Our kids/grandkids invited us to go with them on this cruise back in January of 2015. Because we love our kids we proceeded to spend an exorbitant amount of money on this cruise. Being seasoned travelers we purchased a direct flight into Ft. Lauderdale. Our kids - because there were a lot of them choose a connecting flight. There was an illness in my daughter-in-laws family which precluded them going the day before. Long story short - they missed their connection and missed the ship - air travel was so snarled that they couldn't even get to any of the other ports either. So my husband and I were stuck on this huge cruise ship. We'd done Allure of the seas with them the year before - so unfortunately we knew what we were in for.

There are about 4000 kids on these huge cruises of over 6000 passengers. 2000 under the age of 10 running wild, complaining and wailing and the other 2000 under 18 with their noses stuck in their IPhones. When you are traveling with your own, it makes it a bit easier to overlook everyone else's. If you are just a couple looking for a lovely relaxing cruise DO NOT - I repeat DO NOT book a cruise on the Oasis or the Allure. We bonded with a few other couples who were also alone and we were all pretty miserable. Honestly, I spent most of my time on our balcony (thank God we had one) because on days at sea - the the ship was a madhouse.

Now to the food. Really, and I've told RC this twice now - you just cannot serve that many people effectively. The food was mediocre at best. And often just terrible. We decided to do my time dinning - or as we called it RC-Time dinning. If you could get a reservation - you still had to wait. And once you got into the dinning room it was pandemonium - good luck getting a glass of wine - there were no wine stewards or cocktail waiters that we could find and the waiters were slammed and did know the wine at all. We had our wedding anniversary on board and decided to splurge on the specialty dinning Italian restaurant. Definitely the best meal we had, but for an extra 40 bucks - it was just OK. Read more