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Oasis – Eastern – 05/18/13 – So Much To Do

Shore Man
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Shore Man

Shore Man

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I can’t believe it’s over. After months of planning and anticipation, our week long cruise aboard the Oasis of the Seas is now in the past. It was a little more expensive than I would have liked, it required a lot more research and homework than I would have preferred doing and there are definitely some things that could be improved. But, would I do it again? Is it worth all the effort and money? YES, YES and YES!! If you’re ready for a long read, let’s start from the beginning.

 

 

This was our fifth cruise. Oops, let’s back up a little more. I am a very late 40ish cruising enthusiast from Tampa, Florida, by way of New York. Okay, I exaggerated a little. I just bounced into the next decade, like minutes ago, so I still consider myself “late 40ish” (and I’ll probably do so for the next 5 years, so just let me be). My wife is a younger chick (two years) and we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. More on that later. Our first cruise was on the Voyager of the Seas back in 1999 (on her third voyage, by the way). Then we went the way of Carnival for our next three. Hey, that doesn’t make us bad people. They are a little cheaper and they do put on a good show. I love cruising and I’m hard to disappoint (note that we’ve been married 25 years and she’s cooked maybe three meals in her life. She’s great at reheating leftovers, though. But I digress). If we can cruise for less money, why not do it, right? We were on the Carnival Dream when we first saw the Oasis. We were docked right next to each other (don’t remember which island) and we noticed how much larger the Oasis was. Now keep in mind, the Dream is Carnival’s biggest ship, yet it was dwarfed by the Oasis. After being awed by the size, I was underwhelmed by its appearance. You got to admit, the Oasis is one ugly ship. It looks like an apartment complex that floats. But then I thought, who cares what it looks like anyway? When we got home from that cruise, I looked up the Oasis, saw the rather steep pricing and decided to wait for a special occasion. Now, fast forward to this year. 25th wedding anniversary, 50th …uh…very late 40ish birthday, so hey, let’s do something special! I figured, what the heck? Let’s pull the trigger on this bad boy. And let the odyssey begin:

 

 

For those of you new to cruising, a word of caution. This ship requires you to do your homework. You can’t just book, hop on the ship and have a great week. Well, maybe you can, but being the organized nincompoop that I am, it required a quite a bit of planning. For example, let’s start with the room selection. The past couple of cruises we selected an interior room. The thought being, we’ve had a balcony before and spent very little time out there, so let’s save a little money. However, that stupid “Special Occasion” thing popped up in my head again, so, what the heck, let’s do a balcony. What? There are different balconies? Oh boy. There are interior balconies and exterior balconies. Hmmmm, interior sounds cool. Let’s choose that. What? There are different interior balconies? Yikes. There are those that look over Central Park. I’m glad we didn’t choose that one because Central Park didn’t have a lot of action going on. Then there are those overlooking the Boardwalk. That one looked kinda cool, as you can see the Aqua Theater, a little bit of the Ocean and watch the Zip Liners scoot by. However, I didn’t know that at the time of booking and as my head was starting to explode, I chickened out and skipped that room type as well. Finally, there are the interior balconies that overlook the Promenade, which seemed to have the most action for those looking to people watch, although it might get noisy with all the activity going on. Also, if you forget to close the drapes, you’ll be the ones putting on the show. So many choices- lot’s of pressure. So I decided to be safe and select the Ocean View. I’m not even going to into the various types of Ocean View Balconies there are. All I knew at this point is that I wanted something midlevel and midship (to help limit my susceptibility to seasickness) with a price that didn’t cause my atrial fibrillation to kick into high gear. I was able to find something meeting these criteria (deck 7 – Room 250) and opted for the insurance to, you know, be on the safe side. Hoping to never need it, of course. So that’s it, just pay and go, right?

