Oasis of the Seas Photo Review - March 9th-16th, 2013 Sailing

[Kimahri]

Thanks for the flowrider tips I'm trying it for the first time in 4 more weeks.

[COOPBRO]

Thanks for sharing all the pictures and tips. Me and DH are traveling on the Oasis in two weeks for our first cruise. I am getting so excited reading your reviews.

[COOPBRO]

Hi Russ, do you know what time the gym opens up ?

[Russ Lomas]

Hi Russ, do you know what time the gym opens up ?

Not that I actually used it, but I did look at it...

My Cruise Compass says it is open from 6am til 1am daily.

[Russ Lomas]

Thanks for the flowrider tips I'm trying it for the first time in 4 more weeks.

 

If you are like me, you will end up cancelling your upcoming trip on the Radiance and switching to one with a Flowrider. I had the Brilliance booked for this past March but switched to the Oasis because I did not want to be without the chance to use the Flowrider. I am really hoping that they put one on the Adventure of the Seas now that they are putting one on the other one of the same class sailing out of Texas.

[Russ Lomas]

Thanks for sharing all the pictures and tips. Me and DH are traveling on the Oasis in two weeks for our first cruise. I am getting so excited reading your reviews.

 

Wow, starting off with the biggest ship in the world for your first cruise. It will be hard to go on a smaller ship after trying the Oasis on your first cruise (and I can almost guarantee you will book a 2nd cruise after this one). You will not believe your eyes on the Oasis. You will usually forget you are at sea and think you are in a huge land based resort complex. Enjoy!

[Grandma Petania]

Just a note about the zip line that some people might not realize. If you are wearing glasses, they won't let you on the zip line unless you have an elastic or other type of band to hold your glasses tight to your head. It was fortunate that I had a couple of skinny hair bands that I was able to fashion into such a strap. My daughter had to wait till I got back from my zip ride so she could borrow the strap to hold her glasses. This trip I will be prepared ahead of time.

[fourkidsinfamily]

Thanks for the review. Very nice.

 

 

[Russ Lomas]

Just a note about the zip line that some people might not realize. If you are wearing glasses, they won't let you on the zip line unless you have an elastic or other type of band to hold your glasses tight to your head. It was fortunate that I had a couple of skinny hair bands that I was able to fashion into such a strap. My daughter had to wait till I got back from my zip ride so she could borrow the strap to hold her glasses. This trip I will be prepared ahead of time.

They will not let you have ANYTHING that can be loose and may fall. I had my DD wearing her ship card pass on the string that Adventure Oceans gives the kids around her neck and they would not let her wear it. I put it in my pocket and they said I could not even have it in my pocket in case it fell out. They want your pockets 100% empty in case anything falls out - no wallets or anything. Best idea is to have another person with you who can hold these types of items because you invariably will have something on they will not let you ride with (and they will not hold items for you, nor do they have anywhere to leave items behind at the launch area). Not great planning on their part.

[COOPBRO]

Not that I actually used it, but I did look at it...

My Cruise Compass says it is open from 6am til 1am daily.

 

Thanks Russ

[RCcruiser28]

I'm going on the Oasis on Saturday....and I wanna take outfits along if they have like theme nights....Do they have a disco night or anything like that?

[Russ Lomas]

I'm going on the Oasis on Saturday....and I wanna take outfits along if they have like theme nights....Do they have a disco night or anything like that?

No white night like on the Liberty.

70s disco inferno street party at 11:30pm on day 5 on the Promenade

There was an Escape by Malibu Beach Party from 11:30-2am in the Solarium one night, suggesting casual beach attire)

a 50s and 60 rock'n roll dance party at 7:45pm in one of the bars

[Peeker28]

Just a note about the zip line that some people might not realize. If you are wearing glasses, they won't let you on the zip line unless you have an elastic or other type of band to hold your glasses tight to your head. It was fortunate that I had a couple of skinny hair bands that I was able to fashion into such a strap. My daughter had to wait till I got back from my zip ride so she could borrow the strap to hold her glasses. This trip I will be prepared ahead of time.

Thanks for the tip, I wear glasses so I will make sure DH is close by so he can hold them

[jreichow1972]

Your review is fantastic! I just booked the Oasis yesterday for December 2014. After seeing how much there is to do on this ship and how interesting the shows and just everything looks it makes me a little sad I will be on the Carnival Valor this December (only because I am so excited to go on the Oasis). I know we are going to enjoy this cruise. Thank you for sharing your review.

