by Jim Bellomo | Oct 10, 2019 | Uncategorized
A panoramic view of St. Kitts harbor from the sundeck on Allure of the Seas
More about Allure…which almost rhymes. Day three was another sea day and we had class from 9:00 to 12:00 and then we had lunch as a group in Giovanni’s Italian restaurant, one of Allure’s specialty places. (BTW: The pic above is St. Kitts from the ship. Looks pretty right? Not if you hate heat and humidity. More below.)
The class was fine but again, the conference room was so cold it gave Kathleen a migraine headache that was so bad she missed lunch and was in bed all afternoon. Entirely due to the frigid temps and the constantly blowing AC. Our instructor Nate asked to have it warmed up a bit and maintenance told them they had complied with his request but you would never know it. From now on I am bringing a small thermometer to conferences. She missed a great lunch and the best session of the classes we took.
We had two guest speakers that afternoon. First we got to meet a Royal Genie. If you are not familiar with the Royal Genie program, it is pretty much one-of-a-kind. It works like this: If you book certain VERY expensive suites onboard many of Royal’s ships (the big ones predominately) you get the services of a Royal Genie. Think of him or her as a super butler. In fact to become a Royal Genie you have to go to London to a butler school that is run by a former butler to the British Royal Family.
A Royal Genie’s job consists of contacting you about a month before your cruise to find out your likes and dislikes, whether you have any special requests and to generally make you feel ultra-special. They carry on a pretty detailed dialog with you via e-mail for the month prior to the cruise. In that time they might book shows for you or make reservations at specialty restaurants (in those suites, all specialty restaurants are included). Then when you arrive at the ship they meet you at your car and escort you through check-in and directly to your suite which is ALWAYS ready for you. After that, every wish you have (within reason but they can be pretty crazy) is taken care of. When it is time for you to go to dinner at your specialty restaurant, they come and escort you there. Same with shows. And if you don’t want to go out but want a meal from a specialty restaurant, then they can have it brought to your suite and they serve it for you. If you want a party for other guests on board, they take care of that as well. All at no additional charge. Of course a seven day cruise in a Royal Genie serviced suite will run you anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000, but hey, it’s worth it.
The Royal Genie that came in to speak to us was very interesting and described his job as well as telling us a bunch of stories (with no names of course) about crazy requests he had dealt with in his six years as a Genie. Hilarious and crazy stories you will have to ask me about later. Too many to tell here.
After our Royal Genie session we got to spend about 45 minutes with our Cruise Director Jimmy Rhodes, one of the funniest CDs I have ever had the chance to listen to. He has been an RCL cruise director for 17 years and was the first black cruise director on a major cruise line. He started with RCL as a dancer in their shows and moved his way on up. If you look up the word “Hoot” in the dictionary, you will see his picture.
He also told us some great stories and answered a bunch of questions about the ship. One of them was whether the water show would be performed that night. Allure (and all the other Ovation class ships) have a huge water show that takes place outdoors on the aft end of the ship. The day before it had been postponed due to rough seas and high winds. We were interested because many of us had reservations for that night’s show. He was quick to reply that they would probably postpone the shows for that night as well and they did end up doing that. We did get to see the show the next day at 5:30 pm and I can’t say enough good things about it. Our buddy Mike told us the shows were great on this class of ship and he has been right on so far (tonight we are going to another one and I will let you know if we go three for three). For this show, I got to take lots of pics and the light was pretty good, so you will be able to see what we saw. Suffice it to say, it was AMAZING. See the pics below.
The next morning we arrived on the island of St. Kitts. Kathleen and I had never been to this island before so we had booked a Royal Caribbean shore excursion to take a train ride around the island on a narrow gauge train that was set up for taking travelers to see the island. We were aware that we would have to take a bus from the ship to where we would join the train and one back as well. What we didn’t realize that we would be on a poorly air-conditioned bus for more than an hour to get to the train over some of the worst roads you have seen. On the train we were served water, rum punch, rum and cola, rum on the rocks, Pina coladas, rum and rum or just about anything with rum in it. Like a plastic cup. Just a note that we would NOT recommend this shore excursion to anyone. Hot and boring unless you like looking at grass, trees, ocean and the rest of your fellow travelers who are on board. The tour was also fully narrated but because of the age of the train and tracks, you couldn’t hear the narration. It was an extremely loud train trip.