 

 

Wrong. Homework doesn’t end there though. Regarding all the various shows onboard, Royal Caribbean, unlike Carnival, lets those with reservations enter first and if there are any seats left, they will let those waiting on the no-reservation line to enter. So, if you want a good seat (and I want a good seat), you need a reservation. So, starting 90 days out, I kept checking the website to see if the reservations opened up. Every day. That doesn’t make me, like, compulsive, does it? I kept thinking that there was some RCCL employee monitoring the website and thinking, “hey, that idiot from Tampa is checking the reservations again. Let’s keep it closed for a couple more days, hee hee”. Well, my patience finally paid off as around the 60 day mark they opened up the reservations. Finally! I heard that RCCL hadn’t contracted the comedians yet and wouldn’t open up the reservations until then. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but it sounded better to me than “let’s spitefully keep the reservations closed and see if this Tampa guy finally gives up”. I downloaded the show schedule from the website and scheduled one show a day. Happily, I was able to reserve all the shows at the exact times I was looking for. Now keep in mind, the doors open 45 minutes prior to ShowTime. During the last 10 minutes they open up the venue to those without reservations. Most of the shows were not full, so these “unreserved” people were able to get in, however they probably got most of the side and rear seats (although an occasional middle / front seat was available). Also, the Comedy Live room, where the comedians are, holds maybe 100 people – so reservations are mandatory for this. I can’t imagine any walk-ins were able to get in. Phew, all done with the pre-work, right?

 

 

Nope. Dinner reservations people, don’t forget the dinner reservations. We wanted to go to a couple of the specialty restaurants, so we made these reservations too. We did the Chop Grille. Man oh man. Just awesome. The Porterhouse was sick and the chocolate mud pie was insane. I’m telling you, if I wasn’t such a classy person, I would have gnawed that Porterhouse bone. Boy was it good. I can’t recommend this place enough. We also did Giovanni’s Table. Again, the food was ridiculously good. I can’t think of a reason not to go to either of these places. I mean, I can understand why people would not want to pay extra to eat when there are plenty of free options available, but other than that, these are no-brainers as far as I’m concerned.

 

 

Ok, let’s sum up the pre-work. Booked the room (after figuring out the type and location), made the show reservations and made the dinner reservations. Now I started to get lazy. Actually, I didn’t. Ok, not too proud of this, but I created a spreadsheet of all the various stores, bars, restaurants, landmarks, etc. and the floor on which these areas are located. First, it was sorted by the facility, in alphabetical order, then the same list was sorted by floor. My plan was to use this as a cheat seat so at a quick glance, I would be able to figure out exactly where my desired destination was located. Dining Room? Third floor baby. Ice Cream machines? 15. Promenade? 5! See? Works like a charm.

 

 

 

Sorry ladies, I’m taken.

 

 

Two days before the trip, I realized that I didn’t plan where to park the car in Fort Lauderdale. After doing some research, I found a place that had mostly good reviews, called Park N Go. I made a reservation online and it cost only $4.99 a night. I think pier parking was $15.00 a night. Over 7 nights, that adds up. Now, don’t do what I did kids. I went to the boat, unloaded the luggage, checked it in with the porter and then drove the car to Park N Go. However, everyone else in the planet drove directly to Park N Go and then boarded the bus with their luggage for the 5 minute drive to the pier. Probably the better way to go. After dropping off the car at Park N Go, we walked right onto the bus which took us to the boat. Getting off the boat, we walked to the designated spot and then had to wait maybe 3 minutes for the bus to arrive to take us back to the car. The lot seemed safe and organized. I’d highly recommend Park N Go.

 

 

One last task to do before our trip begins. Pack our clothes. You know, there’s an old adage here: Pack half of what you think you’ll need. Excellent advice. Unfortunately, my wife hadn’t heard that one. When I saw the three staging areas within our home of “stuff to be packed”, I told her about this very fine quote. She then looked at my cheatsheet that I was holding in my hand, sorted two different ways, and gave me a look that I’ve seen many times during our 25 years. I knew what had to be done. Just shut up and pack. At the end of the day, we actually had only three (rather large) pieces of luggage. I travel a lot and utilize those Travel Cubes and folding aids. Helps you squeeze a lot of stuff into your luggage. Do a google search if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Anyhoo I was shocked that we only had three pieces of luggage, and one was totally dedicated to shoes. You think I’m kidding, right. Nope. Shoes. To be fair, I have rather large clodhoppers and they take up a lot of room, so if you go by mass, she still occupied about 60 percent of the space. But if you go by quantity, she must have outnumbered mine 4 to 1.