[Russ Lomas]

Your review is fantastic! I just booked the Oasis yesterday for December 2014. After seeing how much there is to do on this ship and how interesting the shows and just everything looks it makes me a little sad I will be on the Carnival Valor this December (only because I am so excited to go on the Oasis). I know we are going to enjoy this cruise. Thank you for sharing your review.

Every cruise is great in its own way (well unless you count the Carnival one with the raw sewage running down the walls and up and down the hallways). We enjoyed our trip on the Carnival Valor, but that being said, we LOVED our trip on the Oasis much more. Your Valor trip has a great itinerary, so I am sure you will enjoy it. The "WOW" factor going on the Oasis however cannot be beat. I still have to finish off this review with my photos of St. Thomas, so keep checking back for one final batch of photos.

[jreichow1972]

Every cruise is great in its own way (well unless you count the Carnival one with the raw sewage running down the walls and up and down the hallways). We enjoyed our trip on the Carnival Valor, but that being said, we LOVED our trip on the Oasis much more. Your Valor trip has a great itinerary, so I am sure you will enjoy it. The "WOW" factor going on the Oasis however cannot be beat. I still have to finish off this review with my photos of St. Thomas, so keep checking back for one final batch of photos.

 

Thanks, I will look forward to more of your review.

[Russ Lomas]

I had been to St. Thomas once before and, based solely on that first visit, it is not one of my favourite islands. I am not into shopping, so the amount and quality of the shops in St. Thomas really hold no personal appeal to me. Last time, we visited Sapphire Beach with the family for a day. We took about a 20-30 minute hike to catch the local bus to take us there. Once aboard, it was a cheap way to get to the beach (I cost us either $1 or $2 per person each way as opposed to $15 to $20 per person each way in a "cab", which is really just the same vehicle as the public bus. $24 return for a family of 6 opposed to $240 in a cab. I thought it worth the 30 minute walk).

 

It took about 30 minutes to get to Sapphire. Every where you looked along side the road, all I can remember is broken down vehicles EVERYWHERE. It looked like nobody bothered to fix them. You just dump them on the side of the road and the tourists get to see them. Not very attractive. Sapphire Beach was pretty, but the sand is quite coarse. It contains mainly broken shells. They had very little in the way of services when I visited it about 5 years ago.

 

I also visited Coki Beach, by myself, later that same day when I visited last time. We were in port til midnight, so I went back there around 4pm and then did a night beach dive. Most of the crowd at the beach at Coki had cleared out when I arrived. The garbage cans were overflowing and garbage was everywhere. I cannot say what it would have looked like earlier in the day, but late in the day, it was a mess. The beach was very small compared to Sapphire Beach, so I would assume it get very crowded as well. The other thing that I did not like is that I was immediately approached by several people when I got off the bus and asked it I wanted to buy drugs. Not the type of place I would be taking my kids to.

 

I do not remember the name of the dive operator I went with, but he was great. It was just the two of us. When the dive was over, he informed me that the island was not very safe at night and he offered to drive me back to the ship. I gladly accepted. He had to stop by his place on the way to the ship to drop something off. The entrance to his shop was enclosed by a huge iron fence and gate. There were iron bars on all the windows and over the doors. Barbed wire was atop several fences in the neighbourhood. I did not feel entirely comfortable, even though I was with a local. He was great, and gave me a ride right up to the side of the ship. An absolutely great dive facility and operator, but the vibe I got about the island was not so great.

 

This was our return visit to St. Thomas and I was going there with mixed feelings. I enjoyed our experience there much better this second time.

Ships port either in Havensight or in Crown Bay. The Oasis ports in Crown Bay. There were 2 Carnival Ships and a Disney ship docked in Havensight on this day. There is a nice overlook that the cabs stop at on the way back from Magen's Bay for some quick photo opportunities. Below is the Havensight Pier.

 

Rotating to to your right from this point you can take a photo of the Crown Bay pier in the distance. The Oasis was ported with a Holland America ship on this day. The Oasis is so large that it looks like the H.A.L. ship could be used as one of the lifeboats on the Oasis.

 

As you get off the ship and walk along the pier at Crown Bay, be sure to check out the rocks to see the iguanas. They sun themselves on the rocks and are used to people, so they are pretty easy to take some good photos of. Below is a pretty nice shot of one of the iguanas.

 

With a good zoom lens, you can get in even closer than that. If you try to take a shot like the one below, be sure to get nice and low so that you can have the blue of the water in the background instead of the rocks. That will make the iguana pop out in your photo instead of blending in to the rocks.

