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]

Onward with the trip report:

 

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

 

Terminal 18 is huge as they designed it to accommodate an Oasis class-size crowd. See how many more seats they have.

 

 

 

 

This being a holiday cruise, you will see many large group gatherings as families/friends are on the same cruise.  Check out the big group downstairs on the lower left side of the picture as they are all visiting uncles in prison…

 

[harryfat1]

As I have mentioned previously, the port of San Pedro does enforce the check-in time and makes you wait outside if you are not within the two-time slots being called. That’s because San Pedro has very little seating capacity inside the terminal.

 

San Pedro posts sign that you must be within these 2-time slots to be allowed into the tent city to check-in.  If your time is not listed, you are required to stand outside behind the blue tent and wait outside

 

 

If you arrive too early at San Pedro, you are standing in line with folks behind the blue tent

 

 

This is San Pedro seating inside.  That's it.  No more seats.  Compared to Terminal 18 seating inside in the previous post.  Notice the “slight” difference in capacity? 

 

 

That’s why unless there’s a special occurrence, Port Everglades will just waive people forward.  They can seat lots more people upstairs so no need to force the people to stand outside unless necessary whereas San Pedro can't afford to let throngs of people inside so they make the people wait outside.

 

I think every week, someone posts a question on the RCI board asking about the enforcement of the check-in time.  If you are sailing from San Pedro, be sure to sign up for the check-in time exactly on the 45th day.

[harryfat1]

14 minutes ago, h20skibum said:

It is on the, soon to be new, Sun Princess. I say soon to be new, because it is just finishing sea trials and has the inaugural sailing in Europe next month.  Our sailing is a seven night Western Caribbean from Ft. Lauderdale.  Fits nicely after the family gets together at our rented beach house next Christmas/New Year.

 

The last time we sailed Princess, they were just starting to roll out medallion, so we haven’t experienced that yet.  I am excited to see the new ship.  It appears to be very similar in size to Odyssey, and it will be their largest ship.

 

 

Oh, very nice to be on the new Princess ship.  Yeah, I have seen photos of the new ship.  

 

With the medallion service, you can order drinks from the app, and in theory, they know exactly where you are on the ship from the medallion tracking and deliver your drinks to you while you are sitting on some lounger so it's the ultimate laziness in ordering drinks from the phone and not have to look for a drink runner.

 

In practice, it was hit-and-miss.  Sometimes the drinks never showed up and we had to place another another. Since we were on the Princess Plus promotion package which included alcoholic drinks, we never fretted that they would charge for a drink that never arrived.

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

At around 11 AM, I noticed the suites people started getting up to line up so I knew our time to board the ship would soon arrive

 

Sure enough, at 11:15, they started letting the rest of us ghetto cruisers get up one row at a time to board the ship starting with the far left row so there’s no super stampede to run for the gangway.

 

 

Our turn to stand up

 

 

Part of the happy walk.

 

 

 

My wife taking a picture of me taking a picture of the Odyssey name

 

 

 

RCI is not shy about displaying the name of their new ships as they are “in your face” on what the name of the ship is.

 

From what I read, Odyssey was the first ship to get the boldface mega-size fonts on their ships. You would have to be pretty drunk to not find your way back to this ship from all the drinking at Senor Frogs as the letter O is like 40 feet tall.

[harryfat1]

@Biker19 – as discussed previously in the Navaigiator trip report, Port Everglades doesn’t have shore power set up yet.  Saw no signs of any plug-in device at the pier as they had at San Pedro for the Navigator.

 

I think they are targeting 2027 to be fully completed from the latest info I read.

 

 

For those unfamiliar with the shore power concept - it's a cruise ship version of an electric plug-in, similar to cars on land.  The idea is to have cruise ships use the plug-in power on turn-around days so they don't burn fuel for the whole day.  In theory, that's better for the environment,

 

However due to higher costs of electricity, some ports are charging the cruise ships, and not all ships are opting for shore power.

 

Port Everglades and other ports are supposed to be installing these.  While on the west (left) coast, the ports have already installed them in San Pedro and Seattle as they are more politically correct/aggressive on the environmental stands.

 

Here's what one looks like in San Pedro back in August:

 

 

The white thing to the right is the plugin electricty

 

[harryfat1]

As we are ready to board the ship, maybe now it’s a good time to give an overall view of the Odyssey of the Seas for those who haven’t sailed on her/Quantum class ships before. 

 

She’s the 5^th (most likely last) ship in the Quantum class of ships. This class was designed years ago to appeal to the Asian market, but Odyssey and the Spectrum of the Seas (4^th ship in the class) have a slight difference in being the “Quantum Ultra” class (RCI marketing lingo).

 

Without getting into all the details at this point of what is a regular Quantum versus Quantum Ultra class, the difference is all in the interior design but the size/length of the ships are essentially the same with RCI getting more greedy on the Odyssey and cramming more passengers into her versus the original Quantum of the Seas. 