 

 

Time to board people, time to board. Got there about 10:30 AM and went on line (according to deck). Waited, oh, two minutes before being waived on to an open window. Just a few short minutes later our picture was taken, keys are in hand, and we walked to the waiting area to take a seat. Sat for 10 minutes, tops, and we were walking on the boat. My first thoughts as we entered the boat? Holy @*&^, can you believe this @*&^#@% thing? I can’t believe this is a *@&*^$# boat”. You did read I’m from NY, right? Ok, a little more background about me. I hate to look ahead. I don’t like reading a menu before we get to the restaurant. I don’t like watching previews for upcoming shows and I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at pictures of the ship. I like to be surprised. Boy, was I surprised. It’s so impressive. But again, I think you need to do some pre-work and familiarize yourself with the ship. The ship is just too big to try to learn its configuration on your own, onboard, without being exposed to it before. For example, I knew there was a boardwalk, a promenade, a central park, a rising bar, a “hidden balcony”, a little known spot where they hide the third ice cream machine, where to stand on sail away, where to get breakfast if the Windjammer is too full, where to get a great roast beef sandwich, where to sign up for the free $50 dollar good-as-cash casino coupon, etc.. I think it would take someone too long to find out these things. I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t, all I know is that I was overwhelmed and I did a bit of homework. I’d hate to think how overwhelmed someone who didn’t prepare might feel. Oh, that $50 coupon I mentioned above, I made that up to see if you were paying attention. Got you blood flowing a little bit, didn’t I?

 

 

Royal Caribbean Hiccup alert. I read that the Windjammer (lunch buffet) may get a little busy on the first day, so here’s where my little bit of homework pays off. “Hey honey bunny, let’s go to Central Park, where we can have a quiet lunch, don’t worry, nobody knows about this place”. Funny thing. It seems EVERYONE seems to know about this place. Yikes. Let’s go to the Windjammer then. Yikes squared. Where’d all these people come from? There was no place to sit. Hmmm, very annoying actually. Is this the way it’s going to be the whole cruise? I didn’t plan on this. Atrial Fibrillation starting to kick in. Cheatsheet is not helping. Eye starting to twitch. Wife looking for bartender. Wait, a table is opening up. RUN! “Watch it old lady, that baby’s mine!” Phew, got it. I hope this isn’t an omen of things to come (Hint: It wasn’t). Food however was very good.

 

 

Rooms are now open up. Hey sweetie, being our anniversary, ready for some Oom pah Pah Mow Mow? Oh wait, the ice cream machines are closing soon, let’s get some before they close. Now, don’t get me started on the ice cream machines. Too late, I’m getting started. Why do they close those things at 6:30? It’s 24 hours over there at Carnival. Doesn’t make sense. Oh, and here’s another annoying thing. The Donut Shop. Only open a few hours a day. And not the same hours each day. It was open certain hours on sea day, then it was open a different set of hours when docked. I could tell you when it wasn’t open though: When I wanted a freaken donut!! Whenever I went there it was closed. Now let’s think out loud a bit. Isn’t a donut the perfect between meal snack? Unfortunately, it seems you could only get a donut at meal time. To sum up, if you have a sweet tooth like me and are looking for a sweet snack after a show, before bed or any time after dinner for that matter, you’re out of luck.

 

 

One last nitpicky thing. You know that you can order as much as you want in the dining room, right? However, I got a vibe from the waitress that she was annoyed by this. Like after I placed my order, she would start to walk away, and I’d have to continue my order with a (kinda-loud) “AND, I’d also like…”. Typically, my wife and I would each order a main dish, then I’d order a third item that we would split. You know, something that I typically wouldn’t order but took advantage of the free food by experimenting. If it ended up that we didn’t like it, no big loss. This didn’t apply to Lobster Night, however, as I wasn’t splitting that bad boy with anybody. Regarding the lobster, I don’t believe they were from Maine / North Atlantic as those are a little sweeter than the ones served on the ship. Still good though. Oh, getting back to the waitress. It wasn’t until the last day, tip day, that after we placed our order, she added, “anything else”? Two little words that would have made me feel more comfortable if she would have said them all week. She even encouraged us to get an additional dessert: “You sure you don’t want to try the Key Lime Pie”? Man, where was that attitude all week?

