Ovation of the Seas - Friday 3 February, 4th Sea Day

Mum enjoying our balcony

Another sea day as we get closer to New Zealand and our next port of call! The weather has been near on perfect. I thought it would get colder as we got closer to NZ but so far it's still lovely and warm. We spent some more time walking around the ship, taking happy snaps and watching the flowriders and rock climbers. The pool areas are great with three separate main pool areas, two of which are inside. The main outside pool area also includes a great kiddies area with slides and a whirlpool. I really wanted to try the whirlpool! I think I could have just would have felt weird without a kid with me ;-)

Seaplex - Hotdog van

A lap around deck 15 was just under 1km, that is how big this ship is!

Shuffle Board

Flowride - surfs up!

Rock Climbing

The main pool area with kiddies splash zone - deck 14

The North Star - one of mums favourite activities!

Doing a lap.

Pre dinner drinks in Vintages - deck 5

We had a 7.30pm Show at the Two70 Theatre - Pixels booked so I had booked an earlier dinner for us at 6pm. We were sat in another area of our restaurant, we didn't realised how big it was! The food was just as delicious but the service was not as good, a bit slow. The staff were lovely just didn't look as well organised or possibly there wasn't enough of them. Normally this wouldn't really matter but because we had the show book and need to be there at least 20 minutes before hand we ran out of time to have dessert. :-( The waiter did say he would be quick quick but really, we didn't 'need' dessert!

Yummy dinner! We didn't realise how big our restaurant was.

 The show and venue was fabulous! Amazing layout, the floors open and rise and lower. Performers were dropping down from the ceiling, dancing and spinning, singing and twirling with lots of computer generated images, hence why it's called Pixels! Both of us really enjoyed the show!

Pixels in Two70 - definitely worth seeing

 Guess what, another new roomie! This time it was a monkey. Love the towel animals! (easy pleased)

Monkey!

Ovations of the Seas - Thursday 2 February, 3rd Sea Day

Day 6 already!

We've booked for the North Star Experience at 11.20am. I did this online before we left - here's hoping it all goes to plan!

It almost went to plan. Our original time was cancelled due to the wind but we went back a few hours later when we had noticed it was running again and were easily able to get on. We were given a priority pass when our booked trip was cancelled but didn't end up needing to use it as we got straight on. I think mum would have preferred that we didn't get on as once it started going up she realised how high we were going to go. She wouldn't let go of the railing and had a petrified face pretty much the whole time, ha ha. She did manage to take a photo but then realised we were already back down! The North Star goes up about 92 metres and then swivels around to get side views but it doesn't actually go over the side of the ship. The staff member who was on with us said that it has to be absolutely perfect conditions before it can go over the sides so it very rarely does. It would probably only be at a port that is tendered in a very sheltered spot. I still enjoyed it. You really get a great view of the ship!

92 metres above the ship - mum wanted to stay up here longer (not really!)

The North Star

Another day spent exploring the ship and enjoying the views and the yummy food. Dinner tonight in Icon was mum's favourite meal of the cruise! She ordered the Beef Wellington and I ordered the Grilled Salmon but the waiter insisted I have the Beef Wellington. I really wanted the Salmon so he decided to bring them both out for me! I did have some of the Beef, which was delicious and mum had some as well so he was very pleased when he came back to clear the plates that most of it had been eaten :-) I can't believe I fitted dessert in but I did, pavlova!

Grilled Salmon and Beef Wellington for me - I'm not a pig truly!

This isn't helping my cause!

Another new roomie, very cool roomie he was as he was wearing my sunnies!

Almost as cool as we are

Ovation of the Seas - Wednesday 1 February, Mystery Island - Vanuatu

Day 5 - Mystery Island

Mystery Island! Still as beautiful as we remembered. We didn't ended up getting off the ship here, mum didn't want to share the island with 4,000 or wait for a return tender.

Beautiful Mystery Island

The tenders are used for this port seeing as it's a teeny tiny island and I think the ship is bigger than it!

