Allure of the Seas Review

5.0 / 5.0
3,139 reviews

'The Gratuity Cruise'

Review for the Bahamas Cruise on Allure of the Seas

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Sail Date: Sep 2011
Cabin: Sky Loft Suite with Balcony

My wife and I decided to come to Florida for a few weeks and decided on a cruise for 7 days from Miami / Ft L so the Allure leaving the day after we arrived was too good an opportunity to miss. We had previously cruised twice with Princess. We went for the Loft Suite on the 17/18 Floor, as whilst they were expensive - £5000 ($8000) for 7 days, I expected the facilities and service would be excellent as they had been with the Suites on Princess.

My first negative experience happened before we had even boarded when on departing our taxi we were approached by a uniformed RC 'porter' who moved our bags 4 yards into a luggage container and then he directly asked for a gratuity and 'he would make sure our bags reach our room'. I was then in line for about five minutes and he moved away and never even looked at our bags again. Considering my wife and I had managed to get our bags 3000 miles and had two flights and two hotels without any bother, we could have managed the last 4 yards. I'll come back to gratuities later.

I would love to say everything was great from then on but it wasn't. We had long queues to board the ship and it was disorganised with the staff arguing amongst themselves as to who should board first, so we just moved away from our group (which had been the only one standing for 10 minutes) and joined another who were already boarding. As we boarded 5 minutes later our original group were still watching everyone else get on the ship.

Cabin Review

Sky Loft Suite with Balcony

Cabin SL

Loft Suites - Very modern and spacious with a large balcony. Note these Suites are on the 17 floor therefore it can take time to get around the ship as the lifts take a long time and are sometimes full with people going up before the go down.

As its the 17 floor it is quiet when you are up there although it can be busy as some people come up from the very busy Windjammer Restaurant (16 floor) to gets the lift before the people on the 16. There was no noise from other passengers on the 17 floor so it feels quiet when on your own balcony but watch out for Lofts at the 'back' of the ship as they are directly above the Sports Area and are noisy at times.

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