A quick note here about the most overriding thing about this trip—the HEAT! And the humidity. Going outside of any air conditioned part of the ship is awful. And I fully take credit for that since we are total heat and humidity wimps. But that’s why we live in the Northwest. We hate heat and we hate humidity. More about this when I write about San Juan on Saturday.
Back on the ship we had a late lunch and I went to work out. Normally I work out in the morning but this cruise has really thrown off our schedules. We have late seating which means we eat dinner at 8:00 pm, then hang out until at least 11:00 to let our food digest and then go to sleep. That means that I am sleeping until 6:30 or 7:00 which doesn’t leave me enough time to work out, eat breakfast and make it to class or a shore excursion so I have been working out or walking later in the day. On Day 3 I walked five miles around the ship’s jogging/walking track in the later afternoon (and about died due to the heat and humidity) and on Day 4 (yesterday) I went to the gym around 3:30. Thankfully the AC was working better than it had been on Monday morning. I am somewhat worried what is going to happen to our schedules when we get home on Monday.
After the workout we were off to see the aforementioned water show that had been postponed. And as I said, it was excellent. After the show, dinner, then hang out and bed. Tomorrow (really today) is San Juan, Puerto Rico. More on Friday from the Nassau, Bahamas.
St. Kitts photos
Early morning as we arrive in St. Kitts
The cruise terminal in St. Kitts
St. Kitts from the sundeck on Allure
St. Kitts from the sundeck on Allure
St. Kitts from the sundeck on Allure
St. Kitts from the sundeck on Allure
Workers working on the new cruise ship pier that will accommodate two more ships bringing the daily total of ships that come here to four. OMG! They had a hard time handling two.
Tying up Allure
Ships off our aft
St. Kitts from the sundeck on Allure
Waiting four our shore excursion. It was HOT!
Boarding the buses
The train
If you sat in the bottom of the double deck coaches which were partially air conditioned, this was what you saw for most of the train ride.
Their dormant volcano
Lots of coastline
A bunch of it
A singing group that sang us a song
Goats due roam
More ocean
Even more ocean
This was scary. When we crossed this bridge…
The cars below the bridge had to stop in case the bridge fell on the road
More ocean
An old sugar mill
More ocean
The upper deck on the train cars was open air and really HOT!
More ocean
Still more ocean
And an old church
Ocean Aria Aqua show photos
The show begins like a Cirque show with clowns in the audience
And our master of ceremonies
And cheerleader
The horns blow
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
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The Ocean Aria show
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The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
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The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
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The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
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The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
The Ocean Aria show
These two guys stayed underwater the entire time
St. Kitts’ government is much more libertarian compared with the U.S. It’s not even close.—Roger Ver
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 8, 2019 | Uncategorized
A small pano from the top of the ship
Fully realizing that I promised you some daily updates, I have already missed a day so here goes. A little touch of Allure of the Seas for you.
We left Mike’s house early Sunday morning and got about a quarter mile away when Mike texted and then called us to let us know I had forgotten my bag with my camera and computer in it. This is laughable since my biggest screw up in traveling was leaving that same bag in a rental car the last time we sailed from Fort Lauderdale. After retrieving it from Mike’s (and we were so glad he saw it before we got all the way down to the port…and gave us curbside service for pickup—thanks Mike) we had an uneventful trip to the airport where we dropped the car and took a cab to the cruise port. If you have not sailed from Fort Lauderdale the airport is about a 10 minute cab ride from the cruise port so this was really easy.