 

 

Jim J. Bullock was in hairspray. Did anyone else know this? Did they even advertise it? I don’t remember ever reading anything about it. I remember him from “Too Close for Comfort”, a show staring Ted Knight in the 80’s. I mean, I remember my grandma telling me about that show from the 80’s. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Any hoo, he signed an 8 month contract, so he’ll be doing the show onboard the Oasis until the end of September. I still don’t understand why a man plays the role of the mother. Really doesn’t make sense to me, but what do I know?

 

 

That’s basically it. Except for the couple of annoying things noted above, everything else was more than perfect. The staff bent over backwards for us. The entertainment was great, food was spectacular and the ship itself is a work of art. Oh and don’t worry, contrary to my title, I was able to batter dip the corndog during our cruise. Like with anything else, you just have to do the proper planning. “Hey honey, we have two minutes until the Beatles Trivia….”.

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drb_2000

drb_2000

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Ok, let’s sum up the pre-work. Booked the room (after figuring out the type and location), made the show reservations and made the dinner reservations. Now I started to get lazy. Actually, I didn’t. Ok, not too proud of this, but I created a spreadsheet of all the various stores, bars, restaurants, landmarks, etc. and the floor on which these areas are located. First, it was sorted by the facility, in alphabetical order, then the same list was sorted by floor. My plan was to use this as a cheat seat so at a quick glance, I would be able to figure out exactly where my desired destination was located. Dining Room? Third floor baby. Ice Cream machines? 15. Promenade? 5! See? Works like a charm.

 

 

Great review.....

 

Would you mind sharing your planning spreadsheet? Sounds like that was of great help.. As you see for my signature, I have almost a year of planning ahead of me :D

 

Thanks for the pointers.

 

DrB

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Brutus66

Brutus66

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I think I just met my "mental" doppelganger. My wife last cooked a meal somewhere around 1997 and I am laying the ship out in color-coded grids :eek:

 

I want to see your shread sheet!

 

Awesome review. We are on oasis in 2 weeks.

 

Thanks!

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labeachcomber

labeachcomber

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Great review. Is there more to come? I hope so! You didn't mention any excursions, how you planned for them, etc. What was your game plan for sea days and nabbing a coveted chair?

 

"Batter dip the corndog"! Never heard that one before, but I'm going to use it on DW tonight!

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F27TW

F27TW

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I can’t believe it’s over. After months of planning and anticipation, our week long cruise aboard the Oasis of the Seas is now in the past. It was a little more expensive than I would have liked, it required a lot more research and homework than I would have preferred doing and there are definitely some things that could be improved. But, would I do it again? Is it worth all the effort and money? YES, YES and YES!! If you’re ready for a long read, let’s start from the beginning.

 

 

This was our fifth cruise. Oops, let’s back up a little more. I am a very late 40ish cruising enthusiast from Tampa, Florida, by way of New York. Okay, I exaggerated a little. I just bounced into the next decade, like minutes ago, so I still consider myself “late 40ish” (and I’ll probably do so for the next 5 years, so just let me be). My wife is a younger chick (two years) and we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. More on that later. Our first cruise was on the Voyager of the Seas back in 1999 (on her third voyage, by the way). Then we went the way of Carnival for our next three. Hey, that doesn’t make us bad people. They are a little cheaper and they do put on a good show. I love cruising and I’m hard to disappoint (note that we’ve been married 25 years and she’s cooked maybe three meals in her life. She’s great at reheating leftovers, though. But I digress). If we can cruise for less money, why not do it, right? We were on the Carnival Dream when we first saw the Oasis. We were docked right next to each other (don’t remember which island) and we noticed how much larger the Oasis was. Now keep in mind, the Dream is Carnival’s biggest ship, yet it was dwarfed by the Oasis. After being awed by the size, I was underwhelmed by its appearance. You got to admit, the Oasis is one ugly ship. It looks like an apartment complex that floats. But then I thought, who cares what it looks like anyway? When we got home from that cruise, I looked up the Oasis, saw the rather steep pricing and decided to wait for a special occasion. Now, fast forward to this year. 25th wedding anniversary, 50th …uh…very late 40ish birthday, so hey, let’s do something special! I figured, what the heck? Let’s pull the trigger on this bad boy. And let the odyssey begin:

 

 

For those of you new to cruising, a word of caution. This ship requires you to do your homework. You can’t just book, hop on the ship and have a great week. Well, maybe you can, but being the organized nincompoop that I am, it required a quite a bit of planning. For example, let’s start with the room selection. The past couple of cruises we selected an interior room. The thought being, we’ve had a balcony before and spent very little time out there, so let’s save a little money. However, that stupid “Special Occasion” thing popped up in my head again, so, what the heck, let’s do a balcony. What? There are different balconies? Oh boy. There are interior balconies and exterior balconies. Hmmmm, interior sounds cool. Let’s choose that. What? There are different interior balconies? Yikes. There are those that look over Central Park. I’m glad we didn’t choose that one because Central Park didn’t have a lot of action going on. Then there are those overlooking the Boardwalk. That one looked kinda cool, as you can see the Aqua Theater, a little bit of the Ocean and watch the Zip Liners scoot by. However, I didn’t know that at the time of booking and as my head was starting to explode, I chickened out and skipped that room type as well. Finally, there are the interior balconies that overlook the Promenade, which seemed to have the most action for those looking to people watch, although it might get noisy with all the activity going on. Also, if you forget to close the drapes, you’ll be the ones putting on the show. So many choices- lot’s of pressure. So I decided to be safe and select the Ocean View. I’m not even going to into the various types of Ocean View Balconies there are. All I knew at this point is that I wanted something midlevel and midship (to help limit my susceptibility to seasickness) with a price that didn’t cause my atrial fibrillation to kick into high gear. I was able to find something meeting these criteria (deck 7 – Room 250) and opted for the insurance to, you know, be on the safe side. Hoping to never need it, of course. So that’s it, just pay and go, right?

 

 

Wrong. Homework doesn’t end there though. Regarding all the various shows onboard, Royal Caribbean, unlike Carnival, lets those with reservations enter first and if there are any seats left, they will let those waiting on the no-reservation line to enter. So, if you want a good seat (and I want a good seat), you need a reservation. So, starting 90 days out, I kept checking the website to see if the reservations opened up. Every day. That doesn’t make me, like, compulsive, does it? I kept thinking that there was some RCCL employee monitoring the website and thinking, “hey, that idiot from Tampa is checking the reservations again. Let’s keep it closed for a couple more days, hee hee”. Well, my patience finally paid off as around the 60 day mark they opened up the reservations. Finally! I heard that RCCL hadn’t contracted the comedians yet and wouldn’t open up the reservations until then. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but it sounded better to me than “let’s spitefully keep the reservations closed and see if this Tampa guy finally gives up”. I downloaded the show schedule from the website and scheduled one show a day. Happily, I was able to reserve all the shows at the exact times I was looking for. Now keep in mind, the doors open 45 minutes prior to ShowTime. During the last 10 minutes they open up the venue to those without reservations. Most of the shows were not full, so these “unreserved” people were able to get in, however they probably got most of the side and rear seats (although an occasional middle / front seat was available). Also, the Comedy Live room, where the comedians are, holds maybe 100 people – so reservations are mandatory for this. I can’t imagine any walk-ins were able to get in. Phew, all done with the pre-work, right?

 

 

Nope. Dinner reservations people, don’t forget the dinner reservations. We wanted to go to a couple of the specialty restaurants, so we made these reservations too. We did the Chop Grille. Man oh man. Just awesome. The Porterhouse was sick and the chocolate mud pie was insane. I’m telling you, if I wasn’t such a classy person, I would have gnawed that Porterhouse bone. Boy was it good. I can’t recommend this place enough. We also did Giovanni’s Table. Again, the food was ridiculously good. I can’t think of a reason not to go to either of these places. I mean, I can understand why people would not want to pay extra to eat when there are plenty of free options available, but other than that, these are no-brainers as far as I’m concerned.

