Tag: sea days

Oasis of the Seas: Day 5 at Sea!

Our second sea day was a mixed bag for me. I can’t really explain why, maybe it was the “alpha, alpha, alpha” call that happened just after 8am (medical emergency) that put a damper on my mood, but it took me quite a while to get in a “sea day” state of mind. The call happened as we were within sight of Grand Cayman, and we didn’t stop for any evac, so hopefully that means the person in question is okay.

We ate at the MDR for both breakfast and lunch, which turned out to be a pretty good choice. The breakfast menu had some chocolate -themed breakfast items on them. Bayley had the chocolate pancakes and loved them. One of the cool things about eating at the MDR for both meals is that in addition to the menu choices, there’s a buffet you can eat off of too.

Between the two meals, Jen and Bayley took in the “Splish Splash” show in the aqua theater, and came back pretty overheated. The downside of watching a show out there during the day is that you can endure quite a bit of sun any humidity. Good show, just too hot to watch from out there.

Somewhere in there, I went for a stroll on the sundeck, on 14 forward. As mentioned before, it’s a pretty cool place to hang out and enjoy the view. While I’d hate to book a cabin up there due to the additional traffic it draws when in use (port side access only), I really enjoy the serenity it offers:

After lunch, the girls were signed up for a cupcake decorating class in Cups & Scoops on the Boardwalk, so we headed down to get going. The class was pretty cool, and besides them there were a few kids in there enjoying the fun as well. The class lasted just over half an hour, and cost $22/pp. A little pricey, but I get it, they’d be overwhelmed with people wanting to do it for the free cupcakes if they didn’t charge. Regardless, they had a blast, and each made froggy cupcakes!

After a bit of a rest, we headed to the Opal theater for bingo. I expected this to be a letdown after the fun that was the Bingo Boys on the Divina, and wasn’t wrong. We didn’t even end up playing. After standing in a ridiculously slow moving (and poorly managed) line outside the theater for bingo cards, we discovered that the cheapest package was $44. Uh, what? We just wanted to play one card and have a little fun, but had no intention of spending that much, so we left.

We decided to get ready for dinner (our final formal night) a little early so we could make the 5pm round of general knowledge trivia. Sadly, no win this time. Following our trivia loss, we headed up to the sundeck to take a few pictures of Bayley up there in her formal night outfit. There was next to no wind, and the observation decks up there made for a perfect backdrop:

Dinner was once again quite delicious, as I had some tasty prime rib. The highlight of the menu, however, was the dessert, which included baked Alaska and grand marinier soufflé. The latter was incredibly good, to the point that Bayley and I wish that’s what we’d had for each course ;).

We capped off the night with a quick picture with Po from Kung Fu Panda, followed by the ice show, Frozen in Time. It was a pretty good show, especially the part with the sand painter. I’m always amazed when I see that done, as I find it to be an incredible art. The performer last night was incredibly talented, as were all of the ice skaters.

We were all pretty dead at that point, and with Cozumel on tap the next morning, decided to call it a night. Sadly, we’re entering the home stretch here, with only a couple of days before we have to return home. Keep an eye out for my next post though, our day in Cozumel promises to be really fun!

Oasis of the Seas: Day 4, Visiting Jamaica!

Going in to the cruise, I think we all were a bit apprehensive about stopping in Jamaica. Our only other visit to the island was 8 years ago on an NCL cruise, and it ended with a pretty serious injury to one of my daughter’s hands due to negligence on the part of the zip line operator. That was also the cruise where we saw that if you’re late coming back from a cruise line sponsored excursion, they will in fact wait for you. Due to the injury we were an hour late getting back to the ship, and obviously the last tender from shore before departure.

On this stop, things couldn’t have ended any differently. We booked an excursion through Royal that took us to Dunn’s River Falls for a climb up the falls, followed by a lunch stop at some resort, and ending with a 35-minute river tubing trip. There were a couple of lows, but overall we had a lot of fun!

