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]

OK, time for dinner.  Back to the MDR to “our table”.  I like the fact we can just walk in and sit down and not have to talk to anyone at the podium.  The Book started at 7 and they timed it so that the late seating folks could just go directly from the show to the MDR.

 

However, we took a slight detour in going back to our cabins via the “secret entrance” as we were already on deck 6 from the show.  Fewer people left the show from there and no line to go back to our cabins to use the restroom in our cabin.

 

View of MDR behind me at 8:06 as I just need to turn my back to take this picture. 

 

 

 

Originally I had thought people would dress up for Christmas night dinner so I brought along 3 ties – 2 formal nights plus 1 Christmas night but the RCI theme for the day was “white” so no need to whip out the suit so wore my “whiteish” Hawaiian shirt for dinner as that was as white of a shirt as I brought. 

 

If RCI wants people to dress up for these non-formal theme nights, they should at least show it on the app so people know ahead of time.  I had no idea there would be a “white” night.

[harryfat1]

The dinner theme tonight is “UK Night”.  I have only been to London once before the kids were born so my knowledge of UK food is pretty limited, especially since we are on the west coast, UK food is not that common in our neck of the woods to say, sushi.

 

 

Not sure how Escargot is listed under the UK theme but hey, half of the RCI theme menus make no sense. Or the suggested "white" clothing - is that associated with the UK in any way?

 

Just ignore the theming and get whatever you like to eat...

 

 

[JamesEM]

Thought I would provide you with some useless information, earlier in your report you had mentioned getting free champagne.  The champagne RCL was providing was a cheap Sauvignon Blank wine with a sugar substitute for the bubbles.  

[harryfat1]

11 minutes ago, JamesEM said:

Thought I would provide you with some useless information, earlier in your report you had mentioned getting free champagne.  The champagne RCL was providing was a cheap Sauvignon Blank wine with a sugar substitute for the bubbles.  

 

Huh.  How does that work? 

 

Did RCI buy the regular Sauvignon Blanc and add in the sugar substitute or was the winemaker being cheap in the process and doctored up their regular wine?

[harryfat1]

Escargot - British style (or not)...

 

 

 

Oh, by the way, you can tell who took which picture.  My pictures are typically "in your face" close-ups (similar to my bad jokes) whereas my wife likes to pull back a little more on her pictures

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Programming Note:

 

I tried to upload more pictures tonight but I kept getting an error message from CC.  So until that is resolved, I can't move forward on the trip report. 

 

I believe CC was having issues earlier this morning as I couldn't sign in.

 

Anyway, here's one bit of news on storm messing up "Perfect Day":

 

https://www.cruisehive.com/high-winds-cause-difficulties-for-ships-at-royal-caribbean-island/122820

 

[Coralc]

Today was supposed to be tail end of the storms in the SF Bay Area. Light rain/scattered showers. Noooo. Wrong. We had steady downpours and deluge for about 5 hours including hail and a power outage. 🙄 

And I found the photo of CD Ricky I was looking for: 

 

And oddly, I believe the servers that power Cruise Critic are in the South Bay, so they might have had power issues. 

[harryfat1]

1 hour ago, Coralc said:

Today was supposed to be tail end of the storms in the SF Bay Area. Light rain/scattered showers. Noooo. Wrong. We had steady downpours and deluge for about 5 hours including hail and a power outage. 🙄 

And I found the photo of CD Ricky I was looking for: 

 

And oddly, I believe the servers that power Cruise Critic are in the South Bay, so they might have had power issues. 

I read in the news some Californias are still without power after 4 days. Incredible.

 

We got hail at work this afternoon before the rain finally stopped.  I think we should be done as this was the last part of the storm.

 

Chinese New Year is this weekend so it'll be good to have nice weather as many people are out and about visiting families and friends.

[harryfat1]

OK.  Let's try to upload some pictures tonight as the CC server wouldn't allow any uploads last night.

 

++++++++++++

Desserts:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

A lot more empty MDR at 9:25 as many people are done eating and are gone

 

 

As I said in the previous post, we typically get the next day’s menu the night before but tonight we never saw the head waiter so we didn’t get a chance to pre-order, but we weren’t going to order anyway as we were going to go to solarium bistro for dinner the next night.

 

Since we had few moments, it was a quick visit to the uncle in prison.  Earlier someone asked about a different photo backdrop for the Odyssey, this was new to me as I had never seen this before.

 

[harryfat1]

Tonight’s Headline Entertainers are “Las Vegas Tenors”.  Yeah, I never heard of them either but that’s par for the course of these cruise ship guest entertainers.

