GregD Posted February 15, 2022 Report Share Posted February 15, 2022 728 days, and three cancelled cruises and we are finally getting back to sea! I feel like I have been waiting so long to start this blog I now feel like this lady...... We are headed back to sea sailing on Oasis of the Seas in a 2BRATS. This will be our first star class experience, so to say that we are excited is a massive understatement. Behind all that excitement is that looming fear that one of us tests positive just before we leave. Thankfully though with numbers in our area plummeting, that fear is getting less and less. Originally I would have started this blog a long time ago, and probably have gladly taken the "earliest blog crown" but like @Lovetocruise2002 said in her last blog, I'd hate to start this and then, poof never mind! All of us in our travel group are still wearing masks even though the mandate has been dropped. We want to do everything as possible to make sure that we don't test positive prior to this cruise. Being that my wife Heather and I work in health care, we REALLY need this vacation! Okay, enough doom and gloom, let's get into the fun stuff. Who's sailing: Me, obviously...The wife, Heather, Daughter Lydia 12, Son Johnathan 8 and my sister Julie. Stateroom: We have the deck 9 2BRATS. We booked this cruise the day the itineraries were released. With two kids in school this one coincided with their winter break, and we are basically stuck with this week. Had COVID not struck, this actually would have been our second time in this room. We had this same cruise, eastern itinerary, booked for 2021, and we all know what happened there. Itinerary: This is a Western Caribbean and perfect day that leaves out of Miami. Day 1: Miami Day 2: Perfect Day at Coco Cay Day 3: At Sea Day 4: Cozumel Day 5: Roatan Day 6: Costa Maya Day 7: At Sea Day 8: Worst day ever We are excited about this itinerary. This will be our first time back to Perfect Day with the beach club open, and the kids are old/tall enough to fully use the thrill water park. We had such a blast at Roatan the last cruise we are on, so we are excited to go there again....okay...okay...its really because of the sloths....but I digress. We have not been to Costa Maya yet, so this will be a new one for us. More to come. I'll try to break up these first bunch of posts to make this easy to read. JohnK6404, WAAAYTOOO, CravingaCruise and 9 others 10 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathbees Posted February 15, 2022 Report Share Posted February 15, 2022 You will not regret the Genie or the ATS, although, you may find yourself spoiled for life. I can say we were... CravingaCruise, GregD and WAAAYTOOO 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cruiser4Life Posted February 15, 2022 Report Share Posted February 15, 2022 3 hours ago, GregD said: 728 days, and three cancelled cruises and we are finally getting back to sea! I feel like I have been waiting so long to start this blog I now feel like this lady...... We are headed back to sea sailing on Oasis of the Seas in a 2BRATS. This will be our first star class experience, so to say that we are excited is a massive understatement. Behind all that excitement is that looming fear that one of us tests positive just before we leave. Thankfully though with numbers in our area plummeting, that fear is getting less and less. Originally I would have started this blog a long time ago, and probably have gladly taken the "earliest blog crown" but like @Lovetocruise2002 said in her last blog, I'd hate to start this and then, poof never mind! All of us in our travel group are still wearing masks even though the mandate has been dropped. We want to do everything as possible to make sure that we don't test positive prior to this cruise. Being that my wife Heather and I work in health care, we REALLY need this vacation! Okay, enough doom and gloom, let's get into the fun stuff. Who's sailing: Me, obviously...The wife, Heather, Daughter Lydia 12, Son Johnathan 8 and my sister Julie. Stateroom: We have the deck 9 2BRATS. We booked this cruise the day the itineraries were released. With two kids in school this one coincided with their winter break, and we are basically stuck with this week. Had COVID not struck, this actually would have been our second time in this room. We had this same cruise, eastern itinerary, booked for 2021, and we all know what happened there. Itinerary: This is a Western Caribbean and perfect day that leaves out of Miami. Day 1: Miami Day 2: Perfect Day at Coco Cay Day 3: At Sea Day 4: Cozumel Day 5: Roatan Day 6: Costa Maya Day 7: At Sea Day 8: Worst day ever We are excited about this itinerary. This will be our first time back to Perfect Day with the beach club open, and the kids are old/tall enough to fully use the thrill water park. We had such a blast at Roatan the last cruise we are on, so we are excited to go there again....okay...okay...its really because of the sloths....but I digress. We have not been to Costa Maya yet, so this will be a new one for us. More to come. I'll try to break up these first bunch of posts to make this easy to read. Day 8 worst day ever… love it! Congrats on back to cruising! GregD, CravingaCruise and Neesa 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 15, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2022 Let's talk excursions!! All of us are vaccinated so we don't have to worry about the RC excursion bubble. Perfect Day at CoCo Cay: We had a bunch of OBC, yay free money, from our cancelled cruises so we used that here. We got a floating cabana in the beach