A&L_Ont

I’m happy to report that the Colts were playing the Broncos in Playmakers tonight. Only college ball in The Pub and cabin tonight.

We are currently in the Star Lounge watching kid’s karaoke. We came in to see one kid singing Zombie by the Cranberries and the girl singing right now is singing Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond.

We were just there yesterday and this is 100% accurate. They just recently started selling cabanas to any guest on board the ship, not just to suite guests on the cruise planner. Add that Pinnacles have access as well no matter their cabin.

Football game day update. 47-6 for Owen’s team at the start of the 4th. So far, so good. Edit, that was the final score. They are now 3 wins with 0 loses and 6 points against them.

Indeed. They did none of that and they suffered.

So to give you an idea of how hot it is, Lisa looked at me and said she’s had enough. In 42 cruises I’ve never heard her say that. We are now down on our balcony hanging out with some cold water enjoying the shade and listening to the waves gently break at the side of the ship. To give you an idea, the people who sat beside us for 20 minutes got up and left. They walked down a few stairs while waiting in line to get a drink the woman passed out. Not from alcohol consumption, but from dehydration and heat exhaustion. She sat and had a bottle of water while the crew attended to her. We had been there since eight in the morning and she only been there 20 minutes. It’s amazing the power of the sun. That being said, I didn’t see them have any water the entire time they were there. Envision it… And aft.

Belly flop contest about to being. When looking for floppers they put out the call for 300lb+ cruisers first. Photos to come.

Sunrise today. I might have been cloud blocked for a while, but she finally appeared. Givin’ you that balcony vibe. She gave the ship nice glow.

Some sunset photos from two nights ago. This freighter passed along our starboard side.

I’ve looked at this in our bathroom every day. Am I the only one who reads these top 2 lines the same way? I mean certainly Lisa, and Lynn our cabin steward, would rather I rush than not. I’m going with my instinct with this one.

It is insanely hot. We are currently rotating every 20 minutes, basting in sun tan lotion, and dipping in the pool religiously. Edit: and hydrating with water and frozen drinks.

I’m tied up in stitches. 😉😂

The band is out and I’ve returned from riding. It went well, no falls today at all. View from the wave. Lisa came back and snapped a few pics.

I can’t fault you one bit. That being said, you would have an effect on the betting odds.

No one took the bet on the pool. As of 11:07am both are still open.

Remember Owen’s photo from music with the thumbs up? He just sent this one on from his teacher.

Owen just sent this photo to us from his music class. Not exactly sure how hard he is working in class right now. Let’s go that this was at the end of the class. The players dress up on game day. This year Owen went with a sports jacket, white or red shirt, and black pants. They alone went with these ugly Pit Viper sunglasses. one of his good friends are beside him. The full look at home. Yup, white game day socks. No mom picked those with turf fields.

Thanks for asking. Grandma has been feeding him well with her exceptional skills in the kitchen. We are lucky to have her to help us out. He had the final baseball tryout last night. He had a 4 pitch inning, and he isn’t a fan of pitching. His favourite position is centre field, but he can do it all. He was a football game this afternoon and an exhibition hockey game at 9pm tonight. Thankfully it’s at our home rink. We have been watching him get on the bus every morning on the security cameras and he waves at us. Occasionally we see Lucy following him down for the bus. All seems to be good at home.

Mid morning report from the pool. The seas are calm and it is exceptionally hot today. Lots of liquids will be consumed. Sunscreen will be applied in copious amounts too. I might even wish for the occasional cloud or two to provide some shade as well. Both pools are currently open.

We knocked off last night around midnight. I was up around 6:30 to catch the sunrise and it was partially blocked by clouds. Photos to come. A quick breakfast was consumed at the WJ and we are now flaked at the terrace seating by the pool. Lisa and I spoke briefly with one of the crew, who was dressed in blue coveralls who fix everything, to which I have named the penguins. Like the penguins in Madagascar who also fix everything. He was testing the pool water. We commented that it would be nice if the pool stayed open for longer than an hour today. The crew member responded with we should be good “so long as there are no more baby bowel movements in the pool”. Meanwhile, we are currently watching two young kids and their parents play in the shallow water along the pool edge. This is when the kids splash zone comes in really handy on the other ships. Are there gonna be an takers here on an over under to how long it’ll take for both pools to be closed, or how quickly the first one will be shut today? I mean, the odds got to be better taking bets with you guys than over luck at the casino last night.

