Anthem - August 11 Review (9 Night Bermuda and Caribbean)

[fligster]

This is a review of our August 11 2016 sailing on the Anthem of the Seas. It is me, my wife and our 11 (almost 12) year old son. This is my wife and my 8th cruise and my sons 6th. We are platinum with RCCL. We traveled with my sister and her wife. We had a D3 balcony on deck 8, they had a balcony on deck 13.

 

I am actually still on the cruise, am an early riser so figured I would start this on our last sea day.

 

PRE CRUISE:

I was able to reserve dinner and all the shows in February timeframe or a little after. I also reserved ripcord, North Star and was able to reserve the puzzle room. We booked online direct in September of 2015 and had many price adjustments. Getting adjustments was an easy call to RCCL. I kept notes, here is the progression

 

ORIGINAL COST (9/16/15)

BASE RATE: $6,694.00

With Port/Tax: $7,258.60

TOTAL (Including Gratuities): $7,608.25

 

(30% SALE 10/14/15)

BASE RATE: $6,274.00

With Port/Tax: $6,838.60

TOTAL (Including Gratuities): $7,188.25

 

(WOW 30% SALE 2/23/16)

BASE RATE: $5,965.00

With Port/Tax: $6,529.60

TOTAL (Including Gratuities): $6,879.25

 

(BOGO 60% SALE 5/2/16)

BASE RATE: $5,619

With Port/Tax: $6,183.60

TOTAL (Including Gratuities): $6,533.25

 

(BOGO 60% SALE 5/17/16)

BASE RATE: $5,574

With Port/Tax: $6,138.60

TOTAL (Including Gratuities): $6,488.25

 

(BOGO 60% SALE 5/18/16)

BASE RATE: $5,558

With Port/Tax: $6,122.60

TOTAL (Including Gratuities): $6,472.25

 

FINAL COST (BOGO 60% SALE 5/23/16)

BASE RATE: $5,417

With Port/Tax: $5,981.60

TOTAL (Including Gratuities): $6,331.25

 

So I saved $1,277 since originally booking.

 

NEXT UP: Embarkation

 

 

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[champagne123]

Leaving in 8 weeks and very interested in your review!!!! :)

[wongcruise]

9 weeks to go! Looking forward to your review.

[BettyPC]

It is interesting to see the price drops. I go on RC and also Carnival. My experience has been that the price I book at has usually been lower. I checked my Navigator last night & the cost of the cruise is slightly less but I got $300 credit on the room & now its $100. So its a wash. Looking forward to hearing about your experience!

[Jenjer]

looking forward to this.

[gowensricks]

We are taking this cruise next summer, so I can not wait to read your review. Thanks!

[fligster]

On a side note some may have heard we were going to meetup with the coast guard off cape hatteras for medical evacuation. They decided it was best for an early as possible land evacuation so we are due in to Bayonne at 2:45 am, disembarking times are not affected the early dock is only for the medical emergency

 

 

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[fligster]

Embarkation:

 

We live in South Jersey so it is about a 1 hour 45 minute drive to the port. I had selected a 10:30 to 11:00 checkin time. The trip started on a bad note as about an hour in I realized I forgot my iPad. I wasn't going to go back and lose over two hours so I figured I would manage checking work emails etc on my iPhone.

 

We arrived around 10:25, there were maybe 15 cars ahead of us. We waited a few minutes to drop off our luggage and then headed to the garage and paid the $180; parking on the second level. There were still people outside waiting to be picked up from the previous cruise.

In the terminal we were directed to an agent with a tablet and had to wait maybe 5 minutes for her to finish up. We had taken our pictures at home, checkin was quick and we went through security quickly. They then direct you to sit in chairs.

There were already hundreds of people waiting in the blue chairs. The woman showing people where to sit saw we were platinum and took a little bit to figure out where to put us since the first rows were filled. She had us sit in the last row and told us that she would remember me and get us when they were boarding priority. She said there would be complaints from those around us but that's ok. They started boarding around 10:50 and sure enough after they boarded suites and higher C&A she came over and walked us to the front and we were inline to the ship. I was pleasantly surprised that she took the time to make sure we got on with priority boarding. We were on board by 11:00, so about 35 minutes from baggage line to stepping on the ship.

 

We tried connecting to the Royal IQ app but it didn't recognize us when we tried to access. I'll have more on this app and Internet later as I had pre purchased the one device steam and surf package.