 

The theoretical maximum number of passengers for Quantum (per Wiki) is 4,905 whereas the Odyssey can go up to 5,510.  So being the greedy money-sucking pigs they are, RCI added 600 passengers to effectilveythe same size ships. 

 

The original Quantum class ships were made for sailing colder climates of Asia in the winter months or used for Alaska cruising with Quantum and Ovaation making those runs in the summer months. The one big feature of the older Quantum class is an indoor pool. 

 

Odyssey is the different child amongst the sisters being deployed mostly in Florida in the beginning years but will be moving to the New Jersey area.  It will be interesting during the upcoming winter sailings as the pool area will not get much action at the beginning or the end of the cruise. 

 

In theory, Anthem (second ship) in the class is better suited for the NJ crowd but I guess after so many years of making the same run with Anthem in New Jersey, RCI needs a different ship to entice repeat passengers to cruise again as new ship means new entertainment venue for people to experience instead of the same-old, same-old.

 

I will point out what I believe are the differences between the two classes based on what I read as I haven’t personally sailed on both so I don’t know for sure.  Whatever I miss, I’m sure someone will chime in.

 

Technically, RCI said they “added” more features in the “ultra” class as their marketing team will want to focus on the additions but won’t talk about the “subtractions” of the original ships.  To some, having something deleted is more devasting than the replacement if they don’t care for the replacement.

 

It’s like telling a Vegan – Great News, we have added 3 new types of steaks in Chops…Additions are only valuable if you utilize them.

 

 

[harryfat1]

They have the balloon arch welcoming people aboard.  Official touch down boarding time was 11:23 AM.

 

 

The workers there were pushing people to go to the muster stations and since ours was Giovanni’s on deck 5, we figured we might as well go there anyway since it’s at the back of the ship and we’d need to take the Aft elevators to go to windjammer anyway for an early lunch.

 

Passing the bionic bar that we had seen so much on Youtube

 

 

We got to our muster station at Giovanni’s and there were no workers for our muster drill.  The podium was there but no workers.  OK.   Whatever.  I'm not going to wait for them to show up.  We will come back later.

 

 

[dani negreanu]

19 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

I would love to hear about your experience if you had your sea pass picture re-taken at the terminal.

 

Every time... ☹️

[GimmeOcean]

39 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

Odyssey is the different child amongst the sisters being deployed mostly in Florida in the beginning years but will be moving to the New Jersey area.  It will be interesting during the upcoming winter sailings as the pool area will not get much action at the beginning or the end of the cruise.

Still not sure why they built Odyssey without a covered pool, but my guess is that Odyssey’s design was more conducive to adding the extra-charge casitas. I don’t see the pools or the casitas getting much use in the winter from NJ, though.

[karebare22]

On 1/19/2024 at 1:18 AM, harryfat1 said:

I bought these luggage tags last year.  Very sturdy and handy.  Waterproof.  Used them for the Navigator and used them again for the Odyssey. 

 

In the old days, I always had to borrow the stapler from the front desk of the hotel when I checked out on the last day just so I could staple all the luggage tags before boarding the ship.  Now it’s all done before leaving the hotel room to go downstairs.  No more borrowing staplers.

I have these same holders and have used them many times, so a worthwhile investment. I remember the old days of borrowing staplers at the hotel when we were anxious to leave to get to the ship.

 

21 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

In less than 15 minutes after dropping off the luggage, we were having our onboard pictures taken.

Although my daughters really don’t want to stop for the embarkation photo, I always insist since this is always one of my favourites and we get it as one of our “free” photos. My girls are now at an age where we barely see them all week other than at dinner or the flowrider, so I find we keep missing out on group photos, so this is my one guaranteed family photo for the trip. It’s nice to have a pic with a more fun or relaxed pose too.

[KmomChicago]

14 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

As I have mentioned previously, the port of San Pedro does enforce the check-in time and makes you wait outside if you are not within the two-time slots being called. That’s because San Pedro has very little seating capacity inside the terminal.

 

San Pedro posts sign that you must be within these 2-time slots to be allowed into the tent city to check-in.  If your time is not listed, you are required to stand outside behind the blue tent and wait outside

 

 

If you arrive too early at San Pedro, you are standing in line with folks behind the blue tent

 

 

This is San Pedro seating inside.  That's it.  No more seats.  Compared to Terminal 18 seating inside in the previous post.  Notice the “slight” difference in capacity? 

 

 

That’s why unless there’s a special occurrence, Port Everglades will just waive people forward.  They can seat lots more people upstairs so no need to force the people to stand outside unless necessary whereas San Pedro can't afford to let throngs of people inside so they make the people wait outside.

