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An Alluring Tale of Love … A Blessed 25 Years; A Joyful Return to the Starry Seas - Allure of the Seas 12/19/2021 – 12/23/2021


Lovetocruise2002

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2 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Dinner brought us to Chops Grille tonight. While I am not a fan of their signature filet, I do love their lobster.

They have made a few changes to the Chops menu. Sadly, as @calvink669 mentioned, the mushroom soup that @WAAAYTOOO and I love is gone. Also gone is the seafood tower loved by many.

 

 

👀 HOLD THE FRONT DOOR!!  I didn’t know the mushroom soup is gone!!! I HAVE BEEN DYING TO TRY IT ON OUR UPCOMING CRUISE. I need a momment y’all seriously! Noo

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7 hours ago, starbrat said:

👀 HOLD THE FRONT DOOR!!  I didn’t know the mushroom soup is gone!!! I HAVE BEEN DYING TO TRY IT ON OUR UPCOMING CRUISE. I need a momment y’all seriously! Noo

I don’t know exactly when it disappeared. I know that when cruises were restarting back in the summer, people were reporting that the seafood tower was gone. But about a month or two when I was going through the menus on the app for this sailing, I noticed that the mushroom soup was gone too. I was hoping that was maybe a glitch in the app but no such luck. 😕

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39 minutes ago, starbrat said:

Maybe say something to your genie. Shoot he made tequila appear everywhere. 🤪 I have seen some “reconstructed” seafood towers. Someone might be able to whip up a batch of the soup. I am totally asking for it April. 

I might have to wait for March to make that request lol. The amount of “snacks” she has sent each day, combined with all our dinners, we can barely move these days and our clothes are shrinking 😂

The mission today is Izumi lunch and Giovanni’s for dinner so no more food requests from us. 

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Day 4

It’s that time….

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PCR testing for international travellers. 
Our appointment was booked for 8:30 am and Smitha offered to meet us in our room around 8:15 am. We were up earlier today so we met her outside the conference centre instead. She already had our papers waiting for us. There was no line so likely even without Smitha it would have been a fast process. She said that as the morning goes on that is when the lines tend to form, especially with little ones. The whole process took us less than 5 mins. Done before our original 8:30 am appointment time. Fingers crossed for negative results! 
 

Off to you know where for breakfast 🙂

 

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Sea day today so it was Izumi for lunch. Delicious as always. Not sure how I will have even more carbs tonight, but in the words of my oldest, we will just “power through”. 😉

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Drink:

She’s a Geisha

Small plates:

Vegetable Fried Rice

Shrimp Firecracker Spring Roll

Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura

Large Plate:

Tonkatsu Ramen

Dessert:

Green Tea Ice Cream

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3 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Blast from the past!

Went to go redeem our free photo and Allure still uses the old “find your printed photo in your folder” system. Haven’t seen this in ages!

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I spilled coffee on the folders on the bottom shelf of one of those towers last September.  Embarrassing!!!

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Much of the afternoon was spent just hanging out in our suite and trying to soak it all in before we have to leave tomorrow. I really do love this room. 

We spent some time chatting with our Loft attendant, Komang, he is fantastic by the way. He’s been a loft attendant for a while now alternating between Oasis and Allure. I am really hoping to run into him again. He has checked in with us more time than we can count, great sense of humour, and very thorough with a small problem that we had in our suite. 
 

Other than that, it has been a pretty uneventful afternoon, but for us, that has been perfect since both of us are usually always on the run. 
 

Off to dinner now and then we have plans to see the ice show. Trying not to think too much about leaving tomorrow but I do miss the girls, Christmas awaits! 

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Dinner - Giovanni’s 

Delicious tonight and fabulous service! 

Menu and Wine List

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We ended up with a whole mix of items because everything looked delicious. 

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Starter: soup of the day (Tomato Soup)

Mains:

Hubby got the Carbonara with a few prawns added in.

I couldn’t decide so I ended up with a side of Carbonara (which ended up looking like a full lol), pork belly (no sides), and eggplant (no sides). 