 

When you board they tell you lunch is on deck deck 14, but we knew to go to cafe 270 instead. We got sandwiches here for lunch. I really liked the roast beef.

They had a bumper car session at 12:30 so we did that since there was hardly a line. I will give more info on this later. At 1:00 they announced the rooms were ready. One thing that annoyed me throughout the cruise and started on the first day was the people who would sit on the steps. We encountered this every day, usually multiple times. I always tell my son "it's a stair not a chair".

 

Next Up: Cabin

 

 

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[cruise47]

Why are Anthem of the Seas reviews under Cruise Critic so low? Everything you read about this ship is very positive.

[nycfa]

Loving the review!

[qanderson]

Can't wait to hear more[emoji4]

 

 

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[toad455]

In regards to the price drop, I'm currently booked on the Anthem for Jan. 26, 2017(12 days). I originally booked an inside virtual cabin back in February. My price hasn't changed, but as of two weeks ago I'm now in a guaranteed balcony cabin.

[Clarea]

In regards to the price drop, I'm currently booked on the Anthem for Jan. 26, 2017(12 days). I originally booked an inside virtual cabin back in February. My price hasn't changed, but as of two weeks ago I'm now in a guaranteed balcony cabin.

Wow, very nice!:)

[ForeverAfter]

Following along!

[fligster]

Back home now. Will finish up review on Sunday.

[MillbrookMom]

I apologize if this has already been discussed, but I am wondering, does anyone know if you make entertainment reservations on Anthem like on Oasis? I loved being able to do that so I knew when we were going to see what.

 

Oh and how do you go about booking the dining packages? (if you are doing multiple specialty restaurants)

[Ourusualbeach]

I apologize if this has already been discussed, but I am wondering, does anyone know if you make entertainment reservations on Anthem like on Oasis? I loved being able to do that so I knew when we were going to see what.

 

Oh and how do you go about booking the dining packages? (if you are doing multiple specialty restaurants)

 

Entertainment is like on the Oasis where you can make reservations.

 

When you select either the 3,4 or 5 night dining package you will be asked for your time preference for day 1 or 2. Royal will select that restaurant. Once on board you make your other reservations and can change the restaurant that Royal assigned you subject to availability.

[fligster]

You reserve the 3 main shows; The Gift, Spectra's Cabaret, and "we will rock you". You should be able to reserve online ahead of time. Ours opened up in late February.

[easyboy]

Looking forward to your review.

[fligster]

CABIN:

We had a D3 balcony cabin on Deck 8. We were on the port side at the end of the first “hump”. I was very impressed with the cabin. There seemed to be enough room for the 3 of us where we never felt too crowded. There is plenty of storage, more than enough for all of our stuff, and we packed 3 large duffle bags. The balcony was an OK size and had 2 chairs with foot stools and a small table. As most are aware, you need to have a card in the slot for the lights and air conditioning to work in the cabin. They expect you to use your Seapass card, but you can use any similar sized card. I used an old hotel key card I had from earlier in the week. We did lift it out a little to turn off the lights/air if we would be out a while, but left it in if coming back soon. Also, the air conditioner will not work if the balcony door is not closed and locked. There is an additional lock higher up on the sliding door that can be engaged so short children cannot reach to unlock and then open the door. On this trip the Port side did not afford us any port facing views, as we were facing out every time, except San Juan where we could see the CVS and Coast Guard station etc.

The bathroom of course was small but very nice. I liked having the shower door instead of a curtain or similar. The bathroom light has a built in night light that goes on when the light is off. We had brought our own for the cabin, but this was good for the bathroom because you didn’t have to turn on the light in the middle of then night. We did have small hotel size shampoo, conditioner, and body gel. We also had hand soap bar for the sink and a bath soap bar for the shower. Our toilet did stop working once during the trip, we told our room steward and it was fixed by the time we came back to the cabin.

We met our room steward later in the day. His name was Elvis, which was easy to remember. He was friendly and asked my son a bunch of riddles and told him if he got them right he would make a towel animal every day instead of every other day, so my son got a bunch of towel animals. Elvis would even ask him what he wanted that night if we saw him while leaving the cabin. Our cabin was always cleaned up and ready when we returned. He asked if we wanted the sofa bed made up fully or just made up with the cushions removed so there would be more room in the cabin, since we only had my son sleeping on it. We chose the latter so we would have more room to move around in the cabin.

