Trip Report. Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas: Part Three

I meant to write this post a few weeks ago but time got away from me and then I was dealing with back issues and then I was just swamped trying to get things done before Christmas. We just got back from Colorado at 5:30 Tuesday morning and outside of work I’ll be spending the next few days packing up Christmas decorations and trying to put 2016 far, far behind me.

Moving on.

This last segment of my trip report is really just a few bits and pieces about the time we spent on the ship. We sailed on the Allure of the Seas which is one of the biggest cruise ships in the world (previously the largest but there are now one or two that are bigger). Somehow even on a ship with 6000 other passengers, it never really felt crowded. Of course we avoided the sales and parades in the shopping area and there were times when the pools were crowded but that’s to be expected. I was super impressed that I never felt overwhelmed with the amount of people. I think RCI does a good job of spreading things out across the ship and at least with the Oasis class ships, there are several different “neighborhoods” that you can visit.

Our stateroom was on Deck 6 which was the deck the Boardwalk was on. There was a hot dog stand, a carousel, and a Johnny Rockets just to name a few stops. This is also the deck where the aqua theater was which is where they did their diving show which was INSANE. Seriously, I can’t even explain it.

The other neighborhood I was most impressed with was Central Park which included a ton of live greenery. One of the nights on the ship we ate at Giovanni’s Table which is one of the specialty restaurants not included in the fare. It was only $25/person for dinner and included as much delicious Italian food as we could stomach.

During our stay we spent most of the time in the beach pool, on our balcony, or napping in our stateroom. We saw a few of their shows and we were impressed by all of them. Ocean Aria (the diving show) was my favorite but their production of Mama Mia! was really good, too. We also went to a show called Blue Planet which was good but weird.

The food was insane for the most part which was good because that’s the best part of a cruise. The hot dog stand was frequented every day, multiple times a day and we helped ourselves to plenty of soft serve. We only ate at the buffet a couple of times but had Johnny Rocket’s almost every day for breakfast. The main dining room dinners were delicious minus the creme brulee, which I’ll admit was disappointing. The drinks were great for the most part and we had enough of an on-board credit to cover most of the booze we drank, including this frozen strawberry daiquiri I enjoyed on our balcony.

We dressed up for both formal nights in the dining room which I enjoyed because I got to wear a new dress I found on Pinterest and my bachelorette part dress which I previously couldn’t fit in (and can’t currently fit in…darn cruise and holiday food). The second formal night was also our wedding anniversary so the servers sang us a song and brought out an extra dessert.

The only thing that really disappointed me was the Prohibition Party we signed up for. Part of this was just me being in a bad mood but it pretty much consisted of sitting in a dark corner and drinking overly sweet cocktails for 2 hours. On the plus side, I ordered a really neat 1920s style dress off Amazon for it and ended up really liking it. I had planned on just giving it to Goodwill after but I’m definitely keeping it. Of course I don’t actually have a picture but trust me, it was worth the $20 I spent.

All in all it was a fantastic vacation and I cannot wait to go on another! No idea when that will be since we will hopefully be making a couple of large purchases over the next 2-3 years but I guess that just gives me more time to plan. There’s a transatlantic cruise I am dying to go on so maybe I’ll go ahead and start looking into it a bit more.

I just have one more post lined up for this year but I’m hoping I’ll be motivated to blog more consistently in the new year. Time will tell.