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Semi Live Allure of the Seas - Jan 15th - 22nd


wordell1

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20 minutes ago, asquared17 said:

oh god this has been giving me anxiety for weeks 😅 i’ll try to pop my calm gummies and chewing gum to keep it at bay, i suppose 

We had a huge group of people trying to stick together through the gauntlet maze of a port to get out. Once you escape that it's not difficult at all. 

The cab ride there seems like it takes forever and you start to understand why they arrange the cabs for you. But it's worth it for the food and service at that place!

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12 hours ago, asquared17 said:

oh god this has been giving me anxiety for weeks 😅 i’ll try to pop my calm gummies and chewing gum to keep it at bay, i suppose 

 A little trick for costa maya.  They wind you through the maze of shops, however, if you look in the shops some of them are open in both sides, that allows you to cut quite a bit off of the maze to the exit.  We just walk right through.

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3 hours ago, wordell1 said:

I always envy the BTB cruisers. One of these days I'll be retired and able to stay for multiple cruises.

Us too! I can swing the time off, but unfortunately my wife lost a ton of vacation days when she switched employers and has a hard time taking more than one week and maybe a couple of days at once.

We were chatting with a nice retired couple before one of the shows. She and her husband were on the first of 3 consecutive sailings on Wonder. So envious! I asked her if the itinerary switched the next sailing and she did not know, LOL! She was content playing the ports by ear and spending time on the ship. One day! 😎

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We are home in Austin (Pflugerville).  We were able to walk off with our luggage at 7:45am and never stopped walking until we had to pause a second at the facial recognition scanners for customs.  Very easy.  We were parked very close to the terminal in the covered North Lot so we were at our car quickly and on our way.

The new terminal is definitely designed better than the old one in Galveston.

Now we need to rest up from our vacation the rest of the day before getting back to work/school tomorrow.🙁

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29 minutes ago, wordell1 said:

We are home in Austin (Pflugerville).  We were able to walk off with our luggage at 7:45am and never stopped walking until we had to pause a second at the facial recognition scanners for customs.  Very easy.  We were parked very close to the terminal in the covered North Lot so we were at our car quickly and on our way.

The new terminal is definitely designed better than the old one in Galveston.

Now we need to rest up from our vacation the rest of the day before getting back to work/school tomorrow.🙁

UGH, going back to work the day after is no fun.  This year I took off 3 extra days after the cruise.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/17/2023 at 8:20 AM, wordell1 said:

First complaint of the cruise. I went up to windjammer for an early breakfast and did not see a made to order omelet station. 

I've seen omelet stations in every other windjammer, including Wonder last June. 

I even asked the restaurant manager and he confirmed that they didn't have one. He pointed out some pre made omelets (only 2 choices) that were really half omelets.

Dissapointing, as this is my go to breakfast at windjammer. I'm not sure if is just Allure or a fleet wide cutback.

 

20230117_072854.jpg

They are in the solarium bistro.  I haven't read the rest of your thread so apologies if it's mentioned later.  I LOVE my made to order omelets and was really disappointed to hear that Allure doesn't have it in the windjammer.  

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20 minutes ago, Coda_Sarah said:

They are in the solarium bistro.  I haven't read the rest of your thread so apologies if it's mentioned later.  I LOVE my made to order omelets and was really disappointed to hear that Allure doesn't have it in the windjammer.  

Yes, unfortunately, I did not figure it out while on Allure but I will know to check there in the future if it ever happens again.

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I realized that I never recapped my thoughts on the UDP.  As you remember, this was an experiment for us to see what level of specialty dining is right for us on future cruises.

I am glad we tried it, but it will probably be our last time with the full package for a few reasons.

On the plus side, we enjoyed all of the specialty restaurants that we tried.  There was enough variety of food was enough to keep it interesting on an Oasis class ship with all the different restaurants.  The food quality and service was really good. The price is also good when you figure in the cost of UDP for the week divided by the 7 dinners and 4 lunches we had.  It added up to less than $20 per meal.

On the negative side, there was just too much food.  I would probably never eat a full meal at lunch and then follow it up with a full dinner, especially if I had breakfast. I think it may have worked better if the ship had portside BBQ or Playmakers where we could have had a lighter lunch.  We also missed having the same waiters for each meal in the main dining room. 

I definitely can see why some would rather pay extra for the improved food quality vs the MDR, but we like the MDR food.  

We will definitely still use specialty dining going forward, just not the UDP.

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2 hours ago, wordell1 said:

I realized that I never recapped my thoughts on the UDP.  As you remember, this was an experiment for us to see what level of specialty dining is right for us on future cruises.

I am glad we tried it, but it will probably be our last time with the full package for a few reasons.

On the plus side, we enjoyed all of the specialty restaurants that we tried.  There was enough variety of food was enough to keep it interesting on an Oasis class ship with all the different restaurants.  The food quality and service was really good. The price is also good when you figure in the cost of UDP for the week divided by the 7 dinners and 4 lunches we had.  It added up to less than $20 per meal.

On the negative side, there was just too much food.  I would probably never eat a full meal at lunch and then follow it up with a full dinner, especially if I had breakfast. I think it may have worked better if the ship had portside BBQ or Playmakers where we could have had a lighter lunch.  We also missed having the same waiters for each meal in the main dining room. 

I definitely can see why some would rather pay extra for the improved food quality vs the MDR, but we like the MDR food.  

We will definitely still use specialty dining going forward, just not the UDP.

Thanks for sharing your cruise with us!

Also, thank you for your honest recap of the UDP. My wife and I purchased the UDP for the first time for our upcoming OCT sailing. We usually get the 3-night dining package. I have a feeling we'll come to the same conclusion. We figured we'd give it a try, especially since this upcoming cruise is not as port intensive as the last and we can enjoy some lunches onboard on the sea days.

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2 hours ago, JohnK6404 said:

Thanks for sharing your cruise with us!

Also, thank you for your honest recap of the UDP. My wife and I purchased the UDP for the first time for our upcoming OCT sailing. We usually get the 3-night dining package. I have a feeling we'll come to the same conclusion. We figured we'd give it a try, especially since this upcoming cruise is not as port intensive as the last and we can enjoy some lunches onboard on the sea days.

I definitely think it's worth a try and will make sense for a lot of people.

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/15/2023 at 12:19 PM, wordell1 said:

We boarded at about 1030. They boarded by C and A level and it went very smoothly.

We were able to make our dinner reservations right away at the kiosk and got everything we wanted. I had a list of everything for the week made out and handed it to the over. This made things much easier.

After that, we checked in at our muster station and then explored the ship.

We are thinking of getting the RCCL "The Key" Do you think this helps at all at boarding time?

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On 3/14/2023 at 11:17 AM, GymMom said:

We are thinking of getting the RCCL "The Key" Do you think this helps at all at boarding time?

I'm not a fan of the key unless you are a cruise with ports requiring tenders.  If you make sure to check in exactly 45 days out, you can get an early check in time.  

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