Being such a technologically advanced ship, I did think it was strange that they use a magnet card for indicating whether you want “Do Not Disturb” or “Make up Room” on the door. They should have a light or indicator built into the ship. They had this on the NCL Breakaway (IIRC), and other cruises we have had a little dial in the door or similar.

Here are a few pictures I took of the cabin, and one of the towel animals. Elvis had made us this one, and also a different animal for my son on his bed.

 

 

 

 

 

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[fligster]

Here are some views from the balcony

 

 

 

 

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[fligster]

TECHNOLOGY:

I pre purchased the Surf and Stream, 1 device package for 30% off. They provide you an access code that you enter to gain access on the device you are using. To switch devices, just go to logout.com and then enter the access code on the other device. I was expecting to have my access code in the cabin ,but it wasn’t and neither was my sisters in her cabin. We ended up getting the access code later that afternoon / early evening.

The login page indicates that you will be logged out after 2 hours of inactivity but I didn’t find this to be the case on my iphone 6. I never had to login again unless I had been using the internet on another device. My sister has an iphone 5 and indicated that they had to keep logging in after 2 hours. I was impressed with the speed for a ship, but was expecting more from previous posters. It seems that they are now throttling the speeds even for surf and stream as I was getting around 4 mb down and 1.9 mb upload speeds. I never had issues with the internet during the cruise. There is no internet on Labadee. I couldn’t get a signal from Nellies beach, except once I took my phone out to take picture and I was connected for like 30 seconds, so maybe on spots closer to the ship you could pick up the ships wifi.

 

 

We also purchased the chat/phone option for $7.95 per cruise. This is great for texting each other to see where everybody is and to meetup with others. I never had any issue with texts not going through etc. I would recommend this.

You can use the Royal IQ app without purchasing an internet package. This can be used for looking at your schedule, statement, cruise compass etc. This is a good concept and similar to the Carnival Hub App we used last year, but not implemented as well. It is good to have this information available but there are quite a few shortcomings:

• It lets you filter and look at future days cruise compasses, but they aren’t always loaded ahead of time, so this ability was usually useless. On the last sea day, they didn’t even have the current days compass loaded until late afternoon.

• The app was flaky the first 1.5 days of the cruise, where it would crash often, or say it was loading and then give a message that the action couldn’t be completed. The crashes occurred less often as the cruise went on, but still happened. Sometimes you had to clear the app from memory and restart it to get it to work.

• You could view your statement, which was pretty accurate, but since I had my wife and son my account, everything showed up under me. You couldn’t see who of the 3 of use actually made the purchase. Even though when you get the printed statement at the end of the cruise, it was broken out correctly.

• You can put in an email to have your statement sent to you, but this didn’t work as I never received and email with my statement.

• The texting portion doesn’t allow you to send a text to a group, you could only send a text to one person at a time. This is inconvenient when trying to get in touch with multiple people at once.

• The texting portion doesn’t have autocorrect when you are typing. I never realized how much I rely on this while texting quickly.

• I was able to get a notification sound for new texts on my iphone 6, but my sisters using an iphone 5 could not, even though all settings were the same.

• If you are in a texting conversation, it still indicates that the conversation is “unread”, you have to go out and back into the conversation for that indicator to clear.

• It seemed random as to whether or not you could add an activity to your calendar. Some items in the cruise compass had an “Add Activity to Calendar” option and others didn’t.

• You can’t add your own activity like you can on the cruise planner before your cruise. For instance, my wife had a SPA appointment that doesn’t automatically appear on her calendar, and you can’t manually add it.

• There are no deck plans or maps on the app. This seems like a huge oversight. Also the activity said where it was located (e.g. Schooner Bar) but didn’t give you information as to where that is on the ship.

• Sometimes the times for activities didn’t match the paper compass, and the paper compass was correct.

• It was a little slow to load the information each time. Also, if you hit the wrong thing and it started loading something, you couldn’t cancel out, you had to wait for it to finish loading. You could exit out the app but that is clunky. They have tablets around the ship that you can use and those loaded immediately, most likely because those were hardwired and not using the wifi.

 

You can also view your calendar, menus, compass, statement etc on the Television. The television menu wasn’t working correctly until later on the first day. It seemed like they hadn’t fully switched it over to the new cruise. The television menu seemed to work all the time.

 

We decided to get the WOW bands. We went to guest services and we each got one. We apparently got the older “bad” style where they have 3 holes and nubbins you had to click together to put on. This was very hard to do, and a pain.

