Royal Newbies do Oasis for Thanksgiving!

The Cast:

My family of 10 just returned from our Thanksgiving cruise on Oasis of the Seas Nov. 21st – Nov. 28th 2015. While many of my family members (ages 28-63) are experienced cruisers, only 1 in our group had sailed RCCL prior to this cruise. Most of my family were/are loyal to Princess Cruise lines (two of which are platinum, and 2 were Ruby w/ Princess). So getting the family to go Royal I needed to entice them with something Princess didn’t have, which was an Oasis class ship. While my parents and aunts and uncles have no need or desire of flowriders, rock walls, ice skating, zip lines, etc., my brothers and I (ages late 20’s-mid 30’s) have felt very young on princess cruise lines in the past, even on holiday sailings which attract younger families. Princess seemed IMO to target Boomers more than Gen X or Y or Millennials, and my brother had sailed enchantment earlier in the year w/ his girlfriend and thought RCCL might offer more for a broader age range and interests, so we booked Oasis (in spite of my parents hesitations that the boat would be far too big and crowded) and hoped for the best.

I made matching obnoxious tee shirts for the family but my brothers and their girlfriends refused to wear them for embarkation day, they wore them later in the trip. I also made door magnets with the same design, this was also because my uncle has issues with short term memory and this was to help him remember which room was his.

I had arranged for pick up and transportation with Howards Transportation which was recommended by RSharpe earlier in the year on CC. He was very easy to deal with and his prices were much better than the others I had priced out. I would highly recommend him.

Check in was relatively easy. We arrived at Port Everglades at 1:25pm, and by 1:55 we were in our staterooms.

Staterooms:

We had 5 adjacent D7 ocean view balcony rooms on deck 9 (adjacent, not joined), and we were able to open up all the dividers between our stateroom balconies to create one giant mega balcony. ( Pic Megabalcony:

This was fantastic and was where we spent many of our mornings having room service breakfast and evening cocktails on our mega balcony together.

Celvin from Jamaica was our stateroom attendant and he was great! Brought us ice every day without us asking, kept the room tidy and clean. Fun towel animals!

Anything we asked, he fulfilled with a smile. We were all pleased with him. My parents noted they thought the rooms were much smaller than equivalent rooms on princess, and upon research, they were smaller by approximately 46 sq ft. However, I thought RCCL rooms were more efficiently laid out, as on Princess so much room was given to the closet and bathroom, there was never a couch or seating area other than potentially one chair in the standard balcony stateroom. Whereas with the Oasis stateroom we had a couch and desk which was nice. I liked deck 9, we were 1 floor up from Central Park which made runs to Park Café for their focaccia egg cheese and arugula breakfast sandwiches super easy.

Also, I should note that Christmas decorations started going up on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (Thursday), and they were very pretty!

Boardwalk:

Central Park at Night:

FOOD:

I had made MTD dinner reservations for between 6 and 6:30pm every evening for our family. One person in my family has Celiac disease, and just a hint of cross contamination can send her running for the bathroom and ill for quite a while. Our wait staff Greggory and Poppi were WONDERFUL, they knew exactly what Celiac disease was without having to explain it, they triple checked everything on the menu to make sure it didn’t contain gluten even if it was noted as gluten free on the menu, Greggory stated that for Celiac some of it was still not completely gluten free or might have some cross contamination that could make her ill. My family member would order her celiac dinners the night before, so they were prepared in a special portion of the kitchen where cross contamination would not be a problem. Really, Greggory and Poppi bent over backwards for her, getting her anything she wanted, special making a flourless chocolate dessert served on night 3, for the rest of the cruise as she was obsessed with it. Dinner was wonderful. Breakfast on the other hand was a bit harder. She would order her gluten free breakfasts the night before, but often when she went down to American Icon for breakfast, the wait staff at breakfast wouldn’t know what she was talking about when she ordered a gluten free celiac breakfast she ordered the night before, or it would take an hour or more to arrive. It was odd how dinner with Greggory and Poppi ran so smoothly, yet breakfast seemed so disorganized. Overall I thought the MDR dinners were good to very good, with highlights being the horseradish crusted salmon, roasted duck, rack of Lamb, lasagna al forno, sticky bread and butter pudding, tiramisu, dessert sampler (with the coveted royal flourless chocolate cake my celiac family member was obsessed with). Thanksgiving dinner had a traditional turkey (real turkey, I saw a previous review who thought it wasn’t real turkey, which is just odd), I had ham filled with an apple stuffing which was quite good as well. Pumpkin cheese cake and pecan pie were also good. Overall it was a very nice Thanksgiving meal, and the fact that nobody in our family had to prepare it or clean it up, was extra special!