Embarkation (unlike our departure on Ovation in Seattle in July) was beyond easy. We had filled in everything in advance including uploading our photos. Once we arrived at the line where we would normally have presented credit cards, boarding pass, etc. our passports were checked and we were released to the waiting area for boarding. We found our fearless leader Nate (who would be teaching our classes —I am writing this while he is teaching right now) and after a short wait we were onboard and gone. With Royal, you no longer get your seapass card before boarding. You find it later outside outside your stateroom.
Once on board we raced to our conference room on deck 3 to drop off our carry-on bags and then we raced to the other end of the ship to deck 17 (the top) to see some suites before the folks in those suites got there. If you want to see how the other half lives on board, I have included some of the suite pictures below as well as the staterooms for the rest of us. I also added some pics I took from the ship leaving Fort Lauderdale as well.
After we were done touring the staterooms, we were free until that night. Kathleen and I went to find someplace to eat lunch. Eating lunch on embarkation day is always a challenge. Most people’s first meal on a ship is in the buffet because that’s all they know. We asked our instructor for recommendations and he suggested Park Cafe in the Central Park area on Deck 8. It is one of a handful of complimentary restaurants available during embarkation. It was crowded but we were able to get in and grab a sandwich before we headed off to sit and wait for our cabins to be ready.
I want to make a point here that this is a BIG ship. We were told in class today that there are more than 6,000 passengers on board including more than 900 kids (I want to know how are they getting out of school in October???). This means that this is a very crowded cruise. And you can really see it on embarkation day before the staterooms are ready. That hour or so between the end of lunch and 1:30 when the announcement is made that staterooms have been released is very crowded. We ended up sitting in a bar (not drinking), just sitting on the Grand Promenade for about half an hour before we heard that announcement that staterooms were ready.
They finally made that announcement and we were off to our stateroom (10653) on deck 10, midships. Our stateroom is very nice but not in the same ballpark as the one we were in on Ovation of the Seas in July. This is a fairly old ship and the stateroom looks like it. I have pics below. We hung out in the stateroom until the muster drill which took place at 4:00 pm. This is a mandatory drill and our advice is that if you have a hard time standing for an hour, get to your muster station (ours was in the champagne bar) really early and get a seat. Otherwise you will be standing through the entire, boring exercise.
After the drill we went back to our stateroom and as we were walking up to it, Kathleen looked way down the corridor and said, “That looks like our luggage.” Sure enough it was. We wonder how long it would have taken them to get it down to our room. We grabbed them and got them in ourselves and unpacked. That’s the BEST part of cruising—visiting multiple countries and cities and only having to unpack once. We hate living out of a suitcase.
After unpacking, we were invited (by Nate) to a sail-away party on deck 17 but I went up to take some pics as we sailed out, and it started pouring rain. So I took a couple of pics and headed back to our stateroom to change for our cocktail party. That cocktail party was a private event just for our group of around 30 Expedia Cruise Ship Center travel agents from the USA and Canada. It was very nice and we went from there to dinner at 8:00. We don’t usually have late seating (as our friends Paul and Gail will testify to) but the entire group was signed up at 8:00 so we eat at 8:00. Had a nice dinner and had a chance to talk travel with a lot of great agents from all over Canada and the USA. A really great networking experience.
Day two was a day of classes. We started early and had classes from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. We enjoyed the classes but the rooms were freezing which gave Kathleen a migraine. They run the AC way too cold. Then drinks in the Diamond Club (we get access to the RCL loyalty club because of our status on their sister cruise line Celebrity) and dinner at 8:00 with Kathy and Cheryl from Wisconsin who were some of the few not at a show.
Speaking of shows, we then headed to the 9:30 pm performance of Mama Mia. It was a GREAT performance and we really enjoyed it. I wish I could have taken photos to show you what it was like but they were adamant that no photos or videos could be taken. I learned today from the Cruise Director that they used to have no problem with people taking photos but two reps from the company that licenses the production to Royal were on board and saw people taking pics and warned the ship that if it continued they would pull the rights to the play and they would no longer be able to perform it and that would be a shame as it was easily as good as the one we saw at the Paramount in Seattle and certainly better than the Mama Mia movie because Pierce Brosnan didn’t sing in it ?.
