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Other rejected titles: • I *Still* Know What You Did Last Star Class cruise on Oasis. (That's for all you kids born in the 80s or before). • Yawn: Not another Star Class Blog (for a week-long cruise on a crummy itinerary). I should have titled it this. I could’ve just melded my previous blogs together a la Not Another Teen Movie … • Cruising fat (again): who cares? Fact: Star Class gets you even fatter. And how not to hire a nutritionist who's an enabler. I often take pics of what I am eating and text them to my nutritionist. Once it was a slice of NJ pizza with steak topping and extra sauce and a glass of wine. She responded: “good job! Cheers!” as it was the first I ate all day. I wrote back: “to be clear, this is just an appetizer...” To amuse myself, I may wind up texting her pics of everything I eat on the cruise so she can get a calorie count. That shouldn’t be too bad unless I wind up taking pics of every single drink ….. • Lewis Capaldi is Amazing/No, He’s Not. Kidding. This is just a semi-heated, semi-regular debate in our house. Tread carefully weighing in here if you want to be friends. If you wind up inadvertently being Team Batman, the blog ends here.... • How much of a fit did my CFP/CPA pitch when we announced our possible retirement this year, coupled with a Star Class cruise that we claimed to get "for cheap?" Hint: it was "define cheap and how many of these do i need to factor into your yearly spend, you idiots?" To be fair, 'you idiots' was implied .... 'Crazy,' on the other hand, did make its way into the convo. By me. This is when he thought $20K could get us 2-3 cruises in Star Class. Hilarious. It made me doubt the rest of his financial advice. Bottom line, we nearly canceled this cruise 18x, until i looked at spring/summer 2025 prices. Forget that noise. It was clear this was our last chance to cruise "this cheap" for a while. Note: there was absolutely nothing cheap about PDCC prices. Even with all the ‘sales.’ And here is a good time to mention that I DESPISE Royal’s Cruise Planner and the stalking it requires. I get the economics of dynamic pricing, but I do NOT have to like it. It’s exhausting. And I will die on that hill. But back now to the original title …. No seriously. What WAS I thinking? We wound up booking our last Oasis cruise (Sept ’23) and this Symphony cruise on the same day. Once NJ season 2024 opened, I did my due diligence and called my TA Mindy to book the best priced dates on each ship. Mindy asked, "You want both?" An innocent question. Yes, yes, of course I want both! Oasis in '23 & Symphony in '24. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, all these months later, I'm hearing, "You want BOTH?! SweetPea, maybe you should sleep on this!" That would've been the better call. Because I seriously did nearly cancel this cruise about 18 different times. Batman and I are both over 7-night cruises. They aren’t long enough for people like us who live our lives in 2-week increments. They almost feel over before they barely even start. Our sweet spot is 10-12 days but I’m not kicking 14 nights out of bed either. But this is most important. Since we booked at or near open, we had a plethora of rooms from which to choose. Who thought it would be a good idea to let Batman watch some YouTube videos and choose our cabin? Who?! WHO?! I'd like names, please! I was lobbying for the side-facing Star Loft of course. (I mean … c’mon … OF COURSE!!!). "Where's the Panoramic suite like we have on Oasis?" he asked. Well, yes, that would've been a no brainer. First viewing was the side/ocean facing SLS that I so DESPERATELY wanted. He made it 22 seconds into the video, spied the stairs, and announced, "Next!" (Oh, this will bode well for that 11-night Odyssey cruise in January in a GLS ...). Again, what was I thinking? Second viewing was the A1 Brats. The A2s were all available, but if I have a choice between an A1 and an A2, well, we'll just take that as small consolation for my loss. He was sold on the A1. “But, but, but, the bathrooms!!” I protested. “Look at that balcony though,” he countered. “But, but, but, we won't be near the suite lounge!” “We won't have stairs,” he rebutted. (He fails to understand the concept that waddling up a single flight of stairs is no different than getting your 10k steps in to go from your aft stateroom to the forward lounge, but i digress). I don’t know if I mentioned this in my last blog, but with the Oasis Owner’s Panoramic being right around the corner from the suite lounge, I would leave him to get ready for the evening and go sit in the lounge by myself and happily have a filthy martini. The staff all knew me and would always ask after Batman. I would tell them the truth: he’s in the shower. They literally thought I was a shower widow. (They also never understood how I could be the one who was always ready first. That’s another story for another day). One night we actually showed up together and three of them ran up to us, one of them announcing that he was glad our marriage was still intact. I digress … No stairs. Huge balcony. Two (crummy) bathrooms. We’re staying in the Guam equivalent of the USA: Beautiful, but oh so far from my beloved East Coast. And so, I “cheerily” booked the Deck 8 2BRATS because I'm clearly Wife of the Year. Clearly. I'm only consoled by the fact that we now have a "snoring room" and can watch Hiro from our balcony. (Is it even Hiro? I should probably check that. Who cares. Aqua80 HAS to be the best.). Fast forward to a few weeks ago: Batman: “what do you mean, we’re Deck 8 aft? You LOVE the suite lounge! Where are you going to sit and have your pre-dinner drink?!” Literally remembered NOTHING about him choosing the room. NOTHING. What The Actual #&$%$#*(@# I repeated the entire release-day conversation. He reinvestigated the (now moot) point and upped the ante. He claims he never would have chosen the SLS (awake, sober, not distracted, take your pick) due to the balcony (“look at the size of that puny thing!”). However, I did impart just enough guilt that he’s been busy watching YouTube videos on how to make the perfect filthy martini. (His idea. Totally.) So I can sit on our balcony and drink one while I am inevitably waiting for him to finish getting ready. He insists that he will make me one before he showers. Every night. Did I marry a keeper? Jury is still out. I predict this is a fleeting idea, and I will be waiting for him at the Trellis Bar or Dazzles. If you have better ideas, let me know. Seriously. Bygones. But, I AM hopeful that our weather will be much better than our last 2 cruises and that perhaps we will finally get to sit in Playmakers at the bar since our cruise departs on a Friday and it's not football season. #LifeGoals I honestly debated on whether to blog this one since, if you can't tell, my heart's not really in it. But, if you've read my last blog, you've lived inside my head enough to know that something ridiculous or stupid is bound to happen. And I'm more than willing to share those moments when they happen, even risking my healthy marriage to do so. You're welcome. The "Adventures" of SweetPea & Batman aren't exciting, but maybe more like an episode of The Office … or Superstore, if that's your type of thing. So watch this space for terrible pics (me), decent pics (Batman) that I make up excuses to get from him, a full Deck 17 v. Deck 8 smackdown, and, undoubtedly hiding in a closet to blog so Batman never knows I’m blogging and nothing i post will require pre-approval ... or a divorce . So Symphony, and all the Gloriousness that is the Legend of Genie Shane, like it or not: here we come!

