harryfat1

Of course back then we didn’t know anything about the issues of 737 Max 9 doors could fly off any given minute. Actually, I received an email from Alaska Airlines the morning of the flight telling me that the airplane we would be on was very spanking new – do new planes have a smell similar to new cars? Everything looks very new. I liked the USB chargers at the top of the headrest for charging the phones - if I were to charge my phone but I was planning on sleeping instead or so I had hoped… As the seats are 3 and 3 configuration, with the 4 of us, the wife and the boys sat together and I saw across the aisle on the aisle seat so we could be close to each other. As (bad) luck had it, I sat next to a couple that didn’t want to sleep on the red eye. The dude next to me had his reading light on most of the flight and his wife by the window seat had her phone on with a bright display watching movies during the flight and talking with their friends in the row behind us. Lovely… On top of that, they got up twice to go to the bathroom during the night and I had to get up out of my seat to let them out. My watch is at 1:46 AM PST/4:46 AM EST and I’m still not sleeping halfway into the flight… A wise man once said, "It's not the Destination but the Journey". However, that wise man probably never flew on a red eye with seats that is in theory ergonomically designed to fit someone's back and butt (certainly not your back or butt as you squirm in trying to sleep with your 2 neighbors watching videos at 2 AM and chatting with their friends...) Yeah, it's about the destination for me at that point. The heck with the journey. Get me to FLL ASAP... +++++++++++ This concludes day minus 2 of the trip report. Thanks to all for being part of the trip report. Hope we will have lots of fun sharing posts next several weeks...

This being SF and West Coast “green” state, they have 6 dedicated water refill machine dispensers at the airport terminal right after the TSA checkpoint so people can fill up their water bottles. FLL airport only had one small one by the bathroom area. A touchless sensor will dispense water if you put your hand near it. There was only one red-eye flight to FLL that night. The Alaska Airlines flying the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane. Yes, the same type of 737 plane from the same airline that lost its door less than 2 weeks after we were on one and has been grounded by the FAA pending further investigation…😨 One thing you won’t find at this terminal at SFO which you can find at almost every other airport – Starbucks. Since this is Peet’s Coffee Country in SF, if you want coffee, it’s Peet’s to the right or to the left. I think there’s a Starbucks over at the International terminal but it’s a pretty good walk to get your Starbucks. Solid wifi speed at the terminal as we wait for the flight to board at 10:30PM Got my neck pillow. Thinking I will get maybe 3 hours of sleep on a 5.5-hour red-eye flight. Ha. Wishful thinking...

Thank you for your kind words. Appreciate you reading along. Yeah, a cruise vacation is like the ultimate buffet. It's got so many things going on at the same time, that it's hard to absorb it all and it's always nice to see how other people spend their vacation time as everyone has their preferences. Impressive in getting to the 50-pound mark consistently. I need to strive for that perfection. Most of the time we leave a little space in each suitcase pre cruise with the idea we will be buying whatever souvenirs from the vacation and still be under the 50-pound limit. Having a portable scale will certainly make things easier than just trying to lift it and estimate.

Many thanks to all the provided feedback on your packing preferences. Looks like we have a fairly cautious group here with many people packing just in case. Always appreciate the discussions throughout the trip report as I always learn something from each report via people's comments. More fun to have discussions than people just reading my diary/journal on what we did for 10 days in December... Anyway, onward with the trip report +++++++++++++ I typically start/end my trip reports from SFO airport as the first and last picture of the vacation. This trip will have a slight twist on the backend but no need to get ahead of ourselves at this point. The first picture of the cruise is SFO at 9 PM as we get ready to self-tag our luggage. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man – I miss the old days when they had airline workers who would tag and do all the stuff for you instead of you standing in front of the kiosk trying to type in the necessary info to get 4 luggage tags to print out. Another sign of being old is now my kids are the ones handling the kiosk interaction instead of the old man getting frustrated with the screen. Another sign of getting old… In one of my previous trip reports, fellow cruisers convinced me to get the TSA Precheck as a real convenience. So I opted for a new credit card that gave me TSA Precheck expense as part of the perk and signed up for that. The family gave me all their electronic stuff for me to carry so they don’t have to deal with it in the regular line. After having done it on the return trip, I must say I like the TSA pre-check. No need to have the hassle of taking off shoes and putting the hands up at the screening machine. After coming back, I signed up my younger son for the TSA pre-check as he attends college in Southern California and flies back and forth to the Bay Area, and having a TSA pre-check will be easier on his flying experience. Will also get the wife and my other son the TSA precheck ahead of our next cruise in December.

