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I was feeling a bit under the weather today so we didn't do anything during the day. In the evening we went to the Main Dining Room. They had an Indian Chicken Meal that I did not want to miss and also a Greek Moussaka (Eggplant Casserole) meal. Both were excellent. The Indian Chicken Meal was definitely better than what they were offering in the buffet the prior night which was supposed to be Indian night.
The first thing I felt missing is the ship has no intimate feel to it. Everything felt institutional. Due to the huge size of the ship and number of passengers it has to serve, it has a lot to offer. But, everything has to be served on a mass scale with little opportunity to one and one connection between guests and staff or performers. Barbara and I like the smaller music venues, especially those with a sole piano or guitar player. But in each of the venues where this was present, the performer would stand or sit in one corner and just play their songs with little or no audience interaction.
On the Wonder Of The Seas there is no central attrium lounge where many gather and musical acts alternate thoughout the day. Instead there is the Royal Prominade which is like the central hall in a shopping mall with limited seating. They do have a bandstand a level above and overlooking the Royal Prominade where various live entertainment is provided from time to time. But there is no place to sit to watch the entertainment except for the seats at Sorrento's Pizza Parlor. Whenever there is live entertainment on this stage, all the seats at Sorrento's Pizza Parlor get taken. Everyone who can't find a seat remain standing or dancing in the Royal Promenade in front of the bandstand blocking the main walkway. It makes it impossible for anyone that just wants to get a slice of pizza to find a place to sit in the restaurant, or for people to just get in and out of the pizza parlor who just want to get a piece and go. I feel this is design flaw in the ship. They should have placed the bandstand above Sorrento's Pizza Parlor instead of across from it. If they had done that, there are several places on both levels that would have been right across from the bandstand where people could have sat and watched the performance. All of these places are just bars that serve no food and would not have been in the way of anyone. This would also have avoided so many people from clogging up the main walkway.
The designers of this ship highly underestimated the popularity of Karaoke and the size of the room needed for this venue. This room would run out of seating 30 minutes to an hour before each performance. If you didn't arrive very early you'd end up standing. We went to a few jazz perfomances in the Music Hall which is a good size room, much bigger than the Karaoke venue, and it was usually pretty empty. On Princess cruise ships, no particular room is designed specifically for Karaoke. They move the Karaoke from one venue to another depending on how popular it is and how big a venue is needed to accommodate everyone.
We weren't impressed with the selection or taste of the food at all in buffet. Their selection seemed pretty sparse and the taste of the food was nothing to write home about. Even when they had a special night in the buffet, such as Indian night, they only had about 5 Indian items. Even terribly limited Indian buffets have more selection than that. We found the buffet on both Princess and Carnival ships far more extensive and with more flavor than that in the Royal Caribbean buffet. When I go to the buffet on a cruise ship, I expect to be amazed by the huge selection. This was not true on the Royal Caribbean. There was also a tremendous lack of vegetable dishes.
A ship this large really should have 3 sets, instead of 2 sets of elevators. Both sets are located midship. None are located aft or forward. Thus, if your cabin is located forward or aft, you have a long way to walk to get to the nearest elevator. Even if the venue you going to is a few floors directly below your cabin, such as the main dining room or main theater, you have to walk a long way to the nearest elevator, go down a few floors, and then walk all the way back. Most ships smaller than Oasis Class have 3 sets of elevators: One in or near the forward cabins, one midship, and one in or near aft cabins. Granted, there are a lot of elevators. Each of the 2 sets has 16 elevators or a total of 32 elevators on the ship. There are also hidden elevators just for crew which means you won't find elevators getting clogged up with crew bringing luggage up and down during embarkation and debarkation.
The ship itself is absolutely amazing. With the exception of my above criticisms, this was the best designed ship I have ever been on. I'd strongly recommend that everyone take a cruise at least once on a Royal Caribbean Oasis Class ship, even if not specifically on the Icon Of The Seas or the Wonder Of The Seas. All Oasis Class ships are pretty similar in their design.
