This year Claudine and I decided we needed our own vacation. So just like 5 years ago we booked a cruise. This time on the Oasis of the seas, Royal Caribbean’s largest ship to date. (At the time I’m writing this the Oasis class is still the largest ship, there is dispute over which one of the ships is actually the largest, it might be the Allure).
This blog post will be about the highlights of our cruise, it’s not going to be a review of the cruise or the ship. That will come later. The short review is simply this:
We love cruising, we love the all inclusive nature, with the opportunity to see multiple ports of call, good food, good atmosphere, add in the rocking of the boat and it’s the best sleep you’ll ever get.
This cruise was not without its challenges. In short, it is unlikely we’ll ever cruise on the Oasis again. We might try the Allure, but not the Oasis. This has nothing to do with cruising itself, but Royal dropped the ball more than a few times on this trip. We heard from plenty of other passengers including a few that had previously sailed the Oasis and other Oasis class ships that this was below their normal expectations for service and quality. It is unclear to me if this is a company wide issue or if it’s an issue with this ship. In the past we found our trip on the Freedom of the seas to be a 10 out of 10, the same ship (Indy) was more like an 8 out of 10 with respect to service/entertainment. Using the same scale, the Oasis probably only scores a 6.5-7, and that’s not ‘awesome’. Still at the end of the day, you’re on a cruise ship!, and it was still hella fun, and still an outstanding value. Details on this will come later.
We booked our 7 night, Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Oasis of the seas through Costco. Including flights from Cincy to Fort Lauderdale we were all in for a little less than $3000 USD ($2400 for the cruise/$600 air fare). This was an upper ‘superior view balcony stateroom’. I’m sure this isn’t the ‘ultimate deal’ but it was in our minds a pretty good deal.