Greggory and Poppi

We also dined at Park Café (roast beef sandwiches were just as good as advertised, although we did have to request the mustard horseradish relish, as we didn’t know we had to request it the first time). I never saw a line at Park Café, not even on embarkation, when we arrived around 2pm, I was expecting a huge line and there was none perhaps that was earlier closer to noon.

I only dined at the Windjammer one morning. It was larger than I was expecting given how many times I’d read on CC of how small it was. It was huge. It was busy (before 8am), but we easily found many open tables with ocean views. The food I thought was pretty mediocre, although my family member with celiac appreciated their gluten free station. I liked how the windjammer was laid out in different stations rather than just 1 forever long buffet line. Much easier to jump in, grab what you want, and move on. My family thought the buffet food on Princess was better, but liked the layout of the windjammer better.

My favorite breakfast was honestly just ordering room service the night before, and grabbing those park café focaccia breakfast sandwiches and enjoying a leisurely breakfast on our balcony.

Little croissant sandwiches and cheesecake lollipops from Café Promenade were good. We found we liked the coffee at Park Café the best, as it seemed to be brewed the strongest.

My most disappointing meal of the week was a lunch at the solarium bistro. Honestly everything tasted like it was mushy and just poured out of a can. It was just so bland and tasteless. I assume dinner is better since it’s a specialty restaurant at night, but my lunch experience was so disappointing I had no desire to check it out.

We had lunch at Sabor our last sea day, and the dinner sampler for $20 is more food than 2 people could possibly manage to eat. It was enormous, and very good. It included a dessert “box”, I was thinking a small little box of desserts, and not the trey of 6 different desserts we were given. Good lord that is a lot of food!

Activities:

We rock wall climbed several times, rode the flowrider several times, zip lined the Oasis and the Dragons Breath on Labadee, ice skated, and ran the track for many miles. For those of us in my family who like to be physically active, the Oasis was WONDERFUL. There was so much to do! I felt like we were running around trying to fit it all in. I know my parents didn’t want to do any of those things, but they seemed to enjoy watching people (and us) wipe out on the flowrider. Toward the end of the week, my aunt who wouldn’t stop comparing every nit-picky thing to Princess, admitted that Oasis was a much better ship for young people than Princess.

My hubby on the flowrider!

Shows:

I made reservations for our entire family of 10 to attend all the shows, even though only 3 of us made it to all the shows. I thought the level of entertainment on the Oasis was amazing! The Oasis of dreams was fantastic, the comedians were hilarious, Come Fly With Us, Frozen in Time were all amazing! The level of talent really surprised me, I was thinking prior to the cruise, the shows will be good “for a cruise ship”, when in actuality the shows were really just down right Great! No qualifiers needed. I really expected to like CATS, I love Broadway shows, and we have season tickets and see 6-8 Broadway touring shows (mostly musicals) at the Fox Theater in Atlanta every year. I read up on the plot of CATS as was recommended on CC to understand the plot prior to watching, the plot didn’t seem to make much sense but I thought it would come together in the show. The singing, the stage, the production, the dancing were all FANTASTIC. RCCL did a wonderful job putting on a wonderful production of CATS. That said, the reason nobody can stay awake for this show despite the phenomenal dancing, singing, and stage production, is there is almost zero storyline. It’s really just a bunch of poems mashed together with only the slightest weakest thread of a storyline trying to tie them together. It’s really the weakest storyline of a musical I’ve ever seen. I’m glad I saw it on Oasis, because if I had paid $150/seat for it like back home, I would have been irritated. It’s funny, because my husband and I loved Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar and Phantom of the Opera. But both of those musicals have flushed out storylines, whereas CATS, really doesn’t. I’m glad I saw it. But now I also get why people have such a visceral reaction to it as well.

