harryfat1

Anyway, I can go on another old man tirade of “Café Promenade/Esplanade used to have so much better food back 10 years ago when I was cruising” but nobody cares… Short video clip to show the busy vibe of the Espeande./Promenade area 20231223_150041.mp4

Also checked out the Café Promenade. Some repeat of desserts and sandwiches from WIndjammer upstairs as well as Cafe 270 Now here’s a question that’s like “What is the meaning of life?” in significance– if RCI renamed the main shopping area to be Royal Esplanade instead of Royal Promenade, shouldn’t the café be renamed to Café Esplanade instead of Café Promenade? That question kept me awake the entire 8 nights of the cruise as I tossed and turned in my bed pondering why didn’t they change the name. Either that or it was the extra 2 desserts I ate at dinner that was causing my indigestion and prevented me from falling asleep…🤪

So we went back to the Royal Esplanade (Promenade) and checked out the Christmas tree as it’s a Holiday cruise after all.

Lots of cruisers standing in line waiting to talk to the dining room staff as they have dining table/time issues. 20231223_145303.mp4 As the people need help with their dining situation, here's another Beatles song: Oh, yeah, now is a good time to mention that RCI must have a memo out to ALL the dining room and sales workers to force all of them to wear Santa hats. They wore them the entire cruise, even after Christmas so you will see lots of workers with Santa hats.

So we were table 461 per our set sail pass so we knew it was on regular seating on deck 4. Just had to look for it with all the numbers on the table. And we found our table near the back….along with a whole bunch of other tables. Our table is the last 4 seats here along with all the others close by When we cruised with the inlaws, we had a table for 6 on the Voyager/Freedom/Oasis class and those were always big round tables where we had space to stretch out. The Odyssey had a lot more of these smaller tables by cruisers sitting side by side with not much privacy/space in between. Could this be due to a lack of space from a smaller dining space? I didn’t think about this but after coming home and looking at the pictures, while the open floor concept for deck 4 looks cool, I wonder how many more tables could have fit in the open space? Meaning if they just extended deck 4 MDR to fill the space similar to deck 3 below, that would have created at least a couple hundred more seats, and maybe the other tables wouldn’t be as cramped. What would it be if they closed out the dining area where 2 dining rooms stack on top of each other? We would utilize all the space in the middle. It wouldn't look nice or dramatic but we would have more space. So it was a tradeoff of looking "wow" versus space. Guess which route RCI chose? I’ll get on my soapbox and go on a long spiel on the advantages of set dining when we get there later on. For now, mission accomplished as we found out where our table was. Long tables for the big holiday gatherings

A quick note before I proceed with the nightly photo upload. I know there have been some differences of opinion today. I hope we all respect the different approaches utilized while cruising and do not have a need to point out the differences as that just creates unnecessary confrontation. If there’s a mistake in facts like if I said My Time Dining starts at 5:30 but in fact, it starts at 6:30, then please by all means, point it out as we don’t want to confuse future cruisers reading this and plan things based on the wrong info. But if it’s just a matter of matter of opinions and preferences, just let it be. I’m writing this trip report as a guide to help newbie cruisers to the Odyssey/Quantum Class ships as I was new to it just a month ago so I try to cram as much info/pictures as possible to help the next group as a ”pay it forward” as I will be reading the Carnival reviews from other cruisers for my December cruise. I know outside of this thread, people here at CC are not always kind to each other if they don’t like what someone has posted. Hopefully, we will be more friendly toward each other in the next month as almost 2 weeks into this and I’m still on day 1 so we will be with each other for a while hopefully we can have fun and learn from each other the rest of this trip report… Queue up the Beatles Song:

Thanks for reading along. Oh, very nice. Your cruise is just around the corner. Have you taken the luggage out yet or you are almost done packing? This is the most exciting time as you get your luggage tag ready after watching Mark’s video on his paper-saving technique to get your luggage tag ready. As for iFly, I assume the weight limit is just because they can’t safely blow enough air to lift someone if they are over the limit. It’s the corporate lawyers' CYA time in case there are lawsuits from injury. My older son is like 40+ pounds bigger than my younger son and the older one couldn’t get nearly as much lift in the air as the younger one inside the tube. They weigh each person's preflight so they know how much air to crank out to safely lift each person up in the air. The bigger you are, the more air is needed.

