Cruiser Formerly Known As Cheapo Dad's Trip Report on Odyssey of the Seas Sailing to A Minus B Plus C Plus H Islands

[harryfat1]

The cafe had premade salads also.  My wife got some later on in the cruise

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

So we grabbed some tea and coffee and just sat in the 270 area to admire the area.  For me, this is my favorite part of the ship.  Others may prefer solarium or the pool deck but for the way I cruise, this is my area.  You will see ad nauseam amount of pictures from me on this area – front/side/back/top/bottom views.  If I could take a picture of 270 standing outside the window, I would have…

 

 

 

 

 

You can walk to the back to see the very tall floor-to-ceiling window and admire the view at the back of the ship. 

 

[harryfat1]

There’s a Princess ship as well as a Disney ship docked to the back of us.  Like I said, I love seeing all the cruise ships in port.

 

 

For all the line fans (you know who you are):

 

 

One interesting thing I noticed was that Terminal 18 had the lines tied way on the back about 100 feet away from the edge. I have never seen it being tied that far inland.

 

They bypass a closer anchor near the water in favor of the one further back.

 

Does anyone know the advantages of doing it this way? 

[harryfat1]

Oh, hey, what do you know?  We have more 270 pictures to see.  These were taken by my wife as she loves these panoramic shots.

 

What do you mean you are tired of 270 pictures?  

 

It's only day 1 out of day 8....

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

For those who didn’t buy a drinks package pre-cruise, you can still get one on board in the beginning with a bit of discount but the pricing online pre-cruise is better than what you can get onboard. 

 

This applies to all the packages I know of like the dining or photo package.  Cheaper to get them online pre-cruise.  Especially if you get them during special Black Friday sales

 

[karebare22]

19 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

Personally, I don’t know why anyone would want a connecting cabin if the other end isn’t your family member.  Maybe you get it as a guarantee type of cabin but I have seen one cabin of a connecting cabin available to book but not the other.  So either the cruise line is holding out on not making that other cabin available or someone just booked the ½ of the connecting cabin and not paying attention to the deck plan symbols on what is a connecting cabin.

Our first cruise after the restart we booked a guarantee balcony cabin. Ship was only maybe 1/2 capacity, yet we ended up being assigned to a balcony that was connected with another family. It seemed like almost all the rooms around us were empty. I remember our cabin steward opened up the balcony divider with the empty cabin on the other side of us for the day that we were cruising through Endicott Arm & Dawes glacier,  so we had more space for our family for the scenic cruising (kids were in an interior cabin across the hall).

 

29 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

Speaking of cabin attendants now is a good time to talk about ours.  At the risk of sounding like a grumpy (grumpier) old man, I would say she was probably the worst one we have had on all the cruises.  From my cruise experience, most are very good but ours wasn’t very good. Not sure if they are understaffed or if she has to work extra hard/long due to the ship being 125% of double occupancy but I was not impressed by her attitude/performance.

Ever since the room service was cut to once a day, I’ve noticed the service isn’t what it used to be, so I do wonder if they are understaffed. Our last attendant did a good job, but just wasn’t very friendly. He did mention he was 2 weeks from the end of his contract, so I imagine he was just tired of all us demanding cruisers and ready for a break!

[rncruiser]

40 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

Anyway, after checking out the cabins and dropping off our backpacks, it was time to go out and explore the rest of the new ship that we hadn’t seen yet.  The sign at the door says the luggage won’t be delivered to the cabins until 3 PM by the cabin attendant.  That’s also something new to me as I thought in the past, the luggage was delivered by the “back room” workers.  Never seen the cabin attendants drop them off.

 

 

Speaking of cabin attendants now is a good time to talk about ours.  At the risk of sounding like a grumpy (grumpier) old man, I would say she was probably the worst one we have had on all the cruises.  From my cruise experience, most are very good but ours wasn’t very good. Not sure if they are understaffed or if she has to work extra hard/long due to the ship being 125% of double occupancy but I was not impressed by her attitude/performance.

 

First of all, she never came by to knock on the door to give us the typical speech to introduce herself and explain the procedure, and ask us when we want the cabins to be cleaned as nowadays they only do it once a day – morning or night.  I think she made a compromise in her schedule in always cleaning our cabins around 2 PM time so it’s a halfway thing.

 

There was another lady that came in during the afternoon on day 1 but it wasn’t our cabin steward and she just came in to drop some paper ads in our cabin.  That's when I asked the outside balcony to be opened and she said she would get someone to do it.