After getting off the ship and meeting at the designated location for our tour, we were broken up into two groups of ~15 for the bus ride. It was nice not being packed into some large tour bus, the small groups were perfect. On departure, they told us they were changing the order, and that we’d do the falls first, so that we could avoid the larger crowds that show up later in the day. That was fine with us. After about an hour of riding in the bus, we arrived at the falls to a mostly-empty parking lot. There were a couple other small tours there, but the place never felt overcrowded.

After getting all checked in, we were assigned a guide and videographer and were led to the bottom of the falls. For those who have never done this, it’s really not that hard. They scrub the path every morning to keep it from getting slippery, and are always pointing out the best spots to step on the way up. Now, there are times that your group has to hold hands and form a human chain while climbing, but overall it was pretty easy to get around. The guide was great, and while the videographer did a good job of capturing everyone along the way, we chose not to pay the $40 for the DVD, as I had my GoPro with me.

After the climb, they lead you back to the bus through the little market place there, where you do encounter some pushy shop owners. This is one of my least favorite parts of Jamaica, as we all remembered it having some of the pushiest locals of any port we’ve stopped in, and this area was no exception. After a string on “no thank you” responses, we made our way back to the bus to head out for lunch.

The lunch stop was some little resort along the way where you get access to a buffet with some mediocre eats. Things like jerk chicken, rice, beans, salad, and assorted deserts. One thing to note here, on the way in they give you a very small glass of rum punch. That’s the only free drink you get here. Period. Bring water… Also, a very pushy gentleman will take your families picture on the way in, and try to get you to buy it on the way out for $10. He’s a pretty bad photographer, as a few pics were blurry, and ours was fogged over. Yea, no thanks.

After leaving the resort, we took a short drive to the starting point for the river tubing. This was an absolute blast. The last time we did something like this was in Belize, cave tubing, and we were highly disappointed. That wasn’t what I consider tubing, as they pulled us down the river the entire way, there was zero current. Here, there was plenty of current, with a few small drops along the way. Nothing to fear though, it was really, really fun!

After tubing, we all loaded up in the bus for the long ride back. As we were leaving, it started raining pretty hard, which made the drive back even slower. On arriving back at the port (around 4:30pm ship’s time, if I recall), it wasn’t raining there yet, but was about to start. We walked through a couple of shops and picked up a few small items before heading to the ship right as it started pouring. One nice thing about the enclosed shopping area at the port, the store owners aren’t pushy like they are everywhere else.

Even though we got back pretty close to dinner time and were soaked and tired, we managed to get ready and make it on time, and enjoyed another tasty meal with more excellent service from our wait staff.

After dinner, we headed over to Dazzle for Battle of the Sexes, but the best we could do seating-wise was an upstairs section against the center glass, and even with that view, couldn’t really see a thing. A lot of people seemed to be really unhappy with the views in there, and a number of others left without being able to find a seat. That was a pretty popular game show that was held in a really horrible venue. I think we stuck it out for 10 minutes before we decided to head to the boardwalk so Bayley could take picture with the penguins from Madagascar:

That pretty much did it for the night. Bayley went hunting for a snack, but with some very limited options at 9:30pm (basically Sorrentos and the half a dozen items in the promenade café), chose to skip it. We’re still really surprised at how limited late night snacking is on a ship this size.

Oasis Of The Seas: Day 2 Is In The Books!

Our first sea day here aboard the Oasis was both fun and frustrating at times. If I’ve learned one thing that needs to be passed on, it’s that anyone sailing a ship in this class needs to ensure they bring a large amount of patience. Between the elevator waits, buffet lines, and overall crowds in some areas, there are times where you really see the downsides of being on such a large ship. So how did the day go? Let’s take a look!