I think my humor is too subtle as I thought that having an emoji with a tilted head and a tongue out would mean I wasn’t serious in my comment. However, if I do need to round up multiple tablets, it wouldn’t be a hard task as my wife and boys have tablets with them on the cruise to use at the hotel pre cruise as well as for the 6.5-hour long flight back to CA after the cruise. I didn’t bring my tablet. We also have some old tablets back home collecting dust after we upgraded to the newer models. On top of that, I have a bunch of young nieces and nephews that I’m sure have older tablets sitting at home not being utilized. I can borrow those with the promise that Uncle Harry won’t play with their Candy Crush or Purple Dragon Merging games for a week.🤪 (Note the tongue emoji in case anyone attacks me with a new post saying I'm a bad person in stealing little girls’ tablets just to save money...)

You are welcome. The whole point of writing this trip report is to share my experience with future cruisers. Hopefully, you and others who will be sailing on the Odyssey or her sister ships will be on the lookout to book these time slots ASAP. As you can see, I’m not the only person concerned with not being able to secure a slot. The FOMO syndrome is strong with many as we all paid thousands of dollars for our cruises and we all want to reap the benefits as much as possible.

Huh. I’m sorry if I gave the impression the interiors of our 2 cabins are different. They are symmetrically identical as you can see from this picture. What I meant to say was the boys had a slightly larger balcony area as there’s a slant to it. But I wasn't going to switch out cabins just based on that since we opened the balconies and we just walked to each side of the balcony easily. Originally we booked 3 cabins all together – 6284/6286/6288 when the in-laws were going to sail with us but they had to cancel so we only had 2 cabins together or else we would had 3 balconies opened. I knew from the deck plan that the boys would have a bigger outside balcony as you can see it starts to jet out but figured it didn’t matter who sleeps where. As I type this, I realize I never sat outside on the balcony chairs even once during the 8-day cruise. I went out and took many pictures of the area but I don’t think I think I ever sat there. We are not balcony/Caribbean heat type as our cruise was either too windy in the beginning or too hot in the middle and too rainy at the end. Whereas we used the balcony much more in Alaska on the Princess cruise, especially during the 2 glacier days.

Is this luggage staging thing a fleetwide system that they implemented recently? I didn’t see this back on the Navigator in August. We waited until 3 something and nobody delivered a thing so we DIY it and grabbed our own luggage as it was less than 30 feet down the hall. As for luggage tag trimming – are we going to see another YouTube video from you on how to trim the tags, so they fit the RCI holders? Saves them money from buying new tag holders that fit the Carnival sizes. I would need to watch the video myself to learn how to cut. Remember you need the cash inflow from these YouTube videos to pay for that 1 piece of paper and the toner ink…🤪

Mark, I think you and I have the same brand of USB hub from Amazon. Here is my picture from the cruise. I found the USB pictures I referenced the other day. It was buried down on day 8 when I was ready to pack the cables to go home and I realized I forgot to take pictures of the hub and cables that I wanted to point out in the trip report. For those unfamiliar with what we have been talking about: Type A – the old-school USB cables. I’m sure you have many of these at home but they are being phased out with the newer USB C types. They are still very common and the plug stands on the Odyssey fit these Type C – newer technology. Charges the devices faster but won’t fit the RCI plugs and from Mark’s post, the newer ships like Princess are already moving onto this new technology. Will see what Icon’s cabins have for USB plugs. I’m sure there will be some upset people going onboard the newer ships and finding they can’t plug in directly with their older cables. The safest thing to do is buy a USB hub like the one's Mark and I have (about $30 from Amazon) and you are covered with both technologies since the hub will take both types of cables and the cruise ships allows their use