club. We were able to snag one of these before they went up to $1900. It wasn't cheap at the $1040, but knowing there were 5 of us in the group, and we wanted to get beach club passes anyway, and those were $170ish for our sailing, it made the cost seem reasonable, so lets just throw some money around!! Heather plans on plopping herself in the cabana and spending the day there in full relaxation mode. The rest of us will check out the thrill water park. We all like water slides and this is the first year that my youngest is tall enough that he can go on the slides so we are going to check them out in the morning, then spend the afternoon in the cabana. Johnny says that he plans on petting any of the sharks that swim by, so that should be interesting. Julie, Lydia and I will do some snorkeling as well. Cozumel: We originally booked the Rio Secreto cave tubing, but one day I logged into the cruise planner and saw that got cancelled without any notice, thanks Royal IT. We did see that there was another one that was similar and was going to book that, but after discussing with the group we decided that we didn't want to take the ferry to the mainland. My sister gets seasick easily and the reputation of those ferries had her nervous, so we settled on Legacy of the Maya:Ruins and Chocolate tasting. Johnny let me know that I "had him at chocolate" This excursion is short, so that will give us time to check out things around the port, and get back to the ship earlier and take advantage of an empty ship. Roatan: Our last cruise went here and we had a blast with Bodden Tours. We will use them again. Obviously we will be holding some sloths and monkeys. We also plan on doing their Zipline adventure, then finding some lunch, do some shopping, and playing the day by ear. For those who aren't familiar with them they offer private guides for a reasonable price. Their communication is great, and they have lots of options for excursions, I highly recommend them if you are visiting Roatan. Costa Maya: This will be our first time here in this port and based on all of the recommendations here we booked passes to Maya Chan. This will be a great way to bookend the cruise with relaxing beach days. Lovetocruise2002, CravingaCruise, Yesiamthere and 4 others 5 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 15, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2022 Living in the frozen tundra of Upstate NY means lots of travel to get to the cruise ports. Our original plan was fly down on Saturday, probably to FLL, I hear there is a good Mexican place near 17th St? then Uber to the port. When flight schedules got released I started looking at flights and was instantly frustrated at prices. Flights for the 5 of us were more than double what they normally are for this vacation week. Soooo plan B. ROAD TRIP!! ! After exploring many options we've decided we are renting a van and driving down. We will do this over two days leaving Friday morning. We will get all the way to North Carolina on Friday, then drive the rest of the way on Saturday. This will still give us our cushion in case there are delays on the road. Thankfully the weather looks good for this weekend so we should be good. For a price comparison, the cost of the rental+two nights in a hotel+parking at the port was less than 2 plane tickets. An added bonus of driving is that a good family friend that we grew up with is currently living in Charleston SC and just had her first baby, so we plan on meeting up with them for lunch on Saturday. Heather and Julie are super excited for baby snuggles. I'm probably going to have to be the mean one and somehow extract the baby from their clutches. I'm already resigned to the cuts and bruises this endeavor will result in, as well as all of the cold stares from them as we get back on the road. The kids are excited for this adventure as well......I'll give it about 20 minutes before the first "I'm hungry" or "I have to go to the bathroom" Wish me luck!! Skigoofy, KristiZ, CravingaCruise and 6 others 6 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 15, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2022 Genie Survey: About 10 weeks prior to embarkation day we got our genie survey. We were super excited to get this, and I had been planning answers for quite some time. I took many suggestions from different people. I can't remember now who said they create word document and copy and paste, but that's what I did. We have more star class sailings coming, so that will be helpful. Like @WAAAYTOOO and others mentioned, I did not answer all of the questions ie - what am I taking to mars with Elon Musk, but most of the others we did answer. Many people have posted the survey in their blogs already, so I won't do so here. If anyone does want to see it, let me know and I'll put it in. Once the survey was submitted, we sat anxiously reading and watching reports of COVID and omicron playing whack-a-mole with the ships. I was cautiously optimistic that by the time this cruise was due to sail, things would be much different, and I was correct. CravingaCruise, Lovetocruise2002 and WAAAYTOOO 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 15, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2022 Genie Assignment: FOMO is real!! Facebook is a terrible thing. There is nothing more frustrating than when you are scrolling along, and a post in the star class Facebook group pops up with someone who got their Genie assignment. Then you see that they are on the same sailing as we are, and we had not gotten that coveted letter!!!! I probably refreshed my email 