 

 

Ok, let’s sum up the pre-work. Booked the room (after figuring out the type and location), made the show reservations and made the dinner reservations. Now I started to get lazy. Actually, I didn’t. Ok, not too proud of this, but I created a spreadsheet of all the various stores, bars, restaurants, landmarks, etc. and the floor on which these areas are located. First, it was sorted by the facility, in alphabetical order, then the same list was sorted by floor. My plan was to use this as a cheat seat so at a quick glance, I would be able to figure out exactly where my desired destination was located. Dining Room? Third floor baby. Ice Cream machines? 15. Promenade? 5! See? Works like a charm.

 

 

 

Sorry ladies, I’m taken.

 

 

Two days before the trip, I realized that I didn’t plan where to park the car in Fort Lauderdale. After doing some research, I found a place that had mostly good reviews, called Park N Go. I made a reservation online and it cost only $4.99 a night. I think pier parking was $15.00 a night. Over 7 nights, that adds up. Now, don’t do what I did kids. I went to the boat, unloaded the luggage, checked it in with the porter and then drove the car to Park N Go. However, everyone else in the planet drove directly to Park N Go and then boarded the bus with their luggage for the 5 minute drive to the pier. Probably the better way to go. After dropping off the car at Park N Go, we walked right onto the bus which took us to the boat. Getting off the boat, we walked to the designated spot and then had to wait maybe 3 minutes for the bus to arrive to take us back to the car. The lot seemed safe and organized. I’d highly recommend Park N Go.

 

 

One last task to do before our trip begins. Pack our clothes. You know, there’s an old adage here: Pack half of what you think you’ll need. Excellent advice. Unfortunately, my wife hadn’t heard that one. When I saw the three staging areas within our home of “stuff to be packed”, I told her about this very fine quote. She then looked at my cheatsheet that I was holding in my hand, sorted two different ways, and gave me a look that I’ve seen many times during our 25 years. I knew what had to be done. Just shut up and pack. At the end of the day, we actually had only three (rather large) pieces of luggage. I travel a lot and utilize those Travel Cubes and folding aids. Helps you squeeze a lot of stuff into your luggage. Do a google search if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Anyhoo I was shocked that we only had three pieces of luggage, and one was totally dedicated to shoes. You think I’m kidding, right. Nope. Shoes. To be fair, I have rather large clodhoppers and they take up a lot of room, so if you go by mass, she still occupied about 60 percent of the space. But if you go by quantity, she must have outnumbered mine 4 to 1.

 

 

Time to board people, time to board. Got there about 10:30 AM and went on line (according to deck). Waited, oh, two minutes before being waived on to an open window. Just a few short minutes later our picture was taken, keys are in hand, and we walked to the waiting area to take a seat. Sat for 10 minutes, tops, and we were walking on the boat. My first thoughts as we entered the boat? Holy @*&^, can you believe this @*&^#@% thing? I can’t believe this is a *@&*^$# boat”. You did read I’m from NY, right? Ok, a little more background about me. I hate to look ahead. I don’t like reading a menu before we get to the restaurant. I don’t like watching previews for upcoming shows and I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at pictures of the ship. I like to be surprised. Boy, was I surprised. It’s so impressive. But again, I think you need to do some pre-work and familiarize yourself with the ship. The ship is just too big to try to learn its configuration on your own, onboard, without being exposed to it before. For example, I knew there was a boardwalk, a promenade, a central park, a rising bar, a “hidden balcony”, a little known spot where they hide the third ice cream machine, where to stand on sail away, where to get breakfast if the Windjammer is too full, where to get a great roast beef sandwich, where to sign up for the free $50 dollar good-as-cash casino coupon, etc.. I think it would take someone too long to find out these things. I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t, all I know is that I was overwhelmed and I did a bit of homework. I’d hate to think how overwhelmed someone who didn’t prepare might feel. Oh, that $50 coupon I mentioned above, I made that up to see if you were paying attention. Got you blood flowing a little bit, didn’t I?

 

 

Royal Caribbean Hiccup alert. I read that the Windjammer (lunch buffet) may get a little busy on the first day, so here’s where my little bit of homework pays off. “Hey honey bunny, let’s go to Central Park, where we can have a quiet lunch, don’t worry, nobody knows about this place”. Funny thing. It seems EVERYONE seems to know about this place. Yikes. Let’s go to the Windjammer then. Yikes squared. Where’d all these people come from? There was no place to sit. Hmmm, very annoying actually. Is this the way it’s going to be the whole cruise? I didn’t plan on this. Atrial Fibrillation starting to kick in. Cheatsheet is not helping. Eye starting to twitch. Wife looking for bartender. Wait, a table is opening up. RUN! “Watch it old lady, that baby’s mine!” Phew, got it. I hope this isn’t an omen of things to come (Hint: It wasn’t). Food however was very good.