We spent most of the day on the Solarium in and out of the beautiful pools. Great day. Breakfast again was in the Solarium Bistro with made to order eggs for mum, perfectly cooked!

Mystery Island from the Solarium

The Solarium

It's hard to get a photo of the whole of the Solarium as it is big and also the pools are tiered - there are three main pools in a waterfall affect ending in a shallow pool with the two hot tubs either side. A fabulous space!

The shallow pool looking up towards the Sunshine Bar

We had grabbed some towels yesterday from the towel bar ready for today either for the beach or the pool. Thought it would be easier to get them yesterday than today but they were very well organised, as with everything so far, so there were plenty of towels to go around.

Amazingly there is an airport on Mystery Island

There were a couple of small planes on Mystery Island when we arrived, I wonder if the knew a massive cruise ship was arriving! We watched them take off later in the afternoon, such a small island to have an airstrip. They took off safely and got far far away from us cruisers :-)

Tender heading over to Mystery - how beautiful is the water?!

 Pre dinner drinks on our balcony as we waved goodbye to Mystery. Two sea days as we head down to New Zealand. Both mum and I are really looking forward to this part of our cruise as it is somewhere we haven't been on a cruise before. Going to new ports is always very exciting!

Seriously good!

 I just have to note that I had a Crab Cake for starters tonight, YUM!

Another new roomie, possibly a koala??

Roomie!

Ovation of the Seas - Tuesday 31 January, Noumea - New Caledonia

Heading into Noumea

Noumea - New Caledonia. We have been here many times now due to our love of cruising and the fact that just about every cruise, that does the South Pacific, goes to Noumea. We've been tossing up whether or not to do the Kayaking Tour ($106pp) on the Dumbea River.

Noumea Fire station

We ended up not doing any tours and just wandered around Noumea for a few hours before heading back to the shuttle bus and the ship. Being that the Ovation is so large we docked at the container terminal and had to catch shuttle buses to the main cruise terminal. This was all organised very well and didn't take us very long at all to get off the ship and onto a bus.

Coconut Square

 Nothing much has changed in Noumea since our last visit. I did try and get onto the wifi in Coconut Square as I needed to contact my sister about a tour I had organised for Auckland but I didn't have any luck. Possibly due to 1,000's of other cruisers also trying to log on! No big deal, I'll just try again once we get to NZ.

I'm still amazed how BIG the Ovation is!

I hadn't changed any money so could go to the casino (supermarket) to buy any nibblies which I previously have done. Not that the nibblies are that fabulous or anything it was just something I started doing and they became the pressies for everyone. No pressies this time!

We had one or two ice creams during the course of our cruise

Once back on board, would you know it, it was lunch time. Windjammers and then an icecream. We left Noumea right on time, possible a little bit early and headed for Mystery Island.

Leaving Noumea

 Dinner again in the Icon but we were placed in a different section this time. Still fabulous just a busier area as it was much closer to the kitchen and bar areas. The waiters put on a little show for us, it was a great evening. I had a sweet potato pie for dessert, different, unusual, nice.

Show time

 

Creme Brulee and Sweet Potato Pie

 Another roomie tonight, this time it was mister turkey,gobble gobble!

Turkey!

Ovation of the Seas - Monday 30 January, 2nd Sea Day

Day 3 - 2nd sea day

Our second sea day went pretty much like the first one although this time we ate lunch in Windjammers and not our cabin and went to a 'silent disco' in Two70.

Silent Disco - getting my DJ groove on

The silent disco had us intrigued so we had to go and see what it was all about. How it works is there are two dj's who play different music to one another but to hear them you need to be wearing headphones! There's a button on your headphones which you can switch between the two dj's (green or blue) or switch off so you can't hear any music. This is when it gets funny! People are dancing and singing but if you don't have headsets or you've switched them off you can't hear any music but you can hear people singing, generally very loud and off key! It's hilarious. As is the dancing because there are two types of music playing some people don't look like they're dancing in time but that's only because your listening to the other dj! We didn't dance, may have accidently sang out loud a few times, but had a great time!