As usual, I woke up early, getting out of bed at 7am, throwing some clothes on, and heading to Windjammer for breakfast. At this point, not many people were up, so the buffet was pretty dead, and I was able to get a good seat:

I was a bit disappointed in the quality of breakfast up here, as the bacon and pancakes were both pretty soft (the pancakes a bit under-cooked). I didn’t even bother with the waffles, as they were way too soft for my liking. This seems to be a common theme with cruise ship buffet waffles, and while I get that it’s hard to cook for this many people, would it kill a line to cook at least one batch of waffles long enough for them to be golden brown?

Regardless, I decided to head for the Promenade to fill my soda cup, as the Freestyle machines in Windjammer were in bad shape (all out of ice, one totally unresponsive to touch). Arriving at the machines outside of Sorrentos, I found one out of both ice and low/no calorie soda, which brings up my next gripe. I understand all too well how these work, so I know they can be problematic, but keeping it full of ice shouldn’t be a big deal (the same one was still out of the same two items at 11am), and as it happens, the machines are set up to electronically inform someone when a soda cartridge is almost empty, so unless they’re not set up right, someone should be pretty aware that servicing is needed. The other machine was fully operational, so I grabbed a Pibb Zero (with ice) and decided to check out the walking/running track on deck 5. Pretty cool use for the space, as I’ve found the equivalent deck on the last couple of ships we were on to be totally dead most of the time. There were quite a few people out there making use of it, too.

After walking it once and strolling around a few other areas, I headed back to the room, where the girls were starting to wake up. After getting ready, they wanted some food, so I walked back up to Windjammer with them. As soon as we arrived, we turned right back around. Yea, if you want to eat at the buffet, get there early. The line of people waiting for a table was pretty long, and considering it was something like 10:30 by now, there’s no way all of them got in before it was switched over to lunch. In our opinion, the Windjammer is way too small for a ship with 6200+ passengers. It’s the smallest buffet of any ship we’ve been on in the last 5 years, which seems really odd considering the passenger count.

The buffet plan thwarted, we headed to the café in Central Park, which turned out to be a good call. There was hardly anyone there, and we were all able to get something pretty quick. It’s not a full buffet, but does offer enough selection to be a decent substitute for waiting in some other line. I ended up getting a bacon egg and cheese biscuit, which wasn’t too bad.

Our lunch over, we did a bit more walking around, including passing back through the Promenade as some “sales” were happening. Wow, the crowd…

At that point we headed up to the zip line area to see if we could get a run on it in, but the line for waivers was ridiculously long, and the zip line had already closed for the morning. Side note here, you’re supposed to be able to sign the waivers electronically on the TV in your room, but it fails every time once you get past the general waiver, at least for us. Oops. Anyway, knowing we’d have to wait in that line to sign up to ride it after it opened back up, we decided to wait on the waivers, too. We were just past the start of lunch at that point, so we headed to the Solarium Café to check out the eats there. All in all, not bad, just more limited choices than what you’d see in Windjammer. Following lunch, we headed to the room to rest up for a bit. We had a few things on tap starting at 2, so getting in a little break sounded good to all of us.

Our schedule this afternoon had us in the Schooner Bar for a couple of hours enjoying some trivia. First up was the progressive, and while we don’t know what score we have currently, felt like we did okay. Following that was brain-teaser trivia, and we ended up being declared co-winners of it after tying another team with a perfect score, followed by both of us getting his only tie-breaker correct. The prizes included highlighters, zipper pulls, and even a backpack/water bottle. In our final round, the cartoon music trivia, we didn’t fare as well, but really weren’t too far off of the winning score (I think we lost by two). Not a bad afternoon, but I will say that we all agree the trivia sessions on the Divina were a lot more fun and lively.