 

 

Rooms are now open up. Hey sweetie, being our anniversary, ready for some Oom pah Pah Mow Mow? Oh wait, the ice cream machines are closing soon, let’s get some before they close. Now, don’t get me started on the ice cream machines. Too late, I’m getting started. Why do they close those things at 6:30? It’s 24 hours over there at Carnival. Doesn’t make sense. Oh, and here’s another annoying thing. The Donut Shop. Only open a few hours a day. And not the same hours each day. It was open certain hours on sea day, then it was open a different set of hours when docked. I could tell you when it wasn’t open though: When I wanted a freaken donut!! Whenever I went there it was closed. Now let’s think out loud a bit. Isn’t a donut the perfect between meal snack? Unfortunately, it seems you could only get a donut at meal time. To sum up, if you have a sweet tooth like me and are looking for a sweet snack after a show, before bed or any time after dinner for that matter, you’re out of luck.

 

 

One last nitpicky thing. You know that you can order as much as you want in the dining room, right? However, I got a vibe from the waitress that she was annoyed by this. Like after I placed my order, she would start to walk away, and I’d have to continue my order with a (kinda-loud) “AND, I’d also like…”. Typically, my wife and I would each order a main dish, then I’d order a third item that we would split. You know, something that I typically wouldn’t order but took advantage of the free food by experimenting. If it ended up that we didn’t like it, no big loss. This didn’t apply to Lobster Night, however, as I wasn’t splitting that bad boy with anybody. Regarding the lobster, I don’t believe they were from Maine / North Atlantic as those are a little sweeter than the ones served on the ship. Still good though. Oh, getting back to the waitress. It wasn’t until the last day, tip day, that after we placed our order, she added, “anything else”? Two little words that would have made me feel more comfortable if she would have said them all week. She even encouraged us to get an additional dessert: “You sure you don’t want to try the Key Lime Pie”? Man, where was that attitude all week?

 

 

Jim J. Bullock was in hairspray. Did anyone else know this? Did they even advertise it? I don’t remember ever reading anything about it. I remember him from “Too Close for Comfort”, a show staring Ted Knight in the 80’s. I mean, I remember my grandma telling me about that show from the 80’s. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Any hoo, he signed an 8 month contract, so he’ll be doing the show onboard the Oasis until the end of September. I still don’t understand why a man plays the role of the mother. Really doesn’t make sense to me, but what do I know?

 

 

That’s basically it. Except for the couple of annoying things noted above, everything else was more than perfect. The staff bent over backwards for us. The entertainment was great, food was spectacular and the ship itself is a work of art. Oh and don’t worry, contrary to my title, I was able to batter dip the corndog during our cruise. Like with anything else, you just have to do the proper planning. “Hey honey, we have two minutes until the Beatles Trivia….”.

 

You definitely win the the award, man .. you combined informative with funny .. "batter dipped the corndog .... " !! ROFLMAO!!!

We need you to take a lot more cruises so we can read more from you! Next time .. pictures ! (well, of the cruise ... not , uh .. well, u know .. LOL)!

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CntPAcruiser

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Jim J. Bullock was in hairspray. Did anyone else know this? Did they even advertise it? I don’t remember ever reading anything about it. I remember him from “Too Close for Comfort”, a show staring Ted Knight in the 80’s. I mean, I remember my grandma telling me about that show from the 80’s. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Any hoo, he signed an 8 month contract, so he’ll be doing the show onboard the Oasis until the end of September. I still don’t understand why a man plays the role of the mother. Really doesn’t make sense to me, but what do I know?

 

The original "Hairspray" was a John Waters classic camp film, in which Divine (a drag star) played the mother. In deference thereto, it has been played by a man in drag ever since (thank you Harvey Fierstein--on Broadway--and John Travolta--on film).

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