 

I think every week, someone posts a question on the RCI board asking about the enforcement of the check-in time.  If you are sailing from San Pedro, be sure to sign up for the check-in time exactly on the 45th day.

This is a good point. Not all ports enforce but some do. Baltimore does. I only sailed there once on Carnival but they share the one terminal with Royal and they run a tight ship, so to speak. 
 

It was a Christmas cruise and it was quite cold outside and they didn’t care one bit. Parking is right there and people were going back to sit in their cars and wait; if they’d been dropped off they stood out in the cold. Period, end of story.

Edited January 21 by KmomChicago

[KmomChicago]

14 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

At around 11 AM, I noticed the suites people started getting up to line up so I knew our time to board the ship would soon arrive

 

Sure enough, at 11:15, they started letting the rest of us ghetto cruisers get up one row at a time to board the ship starting with the far left row so there’s no super stampede to run for the gangway.

 

 

Our turn to stand up

 

 

Part of the happy walk.

 

 

 

My wife taking a picture of me taking a picture of the Odyssey name

 

 

 

RCI is not shy about displaying the name of their new ships as they are “in your face” on what the name of the ship is.

 

From what I read, Odyssey was the first ship to get the boldface mega-size fonts on their ships. You would have to be pretty drunk to not find your way back to this ship from all the drinking at Senor Frogs as the letter O is like 40 feet tall.

Hmm I never thought about if there was a practical reason for the giant name. At Nassau or Cozumel with a buncha ships docked concurrently maybe this is partly for dummy passengers to find their way. 

[KmomChicago]

Hey everyone. I never thought this was a tip to share but this is what I bring to attach the cruise luggage tags: 

[rncruiser]

Does anyone know if Tampa enforces the check in time?

[Mama2CruiseBaby]

I’m curious about how fast the bookings for the complimentary ifly and North Star activities sell out. We have 4 people to book and our check in isn’t till 12 on a sold out ship. Can I book the paid and then cancel and get a refund if I can get the free version? My FOMO is getting the best of me….

[GimmeOcean]

20 minutes ago, Mama2CruiseBaby said:

I’m curious about how fast the bookings for the complimentary ifly and North Star activities sell out. We have 4 people to book and our check in isn’t till 12 on a sold out ship. Can I book the paid and then cancel and get a refund if I can get the free version? My FOMO is getting the best of me….

The paid ones say you can cancel up to 12 hours in advance or get charged a $25 no-show fee.

Edited January 21 by GimmeOcean

[Mama2CruiseBaby]

10 minutes ago, GimmeOcean said:

The paid ones say you can cancel up to 12 hours in advance or get charged a $25 no-show fee.

Thank you!

[KiwiGal117]

On 1/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, harryfat1 said:

After a quick scan of our sea passes and stuff, she took our pictures again.  Now I must be a crappy portrait photographer as I took everyone’s pictures on the phone app from home weeks ago as part of the check-in process. 

 

The same thing happened with the Navigator check-in back last August where they had to re-take everyone’s pictures again.  Same with the Odyssey, all 4 of us had to have our pictures taken again even though we did it on the App previously.

 

Is this common for y’all?  I would love to hear about your experience if you had your sea pass picture re-taken at the terminal.

 

Yup - every time - always have to have the pictures redone.  I no longer bother doing them at home.

[Bobbosahn]

Thanks Harryfat1 for the great memories!

 

We did the same cruise. Of note, it was a short Uber ride of around ten minutes to the port. Ubers were readily available at 1115 unlike the night prior’s arrival to FLL which incurred a 30 minute wait.

 

We had an 1130 checkin time and were onboard at 1150. Super smooth. 
 

The check-in clerk retook our group’s photos- everyone’s. I asked her why after I spent ten minutes taking what I thought were perfectly lit and composed mugshots. She replied that they take photos of everyone regardless of guests having a photo uploaded or not and then chuckled about how many poorly lit and non-compliant photos they see (as far as sunglasses, cluttered backgrounds, pictures taken from a guest’s younger years, facial hair in a picture vs now being clean shaved, etc.). Based on those points, I wouldn’t be surprised if the photos are used as a facial recognition component in security’s CCTV system to facilitate investigations after a problem occurs. See another thread on these boards where someone’s magnet was stolen off their door and security found the culprits after a report was made…. Also pretty sure the terms and conditions allow them to use photos as part of the photo package auto sorting system so long as you opt in. 
 

As for IFly and the North Star, we could not get free reservations as early as 11:40-ish on boarding day. I spoke with an activities rep on our second sea day and she coyly mentioned that I should continue checking the app for availability as they continually assess schedules and interest. Sure enough- a batch opened up later that day.  So don’t give up!  Pretty sure they had some more open around day six- but don’t quote me on that. 

[harryfat1]

On 1/20/2024 at 2:57 PM, dani negreanu said:

 

Every time... ☹️

Hi Dani,

 

Thanks for reading along again.