That ended day two and with that I will conclude. Tomorrow we have more classes and hopefully the water show in the evening. Then St. Kits. I think I will hold off and not post again until after we visit there.
This is the downstairs part of a loft suite
Also the same
The living room in the loft
More of the living room
The dining room in the loft suite
More of the living room
The bedroom upstairs. This stateroom is 1200+ square feet
Also in the dining room
In the bath
Ditto
Another suite
with a gorgeous living room
A typical verandah stateroom
Looking in the other direction
This is a handicapped accessible room, thus the extra space
Another verandah
A junior suite
The bathroom
The bedroom
An inside stateroom set up with one bed
The bathroom of the inside stateroom
An inside stateroom set up with twin beds
Another handicapped accessible stateroom
The bathroom of that stateroom
A smaller suite on a lower floor
A smaller suite on a lower floor
A smaller suite on a lower floor
Our room, a Central Park verandah stateroom
Our bath
The look outside our stateroom verandah into Central Park in the front half of the center of the ship
Another look into the Central Park area.
Time to sail away from Fort Lauderdale
This Carnival ship preceded us out
Looking back at the port
My typical pilot boat shot.
People come to this beach to wave at the ships as they leave
It’s quite the beach
And here are the wavers
And the area on the ship where I was standing.
What’s the most fetching thing that provokes people? A volcano? Fountains that dance? A pirate ship that sinks? Some other animated device or presentation? Is that as strong as mystery? Allure, intrigue, is much more powerful… It taunts you.—Steve Wynn
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 6, 2019 | Uncategorized
A panoramic photo of the Morikami Gardens
Just a quick post with some photos before breakfast. We will be boarding Allure of the Seas at 10:30 am and I am writing this in Mike’s family room at 6:30 while Kathleen is getting ready to go.
Yesterday was a really great and relaxing day. Mike does volunteer work at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens where he is an information specialist (a fancy name I am giving him for the guy who sits at a desk by the entrance and answers questions). The gardens are beautiful and the weather cooperated while we were there. Big, fluffy clouds on a nice blue sky let me take some great pics while we toured.
After Morikami we headed north on Highway 1 along the coast. We drove by the infamous Mar-A-Lago Country Club (that you-know-who owns) and then a little further before we stopped at Benny’s on the Beach (a really cool restaurant on a pier perched over the Atlantic) for a delicious lunch. After that it was north to Palm Beach where we stopped to buy some postcards (yes, we still send those—I’m very retro, ? so sue me) to send to the grandkids and other friends and relatives. Speaking of retro, we got the postcards at a little drugstore that Mike had been to before that was a total throw-back. Even had a little luncheonette. Reminded me of an old Woolworth’s.
Then it was back to Mike’s where we watched a little college football until Mike’s neighbors Barb and Hans came over to see us. We had sailed with Barbara and Hans on a two week South East Asia cruise from Singapore to Hong Kong (one of our favorites) in 2010. It was great to see them. We always have a lot to talk about. Then it was dinner out at a Cuban-American restaurant and that was it—a really nice day.
Here are the pics I promised you and you will get our first report on Allure either later tonight or tomorrow.
A beautiful tree in the Morikami Gardens
Met a snow white egret in the Morikami Gardens
Also a really green iguana.
And a blue dressed American woman as well.
In the Morikami Gardens
Turtles sunning themselves
A wild orchid in the Morikami Gardens
We were surprised they had Jabba the Hut in the Morikami Gardens
And they had an incredible bonsai exhibit
Waterfalls inside the Morikami Gardens
And another turtle
And a heron
This bird could sing. I mean it made amazing noises.
Another iguana
And another egret
The Japanese Tea Room in the museum
A beer before lunch at Benny’s on the Beach
From our table I captured this surfer
And this little guy.
