Pratique

Empty your pockets, shoes stay on. They will wand you if any metal is detected such as jewelry.

It could be that the parent company RCG is leasing the island to the cruise line subsidiary RCI. I don't know but it doesn't make a practical difference, just a legal one.

Wikipedia still says the island is leased but there is no source for this. This is a quick read Kindle book about the history of the island, worth $3.49 if you're interested and free if you have KindleUnlimited. https://www.amazon.com/Little-Stirrup-became-Caribbeans-private-ebook/dp/B0BXDJJHWX Neil Ruzic was a scientist who purchased the island with the intent of building a research station, but encountered too much difficulty obtaining permits from the government, so the island went undeveloped. Ruzic saw how the adjacent island was being used by NCL for tourism and established a deal with Eastern Cruise Lines. In 1983 he agreed to let cruise passengers onto the island for $10 a person. Eastern was absorbed by Admiral which was absorbed by Royal Caribbean. Ruzic sold most of the island (except five acres) to Admiral in 1985 giving Ruzic the right to "'roam' the whole island." In 2016 the Ruzic family sold the remaining part of the island to Royal.

I’ve stuck my head in both casinos on Oasis several times this week and I see lots of empty tables with bored dealers in the main casino but it’s been busier in the non smoking one. FWIW.

Consistently getting 9.5 down and 3.7 up on Oasis around the ship. Just had an hour long Teams call with several short dropouts. It’s useable if the other participants are patient with it.

One of the CocoCay tram attendants said today was the first good day in a long time. I guess we got lucky the weather held out. Yesterday they had the same thunderstorms that passed over Nassau and they had to shut everything down early. As an aside I scraped my foot on a rock out in the water and paid a visit to first aid at Chill Beach to get patched up. She took good care of me.

Both of those parks are about 15-20 minutes closer to PC and there is less distance to cover once you arrive. With Disney they drop you at the TTC and then you need to make your way to your destination using something other than your feet. All of these factors increase transit time meaning less play time. It’s doable but expectations need to be calibrated.

Maybe if you hustle. It took us more like 10 minutes leisurely walk. It was too hot to hustle.

Breakfast in Windjammer has been decent at least for the basic run of the mill offerings. Nothing exciting it’s just breakfast.

Yes they are still on the ship.

Royal seemed to abandon the exterior aesthetic when they gave in and added water slides to their ships. I suppose relatively few people care much about how the ship looks from afar. But I say the same about automotive design. Cars have gotten pretty ugly but they seem to sell just fine Pontiac Aztec being a notable exception. I’m having a difficult time getting excited about Icon. I’m sure it will be a hit though.

My earlier recommendation to avoid the Disney excursion stands unless you really understand what you’re getting into. We are on Oasis out of Cape Liberty and today took the bus to WDW from Port Canaveral knowing full well what to expect. And it went pretty much as expected. The ship arrived at 1:00 and the gangway opened at 1:30. The tour bus left at 2:15 and arrived at the TTC at 3:20 with some usual I-4 traffic that is as bad as it was when I first lived there 33 years ago. Walked to the Poly and waited 15 minutes for the Disney bus. The bus then stops at the Grand Floridian and it took almost half an hour to get to Disney Springs including a short delay unloading a wheelchair guest from the bus. It’s a long ride with long traffic signals on the dedicated bus lanes. So we got there at about 4:25 and had to be back to the bus by 7:00 because for some reason all aboard was at 8:30 (the original itinerary had us departing at 10:00 instead of 9:00 which cut an hour off the excursion). We ate dinner at STK Orlando which was wicked expensive but very good although there was a DJ blasting music so table conversation was out of the question. Recommended for the food but not for the price or the noise level at 4:30 pm on a Sunday afternoon setting off the environmental noise alert on my Apple Watch. We got to the bus stop at Disney Springs at 6:15 and the bus to the Poly left at 6:35. We got back to the tour bus at 7:02 so technically we were two minutes late but we waited for stragglers who arrived at 7:15. With traffic and torrential rain we got back to the ship at 8:35 five minutes after all aboard. They held us in the terminal for 10 minutes waiting for the rain to ease up but still got soaked running to the gangway. Not surprisingly a few folks were anxious about getting back late and worried that the ship would leave without us. I just put my AirPods on and enjoyed the ride. So all in all we had an hour and 45 minutes at Disney Springs but we were gone for six hours and 15 minutes. Do the math and make the call but you have been warned. Even under the best conditions you’ll only have a few hours at Disney. It’s 120 miles round trip and that’s not going to change.

FWIW we went to Portside BBQ last night (formal night) and basically had the entire place to ourselves. With live entertainment. It was great.

Thanks for this review, very nicely written. Just curious why you chose to sail out of New York instead of Florida or Texas. We chose Oasis out of Cape Liberty because we can avoid flying there and we don’t really care where the ship sails (just get me on the water and I’m good). But the itinerary is not great and if we had to fly to the port then I probably wouldn’t choose this itinerary especially with the short stop in Florida.

One must have low expectations and then use the booze to lower them even more.

I hear you. At home when my wife asks me what to get for lunch I always say Windjammer and she rolls her eyes.

Yes but why would Royal want to build smaller ships if the big ones are doing so well?

Your neighbors probably didn’t have enough to drink.

Okay then, do kids and multigenerational families want a smaller ship? Where is the market for Royal to do that and be distinctive from NCL etc.?

Why wouldn’t they just use Celebrity as the platform for this? It seems more logical to me.

Maybe I’m not thinking creatively enough but I wonder how they could get a mega ship experience in a midsize ship. Or if that even makes sense? These ships with the outdoor venues really only work in warm climates and quite frankly people who prefer a smaller ship don’t like the mega ship experience.

They are still rebuilding from the pandemic shutdown. I think they lost a lot of experienced folks. Whatever the reason this guy with 10 years experience seemed concerned.

We are onboard with you and completely concur on the selection at Windjammer, which is our preference for lunch. Lackluster is a good description. As usual the crew are trying to encourage people to go to other lunch venues including of course the up-charge ones. Maybe it's a conspiracy, make the food lackluster to get us to spend more on the specialty food lol. But otherwise the crew have been excellent so far. Although the Captain's jokes are pretty weak. 🙂 We only checked one bag at the curb and by 5:30 our stateroom attendant said he couldn't find it anywhere including Security, so he sent me down to Guest Services where they told me bags were delayed due to the rain. Our attendant said they were delayed due to the short turnaround and early departure. Then my wife calls me and says the bag arrived. The cabin tag fell off and they figured it out from the name on the other tag on the bag. Lesson learned is to never staple the paper tag to the bag. I need to get those plastic holders.

IMHO Royal is not interested in the small cruise ship market. They will leave that to lines like Margaritaville at Sea. Royal is shooting for the moon on the megaships and the handful of itineraries that they can sail at full capacity year round. Last night we were chatting with our server onboard Oasis who has been with Royal for 10 years. He said that he is concerned about how Royal is going to staff all of these new megaships with two to three thousand-plus crew per sailing. He thinks they need at least 50% experienced staff on a given sailing to meet the minimum service levels, so they will need to poach crew from other ships while they train up the new recruits. I could sense the apprehension in his voice about how well that is (or isn't) going to turn out. Time will tell whether Royal can pull it off and what the end result will be for the rest of us.

Following this thread b/c I am getting on this cruise this Friday. I will be bringing an Apple Watch for the first time and it appears that using indoor workouts instead of outdoor workouts will avoid the skewing caused by GPS when the ship is moving. I will give it a try.