The Love and Marriage was pretty good last night. Dinner at Hibachi had it beat though. In essence it was kinda the same thing, items being grilled over lots of heat. I had the steak and shrimp and Lisa had the chicken and steak. We noticed that they didn’t toss the egg on Mariner compared to the Oasis Class ships. Not sure if this is a Mariner only thing, or across all ships now. Love and Marriage was good, but we thought they spent too much time on choosing the couples. That’s just a “we” thing though. We think another round of questions would have been funnier than 30 minutes of picking the couples. The,couples picked were hilarious and it was even better as one set had their mom in the crowd and the other had their grownup kids. Marc Walker was also a great host, but after 26 years he knows how to work the crowd. I may have got some pizza on the way back to the cabin. I will say that with only cafe promenade for snacks the line can get long but it moved quickly. It would be nice if there was another quick area for snacks but not the end of the world.

It’s been a long time, but it is finally time for another Live Review with Andrew and Lisa, this time on Mariner of the Seas. In fact, this one has been years in the making, as we have not sailed since the fall of 2019. We, like many of you, have cancelled far too many cruises but now it is almost go time for us. Owen is staying home this week with Grandma Sharon. He is now is grade 10. He’s still busy with sports, with three currently taking place. Baseball tryouts for next spring, hockey practice in preparation of the new season, and high school football. He is the team kicker and also plays on defence. Then there is the all important school work, he needs to keep up his 85% average from last year. For those who haven’t seen him since our last live review in March of 2019, he has grown up a lot. This is him with my mom last week, after their football victory. They are 2-0 so far and are last year’s city champs. As for baseball, his team ranked third place in the province for their age, at the end of this season. I think that would be comparable to state finals for the Americans reading along. Then there is Lucy. She isn’t coming with us but she just celebrated her 10 year anniversary of living on our farm. She acts like she could not care less, but I know she is jealous. You going somewhere without me?

