A First Time Cruiser’s Review of Oasis! Spring Break Cruise 4/1-4/8

[Mott1086]

This Picture Is Stunning, And The Perfect Way To End A Wonderful Week On The Oasis!

 

 

A beautiful sunset to close out a beautiful day.

 

 

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[baileybrad]

FirstAnthem (or should you really be FirstOasis), thank you so much for sharing your trip and family with us. We cruised on OAS this past December with our 3 sons -- now 15, 18 and 20. Our cruise this past spring break (due to college spring break being a different week) on the Brilliance of the Seas out of Tampa was bittersweet because our oldest was at Clemson and did not cruise with us for the 1st time. So we know the pain that you felt at not having the whole clan together.

 

Fortunately, we are cruising on the OAS this December with all 5 of us.

 

Again, your review was wonderful and your sharing of it was so very kind.

[MJSailors]

Very enjoyable review and great photos !

I noticed your Vera Bradley tote on the chair in one of your last photos. I have the same bag !

You have great taste !:)

[FirstAnthem]

Steve and Jack went to the family friendly comedy show on our last night. Sophie wasn’t really interested in it, so we stayed in our cabin and watched the only thing on tv—an old rerun of Seventh Heaven! Lol Oh my goodness, there is really no option on tv on Oasis. The kids watched Dora one night before going to bed. Hilarious.

 

Before the comedy show. It was in Studio B. They said it was pretty good, not fantastic.

 

This was our view from our balcony that night. I wanted to soak in every possible second of warm ocean air that I could. I knew it was snowing at home!

 

At dinner, Marvalyne, our waitress, clued us in to debarkation (is that the right word?) morning. We knew we wanted to carry our own luggage off the ship. (The other option is to pack up your stuff and leave your luggage outside your room at night, the porters pick it up, then you get it when you get off the ship.) If we had let the porters get our bags, the assigned time for us to get off the ship was 10:30. Way too late for us to start our drive home from FL. So, since we were carrying our own luggage off, we had from 6:45-7:45 am to get off the ship. As naive as we were, we thought, “simple, we will head down about 7:15 or so, get right off the ship, and start driving!” Marvalyne set us straight.

 

She was like “You’re going to head down when? And expect to hop right off the ship? Hahahaha” She advised us to get downstairs to the Royal Promenade around 5:30! She said “Mark my words, there will be a line of people and suitcases from the Promenade through the main dining room!”

 

So, Steve got up at 5:15 and headed downstairs and sure enough, there were about 20 suitcases already lined up! He ran back up, got our bags, and brought them back downstairs to put them in line. You didn’t have to stay with your bags, so he came back upstairs and we got ready for the day and made sure we had everything.

 

Here’s how close we were to the front of the line.

 

Here’s the line of bags behind us. These were taken at 6 am.

 

When they started letting people off the ship at 6:45, it literally took minutes. It was effortless. We were in the car (we parked in the garage) by 6:50, and we drove to the nearby Publix to pick up food for the drive home. We were there by the time they opened at 7 am!

 

TIP! For gluten free people out there, who may have a long drive ahead of them after a cruise, this is what we did. We had snacks left over from the trip. But we picked up a loaf of GF bread, GF deli turkey (applegate farms brand) to make Sophie a couple of sandwiches for the drive. (I had brought mayo packets with me, so I already had those.) We bought water, another kind of chips she likes and some grapes and she was set. We got other food for the rest of us and made it work until dinner time. Then we stopped for dinner in Richmond, VA, and got Sophie Five Guys and we got Panera, all to go. The next day we left so early that we had granola bars in the car for breakfast and we were home in time for her to have lunch at home! (We drove a LONG way the first day—FL to Frederick MD!)

 

Driving isn’t our first choice because it is so far, but it’s so much cheaper, and honestly, we liked having control of when we left. We knew we could just get going, and not add on a day of “get to the airport, make the flight on time, switch flights, get the bags...” Ugh—driving 23 hours is more palatable to us than that. Lol. I know we are in the minority on that one!

 

 

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[Gatordad815]

Thank you again for all the great GF tips & an overall fun trip report! Loved all the photos! My daughter loves risotto but not seafood so I’m going to see if we can just get it plain for her with maybe chicken on the side. You’ve given me lots of good ideas, so sincere thanks from one Celiac parent to another!

 

 

Hope to see you back on here again posting a report after your Feb trip! Best wishes to your family!

[Gatordad815]

Also I don’t know if you noticed this at Publix or not, but another GF tip for all of you non-southerners who don’t have Publix but do have a need for GF fooods: Publix has purple GF labels on the price tags of every GF item in the store. This has saved us countless hours of reading ingredient labels and made life so much easier. So if you’re driving down like the FirstAnthem family and need to make a GF grocery run for non-perishables to bring onboard the ship, Publix makes this very easy for you...

[FirstAnthem]

Great tip, Gatordad!! I wish I knew that before, but it will be a HUGE help to us in the future!! I hope you guys have a fantastic cruise—let us know how it goes! I hope your sweet daughter finds lots of GF goodness on your cruise. I know she will!