 

 

They now have bands that have a watch like buckle closure. We spoke to someone that got theirs in Boleros on the first day and had those. But like much on the ship, they never announced or let you know that these were available in Boleros. The WOW bands are supposed to be $4.95 each and the person who got in Boleros was charged this, but we never had the charge show up on our statement. If we don’t get charge after the fact of our final statement, I would of gladly paid the $5 to have the one with the buckle instead. The WOW bands worked great, except if you were buying drinks from the roaming waiters as they expected a card. You still need your card to enter/exit the ship. I didn’t see many people with WOW bands throughout the cruise.

 

For photos, they don’t’ print them anymore to view and pick. Everything is done electronically. They either take your room number when they photograph you or their facial recognition software would add the photo to your account. We only had one group photo show up that wasn’t ours, and you can easily say it isn’t you to remove it. They have maybe 25 terminals so you could always look at your photos. You can order prints or electronic picture that is downloaded to your phone or tablet. The only provide a USB drive if you purchase at least 10 photos. The photos are 8 x 10 quality and $19.99 each. You pay the same price for prints and electronic which I think the electronic should be cheaper. Also, we had buy one get one 50% coupon and you can only use this on print photos which doesn’t make sense since they are the same price and electronic are cheaper for RCCL because they don’t need to print them. So, we order 2 print pictures to get the discount rather than the electronic like we had planned to.

 

We watched the Bionic Bar but didn’t order anything. This is interesting to watch for a short time, but it is pretty slow and not that interesting. You order via a tablet, it makes your drink and then you put your card on the reader to verify it is you and the drink slides to you. There is a crew member there assisting and helping out when the robots have issues etc.

 

NEXT UP: Activities / Shows / Recreation

 

 

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[Clarea]

Thanks for the speedtest data points. I agree with you that they seemed to have converged to 4Mb/2Mb limits for surf & stream.

[fligster]

ACTIVITY / SHOWS / RECREATION:

 

GENERAL ACTIVITIES: Overall I think there was a lack of organized activities around the ship. They had them, but there seemed to be times where not much was available, or they had activities and they were happening at the same time. This is my view compared to the activities available on our Carnival Breeze cruise last year. They did give out RCCL swag for winning trivia and such. This includes keychains, pens, hats, water bottles, highlighters. Trivia, quizzes, napkin folding was held in the Schooner Bar. They also had scrapbooking (charge), card making (no charge and you got a nice kit for free) activities. They had an adult coloring activity which they were supposed to start the next cruise, but previewed this cruise.

 

SEA PLEX: This area is really cool and usually very crowded. The bumper cars are a lot of fun and go pretty fast. They don’t have any signs to let you know where the line begins, you just have to know it is at the one corner. The line ends up snaking around the entire Seaplex. People start lining up 30-45 minutes before the start of the activities. They usually had about 18 cars running at a time. I believe you can be a passenger if you are 5-8 years old and can drive if 9 and older. We ended up doing the bumper cars 3 times. I got hit from the back a few times and your head goes flying and hits the back of the seat which isn’t padded, and that hurts, so be careful.

They also have trapeze and roller skating. Participants are limited so you need to line up early to get a spot. When they do the trapeze, they only use half the area and the other half is open for basketball. The bumper car sessions were usually once per day for about 2 hours. I think they should have had more sessions since it is very popular, maybe a morning and then an evening to let the cars charge back up. I think part of the challenge is it takes a while to setup and teardown each of the activities.

There is a second floor where they have ping pong, foosball, air hockey (need to pay for this) and xbox. Xbox didn’t work so great; they had call of duty but it wouldn’t let my son play because there was no disc.

Outside the seaplex in the aft port area they have shuffleboard out on the deck. This was closed the last half of the cruise because they were replacing glass panels near it. Also, there were only 2 “sticks” as the others went missing or were broken.

 

SOLARIUM: This is an adult only area in the front of deck 14 and is enclosed. There are 3 small pools to sit in, a shallow pool with a few plastic loungers, and 4 hot tubs (2 hot tub areas, but each hot tub was split with stairs to go over to another one). There was a family that came in with 2 smaller children and the crew immediately went over and instructed them that this was adults only and they left. I was glad they were maintaining the policy.

 

POOLS: There is a covered pool and an open air pool. The pools were always crowded. There is a large television screen at the open pool area. They sometimes had movies here at night, but mostly they were showing ESPN Caribbean and the Olympics. This was a great way to watch the Olympics from the loungers or the pool itself. Chair hogs were out in force; one day I did see a crew member going around early in the morning marking the chairs with times on sticky notes. I have read complaints about lack of loungers, but there were tons of loungers on deck 14 and 15, there are just only so many right near the pool. We always saw empty loungers around the decks. They also have a little splash area for the smaller children.