Another difference of the “Ultra” class is they combined all the different restaurants and formed one large MDR. Years ago, when they designed the Quantum class ships, RCI had this “brilliant idea” of thinking people would want dynamic dining where they would go to different restaurants nightly with different themes instead of just one constant restaurant. Well, many people (myself included) hated the idea and it never really took off as RCI had wanted but by then, they had already built the separate restaurants for the Quantum class ships so those ships have different MDR designs compared to the “Ultra” which scrapped the individual restaurant concept and unified them into one. I have always liked how RCI designed their MDRs on the Voyager/Freedom/Oasis-class ships. Big and grand and has lots of open space. The Odyssey isn’t as big and grand given the space limitation, but it still looks nice and very different with an opening on deck 5 where any passerby can look down and watch people eat their meals.

At around 2:45, we remembered that we needed to go to the MDR to check out where our table was. So we made it down to deck 4 below. A lot of people are in line trying to talk to the MDR staff to get their dining arrangements squared away.

That’s Ricky the cruise director talking on the screen. He’s a riot. I believe my boys think he’s the cruise director they have ever sailed with. You can see people are relaxing around the 270 area so we weren’t alone in appreciating the area.

A few more pictures and then we move on from 270. From the Aft of the ship at 270 looking at Disney and Princess ship. Trivial info for the Star Wars fans - if you are from the Bay Area and take the subway (BART), sometimes the train operator will point out the cranes from the docks in Oakland as being the inspiration to George Lucas in creating the Walker Tanks from the Star Wars movies since he is from the Bay Area.

It's a luck of the draw on what cabin stewards we get. We just drew the short straw on this cruise.

Yeah, many cruise workers leave the profession after a while as it's a grueling profession. Especially with the cruise industry keeps building new and bigger ships, they need to hire more competent workers annually. Not sure if they can recruit/train/retain enough of them.

For those who didn’t buy a drinks package pre-cruise, you can still get one on board in the beginning with a bit of discount but the pricing online pre-cruise is better than what you can get onboard. This applies to all the packages I know of like the dining or photo package. Cheaper to get them online pre-cruise. Especially if you get them during special Black Friday sales

Oh, hey, what do you know? We have more 270 pictures to see. These were taken by my wife as she loves these panoramic shots. What do you mean you are tired of 270 pictures? It's only day 1 out of day 8....

There’s a Princess ship as well as a Disney ship docked to the back of us. Like I said, I love seeing all the cruise ships in port. For all the line fans (you know who you are): One interesting thing I noticed was that Terminal 18 had the lines tied way on the back about 100 feet away from the edge. I have never seen it being tied that far inland. They bypass a closer anchor near the water in favor of the one further back. Does anyone know the advantages of doing it this way?

So we grabbed some tea and coffee and just sat in the 270 area to admire the area. For me, this is my favorite part of the ship. Others may prefer solarium or the pool deck but for the way I cruise, this is my area. You will see ad nauseam amount of pictures from me on this area – front/side/back/top/bottom views. If I could take a picture of 270 standing outside the window, I would have… You can walk to the back to see the very tall floor-to-ceiling window and admire the view at the back of the ship.

The cafe had premade salads also. My wife got some later on in the cruise

So café 270 near the 270 area in the back is similar to café Promenade on the other RCI ships in providing snacks and drinks (paid and complimentary) but it’s better than that as it has more offerings than the café Promenade and salads as well as sandwiches Coffee menu if you want to buy the special coffee

Pre-cruise, I thought I could get to the backdoor of 270 on deck 6 via a small opening (highlighted below in purple) So we walked outside to the hallway and headed to the back and saw NO entrance. Eh? WTH? Did they seal off the entrance? No idea as we walked ALL the way around like dummies in search of the entrance that wasn’t there (red arrow line) OK. Forget it. Let’s do it the old-fashioned way by going down one flight of stairs near the elevators and walking to the back on our own. It wasn't until the next day did we found the secret door. More on that once we get there.