It doesn’t matter how much I think I know about Florida, it still flips me on the head every time. It’s just an absurd, eclectic place, and the stories that can come out of that place just never stop.—Matt Passmore
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 5, 2019 | Uncategorized
Sometimes I think we are the living embodiment of the Willie Nelson song. Or if you are my age, the Canned Heat song. But then we spend a few days with our good friend Mike Preisman and I realize that as much as we travel, he travels more. And he writes about his travels even more than I do. I linked his website above. It is worth going to before you travel has he has probably been where you are going.
I mentioned Mike because we are in humid and hot South Florida staying with Mike before we board Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas tomorrow. I may have mentioned that I am not a big fan of the Caribbean but we are taking this cruise to learn. Almost all of the cruise lines out there do what are referred to in the trade as FAM (familiarity) cruises from time to time. These kind of cruisers give travel agents a chance to see a ship and learn about a cruise line while on a cruise. They aren’t free (nothing ever is…) but we do get a very nice discount and there are some nice perks. Of course we still had to pay to get down to humid south Florida, but it’s still a bargain.
It especially helps if you have great friend who will put you up a few days before the cruise as well. We are staying with one of our super Martini Mates, the aforementioned Mike Preisman. And besides getting to see him, we were able to see some friends who we met on our first Celebrity cruise through the Panama Canal in 2004, Bert and Annette. We had lunch with them at their country club (a really swanky place) and just a great time talking about all we have been doing since we last saw them five years ago when we had lunch in the same place.
So tomorrow (Sunday, October 6) we board the Allure of the Seas at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. This is our first time on an Oasis Class ship. The Oasis class are the largest cruise ships in the world. Only one ship sailing has more cabins than Allure. When the ship is at maximum capacity she can hold 6,314 passengers and more than 2140 crew members. That’s 8,500 people on one ship. For me that three times the size of the town where I spent most of the 90s, Leavenworth, WA.
We will board tomorrow morning before most of the other passengers so we can do a ship’s tour that will let us see some of the staterooms and suites before others come aboard. Our FAM group is composed of about 30 Expedia Cruise Ship Centers travel consultants and people from their sales department. During the week, on the four sea days (out of seven) we will have classes from 9:00 am to noon and then from 2:00 to 4:00 pm every day. The coordinators from Royal will not only talk about the ship we are on, but all the other Royal ships in the fleet. And I am sure we will have plenty of time to see all the public areas on this ship…which means you will get to see a whole bunch of photos this week.
At least I hope you will because we have free use of Royal Caribbean’s Voom internet which is (according to their marketing) the fastest internet at sea. So if it really works (they say you can stream Netflix) so we shall see. If it is that fast, you will get daily updates all week, so be ready. This will be your chance to find out all about the biggest ships at sea.
We hope it all goes better than our last cruise on Royal’s Ovation of the Seas when we took our grandkids (and their parents) to Alaska in July. And since we are doing this cruise by ourselves, this will be much more about the ship. We are seeing shows almost every night, have planned a shore excursion in one of our ports (St. Kitts) and want to try as much as we can while onboard. I should mention that our other two stops on this cruise are San Juan, PR, a port we have visited twice before and Nassau in the Bahamas. We have no interest in those ports so we will probably stay on the ship. I may get off and walk around in San Juan as their old town is really quaint and picturesque.
Be ready for some posting this week while we take you cruising on Allure of the Seas.
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. —Zora Neal Hurston
by Jim Bellomo | Aug 13, 2019 | Uncategorized
I had something else I was going to do before this post but it can wait since it is me being a “grumpy git” as my Yorkshire friends would say.
So let’s talk what I loved about our Ovation of the Seas cruise to Alaska with our kids and grandkids. So many of you have commented that every thing seems to have been horrible and now where should they take their kids on a cruise if not Royal. Well I am here to say, go ahead and take them on Royal Caribbean, just have lower expectations and a different mindset of what is important.
As a travel professional it is my job to help my clients have the best travel experience possible and my writing about this cruise is part of that. Hopefully those clients and other readers will learn from my mistakes. So here’s the good stuff.