 

It just amazes me how a multi-billion dollar corporation can’t get the software to work properly for millions of passengers who cruise with them throughout these years.

[harryfat1]

On 1/20/2024 at 3:28 PM, GimmeOcean said:

Still not sure why they built Odyssey without a covered pool, but my guess is that Odyssey’s design was more conducive to adding the extra-charge casitas. I don’t see the pools or the casitas getting much use in the winter from NJ, though.

The Odyssey was in theory built for the Florida crowd as there’s no regular Quantum class ship based there with the Quantum/Ovation/Spectrum out in Asia.  Anthem is/was deployed in New Jersey/Europe so they must have wanted a Quantum class ship in Florida for the non-European sailing months. 

 

I think if they want to attract cruisers like myself who have done the Voyager/Freedom/Oasis-class ships in the past sailing out of Florida in the winter months and want to experience a new class of ships. If based in Florida/Europe regularly, then they would want this new Quantum class to have more sun space and be able to sell the way overpriced casitas.

 

That worked well in the first few years after Odyssey but now they also have to juggle with the need to switch Anthem out of New Jersey to bring back repeat passengers from that region to give them a new “ultra” ship to get excited over during the winter sailing months.

 

However, Florida in December 2023 was cold/rainy so if the same holds true for the December/winter period of next year, those sailings won’t find too many people outside for a big part of the cruise on the more open decks of the Odyssey.

 

[harryfat1]

20 hours ago, karebare22 said:

I have these same holders and have used them many times, so a worthwhile investment. I remember the old days of borrowing staplers at the hotel when we were anxious to leave to get to the ship.

 

Although my daughters really don’t want to stop for the embarkation photo, I always insist since this is always one of my favourites and we get it as one of our “free” photos. My girls are now at an age where we barely see them all week other than at dinner or the flowrider, so I find we keep missing out on group photos, so this is my one guaranteed family photo for the trip. It’s nice to have a pic with a more fun or relaxed pose too.

 

Yeah, during boarding time, everyone is in a happy mood. 

 

The whole embarkation photo session process takes less than 2 minutes for the most part as they need to move people along with just a few snapshots.  Even an aggressive anal person like yours truly will spare 2 quick minutes during the boarding time process.

 

[harryfat1]

11 hours ago, KmomChicago said:

This is a good point. Not all ports enforce but some do. Baltimore does. I only sailed there once on Carnival but they share the one terminal with Royal and they run a tight ship, so to speak. 
 

It was a Christmas cruise and it was quite cold outside and they didn’t care one bit. Parking is right there and people were going back to sit in their cars and wait; if they’d been dropped off they stood out in the cold. Period, end of story.

 

Does the Baltimore port have a small seating/waiting area?  I have to imagine that’s the major reason why they can’t/won’t allow passengers to get inside before the assigned time.  Unless the people in charge are strict authoritarians who insist cruisers follow the rules by the letter, it makes no sense not to let the people go inside the terminal from the cold.

 

For Terminal 18 at Port Everglades, they have a lot more space INSIDE the terminal than OUTSIDE.  I showed some pictures of hundreds/thousands of empty seats they could plop the people to wait inside.  As long as the check-in workers can process enough cruisers so their queue isn’t 200 people deep in each line, I would think Port Everglades will want to let people in early and just sit upstairs to chill out for 30+ minutes as we did.

 

San Pedro is a different animal in that the most they can seat inside is around 200 people in a tiny section that’s smaller than some Grayhound bus terminals.  Unless they want the fire marshall to get on their case, the port people have to make the people wait outside so as not to overcrowd the inside.

[harryfat1]

11 hours ago, KmomChicago said:

Hmm I never thought about if there was a practical reason for the giant name. At Nassau or Cozumel with a buncha ships docked concurrently maybe this is partly for dummy passengers to find their way. 

Not sure if there is a practical reason.  It’s just RCI marketing trying to get the ship name recognition out there. Most/many of the ships have very small fonts that you can barely make out the name of the ship unless you are very close to it.

 

I just mention the drunken people as a side note but I would be surprised if RCI changed the font size just for them.    

[harryfat1]

10 hours ago, Mama2CruiseBaby said:

I’m curious about how fast the bookings for the complimentary ifly and North Star activities sell out. We have 4 people to book and our check in isn’t till 12 on a sold out ship. Can I book the paid and then cancel and get a refund if I can get the free version? My FOMO is getting the best of me….

I hear ya.  I was in the same boat (pun intended) myself for this cruise.

 

The reservation thing for both items was a big anxiety item for me to check off right after boarding.  In the travel planner that I shared earlier, I had it in bright green color to remind myself & the family to make reservations for both items ASAP after boarding. 

 

See the green area in the red arrow?

 

 

I will discuss our experience in reserving both slots shortly within the trip report.  Feel free to ask any questions once I get there