[Rewind]

FirstAnthem - great review. I don't want to get ahead of your comments, but as you have now arrived home in your story, what were your overall thoughts? Have you become addicted to cruising like most of us here?

(it only took a single 3 night cruise for me)

[SmoothFlying]

My wife and I did the OTS (Oasis of the Seas) March of 2013 so I'm definitely looking forwards to your review and how your cruise turned out !:D

 

Mac

[cft8]

I just wanted to say I really enjoyed reading your review. I started following the thread because I though we were going on the Oasis next year (oops, it's the Ovation - I am easily confused), but it was so entertaining that I had to keep following along! :-)

[bluedolph1n]

Thank you so much for you review! We are doing this itinerary in the summer, so thank you for the tips. And it makes us looking forward to the trip even more. :-)

 

 

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[FirstAnthem]

FINAL THOUGHTS!

 

At the close of this review, I thought I’d give our final thoughts on our first cruise.

 

In a nutshell, it was fantastic. We had an excellent time. We really loved the whole idea of a cruise vacation—having a home base and getting a taste of a few different countries all in one vacation.

 

We loved the food on this vacation—dinner was truly a highlight of our day. And even if the kids were a little cranky or arguing, once we were at dinner, everyone was happy and chatting and having a grand old time. It didn’t hurt that the food was really good! Not everyone absolutely loved everything, but for the most part, it was great.

 

Gluten free dining was really easy for Sophie, and we were so happy about that. Not having the main dining room on port days makes it a little hard—we would have preferred that option. But the chefs in Windjammer worked very hard for her and for the most part, it worked out perfectly. Next time, we will definitely order her lunch for the next day with our head waiter on every port day, if we will be on the ship for lunch. It streamlines the whole process.

 

We wish the shows were better. The ice show was probably our favorite, except that it was SO LOUD. We’d bring ear plugs next time. It was so strange that it was so loud. Our favorite part of the ice show was this artist who drew pictures in sand. The sand was in a big box that he stood behind, and it was projected up on a screen behind him. It was jaw dropping. So cool. The kids would have watched him for an hour if they could. They kept asking if he was going to come back out and do more. He was amazing. Funny that their favorite part of the ice show wasn’t actually ice related, but that’s kids for ya. : ) Actually it was my favorite part too!

 

Our excursions were really fun, and port days were definitely our favorite. We did not love the sea days. If it was just Steve and me, we’d love every minute of everything. But the sea days got long for the kids. We both agree that we need to ditch the kids sometime! We were way more fun than them haha.

 

Next time, we will not schedule all our excursions through the ship. They were so crowded, and too short, and not exactly relaxing. We feel confident we can figure out an independent excursion.

 

Sophie’s favorite excursion was The River Tubing and Adventure Falls in Jamaica. Honestly, even though we didn’t have time at Adventure Falls, I think it was my favorite excursion too. The guys were truly hilarious and entertaining. Jack’s favorite excursion was jet skiing in Labadee. Although we all loved taking the cab into town in Cozumel. And they both loved the shopping in Jamaica. Steve loved all the excursions and can’t pick a favorite. Basically, we had a fantastic time!

 

Lesson learned—we do not like Spring Break cruises on big ships! We will plan differently next time.

 

And yes, there will be a next time! We have a cruise scheduled for February on Adventure of the Seas. We are not 100% on this, however. The kids want to go to Universal (for the first time) and Disney (again), however that vacation is more expensive than the cruise! We will decide soon.

 

Are we now addicted to cruising? I wouldn’t say addicted, but I would take another cruise in a heartbeat.

 

A big thank you to all of you for reading my review! Thank you for all the nice comments and kind words! I learned so much on cruise critic to prepare me for our first cruise, so thank you for that, too. Until next time....

 

 

 

 

 

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[VPIcruiser]

I enjoyed your review. We were on the week before you and we also had a great time. Since spring break works so well for us, vacation-wise, we can deal with higher crowds and more kids.

 

We didn’t get in line until it was wrapped around outside, to leave the ship, but once it was moving, it was fast. We were in our car at 7:00 AM. Too bad the traffic has so horrible north of Richmond. I always say that t

95 coming home is the worst part about living in Northern Virginia.

[accio_7]

Thank you so much for your amazing review and photos!

 

 

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[JHDub]

This was great to read! It makes me excited for when our munchkins are older and go cruising with us. (They're 3 and 5 this year, so they get a "vacation" with Papa and Grandma.)

 

We are doing the same itinerary in October - Well, as long as the hurricanes play nice LOL. I've been a little overwhelmed with the thought of such a big ship... Our last cruise to Alaska with Holland America was more "old-school" style and smaller and we were among the very youngest peeps (in our 30s), and I LOVED IT. Hubby has always dreamed of doing an RCI big ship though, so at least I got an ocean view balcony to go hide on if I need it. ;0) So I am grateful for your posts and the chance to get an idea of how to plan! (And welcome to cruising - it really IS the best way to see a lot of cool places while your hotel room travels with you!)

[Editrix]

What a wonderful review. Thank you so much for writing it.

[cruisequeen4ever]

Fun review; thank you!

 

 

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