Dessert:

Chocolate gelato 

Tiramisu 

Irish Coffee

As always, food coma is a real condition. 😋

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On 12/21/2021 at 9:07 PM, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Dinner brought us to Chops Grille tonight. While I am not a fan of their signature filet, I do love their lobster.

They have made a few changes to the Chops menu. Sadly, as @calvink669 mentioned, the mushroom soup that @WAAAYTOOO and I love is gone. Also gone is the seafood tower loved by many.  My once loved Lavender Tonic is now known as the Lavender Martini. Luckily, it appears to be just a name change. The taste remains unchanged and good. 
 

Menu

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Lavender Martini

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Butternut Squash Soup

Because they got rid of the mushroom soup, I decided to give this a try. It was surprisingly good and flavourful. Not bad for a replacement. I still wish they kept the mushroom soup though.

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House Bread

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Caeser Salad

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Broiled Maine Lobster

Normally there is an up charge for this but with SC, it is waived. Full of flavour and perfect texture! 

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Spicy Jumbo Shrimp

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Sides - Truffle fries, Creamy Spinach, Mac n Cheese, and Tater Tots

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Dessert - Key Lime Pie, Cheesecake

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Bavarian coffee 

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Did they say why they got rid of the mushroom soup?  I can do without it, but my husband was looking forward to having it at many dinners on our May cruise. 

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2 hours ago, Ampurp85 said:

I enjoyed Ice Games, even though during my cruise we had the B crew for both that and Mama Mia.

I also want to point out how great @Lovetocruise2002 and @Jax sailing are going in comparison to @Neesa. I don't know if you are in a star class bubble or if Oasis and Allure aren't experiencing C19 pains.

I don’t know if it has anything to do with being in a “star class bubble” but we are thankful that this sailing has gone smoothly for us. 

1 hour ago, Ferramc said:

Did they say why they got rid of the mushroom soup?  I can do without it, but my husband was looking forward to having it at many dinners on our May cruise. 

I didn’t ask why it was gone. Sorry 😕

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Back to Ice Games…I had mentioned initially that we had sailed Allure before in 2016. Since then, other ships that we have sailed with an ice show are Harmony (twice), Mariner, Indy, Symphony.
 

What stuck me tonight was that Ice Games seemed really dated and then I realized about 10 minutes in why. All those ships we have sailed since are either newer, or have been amped (shows redone), making Ice Games seem a bit lacking in comparison.
 

It was still a decent Royal Caribbean production, but tonight was probably the first night where I felt like Allure could have really benefitted if she had not lost out on getting amped. 

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Tomorrow we are in no rush to leave because our flight back to DTW isn’t until 12:15 pm. We asked Smitha when the latest departure time can be for us and she informed us that 8:45 am is probably the latest that we can push it. We took her up on that and the plan for Deck 17 SC guests is to not put luggage out the night before. Instead, someone will come with a trolley (that is what Smitha and Komang called it) and take our luggage down to the Champagne Bar to meet Smitha. From there she will assist us in getting off the ship. 

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2 hours ago, Ferramc said:

Did they say why they got rid of the mushroom soup?  I can do without it, but my husband was looking forward to having it at many dinners on our May cruise. 

Quite likely the national mushroom shortage.

https://www.producebluebook.com/2021/10/27/mushroom-industry-group-sounds-alarm-about-possible-holiday-shortage/#

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Final thoughts on the Grand Panoramic Suite - 1758

We booked this suite to try something different. Many of you know that I am #teamDeck17 and we have done the lofts and have more of those in future reservations. This sailing, because it was just Hubby and I, it was the perfect opportunity to try since it’s just the two of us. We are glad we did. 

This room is not as ideal for a family. It is very open concept. Perfect for a couple.  The only room that is closed off completely in this suite is the second guest bathroom.  I would 💯 book this suite again if it was just the two of us. If we had our girls with us, it would be a definite no. 

I was worried about noise from CK, that has proven to be a non-issue. You do hear some noise from the bedroom when there is music on the pool deck. But nothing major. 

The one and only downside about this suite is the lack of privacy. Anyone standing on Deck 16 below can see you on the balcony and slightly into the windows. If your lights are on at night, things are even more visible. And these are not one way windows. People can see you just as well as you can see them 😉 The lack of privacy still would not deter me from booking this again. 