1000 times that day. About 36 hours later the email we had all been waiting for arrives, and we were assigned Derick Martis. We were super happy. Derick is one of the OG genies and helped develop the program. So far his pre cruise communication has been good. He is very to the point, which I like. He's responded to all of my questions, or statements with either an answer, or "noted." Some things I'm curious to see what happens when we get on the ship that his "genie magic" can accomplish. Like others have said, I feel like some answers are by the book answers, but once on board the answer may be different. We shall see. We are currently working out our schedule for the week. We just got our first tentative dinner schedule. @Lovetocruise2002we will be in Coastal Kitchen for fillet night. Derick let us know that for Hibachi or Chefs table, to secure our desired time that we should book it in the cruise planner, and once on board he will have the charges refunded. We will be doing the hibachi, but won't be doing Chefs table. Lovetocruise2002, bellemiche, CravingaCruise and 3 others 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 15, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 15, 2022 So at this point, I think all of the pre-cruise stuff has been put down, and now we are in real time. I am basking in the delight of doing the single digit dance again. Over the past week we have been inundated with packages from Amazon and have gone shopping for all of the things that we need for this trip. We have our COVID test kits. We will be doing the home test with emed. Packing has begun and all of the final details are falling into place. All that's left to do is some laundry and final packing Friday morning. We plan on being on the road by 8am COVID negative and highly caffeinated. CravingaCruise, JohnK6404, Lovetocruise2002 and 1 other 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cruiser4Life Posted February 16, 2022 Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 The Mexican restaurant is Carlos and Pepe’s and while not cheap, we love it when we are out East. CravingaCruise 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RWDW1204 Posted February 16, 2022 Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 4 hours ago, GregD said: I hear there is a good Mexican place near 17th St? Or La Bamba, in the Publix shopping center behind Embassy Suites. CravingaCruise, PPPJJ-GCVAB and bellemiche 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Babsy47 Posted February 16, 2022 Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 I accidentally deleted that first Genie survey without completing it for a cruise next month. Should I worry about my user error? CravingaCruise 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovetocruise2002 Posted February 16, 2022 Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 13 hours ago, GregD said: I can't remember now who said they create word document and copy and paste, but that's what I did. We have more star class sailings coming, so that will be helpful. This is exactly what I do. The first document took a while to write up. Now I just go in, change a few things depending on if kids are coming or not, and send it off. Will be following this as you know have #majorstarclasstakeover a few weeks after you on Oasis. Derrick is not our Genie (we have Allan) but someone in our gang has him. You might want to warn him ahead of time lol. Neesa, CravingaCruise, MamaShark and 1 other 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WAAAYTOOO Posted February 16, 2022 Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 8 hours ago, Babsy47 said: I accidentally deleted that first Genie survey without completing it for a cruise next month. Should I worry about my user error? No. You'll be fine. Just make sure that when the Genie contacts you, that you provide them with the types of drinks you will want supplied to your suite and some idea of what you're looking for as far as dining reservations. The questionnaire is entirely useless, IMO. CravingaCruise 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathbees Posted February 16, 2022 Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 5 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said: The first document took a while to write up. This assumes that you didn't delete that first document, because you couldn't imagine a world where a second opportunity for a Genie could come up. D'oh! Hmm.. I wonder if it's in my email history. Lovetocruise2002 and CravingaCruise 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovetocruise2002 Posted February 16, 2022 Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 51 minutes ago, mathbees said: because you couldn't imagine a world where a second opportunity for a Genie could come up. D'oh! This makes me laugh so hard. After the booking the first, I told Hubby I just wanted to try it once. We all know how that went! I didn't delete the document Neesa, ellcee, CravingaCruise and 2 others 2 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 16, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 6 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said: You might want to warn him ahead of time lol. I will let him know to warn all the Genies to get prepared! 