Oh, yeah, do the video so we can all learn. Just practice what all YouTubers say, "Please leave a thumbs up if you like this video. If you are new to this channel, please consider subscribing. It will help out the channel a lot as I can upload new content in the future videos..." Yeah, I watched too many YouTube videos in my vacation prep...

Yeah, my trip report is similar to the Windjammer (to use RCI food venue as an analogy). No promises of quality but you will get quantity galore. Just a little of everything of a mega buffet and people pick and choose what they can get out of it. Whereas other cruisers' reports are more like Chops and Wonderland that have higher quality material and presentation.

Very organized. Better than me. Laundry after any vacation is a lot of work, especially for 4 people for 10 days. I think our washer/dryer was on for most of the day after coming home. This is the "glamorous" part of the vacation that nobody ever talks about.

Oh, I wouldn't be reading any trip report while on vacation. Enjoy your time on the ship. This trip report will still be here when you get back.

Yeah, similar to buying stocks, it's not possible to always get everything at the lowest point. Just set a budget and track the prices for a while and you should have a fair assessment of what is a good price to book it. I, too, had many tracking emails from multiple sources telling me daily about the price changes going to Florida and back but after a while, it's just a distraction. I found myself paying more attention to flights and prices than the cruise itself. It was a relief to finally book the airfare and move on to the "fun" part of travel planning like coming onto CC and arguing with strangers on the dining room dress code instead... BTW: as Patti at @Coralc can tell you, the people here in California don't call the state "Cali". That is what outsiders call us. When I was at Hollywood Beach renting the bike, I had to give them my ID and the guy saw it and say "Oh, CALI". You know he's not from here...

Ahhh, yes, packing list. We have one also in Excel (bet no one is surprised by this revelation 🙂). It's been revised many times as the kids gotten older. In the old days, it was to make sure they packed their favorite stuffed animals and blankets on the cruise to the modern day by bringing enough USB cables and charging bricks. We also have a different packing list for the long road trips or a different one for the Alaska cruise as that's a totally different animal than packing for the Caribbean.

You should do a YouTube video on the "Cruise Unpack Hacks" and show people how it's done. What is the advantage of bringing your own hangers? Just the speed of dropping them into the closet faster than hanging each shirt one by one? One of our suitcases went over the 50-pound limit coming back as we just dumped all the overnight stuff from last night on the cruise into that suitcase at the airport. It was 50.5 pounds and the Jetblue lady just ignored it and let us pass instead of forcing us to re-pack the extra 1 pound into another suitcase. I have one of that portable luggage scale thing from many years ago. Maybe the next cruise will bring it to make sure we are not over the limit.

So you are definitely a +3 or higher packer. We don't use carryons because we take so many pictures, we need to keep our hands free to whip out the phone any given second to snap a quick picture. Hard to do when you have a carry-on in tow.

Side note to others - @luvtoride and @rncruiser (in the next post) were part of the roll call and we are all here re-living the cruise one last time as well as having them provide insights on the cruise I may not have experienced. This trip report is for all to comment on and please feel free to post whatever pictures you have from your cruise. This is like a big virtual potluck party. Everyone is invited to share. I also don't believe in the "hijacking the thread" concept. If anyone has a question or comment, please post them. We all pay the same premium annual membership to be part of CC so feel free to jump in anytime to have a comment. I like back-and-forth discussions in my trip reports. Very boring if I just sit here and talked about the days of our lives for the 10 vacation days. Waiting for @bobmacliberty to come in later on to talk donuts or whatever...

Brian, Very nice looking clan. I was looking for you at the Photo Gallery on day 8 as I was looking for a guy with a gauze wrap on his head (insider joke) but couldn't find you guys. As for boarding time, from what I read, various ports implement the boarding time policy differently. I think the key for Port Everglades is that terminal 18 is HUGE as it was designed for an Oasis-class ship's passenger to sit and wait. They have more space inside to wait than outside so it makes more sense to process the people ASAP and then have them wait inside the terminal. We arrived at terminal 18 at 10:30 and waited less than 30 minutes at the seats before boarding ship. Whereas in San Pedro, their waiting area is less than 200 seats so they have to be strict in enforcing the boarding time. See the seating capacity here for San Pedro for the Navigator of the Seas? This is all they can accommodate inside so they have to be very strict on whom they allow inside the terminal. They had signs saying you must be at these 2-time slots to be inside the tent line waiting. If your time slot is not these 2 slots, they make you wait outside in another line See the people behind the blue tent? Those are the people who arrived at San Pedro at 10:30 when this picture was taken. If they were not in the 10:30 or 11 AM boarding time slots, they had to stand outside and wait

