Allure of the Seas
We flew into Miami and spent the first night at an airport hotel. This is normal when you join a Caribbean cruise as a flight delay could result in you missing your sailing. After a leisurely breakfast we transferred up to Fort Lauderdale to join the ship. The embarkation is staggered to make boarding as smooth as possible and the cruise terminal had around 20 check in desks. We were photographed for our Seapass which is linked to your credit card and allows you to purchase things on board, access your drinks package if you’ve bought one, and get on and off the ship. Several of my fellow Travel Counsellors were dubious about spending a week in the company of over 5,000 passengers, but once you’re on, you would never know there were that many people on board. As the ship was sailing full, we were given special clearance to board early so that we could view the main cabin categories before their guests arrived. Allure is a family ship and although there were hundreds of children on our sailing, they were well entertained by the complimentary Adventure Ocean kids clubs and the organised family activities. There’s the Studio B ice rink, twin rock climbing walls, mini golf, a sports court for basketball, volleyball and dodgeball, several pools, a water park, two surf-riders, a fairground carousel, a 3D cinema and a zipline to keep kids of all ages busy during sea days. For very young children, there’s even ‘Royal Babies’ and ‘Royal Tots’ where you can book babysitting from $6 an hour and prebook your supplies of nappies etc. with their ‘Babies2go’ service. There’s also ‘My Family Time’ dining offered where the kids club staff will collect your children aged 3-11 from the dining room 45 minutes after service starts so that you can enjoy your dinner and entertainment as a couple until the early hours.
We enjoyed the amazing new OceanAria aquatheatre production, the Blue Planet stage show and Tony Award-winning Broadway musical ‘Chicago’ and were easily able to change our dining times to choose between early and late shows. Adagios was our main dining room on second sitting but we also sampled ‘Rita’s Cantina’ Mexican restaurant & ‘Chops Grill’ steakhouse for a small cover charge. Other people chose to try out the ‘Izumi’ Japanese restaurant & ‘Giovanni's Table’ the Italian Trattoria.
For breakfast most of us seemed to favour ‘central park’ or the solarium as we were able to eat outside and enjoy the early morning sun before heading into the conference centre for our training sessions. Room service is also offered free of charge or you could also opt for a full silver service breakfast cooked to order in the main dining room, the buffet breakfast in the Windjammer or even donuts and pastries from the Boardwalk Donut Shop. We did try, but failed to get round all of the restaurants on board in just a week!
We also tried to get round all the entertainment between us, and failed that too. We were able to catch the Ice show and most people alternated between Blaze and Dazzles for clubbing and live music but we didn’t get round to the comedy or jazz clubs, the karaoke or spend time in many of the other bars featuring live music. One that we had to try together before dinner one night was the ‘Rising Tide’ which actually travels slowly between three decks!
On port days we had some free time and in Labadee (Haiti), Falmouth (Jamaica) and Cozumel (Mexico) we were able to leave the ship easily as there were gangways directly onto the piers at each.
Labadee is Royal Caribbean’s 260-acre private beach resort and has four distinct beaches linked by ‘tram’. This is actually more like a stretched golf buggy pulled by a mini tractor – but it beats walking! Whilst ashore here your lunch and drinks are included, but you pay extra for any activities you do – including using the water park. If you’re up for some soft adventure you can ride the Dragons Breath zipline – it’s the longest zipline in the world over water at 2,600 feet long and can reach speeds of 40mph. If that’s too fast for you, located 680 feet up on the same mountain, you will also find the Dragon's Tail alpine roller coaster which runs with single seater cars and can reach 30mph as it snakes down its track towards the sea. Most of us took the opportunity to laze on the beach and go for a swim and then wandered back through the craft village to the Adrenaline Beach to watch the zipliners for a while. A couple of people stayed on board and tried out the spa and a couple of others went kayaking and visited a local village. All in all, it was a relaxing day and even embarkation seemed to have naturally staggered itself so there was no last minute rush to board the ship. Maybe a few of the ‘labadoozie’ island cocktails had done the trick to make everyone relax into the Caribbean pace of life.
Falmouth is Royal Caribbean’s specially built cruise port close to Ocho Rios. The town itself has 19th-century Georgian architecture and you can wander around here easily without having to book an excursion. If you want to explore further afield you can visit Dunns River Falls, take a bamboo raft ride on the Martha Brae, visit Negril or one of the Great Houses. Several of our group went river tubing but we were invited to visit Secrets Wild Orchid and Secrets St James and it was a great opportunity to see these resorts first hand.
The last port of call was Cozumel and a couple of our Australian TC’s were out very early for the all day trip to Chichén Itzá which was fascinating. Most people don’t realise it covers 6 square miles and has several hundred ancient buildings. The other Australian TC’s hired a jeep and explored on their own, finding an authentic Mexican beach bar where they were the only guests for lunch. Several people went to Chankanaab which is a fairly new local beach park offering a snorkeling reef, botanical gardens a sea lion show and crocodile pond. I opted for a snorkeling trip by catamaran and visited a beautiful reef before spending an hour on a deserted island beach with a cold beer and the local iguanas.
During our sea days on the way back we met the captain and his hotel and entertainment directors, we visited the bridge and the galley, the Adventure Ocean clubs and the nursery, the casino, spa, gym and photo gallery. Allure of the Seas is operating out of Europe all summer so I must admit I'm tempted to sneak off for another week to experience the bits I've missed!