Our New Year’s Cruise on the Allure of the Seas 12/30/18 thru 1/6/19

I would like to begin this review by elucidating to all readers that we are absolutely not the type of Cruisers that believe we are above and beyond any other person on a cruise ship regardless of what room they stay in or their status. We are a very humble couple and feel very blessed to be able to enjoy these types of vacations. However, regardless if you stay in an inside cabin or the owners suite it still costs money and the agreeably there is a standard set “By the Company” you are cruising with, and quite frankly if they cannot live up to their Standards then it is something that should be shared with other travelers.

With that I will begin our review of the Allure of the Seas. First and foremost I have similar reviews of the Big Ships and ironically it seems to be the same all the time – RCCL and others have these big beautiful ships and unfortunately they don’t have to correct amount of staff to keep up with their “Standards”. We have been on a total of 13 Cruises since 2012 and have sailed on the Vision, Radiance, Voyager, Freedom and Oasis Class ships at least once. It is not hard to figure out that service levels from Vision and Oasis are worlds apart. If I had to scale these in order of service and standards I would say Vision (80-90%) Radiance (80-90%) Freedom (75-80%) Oasis (65-75%). Again this based on number of Passengers to the number of employees. The Oasis class ships have a passenger compliment of 5400 with 2165 crew members which is 2.49 crew members to every passenger. With 18 Categories of Officers the equation greatly reduces the total of number of crew members to guests in the rating of less than 1 per passenger. Overall the statistics may or may not be of any significant to most people however it does illustrate the point that just because their bigger doesn’t mean their better, and it Segway’s into my review as it may hopefully give a better insight on the “Standards and Service Levels” that we were engaged with. Read more