We are cruise addicts and cruise mostly Royal Caribbean although we have sailed on Disney and Carnival. We flew in the day before our cruise on Southwest and stayed at the Hyatt Pier 66. Wow, what a great location!. Normally we could not afford this hotel but it was low season and got a great price on a tower room. Views were amazing and I did not want to leave my wrap around balcony. I loved watching the Oasis and Freedom sail away right from my room. We spent the day on the water taxi touring the intercoastal waterway. Interesting to see how some of the rich live. Anyways for some reason I woke up at 5:15am and went out on my balcony and there was my ship just coming into port all lit up and beautiful.
We left our hotel at 10:30 and were at the terminal a few minutes later. As everyone has stated a very quick embarkation. You first enter the Royal Promenade and your reaction is WOW. We headed straight for Park Cafe which became my favourite place to eat everyday. I LOVE the salad bar and of course we tried the roast beef sandwich. It was very good but a little too much salt on that bun. I also enjoyed the flavored water. Central Park is beautiful and I even saw a butterfly on a sea day. Next we began our tour of the ship, we quickly found the video postcard booth in the On Air club and sent a postcard home to the kids which became a daily routine. My kids loved it but Grandma said everytime my 7 year old son watched one he would run to his room and cry :). We also headed to the Windjammer to get my honey stung chicken fix :). We got on early but it wasn't that busy yet, still manageable. I only went to the windjammer once this week as I had heard it was busy but I also just prefer service in the main dining room. The one time I went I did not find it to be that horrible. Rooms were open at 1pm and our bags were already there. WE had a balcony ocean view room at the aft of the ship. Great location as we tend to spend a lot of time on flowrider and the sports pool. Our room had the bed by the balcony door. I thought the new closet layout away from the front entrance was excellent and had plenty of space. We quickly unpacked and my husband headed to flowrider to get some rides in before it got busy. There were only 4 guys there so he had a great afternoon with plenty of turns. The zipline was also open and hardly anybody was there either. I am scared of heights but my goal this week was to at least try it once and I did! I screamed my fool head off and shook for an hour afterwards which was silly because it really is a very simple quick ride but...
Our muster station was in the aquatheatre which is a very comfortable place to sit but can be hot if you are sitting in direct sun. Muster drill went quickly and we headed up to Deck 11 for sailaway with the Pink Boa Society. This was a great location as we had a view of leaving port plus we could watch the sailaway show with the DreamWorks characters on the aquatheatre stage.
We liked being aft but a cabin closer to the elevator would have been better. It was a quiet location and we had no issues.