 

Since our cabin attendant never came by to introduce herself, I couldn’t ask her for a hard copy of the cruise compass on day 1.  By the time I finally saw her, it was day 2 in the hallway and she couldn’t give me anything until day 3 and she also didn’t get a compass for me on day 8. 

 

Somewhere in the middle of the cruise, we had a knock on the door and it was her and someone in an officer’s uniform outside asking us if everything was fine.  That was odd as we never had someone asking us that question in the middle of the cruise without us ever initiating any questions or issues.

I actually found our cabin attendant to be wonderful. He came to introduce himself minutes after we stepped into the cabin we were checking the bed for bedbugs, something we always do, and saw a mark on the sheet. The mattress cover and mattress itself were fine. He immediately offered to change the sheet and got a fresh one and changed it right away. We told him we preferred morning room cleaning and would like a paper copy of the compass. He said he would take care of it. The next morning I remembered that I had forgotten to request bathrobes and left him a note on the bed. We never saw him again during the week, but the robes weee there later that day and we had the compass waiting for us every evening. 

[rncruiser]

27 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

So café 270 near the 270 area in the back is similar to café Promenade on the other RCI ships in providing snacks and drinks (paid and complimentary) but it’s better than that as it has more offerings than the café Promenade and salads as well as sandwiches

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coffee menu if you want to buy the special coffee

 

I found that 270 is way more similar to Park Cafe than to Cafe Promenade. 

[harryfat1]

1 hour ago, karebare22 said:

Our first cruise after the restart we booked a guarantee balcony cabin. Ship was only maybe 1/2 capacity, yet we ended up being assigned to a balcony that was connected with another family. It seemed like almost all the rooms around us were empty. I remember our cabin steward opened up the balcony divider with the empty cabin on the other side of us for the day that we were cruising through Endicott Arm & Dawes glacier,  so we had more space for our family for the scenic cruising (kids were in an interior cabin across the hall).

 

Ever since the room service was cut to once a day, I’ve noticed the service isn’t what it used to be, so I do wonder if they are understaffed. Our last attendant did a good job, but just wasn’t very friendly. He did mention he was 2 weeks from the end of his contract, so I imagine he was just tired of all us demanding cruisers and ready for a break!

Yeah, many cruise workers leave the profession after a while as it's a grueling profession.  

 

Especially with the cruise industry keeps building new and bigger ships, they need to hire more competent workers annually.  Not sure if they can recruit/train/retain enough of them.

[harryfat1]

1 hour ago, rncruiser said:

I actually found our cabin attendant to be wonderful. He came to introduce himself minutes after we stepped into the cabin we were checking the bed for bedbugs, something we always do, and saw a mark on the sheet. The mattress cover and mattress itself were fine. He immediately offered to change the sheet and got a fresh one and changed it right away. We told him we preferred morning room cleaning and would like a paper copy of the compass. He said he would take care of it. The next morning I remembered that I had forgotten to request bathrobes and left him a note on the bed. We never saw him again during the week, but the robes weee there later that day and we had the compass waiting for us every evening. 

It's a luck of the draw on what cabin stewards we get.  We just drew the short straw on this cruise.

[harryfat1]

A few more pictures and then we move on from 270.

 

From the Aft of the ship at 270 looking at Disney and Princess ship.

 

 

 

 

Trivial info for the Star Wars fans - if you are from the Bay Area and take the subway (BART), sometimes the train operator will point out the cranes from the docks in Oakland as being the inspiration to George Lucas in creating the Walker Tanks from the Star Wars movies since he is from the Bay Area.

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

That’s Ricky the cruise director talking on the screen.  He’s a riot.  I believe my boys think he’s the cruise director they have ever sailed with.

 

You can see people are relaxing around the 270 area so we weren’t alone in appreciating the area.

[harryfat1]

At around 2:45, we remembered that we needed to go to the MDR to check out where our table was.  So we made it down to deck 4 below.  A lot of people are in line trying to talk to the MDR staff to get their dining arrangements squared away.

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Another difference of the “Ultra” class is they combined all the different restaurants and formed one large MDR. Years ago, when they designed the Quantum class ships, RCI had this “brilliant idea” of thinking people would want dynamic dining where they would go to different restaurants nightly with different themes instead of just one constant restaurant. 

 

Well, many people (myself included) hated the idea and it never really took off as RCI had wanted but by then, they had already built the separate restaurants for the Quantum class ships so those ships have different MDR designs compared to the “Ultra” which scrapped the individual restaurant concept and unified them into one. 

 

I have always liked how RCI designed their MDRs on the Voyager/Freedom/Oasis-class ships.  Big and grand and has lots of open space.  The Odyssey isn’t as big and grand given the space limitation, but it still looks nice and very different with an opening on deck 5 where any passerby can look down and watch people eat their meals.   