 

The ride up and over the mountain to Magen's Bay takes about 20 minutes. It goes into the town of Charlotte Amalie first, then heads up over the hills. It is amazing how some of the homes built into the side of the hills do not collapse and fall down the hillside. Some of them do not look too sturdy. As you arrive at Magen's Bay, your cab driver will get out and collect CASH from you to pay your entrance fees into the National Park. Be sure to have enough money on you for the day. One family on our cab paid for the one way trip to Magen's Bay ($15 each I think - but we negotiated to take the 4 year-old twins for free since there was 6 other paying customers in our group). They then paid their entrance fee and realized they had no money left over for the return cab ride for their entire family on the way home. I wish I had brought enough money that I could have loaned some to his family, but I had not. He ended up leaving the rest of his family at the beach while he took the cab back to the ship to get more money from his safe so that his family could afford the trip back to the ship at the end of the day. Poor guy. What a waste of his time on the island. Things are not cheap in St. Thomas overall. Especially, the taxi rides when you have to pay per person for an entire family.

 

Below is the sign with the entrance fees to Magen's Bay as you arrive at the entrance.

 

I will try to continue with my review and photos of Magen's Bay tomorrow. Good night for now.

[jpolm]

We leave In 3 weeks. My plan was sapphire beach. Curious to see your pics and what u preferred Magen's bay or sapphire?

[Tsyc]

Your review is very helpful in planning for my Sept sailing on the Alleur. I was going to take my family to Coki. Thought it would be safe for my kids(4 & 1 yr old) if we go early in the morning. Husband wanted to do some snokeling. I might have to change plan now. Do you remember if the sand on Coki Beach was corse or not? Looking forward to the rest of your St Thomas review.

[Russ Lomas]

We leave In 3 weeks. My plan was sapphire beach. Curious to see your pics and what u preferred Magen's bay or sapphire?

The best I can do for you is offer some photos of each. Below are three photos I took during our visit in 2007 to Sapphire Beach when we cruised on the NCL Spirit (one of my favourite ships and vacations).

 

These three photos were taken with an old point and shoot camera (not my current Nikon D5100), so please excuse the difference in photo quality. The photo below is what you can expect at Sapphire Beach. The two girls in the photo are my older two, who are now 5 years older in the previous posts I have done in this thread. This was looking one way towards the only real hotel on the beach. Behind where I took this photo, the beach was a bit rougher with more rocks, lots less people, and it was undeveloped. That being said, when the photo was taken 5 years ago, they were clearing the land to add some hotels or condos on the part of the beach that was then undeveloped. I cannot say what it is like now, but those developments are now likely finished.

 

The next photo you see is the view you get from the beach. Very pretty water can be seen. Sapphire is not as protected from the wind as Magen's Bay, so you could have choppier water there. There was a bit of a drop off in the water at Sapphire if I remember correctly roughly when you reached knee level in the water, it pretty well dropped straight down to waist level.

 

Below is a view of the beach taken from a peninsula that juts out down by that resort you could see in my first photo.

[Russ Lomas]

Your review is very helpful in planning for my Sept sailing on the Alleur. I was going to take my family to Coki. Thought it would be safe for my kids(4 & 1 yr old) if we go early in the morning. Husband wanted to do some snokeling. I might have to change plan now. Do you remember if the sand on Coki Beach was corse or not? Looking forward to the rest of your St Thomas review.

I suspect that I would have felt safer at Coki earlier in the day than when I arrived. I also assume (hope) it would have been much cleaner with empty trash cans not overflowing. I do believe the sand was not so coarse here. It definitely was not as coarse as at Sapphire Beach. Magen's Bay is reported to have minimal snorkeling and was far too rough when we visited (I am told that being rough there is unusual however) to snorkel. Sapphire was very choppy and not great for snorkeling. Coki would likely be the best for some snorkeling from other photos I have seen. West Bay in Roatan still has the best beach snorkeling I have ever done however. If you do decide to do Magen's Bay, you will feel VERY safe.

[Russ Lomas]

The beach at Magen's Bay is huge compared to any other beaches you will see in St. Thomas. It would take you more than 30 minutes to walk from end to end without stopping. The section where you are dropped off is quite congested. There are places to buy food and drinks, many parking lots, washroom facilities, and TONS of people. They were shoulder to shoulder. CROWDED. The further you walk to the right or the left from the place you are dropped, the less people you will see. You can choose from basically deserted with no lifeguards to wall-to-wall people with lifeguards, and any variation of this in between. I like to feel safe yet not be crowded, so we walked about 10 minutes down the beach to the left. This set of photos were taken at this point. There are still lifeguards and washroom facilities very close to where we made our site for the day.