First, Mason’s viewpoint. On the last night of the cruise, at the dinner table in the main dining room (while he was eating escargot for the fourth time) I asked my 8-year old grandson, “What were the five best things on this cruise?” He was really quick to answer me:
- The Flowrider (he had only the day before learned to ride it and he was INCREDIBLY proud of that).
- The service in the dining room at dinner. (I pressed him on this because it was kind of an interesting thing for an 8-year old to say but he was adamant.) He loved Res and Putu, who took such good care of all of us.
- The food in the dining room at dinner. (I was sure he was going to choose the buffet because of all the choices but he said no, he loved the food in the dining room best. Guess it was the escargot, shrimp and steak.)
- The bumper cars. (He’s 8—what did you expect?)
- Spending a week with Grandpa and Grandma K. (Of course I wish this had been first but it did place ahead of spending the week with his sister, mom and dad so I was happy!)
I love his list. And he really never mentioned (neither did his sister) anything they didn’t like. Now if you ask me what they really liked, it was having the complete and total attention of their Mom, Dad, Grandpa and Grandma K for an entire week—always trying to keep them entertained.
Now here’s my list of the things I LOVED about our Ovation cruise.
- Spending the week with my grandkids and their parents. It was a sheer joy to have my two grandkids knock on our door every day before breakfast and say, “room service,” laughing the entire time. Even standing in line for hours with them was great. We had so many interesting conversations. I have never played so much foosball and loved it. Mason and I have a particular bond (I was lucky enough to get to take care of him when he was really little when his Mom was teaching and his Dad had to work) and we have always just been simpatico. He’s my best buddy and I am his. So spending time with him is a joy for me. And Maylee loves me and adores her Grandma K. All the hassles we had on this cruise from start to finish are overshadowed by the incredible time we had with those two and their parents. It was a vacation we will all remember for a very long time.
- Our stateroom. In 28 cruises (barring the one time we had a suite) this was the nicest room we have ever been in. It was the best designed, had the most storage, was the most comfortable as far as just being in it. Sure, the shower could have been a little bigger but at least it was an enclosure and didn’t have a shower curtain. And the bed was one of the worst we have ever slept on (but that didn’t detract from the great stateroom design). We should mention there are entire Cruise Critic threads out there about people bringing air mattresses because the beds are so bad.
The service team in the dining room. Res and Putu were actually better than pretty much any other serving team we have ever had. After having Richard and his team in Blu (on Reflection in Iceland) I didn’t think it could get any better. But I was wrong. And the fact that I was wrong is what makes RCL the right place to take kids. You see even though the management has scheduling conflicts and the kid’s club people were just ho-hum in their interactions with our kids, the real star of the ship for kids are the adults who “get” how to deal with kids. From our room steward Shetty who talked to the kids every time he saw them to the guy running the Flowrider who took time to work with kids on trying new things (he didn’t have to do that) these people got kids. And above all, these two amazing people who served us each night in the dining room charmed our kids. Especially Res who just knew how to deal with kids so well.- The gym. It was spiffy! That’s the best word I can give it. I went every morning for an hour and as usual it was packed on day one and almost empty on day six. But all the equipment is still like new. Best stationary bike I have ridden that I didn’t own. The place was kept VERY clean.
- The ship itself. Ovation is new and beautiful. It has been quite a while since we have been on a ship this new. Everything is still clean and sparkly compared to many other, older ships we have sailed on—even though Ovation is almost three years old. She has been well taken care of and if you are considering a cruise on her you will love the ship itself. I especially loved the artwork in all the stairwells. Of course you have to take the stairs to see it all, but the elevators are so slow, you can take your time on the stairs.
That about does it. Not perfection but not horrible either. And I can say this unequivocally—if I had to do it again, and I could avoid a few of the bigger problems (like having a passport—that we just got back from renewal today) I would. Just avoid the buffet, eat in the dining room and take your grandkids.
Nothing always stays the same. You don’t stay happy forever. You don’t stay sad forever. —Cat Zingano