Harmony of the Seas - August 25th, 2024 brief trip report and musings

[trafaelwyr]

I know another board member here has their very detailed and awesome review of their cruise on Harmony from 8/25, but mine won't be like that!  It may get a bit lengthy and wordy and go off on tangents, but it's not going to be too terribly in depth.

 

Day 0 & Day 1:

 

The cruisers:  my mother, my sister and myself.  We all live in the DFW area.  I, like everyone else in the world, love to take a vacation.  The only hand wringing I do as I go off on vacation is the well being of these two feral kitty cats that live in my backyard.  They're both 8 years old and were born under the shed in my backyard when I bought my house in 2016.  Up until a few years ago, I did have a neighbor across the street whom I relied on to come into the backyard and give the cats food and water.  A couple of years ago I invested in this automatic feeder, but I've had to fortify it to prevent the racoons from eating all the food or carrying the feeder away into the yard (which they did do on the first year!).  I figured, loading the feeder up with dry food and giving them two bowls of fresh water (both protected from the elements) would get them through the week.  

 

We left the DFW area on Saturday 8/24 around 9:15am.  That's been our m.o. since 2018 - leave for Galveston the day before the cruise.  The drive normally takes 5 hours and this also includes a brief stop in Madisonville at the Buc-ee's to top up the gas tank, buy some food and switch driving duties.  I always take the wheel from Madisonville to Galveston as my sister does not like driving though Houston when it gets to the downtown area.  Everything was going good until we got near downtown Houston.  It would appear that they like to do roadwork construction on the freeways during the weekend.  We encountered traffic construction not once, but twice.  The first was north of downtown where traffic narrowed down to the left lane.  Seriously?  Ok, we got through it.  The next traffic construction occurred once you started to head south past downtown, this time you were forced off the highway and on to the frontage road.  Luckily for us, we had a green light when we got to the traffic light, so we continued on and then back up on to the freeway.  But again, seriously?  These two traffic issues tacked on an hour to the drive.  It was clear driving after that.  

 

In Galveston, we stayed at the Home2 Suites by Hilton on the Seawall.  For some odd reason I thought we had booked a room at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites because right next to that hotel is the restaurant The Spot.  Oh well.  At the Home2 Suites, we were extremely close to this Mexican restaurant we all like called Salsas.  After we unloaded all our stuff into our hotel room, I went out on to the beach to take some pictures and walk in the water a bit.  The weather that day was spectacular and the waters of the Gulf felt very nice.  We decided to go to Salsas around 5p for dinner.  The food there is always good, but my biggest mistake is pigging out on the chips and salsa!  Who doesn't?!  🙂  The hotel itself is fine, though not too sure about the streaming of live TV that they have.  It doesn't seem like you get many channels.

 

On Sunday morning, we were up and out of the hotel by at least 10a.m. or so and made a brief stop at the Kroger's to pick up some medicine and top up the gas tank ($2.62 a gallon with discount).  From there, we made our way to the indoor parking for our vehicle.  Car parked, luggage loaded on to the shuttle and our butts in seat, we were off to the cruise terminal.  Now, this was my first time at the relatively new RCL cruise terminal.  I've always gone to the old one - which I extremely dislike - for past RCL and Princess cruises.  This new terminal was SO much better!  My mother and sister had been here back in March for a short cruise they took.  With this terminal, there was no waiting and really no lines other than putting your stuff on the belt for the x-ray machine.  After that, clear sailing - pardon the pun - getting on the ship.  I think we were on board by 11:15am. 