 

 

 

They were OK.  Not the best and not the worst of all the entertainers I have seen on various cruises.  They will blend in with the rest of them in the fuzzy memory bank.  I think I had seen some people’s trip reports of seeing the Beatles impersonators.  I would much rather see that than these Las Vegas guys singing some songs that are older than me.

 

Anyway, entertainment is subjective.  I’m sure others would like these guys more than the Beatles.

 

Oh, side note.  I didn't take a picture of it, but the row of people in front of us took their "chair hog" behavior from the pool deck into the theater.  About 8 of them left their drinks and jackets in the first row before the show and took off doing whatever just so they could have the seats for themselves right at showtime.  

 

Never seen that practice done at the main theater before.  I had seen 1 person at Studio B trying to reserve an entire row for her family/friends but at least they have a live person. This time it was just drinks and jackets and not a single person in sight.

 

[harryfat1]

After the show, the same routine of water and tea at Café Promenade/Esplanade and back to the cabin.

 

There was a big group of dancers from Bolero taking over the Esplanade.  You have to squeeze in on both sides if you want to pass through

 

 

[harryfat1]

Same view as the previous night.  The corner cabin is still displaying its nightly lid balcony area.  I wonder if they had to bring those in during the cabin maintenance scheduled for tomorrow?

 

 

Interestingly now that we are just hours away from Curacao (11;45 PM), the ship is sailing faster at 20 knots whereas earlier we were below 17 knots.  Were we running behind schedule and the captain needed to sail faster?

 

 

The final picture of the night.  The newer cabins now have digital readouts so you know exactly how hot/cold is your cabin.  On the older ships, it's just some dial you turn and hope it gets to where you find it comfortable as you play with the dial the first couple of days. 

 

On the Odyssey, you can set it to 0.1 degrees of your ideal temperature. Yeah, let’s be anal and go for 72.8 degrees.  Not 72 or 73, but 72.8….🤪

 

Edited February 8 by harryfat1

[harryfat1]

Two days of sea day is more than enough for me.  Had to supplement it with some special events to make it less boring.  I’m not a sea day person.  Will never do the transatlantic or Hawaii sailing where you spend days and days at sea. 

 

I need to go to Europe where there’s a new port daily so I can see different things and take pictures every step of the way…

 

Not sure if the captain is under pressure to speed up so we can get to Curacao on time by 8 AM but here’s a Queen/David Bowie classic to close out the night.

 

One of my favorite shows, the Magicians, has a good rendition of the song. They have a couple of actors that can sing well. The show ran for 5 years and it's an adult version of Harry Potter's School of Magic.

 

 

 

 

This concludes day 3 of the trip report. 

+++++++++

 

As always thanks to everyone for reading along. Our sea days are not very exciting so hopefully, we have better pictures for our first port day tomorrow.

 

For comparison purposes, we took more pictures of our one port day at Curacao than 2 sea days combined as we traveled for scenery and not relaxation.

[rncruiser]

17 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

Tonight’s Headline Entertainers are “Las Vegas Tenors”.  Yeah, I never heard of them either but that’s par for the course of these cruise ship guest entertainers.

 

 

 

They were OK.  Not the best and not the worst of all the entertainers I have seen on various cruises.  They will blend in with the rest of them in the fuzzy memory bank.  I think I had seen some people’s trip reports of seeing the Beatles impersonators.  I would much rather see that than these Las Vegas guys singing some songs that are older than me.

 

Anyway, entertainment is subjective.  I’m sure others would like these guys more than the Beatles.

 

Oh, side note.  I didn't take a picture of it, but the row of people in front of us took their "chair hog" behavior from the pool deck into the theater.  About 8 of them left their drinks and jackets in the first row before the show and took off doing whatever just so they could have the seats for themselves right at showtime.  

 

Never seen that practice done at the main theater before.  I had seen 1 person at Studio B trying to reserve an entire row for her family/friends but at least they have a live person. This time it was just drinks and jackets and not a single person in sight.

 

I have to agree with you about the Las Vegas Tenors. They were just ok. In fact, by the end of the week I had actually forgotten that we had seen them. When I responded to the RCI survey I didn’t even mention them in my comments, although I commented on all the other entertainment I had seen. I had not remembered them at all. 

[harryfat1]

Day 4 – Curacao

 

This is probably my most anticipated island visit to the Caribbean after Puerto Rico.  I wanted to see PR to see its historical forts back in 2017 and for Curaaco, I wanted to see the colorful European-style buildings.  Aruba might have prettier beaches but I am more excited for the buildings.