 

Magen's Bay is a National Park, so we did not see a single vendor on the beach trying to sell us anything. I hate the hard sell you encounter on some beaches, so this was a nice change compared to other beaches (I did not encounter anyone selling stuff on the beach at Sapphire Beach 5 years ago either, but that may have changed by now). There are lots of trees set back from the beach, so you can have a choice of sun or shade. The sand on the beach is very nice and my 4 year-old DDs had lots of fun playing in it. The sand on the beach is also very deep in terms of from the treeline to the water's edge. It is not like some beaches where there is a 10 foot deep strip of sand and you have people walking all over you.

 

Below is a photo of my 2 older DDs (on the bottom left side of the photo) on the beach.

 

The water is a beautiful colour of blue and there are some neat trees you can sit on or hang you bags on to keep them out of the sand, like the one below.

 

The trees also make a great frame for some artistic photos. I love the one below with our friend Tony walking my two twins out to play in the waves. You can see the trench they built in the sand leading out to the water. The photo also gives you an idea of how busy this area of the beach was even though there were 5 cruise ships in port this day we visited.

 

The sun was pretty intense this day and we already had our mid-winter Canadian's sunburn well underway from the previous two days of lounging in the sun on the Oasis and in Nassau. The trees were a welcome natural shelter from the sun. You could rent lounge chairs, which we did not bother to do, but there was no need for umbrellas at this beach due to all the trees around.

 

After walking down to the far left side of the bay, I looked back and took the photo below of the busiest area of the beach.

 

One bonus about this beach was that the bottom of the bay was pure sand. No seaweed, no grass, no rocks to stub your toes on! Absolutely no need for water shoes at this beach.

[Peeker28]

The pics are beautiful

[Russ Lomas]

I took about a 10 minutes walk down to the very end of the beach to the left side of where the cabs drop you off. The last 500 yards or so of the beach beyond the last lifeguard station are basically deserted. There is a sign warning you that there are no lifeguards beyond that point. If you are looking for privacy at Magen's Bay, this is the place for you.

 

The tree at the back of the beach have not been cleared out, so they are more like a dense jungle at this end of the beach. You will not find shade at this end. There are some grasses growing out of the sand which have not been cleared like they have at the main portion of the beach. Still, for saying that there were probably close to 3000 people on this beach, look how many people you see on this part of the beach below.

 

There is a path leading back into the jungle from this area from which I took the photo below. There was a stream alongside the path that did not smell the best, so I decided not to follow it into the jungle. You can see how the leaves in the photo below were on the beach. Not so in the main part of the beach where it is well maintained. This end of the beach is more like a private little natural refuge.

 

The very end of the beach has a wall of cactus. Being from Canada, cacti are something we do not usually see, so this was a neat thing to see. There were birds and iguanas hiding for protection around this area as well.

 

There were some rocks that were neat for climbing along on this far end of the beach. I am sure young boys would enjoy climbing along the rocks and seeing what they could find in the little tidal pools in this area. The algae on the rocks made for some nice photos too.

 

A nice close up of the algae on the rocks.

 

We took the 10 minute walk back to the parking area to get a taxi back to the ship. There were loads of cabs waiting to take anybody back who were done with the beach for the day. They are also willing to take you to town to do some shopping on the way back. Our cab driver told us that he would be there at 3pm (he let us pick the time) to take us back to the ship. He was sitting there waiting for us when he said he would be. It was a bit tough to find him however because there were probably over 100 other vehicles who would have gladly took up back as well. We felt safe with our driver and he did not charge us for our twins, so we looked for him specifically knowing that he would not charge us on the way back either.

 

So in the end, the return cab ride is $30 per person and an additional $4 entrance fee for each adult is required as well. We had a great day at Magen's Bay and I would happily visit it again. That said...next time I will be traveling without the kids, so my DW and I plan to be a bit more adventurous and head over on the ferry to St. John's.

[Russ Lomas]

The pics are beautiful

Thanks. It eats into my vacation time taking all these photos, but they really help bring back the good memories. Glad I could share them with you and hopefully my review and photos can help others with their decision making process to make their vacation as good as ours was.