 

ARCADE: The arcade is small compared to arcades on other ships. They had games as well as prize games like Stacker, but the prizes weren’t that great. The best prize here was a go pro 3 and a mini IPOD (not IPAD). They had free games for 5 hours on the first day, this of course doesn’t include the prize games. They also had half price games sometimes as well as free games for specific age groups of kids.

 

CASINO: The casino seemed small to me. I didn’t’ like the slot machine selection they had. They did have 3:2 $10 blackjack and they don’t have automatic shufflers. They did have poker, blackjack and slot tournaments throughout the week.

 

BINGO: We ended up not playing bingo as it was never at a convenient time for us. We went once but it was jammed. They have it in the music hall and I think that is too small a venue, as well as they only had 2 small screens on the side so it would be hard to see I think. We did see that they do it old school with paper and daubers, which is what my wife likes.

 

RIPCORD: The RCCL documentation just mentions a 250 lb limit, but on ship it indicates there is a 230lb limit if under 6 ft tall, and 250lb if over 6 ft. So, I couldn’t do it but my wife and son did it. They loved it and did pretty well. If you can, I would recommend doing it. It only lasts 1 minute, but that seemed like plenty of time.

 

FLOWRIDER: You can sign your waivers on the television, but what they don’t tell you is that you still need to go to the Ripcord sign in area and get a wristband. They don’t tell you this and there were lots of people in line and then when they got to the front they were told they need a wristband, had to get one and go back in line. The wristband is then good for all the waivers (flowrider, rock climbing, roller skating) that you signed.

 

NORTHSTAR: We had reservations for early in the week at 10:00 am. When we arrived they said the doors wouldn’t close and we should reschedule and the last sea day was wide open. We rescheduled for 10:00 on day 9. We arrived a little before 10:00 and they were running late. There was an earlier group that went in at 10:00 and we went up around 10:15. It holds up to 14 people. It was interesting but nothing spectacular. There is air conditioning that comes out of the top, but I was standing next to the window and it was very hot there. The ride lasts about 15 minutes, they go up and then they did go to the side very slightly but not anything significant.

 

PUZZLE ROOM: This is another activity that unless you have read about online, they don’t really advertise. I was lucky enough to be able to reserve this online, as it showed up in my cruise planner briefly about a month before sail time. The puzzle was hard, but the crew member is there to provide small clues if needed. Our group solved the puzzle and had about 16 minutes remaining. This room wasn’t as fun as a land based one we did, but fun nonetheless for a free activity on a ship. I would recommend it if you can get a time slot.

 

THE GIFT: We were a little confused by the storyline, we weren’t exactly sure who was dead and who was alive. The show was good though, and lasted less than an hour. Even though you reserve a seat, you still need to show up at least 30 minutes early to get a good seat.

 

SPECTRA’S CABARET: This is another one where you need to get there early to get a good seat since it is in 270. Our seats were ok, but we were on the side and could see slightly into the stage openings which took away from the act a little. The show was ok, but there is a lot of waiting and expecting more and then not getting it. They have people come down hanging from the ceiling, but they don’t do much except hang there for a very long time. We were expecting more of a performance.

 

WE WILL ROCK YOU: Only my wife saw this. She said the performers were good, but the story wasn’t that great. This is a long show and is like 110 minutes long.

MAGICIAN: I don’t recall his name, but there was a “comic” magician performing one night. He did slight of hand tricks. He was excellent and gave a terrific show. This was highly entertaining.

 

COMEDIAN: The one comedian who performed was pretty good. He had an adult only show, but of course a couple of people had small kids there, and RCCL allowed them there and didn’t ask them to leave. The one father had his 2 small kids in the first row. Some of the jokes definitely weren’t appropriate for kids, which is fine since they advertise it as adults only.

 

Alfred & Seymour: This was a headliner show with 2 fellows who did comedy. They didn’t seem to tell many jokes but they were entertaining. They did shtick where they would yell at people coming in late and such. I enjoyed their show.

