.  Big thanks to @Matt  for  letting us all in on the larger Central Park balconies as we were able to snag one!  



Photo credits-Luis Ortega
 We will be enjoying the perks of lunch at Jamie’s and a nice bottle of wine that are included with the CPB stateroom .  We have never stayed in a balcony that does not overlook the ocean and we are still not entirely sure about our decision but know it will not make or break our cruise!  I am really looking forward to sitting on the balcony at night looking at the beauty that is central park!


I will end today’s post with a pretty significant  first for us..... My husband and I will be cruising completely alone! No kids, no family, no friends!
This is US...
Someone is.....

And the other....

 Those who know me well know which one I am! @BrandonOwen @Big Dawg Ron @Wilson ??

Have a great sailing @Karahvacatimes!  And your blog brought out the great @BrandonOwen!  ?  Would it be too much to hope for a @Big Dawg Ron sighting too??

First off because its the most important thing today ......
Its Single Digit Dance Day!!  

And now for something completely new, from me that is!  A Live Blog (or as live as I can make it) from our 7 night sailing on Symphony of the Seas, March 2-9 with stops in Nassau, St Thomas, and St Kitts/Nevis.  
Just a little background info to get you as close to as excited as I am!! 

We booked this cruise in July 2017 at NextCruise on Anthem of the Seas!  Anthem was the first cruise we had taken in 15 years!!
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Symphony was still being built and we were stoked to book our first Oasis Class Ship.

I have 9 more days to to tell you all about the rest of the firsts for this cruise so "Come aboard, we're expecting you!"

Just, you know, a little larger....

Have an awesome cruise.  I could never do a Live (or almost live) BLOG!  

Don't forget @BrandonOwen at the end of episode 1! 

Don't you mean Pre-Emerald? 

Heck no!  I just made Platinum on my last cruise and I’ve been on two RCLB Group Cruises and never felt left out!

Day 3 - Juneau
We had a noon arrival scheduled so we spent the morning sailing up the channel towards Juneau enjoying rain wrapped mountains on both sides of the ship.  The temperature in the mid-50s wasn't too bad but the light rain made it feel colder than it was.

We joined a number of ships already in port including Radiance of the Seas and a Silverseas ship (Silver Spirit) at the main pier with a Seabourne ship at anchor (tendering).  A Princess ship was in port.

Our excursion would depart shortly after the ship's arrival in Juneau so we visited the Windjammer when they opened at 11am then got ready to depart as soon as we were given the all clear.  
Today we would be doing a two part excursion.  The first part was whale watching by boat followed by a short hike in the rainforest to Mendenhall Glacier.  We boarded a bus for a 20 minute ride to Auke Bay. 
Here we boarded the Navigator!  No, not the Navigator of the Seas, but a small whale watching boat named Navigator.

Before leaving the marina area we were treated to dozens or Bald Eagles sitting, flying, fishing and just hanging out all around us.


Our guide tells us a lot of people get this next bird confused with something else but it is still a Bald Eagle, just a juvenile bird who will get it's white head after a few seasons.

Captain Jen and our guide Jamie took us out away from land where we saw more Eagles.


It didn't take long before Captain Jen spotted the first whale.



This is apparently Sasha.  Each whale has distinctive markings on their fluke and the boat carries a book with pictures of each fluke they use to identify them.

Both our guide and Captain spend the winters in Hawaii and summer in Alaska following the whales.  They breed and reproduce near Hawaii then migrate to Alaska each summer to feed.

We zoomed off on a 20 minute boat ride to another area, listening to radio chatter from various other whale watching boats.  In this next area the water is hundreds of feet deep and whales swim right next to the shore where it isn't shallow.  The mountains rise hundreds of feet above us so you can imagine the steep, shear cliff walls plunging down underwater into the depths.

There was a group of several whales swimming with each other, various spouts of water every time they came up for air.    There must have been six or seven in close proximity.  Possibly some juvenile whales and their family on their first trip to Alaska.

There are many types of whale watching boats.  This next one was similar to the size of boat I took last year. 

I spotted several Royal Caribbean jackets from the logo shop on board Explorer on this particular boat.  It was likely another RC excursion.  

With only a dozen on our small boat it made for better viewing oportinities and being smaller and more agile Captain Jen was able to quickly maneuver us for the best photo angles.

Day 2 - Sea Day
I awoke to my son making some noise in the cabin.  His Eastern based internal clock was ticking.  He, having crashed early the night before was ready to go earlier than I was.  It was before 6am PT. 
Today is a sea day so lots of time to do sea day type things.  Breakfast in the Windjammer opened at 6:30am so we headed up there just after opening time.  After breakfast we explored the ship.  I wanted to get some more helipad pictures away from port and at sea:


I walked around various outside decks in search of wildlife.  In the distance a couple of times I saw some whales but they were too far away to try to take pictures. 
Afternoon brought us back up to the Viking Crown Lounge (Dizzy's) for a Royal Caribbean Blog event with free drinks!