 

 

 

[JamesEM]

Enjoying your posts and photos, a few comments, the fire doors are closed but not locked, when I board I drop off my carry on bag in the cabin, if I am challenged by a crew member I tell them I'm in transit, i.e., b-2-b cruiser. As for TP, my wife used to take a roll of her favorite, but don't leave the TP out because it will be confiscated, not good for the plumbing.  As for connecting cabins, they are missing a piece of furniture to make room for the door. 

[Badatz2]

43 minutes ago, JamesEM said:

Enjoying your posts and photos, a few comments, the fire doors are closed but not locked, when I board I drop off my carry on bag in the cabin, if I am challenged by a crew member I tell them I'm in transit, i.e., b-2-b cruiser. As for TP, my wife used to take a roll of her favorite, but don't leave the TP out because it will be confiscated, not good for the plumbing.  As for connecting cabins, they are missing a piece of furniture to make room for the door. 

I am not trying to hijack this great review but why are you so proud to share with us your two transgressions.  One morally wrong, by lying to a crewmember and thinking that you got the better of Royal by getting your carry on bag into your room before you are allowed to.  And two, potentially causing a major plumbing problem on the ship by sneaking what you know is unsuitable toilet paper just so your wife can use her favorite brand.  You know it's wrong and dangerous but you do it anyway.

[h20skibum]

8 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

Few things to point out about these new style cabins on the Odyssey compared to the older ships’ cabins:

 

I like the overhead bins above the bed.  Good place to toss stuff in like sleep clothes away from the cabin steward when she cleans the room. In theory, the cabin has enough storage spaces on both sides for 2 people on a 7-night cruise but if the area is filled with 4 people, the overhead bin will serve as an extra storage area.

 

More USB plugs for all the electronic devices we are all bringing aboard. However, the drawback of providing technology is it can be outdated fairly quickly.  Like these older USB ports.  These are the older generation of USB type A plugs.  These were the original version and most commonly used especially for the older devices although many times I tried to plug them in the wrong side.

 

The newer version of USB type C eliminates the directional plug-in as both sides work and the faster charging bricks utilize the USB type C cables.  If you are in a hurry to come back to the cabin for a few minutes and need a quick charge, don’t use these USB plugs.  Instead, invest in the newer style USB cable.

 

 

I took pictures of the cables from the cruise to demonstrate my point but now I can't find them amongst the thousands of pictures we took from the cruise.  Oh, well, whenever they show up, I will refer back to this post.

 

Hey, like I said from the beginning, I'm not a professional reviewer and you are getting what you paid for...

Yeah, hard for the cruise lines to keep up with technology.  From the photos of the new Sun Princess, it looks like they will have plenty of the usb Type C plugs. 
 

I have one of these things I bring along.  It has five of the Type C, and two of the Type A ports.  Works well, because we have an iPad, two iPhones, two Apple Watches, and a GoPro to charge. 

 

 

8 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

Enough complaining.  Off to 270 we go as I saw from the deck plan back home that we were very close to the door on deck 6 that would take us to deck 5.

 

Opening the door and saw a whole slew of suitcases about 20 feet from our cabins down the hallway toward the Aft.  Our luggage was amongst them but since the sign said the cabin attendant would deliver by 3 PM, we will just let them do their thing while we explore the ship.

 

 

Side note - the luggage on the left (see red arrow), is using the non-RCI size tag that Carnival and Princess, and other ships use.  Those tags are wider than the RCI tags.  So for those of us who have RCI tags and you are going on another cruise line, the tags won't be a perfect fit.

 

 

 

It seems the ships stage that luggage in the hallways now.  If we spy ours sitting there, we will drag them to our cabin and unpack.  We always like to get that out of the way.  
 

Maybe that is their plan.  People see their suitcases and take them.  That way they have fewer to deliver. 
 

And on the tag holders, never did buy the wider ones to fit Princess tags.  If you trim a little from each side, they fit the narrow Royal tag holders.  

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

9 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

We made the request prior to the cruise along with the beds divided but they only honored the door request and not the bed separation.

Maybe they thought the parents might want the bigger cabin since you've said one had more space so decided to wait and see if you switched up who was where since it's easier to separate the beds than put them together?

[edspec]

6 hours ago, JamesEM said:

  As for connecting cabins, they are missing a piece of furniture to make room for the door. 

This is not true in all cases.  I've seen some videos where connecting vs. non-connecting have different furniture but we always buy connecting cabins and the furniture always matches the videos of non-connecting.