After everything in the Schooner was over, we headed for the boardwalk, where the Daily Planner indicated we’d find some pirate themed stuff going on. Nope. The staff had some kids activities going on, and the performers were practicing in the Aqua Theater, but no pirates were found anywhere. Oh well, we hung out and watched the diving practice. They really are amazing. I have no doubt it takes a lot of guts to jump off those high platforms…

Next on tap was dinner, so we headed back to the room to change. Tonight was the first formal night, too. Dinner itself was good once again, with the highlight for me being the beef tenderloin and the bittersweet chocolate soufflé. Oh, and the birthday cake, which was finally delivered to the table tonight, complete with a round of singing. I have to say, the chocolate celebration cake on Royal’s gift site is absolutely delicious!

After a quick trip to the room to change in to more comfortable clothes, we headed to 4 so Bayley could get a pic with Alex the Lion from Madagascar. Yea, even at 20, she loves character pics! That pretty much capped the night for me, as I was feeling pretty tired. The girls participated in Majority Rules (which they said was “just okay”, again, not as good as on the Divina), and walked around a bit before calling it a night.

Day 3 brings our first stop, Labadee, Haiti, which is Royal’s private island. We’ve got the zip line booked, and plan to enjoy the beach the rest of the day! More to come!

 

Oasis of the Seas: Day 1 Recap!

Our first cruise on Royal Caribbean in 8 years has us on the Oasis of the Seas for 7 days, and I have just one thing to say:

(Donald Trump voice) This ship is huuuuuuuge.

Having never set foot on any Oasis class ship before (outside of a very short tour Jen got to do of this one last year), we really weren’t sure what to expect as far as boarding goes. Boy were we shocked. We arrived at the port right around 11am, and by 11:25 were onboard the ship. A ship this size obviously requires a set boarding procedure, and Royal delivers in that regard. Here’s pretty much how it went:

  • Arrive at the terminal
  • Proceed through security screening
  • Go through check-in. We had priority check-in, but didn’t need it. No line at all.
  • Follow the signs and staff directions to Gold seating, at which point they tell you where to sit (no empty seats for bags appear to be allowed, BTW)
  • Here we waited maybe 10min before they started boarding our section
  • Walk up the gangway and get on the ship.

Like I said, 25min start to finish. Easily the most efficient boarding procedure we’ve seen on any ship to date, and got us here in record time:

After boarding, we took a walk down the Royal Promenade and stopped to sign up for beverage packages. We got one soda-only, and one Royal Replenish. We’ll see if they end up being worth it, but one of the nice things about this ship is the presence of Coke Freestyle machines, so we can a variety of sodas. So far, the lines at them have been hit or miss. There are a couple on each side of Windjammer, and a couple down by Sorrentos, with those being the busiest so far.

Anyway, after purchasing the drink packages and walking around the boardwalk area, we headed up to Windjammer to get some lunch. Fortunately, we arrived just as it opened, and were the first people in. Shortly after, the place filled up, and they started queuing people outside, forcing them to wait until there were tables available, so take that as a tip, if you’re hungry, head there right away or you could end up waiting a while. The food itself was pretty good for buffet food, too.

After lunch we did some more exploring, heading to the pool and then down to Central Park before the rooms were ready. That was a mistake while carrying a bunch of heavy bags, as Central Park can get really humid due to the design (open-air, no wind at all). Fortunately, 1pm arrived pretty quick, and we headed to our room to drop our bags and relax. For this ship, we chose a boardwalk balcony on deck 12 at the back of the ship (12729), as the ability to watch the shows at the Aqua Theater sounded intriguing. The cabin itself is a bit tight, and I’m not sure how you could fit all of the stuff a full family of 4 might bring, as the 3 of us had a fun time trying to organize our stuff, but we made it work. Our cabin steward had put up the birthday decorations I’d ordered for Jen, too, so that was a nice surprise for her when we got to the cabin. Here are a few pics of it, along with the view you get of the boardwalk and Aqua Theater:

The rest of the afternoon pretty much consisted of more exploring and some unpacking. We had early seating at dinner, so we headed down at 6pm and were promptly seated. So far, MDR service is much better than the MDR on the Divina, a welcome change. The food was just as good as we remembered, with my prime rib being outstanding. Interestingly enough, I was also given a survey to fill out at the table on how my meat was. I’ve never seen that before, but was glad that they spot-check their work!