At this event we got to have our cake and eat it too!


This led directly into the pub crawl, which began at the... Pub.

The pub on this ship is different from other pubs in the fleet.  The bar area sits very near the entrance and it consumes a lot of floor space.

Remarkably the beer is just as cold and it drinks the same so we went with it.  There may be slightly more bar seating in this layout but less room in the rest of the pub to listen to entertainers and such.

Matt scoping:

After complimentary drinks at Dizzy's, I was close to seeing exactly how this next picture of Matt and Annette captured:

Yet off we went to the Schooner Bar.



Next up, R Bar.

Rut Roh. Shooters in play.



Shooter round two... Fireball!

Time to head up to the Skybar. Elevator for 80 please... maybe two (or three).  How many blog readers can you squeeze into an elevator?

Okay I've gotta come clean here.  Mrs Cookingyo:  I didn't actually see Cookingyo eat pickles on the Adventure of the Seas.  (You had to be there).




Before we knew it it was 4:37pm when Matt realized it was Diamond happy hour.  Enough said. #nodrinkpackage
Formal night approaching the pub crawl was unofficially over. 

Actually both Matt and I are very careful to be inclusive.  My son isn't Diamond.  I haven't even stepped foot in the Diamond lounge yet.  Most people on this GC aren't diamond.  

I need to go on a GC ?
It looks like so much fun!!  Love the elevator pic that was just posted on the RCPeriscopers page too!  

My son was exhausted from his early flight and coming from the East coast the 3 hour difference caught up to him so he went to bed.  I saw the makings of a sunset through the overcast and found the deck 4 outer decks the only place to catch it.

It was very cool and we had a strong wind so they closed the upper decks and helipad access.  I grabbed this photo of the pool deck as I sought places to capture the sunset.

Since I have the drink package my route between photo locations somehow included a bar along the path.  Here is the Promenade as I made my way back down to deck 4.

I am trying a new camera this cruise and decided to push the limits a bit to see what I could away with.  This is a 1/3 second shutter speed trying to create some motion blur in the waves while hoping for a clear and steady picture of the ship.  I think it turned out pretty good.

Same trick looking aft.

As the sun continued to set there were some lovely pastel colors presented in the mountains surrounding us on both sides of this passage between Canada to our North and America to our South.  Combined with varying levels of cloud coverage it was very pretty.  This was shortly after 9pm.

Back inside I happened across "The Tavern" in the Boleros area on other ships.  This is kind of a sports bar at times but also used for things like Karaoke.

To the pub for a beer and some pub music.

I ventured back outside and again did some experimenting with my camera.  By this point the moon was out and combined with gaps in the cloud coverage it created some dramatic scenes.

I ran into the @cookingyo s at the Schooner Bar and sat with them for a while.  It was getting late and time for bed so I hopped in an elevator and made my way back to my cabin.  Saturday already.

Day one complete.

And I can confirm that Twangster is not a robot. He is a nice human.

After walking back to the hotel I had just under an hour to prepare for the first Royal Caribbean Blog Alaska Group Cruise event - a 5pm meet up that included pizza.

Here I met several familiar online names and avatars but was able to put real names and faces to them.  

I grabbed some lunch and headed back for my turn at the Space Needle.  It was about an hour in line snaking slowly up towards the elevator for the rise top the top.  There is a security checkpoint you have to walk through but I had no issues with anything I had with me. 

This is the area near the elevators where I finally made it to after crawling along, inch by inch waiting for the one elevator to carry guests up and down to the top.

Just prior to this point is a photo station.  The photo is free to download.  They take your picture against a gray background and later, in the gift shop you can choose one of six backdrops and have a link emailed to you to access your photo.  This is included at no additional charge.
Built in 1961 the building and elevator appear to be set in this era.  It took just 400 days to building the Space Needle.  They are renovating the upper observation deck, replacing wire 'cage' with glass panels for a better view.  It's under construction now but mostly complete.
Here is the elevator ride up and down.

They have set up a display to compare the old caged feel versus the new glass panels they are installing.  There used to be a knee wall where now the glass extends down to the floor for a much more open feeling with great views.



The inside is being renovated as well. This is the line waiting to go back down. Not nearly as long a wait as it was going up.

I'm very glad I did both Chihuly Glass and the Space Needle but I would choose an earlier reservation next time.  The crowds seemed to be growing bigger as the afternoon progressed.

My approach to Maho Beach