 

The ship itself - wow...massive.  My muster station was easy to find (it was on deck 5 at the theater), but my mother and sister had to go down one deck and near the casino for theirs.  As I waited for them to show back up on deck 5, I treated myself to some Sorrento's pizza.  Ok, so, the pizza there is just fine.  It's not stellar, but it does the job.  I think the BEST pizza I've ever had at sea was on Regal Princess - and that was from the pizza place up top near the pools!  Anyways, I digress.  After inhaling two pieces (I hadn't had breakfast), I finally bumped into my mom and sister.  We decided to hang out near the elevators near the front of the ship on this padded seating area for lack of a better description.  Sensing they might be hungry, I went back to Sorrento's to pick up a few more slices of pizza.  The time flew by and pretty soon it was 1pm.  By this time, I'd already made my way up to deck 10 where my cabin was, but the door wasn't open just yet.  A few minutes passed by and off we went!  My cabin was 10454 - an interior cabin with virtual balcony.  To get to that cabin, there was a door that was in between the two banks of elevators that would allow you to get to the interior rooms.  I was lucky that I only had to go through that entry way, turn right and go down a couple of doors to my cabin.  

 

As I just mentioned, my cabin was 10454 with a virtual balcony.  The room itself was pretty spacious for just one person and the bathroom was a good size as well.  The virtual balcony could be glitchy at times.  By that, I mean that at times, it would sometimes go black, I'd see computer command prompts, a blinking IP address, the RCL logo and then finally a video feed from the one camera.  My cabin was considered to be on the starboard side, yet the video feed for my virtual balcony was from the port side.  That really didn't make any sense, but whatever.  I had packed two suitcases, neither of them had reached my room yet.  Once I got done checking out the cabin, I went back to 5 and let my mom and sister know that they could go to their cabin.  I grabbed my camera backpack, other backpack and went back to my cabin to deposit them.  It was nice to be rid of them for a bit.  For the rest of the afternoon, we all just wandered around the ship checking things out.  Once place we knew we'd be spending quite a bit of time in was the casino!

 

Our daily seating time in the MDR was 5pm.  We were on deck 3...don't recall the table number, but we were kinda in the back.  When it was time to go for dinner, I went back to my cabin to see if my luggage had shown up yet.  Well, only the small one with my snorkeling gear, other aquatic stuff and some t-shirts was there.  The larger of the two with suit, nice clothes, etc was still MIA.  Looks like I was going to be wearing jeans and a t-shirt to dinner, which...to be honest...was pretty dressy when I would see what some people wore to dinner during the week.  For dinner, I had the grilled chicken and Boston Cream pie for dessert.  The plan after dinner was to explore the ship and then take in the musical Grease, but my mom was feeling a bit tired, so it was just my sister and I for the 9:30pm performance.  Overall, I thought it was a pretty good production!  

 

That's it for the start of our cruise.  I was pretty happy that things went as smooth as they did.  I'll have to post some pics from the first day a bit later.

[dragontrainer]

I'm looking forward to seeing your thoughts on the cruise, it turns out we were a couple rows down the hall from you (towards the front) and walked by your door many times a day!  I stressed to our two kids to be respectful of others while going to the room and am hopeful they never ran you over or were overly loud.

[Jaynay]

Great intro!  Looking forward to the rest of your trip report!

[ceilidh1]

Hope you had as much fun on this ship as we did!

[kokopelli-az]

We're on the Harmony tomorrow!   Out of Fort Lauderdale.    Our room is on the 10th floor, too.  

Tomorrow we plan in going to the muster check-in and then to the closest bar. 🍸

 

Bless your heart for taking care of the feral kitties 😸 

[mkmom514]

6 minutes ago, kokopelli-az said:

We're on the Harmony tomorrow!   Out of Fort Lauderdale.    Our room is on the 10th floor, too.  

Tomorrow we plan in going to the muster check-in and then to the closest bar. 🍸

 

Bless your heart for taking care of the feral kitties 😸 

Fort Lauderdale?

[kokopelli-az]

4 minutes ago, mkmom514 said:

Fort Lauderdale?

Yes.  In the morning.   

[mkmom514]

5 minutes ago, kokopelli-az said:

Yes.  In the morning.   

That's the Oasis. Harmony is ported in Galveston.