There's dancing at the Silent Disco

We watched the flowrider and ifly - we're booked on the ifly for later in the cruise but think we'll just be spectators for the flowride. It looks fun but it also looks like you could hurt yourself if you get it wrong, which I'm sure I would. Actually, a day or so later a guy of about 60 did fall and hurt himself quite badly and had to be airlifted off and taken to Noumea Hospital. We did hear later on that he returned to the ship when we were in Auckland. He was wearing a neck brace but luckily had no serious injuries!

It's a big ship so the corridors are long, luckily our cabin wasn't far from the stairs/lift

 We had drinks in Vintages before we headed for dinner. It's a nice, quiet lounge just up from Two70 and next to Jamie Oliver's Italian Restaurant and above our restaurant.

Vintages

American Icon - our restaurant!

Starters - the food in the restaurant was superb

 When we got back to our cabin we had a new roomie, Ellie the elephant!

Ellie the elephant

Ovation of the Seas - Sunday 29 January, 1st Sea Day

How lucky are we?? (hint: very)

We started our first sea day with a cuppa, made from our kettle in the room, on our balcony. Such as small thing to have a kettle but it was nice to not have to either order room service or pop upstairs to get a cup of tea. I know, 1st world problems! We're easy pleased anyway.

Solarium Bistro - our breakfast venue of choice

No plans for the day so we just relaxed a bit on the balcony before getting ready and then headed upstairs to check out the Solarium Bistro for breakfast. This became our place for brekky. It's a smaller and quieter buffet style restaurant which suited us just fine. I'm not a morning person so being able to eat my muesli and have a cup of tea in relative peace was nice, especially on such a big ship. The solarium area is a lovely space with lots of windows and light coming in. I could get use to this. (and I did)

The Promenade - deck 4. Always busy when there are bargains to purchase!

Heading for Jamie's, Vintages and Two70 Lounge and Cafe

Two70 Lounge

After breakfast we went for another walk around the ship, trying to get our bearings and work out where everything is. Is very well laid out so didn't really take us that long to find things and not get lost. The majority of the main public spaces are decks 3, 4 and 5 and then the top decks 14, 15 and 16. The rest is basically cabins. Deck 3 is the casino, deck 4 is the main promenade or atrium level with the majority of shops plus restaurants and the main part of the Royal Theatre (Our restaurant was on this level) and deck 5 has a few restaurants and bars plus a couple of shops and the photo centre.

The Two 70 Lounge at the back of the ship, deck 5 with a balcony area and library on deck 6, was a beautiful area. The whole back of the ship is all glass so you can image the views. This also turned into screens for shows, a very funky place.

We went to Windjammers to grab some lunch and decided to enjoy it on our balcony, we loved having a balcony.

Lunch in our cabin

6.45pm - Dinner reservation in American Icon. I'd prebooked this doing an earlier sitting as I had booked us in to see the show in the Royal at 9pm so didn't want to have to rush dinner (or miss out on dessert!). Our second dinner on board the Ovation was just as yummy as our first!

We'd often check the menu out on either our TV or the iQ app on my phone

9pm - Show in the Royal Theatre, Live.Love.Legs Fantastic show. Lots of dancing, legs and singing. Definitely worth seeing. There was another showing at 10.45pm but that was a bit late for us. This show was after mum's bedtime! We could go straight in after having our card scanned as we had a booking but there were a number of people waiting in the 'standby' line hoping to be able to go in if anyone with bookings didn't show up. 8.50pm was the cut off for people with bookings and then they would start letting in the standbyers. It is a decent sized theatre but like old theatres are there some seats better than others. A few nearer the back were behind columns and the lower ones weren't as tiered as the top so if a taller person sat in front of you, you may have a bit of a time looking around them. We did notice people saving seats, which aren't meant to do, but what made it even worse was that they were saving them for people who did not have a reservation. A bit selfish if you ask me! Anyway, we really enjoyed the show and were looking forward to the other shows I had prebooked for later in the cruise.

Live.Love.Legs show in the Royal Theatre

 Now it's time for bed, we aren't party animals that's for sure!