The ship has a massive amount of open space. The ship is divided into 3 sections. Aft is the open Boardwalk area. This area is designed to look like Connie Island in New York. Forward is the open Central Park area which is designed to look like Central Park in New York City surrounded by upscale restaurants. Both of these open areas are surrounded on both sides by many levels of interior balconies. Most of the elevators are glass elevators with a complete view on every level of these huge open areas. This makes almost every elevator trip an enjoyable ride in itself. The central section of the ship is the Royal Promanade. As I mentioned before, this is like the central section of a mall. It is very wide with shops, bars, restaurants, and services on both sides with a number of kiosks selling various items down the center.
The elevators themselves have features missing on many cruise ships, especially new cruise ships. First, there is an indicator by every elevator on every level indicating where the elevator is currently located. When an elevator reaches your level, a huge white light over the elevator entrace would turn either green or red indicating whether the elevator was going up or down. That made it easy to tell when an elevator had arrived going in your direction, even if you weren't standing near the elevator.
Because of the size of the ship and the number of passengers, there were a lot of musicians and other entertainers on the ship. There seemed to always be several options for live entertainment going on all the time. There were also many different live shows available, not just one main event in the main theater. The is a major water show on the ship performed on a huge outdoor stage. There is an ice skating show also performed in a sizeable theater, which is available for passengers to use for ice skating when a show is not in progress. There is also a two level Music Hall for smaller audiences, but still of good size. Then there is the Royal Theater for the main performances each night which they claim is the largest theater at sea. There are also a number of smaller venues for other performances, but I don't think any of these smaller venues are as small as that devoted to Karaoke, one of the most popular offerings on the ship.
A lot of people rate the Royal Caribbean Cruis Line (RCCL) as their favorite cruise line. There is a man that nicknamed himself "Mario" who lives year round on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. He spent weeks cruising on just about every cruise line and calculated that Royal Caribbean best met his needs and provided the highest value for cost.
If you are a young couple, a family with young children, or even a single, I can see how you might like Royal Caribbean more than most other cruise lines. There is a lot of physical activities for adults and children including a zip line. flowrider, rock climbing, basketball, ping pong, miniature golf, and more. There is a great children play area and teen arcade area.
First, Barbara and I are not into Sun, Sand and Water at all. We don't like swimming or snorkling or any other water activities. I have a light complexion, burn easily, and even the sun just shining on my skin feels painful. Neither of us just like laying out in the sun. We don't find hot and humid weather pleasant at all. We didn't even get off the ship in Cococay as we saw no activity of interest to us beyond the glass bottom boat, and those were already all booked up. So, the Caribbean is not one of our preferred destinations. We only selected this cruise as that seemed to be the best place to try a short cruise on the largest cruise ship in the world, The Wonder Of The Seas.
Presently, Princess Cruise Line is our favorite cruise line. The target customers of Princess tend to be older adults. Princess does not devote the top deck of their ship to an amusement park as is done by Royal Caribbean, Carnival and NCL. They have some venues for children and teens, but not much specifically desgned for them. As a result, it mostly gets an older crowd for passengers. There tend to be very few children on Princess cruises. Princess cruises usally have a lot of live music entertainment, especially classic rock, jazz, piano, and other classic music. One surprise was that Royal Caribbean had more jazz and horns than most Princess cruises, but that probably had more to having to keep such a huge number of passengers with diverse tastes entertained.
From our personal taste in cruising, Princess still holds the #1 position for us. Currently Carnival hold the #2 position, but that may just be due to our lack of experience with other cruise lines that might be more like Princess. Probably Holland America and Celebrity would still rank higher with us than Royal Caribbean. But I can definitely say that Royal Caribbean ranks higher than Norwegian Cruise Lines in preferences. Whereas the Oasis Class are probably the best designed cruise ships, we believe the newst NCL cruise ships are the worst designed cruise ships.
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If in this report you see any typos, misspellings, factual errors or other types of errors, please let me know.
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