Is our White Whale of Moby Dick proportions? IDK .. are you counting our financial well-being? Who cares! YOLO!! Who: SweetPea and Batman, two crazy mutual enablers who found about 23 (24, 25?) years ago. Married for most of those. Don't ask me our anniversary. I once proudly told Batman my new ATM PIN, proclaiming, "Get it?! It's our anniversary backwards!" Spoiler: it wasn't. I've not heard the end of it since. What: Our White Whale. Why, you ask? We had 3,462.7 cruises in the Owner's Panoramic canceled during the Covid. Seriously. By March 578th, 2020, I'd had enough, just like the rest of the world. This was bound to happen sooner or later. I made sure of it. When: September 24-October 1, 2023. Too short and will be over too quick, but the ship is our destination so who cares?! (Our itinerary is mundane and boring. We'll only be getting off the ship for PDCC.) Where: Oasis of the Seas (C'mon now. There are only 2 OPs in the entire fleet, so there's a very good chance you'd win that coin toss.) Why: Why not?!! Besides, flying sucks and we can drive to the port! And by drive, i mean be driven. Because who drives on vacation? Is that even a thing?! How: Selling one pickled middle-aged kidney on the dark web. Let's face it, there's a difference between a kidney from a 20-year old athlete and one from a 50-something whose kidney is going to be (a-hem) grape-flavored. Clearly what I'm trying to say is that you could probably book two Star Class rooms with the 20-year-old kidney. Our cost wasn't *that* bad, but should still leave you questioning whether you'd consider us sound financial advisors. Crown&Anchor Level: Brown. I briefly considered making a parody pin that said "Not Pinnacle" with the "not" in very, very small font. I think it'd have been an excellent conversation starter. Pre-cruise Diet: Poor. I planned to lose 30 pounds. I only have 33 to go. Forget that noise. So here we go on our 3.5-year-in-the-making adventure. If you know us, I'm taking a very liberal definition of the term "adventure" here. As in, you shouldn't expect FlowRider reviews from us. That would only happen if they privacy-tented the entire wave pool and literally no one else could see us. I've seen this new TikTok thing all the cool kids are talking about, and going viral for all the wrong reasons would send me into a Brendan Fraser Whale-spin without the need of a fat suit. (Perhaps i should tell you about the time i managed to ATV my way into the middle of a sugar cane field in St. Kitts where the excursion leader pulled me aside and quietly asked if I'd consider a private lesson before allowing the group to continue. That was 20 years and 30 pounds ago and my grace and agility has not aged like the fine wine I enjoy so much. --- That was for the kids in the back who didn't get my grape- flavored kidney joke earlier.) This is our first cruise post-shutdown. We wanted to feel like we were going on vacation, not checking in for a clinical procedure. So we sat out all mandates. We both found them too stressful and opted to wait until the craziness was well on its way to over before we even remotely considered cruising again. This is one of the reasons we're going to the poorhouse post-cruise. I booked this pretty late and didn't partake in opening day prices. However, i got worried this was Oasis's last season in NJ so i bit the bullet and made several payments Batman wouldn't notice so our final bill was more in line with what I thought he could stomach. I can't be the only benevolently devious spouse to do so. If you've done something like this yourself, blink twice. (And, Mindy, if you're reading: You're a SAINT!) For the record, i caught Batman in a good mood one night and asked him the max he'd pay for a week-long cruise in Star Class. Unsurprisingly, it was a *bit* less than the cost of this one. So this is just between us RC Blog family, right? Good thing he thinks this website is Royal.blog.Carribean.me.live.com/reports which he always forgets to find later .... And to any dudes reading, please remember: there is no such idiom as "Bros before blogs." That does not and will never exist.... if i can help it. So, as long as Batman never does find this blog ... Continue to follow along to learn the riveting answers to such burning questions as: how will Anthem Star Class compare to Oasis Star Class? Will we prefer O Class to Q Class in general? Is this Deck 17 we keep reading about an actual Nirvana? What else has the pandemic stolen from us in pre v post shutdown changes? Will we ever want to return to Norwegian Haven? And ultimately, will selling a functioning kidney be worth the experience? Come with us! We'll find out together!