My only complaint about dinner was that something else I’d ordered, a birthday cake for Jen that was supposed to be delivered at dinner, wasn’t there. I spoke to the waiter about it afterward and he said he’d never gotten any notification about one, but that he’d take care of it and will have it there tonight. I’ve heard about Royal “forgetting” various items people pre-ordered recently, so was disappointed to experience this myself. It’d give me pause about ordering anything from their catalog for clients.

We’d set show reservations up well ahead of the cruise, but already had one change that impacted the first evening. We had been booked for Cats at 2:30pm on the first sea day, but that show got cancelled, so they moved us to the 8:45 show on boarding day. After dinner, we headed back to the room to change, and before leaving for Cats, hung out on our balcony a bit to watch the opening show in the Aqua Theater. Really cool stuff, and it’s awesome to be able to hang out in the room and watch stuff like this:

After that ended, we headed to Cats. I’ll preface all of this by saying that I’m not in to musicals. At all. There’s the rare exception every now and then, but this is not one of them. I can see why Royal’s having trouble keeping the theater filled for this, and it’s not because of the performers, they’re obviously talented, it’s 100% the play itself. I really don’t get the love-fest for it, and a lot of other people didn’t seem to either, as there were plenty of open seats at the start of the show, which only got worse over the course of the first act. At intermission, we left, as none of us could really take it anymore. I feel bad for the performers, as I’ve read that this isn’t a popular show on the Oasis. I can see why.

Our half-a-play over, Jen headed to the room while Bayley and I made one last pass of the ship. One thing that really stuck out, the Windjammer buffet closes at 9pm, so after that, your only free options appear to be Sorrentos and the café on 5. There are over 6000 passengers on the ship, but the main source of an evening snack closes at 9? Wow. Oh, and I should also mention that the pizza on Oasis doesn’t even come close to any of the 3 styles available on the MSC Divina. Sorrentos is more like me making pizza at home from scratch, and I think all of the pieces we tried were a bit undercooked. I’m really missing the Divina’s pizza right about now. Small issue though, we’re still on an awesome cruise ship, right?

That about covers day 1. More to come as our journey aboard the Oasis of the Seas continues!

Oh, and If you’re not following us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, you’re missing out on some great shots of the ship!

Is the MSC Divina Right For You?

After cruising with MSC out of Miami twice in a three months, one thing stands out, and that’s the fact some people don’t seem to be doing their research before booking on the Divina, or their travel agents aren’t doing it for them :). Understanding the differences between the various lines is important, regardless of who you end up booking with. Proper expectations play a key role in one’s happiness with something as expensive as a vacation, so why would you book a cruise based simply on the best fare, and not at least partially on others’ experiences? I recognize that you can’t trust all reviews, but if you read enough of them, you can identify positive and negative patterns and learn to filter out the noise.

In MSC’s case, their first couple of seasons in the US really didn’t seem to go well, at least from the perspective of American passengers. I can’t really speak to that, as we didn’t get to experience the Divina before she returned in 2015, but we’ve heard and read that it was still set up in a far more European manner than it sounded like people here wanted or were expecting. I get that a line starting operation in another country should be familiar with their market and adjust accordingly, and by not doing so they turned some people off. Personally, I think it would have been interesting to give that a try. I’ve read a few posts and reviews about those first couple of seasons, but one of the fairest I’ve seen comes from someone I’ve referenced before, Scott Sanfilipo, who sailed before and after their adjustments, and recapped his 2014 experience right before sailing again in 2015 in this blog entry. It’s definitely worth a read before continuing here.

