Allure of the Seas Cruise Review by getinold

Embarkation

A breeze. Nice to see that if you do have alcohol, this time round they are " keeping it for you " as opposed to confiscating it like they did to us last year.

The ship

Identical to the Oasis. Very large and you would never know there were 6,000 people on board. Previous posts about busy elevators etc are ridiculous. How many of you have used in a hotel elevator ? - bet it was busy most of the time.

Service

We noticed a marked improvement form the service we seen on the Oasis. Every member of staff seemed eager to help. Don't know if this was just specific to the Allure but we are going on the Independance later this year and will make comparisons. We were pleasantly surprised

Shows

Not too great although Chicago was never going to be to my liking. The ice show lacked ideas and mostly consisted of the same routines with costume changes. The blue planet show was visually good. We enjoyed the Aqua show the best. Headliner was a singer - again pretty ordinary. Comedy show was rather predictable - " Hey, how small are these staterooms ? " - heard it on evert cruise.

Cruise director

Ken Rush - not too bad but loves himself a bit too much. RC should remind him that vacations are about us - not him. Much preferred Richard Spacey


Food

No complaints here - unlike previous cruises we did not use any specialty restaurants and we fared very well. However that didn't stop RC pushing them almost daily on the TV channels - that got a bit boring

Disembarking

Again a breeze getting off the ship. One complaint here but it's not directed at RC but the US Homeland Security. 6,000 people getting off a ship and only one gate open for non US pasengers. US passengers breezed through about 5 gates but we visitors to the US had to ensure a very large line in a baggage hall with no air conditioning. Not a very good way for the US to treat it's visitors. Many people were concerned about missing their flights