I'm another one that doesn't care for bothering the stewards when they're working their behinds off.

[edspec]

@harryfat1 Thank-you for info on Ifly and Northstar, I wasn't aware of needing to book immediately once onboard.  It will most likely be just me and there won't be a lot of options due to our itinerary, two port days and eight sea days.

I'm another one that doesn't want to see a messy cabin.  Sometimes when I'm walking down the hall and see the state of some cabins I'm baffled.  How many bottles of hair product, lotion, etc... do even four people need for one week?  And clothes all over the place. Ick.

[luvtoride]

On 1/22/2024 at 9:50 PM, harryfat1 said:

Great tip, Mark. 

 

If so, I' will be bringing 7 tablets in my backpack on the next RCI cruise…🤪

 

Funny that Cheapo Dad would splurge on having 7 tablets to bring…isn’t one enough??😂. I’m pretty sure the cost of the Voom internet package for one device for the entire cruise was LESS than the cost of a tablet.  

[NHProud]

4 hours ago, luvtoride said:

Funny that Cheapo Dad would splurge on having 7 tablets to bring…isn’t one enough??😂. I’m pretty sure the cost of the Voom internet package for one device for the entire cruise was LESS than the cost of a tablet.  

It’s called irony , embellishment, hyperbole, exaggeration! 

Edited January 24 by NHProud

[volk904]

We sail Feb 3.  Love you review.  I am disappointed in the 300 Lb limit on North Star. Yes I am a little over that but a thing like that is designed for total weight of all the people not 1 person so I don’t see what difference it makes.  Other than that the ship looks great. I will say I don’t understand why they went with 2 single pkugs and not a duplex. If I use my 3-1 adapter I will only be able to use 1 of them. 

[harryfat1]

15 hours ago, h20skibum said:

Yeah, hard for the cruise lines to keep up with technology.  From the photos of the new Sun Princess, it looks like they will have plenty of the usb Type C plugs. 
 

I have one of these things I bring along.  It has five of the Type C, and two of the Type A ports.  Works well, because we have an iPad, two iPhones, two Apple Watches, and a GoPro to charge. 

 

 

 

It seems the ships stage that luggage in the hallways now.  If we spy ours sitting there, we will drag them to our cabin and unpack.  We always like to get that out of the way.  
 

Maybe that is their plan.  People see their suitcases and take them.  That way they have fewer to deliver. 
 

And on the tag holders, never did buy the wider ones to fit Princess tags.  If you trim a little from each side, they fit the narrow Royal tag holders.  

Mark,

 

I think you and I have the same brand of USB hub from Amazon. Here is my picture from the cruise.

 

 

I found the USB pictures I referenced the other day.  It was buried down on day 8 when I was ready to pack the cables to go home and I realized I forgot to take pictures of the hub and cables that I wanted to point out in the trip report.

 

For those unfamiliar with what we have been talking about:

 

Type A – the old-school USB cables.  I’m sure you have many of these at home but they are being phased out with the newer USB C types.  They are still very common and the plug stands on the Odyssey fit these

 

 

Type C – newer technology.  Charges the devices faster but won’t fit the RCI plugs and from Mark’s post, the newer ships like Princess are already moving onto this new technology.  Will see what Icon’s cabins have for USB plugs.

 

 

I’m sure there will be some upset people going onboard the newer ships and finding they can’t plug in directly with their older cables.  The safest thing to do is buy a USB hub like the one's Mark and I have (about $30 from Amazon) and you are covered with both technologies since the hub will take both types of cables and the cruise ships allows their use

 

 

[harryfat1]

15 hours ago, h20skibum said:

 

It seems the ships stage that luggage in the hallways now.  If we spy ours sitting there, we will drag them to our cabin and unpack.  We always like to get that out of the way.  
 

Maybe that is their plan.  People see their suitcases and take them.  That way they have fewer to deliver. 
 

And on the tag holders, never did buy the wider ones to fit Princess tags.  If you trim a little from each side, they fit the narrow Royal tag holders.  

Is this luggage staging thing a fleetwide system that they implemented recently?  I didn’t see this back on the Navigator in August.

 

We waited until 3 something and nobody delivered a thing so we DIY it and grabbed our own luggage as it was less than 30 feet down the hall.

 

As for luggage tag trimming – are we going to see another YouTube video from you on how to trim the tags, so they fit the RCI holders?  Saves them money from buying new tag holders that fit the Carnival sizes.  I would need to watch the video myself to learn how to cut.

 

Remember you need the cash inflow from these YouTube videos to pay for that 1 piece of paper and the toner ink…🤪