[kokopelli-az]

OMG so sorry.  We're on the Freedom tomorrow out of Fort Lauderdale.  I don't know how I got that mixed up with the Harmony.   Senior moment 🙄

[trafaelwyr]

And, we're back!  

 

Day 2

 

 

To be honest, day 2 was a bit of a blur.  My m.o. whenever I'm on a cruise ship is that I'm up early - but not too early - to go to the gym and work off whatever I ate the night before.  Now, I'm sure some of you might shudder at the thought of being up early to hit the gym, but for me...there's too much foodie temptation aboard a cruise ship!  When I did my first cruise back in 2015, I did not go to the gym as the whole taking a cruise thing was new to me and I was all about checking out the ship, relaxing and enjoying the food.  After getting an idea of the ship layout and what all it has to offer, I decided that on the next cruise I would get into some sort of schedule as to make the most of my time on the ship, whether it was a day at sea or in port.  

 

Ceilidh1 did a great job in her report posting pictures (some I wish I had taken!), so I'll try not to repeat any here.  So, Monday morning I am up around 7a.m. or so and down to the gym a bit after 8a.m.  I had a brief tour on Sunday with regards to the gym and the vitality spa as I had purchased the Vitality Spa/Thermal spa package.  Bigger ship meant changes I'd have to get use to.  On my sailings on Independence, everything was on one deck - vitality spa, gym, lockers, etc.  On Harmony, the gym and about half of the vitality stuff was on deck 6, but for the locker room, steam room, sauna, thermal beds, etc you had to go down a flight of stairs to deck 5.  To me, this was a bit inconvenient.  I know, first world problems.  On Indy, I could go to the locker room, change and then go right out into the gym.  On Harmony, I had to go down to deck 5, change, go back up and then go to the gym.  To me it just felt clunky.  I did the treadmill for about an hour and only noticed the following day a sign asking people to only use them for 30 minutes. Oops.  Another difference between Indy and Harmony - yes, I realize this is like comparing apples to oranges - is that the treadmill machines were facing the direction the ship was going in, so I got this nice view of what was ahead of us.  On Harmony, you were looking out either side of the boat.  

 

The men's locker room was fairly spacious and it didn't take long to figure out the locker situation with creating our own locker code.  The sauna was....eh.  I would have to say the dimensions of the sauna were 8' x 15' if anything and there was just a one level bench in the shape of an L.  The sauna was heated by what looked like long heating lamps that were recessed into the walls.  I thought this was a bit odd.  On Indy, the sauna was MUCH bigger, had three levels of benches and had the traditional coals that you ladled water on.  As for the steam room, I only went in there once because I felt that it was TOO hot - I'm talking 52 Celsius / 125 Fahrenheit.  Yikes!  The steam room was a good size though, probably almost the same size or maybe even a bit smaller than what's on Indy.  The steam room on Indy was hot, but it was tolerable.  So, some ambivalence about those two.  The heated loungers outside of the steam room and sauna were nice and I'd experienced those last year with the spa package Princess offered.

 

With my workout at an end, I headed back up to my cabin to dispose of my gym stuff.  It was now time to explore more of the ship.  I didn't take any pictures this day.  What I did do, since this was a sea day, was to lounge by the pool.  My sister had texted me earlier about going to the pool and I had agree.  As a bit of a backtrack here, on the first day, I did wind up getting the internet package to check on a security camera back home.  Anyways, I'm sitting up there on the pool deck around 11 something.  No sign of my sister.  I'm waiting and waiting.  She shows up about an hour or so later.  It turns out that she and our mother had gone to the Wind Jammer.  Thanks.  When she did show up, we made use of the pool.  Geez, it was pretty crowded!  At least the boat has enough pools and whirlpools to accommodate everyone. 