 

No need to worry about time zone changes this morning as ship time is the same as local time.

 

Quiet hallway at 7:19

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

Going through the secret door on my way down to deck 5 of the café 270, I saw a tug boat on the port side with the dude just hanging out by the side. 

 

 

Huh.  Wonder what he’s doing.

 

Then I saw the tug boat backing away with the mooring line.  Oh, this is cool.  Gotta go take a picture of this. 

 

 

For those who don’t know, I’m a big mooring line fan.  I’m Part of the Mooring Line fan appreciation club (some people call us a cult but what do they know) 🤪

 

Here is a picture of 270 (I was where the arrow was pointing) but no time to chit-chat or get my coffee.  Time to run out to the open deckwalkway to see what the tug boat is doing. 

 

 

Priorities, people, priorities.

[harryfat1]

By the time I made it out to the open area on deck 5, the dude was already done tying the line.  Damn.  Couldn’t run any faster while flip-flops and before drinking my coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

So basically what happens is since the Quantum class ship is very long (the only ship longer is the Oasis class) ship, the Aft (butt part) of the ship sticks out past the anchor area.  So they need to use a tug boat to drag the line from the Aft part of the ship to the anchor.  Never seen that before as I thought they just throw the line across to a dockside worker.

[harryfat1]

Oh, well, that’s that for the excitement of the morning as here’s a picture of the Promadneade deck that does not wrap around. 

 

 

Maybe I  need to get on an old man rant to complain about the wood of the Promenade deck being gone as well as not having it wrap around the entire ship like the "good old days" of the classic ships.  But today is not the day because we are trying to get off the ship to our first port of Curacao.

[JamesEM]

Harryfat1, RCL bought the wine as is, FYI good champagne uses sugar cane in the fomenting process.  Looking forward to your day in Curacao, when I was there I did not take a tour just walked around the town.  

[Coralc]

Awesome! I read The Magicians (Trilogy), books by Lev Grossman. They were very good, but I didn't know they had made a series from them. I'll bet it was enjoyable! I thought that when we retired, we would watch TV all the time. In actuality, we never watch it. 

 

Happy upcoming Chinese New Year! ☺️

[perfect match]

I loved Curaçao! Can’t wait to see your pictures of the town. We saw some spectacular scenery, met some awesome sea turtles, but did not get to see much of the town. I need to go back there!

[HeyJut]

On 2/2/2024 at 10:01 PM, harryfat1 said:

Hi,

 

Thanks for reading another installment.  I have been receiving constant notifications these past few days from your reactions to the old posts from the beginning. 

 

You have come a long way in the past few days to be “live” with us. It’s probably equivalent to binge-watching 2 seasons of Game of Thrones in one week…

 

You should give Royal Caribbean a try.  Although at these high prices, you can wait awhile to try one of their ships. Every cruise line is different yet similar.

 

Now I'm curious - what brings you over to the RCI boards to read this trip report if you are not sailing on an RCI ship?

 

We will be on the sister ship of the Carnival Celebration on the Carnival Jubilee this December. No inlaws for the Odyssey cruise but they are slated to join us as a group of 11 going to Texas as I have never sailed out of Galveston before so looking forward to that. 

 

I am already planning to go and see the Space Center in Houston either pre or post-cruise. We saw the space shuttle when we were in LA a couple of years ago so looking forward to seeing more space-related exhibits in Houston.

I’m interested in cruising and learning about other cruise lines also, I’ve cruised on Carnival, Norwegian, Disney, Princess, and Holland. I had a trip booked on Harmony of the seas several years ago and unfortunately a medical issue came up between one of us the day of cruising, and had to cancel. Never did get it rebooked. I’ve followed several other cruise reviewers on RCI. I just find it entertaining and a lot of times learn some good information. I would like to go on RCI one of these days and hopefully will but in the meantime, I get my fix for reading good reviews like yours.

as for the notifications, I hope that’s not annoying as I feel like you were doing a lot of work it should be recognized for it.

[juanrod]

Enjoying your review as always @harryfat1  in so cal with all this crazy weather.  Nothing like tornado warnings last night with the last wave of the storm, but the sun is out today, hope power comes up for everyone as they start to clear all the mudslides up 

[T-2]

Thank you for remembering I was hoping there were some different backdrops, you're spot on, I have not seen that one before either so it does look like RCCL is spreading a few new ones around the fleet, did our online check in last night and at the moment we are thoroughly enjoying every moment of your adventures (we have a different itinerary but reading yours, I will be looking for one on Royal that does the far southern islands next as have not been there in over a decade). Thanks for sharing with all of us, you are super appreciated!