Come Fly with Me

CATS:

Dazzles:

PORTS:

We were on the western itinerary, which is of course Labadee, Falmouth and Cozumel. Initially, my family was against going to Haiti, but when I reassured everyone that the photos of Labadee looked lovely, and it got great reviews, and we wouldn’t have to tender in like grand Caymen or the Princess Cays, the family agreed to go. Labadee was a big hit with the family, especially those of us who did the zip line. It was such a great ride! Yes it’s expensive for just a 90 second ride, but it’s a hell of a ride, and an over ocean zip line that long is so unique. The rest of our day was spent at Columbus Cove under palm trees, drinking Labadoozies and swimming to cool off. I thought the staff were very friendly and nice. In particular Donald who helped us at the top of the Dragons Breath zipline was so sweet and helpful. TIP for Zipliners – I know you leave all your belongings at the lockers or with a family member at the bottom, but stuff a few dollars in your pocket, because the staff at the top of the zipline, who don’t come down with you, take some great photos of you and your family with the ocean and ship in the background, and you want to tip them, and then all your tip money is in the locker at the base of the zip line. We gave some tip money to Dan our zip line guide to give to Donald (in addition to his tip), but I don’t know if it ever got to him.

Labadee

Falmouth:

I booked an independent tour of both Dunns River Falls and the Irie Blue Hole with Liberty Tours. We met Ricardo (who I had corresponded with via email and phone calls prior) at the white tent behind the ship within the port boundaries where the independent tour guides all hang out, and he assigned our tourguide and driver Demar Lawrence who was great! Demar was funny, very informative, and so friendly and easy going! Prior to going, Ricardo had tried to warn us we didn’t need to do Dunns River Falls if we were doing the Blue Hole, as we would like the Blue Hole so much better. However my brother “HAD” to do Dunns River Falls, as his friends who had been to Jamaica prior all told him it was a MUST DO. So I insisted with do both Dunns River Falls AND the Blue Hole. I had done Dunns River Falls before, and it was what I remembered, fun, splashy, pretty and insanely crowded. Blue Hole was a beautiful piece of paradise, and it was much less crouded and so much more fun! We got to jump off cliffs into blue lagoons, swing off ropes into pools, splash in waterfalls, it was so much more active and fun! Our Blue Hole Guide Alex was also great and took pictures of us. Unfortunately I couldn’t figure out the settings in the waterproof housing for my camera to get the shutter speed to be quick enough even though it was a little dark under all the tree and jungle canopy at the blue hole, so unfortunately a bunch of my photos are a little blurry. I figured it out on the way back to the ship of course when it was too late. We stopped and had lunch at Scotchies, the jerk chicken was good, the rice and beans were kind of bland till you added the hot sauce. I loved how on the hour drive back to Falmouth, Demar turned on the movie “Cool Runnings” to watch. I forgot how much I enjoyed that movie. :)

Cozumel:

My mother really wanted to see Tulum, and although I wanted to do an independent tour, when I started really looking at the logistics of getting from Cozumel to Tulum and back, I realized that there was a gap in the afternoon where the ferries seemed to either not run or those runs were not available to the public as they are bought out by the cruise ships, and those were the critical time periods where we would need to ferry back. So we booked the Tulum Ruins and Beach Break tour directly through RCCL. Of everything we did, this tour was the biggest disappointment. First off, the seas were rough, so the ferry ride from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen ended up being the vomit ferry from hell. It was contagious, once one person started throwing up, it felt like everyone started throwing up, there was vomit on the walls, the floors, the seats, it was everywhere, and so gross. The smell started to make me ill, I ended up putting a tube of sunscreen in my beach towel and held it to my nose and just smelled sunscreen to keep from getting sick myself (I don’t get sea sick, but the smell will turn my stomach). I felt bad for the ferry workers who were running all over the boat trying to clean up all the vomit. We finally got to Playa del Carmen, but the seas were so rough the ferry captain had trouble docking, and then it took a solid 40 minutes just to get everyone off the boat, because the seas were so rough the gangway was rocking and rolling and sliding with the boat. We all finally got off, got in our respective lines, and were led to buses across the street behind some buildings. We were all happy to be on dry land, and headed to Tulum, or so we thought. I knew we were behind schedule (3 hours from getting off Oasis to getting on the bus in Playa del Carmen), but thought there was still plenty of time for Tulum. But then our Bus stopped at this horrible tacky tourist stop as a “bathroom break”. There was a bathroom on the bus, and there were bathrooms at Tulum, we didn’t need a 45 minute stop at a tacky tourist destination. I don’t need to buy Chinese made magnets in the shape of a sombrero. I wanted to see Tulum. We finally got to Tulum, and we had a 15 minute walk from the Bus to the actual ruins where our tickets were finally given to us. Once we got into the Tulum Park, our tour guide then led us up the hill away from all the Tulum structures, and talked for 40 minutes about Mayan life, not Tulum ruins, or the structures he had led us away from, but just general mayan life. At the end of the 40 minutes, he told us we had 20 minutes to explore Tulum and then we were all leaving on the bus. WHAT? I had 20 minutes to actually see Tulum? Seriously? You couldn’t even do a lap at a brisk walk in 20 minutes around Tulum, I tried. My whole family started getting really pissed. We wanted to see Tulum, it was the whole point of the trip, and I get that our tour may have been cut short due to the ferry ride, but we lost 45 minutes due to that awful “bathroom” break at the horrible tourist trap. And then we were racing off to this beach break where the water was too rough to swim. That 45 minutes could have been at the ruins and not at that awful tourist trap shop. We could have cut the beach break down since the surf conditions were so rough. Why cut down the time at the one thing we all went on the tour to see? And why was our 40 minute tour with a guide so far away from the structures in the Tulum compound? And why did our guide not discuss hardly at all any of the Mayan Ruins in front of us, no architecture or construction details. Just that it was a trading post, and most of the structures were limestone. That was it. That was the extent of the knowledge of the Mayan temples in front of us given by our guide. Anyway, we raced to lunch at this restaurant on the beach in Tulum, where the beach was covered in thick seaweed and the seas were very rough. We had a full 2 hours here. Why? I don’t know, I would have preferred more time in Tulum ruins. Our ferry ride back confirmed my initial suspicions, the afternoon ferries from playa del Carmen are fully booked by the cruise ships, the available ferry to the public was at 6pm and would have been too late to make the boat. Overall I’m glad I got a quick glimpse of Tulum, but overall, I wouldn’t do it again. I would wait till I’m staying in Mexico several nights to do Tulum, and then Chicheniza. It was too rushed, and frankly too poorly done for the price.

I got more relevent information off this sign in my 20 minutes in Tulum, than I did from our tour guide.

Service:

I’ve read countless threads on CC about how the service has gone down. This was a holiday sailing at capacity, and I had no trouble getting a drink from a bartender. Several times we were in the cantilevered hot tubs and bartenders came by and asked if we wanted drinks, and we ordered then. It was easy, service was friendly, and the frozen mojitos were divine (thanks Bob for the rec)! Our main dining room servers Greggory and Poppi were outstanding, best I’ve had on a cruise ship. Our stateroom attendant Celvin was great. Check in staff were so friendly. Honestly we didn’t run into one rude person all week. I don’t have a previous RCCL to compare it to, but we all had such a good experience with service all week. The only time I saw long lines, were for MTD for those who had not made reservations. Night 1 on deck 3 at American Icon, the line for MTD without reservations was out the door, through the elevator lobby and wrapping around. It was insane. We had reservations, so we didn't encounter that line, but I would not want to be stuck in that line.

