Allure is BIG, maybe too much so

Thank you Port of the Everglades!! The new system of "Expedited Check In" is amazing and wonderful! Use it and it will be the best thing you ever do if you embarkation city is participating!

This was a family cruise and it would not have been our 1st choice of time of year, or ship - so I should preface my review that way. Though we like Royal Caribbean, we Love NCL, and there are probably others we'd like to explore.

The Allure is an extremely large ship- I believe I missed seeing certain areas. We went in mid-summer due to children in the family [not ours], and the ship was filled with them and families. So if you're travelling with kids - GREAT time to go! We found solace in the Solarium part of the ship, Adults Only. Actually it was fabulous, as was the Solarium Cafe for eating.

We chose a cabin with a larger balcony for the 1st time; tho it was very nice that way and Mike really liked it, I don't necessarily see the need vs the cost difference. The cabins are at that price are all the same size inside.

Dining ... Hmm... We chose My Time Dining. What can I say except that it's definitely not the same as 'Any Time Dining' on NCL's Breakaway Class ships. You can only dine in one dining room, vs 3 on NCL. We had good food every night and our wait staff was very good, but there were nights were things were so slow we were late or missed shows. This wasn't due to the wait staff, but kitchen service. They actually had to bake extra dessert one night??

There were several activities we wanted to participate in - particularly on the 'at sea' days. For myself, I wanted to do a few of the casino tournaments. Well it happens that they had them all bunched up together almost. Two of them that I wanted to enter were almost on top of each other .. The poker tournament and Black Jack. I decided to enter the Poker Tourney and if I got out early maybe enter the BJ. Well I didn't make it to final for the poker, but got pretty far, so missed out on the other. Seriously ... The Slots, poker and black jack were all between 1 pm and 4 pm in the afternoon - ridiculous!

Another activity that we wanted to participate in as a family [and it seemed others did also] was in a very small venue. Got there 10-15 min in advance and it was packed, actually overflowing. There were 3 tables in from but NO chairs. I went to the host and asked about it ..she told me I should get there earlier [oh really, nice]. So I asked her about extra chairs for the tables. She said we could drag them in from the outer area of the lobby [the heavy padded ones in the boardwalk area, lol]. WOW .. impressive. No, I wouldn't give the activities director extra points..

One of the shows we saw, Mo5aic, Excellent!! If they're on your cruise see them. We saw Mama Mia and it was very good, as expected - tho actually I guess I expected a little more, lol.

Overall .. our family was together and had a lovely time.

Would we go on this ship again - No. No interest.