 

After spending about almost 2 hours by the pool, we decided to up stakes and check out the Solarium.  That was a really nice area!  We were able to secure one of those huge brown cabana type chairs.  Those seem to be pretty popular!  I'm surprised Royal hasn't started to charge for those.  I think we were there for about an hour when we felt like we'd been up on the pool deck for a long time and returned to our own cabins as we had an event to go to before dinner.   My mom and sister were also on deck 10, but in a balcony cabin on the port side overlooking Central Park.  They REALLY liked having that cabin - it's like you couldn't tell you were on a cruise ship - and they were able to sit on the balcony without the wind whipping around them.  They also enjoyed hearing some of the music that was played down there as well.  

 

For the majority of the cruise, we ate in the MDR with our 5pm reservations.  There was only one night we ate at a specialty restaurant (Wonderland).  When we had booked the cruise, I had an OBC of $150 - some of that money went towards an excursion, the rest went towards booking Wonderland.  Here's a fun humdinger with what I had to go through for that restaurant and there's a bit of a story to it.  This person I deal with at work also acts as a travel agent for cruises.  She had been in the industry a long time ago, changed jobs but still helps people with booking their cruise.  We decided to use her for booking our cruise this year.  Since I had my own cabin and my mom and sister were in the same cabin, we had different reservation numbers.  When I used my OBC, I was pretty certain I had included them in the booking of Wonderland as I had to pay the remaining difference.  We had originally planned to go there on Monday night, but then it turned out that Monday night was French night in the MDR, so I decided that none of us wanted to miss that and had to choose another night.  It turns out that on Wednesday night, the menu in the MDR was Caribbean food night and none of us were too thrilled with the offerings, so I had the reservation switched to Wednesday night.  Now, I had to call up RC to make this change.  To make a complex story shorter, the lady I spoke to had to cancel my Wonderland reservation and refund the difference I paid and then rebook us on Wednesday night and charge me the difference.  Also, she linked up my mom and sister's reservation for Wonderland to me because when I mentioned that they were also supposed to be on the reservation, the lady wasn't seeing it.  In the end, it all worked out!  

 

Before dinner that night, we had a 4pm reservation for this Women of Wine wine tasting experience.  This was given to us for free by the friend of mine who booked our cruise as a thank you.  The wine tasting was done at Vintages, so we didn't have too far to go to get there.  For those here that like wine, this would have been for you.  As this was formal night, we were all dressed up going to the wine tasting.  None of the Women of Wine were there, but we were treated to a video about each lady, their background, etc.  There was also this small booklet that you were given which also had more info about them.  Once each segment was played, the guy in Vintages imparted some interesting information about the wine we were about to taste (well, drink).  There were 3 reds, 3 whites and one sparkling white - that was the first one we started out with.  Additionally, each glass was placed in this circle on the circular mat to identify the vineyard/brand.  I quite liked the sparkling wine!  The other whites were sorta...eh..ok.  I'm not much of a red wine drinker, so only took a few sips of each of those.  You were also given a small charcuterie plate as well.  My mother was pretty picky about the wines and maybe had a sip of each, but my sister pretty much downed them all except for this one white!  I will say that the guy in Vintages who hosted this wine tasting did an amazing job!  I learned quite a bit from him, especially when it came to German Riesling wines.  The whole event took about an hour and 15 minutes.

 

Now that we were fairly wined up(!), we made our way down to deck 3 for dinner.  Our waiter must have been getting anxious as it seemed like another party was going to be seated at our table, but we got there in the nick of time.  That's one thing I like about RCL is that you have the same table each night.  When we were on Princess last year, we probably had the same table twice and then were bounced around the dining room.  I can't quite recall what my mother and sister had for dinner, but for an appetizer I had the crispy buttermilk calamari.  That was ok - I felt like it could have been a bit crispier, but it was fine.  For my entrée, I had the chicken cordon bleu.  THAT was very good!  For dessert, I think I went with the crème brulee.  One thing I did notice was that dinner service was very fast and efficient.  I believe we were out of there by 615pm.