Smitha was our genie on this sailing. I personally do not feel that covid restrictions have dampened our Star Class experience at all. If anything, Star/genie is an huge advantage to navigate through the restrictions. We have wanted for nothing. Everything we have asked for was granted. 🙂 

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1 hour ago, wannabecruiseexpert said:

I've enjoyed following along! When's the next one? 😉

Hopefully if Covid doesn’t get in the way, it should be our long awaited #majorstarclasstakeover on OA 3/13/2022!! 

29 minutes ago, Srp431 said:

Enjoyed your blog. We're waiting to get on Allure right now

Happy Sailing!

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Final thoughts on this sailing….

We feel extremely grateful given all the covid changes this past week that this sailing went very smoothly for us. We embarked just as they implemented the mask change and I will start by saying that change did not dampen our experience in any way at all. I have long since said that I would happily wear a mask if that meant I could sail again, and we did just that without complaints.

Overall, on this sailing, most were respectful of the mask policy. The 6 max on elevators were what was never respected.

This sailing felt full. There was no distancing at shows designated as vaccinated, there were long lines most days at the WJ (not that we ever went lol), and our Genie did confirm that there were approximately 4800 onboard this sailing.

I felt sailing Star on this one was most definitely worth it with covid restrictions in place. Night 1 the Aqua show was cancelled due to winds and another day, Mama Mia was cancelled due to technical difficulties. Without Star, those would have been slightly stressful to reschedule. Star also made dining a breeze. It gave us major flexibility in our plans. Night 1, we decided at 4pm that we would order in suite instead of going out, it was taken care of immediately. Another night we decided that we wanted to move up our dinner reservations, also done with zero issue. Without star we might have had that flexibility as most speciality venues were full each night.

So do I feel like the Star class experience was dampened while sailing during a pandemic? Most definitely not. If anything, it makes it more worthwhile. 

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Final thoughts on sailing star without our kids…..

We are grateful that we were able to upgrade this sailing to try out the GPS.  I have long since thought that star might not be needed if we didn’t have the girls with us. Turns out, it was quite nice lol. The experience is most definitely different without them, more subdued. When we had the kids, it was all about the activities like ice skating, ice cream bars, special deliveries for them. Without them this time, we found that we got a chance to relax and enjoy the room more, and it allowed us to max out as much as we could of specialty dining, this leading to shrinkage of our clothes 😉

Smitha totally spoiled us on this one. Food kept coming non-stop, she checked in on us multiple times a day, and whatever we requested, she handled without any issue at all. Our main form of communication with her once onboard was through WhatsApp. I actually love this way of contacting the Genie. I hope more of them do this going forward. Pre-cruise she was prompt in her responses through email, responding within hours in most cases. Onboard, she texted back almost immediately. Anyone who ends up with her is in good hands. She has been a Genie for a long time and knows exactly what to do. 

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Disembarkation

There was an issue around 8:15 am this morning where the power went out at the terminal and CBP halted disembarkation. This lead to several announcements pleading for guests to remain in their cabins and not congregate on Deck 5. I told hubby this is another situation where Star comes in handy.

By the time a porter rang our doorbell at 8:40 am to grab our luggage, we were met with a long, long, line on Deck 5 that lead from the doors next to the Champagne bar wrapping all around to almost where the pub is. Smitha was waiting at the Champagne Bar for us and we bypassed the line and disembarked immediately. Thank goodness for star and Genies! 

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Sitting at FLL now waiting for our flight back to DTW and feeling extremely grateful for the opportunity to have been able to get away if only just for a few days. My glass block and ship model are safe in my carry on bag, and I already got the best Christmas gift ever this year!

Thanks for following along. It’s always fun to blog. Ask away if you have any other questions. I will post all the “literature” from this sailing when I get home. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! 

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Thanks for taking us along and sharing your experience.  Am really happy for you and your DH that things worked out and you were finally able to to cruise again.  Sounds like an amazing cruise and only negative is not long enough, but they are never long enough.  Safe travels home, and happy holidays with your kids.

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