Disembarkation:

I had booked a 9:50am flight home to Atlanta, which I know on CC was a huge no-no. But to be honest, I wasn’t worried. My husband is diamond with Delta, and there are flights every single hour to Atlanta, so if we missed it, I wasn’t worried. We got in line to do express self departure on the promenade at 6am. At 6:13am, the gangway opened and we were cleared to disembark. By 6:24am (11 minutes later), we were through border control and in a Taxi on our way to Ft Lauderdale airport. Arrived at Ft. Lauderdale airport at 6:38am, and checked in with Delta to see if we could get on an earlier flight, maybe the 8:30am flight? Delta said we could still make the 7:45am flight as we had 65 minutes to take off so we could still check our bags! YES! So at 7:45am, we took off from Ft Lauderdale airport, by 9:15am, we landed in Atlanta, thanks to priority checked tags on our luggage, we had our luggage, got our UBER and by 10am were unlocking the door to our house and welcomed home by a herd of happy doggies. Since we got home earlier than we expected, and it was college rival Saturday, and we have season tickets, we made the noon kick off to our college football game downtown. We lost, but still, I made kick off for a noon football game in Atlanta the day I stepped off a cruise ship in Ft. Lauderdale, this still blows my mind!!!

Final Thoughts:

My entire family had a great time. My Mom and Dad realize now that Royal maybe a better fit for when the whole family cruises, although when they cruise by themselves, I think they will go back to Princess for the “serenity”. We were all impressed with how well Royal handled the celiac issues in my family. That’s a huge plus in their favor. Oasis is a beautiful ship and we’re already looking at booking another thanksgiving cruise, possibly on the Harmony. Thanks to Cruise Critic for all the wonderful bits of information. I felt like a pro with my magnet hooks, shoe organizer for the bathroom door, door magnets, knowing how to access the secret viewing deck on deck 14, even though I had not cruised in 8 years and never on Royal Caribbean before. This cruise changed my husband’s mind about cruising, he was never terribly fond of cruising prior (only on Princess before this cruise), he felt it was a retired person’s vacation, and not for younger active folks. Now, he likes the idea of cruising, and he told me he sees no reason to cruise any other line but Royal.

Sunset from ship

Ship on Cozumel:

Great review. Sounds like you all had such a wonderful time. How special you could all travel together.

Great review

Great Review! Fabulous pictures too! We love the Oasis and last May were on the Allure in the Med .... they are both wonderful ships! So glad you had a good time. We've not tried Princess yet ... every time we look, seems we end up with Royal Caribbean! One of these days maybe! Thank you for taking the time to share all you did ... I enjoyed it. :)

Awesome review, we are doing the same thing in January, We have 13 of us family members:D

Thanks for the review. Any chance you can post the cruise compass?

Great review! We will be on the Oasis this Saturday with a group of 15, and are looking forward to having a great time, with something for everyone to make them a happy cruiser!!:D

Keith

Thanks for the review. Any chance you can post the cruise compass?

I did saved the cruise compasses, have not scanned them in yet. Hope to do so later today and will post them.

Ahhhhh Stef....what a WONDERFUL review. Brings back such great memories. You put such a human twist to it along with such amazing pictures.

I also loved the way you compared Princess and RCCL without bashing either one of them.....just pointed out differences in the two.

It was soooooo refreshing to read this. GREAT JOB and hope to see you on the HARMONY in the future. :):):)

I did saved the cruise compasses, have not scanned them in yet. Hope to do so later today and will post them.

Thanks!

Great review. Sounds like you all had such a wonderful time. How special you could all travel together.

We did really have a great time, and it is so special when our family can get together for a vacation. It happens much less than we would like, it seems there is always something getting in the way.

We've not tried Princess yet ... every time we look, seems we end up with Royal Caribbean! One of these days maybe! Thank you for taking the time to share all you did ... I enjoyed it. :)

Glad you enjoyed it! Princess puts out a good product, its just less broad in activities than the Oasis. But for cruisers who want less children and young families on their ship, cheaper drinks and drink packages, and a classy cruise experience without all the extras like rockwalls, flowriders, ice skating and zips, Princess does a very good job.

GREAT review. I agree, it is refreshing to see a wholly objective review. Also, great shots to accompany it.

Killer job on getting back to ATL, too. Impressive.

Great review. Thank you for sharing. :)

Thanks for sharing. Loved your pictures