 

When we left the MDR, there was SUCH a line for those who did not have reservations to get in.  My only thought was, "Glad I'm not in that line!"  After dinner, we made our way to the casino.  This would be the ritual every night.  I just hope that later this year or early next year, I'll get an email from RCL offering me a free interior cruise for spending so much time in the casino!  There was this Wheel of Fortune game I knew they'd have on there and I'd played this same game up at Choctaw in Oklahoma, so I was looking forward to spending some time on that machine (tho I did gravitate towards other games later in the cruise).  I was probably in the casino for about an hour or so before I decided to call it a day.

 

On Sunday night, I'd briefly scanned the channels on the TV, but on Monday night I had a bit more time on my hands.  Royal really needs to do some updating to their channel entertainment selection.  It's not the best.  Also, you shouldn't have to pay for movies or TV shows on demand.  That was the one thing I liked about the TV entertainment on Princess - you were given TONS of stuff to watch without getting charged for it.  Oh well.  Even though I didn't spend a lot of time in my cabin, it would be nice to come back to a rather healthy choice of viewing entertainment while in there.  Day 3 with pictures tomorrow!

[trafaelwyr]

Egads!  I can't believe how fast the week has flown by!  On with day three.

 

The morning started as usual, up early, got cleaned up and then went to the gym.  Each day I was in the gym on the treadmill, I would do small increments on the speed of the treadmill.  I certainly didn't want to kill myself on the first day!  I had to work back into it.  On this morning in the gym as I stepped up on to the treadmill, I looked out the window and saw land.  Hmm!  I don't recall seeing this the last time we'd gone to Roatan...then again, I can't exactly recall the route we took.  As I kept looking out the window, I saw a Virgin cruise ship at the one pier.  Naturally, I wondered which ship it was (it was the Valiant Lady).  My sister had texted me to say that our ship was making a brief stop in Cozumel to disembark the passenger who had the medical emergency.  I kinda figured that, but didn't realize it was that serious that we had to make an unscheduled stop.  She added this golden nugget of info:  we can't get off the ship.  I mean, really?  This was something I had pretty much figured since this wasn't an actual planned stop.  

 

Once I was done with the gym, I cleaned up (again), went to my cabin and then grabbed my photography equipment.  The excitement, no matter the reason, of heading into a port made me want to take pictures.  I made my way to the Solarium on deck 15 and then went down a level so I could go outside and hang with the other people who were also there watching us make our way to the pier.  For some odd reason, I incorrectly thought that the pier we were pulling up to would be the one we'd dock at when we made our official stop there.  I soon discovered that on our way back!  So, there we all were, standing up on deck 14 as we pulled up to the pier.  The one thing I'm sure people wanted to see was the person being wheeled off the ship on a gurney.  Now, while that did happen, you really didn't get to see much.  I must have been up top there for about 1 1/2 hours.  Once the person had been loaded into the ambulance, we were off.  That ended the drama of making this unscheduled stop.  I hope the person who left the ship recovered from whatever medical emergency they experienced.  It's such a horrible thing to hear the "Alpha, Alpha, Alpha" call come over the speakers on a ship.  

 

It was neat to see two other RCL ships at the one pier while we were coming in.  The two ships that were there were the Mariner of the Seas (out of Galveston) and Independence of the Seas (out of Miami).  I really like Independence - been on that ship twice and felt that it was just the right size.  The other ship that was docked was the Carnival Valor.  If memory serves correct, I think they had to vacate the location that they were in so that Harmony could pull up to the pier.  

 

The rest of the day was spent out by the pool and in the casino.  I believe it was on this night that this one lady won $13,697 playing one of the machines!  Incredible!  Dinner that night was a taste of Italy.  I went for the minestrone soup, chicken parmesan for the entrée and for dessert, I got the lemon curd tartlet.  Again, wonderful meal.  

 

Not a long post this time, but I have mentioned pictures - of which, I have yet to edit, color correct, etc.  Enjoy the snaps!