8 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said: I didn't delete the document Mine won't be deleted either! CravingaCruise and Lovetocruise2002 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovetocruise2002 Posted February 16, 2022 Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 1 hour ago, GregD said: Mine won't be deleted either! Of course not! We both need it for July! CravingaCruise 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 16, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 15 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said: Of course not! We both need it for July! Exactly!! Did you see that some Stavanger excursions started loading? Lovetocruise2002 and CravingaCruise 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovetocruise2002 Posted February 16, 2022 Report Share Posted February 16, 2022 31 minutes ago, GregD said: Exactly!! Did you see that some Stavanger excursions started loading? No! But going to take a look now. CravingaCruise 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 17, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2022 Currently sitting at the firehouse kicking myself for not taking the whole day off today. I'm officially on vacation at 3:30 today, and this clock does not seem to be moving at the correct speed...... CravingaCruise and WAAAYTOOO 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 17, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2022 Actual footage of me leaving work today to start my vacation. Cruiser4Life, RWDW1204, WAAAYTOOO and 7 others 1 7 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 17, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2022 Lots of final preparations happening today. Many emails were exchanged with Derick and our dining schedule has been all finalized. We are still waiting on our show/activities schedule because that has not been finalized on the ship yet. He did let me know that Oasis will probably be having a Coast Guard inspection on Sunday, which means boarding times will get pushed back boo...... We are pretty much all packed, I'll be picking up the rental vehicle tonight in a little while. I'm going to try to get on the insiders zoom call and try to relax the rest of the evening. Tomorrow, we drop this guy off at the boarder, take our COVID tests, pack up the car and then hit the road!! Neesa, JohnK6404, Lovetocruise2002 and 5 others 4 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovetocruise2002 Posted February 18, 2022 Report Share Posted February 18, 2022 Is it just me, or do you find it hard to finalize dining plans without the show schedule? I found this hard on Allure in December and same thing this time around as well. bellemiche, CravingaCruise and WAAAYTOOO 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 19, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 19, 2022 On 2/17/2022 at 9:46 PM, Lovetocruise2002 said: Is it just me, or do you find it hard to finalize dining plans without the show schedule? I found this hard on Allure in December and same thing this time around as well. Derick so far has us eating dinner at 6:15 each night. He said that way our evenings were free for whatever show we wanted to go to. I’m sure if we need to tweak that he would. CravingaCruise, Lovetocruise2002, MamaShark and 1 other 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathbees Posted February 19, 2022 Report Share Posted February 19, 2022 38 minutes ago, GregD said: I’m sure if we need to tweak that he would. In my experience with them, the Genies check in on you multiple times and always confirm everything multiple times, so changes are not a problem. WAAAYTOOO, CravingaCruise and GregD 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovetocruise2002 Posted February 19, 2022 Report Share Posted February 19, 2022 19 minutes ago, mathbees said: In my experience with them, the Genies check in on you multiple times and always confirm everything multiple times, so changes are not a problem. One of the things I love about Star! CravingaCruise, mathbees, MamaShark and 1 other 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 19, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 19, 2022 Road Trip Update: Well, Thursday night was busy! I picked up the rental car, and as I walked up to the counter, I got an "Oh, you are the one looking for the van" and I thought to myself, oh that's not good. Turns out, the vans that were due to be returned that day didn't. We were hoping for a van, so that we wouldn't have to play Tetris with ourselves and luggage for the two day trip to Florida. We ended up with a fully loaded Ford Explorer. I'm loving the massaging seats!! This is making their road trip much more enjoyable. We are playing Tetris with the luggage a bit, but it's not horrible. We left our house at 9am and hit the road. Traffic wasn't bad until we it the DC area. We diverted around DC and went over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge which was cool for an engineering nerd like me. We all thought he looked like the creepy restaurant critic from Ratatouille, what does everyone think? Later he looked like this...Even my neck hurts looking at this . More to come, time to load up again!! Next stop Florida!! JohnK6404, Jax, Lovetocruise2002 and 11 others 12 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 20, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2022 Road Trip day 2. So I lied, our next stop wasn't Florida, it was Summerville SC. We have a friend of ours, Nora, that grew up in the house behind the one that Julie and I grew up in. She has essentially been another Sister to us. She was born on Julies 6th birthday, so Julie considers her her birthday present. Her husband is a Lieutenant in the Navy and he is stationed in Charleston SC. They just had their first baby, so we took the opportunity to see them and meet a