 

FAREWELL SHOW: I don’t understand the Anthem of the Seas orchestra as they call it. They seem more like a band than an orchestra. They seem to always play the same very long song, and then “Happy”. I don’t see the point of them even playing in the beginning. The cruise director; Abe Hughes says some stuff and some “jokes” and then another comic Ed Regine did what was supposed to be a family friendly set. Most of it was, but it wasn’t very funny. I am just glad I didn’t’ stay up to see his show the previous night. Then, near the end he gave us 3 “bonus” jokes when referring to his DVD’s he would be selling. These jokes were not family friendly even though he said they were.

 

NEXT UP: DINING

Edited August 21, 2016 by fligster

[fligster]

DINING:

I had made reservations, split among Chic, American Icon and Silk. I didn’t make any reservations for The Grande, and didn’t realize it was casual the first and last nights. We ended up not eating in Silk, because the menu didn’t appeal to us. We split dinners among Chic, American Icon and the Windjammer. The service in the restaurants was hit and miss, depending on your server, but it was never “bad”, it was just OK to really good. The food in the dining rooms for dinner was good, but nothing was really good.

 

CHIC for Lunch: Dining room lunch was in Chic and we ate there a few times. The menu was always the same, it might have changed from the beginning to the later part of the cruise, but we only ate there the later part. The menu for lunch got old, the Apple Fritters (if they were served warm) were really good for dessert.

 

CHIC for Breakfast: We only ate here once for breakfast and the service was terrible. The waiter forgot my sister’s sausage and my other sisters cheese grits. When we mentioned this he didn’t seem to even know what we meant by cheese grits, even though they are on the menu. The waiter came back a little later with the sausage and a bowl of grated cheese. We explained cheese grits, and then he finally brought them a little later. They also didn’t have the salsa with the Rancho Juevo’s, when mentioned he took a little contain off a tray, so he had it but didn’t server it for some reason.

 

Café 270: We ate here for lunch on the first day. They offer premade sandwiches/paninis and salads. They have the roast beef sandwich that was really good. They did run out of Au Jus most days if you went later in the afternoon. I would recommend trying one of these roast beef sandwiches.

 

Johnny Rockets: We ate here once for lunch, it is al a cart pricing on the Anthem, but is reasonable as you can get a burger, fries and soft drink for $5 or burgers are $2.50, fries $1.50. The burger was good but I didn’t like the fries, they didn’t seem like regular Johnny Rocket fries and had those little crispy things on them. Also, there is no table service, you order and pickup at the counter. They have a couple of booths and then some tables, it is right the pool deck. The milk shakes are either $4.50 or $4.75 and small for the cost. We used our BOGO coupon for these. My wife’s chocolate milkshake was OK, but my son didn’t care for his vanilla one.

 

Café Promenade: We got cookies here sometimes as a little snack. I tried the premade turkey sandwich once and didn’t’ care for it.

 

Sorrento’s Pizza: The pizza here is ok, maybe equivalent to cafeteria pizza, my wife liked the Windjammer pizza better. The slices are small but you can get as much as you want and they serve you quickly.

 

La Patisserie: They have specialty coffee, Ben & Jerry Ice Cream and some for purchase pastries here. My wife got Ben & Jerry’s and it turns out they give you one of those smaller than a pint containers and cost $4.50, a pint was $10, so way overpriced compared to land based grocery or convenience stores.

 

Windjammer for Breakfast: The food options were pretty much the same every day, but there were a lot of options and the food was better than most ship buffets I have had. I like the layout. It would get crowded after 8 and a little earlier on port days, but you could always find a table. You just had to walk a little further to the back to find a table.

 

Windjammer for Lunch: This was when it was the most crowded every day, although again it wasn’t too difficult to get food or a table. The lunch options were varied and were mostly the same each day and were pretty good.

 

Windjammer For Dinner: Dinner usually wasn’t too crowded, and they usually had the back half of the windjammer closed off. They switched up some of the specialty items at dinner. The desserts were pretty good, they had a chocolate fountain one night and donut holes a couple of nights. The donuts were delicious.

 

Another note about the Windjammer, they have sinks and soap at the entrance to wash your hands. They still have Purell and you can use that instead, but they direct you to the soap/water stations. If the line is long to get in, enter from the back of the windjammer, from the stairs outside on deck 15, back here they also have many tables outside. They have a specialty section in the way back here also where in the morning you can get crepes.

 

SeaPlex Hot Dogs: This is of course in the back of the SeaPlex area, they have a few different kinds of “hot Dogs”. I got the smoke variety with onions and peppers, and thought it was pretty good.

 

NEXT UP: Ports of Call / Excursions