Mum and I are very excited about our up coming cruise on the Ovation of the Seas, to say the least! We can't wait. I think it's the whole new ship thing that has us especially excited for this cruise, I hope it doesn't let us down. I can't image it will though, touch wood, we've never had a bad cruise. Some cruises have been better than others but never a bad cruise have we had!
With Royal Carribean cruise, well with this ship anyway, we are able to organise a lot of things online ahead of our cruise. I love being able to organise and plan ahead of time, for all holidays and travel makes me less worried and unsure if I know the main things are booked. With this cruise we're able to book all of our dinners, whether it be the early/late/any time (which all cruises let you do) but with this ship as we have selected the Anytime Dining we can also book each individual day and select different or the same if we want to. I've locked all our meals in as either 6.45pm or 7.45pm with the idea that we can skip and just do the buffet or one of the other included meal venue places once we're onboard and got the lay of the land. I've got up until a couple of days before the cruise to change any of these but I just thought I'd book them now, just in case things get busy and seating times book out. We originally had the late sitting but I didn't know what time that was until our confirmation came through. 8.30pm which is too late for us and the early sitting is 6pm which is too early, we'd still be full from lunch!
I could also booked some of the onboard activities such as the Eye and the Skydiving - I booked the Eye for a sea day as I think that would be amazing going over the side of the ship so high up, I don't think it can do that on a port day. Then I booked the sky diving, not quite sure if we'll do it yet, after we've been to all the ports just in case we have a mishap! Hate to do it early on in the cruise only to injure ourselves and not be able to enjoy the rest of our cruise. There's also the surfing but from what I can tell this must be open the majority of the cruise so you don't need to book and you can do it as many times as you like. Another thing we're not sure we'll try, the pool might be safer for us!
The shows have just been made available on the online booking so I've also done these and booked our seats. Again, I wasn't sure how quickly these would fill up so wanted to get in early and make sure we could see them. The two shows in the Royal Theatre currently are only showing as being on for one night, not sure if that means there are other shows on the other nights that don't require booking or they're just not available to book online yet. So anyway, I booked the 9pm shows, it was either that or 10.45pm and the 7.30pm show in the Two70 Lounge. For this one we will probably have to cancel our restaurant booking and go to the buffet which is fine as the buffet looks amazing!
So as you can tell the excitement is just building and building for this cruise. I did try and talk my sister into joining us but sadly she has declined.
Only 66 more days until we board the Ovation of the Seas. We have a check in time of 11.30am which is the earliest and we've done all our online stuff, even took our photos that will link to our cruise cards. I also read that you collect your cruise cards at your cabin door and not at check in, just another thing to help speed up embarkation. Sounds good to me!
Happy cruising!
ps: I'm still checking OzCruising for bargain cruises, can't help myself! Too bad I haven't won lotto yet or had a massive order or seven come through at work :-)