future RCBlog insider, Charlie. We meet in Azalia Park and had a great lunch full of baby snuggles. Heather and Johnny found some flowers while enjoying the warmer than NY weather. Julie was so excited to meet her "nephew!!" Nora Is all the way on the right. Her husband, Joe is behind her. Noras parents, Claire and Brian were also visiting at the time. It was a nice mini family reunion. After a great time with family we got back on the road... Eventually we saw this sign and got even more excited. One funny moment while in the insane traffic of I95 approaching Ft Lauderdale. Heather and Julie were commenting on the crazy traffic and how fast we were going, and that at 85mph I wasn't the fasted one on the road by a long shot, Johnny pipes up from the back saying "just close your eyes, and hope for the best" Well, that's what I did, and somehow we made it to the hotel in one piece!! During the day, we heard from Derick a few times. We have our entertainment schedule set, and it looks good. We do have a 1hr delay for boarding for a coast guard inspection. Derick recommended arriving at the port at 11, so that's the plan. We are all currently getting ready to head to the port. We will do a target run on the way for a few last minute items. Next stop.....THE SHIP!!!! Neesa, WAAAYTOOO, Cruiser4Life and 7 others 6 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 20, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2022 ITS CRUISE DAY!!!!! I've got the required uniform on for today...get we skip to the good part? Cruising to Retirement!, Coachkev24, KristiZ and 9 others 9 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 20, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2022 All checked in at the terminal. Just waiting on Derick to escort us onto the ship!! CravingaCruise, JohnK6404, Yesiamthere and 1 other 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 20, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2022 There she is! CravingaCruise, Yesiamthere, Lovetocruise2002 and 5 others 6 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovetocruise2002 Posted February 20, 2022 Report Share Posted February 20, 2022 2 hours ago, GregD said: All checked in at the terminal. Just waiting on Derick to escort us onto the ship!! When you have a chance, would love to hear about your boarding experience at Terminal A. We've never done Star from there before, pretty excited for 21 days from now. bellemiche, CravingaCruise and WAAAYTOOO 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 21, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 21, 2022 Its currently 6:30AM and I'm sitting outside el Loco Fresh. I love this time of day when the ship is quiet. It's been hard to do regular updates, we were pretty busy yesterday, and the internet in our room is spotty at best, so I need to go elsewhere on the ship for good service. We just docked at Coco Cay, There is a Norwegian ship moored out by their island, and Odyssey of the Seas is pulling in next to us. @Lovetocruise2002 The boarding process was very easy. If you don't have a car to park, or if you park first it will be even easier. As we pulled into the terminal, we were stopped by one of the lead porters, and we mentioned we were star class, and he immediately pointed us to the area that Derick had told us. For this day, it was area 7. There was a star class banner right there, and it was easy to see. We pulled up to the curb, and a wonderfully nice woman met us and guided us completely through the check in. A star class porter was there as well. We probably committed a mortal sin in @WAAAYTOOO eyes. The star class ported placed our bags on a cart and off they went. Everyone waited together at their outside podium while I parked our car. In the mean time, I sent a text message (through WhatsApp) to Derick that we had arrived at the terminal. Once I returned to the group we headed into the terminal. Once through the main doors we were stopped the first time to glance at vaccine vaccine cards, but more importantly verify our pre-cruise tests. They payed close attention to Johnny because he is younger than 12, and the one gentleman was surprised that he was vaccinated. He got a sticker that let him bypass the testing for the younger kids. Then it was off to the elevators to the suite lounge area. The same woman from outside followed us through the whole check in process to make sure it was done. We passed through the scanners. While at the scanners, Derick was already there waiting for us and greeted us warmly as if we had been friends forever. Then it was into the lounge. Once there, another employe came over and got us all checked in. She scanned passports, verified vaccine cards again, took the pictures I forgot to do for Heather and Julie, and we were cleared to board. We had to wait a few minutes for Derick to return, as he was bringing another family onto the ship. We huddled around our phones and watched the safety videos. Eventually Derick returned and escorted us onto the ship. As we stepped off the gangway, and onto the ship, Heather and I looked at each other and said in unison "We are home" JohnK6404, ellcee, Lovetocruise2002 and 10 others 8 1 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 21, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 21, 2022 Once on board, we proceeded to the boardwalk and our muster station. We met with a crew member who reminded us what the emergency protocols were, and our sea pass cards were scanned, emuster complete. I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but the emuster is a permanent change. Once