After not having taken a cruise since 2017 my wife and I decided to cruse one again so we shopped around and decided on this cruse as we wanted to try one of the larger cruise ships. So we looked at this itinerary and as St. Martin we had not been to and as we have sailed out of San Juan previously we had not seen much of San Juan we decided to take this cruse. We flew down to Fr. Lauderdale the day before the cruse and stayed at the Spring Hill Suites in Dana Beach which was a nice hotel. On Sunday Morning we got up and had breakfast and booked a 10:45 AM shuttle to Port Everglades. We arrived at terminal 18 at Port Everglades at 11:00 AM as we had selected the first cheek in window to board the ship. We dropped our luggage with the porters and headed into the terminal to check in if you have the Royal App on your device the check in goes very fast the only problem we had was a minor one as my wife photo did not up load properly. Also Royal Caribbean is no longer requiring that a health questionnaire be filled out after checking in we proceeded to get our Welcome Aboard photo taken by the ships photographer and headed to the waiting area as the ship was not ready for boarding. Since we have gold status with Royal Caribbean we waited in the gold section the boarding area which is huge and once the higher status guests we boarded. We boarded the ship at 11:45 Am we had our boarding passes scanned on our phones we headed up the gang way and boarded the ship on deck 5 which is where you begin to notices Allures sheer size and volume this is where the ships Royal Promenade is located and it is huge. Much bigger than the ones we have found on the Explorer. Navigator and Mariner of the Seas, After stopping to find out about a soda package we decided not to get one due to the cost of the package. We headed to the Windjammer for lunch and it was already packed after finding a place to sit we got lunch. As our rooms would be ready at 1:00 PM we headed to find our room on deck 9 forward since the ship it so wide there are cabins going across the entire front of the ship with both inner and outer corridors. We found our room and our sail and sign cards were waiting for us in an envelope on our door. We entered our room and it was spacious and our shore excursion tickets we waiting for us. Shortly after we arrived our luggage was delivered and we unpacked for the week, we had plenty of room under the bed to store there of our pieces of luggage. One of our small bags and our carry on fit in the large closet. One thing we were grateful for was that our cabin was not a virtual cabin but it did have a large flat screen TV and plenty of storage space both in the bathroom and around the desk. After unpacking we and since it was raining off and on we headed to our must station for the mandatory passenger

Evacuation drill our muster satiation which was a staging location was in the fitness club where we were shown the safety video which also shown on the cabin TV’s. After a brief announcement for the Captain we headed up to deck 16 to watch the Ship depart from Port Everglades. Once we were out to sea and since we had an 8:00 PM reservation to see Momma Mia and since we had our time dining we headed to the American Icon Grill our assigned dining room and had a delicious dinner. We were done with dinner by 6:45 PM. We headed back to our cabin where we met Karen our cabin steward. We used the bathroom and headed to the Amber Theater on deck four to watch Momma Mia. Since we had reserved the show we had our Sea Pass cards scanned and found our seats. The show is a full show staged exactly as it was on Broadway with a 15 minute intermission. After the show we stopped on the Royal Promenade to try the Pizza at Sorrento sans the shops as well. We then headed tour cabin to get tom rest as we had two day at sea to enjoy the ships facilities.

On the first of two seas days we got up and we had breakfast in the Windjammer. Read more