Some of the things he talked about from the 2014 season have changed, and some haven’t. Just know that even now, this is a different product than the contemporary US-based lines. This isn’t Carnival, Norwegian or Royal, it’s MSC and they have their own identity. I can’t emphasize this enough: When booking any cruise, don’t just look at the cost, know what you’re comfortable with, what you want, and what each line offers. When looking at the Divina, I think the main question potential passengers have to answer honestly is:

Are you comfortable in a melting pot?

The ship appeals to Europeans as well as Americans, and in talking to a family from Sweden on our Christmas sailing, it was easy to understand why. For them it came down to an affordable way to get a feel for Caribbean cruising. On some Divina sailings kids sail free, so they didn’t have to pay for either of their boys. I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons too, but along that same “melting pot” theme, there are things you need to be aware of and comfortable with:

  • You’ll be surrounded by people speaking in other languages, more so than any other U.S.-based cruise we’ve been on. It’s not something that concerns me (and most of the time I don’t even notice), but on both of our sailings we overheard people randomly complaining about it when talking to each other about how their cruise was going.
  • Ship announcements happen in something like 5 languages. This happens during anything from Bingo to the muster drill. Frankly, this got to be a pet peeve of mine. Not that it happens, but how often I’d hear a fellow American complaining about it as it was happening.

The other big complaint in this area we heard more than once was that the crew and passengers were noticeably rude. We didn’t get that vibe at all. There are both rude and friendly people in all cultures, and frankly we didn’t see any more line cutting or rude attitudes out of passengers on the Divina than we’ve seen out of our fellow Americans on other sailings.

Some of the other big differences (good and bad) between MSC and the standard U.S. based lines that we noticed on our two sailings:

  1. No sail-away party. Actually, we didn’t notice this because we normally aren’t up on deck for it on any sailing, but we did hear it from a couple of people who were disappointed by it.
  2. No music constantly playing by the pool on the Divina. True, outside of music possibly playing when the entertainment staff is out there putting on events, I don’t recall constant blaring music by the pool all of the time. The one time I really appreciated this was on the last sailing. We were docked next to one of Carnival’s ships in Nassau, which was blasting canned music the entire time they were docked to an empty pool deck, while the Divina’s was quiet and peaceful.
  3. There’s still work to be done in the Divina’s MDR. At Christmas, they really had too many tables crammed too close together and not enough staff to handle the load. Our waiters were all friendly, but really couldn’t keep up with the number of tables they had. Even though we weren’t in the MDR on the last sailing, we heard similar complaints from those who were. 8/2017 Update: As mentioned in a recent post, the MDR experience on our August 2017 sailing was vastly improved, so to us, it looks like MSC has taken customer feedback and made positive change here!
  4. You get a more international selection of food in the MDR and Le Muse than you tend to on U.S.-based lines. Some meals were better than others, but it’s an interesting change of pace. One item I can’t rave about enough is the pizza. From a food aspect, I’d go back for that alone.
  5. The included shows were better than our previous 5 sailings (3x Carnival, 1x Celebrity, 1x NCL). I’m looking forward to comparing it to the entertainment on the Oasis of the Seas later this month, as it’s been far too long since we’ve been on Royal Caribbean for me to objectively compare the two.
  6. I’ve gone on a lot after both sailings about the Divina’s entertainment staff, and for good reason. They’re friendly, fun, and they know how to engage the passengers. We had plenty to do during sea days on both sailings. It was really nice to attend trivia without the same canned questions other lines use over and over, too. They’ve stuck in our memory far more than the entertainment staff on previous ships.

I think that about covers it. Really, it comes down to comfort level with a very diverse mix of passengers. I admit that before we sailed in December we were nervous after reading a lot of the reviews, but after both sailings, we’re quite happy we went. The differences made for some fun times, and we’ve enjoyed mixing things up and getting out of the comfort zone we’d built sailing on the contemporary lines. We look forward to the Seaside’s arrival next year and definitely plan to sail her.

For now, hopefully you’re more educated on what to expect from the Divina if you choose to sail with MSC! If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll respond as time permits!