Hello Everyone! Back from Oasis of Seas Inaugural and its taken me a few days to catch up on things as my daughter also arrived this week home from college in Florida. But, I wanted to post a trip review for all of you so here goes:
Pre-Cruise- We left BWI on Thursday and arrived at the airport only to find our flight out delayed ...but it wasn't a long delay and soon we departed and headed to ATL- our first stop, from there we headed to FLL., and arrived at approx. 3pm. We checked in at the LaQuinta- overall a good place to stay but it does need some renovations- the elevators took a long time and creaked every time it closed...kind of scary. The rooms were adequate but sure nothing fancy, although beds were fairly comfortable. I don't think I would stay here again though. I was not feeling tooo well- my stomach was acting up. Perhaps it was just all the anticipation of the upcoming cruise but I just rested up the rest of the day. We met up with friends of ours the next day who were also staying there and going on the Inaugural with us- it was so nice to see them again- we had met them on our Freedom Cruise. We decided to take a walk and within a short distance was a nice shopping area with several food places- TGIF, Red Lobster and a few others. Friday evening we had our pre-cruise dinner and 21 of us came, it was great and it was at Sal's Italian Restaurant- rt nearby our hotel- The meal was fantastic!! Some of our gang though said it was hard to find and arrived a little late but what the heck we were on vacation and about to have the most exciting vacation of our lives!!!
Embarkation Day!!! We arrived at the port at 9:05am- yes I was one of those early birds!! I just couldn't stand to be there later and I was so looking forward to getting my first glimpse of ship- which when we did I just cried. All the emotion and planning of the last 2 years was just so emotional when I saw her for 1st time. My DH and daughter were laughing they just thought it was so funny. Oh well. We were allowed to check in 9:30am and it only took like 10 min. and we were headed upstairs. We were given yellow oasis inaugural bags along with planner for the week. Already free gifts- I liked that alot! We headed up escalator and took our seats. There ended up being over 600 passengers who were doing the B2B and so they headed to a spot in the terminal near us. Then the long wait to board began.....we found out later that there were people still on the ship that had refused to get off- as they were apparently told that they didn't have to get off if they were on the b2b which was not true. The ships' manifest HAS to read 0 before embarkation can begin. It took awhile, but we were FINALLY able to board about 1245pm after all the diamond +, diamond and platinum members boarded. We enetered mid ship on the Royal Promenade and our mouths just dropped to the floor!! Yep, I cried AGAIN!!! It was just beyond words and so beautiful!! We were handed a glass of champagne and welcomed warmly onboard by the staff.