harryfat1

Since we had time today being a sea day, no need to wake up the family too early, I walked around deck 5 after finishing part 1 of the breakfast Saw a ship far out on the horizon (see red arrow) and zoomed in. I assume that was the Carnival Horizon docked next to us in Aruba yesterday as they are now heading up north as well

Got my regular chocolate croissant and coffee but you can get other types of croissants with meat and eggs as well

Open, Open, Open…. I was the first person in line waiting for the magical 7 AM opening While in line, I noticed there were words on top of the café. Never paid attention to it until I was bored standing there. So for those who will be sailing on the Odyssey, look up at the cafe. Are the words on all the Q-class ships?

Few random pictures of decks 4 and 5 before going to my favorite café 270 to be the first person in line at 6:57 to wait for them to open You only see these types of stairs on cruise ships

The MDR wasn't opened yet at 6:55 AM as I walked up to the walled flowers as I wanted to take a video to show the moving flowers. I found out that the flowers are motion activated as there was some sensor near the front of the entrance and unless you trigger it, the flowers are still. Look carefully at the first couple of seconds of the first video as the flowers were still until I triggered the sensor by walking up to the path 20231229_065117.mp4 20231229_065308.mp4

Nobody was visiting the crazy aunt before 7 AM A couple of people ahead of me at Guest Services early in the morning. So I talked to the guy at the far right and explained to him that I wanted a later luggage tag as we were not in a hurry to get off the ship and besides our tags are different than our kids. The lazy-ass bugger didn’t want to give me new tags. He just said we could get off whenever and after our time slots were called and we could just go to different stations to get our luggage. Which was what we didn’t want as we wanted everyone’s luggage to be in the same section. I didn’t do the passenger survey or else I would have given him a 2 out of 10 for bad service as how hard is it to just give me new tags? So instead of getting new tags, since they issued 2 tags per passenger, I just used the extra tags from the boy’s group and attached them to ours luggage instead

Instead of going to the secret door down to deck 5, I went the regular route as I needed to go to Guest Services to talk to them about switching luggage tags to be at a later time as we have a late flight out of FLL on day 9. Stopped by Wonderland. For those unfamiliar with this restaurant, it’s themed after Alice in Wonderland and it’s a specialty restaurant. They don’t serve lunch or else I would have opted to dine here. The food is odd and different and it would provide enough of a different experience that we crave. The family wanted to dine here as we all watched the Youtube videos and it was different than your same old, same old meals but at $55/pp for dinner, CFKACD passed on it and instead opted for 2 lunches ($18 and $13) and still save money. I also heard that Wonderland on the Odyssey didn’t have Mad Hatter as in other ships and that was supposed to be a big part of the character-related dining experience. So maybe we will wait for an RCI ship that has the Mad Hatter before trying it. Not a very big venue on the Odyssey You see "the finger" as well as the Bionic Bar on the other side of the ship Time to queue up the Jefferson Airplane song:

Day 6 – Sea Day 6:40 in the morning. Actually, it was 7:40 on the old time but with the time zone difference, we gained an hour so in theory, we got back the extra hour of sleep we lost the other day. Nobody was in the hallway at that time of the morning.

Here’s the last picture for the night, at 11:18, it’s 27 degrees Celsius or 81 degrees Fahrenheit as the captain is putting “the pedal to the metal” is leaving Aruba at 20.1 knots. I guess the earlier he leaves town, the slower the ship can travel and save the company a few dollars in fuel as higher speed is likely less economical in terms of fuel usage. We didn’t walk near as much in Aruba as in Curacao as we were on the bus tour and the port area wasn’t interesting enough to keep us engaged for a long period. Oh, yeah, changing the clock back one hour tonight Time to queue up a song about time This concludes day 5 of the trip report. ++++++++++ As always, thanks for reading along. 3 more days left on this cruise report and 2 of which are sea days where we don’t do much so they should be much shorter. The only detour we might take is that RCCL should be issuing their 10-K report sometime next week. Maybe next weekend we might have the dreaded numbers discussion.... ++++++++++++

Seaplex at 11 PM. All the structures used for the laser tag have been deflated Well, nothing else was happening so we decided to call it a night since we had been getting up early the past couple of days for tours. Time to go back to the cabin and rest Got back to the cabin and saw they had issued us luggage tags to get off the ship. Since I didn’t go on their handy dandy app to tell them about flight info, they assigned us a group number earlier than I wanted. Which is no big deal but then they assigned the boys one group number and my wife and I another group number. I rather have all our luggage together, regardless of the number. Arrr, need to pay a visit to the dreaded guest services tomorrow morning.