Day Minus 2 : As this was an 8-day cruise departing on Saturday, my preference is to fly out on Thursday night or Friday morning from California to Florida ahead of the sailing. However, as many have noticed, the price of airfare has been ridiculously high for 2023. I waited and waited for the prices to come down and finally had to book the airfare at a higher price than I would have expected. In order to save money, we had to fly out on a Wednesday instead of Thursday or Friday as flying out just one day earlier is a savings of $150/pp. Multiply that by 4 people, it’s a savings of $600. Being a CFKACD, I rather fly out earlier as I’m still better off paying the extra night of hotel and having lunch/dinner in Florida and still come out ahead. Another way to look at it is I get a free day of vacation for the same amount of money paid. So the decision was made to fly out on Wednesday night so I could save one extra vacation day at work and arrive in Florida on a red eye. This makes it a total of a 10-night vacation. One question I raised in my Alaska trip report was how many people are over/under packers? Meaning if it’s a 10-night vacation, do you pack exactly 10 pairs of underwear/socks/shirts or do you overpack with a “just in case I spill something” attitude (a +1 packer). Or are you a minimalist with a small carry-on and only pack 7 pairs (-3 packer) with the thinking no one should be close enough to sniff your underwear so no need to change daily? Back then many of the ladies ratted out their partners by saying many men are negative packers (but no mentioning of themselves). So I'm just curious if anyone here is a big + or – packer? Being anal, it should surprise no one that I’m a +1 packer. Always have the “what if” paranoia that I might need an extra shirt/underwear/socks somewhere along the way. Would love to hear if anyone volunteers to share their packing preference?

If you look at the deck plan for deck 6, the red circle was our inside connecting cabins. You walk out toward the back of the ship and you will see that "tiny opening" on the deck plan. That's how you can connect to the back of deck 6 of 270 from the cabins. When I was studying the plans pre-cruise, I thought it was an opening that anyone could walk through. I was totally surprised when I walked around and couldn't see the opening. I thought they sealed it off. It wasn't until day 2 morning when we found the secret door that connects the area. I will show the pictures when I get to the cabins. Deck 6: Walk down the stairs to deck 5 and you are right at the 270 cafe to get quick breakfast or any drinks and then sit in the comforts of 270 enjoying the view:

That sounds like a lot of fun. I would imagine it's tiring to go see so many ports in a row. Especially in the hot humid weather of the Caribbean can be tiring but I'm sure you have some great pictures and memories from your trip. I do want one sea day on the last day so I can pack and get ready for the flight home. Last August we were on the Navigator and the last day was a port day and it was tiring to come back from the tour in the afternoon to shower and pack and get ready for dinner and have luggage outside by 10 PM.

Itinerary: This was our 8-day itinerary in going to the A and C islands plus Labadee (Haiti). We were disappointed that we weren’t going to CocoCay instead as we had already been to Labadee twice previously and we had never been to CocoCay. In looking at the Odyssey schedule for the rest of 2024, they typically sail to CocoCay as part of the 8-day run but somehow just for our one cruise, they didn’t go there. Perhaps CocoCay is already full with other ships that day. As stated previously, I’m not a sea day guy. That probably put me in a minority as many folks here on CC are sea day people. I cruise/vacation through my camera (phone) lens and if I have nothing to photograph/experience, I get antsy. Like I said, I vacation to see/experience new places. The ocean is a constant for me and you can only take so many pictures of the same ocean… A couple of months ago, RCI asked me to participate in one of their surveys and they asked how many sea days I would prefer on a 7-night cruise and I answered “1”. I doubt I will ever be on a transatlantic/transpacific sailing. Too many sea days… Someday after my kids are done with school, we will go to the European cruises as those are better fit with our preferences in having numerous port days.

If you are interested in any of the packages or specialty dining, reserve them ahead of time online. They typically don’t get any cheaper once on board. Especially if you booked your cruise months/year(s) out, check online (I’m not an App person to check on the phone) frequently for discounts. If in doubt, book it now and you can cancel up to 3 days before sailing and get a full refund if you see the same package on sale at a later date. For our cruise, the best prices I found were the Black Friday sales. So if you have a cruise booked for next year, but sure to start checking for discounts in mid-November, I was able to get the photo package at 50% off and Specialty lunches at $13 (Giovanni’s) and $18 (Chops) at 40% off during the Black Friday deals. So that makes it more reasonable to upgrade to these dining. But if you have your heart set on that bargain $99.99/pp Chops Christmas dinner, you won’t see any discounts for that anywhere and RCI explicitly excludes the Holiday dinners from the all meal plans.