this was complete, it was off to Central Park. We are having lunch at Giovannis. Our original plan of Port Side BBQ will have to wait, they weren't opening until 3pm. So first time star class, and first time with specialty restaurants, so everything is "new" for us so some comparisons will be hard. But if lunch was as good as it was yesterday, we are in for a treat. Our plan was to order a bunch of appetizers to keep lunch somewhat light.....well that plan went right out the window. I mean we did order appetizers, but we also ordered big bowls of pasta too. Appetizers were the meat plank and calamari. I forgot to let the camera eat first here..... I Entrees were delicious. Lydia got the Bucatini Bolognese. The noodles were about 3 feet long each Heather and I got the same dish. The waiter told us he would have the chef make us a special pasta, which was tagliatelle with shrimp, and a combination of their red and white sauce. It was delicious. Derick had mentioned to message him when we were done with lunch, and he would then escort us to the suite. In true genie magic sense, I had only typed Derick into the message to him and he walks in ready to bring us to the suite. Lovetocruise2002, Ampurp85, RWDW1204 and 11 others 10 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovetocruise2002 Posted February 21, 2022 Report Share Posted February 21, 2022 2 hours ago, GregD said: We probably committed a mortal sin in @WAAAYTOOO eyes. The star class ported placed our bags on a cart and off they went. Was your luggage in your suite by the time you got there? 1 hour ago, GregD said: but the emuster is a permanent change. Thank goodness! One good thing to come out of covid! 1 hour ago, GregD said: well that plan went right out the window Get ready...it's food coma time! 1 hour ago, GregD said: In true genie magic sense, I had only typed Derick into the message to him and he walks in ready to bring us to the suite. You had to wait until after lunch to get into your suite? It wasn't ready when you boarded initially? CravingaCruise 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 21, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 21, 2022 People can be jerks: Following lunch, we headed to the suite. As mentioned before, we are in a deck 9 2BRATS. We would love to try the gated community at some point, but since we usually sail with more than 4 people, that only leaves the RLS. Some day we will try that suite out. Anyway we do love the aft suites so it’s good. Like people have said…that..walk…is….long!! Which is perfect for walking off some calories. its allllllllll the way at the end of this hallway. So we get into the suite and it’s beautiful. As we are getting settled, my sister finds a spoon tucked up on a shelf where you normally wouldn’t look for a spoon. We thinks, that’s weird, but think no big deal, ship happens. Well, we start looking more, and then see one of the soda cups isn’t wrapped in its cellophane. That cup has liquid in it. So now I really start looking. In the mini bar area I find an apple juice that had been opened, with a little missing. That apple juice had been put in the back corner of all the other juices that are there. They also put water and juice under one of the coffee cups next to the espresso machine. To me it seems like someone tried to set up the stateroom attendant to fail. It appears as if the previous guests didn’t use any of the mini bar items during their cruise, so the attendant didn’t focus on that area. At the same time, the attendant should have looked at this area. All in, I’m way more pissed at the previous passengers than the stateroom attendant. Anyway, a quick message to Derick and everything was fixed very quickly with many apologies. The offending items. This view though, chill6x6, Skigoofy, RWDW1204 and 11 others 9 2 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregD Posted February 21, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 21, 2022 @Lovetocruise2002 We didn’t go to the suite first because timing wise, it was lunchtime when we got on the ship, so we ate first. Our luggage was waiting patiently for us in the foyer. I’m also glad that emuster is here to stay, but they need to come up with a better plan to make sure everyone watches the videos prior to boarding. Our sail away was delayed over two hours waiting for people to finish. I quickly understood the Star Class food coma. There were snacks from vintages waiting for us in the room. Shortly after a platter of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries arrived, which were quickly turned into finger caps, and the devoured. JohnK6404, RWDW1204, CravingaCruise and 6 others 7 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovetocruise2002 Posted February 21, 2022 Report Share Posted February 21, 2022 1 hour ago, GregD said: This view though, Yes! Look at those shipping containers! Wow! just kidding You definitely cannot beat the aft views in the ATS! I'll bet sail away with the Miami skyline was amazing! sammy79 and MamaShark 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bellemiche Posted February 21, 2022 Report Share Posted February 21, 2022 I am intently following along! We are on the #marjostarclasstakeover in ATS 9330 and Derick has also been assigned as our genie. Neesa, Lovetocruise2002 and WAAAYTOOO 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coachkev24 Posted February 21, 2022 Report Share Posted February 21, 2022 Following as a fellow Upstate NY'er! Enjoy!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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