Very quiet and colorful at the back of the ship. The skypad can be seen far away at night as its pink/reddish color stands out You can barely see Aruba at 10:30 in the background

We were here at the back of the ship trying to take pictures of the stars with mixed results. That is supposed to be a star But at least the moon shot is still decent as you can see the moon easily from above

Meanwhile, we were at the pool deck waiting for the party to start at 10

As the ship was sailing away at 10 PM, they had a sailaway dance party on the pool deck so we went up there to check it out. I think everyone was already aboard way before 10 PM as this picture was taken at 10:15 and we were already pretty far away from Aruba so the captain must have cast off early with everyone already back onboard before 10. I didn’t see too many bars/drinking establishments near the cruise terminal so there’s not much reason for people to miss a 9:30 PM all-board time

So for tonight, there was NO entertainment scheduled by the ship at the main theater. Somewhat surprising as that was our nightly entertainment venue. Maybe they assumed people would be off the ship late since we don't depart until 10 PM so no need to set up entertainment if people are not coming. OK, guess we will have to entertain ourselves. DIY time...

After dinner, we paid a quick visit to the uncle in prison (aka shipboard photographers) as they were set up just outside of the MDR walkway past the colorful flowers. Since today’s theme was Caribbean night, the backdrop is beach-like. Not sure the cruiser that asked about the background is still around but there’s another backdrop. Carnival used to have props and 3-dimensional prop displays with their photo shoot. RCI is pretty boring with just the basic fake background. Carnival used to have clothes like wild west bank robbers you can dress up in props to make their pictures look more interesting. Will see what they have come this December as it’s been over 10 years since we have sailed with them

As it was a hot day walking around the island earlier that day, I opted for 2 scoops of “ice cream” (RCI version of ice cream/milk) as something cold for dessert. It may not taste like the ice cream back home but at least it’s cold and sweet..

Yeah, I guess Aruba’s main tourist business is still with the land-based tourists at the hotel zone with activities geared at that part of the island. The major cruise lines only started going down to the ABC islands from Florida the past few years as they built more ships, they needed to establish new itineraries to bring back repeat cruisers. So the cruise business is more of a newcomer relative to the land-based hotel business. The cruise terminal area wasn’t very exciting at nighttime. I saw videos of the free trolley, but I heard the complaint was that they cut short the trolley route and it wasn’t as good as before. By the time we made it outside, the trolley was probably done for the day by 6 PM. I was just hoping for more activities since there were 3 ships in port that day more people would be out and shops would open longer.

Oh, yeah, we came here to eat

I prefer the Voyager/Freedom/Oasis class MDR with a staircase where I can see the dancing workers. Here was the Navigator back in August: 20230810_205607.mp4 Pay particular attention to Mr. Washy-Washy in the front middle with the bright color shirt. The dude is ALL INTO IT... In comparing the 2 ships, I would definitely say the Navigator crew is much more into dancing than the Odyssey crew 20230809_205339.mp4

20231227_203320.mp4

Here's my wife taking a picture of me shooting a video of the dancing waiters Not my best video as I lost control of the phone for a bit but you get the vibe from it 20231227_202910.mp4

In the middle of the dining, they had the waiters do the Macarena Dance I know some people on CC hate these interruptions, but I strongly disagree as I love it as it provides a photo op and it’s something you can only get from a cruise. How often do you see dancing waiters on a regular dining establishment back home? In my opinion, this is what makes cruising so special Here is where I miss the MDR setup of Voyager/Freedom/Oasia class where they have two-story stairs and they have waiters sing and dance in the middle. With the Odyssey set up, there’s no really one center piece so you don’t know where to look. You see people waving their napkins Our waiter from Ukraine is dancing (or trying to). Other guests are joining them as well so it's not just crazy old me who like this stuff