Pre Cruise-Planning: I showed in a previous post the Excel schedule I modified for this cruise from the previous Allure cruise but unlike the Oasis class ships, there’s not that much to reserve ahead of time for the Odyssey unless you are doing specialty dining. There is only one show, The Book, that you need to reserve a space for pre-cruise. In theory, you can do it while on the ship, but I don’t know how much space they reserve for onboard booking versus doing it from home. Depending on your budget, you can either reserve the “paid” version of iFly and NorthStar at home (think it was around $40/pp) or wait until boarding the ship to reserve the complimentary sessions. The paid sessions give you more and you can book it months ahead of time for a sea day. The complementary sessions are only available on port days. Even though I’m only CFKACD, I still won’t pay the extra fees to RCI so we opted for the no extra cost sessions. To get those, once you are onboard, be sure to reserve the complementary IFly and Northstar sessions ASAP on day 1. Those time slots are only available AFTER you get on the ship and connect to the ship’s wi-fi.

Pre Cruise-Planning: After you have made your final payment at the 3 months pre-cruise, the next important date is to select a cruise check-in time. RCI opens the cruise check-in 45 days before the sailing date at midnight EST. Coming from California, that meant 9 PM so I didn’t have to stay up late to try to get done at the onset but being 9.2 on the anal scale, I did set a calendar reminder date on my phone and a reminder 1 hour before being at the computer to check-in. I think you can do it both on the phone App and online. Being old, I prefer logging in online with a bigger screen and I can type faster on the physical keyboard. If my kids were doing it, they would do it on the phone app instead - different generation. I had forgotten you need to have passport info on hand to get a time slot. I thought you just signed in for the time slot and went back to do the passport later. So be sure to have the passport in hand when you do this. Finished the check-in for the 4 of us by 9:20 PM (PST)/12:20 AM (EST) and was somewhat surprised/disappointed the best sign-in time available was 11:30. (And yeah, my real name is Harry and not John or something but calling myself Harry online...) For the Navigator, I didn’t sign in until later on day 1 and I got the 11 AM booking (earliest was 10:30). Maybe Odyssey/Florida has different time slots than California. (For those who are ready to jump on a new post and say, BUT for our cruise, our boarding time was this... No need to make that post. Just follow the storyline here. Don’t come in with any spoiler ending. Don’t be THAT GUY at the theater eating popcorn and telling his friend, I bet you $5 this dude get killed by Freddy Krueger in the next scene..) 12 hours later, the best available time is now at 12:30 as the 11:30 and 12 noon slots are gone 12 hours after that, only 1 PM slot is the earliest slot available. So the take-home lesson is that within 24 hours after the check-in window is opened, the 11:30/12/12:30 slots were all taken. There are other cruisers out there also that track the check-in time and they jumped on the slots ASAP.

Haha, sorry. That corn picture is not from a lunch on El Loco Fresh but from a land-based restaurant on Hollywood Beach.

I think we are very similar. This was our first Quantum-class ship as well as having an obstructed balcony on deck 6 in the Aft. It would be funny if your cabin was near the ones we had. Depending on your luck, every 4th or 5th cabin has a very obstructed view. We got the short straw on our balcony with a bad view but the boys got a better one with a larger balcony space as it was at the end of the section. I will show you the "secret entrance" to 270 from the Aft deck 6 cabins when we get there on the report. Saves you time and walking.

As this was a Holiday sailing, it came as no surprise that the ship was jammed packed way above 100% double occupancy. The reported passenger total for our sailing was 5,269 people. Per Wiki, double occupancy for the Odyssey is 4,198 and theoretical max is 5,510 passengers. So at 5,269 passengers, we were at 125% of normal occupancy. Even for a Holiday sailing, that’s a lot of people as historically RCCL fleetwide average was around 110% during the Holidays. It would be interesting to see how well RCCL as a company did for 2023 Holiday sailings as one would imagine the numbers would be high given many of the sailings have been very full in 2023. Speaking of numbers, these were the return cruiser numbers for our sailing. Quick addition (you can't present a whole bunch of numbers to a Finance guy and not expect him to try and add it) will show only 2,451. This is less than half of the 5,269 so that meant over 50% of the cruisers on our sailings were first-timers... This will be the last set of random pictures to finish off the introduction part and then we'll see the pictures in the natural order as they occur during the cruise +++++++++++++ 20231229_065308.mp4

I think you did great in being just 10 cabins apart on a guaranteed cabin. You guys could have been 5 decks and 800 feet apart on Aft/Forward cabins. I guess you would utilize the desk phone they provided in the cabins to contact the other cabin. That's the only time we use the desk phone to call the in-laws in the other cabins if they cruise with us. Well, one day we will be on the same sailing as you typically sail during the Holidays given your family's schedule is tied to the school schedule as well as ours. Side note to others - Ken and I were scheduled to be on the Freedom of the Seas back in December 2016 but he had to reschedule that one as well due to a schedule conflict. Maybe the third time will be the charm.