So I have a promise to fulfill. I have written this review of the Royal Loft Suite on the Oasis of the Seas for a few fellow CC members that have requested it. navy1234Cool Cruiser Join Date: Jun 2013 Location: Paris Posts: 2 Hi Andrew, I understood by reading your messages that you had several cruises on RCI and in the Royal Loft Suite. I made a search in all your messages and didn't find any review of your cruises in RLS. Did you already write a review about this wonderful suite? Would love to hear your feedback about it and also to see pictures of the suite. Thanks in advance for your reply. Yvan Quote: Originally Posted by A&L_Ont Yvan, Give me a few days and I will do a posting for you. I don't like to advertise it, as perception can be a bad thing, but I think I can tastefully put something together. I see it is your first post. Congrats and welcome to CC. Are you from Paris France or Paris Ontario? We were in Paris two years ago and loved it. We stayed in St Germaine Depres for a week and had an amazing time. Now if you are from Paris Ontario it too is a wonderful town an hour from where we live. I think I should be able to do something by Monday of next week so please check the main RC boards. Andrew jrljelCool Cruiser Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 235 Oh, PLEASE DO give a review of the RLS!!! How exciting! AND...please tell us how in the world you afford that. I have always wondered what people do who are in those Royal and Loft suites, not to mention the Royal Loft Suite. Was it a present or something super special? I hope you have a great story. Can't wait to live that experience vicariously through you words. I've only once been in an Owner's Suite and that was heavenly. Thanks! Some subscribers of this review will have met us before on other cruises and others might just know us from the boards. We have met many great people and made some virtual friends through the boards here on CC. I hope that those who sign up will enjoy my review. For one sailing we opened the RLS to a cabin crawl and we opened the doors to a few other cruisers that we met along the way for both sailings. So I shall start with the reason to why we have sailed in the RLS. On March 29, 2010 our family that consisted of three became four. There was myself (Andrew), my great wife Lisa and our dear son Owen and the newest member Allison. What should have been an exciting time in our lives turned into what would become some of the hardest but most rewarding time of our lives. When she was 4 months of age Allie was diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic brain disorder called Lissencephaly and Microcephaly. If you wish to learn a bit about her diagnosis please go to the following link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissencephaly We were gifted to have Allie with us for 2 years and two days before she passed. Our family went on a long, scary, interesting and wonderful journey that did not tear us apart, but brought us closer together. I will quote from a part of her eulogy that I wrote and read. “With so many challenges in her life, Allie showed us how to be thankful as there is always another day with a fresh beginning. That is how we lived everyday with Allie. Each sunrise was the start of a new day. Just as now with Allie gone, each sunrise is the start of another new day. It’s hard to let go isn’t it? It is hard, but that is life. She taught us that you continue on, just like we did after she was diagnosed. In life, once in a while you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, and you try desperately to hold on to them. They are the life boats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely illusive. So the question becomes, or should have been all a long... What would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What life boat would you grab on to? Allie taught us to hang onto the things that matter and stop and take that breath of fresh air. Allie taught us to remember the things that we have known our entire lives. Love, Family, Laughter, and Friends.” With Allie gone we now had to discover our second “new normal” in two years. Our family of four was three again. We were starting to venture down another road in life, a road with just the three of us and a fourth that was with us in spirit. Having had great help with both of our families we now thought it was time to thank them. Thank them for the help over the numerous times in watching Owen while we were at the local children’s hospital on multiple occasions while she had bouts of phenomena, blood infections, tests, Dr. appointments, surgery for Allie, as well as numerous other reasons. The best way we knew how to say thanks and to make new memories was to do something we enjoy. So we decided to take both of our in-laws on their own cruises as our way of saying thank-you. Now I will provide a bit of preamble. Some of you might remember our review of our Oasis July 2011 cruise that we took. It was the one where the mirror fell off our wall and landed on our bed in the middle of the night. If not click here: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1474659 Lisa and I took this cruise as a much needed vacation. It replaced a cruise that we had to cancel the previous February. As it turned out Allie’s g-tube surgery was scheduled to be 2 days prior to embarkation. It had been delayed multiple times and had been originally scheduled to be done months prior to our cruise that we had to cancel. So the cancelled cruise date went by and we learned how a feeding pump and g tube work. A few months later we both said it was time for a holiday so we used the refund money to book a cruise on Oasis. I think it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The ship I swore I would never sail on became our oasis. This ship provided us a getaway that was well needed and long overdue. Nights of sleep and days of relaxation, the polar opposite of the life we were living at home. So now I have answered part of Jrlje question to why we were in the RLS. To answer a few more of her questions on a quicker note. Yes it was for a super special occasion, we covered all costs of both trips, and as you already know it truly is a great story to why we did this. As for the cost, we will leave that to one’s imagination. Now for what I do for work, that is a conversation that is easier to have in person, maybe while having a drink on the Rising Tide Bar. My work is all encompassing and averages 50-60 hours a week. One of the reasons I love cruising is my phone goes into the safe and emails left on the mainland. Our first cruise in the RLS was July of 2012 and the second time was in March of 2013. So for those of you that have read this far I will describe what this review will be about. It won’t be about the cruise as I am sure that you can imagine the great memories that we had made. It will be to fulfill the request for information about the room itself, and the experience that comes with the room. Many of us have had great experiences on the Oasis so I don’t need to go on about that, or the CL, or the MDR or ports of call. It will be broken out into the room areas and different aspects related to the room. This is a good old fashioned cabin review. Embarkation It went very smooth. When we checked in at the suite area Robert was sent over to greet us and he was our escort, no handler, no that sounds wrong… he was our “guy”. He walked with us through the security process, check in, group photos, muster wrist band for our son and then onto the ship. We arrived at port at noon so we were able to right on board. He was going to take us up to the CL, but we thanked him as we knew where we were going. Truth be told we were also embarrassed as he held his papers in the air, cut into lines and made an ordeal of the fact that we were VIP. Anyone who has met me and our family know that is not who we are. We have since met Robert on other occasions as we are suite cruises and we make a point of saying hello. For recent stay in the RLS we just let him escort us to the gangway door and we were on our way. Thankfully no papers were held in the air during the process this time as he has discovered that we are relaxed cruises and not the ones who need to be status inflated. Deck 17 As we entered the secured area of the loft suites we were rather excited to be approaching our cabin. You know the same type of excitement that you have when you are about to step foot on the ship. We walked down the double wide hallway lined with dark wood paneling which was nicely decorated with photos. The thing that we noticed was the quietness. Not often did we pass the other occupants in the halls at any time of day, and we never had any late night door bell ringing. That is one great advantage of being in any room on deck 17. In the past we have experienced late night doorbell rings that suite cruisers get to experience on other floors of ship. Not to mention the tromping of feet and loud voices as the late night revelers return to their cabins. Hey, someone has to party, that was me a few years ago. Like university days. First impressions of the RLS For once pictures in cruise books were accurate. Our first cruise ever was on the Dawn Princess and we had a balcony room. Well we walked into that cabin and wondered where was the rest of the room? Our washroom the night before in the hotel was a third the size of that cabin. It is amazing what a wide angle lens can do. Back to the Oasis, the reason for this review. We slid the room key in the door and open it up. WOW. I would have said holy $^&*, except for the fact that we had little ears with us but we were in the privacy of our cabin. An extremely luxurious one I might say. Floor Plan of RLS